The best gacha games on PC in 2026 — and which one suits you

We write about Raid on this site. It isn't first on this list, and if it were you'd be right to stop reading. A best-of that puts the author's own topic at number one is an advert with a number next to it.

Five hero collectors that run on a computer, ranked on the three things that actually decide whether you're still playing in a month.

What I ranked on

Not roster size and not graphics. Three things:

1. Does it run natively on PC? An emulator adds a layer, keeps every mobile cap, and adds

latency. A native client changes what the game actually is.

1. How much time does it demand per day? The most common reason people quit a gacha isn't the

pulls. It's discovering it wants an hour a day and they have twenty minutes.

1. How punishing is the summon economy? Every game here is a gacha. They aren't equally harsh.

The ranking

1. Honkai: Star Rail

The best-rounded of the five, and the easiest to recommend to someone who's never played a gacha. A proper native PC client, turn-based combat with real depth, and a story that's actually written rather than assembled. The pull economy isn't generous in absolute terms, because it's still a gacha, but it hands out enough currency that progress doesn't feel like it's waiting on luck.

Weakness: it's content-paced. You can run out and end up waiting for a patch, which doesn't happen in the grind-forever games below it.

2. Raid: Shadow Legends

The deepest build puzzle here. Turn order runs off a speed stat, and once that clicks the whole game becomes a solvable optimisation problem. One you can solve without spending, which is the part its reputation never gets credit for. Native Windows client, no daily multi-battle cap, an enormous amount of content.

Weakness, and it's why it isn't first: the summon rate is about 0.5% for a Legendary, gear swaps cost silver in a way that compounds, and the onboarding tells you almost nothing you need. Most people who quit in week two quit over things the tutorial never explained.

If the optimisation puzzle is the part that appeals, it's the best game on this list and nothing else is close. If it isn't, it's the most punishing. The full review, including who should skip it.

3. Summoners War

The genre's veteran, and the tightest balance of anything here. A decade of tuning shows. Rune management is deep, and the PvP scene is the most established.

Weakness: no native PC client, so you're on an emulator with the mobile caps intact. And the learning curve is close to vertical; it doesn't meet a new player halfway at any point.

4. AFK Journey

The pick for someone with a job and a life. Built around roughly ten minutes a day, generous with pull currency, and pleasant to look at. It runs natively on Windows.

Weakness: the combat is mostly automatic. If you want a puzzle to solve, this isn't it. It's a progression system with a game attached, and it's very good at being that.

5. Watcher of Realms

A reasonable middle. More tactical than AFK Journey, far less demanding than Raid or Summoners War, and a moderate pull economy. Nothing about it stands out, and depending on what you want that's either the point or the problem.

Weakness: emulator only, and a smaller player base than the four above.

Picking, in one line each

The thing all five have in common

Every one of them is completable free in PvE, and none of them is competitive in ranked PvP without a budget. That's the genre, not a flaw in any individual game, and anyone presenting one of these as the free-to-play exception hasn't played it long enough to hit the wall.

Pick on time budget first and combat style second. The summon rate matters far less than either, because you'll either make peace with it or quit over something else entirely.

If Raid is the one

The Windows client is the version worth installing. No daily multi-battle cap, no thermal throttling, and it runs the desktop build rather than the mobile one through an emulator. What it is and what it needs, and how it compares to running BlueStacks.

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