Uncharted: All Five Games Ranked

Today, we try the impossible; to pick the best installment in one of the best video game franchises ever made! The Uncharted movie starring Tom Holland now plays in theaters, and we have huge luck that we are hardcore Uncharted fans. So, considering this is one Uncharted weekend, today we will rank all five Uncharted games that Naughty Dog released so far. Although it was announced that Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (and its standalone spin-off The Lost Legacy) are set to be the finale, there’s always a chance that we might eventually get a new game from this amazing series.

The Uncharted franchise kicked off in 2007 with the original game of the same name which was released exclusively on PlayStation 3. The game was pretty successful, which led to the development of the sequel — Uncharted 2: Among Thieves — which launched the franchise into the stars and it’s still considered as one of the best games ever made. The third installment was released in 2011 and it concluded the original trilogy.

Five years after the original trilogy concluded, Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive Entertainment released Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, a highly-anticipated endgame of Nathan’s story. One year after that, a standalone expansion — Uncharted: The Lost Legacy — featuring a fan-favorite character Chloe Frazer as a playable protagonist, was released, closing that very successful five-game franchise that turned Naughty Dog into one of the most admired game developers.

Thanks to the success of Uncharted, Naughty Dog started The Last of Us, another franchise that was also a huge success for them, with two games released in 2013 and 2020, respectively.

With all the cards, or better say games, on the table now, here’s how would we rank Uncharted games. Also, you can check our review of the recently released Uncharted movie starring Tom Holland down below:

5. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (2007)

There’s always that old saying “the first one is always remembered as the best one.” Although that may be true in some cases, let’s face it, that cliche grew old a long time ago. Don’t get us wrong, Uncharted doesn’t have a bad game, but the fact that the very first entry of this franchise is on our last place actually shows how great this whole franchise is because it kept growing and improving with each new installment.

Uncharted: Drake Fortune was a really solid start, it was our first meeting with Nathan Drake, Victor Sullivan, and Elena Fisher. This game built the foundation for something that will eventually become one of the best video game franchises ever.

4. Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception (2011)

The original Uncharted trilogy was built the way that most successful trilogies have been, regardless of whether it’s a movie or a video game trilogy. Take The Dark Knight trilogy for example; solid start, extraordinary sequel, and decent and satisfying conclusion in the threequel. Batman: Arkham trilogy kinda worked the same way, and now when we think of it, the same can be said for Uncharted.

Uncharted 3 has everything we love and cherish about this franchise, but after the second installment, it just had too big shoes to fill. Although we can’t put it any higher on our list, Uncharted 3 is still a great game with its own charm, and it’s not suffering due to its inferiority to its predecessor and successor alike.

3. Uncharted: The Lost Legacy (2017)

This is probably our most controversial pick on this list. Although it would be easy to put it in the last place and say “Uncharted isn’t Uncharted without Nathan”, which is true in a way, we still could not resist showing a lot of love to this spin-off of the fourth installment in the series.

You know that feeling when you’re watching a movie or playing a video game and that one side character is so amazing to you that you’d love to have a spin-off centered on them, even though that may not happen? Well, that’s how we felt when we met Chloe Frazer in Uncharted 2 back in 2009, and once we saw that Naughty Dog is really developing an Uncharted game with Chloe as a playable protagonist, it felt like Christmas came early that year.

Although it’s built on the engine and concept of Uncharted 4, The Lost Legacy still managed to be as Uncharted as it gets, and even without Nathan, it’s still a great experience for every fan of the franchise.

2. Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (2016)

If Uncharted was like Marvel Cinematic Universe, then Uncharted 4 would be its Endgame. After the conclusion of the original trilogy, Naughty Dog decided to bring closure to Nathan’s story with this fourth installment which was widely anticipated, and it definitely managed to live up to the hype. Although Amy Hennig, creator and director of the original trilogy, didn’t work on this fourth installment, Naughty Dog still managed to conclude Nathan Drake’s story in the best way possible.

This was the first Uncharted game that was released primarily on PlayStation 4, and moving the franchise to the next generation of the console really did justice to the graphics and technical capabilities of this outstanding game, which we’d dare to call one of the best action-adventure games of all time.

1. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (2009)

It was a really long debate on which game to put on the first place — Among Thieves or A Thief’s End? In the previous paragraph, we called A Thief’s End one of the best action-adventure games of all time, so why did we place Uncharted 2 above it? Well, because Uncharted 2 was, and it’s still is, that very same thing as well.

When it was released in 2009, this game was ahead of its time, and the beautiful graphics were only the tip of the iceberg of everything that this terrific game had to offer. You know, Uncharted 2 was actually the first Uncharted experience for the author of this text, and he still remembers the day when he first tried it out, and just couldn’t release the controller before he reached the final chapter.

No matter how hard we tried, and even after all these years, we just couldn’t find one single flaw in this perfect game, and we can definitely say that Uncharted 2 is still one of those games that we’d call “a game without flaw.” If you have PlayStation 3 or PlayStation 4, but you never played Uncharted 2, we are honestly wondering what the heck are you waiting for.