In an ideal world, a genre label is informative. When you see the “real-time strategy” tag under a video game, you usually know to expect peons, gathering resources, and sending a blob of soldiers against enemy defenses. When you see “first-person shooter”, you know to adjust the FOV-slider and to have one finger always on the reload key.
What do you expect when you see the “role-playing game” label? Your answer might be different based on the decade when your formative gaming experiences happened, which makes things complicated to discuss across generations.
More than any other genre, RPGs are a mess of labels, resulting in several subgenres trying to apply some order to the chaos. Let’s talk about some of the most popular ones!
cRPG – A View From the Top
The genre which to many people is the only valid form of role-playing video game is typically referred to as a cRPG. Originally, it meant “computer role-playing game”, but that definition was born in the last millennium when it was much more relevant. What are cRPGs like?
Out of all RPG subgenres, they tend to be the most interested in robust dialogue trees, letting you flesh your characters out and influence the story. One of the best recent examples is the remarkable Disco Elysium, which took that narrative reactivity and density to a level unseen before, making the game incredibly replayable.
cRPGs also tend to give you control over an entire party of adventurers, not only for narrative complexity, but also as vital support in tactical combat. Traditionally, the subgenre used the real-time with pause format, similar to that of real-time strategies, but some of the best cRPGs in history used turn-based battles to great effect. The original Fallout is an early exemplar, while 2023’s Baldur’s Gate 3 is a very modern representative, and one of the best RPGs of the decade.
That tactical, party-based format usually comes with an isometric or 3D bird’s eye view of the battlefield, but games such as Knights of the Old Republic or Neverwinter Nights (where it was an option) show that with a smaller scope a third-person perspective can be very functional.
However, if it’s getting up close and personal that you crave, the next subgenre might be more to your liking.
Action RPGs – Close Enough to Get Splashed
If, instead of giving orders to characters, you’d rather just control them directly, action RPGs might be what you need.
Their moment-to-moment gameplay is closer to action games, with direct controls, responsive attacks, and usually a third- or first-person perspective. Or both, as the case might be: some games, such as the recent Avowed, allow you to switch between the two as you please.
Action RPGs tend to put a strong emphasis on combat, but their approach towards storytelling is very diverse. Cyberpunk 2077 is, for example, inextricably story-driven, and takes great pride in its plot and theming. On the other hand, TES 5: Skyrim is much lighter on writing and exemplifies sandbox-like roleplaying via actions rather than words.
The individual choices might be much more scarce than in cRPGs, but they can still have a huge impact on the plot, as the depth of Cyberpunk’s or Elden Ring’s endings prove.
Tactical RPGs – Chess With Personality
Somewhere in between lay tactical RPGs. Once upon a time, they’d have been called “JRPG”, but the original label isn’t helpful anymore. They usually have a rather linear story, but just as often are very character-driven. In combat, tactical RPGs are turn-based or use similar systems and put a strong emphasis on strategic and tactical planning.
Some games, such as Fire Emblem: Three Houses or Tactical Breach Wizards feature full, grid-based movement, allowing you to position your troops turn-by-turn to get behind cover or outflank your enemies.
Meanwhile, others, like Persona 5 Royal or Battle Chasers: Nightwar don’t feature any in-combat movement at all, and instead rely entirely on skillful use of character abilities for both offence and defence.
MMORPGs – Better With a Guild
A downside (or an upside, depending on your preferences) of the previous three subgenres is that they are almost always single-player oriented. What about the more social experiences? That’s where Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games come in, immediately showing why using the “MMORPG” abbreviation is preferable.
The genre’s quite venerable, but its strongest roots are in the 1990s with titles such as Ultima Online or Everquest. For the past two decades, the undefeated king of MMORPGs has been World of Warcraft, but in recent years Final Fantasy XIV has been gaining a ton of well-earned popularity.
A big appeal of the genre is being able to share the world with hundreds or even thousands of people having their own adventures, joining forces to defeat overwhelming challenges, and, often, freely role-playing and having a grand time being social with fellow gamers.
Of course, it’s not the only reason: MMORPGs also enjoy high retention when they provide good foundations for satisfying Player vs Player combat and theorycrafting powerful builds for those who seek to engage deeply with the mechanical guts of the game.
Rogue-lites – Next Time for Sure
The descendants of Rogue are hardly uniform, but there is a measure of RPG-ness to them. The basic premise is simple: your character delves into procedurally generated locations filled with deadly enemies, traps, and other challenges, and needs to reach the end of such a “dungeon” (they aren’t always literal dungeons). However, it’s almost certain you can’t do it on the first attempt.
When the character dies, they return to the metaphorical Square 1, losing most of the gear and upgrades gained during the attempt, but also richer in persistent resources you can use to upgrade abilities and equipment. And then you try again. And again. And again. There is probably no finer example of this than Hades 1 and 2, both excellent, filled to the brim with content, stories, and challenges, in addition to snappy, satisfying combat.
More Than the Eye Can See
These five genres are just one possible classification, and firm categories for an endlessly creative and fundamentally diverse genre might just be an impossibility. To an extent, these five (or six, if we spin sandbox RPGs out from aRPGs) are merely ingredients, and every RPG should be evaluated individually, on its own merits.
The most important part, however, is that RPGs are an incredible genre full of adventures, memorable characters, cool weapons, and the kind of interactivity you won’t get in other genres. You could start exploring your options right now, thanks to incredible RPG deals you can find on the G2A.COM Marketplace, and open your gate to digital adventures this way, using the examples of each subgenre as a handy starting point.
Your turn!