The first console I ever got was a PlayStation 4. I was really late to the game – I was a PC gamer through my teenage years and college. I’ve since moved back to PC, but I remember the time with my PS4 very well. As an RPG player, I remember the excitement of finally being able to play exclusives, and there were more of them on the PS4 than the PS3.
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Like the PS3, there aren’t many Western RPGs exclusive to the PS4, but those that are are considered essential multiplayer RPGs. The new technology that came with the PS4 has enabled developers to push the limits of the genre, and RPGs that were previously released on PC or poorly ported to consoles have done well on the PS4.
10
GreedFall
An Outstanding Game From A Small Studio
GreedFall didn’t do anything new in the RPG genre, but it earned a spot on this list because its developer punched above its weight. Spiders was a developer who had many games, and was an AA developer when he first created GreedFall. What it produced was a AAA action open world RPG, where many other games were canceled during development.
GreedFall’s story and characters were okay, but it had interesting combat and character building options. It relies on traditional RPG mechanics to do this, and the close combat options alone make it worth playing. The fact that Spiders envisioned a AAA game with many constraints, including a tight budget and very little experience, made GreedFall an ambitious project, even before considering its satisfactory performance on PS4.
9
Kingdom Come: Deliverance
A Historical Epic
Considering the success of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, it’s hard to believe that Kingdom Come: Deliverance was once a long shot from a new developer and relied on Kickstarter funding to get off the ground. New developers creating games of this scale and releasing them are rare, and the ambition of what Warhorse wanted to achieve is clear.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance struggled to be set in the real world, a responsibility that RPGs don’t usually own, and Warhorse was determined to make it historically accurate. It included many details, which were criticized and praised. This was a big job from a new studio, and it paid off. Kingdom Come: Deliverance was followed by DLCs and a sequel.
8
Outer Worlds
Obsidian Venturing Outside Its Box
Obsidian is a respected developer that makes narrative-heavy games that often challenge your imagination and behavior. Their plays are often smaller in scale, preferring narrative rather than spectacle. Outer Worlds was both a new IP for Obsidian and a departure from its more limited game design.
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Outer Worlds is big and vibrant, and it works that narrative design of Obsidian into something like Fallout in space. My biggest impression from Outer Worlds was the amount of color in it. After experiencing game after game where the color saturation was turned to gray to convey despair and a dark narrative, Outer Worlds shined even when things went wrong. This is a beautiful, ambitious game from Obsidian, and it was a bold departure from their usual fare.
7
Fallout 4
New Systems for Old Formulas
We were all familiar with the Bethesda formula by the time Fallout 4 was released. Starting in the Vault, escaping into a post-apocalyptic world, and stopping the main quest as long as possible to do random side quests is the operandi of playing the Bethesda Fallout game.
Fallout IV had a bigger world than before, in the Boston area, a place steeped in history. Fallout IV’s standout feature was its habitat-building tool. This was introduced on a very small scale in Skyrim, but here it really showed what this tool can do. Creating settlements was my favorite part of Fallout IV, and I found myself neglecting all the quests, special or not, just to build the prettiest or craziest cities possible.
6
Dark Souls III
Active Change
Ending a beloved series is as difficult as starting it, and FroomSoftware played a role in getting it here. Dark Souls III is the culmination of its predecessors, and it wasn’t afraid to stray from what worked, giving us the theory and gameplay that made the first two so successful.
FromSoftware already has a winning formula in its gameplay and combat – a developer could leave it at that, and no one would complain. But Dark Souls III took its combat even further with the introduction of Weapon Arts, which give you more control over your build and add more variety to combat than ever before. Making small changes to such a finely tuned system would have sent it all, but it worked for Dark Souls III.
5
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Bringing CRPGs to Consoles
The last time isometric, real-time turn-based combat was this big was Dragon Age: Origins. Almost ten years later, Divinity: Original Sin 2 came out and not only created a truly beautiful CRPG in a world that thought it had left the format, but it translated the dense CRPG design to the PS4.
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CRPGs live on PC for a reason. Adapting to consoles was always a challenge due to the controller and system capabilities, but Larian embraced it and made CRPGs accessible. Divinity: Original Sin 2 is a dense, narrative-heavy game with complex systems that all interact and respond to player choices. Building this for PS4 was an ambitious undertaking, and Larian succeeded.
4
Dragon Age: Inquisition
Emphasizing Scale on a New Engine
Dragon Age: Inquisition was a huge departure from its predecessor. Partly due to the regression of limited dungeon maps in Dragon Age II, partly due to the influence of Skyrim which started the trend of everything being open world, Dragon Age: Inquisition featured large open world maps set in two worlds.
Along with the massive scale of Dragon Age: Inquisition, BioWare was also building an RPG on EA’s in-house Frostbite, which was designed for sports games, shooters, and racing games, not RPGs. BioWare had to create everything from the ground up, and presented a game full of political intrigue, a war table, and an interesting breakdown of the intersection between religion and history and what goes into the creation of fiction.
3
Blood
Death Around Every Corner
FromSoftware took notes on the difficulty of Dark Souls and kicked it up a notch with Bloodborne. This game knows who it is and isn’t interested in mass appeal.
Despite this, Bloodborne found its audience, and they stuck around because Bloodborne did a great job. Set in a visually dark yet magical world infested with monsters, Bloodborne gives you the kind of high you only get from close encounters and knowing you’re just a few short steps away from oblivion. Its desire for scope and fearlessness in making a serious game earn it a place on this list.
2
Horizon Zero Dawn
The new face of PlayStation
Most RPGs released during the PS4 era were sequels or adaptations. Horizon Zero Dawn was a completely new IP set in a post-apocalyptic world, but made to look like paradise. However, it wasn’t Horizon Zero Dawn’s gameplay, combat, and setting alone that made it an aspirational project, but its lead character.
Any list about PS4 RP4s would be remiss to leave out Aloy as an iconic character. Random female characters were a rarity in the PS4 days, and Guerrilla Games’ design of Aloy as a realistic, sexless woman was incredibly bold. Aloy stands next to FemShep as the compelling video game characters that paved the way for the variety of games we see today. Aloy was so popular as a character that she is one of the best PlayStation characters, a risk that paid off.
1
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
The Game That Changed Everything
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has improved open world gameplay. It features a large area, various biomes, and natural storytelling that players can get lost in.
Choice is a powerful tool in RPGs, and The Witcher 3 had it in spades. Each choice you make as Geralt influences some part of the story, be it who comes out of the big battles, who lives or dies, the fate of the settlement, or deciding the new king of the land. All of these decisions come together to create a cohesive emotional story.
I remember my calmness at the end of The Witcher 3, just waiting to see if I was a good father to Ciri and guide her in the right direction, and the relief I felt when I saw my actions paid off was indescribable.
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