Summary
- Cat Quest 2 offers a unique, easy-going fantasy adventure on iPad with adorable characters and inviting world design.
- Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance brings vibrant, gory visuals and engaging storytelling to the iPad, with deep roots in tabletop gaming.
- Diablo Immortal brings full-featured hack-and-slash action and deep lore to the iPad, catering to both casual and seasoned gamers.
While the name may seem restrictive, gameplay-wise, action role-playing games come in many different shapes and sizes. Whether players are wading their way through oceans of enemies or methodically plodding past a particularly difficult boss, the genre can humble some of the best of us.
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However, if casual or seasoned gamers are looking to slow things down a bit, and they happen to own an iPad, an ARPG might just be the way to go. Yes, on the surface, it may seem like a tablet's graphical capabilities might hold a game back, but look a little deeper and players will undoubtedly find games that overcome those minor limitations. What follows are some of the best ARPGs playable on the iPad.
5 Cat Quest 2
Metascore: N/A
Cat Quest II
Following the success of the acclaimed CAT QUEST, developers The Gentlebros return to the world of Felingard to expand on the original with more explosive spells, expanded weapon options, an exciting new character switch mechanic, and local co-op!
Features
- Brand new story set in the world of Felingard - and beyond!
- All new switch and co-op gameplay. Play as both cat and dog, either alone or with a friend!
- New weapons types – Master swords, staves and more to become a fur-midable fighter!
- More spells bring even more furry judgement to your foes.
- New passive abilities, whose attributes can be mixed and combined for endless paw-sibilities!
- Exciting, and varied dungeons filled with new traps and obstacles, making every pounce into the unknown a fresh experience!
- Em-bark on a litany of side quests, each telling its own story and expanding the lore and universe of CAT QUEST!
What Makes This Action RPG For iPads Great?
- Unique presentation of its world.
- Laid-back adventure gameplay.
Cat Quest 2's esthetic is essentially as if an entire game took place on an overworld map, with a solid amount of dungeon crawling for good measure. The cat and dog player character designs are adorable, something that is in stark contrast with the game's story involving a large amount of political intrigue.
The game features some serviceable gear and stat management to make traveling through its inviting world worth it. Players looking for an easy-going fantasy adventure can find their place here, while those looking for some incredibly deep systems should probably look elsewhere.
4 Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance
Metascore: N/A
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance
A NEW LEGACY BEGINS...
Experience the massively popular world of Baldur's Gate as never before. Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance thrusts you into an epic Dungeons & Dragons adventure filled with intense action, intricate puzzles and sinister intrigue, where your mastery of cold steel and devastating spells is the only thing between you and ultimate evil.
• A ground-breaking adventure, featuring the 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons® rule set.
• Explosive spell effects and incredibly detailed creatures and environments deliver a more realistic gaming experience.
• Three customizable characters, each with distinctive powers, appearances and abilities that develop throughout the game.
• Battle alone or join a friend in two-player cooperative mode.
• Explore Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance all over again, experiencing newfound adventures with a different customized character or replaying in Extreme mode for ten times the difficulty and fun.
• Dolby Surround sound, real-time sound effect mixing, Hollywood voice talent and an original soundtrack by acclaimed composer Jeremy Soule.
- Released
- December 2, 2001
- Developer(s)
- Snowblind Studios
- Platform(s)
- PS2, GameCube, Xbox (Original), Nintendo Game Boy Advance, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
- Genre(s)
- Action RPG, Hack and Slash
What Makes This Action RPG For iPads Great?
- A style of storytelling that translates well from the tabletop game.
- Vibrantly and gory visuals to enjoy.
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance is a quest of massive proportions from the perspective of a band of unlikely heroes, much like the Dungeons and Dragons stories that it hails from. Meanwhile, the game's simple Action RPG nature makes for some deceptively easy combat, though it also made an eventual port to iOS a shoe-in.
Throughout the player's questing, many monstrous enemies come at them at once, and their slayings leave piles of carcasses wherever the party goes, something that is vibrantly realized on an iPad screen. Then there's the inventory management, which has players wading through shop menus and loading up on gold at all times. It all adds up to a game that has withstood the test of time, as well as its porting to iOS nearly two decades after its initial release.
3 Diablo Immortal
Metascore: 67
Diablo Immortal
What Makes This Action RPG For iPads Great?
- Full-featured Diablo game.
- Adds to the franchise's deep, overarching lore.
Diablo Immotal does a great job at bringing the frenetic, loot-centric, hack-and-slash combat that the series is known for to a smaller scale. Just like it's bigger brothers on PC and consoles, the game has players create a character out of one of a handful of classic Diablo classes in order to take on hordes of ghouls, monsters, and demonic spawn with the player's weapon of choice.
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The game features everything from PVP to PVE combat, bringing it even more in-line with other Diablo games. In this way, it quite easily makes a claim for itself as a must-play for fans of the series, especially when it adds a ton of lore that fans of this universe shouldn't miss.
2 Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition
Metascore: 79
Platform(s): Nintendo Switch, Android, Playstation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, iOS
Released: 2018-02-07
Developer(s): Square Enix, SummerTimeStudio
Genre(s): Action RPG, Action-Adventure
What Makes This Action RPG For iPads Great?
- A condensed, but still epic, story.
- The same fun real-time combat as its console version.
As divisive as Final Fantasy 15 is, Pocket Edition cuts out all the fat, leaving the original game's epic story exactly the way that it was. As an added bonus, and keeping in line with many other mobile games, the world of Eos is presented in a super cutesy way.
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While smaller, a lot of the fun changes to the Final Fantasy formula that 15 introduced, like the transition to real-time combat, or the banter between Noctis and the gang, are still present here. That's all to say, Pocket Edition is just a much more digestible version of one of the more underrated entries in this long-running franchise.
1 Genshin Impact
Metascore: 82
Genshin Impact
- Released
- September 28, 2020
- Developer(s)
- HoYoverse (Formerly miHoYo)
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC, iOS, Android
- Genre(s)
- RPG, Action, Adventure, Gacha, Open-World
What Makes This Action RPG For iPads Great?
- Addicting gacha mechanics.
- Beautifully rendered attacks and environments.
Genshin Impact took the world by storm, making Gacha a world-wide phenomenon. Thankfully, the game that this addictive feature is attached to is an enjoyable one, with continued updates constantly giving players new stuff to do and see. Things like new amazingly-detailed areas in the open-world to explore, as well as more characters to unlock and take on new challenges with.
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In fact, combat is probably the most fulfilling part of Genshin Impact, since every character has their own unique personality, shown mainly by the way they dispatch their foes. Their differing elemental affinities also play a major role in their effectiveness in specific combat situations. That said, whether players are slicing through a slime with their blade or blowing away an automoton in a spectacular display of particle effects (rendered exceptionally well on a tablet screen), there is something here for everyone.
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