These Open-World RPGs Tell You To 'Git Gud'

“Git gud,” the iconic phrase that was born in the darkest depths of the most hardcore of gaming warlords and their lair: the Dark Souls community. Since then, it has been thrown around as a meme and phrase in other games, from competitive PVP titles to other, grueling single-player experiences, to express the idea that the game isn’t too hard; it’s the player who isn’t good enough.

Open-World Games That Punish You for Playing on Autopilot

Get lazy and distracted or try to rush through these open-world games, and they’ll swiftly send your character to the death screen.

There are definitely games that enforce this idea by delivering unapologetically tough experiences. You either learn, adapt, and eventually overcome the hurdles they present, or you uninstall the game and go off to play something more your speed. For gamers who aren’t afraid of being challenged and pushed to the limits, here are the open-world RPGs that force you to become tougher and better players instead of babying you.

Project Zomboid

The Game Is Over As Soon As You Get Sloppy

Project Zomboid’s RPG features are probably the lightest you’ll see on this list, but given the skill progression system and specialized occupation you can choose in the beginning, I’d argue it still fits. As the last survivor in Knox Country, a massive open-world environment overrun with zombies, your job is to just survive for as long as possible, securing yourself a base, a source of food, water, fuel, and meds. Playing on the Apocalypse difficulty is considered the default experience of Project Zomboid, and that means resources are generally very sparse, and you’ll have to fight through hordes of cunning zombies that are plentiful in the world.

Every decision you make has to be calculated carefully, and without an escape plan, you can easily be overrun or jumped. If you’re bitten, it’s basically game over, and you’ll be sent to the death screen once the virus works its way through your system. It’s a game where you’ll likely fail over and over again, even after playing it for a while, because there’s simply so much to consider and you’re never fully relaxed. However, just like your character who learns skills to stay alive, you as a player will learn how the post-apocalyptic world works—eventually.

Pathologic 2

Get Used To Cortisol Spikes

What’s the most stressful feature you can think of in a game? I know an easy one: a time limit. Nobody loves deadlines, and Pathologic 2 harnesses that to its maximum potential by making you survive a raging plague in the matter of twelve in-game days. With each day, time ticks away. Your decisions directly impact the people of the world: who survives and who doesn’t.

But you also need to survive, and you may need to hurt or betray people around you in order to guarantee that. The game hammers this one truth into your head: there are no good choices, there is no hope. It’s this brooding atmosphere and the desperate race against time with nail-biting survival elements that will force you to adapt and overcome, or fail.

Gothic 1 & 2

This Fantasy World Has No Chill

Another game that doesn’t scale to the player’s level is Gothic 2, and its predecessor, Gothic. Not only is the combat a whole ordeal, as you start off playing as an absolute nobody with terrible equipment and damage, but it’s also clunky due to the game’s age. Some of the enemies have the ability to kill you in the blink of an eye if you’re not prepared.

It’ll be interesting to see how much that changes with the Gothic Remake set to come out soon. Action aside, the Gothic games also subscribe to an old-school game design idea where there are no quest markers, and you’re trusted to figure things out on your own from the get-go, and backtrack from memory. All in all, it’s a stressful experience that you’re just going to have to get used to, but so worth it if you’re an RPG fanatic.

Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen

Come Back When You’re Stronger

Dragon’s Dogma 2 aside, the first game delivered a bit of a learning curve. The world throws a few curveballs your way in the form of enemies that are at a set difficulty, and it’s not hard for newcomers to explore the game’s open-world environment and run into an area that they’re absolutely not prepared for. But even outside of late-game areas, some of the earlier encounters are infamously hard (ahem, those pesky bandits), and you’ll have to manage your stamina carefully when facing off against larger monsters.

It’s a grindy game, so there’s going to be times when you’ll simply have to accept that you need more training and have to come back later. There’s no forcing your way through. Outside of mastering the combat and using your pawns to their highest potential, buildcrafting and upgrading your weapons is a knowledge-based learning curve of its own, though it still remains second in difficulty to several Souls games—if that’s any consolation!

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1 & 2

The Realistic Combat Is Intimidating For Many

If you aren’t actively playing the Kingdom Come: Deliverance games, then most likely the one thing you know about them is that the combat is a steep learning curve. While both games have a tutorial sequence that introduces you to some of the core moves, like the perfect block, feinting, dodging, and more, it’s all about getting used to a very detailed sword combat system.

It takes time, and that’s something that will understandably be stressful for some players who might be more used to a simpler system. There aren’t any cheat codes for mastering the combat as Henry, though leveling up your skills and gear will make some things just a bit easier. If you’re after challenge and like the real feeling of progression, these games will deliver exactly that and more for you, while testing your patience.

Outward

Plan Your Adventure, Or Fail To Survive

With Outward 2 on the horizon, it’s a great time to highlight the uniquely challenging gameplay that Outward has. It’s a classic example of an RPG that doesn’t let you just walk into things without consequences. What makes it different from some other games here is that it features survival gameplay elements, such as managing your thirst and fatigue. There’s also no fast travel in the game, so much of your time will be spent exploring on foot, which is already quite dangerous.

The enemies in Outward are punishing, and you should always be well-prepared for your journey before setting out. Dying is pretty intriguing in the game, too, as it doesn’t just make you reload from a save. Rather, you might get placed in a totally different area or even end up captured while your belongings are left behind or taken. It’s a cool concept since it lets you roleplay even your death scenarios, but it’s also an added challenge as you try to get to your backpack after being dropped into a new location.

Elden Ring

Soulslike In Open-World Format

Although Elden Ring has gained the reputation of the easiest Soulslike to date due to it being an open-world game, it’s still a grueling experience in many ways for those who aren’t veterans or particularly seasoned players of the genre. The world is vast, and you can always go somewhere else to level your character slowly but surely. However, many of the smaller bosses and “insignificant” enemies still boast abilities that can feel wholly unfair. From status effects that can catch you off-guard to combos that will stunlock your character if you’re not careful, danger is always lurking around the next corner wherever you go exploring in the Lands Between.

And it’s not just enemies, but also various environmental hazards, like giant balls rolling down stairwells, massive seas of pure Scarlet Rot, and more. My personal source of anxiety? Those cursed Basilisks that spray Death on you. Finally, you have all the big bosses of the game, the cinematic ones. Elden Ring welcomes you into its first major dungeon with Margit, who was a tough one for anyone who hadn’t ever played a Soulslike before due to his moves and pacing. Later on, Malenia was giving players such a hard time that she reached meme status on social media. So, needless to say, Elden Ring’s world doesn’t give you an inch, but forces you to toughen up and come back when you’re ready for a real challenge.

Kenshi

Great Freedom, Through Great Suffering

Among the kings of punishing games that demand you to suck it up and “git gud,” we have Kenshi. If you’re jumping into this unique open-world RPG without any prior knowledge of what to expect, you’ll be met with a splash of cold water on your face, especially if you’re used to big triple-A titles like The Witcher 3 or Skyrim that welcome you in as some sort of mythical hero or chosen one. Kenshi treats you like the little fleck of trash you are in its world, and if you want to become anything more than that, you’d better get training to up your skills, and fast.

The game doesn’t exactly send you help or guide you with that, either. It’s through trial and error, getting beaten up in its desert over and over again, bleeding out dry, that you’ll eventually learn and understand what you need to do in order to emerge on top in its hostile world. As you spawn in with nothing, it’s very likely you might end up getting captured for slavery in the first thirty minutes and spend your time as a prisoner. It’s certainly a far cry from a hero’s journey seen in a Bethesda RPG, but you could argue the payoff is greater once you get the hang of the game’s systems and manage to break free from your chains.