The Elder Scrolls 6 seems like a game that is still very far away, despite its initial teaser trailer releasing seven years ago. Thankfully, in the seemingly infinite time between the next Elder Scrolls game’s launch, there are other great RPG titles you should try. Many games similar to the series are even free on platforms like Steam, providing you with great experiences only a download away.
With even release date leaks for Elder Scrolls 6 marking the game as far off as 2028, your next open-world RPG fix should come from somewhere else for now. Some MMORPGs and other traditional fantasy RPGs will provide closer experiences, albeit with their own quirks and features. Even some games from the series’ past might be worth trying, especially if they don’t cost anything to play.
Shroud Of The Avatar: Forsaken Virtues
Single And Multiplayer Fantasy RPG With Lots Of Freedom
Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues is a fantasy RPG that shares many similarities to the Elder Scrolls games, even if it takes a massively online multiplayer approach to some of its systems. This game allows you to create a custom character without a standard RPG class or job, giving you a degree of freedom to find your own playstyle as you go about your journey.
Unlike other MMORPGs, Shroud of the Avatar can be played completely offline in single-player content. You can still interact with the works of other players, though, such as vendors, houses, and player-owned towns.
This is extraordinarily close to The Elder Scrolls‘ approach to character creation, where an initial foundation doesn’t lock or restrict too many abilities from the start. In Shroud of the Avatar, your character build comes more from experimentation than optimization of something pre-selected. With a fantasy story and open-world freedom, fans of Bethesda’s work will feel right at home within this game.
Soda Dungeon 2
Collect Loot In Dungeon Crawling Adventures
Fantasy RPGs can be quite overwhelming time-sinks sometimes, so a title like Soda Dungeon 2 can offer you the same vibe without too much pressure. This title is a dungeon crawler RPG, where you assemble a team of unique adventurers to brave the dangers of a dungeon to loot its treasures. Much like the earliest Elder Scrolls games, this game is quite straightforward, as gaining money, gear, and a stronger arsenal are keys to success.
As your recruited party members keep bringing back treasure, you can use that loot to flesh out a fantastic home base. Building a huge tavern is a huge part of Soda Dungeon 2, as you can unlock a variety of new NPCs who can help unlock your party’s potential. The option to auto-battle to save time in this game also adds to its replayability, letting you get to content your interested in faster.
This game also features cross-platform systems, which help save your progress anywhere. From mobile devices to PC on Steam, you’ll be able to access your world in Soda Dungeon 2 no matter how you play.
Experience The Past To Get More Excited About The Future
One of the best free adventures like any Elder Scrolls game is, well, The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall, the second title in the series. Completely free on Steam, players can experience an early entry in the franchise that shows the growth of Bethesda’s later works. Both this game and The Elder Scrolls: Arena cost nothing to download, making them unique games to play without any investment.
Daggerfall is far more linear than the open world adventures of The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind or Oblivion. As a dungeon crawler RPG, this game follows sees your Champion try to find an ancient weapon that could decide the fate of Tamriel. Careful exploration and fighting monsters dominate the entirety of this game, but despite its age, it offers an interesting insight into early systems that would remain throughout every Elder Scrolls title.
The 4th Coming
The 4th Coming is similar to Shroud of the Avatar, with characters having no “classes” that define their builds and abilities. However, this game differs by having a much larger open world to explore, rivaling the likes of Skyrim in its attention to detail. A multitude of characters, enemies, and quests are available for you to discover, creating a journey that can span hundreds of hours.
One of the more appealing aspects of this game is an in-game trade system entirely driven by its community. The marketplace is run by players, which coincides with regular updates to stay engaged with new content.
Dungeons provide great realms of combat and loot, but an unexpected shared quality between this MMORPG and The Elder Scrolls is how both approach factions. During your adventures in The 4th Coming, you can join different groups of characters to unlock new questlines and content, much like the many appealing groups in Bethesda’s games. While there might not be a Dark Brotherhood, the right bonds might help create a more memorable experience.
Dark And Darker
Promising Early Access Title For Hardcore RPG Fans
The first-person element of The Elder Scrolls is emulated well in Dark and Darker, a multiplayer RPG where you and your friends can delve into dangerous dungeons. While this game does have combat very close to something like Skyrim‘s, it is far more punishing, with difficult challenges that manifest in areas that carry huge risk and huge reward at the same time.
The devil is in the details within Dark and Darker, whose mechanics are close to the stealth classic Thief. Every light, sound, and attack you make must be deliberate if you and your friends have any hope of surviving its brutal dungeons. As a PvPvE game, everything could be a danger, including other adventurer players.
With multiple classes to select, the Early Access version of this game offers a lot to enjoy, especially for those looking for extra RPG difficulty. No two runs into the dungeons are the same, forcing you to adjust and adapt to new circumstances to get the best loot and rewards possible from winning fights in your explorations.
Path Of Exile
Unlimited Character Customization For Endless Opportunity
Path of Exile may not be as big as Path of Exile 2, but this free RPG offers something that Bethesda rarely does — complete and total freedom over what your character can do. This RPG is infamous for having an insanely huge skill tree for any given character, allowing you to build them out in nearly infinite ways. With nearly no restriction on your character’s skills, you don’t have to commit to certain skills as much as you would in The Elder Scrolls.
For those looking for a greater challenge, Path of Exile offers a Ruthless mode, where item drops are fewer, crafting is limited, and other changes alter the gameplay to be much harder. For fans of older Elder Scrolls games, this can be a perfect setting.
Many different missions and hundreds of varied world Atlas maps give you endless chances to test out your complex character builds. Much like The Elder Scrolls, finding the best perks and passive bonuses can truly unlock Path of Exile‘s combat, making you feel powerful throughout any enemy encounter. While more of a hack-and-slash rather than an open-world RPG, plenty of exploration will help locate secrets to flesh out your character further.
Runeflame
Story-Driven Adventure With Fantasy Puzzles And Interpersonal Conflicts
Those who enjoy the characters of The Elder Scrolls games may have to take a look at Runeflame, a free title that prioritizes interactions with characters over open world exploration or combat. This top-down adventure puzzle RPG places you in a world mired in conflict, with people fighting spirits at every turn. Your character starts their journey trapped, with only their wits and skills with a bow allowing them to claw their way toward freedom.
There are four unique fantasy races in Runeflame you can choose from, with each offering an adventure different from one another. Each origin acts as a standalone journey, with its own secrets to unlock to progress your way forward. Although in Early Access, the riddles and interactions with characters in this game reveal more about the world, crafting an interesting setting you’ll want to dive into.
Allods Online
Sci-Fi And Fantasy Combine Into Many Fantastic Worlds
Few RPGs have a setting as interesting as Elder Scrolls‘ Tamriel, but Allods Online comes close. This MMORPG places you in the world of Sarnaut, where a Great Cataclysm a thousand years ago sundered the land into nearly infinite floating islands called Allods. These islands are spread apart throughout a dreamlike space, where only special ships can travel.
The ships of Allods Online look like something that would come out of a Starfinder TTRPG game, almost possessing a sci-fi quality you may see in a Dune novelization.
Each Allod offers something new, with each island world having its own appeal. Fans who loved traveling across Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim‘s open worlds might also find the same fascination in certain Allods’ environments. You and your friends can even participate in huge duels between starships that travel between Allods, adding massive warfare to the typical RPG mechanics you’ll still use to flesh out an interesting character.
Eternium
Snowballing Battles That Test Your RPG Experience
Eternium is a game “crafted by old-school RPG fans,” offering a free, straightforward experience that is easy to pick up and enjoy. As a traditional RPG, your journey starts with simple choices between a character class and their starting weapon. When you choose your playstyle this way, you proceed into various dungeon-like settings, traveling through everything from barren canyons to desolate forests.
Each class’ skills lend to how you play, from the Warrior’s ability to wield multiple weapons to another class being one of the only ones who can use a shield. This creates multiple ways to approach combat, which is fast-paced like other great hack-and-slash RPGs. The tactical fights in Eternium slowly ramp up in difficulty, rewarding players who master their abilities to delve deep enough to face the game’s biggest challenges.
Pale Abyss
Old-School Exploration That Returns To The Elder Scrolls’ Roots
Even though it is currently just a small demo, Pale Abyss is a fantastic RPG that goes back to the era of the first Elder Scrolls. The Elder Scrolls: Arena was released in the same year as King’s Field, the game that would later inspire the Dark Souls series. While both franchises went in completely different directions, both the original titles had strong similarities that combine somewhat in Pale Abyss‘s short and impactful runtime.
Much like Elder Scrolls games, Pale Abyss is a first-person adventure that has you journey across a vast world. Here, you’ll have to find whatever resources you can to survive, from rusty weapons to scarce spells across the land. The old-school aesthetics of this game are present the most in its graphics, which can be compared to the original Elder Scrolls: Arena or Daggerfall in how they are presented in gameplay.
Modern gameplay changes offer the best of both worlds in Pale Abyss, with CRT-esque graphics combining with gameplay you might find in The Elder Scrolls 6 whenever it does end up releasing.
Multiple starting character classes allow you to customize your adventure, with ways to level them up as you grow stronger. This game is almost like a combination of Skyrim and Demon’s Souls, putting together different ideas in a short but strong adventure. The haunting world invites you to explore every corner, while multiple tools give you many ways to approach fights as you face new enemies.
The many options available in Pale Abyss makes it a game you’ll likely play over and over after completing it. The many secrets it hides may not be in the form of quests or open world content, but its choices are more in line with earlier iterations of The Elder Scrolls franchise. As a result, looking back at the series’ origins can help make The Elder Scrolls 6 wait much more bearable.
- Released
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2026
- ESRB
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m
- Developer(s)
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Bethesda Game Studios
- Publisher(s)
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Bethesda Softworks