My Top Ten Favorite Games Of 2025

​If nothing else, 2025 was another great year for video games and I’m excited to share my thoughts on my favorites as always. I beat 28 new games including remakes this past year and I thought everything I played at minimum was pretty good which is unusual and quite welcome. Still, a handful of games stood above the rest which made figuring out my top ten this year outside of the bottom cutoff a bit easier. While not the focus of this blog, I did beat 28 old games last year as well. My big focus there was continuing to chip away at my PS3 backlog and I’m down to just 15 games left as I enter 2026 so I’m hoping this is the year I finish it!

Before I get into my favorite games of 2025, the ones that resonated with me and that I enjoyed the most, I do want to give three honorable mentions here. My first is for my 11th placed game this year, Mario Kart World. I had a great time with Mario Kart World with friends and family and the single player is definitely the best in the series, but I think it just missed the cutoff because the number of normal race tracks is a bit too low and some expected features were MIA for most of the year. The first big patch we got in December is promising as it finally added custom items and significantly altered a few routes to make them some of the best in the game. Hopefully a mix of free and paid updates will help make it into the staple game it should be because the foundation is already quite excellent with racing that feels more exciting than ever. The second honorable mention I have is for Magia Exedra. I’ve played a handful of games this year I’d certainly consider better and it’s a shame since I first blogged about it the story of Exedra has mostly spun its wheels all year with remakes and more fluffy events outside of Crescent Memoria (a fully voiced Magia Record prequel story), but even so it’s still so cool to have an all new Madoka mobile game going. I’ve been having a great time playing it daily since the RPG half is a good deal of fun (I’ve ranked in the Top 50 for PVP for 16 seasons in a row which is amusing) and some of the events have been fairly great like the Mitama detective events and the recent New Years event. Hopefully in 2026 the story will pick up, but for now I’m still having a great time with Magia Exedra!

Finally, I want to give my third honorable mention to Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition. I don’t consider more straight rereleases and remakes for nomination on my top ten favorite games of the year blogs and Xenoblade X Definitive Edition sat right at the border where I might have considered it eligible as while a new mechanic does completely change the entire flow of combat for the better, I didn’t consider the experience as a whole substantially evolved over the Wii U version and the cool new epilogue story alone wasn’t enough to make my top ten. That said, wow! Xenoblade Chronicles X is even better than I remembered and I already really loved it. This time around I was fully determined to see virtually every last bit of the game so I made sure to do all of the quests this time and learned how to craft, build, and actually use mechs to see the post game content that eluded me on the Wii U. I had such an awesome time once again exploring the world and this time digging even deeper into it. One of my favorite new discoveries in particular was definitely the extensive water treatment plant quest line which feels like such an essential part of the experience to me now with how wild it gets. The new combat is the best combat in a Xenoblade game to date as you can now cancel cooldowns with a limited resource that fully refills after every fight to employ new strategies never remotely possible and take on even tougher foes earlier. I hope Monolith is strongly considering implementing something similar for the next Xenoblade and taking a look at the already more interesting equipment and ability systems compared to the rest of the series. While the new epilogue isn’t really what I envisioned for a Xenoblade X sequel, I still had an awesome time with it as I dug the new weird main character and exploring the new zone.

With my honorable mentions complete, here’s my top ten favorite games of 2025!

10: Metroid Prime 4 Beyond (Switch 2 and Switch 1)

I went back and forth if Metroid Prime 4 Beyond or Mario Kart World would make the cut for my top ten list this year, because like Mario Kart World there unfortunately was a feeling of relative disappointment with Metroid Prime 4 Beyond sadly. The game has some major issues including: way too linear level design which also causes the levels to blend a little too much together, obnoxious handholding paired with an uncharacteristically sloppy menu option to disable tutorials that introduces other problems, NPCs that are weirdly handled, and finally a previously blank slate villain whose motivations and presence feels murky at best. There’s no denying all of those core issues and other quirks feel worse especially in the context of the eighteen plus year gap between Metroid Prime 3 and 4 and yet even so, I still had such a blast playing through Prime 4 and it does enough right for me that I walked away pretty happy with it.

The big thing I think Prime 4 gets right above all else is that it feels like a Metroid Prime game in enough key ways which given the large gap between games wasn’t something I felt was a guarantee. Moving Samus around in the world and the presence she has, plus the way combat flows, and how scanning offers the same cozy and thoughtful feeling prior games gave me, all comes together to still feel refreshingly unique all these years later. The presentation is generally astounding and while it annoyingly trends too much to indoor environments, seeing the world and hearing the terrific music is definitely a highlight of the experience. Fury Green, Volt Forge, and the Ice Belt were definitely the best levels, but Flare Pool and the mines definitely have their strengths too. While the main paths were a bit lacking in puzzles, when it came time for 100% item clean up, I found the usual array of clever puzzles I expect from a Prime game just off the beaten path and in the new Ocarina of Time-like puzzle holes in the open world desert area. Speaking of the desert I feel it and the motorcycle are the biggest swings in the game and while I dislike the lack of music (seriously Nintendo, give us a radio for your open world games), I had a good time soaking in the sights, cruising around at high speeds, and finding structures of interest I could approach from any angle. The other swing, the new psychic items, reminded me of how Twilight Princess found new riffs on classic items which is fine, but depending on the item those new wrinkles wildly varied in excitement. The psychic tether for the morph ball and the new grappling hook that lets you hold onto walls were probably the best here while others like the psychic boots were a misfire. The final thing I really have to give a big shout out to are the bosses that are easily the best in the series. There are so many clever ideas here, a few with some excellent spectacle, and some that are just classically excellent. My big hope here is Retro will tackle Metroid Prime 5 next and take what worked here, discard what didn’t, and make a game entirely theirs, because I think a lot of the major elements here are all pretty excellent even if a few others are holding them back from reaching their true potential.

9: Unbeatable (PS5, also on PC)

The moment I saw a trailer for Unbeatable I knew right away I wanted to try it as it oozed style and the idea of an adventure rhythm game sounded like a lot of fun. Unbeatable is essentially two games in one, the adventure game divided into six episodes and a classic arcade rhythm game and both sides are quite excellent even if the adventure game portion steals the show. While I imagine the writing style and voice direction could drive people up the wall, I personally really dug the dialogue in Unbeatable as it was often very funny (some of the dialog choices are wild) and how clearly vulnerable the characters are made them easy to connect and sympathize with. While the whole band is great, I especially liked the main character Beat and her friend Quaver and the relationship between the two. The story often skips ahead regularly and doesn’t always reveal what Beat is thinking despite how she acts seemingly like an open book and I really dug how this worked here because it made the journey through the game more surreal and ultimately uncovering what was going on with both Beat and the world a really interesting mystery. The extended ending is especially heartfelt and emotional and I loved how the story wrapped up especially with the final concert. The actual adventure gameplay mixed with various rhythm games was the fun mix I hoped for walking in. Exploring the world with the real slick mix of detailed realistic 3D environments with 2D cartoon characters running around is great fun and adds to the surreal road trip vibe of Unbeatable. As for the minigames, my favorite is definitely the baseball game that feels ripped right out of Rhythm Heaven.

I definitely have to mention the music which is incredible throughout. There’s a fairly wide range of genres covered, but my favorites are definitely the vocal tracks by Peak Divide that have a lovable punk rock vibe and are excitingly guitar heavy. These are the songs that are sung by the band throughout the story and are regularly used to end each chapter with a bang. I sincerely hope those songs and the soundtrack as a whole get added to itunes soon since they’ll certainly stick with me beyond playing Unbeatable. Speaking of the music, the other half of the game, the arcade mode, is also a great deal of fun even if at least on lower difficulties like…Hard…a bit simplistic. While it can become as complex as a four button rhythm game, on the lower difficulty settings Unbeatable is mostly just using two buttons and adds complexity with some delayed notes and obstacles in the note chart that ask you to hit the opposite button from the track they are on. I had a great time beating all of the songs I could on Hard mode and even beat one song on Unbeatable difficulty before I felt satisfied for now. I say “all of the songs I could” because unfortunately while I love Unbeatable as it stands the PS5 version has tons of glitches that makes it hard to recommend including: numerous crashes and soft locks, a failure for credits to roll which corrupts your save file, menus that break in multiple ways, and random deletion of your rhythm game scores. None of this was clearly a game breaker for me (well except the literal last possible second one I guess that forced me to watch the credits on Youtube), but it is a shame it mars something that has so much heart and really connected with me. Hopefully Unbeatable will get some needed patches and QOL additions down the road, because I’d love to put more time in with the rhythm game especially.

8: Trails Through Daybreak II (PS5 also on Switch and PC)

There have been twelve directly connected Trails games now which is wild to think about. While Daybreak II sadly doesn’t advance the grand story too much, it still makes some interesting moves and has some wonderful focus on some of the characters especially during the bonding events. While the story becomes most interested in time loops which allows for some intense and dark scenarios to play out, I was more interested during the early game structure which sees Van go on business trips with the various members of Arkride Solutions while Swin and Nadia from Trails Into Reverie return to take over running Van’s Spriggan / fixer jobs in Edith while also enrolling in Agnes’ school. The middle chapter of Daybreak II is also super interesting as tons of factions all gather together on the same island and get wrapped up in vacation activities, navigating a battle royale, and figuring out the dark secrets of the island. While exploring the world and spending time with the characters and NPCs is always the biggest highlight of Trails games, I was pleased the battle system got some needed tweaks especially by making the UI more readable again and bringing back stealing bonuses from enemies while keeping the stuff that worked well last time like shard skills. One last thing I want to give a shoutout to, like in Daybreak you can watch movies with your friends and you get a small clip from the film to watch yourself. My favorite by far this time was definitely Sharkferno which looked super goofy, inspired an amusing range of reactions from your party members, and amusingly enamors an NPC you can check on a few times about how it changed her life. Everything related to it is very funny and unforgettable and I’m hoping it gets referenced in Trails Beyond The Horizon.

7: Ender Magnolia (Switch, also on PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series SX, and PC)

At the start of 2025, three Metroidvanias I was very excited about, Blade Chimera, Ender Magnolia, and Momodora Moonlit Farewell, all came out within a two week period which was awesome and wild. All of them were excellent, but Ender Magnolia, the sequel to Ender Lilies, was definitely my favorite of the three which made sense given how much I loved Lilies. Ender Magnolia has a very large world to explore and early on where you keep stumbling into more giant zones to explore one after the other is wonderful. While I really dug the progression from slower Dark Souls-like combat to more speedy DMC-like combat in Lilies, I really appreciated in Ender Magnolia that combat was speedy right from the start as it gives the experience a more unique identity and is my preference too. Ender Magnolia gives you a variety of weapons, abilities, and accessories over the course of the game and it’s really fun to find what works best for you. Unlike Lilies, I did actually switch up my loadouts a few times over the course of the adventure which kept the long journey fresh. While combat is speedier in Ender Magnolia, I do appreciate Magnolia has a good deal of bite to it still especially during the boss fights which demand a great deal from you regularly and feel so satisfying to conquer. While I do think Ender Magnolia lacked some of the good surprises and rough edges Ender Lilies had which makes it less memorable, it’s such an excellent and engaging adventure from beginning to end. If the developers make a third game, I’ll be there day one for sure.

6: Kirby Air Riders (Switch 2)

The original Kirby Air Riders is one of my favorite games of all time especially as I often maxed out the clock in City Trial Free Ride with friends as we had fun cruising around the city in the different vehicles and making up our own fun. I don’t think I’ll have that similar relationship with Kirby Air Riders as the new City Trial map Skyah doesn’t inspire me the same way (it’s great otherwise though!) and yet in every other regard this is certainly a dream sequel to the original game. The three modes from the original return alongside the new Road Trip mode and feature tighter mechanics such as star trails that help you catch up from behind, better vehicle balance, more engaging race tracks, and of course plenty of new additions and enhancements like more vehicles and more events for City Trial. Altogether, all of the enhancements and additions make every core mode so much more fun to play compared to the original game and I had such a blast knocking out every achievement in the achievement board for all four modes as the moment to moment gameplay regularly made me smile. While all of the modes are great this time including the new Road Trip mode where you level up your vehicles by choosing which events to pursue and where you spend your money, the star of the show is of course City Trial which is more chaotic than ever thanks to the increased player count and increased number of events and mechanics. While the achievement boards encouraged me to mix it up, my favorite City Trial matches usually revolved around leveling up the new Paper Star because you get so much maneuverability in the air with it which makes it easy to claim items in the floating rings and on the sky islands that occasionally appear. I’m really glad you can play all of these modes online as they shine so much brighter playing with real people. I’m looking forward to enjoying Kirby Air Riders for years to come because wow they nailed it.

5: The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy (Switch, also on PC)

The most ambitious game of the year without question was The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy. The game begins with a roughly 30+ hour prologue (that was good enough it probably would have made my list alone) where the main character Takumi Sumino is brought to Last Defense Academy and is forced to fight “school invaders” for a hundred days alongside his fellow classmates. It doesn’t go perfectly despite their best efforts, so when Takumi is presented with the opportunity to redo his hundred days there in the hopes of getting a better ending for everyone, he chooses to take it. From here The Hundred Line becomes a choose your own adventure with twenty two different routes and over 100 endings to see. Even with skipping as much repeated content as possible, it still took me over 165+ hours to see every single route and possible ending. What’s amazing about this game isn’t the length necessarily, but how the genre of the story shifts entirely between routes and even sometimes during the same route. One route might revolve around a handful of murder mysteries for example, while the next route is a romantic comedy route, and another is a science fiction route. You’ll see so many sides of the characters over the course of the journey and even characters I disliked in other routes could have awesome moments in others. The writing is really sharp and lively which is important in a game that by nature can be so repetitive. I definitely stuck with The Hundred Line because it regularly had so many surprises and fun ideas constantly across all of the various routes and the two biggest endings, the one by Kazutaka Kodaka and the other by Kotaro Uchikoshi, are immensely satisfying.

While the story is definitely the main reason to play The Hundred Line, there is also a fun grid based strategy game here with some light RPG elements to enjoy. I appreciate due to a story conceit your characters can’t permanently die and instead actually revive between rounds of the strategy game which makes it very breezy and makes the strategy more about how efficient you can be. Your damage numbers are generally on the low side like a Paper Mario game, so upgrading your attacks whether it’s through limited use items (which recharge after every battle) or through permanent upgrades can make a substantial difference. Every member of the Special Defense Unit has a completely unique set of abilities like Yugamu (one of my favorite characters on and off the battlefield) being able to deal +1 damage to any enemy with a status effect or Kurara being all about setting up tower defense structures and traps. Your party shuffles around depending on which route you are on which is cool, but after your second successful run through the story, the strategy RPG starts running out of steam sadly as your stats become too high with everyone and “repeat” battles can be skipped entirely. The latter is certainly a good thing given how much of an extended marathon The Hundred Line is and makes sense with how the game is balanced, but it is a shame something that is such a fun part of the experience early on eventually vanishes almost entirely outside of a very cool “final” battle. I have less love for the other major gameplay system where you wander around the destroyed world on something that resembles a Mario Party map to gather resources used to craft gifts and upgrades, but I kind of appreciated it as something different even if it was kind of annoying. While I don’t think I’ll ever replay The Hundred Line due to its excessive length (roughly a week of my life!) I am looking forward to the story DLC the director keeps teasing since I’d love to go on new adventures with the cast and see even more of the world.

4: Trails In The Sky 1st Chapter (PS5, Switch, Switch 2, also on PC)

The original Trails in the Sky is a very important game for me. It was my 2011 GOTY which kicked off my love for the series and Falcom as a whole and has gone on to become my favorite RPG of all time. Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter is a 3D remake of the original game that adds extensive voice acting, new character animations, and completely changes the battle system away from a strictly turned based system that was like a mix of Final Fantasy X, Chrono Trigger, and Final Fantasy Tactics to a new hybrid combat system that often begins with action gameplay and lets you swap over to turn based combat that incorporates some of the best ideas from across the series. Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter doesn’t replace the original game for me, which I didn’t expect it to as that is the version I’m so attached to, but what it does do in almost every category aside from the drier script filled with some annoying quirks is enrich the experience by doing some things the original game could never do. Obviously, the new 3D graphics and lively animations steal the show here given how big a leap it is from the original game and how it is even such a step up from the Daybreak games (not to mention the lovely voice acting too), but what sold me on this version of the game was the first trip to the nearby ancient tower in Rolent. In this version of Sky, you can seamlessly leave town (something new to the series), seamlessly switch between exploration and combat which makes for an engaging trek up the mountainous terrain, and then actually approach and look up to the top of the tower. While 1st Chapter does cutaway to a dungeon interior when you enter and explore the inside, once you reach the top of the tower you can freely survey the surrounding countryside because it is all part of that first map. Trails has just never done this before, certainly not in the original version of Sky, but even too in the more modern games as the maps are often segmented and not too large.

The new battle system is a great deal of fun and dramatically alters the pacing of the game. While I do miss it doesn’t have the exact kind of mechanic where you could steal bonuses for yourself and push penalties on your enemies by manipulating turn order which I feel was far more elegant and exciting, the rest of the new combat system feels cozy in the best way. Like in the Daybreak games, you can swap between real time and turn based combat, which you can take advantage of to weed out weak enemies quickly and leave the enemies that require more attention for the turn based combat. I was going for an extra thorough playthrough which did annoyingly ask me to grind for a few drops and it was nice to just smash through the same handful of mobs with the action combat quick. 1st Chapter also has some of the team up attacks most frequently featured in the Cold Steel games which feel satisfying to build up and unleash. I had a good time too making decisions off the battlefield. They simplified it a bit which is fine by me, but they otherwise kept the core idea from Sky where specific Quartz you equip gives you access to different spells which makes figuring out the ideal loadout for you paired with what accessories you find compelling as you can become very powerful with the right set ups. Of course it is the story that it is the main attraction and again the new presentation adds a lot to the experience as certain scenes really benefit and become more emotional than they ever could be with just text and character portraits. There are also a few extra quests and while a few are neat, I found generally they didn’t add too much to the experience which is kind of a bummer. It’s a shame the new script is weaker and doesn’t match terms and pronunciations, but thankfully the voice acting papers over some of the worst of it. I think if Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter was an entirely new experience I’d be higher on it than I am here, but otherwise yeah this was easily my favorite RPG this year and I had such a blast playing through it.

3: Ghost of Yotei (PS5)

I liked playing Ghost of Tsushima a good deal, but I felt it was dragged down by regularly teasing and then shooting down supernatural elements (it was always just some dude) and worse how the story felt like the Japanese Culture Expert meme at times where “honor and shame were huge parts of it.” Both of those felt regularly deflating, but I took some hope from the Iki Island DLC that focused on the more human parts of Jin Sakai and his story that any potential sequel would be better at least on the latter issue. Ghost of Yotei isn’t just better than Ghost of Tsushima, it is thoroughly more spectacular, excellent, and more wildly fun than the first game. After a shockingly violent prologue that successfully establishes why the main character Atsu would want to seek revenge on the Yotei Six who killed her family and now years later are causing all kinds of chaos in the lands around Mount Yotei, the game lets you loose into the open world with little direction sort of like The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. I really enjoyed this early part of the game where you figure out how things work because most activities you complete give you information on leads to follow, some directly related to the main quest and the rest to other activities you can tackle. I’m not much of a graphics person, but wandering around Yotei’s world was incredible because the graphics are basically almost entirely immaculate and arresting with so much vivid color. I’m not sure I’ve ever taken so many screenshots because I was so captivated by the scenery. While Atsu’s far more human story was my main motivation throughout my journey, I did enjoy Sucker Punch fixed the other tonal problem with Tsushima by actually having some legit supernatural elements alongside the ones that turn out to be less than they seem. I actually didn’t know what was around every corner of the world as a result here which made scouring every last inch of the land more exciting.

My favorite part of Tsushima was definitely the gameplay and Yotei is actually even better. Like many of my favorite games, I found little friction when playing Ghost of Yotei as I could play it for hours with little fuss or desire to get distracted. Combat heavily features in most activities and while it does bring back the simplistic system where in this case certain weapon types (rather than stances) hard counter others, it introduces a new disarm mechanic that on paper sounds very simple where you can knock weapons out of your enemies’ hands, pick them up, and then throw them back at them (or someone else) for far more often than not a one hit kill. In practice because it is so powerful, it often completely upends the flow of combat in an exciting way as if you don’t panic and nail the throw you can decisively shift a battle in your favor in an instant. Battles on the whole then felt a bit scrappier in a way that also fondly reminded me of Zelda Breath of the Wild. While the battles against weaker enemies thus stole the show, I did also really dig the one on one duels. The boss fights against the Yotei Six in particular are especially challenging and exciting and I certainly enjoyed there was a hidden super boss that was so tough it essentially asked you to tap into Punch-Out skills where you had to make rapid quick reads over and over again to eke out a win. One other gameplay shift I dug is that while the first game relied on “detective vision” a lot where you could mark enemies and see where they were, Yotei actually doesn’t offer that skill until potentially late in the game (I was on the later path) so it forces you to be more actively engaged during stealth gameplay which I think is the right call. Overall, I had an awesome time playing through Ghost of Yotei and the story was excellent for the most part. I’m really looking forward to whatever Sucker Punch makes next.

2: Donkey Kong Bananza (Switch 2)

My favorite game to actually play this past year was undoubtedly Donkey Kong Bananza. I was a little skeptical when I started out because while I thought punching / digging through the world was enjoyable and novel, I wasn’t sure exactly how the experience would evolve as it continued. I clearly had no reason to fear, because as Bananza continues it starts playing around with how different materials interact with each other and then it starts adding new Bananza abilities and gives more focus to the level design with more enemies, obstacles, other mechanics, and constant surprises and it becomes very clear very quickly you are playing a game that is just super joyous, clever, and fun. It’s a little hard to talk about Bananza without diving more into specifics then so I’m going to dive into the gameplay more than usual, but I will avoid talking about the very final level and extended ending except to say it was awesome. I remember exactly where Bananza started to win me over was the ice and fire level early on because some of the more interesting ideas start coming into focus. As a soft material, DK can grab snow and start throwing pieces of it together to make bridges into the sky. Snow / ice can obviously harden lava as well too which creates new paths through the world. These kinds of interactions radically change how you view the world and how you can possibly navigate obstacles and solve puzzles which feels extra novel in a platformer context. Bananza does a great job of having more open ended interactions in the world and really narrowing in on mechanics too especially in, but certainly not limited to, the challenge rooms.

The other gameplay mechanic I want to highlight here was ultimately my favorite part of the whole game. In the second to last normal level, you eventually encounter these zones where bits of the arena that are there or that you bring into them create trails behind them that then orbit around a set point in a specific way. It’s possible to not engage with this to the extent I did which is why I like to and feel comfortable talking about this in my blog, but at the very end of the level there is a very fun toy you can play with if you so choose. It’s a turret that can target you and when it does it too leaves a crystal trail alongside every bullet’s path. What ended up happening when I played with it is that I kept creating more and more paths and suddenly it felt like I was building the final battle arena of a rad JRPG or anime together with this turret (see the picture below). I’ve never encountered anything quite like this before and certainly not at the scale and complexity DK offered. While this was the peak of excitement DK offered, it so frequently taps into so many creative ideas like this and explores them so thoroughly that I was just thoroughly engaged throughout my whole adventure.

​I have a few more quick things to touch on before I wrap up here. I can’t go into this first one at length because the full extent of it I think is best experienced for yourself, but one thing I did really enjoy over the course of DK Bananza was just how much loving tribute it pays to the entire DK series which was something I didn’t expect walking in. The most overt and extensive stuff was of course spectacular, but I think what really makes it work for me is that it also explored ideas prior games have explored in this new 3D context. My favorite Donkey Kong game for example is Donkey Kong Country 3 and it features Ellie the Elephant who you both ride and transform into. While there is a big elephant themed level and an elephant Bananza transformation, one thing I really dug is Bananza even got into exploring the idea of using the elephant to store water and using it throughout a level, but it did so in 3D in this more open ended way than DKC3 ever could. By further exploring ideas prior games had explored like this, Bananza just feels all the more genuine and full in its celebration of Donkey Kong. Incidentally, DK himself is lovably brought to life throughout with incredibly expressive animations and poses. While on rare occasions I felt a disconnect with the old Rare and Retro DK and this new DK, on the whole Bananza DK just exudes fun which makes him so much fun to root for and play as. DK’s companion throughout the adventure, Pauline, is also an awesome character and I love her dialogue throughout especially some of the goofy chats before they head to bed each day. Finally, I do want to give a quick final shout to the music which is excellent. I especially enjoyed the Bananza transformation songs and the final vocal song Heart of Gold which is in contention for Nintendo’s best yet. I really hope the soundtrack doesn’t become trapped on Nintendo Music since I’d love to be able to get Heart of Gold on itunes similar to the Mario Odyssey songs. Overall, I had an absolute blast playing Donkey Kong Bananza last year and getting all 777 bananas (my favorite number!) and just wow I’m really excited to see what the team here does next.

1: Magia Record (Youtube, also playable again)

If you’ve read my blogs for a long time or know me more personally, you are probably aware of my all time favorite mobile game Magia Record and how much it means to me. When it was getting started in English back in 2019, I already liked it enough for it to make fourth place on my annual top ten favorite games blog both because the RPG portion of Magia Record was a great deal of fun and since it helped me reconnect with my favorite anime Madoka Magica which at the time I wasn’t really expecting to get more of. In 2020, Magia Record became the first and I believe still only game to be featured on my GOTY blog twice as it was a live game. I placed it in second place which I have mixed feelings over, but I think at the time it made sense for it not to claim first place as it wasn’t obvious how much it’d stick with me. That year the write up was quite a bit different in tone, since Magia Record had won me over even more thanks to finishing the terrific Arc 1 story where it truly became its own distinct thing I loved, but it also broke my heart as the English version actually shut down before the year ended even as the Japanese version continued on. I didn’t think it was likely, but I hoped one day I’d get to continue the story. Years passed and it wasn’t really looking good there’d be an official way to ever experience more of Magia Record, but in 2023 I discovered a fan translation group called Magia Union Translations that was injecting text into then still ongoing Japanese version and the quality of both the translation that preserved the English localization quirks (like Alina speaking Italian) and the technique far more often than not made it feel like the English game never shutdown. Even just watching the translated videos on Youtube, Magia Record was back in my life suddenly in a way I never believed it would. You can actually play the game again even thanks to the efforts of a separate group, Puella Care, but at least currently I’ve stuck with just the Youtube videos to finish the main story and watch event stories I missed from the official English version and of course beyond that. Magia Record is making my top ten favorite games blog this year and is on top because the fan translation group filled in the last missing parts of the translation of the main story over the course of 2025 and thus I was able to experience the ending of the adventure I began 6.5 years ago and yes it was bittersweet, emotional, and most of all about as “perfect” an ending as you could get which left me leaving highly satisfied.

This year for Magia Record, I ended up watching Arc 2 Another Story Chapter 8 through the end of Arc 2 in Main Story Chapter 12 ultimately as gaps were filled in one by one and then moved on to see Puella Historia, The Epilogue Events, and The Final Story (which altogether was roughly 40 hours of new story) along with a handful of event stories that had already been translated including The Tokime Clan’s and Promised Blood’s backstory events. For the main story of Magia Record then, I was picking up from the cliffhanger I had been left on the year prior when the Kamihama Magia Union (the group the main characters from Arc 1 founded), the Tokime Clan, and Promised Blood were attempting to unite together only to have members from each defect to the Neo-Magius who had stolen the Automatic Purification System and whose leader, Himena, was revealed to have survived an assassination attempt. This stretch of the story was exciting as each group had to win back the defectors, Folklore of Zero’s wild backstory was revealed, and ultimately the united groups had to stop the Neo-Magius and all of Himena and Hiko’s wild and deadly plans. I especially enjoyed Yuna and Juri’s magical quest to save Ao in this stretch from the Kimochi of Fear because it went in such an unexpected and memorable direction to resolve everything between them. The final two main chapters of Arc 2 ultimately focused on battling the two final villains of the story, Kyubey and Mikoto Sena, the latter who was quietly built up for years across various event stories and even in the PVP mode’s story cutscenes. While I was a little skeptical of Mikoto when she was first introduced, as the final chapter progressed, she won me over as a fun counter to Iroha. What I loved about this stretch of the story is how the writers made the most of every character and idea/toy in play to make for an exciting and surprising conclusion to the story that managed to tie all of the themes they had been building over the years together. I had seen the design prior, so I was especially curious to learn how Iroha’s ultimate form, Infinite Iroha, came about and what the end of her story looked like and wow yeah, I was not disappointed in the end of my favorite character’s big journey. Iroha remained relentlessly kind to the very end and managed to win over and unite everyone behind her and even death literally could not stop her on her quest to save everyone.

Puella Historia surprised me since I thought walking in it was just going to be historical stories Yachiyo would be reading about in a library or something, but it was actually a big time travel adventure story where the modern day cast had to travel back in time to retrieve Iroha’s scattered concept and help the historical characters’ stories both remain on track and have a slightly better ending which made it way more fun as a final adventure with all of the characters I loved. The individual stories only got better as they went too with the Tibet, Pompeii, and final story, Pillar of Tomorrow, being the big highlights. While the epilogue events were sadly a bit shaky (not helped by the fan translation not putting its best there), it all came down to the Final Story for what would be my final impression of the game and as I mentioned earlier yeah it was truly bittersweet, emotional, and most of all about as perfect an ending as you can get. While I was hoping Iroha would get some final role or words here, the Final Story was actually about the impact she left behind on her best friends and family and the greater community as she left to manage the Magia Record (which turned out to be an actual thing that was neither my first or second guess for what it would be lol). I’m not sure if the Final Story will stand as the final word on these characters, especially with the follow up game Magia Exedra clearly building parts of its main story off of Magia Record, but getting the ending we did felt so cool to see how these characters had grown so much following the events of the story told over multiple years.

I still have more Magia Record to enjoy over the years whether that’s through the fan translation with seeing more event and magical girl stories I haven’t seen and whatever new stories Magia Exedra brings like Crescent Memoria, but my main journey that I began 6.5 years ago in June 2019 finally ended in 2025 triumphantly. The last 40 hours or so of the main story that I saw this year were awesome and I’m so glad I got to experience Iroha Tamaki’s full story because she is just an exceptionally cool and inspiring character. Magia Record is one of my all time favorite games that mean the world to me and it is undoubtedly my 2025 game of the year.

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Thank you for reading my latest blog! I hope you enjoyed it! I’m always curious what you think so feel free to reach out and let me know! Also, I’m curious what were your favorite games from 2025. I’m most easily found these days on BlueSky @justinmikos.bsky.social.

As usual now as I wrap up my GOTY blogs, I do like to list all of the games I beat this year. I finished 56 games last year, 28 from 2025 and 28 from prior years. The last game I finished this year was Magia Record which made for a very cool end to 2025 gaming for me. Aside from this then, see you next time!

2025 Games I Beat (28)

Donkey Kong Country Returns HD
Blade Chimera
Ender Magnolia (100%)
Momodora Moonlit Farewell (111%)
Trails Through Daybreak II
Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii (Platinum)
Magia Exedra
Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition
FAST Fusion
Mario Kart World
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4
Donkey Kong Bananza
The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy (100 Endings)
No Sleep For Kaname Date
Kirby and the Forgotten Land: Star-Crossed World
Lost Soul Aside
Trails In The Sky 1st Chapter
Ghost of Yotei (Platinum)
Once Upon A Katamari
Pokemon Legends Z/A (Full Pokedex)
Hyrule Warriors Age of Imprisonment
Magia Record Arc 2
Metroid Prime 4 Beyond (100% Everything)
Kirby Air Riders (100%)
Skate Story
Unbeatable
Dear Me, I Was…
Magia Record

Old Games Beat In 2025 (28)

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
Grief Syndrome
Shin Megami Tensei Digital Devil Saga
Suikoden
Kirby’s Dream Land (100% Replay)
Gran Turismo 6
The Ocean Hunter
Spikeout Final Edition
Virtua Fighter 3
Kirby Super Star (100% Replay)
Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze (100% Replay)
Mario Strikers Battle League
Pokemon Violet The Indigo Disk
Sly 2: Band of Thieves (Platinum)
Toem: Basto DLC
Theatrhythm Final Bar Line (Ultimate Replay)
Portal 2 Co-Op (replay)
Suikoden II
OverBlood
The Legend Of Zelda: Four Swords (Replay)
Mario Kart 64 (Replay)
Breath Of Fire IV
Magia Record Arc 1 Exedra Version
Sly 3 Honor Among Thieves
Sly Cooper: Thieves In Time
Battle Princess of Arcadias
Shin Megami Tensei Digital Devil Saga 2
Magia Record Scene 0 (Replay)