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The Best Xbox One Games of 2019 So Far

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Six months into 2019, the Xbox One’s best-reviewed lineup reads like a murderers’ row of remakes, reinventions, and punishing new IP.

IGN’s mid-year roundup of the best Xbox One games of 2019 tracks the console’s critical consensus from January through the summer, and the picture that emerges is one of a platform coasting on marquee third-party releases rather than exclusives. Capcom alone landed two of the year’s most acclaimed titles, FromSoftware delivered one of the hardest games of the generation, and Ubisoft, 4A Games, and Codemasters filled out a genre-spanning list that carried the console through to the run-up to Gears 5.

• Capcom’s Devil May Cry 5 and Resident Evil 2 remake both drew critical acclaim on Xbox One, with IGN singling out DMC5 for pushing the console’s visual ceiling with its stylish hack-and-slash combat.
• FromSoftware and Activision’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice earned praise for its posture-based combat system and unforgiving difficulty, set in a fictionalized version of Japan’s Sengoku era.
• Ubisoft’s The Division 2, 4A Games’ Metro Exodus, and Codemasters’ Dirt Rally 2.0 rounded out IGN’s best-reviewed list, with Microsoft’s own Gears 5 still to come later in the year.

Devil May Cry 5’s Return to Form

Capcom’s Devil May Cry 5 gave Xbox One owners three playable characters — Dante, Nero, and newcomer V — and a combat system built for style points as much as survival. IGN’s reviews highlighted the game for pushing the visual ceiling of the aging Xbox One hardware while reviving the stylish hack-and-slash mechanics the series built its name on in the mid-2000s. The result is a game that looks and plays like a current-gen showcase running on last-gen boxes, which is a big part of why it landed near the top of nearly every mid-year best-of list.

Sekiro’s Posture-Based Punishment

FromSoftware’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice traded the stat-building and multiplayer of the studio’s Soulsborne catalog for a single, unforgiving shinobi build around parries, deflections, and posture damage. Set during Japan’s Sengoku era, the game follows a lone shinobi on a revenge mission, and its combat system rewards aggression over turtling — a deliberate break from the series’ past design philosophy.

Sekiro’s posture-based combat system and steep difficulty made it one of the most demanding — and most acclaimed — releases the Xbox One saw all year.

That difficulty spike became the game’s calling card. Where past FromSoftware titles let players grind or respec around a tough boss, Sekiro forces confrontation, and critics rewarded the design choice rather than punishing it.

Resident Evil 2’s Modern Remake

Capcom’s second big swing of the year, the Resident Evil 2 remake, rebuilt the 1998 original from the ground up while keeping its survival-horror bones intact. Players can run Leon Kennedy’s or Claire Redfield’s campaign, and each character’s playthrough branches into different scenarios depending on choices made along the way. The remake modernized controls and lighting without losing the claustrophobic tension the original was known for, which is exactly why it sits alongside Devil May Cry 5 as one of Capcom’s two defining Xbox One releases of 2019.

The Rest of the Field: Shooters and Rally

Beyond Capcom and FromSoftware, three more titles rounded out IGN’s best-reviewed list for the platform. Ubisoft’s The Division 2 moved the series’ setting to a devastated Washington, D.C., leaning into cooperative, objective-based shootouts across a sprawling open world. 4A Games’ Metro Exodus pushed the franchise out of Moscow’s tunnels and into open, sun-lit stretches of post-apocalyptic Russia, while Codemasters’ Dirt Rally 2.0 delivered a more technical, physics-driven rally experience than its genre peers. Together with the Capcom and FromSoftware releases, these five titles formed the backbone of IGN’s mid-2019 Xbox One best-of list.

Looking Toward Gears 5

All of this arrived before Microsoft’s biggest first-party swing of the year. With Gears 5 still on the calendar for later in 2019, the Xbox One’s back half was set up to lean on a genuine console exclusive rather than another multiplatform showcase — a shift from a first six months defined almost entirely by third-party heavyweights.