Here’s to raising a glass to RPG games that continue to bring deep, detailed worlds for everyone to lose hours in. 2025 delivered its fair share of world-class role-playing games, and Insider Gaming is celebrating these outstanding feats with the RPG Game of the Year 2025 award, and the winner might surprise you.
What another year it’s been for the RPG market—you’re simply spoiled at this point. It’s been so overwhelming that even remasters have been some of the most popular launches, including The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered and Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles. Plenty of fresh meat has been thrown onto the market, and picking a winner for dinner was tricky.
Best Role-Playing Game Of 2025 Winner—Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
From a pure role-playing game standpoint, with a primary emphasis on quests, world-building, exploration, and deeper, meaningful RPG fundamentals and mechanics, it would be wrong not to award RPG of the year to Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2.
Warhorse Studios is not here to placate casual users: This is a serious RPG requiring immersion, concentration, and attention to your actions, as one false step or bad choice can be the end of a quest or even your game! There’s so little bloat in KC2, and you have limitless paths to choose from in how you tailor your version of Henry to meet your needs.
The realistic gameplay won’t be for everyone, but who cares when the experience is this rich and full? This is years of hard work and dedication, making a unique RPG. Progression is a multi-layered cake of voluminous ingredients, and well over four million of you have been subjected to its unabashed brilliance. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is the RPG game of the year, and an all-time great role-playing game.
If you disagree, you might be branded.
Best RPG Game of 2025 Nominations
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a superior, cleaner, and better-perfected game compared to Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, but it’s just not a better RPG. While Sandfall’s adventure doesn’t hold your hand, it simply doesn’t have the diverse range of freedom KC2 offers, not even close, to be honest.
That said, there’s no disputing how good Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is. It will forever go down as the game that took home a record nine The Game Awards 2025 honors. Its battle-to-battle scenarios and set-pieces are determined by your team and your build: How you invest skill points, your ability to attack an enemy’s weakness, and so forth. It’s a rightful GOTY contender, and will be talked about for decades, but it can’t be recognized as 2025’s best RPG from a genre standpoint.
Monster Hunter Wilds
It’s hard to argue against Monster Hunter Wilds being the most open and inviting release in the franchise yet. You might have the odd Monster Hunter purist disagree with some of the changes in Wilds, but the fact is that Capcom has done it again. Wilds and World have helped the series transcend the joy and satisfaction of slaying monsters for a select audience and opened the franchise up to the mainstream.
Monster Hunter Wilds switches to a living, breathing open-world design, you have a dedicated mount, there are tweaks to the combat and modes of attack, and if you invest now, expect a constant stream of updates between now and the end of the game’s lifecycle—look at Update 4, as an example.
The Outer Worlds 2
Obsidian’s calendar has been exceptionally full in 2025, and it’s had another RPG to release and support—Avowed. However, the focal point of the company’s year was always likely to be The Outer Worlds 2. With Tim Cain helping, the developer has released the perfect follow-up to 2019’s The Outer Worlds.
Almost everything has been overhauled and improved in some capacity or another. There’s also a plethora of fun weapons—Wham-Bam!, take that—and even quests feel like you (the player) have been unshackled. You can approach missions and play them in different ways, and between its hilarious trolling Flaws and progression trees, it’s a must-play RPG!
It’s your chance to go to the free-to-join Insider Gaming Discord Server to tell everyone your favorite RPG game of 2025. You can also admonish us for not giving it to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33!
You should also check out Insider Gaming’s best lists, featuring the Best Co-Op Games, Best Indie Game Deals, and Best Nintendo Switch Games.
CO33 should definitely win the AI developed game award. If there ever is one.