With the prices of AAA games more expensive than ever, it's getting more and more difficult to justify spending the money to play them, especially when so many of them are pumped out every year. However, while some of these titles are buggy messes that aren't worth players' money, a lot of them are truly great.
Furthermore, everyone has a different budget for gaming, and even AA games and larger indie studio titles can be a burden on the pocket for some. Not every game on this list is an alternative to a ridiculously expensive AAA title, but aims to provide drastically cheaper alternatives that offer a similar experience.
While AAA studios may be pushing their prices to the absolute maximum, this article does not in any way aim to insinuate that these games aren't worth the money, AAA or otherwise; instead, this list aims to provide alternatives to those with a lower budget.
8 Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord / Battle Brothers
Since Battle Brothers is currently more expensive than Mount & Blade: Warband, it's not worth buying instead of the latter, but if players loved the army building and questing of Mount & Blade: Warband, but want something cheaper and smaller scale to play until they can spare the cash for its large scale sequel, then Battle Brothers is something worth checking out.
Although the two games are quite different, Battle Brothers provides a suitable, small scale alternative to the real time RPG of Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord. The game is turn-based, and players control a squad of 12 rather than an entire army, but the gameplay loop remains relatively the same, just with a smaller scope. Players shouldn't go into Battle Brothers expecting it to be the same as Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord, but Battle Brothers still offers a similar feeling of overarching strategy, leadership, and sense of fantasy adventure.
7 Diablo 4 / Torchlight
After the controversy around Diablo Immortal's monetization and the game's mixed reception, Diablo 4's polished and faithful experience came as a pleasant surprise to many fans of the beloved franchise. But although Diablo 4 doesn't contain the horrendous monetization of Diablo Immortal, it's still worth a pretty penny.
Both the first and second Torchlight games make great cheap alternatives to the Diablo franchise as a whole; action-RPG, class-based gameplay, hordes of monsters to take down, plenty of loot, and online co-op.
6 Dark Souls Remastered / White Lavender
Dark Souls has always been a higher budget, ambitious franchise. The Dark Souls remaster and its sequels can be expensive when not purchased on sale, and considering the polarizing opinions on the franchise and its notorious difficulty, players may not want to take a risk on a game they might not enjoy.
White Lavender, developed by burgeoning indie studio Sokpop Collective, is a beautifully and uniquely rendered souls-like RPG experience at a fraction of the price of any game in the Souls franchise. The game puts players in the shoes of a bug, fighting various critters small and large whilst exploring a variety of small environments.
The game features classic Dark Souls tropes like a variation on the Estus Flask, quirky NPC interactions, an RPG progression system, and a bunch of boss fights.
5 Darkest Dungeon / Tinyfolks
Darkest Dungeon isn't the most expensive game in the market, but for players that want to dip their toe a little before taking the plunge, they couldn't go wrong with Tinyfolks. Sporting lovingly crafted 1-bit pixel art, with some really great boss designs, Tinyfolks manages to capture the essence of Darkest Dungeon gameplay and boil it down to a simpler and more forgiving loop.
Like in Darkest Dungeon, Tinyfolks has players build out a team of adventurers in a town before sending them out to various locations in order to beat the boss that lurks there. Unlike Darkest Dungeon, players only need venture to each location once, provided they can beat the boss straight away. Furthermore, while losing adventurers is certainly painful, it's a lot easier to level up and equip adventurers in Tinyfolks than in Darkest Dungeon, meaning losing an entire squad of high level adventurers is bad, but not necessarily a game-ender.
4 DOOM Eternal / ULTRAKILL
DOOM (2016) completely revitalized the franchise with top of the line graphics, as well as fresh new ideas and gameplay, without compromising the game's faithfulness to the original games. DOOM Eternal did much of the same, but with increased difficulty and more variation on DOOM (2016)'s ideas.
However, for fans of DOOM (2016) that want more for less, ULTRAKILL is the perfect choice; while it does carve out its own niche in the gaming scene with its combination of skill-based style scoring similar to character-action games like Devil May Cry and classic boomer shooter action, ULTRAKILL achieves that same feeling of fluid, fast-paced, high-stakes arena action.
3 Borderlands 3 / Gunfire Reborn
The Borderlands franchise is well known for its wide variety of guns, elemental effects, and multiplayer looter-shooter FPS action. All of these gameplay elements have been fine-tuned over the course of four games, with the latest at the time of writing being Borderlands 3. Borderlands also features several playable characters with their own unique skills and progression.
Gunfire Reborn does a lot of the things that Borderlands does, only with its own unique (yet equally cool) art style, and wrapped up in a rogue-lite package. The game, like Borderlands, also features intense boss fights and different environments to spice up the gameplay. Although the game comes with multiple playable characters, players can access more through DLC.
2 Battlefield 1 (2016) / Battlebit Remastered
Battlefield as a franchise has come a long way from its origins, now known for its large-scale multiplayer battles with destructible environments and squad-based gameplay. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3 are perhaps the most iconic examples of the franchise's evolution, but Battlefield 1 took the franchise and set it in WW1, a theme that synergized with the gameplay to great success.
However, if fans don't mind the blocky aesthetic often associated with Roblox, the recent release of Battlebit Remastered might just be the cheap experience they're looking for. Especially with Bad Company 2's online services being retired in December 2023, fans might struggle to find a similar experience elsewhere at a price point that doesn't break the bank.
1 Super Smash Bros. Ultimate / Brawlhalla
It's hard to find a better fighting game than Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, but with Nintendo's prices increasing with the rest of the AAA industry and even their older games not dropping in price, fighting game fans should look no further than Brawlhalla, a free-to-play fighting game for up to eight players
Brawlhalla, now has a port for the Nintendo Switch, and can be played both online and locally. The game even features cross-play and has a large roster of characters to choose from, although these characters need to be unlocked by earning and spending in-game gold.