Apparently 2025 was a good year for gaming, I wouldn't know that though because I barely touched any modern games this year. I play so few games at launch that I couldn't even write a top 5 if I restricted this list to just the games that came out this year, and so just like last year, this is not a list of the best games released in 2025, it's merely the best games I played last year.
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All the games listed here are something I've already talked about on Bluesky, so if you follow me there this list might not surprise you very much but I still had a lot of fun looking back on everything I played this year, and I hope you have fun reading what I've written.
#10 Dragon Ruins (2024, PC)
Dragon Ruins is a dungeon crawling microgame for tired people, it is not a complex game nor is it long. It strips dungeon crawler gameplay to its bare essentials: there is no story, the dungeon is only one floor, battles are all automated and the graphics are black and white wireframe. But it is strangely compelling in its simplicity.
Dragon Ruins plays like a typical DRPG: you make a party of 4 characters from different classes and you move through the dungeon with grid based movement in first person perspective. Random encounters happen as you're exploring the dungeon but they all happen automatically in the background as you're walking around the dungeon, there is no strategy involved in the battles as they are simply about whoever has the highest numbers.
As a big fan of complex CBT RPGs Dragon Ruins is not a game that appeals to me on paper, yet I must commend it for how well it manages to capture the appeal of dungeon crawler RPGs with its simple gameplay and short runtime. Obviously it is nowhere near the level of something like Etrian Odyssey, and if I had played any real DRPGs this year Dragon Ruins would only get an honorable mention. But Dragon Ruins gave me a quick scratch for the DRPG itch I had been feeling, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is also feeling the same without wanting to dedicate 50 hours to hardcore dungeon crawling.
Though I wish the game had some kind of results screen at the end telling you how many in-game days it took you to defeat the dragon, how many times you died and other such fun stats. Instead the game immediately loops to NG+ and because of that I think beating the game doesn't give you the feeling of satisfaction it should.
#9 Sakura Wars (1996, Sega Saturn)
I already wrote a lengthy blog post about Sakura Wars earlier this year and you should read that to understand my full thoughts on the game and why I rate it so highly despite its apparent issues. But in short Sakura Wars is a hybrid strategy game and a dating simulator with impeccable style. Its gameplay is a very basic SRPG and though I enjoyed the story, it is nothing revolutionary either. But that gameplay and story are presented with such style that I can't help but be impressed by it. Its presentation for even minor scenes is incredible, and as soon as I started the game I was in love with it just from how good this game looks.
Sakura Wars is a spectacle, it commits to its theater aesthetic so hard that its presentation alone is enough to carry it even through some of its weaker aspects. It's a game that appeals to me on a personal level and left an unforgettable impression on me.
#8 Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin (2022, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One/Series X and PC)
Stranger of Paradise is one of the most insane games I've ever played.
Gameplay-wise I believe it's a straightforward Nioh clone (I have not
played Nioh though so I could be wrong), which is a lot like Dark Souls
except much more fast paced and encourages a more aggressive playstyle.
The gameplay is fun and I don't have many complaints about it. I only played its main story though so I have no idea what the higher difficulties or the post game are like. But while
the gameplay is fun, it is not the reason you should play Stranger of
Paradise. The real reason you should play it is the story.
On the
surface SoP is a strange reimagining of Final Fantasy 1 that replaces
the silent Heroes of Light with an angry man who seemingly has no
personality other than wanting to kill Chaos. And if there is one thing
you likely know about SoP it's all the memes about Jack and Chaos. Jack
is a baffling main character who has no interest in anything other than
killing Chaos. He is brash, over confident, rude and violent, he feels
like an 80s American action movie protagonist thrown into a JRPG and the
sheer contrast between Jack and everything else in the story is
hilarious.
And yet, Stranger of Paradise does not feel like a
parody. Despite its absurdity the story is sincere. I do not wish say more than this because Stranger of Paradise is
something you should experience as blind as possible, but the story goes
far beyond being just Final Fantasy 1 with a funny protagonist. And because Jack refuses to listen
to any characters explaining the story, the player instead has to seek
out the story through log books hidden throughout the world (and
occasional flashbacks shown after boss battles). And through these log
books the player will see Square and Team Ninja have cooked up something
truly insane with this plot. A story so insane it would never work as a
new IP and only as this strange reimagining of the first Final Fantasy.
Stranger
of Paradise is a game I can't believe even exists, I don't think any
fan would ask for a game like this nor do I understand how anyone at
Square greenlit it. But I am so glad this game exists because it gave
the kind of insanity I could've never even imagined myself.
Though if you want your Final Fantasy stories to be less insane you might not find as much enjoyment from this story as I did.
#7 Breath of Fire III (1997, PlayStation and PSP)
I played Breath of Fire 2 back in January. I had heard many good things about BoF2 over the years so I was very excited finally experience it myself. But while it certainly had a lot of interesting ideas and was an improvement over the first game, BoF2 never really grabbed me nor did it have much of an impact on me. After how much praise I had heard for it over the years, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed with it, even though it was by no means a bad game. But even if I found BoF2 disappointing, I decided to give BoF3 a try 6 months later with modest expectations.
Breath of Fire 3 is a very unusual sequel, after BoF 1 and 2 had you travel across the whole world fighting evil empires and churches, as is often the case in JRPGs, BoF3 feels very unambitious and is instead a very small scale adventure that only takes place within a single country with no world ending threats to be found. The focus on BoF3's story is almost entirely on making the player endeared on the main cast rather than telling some epic narrative.
Breath of Fire 3 feels very much like Grandia or Trails in the Sky (both games I love dearly) with the way it takes a long time for the plot to get going in favor of the game being about kids going on fun adventures until they eventually get tangled up in something more serious. Even as the story gets serious, the scale doesn't go beyond a single country's borders. The villains you meet throughout the story do not matter on a worldwide scale, even in the endgame the story isn't about saving the world from some great evil, it's about finding closure to the protagonist's arc.
If you're looking for hype moments or epic battles in your RPGs then BoF3 is not the game for you, but if you're like me and have already played 100 RPGs that are all about saving the world from a great evil, BoF3 is a refreshing change of pace. Its colorful visuals and smooth music create a comfortable atmosphere that had me hooked from the very beginning in ways BoF1 or 2 never did and it's a game I'm going to be thinking of for a long time.
What holds BoF3 back from being one of my all time favorites though is that its gameplay isn't particularly good. It's mostly just standard turn based fare that doesn't have anything outright wrong with it, but it is also not exciting in the slightest. Combine that with a high encounter rate and dungeon design that has you running back and forth for puzzles, and you have a game that often feels tedious rather than challenging.
#6 The Adventure of Little Ralph (1999, PlayStation)
Little Ralph was the biggest surprise of the year for me. It is a 2D platformer I picked on a whim because I wanted something short and sweet between bigger RPGs, but it blew me away. It is an incredibly well polished platformer with combat mechanics that feel like an evolution of Zelda 2, just with a much bigger focus on platforming. The game is extremely easy to pick up and play for a quick session, while being difficult without feeling unfair.
Besides being a platformer Little Ralph also has a side mode that turns it into a fighting game, and a surprisingly well made fighting game at that. This mode is used for certain boss battles and is also available as a 2 player versus mode after you beat the game. I don't know why the developers would put such a mode into a platformer, but I do respect the effort.
The only real negative I have about Little Ralph is its story, which is just nonsense. Of course a 2D platformer doesn't need a story to be good but I think having no story at all might have been better than Little Ralph's weird attempts at humour that didn't land for me (or maybe the fan translation is bad).
But if you have even a slight interest in combat focused 2D platformers you ought to give Little Ralph a try, you can't go wrong with it.
#5 Octopath Traveler 0 (2025, every modern platform and PC)
Octopath 2 was my favorite game I played in 2024, so I had very high expectations for 0. In fact I originally wanted to write this blog post in December so I could've published it before the year ended, but I had to delay writing this post until 2026 purely because Octopath 0 took me almost 100 hours and I couldn't finish it before January. But even early in the game I knew I wouldn't be satisfied with this list if I didn't get to include the latest Octopath here, so I had to wait until finishing OT0 before writing this list.
0 feels familiar to anyone who's played the first two games but it brings big changes to Octopath's formula. There are no longer 8 protagonists with 8 distinct stories, instead you play as a customisable player avatar. There are still multiple stories you can do in a (mostly) nonlinear order, but instead of your avatar being the protagonist in any of these stories, it feels like you're simply observing other people's stories from the side.
The battle system has also been reworked so you now have 8 characters during combat: 4 in the front and 4 in the back, and you can freely swap between the rows whenever you want. The increase in character roster means your characters are no longer as versatile as the ones from 1 and 2 (sub classes are also no longer a thing) but the increased party size allows you to pull off techniques that would've never been possible before, and with over 30 playable characters you have so many different party compositions you can use to deal with any situation. The possibilities with OT0's battle system feel endless.
Unfortunately however this has a disastrous effect on the game's difficulty and balance. Unless you're intentionally holding back, the game simply has no challenge whatsoever once you get far enough and have access to all the broken skills, equipment and characters. There are many ways to break the game but the boss the battles never feel like they are designed around the player's broken abilities. And though it is really fun to find the most broken skill combinations in a game, when you're doing that for 100 hours the lack of challenge simply starts to feel stale and I started to wish the game would throw some real CBT at me, but even in the final story it never delivered on that.
Still outside of combat, 0 offers everything I loved about Octopath 1 and 2. The nonlinear exploration is great and the bite sized stories are still good. The stories of 0 also have a stronger continuity than the ones from 1 and 2, and the way they tie into Octopath 1's story feels natural and not like cheap fanservice (though the inclusion of Octopath 1's cast as recruitable characters does feel like cheap fanservice even if they do not play any role in the story)
But I think the best part of 0's story is its central theme: greed. A lot of RPGs depict greed as simply a desire to have money, but Octopath 0 goes further than that by presenting greed as the greatest source of all human evil and dividing it into three aspects: wealth, power and fame. All of the stories in in Octopath 0 feature villains motivated by a desire for either wealth, power or fame, and it is also the ordinary people's desire for wealth, power and fame why these villains' evil is not questioned. It feels the most prominent with the initial three villains: Herminia, Tytos and Auguste, as any one of them could have been heroes but their greed for more wealth, more power and more fame is what lead them to a path of evil where they're willing to commit any number of atrocities to satiate their greed.
#4 Fate/Hollow Ataraxia (2005, PC, Vita and Switch)
I'm not very vocal about being a Fate fan but it is a franchise that's been dear to me ever since I watched Studio Deen's adaptation of Fate/Stay Night as a teenager. Over the years I have fallen off from actively following Fate because the franchise is so big, but ever since I was a teenager there was one Fate story I wanted to experience more than any other: Stay Night's direct sequel Hollow Ataraxia, which never received an anime adaptation of any kind.
There was a fan translation for the VN but I had heard it was low quality and so I had given up hope that I'd ever get to experience Hollow Ataraxia. Until one day an official localisation for both Stay Night and Hollow Ataraxia was announced out of nowhere. I skipped on reading Stay Night's official localisation as I had already read its fan translation (although I bought it on Steam just to support the official release) but when Hollow Ataraxia was dropped on Steam I bought it immediately and proceeded to do nothing but read it until I had reached 100% completion.
Yet Hollow Ataraxia is not some epic sequel to Stay Night that doubles down on all of Stay Nights hype and chuuni moments to resolve all the loose threads of Stay Night's plot. Instead Hollow Ataraxia is almost entirely slice of life and takes place in an alternative timeline where nobody died during Stay Night's events and everyone is friends now. There's even fun mini games you can play with all your favorite characters.
It is an extremely bizarre direction to take Stay Night's sequel, but even in this peaceful alternative world Hollow Ataraxia brings closure to Stay Night's events and also develops its cast in ways they never could've been developed when they were enemies. But this peaceful world is too perfect. Though the story is mostly slice of life, there is a constant darkness behind this peace. You know this peace is unnatural, you know this perfect world shouldn't exist.
And I think that is Hollow Ataraxia's beauty. It gives you this perfect world that you wish could go on forever, that you wish was how Stay Night's story had ended. But no matter how much fun you have here, you know you need to let go of this perfect world eventually because this is not how the story should go...
#3 Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 (1999, Super Nintendo Entertainment System)
I don't remember if I've ever played another game that made me suffer like Thracia 776 did. It is a game that feels like a cruel joke, every aspect of it designed to make the player suffer as much as possible. It is not simply a difficult game, it is a relentlessly difficult game that never pulls back its punches and keeps beating you no matter how much you beg for mercy. It is a game made for insane people who do not want to have fun when playing video games.
Yet no matter how much Thracia 776 made me suffer, it also gave me a catharsis that's unlike any other game I've ever played. Overcoming Thracia 776's challenges requires you to be flexible with your strategies and use every resource at your disposal, you can not approach it like a standard Fire Emblem game and instead you often need to think outside of the box to find the optimal strategy.
There are three key ways in which Thracia 776 is different from every other Fire Emblem game.
1: Your units all have a fatigue level. Using one unit too many times makes them fatigued and you can't deploy them for the next mission.
2: Staves have an unlimited range for all spells. Whether its healing your own units or causing ailments such as sleep or silence on your enemies, there is no limit to where and how you're using staves.
3: You can capture enemies instead of killing them, which lets you steal all the items in their inventory.
None of these three mechanics were brought back in future Fire Emblem games, but these three mechanics are Thracia 776's cornerstone. When you need to worry about fatigue you can't simply rely on your favorite units for every situation. With staves having unlimited range you can actually build your strategies around status ailments. And you always need to consider if an enemy should be killed or if it's worth trying to capture them and steal their gear, especially since this is not just a way to stock up on items for free, it is often the only way for you to get new items and weapons because money is extremely scarce in Thracia 776 and shops are few and far between.
But what truly makes Thracia 776 such a special game is its story, or rather how its story and gameplay intertwine. Thracia 776 is a game where you are the underdog. You lead a band of guerillas against a powerful empire with far greater armies and resources than your small band of rebels, and the game's intense difficulty makes it feel like you truly are going against impossible odds in this war. But each time the protagonist celebrates his small victories, you are celebrating alongside him because you had to work hard to earn even the smallest victories. That is the catharsis Thracia 776 offers to it players.
It is a difficult game, a very very difficult game. But there really is no other game like Thracia 776 and after finishing it I've been left yearning for another game that could give me the same feeling.
#2 Dragon Quest VII (2000, PlayStation)
It's been about 4 years since I played Dragon Quest VI and during those 4 years I've often thought about playing Dragon Quest VII, but the one thing I always hear about it is how unbearably long it is and that's what kept me from giving it a try. But in 2025 I finally stopped being afraid of its length and started Dragon Quest VII.
The stories about Dragon Quest VII's length are not exaggerated, it is so long that when I was halfway through the game Square Enix announced a remake of the game where one of the main selling points was that they've made it shorter. But despite also being 100 hours long Dragon Quest VII never gave me that same feeling I got from Octopath 0 where I started to feel bored with the game near the end. That's not to say every hour of Dragon Quest VII is meaningful (I spent quite a lot of time grinding job levels) but it was constantly offering something new and I never started to feel fatigued with the gameplay despite how simple it was.
However despite its length Dragon Quest VII is surprisingly light on story.
Hundreds of years ago god and the demon lord fought a great war that ended in their mutual defeat and the destruction of the whole world. Now the people have forgotten all about god and the demon lord, and all the remaining humans live on a small peaceful island. One day the protagonist and his friends discover a portal to the era when god and the demon lord fought, the era when the world was still more than just one island. And from there they start helping the people of the past overcome the demon lord's terror. Each time you help a town in the past, that part of the world gets restored in the present world as well.
The past world is full of misery but each time you save a town in the past, you get to see how it now thrives in the present. Even when you can't save everyone in the past and a town's story has a tragic ending, you get to see how the town's inhabitants have moved on from their past tragedy in the present and now embrace a more hopeful future. Other times the present is the tragic one instead, as you worked so hard to save everyone in the past, yet in the present the people have twisted the truth of the past for selfish reasons.
This is what Dragon Quest VII is about. There is very little "main story" in the game and instead each town you save is a small story arc of its own. The arcs vary greatly in length and tone, and though almost none of them contribute anything to any wider narrative I would not remove a single one of them, each town is an important part of the journey.
Playing Dragon Quest VII very much feels like you're watching a long running anime with the way its arcs are structured. Because of the arc structure it's also easy to take a break from the game for a while without being afraid you end up getting lost with the story. And with how long this game is, you should take at least a few breaks from it. This is not a game you should try to rush or marathon.
DQ7 is a game about stopping to smell the roses. Take your time and speak with every NPC you see, also go backtrack and talk to NPCs you don't see. It is always worth it to hear what people have to say about each situation because like other DQ games, VII expects you to talk to NPCs to get hints on where you should go next. But that's not the only reason you should talk to everyone you see. Nearly every hint of the overarching story is hidden in NPC dialogue, bookshelves or signs. If you want to get invested in the overarching story connecting the arcs together, you're going to have to look for that story yourself, it is not handed out to you.
And once you eventually reach the endgame where the story is finally about god and the demon lord instead of self contained arcs, it isn't actually anything particularly amazing. If you go into Dragon Quest VII expecting an amazing story, you will be disappointed. The main story does not go much deeper than god is good and demon lord is bad. But it doesn't need to go deeper than that because Dragon Quest VII is not about its main story, it is entirely about the journey. And it is one of the best journeys I've ever had.
DQ7 is about all the places you see and all the people you meet. The more you take your time exploring the world and talking to people, the more invested you get in this world on a human level. In the end you do not want to defeat the demon lord because because god is good and the demon lord is bad, you want to defeat the demon lord because this game has made you truly care about its world and people. No matter how long Dragon Quest VII is, if you engage with everything it has to offer the game will reward your time commitment. And that is why Dragon Quest VII is a beautiful game.
Honorable mentions
If I wanted to, I could've filled this entire list with Fire Emblem games. I got really into Fire Emblem in 2025 and playing old Fire Emblem games was one of my favorite things in 2025. But the list would've felt really repetitive if I had featured several Fire Emblem games so I decided to limit it to only Thracia 776, because it was the Fire Emblem game that had the biggest impact on me. In addition to Fire Emblem I'd also like to shout out TearRing Saga and Vestaria Saga, Shouzou Kaga's two Fire Emblem-like games that I also left out of the list because it would be no different than having multiple Fire Emblem games here. But while both of those games are very derivative of Fire Emblem's style and do not have much identity of their own, both of them are incredible games that every Fire Emblem fan should play.
Another game I would like to highlight is 2025's new mobile game Stella Sora. I don't actually want to recommend a gacha game no matter how much I enjoy it, which is why Stella Sora is only getting an honorable mention and not a full spot. But Stella Sora is a game that has quickly endeared me with its strange world. It is a world where fantasy mixes with modern technology and corporations mix with churches. It looks utopian with its colorful visuals and cute girls, yet under the surface it is no doubt dystopian. Its story is still in its early phases as the game is only 2 months old, but I can't wait to see how it develops after the main story's most recent cliffhanger.
#1 Berwick Saga: Lazberia Chronicle Chapter 174 (2005, PlayStation 2)
This should not come as a surprise to anyone who follows me as I have been raving about Berwick Saga throughout the year. I declared it one of the top 5 best games I've ever played, and just like Sakura Wars, I wrote a lengthy blog post explaining my love towards the game. I do not think anything I write here can effectively convey just how good Berwick Saga is, nor do I think even my dedicated blog post can explain just how much of an impact it had on me.
Berwick Saga is another game created by Shouzou Kaga. But unlike TearRing or Vestaria, which are straightforward Fire Emblem clones, Berwick Saga is a full evolution of Fire Emblem that not even real Fire Emblem games have managed to accomplish. Berwick Saga not only stands proud next to all the real Fire Emblem games, it surpasses every one of them.
Berwick Saga tells the story of a grand war between two nations that has lasted for centuries, yet the story's focus is not on the war or great heroics. Instead Berwick Saga is a grounded and personal story of a commander who gives everything he has for a country that does not value his efforts. It is a story that's as frustrating as it is beautiful as you struggle against impossible odds, yet those with the power to make a difference in this war only worry about their own political gain.
And much like Thracia 776, Berwick Saga has a difficulty level that matches the stakes of its story. Though not as hard as Thracia 776 thanks to the ability to save in the middle of stages, Berwick Saga will frequently push the player's strategic skills to their absolute limit to convey just how overwhelmingly powerful the opposing army is, to convey just how hopeless this war is. But just like Thracia, you must keep pushing on no matter how difficult it gets.
Berwick Saga is without a doubt one of the very best games I've played, even after 6 months it is a game I am thinking about constantly and a game I want to replay so I can see more of what it has to offer. Whatever problems I have with the game are incredibly minor compared to how good the rest of the game is.
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