Game of the Year 2025 – Overall Winner

As we enterprise into the ultimate hours of the 12 months, and with some components of the world are already sneaking into the following, it’s time to disclose our general Game of the Year 2025 winner!

We’ve been doling out awards for an entire host of classes, from our favorite visuals, audio, and narratives of the 12 months, to breaking video games out into their genres, together with a brand new run-based Roguelike class. For the general winner, the favourites and entrance runners would have been apparent to see from the off, however who comes out on high?

We’re highlighting the highest three, as normal, however our winner is…

Ghost of Yotei has climbed to the highest of the mountain to say our General Sport of the Yr Award 2025, and for good motive. Sucker Punch’s comply with as much as Ghost of Tshushima is stronger in each approach from the story, the fight, however most significantly the world. Ghost of Yotei’s open world of Ezo is one that’s crafted so effectively that it invitations you to discover, and also you settle for that invitation willingly.

Sucker Punch has crafted an surroundings the place exploration is signalled by clues throughout the surroundings, like bushes lined in flowers, and smoke on the horizon tapping into your curiosity. Ghost of Yotei’s world is made stronger by having quite a lot of environments to discover throughout its areas, every hiding its personal risks and secrets and techniques. The world itself is inhabited by attention-grabbing characters that weave out and in of Atsu’s story, be it by way of the mainline path, aspect missions, and even the bounty hunts that feed into the general narrative.

As I mentioned in my Ghost of Yōtei overview, “It is a really worthy successor to Ghost of Tsushima.” And the journey is just not over with the Legends content material coming in 2026 that can draw so many people again to Ezo’s shores.

– Aran

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Runner Up

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is only a stunning sport. It begins robust, with an irresistibly intriguing setup: in a fractured world the place Paris sits upon one in every of few islands amidst the chaos an unravelling world, the Paintress, an enormous with lengthy hair masking her face, sits beside a monolith with the quantity 34 on it. She erases the quantity and replaces it with 33, and everybody of that age fades into oblivion. One other in a protracted line of expeditions readies itself to attempt to destroy her, together with Gustave, whose lengthy misplaced love simply changed into smoke and flower petals. It’s simply as unusual and mysterious proper up till the very finish.

It’s not simply story and setting, although. There’s additionally an intricate turn-based fight system that, when harnessed correctly, could make you are feeling very highly effective certainly. The entire characters play fully in a different way as effectively, each a totally new playstyle to fiddle round with, however every as doubtlessly robust as the opposite. On high of that, there’s a parry and dodge system, permitting you to drag victory from the jaws of defeat by ably parrying and countering when you’re ok. While it could be difficult to learn the fiendishly misleading assault animations, efficiently countering a combo of six assaults is at the very least satisfying sufficient to be value it. Clair Obscur is a exceptional achievement for such a small studio and stays one in every of greatest surprises and one in every of finest video games of the 12 months.

– Gamoc

Hades 2 – Runner Up

100 and three. That’s the variety of instances I’ve commenced a run in Hades 2, both sending the magic-spell concocting Melinoë on a descent to the dark-depths of the underworld, or having her journey throughout the floor to clamber atop Mount Olympus. Identical to the unique Hades, the fight stays crisp, responsive and totally beguiling; it’s a busy action-packed thrill-ride of a sport, but you by no means lose the power to inform what’s occurring regardless of the onscreen fireworks. The truth is, even with the numerous roguelite imitators over the intervening years, not one of the emulators have been capable of obtain this excellent steadiness of spectacle and nuance. It took the return of Supergiant Video games to indicate the remainder the way it’s finished.

What impresses much more, is how that, after some fifty hours into the sport, it’s nonetheless introducing sensible new mechanics, fascinating new characters and completely new storylines to me. Speak about confidence, Supergiant Video games saved plenty of the most effective stuff till tens of hours after the tip credit rolled.

My closing level as to why Hades 2 is effectively deserving a spot on the GOTY podium; it gives a fully excellent interpretation of the larger-than-life icons of Historical Greek mythology, exploring the unstable relationships between gods, heroes and monsters. It’s a masterclass in bringing new life to historical mythology.

How do Supergiant Video games do it?

– Ade

And that’s a wrap for our Sport of the Yr 2025 awards. Congratulations to our winners throughout the board – we will likely be keenly watching what comes subsequent from all of those groups! 

Talking of which, subsequent up now we have our Most Needed lists, trying on the video games we’re most excited to see by way of 2026.