Genshin Impact

This is the one that surprised me most when I sat down to write it. Genshin Impact is, by any reasonable measure, a massive open-world action RPG, and the whole thing is free. The first thirty or forty hours ask nothing of your wallet. The world is genuinely beautiful on PS5, the elemental combat has more depth than it looks at first, and the story is better than a game this generous has any right to be. The gacha mechanics do eventually show up, and if you want specific characters you will feel it. But I played into the second region without spending a cent and never felt locked out of anything meaningful.

Genshin Impact has a native PS5 client with DualSense support, strong ongoing content, and genuinely beautiful production values. The reason it's not in the top ten is simple: co-op is secondary to its design. Multiplayer unlocks at Adventure Rank 16, which takes several hours of solo play, and story quests can't be completed in co-op at all — guests join the host's world but can't advance their own narrative. The daily Resin stamina system also caps how much domain and boss content you can farm together each day. If you're already playing Genshin and want to occasionally run domains with a friend, it works well. As a recommendation for a group specifically looking to play together from the start, it falls short.