Live ranking

The full ranking.

5,110 video games face off in duels and 438,816 duels have already been settled. The ranking is recomputed with every vote: filter by genre, decade, platform or period.

342 games Reset

  1. 1 Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings 1999 · Strategy 1,890
  2. 2 Sid Meier's Civilization IV 2005 · Strategy 1,872
  3. 3 Crusader Kings III 2020 · Strategy 1,859
  4. 4 Fire Emblem Awakening 2012 · Strategy 1,853
  5. 5 Age of Mythology 2002 · Strategy 1,844
  6. 6 Company of Heroes 2006 · Strategy 1,837
  7. 7 Sid Meier's Civilization V 2010 · Strategy 1,834
  8. 8 StarCraft 1998 · Strategy 1,823
  9. 9 Total War: Shogun 2 2011 · Strategy 1,816
  10. 10 Age of Empires 1997 · Strategy 1,812
  11. 11 Pikmin 2 2004 · Strategy 1,800
  12. 12 XCOM 2 2016 · Strategy 1,797
  13. 13 Command & Conquer 1995 · Strategy 1,796
  14. 14 Into the Breach 2018 · Strategy 1,780
  15. 15 Worms Armageddon 1999 · Strategy 1,771
  16. 16 Fire Emblem: Three Houses 2019 · Strategy 1,770
  17. 17 Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia 1999 · Strategy 1,769
  18. 18 Dungeon Keeper 1997 · Strategy 1,764
  19. 19 Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos 2002 · Strategy 1,763
  20. 20 XCOM: Enemy Unknown 2012 · Strategy 1,754
  21. 21 Rome: Total War 2004 · Strategy 1,749
  22. 22 Europa Universalis IV 2013 · Strategy 1,742
  23. 23 Medieval II: Total War 2006 · Strategy 1,729
  24. 24 Frostpunk 2018 · Strategy 1,724
  25. 25 Sid Meier's Civilization VI 2016 · Strategy 1,722

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FAQ

Questions about the ranking

How is this ranking established?

The ranking comes solely from player votes, in duels between two games. Each vote updates an ELO score, the rating system used in chess: every game starts at 1,500 points and its score moves duel after duel.

How often is the ranking updated?

Continuously: every duel voted immediately adjusts the score of the two games involved. The badge on the right shows how each game's rank moved over the past seven days.

How many games take part in the ranking?

5,110 games, selected for their fame, face off in duels. The full GameForever catalogue covers tens of thousands of titles, across every era and platform.

How can I see the best games by genre, decade or platform?

Use the filters at the top of the page: genre (RPG, FPS, platformer, strategy...), decade and platform (PC, PlayStation, Nintendo, Xbox, SEGA). Filters combine, and the selection is numbered from 1, from the highest ranked down; each game's world rank stays shown on its own entry. The period filter instead ranks on the points gained recently, from 7 days to 12 months (all time by default).

Why can an indie game finish ahead of a blockbuster?

The ELO score measures neither sales nor budget, but the preferences expressed in duels. An indie game that regularly wins its match-ups against higher-ranked titles climbs mechanically, owing nothing to its production budget.

What is the difference between the position in the list and the world rank?

The position is that of the selection on screen, numbered from 1 and carried on from page to page: filter on RPGs and the top RPG becomes number 1. The world rank depends on no filter and is shown on each game's own entry, along with its duel count and win rate.

Why rank by duels rather than by a score out of 10?

Absolute scores saturate: nearly every game that matters ends up between 7 and 9, and what is left of the gap often says more about a site's audience than about the games. A duel asks a question you cannot answer with "both", and it lets a 1994 game and a 2024 game be compared without correcting anything: they are not scored on two scales, they are set against each other.

Vote on a duel