6 Open-World RPGs With Better Cities Than Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City, Ranked

Before Cyberpunk 2077’s release, many expected the game to challenge Grand Theft Auto itself with its dense urban setting, believable simulation, explorable building interiors, and optional activities. To CD Projekt Red’s credit, the studio presented Cyberpunk as a narrative-driven RPG first, but expectations for Night City often went far beyond its story-driven content.

In the final game, though, Night City mostly serves as a backdrop to the game’s main story and optional quests, with relatively few leisure activities, basic NPC behavior, and underused stretches of its district space. Despite those limitations, it’s still among the best cities in video games and a tough benchmark to match in scale, verticality, atmosphere, and its unique cyberpunk vibe, with futuristic architecture unlike anything else.

That said, some rare open-world RPGs deliver an even better city experience than Cyberpunk 2077, at least in certain specific areas. Exploring the cities below and interacting with their inhabitants can be more fun and rewarding than spending time in Night City, so here are some of the best urban settings to challenge CP2077 at its own game.

6

Assassin’s Creed Origins

Alexandria

Assassin’s Creed Origins remains among the most beloved games in the Assassin’s Creed series’ RPG-ish branch, particularly for its rich, unique setting of Ancient Egypt, brought to life on a spectacular scale. Alongside the allure of climbing the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid, Alexandria is another standout location recreated with impressive historical detail. If all you want to do is admire it, AC Origins also introduced the franchise’s first non-violent Discovery Tour mode.

Naturally, the city’s biggest draw is its enormous lighthouse, the Pharos of Alexandria, serving as one of the highest points on the map. Since few games can match Assassin’s Creed’s freedom of traversal, exploring Alexandria’s architecture by roaming its streets and rooftops is a pleasure in itself. Temples, towers, monuments, and waterfront routes form a city you can climb through almost continuously, a freedom Night City rarely offers. Even though Alexandria can’t match the social depth of some of the cities listed below, it remains a stunning ancient setting, one of the richest for virtual historical tourism in the medium.

5

Fallout: New Vegas

New Vegas

To truly do its memorable city justice, Fallout: New Vegas desperately needs the Oblivion Remastered treatment. Even as it is, though, this wild city of contrasts can challenge Night City in key areas, especially NPC reactivity and how directly the Courier can influence its power structures. Reaching New Vegas itself is quite the adventure across the Mojave Desert. When you finally enter its bustling districts, with luxury casinos, struggling neighborhoods, weird markets, and powerful families, it’s like discovering a game within a game.

With its unique atmosphere as a shady criminal oasis in a post-apocalyptic world that has long gone insane, exploring New Vegas can be a real time sink. Its districts, including the Strip, are full of explorable buildings, people to meet, and institutions and major players to learn about. Of course, true to Obsidian, it’s not the layered architecture, activities, or simulation that shine here, but rather the player’s own agenda, choices, and consequences. Whereas Night City gives V memorable personal stories, New Vegas gives the Courier a much more direct role in deciding its political future.

4

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Novigrad

Night City might be the biggest city in CDPR’s history so far, but it’s impossible to leave out the bustling Novigrad from The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, often regarded among the best video game cities of all time. The city’s stunning architecture, crowded markets, distinct districts that reflect its criminal and religious layers, unforgettable music, and gorgeous sunsets—I already want to boot up the game and walk its streets and alleyways to experience its unmistakable identity all over again.

The best thing about Novigrad isn’t its visual splendor and atmosphere, but how tightly interconnected its urban storytelling is. Mage persecution, religious authority, criminal factions, and the stories of Triss and Dandelion continually overlap, making the whole city feel caught in the same unfolding conflict. Every neighborhood becomes memorable through exploration and small stories, and familiar streets acquire new significance as you progress through The Witcher 3. Novigrad also captures that “culture shock” after dozens of hours wandering across swamps, forests, and small villages, only to enter this colossal heart of civilization and get lost in its layout.

3

Where Winds Meet

Kaifeng

One of the newest additions to the open-world genre, Where Winds Meet earns some serious points for Kaifeng, not just for its enormous scale and gorgeous vistas, but mostly for the density of encounters and interactions with ordinary residents at every step. This bustling historical setting offers distinctive architecture and beautiful buildings that are fun to explore and admire, but its districts, densely packed with activities and NPCs, take the real spotlight. Once you reach Kaifeng after Chapter 1, it can be hard to trade its absorbing appeal for the surrounding wilderness.

It feels like a large part of Where Winds Meet was designed around the city itself, so this massive urban hub is full of exploration quests and varied interactions to get involved in. Kaifeng always gives you reasons to stop and investigate, debate with locals, help or heal them, steal valuables, try mini-games, solve riddles, and so much more. Wandering through the city is an activity in itself, while Where Winds Meet’s ever-evolving nature ensures more activities and quests are progressively added for longtime players to discover.

2

Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth

Honolulu

Even Kaifeng pales in comparison to the opportunities for enjoying city life in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth’s Honolulu. This is a whole new level of city design, interactive at virtually every step and filled to the brim with places to visit and activities to take on. Stepping outside Japan adds much-needed freshness to the series, placing you at the heart of a virtual vacation simulator. Sure, traditionally the series’ maps are more arcade-y than seriously immersive, but who really cares when there’s so much to do? Probably even too much.

Compared to Night City’s limited leisure activities outside its quests, Honolulu in Infinite Wealth is in a completely different league, with near-endless ways to spend time in the city just for the fun of it. Karaoke, Crazy Delivery, Photo Rally, Sujimon battles, restaurants, shopping, hidden caches, or vocational-school exams give its streets purposes beyond story missions. Relationships and substories integrated into these leisure activities add plenty of natural life and memorable moments for character development.

1

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2

Kuttenberg

If the vibrant, non-stop fun of the Yakuza series isn’t really your cup of tea, Kuttenberg from Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is definitely up there among the best and most immersive virtual cities ever made. With this list’s RPG focus, we can’t include RDR2’s Saint Denis for its rich simulation, and Kuttenberg is perhaps the closest comparison in this area, leaving CDPR’s cities from Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 far behind. Delivering convincing daily routines and NPC simulation has been a major goal for open-world RPGs since the genre’s early days, and KCD2 is the true modern benchmark for that.

Residents have routines you can actually follow: working, visiting taverns, returning home, sleeping. Learning someone’s schedule matters when planning a theft or finding them for a quest. Like in most video game cities, you can’t enter every building in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, but there are still plenty of accessible interiors. Class differences and reputation also make Kuttenberg’s population feel more like a functioning society you can interfere with, rather than faceless crowds filling its streets. Not to mention Kuttenberg’s historical authenticity, which can rival even Assassin’s Creed titles.