Below is the official and authoritative list of games worth considering for Game of the Year status in 2025. The winner will be listed first, but all the other games worthy of mention are below.
There simply is no meaningful competition for Ninja Gaiden 4, it is one of Platinum's finest action games, one of the finest character action games ever made and is a modern classic of the genre, merging Ninja Gaiden's intensity with Platinum's spirit, a stretch for both sides making the unlikely success ever sweeter. NG4 is simply the best game of the year without question.
See Review
Pros: A VN of unrivaled scope and ambition. Telling dozens of possible stories with a Kodaka school game cast across several talented writers.
Cons: Uchikoshi wrote some really crappy routes and unfortunately a Kodaka indulged in his fetishes too much in one or two of the others
See TMDvidya review
The only notable Metroidvania released in 2025, I am certain of this! An excellent metroidvania that embraces action movie cheese. A wide array of guns to find makes exploration especially rewarding and the hallways full of Metal Slug-esque destruction make the traversal a lot more fun than the average Metroidvania.
It is hard to describe Neon Inferno better than to simply post images of the game. The art is sublime in every possible measure you could quantify it. Pixel art quality, character design, environmental design, the dynamic lighting and similar effects in-game, how it relates to the gameplay and communicates to the player. And it is harder still to praise Neon Inferno than to say it plays as smooth and delightful as it looks. Last year's Iron Meat was a standout run-and-gun homage to Contra but Neon Inferno laps it in quality easily, and even the dev's previous effort Steel Assault, which I enjoyed but would not have called a game of the year, is lapped just as hard. Neon Inferno is a run and gun that is Contra most of the time but sometimes asks you to do a gallery shooter like Wild Guns or Blood Bros at the same time. Every stage is a series of memorable and interesting set pieces that give you a whole action movie's jolt of adrenalin in a 30 minute clear wile demanding specific routing and skilled play in a manner you seldom see outside of games like Shadow of the Ninja Reborn. While the game wants you to 1cc, it has several easier difficulties with more polite checkpoints for people who will more likely need 80 hits to beat the game than 8, along with a level/checkpoint replay feature for full practice once you clear it. However you wish to approach it, Neon Inferno is an absolute joy to play and one of the finest releases of the year, but it is the sort of game you will have to replay multiple times to get the most value out of. That should not be a tall order, have you truly only played MMX1 or Contra Hard Corps once in your life?
Pros: AI Limit is a top notch homage to Dark Souls that does the formula competently and strongly with enough unique tricks to memorable mixed with the charm of featuring animegirls prominently. Following the Souls lead makes it sound less exciting to be fair, but Souls has a lot of great games to its name and AI Limit deserves to stand next to that pantheon, and should not be overlooked.
Cons: The parry is overpowered compared to what the enemies can do. That obnoxious human plinko level is easily up there with the worst of mainline Souls.
A cheat entrant because it is DLC released this year. Lies of P was one of the best soulslikes ever made and the DLC only served to expand an excellent game with more excellent content.
A cheat entrant because it escaped exclusivity and released on a real system (PC) this year. Rise of the Ronin is the best open world game in recent memory. It takes the formula of Ghost of Tsushima and actually makes it good with solid content and an enormous array of historical figures to have boss fights with. While the combat is very parry-centric, it still encourages offense, positioning, dodging, and other aspects quite well.
Pros: A refinement on the original best roguelite deckbuilder with radical balancing changes to give it some new identity and a top notch soundtrack to match.
Cons: Despite the changes, it still ends up more of the same from Monster Train 1. Some of the new stages have such demanding stat checks that even the possibility of hitting them has an outsized effect on what strategies you cannot even try, which limits the high level play.
Pros: A game so good it feels like it fell out of the early Xbox 360 era. COE33 needs no introduction or explanation at this point; it's a JRPG with the same clever exploration of genres that you used to see out of Ubisoft in games like Mario Rabbids.
Cons: Does not escape JRPG fatigue of refighting solved battles as dungeons drag, a game of "just parrying" makes it arguably a bit less than actual Souls or action games that use parrying with a suite of other mechanics. And, let's be honest, even though the story works and does stick the landing, the third act reveals are kinda a little too cute.
The biggest cheat entrant ever to cheat entry, a DLC of a game released last year remaking a game released years before, but Intravenous is such a good game it can cheat like this.
Obviously no GOTY list would be complete without this game.
Cons: No volleyball. No Tina. No Helena. No Nyotengu. No Marie. Not actually released in America.