2025 was a lighter year in new game releases. For me personally, the year did not ramp up until after the Nintendo Switch 2 release. I had spent the early part of the year moving, flying out to stay in L.A. for a week, and finally taking care of boring adult stuff that comes with moving to a new place. However, as a certified gamer, I still surprisingly pulled off playing enough new titles to culminate into a Top 10 list, so let’s do that.
This list includes a game that is left unfinished, so I will mark it with a * in the list. This is more of a stream of consciousness on what I remember feeling when playing these games and less of an analyzed, well-thought critique of these games.
10. Dynasty Warriors Origins
When this game was first revealed it was safe to say I was decently hyped up for it. I loved the Warriors musou games growing up, and haven’t played one fully since Dynasty Warriors Empires 8. The graphics engine finally looked better, the battle scales looked larger – I was prepared.
January 17th, 2025 came and essentially went. I do like this game, but honestly its inclusion at the top of this list is due to having not finished many games or playing enough games at the top of the year. I may do an in-depth review/rant on this in the future, but while it was an enjoyable action game, DW: Origins dropped off so much of what makes the series a fun and replayable experience.
9. WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers*
This was a game I didn’t even know about until I saw it randomly on the Playstation Store’s “Upcoming” section. Pretty lady + dark souls is always a easy sell to me. And, after seeing Iron Pineapple’s video on it, I figured I’d give it a shot.
This is the game I have yet to complete, by the way. I won’t get too detailed, but the game is fun. It definitely captures the way I felt when playing Dark Souls (1) for the first time, but in a macabre fantasy China. The moment to moment gameplay is fun and there is plenty of challenge, but this game runs pretty bad at times (even on my PS5 Pro), and before I could even finish it, controversies with the player-base in China led to content being censored or redone before I could experience how it originally was.
8. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds
I was late to the party on this one. Let me get it out of the way: this game is way more fun than Mario Kart World (which is not on this list). To be fair, it’s hard to beat a racing game where you can play as Hatsune Miku.
I picked this one up for Black Friday and played a good bit with my friend. It’s by no means the perfect game, and it is plagued with a balancing issue that has yet to be addressed (you want to be in between 4th-8th place until the last moments of the game pretty much). There are also some sad looking graphics engine issues even on PS5 Pro, such as background characters appearing to be .gifs imported into the world. All that aside, the character selection is great and the racing is fun and feels good to control.
7. R.E.P.O
R.E.P.O dropped in February, but I didn’t play it until a couple months after. I had still felt full from my good 40+ hours in Lethal Company the year prior, but my friend saw a lot of clips of this game and wanted to try it.
It became a regular Discord get-together for us for a month there in 2025 and it was good fun the whole time. I know the game still receives updates from time to time, but it ultimately felt like there was a little less to truly work towards besides powering up. I absolutely love the ways you can try to kill the monsters too – the sleep dart gun is top tier!
6. Donkey Kong Bananza
We finally get to the Switch 2 games. I was up past midnight picking up the Switch 2: despite the online discourse, I was excited. DK Bananza looked like fun, so I picked it up. I don’t really play any sort of platformer-adventure games often (if ever), but admittedly the Switch 2 was sort of dry at the time, and this was the stream of water it desperately needed.
This game was a blast – early negative reviews be damned! I played primarily in handheld mode and enjoyed smashing entire blocks of terrain, collecting all of the fossils and running around to get the Crystal Bananas. This is a solid game, which explains its nomination for Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2025. The only real complaint I had for DK Bananza is it overstays its welcome in the story and could have been shortened just a touch.
5. Elden Ring: Nightreign
I am an Elden Ring lover. I have played Dark Souls 1 and some of 2 and 3, so I may be called a poser, but Elden Ring was an insane release back in 2022. I even 100%’d it – I love this game. So when Nightreign was announced to be a co-op roguelike spinoff, I was somewhat skeptical but still excited to try it out.
When it dropped, that excitement was validated. The game is essentially co-op runs through a mashup of the Elden Ring maps, where every second counts to level up and get better weapons before the Fortnite-esque storm consumes you. I 100%’d this game as well and enjoyed many sessions with my friends, but now that the DLC has dropped, I found myself not as eager to come back as I thought I would. I’m sure I will come around, but the DLC expansion did not demand my immediate attention.
4. Monster Hunter Wilds
This was the game that tricked me into believing I needed a PS5 Pro. Some background: I was in the middle of a move when initial reviews were dropping, and the game looked like a lot of fun. But performance issues on consoles were noted, and many had said that PS5 Pro was the definitive way to play this title. I’m not super sure about that, as it still has some embarrassing hiccups on it, but regardless, this was a fun addition to the series.
Another one I spent a good chunk of my Spring on and it ended up 100%’d as well! As an Insect Glaive main, I wish the feel for the weapon was retained from MH Rise. Instead, it is back to the sheepish jumps of World, but with the addition of the new special attacks, I can forgive it. It really does suck Capcom haven’t quite pushed to eradicate the glaring performance issues yet…regardless, it is more than playable and what you get to play is a blast.
3. Umamusume: Pretty Derby
Yes, my top three starts this way and I am not ashamed. I was a fan of Umamusume Season 1 back when it aired originally. At the time, I did not know it was planned to have the game come out first, and then it wasn’t until the Global release earlier in 2025 that I even knew there were multiple seasons, a movie, and that Japan had the game for some time.
Although it took me a minute to understand the actual gameplay of this little gacha, it got me back into the series full-send. I am now knowledgeable on many race horses from around the world, get to enjoy cute horse girls daily, and am catching back up with all the anime I have missed (and it’s all good!)
The reception for Umamusume: Pretty Derby’s Global release actually shocked me! I remember it was a popular show back in S1 of the anime because people thought the concept of race horses turned anime girls was funny. I guess it’s an everlasting charm, because I still love it!
2. Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma
Hoo boy. I have played RF3, RF4, and RF5. I still remember when RF5 was title revealed years ago, I had tears in my eyes because prior, the series’ developer was shutting their doors. Not too long after, in 2023, we saw “Project Dragon” revealed as a Rune Factory game. Little information dropped about this until the months leading to release – which was pushed back to release with the Switch 2 on June 5th, 2025. That whole time, I had just assumed we were getting Rune Factory 5 but “in Japan.”
What an awesome surprise this was. To be frank, this is definitely a sort of “spin-off” on the series, but it does introduce so many changes to the core mechanics that I think Rune Factory should include going forward. Building multiple villages with NPCs that can come and go to automate farmer and foraging and more, lots of different combat styles and skill trees to invest in, and a cast of just all around lovely and fun characters that are all well voice acted. This was my obsession all of June, I could barely put the game down. I still have the end-game content to finish, but I got a solid 60+ hours out of simply playing through the main story while getting distracted with side content here and there. There are some things I wish this game went further on, like the relationship systems and marriage, and I quite dislike that they locked some romance options behind a DLC, but it is probably the best Rune Factory to date.
1. Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar
I have played nearly 100 hours of this game so far. I preface with that because I initially planned to make this the #2 on the list. But, simply for what this game is and how much time I put into it alone this year – it has to be number 1.
I never played the original Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar (unfortunately). However, with the modernization of the old games under the moniker of “Story of Seasons,” I have picked up every type of remake to-date, so this was no exception. I never expected much, especially when the previous remake was my childhood favorite, Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life. But when this released and I got my hands on it, I was more than pleasantly surprised.
Many a fan are hailing this as “the best game in the series” and at this point, I am inclined to agree. It is by far the best looking we have seen from Story of Seasons to this point, and what was a small DS title in the series has been remade into a full-sized package worth every penny. One of the first things I noticed that instantly told me this was a quality product was there is a beefy amount of voice acting – something that has been extremely rare for the series outside of some vocal stims and grunts.
The next thing was that this game looks so pretty. Yes – it’s not revolutionary graphical prowess you would see with a triple A title, but for a long-time fan, this is the same feeling as shifting from a PS3 game to a PS5 game. Colors are deep and lush, the foliage amount and animations really make you “feel” the wind of Zephyr Town. It’s just a cute little treat for your eyes.
Gameplay is solid as ever too (with some caveats). While there is a lack of world customization the baseline titles attempt to give, it is not necessary here. You can unlock more fields, repair the windmills to unlock more resources – there are progression systems, and it all culminates with the overhead system of progressing your bazaar rank. This is an extremely fun loop to work through, as you never feel the need to “skip a day” in any week in the game, as you always need to work on meeting the goals for the next bazaar rank. I do dislike the decay/quality system, as it makes you rush to try and use your produce and food items at all times, and I feel like I am spending half of my harvest on making more seeds than I am simply making money. But those are tiny complaints.
This is one of my top-played games on the Switch 2 or Switch library in general, and is by far the most time I have put into a Story of Seasons game since I was a kid (I lost hundreds of hours of sleep to the original HM: A Wonderful Life). With that being said, these are just some of the reasons I picked this as my stand-out game from 2025.
Honorable Mentions
There were a good amount of games in 2025 that I picked up, but these are mostly ones I picked up near the end of the year and/or haven’t finished enough of to feel like I could place it comfortably on a list like this.
Expedition 33
I waited for the physical release which was pushed back into November, so I didn’t get to start this title until mid-November of 2025. I have yet to finish it and have just started Act 2. I see why people were all about this, but because I did not finish it in time and from some personal opinions on it, I think this is simply a solid RPG to recommend but not quite one to take home all the gold.
Megabonk
I heard a lot of good things about this throughout 2025, and before I bought it on-sale in late December, I wrote it off as “just another Vampire Survivors” game. To be fair, I do like the gameplay loop of those games, but I really only played Holocure in that genre and nothing else. I decided to pick up Megabonk and man, it is just good fun where you can sort of shut your brain off, but put in enough thought per run to feel like a smart fella. I haven’t played enough and have only unlocked a quarter of the items, but yes, this is a really fun game!
Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut
I picked this up a day after the Switch 2 dropped for the simple fact that I had not played Yakuza 0 since back in 2017. Yakuza 0 was my first experience with the franchise, so at the time the appeal of the substories and minigames had not dawned on me, so I remember burning through the game really fast.
As of writing, I have put in over 50 hours into Director’s Cut so far on my Switch 2, and I am glad I picked it up simply because it is letting me truly love Yakuza 0 all over again and to go back and appreciate everything I had neglected before.