The Best RPGs You Can Play Without Audio

Key Takeaways

• Many modern RPGs offer subtitles and accessibility options for players who prefer to play without audio, ensuring an inclusive experience.
• RPGs like Pillars of Eternity, Stardew Valley, and Skyrim provide rich details, visuals, and text-driven interactions, making them enjoyable sans sound.
• Games like Undertale and Disco Elysium offer immersive storytelling and gameplay without the need for audio.

There are so many reasons people may choose to play their favorite game without audio. Of course, players who are deaf or hard of hearing may simply be unable to hear the audio, while other players may find the audio overwhelming or uncomfortable during their playing experience. Most modern RPGs offer subtitles and accessibility options like text-to-speech and visual alerts, which means players who cannot use audio won’t be missing out on any of the details in games.

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Lots of people play games in communal areas, like family living rooms, or at unsociable hours, and sometimes the headphones just aren’t charged when you need them. This list details the best RPGs that are rich with detail, with or without sound, where players can focus on the visual design, storytelling, and gameplay mechanics instead.

8 Pillars of Eternity

A Classic Questing RPG

Pillars of Eternity is a deeply explorative RPG full of choices to be made which shape the player’s adventure. Fans of the game praise it for its story, which is brought to life with evocative writing. The game offers great character design options and a reputation system impacted by choices, allowing for maximum player control over the story and where it goes.

What’s more, the visuals are full of great detail, combining elements of medieval and fantasy in this unique world that is made for getting lost in. The game boasts a lengthy 45+ hours of gameplay and there’s a sequel too.

7 Stardew Valley

Unconventional And Indie

This indie RPG is all about farming and building community. Players are tasked with taking over their grandfather’s farm and restoring it to a state he’d be proud of, all the while completing tasks for the nearby townsfolk to try and restore their local Community Center. The game is wonderfully cozy and full of vibrant seasonal imagery, as well as exciting, funny plotlines involving the inhabitants of Pelican Town.

The game uses on-screen text for player interactions and quest instructions, all of which are clearly signposted, meaning players won’t be missing out without audio.

6 Dragon Age: Inquisition

A Vibrant Combat And Exploration Experience

This is a well-known RPG with classic combat and questing tasks. Inquisition focuses on an organization known as the Inquisition, which must restore order after demons enter the world after a breach in the Fade. There are lots of choices in character design and appearance, making the gameplay highly customizable.

Dragon Age: Inquisition is easy to play without audio. The vivid and detailed scenery makes the game very visually immersive, and there’s text integrated on-screen for dialogue and character actions, with fans enjoying the user interface for its accessibility and usability.

5 Chrono Trigger

A Classic Of The JRPG Genre

Chrono Trigger has earned itself classic status, but remains as fun and immersive as ever, even when played without audio. Players can immerse themselves in a charming pixel-art universe in high resolution with sophisticated combat mechanics which have been updated and refreshed for modern audiences, almost thirty years after its original release.

Fans of Chrono Trigger have long loved the game for its powerful visual storytelling combining fantasy and time travel, and its clear text-interaction formatting, which makes it great for playing without audio.

4 Persona 5

Persona 5 is an incredibly detailed JRPG centering on teenagers at a Tokyo high school with secret double lives fighting evil figures in the city through the ‘Metaverse’. The game balances school life and social interaction with turn-based combat and psychologically-driven supernatural elements.

Simply put, Persona 5 is one of the most jam-packed RPGs out there, with plenty to enjoy without audio. There’s a deeply immersive open world, plenty of NPC interactions and side stories, a rich dual plot line, and colorful, vivid graphics pulling the whole thing together.

3 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Expansive Story And World-Building

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a vast and impressive RPG where players take on the role of Geralt of Rivia in the search for his adopted daughter. Combat is a large aspect of the game, with players able to develop their skills intuitively along their journey, with different styles including magical ‘signs’, bestiary research, and alchemy.

Playing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt without audio works because the world of its setting is incredibly vivid, with a vast world for exploring and the use of visual cues to enhance gameplay. The storytelling relies on text more than sound, with a great journal system that integrates quests and updates for the player and exciting side quests which are explained primarily through text.

2 Undertale

Unusual And Immersive Storytelling

Another indie RPG, Undertale is a combination of sophisticated storytelling and unique combat mechanics. Players have fallen underground, into a world of monsters, and now they are trying to escape. There’s lots to look forward to: from wholesome good humor and a delightful and simplistic pixel-art world that feels nostalgic and unusual at once, to decision-making options that affect the gameplay as you go along.

Undertale is a great game to play without sound. Its visual style is distinctive, with text-driven interactions guiding the story, and the narrative is strong enough to pull in even the most reluctant players.

1 Disco Elysium

A Text-Driven Psychological RPG

Disco Elysium is about a detective solving a case, but far from traditional problem-solving games, it grapples with profound existential ideas and dilemmas through its heavily text-based format and super distinct narrative style.

The design of the world is detailed and feels thoughtful, with a delightful expressionist style to it. While there is a soundtrack and full voice-acting in the game, the level of detail throughout its other aspects makes it a great game to play without sound, with the rich use of on-screen text making it super immersive.