Published Sep 27, 2026, 12:00 PM EDT
Jared is a writer, editor, and Communications Studies graduate who loves popular nerd culture (almost anything to do with Marvel, DC, Star Wars, or The Lord of the Rings) and the interactive storytelling medium. Jared's first console was the PS1, wherein he fell for Spider-Man, Spyro the Dragon, and Crash Bandicoot.
Sign in to your ScreenRant account
If the fantasy genre was a crown, The Lord of the Rings would glimmer as its most elegant and significant jewel. Tragically, that jewel’s radiance has dulled concerning The Lord of the Rings games, as they’re a mixed bag that is arguably more bad than good at this point. The games that are superb hit extraordinary high highs, but so many have been lackluster in their attempt to replicate what makes The Lord of the Rings so special.
The Lord of the Rings deserves a lot more than an egregious Gollum game, for example. The Lord of the Rings may not have its ‘Hogwarts Legacy’ yet, but there are myriad high- and dark-fantasy RPGs that are immersive and terrific enough to satisfy that craving in the meantime.
9 Elden Ring
Elden Ring rewrote the book on what a FromSoftware Soulslike game could look like, and its sheer enormity as an open-world game helped provide it with a scope and scale that let the Lands Between and the Land of Shadow rival Middle-earth in their potential for worldbuilding. It’s a treat, then, that George R.R. Martin contributed to Elden Ring.
Besides, the titles Lord of the Rings and Elden Ring are strikingly similar, with many of the same fantasy tropes that the former possesses naturally being found in the latter. If Elden Ring and Elden Ring Nightreign received a novelization that plunged into the depths of its lore, it’d surely be as dense and marvelous as J.R.R. Tolkien’s three Lord of the Rings volumes.
8 Baldur’s Gate 3
The hype was unlike anything else when Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian’s enormous fantasy CRPG sensation, took the industry by storm, finishing its nearly three-year early access period and launching fully in August 2023. Strangely, despite Baldur’s Gate 3’s overwhelming popularity, Larian is not focusing its efforts on exploring the franchise that it made such a profound impact on further, but instead hopping back to its original IP, Divinity.
Either way, Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the biggest and best fantasy RPG games ever, and lovers of fantasy and The Lord of the Rings alike cannot afford to sleep on it. If ever there was a Lord of the Rings CRPG like Baldur’s Gate 3, fans of Tolkien’s work might never need to play another game for the rest of their lives and be wholly sated, though fans of the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online may already have that scratch sufficiently itched in many ways.
The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion may not necessarily be more or less popular than either its predecessor, The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, or its sequel, The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, but fans don’t have too tough a choice to make regarding which Elder Scrolls games they’d probably get the most out of if they’re hoping for an atmosphere comparable to that of The Lord of the Rings.
6 Dragon’s Dogma 2
More than anything else, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is perhaps a fundamentally devastating interpretation of how nightmarish and bleak the Fellowship and Frodo Baggins’ journey was. A lot of the gameplay in Capcom’s Dragon’s Dogma franchise boils down to getting from point A to point B, crossing unaccommodating lands and encountering hostiles, and players who aren’t sufficiently prepared and have their resource management in order will suffer the same fate that a quartet of hobbits would if they failed to pack enough provisions, such as crispy bacon or lembas bread.
Thankfully, players don’t need to think like Frodo does in Amon Hen, at the end of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, when he believes he must complete his adventure alone. Dragon’s Dogma 2’s Pawns are companions who are as stalwart as Samwise Gamgee, and occasionally as humorous as Sam, too, depending on their NPC AI behavior. Dragon’s Dogma’s sense of scale is also unmatched by many other fantasy RPGs, and being able to scale and slay giant beasts can give players the same satisfaction as watching Legolas defeat the cave troll that the Fellowship encountered in Khazad-dûm.
5 Fable
Fable is like The Lord of the Rings, if only every character was as immature and stupefied as Peregrine “Pippin” Took, and if it embraced absurdist British humor as one of its chief characteristics. Levity certainly plays a massive role in The Lord of the Rings, and Fable is better for indulging in this signature, as opposed to turning tail and fleeing from it.
If a Middle-earth game let players dilly-dally in the Shire as a hobbit and repulse hobbit NPCs with a flatulence emote, it’d be utterly bizarre. In Fable, players are actively incentivized to make choices and behave in ways that will alter the game world and manipulate how NPCs perceive the protagonist character. Playground’s upcoming Fable game is set to reinvigorate the series in February 2027, demonstrating why Fable is such an endearing and enjoyable flagship Xbox IP.
4 Pillars Of Eternity
Custom image by Nicholas WeidLike the Baldur’s Gate franchise, Pillars of Eternity is explicitly based on Dungeons & Dragons, though Dungeons & Dragons is heavily inspired by The Lord of the Rings. Pillars of Eternity is yet another example of how seminal The Lord of the Rings’ truly has been for almost 90 years, and it’s nearly impossible not to see those influences present in every remarkable and beloved piece of popular fantasy media today. If you adored Baldur’s Gate 3 yet have not played Pillars of Eternity and are interested in exploring other Dungeons & Dragons- or Lord of the Rings-esque CRPGs, you ought to.
3 Avowed
Speaking of Pillars of Eternity, The Lord of the Rings enjoyers who are also fans of Obsidian’s rich BioWare- and Bethesda-style RPGs should look no further than Avowed. Indeed, Avowed and Pillars of Eternity coexist within the same IP and share the same world of Eora, meaning that there should be plenty of lore that’s both new and familiar. Of course, Avowed may fare better for fans who prefer an RPG in the same vein as an Elder Scrolls game, rather than an RPG like Pillars of Eternity, as its gameplay is played from a first- or third-person perspective.
Avowed’s expressive buildcrafting allows players to experiment liberally with the kind of fantasy archetype they’d like to role-play as, and it’s as fun to play as a book-and-wand-wielding sorcerer as it is to play as a bow-and-arrow-wielding archer. Sadly, with Obsidian now tasked with developing a new Fallout game and Xbox having cracked down on which IPs will be given preferential treatment due to their perceived potential for great success, it’s unlikely that we’ll see an Avowed sequel anytime soon.
2 Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
Because Kingdom Come: Deliverance developer Warhorse is currently working on an open-world Middle-earth RPG, there’s no RPG better to play if you’re a fan of The Lord of the Rings than Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. Warhorse’s open-world Middle-earth RPG could define what Lord of the Rings games look like for the foreseeable future, and it’ll be doubly interesting to see if Warhorse will attempt to marry Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2’s historical realism with Tolkien’s dizzyingly high-brow brand of fantasy.
1 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
The Witcher’s dark-fantasy universe is a fascinating cocktail of Slavic, Celtic, and Nordic mythology inspirations, and its emphasis on the horrors and tragedy that humankind itself brews is about as different from The Lord of the Rings’ themes as you can get. It’s also much more lewd and grimy, and it’s these differences that make The Witcher exceptionally unique in a genre that is otherwise dominated by the aesthetic of The Lord of the Rings.
Regardless, the world that CD Projekt Red has crafted and adapted from Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher stories is unbelievably rich and immersive, and may be a lovely change of pace for fans who get a bit of a sweet tooth from how triumphant and heartwarming The Lord of the Rings is.
Created by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings is a multimedia franchise consisting of several movies and a TV show released by Amazon titled The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. The franchise is based on J.R.R. Tolkien's book series that began in 1954 with The Fellowship of the Ring. The Lord of the Rings saw mainstream popularity with Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies.
English (US) ·