Manatees 2025

This year was rough for me on top of you know, the general everything. I started off 2025 in physical therapy for a few months for my back and leg. Then in July, my father ended up in the hospital and I spent the next month in and out of the hospital until he passed in August. While this was going on and then after he passed, I had to take care of my mother who has mid-stage dementia.

So to say this was not a typical year for gaming for me is an understatement. I spent a lot of time on phone games. I got into free-to-play gacha games as something to do without needing super commitment. It took me months to finish games, after July I basically played two AAA games: Death Stranding 2 and Outer Worlds 2. There’s a lot I didn’t touch this year: Ghost of Yotei, Borderlands 4, anything on the Switch 2 (since I didn’t get one). And there were plenty of smaller games like Ball X Pit that sounded neat but I just never got to.

I did get a Steam Deck, which allowed me to tackle games in my Steam collection and I have to say, I have played a lot more of my vast Steam library than I did prior to 2025 thanks to its handheld nature (and also why I wasn’t particularly pressured to get a Switch 2.)

I still managed to work out a top 10, though.  And I surprised myself with how everything ended up shaking out. And this list is getting out at the beginning of 2026 when a best of games list is still relevant-ish, so hopefully you enjoy.

Honorable Mention #1: Persona 5: The Phantom X

One of the gacha games I got into was P5X. As a Persona 5 superfan, I was skeptical at first and while the game starts off a little rocky, the new characters won me over fairly quickly and the story starts standing on its own after a while. However, the gameplay itself is fairly straightforward and only the repeatable endgame content really poses any challenge once you’ve amassed enough characters through the gacha system. And even then, the endgame content is typical gacha treadmill content where you’re just trying for a high score for slightly more rewards to pull more characters. However, when I got to the end of the first palace and this banger of a music track started playing, I knew the game had me.

The nice thing is that I haven’t felt the need to spend any money on this to feel like I’m able to keep up with and enjoy the main story content. But I would still have preferred if this was just another Persona 5 spinoff game that was a complete package from the beginning. It’s great to keep me busy until Atlus decides to release Persona 6, but it’s empty calories while I’m waiting for an actual meal.

Honorable Mention #2: Deltarune Chapters 3/4

I was in the middle of Deltarune Chapter 4 when the issues with my dad started up in July, and as such I ended up never finishing it. While Toby Fox is still a genius in everything from gameplay to music to comedy, the fact that I never completed this is why it ended up in the honorable mentions.

I think once all seven chapters of Deltarune are out and it’s a complete story, there’s a good chance the whole thing ends up on my all-time favorites list. But each segment coming out years apart has kept it from really shining, in my opinion.

Honorable Mention #3: Hades 2

If, when Hades 2 was announced, you told me that when it released into 1.0 it would only get an honorable mention from me, I would have called you crazy. But here we are. I loved the first Hades. I loved playing Hades 2. But…while it was a refinement of everything in the first game, this game is simply more Hades. The story is intriguing and Chronos makes for a great follow-up to Hades himself. The new weapons are neat and boon system is still fun.

But it never really landed as hard as the first one did. It could just be because of the unfortunate timing of it coming out right in the middle of one of the worst few months of my life. In fact, it probably is. I definitely enjoyed playing it. But it also faded out of my memory and rotation a lot faster than the original game. Is that a result of the game’s quality or my own external factors? Who’s to say, but considering there were ten other games that made a stronger impression on me this year, Supergiant’s latest only ends up as an honorable mention.

10. The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy

Hundred Line is a good game, but it is just TOO MUCH GAME. It qualifies as a magnum opus for its two directors (Kodaka of Danganronpa fame and Uchikoshi of Zero Escape fame) in the sense that it is wild how much game they put into this game. This is a game where you play the game for 40 hours and then the REAL game starts. HowLongToBeat says to complete the entire game it’s around 164 hours, and I believe them.

It’s a tactics game that’s mixed with a visual novel about a group of students who are forced to defend against a horde of unknown villains. They are the last defense of humanity (or so they think) but in typical Danganronpa/Zero Escape style, there is much more than meets the eye to everything and everyone involved. The characters are great, the battles are engaging, and the twists are wild. But like I said, it’s just SO much game. I’ve barely scratched the surface at 50 hours of play. It’ll probably take me years to actually see everything the game has to offer. Which is why it only sits at #10.

9. Hollow Knight: Silksong

Silksong, like Hades 2, came out at the exact time when I needed a distraction from one of the biggest emotional cascades of my life. And it was a great distraction. Precise platforming, difficult bosses, and adorable side characters all populate the Silksong world. It’s truly a masterpiece and a worthy follow-up to the original Hollow Knight. The art style is gorgeous and I loved exploring the Metroidvania world before me.

I did get tired of the difficulty in some points, though. The nice thing about Silksong is that if you get stuck at a boss, most of the time it’s not the only way forward so you have multiple avenues of exploration that you can retreat to if you don’t want to bang your head against the same boss for an hour. But man, some of those bosses made me want to throw my Steam Deck into the trash. I would vacillate from thinking this was the best game ever to questioning why I was still trying to play it. I’m starting to think I might be on the downswing from my “I want to play games that challenge me” era.

8. Öoo

Öoo is a wonderful game. It’s a puzzle platformer that is 4-5 hours long and doesn’t overstay its welcome.  You’re a worm trying to escape from a bird’s stomach. You get two orb segments to your body that you can leave in place and then detonate to propel you in different directions. And the entire game is based around the tricks you can do with that.

That’s it. I felt like a genius every time I figured out how to manipulate the bombs in the correct way to progress. It even incorporated using the map in unique ways that made me smile when I realized what the game was clueing me towards. The final leg of the game where you have to put everything you’ve learned together is a great challenge and ties up the game in a nice bow.  If you want a short, tight puzzle game that will leave you satisfied, look no further than Öoo.

7. Chaos Zero Nightmare

Another gacha style game I got into this year, Chaos Zero Nightmare is…interesting. On the plus side, it has some of the best deck-building gameplay since Slay the Spire and the gameplay loop of building decks for character teams is super satisfying. On the minus side…well, hm. You know how people used to say they read Playboy for the articles? Yeah, I’m playing this game for the gameplay, not the fanservice. It’s bad, y’all. Just like, boobs and sexualized imagery everywhere. It’s not a straight-up 18+ porn game, but it’s also not a game I’d whip out in public.

It’s a shame the game dives into that aspect of gacha because the gameplay and worldbuilding is pretty solid. You send teams of three into Chaos systems, where each character has their own deck so you plan your teams like DPS, support, healing, etc. But then you have to add, improve, and remove cards to fill out your deck and complete your run. There’s also a sanity system like Darkest Dungeon where your characters’ decks end up nullified if they have a breakdown, making you have to fight enemies with one hand tied behind your back until they recover. And once you’ve completed the Chaos runs, you can use the decks you’ve built in other, more difficult endgame challenges. All of it comes together in a very satisfying package that has me saying “ok, just one more run and I’ll get the perfect deck to use for this character” at 1 AM.

I swear, I’m playing it for the gameplay. Really.

6. Death Stranding 2

I still don’t know how I truly feel after finishing Death Stranding 2 over a month ago. Yeah, it took me the better part of half a year to complete so maybe some of the (weird and complex) story bits didn’t take hold as well as they should have. But to me it never reached the heights of the first game. I never thought the environment posed a challenge like it did in the first one. You unlock traversal vehicles too quickly, and it became more of a “drive from point A to B” game that made a lot of the equipment you could build obsolete fairly early.

But on the other hand, the moments the game did hit, oh boy, they HIT. There’s one sequence where you have to investigate some “headless riders” for one of the NPCs. And the mission turned into something I didn’t expect AT ALL and blew me away (both with what happened and the soundtrack to it). And the peaceful moments where I was just driving across the country delivering things was actually great for calming my emotions in a zen way.

Tonally, like most Kojima games, DS2 is all over the place. Which means my feelings for it are all over the place. But it’s still a pretty good game and it kept me invested all the way to the end even if it took me a while, which not all games can do nowadays. So here it sits on my list.

5. The Roottrees Are Dead

I described this game to a friend of mine as “Return of the Obra Dinn, but instead of investigating a pirate ship with a magic watch, you’re investigating a family tree with a corkboard and a 90s search engine.” And I stand by that.

This is another example (along with Öoo) of where my taste in games is starting to tilt. Having a logic puzzle in front of me and untangling the web of the family tree kept my rapt attention for hours. Getting stuck with seemingly no way forward, only to review a previous article and find something new to search for which unlocked an entire new branch got that dopamine a’flowin’.

It’s honestly one of the best logic games I’ve played since Obra Dinn. There’s some legitimate points where I was scratching my head and a few points where I made an educated guess and pumped my fist when it was confirmed correct. If you like brain workouts and have a nostalgia for 56k modems and the internet before it became terrible, I suggest checking this one out.

4. The Outer Worlds 2

Outer Worlds 2 unsubtly satirizes capitalism throughout the entire game. Some of the jokes are hilarious, but some of them hit a little too close to home. But while the first game’s world never really captivated me, they really fixed the worldbuilding and characters in this one that I’ve felt suitably engaged the entire time I’ve been playing. All of your companions are fantastic, to the point that I’ve been alternating through all of them to hear their dialogue with each other and making sure each character is around when I’m dealing with their corresponding faction. Even the gunplay is some of my favorite in recent memory: the reloading animations are so satisfying that I’ll stop and watch them even 30 hours into playing the game.

I have a few quibbles here and there: the weapon mod system (and inventory system in general) is still a little clunky, even if they streamlined some of it. And even as I reached the endgame, my companions felt like paper tigers and I felt like a glass cannon in most gunfights. But I also took a flaw early on that made it so I couldn’t specialize in any stats, so I ended up with a very average build across all stats and abilities on my first playthrough. So maybe that might contribute to it and it was a reason I decided to hop into a second playthrough after I beat it. 

Overall though, this game is Obsidian firing on all cylinders. It’s not quite Fallout: New Vegas or Alpha Protocol level, but it is the first game in a long time where I immediately started a second playthrough as soon as I finished the first, so take that as an indication of its quality.

3. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Look, if you don’t know what Expedition 33 is about by now, you’ve somehow missed the entire internet for the last 8 months; well, at least the gaming side. I don’t think there’s anything I can say here that hasn’t been said and debated and yelled about over many, many, MANY other articles and blogs.

It’s a wonderful game. The music and art direction is fantastic, the parry system brings a fun tactile involvement to turn-based battles, and the game lets you break it once you get powerful enough, only to throw superbosses at you that break you right back. The story brings some surprising twists and it’s honestly up there in the pantheon of exceptional RPGs.

Now, is it the best thing since sliced bread? No. Is it even the best RPG of the last decade? Also no. It may suffer from a little overexposure at this point, but it is still a great game and deserves (most of) the hype.

2. Dispatch

Dispatch is basically a playable TV show. Divided into eight episodes that released two a week for four weeks, it was sort of a perfect storm of water cooler moments for a game. It gave people something to look forward to and theorize about between episode releases. And in the true Telltale style of old, it made you feel like your decisions had consequences and your narrative was yours despite the overall discussions.

You play as a former superhero who now works as a dispatch operator for other superheroes. The main bulk of gameplay is these dispatch sessions, where you have to pick the right heroes to fight problems across the city as they pop up. There’s also dialogue choices and QTEs, but the QTEs are able to be turned off if you just want to sit back and enjoy the show (which is what I did, with no shame).

The characters are fantastic in their setting and all their little interactions put a smile on my face. And I’m a sucker for found family/team of misfits end up bonding together storytelling and that’s where this goes to great success. This is up there with Tales of the Borderlands as the greatest in the genre and if you enjoy these types of games, this is an absolute must-play. In fact, it might be a must-play even if you don’t enjoy these types of games.

1. Blue Prince

Every game released after Blue Prince was fighting it for the #1 spot and only Expedition 33 and Dispatch even came close to dethroning it. I’ve never, never, NEVER been as absorbed by a puzzle game as I was with Blue Prince. The combination of real mind puzzles, roguelike gameplay with the choosing of the rooms, and the overall narrative you’re tasked with putting together on your own ends up creating a masterpiece of a game.

It’s the only game I’ve ever pulled out a literal notebook and wrote down notes for myself so I could remember all the clues I found. Every time you think you’ve explored as much as you can, another room suddenly has another secret for you to uncover. The layers upon layers upon layers of storytelling and worldbuilding underscoring the puzzles is an achievement in and of itself. I had a discussion with a friend of mine about how he thought he had beaten the game, only for me to demonstrate that he had literally only scratched the surface of what puzzles could be solved.

Every time you think you’ve reached an end point, there’s another door to another layer with more brain bending puzzles. All of this is wrapped up in a roguelike exterior that complements the logical gameplay in a unique and engaging way. I adore Blue Prince and it may honestly scratch my top 10 games of all-time, which is an exceedingly more difficult task each year. It’s not a game for everyone because it’s a real brain buster, but Blue Prince is the perfect demonstration of how I want a game to stimulate me nowadays and I think everyone should at least give it one shot. Or a few shots if you get a terrible first run. Just give it a chance.

And that’s it for 2025 in games. Where will 2026 take me? Who knows. I’m hoping to start writing more general articles again for this blog (and finish the remaining 2 games from my top 100) so hopefully you’ll see more out of me soon!