The Best Dungeons & Dragons Video Games

With Baldur’s Gate 3 on the way, it’s time to take a look at some of the best Dungeons & Dragons video games. While Dungeons & Dragons is of course known for being a tabletop RPG, its popularity is at least partially due to the many video games that have captivated fans since the 1980s. Some games have been faithful recreations of various D&D rulesets, while others have highlighted some of many worlds of the game. Since we’re getting a brand new Baldur’s Gate game coming out in just a few weeks, we decided to take a look at some of the many fantastic D&D games that have come out before, picking out which games you should check out while either waiting for Baldur’s Gate 3 or looking for a new obsession after finishing the game. 

Eye of the Beholder

One of my personal favorites, Eye of the Beholder might be the first D&D game that most folks played if they didn’t have a PC. The dungeon-crawler RPG was released on the SNES and Sega CD alongside PCs. The game sent players to kill the infamous Xanathar, a beholder crime boss lurking in the sewers beneath Waterdeep. Players could grow their party by resurrecting or saving NPCs within the sewer system. Several sequels were released, but Eye of the Beholder was the only one released on consoles save for a stripped down version that was released for the Game Boy Advance. 

Neverwinter

D&D fans often forget that there’s a popular and long-running MMORPG that has been regularly releasing new content over the last decade. Neverwinter was first released in 2013 but has been regularly pushing new content between 1-2 times a year since its release. Many of the game’s campaigns tie into either recent D&D campaign adventures or popular Forgotten Realms novels, and the developers have regularly made massive overhauls to the game’s mechanics to address player criticism and add new classes. If you want an appropriately epic D&D experience, Neverwinter might be the game for you. 

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

While not a Dungeons & Dragons game in the traditional set, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is actually built around a Dungeons & Dragons ruleset. The underlying game engine for both Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel are based around the Wizards of the Coast Star Wars RPG, which uses a d20 system that is essentially Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition with the fantasy bits stripped out of it. Characters in Knights of the Old Republic have the same six ability scores and the same ability modifiers as D&D characters. Using a menu, players could even see the dice rolls used to determine successes and failures within the game. 

Neverwinter Nights

Another hugely influential game, Neverwinter Nights is a BioWare-developed D&D game that sees players fight off a mysterious cult that is spreading a plague throughout the Forgotten Realms, which eventually leads to a conflict with an ancient race of reptile people. The game was somewhat overlooked due to the release of Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, but was still popular enough to spawn a full sequel. While the game received much acclaim when it was released, the game engine developed for the game was also used for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and The Witcher, two other enormously-popular and influential video games. 

Planescape: Torment

While overshadowed by the release of Baldur’s Gate during the same year, Planescape: Torment is arguably the better game. Focused on the strange Planescape setting (one of my personal favorites in the franchise), Planescape: Torment focuses on a character known as the Nameless One who is trying to regain his memories and the reason why he was cursed with immortality. The Nameless One’s actions help shift his alignment throughout the game, which flavors the reactions of various NPCs. With Planescape returning later this year, it’s likely that we’ll see at least some of the characters from Planescape: Torment re-emerge. The floating skull Morte has already been confirmed as the narrator of Morte’s Planar Parade, one of the three books in the upcoming Planescape boxed set. 

Baldur’s Gate

Perhaps the most critically acclaimed Dungeons & Dragons video game of all time, the original Baldur’s Gate not only brought the Forgotten Realms to life for millions of players, it also helped to revitalize and re-establish the entire role playing video game genre in the late 1990s. The game’s plot involves the player discovering ties between an ongoing iron shortage in the Forgotten Realms to a plot involving a person trying to ascend to become the next god of murder. The game was not only a runaway success, it led to an entire franchise of games built around the Baldur’s Gate storyline and region.  An enhanced version of the game was released in 2012, bringing the game to a new generation of fans and adding even more new content for players.