Cyberpunk 2077: Open-World RPGs With Better Customization, Ranked

In the open-world RPG genre, Cyberpunk 2077 is among the strongest offerings for players looking for extensive customization. Even if it's lacking in certain areas, CP2077 goes to admirable lengths overall, fueled by years of free updates (like the new 2.5 update) and robust mod support. Limited body sculpting, the lack of clothing dyes, and rather bare-bones interior and vehicle personalization hold it back, yet it now offers everything from cosmetic arm cyberware and wardrobe transmog to paint schemes for vehicles.

Nevertheless, certain games can outshine even Cyberpunk 2077 by offering more flexibility throughout the playthrough. From more robust character creators to detailed arsenal customization and unmatched freedom in designing your own home or base, these open-world RPGs beat CP2077 in specific areas.

7 Dragon Age: Inquisition

If Only The Mounts Were Decent

Customization-wise, Dragon Age: Inquisition is perhaps the richest game in BioWare’s history, combining numerous systems you can deeply personalize. It might be less extensive overall than some options below, yet there are few annoying limitations stopping you from tweaking your character, gear, or base. Well, maybe mounts, which are absolutely atrocious in this game.

Dragon Age: Inquisition has multiple playable races, each with its own build, alongside haircuts, tattoos, and more. That’s just the start, as the robust gear system soon takes center stage, making the hunt for new materials and schematics worthwhile. Weapon and armor crafting depends on materials with different tiers and properties, letting you tailor equipment through your choice of resources, upgrades, and color tinting. Needless to say, you also have several companions to create unique gear for. Later, Skyhold adds fortress decorations to the mix, from banners and furnishings to cultural styles.

One of my favorite moments in Inquisition is actually tied to character personalization: you can have Solas remove your elven character’s facial tattoos during his romance for a specific lore reason. It creates a deeply personal moment around a seemingly unimportant trait you chose in the creator without a second thought.

6 V Rising

From Skills To Castles

Like Inquisition, V Rising might not blow your mind with a single customizable aspect done head and shoulders better than anywhere else, yet its combination of systems that keep meaningfully evolving deserves praise. From equipment and spells to castles, there’s enough flexibility to shape how your vampire and their lair look and feel.

V Rising’s creator has enough options to make a distinctive vampire: preset faces, hairstyles, accessories, and more. It won’t beat Cyberpunk 2077 directly, as there’s no real face or body sculpting, and the options are fairly standard. Once equipment comes into play, though, appearance overrides, individual dye palettes, sets, and ancestral weapons let you personalize your vampire lord, while spell Jewels alter your abilities. Designing your hideout across multiple floors, gardens, rooms, and decorative themes can feel like a game within a game. Your home becomes a much larger expression of your character than selecting an apartment’s existing style in CP2077.

There are also very few permanent customization decisions in V Rising. You can revisit your appearance at a Mirror, combine preferred Jewel effects through the Fusion Forge, and redesign your castle whenever you want.

5 Black Desert

The Character Creator Of Your Dreams

Even those who never play MMOs have probably heard of Black Desert, a game with one of the most advanced character creators ever, leaving behind not only CP2077 but almost any other RPG on the market. Facial structure, body proportions, muscle definition, hair shape, tattoo placement, makeup — you can spend hours or even days with these sliders alone. Honestly, it’s a bit curious that Pearl Abyss went with predesigned characters for Crimson Desert instead of letting you create your own Greymanes.

While the creator is the definite headliner, Black Desert also offers plenty of fashion choices to support your unique creations: an extensive wardrobe, dyes affecting individual sections and material finishes, plus residences to furnish.

If we’re already venturing into MMO territory, let’s also highlight Guild Wars 2. Its creator doesn’t match Black Desert’s strength, yet for breadth beyond that, it might come out on top. Countless armor and weapon skins, a separate dye system, backpacks, and mount and glider appearances let you develop a recognizable visual identity over time. Fashion Templates save those cosmetic combinations, while the Homestead system is the cherry on top, adding extensive personal decoration without being the game’s foundation. Few MMORPGs rival its fashion and housing.

4 Tom Clancy’s The Division 2

An Ever-Evolving Gunsmith Paradise

The Division 2 makes a particularly direct comparison with Cyberpunk 2077: a custom human protagonist, modern clothing, visible equipment, firearms with attachments, and extensive loadout tuning. Its agent creator is far from the main selling point, which might be a bummer in a third-person game. With that much headwear and so many masks to conceal your face, it’s hardly a problem, though, and the Barber lets you revisit your character’s appearance later.

Where The Division 2 is particularly strong is its combination of visual apparel and separate combat gear. Both have their own collections and play a major role in how stylish and distinctive your agent can look. Years of seasonal updates have added a ton of fashion items, full outfits, backpack trophies, patches, and dyes, alongside equipment brands and gear sets with their own bonuses, talents, and mod slots. The best part is how you can assemble your clothing independent of your build, controlling both the casual outfit underneath and the tactical equipment worn over it.

And that’s before we get to arguably the main course: weapon customization in The Division 2 is simply fantastic. You can spend countless hours fine-tuning your firearms through skins, compatible attachments like optics, magazines, muzzles, and grips, and robust recalibration and talent options. New progression and tweaking possibilities just keep arriving through updates and DLC.

3 Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition

Skells Make A Difference

Xenoblade Chronicles X is a real paradise for personalization lovers, which matters when an open-world RPG can eat hundreds of hours of your life. At first glance, it’s a relatively standard package: a custom protagonist, separate armor pieces for you and your party members, equipment augments to tune your loadout, and Fashion Gear to choose appearances independently of combat equipment.

However, there’s one major extra in Xenoblade Chronicles X that instantly sets it apart from competitors: Skells. These pilotable mechs effectively add an entire second character to customize. Different frames, visible armor, and mounted weapons determine their durability, combat role, and available Arts, the Skells’ special attacks.

Once you’ve settled on a design and preferred combat range, you can match your Skell to your character by recoloring individual sections, including the visor and thruster effects. Everyone in the party can have their own Skell, so the possibilities for your squad in Xenoblade Chronicles X keep piling up. Depending on the frame, they also transform into different vehicles for traversal, and there’s even a Flight Module to unlock.

2 Starfield

Let’s Build A Rocket

Starfield is a very controversial RPG overall, but no one can deny its strengths when it comes to customization; unsurprising, really, given how Bethesda’s open-world RPGs have always been among the trendsetters in this area. It features perhaps the studio’s most robust character creator yet — even though you’re limited to humans rather than the multiple races of The Elder Scrolls. Choosing the protagonist’s background and traits helps establish them in this world.

Starfield’s equipment customization can easily challenge CP2077 as well, with Weapon Engineering, Spacesuit Design, and rich workbench modifications. Spacesuits can be tailored for carrying capacity, oxygen consumption, or hazard protection, while weapons offer different barrels, stocks, optics, suppressors, magazines, ammunition, and firing mechanisms. The Free Lanes update pushed this further, letting you rework Legendary effects through X-Tech.

Like in Xenoblade Chronicles X, an exceptionally substantial ship system comes into play. In Starfield, your options to build and customize your spaceship are near-limitless, as apparent from the wildest fan creations shared since launch. From choosing your spacecraft’s shape, modules, weapons, and colors to arranging its interior, you can forget about spacefaring RPGs with pre-designed ships like Mass Effect. Add outposts across multiple planets and homes to furnish, and you have a considerable amount of content to make your own.

1 Fallout 4

The Commonwealth Is Your Playground

It’s hard to choose between Bethesda’s two latest major RPGs, so we won’t leave either out. Starfield and Fallout 4 excel in slightly different areas, but broad customization pretty much defines both experiences, reflecting the studio’s unmistakable DNA. Fallout 4 shook the series’ foundations, reworking Power Armor and giving almost everything you find in the wasteland a purpose, rooting the game in an almost sandbox-like world.

Fallout 4 offers an unusually broad package for tweaking equipment and literally shaping the world around you. Whether you’re sculpting your character with great freedom, combining clothing with separate armor pieces, modifying individual weapon components, assembling and painting Power Armor, breaking down junk into resources, or building entire settlements and interiors as you like — nothing stops your creativity. Comparing CP2077’s apartment customization to Fallout 4’s settlements feels almost wrong, with the latter’s modding potential also in a whole different league.

Hell, just to highlight how deep customization runs in Fallout 4, it received several DLC packs revolving around giving you even more tools for building and personalization. Automatron lets you build robot companions with hundreds of available mods, paint schemes, and even voices. Contraptions Workshop expands those possibilities through complex machinery, while Vault-Tec Workshop lets you single-handedly run and customize your own massive vault.