The RPG genre has had an incredible decade, with countless amazing games released to an audience hungry for extensive character creation options, branching storylines, choices that matter, and in-depth battle systems that test players’ skills.
It’s hard to narrow down a list of ten great RPGs that have launched since 2016, considering how many amazing games have been released in that time. In the end, a few companies tested their mettle against the competition. They proved they could create the ultimate player-choice-focused experience for their titles, drawing players into unforgettable worlds that people are still playing today.
Baldur’s Gate 3 Brought D&D 5e To The Masses
When Baldur’s Gate 3 was announced, there were many fans of the original games who were concerned that Larian Studios was just using a famous name for an unrelated product. After all, Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn had launched twenty years earlier at this point, and the lore of the Forgotten Realms had moved forward by a century, meaning Baldur’s Gate 3 would be an unfamiliar experience to those who played the original games.
Larian proved the doubters wrong, with Baldur’s Gate 3 being the ultimate video game adaptation of the Dungeons & Dragons experience. Baldur’s Gate 3 is the ultimate reactive game, where the countless character creation options and player decisions result in stories that feel unique on each playthrough, with it feeling like the developers have truly thought of everything, much like a wily Dungeon Master who loves punishing players for their stupidity.
Elden Ring Redefined The Open-World Experience
Elden Ring is the result of everything FromSoftware had learned from its previous action RPGs, all transplanted into a gargantuan open-world, where horrors and treasures wait in every cave, and players could lose days of their lives exploring each facet of it. The Shadow of the Erdtree DLC made things even more epic, adding brutal bosses that put even the best FromSoftware fans to the test.
Few games have ever offered the same depth of content as Elden Ring, leaving fans wondering where FromSoftware can go next. The Lands Between from Elden Ring has one of the biggest and most in-depth open worlds of any video game ever made, so a theoretical Elden Ring 2 is going to have to up the ante and be even more epic.
What makes Elden Ring so special is that it managed to capture the perfect balance of featuring lots of content without overwhelming the player. That’s why people keep returning to The Lands Between each year, as there’s so much more left to experience.
Pathfinder: Wrath Of The Righteous Is The Most Epic CRPG To Date
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is a game that’s often unfairly compared to Baldur’s Gate 3, even though they take very different approaches to adapting the tabletop RPG experience to the video game medium. Baldur’s Gate 3 focused more on character interactions and roleplaying.
At the same time, Wrath of the Righteous explored epic fantasy adventures and combat mechanics, using the benefit of running on a computer to make the experience smoother. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous tasks the player with creating the average adventurer, only to throw them into a city being invaded by demons, and becoming the leader of the crusade that will seal the portal to hell.
It’s a massive experience, one that demands the player min-max their party if they want to play on the normal difficulty, while mastering the mass-battle mechanics as they guide an army in battle. The final result is an epic experience no other RPG has managed to emulate.
Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth Is The Game Remake Should Have Been
Final Fantasy 7 Remake was an excellent game, but it didn’t quite live up to the promise of its premise. The city of Midgar felt more like a prison, where the story and quests were heavily regimented, and the small party meant that many fan-favorite characters never appeared.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is closer to the remake that fans wanted. Not only is the world massive and packed with activities, but the larger party and expanded battle system also make combat feel much more engaging, especially since the characters are more distinct than in Final Fantasy 7.
Hopefully, the upcoming Final Fantasy 7 Revelation will take things further, finishing the story and giving fans the last piece of the Final Fantasy 7 remake they’ve waited a decade for.
Dragon Quest 11: Echoes Of An Elusive Age Might Be The Most Epic JRPG Ever Made
It’s a shame that the Dragon Quest franchise struggled to find an audience outside of Japan for so long, as they’re among the best JRPGs of all time. Yet, they could never grab attention in the same way Final Fantasy could, even with the Akira Toriyama artwork.
Thankfully, opinion on the Dragon Quest franchise has changed over time, helped in no small part by Dragon Quest 11: Echoes of an Elusive Age, an outstanding game on modern platforms with an absolutely gargantuan campaign, especially in its updated remaster.
Echoes of an Elusive Age follows the usual Dragon Quest formula of telling the story of a legendary hero who must save the world, but keeps the player interested through its excellent characters, side stories, and minigames, all of which propel them toward the encounter with the final boss.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Proved There’s Still A Fanbase For Old School JRPGs
Square Enix was once the master of the turn-based RPG. Still, over time, the Final Fantasy series would shift toward the action RPG genre, with a greater focus on player skill and reactivity rather than careful planning and strategy. In 2025, one game proved that there was a thirst for the turn-based combat and explorable overworld that Final Fantasy had abandoned, and its name was Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Clair Obscur is set in a world where people instantly die the moment they reach a certain age, with the limit decreasing by one each year. Expedition 33 is a team that has been dispatched to try and stop the supernatural being behind the culling, in what is one of the most beautiful and heart-wrenching RPGs ever made. There’s a reason why Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 cleaned up the awards in 2025, as it really is as good as the critics say.
Persona 5 Royal Proved That Classics Can Be Improved Upon
There’s a strong argument to be made for Persona 5 being the best RPG ever made, having mastered the school schedule/dungeon exploration of its predecessors, while injecting a ton of excitement and visual flair in the process. Persona 3 and 4 suffer from lengthy introductions that take way too long to get going. At the same time, Persona 5 throws the player into the action, instantly engrossing them in its world of teenage criminals with magical powers.
In 2020, Atlus managed to improve on perfection with Persona 5 Royal, which added a massive amount of content, especially at the end of the story, while also introducing a new party member and featuring way more battle mechanics for players to unleash upon enemies. Just be aware that Persona 5 Royal is an absolutely massive game in terms of length, but it’s one where the player will be sad when the credits roll, as every second of the experience is fun.
Pillars Of Eternity 2: Deadfire Proved Fantasy Can Avoid Medieval Europe
Far too many RPGs use Medieval Europe as their base, with healthy doses of Dungeons & Dragons and The Lord of the Rings shoved in there. People gravitate to what they’re familiar with, meaning few RPGs in the fantasy genre never stray too far from knights, wizards, and evil monarchs.
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire throws the standard setting in the trash, being a CRPG set in a fantasy version of the Caribbean during the pirate era, where the player hangs a flag on their mast and goes exploring islands. Those who loved Baldur’s Gate 3 and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous need to check out Pillars of Eternity 2 next.
Its unique setting, coupled with a greater focus on lore and story, makes it the natural follow-up to the more standard fantasy worlds. Also, players can become pirates and take over the high seas, something few other games offer.
Atlus has become closely associated with the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei franchises, which feature dark stories told in contemporary or post-apocalyptic worlds. Metaphor: ReFantazio was the company trying something new, with a fantasy setting featuring a diverse mix of mystical races, while the player travels the land to win an election.
Those who love Persona should check out Metaphor: ReFantazio next, as it has the same social link and scheduling system, only with a greater focus on dungeon exploration and character class mechanics. The world is vast and bursting with interesting characters to meet, as well as treasures that need plundering, as Metaphor: ReFantazio lives up to Atlus’ reputation for being brutally challenging, and the player is going to need all the help they can get if they want to see the credits.
Yakuza: Like A Dragon Proved Not All RPGs Need To Be Fantasy
Most RPGs take place in fantasy or science fiction settings, with the genre making the most of the strange worlds to show people worlds they’ve never seen before. It’s much rarer for RPGs to use contemporary settings, as there’s little interest in creating a whole world similar to the one the player sees outside their window every day.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon proved that contemporary RPG worlds can not only be interesting to explore but can also be hilarious when adding the tropes of the genre to everyday concepts. Ichiban Kasuga is a Yakuza member who sees the world in JRPG concepts, thanks to playing too much Dragon Quest as a child, and his adventure proves that some of the best games of all time aren’t necessarily about slaying the dragon or stopping the evil empire, but are about surviving a more-than-mundane life.
Yakuza: Like A Dragon
- Released
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November 10, 2020
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol
- Developer(s)
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Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio
- Publisher(s)
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Sega
- Engine
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Dragon Engine