The Best RPG Series With Anthology Games

Key Takeaways

• Pokemon
  integrates characters and regions across games, culminating in the crossover Gacha
  Pokemon Masters EX.
• .hack//Link
  connects multiple series while facing criticism over gameplay in its final mainline game.
• Fire Emblem Heroes
  continues to expand with crossovers across the franchise, providing unparalleled character integration.

There are a number of role-playing games that tend to shift focus to a different cast, setting, and possibly even more as the series progresses. Games can go from 2D to 3D, monochrome to fully colored, and static and silence to high-quality voice acting. As a cache of these different games, settings, and other pieces are built and added to, some companies will put them all into one setting.

This leads to RPGs crossing over with themselves in a way, with characters who have an established degree of separation interacting directly. These are oftentimes done in the Gacha format, but this is far from the only manner in which certain series cross over with themselves. These anthology RPGs will be ranked by the number of series installments as well as how well they integrate their source material.

5 Pokemon

Anthology Game: Pokemon Masters EX

Pokemon is noted for carrying over the majority of its typically ‘playable’ characters to most series installments; those being the titular Pokemon themselves. That said, the human characters of each game typically nod to those of others. Most notably, Gold and Silver allow the player to travel from their native region of Johto to Kanto, allowing them to fully experience the previous game’s region for themselves. While this direct integration is rare as the series expands its scope, there are always more examples of just how interconnected every region is.

These include the Pokemon World Tournament in Black 2 and White 2, which allows the player to face off against a number of Gym Leaders and Champions from the series’ various regions established at the time, as well as Team Rainbow Rocket from Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, an alternate-universe version of the evil team consisting of various established evil team leaders who succeeded in their goals.

This fully came to a head with the Gacha game known as Pokemon Masters EX. This game allows the players to team up with and take control of various characters of all sorts from each region, including the Elite Four, Champions, and even all the established playable trainers, with each one of them having a signature Pokemon of their own.

From here, the player effectively participates in 3-on-3 battles against enemy teams, whilst building up their own Pokemon squad. This means the game maintains a high level of fidelity towards its source, even with the simplified format. Masters EX received mixed reviews upon release, with some being focused on the lack of content and others on the shallow mechanics. Nonetheless, as it is still in service, the game has continued to grow and expand since its release.

4 .hack

Anthology Game: .hack//Link

This fascinating series takes place within a virtual MMORPG, known as “The World,” and has players of the game in their chosen avatars acting as the heroes. It makes the unique choice of having multiple installments dedicated to a single, overarching story. It also had a successor series, .hack//G.U., which takes place sometime after the first, featuring entirely new characters, and like its predecessor, focuses on a story told across multiple games.

The two series are more directly connected in .hack//Link, a Japan-only PSP release, which features characters from both incarnations alongside a new protagonist named Tokio Kuryuu, fighting against a new evil organization known as Schicksal. The game was praised for its connective nature, linking between the lore of the games and expanded media such as OVAs, manga adaptations, and more. However, the gameplay itself fell under scrutiny, being heavily criticized by reviewers and critics. .hack has since attempted multiple spiritual successors, which ironically were on now-discontinued service-based platforms. However, //Link remains the final mainline game with the .hack title, and the last to focus on the lore of the greater series before it.

A fighting game with a roster once again encompassing the greater series, //Versus, was released sometime later, often bundled with an original movie using .hack as the source material.

3 Fire Emblem

Anthology Game: Fire Emblem Heroes

Fire Emblem is noted for its many incarnations, and crossovers of a sort tend to happen to varying degrees in the main series as well. An early example of broader self-acknowledgment was Awakening, where avatars based on characters from previous installations, termed Einherjar, were playable, and could be fought against in DLC maps. A small handful of them, more directly tooled to be based on unique characters, also reappeared in Fates.

The series delved into more direct crossover territory with Warriors, which integrated RPG gameplay alongside the beat-em-up format of most Warriors games. Here, characters from many incarnations of Fire Emblem are playable, albeit with some games receiving less or no representation in the spin-off. Engage focuses on “Emblem” versions of the warriors, who have their powers utilized by the playable characters of this specific installment in the series. There is also Tokyo Mirage Sessions, which retools characters from Awakening and Shadow Dragon into Persona-like beings.

The most broadly accepted crossover, however, is Heroes, a long-running Gacha game that continually updates and has survived concurrently alongside multiple mainline Fire Emblem games. With its length, it continually succeeds at integrating characters from throughout the series across its updates, ranging from fan favorites and well-known characters to lesser-knowns, some of whom were not previously localized outside of Japan. Although the gameplay is simplified to a great degree (even with continual updates), no other Fire Emblem game has this many characters from its respective titles working together under one title.

2 Final Fantasy

Anthology Game: Dissidia Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy is something of a metaseries in itself, with a lot of its more popular entries having supplementary material that expands on the greater lore of their specific narratives. That being said, there is a continual series that blends the series’ disconnected worlds together, known as Dissidia Final Fantasy.

Dissidia originated as a 3D fighting game, but like Fire Emblem Warriors, it ported elements of the series’ original genre over to this other incarnation. The result is that some of the gameplay feels more like that of an action RPG rather than a fighting game. There are three incarnations of this game, with the third, NT, focusing on 3v3 combat, with two selected characters being AI-controlled while another is played directly. Heroes and villains from nearly every numbered Final Fantasy installment at the time of release, as well as Ramza Beoulve from Tactics and Ace from Type-0, are playable.

Dissidia has a fourth incarnation, although it is not a fighting game, but rather a Gacha game known as Opera Omnia. This installment has far more playable characters from each game, and includes at least two, often more, for each game represented. With service concluding in February 2024, it is unclear what shape or direction, if any, Dissidia will take from here on out.

1 Tales Of

Anthology Game: Tales Of The World

The Tales series tends to rarely focus on an individual setting for more than a single installment, although some sequels do exist. Additionally, certain games tend to take place in the same general area, despite not being strictly classified as direct sequels. Like many RPGs, the series tends to have a mythologized medieval aesthetic and involves themes of justice and conflict across different races and cultures. The Tales series exists in many forms, and various characters from its installments have made appearances elsewhere.

Due to the mixed popularity of the series, only a select number of titles are available in the West, such as the most recent release, Tales of Arise, which came out in 2021. Less commonly available are the spin-off titles, known as Tales of the World. This is a somewhat interesting title when one considers that it rarely seems like there is one “world” that encompasses all these “tales.”

Nonetheless, a variety of games that feature characters from the many Tales installments have been released. Radiant Mythology, a rare Western release, is one such example, coming out in 2007 worldwide. Other games in the series tend to focus on different genres, including puzzle games, tactical RPGs, and even a board game hybrid. The most recent installment of this series is Reve Unitia, which came out in 2014 and was a 3DS port of the mobile game Tactics Union. Roughly a decade later, this series has remained dormant. It is likely that, as new Tales worlds are continually being created, there is less incentive to continually model games around them collectively. Seeing as Arise is the 17th mainline installment, the focus currently seems to be more geared towards the individual worlds themselves.