We adore role-playing games - titles that let us explore not just fresh new worlds but also meet new characters, including the chance to shape our own player character as we experience the story and plot, in their shoes.
TheXbox Series X and Series S, thanks to extensive backward compatibility and a growing native library, offer a huge range of amazing RPGs and we’ve gathered the very best for you to check out right here.
Elden Ring
Disco Elysium
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Mass Effect Legendary Edition
Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
Tales of Arise
Persona 5 Royal
Yakuza: Like a Dragon
Masterful world
An amazing open-world reinvents the Souls formula to stunning effect.
FromSoftware’s latest RPG is a stone-cold masterpiece that absolutely sings on next-gen hardware, with way quicker loading times and smoother frame rates. You’ll explore a terrifying, ridiculously detailed and varied map over many hours.
It’s tough as nails, and you might find it a little unforgiving at times (okay, all the time), but when you stick withElden Ringand make hard-fought progress it offers a level of reward that few games can match. It’s a genuine must-play.
Stunning writing
The best writing we’ve ever come across in a videogame, bar none.
If you prefer your RPGs to be heavy on the story side of things, and want a game that really adapts to your approach and lets you do things the way you want to, Disco Elysium is like mana from heaven. It’s written to an unbelievably high standard.
Playing a deadbeat, failing police investigator, you’ve got a crime to solve and not long to do it. The real star, though, is its stunning dialogue, including with your own psyche in-game. This is ideal for anyone looking to be impressed by a game’s intellectual scope.
Huge galaxy
A whole galaxy to explore - thankfully, it also has countless memorable quests and characters to offer up.
Starfield is a huge game for Xbox, giving it the massive exclusive it’s craved for ages, and happily it’s also a really engaging and fun RPG. You’ll set off to explore a massive galaxy, and it’s the stories and characters that you’ll encounter that will really stay with you.
There are oodles of interesting stories to uncover, with loads of fun dialogue and surprising outcomes, and it’s set in a world with some good fundamental background lore to discover, too.
Modern classic
Possibly the greatest RPG of the last console generation,The Witcher 3is a sprawling, magical story with almost endless amounts of diverting side content to explore while you make your way through its meaty main quest.
The game looks ravishing despite its age, and a new next-gen version makes things sparkle at higher resolutions, which means the Series X or S is the perfect place to give it a play-through for the first or umpteenth time.
Endless options
We love Diablo 4 for how it lets you figure your own way out, building a character that feels fun to use for you, before you get to take it online to really test it out against other players and the toughest bosses.
Diablo 4 took many long years to develop, but you can see the attention to detail and care poured into it the whole time you’re playing, with gorgeous environments and a fun, dark story to explore.
Best of all, there are countless ways to build your character for combat, with loads of powers to explore and synergies to unlock, replicated across a range of classes. It’s a tinkerer’s dream.
Sublime scale
This is one of gaming’s great sagas, with a truly epic story told on a massive scale.
One of the greatest stories in gaming history is repackaged and massively upgraded in this collection ofall three Mass Effect gameswith almost all of their DLC and extras, making for a seriously monstrous amount of gaming to get through.
With memorable characters, huge choices and epic moments, though, you’ll find it goes by in a blink, and we had an absolute blast reliving some of the most incredible sequences in RPG history.
Massive map
Valhalla has a massive map to explore and so much to do while you’re at it.
Assassin’s Creed didn’t start as an RPG, but at this point it might just be the biggest one on the market, withValhallaoffering up a huge map and countless activities to explore within it, plus letting you choose your dialogue and whether your Eivor is male or female.
The game looks gorgeous and plays super smoothly, and there are some great DLC packs to check out if you do manage to finish its huge main quest, which will take dozens of hours. This is a great world to sink into for some low-stress gaming.
Touching story
A touching story plays at the heart of Tales of Arise.
If you want more of a JRPG,Tales of Ariseis one of the first big next-gen arrivals on that front, and it looks brilliant on a new Xbox. The story it tells is one of oppression and revolt, and you’ll be right at the heart of it with a cast of loveable characters.
Fighting back will involve plenty of battles, and thankfully Tales of Arise has a superb, rewarding and satisfying combat system that lets you hot-swap between powers and characters on the fly for huge damage and powerful moves.
Excellent combat
A brilliant JRPG that has absolutely loads of content for you to enjoy.
A beloved JRPG that easily has enough content to swallow you whole for a couple of months, Persona 5 Royal expands on the base game and crucially upgrades it by a big margin visually to make it sing on current-gen Xbox hardware.
This means that its superb visual style gets the crisp finish that it deserves, to go with its amazing soundtrack and innovative turn-based combat - making for a superb package that shouldn’t be overlooked. For those who want a more laid-back, rural story, Persona 4 Golden is also an excellent option.
This zany game has so much to offer and is a great turn-based RPG.
Staying in Japan, this brilliant entry in the long-running Yakuza series is the perfect place to jump in, thankfully. It also marks a massive change for the series, transforming it successfully into a turn-based combat game rather than a brawler.
That makes it more relaxed to play but doesn’t stop it from exploring some truly crazy depths and offering up countless amazing stories and fun side activities to try out and eventually master.
How to choose your next RPG for Xbox Series X or S
Here are some helpful FAQs to consider if you’re thinking about how to pick your next role-playing game!
Have you checked Xbox Game Pass?
A key point for all Xbox gamers now is that Xbox Game Pass should always be in their minds - if you’re thinking of buying a game, check if it’s included in the membership service first. If so, you’ll be able to play it at a lower up-front cost in most cases, and can always buy it later if you want permanent ownership.
Do you prefer combat-light games?
If you’re not too keen on learning complex combat systems and working out all the best moves for yourself, you might want to read some reviews of the games you’re looking at. If they make it sound combat-heavy, you might find it a drag!
What type of story are you looking for?
Similarly, RPGs come across all different settings and types of story, so depending on your mood you might feel like a classic fantasy tale, a science fiction yarn or something from another niche, and you’ll get a good sense of which games offer each from their trailers.
Have you tried JRPGs before?
If you’ve never tried a Japanese role-playing game, the Xbox plays host to plenty of stellar options to break that streak. While, in reality, the grouping is way too broad to be meaningful, it can still be refreshing to try a game that’s come from a very different design heritage, such as the Persona series.
