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Defining a role-playing game in 2025 is more complicated than ever. Pretty much every game has RPG elements these days, so if you squint hard enough, you can argue that many games are RPGs, even if they don’t follow the same formulas and structures that the genre has historically. As the definition of what makes an RPG has loosened over the years, any list of the best in any given year is almost guaranteed to have a ton of variety, including everything from action-packed open world expansions to strategic retro throwbacks. Here are our picks for the best RPGs of 2025.
Assassin’s Creed: Shadows
So much Assassin’s Creed games take place in open worlds that aren’t worth exploring. Everything is marked on your map, and outside of those locations there is little to find. But more recent entries, such as Walhallahave bucked this trend and started with maps that were not only huge, but also packed with details to spot, people to meet and activities to discover.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which successfully moves the series to feudal Japan is the next step in this evolution. The world is so satisfying to explore, and as you do you’ll discover new ways to change both playable characters and their builds. And yes, the presence of two playable characters who both have their own quests and dialogue options, as well as combat styles and skill trees, means you’re essentially getting two different, but similar RPGs for the price of one. That’s an impressive feat, and it means Shadows is not only one of the best RPGs of 2025, but also one of the greatest. -Zack Zwiezen
Granted
My favorite RPGs are the ones where I can choose a direction and just go for a walk, encountering interesting encounters and monsters to fight along the way. Grantedwhile not as big as some other open world RPGs, lets me do just that.
But even better, I got to do this in a unique fantasy setting full of characters I will remember for years to come. It’s also an RPG that’s so confident in its characters and writing style that it essentially forces you to camp between quests and exploration. Standing around the campfire and chatting with my small group of misfits could have been annoying in any other RPG. But inside Grantedthese are some of the best moments in the game. Any RPG that makes chatting as fun as fighting and questing is a winner in my eyes. – Zack Zwiezen
Chiaroscuro: Expedition 33
Much has been said about it Chiaroscuro: Expedition 33 as a kind of ‘savior’ of the turn-based RPG genre, as if those games no longer came out after that Final Fantasy VII. I don’t want the sickening way RPG opponents have handled it to detract from how good Sandfall Interactive’s debut game is. ChiaroscuroThe grief-driven story of a group of expedition members on a suicide mission, desperately hoping to end the annual cull of their friends and family (called a Gommage), is one of constant deception and pain, whether that’s in the narrative twists or in the showy way the enemies swing at you to throw off your well-timed parry or dodge. It sidesteps the bloat that burdens the RPG genre in favor of something tight, focused and reasonably paced, and it features a compact, rewarding turn-based combat system. After the amount of praise it received this year, hopefully other RPG developers will learn from its relative restraint and calculated excess. –Kenneth Shepard
Deltarune
Toby Fox’s episodic sequel Understory is still ongoing but four episodes in, Deltarune has already provided humor, atmosphere, character and a banging soundtrack that stands right next to its predecessor. With the final chapters still at least a year away, we still have quite some time before we see the end of Kris’ journey, but what we’ve seen so far has the potential to be just as impactful as Understory was in 2015. – Kenneth Shepard
Demon School
What if you took the first? Persona game and made it fun In the break? You would have Demon Schoola smart, charming RPG that takes turn-based combat and turns each round of combat into a mini-tactical puzzle. The pixel art is great. So does the soundtrack. The characters are endearing, but the interactions are brisk, making the calendar-time management sim aspect of the formula feel lighthearted rather than dull. The writing isn’t for everyone, but it worked for me. Think of the feistiest people in your group chat playing off their archetypes and trading zingers at breakneck speed. It can sometimes feel like a case of style over substance. For a game with so much retro swag, I say, “Who cares?” – Ethan Gach
Digimon Story: Time Stranger
The Digimon The series may have fallen into relative obscurity compared to other monster-taming phenomena of the ’90s, but it certainly hasn’t rested on the laurels of its early popularity. Digimon games are experimental, darker than you remember from the series, and offer a level of creativity and freedom in party building that you won’t find anywhere else. Time stranger pulls off all of the above with more polish and budget than most Digimon games have come before, and while the turn-based combat is a bit simple, the incredibly modular monster training mechanics make it a lot more engaging than it might seem at first glance. –Kenneth Shepard
Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles
There may never be another strategy RPG as good, in these exact ways. Pointing out any negatives I have – the removal of bonus content, a new localization that sometimes makes Ramza too whiny – feels like complaining about micro-errors in serving a three-course banquet with a Michelin star. Perfectly paced, beautifully crafted and heartbreakingly authentic, Final Fantasy Tactics is like a long-lost Shakespeare play made the best Dungeons and dragons session you’ve ever had. – Ethan Gach
Fretless – The Wrath of Riffson
FretlessThe marriage of turn-based combat and rhythm mechanics brings clarity to the timing-based attacks of such Paper Mario or Chiaroscuro by matching every stroke, swipe and sidestep to the rhythm of the excellent soundtrack. Ritual Studios weaves sheet music into the RPG’s design, from the rhythm-based combat to the musical world, where bumping into a plant or stepping on the right stone can add a beautiful melody to a world already packed with songs. It’s the kind of game that anyone with rhythm can enjoy, but it’s especially delightful if you have a background in music and can hear how sound is integrated into everything you do. –Kenneth Shepard
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
It’s hard to believe that an old and clunky open-world RPG like Bethesda’s 2006 The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion could rise in popularity by 2025. But that’s what happened thanks to the remaster, which mainly improves the look of the game and adds a few quality of life changes. That’s it though. At its core, this is still the original Forgetfulness. And yet something special is going on. Walking indoors through the forest Forgetfulness and stumbling across some strange ruins that lead to a dark dungeon is still just as fun in 2025 as it is on Xbox 360. – Zack Zwiezen
Octopath traveler 0
Octopath traveler 0 is proof that Square Enix had no reason to make this Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent a gacha game, when it could have easily turned it into an exceptional RPG without all the gacha elements dragging it down. Octopath traveler 0 is a game rescued from obscurity, as Square Enix gutted it Champions of the continent of its live-service trappings and revitalized it as true turn-based RPG fans wanted in the first place. It’s a solid monster of a game that will take almost a hundred hours of your time, but that’s the result of adapting what was once meant to be a forever game into something that feels complete. Octopath traveler 0 feels like a prodigal son returning after being shut down due to Square Enix’s short-sighted hubris. And it’s certainly nice to have the best parts of the game preserved, once thought lost. –Kenneth Shepard
Pokémon Legends: ZA
The Legends subseries has become Pokémons place to experiment, and Legends: SA takes some of the boldest swings Game Freak has ever taken. The real-time combat system features one of the most interesting twists the studio has ever put on the franchise’s decades-old combat formula, the single-city setting allows the developers to stick with one of the most memorable casts in the series’ history, and the plethora of new Mega Evolutions breathes new life into many old favorites. Legends: SA almost doesn’t look like anything Legends: Arceus, In addition to both games, you have to manually throw Poké Balls at wild creatures and dodge the roll when a powerful attack comes your way. And that’s quite exciting, because it means that maybe the next one Legends game can surprise us in a whole new way. After Legends: SAI’m willing to just let Game Freak cook. I don’t have a wish list. –Kenneth Shepard
The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy
Too Kyo Games’ magnum opus is the kind of game that’s so ambitious and unwieldy that it’s hard to recommend without caveats, but it’s also one of this year’s best RPGs that you’ve probably never heard of. The game is part visual novel, part tactical RPG, and part absolute mindfuck of a branching story, with 100 different endings spread across more than 20 routes, and your path through the story is determined entirely by your story choices. The puzzle-like tactical combat is more of a brainteaser than a sweaty war zone, but their challenging, Evangelion Angel-style boss battles keep things interesting and unpredictable. The Hundred Line may not have won the awards it deserved, but make no mistake: few games from 2025 will even come close to matching its ambition. –Kenneth Shepard
The outside worlds 2
Obviously we’re not getting any new ones Fallout game from Bethesda available soon. But I can wait, because Obsidian’s Outside worlds 2 is a worthy spiritual successor that, in some important ways, even surpasses the franchise that inspired it. Every part of Outside worlds 2 is bigger than the original, and it’s clear that the folks at Obsidian (who also developed Granted this year!) are experts at creating RPGs that give players a lot of freedom while still telling a story that doesn’t feel like a series of random moments, lightly connected. NB, Starfield. This is how you correctly combine space, sci-fi and the Bethesda RPG formula. The end result: one of the best RPGs of the year. – Zack Zwiezen
Trails in the Sky 1st chapter
Trails in the Sky 1st chapter is the type of remake that fans dream of: a complete remake that still remains as true to the spirit of the original as possible. The world is reimagined and the coming-of-age story of peacekeepers Estelle and Joshua retold with new cinematics and voice acting that bring it to life as you always imagined it. Advances in hybrid real-time combat and menu navigation are deftly embedded into the structure of a game released in 2004, in a way that adds both depth and convenience. Finally the starting point for the long term Paths series has a version you can play that doesn’t just feel like JRPG homework. – Ethan Gach
