Ever since the dawn of gaming, it has been a tradition for the world’s most popular anime to receive video game adaptations and spin-offs, from classic arcade titles likeJojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future to loyal adaptations like Animetic Story Game 1: Cardcaptor Sakura. While nowadays most anime are just givensimple gacha adaptations, there are still quite a few that get to flex their popularity by receiving games on consoles.
Review: One Piece Odyssey
One Piece Odyssey delivers a great One Piece adventure, but without regard to the source material, is simply a good but unremarkable RPG.
With so much anime available on modern consoles, and many of them considered less than adequate, it can be difficult to decide which ones are worth playing. However, if one analyzes these games based on their quality and how fans will react to them, and then does not count any arena fighters that the vast majority of gamers dislike, then it is possible to make the following list of the best video games based on anime!
For the sake of highlighting a wide variety of anime and genres, this list will excludevideo games based on the Dragon Ball series, as they would just understandablydominatethe list.
9Naruto Shipudden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4
The Ultimate Ninjutsu Battler
Bandai Namco
CyberConnect2
Arena Fighter
OpenCritic Score
As one of the most popular and iconic Shonen manga of all time, the Naruto franchise has naturally had its fair share of fighting games over the decades. The most popular of these has always been the Naruto: Ninja Storm series, a 3D arena fighter where players can pick their favorite Naruto characters to duke it out and spam super moves at each other.
While the Ninja Storm franchise has never been the most in-depth or complex fighting game around, they’re still a blast to play casually with friends who are into the series. The franchise’s 2014 entry,Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4,often goes on sale and features an incredibly large roster full of fan-favorite characters to play as. While the entry must be placed low on this list due to arena fighters being a looked-down-upon genre in gaming, these games still belong on the list as Naruto fans have been satisfied with them for years.
8Spy x Anya
The Coziest Anime Game Around
Groove Box Japan
Minigame Compilation
Ever since it released its first chapter in March of 2019, Spy x Family has taken the world by storm with its exaggerated slice-of-life exploits and surprisingly emotional moments. With this worldwide success, it was only a matter of time before it obtained a licensed tie-in game. However, unlike most Shonen Jump manga, Spy x Family would be completely unsuitable for a fighting game. So instead, a more slice-of-life experience was released to the world with 2024’s Spy x Anya.
This fun and cozy title sees the player take control of Anya as she fills out a memory journal. To do this, the player must participate in various minigames that represent Anya’s current lifestyle as a member of the Forger family. These minigames are all short and sweet experiences that one would expect from a budget title. While Spy x Anya won’t be winning awards any time soon, its cuteness and cozy factor make it a fun time for any anime fan who just wants to unwind and relax with their favorite characters.
7Sand Land
Honoring a Legacy
Action-Adventure
In 2024, the great Akira Toriyama sadly passed away. A few months after his death, a game based on his mangaSand Landwas released to the world. This title felt more special than most anime games due to its creator’s post-mortem status at the time of development. Thankfully for Toriyama’s legacy, this game is actually quite decent as far as anime tie-in games go. Sand Land sees the player take control of the young devil Beelzebub as he partakes in the typical action-adventure gameplay of spamming light and heavy attacks to knock down enemies.
Review: Sand Land
Akira Toriyama’s desert adventure Sand Land arrives in video game form, but even with his involvement, does it still do his work justice?
While the normal battle gameplay is fine, the area where Sand Land truly shines is its vehicle combat. This title features a wide variety of vehicles for players to both traverse the world and fight in, including a cameo appearance by a Red Ribbon Army mech from the Dragon Ball franchise! Since the late great Toriyama always had a passion for vehicles and designing them, it feels only fitting that one of the last video games he would have contributed to had such a large focus on them.
6Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise
You’re Already Playing
RGG Studios
Sega’s Like a Dragon (formerly known in America as Yakuza) franchise has had several spin-off titles over the years, but perhaps none is more strange than Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise. This title is a reimagining of the Fist of the North Star story, edited to take place all within a single city in order to fit the gameplay loop of the Like a Dragon series. The game further links the two franchises by having every character in the game be voiced by a known Like a Dragon voice actor.
Review: Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage 2
Gamers who pick up this title will be able to enjoy the high-paced action gameplay of the Like a Dragon games and also participate inseveral minigames around the city. Both the combat and the minigames have been given the classic Fist of the North Star edge with exploding enemies, sound effects appearing as you fight, and Kenshiro yelling out “atatata!” as he performs his special techniques.
While this game is good enough to appear in the upper half of this list, it does have several small flaws which hold it back, such as its leveling system, which prevents players from unlocking all skills in a first playthrough. Still, if you’re a fan ofeither Like a Dragonor Fist of the North Star, you should consider picking up this title.
5Fairy Tail
A Special Kind of Magic
Koei Tecmo
While most games based on Shonen anime tend to fall in line and just be an arena fighter in order to properly emulate the feel of their parent series’ big fights, there is another game genre that is maybe more suited for this: JRPGs. Gust’s Fairy Tail from 2020 is a shining example of how to take an anime and transition it into this format. The gameplay loop of Fairy Tail (2020) has the player accepting quests at their guild and then traveling out into the game’s few zone areas to complete them, very similar to Gust’s Atelier series.
Review: Fairy Tail
It’s apparent that a lot of work went into Fairy Tail to ensure that it’s something fans would embrace.
The combat system of the game is based around grids, with each character’s attacks covering different areas of the field. While this combat isn’t as fast-paced and intense as a fighting game, it does allow each character to shine in a way that most anime games can’t replicate.
Seeing characters like Wendy and Juvia actually have a chance to be useful when transitioned into a turn-based format is great and will make the player wish more anime tried adapting themselves like this. If you are a Fairy Tail fan or just someone who wants a good lengthy JRPG to play, then consider picking up Fairy Tail (2020).
4Arslan: Warriors of Legend
Omega Force
Anime tie-in games and Musou gameplay are a match made in heaven. As most anime portray their protagonists as the strongest people in the world, putting them into a gameplay style that involves fighting against hundreds of enemies just makes sense. One anime to receive this treatment is The Heroic Legend of Arslan, which received the Musou treatment in 2015. This title featured 12 playable characters from the anime and a variety of both original movesets and those pulled directly from Dynasty Warriors 8.
Review: Arslan: The Warriors of Legend
Inspired by Dynasty Warriors, Arslan: The Warriors of Legend makes the player feel like they’re in the middle of a beautiful, fluid and spectacular anime.
The game features very dynamic stages where the player will frequently switch to different characters performing tasks all around the battlefield, with said battlefield frequently changing as the player charges thousands of troops around to slice through enemies or break through walls.
Despite its cool gameplay and the wide variety of characters playable in it, Arslan: Warriors of Legend ranks low on this list as it lacks something very important for Musou titles: a variety of game modes. The only stages in this title are the story mode stages, giving players very little content to actually use the wide variety of characters in. If this game just included a few more modes to use the roster in, then it could have been one of the best anime tie-in games.
3Berserk and the Band of the Hawk
Changing the Formula
Arslan isn’t the one Musou game to make this list, as another anime where the main character famously fought off 100 soldiers also received the Musou treatment in 2017: Kentaro Miura’sBerserk. This title is one of the most unique Musou games around as, instead of being super-fast-paced and focused on conquering huge stages, Berserk and the Band of the Hawk has the player making very slow and deliberate strikes to gore enemies to bits. This small change almost completely flips the Musou formula on its head in a fascinating way.
The main story mode ofBerserk and the Band of Hawkcovers multiple arcs of the manga and amazingly uses the Berserk Golden Age movie trilogy as its cutscenes, a gaming practice that one would expect to remain in the 90s. After completing the great story, players will have plenty of extra content to play through via the Endless Eclipse mode, one of the most difficult modes in any Musou game.
Despite being one of the most unique Musou games around gameplay-wise, Berserk and the Band of the Hawk doesn’t top this list due to having an incredibly small roster of eight characters, far less than one would expect from a Musou game.
2Super Robot Wars T
The Greatest Crossover of All Time
B.B. Studio
The Super Robot Wars franchise is one of the coolest crossover series in existence, taking the stories of various mecha anime and telling them as if they all took place in the same world. The SRPG gameplay of this series has been incredible from the start, with incredible attack animations that feel like they were ripped straight from the anime they’re portraying. Whenever a new Super Robot Wars game is announced and the roster is revealed, it truly feels like a momentous event.
If you are curious about trying this series for yourself, then you can’t go wrong with 2019’s Super Robot Wars T. This title features fan-favorite recurring series like Martian Successor Nadesico and G Gundam, as well as several interesting newcomers like Captain Harlock and Cowboy Bebop. If you loved strategy games like Fire Emblem but wish the series had a more anime flair, then Super Robot Wars is waiting for you to pick it up and play it.
1One Piece Pirate Warriors 3
We Are on the Cruise
One Pieceis one of the best-selling manga and anime franchises of all time, and with that success, it has, of course, had more tie-in video games than can be counted. These games have come in all shapes and genres, but perhaps the best one is the franchise’s 2015 Musou game: One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3. With 37 characters from across the franchise playable with some of the most unique movesets in Musou history, the pure gameplay loop of Pirate Warriors 3 makes for one of the best purchases a One Piece fan can make.
When it comes to content, Pirate Warriors 3 is also one of the best anime tie-in Musou games around. The title not only features a story mode that covers up to the Dressrosa arc of the manga, it also has a nearly infinite mode of bonus stages called the Dream Log, which will take up potentially a hundred hours of the player’s time to clear! If you are a fan of One Piece and want a great, lengthy, game to play through, then pick up Pirate Warriors 3 and embark on a never-ending adventure.
7 Dragon Ball Z Games with the Best Story
Even though almost every Dragon Ball video game tells the same story from the manga, some titles just retell it way better.
