The 10 HARDEST PS5 RPGs

The 10 Hardest PS5 RPGs

Welcome to MojoPlays. The PS5 has no shortage of incredible RPGs to spend your time with, but these specific games will leave you role playing the victim.

“Clair Obscur: Expedition 33” (2025)

While most of Expedition 33 isn’t especially difficult unless you’re a masochistic and started out the game on the hardest difficulty, once you reach Act 3, the game takes the reins off and sets the Nevrons loose to crush what remains of your hopes and dreams. With numerous high-level areas now unlocked, you’ll be spending just as much time sending in your reserve team as you are seeing the “Expedition Failed” screen. Enemy attacks are more devastating, rewards are greatly diminished and if you haven’t been properly building your party, you’re going to have a hard time. Specific bosses are also unlocked with all new mechanics to contend with, and during some encounters you could spend half the fight waiting for your turn in this turn-based RPG. Act 3 is not for the faint hearted, and you’ll be laying quite the bloody path for those who come after.

“Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance” (2024)

The Shin Megami Tensei series has always had a much steeper learning curve than its Persona cousin, and while Vengeance offers more quality-of-life improvements than its original release, it retains its status as the true hardcore JRPG experience from developer Atlus. The series’ fifth entry immediately drops players into the deep end and offers them very little guidance in how to survive its world. Item and resource management are key as well as learning the game’s deep and demanding combat mechanics that don’t always directly instruct the player of their many nuances. The addition of recruiting demons to your party can directly affect the game’s difficulty as well. By building a well-rounded team, battles can be easier or more difficult, forcing you to constantly update your tactics and teams, but even with the best demons at your side, the game can still easily ramp up the difficulty with one high level encounter you’re completely unprepared for.

“The First Berserker: Khazan” (2025)

This one truly came out of nowhere this year and despite its anime cel shaded aesthetic, The First Berserker will brutalize anyone entering its world unprepared. With a surprising runtime that can take you upwards of 50 hours, almost half of that time will be spent looking at the title’s game over screen. As a souls-like, naturally The First Berserker was designed to offer a challenging experience, but even FromSoft shows more mercy on its players. With bosses that can take multiple hours to bring down, even the game’s basic enemies are waiting for the slightest opening to absolutely rock you. Even for seasoned Souls players, The First Berserker is a true test of your dodge, roll and parry techniques and will test your patience while also goading you on for just one more attempt.

“Path of Exile 2” (2024)

While modern Diablo is bending over backwards to bring in new and more casual players, Path of Exile 2 said to hell with that and crafted one of the most hardcore action RPGs of the generation. Action RPGs delight in throwing the player into swarms of enemies, and Path of Exile 2 demonstrates a masterclass of balancing overwhelming odds and giving the player just enough tools for their own survival. This isn’t to say that once you craft your perfect build, the game is going to be a cakewalk. Far from it, as the game will routinely humble the player with a dominating boss fight or a horde of dangerously overpowered enemies. Path of Exile 2 is not for the faint hearted and is a classic throwback to old school ARPGs that demanded the player lock in and be relentless in their fight for survival, because this game isn’t going to let you escape alive easily.

“Baldur’s Gate 3” (2023)

As any seasoned D&D player will tell you, it’s all too easy for a strategic run to devolve into absolute chaos. Although Baldur’s Gate 3 offers players near limitless options for customization and strategies for every encounter, you are still often at the mercy of the dice roll. With every encounter bringing its own set of new challenges, from new attack patterns, elements and abilities, things can easily become overwhelming, especially if you get so focused on planning your next move that the enemy wipes out your entire team while you are distracted. For even more of a challenge, give Honour Mode a try. This perma-death mode not only increases enemy strength and abilities but also their abundance, with even the most strategic and well laid plans being meaningless in the face of overwhelming odds that punish you for even the slightest slip-up.

“Kingdom Come: Deliverance II” (2025)

Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is designed to be as realistic as possible, and with everything from broken bones to hunger, thirst, and sleep meters to contend with, you truly feel as though you are role playing someone who struggles to make it from one day to the next. With minimal HUD, Kingdom Come 2 is brutal in its combat and gameplay mechanics, demanding you either learn or die, suffering debilitating consequences for letting your guard down for even a moment. The world of Kingdom Come 2 is enormous and with no fast travel. Even setting out from one village or kingdom to the neighboring one requires resource planning and a detailed route, lest you run into enemy encampments, wildlife, or even a surprise ravine which can leave you with broken bones, limping your way back to town. For added realism, or punishment, turn on the game’s permadeath for the ultimate immersive experience.

“Dragon’s Dogma 2” (2024)

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is as close as you can get to a Souls game without being one. Nearly every design decision in this game is crafted in such a way that it almost immediately weeds out the casual players with ease. However, it's this stalwart direction in its game design that makes it special. The more the game pushes back against the player, the greater the player’s resolve to continue despite all the obstacles in their way. And there are quite a lot of them. With no quest markers, limited fast travel, enemy encounters which can quickly spiral into a life-or-death situation, which becomes even deadlier once the sun goes down, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is not for the weak. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a true hardcore RPG experience, and alongside the recruitable NPC “Pawns” the game has a branching narrative which can lead to one of multiple endings depending on your actions.

“Pathlogic 2” (2020)

Few games are as demanding as Pathologic 2. Not only are you responsible for your own well-being, but your actions directly affect the residents of the town afflicted by the plague, which can result in entire areas of the town becoming overwhelmed and quarantined due to your choices. With realistic mechanics for hunger, sleep, thirst and even avoiding infection yourself, the fact that you also only have twelve days to cure the infection is only half the struggle. Time is not on your side due to the game’s time constraints and day/night cycle. You could inadvertently doom an entire district by missing an important character interaction, resulting in death and the loss of critical resources. Securing the resources becomes your main priority and concocting the cure itself is as difficult as you can imagine, with negative side effects not only resulting in loss of patients but also time as every second counts.

“Darkest Dungeon II” (2024)

Roguelikes are already a punishing genre to get into but adding in elements such as perma-death and a sanity meter is just diabolical. No matter how prepared you think you are for every dungeon run, the dungeon mocks you with its unpredictability. The turn-based combat is incredibly challenging and with numerous inflictions that carry over from one encounter to the next, it's no wonder members of your party can become too stressed to even function properly during combat. Even the most well equipped and high-level character can easily be wiped out in an instant, leaving you with a severely unprepared team to anguish in bitter defeat as the remaining party is systematically eliminated one by one. The only relief is exiting the dungeon, but even this can be treacherous as the game revels in ambushing the player in their weakest moments.

“Elden Ring” (2022)

We’d be remiss if we didn’t include at least one FromSoft game on our list and by far, Elden Ring offers the greatest challenge in the studio’s catalog. The more you explore The Lands Between the more the game punishes your curiosity with each new area introducing new and more demented creatures and enemies for the player to contend with while demanding they “Git Gud” to keep going. Although Elden Ring offers players more ways than ever to approach the game’s open world, the bosses remain the true test of the player’s skill. With a whopping 238 bosses to make you question your life choices, with many of them just roaming the open world itself, you never truly know when you’re about to get your ass kicked until the beatdown has already begun. The recent expansion Shadow of the Erdtree somehow even managed to up the difficulty even higher, further separating the Souls veterans from the casuals.

Which RPG forced you into playing the role of a corpse more times than you could count? Share your experiences in the comments.