Invis's Favorite Games of 2025 [PART 2]

16. The Outer Worlds 2 :

[VAGUE COMPANION QUEST SPOILERS]

The flaws system is such a smart idea and it makes a return from the first Outer Worlds. While there aren't a crazy amount of flaws you can be given, the ones that are there cover most bases so that any player can find one they enjoy. In particular I was given one called "Easily Distracted" which gave me an extra skill point to assign each level but prevented me from putting those points into anything but my lowest skill. You're given this trait by spreading out your skill points, so this was a fantastic way to cater to my playstyle by choosing all the skills I wanted early on and being able to level them up all close to max level. It also made sure that I was unlikely to miss out on any optional exploration paths and dialogue trees, since I was able to get a high level in all those trees that mattered.

This isn't something that I would ever take advantage of just because I'm a completionist, but you're given true freedom in how you want to address every situation. You want to permanently dismiss a party member cause they are annoying? Is the leader of one of the main story objectives being too mean to you and you want to kill them? You can do both of those. The game will present you with a pop up window saying "Hey, we see that you made a decision to severely alter the story. We'll let you do this but you it'll be a challenge and you might miss out on content. Are you sure?". This isn't for me, but I greatly appreciate how they've built in fail-safes for those who just want to John Wick everyone either cause they dislike them or just to switch it up for a second playthrough. Which could be seen as a net positive since whether you're shooting an enemy or melee'ing them, it's a bit brain dead. There's not much feedback on connected shots and many are bullet sponges so the only way to tell if you're doing damage is just staring at the HP bar. You might not need to worry about that though if you talk down your enemies which you can do quite often. Just another example of the freedom you're given.

I become so engrossed in these types of RPGs. I just want to run around and explore every nook and cranny, talk to everyone, and become besties with my companions. For me the story in a game such as this is almost inconsequential compared to your companions. You could nail every system you implement, but its all for naught if I don't want to hang around my party members. Unfortunately this is in part where I believe Outer Worlds 2 falls short the most. There are six companions you run with and that is too many. Four or less is the perfect amount for me because if you have more than that then you run into potential problems, all of which I experienced; not having enough time to flesh out the companions you get last either due to providing them too close to the finale so you feel as if you've got to rush their personal story along, and becoming too attached to the other companions that came before where you don't want to give time to the new ones. I thought highly of Tristan's story, one of an internal struggle revolving around changing poorly taught morals. It's just clear that some were given much more attention than others.

15. Borderlands 4 :

The best Borderlands since 2. It's got a more serious tone than I wanted as I always found the humor in Borderlands my type of stupid, but as a result you get the best written cast in a long while. Also Claptrap gets too much hate. Lighten up people.

14. Sword of the Sea :

Boy, is this game stunning or what? I'm at a loss of words in how to articulate this properly, but the level transformations to bring the sea all around you as you progress through is an artistic masterpiece. As you ride around the ground will become the sea itself, and all matter of aquatic creatures will ride alongside you. Other schools of fish will come above ground and fly around the sky guiding you to your next point of interest. Colorful algae grows up through buildings and encompasses it. It's such a beautiful display accompanied by a relaxing orchestral soundtrack.

13. Catto's Post Office:

[STORY SPOILERS]

A simple game where you play a cat delivering mail on their birthday. Everyone has sadly forgotten about your birthday, but it's all a ruse that leads up to a big surprise birthday party at the end of the day. It's a short uplifting game that made me happy cry, and sometimes that all you want.

12. Avowed :

Obsidian really knocked it out the park this year for my type of games. Avowed is set in the Pillars of Eternity universe, one of which I have no affinity for as I haven't played one. I was constantly running into historical events and terms that I had no idea about, but Obsidian had a brilliant idea to add a pop-up codex into the dialogue text boxes for situations such as this. If something is spoken about which isn't directly referenced in Avowed or would be beneficial for the player to know, you can click on that word to bring up a pop up window to explain it. The amount of people who played Pillars of Eternity II that is also playing Avowed can't be too high, so this feature is a god-send for anyone new to this world. A chunk of the story was lost on me regardless, but I never felt confused through it.

What kept me engaged all throughout was the plethora of combat options at your disposal that can all be mixed and matched to suit anyone's playstyle. For casting magic in particular, spells are assigned to grimoires (one of equippable mage weapons) which gives you flexibility in how you want to spread out your skill points for learning spells. If there's a spell you want to play with but don't want to invest points in them then you can find a grimoire with that spell to use it while allocating your points into those spells you want, having the best of both worlds. Or you could put points into those same spells to make them more powerful compared to free casting them. All of the spells syngerize so well together, letting you create a combo of sorts with them. You could throw down an ice spell to freeze an enemy in place, followed by placing a tick damage fire AOE underneath them, and then burst them down with two handing a spell of your preference for maximum damage.

I usually do not play mage classes but I ended up using spells a lot due to how flexible they were, since you do not have to run a two handed mage if you don't want to. What about dropping some of the damage you'll get from two handing spells in exchange for big burst damage from a pistol? Or instead of that, how about a sword so you can run up to swing for the fences once you've frozen an enemy in place? Outside of bows, the ability to one hand every weapon is such a smart idea in an attempt to incorporate how everyone wants to play a game like this differently, and it works. You can respec at any point from the pause menu too, which played even more into my desire to keep trying out all the weapons and spells. Take all this and couple it with a responsive dodge mechanic and you've got a combat system that I don't have a single problem with.

Avowed is the polar opposite of The Outer Worlds 2 in many ways for me. Avowed has the better written companions and more engaging combat, while The Outer Worlds 2 has more flexible character progression systems and a captivating world. Both are good in their own right and I believe Obsidian is right there on the cusp of making something truly exceptional next go around.

11. Hell Is Us :

[SIDE QUEST SPOILERS, VAGUE ENDING SPOILERS, DISCUSSION OF DEATH]

Hell Is Us shares the ideas of Atomfall by gathering clues for story progression but on a grander scale. There's a loose quest log in your pause menu to track the clues you've gathered and those you've talked to, but it's entirely up to you to figure out how they all intertwine for where to go next. There's no quest markers to point you in the right direction because you are given everything you need as long as you look for it. I'm indifferent on this type of navigation, just as long as you aren't being obtuse for the sake of being obtuse. Hell Is Us is linear all throughout so it tries to cater to both sides and I think it succeeds on that front as someone who appreciates both. There's a good deal of notes placed around the world, some that will progress your main story but many that flesh out the world to paint you a better picture of what's going around you. Personally I rarely ever find notes/audiologs/diaries/etc such as this interesting enough to read so I'll pick them up but never read them. I did the opposite in Hell In Us, as I was so intrigued to learn more about how everything got as bad as it did. A civil war has torn up the country and it sucks. It's genuinely depressing.

The world building here is elite class. There's mystique every way you turn, and the answers to your questions are neither blunt so to leave you some room for interpretation, nor are they given at a pace too quickly. The way the game forms your opinions about both sides early on and then slowly and consistently shifts them the more you play keeps you engaged in a way that stories revolving around war rarely accomplish. The exposition of how everyone involved in this war has done wrong is far from this new revelation, yet it still finds a way to trick you at times in believing there is a good guy in all this.

You can't fail the main quest but this is far from true for side quests. Many of them are time sensitive and those that need help remind you of such. I did not heed their advice for those that needed it, which resulted in me failing quite a few. I had gathered what was necessary, but took too long to return. In one instance, the local militia leader had forced a musician to stay at camp and play songs. The musician lost most of his sheet music and fears he will be killed if he doesn't get new material. He was right. The failure that affected me the most started deep in an underground tunnel. As you explore further down into the depths, the cry of a baby becomes louder and louder. Once you find the baby, he's being cared for by a woman resting on nothing more than a pile of garbage. The infant's mother had entrusted him to this woman before she was killed due to how she sided on the war. The baby is starving and needs milk as the woman begs for you to get some for her, cause she is sure she will also be killed if she goes herself as she cares for a baby of the enemy. I took my time with this, and was honestly heartbroken when I came back to find the woman alone. It's a welcome, if not distressful, far cry from what we are used to in games where the world revolves around the player awaiting your beck and call.

With all that said though, Hell Is Us falls flat on its face when it comes to the ending. I can't think of a more egregious example of a game setting you up for an incredibly well throughtout info dump only to fumble the ball with a near dialogue-less three minute cutscene. It doesn't respect any of the knowledge it gave to the player leading up to this point. You can't expect every player to have gathered as much info about the world and its people as those that read every optional piece of text, but it was not a rewarding ending in the slightest for those that did. For how much I despised the ending, it doesn't tarnish how much I enjoyed everything leading up to that point.

10. Cronos: The New Dawn :

So many of the reasons I enjoyed Hell Is Us are the same reasons why I enjoyed Cronos, so I'll keep it short here to avoid essentially repeating myself. You could honestly swap out "Hell Is Us" for "Cronos" in those above paragraphs and it'll apply just fine, particularly in indirect exposition and how you view those around you. Outside of that, Cronos does the best that any horror game has done at creating tension through ammo and healing item scarcity. Ammo and crafting materials are laid out in perfect intervals right when you need it the most without ever creating a situation where you truly are helpless.

9. Sektori :

I said I needed to play more bullet hells, didn't I? A twin stick shooter that shares much with Geometry Wars but turnt up to 11. The soundtrack gets your heart pumping right from the get go, combining late 90s/early 2000s techno with heavily distorted hardstyle. Every second of Sektori is an adrenaline rush and I love it. The level will often shift turning safe spaces into danger zones, potentially where there isn't any safe space due to an abundance of enemies because you've left that section alone due to how hard you were clinging on for survival just moments ago on your side. Failing never feels out of your control as you can always see it coming, which leads to runs that feel fair. Sometimes bosses can get so hectic that it's hard to see where you need to be aiming to damage them, so I wish the indicator for weak spots was more visible. Once you get that cleared run though, the feeling of satisfaction is like none other.

8. Death Stranding 2 :

[MID TO LATE GAME MECHANICS SPOILERS]

You know the type of game you're going to get here; incoherent story nonsense accompanied with a satisfying straight gameplay loop. If you didn't enjoy the first Death Stranding, there's not much here that's changed to draw you into its sequel. You're going to be doing nothing other than transporting those same packages in the 30th hour just as you did in the first hour, albeit at a faster pace. Compared to the first Death Stranding, the story is far more concise but at times could not be more blunt if it was hitting you across the head with it. There's a good chance you're going to foresee certain twists even before they are foreshadowed. A great cast can carry a subpar story but it's easy to care for all these characters as they've all lost a piece of themselves and have finally begun to heal by way of each other. Or maybe just because they are based on real people and it's more relatable that way. Whatever the reason, I've always been drawn to how Kojima tells his stories and this was no different.

Kojima has crafted so many set pieces that only get more elaborate and insane as you close in on the finale, one that I can only describe as making Metal Gear Solid 4's look conventional. The visceral BT bosses that tower over you can be caught in essentially Poke Balls to be used as allies in later boss fights. Death Stranding 2 is such an odd game due to how straight it plays itself followed by absurdity. This has always been his gimmick, and part of me appreciates how hard Kojima sticks to his visions as he's not out to make games for everyone. In a world torn apart by greed, he wants everyone to realize you're not alone in this fractured society. I'm such a fan of the shared world aspect in Death Stranding, where players work together to build better traversal options for others. I throw out "likes" left and right whenever I use something placed by another player cause the smile I get whenever I'm on the receiving end of it. Helping others is free, and no game expresses that better than the following:

7. LEGO Voyagers :

[STORY SPOILERS]

An improvement upon LEGO Builder's Journey in every conceivable way. This time you'll travel with a partner as you work towards finding a way to travel to space, a shared dream of both of you. You'll work together completing puzzles to reach the space station and build your own shuttle, to see that only one of you is putting on a space suit when it's time. This was never about going to space together. It's a journey about unconditionally helping another reach their goals. It moved me in a similar way that Catto's Post Office did all without a single line of dialogue, and if that's not an indication of storytelling perfected then I don't know what is.

6. AI Limit :

I play just about every souls-like that comes out. They are my games. AI Limit flew under the radar by releasing during a crowded time, but its low price tag of $35 has done well to combat that. It shares much with the first Dark Souls in the layout of its interconnected world, something that later Souls entries and many souls-like today have foregone in favor of instanced levels. It's easy to discover where the path for shortcuts are because you can always see where you are going and where you came from either due to how open the maps are or verticality. There's a lot to appreciate here in its level design if you were a fan of how it was in the original Dark Souls. What matters the most though is how AI Limit sets itself apart, and it does that through fundamental changes to both combat and usability.

There is no concept of stamina in AI Limit, and in its place is a "Sync" bar that fills up from 0% to 100% that determines your damage output based on how full it is. The percentage increases whenever you land attacks and decreases whenever taking damage/blocking/parrying/casting spells, which opens up the option for huge burst damage with the side effect of being vulnerable afterwards. It's so satisfying you get that boss close to being dead and just burst out as many spells and attacks as you can, because you know if they hit you won't need to worry about where your bar is at afterwards. Due to the lack of stamina, you won't ever need to worry about running into a situation where the enemy is open for big damage but you can't attack due to not having any stamina leftover. There's not a great deal of depth to the combat but at the same time it's quick to get a good feel for it.

Now you'll still lose "souls" (called Crystals here) when you die, but not all of them. You'll lose an unrecoverable percentage of them that is determined by one of your equipment items. It determines how many Crystals you get upon killing an enemy as well as how many Crystals are lost on death. The higher Crystals you get from kills increases the amount of Crystals lost when you die, and vice versa. It's a neat risk/reward type system that you can freely swap between depending on how well you are doing at the time. While AI Limit is still challenging at its core, it's one of the easier Souls-likes I've played. You may want to take that with a grain of salt due to the subjectivity of difficulty but I stand by it. There's very few instances of huge unblockable attacks or feigns upon feigns just to toy with you. It's an overall forgiving experience and one of the better Souls-like to ever come out.

5. Mafia: The Old Country :

If I had to pick a theme in media that I gravitate towards the most, it would be mafia or crime adjacent, probably in part to The Godfather. It's always easy to root for a group who's been discriminated against overcoming adversity. However despite being one of the most influential movies of all time, The Godfather romanticizes the mafia as honorable and glorious. Mafia: The Old Country tears down that veil as it continuously kicks you in the gut with reminders of how much this lifestyle steals from you. The story follows carusu (mine-boy, specifically sulfur mines) Enzo Favara as he gains favor of Don Torrisi of the Torrisi crime family after escaping from the mines. Isabella, Don Torrisi's daughter, and Enzo eventually fall in love and struggle to find a way to escape together to America to find better lives from themselves and their future child since Don does not approve of their relationship. It's an overly predictable story, but is carried by some of the best performances I've ever seen in a game.

There is so much power in everyone's words. The emotion they are able to convey in times of distraught adds a weight to each event that not everyone can accomplish. Don Torrisi's voice actor in particular, Johnny Santiago, can deliver so much intensity due to his range. His ability to convey hatred and immediately shift to a compassionate father portrays intimidation like I haven't seen before in a video game villain. It feels passe to say you could turn this into a Hollywood hit, but I know you do it with the incredible cast of The Old Country. Playing the game itself is nothing to write home about with serviceable gunplay and boring stealth sections, but I'm here for the story. And boy, does it ever hit hard.

4. The First Berserker: Khazan :

If AI Limit is Dark Souls, then Khazan is Sekiro. Sekiro was my GOTY for 2019 so it's no surprise that a game similar is placed where it is on this list. Remember when I mentioned earlier that AI Limit released in a crowded time? It released on the same day as The First Berserker: Khazan, an even better Souls-like. It's evident that Khazan wears its influences on its sleeve when it comes to boss stagger bars and that metal clashing sound that plays on perfect guards, but why not? It's an unreal feeling whenever you perfect guard that quick 10-hit combo for the first time. Outside of that, Khazan's not reinventing the wheel whenever it comes to level design as they are nearly identical to how Demon's Souls is; you've got a hub world with teleporters to take you into narrow hold-forward levels and then come back when you're done. It is an extremely linear game that is almost impossible to get turned around in. I don't mind this design philosophy just like I don't mind how open AI Limit is, but just different strokes for different folks.

AI Limit is a great choice to introduce someone into the Souls genre, but it pales in comparison to how much better Khazan is in that spot. I'm sure many would agree with me that one of the main reasons that turns people off from these types of games are both the difficulty and how often you can lose progress. Khazan is one of the very rare instances of a Souls-like having selectable difficulties, ranging from Easy/Medium/Expert (there's also a Hardcore option past Expert that is only unlocked going into NG+1). On Easy you're going to do more damage while taking less damage, but also enemies will have outlines around them to spot easier so you can become accustomed to how they are usually laid out in these games, as well your character having baseline higher stats.

In regards to losing progress, you do drop all of your souls (Lacrima here) in the place you died and need to run back to pick them up. Small quality of life improvement, but you do not need to interact with them to retrieve them and the hitbox to get them is huge so you don't need to be right on top of them either. Let's say though that you killed every enemy on the way to the next bonfire to build up a stack of Lacrima, and died in a spot surrounded by tough enemies. There are consumable items you'll get throughout the game that you can activate at any time to immediately retrieve your lost Lacrima, regardless of where you are. Meaning you can die, respawn, and pop that item to get them back without ever having to worry about dying on the run back.

One new feature that is unique to Khazan is getting additional souls when losing in a boss fight. Each time you die to a boss you will respawn with an amount of Lacrima dependent on how much damage you did to said boss. Your lost Lacrima is also placed outside of the boss arena, meaning you will always start subsequent attempts with more Lacrima than before. This will vary by player but for me it seemed to even out to two additional levels every hour of attempts. This single feature entirely eliminates any halt of progress whenever you run into a boss that you just can't beat. Eventually you're guaranteed to win.

There's so much more I want to talk about but I don't want to turn this section into just running down the game's basic features. Things like there being invisible walls temporarily thrown up whenever you're attacking on platforms you can fall to your death on, assignable loadouts for equipment and skill trees, no missable side quests. I can go on and on. Khazan doesn't do much to make itself stand out on the mechanics front, but it is unequivocally the most approachable Souls-like.

There's always going to be a certain level of inaccessibility to a game once it becomes challenging. Souls and their likes will always have this, and for me, that's where I draw my fun from. Overcoming the inaccessibilities. Everyone that plays games are drawn to them for different reasons. Some may come for an escape while others may come to feel, meaning it's impossible to make a game for everyone as it'll end up just appealing to no one. When it comes to Souls-likes, the entire experience revolves around the player learning how to handle each inaccessibility throw their way and growing from it. It wants you to fail again and again so that you can develop what is necessary to come back and succeed.

There is merit to developers sticking to their vision of how difficult they want something be. Per the developer Neople's own words in a news article posted to Steam for a balance patch, they view Easy mode as a learning experience that is meant to be graduated from. Once the player has gathered all the reflexes and skills that is taught through this mode, they are now ready to move onto a higher difficulty. I cannot speak for Easy or Normal, but on Expert Khazan has the most balanced difficulty progressions in any Souls-like. It's hard as hell but it never got bad enough for me to get shoot hot. Just perfect front to back.

I've played and beaten so many Souls and their likes, and I learned the hard way starting with the original Demon's Souls. I don't use summons for bosses. If there is a harder difficulty such as here in Khazan, I'm going to turn it up to that harder difficulty. It's not because I see myself as some God Gamer that looks down on those that play on Easy or use summons. It's because through a decade plus of experience, I've become accustomed to the inaccessibilites within these games and am familiar with how to approach them. I know the level of euphoria I get whenever I beat a boss I've been struggling on for the last hour, but a newcomer to the genre may not be driven to do the same because they don't know that feeling. Khazan doesn't want you to give up. It wants you to push forward past your barriers to accomplish what you thought to be impossible. You're provided with countless optional assists so you can match the game to your capabilities. And with that, it's done what I thought to be impossible; it has created a Souls-like for everyone.

3. Dispatch :

An episodic Telltale-esque game being on my GOTY list at all, let alone at #3, was the most unlikely of scenarios at the start of the year. I'm just not big on this type of storytelling but the overwhelming positivity around Dispatch was too much too ignore. It only took a couple minutes of playing for me to understand that this game was something special. It's a classic trope about building unlikely relationships, but it's one of the better written games out there that keeps you invested in the growth of all these characters as they learn everything from how to express their feelings to not hating the world around them. The arc that each of them goes through made me want to take a bullet for them all by the end. Dispatch feels as if it was written for me as it's probably the funniest game I've ever played too. I don't know dude, I just love dick jokes and dry humour, what do you want?

2. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 :

I'd have never believed that a game such as Clair Obscur would have gotten the global attention that it's gotten this past year. Now don't get me wrong, it deserves all of it, but it's a mechanic heavy turn based JRPG. The lead writer was originally a voice actor that they found through Reddit who worked as a private equity investor. The art director was stumbled upon through ArtStation. The lead composer was found through a forum post where they linked their SoundCloud. Out of the 34 employees of Sandfall Interactive (should I count the dog?), only three came from Ubisoft. Hundreds of talented individuals worked on some aspect of Clair Obscur through outsourcing, but the core team is mostly composed of young developers that's never shipped a game before. It's got the world against it to succeed. Nothing against any of those I just mentioned as they all were put into a role they've never had before, but they exceeded expectations and turned on its head the formula for how to put together a team.

The world is full of talent that's never unlocked. The best baseball player to ever live may have never played past middle school cause of how expensive gear was. Given a chance and the necessary tools, who knows what some of us could accomplish? What Sandfall accomplished with Clair Obscur is inspiring, and it's not crazy to think that studios of a similar size could form in the near future to try and replicate their success. If you go through the credits on MobyGames for Clair Obscur, you'll run into so many instances of that developer's sole credit being Clair Obscur. I just hope Sandfall is not an outlier in all this. It's foolish to think anyone can succeed in the way they did, yet they've proven anything is possible in this medium.

Oh, and the game is fun too. There's nothing I can say that you haven't heard a hundred times so far about the soundtrack, build variety, overall aesthetic, blah blah. It's all here and it's some of the best work in the genre in decades.

1. Split Fiction:

If you want a game where you play as a ninja, a fish, a hot dog, a pig, and ride a dragon, then do I have the game for you. The premise of Split Fiction is comprised of individual levels each with a different theme. Like I just brought up, each level is dramatically different than the last in every way from art direction to mechanics. I had doubt going in that some levels were clearly going to be more fun than others, particularly the early ones which may have had more time put into them, but that is not the case here. It'd be a gargantuan task to flesh out each level enough to warrant it's own game, but there is enough mini-games and variety in each one to stay refreshing all the way through. The time spent on each level always finds it way to end right when you want it to, leading to no level ever becoming stale.

Hazelight makes the types of co-op games that appeal to me the most. It Takes Two was my #2 GOTY for 2021, and A Way Out was #6 for 2018. I've completed all three as they came out with my same friend and they've finally found perfection with Split Fiction. I've seen complaints regarding the writing but they are completely lost on me, as I thought it was witty and funny all throughout. It was tough to pick between Clair Obscur and Split Fiction as my GOTY as I was close to chickening out and making both tied for the number one spot. What eventually swayed me was that while Clair Obscur is the 2nd best JRPG I've ever played (behind Tales of Vesperia), Split Fiction is the best co-op game I've ever played.