FromSoft has mastered the art of creating irresistibly hostile worlds with the Souls series. Elden Ring is the studio's largest map to date, a massive map packed with danger and mystery. An epic journey brimming with potential, where exploration is rewarded with breathtaking boss encounters. However, in addition to being larger and more sprawling than its predecessors, it is also arguably the most approachable FromSoft game to date, with its open-world structure giving you greater control over the challenge and pace.
But don't worry. Elden Ring, like Dark Souls before it, is a game about overcoming bosses through trial and error and eventual mastery. Despite its more traditional fantasy leanings, it's as strange and distinct as the studio has ever been, shining a light on its world's horrors rather than hiding them away in a poisonous swamp. It's also some of FromSoft's best work as an RPG, with extensive buildcrafting options that allow you to customise your character and combat style in a variety of ways.
THE BEST OPEN-WORLD RPGS
Elden Ring
Release date: 2022 | Developer: FromSoft | Steam
FromSoft has mastered the art of creating irresistibly hostile worlds with the Souls series. Elden Ring is the studio's largest map to date, a massive map packed with danger and mystery. An epic journey brimming with potential, where exploration is rewarded with breathtaking boss encounters. However, in addition to being larger and more sprawling than its predecessors, it is also arguably the most approachable FromSoft game to date, with its open-world structure giving you greater control over the challenge and pace.
But don't worry. Elden Ring, like Dark Souls before it, is a game about overcoming bosses through trial and error and eventual mastery. Despite its more traditional fantasy leanings, it's as strange and distinct as the studio has ever been, shining a light on its world's horrors rather than hiding them away in a poisonous swamp. It's also some of FromSoft's best work as an RPG, with extensive buildcrafting options that allow you to customise your character and combat style in a variety of ways.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Many of the best RPGs are about lone, wandering adventurers, but few, if any, do it as well as The Witcher 3. That artistry is most visible in the setting, which is so full of breathtaking sunsets and wind-tossed groves of trees that I still prefer to walk to destinations rather than take the fast travel points years later.
But The Witcher 3's true strength is that it populates these memorable landscapes with NPCs doling out humble but memorable quests (by the dozen) that contribute to one of the most human RPG experiences on the market. Geralt of Rivia may come across impoverished elves struggling against local racism in decaying wayside towns; elsewhere, he may assist a self-styled baron in reuniting with his long-estranged daughter. These quests navigate moral issues deftly without being preachy or offering obvious solutions.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Choose a direction and run. You're almost certain to come across some small adventure, some small piece of the world that will captivate you. Skyrim's constant reward comes from the density of things to do. A trip to the Mage's Guild will turn into an all-encompassing quest for knowledge. A chance conversation with an NPC will lead you to a remote dungeon in search of a legendary relic. You might be picking berries on the side of a mountain when you come across a dragon.
And if you run out of things to do, know that modders have more in store for you (check out our guide to the best Skyrim mods). Since its release, Skyrim has remained in the top 100 on Steam, providing us with countless ways to explore a vast world. Some members of the PC Gamer team keep a modded Skyrim installation on hand in case they get the urge for adventure. That is high praise.
Fallout: New Vegas
While Fallout 3 was a commercial success, it was a completely different beast than Interplay's classics. Obsidian's version of the franchise returns the action to the West Coast and reintroduces elements like reputation and faction power struggles. Obsidian expands on nearly every aspect of Bethesda's approach, making the game about who you should trust rather than good or evil. It also incorporates a lot of the humour from the classic games: how can you not enjoy a game that gives you a nuclear grenade launcher?
The "Hardcore" mode in New Vegas makes survival in the wasteland more interesting by limiting the effectiveness of RadAway and Health Stims. It makes the game more difficult, but also more rewarding. If that's not your thing, there are plenty of other mods and tweaks to choose from, including game director Josh Sawyer's own balance-tweak mod. What we like best about New Vegas is how it reintroduces the Fallout feel into Bethesda's first-person RPG framework.
Assassin's Creed: Valhalla
Release date: 2020 | Developer: Ubisoft Montreal | Epic Games
The last few Assassin's Creed games, beginning with Origins in 2017, have augmented the open-world adventure with an increasing number of RPG systems. But Valhalla goes even further, reducing the checklist of activities in favour of a world with more depth and feeling. Sidequests aren't just exclamation marks on a growing list of busywork, but strange and memorable encounters that add context and texture to the larger world.
If those frequent moments are the highlight, Valhalla is also a more fundamentally sound RPG. Because level-gating is no longer present, progress and exploration feel more natural. And the combat is more refined, with an added layer of strategy that rewards your preparation and skill. It's also one of the series' better stories, delving deeper into familial relationships and Norse culture than you might expect.
Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord
Release date: 2020 | Developer: TaleWorlds Entertainment | Steam (Early Access)
A true RPG sandbox, with complete freedom to leave your mark on the world. There is no overarching story campaign to follow; instead, you are free to set your own goals and work towards them in whatever way you see fit. Fight battles, smuggle goods, engage in gladiatorial combat, gather followers, invest in trade caravans, or accept a quest or two from a local lord. Then betray that lord, murder him, and take over his land.
Bannerlord is still in Early Access, and new updates with new features and fixes are released on a regular basis. Even without a full v1.0 release, there's enough here to make the recommendation worthwhile. In addition to its singleplayer sandbox, Bannerlord includes multiplayer and modding tools, allowing you to lose yourself in the game for months, if not years.
Outward
Release date: 2022 | Developer: Nine Dots Studio | Steam
Outward immediately eliminates the self-centered saviour complex that we've grown accustomed to in so many action RPGs. While other heroes deal with bandit camps before lunch and save the world before dinner, Outward sits you down and reminds you that you can't just go out and slay wolves without any training. In Outward, fights that are typically treated as tutorial fodder are genuine achievements.
Outward, to make matters worse or better in our opinion, constantly auto-saves your game. Your mistakes are irreversible, and death cannot be avoided by loading a recent save. You're likely to be knocked down a peg every time you die in a cruel marriage of Dark Souls and Minecraft, retracing your steps to find lost gear and left missing progress you'd so jealously hoarded.
THE BEST CRPGS
Disco Elysium
Disco Elysium returns to the fundamentals of tabletop roleplaying games. It's all about playing a part, becoming your character, and accepting whatever success or failure brings. Your predetermined protagonist is a detective who wakes up without a badge, gun, or a name after an amnesia-inducing bender. As the detective, you'll try to solve a murder in Revachol while also unravelling the mystery of your past and identity.
There is no combat, at least not in the traditional sense of the term. Instead, the majority of Disco Elysium is spent in conversation, either with characters you need to question about the murder or with yourself. In Disco Elysium, each of your skills is a part of your personality, with opinions on what to say and do during your investigation. Empathy will help you understand the feelings of the people you talk to, whereas logic will help you poke holes in a bad alibi or understand a clue you find.Investing in skills allows you to pass dice roll skill checks for everything from kicking down a door to hitting on a woman at the hotel throughout the game. It's a massive RPG with clever writing in which each playthrough is significantly different depending on the type of detective you play.
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Outside of tabletop games, few RPGs can match Larian's massive quest for godhood in terms of liberating openness. If you think you should be able to do something, you probably can, even if it's kidnapping a merchant and then setting fire to him with his own blood. Almost every skill has an unexpected and alternate use—sometimes more than one—whether in or out of combat.
You can play this game of madcap experimentation and tactical combat with up to three friends, which is where things get really interesting because you are not required to work together or even stay in the same part of the world. Indeed, there are numerous reasons to oppose each other. The player is always in control, and with four players, collisions are unavoidable. Just remember to apologise if you freeze your friends and then start poisoning them.
Planescape: Torment
There is no other story in gaming that compares to the Nameless One's. His is a story about redemption in the face of countless sins, about not knowing who you are until you become the person you're attempting to be. That open-endedness is at the heart of what makes Planescape: Torment so compelling. On one level, you spend the game attempting to figure out who the Nameless One is, but your actions also help to define him. It's one of several RPG tropes that Black Isle attempted to subvert, including the fact that rats are actually worthy foes, humans are frequently worse than undead, and you don't have to fight in most cases.
The companions of the Nameless One are among the best-written and most enjoyable NPCs ever created. Most have been influenced by your previous incarnations: the pyromaniac mage Ignus was once your apprentice, though it's more impressive that he's always on fire. Or Dak'kon, who swore an oath of loyalty to you for reasons you don't understand. Others are simply interesting, well-rounded people: Fall-From- Grace is a succubus cleric who prays to no god and wishes to do no harm despite being a creature of evil. Morte, a floating skull with a sarcastic wit as sharp as his bite attacks, is the best. These characters would be strange in any other high fantasy world, but Torment is set in the Planescape AD&D campaign setting, which is the strangest world TSR has ever created.
Shadowrun: Dragonfall
Shadowrun's setting includes the standard assortment of RPG creatures. There are orks, trolls, and even a couple of dragons. However, it is set 30 years in the future in a version of our world. The ork runs a homeless shelter for metahumans. The troll is a former special forces veteran who despises you. The dragons run the world's most powerful megacorporations, taking the concept of wealth hoarding to its logical conclusion.
You navigate this clash of cyberpunk and fantasy as a shadowrunner by taking questionable jobs for shady clients. As the leader of a team operating on the wrong side of whatever law exists in anarchist Berlin, you'll have a variety of options for how you complete each task. You'll also have plenty of opportunities to experience the destructive potential of both technology and magic thanks to an enjoyablely deep turn-based combat system.
Baldur's Gate 2
One issue with AD&D is that low-level characters are rather dull. Baldur's Gate 2 addresses this issue by allowing you to carry over your party from the first game or start from scratch with level 7 characters. It makes a big difference: instead of wimpy fighters and frail wizards, you get powerful, useful spells and tough warriors.
It also helps that Amn has a massive scope, with more quests and content than most comparable RPGs. The quests and combat are handled flawlessly by BioWare's Infinity Engine, emphasising the game's emphasis on strategy and tactics in combat. It's difficult to imagine commanding a six-person party without pausing and issuing orders, and any newer game that relies on real-time decisions makes us miss the Infinity Engine.
THE BEST LINEAR RPGS
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition
The standout here is Mass Effect 2, which streamlines the clunky systems of its predecessor to focus on the action and the consequences of the decisions you—as no-nonsense space captain Shepherd—make along the way. As a result, it's a good third-person cover shooter and an even better inter-office relationship simulator, with you tasked with assembling a crew to survive what appears to be a suicide mission.
However, you'll want to play through the entire series, making the Legendary Edition a pleasure to work through. The thrill of Mass Effect is seeing your decisions pay off tens, if not hundreds, of hours later. And, over the course of the three games, you'll form lasting bonds with your motley crew. Don't be put off by the ending controversy in Mass Effect 3: the game is full of endings, most of which do justice to your crew and all of which pay off beautifully in the Citadel DLC.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2
While the original KOTOR is a Star Wars classic, KOTOR 2 takes the franchise in a more daring direction. Rather than focusing on the Light or Dark sides of the Force, the sequel to Jedi Exile of Obsidian deals in shades of grey. Alliances are formed, then broken, and then reformed. Choices you think are good end up betraying other characters. The end result is one of the most nuanced interpretations of The Force in the entire Star Wars Expanded Universe, as well as one of the most complex villains.
The truncated development of KOTOR 2 meant that entire areas had to be cut out, as with many early Obsidian games. A fan-made mod restores much of that content, including a droid planet, and fixes numerous outstanding bugs, demonstrating once again that PC gamers are willing to work hard to keep their favourite games alive.
System Shock 2
Lonely. That is the overarching emotion of Irrational's first game. You'll hear audio logs from fascinating characters, many of whom are fighting for their lives against the bio-terror creatures known as the Many. But you'll never meet them because they didn't make it. Because Shock 2 is all about taking things away from you, loneliness is crucial. Ammo? Check: you're probably going to squander those on an assault droid when you should have saved them for later. Hypos? Yep. Think twice before entering that radiated room.
Irrational created games in which the environment is the main character, and in this case, that character is the Von Braun. It creaks and moans as you walk down its corridors quietly. Every door you open makes a yelp. Its security systems attack you as if you have offended them. Staying on this character's good side is difficult, but Shock 2's levelling system of earning experience points through exploration balances the risks and rewards. Some people play the game with all guns blazing, but the psionics skills balance well with combat, and the tech skills open up new areas later in the game. On the surface, what appears to be a streamlined action RPG skill system contains a lot of balance.
Dragon Age: Origins
Dragon Age's first goal was to recreate the feel of Baldur's Gate, and it comes pretty close. Ferelden evokes much of the Forgotten Realms without feeling like a rehash, and your team's relationship has that old BioWare magic. Even though most of them are faceless hunks of evil for us to cut down, the darkspawn feel like the kind of world-consuming threat that demands our attention.
But it's the combat that feels most familiar and enjoyable: the satisfying tactical depth of pausing your combat, issuing orders, and reacting to the results works exactly as it should in a modern Infinity Engine game. It's unfortunate that BioWare will never make another RPG like this again—Dragon Age 2 is too streamlined (though it still has its own charm), and Inquisition's more open world—so, in many ways, this is the final hurrah for the old BioWare, and a fitting end to its classic design.
THE BEST JRPGS
Yakuza: Like a Dragon
Release date: 2020 | Developer: Rya Ga Gotoku Studio | Steam
Don't be put off by the fact that this is the seventh mainline game in the series. Rather than being a continuation of the previous story, Like a Dragon is all about change: a new protagonist, a new main city, and a new combat genre. Turn-based combat has replaced brawling. This is a pure JRPG, but it retains all of the drama, absurdity, and satire that define the series.
Ichiban, the new leader, is obsessed with Dragon Quest and sets about assembling the ideal team to defeat the great conspiracy at the heart of Yokohama's criminal empire. The usual class list is distorted by the satirical lens of the Japanese labour market, with bouncers, buskers, and hostesses replacing warriors, priests, and mages. There are even summons—weirdos you can summon to assist you in battle. But don't be fooled by the parody: this is a proper, in-depth JRPG that does its inspiration justice.
Persona 4 Golden
Release date: 2020 | Developer: ATLUS | Steam
Persona 4's dungeons have a lot of tactical depth—long, combat-heavy mazes that constantly put your knowledge of the game's systems to the test. You'll use your Personas in these turn-based battles—creatures that can be equipped, upgraded, and fused into more powerful monsters that do your bidding in battle. Exploit an enemy's elemental weakness, and you'll get another turn, so bringing the right Personas for the job is critical to surviving.
So all of the JRPG elements are present and correct. The real meat of Persona 4 Golden, however, is the social side, where you can hang out with friends, explore the sleepy rural town of Inaba, and work to solve the mystery behind a string of bizarre murders linked to a local legend about a midnight TV broadcast. Sure, you can fight hordes of strange demons. But can you get through a school year while also making long-lasting friendships?
Final Fantasy XII
Release date: 2018 | Developer: Square Enix | Steam
In 2018, the most intelligent Final Fantasy game received a PC port. The game can't render the kind of streaming open worlds we're used to these days, but the art still looks great, and the gambit system is one of the most fun party development systems in RPG history.
Gambits allow you to programme party members to follow a hierarchy of commands in battle. You are free to build any character in any way you want. Vaan, a street urchin, can be transformed into a broadsword-wielding combat specialist or an elemental wizard. The port even has a fast-forward mode to make grinding easier.
THE BEST ARPGS
Path of Exile
Release date: 2013 | Developer: Grinding Gear Games | Steam
This fantastic free-to-play action RPG is heaven for players who enjoy deliberating over builds in order to create the most effective killing machine possible. It's not the most visually appealing ARPG, but it has an incredible depth of progression and a fantastic free-to-play model that focuses on cosmetics rather than game-altering upgrades. It may appear muddy and indistinct, and the combat may not feel as good as Diablo 3, but if you enjoy number crunching, this is one of the smartest RPGs available.
The frightening complexity of Path of Exile becomes clear the moment you arrive at your character's level-up screen, which looks like this (opens in new tab). As you defeat enemies and level up, you move across this massive board, tailoring your character a little more with each upgrade. Gear customization is just as intricate. Path of Exile borrows the concept of connected gem slots from Final Fantasy VII. Every piece of armour has a set of slots for magical gems. When placed in the proper formations, these gems grant stat bonuses and bonus adjacency effects. To create the most powerful warrior possible, you'll want to create synergies between your gemmed-up gear and levelling choices. It takes a lot of planning, but it's an engrossing slow-burn challenge.
Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls
Release date: 2014 | Developer: Blizzard | Battle.net
Let's face it: the real-money auction house was one of several bad ideas in the original Diablo 3 release. Blizzard removed the cash auctions just before the release of Reaper of Souls, but it was the addition of Adventure Mode that transformed the game from a disappointing sequel to the series' crowning achievement. Rather than repeating the game's acts, Adventure Mode's task-based milestones and randomly generated areas keep the game feeling fresh for much longer. It's an outstanding mode, and it's difficult to imagine playing Diablo 3 in any other way.
However, RoS added another feature that has changed the way we enjoy action RPGs: guild support. Having friends to talk to while grinding through a dungeon, even if they aren't present, makes the game far less lonely, and it's small touches like these that justify Blizzard's always-online philosophy. All of this, combined with the already-awesome feeling of wiping out hordes of baddies with a well-timed ability change, makes RoS the definitive action RPG for us. We'll be playing this game for a long time.
Grim Dawn
Release date: 2016 | Developer: Crate Entertainment | Steam
If you've exhausted Diablo 2's magical trinkets and are looking for a modern fix, this is the game for you. Grim Dawn is a gritty, well-crafted action RPG with strong classes and a beautiful world filled with monsters to slay in droves. It's Titan Quest's distant brooding son, sharing some designers and mechanics with that excellent 2006 Greek myth ARPG. Grim Dawn, like its cousin, allows you to choose two classes and split your upgrade points between two skill trees. This hybrid progression system allows for a lot of room for theorycrafting, and the skills are fun to use—an important requirement for games that rely so heavily on combat encounters.
For an ARPG, the story isn't bad either. Expect twisting plots and decisions with consequences—this is a game about destroying armies on your own—but there is a neat faction reputation system that spawns harder mobs and villainous nemesis heroes as you become more despised by the criminals, cults, and monsters that rule the wilderness. The scrolling text NPC dialogue and found journals provide detailed descriptions of the local demons and warlords who terrorise each region of the world. However, it is ultimately about monster-slaying and sweet loot, and Grim Dawn delivers on both effectively.