Now that we’re almost three months into the year, we’re getting our first chance to look at the 10 best Xbox games of 2026 so far according to Metacritic — and that’s because there are only 10 games that fit the mould as things stand.
As you may be aware, Metacritic doesn’t rank anything in its “Best Games” lists that have less than seven professional reviews, and considering how most critics tend to review the PS5, Switch or PC versions of multiplatform games, a lot of stuff ends up getting missed out on the Xbox side.
Nevertheless, this is still a good list – the outstanding Resident Evil Requiem sits atop the pile with an outstanding average score of 93 for Xbox right now, while Final Fantasy VII Remake and Monster Hunter Stories 3 aren’t far behind on 88 and 86 respectively. Here’s a look at the full top ten:
- Resident Evil Requiem (93)
- Final Fantasy VII Remake (88)
- Monster Hunter Stories 3 (86)
- Reanimal (83)
- Planet of Lana 2 (81)
- MIO: Memories in Orbit (81)
- WWE 2K26 (79)
- Romeo Is A Dead Man (78)
- High on Life 2 (75)
- Code Vein 2 (74)
However, there are other games that could fit into this top ten list, but they have more reviews for other systems and therefore don’t meet the “Xbox” criteria. BlazBlue Entropy Effect X, for example, has an average score of 84 for PS5, but it doesn’t have enough Xbox reviews to rank in the “Best Games” list for Series X and S.
Other notable absentees that don’t have enough Xbox reviews but otherwise would have ranked highly include Dragon Quest VII Reimagined (83 on PS5), Escape from Ever After (82 on PC), Ride 6 (79 on PS5), Pathologic 3 (79 on PC), Tales of Berseria Remastered (78 on PS5) and Scott Pilgrim EX (78 on PC).
In other words, the list for Xbox alone doesn’t tell the full story, and we really need to look at all platforms to get a true idea of the best games on the platform in 2026 so far. If we included just the games (and that means full games, not DLC) that have released on Xbox this year to date, regardless of which platform they were reviewed for, the list would look as follows:
- Resident Evil Requiem (93)
- Final Fantasy VII Remake (88)
- Monster Hunter Stories 3 (86)
- BlazBlue Entropy Effect X (84)
- Reanimal (83)
- Dragon Quest VII Reimagined (83)
- Escape from Ever After (82)
- Planet of Lana 2 (81)
- MIO: Memories In Orbit (81)
- WWE 2K26 (79)
Of course, it’s still early days and we’ve got many great titles to come over the next nine months, so we’re expecting this list to look extremely different at the end of the year. Resident Evil Requiem has some tough competition ahead!
What are your thoughts on this? Are these the best Xbox games of 2026 so far? Tell us down below.
[source metacritic.com]
Fraser is the News Editor at Pure Xbox, where he spends his time reporting on the biggest stories in the world of Xbox and beyond.
