Defining a role-playing game in 2025 is more complicated than it’s ever been. Pretty much every game has RPG elements these days, so if you squint hard enough, you can make the case for a lot of games being RPGs, even if they don’t follow the same formulas and structures the genre historically has. Because the definition of what makes an RPG has gotten looser over the years, any list of the best ones in any given year is pretty much guaranteed to have a ton of variety, including everything from action-packed open-world sprawls to strategic retro throwbacks. Here are our picks for the best RPGs of 2025.
Assassin’s Creed: Shadows
So many Assassin’s Creed games are set in open worlds that aren’t worth exploring. Everything is marked on your map, and outside of those locations there’s little to find. But more recent entries, like Valhalla, have bucked this trend and started featuring maps that were not just vast, but stuffed 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 so, you find new ways to alter both playable characters and their builds. And yeah, the presence of two playable characters who both feature their own quests and dialogue options as well as combat styles and skill trees means you basically get two different, but similar RPGs for the price of one. That’s an impressive accomplishment, and it means Shadows isn’t just one of the best RPGs of 2025, but one of its biggest, too. -Zack Zwiezen
Avowed
My favorite RPGs are the ones in which I can pick a direction and just start hiking, running into interesting encounters and monsters to fight as I go. Avowed, while not as big as some other open-world RPGs, let me do just that.
But even better, I got to do so in a unique fantasy setting filled with characters I’ll remember for years. It’s also an RPG that is so confident in its characters and writing that it essentially forces you to camp between quests and exploration. Standing around the campfire and chatting with my small crew of misfits could have been annoying in another RPG. But in Avowed, these are some of the best moments in the game. Any RPG that makes chatting as fun as combat and questing is a winner in my book. – Zack Zwiezen
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Much has been said about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as some kind of “savior” of the turn-based RPG genre, as if those games stopped coming out after Final Fantasy VII. I don’t want the nauseating way in which RPG detractors have wielded it to take away from just how good Sandfall Interactive’s debut game is. Clair Obscur’s grief-driven tale of a group of expeditioners on a suicide mission, desperately hoping to end an annual culling of their friends and family (called a Gommage), is one of constant misdirection and pain, whether that be in its narrative twists or in the showy way its enemies swing at you to throw off your well-timed parry or dodge. It circumvents the bloat that weighs down the RPG genre in favor of something tight, focused, and reasonably paced, and it packs it with a dense, rewarding turn-based battle system. After the amount of acclaim it has received this year, hopefully other RPG devs learn from its relative restraint and calculated excess. — Kenneth Shepard
Deltarune
Toby Fox’s episodic follow-up to Undertale is still ongoing, but four episodes in, Deltarune has already provided humor, atmosphere, character, and a banger soundtrack that stands tall next to its predecessor. With the closing 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 thus far has the potential to be just as impactful as Undertale was in 2015. — Kenneth Shepard
Demonschool
What if you took the first Persona game and made it like Into the Breach? You’d have Demonschool, a clever, charming RPG that takes turn-based battles and makes each round of combat into a mini-tactical puzzle. The pixel art is great. So is the soundtrack. The characters are endearing but interactions are brisk, keeping the calendar time-management sim aspect of the formula feeling breezy rather than tedious. The writing’s not for everyone but it worked for me. Think of the snappiest people in your group chat playing off their archetypes and trading zingers at breakneck speed. It can feel at times like a case of style over substance. For a game with this much retro swag, I say, “who cares?” — Ethan Gach
Digimon Story: Time Stranger
The Digimon series may have fallen into relative obscurity compared to other ‘90s monster-taming phenomena, but the series has absolutely not been resting on the laurels of its early popularity. Digimon games are experimental, darker than you remember the series being, and offer a degree of creativity and freedom in party building you won’t find elsewhere. Time Stranger pulls off all of the above with more polish and budget than most of the Digimon games have gotten before, and though its turn-based battles are a bit simple, its incredibly modular monster-training mechanics make it a lot more compelling than it appears on the surface. — Kenneth Shepard
Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles
There might never be another strategy RPG this good, in these exact ways, ever again. Mentioning any quibbles I have—cutting bonus content, a new localization that makes Ramza too whiny sometimes—feels like complaining about micro-mistakes in the plating of a Michelin Star three-course banquet. Perfectly paced, beautifully crafted, and heart-stoppingly authentic, Final Fantasy Tactics is like a long-lost Shakespeare play turned into the best Dungeons & Dragons session you’ve ever had. — Ethan Gach
Fretless – The Wrath of Riffson
Fretless’ marriage of turn-based battles and rhythm mechanics brings clarity to the timing-based attacks of something like Paper Mario or Clair Obscur by tying every strike, swipe, and sidestep to the beat of its excellent soundtrack. Ritual Studios weaves sheet music into the RPG’s design, from its rhythm-based battles to its musical world, in which brushing up against a plant or stepping on the right stone can add a lovely melody to a world that’s already brimming with song. It is 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 blow up in popularity in 2025. But that’s what happened thanks to the remaster, which mainly improves the game’s looks and adds a few quality-of-life changes. That’s it, though. At its core this is still the original Oblivion. And yet, there is something special about it. Walking around the forest in Oblivion and stumbling upon some odd ruins that lead to a dark dungeon is still as much fun in 2025 as it was back on the Xbox 360. – Zack Zwiezen
Octopath Traveler 0
Octopath Traveler 0 is proof that Square Enix had no reason to make Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent a gacha game when it could have easily made it an exceptional RPG without all the gacha elements dragging it down. Octopath Traveler 0 is a game saved from obscurity, as Square Enix has stripped Champions of the Continent of its live-service trappings and revived it as the proper turn-based RPG fans wanted in the first place. It is a beefy monster of a game that will take up nearly a hundred hours of your time, but that’s the consequence 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 sure is nice to have all the best parts of the game preserved when they were once thought lost. — Kenneth Shepard
Pokémon Legends: Z-A
The Legends subseries has become Pokémon’s place to experiment, and Legends: Z-A takes some of the boldest swings Game Freak’s ever taken. Its real-time battle system includes one of the most interesting spins the studio has ever put on the franchise’s decades-old combat formula, the single-city setting lets the devs stick with one of the most memorable casts in series history, and the plethora of new Mega Evolutions gives a lot of old favorites new life. Legends: Z-A is almost nothing like Legends: Arceus, beyond both games having you manually throw Poké Balls at wild creatures and dodge roll when a powerful attack comes your way. And that’s pretty exciting, because it means that maybe the next Legends game can surprise us in a whole new way. After Legends: Z-A, I’m willing to just let Game Freak cook. I have no wish list. — Kenneth Shepard
The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy
Too Kyo Games’ magnum opus is the kind of game that is so ambitious and unwieldy it’s hard to recommend without caveats, but it’s also one of the best RPGs this year you probably haven’t heard of. The game is one part visual novel, another part tactical RPG, and another part absolute mindfuck of a branching narrative, with 100 different endings across over 20 routes, and your path through the story entirely defined by your narrative choices. Its puzzle-like tactical battles are more brain teaser than sweaty warzone, but their challenging, Evangelion Angel-style boss fights keep things interesting and unpredictable. The Hundred Line might not have gotten the awards buzz it deserved, but make no mistake, few games from 2025 even come close to matching its ambition. — Kenneth Shepard
The Outer Worlds 2
It’s clear that we aren’t getting a new Fallout game from Bethesda anytime soon. But I can wait, because Obsidian’s Outer Worlds 2 is a worthy spiritual successor that even exceeds the franchise that inspired it in some key ways. Every part of Outer Worlds 2 is bigger than the original, and it’s clear that the people at Obsidian (who also developed Avowed this year!) are experts at crafting RPGs that offer players plenty of freedom while still telling a tale that doesn’t feel like a series of random moments, lightly connected. Take note, Starfield. This is how you combine space, sci-fi, and the Bethesda RPG formula correctly. The end result: One of the year’s best RPGs. — Zack Zwiezen
Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter
Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter is the type of remake fans dream about: a complete overhaul that nevertheless stays as true to the spirit of the original as possible. The world is reimagined and the coming-of-age story of peacekeeping warriors Estelle and Joshua retold with new cinematics and voice acting that bring it to life the way you always imagined it. Advances in hybrid real-time combat and menu navigation are deftly folded into the structure of a game that came out back in 2004 in a way that adds both depth and convenience. Finally, the starting point for the long-running Trails series has a version you can play that doesn’t just feel like JRPG homework. — Ethan Gach
