Role-playing games worth the month

TW

The Witcher 3

CD Projekt Red

The side quests are better written than most games’ main stories, and the two expansions are better than the base game. Still the benchmark for a world that reacts to you.

P5

Persona 5 Royal

Atlus

Half a social simulation and half a dungeon crawler, and the calendar that limits both is what makes the choices matter. The most stylish interface design in the medium.

DO

Divinity: Original Sin 2

Larian Studios

A combat system that rewards thinking about surfaces, heights and elements before the fight rather than during it. The most tactical turn-based combat here.

ME

Mass Effect 2

BioWare

A game about assembling a team where every recruitment and loyalty mission is the content, and the ending depends on work you did hours earlier. The best-structured RPG of its era.

CT

Chrono Trigger

Square

Time travel used as a structural device rather than a plot device, with no random encounters and no padding. Thirty years old and nothing about it feels dated.

PT

Planescape: Torment

Black Isle Studios

A game where the central question is what can change the nature of a man, and the answer is delivered through dialogue rather than combat. The ancestor of every narrative RPG since.

FN

Fallout: New Vegas

Obsidian Entertainment

Four factions, none of them good, and the game lets you decide which compromise to make. Made in eighteen months and it shows in the bugs, not in the writing.

C2

Cyberpunk 2077

CD Projekt Red

Launched broken and was repaired into one of the best-looking and best-written open worlds there is. The expansion finally delivers what the setting promised.

NA

NieR: Automata

PlatinumGames

Three playthroughs that are three different games, and the ending is something no other medium can do. The combat is good and it is not the point.

XC

Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Monolith Soft

A hundred hours that stay worth it, because the systems keep opening new layers rather than repeating the first one. The most ambitious world design on a Nintendo console.

DQ

Dragon Quest XI

Square Enix

Deliberately traditional and none the worse for it: the comfort is the design goal. The rare long RPG that never feels like homework.

YL

Yakuza: Like a Dragon

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio

Turned a brawler series into a turn-based RPG and made the switch make sense by framing it as a fantasy in the protagonist’s head. Very funny and genuinely moving.

KC

Kingdom Come: Deliverance

Warhorse Studios

A historical RPG where you start unable to fight and have to be taught, which is a commitment most games are afraid to ask for. The saving system is a deliberate annoyance and works.

PW

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous

Owlcat Games

Enormous, rules-heavy and unapologetic about it, with a mythic path system that genuinely changes the story. For people who want the spreadsheet.

PO

Pillars of Eternity

Obsidian Entertainment

The Kickstarter revival that actually delivered, with a setting that does something new with souls rather than reusing elves. Slow to start and worth the first few hours.

OW

Outer Wilds

Mobius Digital

The only game where progress is entirely knowledge in your own head, so it cannot be spoiled and cannot be replayed. Twenty-two minutes at a time, forever.

U

Undertale

Toby Fox

A game that notices what you did on your last run and remembers it. Made by one person and it is more affecting than most studios’ entire output.