10 Classic RPG Games That Need Modern Remakes

One of the most ambitious and unusual action-RPGs of the PS1 era, Vagrant Story was the brainchild of Yasumi Matsuno, Square’s master of tactical combat and stories with acres of intrigue.

As Ashley Riot, a skilled warrior known as a Riskbreaker, you need to delve into the city of Leá Monde and the catacombs beneath to hunt a cult leader.

A deep real-time battle system involving targeting individual body parts and a dark, graphically rich environment made this a cult classic that was more Dark Souls than Final Fantasy.

There are so many big, cool ideas here that work okay on the original PlayStation but would flourish in a modern game for modern audiences accustomed to environmental storytelling and difficult combat.

Objectively, KOTOR is a virtually flawless game and one of the best dives into the Star Wars universe ever.

Packed with memorable characters, difficult decisions and exciting set pieces, it was a massive critical and commercial success.

While the Star Wars movies might be back in limbo, Knights of the Old Republic is crying out for a modern remake that not only cleans up the dated graphics but adds in even more delicious planets to explore.

The mark of a truly classic role-playing game is that you just want to spend more time with it, and this is one of the best examples.

Troika’s 2001 RPG Arcanum looked dated when it was released, and its graphics haven’t aged well in the interim.

But behind the presentation lies one of the most ambitious entries in the genre ever.

Set in a world making the transition from magic to industrial science, players survive a zeppelin crash only to become embroiled in a quest to discover the origins of a mysterious ring.

This PC game was way ahead of its time conceptually, allowing for fully pacifist runs and tons of other unique features.

We’d love to see what modern hardware could do with it.

Another role-playing game that pushed envelopes, the fifth installment in Capcom’s Breath of Fire series for the PS2 moved beyond the fantasy trappings of the first three.

This game turned the franchise into something darker and weirder by setting it in a post-apocalyptic world through a series of subterranean bunkers where any wrong move meant disaster.

The game featured numerous mechanics that were way ahead of its time, including the ability to transform into an OP dragon form to win fights, at the cost of raising a meter that, when full, ended your game instantly.

Dragon Quarter's bizarre save system, which encouraged multiple play-throughs, took some getting used to, but a modern remake that filed down some rough edges could bring this gem to a new audience.

For gamers in the late 1990s, it was criminal that one of the best role-playing titles of the 32-bit generation could only be played if you had a doomed Sega Saturn.

While the first two Panzer Dragoon games were straight-up rail shooters of the kind that Sega pioneered with Space Harrier, the third was a curious hybrid of genres.

Panzer Dragoon Saga featured free-roaming exploration, both on foot and astride your dragon, mixed with a combat system heavy on ranged attacks.

It was a critical success, but many complained that the game was too short, which a modern remake could certainly fix.

Widely regarded as one of the greatest action-RPGs of all time, Gothic II allowed developers Piranha Bytes to craft a massive world full of the most believable NPCs that 2002 had ever seen.

Played in an overhead isometric perspective, it cast the player as a hero seeking a magical artifact that will allow him to speak with the legion of dragons about to destroy his city.

It’s a sprawling, memorable adventure that still holds up today, but it could be better.

Players had numerous criticisms about the combat and localization, all of which could be set right with a high-gloss remake.

One of the most influential and successful PC role-playing games ever, Betrayal at Krondor was released in 1993 to a cavalcade of praise.

The game is set in the Riftwar universe of author Raymond Feist and combines tactical combat with an epic story. 

Betrayal at Krondor puts the player on a gridded battlefields, like classic tabletop systems, and the story unfolds chapter-by-chapter with a huge supporting cast.

This was an epic for its era and still holds up, but imagine what a dedicated team could do with the material over a quarter-century later. 

Everyone knows that the development process of Square’s 1998 mech fantasy epic Xenogears was… troubled.

Conceived as both a new Final Fantasy game and a Chrono Trigger sequel at various points, it was eventually made into the first installment of its own series on the original PlayStation.

As anybody who played it remembers, the final act of this game is an absolute disaster, with huge chunks of the story communicated through narration while the main character sits in a chair because the team just ran out of time to finish the game.

If Final Fantasy VII Remake succeeds, this is the next logical step, giving another classic the grand execution it deserves.

The Persona games are a cultural phenomenon at this point, but many of the Shin Megami Tensei titles are stuck on obsolete systems and not playable by modern gamers.

One of the absolute best is 2003’s brilliant Nocturne on PlayStation 2, which was wildly ahead of its time and already received an expanded edition a year after release.

It has enough big, crazy ideas to float a vastly expanded remake.

When the world is transformed by the Conception into an embryonic state from which a new universe will be born, the half-demon protagonist has to venture through a transformed Tokyo and contend with the forces looking to shape this new world in their image.

It’s an amazingly deep and uncompromising game that rewards deep contemplation, and with Atlus’s devotion to remakes and updates, it deserves a spot in line.

One of the most ambitious and unusual action-RPGs of the PS1 era, Vagrant Story was the brainchild of Yasumi Matsuno, Square’s master of tactical combat and stories with acres of intrigue.

As Ashley Riot, a skilled warrior known as a Riskbreaker, you need to delve into the city of Leá Monde and the catacombs beneath to hunt a cult leader.

A deep real-time battle system involving targeting individual body parts and a dark, graphically rich environment made this a cult classic that was more Dark Souls than Final Fantasy.

There are so many big, cool ideas here that work okay on the original PlayStation but would flourish in a modern game for modern audiences accustomed to environmental storytelling and difficult combat.

Objectively, KOTOR is a virtually flawless game and one of the best dives into the Star Wars universe ever.

Packed with memorable characters, difficult decisions and exciting set pieces, it was a massive critical and commercial success.

While the Star Wars movies might be back in limbo, Knights of the Old Republic is crying out for a modern remake that not only cleans up the dated graphics but adds in even more delicious planets to explore.

The mark of a truly classic role-playing game is that you just want to spend more time with it, and this is one of the best examples.

Troika’s 2001 RPG Arcanum looked dated when it was released, and its graphics haven’t aged well in the interim.

But behind the presentation lies one of the most ambitious entries in the genre ever.

Set in a world making the transition from magic to industrial science, players survive a zeppelin crash only to become embroiled in a quest to discover the origins of a mysterious ring.

This PC game was way ahead of its time conceptually, allowing for fully pacifist runs and tons of other unique features.

We’d love to see what modern hardware could do with it.

Another role-playing game that pushed envelopes, the fifth installment in Capcom’s Breath of Fire series for the PS2 moved beyond the fantasy trappings of the first three.

This game turned the franchise into something darker and weirder by setting it in a post-apocalyptic world through a series of subterranean bunkers where any wrong move meant disaster.

The game featured numerous mechanics that were way ahead of its time, including the ability to transform into an OP dragon form to win fights, at the cost of raising a meter that, when full, ended your game instantly.

Dragon Quarter's bizarre save system, which encouraged multiple play-throughs, took some getting used to, but a modern remake that filed down some rough edges could bring this gem to a new audience.

For gamers in the late 1990s, it was criminal that one of the best role-playing titles of the 32-bit generation could only be played if you had a doomed Sega Saturn.

While the first two Panzer Dragoon games were straight-up rail shooters of the kind that Sega pioneered with Space Harrier, the third was a curious hybrid of genres.

Panzer Dragoon Saga featured free-roaming exploration, both on foot and astride your dragon, mixed with a combat system heavy on ranged attacks.

It was a critical success, but many complained that the game was too short, which a modern remake could certainly fix.

Widely regarded as one of the greatest action-RPGs of all time, Gothic II allowed developers Piranha Bytes to craft a massive world full of the most believable NPCs that 2002 had ever seen.

Played in an overhead isometric perspective, it cast the player as a hero seeking a magical artifact that will allow him to speak with the legion of dragons about to destroy his city.

It’s a sprawling, memorable adventure that still holds up today, but it could be better.

Players had numerous criticisms about the combat and localization, all of which could be set right with a high-gloss remake.

One of the most influential and successful PC role-playing games ever, Betrayal at Krondor was released in 1993 to a cavalcade of praise.

The game is set in the Riftwar universe of author Raymond Feist and combines tactical combat with an epic story. 

Betrayal at Krondor puts the player on a gridded battlefields, like classic tabletop systems, and the story unfolds chapter-by-chapter with a huge supporting cast.

This was an epic for its era and still holds up, but imagine what a dedicated team could do with the material over a quarter-century later. 

Everyone knows that the development process of Square’s 1998 mech fantasy epic Xenogears was… troubled.

Conceived as both a new Final Fantasy game and a Chrono Trigger sequel at various points, it was eventually made into the first installment of its own series on the original PlayStation.

As anybody who played it remembers, the final act of this game is an absolute disaster, with huge chunks of the story communicated through narration while the main character sits in a chair because the team just ran out of time to finish the game.

If Final Fantasy VII Remake succeeds, this is the next logical step, giving another classic the grand execution it deserves.

The Persona games are a cultural phenomenon at this point, but many of the Shin Megami Tensei titles are stuck on obsolete systems and not playable by modern gamers.

One of the absolute best is 2003’s brilliant Nocturne on PlayStation 2, which was wildly ahead of its time and already received an expanded edition a year after release.

It has enough big, crazy ideas to float a vastly expanded remake.

When the world is transformed by the Conception into an embryonic state from which a new universe will be born, the half-demon protagonist has to venture through a transformed Tokyo and contend with the forces looking to shape this new world in their image.

It’s an amazingly deep and uncompromising game that rewards deep contemplation, and with Atlus’s devotion to remakes and updates, it deserves a spot in line.