RPG News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

The creators of Escape from Tarkov may be looking for their own escape at the moment, after enraging the extraction shooter’s community with a new top-tier edition of the game that’s come under fire for its extortionate cost, “pay-to-win” offerings and for U-turning on the promise of free DLC for buyers of a previous bundle.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door's Switch remake has kept in the beloved Fire Emblem Toad, despite previous trailers suggesting he had been removed.

The version 2.2 update for Honkai: Star Rail, dubbed “Then Wake to Weep,” will launch on May 8, developer miHoYo announced.

Publisher FuRyu and developer Nastume Atari have released the second official trailer for dark action RPG REYNATIS.

No Rest for the Wicked's creative director has defended the idea of launching a game in early access following criticism of the game's current state.

Exodus, the new time-bending space RPG from former Mass Effect devs, will have a wide array of companions to meet and alien species to encounter - but it'll also have this adorable, hyper-intelligent pig called Charlotte.

Fallout 4's new next-gen update has been met with a collective shoulder shrug as the long-awaited upgrade is a lot smaller than fans were hoping for, but Bethesda sort of makes up for it by adding in some of the RPG's absolute silliest weapons yet. 

In Nightmare developer Magicfish Games has announced GALIX: New Horizons, a science-fiction open-world action RPG coming to PlayStation 5 and PC via Steam. A release date was not announced.

Cardy and Matt are here in a rare two-hander this week as they discuss their time with the new action RPG Stellar Blade, the early access version of No Rest for the Wicked, and Netflix dark comedy, Baby Reindeer. Plus, as always there's time to talk about various uses of gravy.

Lost Soul Aside, the upcoming action RPG hack-n-slash from Chinese developer Ultizero Games, has been rated in China.

Escape From Tarkov, the extraction FPS from developer Battlestate, recently put up a new Unheard edition of the game for pre-order, and tarkov escapers aren't happy about it. The price for this bundle - which includes a new mode, a bigger stash, and assorted gubbins - comes in at $250, or around two actual hundred actual pounds, but the price alone isn’t necessarily what’s got a section of the player base so tarked-off that a few of them are even loudly considering a lawsuit.

Mayors in RPG games are rarely given the spotlight. They're mostly just there to give you an early quest involving goat banditry or windmill rats or some such other domestic drudgery. Or, in the case of Tristram’s mayor in Diablo, to fret behind the scenes about how to properly fit considerable cathedral repairs into this month’s budget. Well, no more must this valuable civil servant hide behind balance sheets, occasionally popping out to cut a big ribbon in celebration of a nearby mausoleum being turned into a Wetherspoons. Tristam is a 72 hour Ludum Dare project where you play as said town’s mayor. And this time: It’s ceremonial!

This has been a pretty busy week for new releases, with the likes of Another Crab’s Treasure, Stellar Blade, Sand Land, and more coming out. Xbox Game Pass, Microsoft’s video game subscription service, has also had quite a busy week. Three games in particular stand out as must-plays this weekend for those who want to delve a bit further into the service rather than spend money on a new game.

Before we dash-attack into my deals, here's a Vault-Tec sponsored PSA. The free Fallout 4 next-gen updates are rolling out now. Along with a visual spitshine (4K/60 fps for PS5 and XSX consoles) and support for ultra-wide PC screens, they add new weapons, apparel, and workshops to the Commonwealth. Wish I could say there were mad discounts still going for every store version of this game, but it seems to only be a PC affair.

The roguelike RPG Loop Hero will launch on mobile devices on April 30th, 2024. Conquer a constantly shifting world and rewrite a shattered reality, all from the comfort of your phone.

Light novel and anime hit That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is being adapted into video game form for the first time on consoles. Featuring a title that's going to kill us every time we have to type it out — That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: Isekai Chronicles — it's a side-scrolling action RPG featuring a bunch of playable heroes.

We haven't written much about Korean MMO ArcheAge since reviewing it nine years ago, and there won't be many future opportunities to write about it, either. Its developers have announced that its European and North American servers will shut down on June 27th.

Party-based Soulslike action RPG Deathbound will launch for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series day and date with its previously announced PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG) version in 2024, publisher Tate Multimedia and developer Trialforge Studio announced.

Daeri Soft’s latest RPG, Crystal Knights, has officially hit Android and iOS globally. It’s a real-time online idle RPG that’s free to play. Daeri Soft is known for other mobile titles like the simulation game, Cat Garden – Food Party Tycoon, and another RPG The Witch’s Knight.

Nintendo and its fans usually get a long pretty well, with the Paper Mario franchise being an unusual bone of contention. For many years Nintendo has stubbornly attempted to dial down the quirky stories, unique characters, and RPG elements that defined early entries in the series, much to the chagrin of a particular cadre of fans. As perhaps the last true RPG in the series, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has taken on a certain symbolic importance to those spurned fans even though it was never a particularly big hit, selling fewer than 2 million copies on Gamecube.

Party-based Soulslike action RPG Deathbound will launch for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series day and date with its previously announced PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG) version in 2024, publisher Tate Multimedia and developer Trialforge Studio announced.

Publisher THQ Nordic and developer Alkimia Interactive have announced the Gothic Remake Collector’s Edition.

People Can Fly has cancelled a co-op action RPG codenamed Project Dagger after several years of development.

The version 1.2.0 update for Granblue Fantasy: Relink will launch on April 26, followed by the version 1.3.0 update in late May, publisher Cygames and developer Cygames Osaka announced.

Next month, Nintendo will celebrate the 20th anniversary of one of its finest games. Nintendo GameCube classicPaper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is getting a Nintendo Switch rerelease that’s somewhere between a remaster and a remake (not unlike the company’s recent Super Mario RPG revisit). But a game as beloved as this presents a challenge for developers: How do you stay true to the original while still upgrading it enough to justify a full-priced double-dip rather than an HD port?

Falcom has released new information and screenshots for The Legend of Heroes: Kai no Kiseki – Farewell O Zemuria introducing characters Van Arkride, Agnes Claudel, and Bergard Zeman, as well as the story, settings, and new battle system elements.

Compile Heart has released the first information and screenshots for roguelike RPG Death end re;Quest Code Z, which is due out for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and Switch on September 19 in Japan.

Nintendo has released a five-minute overview trailer for the Switch version of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.

Death end re;Quest Code Z, formerly known as Death end re;Quest Code:Zion, will launch for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and Switch on September 19 in Japan for 8,580 yen, the latest issue of Weekly Famitsu reveals. It will also be available in 10,780 yen and 16,280 yen limited editions.

Moon Studios CEO Thomas Mahler has taken the time to sing the praises of early access, going as far as to say that FromSoftware’s seminal action RPG, Dark Souls, might have benefited from the communication-driven model if it had been around upon its release.

The developers behind Fable card game spin-off Fable Fortune and the digital adaptation of dungeon-crawling board game Gloomhaven have revealed a new upcoming co-op RPG… only to announce at the same time that the upcoming game’s development has been put on pause amid layoffs at the studio and difficulty finding funding.

There's nothing quite like video game box art that makes you stop and say «wow». Admittedly, it's been a while since such a cover caught our eye, but we simply can't gawk at the newly revealed box art for Metaphor: ReFantazio and not write an article about it.

Another Crab's Treasure might not look like a soulslike action RPG, but it is one. Take out the dark, oppressive nature of FromSoftware's output and replace it with SpongeBob, and you're more or less there. Purposely juxtaposing the established tropes of the genre, this title offers a fresh, more lighthearted experience without sacrificing the level of challenge you'd expect.

Dark Souls, one of the most widely acclaimed video games of the last two decades - perhaps all time - and progenitor of one of modern video gaming’s most influential and oft-copied-rarely-bettered genres, the Soulslike, would’ve been a better game had it launched into early access. That’s the suggestion from the head of Ori and the Blind Forest developers Moon Studios in the wake of launching their own early access Soulslike, No Rest For The Wicked.

A stunningly accurate cosplay has received developer Larian Studios' seal of approval. After years in Early Access on PC, Larian's RPG was released last year to incredibly high critical acclaim, going on to win many Game of the Year awards and even making its way onto Screen Rant's "" list.

Death end re;Quest CodeZ, formerly known as Death end re;Quest Code:Zion, will launch for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and Switch on September 19 in Japan for 8,580 yen, the latest issue of Weekly Famitsu reveals. It will also be available in 10,780 yen and 16,280 yen limited editions.

"If only you could talk to these creatures" is never more funny or true than in games like Rotwood, where you play cat people and orcs sent to biff snail worms and flies with scythes. From Klei Entertainment, the gang behind Don't Starve, Invisible Inc. and Oxygen Not Included, to name but a three of their fine games, Rotwood is out later today in early access, ready to provide co-op highjinks in a roguelike dungeon crawl that is really a forest. A forest crawl. You'll get muddy knees.

Lords Of The Fallen, an action RPG that was a mixture of fun and infuriating when it first launched, has received its final free update. It introduces the "Advanced Game Modifier System", which sounds like something creepy bachelors would pay an extraordinary monthly fee for. No, it doesn't provide terrible advice on how to talk to women. Instead, it allows you to customise LOTF with modifiers to turn it into a roguelike.

The massive success of the Fallout TV show is inspiring millions of people to play the games on which the Amazon Prime series is based.

Final Fantasy 16 players are aghast as the action RPG's new chapter features what can only be described as 'dummy thicc Tonberries.'

No Rest for the Wicked's director has cited Baldur's Gate 3 and Hades 2 as examples of how early access launches can be fantastic, and said releasing in early access is "one of the best decisions we could've made."

KOG Games’ RPG GrandChase is launching pre-registration. You might be thinking that the game was released a while ago, so what’s up now? Well, this pre-registration isn’t for the game itself, but for a new hero named Brammashell. What’s so special about him that requires pre-registration? Keep reading to find out!

Publisher CI Games and developer Hexworks have released the Lords of the Fallen version 1.5 update “Master of Fate,” which adds the final milestone of the game’s post-launch roadmap: the “Advanced Game Modifier System.”

The PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 versions of Adventure Bar Story are now available via PlayStation Store for $19.99 worldwide, developer RideonJapan announced. The Switch version will follow via Nintendo eShop on April 25, followed by a newly announced PC (Steam) version on May 9.

Sting has announced Dokapon: Sword of Fury for Switch. It is a remastered version of the 1998-released PlayStation title of the same name. It will launch on August 1 in Japan for 4,620 yen.

Zenless Zone Zero is the next action-RPG from Genshin Impact developers HoYoverse. Where Genshin is all Zelda-style pastoral greens, Zenless is an urban fantasy. It's expected to release sometime in the first half of 2024, and you can now pre-register on all platforms.

Songs Of Conquest is a strategy-RPG with some of the most handsome pixel art around. Steam tells me I've played its Early Access release for 0.7 hours, which was long enough to know that I wanted to play more and would wait for version 1.0. I won't have to wait much longer. It's now got a May 20th release date.

Aether Gazer, the action-packed RPG by Yostar Games, has just dropped its latest update, the Night Parade of the Beasts event. With that, Chapter 16 of the epic tale is hitting the scene and getting added to the main storyline. The event is running for a week only, so let’s give you a quick lowdown on Aether Gazer Night Parade of the Beasts event!

A thrilling JRPG called Bloodline: The Last Royal Vampire just came out for Android devices in Southeast Asia (SEA) and India! The game is based on a famous Chinese graphic novel. It’s about Lilo, the last royal vampire, and her friend Ren, who are trying to keep their loved ones safe from the Holy Land, a mysterious force.

Nestled within a seemingly ho-hum patch for Horizon Forbidden West’s PC edition is a change I’ve been crossing fingers and ritualistically sacrificing metal dinosaurs for since release. At last I can behold those glorious words: "Resolved performance regression when enabling Nvidia Reflex On+Boost." Finally!

Developer Moon Studios has rolled out the biggest No Rest for the Wicked patch to date, packing improvements to visuals, performance, loot, and much more.

No Rest for the Wicked launched into early access as a bit of a fixer-upper, even by the standards of its 'buy now, play finished game later' model. The good news is that the grim action-RPG’s wonky performance is already being straightened out, with two of its three hotfixes thus far delivering a noticeable improvements, even on older graphics cards.

miHoYo has opened pre-registration for free-to-play urban action RPG Zenless Zone Zero for PlayStation 5 via PlayStation Store, PC via Epic Games Store, iOS via App Store, and Android via Google Play.

As one of the Treehouse's resident Atlus sickos, I was incredibly happy to wake up to 25-minutes of Metaphor: ReFantazio's director Katsura Hashino talking us through some new footage. We get a look at a new rural town and the activities you can get up to, like bounty hunting. Travel on your magic mech is compared to "camping", which I wasn't expecting. And there's lots of combat on show, with transitions from real-time to turn-based battles outlined in a bit more detail. Oh and it's coming out in October, which gives me plenty of time to clear my JRPG backlog before this inevitably takes over my entire existence for the foreseeable.

Valheim, the popular norse-inspired survival game, is set to get even deadlier and at least several percent more volcanic with its upcoming Ashlands biome. The new biome is due to enter public testing as we speak.

The release date for Genshin Impact maker HoYoverse’s upcoming urban role-playing game, Zenless Zone Zero, might have leaked before its official announcement. The action RPG’s soft “coming soon in 2024” placeholder text may actually mean this summer.

Zynga Inc. just dropped some big news! They’re teaming up their Socialpoint studio with none other than the YouTube sensation MrBeast.  It’s for a special event in their game Top Troops: Adventure RPG. So, keep reading to learn more about Top Troops x MrBeast!

Atlus first teased that it was working on a new RPG with a fantasy setting in mid-2023 — it also said way back then that it will be available sometime this year. Now, the developer has revealed that the game, Metaphor: ReFantazio, will come out on October 11 at a special livestream event. Katsura Hashino, the director of the game, as well as of Persona 3, 4 and 5, also introduced a 30-minute hands-on gameplay that gives you quite a lengthy look at its story and combat mechanics. Similar to the Persona games, Metaphor: ReFantazio has a turn-based combat system with what Atlus says is a «blend of real-time action.»

In its early access state, No Rest of the Wicked is already full of surprises. Mostly those are great, like how one moment I found myself marveling at its slow and precise combat (all but unprecedented in the action RPG genre) and the next I found myself decorating my home like I was in an M-rated Animal Crossing. On the other side, although it’s certainly to be expected from a game that’s clearly labeled as unfinished, there were also some not-so-fun surprises, like various technical issues, a loot and inventory management system that needs some serious tweaking, and some levels that can be a headache to navigate from an isometric perspective. There’s nothing there that feels unsolvable, though, and all of those problems are eclipsed by just how exciting and special this genre-blending pioneer felt throughout my 30+ hours with the content that’s already available.

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes MSRP $49.99 Score Details Pros

Metaphor: ReFantazio, the new RPG by the team behind Persona 5 among other RPGs, officially has a release date. In a special showcase streamed Monday, Atlus revealed that Metaphor will be out October 11, putting it squarely in the holidays.

Metaphor: ReFantazio will launch for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PlayStation 4, and PC via Steam and Microsoft Store on October 11, publisher ATLUS and developer Studio Zero announced.

Compile Heart will reveal a new title in its “Galapagos RPG Evolve” brand on April 24 at 7:30 p.m. PT / 10:30 p.m. ET, the developer teased.

Baldur's Gate 3's CEO says that he has "a lot of respect for Bethesda," and that's why his RPG gave way to Starfield ahead of release last year.

The Fallout TV show effect continues. This time, it’s popular mod site Nexus Mods on the receiving end of the double-edged Shishkebab, as its servers struggle under the weight of people rushing to play through the series again - and mod its latter entries into games worth playing, presumably.

Runa is an upcoming turn-based, Japanese-inspired RPG that's smashed past multiple crowdfunding stretch goals, including the most important one of them all: a promise to add fishing. 

Two Valheim builders spent more than a thousand hours over three months to create an entire RPG within the survival hit.

With Sunday here, the weekend is almost over—but there are so many great deals to check out before it ends. We've rounded up some of the best deals you can find this weekend, with everything games and technology included. The best deals for Sunday, April 21, include the Arctis Nova Pro Wireless Headset, HORI Split Pad Compact, Granblue Fantasy: Relink, Super Mario RPG, Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1, Persona 3 Reload, and more.

No Rest for the Wicked - a new action RPG from the studio behind Ori and the Blind Forest - both is and isn't like Dark Souls, according to one developer.

Following the official reveal of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, IGN was able to speak with Tobias Stolz-Zwilling (Warhorse Studios's PR Manager) to get some extra details about the newly announced action RPG sequel.

Capcom are working on another Dragon's Dogma 2 patch, and this one takes as its target the dreaded dragonsplague, which causes the game's AI-controlled pawns to go nuts and murder everybody, including story-critical NPCs, if you allow it to go untreated for long enough. It'll reduce the infection frequency of dragonsplague, which is spread when pawns mingle with other pawns online, and make the symptoms more obvious. Pawns already get glowing eyes when they're dragonsplagued - I guess they'll be all the glowier in future.

While Atlus has largely become synonymous with the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei series, their next big RPG is actually a new IP – Metaphor: ReFantazio. Developed by a team led by many of the minds that created Persona 3 through Persona 5, Metaphor looks to expand that trademark Atlus RPG style with a more expansive dark fantasy world. Well, today Atlus announced Metaphor: ReFantazio will be launching in October of this year. You can check out a fresh trailer for the game, below.

Metaphor: ReFantazio, the next RPG from Persona developer Atlus, now has a confirmed release date: the 11th October. And to properly kickstart our march towards launch, we've been treated to a 25-minute presentation, which features a load of fresh gameplay footage.

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes will receive a sequel, despite the passing of its director and studio co-founder.

The success of the Fallout show on Prime Video has also led to an uptick in game sales, which means there's a huge demand for mods. Now, it turns out that this demand was more than Nexus Mods could handle, as Fallout fans have downloaded so many mods at once that it's crashed the website.

A hidden detail makes one of the game's more disturbing braindances even more eerie. Throughout CD Projekt Red's sci-fi RPG, players are able to relive moments from other Night City residents' perspectives through a virtual reality-type recording called braindances, which lets V feel their emotional states and anything they physically felt, as well as watching events unfold. In the universe, this is used as a major form of entertainment covering adult content, adrenaline chasers, and more, but V often uses them as ways to help with investigations, rewinding the footage and inspecting it on different levels to find clues.

The next Dragon’s Dogma 2 update will not address the performance issues plaguing the game, instead focusing on gameplay adjustments.

Saturday is here, and that means the weekend has officially kicked off! We've rounded up some of the best deals you can find this weekend, with everything games and technology included. The best deals for Saturday, April 20, include the Arctis Nova Pro Wireless Headset, Granblue Fantasy: Relink, Super Mario RPG, Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1, and more.

Ahead of Final Fantasy 14’s next massive expansion, Dawntrail, arriving this summer, Square Enix recently put out a graphical benchmarking tool. Dawntrail’s benchmark is especially noteworthy as it’s the first time we’ve really been able to put the MMO’s much-anticipated graphical update arriving with 7.0 into practice and see what sort of demands it might make on our hardware by overhauling the 10-year-old game’s visuals.

As the calendar continues its ceaseless onward march, Epic has announced its next batch of weekly Epic Games Store freebies, which this time look very much like Cold War shooter Industria and post-apocalyptic RPG bundle Lisa: Definitive Edition.