The five-minute decision
A mixed-platform group that wants characters and loot. Diablo IV. Full crossplay, cross-progression, split-screen on console, and seasons that give a regular crew a reason to return.
A group that wants one enormous game to learn together. Monster Hunter Wilds. Four hunters, crossplay across all three platforms, and a genuine skill curve that rewards a crew who stick with it.
Exactly three friends who want a challenge. Elden Ring Nightreign. Short, brutal, run-based, and built for a trio. No crossplay, so match platforms first.
A group on a budget. Terraria, then Minecraft. Both are cheap, both take far more than four players, and both have hundreds of hours in them. Genshin Impact is free if you want something prettier.
A pair who want to relax. Stardew Valley, platforms permitting.
Loot RPGs vs sandbox RPGs, in practice
The practical difference shows up in week three. In a loot RPG, the person who played extra during the week is now stronger than everyone else, and the group either accepts that or resents it. Diablo IV and Borderlands 3 handle it well - enemies scale, and nobody is locked out of content. Monster Hunter Wilds handles it less gently: the person who learned the weapon systems will carry, and the person who did not will notice.
In a sandbox RPG the same imbalance turns into a gift. Somebody built a house while you were away, and you get to live in it. That is why Minecraft and Terraria survive groups with wildly different schedules, and why they are the safest purchase for a crew that has never done a long game together before. Our Minecraft vs Terraria comparison settles which of the two your group should start with.
The console split-screen exception
Two picks here still work on one sofa. Diablo IV supports two-player split-screen on console, and Borderlands 3 does the same. If half your group is in the room and half is online, those are the only two that cover both at once. Everything else on this page needs one device per player - the wider list is on our split-screen page.
Seasons, live service, and the cost of coming back late
Diablo IV runs seasonal content, Monster Hunter Wilds adds free title updates, and Genshin Impact runs on limited-time events. None of them punish you for taking a month off in the way a competitive shooter does, but the group that plays together weekly will always get more from them. Borderlands 3 is the one genuinely finished game here - a campaign with an ending, no seasons, and no fear of missing anything, which for a lot of groups is exactly right. We compare it directly with Diablo IV in Diablo IV vs Borderlands 3.
What it costs a group of four
This is the category where the multiplier hurts most, because everybody needs their own copy and there is no Friend's Pass anywhere on this page. Four copies of a headline RPG is a serious spend; four copies of Terraria is not, and Genshin Impact is free. Diablo IV and Borderlands 3 both discount heavily and often, and Monster Hunter Wilds has already come down from launch pricing at the time of writing - the live prices in the table above are pulled from Amazon daily, so use those rather than a number in a review. Our cheap picks guide is the budget-first version of this page.
Baldur's Gate 3, and why it is not a pick here
It is the obvious omission, so here is the honest reason: Baldur's Gate 3 is a superb four-player co-op RPG, but the copies Amazon stocks are import and collector editions at prices well above what the game costs digitally. We only feature products you can sensibly buy at the price shown, so it stays out of the table. If your group wants it, buy it directly from the platform store instead - that is the right call and we would rather say so than pad the list.
Going deeper on the top two
The winner has its own write-up: our Diablo IV review covers crossplay, cross-progression, the two-player console split-screen almost nobody expects, and the seasonal commitment that makes it the wrong buy for an irregular group. If your decision is really between the two deepest picks here, Monster Hunter Wilds versus Elden Ring Nightreign settles it on player count and crossplay - four and crossplay against three and none.
