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Curated category

Action role-playing video games

  • Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy OriginStranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin opens not with a hero, but with a man named Jack who wants only one thing: to destroy Chaos.
  • Final Fantasy XV: Pocket EditionFinal Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition reached three million downloads within its first month on the market. That number turned a stripped-down mobile spinoff into…
  • Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VIICrisis Core: Final Fantasy VII arrived in 2007 with an unusual burden: explaining one of gaming's most beloved tragedies before it happened.
  • Kingdom HeartsKingdom Hearts began with a conversation between two Square employees sharing an elevator. Shinji Hashimoto and Tetsuya Nomura found themselves talking about…
  • Action role-playing gameAction role-playing game, commonly shortened to ARPG, sits at the crossroads of two very different gaming traditions. On one side stands the role-playing…
  • Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VIIDirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII arrived in 2006 as something nobody expected from Square Enix: a third-person shooter set inside one of gaming's most…
  • The Elder Scrolls V: SkyrimThe Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim shipped seven million units in its first week of release, and within two years had crossed twenty million sold. That was 2011.
  • Dragon Age: OriginsDragon Age: Origins begins on the eve of the fifth Blight, a moment when the monstrous Darkspawn threaten to swarm the surface world for only the fifth time…
  • Final Fantasy VII RemakeFinal Fantasy VII Remake arrived on the 10th of April 2020, nearly a quarter century after the game it set out to reimagine.
  • Final Fantasy VII RebirthFinal Fantasy VII Rebirth landed on the PlayStation 5 on the 29th of February 2024 - one of the first major video game releases to arrive on Leap Day.
  • Final Fantasy XVIFinal Fantasy XVI arrived on the 22nd of June 2023, carrying the weight of a franchise that had defined Japanese role-playing games for nearly four decades.
  • The Last StoryThe Last Story arrived on the Nintendo Wii in January 2011, carrying the weight of a question its creator had spent years trying to answer: what was he doing…
  • Final Fantasy XVFinal Fantasy XV shipped five million units in its first twenty-four hours, a figure Square Enix said allowed the game to break even on development costs…
  • Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIIILightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII opens on a brutal countdown: thirteen days until the world ends, and only one person to save every soul in it.
  • Mass EffectMass Effect began not with a game but with a pitch. In 2003, BioWare project director Casey Hudson presented an idea codenamed SFX to company co-founders Ray…
  • Dark SoulsDark Souls arrived in 2011 and did something most games had long stopped doing: it punished players without apology. Developed by FromSoftware and published…
  • Mana (series)The Mana series began not as its own creation, but as a side story attached to one of gaming's biggest franchises. In 1991, Square released Final Fantasy…
  • Namco × CapcomNamco x Capcom arrived in Japanese game shops on the 26th of May 2005, carrying inside it nearly one hundred characters drawn from two of the largest video…
  • The Elder ScrollsThe Elder Scrolls began its life as a medieval gladiator game that nobody expected to succeed. In 1994, when Bethesda's small team told the developers of…
  • Elden RingElden Ring, a 2022 action role-playing game from the Japanese developer FromSoftware, sold 13.4 million copies in its first five weeks alone.
  • Vagrant StoryVagrant Story arrived on the PlayStation on the 10th of February 2000 in Japan, and it came with a peculiar design decision: no shops.
  • Dragon's DogmaDragon's Dogma arrived in 2012 carrying a question its director had been holding since the year 2000: could a Japanese studio build a Western-style…
  • Final FantasyFinal Fantasy began as a desperate gamble. In 1987, a Square designer named Hironobu Sakaguchi was convinced he was about to wash out of the video game…
  • Granblue FantasyGranblue Fantasy launched in Japan in March 2014 on Android, iOS, and web browsers, built by a studio called Cygames. What made it remarkable from the start…
  • Assassin's Creed ValhallaIn 873 AD, political pressures in Norway prompt Eivor Varinsdottir and her adoptive older brother Sigurd Styrbjornsson to lead their clan of Vikings to…
  • BloodborneBloodborne is a 2015 action role-playing game that sent players into a rotting Gothic city where the cure was worse than the disease.
  • Diablo IVDiablo IV crossed one billion dollars in total revenue by September 2024, making it one of the fastest commercial rises in the history of its genre.
  • Diablo ImmortalDiablo Immortal arrived on the 2nd of June 2022, and within a single week it had become the biggest launch in the Diablo franchise's history.