The 10 easiest games of all time, ranked

While many games pride themselves on challenging players, not everyone wants the kind of game that causes teeth-gnashing and controller-breaking fury. Sometimes you want to play a game that is fun yet accessible even on the standard difficulty setting. If you’re looking for a game that doesn’t require perfect timing or endless hours of practice, here are our picks for the easiest games of all time.

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The easiest games of all time – our top 10 picks

While it would be easy to focus on games made for kids or even games where their lack of difficulty makes them laughably short for this list, we’ll be giving attention to the good releases and fun games to play that just have a lower standard difficulty than most games. They might be the introductions to a series or even just simplified versions of more complicated games, but the fact they’re easy doesn’t make them bad.

10) Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy

Released in the early days of the PlayStation 2, this game started one of Naughty Dog’s signature series. It is a platformer that follows the adventures of a young boy as he tries to restore his best friend to human form and maybe save the world along the way. While some of the later levels might test the timing of your jumps a bit, nothing in its 20-hour playtime will truly test experienced gamers, allowing them the freedom to enjoy the colorful characters and charming worlds along the way.

9) Dragon Quest Treasures

Players who go into this spin-off of this long-running JRPG series expecting a lot of challenging combat sequences or puzzles will be sorely disappointed. The entire game feels like it has taken many of the core tropes and features of the genre and stripped them back, making the game highly accessible to younger players or those new to JRPGs. However, the characters are charming and fun and the environments are deeply satisfying to explore, even with the scaled-back difficulty.

8) Ninja Gaiden 3

The original Ninja Gaiden games were notoriously difficult, requiring precise timing and split-second reflexes to survive. However, by the time Team Ninja rolled out Ninja Gaiden 3, they’d taken a lot of the bite out of the game’s difficulty. Most of the challenging bosses were replaced with cutscenes and the combat required only a few combos to come out on top. The game looks beautiful and is still loads of fun to play but it doesn’t quite live up to the precedent set by the original.

7) Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

Another game that stands out in a series known for its punishing difficulty, Symphony of the Night gives in to the power fantasy offered by playing as Alucard and makes the player nearly invulnerable throughout most of the game. Though the story and environments make this game one of the most beloved of the long-running franchise, it certainly changes the formula for what players should expect from a Castlevania title simply by being so easy to beat.

6) Okami

This cel-shaded masterpiece is one of the most strikingly beautiful games of all time, but the gameplay never serves to challenge players as they seek to restore Amaterasu’s divine powers. Once you unlock a few of the divine brush techniques, it is a fairly straightforward task to explore the world and defeat the game’s wonderfully rendered bosses. Okami might be one of the easiest games ever made but its art style and music make it one of the best as well.

5) Devil May Cry 2

The first Devil May Cry game was known for its punishing difficulty and combat, to the point of nearly being unfair. So, it wasn’t a surprise that the sequel toned down the difficulty. However, most fans felt the developers went too far, making the basic combo from Dante’s dual pistols powerful enough to take down most enemies and bosses.

4) Dragon Ball Fighterz

Fighting games are only as easy as the person you’re playing against, but Dragon Ball Fighterz sought to make the game significantly more accessible to those new to the genre. The basic combo for most characters was enough to soar through the game’s single-player mode and could even get you through several ranks against other players if your reflexes were good enough. The fact that the characters all moved and looked so good while doing the basic movements makes it all too tempting to not branch out to new combos until you reach higher multiplayer tiers.

3) Kirby’s Epic Yarn

The Kirby games never sought to challenge players too much with their gameplay, but even by their standards, Kirby’s Epic Yarn is a very easy game. Fortunately, it is a charming, fun, and beautifully crafted game as well, which saves it from becoming forgettable. This is an easy game that won’t provide much of a challenge but it still delivers when it comes to the cute factor.

2) Prince of Persia (2008)

When Ubisoft looked to reboot the classic Prince of Persia series for a new generation, many fans were expecting a return to the punishing difficulty they had known in the past. While the game they got was beautifully presented, the combat was disappointingly shallow and the platforming offered very few consequences for failure. You could survive the entire game just by pressing the same few buttons in combat and barely paying attention to what was happening on the screen, a huge departure from the original’s formula.

1) Yoshi’s Story

While the storybook art style might have been a clue that Nintendo had made a game for kids, no one could have expected how easy Yoshi’s Story would end up being. The platforming provides almost no challenge and the enemies move so slow you would almost have to die on purpose. Even the hardest levels won’t challenge the most basic of gamers, making this a beautiful but forgettable game overall.