Jarrod’s Top Ten of 2025 and Other Meaningless Awards
In 2020, after having been completely dissatisfied with the output of releases that year, I decided to be a snarky little shit and made a top ten list of the remakes and remasters that came out during that dreadful twelve months.
There were, actually, plenty of good games that came out in 2020, but it was a year noteworthy for the high profile COVID-related delays and spectacular boondoggles, such as the original jank-tastic release of Cyberpunk 2077.
In hindsight, perhaps making such a list was a tad mean, and maybe I expected too much of a videogame industry to fuel my inner joy while the Earth basically ceased to function, but 2025 doesn’t have the same excuse.
To put it lightly, I didn’t find this a particularly great year for videogames.
While there’s ten games on this list and those ten games are all rather exceptional, it really wasn’t that hard to put together this group because there weren’t a lot of hard choices to be made in the first place.
Like 2020, this was a year of noteworthy delays and a shockingly large amount of remakes/remasters. Furthermore, if you were to ask me at the start of 2025 to list what games I was most looking forward to, some combination of Metroid Prime 4, Ninja Gaiden 4, and DOOM: The Dark Ages would’ve come out of my mouth, and you will find none of them on this list.
To be fair, there are a lot of independent studios making an astounding amount of good games, so it’s pretty hard to call any year in recent memory “bad” or “lacking in content”. For the sake of this list and my comments, I’m looking at the output of major publishers. Is that supremely closed-minded and silly? Probably, but that’s how my brain works, and by that measure, this was a very underwhelming year.
2025’s “I definitely fucked up” award for the best 2024 game I didn’t get around to:
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess
I don’t even know how to describe this game, man.
What genre would you like to play? It’s probably represented here in this Action-RPG/Strategy game/hack-n-slash/Roguelike/tower defense/ode to all things Capcom. There’s some Okami, there’s some Sengoku Basara, and even for a company as Japanese as Capcom, Kunitsu-Gami is a real testament to the artistic lineage of their great nation. While not featuring the most polygons on screen, I can think of few games I’ve played recently that are so visually enthralling as you literally paint your path forward in service of the Maiden Yoshiro while she purifies the land from unwanted demons. This is one of the very best HDR implementations in any game I have ever played, and I just love looking at it on top of working through its exceptional gameplay.
One of the main reasons Kunitsu-Gami won this award was the well-done Switch 2 port that launched nearly alongside the console in July of 2025. While it doesn’t run quite as smoothly as I imagine it would on a PS5 Pro or a high end PC, Switch 2 performance is quite good, and this is an excellent game to play portably. On top of that, this is the best use of the mouse functionality I have seen yet on Switch 2, and it’s a fantastic way to play overall. Lastly, the devs added an “Otherworldly Venture” mode which works as wave-based survival. It’s a surprisingly meaty addition that adds tons of replay value to a game that kinda needed it.
Kunitsu-Gami would’ve very easily made my top ten list from 2024 if I had played it previously, but I’m glad I waited and got to experience this fantastic game on my fancy new Switch 2. Don’t wait another year to play this absolute banger.
2026’s “I probably fucked up” award for 2025 game I want to play the most in 2026 that I didn’t get around to:
Dispatch
I have a huge soft spot in my heart for the work of Telltale Games, but it should be known that soft spot only exists for the OG Telltale that actually made real Point ‘N Click Adventure titles like the exceptional Sam & Max entries. Their stated goal was to revive a long-dormant genre that had been sent exclusively to the European Publisher Shadow Realm, and they did that. Unfortunately, they then made an episodic series based off of The Walking Dead, which moved their game design philosophy away from their stated intentions and into more narrative-focused adventures. While I enjoyed a few of those, such as the exceptional Wolf Among Us series, I was rather upset that the company founded on reviving the Point ‘N Click genre basically abandoned it, and I wasn’t exactly shedding a lot of tears when they sputtered out and closed.
With that said, I am happy to see Telltale veterans form a new studio with AdHoc Games, and their superhero-themed work simulator Dispatch was a successful debut. Basically the only reason I haven’t played it yet was seeing its overreliance on the “He will remember that” mechanic that I despised from post-Walking Dead Telltale. I am confident that I will get around to this exciting release by the end of this year. I just wish it had more of a focus on rubber chickens with a pulley in the middle or building literal mountains out of molehills.
2026’s Inevitable Story of the Year:
Just how bad will companies fuck up this industry attempting to replace humans with AI?
OK so given the horrific nightmare that is this pathetic industry, I’m not even going to say the story will be “How will AI infect the videogame industry?” That’s already happened. Now I’m not quite on the same level of AI doom as some people here at GameCritics. The recent Larian controversy where it was discovered their giant mega projects maybe-kinda-sorta-occasionally used AI… Look it’s totally unfair to expect technology companies to never use AI. That’s just silly. Attempting to segregate videogames based on if they used AI or not in development is also equally silly, and anyone trying to figure out if a game used AI or not when deciding if they’re going to play (or cover) a videogame sounds like an absolutely miserable hobby.
With that said, I have zero doubt in this industry’s ability to make me into an anti-AI zealot by the end of the year. They will go too hard in an attempt to clamp down on bloated budgets and staff, thousands more people will be laid off, and the slop shoveled our way will be worse in this medium than it will be in any other field. 2026 (from a layoff standpoint) will make 2025 look like a field day for workers, and these decisions will be incredibly short sighted. I foresee multiple games being delayed due to an attempt to overly rely on AI, then the producers will realize they went too far, and then they’ll try to bring people back to a company that fired them because they were told an app can do their job. It cannot.
I didn’t wanna open the list this year with another rant about this business being the drizzling shits, but consider this your reminder.
2025’s Old Game Of The Year (IE: Best remake/remaster):
Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles
This was a tough choice. Again, 2025 featured an absolutely huge amount of remasters/remakes, and the JRPG genre in particular was extremely well-represented with quality compilations of classics like Suikoden and Lunar. I also almost gave this award to the HD-2D remake of Dragon Quest I & II due to how impressive it was that Square-Enix actually made a version of Dragon Quest I in 2025 that basically constitutes a full-on remake of one of the most important videogames ever made.
With all that said, I’m going with the absolutely exceptional Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles. When I think of this title, the word that comes to mind is “classy”. While retaining the look of the original PS1 release quite well, it’s been very smartly upgraded. It has a fantastic reworking of the soundtrack, an excellent update to the translation, and the newly-added voice acting is exceptional across the board.
While some fans are bummed that some of the bonus content from Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions PSP remake aren’t here, the coolest stuff like having Cloud Strife available as a playable character remain intact, and he has been upgraded to be one of the more powerful characters in the game. While The Ivalice Chronicles is still a rather difficult experience, they also smartly retooled the difficulty to make the overall experience less aggravating. This may have put off longtime fans, but for a new audience in 2025, this was the way to go.
Was it a bad sign that a 27-year-old title won “Best Strategy Game” at The Game Awards in 2025? Probably, but also most years don’t produce better strategy games than Final Fantasy Tactics anyway. The Ivalice Chronicles was one of the very best times I had with a videogame all year, and few games appearing on my list receive the same full throated recommendation I bestow on it.
Turd of the year:
MindsEye
I usually try to pick something for this prestigious award based more on what disappointed me the most personally, but occasionally (as was the case last year with Concord) a game comes out that is such a complete, unmitigated disaster in every possible regard that Turd of the Year has an objective answer staring us all in the face.
We’ve all seen the memes, we’ve seen the melting faces, we’ve seen a design ethos unevolved since 2007. It has a dreadful and dreary open world with absolutely nothing going on, and glitches as far as the eye can see. Furthermore, we saw one of the more prolific developer meltdowns in recent memory as former Rockstar developer, Build a Rocket Boy founder and now known lunatic Leslie Bensies (a name I only knew because of a leaked email in a lawsuit that said “I NEED THE BENZ!”) blamed the media for showing everyone how terrible his game was. He even went so far as to blame people in his own studio for being “shadow agents” and leaking stories to the press. He seems to be convinced his shitty game is a victim of some grand conspiracy coordinated by popular streamers and media outlets. Needless to say, if the BBC is writing a “What Went Wrong?” story about your game, you really, really stepped in it.
It’s not all jokes, unfortunately. The UK videogame scene has had a rough few years, and such a public meltdown and the potential closing of a brand new triple-A developer in Edinburgh is a terrible situation for the people who I am sure poured their hearts and souls into this doomed project. They’ve already fired many people and there’s apparently more on the chopping block. This is a story of failed management and unworkable expectations from a man too high on his overinflated reputation to see how damaging his actions are, and while I hope the team at Build a Rocket Boy (great dev name, by the way) can continue to employ people, I am not optimistic.
YOU’VE READ THE REST, NOW READ THE BEST. THE ONLY LIST YOU NEED FOR 2025.
Honorable Mention:
METAL GEAR SOLID Δ: SNAKE EATER
One could be rather confused seeing the remake of Metal Gear Solid 3 appearing (kinda) on my top ten list considering I just gave the award of best remake/remaster to another game, and I stand by that choice. Depending on what side of the bed I woke up on and the position of the sun, there’s a very good chance I would list Snake Eater as my favorite game of all time. It is, in every possible way one could judge a videogame, stupendous. Fantastic story, excellent setting, marvelous bosses, and more Kojima nonsense than one can shake a stick at, Metal Gear Solid 3 is a defining game of my adolescence, and one that I have replayed, legitimately, dozens of times. I was beyond excited to play a fully HD remake of this title, and I was not disappointed.
However, “Not disappointed”, in this context, is relatively faint praise. While I didn’t dislike my time with Metal Gear Solid Triangle, this was an extremely safe remake. It is, emphatically, Metal Gear Solid 3 with a couple of marginal enhancements to the control scheme. The script is the same, the voice acting is the same, the maps are the same, the blocking in the cutscenes is the same, the strategies are the same, basically everything is the same outside of some weird character design decisions like making The Boss more attractive. I’m sure there were some things the developers targeted for improvement, but they seemed almost petrified to change anything about this stone-cold classic, and given the ferocity of Metal Gear fans, I suppose I can’t blame them.
At the end of the day, METAL GEAR SOLID Δ: SNAKE EATER successfully meets my criteria for a successful remake/remaster in that it makes all previous versions of the game obsolete. I see absolutely zero reason why one would go back and play the PlayStation 2 version when this release exists, and I am happy one of my favorite games got such a lavish coat of fresh paint. With that said, I hardly feel excited when thinking about it, and I don’t feel passionate about it either. It’s just kinda there. I’m glad it exists, but I could’ve gone without it just as easily.
10. Once Upon a Katamari
The original choice for the ol’ ten-hole was Metroid Prime 4, but the more I thought about it after finishing it, the less impressed I was with it, even though I still see it as a solid entry in the franchise. BALL X PIT made a strong run late at the ten seed, but i think it peters out pretty significantly the more one plays of it. My lists usually feature less indie games than other, more diverse lists on this website, and that always makes me feel rather un-hip. For that reason, Baby Steps and Blippo+ were considered, but I can’t say either of them grabbed me.
No, after much thought, I’m just going with what made me happy, and Once Upon a Katamari made me very happy. While the franchise has remained somewhat relevant with quality remasters and some fun portable divergents, Katamari hasn’t had a truly original, mostly new entry on major consoles since Beautiful Katamari all the way back in 2007 on the Xbox 360 (Katamari Forever on the Playstation 3 was mostly a “Greatest Hits” style release). It doesn’t add a lot to an already distinct formula, but there are some neat new power-ups, and the vibes are there in spades. This game tells the best “story” of any entry in the franchise while being equal parts new content and nostalgia bait in both its level design and musical choices. It’s just a good time, and in an age where the prices of games keep going up, I appreciated Namco Bandai releasing a new Katamari at a friendly price of $39.99
9. Donkey Kong Bananza
Speaking of good times, the first six months of Switch 2 ownership were certainly that. Even if one isn’t the biggest Mario Kart fan, there’s no denying that launching with one was the smartest thing Nintendo could’ve done. There’s also been a pretty good amount of software for a console not even a year old, and going back to Switch 1 games with significant graphical enhancements, mostly for free, has been a treat. Also, the console has proven relatively easy to get while also avoiding a price increase due to tariffs or AI facilities cannibalizing the hardware sphere. Heck, they even put the thing on sale during the holidays at multiple retailers. I don’t see many ways in which one could see the Switch 2 as a disappointment so far.
And of those good Switch 2 times, nobody was having a better time than Nintendo’s lovable chimp. Donkey Kong Bananza is the best Incredible Hulk game since Ultimate Destruction. It’s just an immensely enjoyable experience breaking the world Donkey Kong inhabits in a billion different entertaining ways. The controls are wonderful, the level design is exceptional, and it’s pretty clear that this was the next game from the Super Mario Odyssey team. Pauline as a tag team partner was an inspired choice, and the musical numbers peppered through the proceedings are a fantastic way of making sure she didn’t feel like a tacked-on addition. It was smart to have a character people could relate to with a developed arc while playing as a rather brutish ape.
It’s a barrel of monkeys, man. My wife is still wondering why now every time I eat a banana I say “OHHHH BANANA!”
8. The First Berserker Khazan
I’m not gonna sit here and pretend I know a damn thing about the Dungeon & Fighter titles and its apparently extensive fictional universe, and I don’t particularly feel the need to find out more than what little I do know. In that regard, I suppose one could look at The First Berserker: Khazan as a failure since it was meant to feed hardcore gamers into their mobile game slop, but I had no problems paying them good money for this exceptional Soulslike.
Khazan focuses on combat, and it does combat exceptionally well. It doesn’t quite have the quality in level design that the true top tier Souls games do, but it makes up for it with exciting encounters and some truly memorable boss battles. The weapon variety is strong, and there’s a lot of difference in how it plays based on what weapon class one wants to main. Ben Starr continues to be a delight in just about every appearance he makes in a videogame, and his dual role here as both the titular hero and the demon currently in possession of his body makes for some entertaining back and forth. Lastly, Khazan looks fantastic, and is an excellent modern interpretation of cel-shading that matches the anime aesthetic of the universe perfectly.
It’s big, meaty, hardcore, and I worry that a lot of Souls players may have passed on this one out of sheer fatigue in a genre that has been done to death, especially from a blossoming Korean AAA scene that seems to make only this. Passing on The First Berserker: Khazan would be a mistake, though, so check it out.
7. Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii
Another year, another Like a Dragon title makes my top ten list.
The most consistently great franchise from the most consistently great developer on the planet delivered another excellent entry while also making the weirdest entry since the zombie game we don’t talk about. Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii delivers on the promise of a title starring infamous series mainstay Goro Majima, and throwing him into a swashbuckling pirate adventure where he’s singing sea shanties and palling around with some kid while running errands for Samoa Joe. It’s a borderline dream come true for LAD fans. These fans also probably like professional wrestling at a higher clip than most players, so throwing Samoa Joe in was an excellent casting decision.
One of the unsung strengths of this franchise is how the team at Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio excellently recycles assets, and putting Goro in a pirate-themed game right after a main entry set in Hawaii was a smart call. The ship combat and traversal is a great new wrinkle, and it always has that rock-solid brawling combat to fall back on. All the wacky side content the franchise is known for is still here, and like The Man Who Erased His Name before it, there are some strong emotional moments at the end that serve as great payoff for longtime fans.
No complaints. This Yakuza boat just keeps on sailing, and may it sail forever.
6. Death Stranding II: On The Beach
It took me a bit to come around on Death Stranding, which I didn’t particularly enjoy upon marathoning it at launch. Its…eccentricities… grew on me by the time Death Stranding: Directors Cut came out, but I still found its story incomprehensible, I found its conclusion to be supremely unsatisfying, I found the environments to be rather boring, and I found the boss battles to be outright terrible. That last one I found particularly odorous given this was a game made by the dude who made freaking Metal Gear Solid.
Death Stranding II is a textbook case of how to make a sequel to a promising yet problematic game. Take the things that were great about the first title and enhance it while eliminating known issues. It is still very much a Death Stranding game, but they’ve built on the concept in smart ways, dramatically improved the map with a rather strange amalgamation of Australia, and given the player tons of new tools and abilities to overcome geographical obstacles. Also, while the story is still batshit insane, it is significantly easier to follow and actually has a somewhat coherent plot and through line. There’s some outstanding performances as well, with the highlight being Troy Baker eating every single inch of screen whenever main antagonist Higgs shows up.
It’s bigger, it’s better, and it proves that Hideo Kojima has still got the juice. As always, I will be there whenever this maniac releases anything.
5. Ghost of Yotei
I feel like most everything I just said about Death Stranding II could easily be said here, but Ghost of Tsushima was a better starting place to work from. Ghost of Yotei is another Sony first-party triple-A open worlder where they tightened up a few things, expanded the size, expanded the moveset, and delivered an improved sequel in basically every regard. Atsu is a significantly more interesting lead character, it tells a better story (that feels a tad rushed at the end) and they do a very good job of making you really want to kill the people the game is making you kill. It delivers a memorable group of baddies in the form of the Yotei Six, and it is delightful to screw up their entire operation, one by one, right before showing them the sharp end of a sword.
If I gave an award for Best Graphics, it would easily go to Ghost of Yotei. This is maybe skewed by my ownership of a Playstation 5 Pro, but goodness gracious is this game a treat for the eyes. Seeing this game with ray tracing, exceptional HDR, a nearly-locked 60FPS, and a high resolution made me stop many times and just look out into the wilderness. Hokkaido is one of the most naturally beautiful places on earth with a tremendous amount of geographical diversity, and the team at Sucker Punch were able to capture all of that on a map that is significantly smaller than many other entries in the genre. Along those lines, one of the strengths here is how reserved it is with content. I did a fair bit of side questing (which is rare for me) and it still only topped out at around 35 hours, and that’s a drop in the bucket when one compares it to something like the incredibly bloated Assassin’s Creed: Shadows.
It is, however, still very much One of Those, and players who have done this sort of triple-A mapbarf action/adventure thing one too many times may not be down for another one. That is understandable, but Ghost of Yotei is a truly exceptional One of Those, and it doubles as a true showpiece for Sony’s hardware in the age of evaporating exclusives.
4. The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy
Y’know, I figured the whole “lock some eccentric teenagers in a weird school with bad stuff happening outside and watch them deal with nightmare fuel while a sadistic stuffed toy gives them orders under threat of death” genre had accomplished everything it needed to with the Danganronpa trilogy. Luckily, Kazutaka Kodaka and his team at Too Kyo Games were able to make a brand new visual novel that obviously borrows from their past ideas while also making a unique experience on its own. This is not Danganronpa, and considering how it’s also totally Danganronpa, that’s an impressive accomplishment.
One of the areas where Hundred Line excels is that, while it’s still very much a visual novel, when it does decide to be more of a videogame and throw players into some strategy RPG combat, it actually has some chops to it. It’s definitely not as complex as something like Final Fantasy Tactics, but it’s a significantly meatier aspect compared to something like the mech combat from 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. The combat scenarios definitely take a backseat to all the bonkers plot reveals in the second half of the game as players discover one hundred different endings, but I appreciated its inclusion.
I am a firm believer that people should go into these types of games as cold as possible. Don’t ask questions, don’t read up on plot details, just go get some hands on a copy of this absolute dandy of a yarn to untangle.
3. Silent Hill f
I think we need to stop, take a moment, and realize what happened here. Over a twenty year span, from the release of Silent Hill 4: The Room in June of 2004 to the Silent Hill 2 remake in October 2024, there was no major videogame franchise more frequently dragged through the mud and desecrated than Silent Hill. Being a Silent Hill fan during in that time was as dreary as the town the games inhabit. Awful “mainline” entries like Silent Hill Homecoming & Downpour, crappy movies, an assortment of titles that Just Didn’t Get It, the heartbreaking cancellation of Silent Hills, The baffling erasure of P.T., and an eleven year gap between releases ended by the downright offensive Silent Hill: Ascension. It has been non-stop pain for multiple generations, and while I loved the Silent Hill 2 remake, that was pretty low-hanging fruit. Making a quality remake of an all-time classic is hardly a reach.
In light of this, we should all collectively recognize the fact that Konami made a brand new, completely original Silent Hill, and it’s amazing. Silent Hill f is a game I legitimately thought would never happen after literal decades of disappointment. It is haunting, disturbing, and takes the franchise in a wildly different direction. The shadow of Silent Hill 2 has loomed over this franchise for so long, and it took getting as far away from that sleepy little town as possible to make something that can actually stand on its own. There are some who didn’t think setting the game in 1960s Japan and starring a bunch of high schoolers was an appropriate choice, and those people are the reason this franchise has been stuck in mud for twenty years. Silent Hill is a state of mind, and the vibes here are everything I, as a longtime fan, wanted. The combat isn’t super great, but it never was anyways, and that slight bump in the road didn’t do much to eliminate the jubilation I had playing.
It also served as an excellent introduction to the very fucked up work of Ryukishi07, who I genuinely worry about as a person due to Silent Hill f actually being rather tame compared to his other stories. This guy is a rabbit hole, and he was a phenomenal choice for Konami and Taiwanese developer Neobards to partner with. In a year where big publishers played it extremely safe, Silent Hill f was an immensely refreshing big swing from a company I didn’t know had it in ‘em.
2. Wuchang: Fallen Feathers
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers was was the most pleasant surprise of any game I played this year, considering I didn’t even know this game existed until the day before release. I was on summer break, I suppose I was in the mood for some Soulsin’, and I went to the local Best Buy to pick up a disc (for some reason I always want Souls games on a disc) and give something with a moderate amount of buzz a shot.
I am so glad I did.
Even for a genre known for difficulty, Wuchang Clan ain’t nothing to fuck with. This game will humble you. I do feel like I deserve some kind of medal because I defeated Commander Honglan pre-patch, but anyone playing the game after launch will find a smartly-refined experience that is still difficult, but significantly more fair. This game was a nightmare in its first iteration, but I suppose I was feeling rather masochistic at the time. Wuchang succeeds in the main area where the more mid-Soulslikes fail — level design. The world is intricate, connected, memorable, and I loved this incredibly twisted take on ancient China. The most interesting mechanic here is the implementation of Madness which works a bit like the Dragon Rot from Sekiro. Essentially, the more a player dies, the closer she succumbs to her inner madness. When the meter is full, she takes more damage but also has significantly increased attack power. This creates a very distinct risk-reward dynamic that I haven’t seen represented in other games of this ilk.
On top of being a fantastic Soulslike, I believe developer Leenzee deserves a lot of credit for creating, by my estimation, the most daring, audacious, envelope-pushing piece of media put out by a company in Mainland China since quite possibly the start of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in the mid 1960s. As people may be aware, getting through Chinese censors can be a bit of a pain in the butt, but Communism works like a radio signal — the further one is from the source, the higher the possibility is of someone getting away with something. Leenzee is based in the western Chinese city of Chengdu, far away from Beijing in the northeast, and I am genuinely amazed they were able to get a game this violent and featuring this much traditionally taboo subject matter released.
Now, unfortunately, the radio tower got wind of this, and to secure a domestic release, they had to essentially rewrite the ending and remove some of the more controversial aspects. such as the player killing various Chinese historical figures (they now just take a nap after defeat) along with those previously-mentioned gameplay improvements. This is a huge bummer, and Wuchang got killed for this online, but I refuse to blame these tremendous artists for the fascist dictatorship they live under. It’s really easy for keyboard warriors to decry censorship from abroad when the people making the game end up in a jail not on Google Maps if they don’t comply.
Much to the chagrin of the CCP, the internet exists and there are already plenty of mods that restore the lost content, so accessing the complete Wuchang experience is a couple of clicks away with various mods on the Steam page. One can also be a true sicko and just run that PS5 disc on version 1.0 if one wants to get kicked in the nuts over and over again.
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is one of the better games this genre has ever produced. It is tremendously exciting to see a mainland Chinese developer show these kinds of chops, and I cannot wait to see what Leenzee comes up with next. On top of being one of the very best games of the year, it’s also one of the most important.
Lastly, I just want to say this game runs fucking circles around Black Myth: Wukong. I hope it made the director of that game feel rather inadequate.
1. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Before we get to why this was an easy decision, I feel like saying something blatantly obvious: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is, emphatically, a fucking indie game. The basic definition of independent media is media created free from government, institutional, or corporate control. Sandfall Interactive is a brand new studio independently funded, and I had never heard of their publisher beforehand. By the standards of its competition in scope, the $10 million budget and a core staff of around 40 (with contributions from a few dozen contractors) are both absolutely miniscule compared to other tentpole releases from this year.
Yes, some of the lead people there worked at big studios before this. That is true of a ton of games that are called ‘indie’. So if some brand new band is making their own music, putting it out themselves, and they have the mixing done by the bass player’s uncle who worked at Warner Music for a spell, is that no longer an ‘indie band’? Do you specifically have to work out of a garage maxing out personal credit cards to be ‘indie’? Is there a polygon count limit? Is Expedition 33 too pretty for Indie? Did having Daredevil in it make it not indie? Seems to be a pretty easy thing to define that y’all have spent way too much time thinking about.
Anyhoo, the best videogame of 2025 is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. “Going chalk” became significantly less cool over the past month as basically every major publication and awards show has come to the same obvious conclusion. As I stated previously, I saw this as a pretty weak year and, to me, no other experience came close. There’s really not a lot I can add that hasn’t been said on so many other lists. It is beautiful. It has all-timer performances from an all-star cast. It has one of the best original scores in recent memory. It tells a wonderful story in a completely fascinating universe that does a great job of telling a complete narrative while also hinting at much larger things to come.
Expedition 33 is also an exceptional take on the Japanese Role Playing Game that fuses a very traditional combat interface with modern design (IE: You can parry, so it’s modern). There has to be some shaking fists and frowning faces in the Tokyo offices of Square-Enix wondering why they can’t just make an original, big budget game where three playable characters walk around an open world, go into towns and caves, and fight monsters in turn-based battles using actions selected from a menu. At the same time, some of the more fussy things in JRPG’s like inventory management have been extremely streamlined.
This happened through discipline, and I’m sure so many of the leads saw firsthand how bloated this shit can get from their previous jobs at Ubisoft and were determined not to make the same mistakes. I can tell this isn’t a game that suffered from feature creep or conflicting visions. They laid out what they were going to do at the start of development, and they did that.
On top of legitimately being a masterpiece, Expedition 33 takes my top spot for one very simple reason — hope. Somebody finally did the thing. A (relatively) small team with a budget the size of a rounding error at major publishers delivered a big, meaty, lavish, bombastic, single-player triple-A videogame using a wholly original IP, and it was tremendously successful financially. We have literally been clamoring for this to happen for fifteen years, and Sandfall wins this award purely by pulling off this hopefully revolutionary achievement.
Expedition 33 also gave me hope because I like to play singleplayer videogames built to a large scale that they still sell on a disc. I value strong production, long runtimes, and fidelity that pushes whatever hardware I’m running it on. I am starting to worry games like Ghost of Yotei and Death Stranding II are going to become such terrible value propositions for publishers that they will simply cease to exist. They’re already being released at a significantly lower rate than I have grown accustomed to, and soon we’re not gonna have enough tentpoles to keep the tent up. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 shows a new way. It shows games like this can be made at a scale less likely to cause economic ruin to everyone involved, and while I have zero faith the major western publishers will learn anything from this, I am very optimistic that smart developers and smart money can chart a new path forward for whatever “triple-A” means with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 serving as their North Star.
Vive la FRPGs.
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