Baldur's Gate 3
2023Baldur's Gate 3
A tabletop campaign given a budget, where almost every stupid idea you have actually works.
RPGStrategy
The best story-driven games
36 hand-picked games
Games you play for what happens, not for the numbers going up. Strong writing, characters worth caring about, and an ending that lands. Sorted so the ones most people are looking for come first.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
2015The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
The side quests are better written than most games' main stories. Budget accordingly.
RPG
Hollow Knight
2017Hollow Knight
A vast, quiet, hand-drawn ruin that trusts you to find your own way through it.
MetroidvaniaPlatformer
Red Dead Redemption 2
2018Red Dead Redemption 2
Slow on purpose. Give it the first six hours and the pace becomes the point.
ActionAdventure
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
2025Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Turn-based combat with real-time dodges and parries, wrapped in the most striking art direction in years.
RPG
Cyberpunk 2077
2020Cyberpunk 2077
Launched badly, rebuilt thoroughly. The version on shelves now is the one that was promised.
RPGShooter
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
2017The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Climb anything, cook nonsense, ignore the plot for thirty hours. All of that is intended.
AdventureOpen World
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
2025Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
Medieval Bohemia with no dragons and no chosen one. Learning to fight is genuinely learning to fight.
RPG
God of War
2018The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
2023The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Hands you a physics sandbox and a glue gun, then refuses to say what the solution is.
AdventureOpen World
Split Fiction
2025Split Fiction
Two-player only, from the It Takes Two studio, and it throws away each good idea before you tire of it.
PlatformerCo-op
Assassin's Creed Shadows
2025Assassin's Creed Shadows
Two protagonists with genuinely different playstyles — one sneaks, one very much does not.
ActionOpen World
Hollow Knight: Silksong
2025Hollow Knight: Silksong
Faster and more aggressive than Hollow Knight. Worth the wait, which is not a low bar.
MetroidvaniaPlatformer
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
2019Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Not a souls game with a sword — a rhythm game about deflecting, wearing a souls game's coat.
Action
The Last of Us Part I
2022The Last of Us Part I
Rebuilt from the ground up. Still the best-acted thing in the medium.
ActionAdventure
Marvel's Spider-Man
2018Marvel's Spider-Man
The swinging alone justifies it. You will take the long way across Manhattan every time.
ActionOpen World
Ghost of Tsushima
2020Ghost of Tsushima
Follows the wind instead of a minimap, which changes how the whole world reads.
ActionOpen World
Horizon Zero Dawn
2017Horizon Zero Dawn
Robot dinosaurs, and a mystery about how they got there that genuinely pays off.
Action RPG
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
2025Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
Still a game about walking carefully while carrying too much, and still unlike anything else.
ActionAdventure
Halo Infinite
2021Halo Infinite
The moment-to-moment shooting is the best it has been since the original trilogy.
Shooter
Persona 5 Royal
2020Persona 5 Royal
Part turn-based RPG, part calendar management, entirely the best-dressed game ever made.
RPG
Subnautica
2018Subnautica
Underwater survival that understands the scariest thing in the ocean is not being able to see.
SurvivalAdventure
Disco Elysium
2019Disco Elysium
No combat. You argue with the parts of your own mind and lose most of those arguments.
RPG
Ghost of Yotei
2025Ghost of Yotei
A new protagonist, a colder setting, and the same trick of letting the landscape do the navigating.
ActionOpen World
It Takes Two
2021It Takes Two
Two-player only, start to finish, and it invents a new mechanic roughly every ten minutes.
PlatformerCo-op
Outer Wilds
2019Outer Wilds
Knowledge is the only upgrade. Go in knowing nothing else and do not read about it.
AdventurePuzzle
NieR: Automata
2017NieR: Automata
Finishing it once is not finishing it. The credits are a checkpoint, not an ending.
Action RPG
Celeste
2018Celeste
Brutally precise, and gentle about it. The assist options are part of the design, not an apology.
Platformer
Ori and the Will of the Wisps
2020Ori and the Will of the Wisps
The prettiest thing on this list, and the movement is as good as it looks.
PlatformerMetroidvania
Portal 2
2011Portal 2
Fifteen years on, still the gold standard for teaching mechanics without a tutorial.
Puzzle
Tunic
2022Return of the Obra Dinn
2018Return of the Obra Dinn
Identify sixty corpses from frozen moments in time. Deduction, with no hand-holding whatsoever.
PuzzleMystery
Super Mario Odyssey
2017Super Mario Odyssey
Endlessly generous. Every corner of every level has something hidden behind it.
Platformer
Metroid Dread
2021Metroid Dread
Tight, tense, and confident enough to be short. Nothing here is padding.
MetroidvaniaAction
Firewatch
2016Firewatch
A summer in a fire lookout tower and a voice on the radio. One evening, well spent.
AdventureMystery
What Remains of Edith Finch
2017What Remains of Edith Finch
Short stories about a family, each told with a completely different set of rules.
Adventure
How this list is put together
Every game here was added to the PlayNext catalog by hand and tagged individually. The order is editorial — a popularity weight set by a person, not an aggregate review score — so the games most people are actually looking for come first rather than whichever obscure title happens to have a 9.4 average from forty ratings.
Length estimates are how long the game takes to finish, or to feel done with if it doesn't end. Use the game finder to narrow any of these lists further by time and budget.