RPG Types Explained: JRPG, ARPG, MMORPG, Gacha, Idle, Soulslike

Saying "I like RPGs" means more than you might think. One person pictures Dragon Quest, following a long story through turn-based battles; another pictures an MMORPG where dozens of players take down a boss together; and yet another pictures a mobile game where you pull and raise characters on your commute. They're all RPGs, but the way people enjoy them is completely different.

This post is a guide that gathers the many branches of RPGs in one place for comparison. We use tables to lay out what each subgenre is, how their combat and progression differ, and who they suit. How RPGs came about and reached where they are today is covered chronologically in The History of RPGs, so here we focus on "classification." Each branch is covered in more detail in its own post.

Definition and Core Appeal: What Makes an RPG an RPG

An RPG (role-playing game) is a game in which the player takes on the role of a character or party, explores a world, and grows stronger. No matter how different the branches are, most share the following elements:

• Progression: Characters grow stronger through experience points and levels, stats, and skills.
• Equipment and items: Weapons, armor, and consumables change the outcome of battles.
• Numbers affect outcomes: It's not only the player's dexterity but also the character's stats that decide victory or defeat.
• World and story: Quests and stories give you a reason to explore.

Subgenres diverge based on which of these elements they emphasize, how they handle combat, and how many people play together. Broadly, they can be divided along three axes:

1. Combat style: Is it turn-based, real-time, tactical on a grid, or automatic?
2. Story and freedom: Do you follow a set story or create your own?
3. Play format: Do you play alone, together at a large scale, or in short, frequent sessions?

Origins: From One Root to Many Branches

The root of all RPGs is the 1974 tabletop game Dungeons & Dragons. It moved to American universities and home computers in the 1970s and '80s, becoming Rogue, Wizardry, and Ultima, and in Japan, console RPGs emerged using these as models. Branches then extended one after another: one that chose real-time combat (action RPGs), one that chose tactical combat (tactics RPGs), one that gathered many people over the internet (MMORPGs), and ones tailored to mobile (gacha and idle). For a detailed look at the flow by era, see The History of RPGs.

RPG Subgenres at a Glance

Key Points by Branch

Story-Driven: JRPGs and Western RPGs

The oldest distinction is between JRPGs and Western RPGs. Ultima and Wizardry on American PCs in the 1980s were the starting point, and when Dragon Quest appeared in Japan in 1986 using them as models, the two branches were born.

• JRPGs are often games in which a party of protagonists with set names and personalities follows a dramatic story. Turn-based command battles, bright colors, and anime-style characters are common traits.
• Western RPGs tend to let the player create their own character, branch the story through dialogue and choices, and allow free exploration of a vast world. CRPGs such as Baldur's Gate, which adapted tabletop RPG rules, and open-world RPGs such as Skyrim are representative.

That said, this distinction only describes tendencies. There are RPGs with high freedom in Japan too, and many Western RPGs that follow a set story. Recently, Western games using JRPG-style turn-based combat, such as the French-made Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, have also achieved great success.

Feel-Driven: Action RPGs and Soulslikes

Action RPGs are RPGs in which you fight directly in real time without waiting for turns. They began with Japan's Hydlide and Dragon Slayer in 1984, and Diablo in 1996 established the "hack and slash" style of cutting down hordes of enemies and picking up items from a quarter-view perspective. Most of today's large open-world games take the form of action RPGs.

Soulslikes are a subgenre of action RPGs that began with Demon's Souls in 2009 and Dark Souls in 2011. They are characterized by high difficulty, a structure where you learn and advance with each death, sparse checkpoints, and stories told through the environment rather than words. Both use real-time combat, but where action RPGs put weight on "the thrill of growing stronger," soulslikes put weight on "the satisfaction of overcoming."

People-Driven: MMORPGs

MMORPGs are RPGs in which hundreds or thousands of people play together in a single persistent world. Ultima Online (1997), Korea's The Kingdom of the Winds (1996) and Lineage (1998), and World of Warcraft (2004) laid the foundations of the genre. Role division among tanks, healers, and damage dealers, raids that dozens of players take on together, sieges between guilds, and economies where players buy and sell from each other are kinds of fun not found in other RPGs. In Korea, the genre grew up alongside PC bang culture, and today mobile MMORPGs also make up a large share.

Time- and Monetization-Driven: Gacha and Idle

The two branches that grew significantly in the mobile era are distinguished less by combat style and more by "how you play and how they make money."

• Gacha RPGs are games where you pull and collect various characters, then build and raise a team. New characters are mainly obtained through random draws (gacha). After Puzzle & Dragons in 2012, they became the central genre of the Japanese and Korean mobile markets, and Genshin Impact in 2020 combined them with open-world action. In Korea, disclosing the odds of loot box-style items became a legal requirement in March 2024.
• Idle RPGs are games where characters fight and grow on their own whether you leave the game running or turn it off. Starting from incremental games such as Progress Quest (2002) and Cookie Clicker (2013), they evolved into RPGs with auto-battling and progress-reset (prestige) structures.

The two branches are often mixed. Gacha RPGs add idle rewards, or idle RPGs add character pulls.

Strategy-Driven: Tactics RPGs

Tactics RPGs (SRPGs) are RPGs in which you fight by moving units one square at a time on a grid like a chessboard. Fire Emblem in 1990 created the template for Japanese-style SRPGs, and X-COM in 1994 created the template for Western-style squad tactics. The core appeal is making moves one at a time while weighing movement and attack ranges, terrain elevation, and victory conditions. They resemble JRPGs in that you can win with your head even without quick hands, but combat carries much more weight.

Repeated-Attempt-Driven: Roguelikes and Survivors-Likes

Some branches split off from RPGs and became independent genres.

• Roguelikes and roguelites take their name from Rogue in 1980. You take on dungeons generated fresh each time, and if you die, you start over from the beginning. Recent roguelites let you keep some progression even after a run ends.
• Survivors-likes are a genre popularized by Vampire Survivors in 2022. Your character attacks automatically, and you move around and choose upgrades at each level-up to survive waves of enemies for 15 to 30 minutes. In 2026, Steam set "Bullet Heaven" as the official tag for this genre.

Key Titles That Started Each Branch

Who It's For: Choosing the Right RPG

Design Points: Different Challenges for Each Branch

From the developer's side, each branch has different problems to solve.

• JRPGs and tactics RPGs face the challenge of giving combat choices meaning and reducing grinding.
• Action RPGs and soulslikes depend on impactful hits, fair difficulty, and a tangible sense that progression changes combat.
• MMORPGs carry the problems of a "service": balancing solo and group play, the in-game economy, and server operations.
• Gacha and idle RPGs hinge on balancing the progression curve, the business model, and player trust.
• Roguelikes and survivors-likes live or die by combinations that change every run and the polish of each short run.

Today: RPGs with Blurring Boundaries

Today's RPGs often don't fit neatly into a single box. Genshin Impact is both an open-world action RPG and a gacha RPG, and Elden Ring is both a soulslike and an open-world RPG. Halls of Torment dressed a survivors-like in the atmosphere of a Diablo-style action RPG, and mobile MMORPGs have adopted the auto-hunting of idle games.

So it's best to use subgenre names as a starting point for describing games rather than as "the right answer." Whether you're choosing a game or making one, asking "What kind of combat does this game have, how do you progress, and how long and with whom do you play?" makes it easy to see which branch the game is closest to.

References

• Role-playing video game – Wikipedia
• History of Eastern role-playing video games – Wikipedia
• Action role-playing game – Wikipedia
• Massively multiplayer online role-playing game – Wikipedia
• Gacha game – Wikipedia
• Tactical role-playing game – Wikipedia
• Soulslike – Wikipedia
• Incremental game – Wikipedia