Every player comes to the open-world games in search of freedom and adventure, to escape reality and go exploring distant virtual worlds brimming with discovery. The genre is all about deciding where and when to go, and what to do there, as players find themselves at the very center of exciting stories. What’s more, many open-world games are built to let you become the creator of events around your character, with flexible sandbox mechanics and reactive worlds, resulting in a truly personal journey worth sharing with others.
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Expansive worlds, gorgeous visuals, and a dizzying sense of an adventure ahead — these titles promise to deliver all three.
In the best open-world adventure games, players are not limited to action alone, with plenty of activities and ways to interact with the environment available to them, including puzzles, survival mechanics like cooking, or various leisure activities, enriching the experience in between intense combat encounters. Below are open-world games with best-in-class adventure and exploration factors.
For a clear separation between open-world adventure games and open-world action-RPGs, we won’t include games that have classic XP-based leveling and stats, so no games like Elden Ring or The Witcher 3.
7
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
Beware of Sand in Your Shoe
The Death Stranding series might not be for everyone, but most players agree that Hideo Kojima’s latest perfectly nails the adventure aspect in a vast open world, where the journey is often more important than the destination. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach makes some major refinements and expansions to the original’s formula, delivering a unique journey-focused style of exploration with an emphasis on strong traversal mechanics and immersive world-building on a massive scale. Not to mention that Death Stranding 2 is easily one of the most stunning games ever made that feels truly next-gen in every department.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach allows for much more flexibility for delivering cargo than the first game, further rewarding the players for a creative approach and allowing them to substantially speed things up, if that is what they want. The game’s unique sandbox mechanics and dynamic events, coupled with social elements for building and communicating, create a rare feeling of loneliness and melancholy — but still make you feel like a part of something more.
6
Ghost of Yotei
The Wind Is Calling
Just like Death Stranding 2, in many ways, Ghost of Yotei plays it too safe, preventing the game from reaching true greatness. It’s a prime example of the evolutionary sequel that doesn’t change too much from Ghost of Tsushima, an embodiment of not touching what already works great, adding some meat to the original’s systems and polishing them to perfection. As a result, while Ghost of Yotei won’t blow open-world fans away with its mechanics and overall approach to combat and narrative, it creates one of the best gameplay loops in the genre that’s almost impossible to resist.
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With Ghost of Yotei’s jaw-droppingly beautiful world and condensed places of interest, it delivers the true flow of adventure that feels natural and organic, without any roadblocks like unnecessary menu screens in between to break one’s immersion. You boot the game, and it takes you straight from one adventure to the next, and even if it can’t quite match the memorable force of some better adventure games below, Ghost of Yotei’s distinct flow is an achievement in itself.
5
Crimson Desert
Desert Who? I’m Still in Hernand
Crimson Desert is an easy game to criticize, so how can it rank so high? In truth, I’d personally rank it in the top 3, yet it’s hard to ignore all of its problems that may alienate a large portion of players. Between its rough opening, overcomplicated controls, weak and disjointed narrative, confusing puzzles, and occasionally terrible boss fights, it could be a very frustrating experience that I hated at first. Yet, even with all that jankiness on display, there’s nothing quite like Crimson Desert and the sense of journey and adventure in the vast continent of Pywel that it offers.
While it is nowhere near perfect, Crimson Desert and its world definitely deserve to stand up there with the best open-world adventure titles, offering the same sense of wonder that only a few titles have ever delivered, like Skyrim or Zelda games. Unparalleled freedom and variety of activities, coupled with no handholding, let players truly forge their own path, brimming with fresh discoveries that just never end. Almost anything you can think of is possible in this world, and the game never runs out of ways to surprise you, even after a hundred hours. It’s a game that will probably be remembered for years, both for how exciting and frustrating it can be.
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4
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Here We Go Again
The Grand Theft Auto series isn’t synonymous with adventure, probably due to its grounded modern settings that feel not nearly as exotic as fantasy realms or trips into the distant past of our history. Nevertheless, your own adventure is often what drives the GTA games much more than the on-rails missions, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is a prime example. Even after the groundbreaking GTA 4 and GTA 5, some still believe that San Andreas is the series’s peak, packed with freedom and possibilities that are rare even in modern open-world games.
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Back in the day, no other title could match the scope and ambition of GTA: San Andreas and its enormous world, and that alone made it a must-play game for generations of players. You can play San Andreas for dozens of hours and never even discover some activities and mechanics available in the game. While The Definitive Edition doesn’t give the game the justice it deserves, GTA: San Andreas is more than a game — it’s an open-world era with a legacy that’s pretty much eternal.
3
Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag
A Merry Life and a Short One
Before Assassin’s Creed went full action-RPG, the series was home to some of the greatest open-world adventures many players grew up with, set amid gorgeous historical backdrops. Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag is undeniably a pinnacle of this approach, constantly named the best in the series with its enduring legacy of adventure and freedom. Countless fans await the reveal of the upcoming Black Flag remake with such anticipation that it can once again make or break it for Ubisoft.
Everything worked out perfectly with Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, created when the company was at the height of its open-world-defining era. Set in the Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy in the 18th century, the game offers an alluring map ripe for exploration aboard your own ship, backed by an exciting narrative, memorable characters, and just the right range of activities to make it feel fresh throughout. Still among Ubisoft’s very best, and a beloved open-world adventure for millions of players.
2
Red Dead Redemption 2
Wilderness Versus Civilization
Ever since Red Dead Redemption 2’s release in 2018, every open-world game that followed has been bound to live in its great shadow. Rockstar’s latest big game so far, RDR 2, has cemented itself as a true masterpiece of AAA game development, with the world and characters brought to life on previously unreachable technical and artistic levels that almost no other studio has been able to match since. The king of details in the medium, RDR 2’s devs think of literally everything, creating a timeless video game that only grows more appreciated with each passing year.
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Unfolding like a road movie, with the van der Linde gang on the run across America, Red Dead Redemption 2 is a vast adventure that spans several years, exploring the lives of the outlaws of those rapidly changing times. Taking all the studio’s expertise in the open-world genre, RDR 2 is equally strong in its cinematic main narrative and the sandbox freedom of adventure and exploration of the wilderness that holds secrets still unresolved by players after eight years.
1
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Living Proof That Perfect Games Do Exist
Almost a decade later, many still hail The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as the best open-world game ever made, simple as that. A true Nintendo masterpiece and a pinnacle of the long-running series, Breath of the Wild is just a condensed pleasure of wonder and discovery for hours on end, and unlike Crimson Desert, it’s a near-perfect game in every regard. Turns out, you don’t need just every mechanic imaginable to deliver the grand adventure for the ages.
Everything in BOTW shines: from its unmatched visual style and music to gameplay, featuring approachable yet satisfying combat, elegant puzzles, exciting boss battles, the true sense of exploration, and the enormous freedom for creative problem-solving (pushed to all-new heights in Tears of the Kingdom). The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the best open-world adventure and a definitive milestone for the entire genre that many successors still look up to.
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