Considering open-world RPGs are rare in general, you would think that any truly great game would be forever immortalized, revisited, and honored. Sadly, that is not the case, and not every masterpiece becomes a fixture of pop culture like Skyrim or The Witcher 3. As the years roll by, genre-pushing titles become footnotes in history, forgotten by everyone but those select few who dropped 500 hours into them as children.
While they might be wiped from memories, these games are at least still available to pick up in some form or another, and there’s nothing stopping anybody from discovering them in 2026. If you find yourself craving a trip to a fascinating world that lets you role-play as a hero, mage, or dad, check out these open-world RPGs. They are worth the effort.
“Near-perfect” is a bit hyperbolic, but all these games are “near-perfect” in one way or another.
Dragon Quest Builders Is A Better RPG Than DQB2
The Curse Of The Sequel
- Totally overshadowed by its sequel
- A better “traditional” open-world RPG than DQB2
Similar to Dragon Ball: Xenoverse, Dragon Quest Builders began to fade into the background the second its sequel launched, which improved nearly everything about the gameplay loop. I’m not here to tell you that DQB is actually superior to DQB2, as that isn’t really the case, but I will say that the first game does a few things better than its successor… or at least, differently.
DQB2 is entirely devoted to the sandbox building aspect, to the point of having painfully easy combat and a story that takes hours upon hours to get going. In comparison, Dragon Quest Builders emphasizes base-building without sacrificing the “action RPG” part of the equation. As a sandbox builder, it lacks the polish and QOL features that make the second game so rewarding; as an RPG love letter to the original Dragon Quest, the first game is more well-rounded and even presents the occasional challenge.
Dragon Quest Builders divides its campaign into four isolated chapters that have considerable stakes, with each one forcing you to essentially start from scratch. The frequent resets can be annoying, but the individual chapters tell good stories with memorable characters going through a proper crisis. The campaign doesn’t have all that much bloat either.
Nier Gestalt Tells A Near-Perfect Story
Let’s Pay Our Respects To Papa Nier
- Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139… largely eradicated the original version from history
- For the uninitiated, Nier was originally released as Nier Gestalt and Nier Replicant with a father or brother protagonist, respectively. Outside Japan, the former was the only one released, and Nier Replicant wasn’t made available until the 2021 remaster.
OK, this one comes with a few caveats.
2010’s Nier wasn’t a critical or commercial success at the time of its release, and the franchise only picked up momentum with Nier: Automata. Now that Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139… brought teenage Nier to North America, the original Western version starring old man Nier doesn’t have much of a reason to be remembered. Also, the gameplay isn’t very good, the fetch quests suck, the performance could be better, and the graphics were mediocre for the era.
All that being said, Nier didn’t initially get enough love for telling one of the best stories of the PS3 and Xbox 360 era, and it holds up spectacularly. I would also argue that the father-daughter dynamic in Nier Gestalt not only works better than Nier Replicant‘s sibling relationship, but it also sets itself apart from nearly every other JRPG that features a young protagonist. There’s something incredibly raw and heartbreaking about watching an aging father try to burn the world down to protect his sick daughter.
Should you go back and play 2010 Nier? Honestly, if you’ve already gone through Replicant, I wouldn’t strongly recommend picking up Gestalt. However, if you have the original PS3 version lying around, then you should play that and not drop cash on the remaster.
Click on the game with the higher OpenCritic rating.
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura Builds A Perfect World
Where Magic And Technology Collide
- A 2001 game that very much looks like a 2001 game
Unless its name is Baldur’s Gate or maybe Planescape: Torment, most early text-heavy isometric RPGs are remembered by those who grew up with them but rarely discovered by new generations. Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura serves as a prime example: newcomers must go through the hassle of running an ancient game on modern PCs, only to be greeted with awkward combat that wasn’t particularly good in 2001.
Although it takes a while to completely remove the shackles, Arcanum eventually becomes a full-blown open world, one of the earliest of its type. More importantly, the RPG takes place in a fascinating fantasy steampunk setting built around the ideological clash of magic and technology. If you build a Mage or a Technologist, the impact you have on the world is widely different, as is what you can accomplish in and out of combat.
Arcanum‘s player freedom still impresses all these decades later, with its quests being almost entirely reactive. The way your character views the world should determine their behavior, and the game gives you the freedom to follow through on that mentality. In terms of pure game-altering consequences, Arcanum is perfect.
Ultima 7: The Black Gate Was The Skyrim Of 1992
A True Open-World RPG Masterpiece That Doesn’t Get The Love It Demands
- The pinnacle of a legendary franchise that is very hard to play nowadays without mods.
- It’s 34 years old.
We really cannot overstate Ultima‘s influence on RPGs, dungeon crawlers, and even open worlds. A true trailblazer that still casts a wide shadow despite its last great game coming out in 1994, Richard Garriott’s franchise peaked with Ultima 7, an MS-DOS masterpiece that introduced a living, breathing world, impressive environmental interaction for the time, and surprisingly nuanced writing.
Cast as the Avatar returning to Britannia after 200 years, Ultima 7 envisions a kingdom in transition, with magic falling by the wayside and a religious movement spreading its influence. The story is very good, but the game’s crowning achievement is its entirely interactive world, which lets you pick up pretty much anything that isn’t nailed down. This level of interactivity was jaw-dropping in 1992 and is still extraordinary in 2026.
Look, I’m not going to pretend that everybody should run out to play vanilla Ultima 7, as there really is no escaping the game’s age by this point. The industry has evolved so much that Ultima 7 feels completely archaic, and it can feel unplayable without mods. However, if you want to experience one of the most important open-world RPGs of all time, track this down.
Yo-kai Watch Went From Massive To Forgotten In Just 5 Years
Yo-kai Watch 4 Wasn’t Even Released Outside Of Japan!
- Except for the first game, Yo-kai Watch‘s entries were mostly skipped over
- Terrible NA release dates, particularly Yo-kai Watch 3
- Yo-kai Watch 4 is still a Japanese exclusive
The Yo-kai Watch games have hub areas rather than traditional open-worlds, but they are fairly open, and they get bigger with each sequel.
Around 2015, Yo-Kai Watch seemed poised to become the next big “creature collector” series, maybe even competing with Pokemon. Level-5 wholeheartedly grasped that ring by flooding the market with sequels and spin-offs throughout the rest of the decade. However, something clearly went wrong along the way; just 5 years later, Yo-kai Watch 4 wasn’t considered worthy of an international release, despite being the franchise’s Nintendo Switch and PS4 debut.
What the heck happened? Well, the momentum started to slip with Yo-kai Watch 2 and 3, both of which waited too long to release globally. By the time they came out, the Nintendo 3DS was old news, with most people focusing on the Switch. While they didn’t quite capture lightning in the bottle like the first game, every subsequent entry was very good, and the third and fourth games introduced new battle systems, multiple worlds, and expanded their free-roaming.
In an alternate reality, Yo-kai Watch is getting ready for its 6th generation, firmly established as a reliable entry-level IP for children looking to dive into RPGs.
