The 5 Best Mobile RPGs
There's no shortage of role-playing games you can find on the App Store, but the most common recommendations you might see or come across tend to almost exclusively select free-to-play titles or ports of age-old classics. Those are fine (or not, depending on who you are), but I'm venturing to do something a little different.
Below is a list of RPGs that are great in their own right and have zero in-app purchases. They are also games that I recommend you play specifically on mobile given their design (or--in some cases--availability).
Play Together beautifully tows the line between parody and Copyright lawsuit in latest event
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It is almost time for Valentine's Day, and Play Together is celebrating with an homage to one of the most romantic films out there: Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory. You know, that film about corporate espionage and terrible things happening to children. I think they want us to focus on the chocolate.
A chocolate factory has opened in the Plaza of Kaia Island, run by a man named - and this is the entire reason I am writing about this update - Billy Bonka. I absolutely adore the silliness here. Anyway, Bonkas’ aside, the factory is in a bit of a state, and it is up to you to get it ship-shape.
Top Mobile Game Discounts
Every day, we pick out a curated list of the best mobile discounts on the App Store and post them here. This list won't be comprehensive, but it every game on it is recommended. Feel free to check out the coverage we did on them in the links below to further vet these discounted games before you decide to buy:
Games marked with an asterisk(*) denote that the entire developer/publisher’s catalog is discounted, despite the fact that all of their games may not be listed here.
The Westport Independent (Free)
Click here to read our The Westport Independent review
The Bug Butcher (Free)
Click here to read our The Bug Butcher review
Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?! ($0.99)*
Click here to read our Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?! review
Cultist Simulator ($1.99)
Old School RuneScape is delivering battles of epic proportions with the arrival of the Royal Titans
I am a big ol’ sucker for anything Norse-related, and by Odin's beard is Old School RuneScape delivering on that, even if it is in the signature Jagex parody-eske manner. Players will be able to do battle with two gargantuan giants, as the Royal Titans crash into Gielinor for members.
The Fire Queen Brandr is leading the fire giants in a vicious attempt to expand their territory and make their way to the Asgarnian Ice Cave. Here they are met by the opposing ice giants, led by the King of Frost, Eldric. It is much funnier if you imagine Eldric as the Ice King from Adventure Time just as a side note.
Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket drops its latest Emblem event with a rather fetching design
I am out to prove a point today to myself, my editor, and to you, dear readers; it is entirely possible for me to talk about Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket in a positive way. To which, the Space-Time Smackdown Emblem event has kicked off for fashion hunters to deck out their profiles.
For those who haven’t delved into Emblems, they are just little pictures that show off the various achievements you have accomplished. A lot of these are battle-related for those who are truly skilled at the game. In my case, I use the, “Look, Mum, I can navigate the store,” Emblems you can buy. The mark of a true master to be sure.
Monster Hunter Now continues building the hype for Monster Hunter Wilds release
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We are finally in the home stretch when it comes to the release of Monster Hunter Wilds, and I am sure you are all as excited as I am. It is bound to be a milestone release, and Niantic is going all in on the fun with their own celebration events in Monster Hunter Now.
The MH Wilds Collab Event II is set to kick off from February 28th until March 31st, and we will circle back to Event I shortly. Let’s start by taking a look at the big beasty who will be front and centre in this crossover; Chatacabra. Take a good look, there's a lot to see.
Released in the beta for Monster Hunter Wilds, this is effectively a walking bolder with a massive tongue. The forbidden love child of a Golem and a Greninja for you Pokemon fans out there. They will be wading onto Now for the duration of the event exclusive to desert habitats.
I imagine you will be just as keen as I am to wipe as many of these things off the face of the earth as possible, and luckily we will be rewarded for it. Completing the collab quests will earn you multiple rewards such as Weapon and Armor Refind Parts, Monster materials, and an outfit that makes it look like you are riding a Seikret. It looks like a cheap Halloween outfit, and I am all here for it.
Logging in during the event will nab you a bevy of Supply Items, chief amongst which is the Hope layered outfit, and 12 Hope Weapon Forging Tickets. With these, you can craft yourself a Hope Weapon, the first tool you will wield in Monster Hunter Wilds. If that isn’t enough for you, the first Wilds collab event is still ongoing. Completing quests will get you a gift code to use in Wilds, and a Supply Item cache if you log in each Monday during February.
Monster Hunter Now is available to download from the App Store and Google Play.
How Pokemon Trading Card Pocket is placing profit over players
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I remember first getting a Game Boy and a copy of Pokemon Red, choosing Charmander, and struggling through the first two gyms with a pig-headed stubbornness to never switch him out. I played the main series, and all the side games like Snap, Puzzle League, and Rescue Squad.
Even with the Switch generation missing the mark for me, I still love the series. So seeing the direction Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket is going is infuriating. I complain about it a lot, but not because it’s bad, or because it's the “cool” thing to write about, or because I hate it. I do it because the developers are taking a huge part of my childhood and letting greed corrupt it.
Games I've Been Playing - January 2025
Each month, I want to share some less formal thoughts about the games I've been playing and my impressions of them. These might be game's that got reviewed for the site or not. As an individual person covering a storefront that is shoveling titles onto its store each day, I have time to dip my toes into a lot of it, but I can't always spend the time needed for a review. With recaps like this, I can give some games their due, even if I can't get a full review of them. I can also add additional thoughts to things I did decide to write about or even honor older games I just decided to back to for some reason or another. See below for what I played this past January.
Netflix announces the impending arrival of new games including massive sports series
I don’t know about you, but I have gotten pretty bored of Netflix personally, nothing has grabbed my attention recently. My subscription is still active, though, which will work for my adventure as the streaming juggernaut has announced some new games coming to their catalogue, and some of them are huge names.
The two drama series Ginny & Georgia, and Sweet Magnolias have both been hits with Netflix, surviving for multiple seasons each. To capitalize on their popularity, they will both be thrust into the video gaming world through Netflix Stories, available on Android and Apple, giving fans the opportunity to get hands-on with the stories.
Zenless Zone Zero - 6 Month Check-In
About half a year ago, I posted a review of Zenless Zone Zero that was quite positive, while also noting about its free-to-play model that "I spent my time clearing all but the absolute hardest mode in the game (i.e. Shiyu Defense Critical Nodes) without spending any money, and confirming that all of it is doable and satisfying as a free player."
In the time since posting this, Zenless Zone Zero has undergone some pretty extensive changes, which has given me reason to revisit some of these remarks and weigh in on how these changes have affected both my ability to do everything I want to do in the game without paying and how satisfying it is to do those things. I will go into more detail below, but the short version is: Zenless Zone Zero has made itself more engaging, more challenging, and seems to remain just as free-to-play friendly as it has been since launch.
Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket introduces trading with several frustrating restrictions
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The latest expansion for Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket is out and includes the greatest of all characters, Lucario, so this should be a day of celebration. Instead, I am left with overwhelming disappointment due to the truly horrific implementation of the trading feature.
I have covered this before, and I shared my fears of how badly they could restrict this mechanic. Then, the developers announced there would be two different resources used up, and that was quite frustrating. Now it is out, and it turns out that they sugar-coated just how aggressively they were going to monetise this.
GodLike Esport pulls off a movie-script comeback to cinch the Pokemon Unite ACL 2025 India League
Never have I been so mad to report on the team that won an eSports tournament, and the reason is so petty. Team Godlike Esports blitzed through their competition in the Pokemon Unite ACL 2025 India League to secure a dream title, which is impressive and well done, but wow does that team name really annoy me. It physically makes me recoil.
Moving on from minor gripes, let’s start from the bottom because this is either the classic underdog tale or a staggering feat of hustling. GodLike faltered multiple times through the Group Stage of the tournament, with the threat of an unceremonious exit looming for seven days. Somehow they made it through, but barely and into Round 7, the lowest of the low.
Koei Tecmo announces closure of Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy and the Polar Night Liberator Global just days after first anniversary
Koei Tecmo has taken a leaf out of the Square Enix mobile playbook and announced the rather abrupt termination of the global version of Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy and the Polar Night Liberator. On the plus side, we don’t have to ever worry about missing part of that massive title again.
This is particularly noteworthy for two reasons. To begin with, it was only around in a global capacity for just over a year. Literally, its birthday was last week, what a gift. Secondly, it is a shame personally, because I have particularly fond memories of playing Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny on the PS2 as a child. It's a shame to see part of the series die so fast.
Sniper Elite 4 review
There was a time when it was hard to imagine a shooting game coming out that wasn't focused around World War II. Between Call of Duty's heyday, Medal of Honor, Battlefield, Brothers in Arms etc. you'd have to go out of your way to find something that didn't involve storming the beaches of Normandy or finding some other backdrops for murdering the shit out of nazis. Sniper Elite 4 is the first game I've picked up in this vein in probably a decade, and... you know what? It still feels good to run around a virtual murder playground killing some of the worst people that ever existed.
Kill nazis, forget the rest
Admittedly, I do not know much about the Sniper Elite franchise, but I gather from the name that this one is the fourth installment. There does not appear to be a way to play the other three games on mobile, but it hardly matters. This game puts you in the shoes of some guy named Karl and gives you just enough context via a hollow supporting cast to go traipsing around Italy killing every German solider in sight.
Your primary weapon is a scoped rifle, but Sniper Elite 4 is not exactly picky about how you go about your killing spree. Whether you are headshotting them from hundreds of meters away or stabbing them directly in the face, the only thing this game seems especially concerned with is showing you just how brutal and deadly you are being to this scum. This is a game that delights in using slow motion and an x-ray cam to showcase jaws shattering apart, intestines being demolished, and skulls imploding.
War never changes
From a messaging standpoint, I'm 100% on board with Sniper Elite 4. How a lot of this ends up playing out in a game design sense is a bit repetitive, though. While it's true that the game litters you with all manner of weaponry like shotguns and explosives while also providing environmental hazards to take advantage of like ledges, ammo crates, etc., it does not take long to figure out an efficient killing pattern and just do that repeatedly through every level.
Each stage is a unique location, but all of them are more-or-less set up the exact same way. They are huge sandboxes where you can kill any and every German in it on your way to what are basically fetch quests (find this document, sabotage this thing, kill this guy, etc.). I could see a situation in which this game asked for a bit more discretion or focus, but then again, that could put Sniper Elite 4 in danger of straying away from what it clearly wants to do: let you kill a shitload of nazis.
Murder on mobile
Seeing as this is a port of a console game from 2017, I should say it basically feels and plays exactly as you might expect. A controller is highly recommended here, and the game looks impressive enough by mobile standards, but is not in the league of showcase titles. It doesn't even have display options to fiddle with.
The level layouts and mission structures typically make completing a mission take longer than your typical mobile gaming session, though it's very easy and comfortable to manually save just about any time and the game frequently auto-saves. Sniper Elite 4 also has iCloud syncing so its a game you can play between devices or come back to if you want to buy into its DLC or replay it. In case none of this gives you a firm sense of whether this game is for you or not, the game is free to download and gives you a very fair look at it for free. If you play the first mission and do not want any more of it, there is nothing behind the paid unlocks you are missing.
The bottom line
On the one hand, Sniper Elite 4 can be a bit repetitive and rote. But on the other, the thing that you do a lot of and get really good at is killing nazis. There isn't much else to this game's formula worth talking about or engaging with, both because there's not much there and what little there is is clearly an afterthought. Still, though, I admire Sniper Elite 4's focus in this regard.
KartRider Rush+ does its part for the environment by teaming up with Hyundai and its IONIQ line
As much as I enjoy speeding around the backroads in my diesel-guzzling Jaguar as it screams its lungs out, I am resigned to knowing one day will will all have to move to electric cars. So, it's good when racing games try to make them look exciting, such as now with KartRider Rush+ teaming with Hyundai.
No doubt you would have heard of the IONIQ line, and you will be able to race two of the models in kart form. You can pick up the IONIQ 9 item kart, IONIQ 9 Balloon, and IQONIQ 9 Plate from the game’s shop, although to be honest, who wants to race that boxy thing? No, my friends, the fun is in the IONIQ 6 Speed Kart.