8 Best RPGs Where The Story Is Better Than The Gameplay

RPG stories can be incredibly immersive, feeling like reading a detailed novel. However, sometimes they become frustrating – you might wish you were just reading a book instead of playing a game. Issues like awkward battles, endlessly repeating challenges, or gameplay that doesn’t live up to the story’s potential can make you struggle to get through the game, just to find out what happens next.

Sometimes a great story is enough to make a game truly captivating, even if the actual playing isn’t perfect. Here are eight role-playing games where the story is the biggest draw.

8. Xenogears

Gears May Stall, But the Story Keeps Running

Xenogears tells a complex story, drawing on ideas from philosophy, religion, and psychology. The game switches between standard turn-based battles and fights with massive robots. However, the animations can become repetitive, combat moves slowly, and controlling the robots often feels like navigating menus rather than actually piloting them.

On top of everything else, the game has random battles that happen far too often, becoming really annoying, particularly in lengthy dungeons. The game strongly emphasizes story, and its final section is famous for having very little gameplay, instead focusing on a lot of detailed explanations. Despite some frustrating pacing issues, *Xenogears* ultimately delivers a satisfying and thought-provoking ending.

7. Suikoden 2

A Political Masterpiece Trapped in Random Encounters

Suikoden 2 is a grand political story filled with compelling characters, exploring themes of loyalty and betrayal amidst a backdrop of war. While it has all the ingredients for a masterpiece, the gameplay-a traditional turn-based system-feels a bit basic, with characters having limited abilities. However, the game isn’t a failure; some of its larger battles remain engaging and memorable.

Although *Suikoden 2* lets you recruit and befriend 108 unique characters, the game’s story is sometimes held back by repetitive tasks. Frequent random battles interrupt exploration, and you’ll often find yourself needing to grind to progress. However, the game’s powerful and emotional story is compelling enough to keep you engaged despite these issues.

6. The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky

World-Building Worth Every Slow Step

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky is well-known for its complex political story, well-developed characters, and a huge, connected world. It uses classic turn-based battles with characters moving around a grid, and a unique magic system where you customize spells with “Quartz.” While the battles are strategically engaging, they can feel slow due to lengthy animations, which slightly detracts from the overall experience.

The dungeons feel unnecessarily long, filled with battles that don’t add much to the experience and seem designed to simply extend the game. There’s a lot of talking and explaining, which sometimes makes it feel more like reading a book than playing a game. However, the story and characters are strong enough to keep you engaged despite these slow parts.

5. Final Fantasy 13

When Lightning Strikes, But The Path Is Still a Hallway

Fans anticipated a visually stunning and epic story about destiny, self-sacrifice, and fighting against oppression. They expected this to be combined with the classic, strategic turn-based combat that *Final Fantasy* games are famous for. When *FF13* was announced in 2009, it created huge excitement in the JRPG community. However, the final game didn’t live up to the hype, and felt underwhelming, particularly due to its focus on the Paradigm Shift system.

The game wants you to frequently change how your characters fight, but it doesn’t teach you how to do this effectively at the beginning because much of the early game plays itself. It also largely skips over exploration, keeping you on a very straightforward path. While battles can feel predictable due to lengthy animations and a set pace, the story, emotional moments, and character development are strong enough to make it worth finishing.

4. The Witcher

Dialogue Choices That Outshine Sword Swings

It might feel wrong to critique a *Witcher* game, especially after how popular the third one became. However, those who have played the series since the beginning might remember that even with its mature story, difficult choices, and branching paths, the earlier games had somewhat clunky and repetitive combat.

Combat in the game involved specific timing and preparing with potions, but enemies weren’t very smart, turning fights into tests of patience rather than skill. Managing items and crafting were also clunky and confusing. Despite these issues, the game’s detailed world, dark atmosphere, and impactful choices make its flawed combat bearable. The world-building and consequences in dialogue really stand out.

3. Persona 2: Innocent Sin

Rumors Are More Fun Than the Random Battles

Though often overshadowed by its sequels, *Persona 2: Innocent Sin* tells a compelling and mature story about the power of rumors and their real-world consequences. It features insightful social commentary and deals with complex themes. The game’s turn-based battles involve collecting and combining demons, but can be challenging to learn.

Okay, so honestly, the biggest issues for me are all the random battles – they happen *way* too often and really slow things down. Plus, the dungeons themselves just aren’t that exciting. They feel really same-y and get boring quickly, especially when you compare them to the awesome, complex dungeons in later Persona games. It’s a bit of a slog getting through them, to be honest. But even with all that, I still love this game! The story is great, and that rumor mechanic is so unique – it’s what keeps die-hard Persona fans, like me, coming back even though the gameplay can be a little rough around the edges.

2. Lost Odyssey

A Thousand Years of Dreams, Ten Thousand Years of Menus

This Xbox 360 game, originally released in 2008, tells a moving story focused on its characters, exploring themes of immortality and human vulnerability. Gameplay involves classic turn-based battles, enhanced by a unique timing-based attack system. However, fights can feel slow due to repeated animations and a lot of time spent managing skills.

Many dungeon-crawling games fill time with endless battles. This game goes to the opposite extreme, featuring a huge amount of story content – like ‘A Thousand Years of Dreams,’ a collection of over thirty emotional stories about the main character’s long life – that feels out of place and ultimately distracts from the weak gameplay.

1. Drakengard 3

A Wild Ride Where the Cutscenes Are The Real Boss Fights

Okay, so as a big fan of Yoko Taro’s work, *Drakengard 3* is just… wild. The story is completely insane, super dark, and honestly, really weird – in the best way! And it has multiple endings that totally change how you see everything. Gameplay-wise, you’re doing a lot of sword-fighting on the ground, but then you switch to flying around on a dragon, which sounds cool, but honestly, the controls felt a little rough. The combat itself got pretty repetitive, and the wonky hit detection and camera made it even more frustrating than it needed to be.

The game suffers from a lack of enemy types, making battles feel similar. While fighting on the ground is a bit clumsy and repetitive, it’s manageable. The real frustration comes from the dragon battles, which are difficult to control and the dragons don’t behave intelligently. Drakengard 3 challenges players to push through awkward and repetitive gameplay for the sake of experiencing a uniquely unpredictable and strange RPG story.

2025-09-17 07:35