20 Best PS4 RPGs

Dragon's Dogma started on the PS3 and Xbox 360, and the enhanced Dark Arisen version later got ports to the PS4 and other systems. You play the Arisen, on a quest to defeat the dragon Grigori across Gransys, a high fantasy world inspired by Sicily. The big idea is climbing. You can grab onto a griffin's legs or scramble up to its head for a more lethal blow, because director Hideaki Itsuno did not want big fights to be you hacking away at the shins.

Critics liked the gameplay and found the story lacking, and that is still the deal today. Fans bring up the combat first. The original and Dark Arisen had sold 9.4 million units by December 2025, and a sequel, Dragon's Dogma 2, finally came out in 2024.

Cyberpunk 2077 is the game CD Projekt made after The Witcher 3. It is set in Night City, a dystopian city in California from Mike Pondsmith's Cyberpunk tabletop games. You play V, a mercenary stuck with an experimental biochip that holds the engram of Johnny Silverhand, a rocker-turned-terrorist voiced by Keanu Reeves. Your character build is the role-playing part, and it goes deep.

The PS4 version is the one that went badly. It launched in December 2020 full of bugs and glitches, and Sony removed it from the PlayStation Store until June 2021. Patches and the 2022 Edgerunners anime slowly turned opinion around, and it has now sold over 40 million copies. The Phantom Liberty expansion never came to the PS4, so this is the base game only.

Nioh 2 is a prequel to the first game, out on PS4 on March 12, 2020. This time you make your own character, a hybrid born of a yōkai mother and a human father, and you can transform into a full Yokai to hit back. The story follows Hide through the Sengoku era and the rise and fall of the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi. William, the hero of Nioh, turns up near the end.

It received generally positive reviews and sold 2.5 million units by February 2022. Players tend to recommend the two Nioh games together, so think of this as the second half of a very long, very hard samurai double bill. A sequel, Nioh 3, came out in February 2026.

Disgaea 5 is a tactical RPG, released on PS4 in Japan in March 2015 and in the West by NIS America that October. The demon emperor Void Dark has wrecked a pile of Netherworlds with an army of over one million soldiers called the Lost, and the Overlords he crushed rise up to take revenge. The series is usually a comedy, and this one takes a darker and more serious direction than the games before it.

The PS4 lets it put up to 100 characters on screen, compared to 10 on the PS3 games, and big maps full of units are half the fun. Players keep it on their short lists of Japanese RPGs to play on PS4. It is the kind of game where a quick session turns into three hours of grinding, and you will not mind.

Child of Light is a small turn-based RPG from Ubisoft. You play Aurora, a young princess whose soul is brought to the kingdom of Lemuria after the Black Queen has stolen the Sun and the rest of the sky's lights. It was built on the UbiArt Framework engine from Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends, which let the team put concept art directly into the game. The result has the look of an animated painting.

The story is told in rhyme, which one reviewer found endearing if a little forced. Players pitch it as the small one, a short and pretty indie to play between the giant games on this list. It is also a good first RPG for someone who has never played one.

Dragon Quest XI came out in Japan in July 2017 and reached the PS4 worldwide in September 2018. As with most of the series, Yuji Horii designed and wrote it and Koichi Sugiyama wrote the music. To help the series catch on in the West, the team added voiced English dialogue. Before a fight you can switch between 3D and 2D graphics, and the battles are the traditional turn-based kind.

Critics loved the story and the localization, and knocked the design for being overly traditional. Players say much the same thing, only they mean it as praise. It is a classic JRPG done about as well as anyone has done one. The Definitive Edition, an enhanced version, followed on PS4 in December 2020.

Kingdom Hearts III came out in January 2019, and concept work on it had begun as early as 2005, right after Kingdom Hearts II. Sora and his usual friends are back, and parties now hold five characters, so Disney heroes from the worlds you visit can join in. It was the first game in the series with Pixar worlds. You can also call up Attraction Flow attacks based on Disney Parks rides in the middle of a fight.

Critics praised the visuals and the combat, and the plot got a more mixed reaction. Fair warning: the plot belongs to a series that has spent years tying itself in knots, so it helps to know the older games. There are also minigames inspired by classic Mickey Mouse cartoons in the style of 1980s LCD games, and they are a delight.

Final Fantasy VII Remake is the first in a trilogy of games remaking the 1997 PlayStation original, and it covers only the opening part of the story, in Midgar. Key staff from the original came back for it, with Tetsuya Nomura as director and Nobuo Uematsu returning to the music. The battles are now fast and in real time, with the role-playing parts of the original still underneath.

The team chose to split the game rather than cut scenes fans would miss, so this one is a full game built out of the early hours of the old one. Critics praised the expanded story and the new battle system, and complained about the linearity and the repetitive side-quests. The second part, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, came out in 2024.

Dark Souls II came out on the PS3 and Xbox 360 in March 2014. Scholar of the First Sin is the enhanced version that brought it to the PS4 in 2015, with the trilogy of DLCs included. It is the only game in the trilogy not directed by series creator Hidetaka Miyazaki. Like the rest of the series, bosses and standard enemies alike can kill you in only a few hits, and it uses a Soul Memory system to match you with other players.

Scholar also changes the ending a little, adding King Vendrick's brother Aldia to the final area. Critics were divided on its difficulty and thought its boss battles weaker than the first game's. It has a reputation as the odd one of the trilogy, which is part of its charm.

Dragon Age: Inquisition is the third major Dragon Age game, out in November 2014 on the PS4 and four other systems. Dragon Age II had a mixed reception, so BioWare set out to combine the elements of the first two games. It runs on the Frostbite 3 engine from EA DICE, which created many development challenges for the team. You can build your character as a dwarf, elf, human or Qunari.

Critics praised the exploration and the characters, and commercially it was one of BioWare's most successful games. The common complaint, from critics too, is filler content. There is a lot of running around, and you will forgive it. A sequel, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, came out on October 31, 2024.

Elden Ring came out on February 25, 2022, on the PS4 and the PS5 at once. Hidetaka Miyazaki directed it as a mechanical evolution of Dark Souls, with world-building from novelist George R. R. Martin. You play the Tarnished and explore an expansive open world called the Lands Between, full of dungeons and secrets. You can fight head-on, or use stealth to avoid a fight.

It won several Game of the Year awards and sold over 30 million copies, which is a lot of people dying to the same bosses. It came late in the PS4's life, so it ranks lower here than its fame suggests. Its expansion followed in June 2024 and sold over ten million copies on its own.

Monster Hunter: World was the fifth mainline game in the series, released worldwide for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in January 2018. The series had always languished outside Japan, partly because of its staggered release schedules, so Capcom planned a simultaneous release worldwide for this one. You hunt huge monsters in living ecosystems, alone or with up to three other players, and turn what you carve off them into better gear.

Critics praised how Capcom made it more accessible to new players without losing the series' enjoyable difficulty. Hunt alone or with one friend and each of you brings a Palico, a cat companion you can kit out in weapons and armor just like your own. The Iceborne expansion followed in September 2019 and reached 10 million sales.

Final Fantasy XV began in 2006 as a PS3 spin-off called Final Fantasy Versus XIII, with Tetsuya Nomura directing. Six years later it became the next main game, Hajime Tabata took over, and it moved to the new consoles. It finally came out on PS4 in November 2016. You play Noctis, Crown Prince of Lucis, on a road trip across Eos with his closest friends, warping into enemies with the Warp Strike.

The friends each have their own skills that level up as you use them. Ignis cooks meals that grant stat boosts to the party, and Gladiolus gets better at survival the farther the party travels in a day. Critics praised the gameplay and the soundtrack, the story got a mixed reaction, and players are split on it too. It has still sold ten million units.

Nioh began development in 2004 as a PS3 project based on an unfinished Akira Kurosawa script. It went through years of revisions until its final version began development in 2014 for the PS4. You play William, a blonde-haired swordsman who lands in Japan in 1600 and fights demons with the help of the ninja Hattori Hanzō. Guardian Spirits boost different stats and can only be switched out at shrines.

Critics liked the gameplay and the graphics and found the story lacking or confusing. Players point anyone who has finished the Souls games straight to it. It went on to ship over 3 million copies worldwide, and the prequel, Nioh 2, followed in 2020.

Dark Souls III came out in March 2016 as the final instalment in the Dark Souls trilogy. Hidetaka Miyazaki came back to direct it after having a supervisory role on Dark Souls II. You play the Ashen One, an unkindled warrior, on a quest involving the Lords of Cinder and the fading First Flame. Die and you drop your souls where you fell. Die again before you get them back, and they are gone for good.

Critics called it a fitting conclusion to the series, and it won Ultimate Game of the Year at the 2016 Golden Joystick Awards. It passed 10 million sales by May 2020. Both expansions, Ashes of Ariandel and The Ringed City, are in The Fire Fades Edition, which is the version to get.

Fallout 4 came out on November 10, 2015. You play the sole survivor of Vault 111, stepping out into a world destroyed by nuclear war. It is the first game in the series with a fully voiced protagonist. The big new idea is building: you scavenge junk, use it to upgrade weapons and armor, and develop and manage settlements of your own.

It shipped 12 million units to retailers and made US $750 million within its first 24 hours, and it won Game of the Year at the D.I.C.E. Awards. The main criticism was that the role-playing got simpler than in the older games. That is fair, and also a strange thing to worry about while you are building a fortress out of tin cans and desk fans.

NieR: Automata came out on PS4 and PC first, with Xbox One and Switch ports later. Director Yoko Taro and producer Yosuke Saito took it to PlatinumGames, the studio behind Bayonetta and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, to make a sequel faithful to Nier with better combat. You play androids such as 2B and 9S, fighting for an Earth overrun by machines, and the shooting parts are based on bullet hell games.

Critics praised the story and the music and pointed out some visual and technical problems. Sales surpassed expectations, passing ten million copies by February 2026. Players often name it in the same breath as Persona 5, and the two make a fine pair of Japanese RPGs that look like nothing else on the console.

Persona 5 came out in Japan in September 2016 and worldwide on April 4, 2017, after several delays because it was unfinished. You play a high school student with a criminal record for a crime he didn't commit, who teams up with others in the same spot to become a group of vigilantes. The fights are turn-based, the rest has visual novel elements, and the party's Personas are based on literary outlaws and rebels.

Katsura Hashino directed it, with Shigenori Soejima on character designs and Shoji Meguro on music. Persona 5 Royal, the enhanced version with new content, came to PS4 in the West on March 31, 2020, and it is the one to get. Counting Royal, it is the best-selling game in the Megami Tensei series, with over 11.8 million copies sold by June 2026. Players back it without hedging, and plenty of them call it a must play.

The Witcher 3 is an open-world RPG from CD Projekt Red, out on PS4 in May 2015. You play Geralt of Rivia, a monster hunter searching for his adopted daughter, Ciri, in a fantasy world based on Slavic folklore. Development lasted three and a half years. The music, mostly by Marcin Przybyłowicz, was performed by the Brandenburg State Orchestra.

It holds more than 200 game of the year awards and has sold over 65 million units as of May 2026. The two expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, were acclaimed too, and the Game of the Year Edition from August 2016 has both. Players use it as the yardstick for other open-world RPGs. The 2026 remaster skipped the PS4, but the PS4 version is the same great game.

Bloodborne is FromSoftware's action RPG for the PS4, directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki and started in 2012 under the working title Project Beast. Sony's Japan Studio approached FromSoftware about working together, and Miyazaki asked to make a game for the new generation of consoles. You play a Hunter in Yharnam, a Gothic city whose people are afflicted with a blood-borne disease, through a night of the Hunt that slips between dream and reality.

It plays faster than Dark Souls. The Rally system lets you win back health you just lost by hitting an enemy quickly, so it pays to stay aggressive, and many weapons are trick weapons that switch between two forms. It sold 7.46 million copies by February 2022 and has been cited as one of the greatest games ever made. Players put it with The Witcher 3 and Persona 5 as the big RPGs of the PS4, and they recommend it far more often than either.