For many decades now, video games have immersed players within grand worlds born either from the developer’s imaginations or inspired by real life. While most video game locations tend to be dungeons oropen worldswhere the player can embrace nature, there have also been a fair few cities that gamers have visited across the years. Sprawling urban environments which contain many citizens living their lives unaware of the journey the protagonist is undertaking.
Genshin Impact Nations, Ranked
Ranking all available nations of Teyvat in Genshin Impact!
While many fictional cities have won the hearts of players over the years, a few stand out among the rest. These cities have fully immersed hundreds of players, whether through their design, their significance in gaming history, or how much players look forward to revisiting them after all this time.
10New York
The Wall-Crawler’s Home
If you exist in the world ofMarvel Comics, then you better verify not to commit a crime in New York. The worst-case scenario is you’ll be dealing with heroes likeThe Punisheror Daredevil, but in the best-cast scenario you’ll get to see Spider-Man. Being the Superhero most associated with this city, it should come as no surprise that nearlyevery Spider-Man video gameis set in New York City.
Swinging across the sky as you gaze at iconic New York landmarks such as the Empire State Building or the various bridges is always a joy and something to look forward to in any game starring the wall-crawler. While New York is undeniably iconic, it would be very hard to justify putting a static city that only truly gets focus in one type of game high on this list, so unfortunately it must rank near the bottom.
9Raccoon City
Zombie-Infected Streets
When thinking of locations in which horror games take place, the zombie-infected area of Raccoon City from theResident Evilfranchise is often the very first to come to mind. Across two mainline games,multiple movies,and several spinoffs, gamers have visited this place numerous times as they’ve gotten acquainted with locations like its museum-like police station.
Despite having visited this city and areas like the strange hospital lab multiple times, it’s hard to say gamers have gotten a real feel for Raccoon City as a city since it debuted decades ago. Locations feel too isolated from each other to get an actual feel for the city as a whole, so while Raccoon City is undeniably iconic, it must rank in the lower half of this list.
8Los Santos
City of Saints
Unlike New York earlier in this list, the city of Los Santos from the Grand Theft Auto franchise isn’t a recreation of the real city of Los Angeles;it is rather based on it. This allows the developers to have their cake and eat it too, where they can have recreations of real locations and landmarks while also giving them the freedom to create new locations within the city to serve the narrative’s purpose.
8 Best Grand Theft Auto Games of All Time
Grand Theft Auto is one of the most popular video game franchises, and these games are the best in the series.
This allows for a combination of real-life iconic locations like the Griffith Observatory and original in-game locations which gamers can recognize on sight, likeMichael’shouse. With millions upon millions of people playing through GTA V andGTA Online, one would expect this city to top this list. However, one must also remember that the city of Los Santos itself isn’t the full map of Grand Theft Auto V; a good 60% of this map is unpopular mountains and deserts which unintentionally make Los Santos itself look small, losing it a few points on this list.
7Hyrule Castle Town
Defended by a Castle
Placing next on this list is Hyrule Castle Town, a recurring location within theLegend of Zeldafranchise. Many would argue that due to its name, it shouldn’t be included on this list. While it has the word ‘town’ within its name, Hyrule Castle Town is by far the most populated location in any Zelda game. Being the only area of Hyrule with large crowds and buildings placed close together, it must be classified as a city.
While the appearance of Hyrule Castle Town has changed greatly in each game it appears in, it always has the general feel of being a hub-like area where the player can buy potions and hear the thoughts of citizens. Sometimes it has more going for it, like a bombchu minigame, but never much. Because the Legend of Zelda franchise has always been about exploring an entire world of dungeons, it only makes sense that Hyrule Castle Town itself has never been a large part of the game. That does however mean it must place in the lower half of this list.
Invaded by Dragons
This next entry on the list can either be interpreted as a stretching of the definition of a city or an admirable showcase of how far gaming has come in the past fourteen years. While WhiteRun is one of the largest cities in Skyrim within the game’s lore, from a gameplay perspective, it doesn’t appear any larger than a few houses and residents.
In a way, this city’s design is the perfect encapsulation of Skyrim’s world as a whole. While the scope of the game is smaller than what it claims to be, players have been able to immerse themselves within the world of the Elder Scrolls and see these areas as being as big as the game wishes them to be. Millions of gamers have journeyed to WhiteRun over the years to learn about dragons and steal some cheese off of the tables, which is more than enough to consider it one of gaming’s most iconic locations.
5Silent Hill
A Fog-Covered Nightmare
Next up on the list is the fog-covered American city ofSilent Hill, being based on a Japanese perspective of what American towns look like via American movies and television shows like Twin Peaks. There has always been something uncanny about this city that has allowed it to remain in the minds of players even when the franchise went on hiatus for over a decade.
10 Best Horror Games Available on PS5
Play horror on the PlayStation 5!
While some would argue that Silent Hill isn’t a city, but rather a small American town, over the course of twelve games players have seen so many locations in this town that it would be ridiculous not to classify it as a city at this point. In addition to this, the games all make it clear that the population of Silent Hill is still growing and developing, so if the franchise went on longer it very well could have been called a city in the actual text. Even if it wasn’t though, it still deserves to be included on this list.
Gaming’s Most Common City
This next city isn’t from any one specific game, but rather many different games: the real-life Tokyo ward of Shibuya. Being one of the largest commercial shopping districts in the world, this district is in many ways a Japanese equivalent to New York City and thus has been the center of many video games such as Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories,Ghostwire: Tokyo, andTokyo Mirage Sessions. Even some Western titles like Marvel Rivals have highlighted this city.
Two games that really made this city stand out though were The World Ends With You and428 Shibuya Scramble. These games put the city and landmarks of Shibuya in the center stage as the player slowly grows to love and recognize parts of the city across their many hours of playtime. As characters like Mario and various JRPG protagonists continue to visit the city, it’ll undoubtedly grow in the minds of gamers as an iconic gaming location.
3Lumiose City
Pokemon’s Paris
Placing third on this list is Lumiose City from Pokémon X and Y. Most towns in thePokémonfranchise have at most four or five houses, so when this title introduced the Pokémon equivalent to Paris it truly felt like the franchise was making a major advancement. While the base Pokémon formula ofpicking your starterand exploring the world remained the same, X and Y’s world design did feel like the games were trying to innovate upon themselves.
Someone at The Pokémon Company must have thought this grand city was iconic too, as the next game in the franchise:Pokémon Z-A, will be taking place entirely within Lumiose City, allowing players to fully experience this urban environment and even parkour throughout it. Just be careful that you don’t accidentally run into any ghost girls while exploring, you may not be the one.
A Dystopian Disaster
Next up on the list is a city so iconic that many fans ofFinal FantasyVII have convinced themselves that the entirety of disc 1 took place in it: Midgar. Unlike many cities on this list which are portrayed in a positive light by their respective games, this city is portrayed as downright dystopian with half of the population never being able to see the sky because the upper class quite literally lived above them on a giant pizza-shaped plate. Combine that with energy reactors which are sucking the planet dry, and you have one of the worst cities to live in of all time.
10 Most Powerful Jobs in Final Fantasy XIV
What are some of the best jobs to have in FF XIV?
Despite being very dystopian as a concept, Midgar is so iconic that when the time came for Square to release the first part of their Final Fantasy VII Remake series, they set the entire first game in Midgar. This allowed for the city and the life within it to be expanded upon in ways fans could only dream of. Any city you spend the entirety of a full-length JRPG in was bound to rank near the top of this list, but Midgar just barely misses first place due to it being a gaming city that players spend many games in.
It was a close call between including Midgar or other various Final Fantasy XIV cities on this list.
1Kamurocho
A Dragon’s Home
The city of Kamurocho is important enough to the Like a Dragon (formerly known in the West as Yakuza) franchise that it is often considered a character itself by fans. Seeing the city slowly change and develop across a dozen games over twenty years can feel magical at times. Seeing new shopping centers pop up, restaurants change and variousminigame-centric venuessuch as bowling alleys be replaced by gyms makes the city feel alive.
Even as the city changes though, some things always remain the same. The same old bars in the Champion’s District will be waiting for you, the small children’s park will always have that one swing, and of course, there will forever be thugs roaming the streets for you to fight. Kamurocho tops this list because, for many fans of the franchise, this place is a second home. Very few video game cities can make that claim and mean it like this one.
Every Mainline Like a Dragon Game, Ranked
A list ranking every Yakuza game from worst to best
