All ‘Elder Scrolls’ games, ranked worst to best

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The Elder Scrolls franchise has been around for nearly 30 years, and in that time, it’s offered some of the most exciting RPG adventures in gaming history, set in one of the most expansive fantasy worlds of all time. The series has repeatedly pushed the boundaries of game design, featuring immense playable worlds to explore. Until we get more news on the long-awaited Elder Scrolls VI, here are all the main games and spin-offs so far, ranked.

While Arena is the lowest-ranked entry on this list, it’s far from a bad game. The first game in the series, 1994’s Arena introduced players to the world of Tamriel. The game’s developers were interested in the possibilities of procedural generation technology, and used it to create a vast, endless world to explore. Arena tells the story of a hero who, with the aid of a ghostly ally, travels to every province in Tamriel to gather and reassemble the Staff of Chaos, to put an end to the reign of the tyrannical Jagar Tharn.

Arena ranks the lowest on this list simply because it’s more barebones than subsequent games in the series — while there are enormous towns and cities to explore, they’re populated with generic procedurally-generated content, and the player spends much of the game exploring the main quest dungeons. The game is also a bit broken; non-magic users stand little chance against the endgame enemies such as Liches, while anyone able to cast a basic Reflect spell will be almost totally unstoppable. Still, the game offers huge and varied dungeons, with plenty of playstyles to experiment with.

The little-known Battlespire was a short game that came out after Daggerfall. While Daggerfall gave players an immense world to explore, Battlespire decided to focus on dungeon crawling.