If a mad scientist (let's say his name is Miyazaki for no reason at all) were to take the emotionally moving open-world exploration of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and then combine that with the strange settings and challenging combat of the Dark Souls series, the result of that union would inevitably become Elden Ring.

The Lands Between, Elden Ring's vast, explorable setting, really is something to behold. Hours and hours into the experience, at some of the same points where many other games tend to fall into routine and repetition, Elden Ring continues to provide its players with surprising discoveries. Strange, tucked away locales that spiral into lengthy quest-lines and challenging boss fights, affecting art direction that brings both the beauty and the melancholy of its world to life, and more esoteric lore to find than you can shake a stick at (the stick has its own creepy backstory too), all culminate in a gameplay experience that is both like many others and completely unlike anything else. Truly, there are few other games out there that can stand toe-to-toe with the scale of it all.

Elden Ring, as with its soulsborne forebears, balances a deeply challenging real-time combat system dependent on player skill, with classic RPG mechanics full of important decisions. Do you spend your runes (this game's "experience points" and currency) now for smaller gain, or save them for later to bump multiple stat upgrades, building the risk of losing them to a well-timed enemy strike? Which weapons and armor will you equip, and how will you upgrade them, if at all? Are you a fashion-souls player first, crunchy RPG player second? The build variety works wonders to add replayability and flexibility to the world of Elden Ring. Through careful character crafting players can make their adventure in the Lands Between as challenging or as breezy as they see fit, and can even have multiple playthroughs going simultaneously that each feel starkly different.

Elden Ring has its faults, with a particular pain point being its moments of where the usual tightly crafted design loosens up a bit, showing the seams of the world. A handful of copy-pasted boss fights and odd balancing choices are symptoms of that, and are at odds with what one might expect from the team's previous work, but with the quality of the game and its world these blemishes can hardly tarnish such a vivid experience

Kind of a remake of Final Fantasy VII, kind of an alternate universe take on Final Fantasy VII's story, the FFVII: Remake is something truly unique and special. Retelling and retooling much of the story of the Midgar segment from the original FFVII's first disk, Remake explores the world of VII in far more granular detail than ever before. It is a beautifully realized experience, with stunning graphical fidelity, wonderful takes on the classic soundtrack, and enough new content to feel like a completely different game.

In fact, Remake is, for all intents and purposes, a completely different game. More an adaptation of the story and mechanics than an actual remake, it replaces the classic turn-based RPG combat of the original with a real-time action combat system that sees the player dodge rolling, blocking, and swapping between heavy and light attacks. What makes Remake's system so unique, however, is its incorporation of the Active Time Battle system from the original game. In order to keep the pace of turn-based battles snappy, several classic Final Fantasy games incorporated ATB gauges which filled individually for each character. Once a gauge filled only then could a character select its move, giving the combat a pseudo-real-time feel. In Remake this gauge is applied in a clever new way, as it fills per character as they cycle through their base combat options, and once the gauge is full the player may slow down the action to select an ability and target an enemy or ally to use it on.

The Final Fantasy series has been grasping for Action RPG for several releases now, but Final Fantasy VII: Remake feels like the ultimate realization of those attempts.

So much ink has been spilled and so many words have been typed over the years about what makes 2011's Dark Souls such a mammoth gaming release. Its gloomy, strange atmosphere and cryptic approach to storytelling create a world both intriguing and off-putting. The commonly cited "tough-yet-fair" action combat and its surprisingly interconnected exploration makes interacting with that world a joy and a challenge both. When Dark Souls' elements coalesce, they do so in a truly special way.

The souls-like subgenre of action RPGs is now thoroughly well-established as a pillar of gaming, with numerous entries from both inspired studios and the original creators themselves. Dark Souls: Remastered brings that first (technically second after the recently remade Demon's Souls) outing forward, updating it for more modern hardware. It is a game that, as ever before, offers a great sense of reward to those willing to take the time to learn its mechanical intricacies. The world interlaces and loops, providing shortcuts and secrets that make curious exploration a must. The combat, which heavily relies on the player's timing and patience, can be frustrating at first, but becomes a joy once you get a feel for it.

While the series and its lineage have only grown and grown in recent years, there are very few experiences that feel quite like the very first Dark Souls.

NieR: Automata is one of those games that, to put it as succinctly as possible, just hits different. Set in a far-future post-apocalypse populated by wind-up toy robots experiencing existential dread, sword-wielding goth androids with depression, and shirtless anime boys who could destroy it all (again), calling Automata a wild ride would somehow be both extremely accurate and a gross understatement.

As a sort-of sequel follow-up to Yoko Taro's narratively beautiful, mechanically miserable NieR (2010), Automata expands on its predecessor's unique approach to storytelling, and taps the action gaming mastery of the developers over at Platinum Games to vastly improve the franchise's approach to combat. With Platinum crafting the moment-to-moment action, gameplay is joyously smooth. Every sword swing that connects does so with satisfying , and every well-timed dodge to safety among the chaos of battle makes you feel brilliant. Punctuated with over-the-top boss encounters, sudden shifts into the shoot 'em up genre, clever camera shenanigans, and combat challenges that test your mettle, the action portion of this game is executed with a well-earned panache.

In of the role-playing game elements in this ARPG, NieR: Automata cleverly steeps its character progression mechanics in the game world itself. Classic experience point gains for level-ups that increase a character's base stats are present, but a robust system of plugin chips allow the player access to the minutia of their preferred build. By choosing and arranges the various plugin chips and their associated benefits you could feasibly craft a speed demon that tears across the desolate landscapes, or an absolute beast of a tank that slams into enemies like a freight train. Clever arrangement of the chip system can even make the game easier or harder, depending on your preferences.

What brings it all together, however, is the narrative and presentation. From the stunningly composed music to the thoughtfully directed cutscenes, NieR never lets you forget that you're playing a Yoko Taro game. The story, which requires multiple playthroughs to actually experience in its entirety, is among the most effectively told in the games industry. It is cinematic in all the right ways, yet it never forgets that it is a video game first and foremost, and uses its medium to better deliver the story. While excitement is high for an NieR: Automata anime adaptation, the core work's narrative, and medium already feel perfectly blended.

NieR: Automata may not be the perfect video game, obviously no game is perfect, but its vision and execution are so singular, so impossibly well-balanced, that sometimes it feels like it could be.

A dungeon-diving loot fest set in a dark fantasy universe populated by demons and the adventurers fighting to put them down, all viewed from an isometric angle, are among the classic, establishing elements of the action role-playing subgenre. Diablo, a poster child series for ARPGs, delivers on these elements in spades.

While some older fans of the series have maligned the game over a variety of simplified game elements and a fairly standard dark fantasy story, the overall experience of Diablo III is a thrilling dive into monster slaying, hack n' slash action. Starting with character creation and class selection, Diablo III establishes out the gate it's role-playing heritage. It isn't long before the game throws players into hordes of undead and demonic enemies to slaughter in order to save the world (picking up an absolute glut of loot along the way). Loot is randomized, as with previous entries, and with the important statistics of each new item shuffled, you never know what you'll get out of a previously unexploded demon.

Between the addictive looting and a multitude of class options, Diablo III relishes the chance to bring players back for more and more runs. Its world may be teetering on the brink of hell on earth, but the gameplay is wonderfully replayable. With the addition of couch and online cooperative play, with options for 2-4 players to wade into the undead masses together, Diablo III is still a grand follow-up to the games that initially created the 'action role-playing' moniker.

The original Mass Effect trilogy, which ran from 2007 to 2012, is fondly ed as one of the Western gaming market's greatest contributions to the RPG genre. Brimming with narrative choice, stunning action set pieces, and unique science fiction world-building, Mass Effect stands as a Bioware classic. Built on the DNA of their previous releases, such as the inimitable Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the trilogy continued the studio's tradition for excellence while still carving out its own niche for storytelling and gameplay. While its RPG heritage is clear and runs deep into the core of Mass Effect, its moment-to-moment gameplay loop consists of cover-based, third-person shooter action sequences that tighten up from one game to the next.

The Legendary Edition has upgraded and updated this classic trilogy for play on modern consoles, bringing with it a variety of new features to make the experience as smooth as possible. All three games have received varying levels of graphical updates, with the original Mass Effect getting the biggest overhaul to bring its graphical fidelity a bit more in line with the rest of the trilogy. While the graphics of Mass Effect are improved, it can often be clear how aged the animations has truly become.

The core gameplay has been upgraded as well, though the actual gameplay loop and narrative progression both remain untouched (in this case a very good thing). With not only all three of the main games, but each and every DLC release for every game in the trilogy, the Legendary Edition is a frankly absurd amount of content to enjoy, and will keep dedicated players enthralled for hundreds of hours.

FromSoftware has made a name for itself with unforgiving action combat games set in bizarre, esoteric worlds. From Dark Souls to Sekiro, all of their souls-like and adjacent games are brimming with atmosphere and fascinating approaches to world-building, Bloodborne, however, might just be the most tightly crafted of their worlds. Set in a deeply moody, dark, and unsettling world inspired heavily by Victorian London, the game presents its players with a world lost to madness, teetering on the brink of complete collapse.

While the DNA of other FromSoft ARPGs is obvious from the start, how the mechanics and presentation of the game end up playing out go in wildly different directions. While Demon's Souls and Dark Souls could often be seen as encouraging more conservative play styles, the classic sword and board combination used to hunker down and strike appealed to many players put on the back foot by their often brutal enemies. In Bloodborne, FromSoft sought to rectify this and push players toward a more aggressive approach. They accomplish this through faster paced combat, a rewarding health regeneration system tied to doing damage back to enemies, and a lack of any viable shield options. Bloodborne is scrappy, and it is far from afraid to wear that aspect on its sleeve.

Even for those who typically shy away from games typically seen as challenging souls-likes, the world of Bloodborne oozes atmosphere and intrigue, pulling many into its bizarre narrative and ferocious fights. It is a game with a great, cohesive sense of itself and the confidence to execute its vision very nearly lawlessly.

The Witcher III: Wild Hunt in 2015 was the moment that game developer CD Projekt Red, who had been helming crunchier RPG Witcher games up to that point, broke out into the public conscious and became a household name in the industry. Wild Hunt's approach to the Witcher franchise kept much of the series' RPG DNA intact, but worked to simplify and streamline each system while presenting one of the most graphically impressive, joyous to explore fantasy open worlds ever put to screen.

Geralt of Rivia's journey takes him from small-scale local encounters to grand medieval fantasy engagements, all while feeling consistent in tone and quality. As a monster hunter for hire, the perfect conceptual excuse for side questing and exploring is established, all without detracting from the game's central narrative. The Witcher thrives when it comes to giving players things to do, practically stuffing the game to its very brim with characters to meet, locales to visit, vicious monsters to slay, and hands of the immensely popular card game 'gwent' to play. The variety of things to do could easily become a nightmare for pacing and quality, and yet the team at CD Projekt Red crafted a game that has won over the hearts of gamers and critics alike the world over. At this point The Witcher III has been ported to seemingly every games console under the sun, a true testament to its (very well-earned) lasting popularity.

The Tales of series has been around for years now, putting out anime-aesthetic action combat JRPGs with an ever-changing cast of characters and worlds to explore. Tales of Arise, arguably, is the pinnacle of the franchise. Arise keeps much of the series' core aspects intact and present, but chooses to focus in and perfect as much as it can.

One of the first extremely noticeable aspects of Tales of Arise is its graphical presentation. The Tales of games have always been translations of the stereotypical "anime aesthetic" to video games, to varying degrees of visual success. While some have used the art style to enhance the overall presentation, others have felt like it is an excuse to cut corners in of texture work. In Arise, however, everything is gorgeous. From the well-crafted anime aesthetic character models to the impressively rendered details of the world you're exploring, this entry in the franchise does not lack for visual appeal.

Much like the graphics, Arise brings forward all the central mechanics Tales games have been known for, but tweaks and updates to provide a modern, exceptional experience. By zeroing in on the action combat, the developers have been able to refine what came before into something that still appeals both to plays who have stuck with the franchise for years but also feels able to bring in new players. Some mechanics, such as multiplayer for combat scenarios in the single-player campaign, have been removed or refined to allow a high quality overall. When all is said and done Tales of Arise is one of the all-time great JRPGs, and is certainly among the best in recent years.

While many games have sought to emulate the success of the Dark Souls franchise and its family have games, few have done it quite as well or quite as uniquely as the Nioh games. Set in Sengoku-era Japan (the period of brutal civil war that rocked the island chain), Nioh takes many of the foundational elements of the Dark Souls games, and proceeds to tinker with them to make each aspect its own. Battles are fast-paced, sometimes frantic, contrasting with the far more visually controlled fights of the Souls games themselves. Nioh can often become a visual feast of battle effects, dipping its toes into unreadable chaos when things go a bit too far.

The Nioh games, both included in this collection, are positively packed with content. Hours and hours of gameplay, supplemented with a rewarding (sometimes addicting) loot system make it a must-play game for many an action RPG aficionado. While its setting is technically historical, it is a game steeped in the supernatural, allowing the player to face fantastical threats of increasingly bizarre scale and endlessly concerning power levels. It is hard to get bored in Nioh 1 or 2 as their frenetic paces stimulate with fear and excitement. Though it can seem an intimidating experience, with its souls-like mechanics and overall brutal combat, it is far from unapproachable. The RPG mechanics work brilliantly to allow more players to explore what these games have to offer, giving enough control over stats and gear to offer a fighting chance against the hordes of the supernatural.

For those looking for a great distillation of what an ARPG is, the Nioh games offer exactly that.