Best Adventure Games on the Xbox

The adventure games worth playing on the Microsoft Xbox start with Knights of the Old Republic, Fable, Jade Empire.

The Xbox and Adventure Games

A PC in a black box, two years before anyone else had a hard drive or an online service that worked. Its library leans Western and leans technical.

Adventure Games are a solid rather than a defining part of this library — worth knowing, but not the reason anybody owns the machine.

Filtering to adventure means the place and the story are what you want back, not the challenge. It is the right filter when the thing you remember is where you were rather than what you did.

The Adventure Games Worth Playing

  1. 1. Knights of the Old Republic

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  2. 2. Fable

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  3. 3. Jade Empire

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  4. 4. Morrowind

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  5. 5. Psychonauts

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  6. 6. Beyond Good and Evil

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  7. 7. Prince of Persia Sands of Time

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  8. 8. Splinter Cell Chaos Theory

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  9. 9. Oddworld Stranger's Wrath

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  10. 10. Conker Live and Reloaded

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

What Makes a Good Adventure Game

A world with a reason to wander it, and writing that survives being read rather than skipped.

Mechanical depth. Several of the best adventure games have combat that is deliberately unsatisfying, because they want your attention somewhere else.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best adventure game on the Xbox?

Knights of the Old Republic is the usual first answer, and there are 10 in the library we cover.

Was the Xbox good at adventure games?

It is a solid rather than a defining part of the library.

What counts as an adventure game?

Anywhere the story and the place matter more than the skill ceiling — point-and-click, walking sims, narrative thrillers and most open worlds. The label alone tells you very little, which is why each pick here says what it actually is.

Are adventure games long?

They split hard. Open-world adventures run to a hundred hours; the narrative ones are often finishable in an evening, and the short ones are usually the better written.

How is this list put together?

From the games this site covers on the Microsoft Xbox, matched against hand-mapped gameplay categories rather than a storefront's genre tag. A page only exists where there are at least four, which is why some console and genre combinations have no page at all.

Adventure Games on Other Consoles

More From the Xbox

Or browse the whole Microsoft Xbox library.