Kyle’s Top Games of 2025

Image Credit: Gust, Koei Tecmo

Can I be real with you all for a moment? This year for me wasn’t that great when it came to games. Yes, there were a lot of heavy hitters like Silksong, Hades 2, Expedition 33, the out of nowhere smash hit. But I wasn’t really interested in playing them. I don’t like rougelikes and I didn’t really click with the original Hades. I didn’t play the original Hollow Knight. And while I’ve heard great things about Expedition 33, it doesn’t sound like something I’d like, while visually it looks like every other game on the market.

Heck if it were up to me and I could bend the rules a bit, my number one pick would be Guilty Gear Strive for finally releasing a proper online ranked mode and killing off that stupid Tower system that we had to use for four years.

All of that is to say that I had a hard time getting this list to six entries. Not because there were so many choices that I didn’t know what to cut. Rather the fact that until the end of this year, I almost didn’t even have six games I played that came out this year.

But that being said, the six games I did narrow this list down to are all great, and I’ll happily revisit them anytime! This list is a bunch of obvious picks sandwiched between two stranger choices, but I hope that you all enjoy it!

6: Hyper Team Recon

Image Credit: Nathan Burton, Top Hat Studios

Here’s a silly little indie game to start the list off right Hyper Team Recon is a 3D platformer that dared to ask the bold question: “What if Paper Mario and Lego games had a kid?” The result? Better than you’d expect.

This game comes to us from Top Hat Studios and developer Nathan Burton. It follows the adventures of Ember, Penny, and Lite; three slime-like shapeshifting alien creatures that crash landed on Earth after their spaceship broke apart. This event leads to the trio being separated and needing to rejoin each other.

The game’s runtime is pretty short, only consisting of ten levels. Each level has you taking the forms of various creatures to platform and puzzle solve your way to the end. Along the way, there are three medals that you’re awarded at the end by meeting certain criteria. These are getting 20,000 currency in the level, finding 5 hidden items, and beating the level without dying. Getting all three of the medals in a level unlocks a costume for one of your characters, so it’s really just a completionist reward.

The game sports an adorable Paper Mario like art style which is really cute and charming, and is a funny contrast to the anime aesthetic on the title screen. On top of that, there’s really no penalty for dying, other than losing out on an end of stage medal. If you lose all of your hearts, or accidentally fall off a cliff, you get respawned right where you died. The only cost is losing some of your currency. 

I also really love the writing in this game. It has big Saturday Morning Cartoon energy, and I got a lot of laughs from it. Penny in particular was a highlight because she’s constantly having to act as the voice of reason, keeping Ember and Lite on track.

Overall, if you’re looking for a simple game to chill out to, consider checking this game out. It’s available on all modern platforms, as well as last gen consoles.

5: Octopath Traveler 0

Image Credit: Square Enix, DokiDoki Groove Works

Oh hi, Octopath. Nice to see you on my year end list again!

Yeah, it’s no secret that I love this franchise. When the first game came out back in 2018, I thought that it was going to be another classic Square Enix one and done, doomed to languish in their basement of cool ideas that they never wanted to touch again. Then it got a mobile game, and I thought the series was dead. Then in 2023, we were graced with Octopath Traveler 2, my game of the year pick of that year.

Octopath Traveler Zero is a bit different from its older siblings. Rather than having you pick one of eight characters and starting your journey from there, you instead get to make your own silent protagonist and pick a class for them to start with. It also takes place in a version of Osterra from before the first game.

The story begins in the small village of Wishvale with your silent protag and their friends. On the night of the Flamebringer festival, your village is suddenly attacked and burned to the ground. After a couple of years pass, you and your friends decide to go back and try to rebuild the village and bring in people to live there.

Octopath Zero features two main gameplay styles. Of course there’s the typical turn-based combat where you roll in with a squad of eight characters that you can shuffle between characters in the front and back row. In addition to that there’s also rebuilding Wishvale. Building houses and shops, and just generally putting it all back together. It’s a fun time, and it reminds me a lot of games like Dark Cloud.

A lot of the story after the prologue follows closely to the plot of the mobile game, Champions of the Continent. The three villains that you’re going after in Zero were all lifted from that, and it’s nice to see stuff from that game get reused in a mainline game. I tried the mobile game a couple of times, but I just couldn’t get invested. So it’s nice to have the story in a console game that’s just much easier for me to sit down with.

Overall, Octopath Zero is a great time. Given that it just came out, I haven’t been able to put too much time into it, but I’ve liked what I’ve played so far. And given that Acquire Corp isn’t at the helm for this game, I think that it’s just as good as the previous two games.

4: Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles

Image Credit: Square Enix, Creative Studio 3

Out of every game on my list, Final Fantasy Tactics is by far the hardest one for me to talk about. If you pick this game up, it’s gonna be for the story. Here’s the bottom line if you’re looking to play the game yourself. The story of FFT is one of the most engrossing and thought provoking stories that I’ve experienced in a video game. It’s a story of class inequality, oppression from the ruling class, and people becoming the very thing that they despised when they were younger. The story and message of FFT will stay with you long after the playthrough is done.

This is the third version of FFT to be released. This time around Creative Studio 3 decided to make the game fully voice acted. You’ll be carried through the game by the fantastic work of people like Timothy Watson (Urianger in FF14), Harry McEntire (Noah in Xenoblade 3), and some guy named Ben Starr, whoever that is. And while the bonus content from the PSP version is gone, I think that getting this game fully voice acted makes this Game of Thrones-esque story more accessible.

This game also has my favorite pair of leads in the FF series in the form of Ramza and Delita. The two of them each follow their own stories that do a great job of paralleling each other. Ramza starts as the bastard son of a noble family, who denounces his status to become a free spirit. Meanwhile Delita starts as a lowborn commoner who rises above his birth and becomes something unrecognizable.

The ensemble cast in the game is also very cool for the little bits of screentime that they get. Yeah… the secondary characters don’t get a ton of story relevance beyond the chapter that they’re introduced. That being said, the Ivalice Chronicles version helped with this problem by giving characters dialog during certain battles if you bring them. This helps flesh out fan favorite characters like Agrias, Mustadio, and Orlandeau.

FFT also features a cool implementation of the Job Class system, but I do wish that it wasn’t quite so grindy. You gain JP so slowly, which in turn leads to you only being able to learn 1-2 skills every couple of missions (assuming you aren’t deliberately stopping to grind). My advice is to learn JP Boost on your characters ASAP.

Final Fantasy Tactics is a story that has only become more important with time. Give it a try if you ever have the opportunity. Play it and learn why Argath is one of the most despised characters in the FF lineage.

3: Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition

Image Credit: Nintendo, Monolith Soft

Between my review and my article on this game, I’ve said everything about it that I need to. Anything I put here would just be plagiarizing myself, despite the strong urge to copy/paste everything from them. At some point, you just run out of ways to say “play this game”. I read back over my review and my article, and I still stand by all of it. Even the part where I said that Tears of the Kingdom is the same as Paper Mario: Sticker Star.

Thank you. Next!

2: Pokemon Legends Z-A

Image Credit: Game Freak, The Pokemon Company

Well this is exciting. I get to be positive about a new Pokemon game!

It’s no secret that the Pokemon series has been stagnant for quite a long time. As to how far back the stagnation started, I’ll leave that up to you. However, over the last few years the series has started to show signs of life once again. This is in large part to the Legends side series. I loved Pokemon Legends Arceus, and I thought that it had a lot of interesting ideas and the absolute best superboss in the whole Pokemon series.

Pokemon Legends: Z-A takes a different approach from Legends Arceus, choosing to be a sequel to Pokemon X and Y that takes place five years after those games. I’m already sold. Pokemon X and Y (and Gen 6 as a whole) were the games that took over my life when I was in high school. I sank over 800 hours into Pokemon X alone plus another 300 with Alpha Sapphire, and now Z-A is here to let me run amok in Lumiose City all over again.

Pokemon Z-A is far and away the most fun that I’ve had with a modern Pokemon game. I love everything about it. The cast is great. I found the story to be very compelling; answering a lot of questions left from the original X and Y. The battles in this game are fast and explosive, and things can quickly go south with one bad move. The new Mega forms that they gave to some of the Pokemon are incredible, and I can’t wait to use them in the mainline games. Yeah, the game can be a bit repetitive at times, and having any kind of meaningful post-game would be nice, but I had too much fun with the main game to really care.

And the online ranked mode for this game is a dangerous obsession. My introduction to competitive Pokemon was with Gen 6 and Pokemon Z-A is bringing me right back to that addiction. It’s so easy to get just three Pokemon ready for competitive play, and climbing the ladder is very generous. You don’t even lose points if you come in last place. And the rewards you get from it all make you able to make new competitive Pokemon thanks to items like the stat vitamins and bottle caps. Though seeing Garchomp, Excadrill, and Metagross in every match gets a bit draining.

Overall, Pokemon Legends: Z-A is just great. Between this game and the DLC for Scarlet and Violet, my faith in the Pokemon series has been restored. For the first time in a long time, I’m looking forward to whatever comes next from this franchise.

1: Atelier Yumia

Image Credit: Gust, Koei Tecmo

I feel like everyone has that one series or franchise that they just haven’t tried out for one reason or another, and for me, that’s the Atelier series. Despite the fact that the series dates back to before I was born, I never even heard about it until Atelier Ryza came out in 2019. I also distinctly remember immediately writing off Ryza when I saw it. Something about Ryza’s design made me think “Oh, it’s one of those games”. It wasn’t until I actually gave Ryza 1 a try this year that I understood why people like these games.

Having only played Ryza 1, I wasn’t fully sure what to expect when going into Yumia. What I got was one of the most fun gaming experiences in this whole year! Much like with FFT earlier in this article, I’ll start with the bottom line. If you want an easy pick up and play RPG with a crafting system that you can put as much or as little time into, then pick up Atelier Yumia. And if you don’t like crafting, the game also gives you a motorcycle that you can use to traverse the four massive maps that the game has on offer.

The story of Atelier Yumia focuses on a young woman named Yumia. She’s an alchemist who has been enlisted by a group of explorers called the Order of Eustella to help with their expedition. In this world Alchemy is seen as a taboo. A trade to be despised, not praised. Despite all of that, Yumia still chooses to follow in her mother’s footsteps and practice the craft.

This game features an open world that looks a lot more intimidating than it actually is. You can get from point A to point B fairly quickly. You can also use Yumia’s Alchemy to craft and repair shortcuts such as ladders and ziplines to further aid in exploration. And again, the game gives you a motorcycle that makes you not take fall damage.

As for combat, it takes place in the combat dimension. Your characters surround the enemies in a wheel and you can run around to avoid attacks. You can also move between the inner and outer rings. Your characters have four attacks that are mapped to the face buttons. Combat can be a bit tricky at the start, but it will all click as you play.

You should all know that I love putting what I’ve dubbed the “sleeper JRPG” at the top of my list. I don’t set out into the year with the intention of doing that. I just pick up what looks interesting, and if it so happens that I liked it, it goes on the list. 

Atelier Yumia is just a good time. Between getting into the Atelier series, as well as playing the Rhapsody trilogy last year, I’ve gained a new appreciation for comfy games. Yumia is a very easy pick up and enjoy game that went painfully under the radar this year. 

Go look up some gameplay for it, and check it out if you think it looks interesting. I can only do so much to convey how good the game is in this article.

Also you get to ride a motorcycle and Yumia can shoot her gun while she’s riding the motorcycle.

Closing

And that’ll do it. Like I said, there were a lot of great games that came out this year that I didn’t play. But I’m always happy to shed some light on the games that went under the radar. Come back next week when Ethan shares his GOTY list.

I’ve got to get back to playing my real game of the year: Guilty Gear Strive Ranked Mode featuring Lucy from Cyberpunk Edgerunners! I’m manifesting Potemkin nerfs in 2026.