2025’s Best Open-World & Story-Driven Chinese Games
The holidays are approaching, and are you struggling to find good games to play? The first half of 2025 promises an exciting lineup of games, ranging from domestic indie titles to AAA blockbusters, interactive cinematic experiences to open-world adventures, with a wealth of outstanding titles across all genres. Today, we’ve compiled a list of the most highly recommended games from the first half of 2025. Whether you prefer story-driven narratives, action-adventure, strategy card games, or open-world experiences, this list has something for everyone!
《Hongtu Guilai》: This MMORPG set in the Three Kingdoms era has a massive global fanbase. The game supports multi-language interfaces and real-time translation systems, making it easy for overseas players to team up and communicate. Built using next-gen engines, the game features stunning visuals and thrilling combat, making it perfect for fans of historical themes and team-based gameplay.
《North Liang’s Fierce Blade》: This open-world wuxia game is adapted from a popular online novel. Players can freely explore the vast martial arts world, experience rich storylines, and engage in thrilling martial arts duels. The game supports global servers with low latency for overseas players and offers complete multilingual support in English, Japanese, and other languages, allowing overseas players to deeply understand Chinese wuxia culture.
《Light and Shadow: Expedition 33》: This Japanese-style RPG developed by a French team has received overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam, with a 95% approval rating. The game features a traditional turn-based combat system combined with QTE mechanics. The storyline follows the protagonist, who has only one year left to live, as he attempts to defy fate and change his destiny. The artistic expression is exceptionally outstanding, making it an excellent example of the evolution of JRPGs in the new era.
In the first half of 2025, the game market showed a trend toward diversification. On one hand, no phenomenon-level works like “Black Myth: Wukong” have emerged, and the total revenue of the top 15 domestic games decreased by 50.87% year-over-year; on the other hand, works with sales exceeding 200,000 units saw a 40% year-over-year increase, with small-team works performing notably well.
From a genre perspective, interactive film-games continue to gain momentum, and socially conscious games are beginning to emerge; independent games are constantly pushing boundaries in gameplay innovation and art style; traditional AAA games are striving for perfection in visuals and technology. Regardless of your preferences, the first half of 2025 offers plenty of standout titles worth trying.
This holiday season, why not pick a few games from this list and embark on your digital adventure? Which game are you most interested in? Or which titles have you already experienced? Feel free to share your gaming experiences in the comments section!
