RPG Site's Most Anticipated RPGs of 2024
With 2023 behind us, we at RPG Site are peeking ahead at what's to come in 2024, and as fans of the role-playing genre, there's quite a bit to look forward to. We wanted to highlight a handful of games we are especially eager to see.
We also asked for input with a public Twitter poll to see what games our readers were looking forward to 2024. What follows below is our staff-selected games, and you can also check the results from the Reader Poll for both Favorite RPG of 2023 and Most Anticipated RPG of 2024.
Our staff criteria for the Most Anticipated selection is fairly loose. In our staff vote, we picked upcoming RPGs that either interested us due to sheer potential, a good pedigree, and/or titles that find themselves with intriguing release situations regarding their development. This year in our internal polling, a smaller number of RPGs gained the majority of votes in our internal staff tally. So, we have selected a total of 10 RPGs that we are looking forward to.
Note that the list is unranked, with the exception of our overall winner.
Need a refresher on what RPGs are set to release in 2024? We have a list you can check out right here.
RPG Site Staff Picks - Most Anticipated 2024 RPGs
Unicorn Overlord
Vanillaware titles feel like one of those special, rare presents you get only every once-in-a-while from your favorite relative that you don't see very often. It's always something new, something different, something exciting, and possibly something you never expected. And of course, they always look amazing.
Unicorn Overlord almost feels like a polar opposite counterpart to 2020's 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. Where 13 Sentinels focused primarily on storytelling, characters, & dialogue, with only some light tower defense gameplay, Unicorn Overlord is going all-in on the mechanics. Character recruitment & rapport, world exploration & quest systems, town liberation & rebuilding, forts & garrisons, honors & renown systems, tactical combat gameplay, a quarry minigame, and more, Unicorn Overlord is looking to be a *dense* RPG, and we are ready to sink our teeth into it.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes made our Most Anticipated list last year, and most of what we said then still applies now. Suikoden fans have been waiting for a long time for a continuation of one of the more unique RPG experiences found on the PS1 and PS2, and that waiting is about to come to an end in the form of a spiritual successor.
Suikoden is getting its own remaster from Konami with Suikoden I & II HD Remaster: Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars, which hopefully turns out well, but Eiyuden Chronicles promises something new. 2022's Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising was a decent appetizer, but it means little without the main course in Hundred Heroes. Here's hoping Yoshitaka Murayama can bring back some of that Suikoden magic nearly 15 years since the latest entry.
SaGa Emerald Beyond
For a general RPG audience, this might be the most out-of-place pick on this list, but we'd like to think that RPG Site's general fondness for the SaGa series is pretty evident at this point. The most recent new entry — SaGa Scarlet Grace Ambitions — won our RPG Of The Year in 2019, beating contenders such as Disco Elysium, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and Monster Hunter World: Iceborne. SaGa Frontier Remastered won our category award for best re-release in 2021. Minstrel Song Remastered is also excellent, and where is SaGa Frontier 2 Remastered?
So, yeah, we're excited as heck for a brand new SaGa title - the first to receive a simultaneous worldwide release even! Emerald Beyond seems to be bringing back all the components we loved about Scarlet Grace, the stellar turn-based battle system, plus eclectic characters, a wide variety of party member races, and what should be an excellent soundtrack from Kenji Ito. SaGa Never Dies!
Granblue Fantasy Relink
The venerable and still wildly popular browser gacha game Granblue Fantasy is finally going to debut on the world stage in the form of a high-end action RPG available on PC and consoles. After what seemed like an unending series of teases and false starts, Cygames opened a deluge of information throughout 2023, resulting in substantial previews of the game's combat, 4-player co-op play, and a wide roster of playable characters that's already set to grow in the post-release period.
Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth
RGG Studio is back again with the sequel to Yakuza: Like A Dragon & it's looking bigger and better than ever. After the franchise's massive shift into turn-based combat, we've all been eagerly anticipating the next chapter in Ichiban Kasuga and Kazuma Kiryu's story. The development team went the extra mile to briefly return to the series's roots with Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name before plunging into what's shaping up to be their biggest project yet.
Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth takes the gang out of Japan for the first time - all the way to Hawaii. From what we've seen so far, RGG Studio is holding nothing back and hopes this RPG is one that people will never forget.
Metaphor: ReFantazio
Formerly known as Project Re Fantasy many, many years ago, this Atlus project was thought to be silently abandoned or cancelled after years of silence... until it was fully reborn and unveiled in 2023 as Metaphor: ReFantazio. While it no longer bears many of the traditional fantasy elements in its early Project Re Fantasy concept videos, Metaphor: ReFantazio is still presenting its own modern fantasy world filled with numerous different races, cultures, and a walking landboat that serves as your home base.
We're hoping that Metaphor: ReFantazio is more than just a re-skinned Persona 5 and presents some of its own unique ideas gameplay-wise. It's incorporating a similar real-time action & turn-based hybrid battle system like The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak, which is a nice first step. This promising title will need to do more though, if it hopes to escape the massive shadow of its spiritual predecssor and carve out its own destiny.
Persona 3 Reload
The original Persona 3 is a seminal RPG that not only provided the first steps in exploding a franchise's popularity worldwide, but has also since influenced numerous RPGs in the way it handles characters, social interactions. and many other role-playing components. And of course, Persona 3's themes of humanity and Memento Mori resonated well among those who played it. Although creatively designed, some of those novel mechanics were perhaps a little *too* ambitious, with fatigue systems or lack of party member control not always looked back upon fondly, and even stripped away in each subsequent re-release of the game.
Ultimately, Persona 3 Reload looks to refine one of the most influential RPGs with the franchise style cultivated in the years since the original release. Clean visuals & presentation, updated music, improved gameplay systems, and promises of some bolstered character writing are all exciting prospects, and we can't we to see how this remake turns out.
Dragon's Dogma 2
The first Dragon's Dogma is a special game that captured the hearts of many RPG fans across the globe. Its grounded fantasy setting, its world that's fun to get lost in, its oddly compelling Pawn mechanic, its charmingly repetitive dialogue quips, and so much more has engraved Dragon's Dogma's place in gaming history. Despite everything that makes it great, it is also a well-documented project that scrapped so many ideas to get it across the finish line.
Director Hideaki Itsuno and the Dragon's Dogma development team at Capcom are back for Dragon's Dogma 2. This time, they've been given the time and resources to fully realize their original vision. While Dragon's Dogma 2 may seem like it's rehashing a lot of similar ideas from its predecessor on the surface (Grigori the dragon took your main character's heart again oops), there's a commitment to make its world, systems, and mechanics even more fleshed out to fulfill the ultimate fantasy experience with your little squad of Pawns to aid you.
There are already substantial differences from the original game, such as the implementation of a beast race called the beastren and meeting elves along your journey - both races were originally cut from the original Dragon's Dogma. A new Trickster vocation job will be joining the fray, along with new massive beasts that can even potentially massacre a nearby town if they're able to get close enough. We're all incredibly excited to see how much chaos we can cause in Dragon's Dogma 2 - how far can we push it...
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake
Even though we haven't seen anything from Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake since its original announcement back in May 2021 — coming up on three years ago now — it still manages to rank high in our internal polling and make this list. This is the third year in a row that this game has made this list. That only goes to show how well-regarding Dragon Quest III is, and our hopes for a modern interpretation in the HD-2D style.
Other classic remakes like Live A Live and Star Ocean: The Second Story (although not technically HD-2D) were all-around excellent, and Octopath Traveler II is easily the best-looking game in the HD-2D style. Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii recently tweeted that he had been playing a test version of Dragon Quest III HD-2D. So, we can only hope that Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake is still diligently in development and that the re-release can live up to the quality that Dragon Quest III deserves.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (Winner)
Is there any surprise that the follow-up to Final Fantasy VII Remake is RPG Site's most anticipated RPG of 2024? Final Fantasy VII Rebirth promises to continue Square Enix's revisit with the legacy (and possible future) of one of the most popular and impactful RPGs of all time. With Cloud and crew freshly escaped from the megacity of Midgar that took up Remake's runtime, Rebirth promises to open up Final Fantasy VII's world to Cloud and crew, with new locations and ways to travel, using Remake as a foundation to build around and beyond.
Rebirth will also build on Remake's mechanics, adding new features like Synergy attacks that depend on party compostion, Item Transmutation to encourage exploration, and new Materia that open up and mix around the Materia system introduced in Remake.