It is a very difficult thing in this modern age to make a great video game that stands out from the bunch and gets high scores from both fans and critics. Metacritic is a website that has long been a measure for fans of how well-received a certain game is, but it is rare for long-running franchises to achieve such consistent success.
Capcom is one of the more famous game companies of all time, and its franchises have produced some of the highest (and lowest) scores across the history of Metacritic. But few franchises manage to maintain the highest scores on any review website, so which of Capcom’s many franchises have stayed at such a high level across many entries?
5 Ace Attorney
While it is difficult for a franchise with many entries to attain such consistent critic scores, the Ace Attorney franchise of visual novel games has managed it for the six main games in the franchise. Or at least, the collected version of the Phoenix Wright trilogy has achieved over 80 on Metacritic, and each of the more recent games has achieved between 77 and 81.
The games feature the player taking on the role of a defense attorney and trying to defend their clients through a series of trials. The games are split into investigative scenes and courtroom scenes. After players put together a case and find evidence, they have to bring up witnesses and examine their testimonies to find inconsistencies. All of this usually leads to them getting their clients freed, the games have an excellent story and have always managed to impress Metacritic reviewers.
4 Dragon’s Dogma
Dragon’s Dogma is set in a fantasy world called Gransys where a character called the Arisen must go on a quest to defeat a dragon that is said to herald the end of days. The game as well as an online update and a special edition have all been released so far to huge acclaim. The high-fantasy world and conspiracies uncovered on the Arisen’s journey have all been massively praised by critics.
The gameplay of Dragon's Dogma has been highly praised throughout the series thus far, including the exclusively-Japanese MMO built around the game’s world. From the class system in building characters to the highly-regarded pawn system regarding other members in the party, the game builds from a familiar place for the genre towards a place of originality and unique excellence. A proper sequel to the original game is in development, but for now, every entry in the series has been a huge success.
3 Okami
Okami is one of the best-regarded video games of all time, and despite having originally been released sixteen years ago there is the constant praise for this being hugely relevant and ahead of its time. While there has never been an official sequel, the game was turned into a franchise by a spiritual successor which was titled Okamiden which was released for the Nintendo 3DS.
Okami was set in classical Japan and mixed Japanese mythology and folklore to tell a tale about the land being saved from darkness by a Sun Goddess. The general gameplay has been praised and compared to The Legend of Zelda series in style and both the original game and successor have been praised massively for their story and gameplay aspects.
2 Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective was just a singular game again, but one that received many releases on various platforms, including surprisingly getting an IOS release that changed the gameplay aspects significantly. In spite of this, no version has ever failed to fall below the 75 mark on Metacritic.
The game features a recently deceased ghost trying to figure out both who he was when he lived and how he came to be killed. The gameplay involves a lot of puzzle-solving and using the ghostly powers of the character to try and save the lives of others. Players are also able to switch from the physical world to the ghost world, where time is stopped, and for these aspects as well as many more mechanics, the game has been massively praised since it was released in every format, prompting huge and consistent praise from sites such as Metacritic.
1 Breath Of Fire
Breath Of Fire is another series that ran for a number of games and managed to retain high standards throughout. The games feature an adventurer named Ryu who can transform into various dragons in order to fight great evils. The parties usually consist of four characters, often including Nina, who can transform into different types of large birds.
The series managed to release six games before going on a hiatus in 2008, which has seen it become a resting IP, besides the sudden release of Breath of Fire 6 online in 2016. But despite this any of the games which have enough reviews to achieve a percentage on Metacritic have managed to retain over the 75% mark. Capcom continues to call Breath of Fire their most successful role-playing game series, and much of this is due to the series taking many cues from the success of Japanese role-playing games in the 1990s. This hugely impacted how the games handled fighting, and character development, and the games even began using anime-drawn artwork for Western releases of the games after the first two entries in the franchise.