Branching Path: Dave Francisco’s Top 10 Games of 2025

2025 was a challenging year, both for the video game industry and for me personally. Because of everything going on, I found myself playing a lot of older games, or titles specifically designed to be comforting and nostalgic. Actually, it was probably good that I was sick and couldn’t fully participate in the RPG Site’s game of the year discussions, since I didn’t have much time to play the major contenders.

Despite a busy schedule, I managed to find time to play some great games released in 2025. Here’s a quick list of my top picks.

The Honorable Mentions

This is a section to highlight games I enjoyed but didn’t have enough time to fully experience, or that deserve a mention even if they didn’t quite reach my top favorites.

Umamusume: Pretty Derby – If you’re the kind of dweeb I am, with little time to spare for games about actual sports, Umamusume’s diabolical blending of cute anime girls with no less than horse racing brings the joy and pain of sports-watching to the dweeb-like-me audience. There’s something real and true about the exhilaration of watching the horsegirl you trained for the last hour or so take first place at the Arima Kinen despite struggling with training failures and debilitatingly slow metabolism.
Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog – The PC-98 was before my time when it comes to gaming, but even without that background (besides a few Windows ports of PC-98-era adult games), one can see the sheer love that went into The Gun-Dog’s presentation. The story itself also feels somewhat vintage in the best way, tapping into that vein of military anime-inflected sci-fi that feels underutilized in contemporary games and anime series. I’m excited to see where Space Colony Studios sets its next set of Stories from Sol.
Skin Deep – The last few years have seen an excellent run of killer immersive sims emerge from the indie space, but for my money nothing hit quite like Skin Deep, which combines a nonlinear focus on being Die Hard or McGuyver in Space with developer Blendo Games’ goofy sense of humor and unique aesthetic. Nina Passedena should be an all-time game protagonist.

10) Suikoden I & II HD Remaster: Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars

Last year, I followed RPG Site’s rules and left out remasters and some remakes from my top picks. However, this year’s re-releases were so excellent, and given my preference for revisiting familiar favorites, I couldn’t ignore them. Specifically, Suikoden I&II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars desperately needed a modern update. Konami didn’t drastically change the games, focusing instead on adding quality-of-life improvements, fixing bugs (including finally getting Earth magic to work correctly), slightly improving the backgrounds, and ensuring a well-polished English translation.

Despite its age, the HD remaster brought Suikoden back into the spotlight for modern gamers, and gives hope that more Suikoden games will be remastered in the future. This depends on whether Konami focuses on the new game, Suikoden Star Leap, which appears to be a game with randomized loot boxes.

9) Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles

Along with Suikoden 2 and Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy Tactics is one of the console RPGs that most shaped my gaming tastes. I didn’t fully understand how good it was until I played it again as an adult, when I was finally able to grasp all its complex details.

Square Enix’s remastered version of the game is a great return to form. While it’s missing some content from the original Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, it brings the game to new platforms with a user-friendly interface and helpful features that speed up gameplay. Though I still wish it included the Dark Knight class, it’s a fantastic and easily recommended version of the classic game.

8) Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road

Here at RPG Site, we sometimes jokingly refer to a game as the “super game.” This originally came from Sega’s internal codename for a large, ambitious project, but I think it also fits games like Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road. Level-5’s RPG is a massive, over-the-top anime football game, and as Josh mentioned in his article, it really makes you believe that football is everything. Beyond that, it’s a genuinely good RPG that covers all the typical storylines you’d expect from a sports anime. Like Umamusume, Inazuma Eleven clearly loves its source material, and that passion shines through, making it an enjoyable and easy game to recommend even if you’re not a football fan.

7) Dispatch

I’ve really been missing games like this one. I used to love Telltale Games, and I feared that their unique style of cinematic, story-driven gameplay would disappear after the company closed a few years ago. Thankfully, former Telltale employees have been working at other studios and starting new projects, and we’re now seeing those efforts pay off. Dispatch is a particularly impressive example, cleverly reimagining superheroes in a workplace setting – it might be the best game yet to follow the classic Telltale formula. It also looks and feels more polished than many older Telltale games, making it just as enjoyable to watch like a great animated show as it is to play and make impactful choices.

6) Avowed

Obsidian Entertainment consistently delivers refreshing RPG experiences, and their new game, Avowed, is no exception. Building on the foundation of the Pillars of Eternity series—which revived classic RPG gameplay and then expanded with the seafaring adventure of Deadfire—Avowed successfully switches to a first-person perspective, taking inspiration from games like The Outer Worlds. The result is a really enjoyable adventure set in some stunning fantasy locations, featuring a great cast of characters and some of the best first-person melee combat I’ve played. While it might not revolutionize the genre, Avowed is a remarkably well-executed game that delivers on all fronts.

5) Ghost of Yotei

Staying true to what I expected, Ghost of Yotei feels very much like a second take on Ghost of Tsushima from Sucker Punch. It doubles down on the beautiful visuals and clear inspiration from classic samurai movies, recreating a fantastical version of Hokkaido, Japan. While the story of grief and revenge wasn’t particularly original – it’s a common theme in many big PlayStation games – strong acting and a stunning open world made it enjoyable. You can spend hours exploring the gorgeous landscape, fighting enemies, playing music, and even befriending a wolf.

4) Assassin’s Creed Shadows

While Ghost of Tsushima and its earlier game felt almost like fantasy due to their distance from reality, Assassin’s Creed Shadows felt more grounded in history, even though it freely embraced a stylish, cinematic presentation. The game’s depiction of Japan – particularly its forests, environments, and changing seasons – is incredibly vivid and visually impressive, unlike anything else available. Plus, Shadows improves on the core gameplay of recent Assassin’s Creed games, making it the most accessible entry in the series since Origins.

3) Dragon Quest I&II HD-2D Remake

Square Enix has been releasing games with a unique retro-modern style, and honestly, it’s thanks to that trend that I finally got into the Dragon Quest series. It’s hard to imagine how they managed to update such a classic game for modern players, but they did it while keeping what made the original special. I realize these remakes are quite different from the originals, but this new presentation made it much easier for me to understand why people love those older games so much. I still have the main theme stuck in my head!

2) Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy

You sometimes play a game and feel like nothing similar exists today, but that’s usually not the case. Tastes change, and games often fade from popularity, get blended into new genres, and then sometimes reappear later on.

Despite its lengthy playtime and varying quality across many storylines, *The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy stands out as a unique adventure game. It truly lives up to the ambitious title of ‘super game’ and justifies the name chosen by the development studio, ‘Too Kyo’.

1) Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

Okay, so I’ve been playing Death Stranding 2, and honestly? It doesn’t quite hit the same way as the first one. A big part of that original game was just new – it felt like a one-of-a-kind experience that didn’t really need a sequel. I actually would have been totally fine if they’d ended it with some crazy twist, like a NieR:Automata-style save deletion, and just let it stand as this perfect, standalone thing. It would have been a cool way to let Kojima and the team move on to something new, you know?

Despite its flaws, I’m happy this sequel was made. It gave Kojima the freedom to fully explore his creative vision, feature his famous friends, showcase emerging music, and create a truly unique experience on a grand scale – something very few artists are allowed to do.

2026-01-05 03:58