In today’s gaming age, a lot about the game you’re playing is handed to you directly. From tutorials, to map markers, it’s all about helping the player out as much as possible.
10 RPGs With 100+ Hours of Content
You’ll lose track of time in these RPGs.
For some, though, they want to be left in the dark. They want to feel alone and confused in a strange world. For those masochists, we’re going to check out someRPGs that never hold your hand throughout their runtime.
The criteria here will be games that don’t help you out in any way and often rely on you to discover the mechanics of the game for yourself. Sure, there might be a basic introduction to a system here and there, but it’s still going to mainly be up to you to hack it in these harsh settings.
10Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader
A Vast Universe With No Guide
Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader
Fextralife Wiki
Warhammer 40K is an insanely big universe to jump into, so it makes sense that an RPG based on the property would be equally as intimidating.
Within minutes of starting up the game, you’re getting all kinds of world-specific, sci-fi jargon that you’re just sort of expected to know about. In the first hour alone, you’re already making a story-altering decision without vaguely knowing what the consequences of doing so are at that point.
There is also only a brief tutorial on the combat and leveling mechanics, which will leave your brain shortly after you read it, because from there, the combat gets deeper and deeper, and you’re thrown in without a life vest and are expected to swim a mile to shore.
The exploration is also completely without handholding, as you are lucky to get a quest objective marker half the time. For the majority of the game, you’re just going where you think you’ll need to go.
There are also walls of text from characters you meet that you’ll need to read to even half understand what’s going on, and tons of interesting lore spread throughout the environment that you can easily miss due to, again, no real marker to show you what interesting things might be.
It’s a very tough game, and learning the combat and the depth of what your various skills and abilities can do is crucial to coming away victorious in combat.
The game leaves it up to you on what level you want to engage with it, and it’s one definitely played best blindly and letting the world take you in, despite how intimidating it may seem.
You’re On Your Own
Outward is a tough, brutal game, and one of its most notable features is that it doesn’t care about you as a player. From the start, you’re given a vague goal and told to go out and do something about it. What you do is up to you.
You’re not shown how to fight, use magic, where the good shops are, who you should talk to, or anything of the sort. Outward expects the player to suffer, and half the mechanics of the game are up to the player to discover.
There is a magic system in the game which is absolutely fantastic, but you may never actually find out how to unlock it if you don’t explore.
It’s definitely not my favorite open-world RPG, but it has a special sort of mystery to it that other games don’t achieve. It’s been a formula that’s been improved upon by other games since, but being able to explore a mysterious world in co-op is an experience you won’t soon forget.
This giant barrier of entry kept the game from getting reviewed well, but perhaps the sequel will be more forgiving in that respect.
8Elden Ring
The Masochist’s Open World
Elden Ring
Fextralife
Elden Ringis a truly overwhelming experience. While you’re given the most basic of combat tools in the opening segment, from there, you’re left to wander the world at your leisure.
You can explore a large chunk of the map from the get-go if you please, but you must know you will get obliterated along the way.
One of the key mechanics in the game, the Ashes of War, are barely explained to you, and you’re able to find yourself lost in how to even customize your weapons with the tons of these techniques you’ll acquire throughout the game.
Then there are the side quests, which are as vague as possible and give you little to no clue how to progress, and the hidden areas that house important mechanics like Beast Man, or the Dragon Head spells. If you’re not constantly exploring every corner of the map, you may definitely miss out on some huge parts of the game.
Then there is the story itself, which is fed to you in such piecemeal ways that you’d be excused for not having half a clue about what is going on or what you’re even supposed to be doing at any given time.
You’ll always remember your first journey into Limgrave, and you’ll never forget exiting Stormveil Castle to get a view of the absolutely massive expanse that lay out ahead of you. It’s on you to find everything it has to offer.
7Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
Bohemian Life Ain’t For Everyone
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2is one of the best games of 2025 and is an epic, engrossing experience that is bothfiercely realistic and relentlessly unforgiving. That unforgiving nature comes in many forms, but mostly, it’s due to the close to zero handholding that the developers provide for you.
Just as with the first game, here, you are absolute trash at combat when the game begins, to the point that two enemies are nearly impossible to take on. You’re left to figure out you need to train to get better, but it doesn’t end there.
You’re also going to have to figure out on your own how to make money, where to get a horse, and where to look for certain objectives. As a whole, it’s incredibly obscure and relies on the player using their wits to get through much of the game.
I’ve never felt quite as poor and lost as I’ve felt while playing this game. You truly do feel like an unknown in this big, medieval world and the build-up from that is as organic as I’ve found in an RPG.
6Divinity: Original Sin 2
You’re On A Prison Island. Good Luck.
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Divinity: Original Sin 2isone of the best CRPGs ever made, but it is not for beginners and is certainly not a game to hold your hand at any point. In the opening hours, you find yourself on a prison island with absolutely no idea what you’re supposed to do or where you’re supposed to go.
And that’s when the magic of the game hits you. There is no right way. There is no wrong way. Whatever you’re thinking about trying to get off this island, you can probably do it. That level of freedom is both intimidating and amazing.
The options you have in everything from exploration and problem-solving to combat are all up to the player. You are rarely given an exact way something needs to be done, and it makes for one of the most free-feeling RPGs to ever exist.
I don’t think I’d ever played a CRPG until this game. I was definitely hesitant at first, but once you get past that initial opening on the ship, you realize the wealth of possibilities the game has to offer and suddenly, you become the author of your own story.
It’s also brutally difficult, and you can miss some amazing stories in the game if you accidentally kill a character or refuse to recruit a party member, but that’s part of the total package.
5Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon
An Ode to the Past
Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon
The RPG genre has felt pretty bland in recent years. Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is a game that gives it a kick in the best possible way. It’s a game that is very much a tribute to titles of the past, and specifically, Elder Scrolls games. Tainted Grail is a hardcore experience that gives you precious few healing items and has you in danger with every corner you turn.
In fact, the key mechanic in the game, parrying, is effectively useless until it’s upgraded, so you can barely hope to use it in the opening hours.
Then, there is the fact that many of the quests rely purely on your exploration. You have to be inquisitive. You have to look for specific items that won’t be marked with a quest marker.
I think the moment you enter Cuaracht and get wrecked by everything within 5 steps of you, the true nature of the game is revealed. I felt like I had to respec, restock, and re-think everything about what I knew about the combat thus far.
While the first area was relatively easy, I immediately poured every stat into parrying, because I just couldn’t handle getting one shot by the enemies in the next one.
It is a throwback in so many ways, but that’s a good thing. Although it is quite the tough experience, the lack of hand holding leads you to uncovering a journey that swings far beyond its budget.
Deeper Than You Think
Nioh 2may come with a brief combat tutorial, but believe it or not, that only reveals about 5 percent of what you can do with the combat system of this game.
It is so absurdly deep that you can’t even see the majority of what it has to offeruntil you finish the game. That’s right, some of the game’s core systems don’t even open up until you’ve already gotten through the first playthrough.
Many fans of the game claim the real game doesn’t start until NG++, so that should be a hint that you’re in for something far more complex and detailed than you’d immediately think.
While you can beat the game with the tools given to you in the tutorial, to get the most out of the game, you’ll want to explore the Labyrithian combat options as you’ll turn the game into one of the deepest combat experiences ever created in a game.
3Remnant 2
A Randomly Generated Journey Through Dimensions
Remnant 2isan awesome RPGthat tries a lot of new things while maintaining a solid souls-like approach as well.
One thing the game doesn’t do, though, is hold your hand. You are given barely an inkling of what you’re supposed to be doing in any of the strange and alien worlds you’re going to explore. When it comes to the side quests, the secret weapons, the hidden classes and armor sets, and even the hidden boss fights, that’s all up to you to find out.
There are so many secrets to find throughout the game that will make the experience even more thrilling, but most of them will be lost to anyone that didn’t read a guide or get very lucky with their exploration.
For example, there is one boss that, if you fail at defeating it, will just disappear for the rest of the game. This could be due to not giving the boss a specific item, or that’s just how the boss is designed. I have no clue, but I know that boss wasn’t available to fight in my playthrough going forward.
There are also puzzles you’ll have to figure out on your own and tons of secrets that the game relies on you to figure out for yourself as well.
2Darkest Dungeon
Anxiety and Fear Becomes You
Darkest Dungeon
Darkest Dungeon laughs at the aspect of holding your hand. Instead of holding your hand, the game chops your hand off, beats you with it, then tells you to get over it. That’s the Darkest Dungeon experience. You get precious little information on how the game works as a whole and when it comes to dungeon crawling.
Having come from a lifetime of turn-based RPGs, I thought I was ready for the challenge the game held in store. I was not, in fact, not even close. I had to rethink what I knew about party building and started prioritizing lesser fighters in order to save the heavy hitters for the toughest dungeon crawls.
It’s not a game for the feint of heart, and that goes double for your party members who can have a heart attack and die mid-dungeon crawl. It’s a brutal experience that pushes away all but the most dedicated gamers, but it’s acompelling adventureif you’re brave enough to see it through.
1The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
A Journey Made Completely Alone
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
There are hardcore RPGs that don’t hold your hand, and then there isMorrowind. Possibly the most hardcore modern RPG to exist, this game is all about you discovering the rules of the world rather than having them fed to you.
Everything is difficult here, from learning magic, to knowing which characters need to survive for the story to even function properly. In fact, you might think the game is broken at the start, as doing something as simple as attacking an enemy is a Herculean task as your hit percentage starts off extremely low.
There are alsoaspects like magic spell creationthat you don’t have explained to you and fast travel being unavailable for a good amount of time too. Overall, you’re flying blind.
This game was my first introduction to The Elder Scrolls, and it was a rough one. I had never been in a world like this before. It was so big, and so intimidating, that I didn’t know where to even start.
It might not look that impressive today, but in many ways, this game started the open world, modern RPG. This can be frustrating, to say the least, but if you push through the brutal learning phase, you’ll be rewarded with one of the deepest RPGs of all time.
10 Best Games Like Kingdom Come Deliverance
While there are few exact replicas of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, there are certainly a handful of games that can get the job done.
