Fergus Halliday's Top 10 Games of 2025
I went into this year with the lofty - but perhaps misguided - goal of only playing games that I already owned. My motivation with this was to try and save some money and change my own habits when it came to buying games on a whim and then never playing them. Just how far could I get into my pile of shame before the siren song of something new tempted me away?
The answer was around four months. The catalyst for this crumbling of my resolve was Nintendo announcing the Australian price-tag attached to the Nintendo Switch 2. The financial figure involved was high enough that it had me asking why I wouldn't buy a Steam Deck instead, and so that's exactly what I did. Although Valve's handheld proved to be a fantastic way of continuing to work my way through my backlog, it wasn't long before it proved to be an excuse for me to fall back into my old habits.
For what it's worth though, I did end up playing a decent amount of those new releases though. As per my Steam Replay, I was well above the average on this front.
Ultimately, I played a lot of games this year. Some of them old, some of them new, and ten of them worth championing in my usual end of year round-up of the best games I played this year. Let's start at the top.
Honorable Mentions: Halls of Torment, Hades 2, The Alters, Sunderfolk, Silksong, Dispatch, Hellclock, Ambrosia Sky, The King is Watching, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
10 - Kingdom Come Deliverance 2
As I've grown older, I've come to realise that one of my all-time favourite sub-genres in video games is watching other developers try to capture the magic of a Bethesda-style open world RPG, and the original Kingdom Come: Deliverance was an unexpected delight in that regard.
The sequel is bigger and better in all the right ways, delivering on the narrative promises the original game made and finding plenty of additional mileage in minutia of its uniquely historical setting. Although my enthusiasm is tempered every time the creative director associated with the game logs onto social media, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is still an achievement in open-world RPGs that I can't help but admire.
9 - Dread Delusion
In some ways, the reasons why Dread Delusion is on this list are pretty similar to those for Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. At the same time, it feels like an indie inversion of Warhorses' lavish AAA open world RPG.
The psychedelic take on dark fantasy and throwback visuals in Dread Delusion are a compelling combination from the moment you boot it up and while the combat eventually loses some of its luster, the narrative remains a highlight all the way to the bitter end.
8 - Destiny Rising
I've totally bounced off everything that Bungie (and Sony) have tried to do with Destiny following The Final Shape, but the series' long in-the-works mobile spin-off finally gave me the thing I've wanted for years: A vision of what Destiny could be if it was just a normal video game.
Sure, Destiny Rising isn't without its issues and I'm sure plenty will take umbrage with the myriad monetization-minded mechanics found in it. All the same, it's a testament to how messy and frustrating the core Destiny experience has become that the familiarity of those trappings quickly outweighed any friction they created for.
The countless quality of life changes here, from being able to queue into raid content to being able to just see if a given item is an upgrade at a glance, add up quickly into an experience that's well worth the time it takes to download off the app store. More than just a Destiny game that runs on your phone, Destiny Rising is a version of Bungie's loot shooter that feels like it isn't actively working against your efforts to have fun with it.
7 - Star Wars Outlaws
It's a shame that Star Wars Outlaws has the reputation it has because it's honestly the most fun I've had with both the franchise involved and the specific Ubisoft-style open world formula in years.
Following the post-launch patches, Outlaws offers both robust options for more stealth-oriented scoundrels and those who prefer to go loud and skip straight to the frenzied street-level skirmishes. More than just scale of the piece, there's a real balance here in terms of the variety of flavors that this particular Star Wars game evokes and provides.
There's something really specific and compelling about a Star Wars game that has room for it for all sorts of stuff - from Sabbac to space combat - without necessarily committing to anything as its core focus.
6 - System Shock 2 Remastered
System Shock 2 is a game that looms large in my memory and Nightdive's remaster of the original space station isolation immersive-sim ticks all the boxes. It's just clunky enough to remain charming but cleaned up enough to not get in your way.
To add to that, the multiplayer mode is an unexpected delight. Playing through System Shock 2 with friends is almost like a story-focused spin off of Lethal Company in the best possible way.
5 - Blue Prince
Blue Prince is one of the most talked about games of the year, and it's hard to talk about the game too much without untangling it from both that initial hype cycle and the seeming-inevitable backlash to it. Nevertheless, while the sense of mystery and the strikingly simple aesthetic drew me in, I think I ultimately found the overall narrative or individual puzzles in Blue Prince less compelling than the core loop of drafting a new house.
It's as fun here as it is in a board game like Betrayal at the House on the Hill and even after I hit credits, I just kept playing Blue Prince because the simple act of laying out the tiles each run was just that delightful and original in a way that I would never have expected going into the game.
4 - Duskpunk
Ever since I played Citizen Sleeper, I have been waiting for someone to take its inspired take on a dice-rolling RPG and put a fresh spin on it - and Duskpunk is that game.
Where Starward Vector complicated the formula in ways I didn't love, Duskpunk swerves in the other direction. The game undoubtedly owes as much to John Harper's Blades in the Dark as Jump over the Ages sci-fi saga, but when the results are more delightful than derivative.
3 - Q-UP
A game about coin flipping should not be so compelling that I played it through to the credits three times over. Sometimes multiplayer gaming can seem like a bit of a coin flip. It's fascinating to see a game build on that perception in the most literal sense and take the bit all the way to its natural conclusion.
Where Unfair Flips made me wonder about the nature of probability, Q-Up feels like a fascinating statement on the way that the meta-game surrounding the game can become the game.
2 - Promise Mascot Agency
Paradise Killer was my game of the year in 2020, and while Kaizen Game Works follow-up has very little in common with their cosmological murder mystery, it's easily one of the years standout titles for me.
Promise Mascot Agency is a Yakuza-like adventure that blurs genres on a dime but never loses its grip on the gravity created by its a colorful setting, hilarious characters and immaculate vibes.
1 - Elden Ring: Nightreign
As much as Shadow of the Erdtree turned me around on Elden Ring, I was hardly hankering for multiplayer rogue-like spin-off to From Software's enormously popular open-world incarnation of the Dark Souls formula. It's the kind of thing that should not work - and yet, here it does.
More than just squeezing the power curve of a Souls game into a shorter time-frame, Nightreign cuts you straight the most compelling parts of what the multiplayer aspect of the series is often able to bring to the table.
When it came to my favorite games of 2025, it was probably always going to be a contender. However, jumping back into the Lands Between to check out The Forsaken Hollows DLC really cemented just how special a game it really is. Sure, you have the odd run that doesn't work out but every run of Nightreign is a fascinating roll of the dice regardless. Each adventure is an opportunity to understand how to better utilise your character's own skillset, navigate the game's sandbox-style maps and take better advantage of the way that Nightreign's roster of bosses are shuffled like a deck of cards.
Looking for more recommendations? You can find my previous end of year round-ups below:
