The 2025 Video Game Retrospective

Sometimes I’ll start these retrospectives with a comment about how the last year has gone, but the only thing I can say this time around is that I’m glad video games and their worlds have been around for me to escape into. Regardless of what’s going on out there, I can always set my mind to these tasks to accomplish and criticisms to levy. Let’s not delve too deeply into whether or not this level of escapism is self-destructive. Actually, it’s very productive and cool.

#1: Astral Ascent

Platform: PC (Completed January 2nd)

When I originally played this, I described it as a mix between Hades and Dead Cells, which is still pretty accurate, but if we’re being honest, it doesn’t quite reach the heights of either. There are two components here that remind me of Dead Cells, first of which is the art direction on the in-game sprites, which feature lively animations but flat colors and featureless faces. Secondly, you have a loadout of four customizable spells that you can switch out and/or upgrade over the course of a run. Unlike Dead Cells, these spells are all assigned to one button. When one goes on cooldown, you advance to the next spell in line. I have pretty mixed feelings about this. In a game as frenetic and visually busy as Astral Ascent, it’s not easy to always keep track of what order your spells are in, which spell is currently active, and how much mana you have. I found myself often mashing the spell button in tough situations, which often doesn’t lead to great outcomes, especially if you’re experimenting with new spells, all of which have different ranges and movement effects. 

It echoes Hades in that the main hub is populated with a variety of NPCs, all of which have a tremendous amount of voiced dialogue. Even in Hades with its impressive writing and voice direction, I eventually find this kind of thing a bit tiresome. In Astral Ascent where the quality isn’t quite at that same level, it crosses over into content I began to deliberately ignore in favor of starting that next run.

Despite all these criticisms, I do enjoy just how customizable your loadout is over the course of a run. Each spell can be upgraded and augmented in an impressive variety of ways, but you can also upgrade your base character strengths as well, including auras, unique passives, and tons of different triggered effects. Like you might expect, there are tons of keywords, elemental effects, and synergies to take into account, and these components are ultimately what kept me playing for a good 45 hours. It was a fun time, but just not as polished as some of this genre’s greats.

#2: Nova Drift (January 12)

Platform: PC (Completed January 12)

I tried this one in Early Access some time in 2024 but committed to it a bit more earlier this year. It’s essentially a take on Asteroids with a whole slew of new weaponry and gear options. Over the course of a run, you can decide how to upgrade and customize your thrusters, your shots, your shield, and even a series of summoned allies like interceptors. Some of them attack and hunt down enemies, some shield you, and some just orbit around you in a hybrid of offense and defense. There’s enough variety to make each run feel fresh. The control scheme is very faithful to Asteroids and games of that ilk, which is definitely a barrier to entry, since proper management of your thrusters is really important to avoid enemies.

#3: 428: Shibuya Scramble

Platform: Steam Deck (Completed January 25)

I read/played a few visual novels this year, but this one really stuck out to me for a few reasons. First, it’s completely live action (through a series of stills and a scant few filmed sequences) and it’s also just a really fun and interesting blend of crime thriller and screwball comedy. Not every aspect of the comedy in this 2008 game has aged well, but those bits weren’t enough to sour my experience.

#4: Judgment

Platform: PC (Completed January 30)

I’ve been making my way through the Like a Dragon saga for five or six years now, so I can’t exactly say I’ve been with the series since the beginning. Even so, I have a lot of experience with it now and I can safely say I didn’t particularly care for Judgment. I may well have been burned out from also having played through Yakuza 6 shortly before, but even so, it’s become increasingly clear that the brawler gameplay has become stale. Judgment’s combat is almost objectively more interesting than many of the games that came before, but it’s still not the kind of combat system that scales well over the course of an 80-100 hour game. That might be fine if I liked the story more or if I cared much for the protagonist, but alas. It also commits the grave sin of being absolutely packed to the brim with tailing missions, a relic of the Xbox 360 era that I thought we were well and truly done with.

#5: Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist (February 3)

Platform: PC (Completed February 3)

It’s wild to think that I played this sequel to Ender Lilies this year quite some months before the long-awaited release of Hollow Knight: Silksong, a follow-up to its 2017 predecessor. Ender Lilies, released in 2021, was heavily influenced by Hollow Knight, so it’s funny to think that there have been two Ender games in that span of time. Regardless, I enjoyed Bloom in the Mist a lot. It sands down some of Lilies’ more questionable design decisions and continues to be a very pretty, accessible take on the Metroidvania formula. It’s not extremely difficult nor is it too simple, it looks great, and has a wonderful soundtrack. It’s the kind of game where you sit down and finish to 100% without a tremendous amount of trouble, but feel very satisfied having done so. It stands out from other games in the genre just through its diversity of loadouts. Most of these games allow you to itemize in some way to augment your character, but your central play style is generally going to be pretty static. In Ender Magnolia, you’re essentially choosing a set of four core abilities and those abilities and the way you arrange them enable an impressive variety of strategies. Granted, the game doesn’t exactly have the teeth to demand you employ the most effective of those strategies, but that does give you the opportunity to experiment with more unusual options. I don't really have a bad thing to say about this one.

#6: Perfect Tides

Platform: Steam Deck (Completed February 9)

I’m definitely in the right demographic for this retro-style adventure game. Mara is a 15-year-old girl in the early 2000s living on a tourist-trap island. More importantly, her real life, particularly socially, happens online. This feeling of having your “real friends” online at that age is extremely relatable to me and calls to mind an era that simply no longer exists, not only because I’m much older now, but because the texture and infrastructure of the internet has irrevocably changed. The story and dialogue are both phenomenally written and everything about that aspect of the game works for me. The gameplay is very much in the vein of Monkey Island and other similar adventure games, which works for me a bit less. Still, that’s not a failing of the game, but more of an issue I have with the genre. Despite the gameplay not being my preference, I will absolutely play through the sequel one of these days.

#7: Rift of the Necrodancer

Platform: PC (Completed February 18)

I was a huge fan of Crypt of the Necrodancer back in the day so I was certainly looking forward to this spin-off. I continue to think that the fusion of rhythm game and roguelike dungeon crawler is a wonderful idea. Comparatively, Rift is a more traditional rhythm game with Guitar Hero-style lanes. It sets itself apart with the notes being a variety of ghouls and baddies from Necrodancer, all of which have different rules and rhythmic behaviors. If you see skeletons with shields coming up, you know you’re going to have to hit them twice in rhythm. Zombies wrap around the other side of the lane when hitting the edge to throw you off. I like the game a lot and find that it’s quite challenging on the hardest difficulties. I definitely had to set aside time to practice for some of the more difficult tracks. While I really enjoyed my time with it, I found myself with little desire to return to it, which is not necessarily an indictment of the game’s quality, but worthy of note all the same. It’s inarguable that it’s not as clever or as memorable as Crypt of the Necrodancer itself. 

#8: The Rise of the Golden Idol

Platform: PC (Completed February 23)
Golden Idol Investigations: The Sins of New Wells Completed September 28
Golden Idol Investigations: The Lemurian Phoenix Completed September 28
Golden Idol Investigations: The Age of Restraint Completed October 4
Golden Idol Investigations: The Curse of the Last Reaper Completed October 5

I decided at some point while playing through the DLC of Case of the Golden Idol that I would happily play through any games of this style they put out. This unique fusion of mystery solving and storytelling is always engaging. The bizarre art style could definitely be off-putting to some, but I find it lends these games a really unique aesthetic. Rise takes place in the 70s, some 300 years after the events of the first game—but won’t you know it, that titular idol is still causing trouble in ways difficult to fathom. The twisty narrative, indirect characterization, and fascinating worldbuilding are all uncovered through a series of logic puzzles and process of elimination, but with some exceptions, the way you get to these solutions generally makes sense, as long as you carefully examine the scenes. There’s one part in the DLC where you essentially have to decode an ancient language that I found particularly memorable.

#9: Lies of P

Platform: PC (Completed February 28)

While you could certainly criticize how much Lies of P wears its Bloodborne and Sekiro influences on its sleeve, it implements those influences admirably well. Visually, it looks a lot like Bloodborne, but since it’s a more modern release and available on PC, it has the distinct advantage of running at a consistent high frame rate. Combat is very parry-centric, but unlike Sekiro, there are ample build and customization options to take advantage of. The core loop of memorizing enemy patterns and parrying at the appropriate time to open them up for big punishes is always satisfying. You have access to a series of tools that mimic the utility of Sekiro prosthetics, but you also have plenty of weapons to experiment with. It’s also worth noting that this whole game is a take on the Pinocchio mythos, which is well done, but secondary to the enjoyment I got out of it. I just wanted to fight a bunch of interesting enemies and experience satisfying combat, and that’s certainly what I did. This is probably my favorite Soulslike not developed by FromSoftware. I need to go back and play the DLC one of these days.

#10: Super Robot Wars Alpha

Platform: PS1 (Completed March 4)

I got a wild hair to go back and play this mostly because I wanted to play more of the Alpha series. I played Alpha Gaiden way back in 2014. At that time, it was only maybe the third ever SRW I’d ever played. Alpha is decidedly more stripped down compared to what I’m used to with more modern entries, but honestly, I still really liked it. Simplicity isn’t always a bad thing—and Alpha still certainly sells the fantasy of assembling a team of mecha from different worlds and mowing down wave after wave of aliens. Tactically, of course. Another reason I wanted to check this one in particular is because it’s old enough that it still had Macross in it, as well as the only ever inclusion of Giant Robo. That felt like a novelty to me, so I wanted to give it a try. It also encouraged me to watch the entire original Macross anime, which is legitimately really interesting. It’s a relic of its time for sure, but I found it pretty fascinating. 

#11: Life is Strange Remastered

Platform: PC (Completed March 10)

This was originally slated to be my designated Steam Deck game to slot in after Perfect Tides. I tend to always have some kind of narrative game or visual novel in the rotation that I play before bed. It turns out that I wasn’t really digging how degraded the graphics were on Steam Deck so I played the vast majority of it on PC. I’ve actually tried to start this game a few times over the years but this is the first time I successfully powered through it. It plays a bit like an early- to mid-2000s indie movie, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s a bit cheesy and overwrought, but it certainly has heart and the voice performances still won me over. I’m also generally a fan of time travel narratives in almost any game, so that worked for me too. Will I ever play any other games in this series? Hard to say.

#12: Shogun Showdown

Platform: PC (Completed March 11)

This is a bite-sized, cleverly designed turn-based roguelite in which you’re tasked with taking out a series of enemies in consecutive levels. All action takes place on a single 2D plane and only forward and backward movement is possible. As limiting as this seems, it really wrings a lot of satisfying gameplay out of this concept. Because the premise is so simple, every movement and ability feels very impactful. Like Into the Breach, enemy movements are forecasted for you, so your actions are taken in response to what will be occurring around you. You’re constantly having to think about when to move, to attack, and when to use abilities that do some combination of both. Over the course of a run, you’ll have the option to upgrade your existing attacks and get new ones. On the meta level, you’ll unlock entirely new classes that reexamine how the core gameplay works. It’s a very simple and effective game that does exactly what it sets out to do. I liked it a lot.

#13: Blasphemous 2

Platform: PC (Completed March 17)

In a year where I played several Metroidvanias, I find that I think back to this one the least. Blasphemous stood out to me for its gory, pixelated aesthetic, but the sequel is a bit cleaner—and a bit less remarkable. On paper, there’s not much wrong with Blasphemous 2. It has all the things that I enjoy doing in these kinds of games and has some great 2D animations, but I got through it fairly quickly. I recall that the giant ball-and-chain weapon trivialized most regular enemies since it had decent range and staggered them reliably. I like that you get three different weapons you can cycle between, all of which have different minor traversal abilities associated with them, but as far as comfortable Metroidvanias go, I would give the edge to Ender Magnolia here, even if Blasphemous 2's controls are a little tighter. Both pale in comparison to some other games in the genre I played later this year, but more on that later.

#14: Final Fantasy XVI

Platform: PC (Completed April 10)

When I played Final Fantasy XV in 2016, I went into it with a good attitude and tempered expectations. I knew even then that even though Final Fantasy was really important to me, it hadn’t really been for me since the SNES era. With those expectations in mind, I played through XV and thought it was a reasonably good game with some notable flaws. As time passed and I had time to simmer on my experience, I realized I didn’t care for it much at all. The combat felt unsatisfying, the story was incomprehensible, and the characters (banter aside) didn’t do a lot for me. With this in mind, I decided maybe I just wouldn’t ever play FFXVI after the initial wave of reviews was a tad mixed.

What I found is that I enjoyed FFXVI considerably more than XV, but it had almost nothing to do with how much of a Final Fantasy game it is. In fact, it doesn’t feel much like it at all. You have no party, there are few to no RPG mechanics, and Final Fantasy whimsy is nowhere to be found. Sure, there are nods to chocobos and moogles and all manner of traditional Final Fantasy monsters, particularly when it comes to the colossal summons, but it ultimately doesn’t feel very Final Fantasy. But honestly, that’s okay. What we have here instead is a spectacle action game with some of the most impressive combat sequences I’ve ever seen in a video game. It’s stitched together with a watered-down Game of Thrones-style plot and a pretty, albeit repetitive Masayoshi Soken soundtrack. It’s far from a 10/10 experience, but the ludicrous combat scenes were worth the price of admission for me. It appeals to me in much the same way an over-the-top action movie does. I’m really just waiting for the next insane action sequence.The combat has almost no friction, but I remedied that somewhat by committing to never using a single healing item. There is definitely some satisfaction in just seeing what ridiculous combos you can string together—and the game certainly gives you a lot of interesting options to experiment with. I just wish the game’s encounters were difficult enough to make those decisions feel meaningful.

It’s worth noting that The Rising Tide DLC amps up the combat difficulty considerably and it’s also really gorgeous graphically. I broke my “no healing items” rule here out of sheer necessity. If the whole game felt like this DLC, I would think much more positively about the game.

#15: Inkbound (April 14)

Platform: PC (Completed April 14)

I’ve been a huge fan of the developer Shiny Shoe for years now, thanks to my undying love for their roguelite deckbuilder, Monster Train. With the news that a direct sequel was releasing, I decided it was a good time to hop in with a friend in co-op to play this turn-based strategy game they’d made in the interim. It turns out it’s quite good, albeit strange in a lot of interesting ways. Although actions are completely turn-based, you can move freely on your turn much in the vein of something like Valkyria Chronicles or even Phantom Brave. Alone, or with a group of up to 4, you’ll take on a series of combat encounters in branching pathways in a format we’re all likely very familiar with by now. Each of the several character classes in the game has access to a series of unique abilities with different pseudo-randomized upgrade paths. You have the option of focusing on raw damage, status buildup, defense, or even support in a party context. Much of the gameplay comes in positioning. You have a limited amount of movement available to you in a turn, but certain actions and upgrades can grant you with more movement as you use your resources over the course of that turn. Power Orbs, for example, usually only give you additional resources to use your abilities, but a very common upgrade has them provide a small amount of movement as well. It's not uncommon at all to end up with builds that generate a lot of Power Orbs, so you can end up moving much further in a single turn (and taking many more actions) than you could under normal circumstances. Beyond that, the gameplay boils down to using the appropriate abilities in the right orders and against the right targets. It's a game of priority, planning, and character building. It may not be quite as sticky as Monster Train (after all, Shiny Shoe did pivot to Monster Train 2 after this game failed to make a huge impact), but it's still a really solid strategy roguelite that I'd recommend investing a few hours into.

#16: Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled

Platform: NDS (Completed May 5)

I’ve already written pretty extensively about this one on this blog because it’s the first in a planned “marathon” of old DS RPGs. In 2011, I made a wishlist on Backloggery that was never fulfilled—until I decided to play a bunch of them this year. As it turns out, I didn’t make it through the whole list, but here’s hoping I’ll finish it off in 2026. Just to briefly talk about the game itself, Black Sigil is a bog-standard Japanese-style RPG inspired heavily by Chrono Trigger. It has a ton of problems but it’s clear it was made with love and marred by circumstance. I’m still really glad I played it.

#17: The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak

Platform: PC (Completed May 12)

Like Final Fantasy, Trails is another long-running series that I’ve started to find myself withdrawing from a bit. I definitely didn’t play Daybreak on release and waited for a sale instead, because Falcom’s long and steady slide into tropey plots and tacky fanservice has disrupted my enjoyment of what are generally great turn-based RPGs with enjoyable gameplay. The same can be said of Daybreak on both counts, but it stands out due to the introduction of some real-time combat elements. Like Metaphor, you’re free to attack and fight enemies in the overworld at your leisure with a basic set of attacks and then transition to turn-based mode when you have a good opportunity—typically when you’ve stunned your enemy. It’s not revolutionary, but it’s refreshing and works well. The characters are also not actively unlikeable nor does the plot fail to serve as a vehicle to throw new threats, dungeons, and treasures at me. The meat-and-potatoes experience is what I’m craving from these games. On that front, it delivers, while not being overly offensive in terms of characterization and storytelling. I also played the sequel this year and well, that changes things a bit.

#18: Yakuza: Like a Dragon

Platform: PC (Completed May 18)

Judgment wasn’t the only game in this series I played through this year. I’ve been obsessively playing through these games in order, as is tradition. Granted, I’ve tended to take long breaks between entries because these games are very long and generally very similar to each other. Like a Dragon upends that a bit since it’s the first in this long-running series to be a straight-up turn-based RPG. Of course, the way it implements this combat style is downright bizarre. It’s like I’m playing a traditional Yakuza brawler except all of the actions everyone is taking are determined by commands instead of button presses in the moment. That’s an oversimplified way to describe it, but it’s kind of true. Broadly, Like a Dragon is a send-up of Dragon Quest in modern-day Japan in the criminal underworld following new protagonist Ichiban Kasuga, an RPG-obsessed former yakuza fresh out of a long stint in jail. For the purposes of the plot, all of the character classes and bizarre fantasy stuff happening in combat is entirely from Kasuga’s active delusions, which is pretty funny. In reality, Ichiban is hitting baddies with a baseball bat but in his mind it’s a glorious sword of legend and they’re all fearsome monsters. Like a Dragon doesn’t take this premise to its nightmarish logical conclusion but instead serves up a political plot involving Ichiban’s parentage, his past, the backstories of his many new companions, and uh, his budding new confectionary business. Like all these games, there’s a ton of side content to do and minigames to play, which we (I played this one with a friend over Discord) spent a considerable amount of time on. I wanted to sell him on the Yakuza experience.

I’m burying the lede a bit here, though. The truth is, I don’t think this combat system 100% works for me. You would think that taking this series I already like a lot and turning it into a JRPG would be like a combination made in heaven, but in practice, it’s not that simple. Or, rather, I guess the fact that the combat is simple is the problem. It attempts to implement Super Mario RPG-style action inputs but there are only a few available and shared among many different abilities, so it never feels impactful or specific. The main purpose of trying out new classes seems more for novelty and watching the animations than in actually crafting any effective strategy. I feel pretty confident that I could slap together just about anything and it would work fine, as long as I’d found some good gear along the way. Still, the combat isn’t bad, per se, there just isn’t enough there. The story is still interesting, if not quite on the same level as some of the previous games, and I do like Ichiban and company. If Infinite Wealth impresses me with its combat system, it may end up being really special.

#19: Wildfrost

Platform: PC (Completed May 21)

I already mentioned that I played Inkbound while waiting for Monster Train 2. When I’d had my fill of that and Monster Train 2 wasn’t out yet, I decided I still needed to satisfy my deckbuilding craving—so I opted for Wildfrost, just one among many of these games regularly recommended to me by Steam’s algorithm. I was somewhat hesitant to check this one out because the reviews were a little mixed, but I ended up quite enjoying it overall, even if I didn’t spend a huge amount of time on it. It’s quite a bit more difficult than other similar card games, which I appreciate, and it also feels very different from some of the big names out there, which is saying something when you consider how many Slay the Spire clones there are. Essentially every card game mechanic already exists in some form, so what’s more important is the flavor you apply in implementing those mechanics. Temporary attack boosts for creature cards exist in all sorts of formats. The Strength mechanic in Slay the Spire springs to mind, or the many +X/+X until end of turn effects in Magic: the Gathering, for instance. Wildfrost’s take on this is hot peppers. I like this idea of cramming a hot pepper in your mouth shortly before a fight to give you a quick boost of adrenaline. Since there’s also a general snow theme going on in Wildfrost, another common mechanic is snow stacking. If you apply snow to an enemy, they’re unable to take action until the snow falls off, at a rate of 1 per turn. In some cases, you can absolutely annihilate an enemy with snow, but many elites and bosses can only have one snow applied to them per turn to prevent an infinite stunlock. 

It’s also just a really cute, visually-appealing game, which is probably why a lot of prospective players were turned off by the surprising difficulty. Another controversial mechanic is that when you do actually clear a run, your winning deck becomes the boss of the next run. Now, this is a wild idea that I’ve never seen used elsewhere—and I guess I can see why. After all, it feels like a punishment for having succeeded. For me, though, I think it’s pretty interesting. You’ve made a really good deck, now figure out how to beat it.

#20: Monster Train 2

Platform: PC (Completed June 4)

Most people would tell you Slay the Spire is the best deckbuilding roguelite, but my personal favorite has always been Monster Train, which is why I was heavily anticipating this sequel. The original is about mixing different monster clans together to create interesting strategies so I was really excited to try out a whole new batch of them. With a set of five completely new clans and new mechanics, Monster Train 2 impressed from the get-go with its fresh variety. On top of brand new clans, it introduces equipment cards, room cards, and activated abilities as well, so the design space for these cards has much more potential compared to before. If that wasn’t enough, by the time you’ve cleared runs with these new clans and unlocked a sizable portion of the game’s content, you’re blindsided by a spoiler that I’m shamefully going to reveal right here: all of the previous game’s clans are in the game too. For reference, you can choose a primary clan and a support clan for any individual run in Monster Train 2, meaning that the initial roster gives you about 20 possible combinations of clans, or 40 if you count your choice of champion and supporting starting cards. With the inclusion of the MT1 clans, that number of combinations becomes 90, or 180 when factoring in champion choice. This is a dizzying amount of variety and goes a long way toward explaining why I have 240 hours in this game and have come nowhere close to 100%ing it. 

It’s worth noting that the game has definitely evolved since launch. When first released, the MT1 clans were noticeably weaker than the new cards because the new design space and iteration had resulted in some power creep. At first, these cards were ported over with little to no changes. After some balance changes, the MT1 cards are a much more appropriate power level and feel more integrated into the game, and even utilize some mechanics that were introduced for the sequel. The game is regularly being updated and DLC is on the horizon too, so I’ll be revisiting this as new stuff comes out. I know at least one new clan is going to be added in DLC, but my dream update would be if they added Wurmkin from the MT1 DLC and then a new clan unique to MT2. It seems greedy in a game with so much in it already, but I’d be ecstatic if it happened.

#21: Split Fiction (June 8)

Platform: PC (Completed June 8)

I play games with a friend every weekend and we typically collaborate on really long RPGs that we play over weeks at a time. Split Fiction seemed like a fun bite-sized experience to play through in between these longer projects even though it’s not the kind of game either of us typically play. Personally, I enjoyed it a lot! Sure, the writing is a tad hokey, but I found Zoe and Mio very likeable in the end. The real reason to play this game is just how much fun the splitscreen co-op gameplay is. Hazelight is clearly very experienced in this field since they’ve designed in this space several times before. The game took us about 14 hours to get through, which is not only a lot longer than I expected, but that’s 14 hours with little to no downtime. There’s almost always something interesting to do, fun to look at, or interesting to experience. There’s some friction there too, so it never felt like I was just going through the motions without any challenge at all. There’s platforming, shooting, boss fights, puzzle solving, exploring—and as soon as you even think a certain area might be wearing out its welcome, you’re off to a new setting completely, borne from the minds of our protagonists. Hey, maybe sci-fi and fantasy fans can get along after all.

#22: Chaos;Head Noah

Platform: Steam Deck (Completed June 9)

I’ve discussed before how I tend to have some sort of narrative game or visual novel in the rotation on Steam Deck and this one made the list because I grabbed just about every Science Adventure VN in a sale quite some time ago. I really enjoyed Stein’s;Gate when I read it a few years ago and I’ve enjoyed everything else in its orbit quite a bit less. That’s not to say I completely disliked this weirdly titled game, and in fact it resonated with me on some level due to my own self-imposed isolation and struggles with depression. Having said that, though, there’s plenty of weird and offputting stuff in this story, not all of which is earned by the narrative. Further complicating matters is some disagreement about the quality of the localization, with many fans insisting you play with a community-made patch. Others deride the quality of the patch and defend the official localization. I don’t really know what to believe but it certainly makes me less likely to read more of this series in the future just because it’s not a tension I want to experience when trying to immerse myself in a story.

#23: Path of Achra (June 11)

Platform: PC (June 11)

I went through a phase last year where I was obsessed with Tales of Maj’Eyal, a traditional roguelike with a ridiculous amount of class and build variety. Ever since, I’ve been harboring this desire to find something that scratches that same itch, but have so far been unsuccessful. Path of Achra could have been that game in theory, especially since it condenses the experience down to runs that last an hour or two instead of 20. It has a ton going on with the variety of races, traits, classes, weapons, and abilities that you can experiment with, but the real problem with the game in my book is legibility. The game describes itself as a “broken build simulator” which is pretty accurate, but too much of the experience is in simulation and not actually seeing that build play out. Sure, you move your character along a grid in traditional turn-based roguelike fashion, but so much of the action comes from a wall of text resulting from a thousand triggered actions—until suddenly, whoops, you’re dead. Or maybe you don’t die and you eventually succeed, but the level of feedback never extends much beyond everything exploding around you in a way that theoretically results from the choices you’ve made, but never feels like it. 

#24: Mario Kart World

Platform: NS2 (June 18)

It feels absurd that I bought a Switch 2 and played Mario Kart World this year because that thing has been sitting on my bookshelf ever since. Admittedly, I had fun playing through the game, but I absolutely wasn’t hooked. I hadn’t played a Mario Kart game since maybe Double Dash on the Gamecube, so it’s not like I was really fiending for a new entry in the first place. I just knew I needed a Switch 2 for the eventual Fire Emblem game that will come out for it. This is not unlike when I bought a Wii U and ended up getting about four games for it. Maybe I should be a bit more hopeful here since I ended up with a decent library for the original Switch, but let’s really examine that for a second. This is no longer an entry on this list about Mario Kart World because the game is aggressively fine and that’s about all I have to say about it. Now, this is just about the Switch 2 and how it compares to the Switch.

I was a pretty early adopter to the Switch and bought a lot of games for it. This was during a time when I was still regularly playing games on consoles, though, which has definitely changed in the past few years. Eventually, I transitioned over to strictly playing console-exclusive games on the Switch—and the number of games that are must-plays for me that are also exclusive to the console has become vanishingly small. Games like Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey are great, but ultimately not the kind of games that I love. To me, the Switch was the console that would be the successor to the 3DS, a handheld that featured a ton of exclusive games that I loved. But this never quite materialized. Series I love like Ace Attorney, Team Asano games like Bravely Default, Octopath Traveler—all of these are available on PC now. One of the last games I ever played for the original Switch was Great Ace Attorney, but only because I bought it a long time ago. I definitely would have just gotten it on PC like I did Ace Attorney Investigations and Octopath Traveler 0. 

So, I guess I’m resigning myself to the Switch 2 being a Fire Emblem machine. I’ve played every single mainline Fire Emblem game since 2003 and I’m not going to stop now. If they ever put out a new Smash, I’ll play that too. 

#25: Diablo II: Resurrected

Platform: PC (Completed June 22)

Due to the whims of the YouTube algorithm, I was flooded this year with Diablo II challenge run videos earlier this year. I do watch challenge runs of various games, but hadn’t looked up anything Diablo-related whatsoever, so it’s a little strange for this kind of thing to be recommended to me. Either way, they caught my attention, and after watching a video or two, I decided it might be fun to finally give this remaster of a game I played a ton in my youth a try. After my friend and I finished Split Fiction, we took the logical next step of playing Diablo II in hardcore mode—something that I have personally never done. We made it all the way through Nightmare difficulty and didn’t die, but we also kind of just fell off of it in favor of other things. I played a Martial Arts assassin, bucking my personal tradition of doing nothing but spamming traps. The remaster looks pretty good and I like the balance changes Blizzard implemented to diversify the pool of available strategies. Ultimately, loot-centric action RPGs only hold my attention to a certain point these days, so leaving off with one hardcore run for the road was enough for me. 

#26: The Dark Spire

Platform: NDS (Completed July 8)

I’d always hoped that when I embarked on my journey to clear my mythical 2011 wishlist, I’d come across some hidden gems. The Dark Spire may not be a perfect game, but man, it’s really cool. It’s an old-school hardcore dungeon crawler in which you create your own party, disarm traps, unlock doors and chests, solve puzzles—the whole nine yards. It even has a mode that displays the game’s 2009-era Nintendo DS graphics in full-on vector graphics. Admittedly, I never really experimented with that mode, but I did play through the game to completion and of course wrote about it on this very blog. I said just about everything there is to say in that entry, but The Dark Spire was a really memorable experience and I’m glad I got the opportunity to play what I consider to be legitimately a hidden gem.

#27: Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven

Platform: PC (Completed July 9)

I’ve been a SaGa sicko for some time now, ever since I really dove into the series in 2017 when the Romancing SaGa 2 remaster hit for the first time. This is a bit of a full circle moment in that I’ve now played many of these games and have returned to RS2, but this time with a full-blown remake. It should come as no surprise that this game still rules and nothing about the fully 3D visuals mars the experience. It’s still delightfully bizarre but now its mechanics are decidedly less obfuscated. It’s always clear when you have the ability to spark—ahem, I mean, glimmer a new technique and under what circumstances you can make that happen. This change alone is huge, and forestalls the inevitable poring over ancient GameFAQs texts to determine which characters can learn which skills with which weapons. All that information is displayed for your convenience, so I have much more time just to experiment with what the game has to offer. 

Beyond that, the game is very similar to that 2017 remaster, which is certainly not a bad thing. The central premise of the game is that there are these seven ancient and immortal heroes that saved the land of Avalon from monsters many years ago but have now become corrupted into demons themselves. You start the game as a young prince and after some events, you inherit the powers of your father. As the game goes on, you have the opportunity to advance into new generations and inherit the powers of your previous incarnation. In this way, you can cycle through various different characters and classes. It’s a wild system that I’m impressed they managed to adapt to 3D, even if we’re not talking about the highest fidelity game in the world here.

As you advance through the game, you’ll have to find ways to track down the seven heroes and determine the best strategy to take them down. Maybe you’re not strong enough yet and fall in battle—only to return later in an entirely new generation to avenge your predecessor. The way in which deaths force you to advance to the next generation is really fascinating and forces you to experiment with different party compositions and loadouts. It’s really a lot of fun and I can’t say enough good about it.  

#28: Nine Sols (July 18)

Platform: PC (Completed July 18)

I mentioned earlier that I’d played several Metroidvanias this year and I wasn’t lying. This is one of those that has really stuck in my head since I finished it, because it is exceptional.  I’m a sucker for a good parry system, as I mentioned with Lies of P, but it feels especially engaging here because I can’t recall a better example of parrying in a 2D action platformer context. Everything about the combat in Nine Sols just feels perfect, and that comes down to the fluidity of animations and careful design of the mechanics. If I wanted to be a tad reductive, I could say that the combat of Nine Sols feels like a combination of Sekiro and Hollow Knight, but since we’re talking about two fantastic games, that’s not so bad. The combat is definitely more complex than Hollow Knight, though, but definitely not as rich with options as something like a more traditional Soulslike.

In the case of Sekiro or Lies of P, the purpose of parrying is to open up opponents for punishes. In Sekiro, it’s close to mandatory in order to succeed since depleting boss health bars takes infinitely longer than simply going for a deathblow. Nine Sols turns this on its head a bit because enemies don’t get staggered or have a separate gauge to deplete in addition to their health bar. Instead, parrying empowers Yi, the player character, by giving him resources he can spend on his abilities. The most common usage is your dash attack, which can be done grounded or in the air. When you have charges of your resource, you slap a talisman on the enemy during this dash, which explodes after a delay. The interplay between these talisman dashes and parrying at the right time is immensely satisfying. 

If the combat was all the game had to offer, I’d still like it a lot, but it also has an excellent soundtrack and a surprisingly engaging story. In fact, this challenging game is quite story-driven, with lengthy cutscenes and a great deal of dialogue—all of which is really great. I’ve definitely enjoyed the vibes and idea of stories in other Metroidvanias, but this is the first in this genre in which I felt legitimately invested and emotionally affected. What a great game, man.

#29: Nioh 2 - The Complete Edition

Platform: PC (Completed August 2)

I claimed earlier that I can only tolerate loot-centric action RPGs up to a certain point, so… of course my friend and I decided to play Nioh 2 next! To be fair, I’d never tried this game in co-op or even on PC for that matter, so it felt very novel to give it a try. I also think that the Nioh games have very strong combat with lots of build options and buttons to press. I do like to press some buttons. I also had never played through the DLC before, so that was a fun treat as well. Nioh’s take on the Soulslike genre isn’t perfect—and the loot system I could do without entirely, if we’re being honest—but the combat itself is very good. Restoring stamina with ki pulses, changing stances for different attacks, experimenting with different skills, the ninjutsu and onmyo magic, they’re all really cool. The story might as well not even be there, but I at least like that this sequel gives you full control over creating your character, unlike the first game. I liked the game quite a bit more this time, partially due to the co-op element, but the comfort of playing it on PC probably had something to do with it as well. 

#30: Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound

Platform: PC (Completed August 5)

Continuing the ninja theme with Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, a new entry in the venerable series developed by The Game Kitchen, the same guys who did Blasphemous. I mentioned earlier that Blasphemous 2 kind of just made no impression on me, but Ragebound was pretty cool, perhaps due in no small part due to its brevity. This one isn’t a Metroidvania, which I think is to its credit. The traditional level structure and fast pacing sets it apart from a lot of what’s on the market these days. I would have appreciated just a tad more difficulty (this is Ninja Gaiden we’re talking about here), but the core gameplay of alternating between Kumori and Kenji for both platforming and combat never grew stale. It’s also got a really catchy soundtrack that includes some fun remixes of classic Ninja Gaiden tunes. This one was just a fun time.

#31: SaGa Emerald Beyond

Platform: PC (Completed August 17)

I was so enamored with the RS2 remake that I really wanted more SaGa weirdness. Emerald Beyond is a brand new entry in the series and a follow-up to 2019’s SaGa Scarlet Grace, a game I found quite bizarre at the time. Both games feature multiple different playable protagonists, but when I was relatively new to the series back when I played Scarlet Grace, I only played through one of those stories. In Emerald Beyond, I really wanted to give the game a legitimate chance, so I played through every single one of the five protagonist stories. 

The good news is that the combat system is great and an evolution of what was introduced in Scarlet Grace. Combat takes place on a timeline and your positioning on that timeline depends on your status, but also the delay and speed of each ability you use. These abilities may delay other enemies on the timeline or move your character further up in the list. The structure of a turn involves selecting the series of abilities that put you in the most favorable position relative to your enemies. Ideally, you position your characters next to each other on the timeline, which creates increasingly powerful combination attacks that can wipe out enemies before they get a chance to act. In some cases, defeating an enemy will remove them from the timeline and extend your combo. It’s a really clever new layer on the traditional SaGa formula. The satisfying glimmering new techs is still here, as is the action-based stat increases. I don’t really have anything negative to say about the combat at all.

On the other hand, the rest of the game is just bizarre, and not always in a good way. The plot is almost completely incomprehensible, the art is inconsistent at best, traversal on the overworld takes place on what looks like something from a child’s board game, there are extraneous gameplay mechanics that I forced myself to engage in despite the tedium, and even the excellent combat can grow stale when it’s all you’re doing and all you’re playing the game for. Despite the inventive combat, it’s hard for me to recommend this game because it’s so long. The absurdity of the setting, graphics, music, and presentation might be part of the selling point if it was maybe 20% as long—or I guess if you decide to just play through one protagonist story like I did with Scarlet Grace all those years ago. After over 100 hours with this game, I was pretty dang ready for it to be over. I spent less time than that on Revenge of the Seven and never came close to running out of steam.

#32: Glory of Heracles

Platform: NDS (Completed August 19)

This was the next game on the list for my 2011 wishlist and as usual, I wrote about it extensively on this blog some months ago. This one was neither as interestingly flawed as Black Sigil or as engaging as The Dark Spire. In terms of presentation, it’s a traditional JRPG that happens to cover Greek mythology—but it actually has a really unusual combat system. First of all, you have five party members and you’re free to choose their formation, dividing your members between the front and back row. The back row is safer, but only ranged attacks can be used. Secondly, the spell system is fairly complex, involving generating different types of elemental mana and spending them with other spells. This is in addition to standard MP costs, which I felt was a little much. I think it would have been more interesting if all spell costs were limited to the elemental mana types. Having two different resources feels a bit clunky. Regardless, I wrote a lot more about this so I won’t do a deep dive here. It’s a decent game, but I don’t think I’ll be investigating the older games in the series any time soon.

#33: Pokemon Infinite Fusion

Platform: PC (Completed August 31)

It’s inevitable that Pokemon will come back up in some way for our weekend gaming sessions. Over the past few years, we’ve played a variety of different romhacks and randomizers, but I’d personally never tried Infinite Fusion, so we finally jumped in. We settled on a loose Soul Link format where each individual Pokemon we caught was linked together and we could only grab one from each route. From then on, we could fuse our monsters any way we liked as long as we fielded the same 12 individual Pokemon. Unsurprisingly, this was a lot of fun and lead to a lot of lengthy sessions poring over the Infinite Dex website to wring the most optimal combos out of what we had available. We finished the main game and played postgame a bit, but an unlikely death on my part in Johto’s ice gym cut things short.

#34: Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja

Platform: NDS (Completed September 3)

It’s been really fun playing through these old DS games without knowing much about them beforehand. I’m sure when I made this wishlist 15 years ago that I knew what kind of game Izuna was, but in 2025, I was surprised to learn that Izuna is a traditional roguelike very much in the vein of the Mystery Dungeon series. I was immediately charmed by the colorful and pleasantly readable graphics. This art style always ages much better to me than something like Glory of Heracles, which featured ugly low-poly character models. The expressiveness of the in-game sprites matters a lot to me, which takes me back to comments I made about Astral Ascent earlier in this list. Even though the sprites in that game are expressive and readable, the fact that the characters don’t have faces makes them seem much more impersonal. Like the other games on this wishlist, I wrote a lot about Izuna (and its sequel) on this blog, but in short, Izuna is a rock-solid roguelite that I legitimately enjoyed playing even divorced from its context as a 2006 Nintendo DS game.

#35: Hollow Knight: Silksong

Platform: PC (Completed September 13)

I really didn’t plan to play four different Metroidvanias this year, but that’s just how it worked out. Also, I’m definitely not complaining, because I had a fantastic time with three of the four. Silksong is the culmination of 8 years worth of feverish anticipation. It’s the follow-up to 2017s Hollow Knight, itself an excellent Metroidvania. The Soulslike tag has sometimes been applied to this series due to the combat difficulty, the benches being similar to bonfires, and the fact that you need to retrieve your money when you die. I’m not that interested in the comparison, but it’s worth noting that Silksong’s difficulty is considerably ramped up—and fair enough, because Hornet is a much more agile fighter than the titular Hollow Knight. 

I won’t mince words, though. I adored Silksong. I know that the game was divisive for its high difficulty and punishing levels, but even when I was repeatedly dunking Hornet in maggot-infested swamps in the infamous Bilewater, I couldn’t help but admire Team Cherry’s audacity. These are these segments where you’ll have to undergo ludicrous platforming challenges to get to a boss that’s the toughest thing you’ve ever faced. Then, you die, and you’ll have to do that platforming segment again. It’s enough to infuriate even the best of us—but man, as soon as you’ve tried that boss a few times and you’ve really nailed that platforming segment, it’s really magical. I think this really crystalized for me after a few attempts on The Last Judge. I’d really struggled with the platforming leading up to the boss, but after several attempts, I realized I was speedrunning it. The game had given me the perfect opportunity to really familiarize myself with the game’s movement options. I was sailing through the air, dodging enemies by inches, bouncing off bells, really mastering the perfect tempo and route to get back to do another attempt in a timely fashion. Much has been said about the tedious runbacks in this game, but I just can’t relate to that criticism. It’s fair if the difficulty isn’t for you, but the runback is part of the boss in my book. It would be one thing if the platforming segment was a rote and time-consuming process you must merely endure in order to get another chance, but in the case of Silksong, these challenging runbacks are legitimately rewarding to master.

I was also pretty surprised when I first started unlocking Crests, which are essentially just entirely new weapon movesets for Hornet. From watching streams, I see that a lot of people didn’t even experiment with these options, but my opinion is that they’re really missing out. I spent a huge chunk of the game using the Beast crest, a high-risk/high-reward option that removes your ability to heal on demand but instead turns your activated ability into a lifesteal effect for the next few hits. It also radically transforms the aerial attack you normally use to bounce off enemies. The default diagonal downward attack you get from the initial needle crest was already divisive among new players who were used to the more accessible pogo attack from the first game, but the Beast version is even wilder and harder to control than that. It’s not unlike a Sonic spin-dash, to be honest, in that it fires Hornet out in a huge arc from long range. When mastered, you can bounce off enemies from a very long way away and chain together these attacks in a very satisfying way.

I’m not going to compose an essay about Silksong in this very long entry but the Beast crest is just one example of the many different combat options the game gives you. The combat is much more interesting and diverse than the first game, the levels are absolutely brutal, and the soundtrack absolutely rules. Your mileage may vary on how you feel about the last sections of the game, but overall it’s absolutely stellar and I’d love to return to the game for DLC.

#36: Silent Hill 2

Platform: PS2 (Completed September 21)

I’m definitely not a veteran of survival horror, but I’ve played a few of them by now. Notably, I’ve played most of the Resident Evil series, but this is the first time I’ve ever tried a Silent Hill game. I knew a lot about it just through cultural osmosis, but I’d never even touched one of these games in their heyday. The PS2 version of Silent Hill 2 was my aforementioned friend’s suggestion and this was another shorter game to play through together on the weekends. I’ll be totally honest—I didn’t really care for it. The gameplay is pretty basic and unsatisfying, which is fair enough if the point is to build up a feeling of dread and fear, but my ancient and jaded husk doesn’t seem to find shambling corpses and zombie nurses all that scary. I know this is more of a psychological horror, but the central premise of the game feels pretty… predictable? Maybe it only feels that way almost 25 years down the line, but the final reveal fell pretty flat to me because I just assumed that was what was going on the whole time and that the game was going to subvert that expectation. Instead, it just aligned with my expectations perfectly. I think it would have definitely hit me harder if I’d played it when I was 13 (hell, I thought Heavy Rain was revolutionary when I was in my early 20s), but in 2025, I thought this was an okayish experience with some unintentionally funny voice acting and mediocre gameplay.  

#37: Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap

Platform: PC (Completed September 27)

Despite having played all the previous Orcs Must Die games to death, I put off playing Deathtrap for a while because the initial reception was decidedly mixed. It’s definitely a bit of a departure from the series formula with its multiplayer focus. If anything, it’s a second stab at what Robot Entertainment tried with Orcs Must Die! Unchained, a game that started its life as a MOBA of all things and transitioned into a slightly more traditional multiplayer-focused tower defense game. Even then, that game’s servers were eventually taken offline entirely and it was banished to the realm of memory. Actually, I liked that game a lot and played it a ton with my ex, so when it was revealed that Deathtrap was another multiplayer game, I was pretty interested in that. My friend and I played enough to get through the main campaign and enjoyed it well enough. It’s important to note that Deathtrap is more of a roguelite this time around, with most gameplay involving playing a sequence of progressively more difficult maps with new modifiers. This is a fine idea in theory, but I found that the map variety was a bit lacking and we ended up seeing the same maps far too often, even in as relatively short a period of time as we spent on the game.I would consider returning to the game to give it another try if more playable characters were implemented or if they really cranked up the number of maps available. For now, I think my curiosity is satisfied.

#38: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

Platform: Steam Deck (Completed September 1)

I last played through this game back in 2011 (wow, that year is coming up a lot somehow) and apparently loved it at the time, but this time I wasn’t as impressed. The localization is a tad dry and the story in general never really grabbed me. I liked Great Ace Attorney a lot more but even it didn’t exactly wow me, so I am starting to wonder if some of the appeal of Ace Attorney has started to wear thin for me with age. I’m not completely giving up hope, though, because this particular entry isn’t widely loved and the sequel (which as of this writing I have not yet finished) generally gets a better reception.

#39: Hades II

Platform: PC (Completed October 9)

It was at this point that I realized I was playing a lot of direct sequels this year, and this is absolutely not where it stopped. Hades II is a follow-up to Supergiant’s 2019 classic and is just as polished. The art direction is excellent, the music is inventive and memorable, the voice acting is very good, and the gameplay is a refinement of the hack-and-slash combat of the first game. Hades II also takes some steps to alleviate some of the first game’s repetitiveness by giving you the option to progress on multiple fronts instead of just doing the same set of floors and bosses over and over. Even with these new gameplay elements, the problem isn’t entirely gone, especially if you’re trying to be reasonably completionist like me. I also mentioned that the gameplay is a refinement of the previous game, but I would have preferred if Supergiant  went even further. Although it’s far from bad, if I’m going to play a game for dozens of hours, I would prefer if the gameplay really holds up to scrutiny. It didn’t take long to figure out which strategies were the best ones and I never had much reason to experiment with other boons more than once since I would have just been making the game harder for no good reason. If I’m going to be committing to finishing runs many times over, I might as well go with the options that are most likely to lead me to success. 

While the lore and worldbuilding are excellent, the actual plot of the game is a bit less interesting. Melinoë is a neat character with a cool design, but she doesn’t really have any flaws or struggle with anything in particular. The only struggle she faces is directly related to my inability to finish a run. It’s also arguable that she’s even that central to the conflict, since the solution requires rescuing her brother Zagreus, the protagonist of the first game. 

I shouldn’t be too tough on Hades II though, because you could do far worse. The combat is fun, it just doesn’t scale very well over the 90 hours I spent grinding out all the game’s content. Despite an emphasis on spell casting and charged attacks, Hades II ultimately feels just about as button-mashy as the first game, so that criticism remains. 

#40: The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak II

Platform: PC (Completed October 20)

This series has really been stringing me along for the last few years and I’m only still playing because I tend to enjoy the combat system and the traditional JRPG trappings. To be completely fair to this game, I do find the characters likeable to a certain extent, the game just loses me when it comes to the plot. This has been the case for the last few as well, but the lengths Daybreak II goes to are particularly egregious. The last chunk of the game is an exercise in lowered stakes and pointlessness—to the point that the fun combat doesn’t really save it. Here’s hoping Trails beyond the Horizon is a bit more chill. These games are best when they’re about hanging out and solving small-scale conflicts, but I think we’re probably well past that by now.

#41: Izuna 2: The Unemployed Ninja Returns

Platform: NDS (Completed October 20)

I don’t have a sense of how well-known these games are but I still get the sense that they flew a bit under the radar back in the DS heyday. Roguelikes were not nearly as popular then as they are now, and a traditional roguelike is an even tougher sell. Izuna 1 was very solid and enjoyable, but this sequel improves on it in just about every way. You can now tag between two characters and use combo attacks, you get access to a huge variety of new weapons and spells, and the structure of the game is decidedly less linear. This one really surprised me with how fully featured it is. I devoted a bit less time talking about this one when I wrote about it earlier this year because so much of what I said about the first game explained how the second game works, but I ultimately enjoyed this one a lot more and would really recommend it if you were only going to play one of them.

#42: Ball x Pit

Platform: PC (Completed October 23)

Countless games have been released in the wake of Vampire Survivors that are heavily or loosely inspired by it. Many of them are straight-up reskins and others really iterate on that formula. Ball x Pit may be my favorite iteration so far with its fusion of block breaking gameplay, roguelike structure, and city-building meta-progression. It also respects your time a bit more than other games in this genre, at least for now. You can do most of what the game has to offer in less than 30 hours. I love how it implements the pinball/Breakout gameplay in the city-building segments as well, allowing you to send balls flying to bounce off your buildings to help construct them. Whereas Vampire Survivors and most games inspired by it mostly consist of walking around while seven million projectiles emanate from you, Ball x Pit feels much more satisfying in that aiming your balls appropriately is important. You’ll often need to aim your balls so that they ricochet several times before returning to you. Other characters force you to completely reexamine how you play, too, so there’s plenty of different ways to tackle the game’s challenges. I really enjoyed this one.

#43: Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles

Platform: PC (Completed October 25)

Final Fantasy Tactics has traditionally been one of my favorite games of all time. It’s always tough to reevaluate this kind of thing as time passes, because not only have much more technically advanced games been released in droves since 1997, but because I’ve aged as well and my expectations and preferences have evolved accordingly. Having said that, Tactics is still a great game and this is a really solid version of it. It strikes a middle ground between the flowery dialogue of the War of the Lions remaster and the poorly localized original and therefore may well be the new definitive version of the script. Of course, I’ll always miss the plainspoken “don’t blame me, blame yourself or God” line from the original NA release, but I’m willing to compromise. 

Crafting broken character builds is just as satisfying as it was in 1997, but some of the same problems still persist. While I’m grateful that this version nerfs the insane power of the Arithmetician (at least in hard mode), classes like Archer and Dragoon are still pretty bland in terms of their skillset since they weren’t really touched. This game also still features an incredible plot, especially for a game from the 90s, but I legitimately would enjoy the storyline better if it didn’t devolve into a climactic struggle against demons and God like every other JRPG out there. The small-scale military conflict of the early game is really unique for this genre and has the best writing. Once you progress into the late game, the writing becomes decidedly more by-the-numbers. The fun of combat is still there, but I’m less invested in the actual story events. I’m not sure if this is something I really internalized when I was younger, but it’s a valid criticism all the same.

#44: Disco Elysium

Platform: PC (Completed November 3)

Listen, I’m comfortable acknowledging the fact that I’m a bit of a contrarian. When a game is popular and well-liked, I immediately become overwhelmed with skepticism. This has made me avoid, consciously or subconsciously, many mainstream games over the years. I was always interested in Disco Elysium, but the lavish praise it receives on the regular likely did contribute to me waiting so long to finally check it out. Well, I shouldn’t have, because the game rules. It takes me back to how I felt playing games like Baldur’s Gate as a kid, where so much of the appeal was just in exploring towns, meeting new characters, and really exploring their dialogue. Disco Elysium perfects this kind of gameplay and structures everything around it. Your progression is entirely about your ability to proceed through these conversations. Are you empathetic enough to understand the pain this man feels? What important new details will this bring to light? Alternatively, are you a violent enough man to intimidate this lorry driver into telling you what you need to know? Even if you are, are you willing to take those steps? One of my absolute favorite “stats” in the game is Conceptualization, which concerns your character’s ability to, well, conceptualize complex ideas, particularly artistic ones. There’s one Conceptualization check that you likely won’t have the ability to pass until very late in the game that is mind-blowing. I could genuinely write thousands of words about how much I like this game, but many YouTube essayists have already done it for me. The most important thing to note about Disco Elysium is that it’s not just a mystery game or a crime thriller or anything like that. It’s a game about people and conversations—and I can’t think of any game that does it better.

#45: Blue Prince

Platform: PC (Completed November 9)

Speaking of popular and well-liked games that I put off playing due to my contrarian nature, Blue Prince is one of the most clever roguelikes I’ve played. Instead of just exploring a giant mansion and gradually uncovering its secrets, you’re essentially constructing that mansion from the ground up, room by room. The catch is that your progress on constructing this mansion is reset every day. That’s the quirk of Blue Prince. Every time you exit a room, you’re given three options of rooms to draft, all of which have different configurations of exits, different traits, and lore, puzzles, and hints to uncover. For the first few runs, this is a really engaging loop because of how the game blends gameplay with a meta-narrative. Your initial goal is simply to reach the mythical Room 46, but the more rooms you draft and progress you make, the more you realize that there’s a lot more to the game than that. It’s a very interesting game that I admire a lot, but I’m going to be perfectly honest here and admit that the game becomes very tiring and repetitive to play once you’ve played several runs. The critical flaw to this game is that sometimes you’ll fail a run for reasons entirely out of your hands. This makes sense for roguelikes in a general sense, but when the gameplay of Blue Prince is mostly just placing rooms next to each other, the novelty wears off quickly. If you’re playing through runs simply in an effort to find something new without learning anything, it feels like you’re just going through a series of time-consuming actions that don’t accomplish anything at all. It’s far too easy to end up in situations where you reach a dead end halfway through constructing the house and then you have no other choice but to start over. If you’ve done 20 runs, you’ve probably found mostly everything in the house proper, so the gameplay at that point boils down to fulfilling a series of specific tasks in order to get to where you need to go. In runs where this becomes impossible, progressing further is completely pointless and you might as well just start over. Because the game is structured this way, I had very little interest in continuing to play after fulfilling the “main” goal of the game.

#46: Absolum (November 21)

Platform: PC (Completed November 21)

After playing through a few cerebral games, I wanted to hop into a co-op game with a bit more of an arcade vibe. Absolum certainly fit the bill. This is a 2D beat’em up with a fantasy aesthetic developed by the same folks who did Streets of Rage 4 (which I have not played). It has this great art style rich with color, wonderful animations that really sell the impact of each strike, and unlike some other games I’ve talked about on this list, very expressive character sprites. It looks a bit like a 90s cartoon in motion, so visually, everything really works for me. On top of that, the combat feels great. Beat’em ups can absolutely feel a bit sluggish, but Absolum is very responsive and enemies can be launched, bounced, and juggled extensively. It doesn’t feel entirely dissimilar to a fighting game, which is glowing praise for a game like this, if you ask me. The only real criticism I have is that the roguelike elements don’t add that much to the game. The build options aren’t incredibly interesting or anything you haven’t seen before. You have different elemental buffs you can upgrade your character with over the course of a run but most of these effects don’t really blow me away. The necromancy options might be my favorite of the bunch since you can summon skeletons passively or even gain bone armor in certain situations. I think they could have just focused on making the core gameplay great and the game would have been better for it.

#47: Luminous Arc

Platform: NDS (Completed November 23)

As of this writing, this is the only DS game I finished this year that I haven’t done a writeup for on this blog. My original plan was to play through Luminous Arc and its direct sequel back to back so I could just write about them together, just like I did with Izuna. I got busy with some other projects so I haven’t played through a ton of the second game just yet. Either way, it felt really strange playing Luminous Arc directly after The Ivalice Chronicles, since it’s clear that this 2007 game was very heavily inspired by the original FFT. The way combat works is extremely similar, but instead of a robust job system, Luminous Arc has a large variety of playable characters all with their own set of skills. Unfortunately, that large variety doesn’t extend to interesting strategic choices in combat. While it’s at least interesting that most characters do different things, there’s often not enough friction to make your choices feel meaningful. The only really notable thing about the combat in this game is that you can make decisions based on when you’re going to level up. Leveling restores your HP and MP entirely, so if you know you’re about to level up, you can more safely wander into the fray even if you’re low on resources. Even if you’re down to one character left, you theoretically have a lot of gas in the tank because you’re going to gain a lot of experience if one character is doing all the combat. There were a few missions where I was picking off enemies with the main character’s rifle shots when he was the only one left, but it was still relatively safe because you get so much experience for landing a kill. I will undoubtedly be writing a lot more about this game in the future whenever I finally get around to finishing Luminous Arc 2.

#48: Super Robot Wars Y

Platform: PC (Completed December 6)

I have pretty mixed feelings about modern SRW. Every game released since Moon Dwellers in 2016 has been very streamlined and relatively frictionless. These games fall back on what has admittedly always been their big selling point: the fanservice of mashing together dozens of different mecha anime and watching a bunch of flashy animations. I still remember when I was still in my infancy of Super Robot Wars fandom that I would watch these compilation videos of animations from Japanese-only games I had never played, in awe at the intricate combat animations. After playing a whole pile of these games, the cracks have definitely started to show. Many of these animations are a bit sloppy and a lot of the newer ones don’t have the same charm as the older, crustier PS2-era animations despite a massive increase in resolution and fidelity. 

Anyway, this is all to say that my expectations were decidedly low going into Super Robot Wars Y and because I know these games are absurdly long, I was hesitant to even buy it at all. The first big chunk of the game did little to assuage my concerns. I chose Hard mode even though I know in recent games that every difficulty was trivial. The prologue was extremely easy to the point that I had to keep checking to see if I’d picked the right difficulty. I was also put off by the artwork for many of the original characters, many of which are egregiously horny in a way that I find tremendously off-putting. 

I soldiered on though, because I generally make an earnest effort to complete every game I buy. I don’t always succeed on that front, but I always give it a try. After I got past the prologue, I quickly realized that your difficulty selection only kicks in at that point. The difficulty ramped up tremendously. I had to think about accuracy, terrain bonuses, unit proximity, manage my resources effectively—all things that I mostly didn’t have to worry about in other recent titles, especially in the early game. Despite misgivings I had about character designs and inconsistent animation quality, I was relieved that the game does actually have some teeth. 

Those other complaints never really went away but I started to become a lot more fond of the game the further in I got. The way the game limits your SP usage for spirit commands in the early game is a radical reimagining of how SRW usually works, and I found that I quite enjoyed the limitation since it forces you to use your commands much more carefully. As you progress further, some of those restrictions are sanded down as you advance through an enormous skill tree—but it feels rewarding because you have to work to lift those restrictions. Y also has maybe the best implementation of the “support pilots” mechanic where non-pilot side characters can support the squad with different passives and commands that you build up resources for during combat.  

All in all, I ended up enjoying Y a lot. It’s probably the best of the modern era, which is saying something, since 2021’s SRW 30 might be the worst. 

#49: Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance

Platform: PC (Completed December 28)

This is the final game of the year that I played on weekends with a friend of mine. We’d been toying around with the idea of playing it for some time, and I’d even bought the original Switch version a while ago and never played it. I think my original plan to play SMT V got delayed because I’d played several games from the series in quick succession and wanted to avoid burnout. Then Vengeance came out and I was left thinking “well, it seems like it would just make sense to play this new and improved version instead…” The point is, Atlus got us. They keep getting away with this. 

After reading up on some of the differences between the two versions, I am glad that this is the version I ended up playing. I mean, even just the fact that I don’t have to play it on the Switch is a plus, but Vengeance expands on the original version’s content in a lot of important ways. Beyond just featuring a brand new route, every single demon in the game now has an innate passive ability. Having only played this version, I would hate to go back to the original without innates since they’re so transformative to the gameplay. By the endgame, we had crafted some truly busted builds, but because we were playing on Hard mode, we still had to adapt to some of the game’s final challenges. 

In summary though, SMT V: Vengeance delivered on just about everything I would want in that it has a killer Ryota Kozuka soundtrack, fantastic combat, great build options for your demons, tons of interesting and grotesque demon designs, and even a lot of exploration. Granted, the pseudo-open world of the game’s massive regions is much more restrictive than it appears at first glance, but we spent plenty of time (too much time?) exploring every nook and cranny to get all the treasures, grumbling at every invisible wall we ran into. 

The plot is kind of extraneous to the whole experience for me and ultimately doesn’t make too much sense by the end, but it’s genuinely not what I play these games for if I’m being honest. There was more than enough crunchy gameplay to keep me engaged the whole way through.

You thought this retrospective was long enough, but no, it's time for an Honorable Mentions Section! These are the games I still spent a considerable amount of time on this year but aren't the kind of games you can ever really beat or finish. I'll include then below in order of how much I played them. Don't worry, it's a considerably shorter list.

2XKO

Platform: PC

No matter how long it's been since I've played League of Legends, I keep getting sucked in by Riot Games projects. I played Legends of Runeterra for a little while, I tried Teamfight Tactics, and I even played Ruined King a few years ago. Nothing has been as sticky as 2XKO, though, which really got my attention because it's a tag fighter that you can play cooperatively. I've spent a considerable amount of time just labbing out combos and learning how to play the game, so most of my playtime has been completely alone. I like the game a lot but feel like the strongest characters in the game are extremely oppressive. Here's hoping it gets evened out in the future and that I find someone willing to subject themselves to playing the game with me.

Clone Hero

Platform: PC

It's always felt wrong that I never mention Clone Hero in these retrospectives because it's one of those games I play quite often during a lunch break or in the late morning on an off day. Because I play drums exclusively these days, it's pretty decent exercise—and it serves to legitimize my impulsive purchase of a electronic drum kit a few years ago. I have a long history with the games that influenced Clone Hero and have fond memories of countless game nights with friends. Clone Hero helps me relive those days and if it gets me a little exercise at the same time, then it's a win-win.

Street Fighter 6

Platform: PC

Well, I have over 1200 hours in this game and a big part of the reason why is because it's the default game I fall back on when I have work downtime or I'm just not in the mood to play anything else. I can always hop in and play matches for 30 minutes. I play almost entirely casual games these days because the game is very stressful even without adding points into the equation. I still enjoy the game a lot and I feel like I learn new techniques and tricks all the time. If I continue doing these Honorable Mentions sections, it's pretty likely these top two will remain fixtures.

Well hey, there you have it! That's the 2025 Video Game Retrospective. This is the 11th one if we want to fudge some numbers. I'm looking forward to seeing if I'm still playing 100-hour long JRPGs when I am naught but skin and bones.