Discover the Best Medieval Open World Games for Immersive Quests, Conquests and Survival
The medieval period, with its knights in clanking armor, sinister castles, bloody battlefields and backstabbing political intrigue has held a timeless fascination for people across eras. Gaming has tapped into this interest with a host of open world RPGs and sandboxes that let you loose in meticulously-crafted medieval worlds full of danger, surprises and memorable stories at every corner.
These games showcase the Sword and Sorcery appeal of the era with their focus on visceral close-quarters combat, perilous journeys across untamed landscapes, occupations like hunting and crafting to stay alive, and periodically defending your settlement from invasions by bandits, supernatural foes or warring lords.
But beyond these common medieval aspects, each offers its own unique style – be it the unforgiving survival focus of Life is Feudal, the historically authentic Kingdom Come: Deliverance or the high fantasy dragon riding antics of Skyrim.
So let‘s look at some of the best open world games that let you live out your medieval dreams, whatever they may be.
Immersive Storylines and Blood-Pumping Combat in the Gothic Series
The Gothic series from German developer Piranha Bytes is considered cult classics by RPG fans, though they remain obscure to the wider gaming community. These ambitious open world fantasies drop players into lived-in worlds full of secrets and let them uncover quests at their own pace.
Gothic 1 and 2 received almost universal praise for their responsive melee combat systems, atmospheric settings like abandoned mines full of secrets, and most all – not holding your hand! The Gothic games are brutally challenging, with players starting out as nearly helpless prisoners who must train hard to survive against wild animals, bandits and demons.
I still have fond memories of Gothic 2 dropping me into a vibrant medieval world and challenging me to sink or swim. The forests brimmed with threats like wolves, bandits and orcs who could easily overwhelm my feeble warrior in the early days. But bit by bit, I toughed it out taking quests to gain gold, better gear and lessons in fighting styles, eventually growing into a battle-hardened veteran feared across the land!
The world design stands out in how areas subtly connect through cliffsides and secret mountain passes, lending a sense of true exploration. Just when you think you‘ve uncovered most secrets, you chance upon new questlines sprawling into unexpected places. It felt so easy to get wonderfully lost on the journey.
Later games like Gothic 3 and Risen retained a lot of the formula while transitioning to full 3D open worlds full of forests, mountains and medieval cities. These sandboxes offer 100s of hours of adventure as you take sides in conflicts, build reputation with factions to learn skills and take down monumental threats like dragons. Gothic 3‘s world reportedly spans 230 square kilometers featuring around 2200 NPCs across cities, mines and wilderness – making it one of the largest sandbox maps of the era.
Conquer Kingdoms in the Mount & Blade Series
The Mount & Blade series uniquely blends RPG progression with strategy, letting you rise from a wandering adventurer to conquering entire medieval kingdoms on your own terms.
These sandbox worlds focus on tense medieval warfare and thrilling sieges, though there‘s also ample room for adventuring, building reputation through heroic deeds and political intrigue. All the while you recruit followers, manage your party, gear up by trading and scavenge supplies to survive.
I‘ll never forget my early adventures riding alone through endless grasslands and deserts in search of bandit lairs to conquer, experiencing periods of hardship where my party and I starved camping through winters huddled around a fire under the clear stars. Yet we‘d share proud moments too like the first victory defending a village from raiders and rescuing farmers from slavery.
Mount & Blade: Warband brought in major improvements like multiplayer clans battling it out and options to become a merchant, tournament champion or cunning ruler. These sandboxes are rightly called medieval life simulators, capturing what living through those chaotic eras must have felt like.
The sprawling sequel Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord refines the formula to new heights with beautifully rendered locations like snow-capped mountains and coasts, massive castle sieges involving hundreds of soldiers and deep crafting systems essential to managing your party‘s upkeep.
Live an Authentic Medieval Life in Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Where most medieval RPGs embrace fantasy tropes with magical spells and mythical beasts, Kingdom Come: Deliverance goes all-in on realism and authenticity. This uniquely satisfying game is set in a stunning open world recreation of 15th century Bohemia, grounded in real history throughout.
Instead of chopping up mythical foes, the combat focuses on mastering moves like timed parries, clinches and aimed strikes with period-accurate swords, maces, axes and polearms. The branching quests feature no black and white morality, while activities like reading, weapon/armor maintenance and cooking are essential parts of daily medieval life.
The attention to detail brings the era to life with Latin church songs, Renaissance era classical music and city markets full of period goods like charcoal, wheat, wine, linen and horse hides. It‘s an open world RPG that history buffs can easily get lost in!
| Game | Map Size | Era Represented | Key Features |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kingdom Come | 16km^2 | 15th Century CE | Realistic combat, activities like hunting, cooking, alchemy reflect daily medieval life. Quests based on actual events and figures from Holy Roman Empire circa 1403 AD set in Kingdom of Bohemia |
| The Witcher 3 | 136km^2 | Dark fantasy | Rich lush forests, towered castles, gritty towns, and sheer scale of open world. Mature storylines (heavily based on author Andrzeji Sapkowski‘s novels) woven into quests with consequential choices |
| Skyrim | 37.1km^2 | High fantasy | Handcrafted world rewarding exploration with hidden surprises beyond quests like environmental storytelling in dungeons tied to past civilizations |
| Dragon Age: Origins | NA | Dark fantasy | Memorable companions with distinct personalities and ideologies. Choices shape their fates and kingdom‘s future trajectory in profound ways |
Slay Dragons and Save Skyrim in Bethesda‘s Epic
It‘s impossible to talk medieval games without the cultural phenomenon that is The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. In many ways the quintessential open world RPG, it builds on Bethesda‘s pedigree of letting you freely adventure and make your own path in the kingdom of Skyrim‘s rugged wilderness, ancient crypts, towering peaks and icy tundra.
I‘ll never forget emerging from the first cave having narrowly slain the dragon there, only to gaze upon miles of breathtaking high-fantasy landscape open for me to explore without boundaries. It kickstarted a personal journey spanning hundreds of hours filled with triumphant battles against the undead protecting buried secrets, days spent leisurely gathering ingredients for crafting potions and soups, joining warrior guilds and eventually rising to become leader of most factions like the assassin brotherhood Dark Brotherhood and noblemen College of Winterhold.
Quests subtly push you to delve deep into handcrafted dungeons like dwemer mechanical cities and hidden vampire towers brimming with environmental details that reveal sinister pasts. The hours melt away wandering lonely ice caverns as notes and diaries subtly hint at expeditions gone horribly wrong.
Beyond the much-memed dragon slaying, Skyrim‘s expansive quest design stands out for its intriguing multi-part storylines which touch on moral dilemmas over 10-30 hours. Each location tells environmental stories or sets side quests stemming from regional politics, family secrets or magical events tied to Skyrim’s history. While the base game offers over 150 dungeons and 300 hours of content, mods released since 2011 have kept this masterpiece feeling fresh nearly a decade later.
Survive Harsh Winters and Viking Raids in Medieval Village Sim Life is Feudal
Many open world games use medieval villages as pretty background scenery. Life is Feudal puts running one at the heart of the experience, and the realistic hardship faced in the era. This PC exclusive challenges you to grow, manage and defend a fledgling settlement across changing seasons and years.
Beginning with clearing thick forests and building lumber cottages, you assign villagers to essential tasks like hunting, mining, farming crops, raising livestock, cooking, tool-crafting from resources like iron ingots and leather scraps and standing guard.
Natural disasters like blizzards can wreck food supplies while roaming bandits and bloodthirsty wildlife pose constant threats. The sky is the limit as you research technology to transform log homes into walled towns and stone keeps bustling with trade.
But make even one mistake like stocking inadequate foods or medicine come winter and you face complete societal collapse! It captures how living in the medieval age where death, disease and starvation lurked one bad crop season away. This granular village management sim delivers a unique addictive high.
Survival city builder games like Going Medieval and Foundation are worth checking out for the settlement defense tactics against supernatural raids. But Life is Feudal raises the stakes to new intensity across vivid seasons.
Shape an Epic Fantasy Saga in Dragon Age Series
Bioware are masters of choice-driven roleplaying epics, and Dragon Age remains one of gaming‘s best medieval fantasy franchises for its memorable characters and world reacting to your actions.
As the newly inducted Grey Warden, I faced off against the demonic Darkspawn invasion that threatened the kingdom of Ferelden. But that was just the start of an winding branching adventure spanning political tensions between races like Elves and Dwarves to mage rights issues involving the brutality of Templars against sorcerers like Morridgan and Lelliana, extremely well written companions with layered histories who challenge your ideologies. Their stories became so compelling, I couldn‘t bear but save them from grim fates in Dragon Age 2 by carrying over data.
These games encourage mixing combat styles and skill combinations within parties. Frontline beserker warriors can lock down demonic Darkspawn while you flank with assassin rogues or bombard from the backlines with elemental spells.The choice driven narratives keep things compelling across 100+ hours.
Live the Assassin Fantasy in Historical Settings
The Assassin‘s Creed franchise stands out among open world games for its sprawling historical sandbox maps like Renaissance Italy, Ptolemaic Egypt, Pelopenessian War-era Greece and Viking Age England. You get to freely run across these full-scale locales while taking part in seminal moments.
A key part of fulfilling the power fantasy comes from the incredibly rich visual detail in these renditions that bring history alive in vivid ways no Hollywood set piece could match. Ubisoft developers leverage everything from archived paintings and illustrations to LiDar scans of topography to recreate how locales actually looked at these peak eras.
You can get lost for hours just people watching as hundreds of rural villagers fill dirt streets of Constantinople debating wars, guards make the daily bazaar rounds while wealthy nobility strut in expensive Roman-Greco attire. It feels like time-traveling through a lived-in world rather than a static backrop.
And what fantasy could beat being a stealthy hooded Assassin, silently infiltrating castles with hidden blades and parkour before striking fear in the hearts of corrupt templar targets! Whether you directly engage as a Viking raider in Valhalla or become Ezio the smooth-talking noble mixing in high society, these games make history both educational and personal in vivid ways no school textbook can.
The visual splendor, conspiracy-laden narratives spanning eras and RPG progression systems will keep you hooked. You‘ll inevitably want to delve into the mammoth worlds of succeeding games once the credits roll on your first.
Test Your Mettle in For Honor’s Bloody Multiplayer Medieval Battles
Live out those Game of Thrones styled fantasies in For Honor, whether as gritty Viking Raiders, chivalrous Knights or deadly Samurai backed by ancient Eastern magic in this PvP slasher. The Art of Battle system still remains unmatched in how it delivers heavy, crunchy medieval melee combat.
There’s weighty feedback as steel blades glance off armor or cut chunks of flesh. Duels seem like fierce life-and-death skirmish rather than memorizing which buttons to spam. You also control direction of attacks and blocks alongside mindgames like feints and deflecting blows away just in time before that warhammer fractures your skull!
Maps range from Viking Strongholds to Samurai palaces and Knightly Cathedrals, including deadly environmental traps to kick enemies off ramparts into rivers or spikes below for an execution bonus! Matches reward technical mastery alongside strategy like dominating zones. I‘ll never forget the rush of my first multiplayer duel, frantically blocking and dodging strikes from a more experienced opponent before finally baiting him into rolling off a cliff!
Wage Thrilling Sieges in Chivalry 2
This multiplayer offers a similar skill-based melee combat focus but on a far grander 64 player scale, truly capturing the chaos of epic medieval battles from the frontlines. There’s nothing like Chivalry 2 in the way it immerses through its blood-soaked slaughter across sprawling castle siege layouts.
Frantic battles unfold with allies rallying a charge as deadly arrows rain past you or enemy cavalry breaking through defenses. Up close steel clashes against steel, whether you cleave off limbs with the longsword or smash skulls using the crude clubs of peasants pressed into service. Catapults and ballistae fill the air with screams of dying soldiers blown apart by the impacts.
Rush in with the Battlecry ability to inspire your comrades while slicing through the sea of bodies chokepoint by chokepoint. Coordinate tactics like flanking maneuvers or using healers and engineers to repair your siege towers. It‘s easy to lose hours storming these fortresses one gory battle after another!
Delve Into More Best Medieval Games Offerings
Beyond the big names, a rising crop of indie games also look to realize specific medieval genres – be they pixelated old school RPG homages like Stoneshard or Ultima Ratio Regum with its focus on historical procedural generation and discoveries.
Survival city builder foundation games offer their own twists like Going Medieval‘s combination of fantasy creatures, catastrophic events alongside settlement simulation and defense tactics against raiders. Open world survival RPG Outward focuses on gritty exploration across wildlands scarred by magical catastrophes alongside dangerous diseases and corruption.
So there you go – the best open world video games where you can live out those medieval power fantasies. Whether you want to lose yourself sightseeing in photorealistic historical Cities or delve deep into handcrafted dungeons brimming with secrets – these immersive RPGs and sandboxes guarantee hundreds of gameplay hours.
Now‘s the time, go forth mighty adventurers and share what undiscovered stories or epic conquests await you in these virtual medieval worlds! The only limit is your imagination. I hope reading about the experiences I shared sparks that sense of wonder and feeds your appetite for adventure.
Let me know in the comments which of these transports you closest to the era and makes the hours fly past without noticing! There‘s just something magical about leaving modern life behind to live by sword, bow and honor during humanity‘s most glorious and turbulent chapters that no other setting captures.