Just like the previous years that I’ve made a list like this, there were a few games that surprised me. I had planned to play more games, but that didn’t happen. 2025 has been a strange year for me, and I’m glad that it is almost over.

My plan was to play more RPGs, but that didn’t go as planned. The few that I did get to were great. I tried a few others that I ended up not doing reviews for because they were disappointing. The beat’em ups, adventure games, and visual novels I got to were awesome. They ended up being my favorite games of the year.

This list is taken from my YouTube channel and blog. A big factor in putting a game on this list had to do with how much I enjoyed it. The list is a mix of retro and indie games. There might be a few budget games on this list as well.

Selection criteria

Let’s talk about what qualifies for this list. I’m not just going to be putting any random game on this list. Here are the criteria I used to compile this list:

• I had to have played the game in 2025.
• I must have reviewed the game on my Blog or YouTube channel.
• It must be a game that I enjoyed.

Brigandine: The Legend of Forsena

This is a Strategy RPG for the PS1. Brigandine plays like a Koei strategy game but with more RPG elements and less simulation. This is a game that I like more now than when I first played it in the 1990s.

The story is decent. Each faction has a separate storyline, and there are side stories throughout the campaign. It makes the game feel a little bigger as you learn more about the relationships between the generals. It was a ton of fun to stumble across these storylines while I was playing.

The game isn’t flawless. The 3D graphics don’t look too good anymore. You only see them in the battle scenes and when you summon more monsters. It is a lot of fun to play and figure out how you want to play the game.  

Banner of the Maid

Banner of the Maid is a wonderful Tactical RPG. It is an alternate history of the French Revolution, where witches are called Maids. They have been around for a long time and seem to have traced back to Joan of Arc. It is a very cool plot.

The gameplay will be familiar if you have played any Tactical or Strategy RPG. Banner of the Maid plays like Fire Emblem, Tactics Ogre, and Final Fantasy Tactics. I love the art style, the gameplay is excellent, and the story is very good! It takes historical events and changes them enough to make the story engaging.

The game has a few minor problems, and the translation can be rough. The game is one of the better Tactical RPGs out there and a wonderful alternative to Fire Emblem and the mainstream games in this genre. It is a spectacular game!

Marvel Cosmic Invasion

This is one of my favorite beat’em ups. It was made by the same developer as Shredder’s Revenge, and it is a huge improvement. I enjoyed everything about the game.

You take control of a team of superheroes to fight against the Annihilation Wave. Over the course of the game, you’ll unlock more characters until you have all fifteen playable heroes. There are some heavy, well-known characters along with some obscure ones. In each stage, you form a team of two characters that you can swap between during battle.

The gameplay and graphics are wonderful! Beat’em ups are some of my favorite games, and this is one of the better ones. I love that the developers made me feel like I’m playing a lost arcade game from the 1990s.  

Urban Myth Dissolution Center

This is a visual novel that is made up of six episodes. It tells a pretty cool story, and there is a nice twist ending. I saw part of it coming, but wasn’t expecting the reveal at the end. In a post-credit sequence, a sequel is teased.

This visual Novel is a little more involved than the other ones I’ve played. It is a detective game, and you can swap between two points of view. You do this by putting on glasses, which is pretty cool. Some of the gameplay feels a little half-baked, but I still enjoyed it. The social media section of the game is a great idea, but it devolves into simply clicking on everything.

Some parts of this game reminded me of my old job. It was a lot of fun to learn about some of the Urban Myths I didn’t know about. It also gave me an idea for a story I had been working on for a while. This is a very good visual novel, and one of the better ones I played this year.

Stories from Sol: Gun-Dog

Much like the previous game on this list, Stories from Sol felt like the start of a series. This is a visual novel set on a spaceship in the far future. It takes place after a war for independence, and what I think is an alien invasion. There are a few endings, so your experience might vary.

The story and setting are my favorite parts of this game. It reminded me of my time in the Navy. A small crew on an isolated ship. Thankfully, I didn’t have to experience a mutiny or an alien species. Your character is the security officer, and you have to navigate a bizarre scenario. There is a grander plot going on that is only revealed at the end of the game.

Most of the puzzles in this game are fairly easy. There were only a few moments when I wasn’t sure what to do. It didn’t take me too long to get through the game, which is always nice for a visual novel. The focus is on the story and the very good graphics.

Battle Circuit

This is another great beat’em up from Capcom. It is an absolutely absurd game with a crazy cast of characters. The plot starts crazy, and it gets even crazier as the game goes on. It is only an hour long, and a wild ride.

There are five playable characters, each of which is associated with a color. They play differently, and it is easy to pick a favorite among them. Battle Circuit has a simple story, but the route you take to get to the conclusion is very funny. There is a recurring character, which makes the game much funnier than other beat’em ups.

I had so much fun with this game. Playing around with each of the characters was great, and I ended up falling in love with the yellow and green characters. This is such a fun game.

Warriors of Fate

This is one of the beat’em ups I picked out to play this year. It was a lot of fun to go back and play this game on the Capcom Beat’em Up Bundle. I liked the setting a lot more than the gameplay, even though the gameplay is a lot of fun.

This is one of the Capcom games that is based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. During the localization process, the whole story got butchered. That doesn’t take anything away from the gameplay. This is a solid beat’em up where you follow the events of the manga that the game is based on.

The game takes about an hour to beat. It is a very solid beat’em up. The levels aren’t all that elaborate, and the enemies aren’t too difficult to beat. The boss characters look great, and it is easy to see the patterns and exploit them. It helps that you have unlimited continues with the Beat’em Up Bundle.

Tavern Talk

Tavern Talk is an interesting take on a visual novel. You’re not playing as a hero, and you don’t actively participate in the story. The character you play as is a tavern keeper who used to be an adventurer. What you’ll be doing is listening to adventurers as they come in for drinks.

Making drinks plays out like a puzzle game. You’ll have to listen to what the characters are asking for, or you’ll get an option of drinks to make. Then you’ll have to select what matches the character’s task. It is a cool idea, and it gets more complex as the game goes on. There are also a few twists to the story, which is always nice.

Tavern Talk is a long visual novel. It took me over ten hours to play, which is a little excessive in my mind. The story is good, but it felt like it took a long time to get to the end. Like many of these games, I had my favorite characters. They each have a lot of personality, and they have some character progression as the game goes on.

Road 96

This is one of the best adventure games that I’ve ever played. I absolutely love the story and setting of Road 96. The gameplay is pretty good, and the way you advance the plot is very cool!

You play as a series of teenagers who are fleeing a police state. There is an election going on, and your actions can have an impact on it. Along the way, you’ll meet different recurring characters. Their stories advance over the course of the game, and you’ll learn more about them. It is very cool to see how each of these stories intertwines at the end of the game. Each story leads you to the border crossing on Road 96.

The graphics can be truly beautiful at times. Much of the gameplay is easy to understand, and it is a lot of fun. There were a few parts where I wasn’t sure what to do, but I eventually figured it out. It didn’t seem to matter if you died or were captured. You would simply start over with a different teenager. It is a great way to tell a story.

Wild Arms

Wild Arms is a wonderful RPG from the mid 1990s. It was unfairly compared to Final Fantasy VII because of the time that it came out. I skipped over this game when it was released, and I’m a little upset that I did because this is a very fun game.

The game’s world feels very dark, and there is an air of defeat in the setting. I love the idea of trying to prevent a demonic invasion, learning about what happened in the previous war, and then fighting to defeat the demons again. The graphics are also pretty fun.

This is one of the games that mixed pixel art with 3D graphics. The pixel art looks much better than the 3D art, but the character models on the combat screen are adorable in some ways. Your characters look like Funco Pops.

Wild Arms is a solid RPG. As far as the RPGs on the PS1 go, this is an above-average one. The story is quite good, the graphics are decent, and I like the gameplay. This was one of my favorite RPGs of this year.

News Tower

News Tower is a tycoon game where you run a newspaper. It takes place in the 1920s, and you slowly grow your business over the years. You can expand to different parts of New York, and eventually you can grow into international markets.

I like how they weave in some historical events for you to cover, and how you need to manage your staff. Just like the title suggests, you add floors to your building to expand your “News Tower.” The game also gives you some control over what kind of newspaper you want to run. There are missions, but you don’t have to do them.

The game can get a little crazy as you get further into the game. You have more things to manage, it is easier to get sued, and the mob becomes more active. There is also more equipment for you to deal with. This can be an addictive game if you like Tycoon games.

Camp Sunshine

Camp Sunshine is a love letter to 80s and 90s horror movies. It is a survival horror game that is set in a summer camp that happens to be haunted. There are a bunch of little things that reference classic horror movies, as well as a few obscure ones.

You play as a kid who is sent to Camp Sunshine. On your first night, everyone dies, and you have to figure out what is going on. The backstory is told to you through cutscenes. It uses pixel graphics and has a great story. I also love that the killer stalks you throughout the game.

I took a chance on a game that I didn’t know too much about. It turned out to be one of my favorite games of the year. I really enjoyed Camp Sunshine. This game felt like a Friday the 13^th game that could’ve been on the Genesis or SNES.

Sweet Home

This is one of the best RPGs that I’ve played this year. Sweet Home is a hybrid of an RPG and a survival horror game. It is a movie-based game, and I loved both the game and the movie. It was so much fun to play the game after I was able to figure out the controls.

Sweet Home is a very unique game. The combat is a turn-based RPG. You form two or more parties out of your five playable characters, and during fights, you can call on the other party for help. There is a lot of inventory management you have to do, and each character has a tool that is needed to beat the game. It feels like every character is important.

I’m so glad that I finally played this game. It is one of my favorite RPGs. The more that I play this game, the more I enjoy it. I also enjoyed the movie for what it was.

Infernax

This is a wonderful metroidvania. This is a genre that I don’t normally like, but Infernax doesn’t overstay its welcome, and it has some very cool imagery in it. It does a great job of emulating the Castlevania series. The game looks amazing, and I love all the cutscenes in it.

Infernax uses modern pixel art, which looks amazing! It reminds me of the SNES and Genesis games in the Castlevania series, but set up like Symphony of the Night. The map isn’t too big or confusing, and I love that you can swap between two characters. There is also a magic system that adds a lot to the gameplay.

I loved everything about this game. The plot is simple enough, and the game doesn’t overstay its welcome. It took me about six hours to beat it, which was something that I appreciated. This is an action RPG that doesn’t have any grinding in it. The graphics are spectacular, and the gameplay is wonderful.

Vanguard Bandits

Vanguard Bandits took some turns that I wasn’t expecting. It starts off quite basic, and then gets more complicated as you have to manage character relationships. There are quite a few endings and storylines in this game.

Out of all the games on this list, Vanguard Bandits is the one that I would love to come back to. I didn’t do well the first time I played it, and I would love to see the other endings in this game. This is a tactical RPG where you move giant robots around! There is no way this could be a bad game!

This was one of the games that I was a little surprised by. The reviews for it were ridiculous. They weren’t too different from the reviews for Brigandine, where the game was unfairly compared to other RPGs. It was much better than some of the reviews say from the time it was released.

Conclusion

I didn’t get to as many games as I wanted to this year. What I had wanted to do was to finish a retro and indie RPG each month. That clearly didn’t happen as life managed to get in the way. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get to more indie games next year.

There were a few games that I wasn’t expecting this year. Some of the visual novels and adventure games I played were excellent. Of course, there were a few beat’em ups that I had a lot of fun with. If I had to pick a game of the year, it would be Marvel Cosmic Invasion. Out of all the modern games, that was the one I had the most fun with.

I have no idea what I’m going to do next year. There are a few games that I wanted to play this year, but I’ll have to play next year. Because this year was a bit of a disaster, I’m not going to go into 2026 with a plan. Those never seem to work out well for me.

If you liked this post, please check out my lists from the previous years. Best games I played in 2023 and 2024.