It’s definitive (Gonçalo Lopes, contributor)
Hardware transition years are always a tricky thing mostly because there shouldn’t be that many exciting things going on with Switch until the inevitable deluge of games on Switch 2 starts to drop. So I feel like a bit of a cheat, but my GOTY so far is Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition.
That’s right, a decade old game (which of course was my GOTY 2015) that brings so many quality-of-life upgrades and a brand new three-part final chapter that wraps up the plot in an extremely pleasant way put every other Nintendo release on the first half of 2025 to shame.
I’m quite looking forward to see what Nintendo has in store for the rest of the year because I suspect my GOTY 2025 is still somewhere down the line (perhaps the adventures of a certain intergalactic bounty hunter or a very strong ape and teenage adopted daughter?). But the industry taught me that better hardware does not always equal better games and despite the original release age, Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition definitely left a huge impression in yours truly.
Citizen, weeper (Jim Norman, staff writer)
I’ve polished off quite a few games so far this year, but very few of them have actually come out of 2025 — backlog? Never heard of it! One that did release in the last six months, mind you, and absolutely destroyed me was Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector.
I missed out on the first Citizen Sleeper by having too much on my plate at the time, but my love for TTRPGs made me ever so curious about its follow-up, and oh my gosh, my investment was off the charts. The writing is incredible, the music is phenomenal, and the final act left me snot-crying on the corner of the sofa while my partner frantically tried to work out what a ‘Sleeper’ was and whether she needed to make me breathe into a paper bag.
You can play CS2 however you’d like to, so there’s no guarantee that your robo-pal would go through the same arc mine did. That said, I challenge anyone to spend a few hours with this colourful cast of characters and not quickly develop a crew that you’d be willing to die for. Just superb stuff, and if it’s not on my GOTY list come December, we’ll have had a very good second half.
Life’s a fantasy (Kate Gray, contributor)
I have a lot of GOTY candidates already, which means it’s been a fantastic year, but I think my frontrunner for the time being is Fantasy Life i.
I gave it a 9 in my review, and they actually FIXED one of my main issues (the farming), so if anything, it’s even better now! It’s a worthy successor to the original, and it’s, like, three entire games stuffed into one. I don’t always like an overstuffed game that tries to be everything, but FLi pulls it off extremely well.
Robots and time travel (Ollie Reynolds, staff writer)
It would have been lovely to list a bunch of Switch 2 titles here, but alas, as good as the new console’s launch line-up has proven to be, none of them will ultimately make my GOTY list for 2025.
There’s one clear winner for me (which I suspect you might have already guessed), but I want to give a shoutout to two titles that came very close to taking an early lead. The first is I, Robot, a magnificent arcade remake from the minds of Llamasoft’s Jeff Minter and Ivan ‘Giles’ Zorzin that sunk its psychedelic claws into me right from the start. It’s such a unique experience, and one that probably won’t appeal to everyone, but once it ‘clicks’, it’s really hard to put down.
The second is Capcom Fighting Collection 2. I’ll be honest, I’ve barely touched the likes of Power Stone 2 and Project Justice, but my goodness, Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium 2001 has me in a chokehold. Its wealth of options is almost overwhelming at first, but I love tinkering with the different grooves and seeing which one speaks to me the most. What an excellent fighter.
But of course, the true winner here is The Hundred Line – Last Defense Academy. I go into much greater detail in my recent feature piece, but in a nutshell, it’s a game that just keeps on surprising and delighting long after you roll credits. Its characters are incredibly memorable, and although I’m not much of a strategy fan, the combat proved to be consistently compelling throughout.
Master swords and anti-grav racing FTW (PJ O’Reilly, staff writer)
Well, and maybe surprisingly — or not — Mario Kart World doesn’t stand a chance of a look-in for me here, as great as it is. Instead, besides retrying every game I own to see which ones play better whilst my sons mock me and call me “bald nerd man”, I’ve found myself absolutely bloody engrossed in Breath of the Wild all over again.
Now, I sort of blasted through it really, really quickly on a (borrowed) Wii U when it first came out, so I hightailed it through a whole lot of things, and did very little side stuff. What this led to was a Master Sword-less playthrough (I’m not sure I even started the quest to get it in the forest). What’s more, I scaled the outside of Hyrule Castle at the end to save time, like a big Irish ninja, going straight into the boss battle from the balcony of the room involved, if I remember correctly. And boy did I give that bad guy a walloping, by the way.
I sure did save a lot of time doing it thusly, but it’s irked me ever since. Now though, having tried a few new runs and then ditched it on Switch, this Switch 2 edition has done the trick. I’m fully back in, one Divine Beast down already and I’m 100% gonna see it all this time. So yeah, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, to answer the question, with all its fancy new bells and whistles and sexy frame rates.
I’ll also give a shoutout to Fast Fusion, which I’m enjoying way more than Mario’s brand of racing right now. It really does pack some depth for racers who push it into the higher difficulties, and may well actually be my favourite anti-grav racer outside of the Wipeout series now, and definitely replaces Redout as my fave on Switch consoles. It’s so fast, Ricky Bobby!
Those are our picks, but what about yours? Pick your 2025 favourite (so far) and take to the comments to discuss games that come close and your hopes for the back half of ’25.
And for a reminder of all the games we’ve awarded an 8/10 or higher so far in 2025, you can find that on our Reviews tab.
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