10 Most Ambitious Wii RPGs

The Nintendo Wii was a major home for the JRPGs of its era, which isn't surprising given Nintendo's strong position within the Japanese gaming ecosystem — and this remained true even during the seventh console era's difficult period for JRPGs across the board.

Despite the difficult time for the genre, we saw some truly ambitious Wii JRPGs release, but what about RPGs? Well, the Wii was less well-known for its traditional RPGs. The Nintendo Wii had a decent, if somewhat obscure, showing, even though it was missing the biggest seventh-gen RPGs in history, like Skyrim or Fallout 3. These 10 games were all ambitious in some way, whether in a technical or narrative sense, in their world-building, or even in how deeply they committed to the Wii's unique motion controls.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is a puzzle RPG that takes a Bejeweled-like match puzzle system and turns it into an RPG combat system. I know, it sounds pretty weird, but they built a genuine RPG around that system: the game has a world map, quests, equipment, spells, character levels, attributes, companions, and a large campaign.

This was a genuinely ambitious attempt to create a different kind of RPG system, and it arguably succeeded. It didn't treat the puzzle-based combat system as an afterthought either, because all the traditional RPG elements feed into it. Character levels provide attribute points, and equipment, mounts, companions, and spells modify how the puzzle battles work. Is it the most technically impressive game ever? No. But it's a fascinating example of how a genre can be reimagined.

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is an ambitious ensemble party-based RPG set in the Marvel Universe. It's stuck on its original hardware, so you can't play it these days, but it was a genuinely ambitious attempt to translate the expansive Marvel Universe into a party-based RPG. You can create teams from a roster of more than 20 heroes to take through the large campaign and dungeon-crawling mechanics.

The Wii version integrated motion controls into the combat, including directional attacks and motion-based powers. The game featured individual power progression for each character, but also had team compositions produce different bonuses. This is a genuine superhero party RPG rather than a throwaway licensed game, even if its technical ambition is somewhat lacking. It stands out for its sheer scope.

Baroque is a real-time roguelike RPG originally released on the Sega Saturn and PlayStation, but which received an interesting Wii remake. The Wii remake didn't really do anything particularly interesting to the underlying game. It didn't make extensive use of motion controls. It didn't push the Wii hardware to its limits. The underlying game is pretty much the same, although it has some additional difficulty options. Its original release was already pretty ambitious on its own merits, but what makes the Wii re-release interesting is its positioning.

The Wii was not a natural home for a game like Baroque. The console was never an especially welcoming home for traditional RPGs, and Baroque was already an uncompromising, niche roguelike RPG. Baroque's defining ambition on the Wii was to bring an interesting gameplay loop and design philosophy to a new set of gamers on a console dominated by very different RPG traditions.

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