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Stuff.tv
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Stuff.tv
15 of the best action RPGs of all time
From Jade Empire to Cyberpunk 2077, the very best action role-playing games (RPGs) feature a masterful blend of satisfying real-time combat, memorable characters, a rich narrative, and deep, rewarding progression whether you play on console or elsewhere. These games will leave your digits sweating as you battle against legendarily epic bosses, deploy your silver tongue in fiendish dialogue skill checks and stomach some tough moral choices. However, bountiful treasures await those who have crafted an adept character build and honed their reflexes, abilities and decision-making to surgical precision. One of the greatest sci-fi RPGs, System Shock 2, hits its 25th anniversary this month, and with the long-awaited remaster nearly at our doors, we're celebrating by listing our 15 best action RPGs of all time. So pick your D4s off the floor, unsheathe your short swords and refill your mana as we explore these unmissable titles. Jade Empire (2005) Play Developer BioWare could do no wrong during the noughties, churning out hit after hit with universally lauded titles like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age: Origins. Jade Empire was also part of that hot streak — a brand new IP based on ancient Chinese history, featuring mythological beasts and spirits. Central to the gameplay were moral choices — do you help the struggling locals or leave them to fend for themselves while hoovering up power and riches? The combat system incorporates a huge number of fighting styles, from bare fisticuffs to Wolverine-style blades and even ungodly animal transformations. All this is set against a story of intrigue, betrayal, vengeance and a little romance, and with three different endings, you get to decide the fate of the Jade Empire. Any chance of a remaster, BioWare? Cyberpunk 2077 (2020) Play As V, a resident of the brutal Night City, you want to make a name for yourself by doing jobs for fixers, corporate clients, deadly gangs and mysterious AIs. How you go about them is up to you, whether hacking security, sneaking in, talking your way to your objective or going in all guns blazing. At your disposal is an arsenal of hardware and a blisteringly fierce range of body mods, from arm-mounted blades, hacking cybersuites, and time-slowing neural chips. Caught in a murder plot and on the run, with the digital soul of Keanu Reeves' Johnny Silverhand stamped into your psyche, you've got to figure out who to work for and who to trust in this futuristic world full of backstabbing, cyberwarfare and corporate espionage. Cyberpunk 2077 is full of nods to classic sci-fi, with side quests that always enrapture and storylines that'll have you digging deep into your own moral code. Oh, and don't sleep on its unmissable expansion, Phantom Liberty, which delivers some of the best post-game content in years. The Outer Worlds (2019) Play Fallout fans looking for another foray into a left-field sci-fi universe could do a lot worse than taking a trip to The Outer Worlds. Evoking a new frontier for the Halcyon system's planets that have been taken over by various corporations, the game is a mish-mash of sci-fi opera Firefly and the corporate bureaucracy and humour of Office Space. After a space rescue that sees your lifepod crashing down on your rescuer, you become captain of the ship The Unreliable, tasked by an eccentric scientist to save the colony from extinction. This quest takes you across several planets and has you in the crosshairs of multiple alien and human threats. The combat isn't quite as tight as other gun-based RPGs, but the moral choices, irreverent humour and multilayered gameplay serve as a colourful and enjoyable romp through a new star system. Black Myth: Wukong (2024) Play Many gamers initially dismissed Black Myth: Wukong as merely a Soulsborne clone, but it's much more of a linear action RPG experience. Based on the ancient Chinese novel, Journey to the West, you play the Destined One, a staff-wielding simian on a quest to retrieve six mysterious relics to revive the mischievous spirit of the Sun Wukong, aka the Monkey King. Along your odyssey, you'll meet many imposing foes who love nothing more than a good scrap. Thankfully, your shape-shifting staff lets you utilise different fighting stances, while a well-timed dodge or flurry of light attacks nets you focus points, which you can build to unleash heavier attacks. Along the way, you'll also learn magic to help you eliminate foes, casting spells like binding enemies to get in some crafty hits or transforming into a flaming wolf to inflict severe burn damage. The enemy design and animations keep things riveting, while duels occur in gorgeously detailed backdrops. It might not have the combat depth or awe-inspiring exploration of Elden Ring, but it represents a more accessible action adventure with plenty of grandiose boss encounters that'll leave your screen shaking. Hades (2020) Play Despite the permanently warm climate and pantheon of hot gods to rub shoulders with, the Underworld isn't for everyone, so we can hardly blame hero Zagreus for wanting to hightail it to the mortal realm to find his birth mother. This isometric roguelike has you donning the flamed laurels of the son of Hades as he battles with the unholy forces of the dead. You'll inevitably die, many times, of course, and resurrect to the sardonic quips of your father. However, during combat, you can use boons bestowed upon you by deities like Poseidon and Artemis to boost your powers and gain special abilities. You also need to think tactically by choosing reward paths and whether to go for bonuses that'll benefit you for this run or subsequent encounters. Hades' blend of frenetic combat, original narrative and sizzling hot voice acting and music make this game addictive as Hell (I'll get my coat). Mass Effect 2 (2010) Play The first of Mass Effect's phenomenal sci-fi series has Shepard barely surviving their first tussle with the galaxy-ending threat of the Reapers, so it's a real bombshell when the sequel kills off the intrepid commander in the first 15 minutes. However, a mumbo jumbo amount of sci-fi babble later, and Shepard is resurrected, now tasked with investigating disappearing colonists while recruiting a crack team of scientists, soldiers and enhanced biotic warriors. ME2 expands on the original's roster of truly unforgettable characters you had to gain the loyalty of, including fan favourites like assassin Thane, genetically enhanced Miranda and motor-mouthed geneticist Mordin Solus. And if you're not humming (I Am the Very Model of A) Scientist Salarian right now, you're dead inside. The cover-based combat feels polished and tight, while the character classes offer a lot of nuance and replayability. The RPG elements may feel light compared to others, but seeing how your choices affect not only beloved characters but entire civilisations feels like the weight of the galaxy on your shoulders. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) Play The Witcher's TV adaptation may have transformed Geralt of Rivia into a household name, but the White Wolf's third adventure provided the springboard. Set in a fantasy world based on Slavic folklore and inhabited by vampires, ghosts, elementals and a monstrous menagerie of hell beasts, the Witcher 3 follows Geralt as a magically-enhanced hunter, roving the land for monsters to fell for the right price. When his adopted daughter, Ciri, goes missing, with rumours that she's being stalked by the mysterious Wild Hunt, the witcher travels across the Continent in search. With several tomes of lore, it can take some time to get to grips with the Witcher's world, but players can find an engrossing and immersive experience with some of the best and most unpredictable side quests written for an RPG. The open world map is also huge and breathtaking to explore, so taking your noble steed Roach for a gallop always feels invigorating. And for those weary from riding and fighting, you can get lost in a friendly game of Gwent. Fallout: New Vegas (2010) Play Though Fallout 4 remains the more technically advanced title, legions of players count New Vegas as the best irradiated wasteland experience due to its superior storyline. Players control The Courier, who starts the game left for dead with a bullet in the brainpan, before being rescued and setting off to uncover who wanted them six feet under. Their setting is the Mojave Wasteland, which features a run-down but barely functioning Las Vegas. You'll cross paths with various factions such as the oppressive slavers Caesar's Legion, the police-like New California Republic and Mr. House, who runs the Vegas Strip with an iron grip and dozens of deadly automatons. Progressing through the story locks you into a power struggle that'll decide the fate of the area. The open-ended story has you contending with dark, moral choices and arresting characters. What's more, the SPECIAL system, which determines your playstyle, can open up lots of avenues for replayability, and you'll have tonnes of fun exploring the many perks you have access to whenever you level up. Nier: Automata (2017) Play Those who invest themselves in Nier: Automata just won't see this one coming. Set in a post-apocalyptic world where humans have evacuated the Earth, a handful of android warriors remain to combat an alien robot menace. However, the truth is much weirder than you first think. N:A's gameplay takes a wild swing in multiple directions, leaving you discombobulated and reeling from its unique encounters. By the time you've rolled past the credits for the first time, you'll have engaged in epic hack-and-slash swordplay, dodged a billion projectiles in its bullet-hell shooty sequences and even played through text adventures, with several perspective shifts throughout. Plus, you won't even be close to the game's true tear-jerker ending, which takes multiple playthroughs to achieve. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011) Play Poll gamers as to their top game of all time, and chances are that Skyrim is up there. Set in the fantasy continent of Tamriel, players take up the mantle of the Dragonborn; a hero foretold who can defeat big bad Alduin the World-Eater. Of course, if players wish, they can complete the jaw-dropping amount of side quests and put saving the world on the back burner. Join a guild (or 10), solve Skyrim's civil war problem, recruit a companion and craft the ultimate weapon. All this means that Skyrim will turn you upside down and shake out hours of your life, which will be hours well spent. The game also has the verve to do away with character classes altogether, instead letting players level up by slowly becoming proficient at combat, crafting or smithing simply by doing. It's a wonderfully organic system that made perfect sense, letting players trial abilities rather than being pre-pigeonholed into specific classes. The first-person combat might be clunky from today's standards, but dragon-shouting hapless foes off snowy cliffs more than makes up for it. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 (2025) Play When you can snuff it before you've even been born (much like medieval life) in the original Kingdom Come: Deliverance, you knew you were in for a rough ride. The sequel thankfully carries on the story of a very much-alive Henry, where a chance bandit encounter leaves him bereft of his status and clothing, necessitating you to befriend the locals to complete quests and regain your identity and standing. You'll make your way through Bohemia, where you can engage in around 100 quests and activities that will more often than not throw a curveball at you. Realism is Deliverance 2's real strength, and its European townships feel organic and lived-in, reacting to your rep and status. And when it comes to combat, don't expect dropping into your first encounter like John Wick with a warhammer, either. Initial solo duels descend into a tense game of clashing swords and armour, with the melee hit system returning from the first game that demands timing, patience and skill to pull off. Part Middle Ages sandbox sim, part rewarding and ambitious RPG, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 offers up a unique adventure that's sure to tempt trebuchet fans. Elden Ring (2022) Play FromSoftware's magnum opus has players step into the boots of the Tarnished, as they venture across the Lands Between to unite the fractured Great Runes of the Elden Ring and become the Elden Lord. Build your character and wander across gorgeous and ethereal environments, where each area has much to discover and be killed by. By combining the best of the open world genre with the dungeon-crawling of Dark Souls, Elden Ring has an addictive and atmospheric world that feels intoxicating to explore, whether you want to grind for souls for hours to get more powerful or take on the many twisted enemies in this forsaken land. Enemy designs are often grotesque if not divinely fantastical, and there's more than 200 bosses and crushing difficulty spikes that'll make you curse your rudimentary flesh and blood fingers. An absolute triumph and unmissable paragon of the Soulsbourne genre. Diablo III (2012) Play Blizzard's seminal isometric dungeon crawler perfects the Diablo formula for its third outing. And while Diablo 4 is a great game that's a more tactical and cerebral experience, DIII keeps clawing us back for its faster-paced combat. This isometric dungeon crawler combines a heady mix of furious button-clicking combat with the promise of dopamine-infused loot drops with every victory. Players can select one of five character classes from the base game, like Barbarian, Demon Hunter, or Crusader, and need to cleanse the dark fantasy world of Sanctuary from the denizens of Hell. And there are many to send back underground, with screen-filling skirmishes often feeling like the most terrifying of Tolkien's works. But if you don't want to battle alone, multiplayer is on hand for friends to lend a hand and a bow, and with a huge variety of skills and magic to test out between character classes, finding that perfect synergy of abilities is always rewarding. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (2024) Play Rebirth follows the end of FF7 Remake, where Cloud and the gang depart Midgar to stop Sephiroth from destroying the planet. But once you step out into the wider world across the Grasslands, you'll find the once tiny hub world in the OG game has been beautifully realised. Kalm, the first town you come across, feels fleshed out, with a sprawling, vertical design full of areas bustling with life and activity. And as you'd expect from a Final Fantasy game, there's a gazillion things to do, with sidequests to boost your companion affinities, fiends to vanquish, chocobos to find and a card game you can easily sink hours into. The monster designs have also been cranked up from the originals' limited polygons, and while you may want to stop and admire the artistry, you'll have your hands full not being punished by its many enemy types and bosses. Combat is a real challenge, demanding that you use its materia and weapon builds and synergy abilities in flawless unison, requiring split-second timing and quick tactical decision making. The alternate timeline story can definitely feel confusing, but it's clear that Square Enix have crafted FF7R with the utmost care and love for the original game. Assassin's Creed Odyssey (2018) Play The eleventh mainline entry in the Assassin's Creed series transports players to Ancient Greece during the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens. Playing as either sibling Alexios or Kassandra, Spartan mercs who get caught up in a conspiracy involving the shady Cult of Kosmos, they must defeat the cultists while staying alive amidst the war for all of Greece. Straight away, players will notice how huge the gameplay map is, while the Grecian islands, with their blue ocean, sandy beaches and varied environments, look and feel utterly lush. The familiar Ubisoftication is here in all its glory too, before the formula felt truly stale — find and take over encampments, embark on side quests, shiv high-ranking targets, etc etc. It can feel grindy at times, particularly with weapon and boss level requirements, but stealthily taking down scores of enemies at encampments while being hunted by mercenaries after your head can lead to fun and unique situations. Players can also destabilise regions by offing leaders, burning war supplies, and stealing war chests, triggering a conquest battle between the Athenians and the Spartans, in which you can pick a side. These large-scale battles keep proceedings interesting, while there's rewarding loot for the victor. And yes, you can Spartan kick enemies like a Mediterranean Gerard Butler.
Geek Culture
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Culture
'BioShock' Creator's Upcoming 'Judas' Will Be A Complete Single-Player Game With No Microtransactions
Ken Levine, best known for creating the BioShock series and his work on the 1999 sci-fi classic, System Shock 2 , has revealed that his upcoming first-person shooter (FPS), Judas , will be an 'old-school' single-player experience, and will not include modern gaming troupes like live-service elements or any online component. Speaking during an interview with System Shock 2 developer Nightdive Studios on YouTube, Levine confirmed that Judas will not only feel like BioShock , something that was already obvious from what its trailers have shown, but it will also follow the same format of the games, being purely a single-player adventure focused on 'telling the story and transporting the player', and not on an abundance of multiplayer content or monetisation that's prevalent in many modern titles today. 'I grew up playing single-player games,' Levine said. 'And I grew up before certain types of monetisation existed. I'm not here at all to say this is bad, or this is good, right? That's not really my thing. I know the kinds of games I like to make, and so we never made a [live-service] game.' 'Juas is a very old-school game,' he continued, 'You buy the game and you get the whole thing. There's no online component. There's no live service, because everything we do is in service of telling the story and transporting the player somewhere.' In an industry so plagued with rampant monetisation and the constant push for 'shared experiences' by including some sort of multiplayer component, it's refreshing to see a developer double down on what makes gaming so great to begin with, transporting a player into an immersive digital world in a finely crafted story-driven experience, instead of blindly chasing trends. Let's hope that Judas becomes a great success, so that more developers will learn from Levine's example and return gaming to its glory days, free of live-service and monetisation woes. For now, the game does not have a firm release window, so fans will just have to wait and see how it shapes up. Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise 'duds' like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3 . He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying. bioshock Judas Ken Levine
Metro
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster PS5 review - the horrors of AI
One of the best PC games of the 90s has been remastered for consoles, as Nightdive Studios gives the sci-fi horror sandbox a well-deserved makeover. Ken Levine is an influential, but increasingly forgotten, figure in video games. Starting his career working on Thief: The Dark Project at Looking Glass, he went on to co-found Irrational Games, which made System Shock 2, before leading development of the BioShock franchise. As CVs go, his is not short of highlights, and while the immersive sim genre he helped invent never quite found mainstream appeal, players who enjoy it can be almost fanatical about it. Levine is set to return with the upcoming game Judas, but meanwhile remaster masters Nightdive Studios have been working on keeping his System Shock legacy alive, with a full remake of the first title in 2023. That stopped short of the more ambitious reboot they'd intended in their Kickstarter campaign, but its generally warm reception was enough to ensure the sequel would get similar treatment. System Shock 2 was originally released in 1999, and while Nightdive's aspirations for its 25th anniversary edition once again had to be scaled back – and released a year late – it is finally here. As such, it provides a fascinating window into gameplay that helped shape the current generation, not to mention Half-Life 2, which came out five years later and most certainly owes it more than a nod. Set 42 years after the events of System Shock, you're a solider aboard the UNN starship Von Braun, waking from hyper sleep to find the place overrun by zombie-like human-parasite hybrids, deranged psionic lab monkeys, and killer robots. Your job is to figure out what happened and try and make your way through the carnage to survive. Once again, you find yourself pitted against corrupt AI, SHODAN, but this time you also have to contend with the Von Braun's rogue computer, Xerxes, and in a foreshadowing of BioShock's structure, a single human survivor, Dr Janice Polito, whose disembodied voice issues instructions and rewards from afar. Her vocal delivery is wonderfully cynical, calmly dismissing the ghosts of the recently deceased crew members you occasionally see, as 'self-hypnotic defects', telling you not to let them distract you from the tasks she's assigned you. It's a compelling set-up and prepares the stage for a game where every single word counts. The audio logs that deliver the majority of the game's lore also contain essential tips and passwords to open doors. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. It means you're always paying close attention to everything that's going on, which helps emphasise the profoundly unsettling atmosphere. Along with the noises and occasional explosions of the decaying UNN Von Braun, the game's fast drum and bass theme music is so jarring it adds to an overriding sense of wrongness. You'll also find the hybrids who continually try and kill you apologising as they do so. 'Sorry', they say, and 'Run', as they lay into you with guns and iron bars. Just as alarming are the lab monkeys, their lurid purple brains exposed through their trepanned skulls, multitudes of whom you'll need to beat to death with a spanner. The more you notice, the more disquieting it is. It makes Nightdive's choice to add four-player co-op with cross-play pretty baffling. For a game so dependent on its sense of creeping dread and the need to dwell on occasionally subtle clues in its environments, adding the knockabout fun that automatically occurs when two or more people get together in a first person shooter seems antithetical. When you're laughing it up with friends, the Von Braun becomes a playground rather than the intended retro-futuristic haunted house. It does help offset the difficulty though, which has in no way been dumbed down from the original. Fights are frequent and often deadly, ammo and medical supplies are scarce, and the packets of crisps and soft drinks you find only heal a single hit point. It's just as well every section of the ship has its own regeneration room, where you respawn after dying, and once you unlock the key to surgical tables that heal you free of charge, you discover things aren't quite as brutal as they initially appear. What really impresses though, are the systems that make up its sandbox. For example, another new addition is your choice of career background, which influences the stats your character has at the start of the game. They provide the foundation for quite different builds, from the gun-toting marine to the physically weak psionic-focus of the OSA. Although inadvisable for a first play through, once you work out which psi powers work best, by the mid-game some of them can become comically over-powered. The downside of the latter approach is that you'll regularly have to navigate the game's over-engineered menus. Finding and selecting a new psionic power is a faff when you're standing in an empty room. In combat, since menus don't pause the action, it's a shortcut to getting yourself battered to death by mutants. Its insistence on mapping the stand-still-and-lean-around-corners button to the one most first person games use to sprint, is similarly inhumane. More Trending Graphically, and in keeping with its status as a remaster rather than a remake, things have been polished instead of reinvented. Cut scenes are much sharper looking, as are enemies, guns and scenery, but they all still have the unmistakable low-poly blockiness of the late 1990s. The most important thing though, is that what made the game such a landmark in the first place is still entirely present. That includes its labyrinthine level design. You eventually discover that sections generously loop back on themselves, creating shortcuts after long and gruelling periods of exploration, and that you can safely dump spare inventory items in the lift that acts as a bridge between those vast floors. That doesn't prevent each new area you discover from feeling genuinely intimidating though. Despite moments of mechanical clunkiness, and the occasional odd design decision, System Shock's 25th Anniversary Remaster is a reminder of how much sophistication was possible even with pre-millennial technology. It's still utterly engrossing to play, and with so many different possibilities to experiment with, invites multiple playthroughs. This is a sensitively made and bug free remaster that should delight devotees of the 90s original and curious newcomers alike. In Short: A meticulous and polished remaster of the classic sci-fi survival horror, which retains the original's atmosphere and complexity while adding new mod cons, most of which enhance the experience. Pros: Level design that feels fresh and refined even today. Wonderfully dark ambience and environmental storytelling. Systems that allow for an inspiring variety of character builds. Cons: Very difficult compared to most modern games. Four-player co-op is fun but annihilates all hint of atmosphere. Menus remain a headache to navigate. Score: 8/10 Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, and PCPrice: £23.99Publisher: Nightdive StudiosDeveloper: Nightdive Studios (original: Looking Glass Studios and Irrational Games)Release Date: Out now (PC), 10th July 2025 (consoles) Age Rating: 16 Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: The 10 best summer video games to play if you're missing the heatwave MORE: Halo team promises 'official scoop' on series' future later this year MORE: Fans call Steam Summer Sale 2025 'mid' but there's a reason it seems so bad
The Verge
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
A shockingly short wait.
Posted Jul 1, 2025 at 5:00 PM UTC Following news of a brief delay, Nightdive Studios announced today that System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary launches on consoles on July 10th. The PC version launched on June 26th.
The Verge
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
A small System Shock 2 delay for consoles.
Posted Jun 23, 2025 at 11:23 PM UTC A small System Shock 2 delay for consoles. The 25th Anniversary Remaster is still launching on PC on June 26th, but on Xbox, Switch, and PlayStation, Nightdive Studios is now targeting a release for 'the first two weeks of July.' The studio vaguely says that it has 'encountered issues' preventing the June 26th launch on consoles.
