Name: Top 20 PS2 Games Better Than Modern Games
Uploaded: 2026-02-16T17:10:55.000Z
Duration: 22 min 52 s
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Welcome to watchmojo and the current gaming landscape may be on fire, but

during the PS2 era we had more and better games that managed to put modern titles and developers to shame two decades later.

The multiplayer focused offering that no one was asking for?

Well, it's deader than the series zombies only a couple years after release.

Why Capcom chose that particular genre is anyone's guess, especially when the groundwork for a beloved online Resident Evil game had been laid 20 years earlier.

Teaming up with other real world players, the group needs to work together to escape Raccoon City during the midst of the zombie outbreak, and

each member of the group had special abilities that would assist in various puzzles and combat encounters.

Encounters Outbreak was absolutely a title that was ahead of its time, and

especially with one of the game's main characters, Alyssa Ashcroft, tying directly into Requiem, Capcom clearly hasn't forgotten this gem that showed them how to properly do online cooperative play all the way back on the PS2.

Gran Turismo 3A spec there was a time when Gran Turismo was the premier car enthusiast series series, and

while that's still mostly true today, the series doesn't carry the same weight it once did, and

arguably the series has been chasing the same heights of Gran Turismo 3 ever since the early days of the PS2.

Aspec put the Gran Turismo series on even the most casual racer's radar and made such a cultural impact on the genre it still hasn't been matched even by the series subsequent sequels.

With nearly 200 cars, multiple levels of challenge for everyone from die Hard fans to beginners, fully fleshed out tuning and customization options, and

numerous race modifiers, ASPEC remains the Ultimate Gearheads game and still has a thriving community even today with the increased focus on microtransactions and online play.

Of the series, Ace remains one of the best entries focused on the race itself and the cars on the track.

few if any, managed to be as fun and consistently entertaining as SoulCalibur III.

The focus on weaponized combat as opposed to fisticuffs was unlike any other fighter, and

with a swath of improvements across the board, soulcalibur III remains one of the definitive entries in the franchise.

While the vibrantly beautiful character and arena designs and solid, impactful combat would have been enough to make the title stand out.

It was the game's character creator that really allowed players to customize their experience.

Utilizing a myriad of fighting styles, armors and weapons.

Players could craft their own combatant to play through the game's many challenges and allowed for better and more replayability than in the series past.

Soul Calibur might be on its sixth entry today, but

it has yet to meet the quality of the PS2 entries.

Unfortunately, neither choice works for me.

I guess thieves need to be quick on their toes, but

Dragon Quest already had a devoted following, but

it was the series 8th entry that made the casual crowd take notice.

During the height of Dragon Ball Z's popularity in the West, Akira Toriyama's iconic art style was finally fully realized in gorgeous 3D models, bringing the world and the tale of a band of heroes trying to prevent the end of the world to life in a way the series never had before.

The world itself felt alive thanks to the in Game, Day, Night, cycle, and

every town you visit felt different from the last, making the world feel like a real place.

Combat might not have been anything special, but

the turn based mechanics the series helped pioneer were and still remain the industry standard.

If you won't do us the favor of leaving, I'll be happy to provide some encompassing Okami what is arguably one of the most beautifully artistic games ever made, Okami introduced players to not only a world they'd never experienced, or history they likely never knew existed, but

game mechanics that were unlike anything else on the PS2 or really ever since.

Fully embracing the experimental nature of video games, Okami gave players a watercolor world and the tools to bring it to life.

The entire world feels handcrafted, as if a painting had come to life to tell its story and you were the artist.

The Celestial Brush allowed players to not only rebuild the world, but

also utilize a multitude of brushstrokes in combat as well.

While video games continue chasing the uncanny valley of realism, Okami utilized its cel shaded art style to make itself stand out and remains an icon of the PS2 era's experimental approach to game design.

First I'm going to take your ride, then I'm going to take your girl.

Need for Speed has been going through something of an identity crisis in recent years, but

on the PS2 not only did the series thrive with entries such as Hot Pursuit 2 and Underground, but

managed to become innovators of the genre, with Most Wanted combining the best elements of both Underground and Hot Pursuit.

Most Wanted dropped players into a massive open world full of shortcuts, jumps and hidden secrets, and

challenged them to regain their street cred while avoiding the law.

The longer you were able to outrun the police, the more severe the response became, until it felt like the military itself was bearing down on you.

This was the Fast and Furious formula fully realized, and the result is just as exhilarating today.

Hell, even the live action FMB cutscenes were well done and surprisingly entertaining.

What happened is he's all showing no goat.

Dark Cloud 2 I was so scared then, but in a way it was really fun.

These days, developers try to blend as many genres as possible into the game to appeal to the widest demographics.

However, Level five managed the impossible way back in the early days of the PS2 with a time bending narrative, a gorgeous cel shaded art style, dungeon crawling, fishing, weapon crafting and city building mechanics, modern games would crumble under the ambition of this forgotten rpg.

The cities you rebuild affect the future as you hop back and forth and you earn specific rewards for rebuilding the city to the resident's request, and

can even use materials found in the game's mini dungeons to forge and invent your own weapons.

This was probably the closest the PS2 ever got to having their own Legend of Zelda title, and

everything about the game worked brilliantly and all tied back into the game's overall narrative.

It must have picked your father and then it picked you.

These days, first person shooters can be anything from hyper realistic to zany, cartoony over the top experiences with no regard for the laws of physics.

But with Black, developer Criterion managed to find a balance between the two and fully embrace the insanity of the genre.

Black not only uses its spy movie influences to craft its world, but

combines that with some of the most bombastic gunplay the genre has to offer.

The sounds of the game's many weapons and explosions was enough to blow out your speakers, and

The cacophony of Chaos was all the more impactful with the game's approach through environmental destruction.

With much of the game's world fully explodable, Black dropped you into the middle of multiple warzones and gave you the weapons to let the enemies know you weren't trapped in the arena with them.

And now for something that modern Disney would never agree to.

We have a series that has no right to work as well as it did or be such a revolutionary cultural moment back on the PS2.

Born from a simple and literal elevator pitch, Kingdom Hearts combined the best of the Disney vault and Final Fantasy's RPG elements, threw them into a blender and gave gave us one of the deepest and most complicated video game lores of all time.

Whereas the first game was a solid yet flawed experiment, the sequel fully realized the concept's potential while also delivering the engaging combat.