Some people have their own preferred genre, a type of game they like best. Today’s awards are for those people, who want the best games of their kind to grace that genre this year.
Note: You can listen to a podcast where Jenn and I discuss these awards! Check it out here!
- Best Platformer
- Best Arcade / Party Game
- Best Action Game
- Best Metroidvania
- Best Roguelike
- Best Action-RPG
- Best RPG
- Best Strategy Game
- Best Simulation
- Best Graphic Adventure / Visual Novel
- Best Puzzle Game
- Best Driving / Racing Game
- Best Sports Game
- Best Music-Rhythm Game
- Best Hardware
- Best Misc. Game
- Additional Commentary!
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Best Platformer
Donkey Kong Bananza – When Nintendo announced the Nintendo Switch 2 without a Mario platformer in sight, many players were disappointed. They needn’t have been. Donkey Kong Bananza is more than up to the task of not only filling that role, but doing something refreshingly original that sets this game apart in its own right. The focus on world destruction could have easily been one-note, but Bananza’s creators used this in truly creative ways to give us one of the best 3D Platformers in years. Mario, whenever you get around to doing your next big 3D Platformer, you have big, ape-sized shoes to fill…
Runners-Up:
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Best Arcade / Party Game
Ball X Pit – The Arcade-style Brick Breaker has been around almost as long as videogames have, dating all the way back to the 1976 game Breakout. Ball X Pit channels the spirit of that genre while completely reimagining it, with players shooting off rapid-fire balls at enemies, upgrading to gain even more destructive potential, and eventually filling the screen with balls, lasers, bouncing thunderstorms, and various other attacks, and then when your run is over, you can build up your town and head back into the dungeons to do it all over again even better next time. The great visceral thrill of unleashing your torrent of attacks on enemies is the epitome of the sort of thing you look for in a truly great Arcade-style game.
Runners-Up:
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Best Action Game
Shotgun Cop Man – The old phrase goes “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. In the case of Shotgun Cop Man, all he has are a pair of guns, so everything you do in this game comes from that, meaning that every jump and every dodge is also potentially an attack, making for some delightful action-packed multitasking as you take out enemies while using your guns to propel you around the room. This core gameplay concept is an absolute blast (ha) that makes Shotgun Cop Man a joy to play, with the best pure action I’ve experienced all year.
Runners-Up:
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Best Metroidvania
Momodora: Moonlit Farewell – In a year with some heavy hitters in the Metroidvania genre, my absolute favorite was a game that worked to best deliver on the core fundamentals about what makes this genre so great – exploration, discovery, and an expansive set of skills. In no other Metroidvania this year was I more invested in seeing just what was around the next corner, or in trying to figure out how to get to that upgrade just out of reach. Where other games in the genre played with inventive gameplay mechanics, Open-World sections, or sadistic difficulty levels, Momodora: Moonlit Farewell reminds us that the best Metroidvanias need to have that solid foundation to start with, and Moonlit Farewell absolutely does.
Runners-Up:
Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist
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Best Roguelike
Hades II – Few games have made use of the Roguelike formula so fully and expertly as the Hades franchise, and while Hades II is mostly just an evolution of what was already great in the original Hades, that still makes it one of the best Roguelike games ever made. Using Roguelike mechanics to give players variety, evolving gameplay, and an ever-evolving story makes Hades II an easy choice to win this award.
Runners-Up:
Ocean Keeper: Dome Survival Roguelike
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Best Action-RPG
Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo – Pipistrello did a wonderful job taking the formula of a classic top-down Zelda game and pairing it with a clever central mechanic that it found numerous fun uses for, the yo-yo. Between the cleverness of its concept and the variety it injects into the gameplay, and the delightful characters throughout this game, this made for a wonderful experience that was surpassed other games this year that either lacked that originality, lacked the variety, or lacked the personality this game has in abundance. Not too bad for a yo-yo swinging mouse.
Runners-Up:
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma
Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion
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Best RPG
Battle Suit Aces – A great RPG should have an excellent story, good character-building mechanics, and engaging combat, and while Card RPGs often nail the last of those three elements, it’s less common for them to succeed at all three. Battle Suit Aces is a shining example of what happens when a Card RPG does succeed at that, bringing us an engaging story with great characters with meaningful relationships paired with deckbuilding and combat that’s extremely satisfying. While many of the other great RPGs this year miss a step, Battle Suit Aces is firing on all cylinders.
Runners-Up:
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Best Strategy Game
Battle Suit Aces – Not only is Battle Suit Aces a great RPG, but its combat is delightfully strategic. Winning or losing often depends not only on having the right fighters on your side, but on positioning them in the ideal spots to evade or take out opponents, while also managing your resources to ensure you can power their attacks. This may not be what you think of when thinking of a Strategy game, but no other game this year gave me more satisfying strategic combat than Battle Suit Aces.
Runners-Up:
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess
The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-
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Best Simulation
Islanders: New Shores – Islanders: New Shores doesn’t dramatically change what was so great about the original Islanders, but instead builds on that game with new gameplay mechanics that add a new dimension and gives you even more choices to consider. Given how much I absolutely loved Islanders, giving me that but with a greater scope was a no-brainer for me, and made for yet another game that I could easily pour hours of my life into.
Runners-Up:
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time
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Best Graphic Adventure / Visual Novel
Goodnight Universe – When it comes to games where story is the focus, nothing else this year hooked me quite like Goodnight Universe. While I did have some issues with its gameplay, none of that changes that I felt compelled to keep playing to find out more about baby Isaac. If you enjoy story-driven games, Goodnight Universe is absolutely one game from 2025 that you will want to experience.
Runners-Up:
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Best Puzzle Game
Mosa Lina – Mosa Lina takes a risk in its game design that runs against one of the core principles of Puzzle Games – it will sometimes present you with puzzles that you can’t solve. While I initially despised this choice, I grew to see it as one of Mosa Lina’s greatest strengths, as it freed the game to provide players with a wide variety of bizarre tools, and then challenged them to use them in any way they could to complete their goals, or see if that was even possible. And if you really want to push people to be creative, it’s hard to think of a better way than by telling them, “this puzzle may be unsolvable, or maybe you just need to be more creative in your problem-solving… but you can always give up if you don’t think you can do it”. Mosa Lina is a messy, imperfect game, but it thrives in its imperfection in ways that even the most absolutely perfect puzzle game can’t. And for that reason, I applaud this as the best Puzzle game of 2025.
Runners-Up:
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Best Driving / Racing Game
Fast Fusion – There were some strong contenders among this year’s group of Racing games, but the one I most wanted to go back and keep playing was this Futuristic Racing game released for the Nintendo Switch 2 launch at an unassuming $15 price. It’s a bit light on content and features, but at that price that’s easily excusable, especially when it’s incredibly fun, looks amazing, and has a brilliant sense of speed. No matter what the price tag is, those are absolutely the qualities I want in a Racing game.
Runners-Up:
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Best Sports Game
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 – As with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 takes two of the greatest Extreme Sports games of all-time, brings them together, and updates the graphics and gameplay, and the end result feels fresh and new while still reminding us why these games were so wonderful to begin with. It might not be wholly original, but there’s clearly a lot of passion that went into making this game the best Tony Hawk game ever released, and there’s a good argument to be made that it succeeds at that. That’s the sort of thing that is absolutely deserving of recognition.
Runners-Up:
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Best Music-Rhythm Game
Robobeat – Music-Rhythm genre mashups are far from new, but to take the genre and blend it with First-Person Shooter gameplay and Roguelike mechanics in this way makes for a truly unique and refreshing experience that takes Music-Rhythm games to completely new areas. This results in a game that was by far my favorite musical game of 2025.
Runners-Up:
Groove Coaster Future Performers
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Best Hardware
EasySMX S10 Controller – While the Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller is an excellent controller with some unique features that still aren’t mirrored anywhere else, it’s also absurdly expensive. Thankfully, we have another strong alternative in the EasySMX 10, which is not only a solid Pro-style controller that’s much less-expensive than Nintendo’s controller, it also has some features Nintendo’s controller doesn’t have, like cross-platform compatibility, TMR analog sticks, swappable D-Pads, app support, turbo function, and macro buttons. If money was no object, Nintendo and EasySMX would have a fierce competition here, but at these prices, EasySMX absolutely blows away Nintendo, making it my favorite piece of hardware in 2025.
Runners-Up:
GuliKit KK2 T Wireless Controller
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Best Misc. Game
UFO 50 – UFO 50 isn’t just a wildly creative game, it’s many wildly creative games. And while not all of them are winners, you have some true greats in here, like the wonderful Puzzle/Strategy game Bug Hunter, the gravity-defying Warptank, the wonderful action-packed Seaside drive, or my favorite, the self-sacrificing Puzzle-Platformer Mortol. Numerous of the games in this collection would be worthy of an inclusion here on their own, so how could I not give this award to the collection of them?
Runners-Up:
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Additional Commentary!
Just going to comment on the categories I feel like I have more to add.
Best Metroidvania
Given the backlash against Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, I think people likely understand why that game didn’t win Best Metroidvania (and some would argue that its game structure is such that it might not even be a Metroidvania). But I expect some will be surprised or upset that Hollow Knight: Silksong didn’t win.
I’ve got news for you: Silksong wasn’t even my second choice (that would have been Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist). It might not have been my third. I think Silksong is a gorgeous game (it already won multiple awards for music and presentation), and I respect that some people will love its high challenge level. But as I’ve said elsewhere, I like Silksong even less than I like Hollow Knight, and I think Hollow Knight is severely overrated. So… I guess there’s your big controversial quote.
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Best Action-RPG
Okay, real talk? I think this was a pretty weak year for the Action-RPG genre. A lot of these are good or even great games, but in a better year, I don’t think they’d be up for consideration for this award.
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RPGs
This may have been a not-so-great year for RPGs, but it was an even worse year for RPGs, at least on Nintendo platforms. Yeah, you other platforms may have been enjoying your Clair Obscur, but we Nintendo owners got… Pokemon Legends Z-A? Sigh… I mean, no, Pokemon Legends Z-A is a good game, but it’s not the same and you know it. We didn’t even get a port of the prior year’s Metaphor Re:Fantazio! In this environment, Battle Suit Aces was a godsend and a breath of fresh air.
Oh, and if you’re wondering why Pokemon Legends Z-A made both this list and Action-RPGs, it’s both because its combat was a hybrid of the two, and because pickings were so slim in these genres in 2025.
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Best Strategy Game
Is it stretching things a bit to call a Card RPG a “Strategy Game”? Perhaps. But I still stand by that I enjoyed the strategic combat of Battle Suit Aces more than any other thing this year that I played that could be called a Strategy game.
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Best Driving/Racing Game
Yeah, that’s right. Mario Kart World didn’t win. What of it?
In order to round out the category, I included Motorbikes Pro 2025 and Drag X Drive. Motorbikes Pro 2025 isn’t an especially great Racing game, but it is far better than you would expect for a little indie motorbike-racing game, especially one made by Baltoro Minis, whose track record is… well, not great. Though they did also release Snooker Fever this year, which I included in the Sports Games runners-up, so… hey, maybe they’re getting better? And as for Drag X Drive… well, you are technically moving around a vehicle, and those vehicle-moving mechanics are arguably the most interesting part of the game.
Look, some of these categories I admittedly had to stretch to fill.
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Best Sports Game
Speaking of categories I had to stretch to fill…
Look, I wasn’t going to give the win to MLB The Show 25 because everything that’s great about it was great in last year’s release too, and the year before… Drag X Drive was an interesting concept that was enjoyable at its core, but with terrible execution and a terribly bland presentation. And Snooker Fever… well, it’s not bad, but if I’m playing a game like that I’d rather play Pure Pool.
No, the only game I could reasonably give this to was the one that happened to be a remake of two older games. I generally try to avoid this, but I feel like enough was changed for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 to make it new enough, and out of all of these games it’s the one of the group that I genuinely love.
Could I have just mashed this genre in with Racing Games, as I’ve done in years past? Sure, but I do think there were games in both genre categories that deserved mention, even if there was no way they were ever going to win.
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Best Hardware
Let’s look at the runners-up!
Bemkiru Portable Travel Dock and Antank S3 Max TV Dock Station are included here as the only third-party Nintendo Switch 2 docks I tested that survived Nintendo’s update that killed third-party dock compatibility.
Waxity Travel Case is an absolute tank of a storage case for both Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2, and I found it to be the best combination of tough, with lots of storage, but without being as overly-big as other similar cases.
Fanpl Slim Travel Case is kinda’ the opposite end of the spectrum, as far as Nintendo Switch 2 cases go – it’s the smallest case you could possibly get while still providing some level of protection to the screen, buttons, and analog sticks. And it’s actually made from pretty nice material.
Finally, the GuliKit KK2 T Wireless Controller, while not perfect, is a solid $50 controller with a nice build and some good features.
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Best Misc. Game
I ultimately decided to split Most Original and Best Misc. game between Blippo+ and UFO 50, because while I think Blippo+ is probably the more wildly original of the two, UFO 50 is truly original… and the game I’d rather play.
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That’s all for today! to keep up with all of the eShopperReviews 2025 Game Awards, be sure to check back at the Awards’ Start Page, which I’ll be updating throughout the week!
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