Highlights

  • Cat Quest 2
    offers a unique, easy-going fantasy adventure on iPad with adorable characters and inviting world design.
  • Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance
    brings vibrant, gory visuals and engaging storytelling to the iPad, with deep roots in tabletop gaming.
  • Diablo Immortal
    brings full-featured hack-and-slash action and deep lore to the iPad, catering to both casual and seasoned gamers.



While the name may seem restrictive, gameplay-wise, action role-playing games come in many different shapes and sizes. Whether players are wading their way through oceans of enemies or methodically plodding past a particularly difficult boss, the genre can humble some of the best of us.

Related

8 Best iOS Games Published By Square Enix, Ranked

While Square Enix’s initial forays into mobile gaming weren’t great, they’ve since added a ton of classic games to the App Store, optimized for iOS.

However, if casual or seasoned gamers are looking to slow things down a bit, and they happen to own an iPad, an ARPG might just be the way to go. Yes, on the surface, it may seem like a tablet’s graphical capabilities might hold a game back, but look a little deeper and players will undoubtedly find games that overcome those minor limitations. What follows are some of the best ARPGs playable on the iPad.


5 Cat Quest 2

Metascore: N/A

Two cats in swimsuits standing by a river


Cat Quest II
Released
September 24, 2019

Developer(s)
The Gentlebros

Genre(s)
Adventure , Action RPG

What Makes This Action RPG For iPads Great?

  • Unique presentation of its world.
  • Laid-back adventure gameplay.

Cat Quest 2’s esthetic is essentially as if an entire game took place on an overworld map, with a solid amount of dungeon crawling for good measure. The cat and dog player character designs are adorable, something that is in stark contrast with the game’s story involving a large amount of political intrigue.

The game features some serviceable gear and stat management to make traveling through its inviting world worth it. Players looking for an easy-going fantasy adventure can find their place here, while those looking for some incredibly deep systems should probably look elsewhere.

4 Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance

Metascore: N/A


Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance
Released
December 2, 2001

Genre(s)
Action RPG , Hack and Slash

What Makes This Action RPG For iPads Great?

  • A style of storytelling that translates well from the tabletop game.
  • Vibrantly and gory visuals to enjoy.

Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance is a quest of massive proportions from the perspective of a band of unlikely heroes, much like the Dungeons and Dragons stories that it hails from. Meanwhile, the game’s simple Action RPG nature makes for some deceptively easy combat, though it also made an eventual port to iOS a shoe-in.

Throughout the player’s questing, many monstrous enemies come at them at once, and their slayings leave piles of carcasses wherever the party goes, something that is vibrantly realized on an iPad screen. Then there’s the inventory management, which has players wading through shop menus and loading up on gold at all times. It all adds up to a game that has withstood the test of time, as well as its porting to iOS nearly two decades after its initial release.


3 Diablo Immortal

Metascore: 67

Diablo Immortal
Released
June 2, 2022

Genre(s)
Action RPG

What Makes This Action RPG For iPads Great?

  • Full-featured Diablo game.
  • Adds to the franchise’s deep, overarching lore.

Diablo Immotal does a great job at bringing the frenetic, loot-centric, hack-and-slash combat that the series is known for to a smaller scale. Just like it’s bigger brothers on PC and consoles, the game has players create a character out of one of a handful of classic Diablo classes in order to take on hordes of ghouls, monsters, and demonic spawn with the player’s weapon of choice.


2:13

Related

Diablo 4: Hardest Classes To Master, Ranked

These classes in Diablo 4 can be incredibly tough to master, even for experienced players.

The game features everything from PVP to PVE combat, bringing it even more in-line with other Diablo games. In this way, it quite easily makes a claim for itself as a must-play for fans of the series, especially when it adds a ton of lore that fans of this universe shouldn’t miss.

2 Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition

Metascore: 79

Platform(s): Nintendo Switch, Android, Playstation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, iOS

Released: 2018-02-07

Developer(s): Square Enix, SummerTimeStudio

Genre(s): Action RPG, Action-Adventure

What Makes This Action RPG For iPads Great?

  • A condensed, but still epic, story.
  • The same fun real-time combat as its console version.

As divisive as Final Fantasy 15 is, Pocket Edition cuts out all the fat, leaving the original game’s epic story exactly the way that it was. As an added bonus, and keeping in line with many other mobile games, the world of Eos is presented in a super cutesy way.


Related

Final Fantasy 16: 7 Best Eikon Builds

Eikons can be immense sources of power in Final Fantasy 16, and here are the best ways to use them.

While smaller, a lot of the fun changes to the Final Fantasy formula that 15 introduced, like the transition to real-time combat, or the banter between Noctis and the gang, are still present here. That’s all to say, Pocket Edition is just a much more digestible version of one of the more underrated entries in this long-running franchise.

1 Genshin Impact

Metascore: 82

Genshin Impact
Released
September 28, 2020

What Makes This Action RPG For iPads Great?

  • Addicting gacha mechanics.
  • Beautifully rendered attacks and environments.

Genshin Impact took the world by storm, making Gacha a world-wide phenomenon. Thankfully, the game that this addictive feature is attached to is an enjoyable one, with continued updates constantly giving players new stuff to do and see. Things like new amazingly-detailed areas in the open-world to explore, as well as more characters to unlock and take on new challenges with.


Related

Genshin Impact: 14 Best Female Character Designs

Stylish and complementary, these designs capture the personalities of these Genshin Impact characters.

In fact, combat is probably the most fulfilling part of Genshin Impact, since every character has their own unique personality, shown mainly by the way they dispatch their foes. Their differing elemental affinities also play a major role in their effectiveness in specific combat situations. That said, whether players are slicing through a slime with their blade or blowing away an automoton in a spectacular display of particle effects (rendered exceptionally well on a tablet screen), there is something here for everyone.

More

7 Best Horror Games On iPad

For players who are always on the go, these horror games run great on iPad, and are perfect for getting in a quick scare over lunch or on the bus.

Share.
Exit mobile version