THE BEST OPEN WORLD ACTION RPGS

There's a very specific itch I get every few months where I want a game that lets me roam a massive map, stab things in real time, and also agonize over which skill tree branch to invest in for six hours. That's the open world action RPG itch, and it's one of the hardest genres to actually nail. A lot of games claim the label. Most of them fail at one of the three pillars.

So let me get the definition out of the way before I start ranking things, because I'm picky about this. An action RPG has to have combat you actually execute with timing and positioning, not menu-based turns. That rules out Baldur's Gate 3, which is a masterpiece but lives on a completely different shelf. It also needs RPG systems with meaningful character progression, builds, gear, and player choice in how you grow your character. That rules out pure action games like most of the Assassin's Creed catalog before Origins, which I'd argue crossed over. And it needs a real open world, not a hub with mission levels branching off. That rules out Monster Hunter World (sadly) because the old format was zone-based, though we'll talk about what changed with Wilds.

Alright. With that pedantic bit out of the way, here's my list.

Elden Ring

I'm putting this first because arguing about it is boring. Elden Ring is the gold standard. FromSoftware took the Souls formula and did something nobody thought they could do, which was open it up without breaking the magic that made those games feel so carefully crafted.

The Lands Between is the best open world I've ever played. Not the biggest, not the prettiest in a technical sense, but the best designed. Every weird tower on the horizon leads somewhere. Every cave has something worth finding. And the game respects your intelligence enough to let you wander into areas that will annihilate you, because it trusts you to figure out when to retreat. That kind of confidence in the player is rare.

The RPG depth is absurd. You can build a pure strength character with a colossal sword, or a faith caster who throws lightning spears, or a dex/arcane bleed build with twin katanas that chews through bosses in seconds. Respeccing is cheap and encouraged. Builds actually feel different. And with Shadow of the Erdtree, there's now enough content that finishing everything is a part-time job.

If you haven't played it, play it. If you have, play it again with a different build. I've got four characters at this point and I'm not ashamed.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

The Witcher 3 is old now, which feels weird to type, but it holds up because CD Projekt Red understood something most open world games still don't. The world needs to feel lived in. Not checklisted. Not bloated with icons. Actually lived in.

Geralt's combat is the weakest pillar here. It's fine. Sign magic is fun, the sword play gets better with mods, but nobody is putting The Witcher 3 on a list for its mechanics alone. What puts it on this list is everything wrapped around the combat. The writing is genuinely good. Side quests are often better than the main campaign. The Bloody Baron questline still ends me. Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine are two of the best expansions ever shipped for anything.

The RPG progression is a little thin by today's standards, and the gear grind can feel repetitive. But the roleplay part of RPG is where this game dominates. Your choices matter across dozens of hours in ways that still surprise me on replays. If you want the full context on the series and where to start, I put together a Witcher games complete guide that covers all of it.

Cyberpunk 2077

I know. I know. I was also in the bad launch camp, and I wrote this game off for about two years. But 2.0 and the Phantom Liberty expansion turned Cyberpunk into the game it was always supposed to be, and it's now one of the best open world action RPGs on the market.

Night City is a technical marvel. The density is unreal. The verticality alone makes most other open worlds feel flat. And the new skill trees actually let you build a character that plays completely differently depending on your choices. A netrunner build where you basically speedrun encounters by hacking everyone's grenades before they see you is genuinely one of the most fun things I've done in a video game. A Sandevistan cyberninja that dismembers gangs in slow motion is also fantastic. You can even just be a dude with a big shotgun.

The main story is short but tight, and Phantom Liberty is the best thing CDPR has ever written, which is saying something. Idris Elba is incredible in it. The spy thriller tone works way better than I expected.

The only reason this isn't higher on my list is that the world, while gorgeous, can feel a little hollow once you've done the main story and the gigs. You're not going to sink 300 hours into it the way you might with Elden Ring. But the 80 hours you do sink in are some of the best in the genre.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

TOTK and BOTW are both on this list, but I'm treating them as a single entry because if you've played one you can guess what I'll say about the other. These games reinvented what open world design could be, full stop.

Breath of the Wild was the earthquake. Tears of the Kingdom was the aftershock, and somehow it's bigger. The physics sandbox alone makes this one of the most creative games ever made. Ultrahand and Fuse turn every encounter into a puzzle you design yourself. You want a flying bomb platform? Go for it. You want to glue a bunch of rockets to a shield and launch yourself across a canyon? Also fine.

The RPG label is where people push back on Zelda's inclusion in this genre, and it's fair. The numerical progression is light. Weapon durability replaces traditional gear scaling. But you're absolutely building a character through heart containers, stamina, armor upgrades, ability unlocks, and which regions you tackle in what order. It's RPG progression delivered in Nintendo's weird minimalist style, and it works.

If you want a broader look at what makes worlds like Hyrule tick, I got into the design side of this in my post on the top RPGs for world building.

Horizon Forbidden West

Guerrilla's robot dinosaur saga is underrated and I will die on this hill. The combat is incredible. Aloy's bow feels tactile and punchy, and taking down a Thunderjaw by ripping its disc launcher off and using it against it is one of the purer joys in gaming.

The RPG systems have actually grown up a lot since Zero Dawn. Skill trees branch meaningfully, weapon mods and coils let you build toward specific playstyles, and the Valor Surges are basically active abilities that shift how your character plays in combat. Stealth archer, melee berserker, trap spammer. They're all real options.

The world is the prettiest on this list on pure rendering terms. The Forbidden West does things with foliage, water, and light that still make my jaw drop. And the lore payoff in the main story is genuinely great if you stuck with the first game. Burning Shores is a solid expansion too.

The only thing holding it back is that the side content can feel a bit traditional Ubisoft-shaped in a way that the best games on this list avoid. But the core loop is so good that I didn't mind.

Genshin Impact

Yeah, I'm putting a gacha on the list. Come at me.

Genshin gets flak because of the monetization, which is completely fair, but the core game underneath it is one of the most polished open world action RPGs ever made. Teyvat is enormous, and new regions drop every year that would count as full expansions for any other game. Combat built around elemental reactions creates genuinely interesting team-building puzzles where you're thinking about which characters synergize across which elements.

The exploration is top-tier. Puzzles are clever. The story has gotten surprisingly good, especially in the later regions. And if you're disciplined about not spending, it's a completely free game with hundreds of hours of content that costs you nothing.

I won't pretend the gacha isn't predatory. It is. But the actual game design, if you can treat it as a free single-player experience with no pressure to pull characters, is fantastic. If you want more in this vein, I wrote a whole piece on games like Genshin Impact that covers the alternatives and the subgenre this game basically created.

Monster Hunter Wilds

Wilds is the first Monster Hunter I'd actually call an open world action RPG without caveats. World was close. Rise was back to zone-based. Wilds made the full jump to a continuous living world with monsters migrating between biomes, weather cycles that change encounters, and a map you can actually get lost in.

The combat is Monster Hunter, which means it's the best creature combat in games, period. Fourteen weapon types, each with its own rhythm, positioning game, and skill ceiling. The depth is borderline absurd. You can play 300 hours and still be finding new tech with your main weapon.

As an RPG it works because of the gear progression, the build crafting around skill jewels and armor sets, and the character customization through weapon trees. You're not leveling up in a traditional sense, but you are absolutely building a character, and every decision about what to hunt and what to craft matters.

Wilds has pacing issues in the main campaign. The early story hand-holds too much. But once you hit high rank and the endgame loop kicks in, it's one of the best long-term hobby games you can own.

Dragon's Dogma 2

This one is divisive and I get why. Dragon's Dogma 2 is a weird game that does a lot of things deliberately badly to make the good things feel better, and that trade-off isn't going to land for everyone.

But when it hits, nothing feels like it. Climbing a cyclops to stab its eye while your pawn screams combat advice at you. Getting ambushed by a griffin on the road at dusk and watching it drag your sorcerer off into the sky. Hiking for an hour through genuinely dangerous wilderness to reach a town and feeling like you earned it.

The combat is phenomenal. Classes (vocations) are wildly different and the advanced ones are some of the most creative build fantasies in the genre. Magick Archer is basically a guided-missile wizard class that should not work as well as it does. Mystic Spearhand turns you into a close-range timeline manipulator.

The world design is where it splits people. There's no fast travel in the traditional sense. Enemies respawn in inconvenient ways. The map is smaller than you'd expect for a modern game. Some people find all of this tedious. I find it refreshing, because every trip across the map is an actual event, not a loading screen. Your mileage will genuinely vary on this one.

Ghost of Tsushima

Sucker Punch made the samurai game everyone wanted, and the Director's Cut with the Iki Island expansion is the definitive version. Jin Sakai's journey across feudal Tsushima is one of the more beautifully presented open worlds on console, and the combat is sharp enough to carry the whole game.

Stance switching against different enemy types is the combat hook, and it's great. You're swapping between Stone, Water, Wind, and Moon stances based on what's in front of you, and the duels have a real sense of weight and finality. Parrying a boss attack and getting a clean kill still feels fantastic thirty hours in.

As an RPG it's on the lighter side. Skill trees exist but they're not particularly deep. Gear progression is present but not the focus. This is more of an action game with RPG flavoring than a full-depth build-crafter, which is why I've got it lower on the list even though I love it. If character builds matter a lot to you, this won't scratch that itch.

What it does instead is atmosphere. Wind guides you to objectives. The photo mode is the best in the medium. And every frame of this game looks like a painting. Sometimes that's enough.

So which one should you actually play

If you haven't touched any of these, Elden Ring is the answer. It's the peak of what the genre can do. If Souls combat isn't for you, The Witcher 3 is still the best story in the bunch, and Horizon Forbidden West is the most approachable on combat. Cyberpunk 2077 in its current state is the best if you want a modern setting. Genshin if you want to spend nothing and get something huge. Dragon's Dogma 2 if you want to feel like an adventurer rather than a completionist.

If you want to zoom out and see how these stack up against their turn-based and CRPG cousins, my broader roundup of the best open world RPGs covers the wider genre including the party-based stuff I deliberately kept off this list.

The genre is in the best shape it's ever been in. We've got a Witcher 4 on the horizon, Elden Ring keeps getting bigger, and Monster Hunter Wilds is going to be getting expansions for years. Pick one and lose a weekend.