My Favorite RPGs of the 2010s

So I've been playing Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and liking it more and more the further along I get. I've started mentally sorting it - "Definitely better than Pillars of Eternity. Is it better than Shadowrun: Hong Kong, though? How would you even compare a massive, crunchy, 100+ hours FRPG with a svelte, modern, streamlined 20-hour cyberpunk RPG?" And it occurred to me that, hey, maybe I should just go ahead and rank ALL THE RPGs!

More specifically, this is a belated list of my favorite RPGs of the 2010s. I came up with this list by reviewing all my blog posts with the "rpg" tag, published between January 1 2010 and December 31 2019. Some of them are arguably not RPGs, but I don't feel like re-tagging my post history. Items in [brackets] were released prior to 2010 but first played by me in this decade. (I have also bracketed Remastered/Enhanced versions of games I played in previous decades.) Items with stars* are games that I wrote one or more blog post about but never finished. And, I'm not listing games that I played but never blogged about, including the first two Witcher games. In most cases I included DLCs and remasters with the original games, except I have split out the various Neverwinter Nights expansions into separate entries.

This is a straightforward "What I enjoyed the most" list, as opposed to the more forceful and controversial "best" or "most influential" lists. As with previous lists of this type, I'm basing this on my current feelings in 2020, and not how much I loved a game at the time that I played it.

Without further ado, here are My Favorite RPGs of the 2010s!

1. Dragon Age: Inquisition
2. Fallout: New Vegas
3. Divinity: Original Sin 2
4. Shadowrun: Dragonfall
5. The Witcher 3
6. Sil
7. [Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines] 
8. [Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer]
9. Siege of Dragonspear
10. Shadowrun: Hong Kong 
11. Mass Effect 3
12. Sunless Skies
13. [Fallen London]
14. Dragon Age 2
15. South Park: The Stick of Truth
16. [Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition]
17. Dex
18. Lord of the Rings Online
19. [Neverwinter Nights 2]
20. [Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition]
21. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
22. Torment: Tides of Numenara
23. Pillars of Eternity
24. [Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark]
25. Wasteland 2*
26. Shadowrun Returns (Dead Man's Switch)
27. Mass Effect Andromeda
28. [Fallout 3]
29. Divinity: Original Sin*
30. [BioShock]
31. [Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide]
32.  Deus Ex: Human Revolution
33.  BioShock 2
34.  Star Wars: The Old Republic
35.  [Neverwinter Nights]

I do like RPGs a lot! Even the games near the bottom gave me a lot of pleasure. For example, I still have very fond memories of the Imperial Agent storyline in SWTOR; in that case, my memories of grind diminish it somewhat, but I still have no regrets about playing it.

I'm still in progress on Pathfinder: Kingmaker, obviously, but at the moment I think I would slot it at #5, between Dragonfall and The Witcher 3. Yes, I'm liking it that much!