The open-world RPG genre is incredibly flexible and varied, including vastly different games with their own focus and highlights. For many players, deep progression, be it character leveling, gear upgrading, or both, can be a vital aspect of how long they'll stick with a game. Fortunately, almost every open-world RPG offers such mechanics in some capacity. However, there are also titles almost entirely built upon them, offering unmatched depth and flexibility for character building and loot tweaking.
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Even after beating the game's story, players can keep returning to such games to try new builds, weapon or perk combinations, and experiment with creating truly OP characters in an attempt to reach record-breaking damage or defense values, which is fun in itself. Today, we'll be ranking some of the open-world RPGs best known for incredibly deep progression mechanics, and they can become real time-sinks for players who are easily hooked by these rich possibilities.
6 Fallout: New Vegas
Embrace The Old Ways
As modern Fallout games such as Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 have moved towards simplifying their RPG elements, Fallout: New Vegas stands as the latest entry to fully embrace the original S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Role-playing system from the original games, allowing for some truly deep and flexible character builds and game progression. Despite playing mostly like a first-person shooter, where player accuracy and weapons are almost as important as their level, skills, and perks, RPG elements really matter in New Vegas, which is evident in the many possibilities and outcomes for every single quest in the game.
Depending on whether players build their character like a soldier, hacker, scientist, smooth-talker, or even some wildly specific combination, Fallout: New Vegas takes everything into account. It's equally fun to play as pure melee builds, snipers, or wanderers who avoid combat at all costs. In-depth old-school progression results in admirable replayability, where players can not only chase other factions' missions and previously missed quests, but tackle them in entirely different ways each time.
5 Assassin's Creed Shadows
Two Characters, Countless Progression Paths
Assassin's Creed Shadows is easily among the AC games with the most interesting and flexible progression, coupling the best features of AC Odyssey, like Diablo-style color-graded randomized loot, and AC Valhalla's enormous skill trees and deep gear upgrades, while sprinkling unique ideas throughout, like two distinct playable characters with their own weapon types to wield, skills to master, and abilities to use. Many initially doubted Ubisoft's idea of separating the shinobi and samurai playstyles, but the execution is more than decent, as evidenced by online discussions in which some players admitted they can't even pick a favorite between Naoe and Yasuke after enough time playing as both.
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In Assassin's Creed Shadows, players can either build each protagonist around a single weapon type or try to master several, create ranged builds, rely entirely on tools, be as stealthy as a ninja, or wreak havoc and clear castles and fortresses head-on, smashing like The Hulk. In addition, AC Shadows offers really flexible loot management. Players can apply their best perks to multiple weapons, upgrade their loot level with resources, and obtain powerful game-changing legendaries. There's even a near-endless passive skill mastery system that many were surprised to discover, serving as yet another endgame layer of tweaking the player's preferred combat stats.
4 Elden Ring
As Massive In Scope As It Is Deep In Progression Systems
Elden Ring is many things, often regarded as one of the very few perfect open-world games. Hidetaka Miyazaki's biggest creation to date is both massive in scope and deep in gameplay possibilities, with the studio's signature flexible character leveling, intricate magic system, and a completely mind-blowing roster of weapon types, armor, spells, abilities, and weapon infusions. Players can find new gear in the world, receive it as a reward from hard-earned victories, and even craft unique godlike weapons, while every ordinary armament can be infused in multiple ways. Magic is yet another near-endless mechanic in Elden Ring, and while it requires some learning and hours of investment, it can result in completely broken characters who melt bosses.
Many players keep replaying Elden Ring not for its stunning world or breathtaking enemy variety, but to try its many different combat possibilities, creating wildly specific builds for each new run. It's not unusual for fans to have over a dozen high-level characters in Elden Ring, further proving how varied the game is and how fun it is to try something new for each new journey in the Lands Between.
Find all 10 pairs
Find all 10 pairs
3 Rise Of The Ronin
The Best Of Two Worlds
Team Ninja's recent Nioh 3 might be even greater for its progression and customization of character builds, but given its open-zone structure rather than being a full open world, Rise of the Ronin is a perfect alternative. Set in feudal Japan, Rise of the Ronin can't quite compete with Ghost of Yotei or Assassin's Creed Shadows in terms of polish and visuals, but it leaves those titles far behind with its robust progression systems. In fact, combat and the ways of tailoring it to one's preferences are undoubtedly a major driving force of the game, fully worth investing in.
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Being more historically grounded than the Nioh series, Rise of the Ronin isn't as complex in its progression mechanics and combat abilities, which can actually be a plus for newcomers. Nevertheless, it's still remarkable, packing dozens of distinct weapon types — each taking hours to fully master for max weapon proficiency — countless skill trees, main stats, and abilities, sprinkled with randomized loot drops in the vein of Nioh, allowing players to prioritize their favorite playstyle effortlessly. On top of that, Rise of the Ronin includes robust companion mechanics akin to Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, with bond milestones for each of over a dozen possible allies.
2 Diablo 4
There's Still Nothing Quite Like This Series
Over its 25-year history, Diablo has changed drastically, going fully open-world in the fourth entry and layering its progression mechanics so tightly that very few other ARPGs can hope to match it. While there will always be players criticizing the changes, arguing that leveling and progression are way better in Diablo 2, there's still nothing quite like Diablo 4, especially if players are looking for an endless time sink that gives plenty of reasons to experiment and flesh out the smallest aspects of their favorite classes.
Diablo 4 utilizes the traditional live-service model, resetting its seasons and encouraging players to constantly create new characters, either trying entirely different builds or playing as a new class. While character building might not be as in-depth and flexible as in Path of Exile, Diablo 4 more than compensates with its itemization and micro-upgrading mechanics, such as glyphs, tempering, or masterworks. Not to mention how often the devs rework many of Diablo 4's core progression mechanics, striving to implement fan feedback for the best combat flow and progression hooks.
1 Tom Clancy's The Division 2
Approachable, Yet Perfectly Deep
Still among the best open-world looter shooters available, Tom Clancy's The Division 2 stands strong, being approachable for casual players and endlessly rich for hardened veterans. Before the endgame, players can play The Division 2 without ever delving too deeply into its progression mechanics or thinking too hard about their equipment. Once players decide to stick with the game for longer, it flourishes with intricate character-building and gear-tweaking progression systems so that players who enjoy this aspect can spend more time with the optimization station rather than on an actual battlefield.
The Division 2 builds on the first game to offer enough ways for rewarding progression and building truly unstoppable agents. Over the years, the game has only improved on that. Six specializations with signatured weapons, customizable skills, countless randomized loot drops with unique perks and set bonuses, extremely rare exotic items, and the ability to tweak every smallest aspect and parameter on every item (although doing so would cost a small fortune) — everything in The Division 2 works to ensure that players can play the game for hundreds of hours, constantly pushing their combat potential to new limits.
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