14 Best PS1 Open World Games

Boku no Natsuyasumi may be the gentlest game on the PS1. It follows the summer vacation of Boku, a nine-year-old boy from the city who is sent to his extended family in the Japanese countryside for a month, in August 1975. There are no villains to stop and no city to take over, just a long summer to fill however you like. Kaz Ayabe directed and wrote it, and it won a New Wave Award at the Japan Game Awards.

Critics loved its visual style and its nostalgic mood, though they said the PlayStation held back its open-ended ambitions. It never came out outside Japan, and it still has a cult following around the world. Import fans keep putting it on their lists next to Moon and Gunparade March, which is very good company. Three sequels followed, and a PSP version came out in 2006.

Shadow Man came out for the PlayStation, the Nintendo 64 and Windows on August 31, 1999. You play Michael, who moves between Liveside and Deadside, and the villain, Legion, wants the souls Michael collects to power the engine behind his army. Somewhere along the way you find Jack the Ripper's diary, which explains how to shut that engine down. It is one of the darkest stories on the console, and it never apologises for it.

Critics praised its graphics and its story. Players who love it are honest about one thing, though: the PlayStation version is the rough one. If that puts you off, a remaster with restored content came out for Windows in 2021 and later for modern consoles. The sequel, Shadow Man: 2econd Coming, went to the PS2 in 2002.

Mizzurna Falls is about the search for a lost classmate in a small rural American town. You play Matthew, and the whole town is yours to drive around while you dig. You also have to eat at the local diners and keep your car fueled, like a real person with real errands. Its creator, Ishizuka, was strongly influenced by David Lynch, and the setting is reminiscent of Twin Peaks, with story elements inspired by Blue Velvet.

For years it was a game English players could only read about. Then a fan sat down to translate it, and people finally got to see what the fuss was about. Justin McElroy summed it up best: "If Twin Peaks had been a PSone game, it would have been Mizzurna Falls." Players who found it describe a murder mystery in a snowy town, and they recommend it strongly.

Shadow Tower is FromSoftware's next step after King's Field, and it wastes no time revealing its differences. There is no music at all and no automap, so you learn the tower's realms the old way, by getting lost in them. There is no leveling up either. You get stronger by finding better weapons and armour to wear, and all of it degrades over time and with use.

That last part is where it gets mean. The repair shops are sporadically placed, and it is very easy to walk into a boss fight with every weapon close to breaking. Reviews were rough, with an average of 49% on GameRankings. Players still tend to name it in the same breath as King's Field, and anyone who likes the Souls games should give it a few hours.

Mega Man Legends 2 came out for the PlayStation in 2000 in Japan and North America. The first game kept most of its ruins on Kattelox Island, while the sequel spreads them across various islands, so the world feels a lot bigger. It adds an underwater dungeon where everything weighs less and Mega Man can jump higher, and Roll's special weapons now show their energy in two bars.

Critics said the graphics and the gameplay improved on the first game, and they liked how complex the story got next to the classic Mega Man series. The big complaint is the cliffhanger ending, and fans are still sore about it. Producer Keiji Inafune said several fans asked him if a sequel would be made. The game has fans of its own, who put it on their short lists of PS1 favourites.

King's Field was the first video game FromSoftware ever made, after developing business software for eight years. A small internal team built it in around six months. It is a first-person action RPG where you find keys and items that open doors and activate portals to deeper levels of the dungeon. The team chose a dungeon crawler after playing Wizardry, and you can feel that in every slow, careful step.

The naming is a mess. This first game came out only in Japan, and its follow-up was released in the West as simply King's Field, so players keep having to explain which one they mean. Reviews were mixed, but it was a commercial success and went on to inspire Shadow Tower and later the Dark Souls series. The Japanese original was preserved and translated to English in 2025.

Driver was a big deal when it came out, because you could explore each of its cities as an open world, which was notable at the time. You play Tanner, who works his way into a crime syndicate in San Francisco and ends up working directly for its head, Castaldi. The cities are Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, each only partially faithful to the real layout.

It was a commercial hit that sold over 4 million units and grossed $150 million, and critics gave it very positive feedback. The missions can be brutal. The real joy of Driver is taking a car out and seeing how long you last with the police behind you. Players still name it next to the PlayStation's biggest hits, and it came back on the PlayStation Network in 2008.

Driver 2 is the same idea, made bigger. Reflections Interactive developed it and Infogrames published it, and this time there are four cities: Chicago, Havana, Las Vegas and Rio. There are so many full-motion video scenes that the game shipped on two discs, with Chicago and Havana on the first one. A cutscene comes before almost every mission, so the whole thing plays like a Hollywood car chase movie.

It sold well, though critics were less excited than they had been about the first game. Players see it the other way and rank it a nose ahead of the original. Allister Brimble wrote the music, and each city gets its own sound, with son cubano in Havana and samba and bossa nova in Rio. Lots of players slip it onto their own lists of PS1 favourites.

Grand Theft Auto 2 came out for the PlayStation in October 1999, and it was made by DMA Design in Dundee. It is still the top-down GTA. You earn points from crimes like destroying cars, and from missions for the crime syndicates, and the gangs remember who you have been working for. The date is never pinned down: sources suggest anything from three weeks into the future to the year 2013, while the game itself keeps talking about the new millennium.

The reviews were mixed, but people liked the soundtrack and the gang loyalty system. Each area has five radio stations, picked from eleven in total. Some players think it beats the first game easily: "I don't know why anyone would ever choose GTA over GTA2." The GTA games and the Driver games get named together all the time, and that pairing makes sense.

Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain is where the series starts, and you play Kain himself. Nosgoth is packed with hidden things. There are 100 secrets in the game, logged as you uncover hidden areas and dungeons, and some of them are spirit forges, where Kain can donate a big portion of his blood in exchange for powerful battle artifacts. It is a vampire story that takes being a vampire very seriously.

Reviewers praised its scope and storytelling and complained about the lengthy loading times. After release, a dispute broke out over who owned it, and Crystal Dynamics kept the rights and made the sequel, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. Fans of the series rate its story very highly, and some like it even more than the sequel. It came back digitally on GOG in 2021.

Digimon World brings you to File City on File Island, where Jijimon needs you to save the island. Its Digimon have turned feral, and your job is to travel around File Island, find them and bring them back. Some calm down after a fight and come to work in the city, and many open shops or mini-games, so File City slowly fills up as you play. Bandai made it to compete with Pokémon Red and Blue.

The heart of it is raising a single Digimon from its egg. You train it, feed it, let it rest and take it to the bathroom, and with age it fades away and returns to an egg, so you raise it again. That sounds harsh, and it is. Players love it anyway, and they put it right next to the Final Fantasy games on their lists.

Mega Man Legends took the Blue Bomber into full 3D, and it came out in Japan in 1997 and in North America in 1998. It starts the Legends series, set in a world where Diggers explore old ruins in search of refractors. Between digs you roam Kattelox Island, and Roll can craft weapons from parts found in dungeons or bought in shops. You can only carry one special weapon at a time, which keeps you coming back to her.

Critics liked how well it moved from 2D graphics to 3D. The Nintendo 64 port, renamed Mega Man 64 in North America, was not so lucky, because reviewers said it lacked improvements over the PlayStation version. Players recommend the Legends games as a set, The Misadventures of Tron Bonne included, and this first one is the place to start. Makoto Tomozawa composed the music.

Grand Theft Auto began as Race 'n' Chase, a game where you played a police officer pursuing criminals. That version was considered dull, so DMA Design flipped it and made you the criminal. The PlayStation version came out in December 1997, and you climb the criminal underworld across three fictional cities inspired by real places.

The team worked to give you the freedom to play however you wanted, and that freedom is what critics loved, along with the sound design. The graphics and controls took some hits. It has since been recognised as one of the greatest games of all time, and it was even planned for the Saturn and the Nintendo 64 before those versions were dropped. Players still put it on their lists of PS1 essentials, often right next to Final Fantasy VII.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is the sequel to Blood Omen, and you play Raziel, a disfigured and ghostly vampire. You hunt down your brothers, and killing each one and devouring his soul gives you part of his power. Nosgoth is one big connected world with no level select, and every new power opens new paths through it, so the map keeps unfolding as you go.

Crystal Dynamics began work on it in 1997, and legal trouble with Silicon Knights plus other delays pushed planned material into later games, which is why the climax feels cut short. Critics praised its gothic story and its graphics and found the gameplay repetitive. By 2001 it had sold 1.5 million copies, and a remaster with its sequel came out on December 10, 2024. A lot of players answer with this game and nothing else, and players recommend it more than any other PS1 open world game.