90s RPGs: Choose Your Next Console or PC Adventure

90s RPGs split along both platform and combat style lines, and picking the right starting point depends more on which of those two axes matters to you than on which specific franchise you've heard of.

Console vs. computer RPGs

Japanese console RPGs of the decade, like Square's Final Fantasy VII (1997) and Chrono Trigger (1995), typically centered on a fixed, authored cast and story. Western computer RPGs like BioWare's Baldur's Gate (released November 30, 1998 by Interplay, using modified Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules and BioWare's own Infinity Engine) instead built around a player-created or player-directed party with more open-ended choices.

Combat styles

Within console RPGs, tactical, grid-based combat (Sega's Shining Force II, 1993, covered in our Shining Force comparison) is a distinct subgenre from menu-based turn order combat (Final Fantasy VII). Blizzard's Diablo (late 1996), covered in our PC Games category, represents a third style entirely: real-time action combat with RPG progression systems layered on top, closer to an action game than a traditional turn-based RPG.

Story and exploration

Console RPGs of the era generally guided players through a more linear, authored story path; Baldur's Gate and similar computer RPGs typically offered a larger, more openly explorable map with side content outside the main story thread, a structural difference as much as a stylistic one.

Beginner-friendly routes

• Want an authored story with turn-based combat: Final Fantasy VII or Chrono Trigger.
• Want tactical, grid-based combat: Shining Force II.
• Want real-time action combat with RPG systems: Diablo.
• Want an open, party-based computer RPG: Baldur's Gate, with the caveat that it arrived right at the very end of the decade in 1998.

We haven't substantiated specific playtime estimates for any of these and aren't stating any here, per this article's own scope note.