無双ゲームの年
Year of the Musou
In Japanese, the word “musou” literally translates to “unrivaled.”
I suppose that’s true. This year has indeed been unrivaled - there’s never been another quite like it; but you could say that about every year.
In Twenty Twenty Five I moved, started a new job, then started yet another new job. This year I quit a job for the first time in over a decade. I’m now living in my fourth major city and by far the largest. There’s a skyline. The weather is different. It snows a lot in the winter. It floods in the summer.
I also have by far the dopest living conditions of my entire life. My living room is a theater. Every possible video game, movie, and all of my favorite books are within easy reach. I upgraded my computers. I now have three mechanical keyboards. Three. Who needs three mechanical keyboards?
Me apparently.
This year I started streaming the creation of my comic book over on YouTube. I went from just a laptop on a desk hooked up to a monitor and tablet to a semi pro setup lickidy split. You should come watch. Or don’t. Actually, better not... It’s a secret to everybody.
While this year has been unrivaled, that’s not really what I want to talk about.
Back in 2020, after perhaps the worst year of my life, instead of talking directly about it, I chose to instead write my Winter Solstice blog about a very dorky subject that I know a little too well: Star Wars. This year, while it has not been particularly bad, it has thoroughly drained me. My production of FLOLAS has grinded to a halt. I’m studying for a cert. I’m planning events. I’ve travelled to DC and Boston. I’m just sort of all over the place, so instead of summarizing all that, I’m just gonna talk about something very dorky and something I know a little bit too well. Again.
The word Musou means something very particular - it’s very… Japanese.
It’s an entire video game genre and a specific series of games at the same time.
For years on Twitter, and now known as “X” by only the most lame, I’ve kept tabs on my favorite video games of the year for the last several years. In my head I think I’m some sort of gaming journalist, trying to throw out recommendations to my legion of readers. Of course that’s not true at all, no one reads my tweets, and nor should they. What’s really going on is me feeding my OCD… much like you would feed a sourdough starter.
My brain just kind of naturally curates peak experiences en silica.
So this year, I’m going to write about video games; which ones I played and which ones I did not. You can go ahead and close the tab. Or don’t! I don’t control your life. Let’s begin with a summary of the last few years:
2024 GOTY - Year of the Dragon
辰年
Dragon's Dogma II
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
Astrobot
Dragon Quest III HD2D
Star Wars Outlaws
Helldivers 2
Dragon Age Veilguard
2023 GOTY - Year of Magic
魔法の年
Zelda: Tears
CyberPunk 2.077
Starfield
Hogwarts
Star Ocean 2R
Avatar Frontiers
Wild Hearts
2022 GOTY - Year of Wonder
驚きの年
Xenoblade 3
Vampire Survivors
Elden Ring
Horizon Forbidden West
Lego Skywalker Saga
In 2021 I made a Games of the Decade List
過去10年間のビデオゲーム
2011 - Skyrim
2012 - Journey
2013 - Grand Theft Auto V
2014 - Shadow of Mordor
2015 - The Witcher III
2016 - Final Fantasy XV
2017 - Breath of the Wild
2018 - AC Odyssey
2019 - Dragon Quest Builders 2
2020 - Immortals: Fenyx Rising
Honorable Mentions
Clair Obscur - Expedition 33
I didn't play much of it but I appreciate that it's a completely new take on the somewhat stale RPG genre, made by a small team, and with a haunting narrative premise. I want to play more of it, but sadly it's currently in my backlog and will likely remain there. I've lost my taste for turn based games in recent years and the tense, morose tone didn't help lure me in.
Assassin's Creed Shadows
No game grew on me as much as this one in 2025. I started playing with about as "meh" of a reaction as one could have, but the further I got into it the more I enjoyed the combat, which reminds me of Diablo, and the world. Shadows is made by the same team that produced Odyssey, which is not only my favorite AC game, but one of my favorite games of all time; and I can feel the DNA... A little. There's still so much jank though: why is there still not a proper jump button? Why are there still so many canned animations that make Naoe leap up into railings unintentionally all the time? Why is there barely a story and why is what's there so dull? This is the tenth mainline AC game and I'm kind of over it, and Ubisoft seems to be too. Don't even get me started on the micro transactions and the in-game store... For all these reasons and more, I'm out.
Hollow Knight Silksong
I bought Hollow Knight back in 2017 around the launch on Steam and barely ever touched it. The hype of the Silksong release drew me back in, and swapping platforms from Steam to Switch 2 cemented things. I just love playing it on Nintendo for some reason - probably the controls and portability. That being said, the game is still notoriously hard as balls, so I'm nowhere near completing it, let alone starting Silksong itself. But, I finally see the light at least, and I will eventually get there one day... The same way I'll one day start the Elden Ring dlc 😬
Mario Galaxy 1 & 2
I never owned a Wii or a Wii U. The whole concept of motion and gestures as a primary form of control disgusts me. The only good thing that came from that experiment was motion enhanced aiming, which bridges the gap from controller based shooters to the far superior mouse and keyboard methods of old, like Quake 3. I strongly dislike everything else, such as the sword controls in Skyward Sword or the tilt controls of some of the levels in Galaxy. So skipping the entire Wii era was an easy call for me that I don't regret in the slightest.
The only problem with this is that I missed out on the two Mario games and a Zelda, two of my favorite series. Nintendo eventually updated Skyward Sword for the Switch back in 2021, and after making a ton of modifications in the form of a Titan 2 and a custom script from a guy on YouTube, and it's own dedicated controller, I finally managed to negate most of the annoying elements and play the game more like a traditional Zelda game.
I can't really do the same thing for Galaxy, but the official updates to the controls and accessibility really do improve things. You no longer have to waggle your Wii-mote around like a moron, now you can just push a single button to do a spin move. The gyro controls on Switch are a lot more approachable because you can tackle them portably, with joycons attached or not, or while docked with a far more superior Pro controller. It's still not ideal - I'll always prefer the old days of Mario 64 or even Odyssey, but the improvements are appreciated all the same. I bought the 3D All Stars collection back in 2020 just to have the newer official versions of the 3D Mario games, and while it might seem like the Galaxy bundle is an extension of that collection, it's more akin to a full remake with updated textures, far higher resolutions (almost ten times from the original code), and improved controls and accessibility. For me, it's a no brainer, and as someone who has never gotten into these games, it's fun to finally start them in earnest - not just as an experiment in emulation on my steamdeck, not as a simple port as part of a collection, but as I think Miyamoto himself would recommend and be proud of.
Ghost of Yotei
I don't think I'm going to include Ghost of Yotei in my end of year list. It makes a good first impression, but I played a ton of Ghost of Tsushima and it simply doesn't distinguish itself enough as a sequel. It almost feels like the exact same game. I heard someone say that it was just glorified DLC and honestly it's hard to argue otherwise. There's better graphics for sure, but it's still the same fundamental game engine and mechanics - the same rendering, the same effects, the same weird lighting model. I appreciate all the improvements and enhancements they made, but it simply didn’t do enough that's truly novel to keep me interested for more than a few hours.
Death Stranding 2
I should probably also mention that I’ve started playing Death Stranding 2, but I only got it two days ago as of this writing and I’ve only briefly played the intro. It seems way better than the first one and a little easier to follow, but much like Clair Obscur, I simply just haven’t spent enough time with it, so I withhold my judgment of it. I’m sure it’s great but at the end of the day I have maybe an hour or two a night - if that - to sink into a game. Perhaps part of the reason why I even think about my curation list is because I’m trying to maximize my time with actually good games.
Two Remakes Two Musous
This year my list consists of two remakes: Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion Remastered and Xenoblade X Definitive Edition. My list also consists of two Musou games: Dynasty Warriors Origins and Hyrule Warriors Age of Imprisonment. Normally remakes and Musous don't stand a chance on a year end list for me, but I suppose this has been an exceptional year.
Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion Remastered
This one came out of nowhere and I barely even had time to process it. It was announced in the Spring, released like 3 weeks later, and I bought it immediately thinking I'd play it for a bit and move on. Then I sank 50 hours into it and didn't even start the main quest - just like I did in 2006 with the original. I simply love Elder Scrolls. I have a constant debate in my mind over which is my favorite: Oblivion or Skyrim. I always thought that Oblivion won that debate but I'd choose Skyrim overall simply because it's newer and it's easier to get setup on a modern computer. Well, not anymore. The remaster runs in a modern Unreal engine, Ray Traces all the things, has full controller support, and runs pretty well despite the lingering stutter from the original code. There's nothing quite like exploring Cyrodil after barely surviving a minotaur fight, the enchantments still lingering on your two-handed silver sword, as the early morning sunlight cascades down the side of a snow capped mountain, a Wizard's tower adorning its peak, glinting through the mist. It's pure magic written in Binary.
Xenoblade X Definitive Edition
I was not a part of Operation Rainfall, but I remember it. Like I said, I didn't have a Wii at all, neither back in the day nor now. I wasn't really even into JRPGs back then, though I think that is around the time I was getting into Dragon Quest VIII - so I was dipping my toes in, or diving head first you could say. For me, I didn't get into the Xeno series until Xenoblade 2. I remember Xenosaga back in the PS2 days - those always looked like cool games, but the turn-based combat and incomprehensible plot turned me away. But then in 2018 I was looking for something new to play on the Switch and I stumbled upon a Kotaku video review of Xenoblade 2 by the esteemed Tim Rogers - which remains my favorite video of his. Tim's turned video reviews into an art form, and while he's gone kind of insane in recent years, his work for Kotaku and early independent videos are some of the best documentaries you can watch on the artform of gaming.
Xenoblade 2 has such unique combat, it's horny af, looks amazing, and has a bonkers plot with some of the best music you'll ever hear. It sent me from barely understanding the series into being a rabid fanboy. I eventually gobbled up Xenoblade 1 DE when it came out for Switch a few years later, and then Xenoblade 3 after that. Then I set up the Xenosaga trilogy and the original PS1 Xenogears on my emulators. But there was one oddball missing: Xenoblade X, a spinoff of sorts, not set in a pure fantasy world like the others, but a distant real world sci-fi future. It was a Wii U exclusive that came out towards the end of that console's lifetime. I tried setting it up in Cemu eventually, but similar to the Mario Galaxy games, I always prefer an official release. Finally, in March of this year, my wish was granted.
Much like the Oblivion remaster, this one kind of came out of nowhere. It was completely unexpected. One day there was just a trailer for it and a little while later the game was released. I was happy to add it to my collection - now I have ALL of the Xenoblade games installed on my Switch 2, and little did I know it would rapidly become one of my favorites of the year.
The game itself is much like the original, with the action bar setup instead of the hotkeys like in 2 and 3. But Monolith Soft made some nice quality of life enhancements like action button attack follow ups that make the gameplay more like an action game than ever before. It's gorgeous to behold too, with the same level of quality as the other games, as well as further enhancements on the engine tech. It's always crazy to me that these games are so massive and exclusive to a portable system - they're literally some of the largest games out there, yet they all run on the Nintendo Switch. Again, the music is top notch, although X in particular has some of the corniest tracks in the series, but the story makes up for it. I actually got somewhat invested in these characters and their plights - it's not just silly anime nonsense. All the character art was updated, speaking of which, making it more consistent with the rest of the series. If you like anime or big robots or gnarly open worlds, I really can't recommend the Xeroblade games enough - they're among the best out there, and X DE is the latest and greatest.
A Top What? And the Switch 2
This brings me to Mario Kart World. My wife and I played the hell out of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. It's been my go to party game for years and years. Whenever there are two or more people in my house, or wherever I may be, and we're looking for something to do, Mario Kart is usually the answer. Just recently, on a trip to Boston, we happened to see a food truck across the street from the hotel we were staying at and we figured we'd check it out. Turns out the food truck preferred if you ordered from the bar so we went inside the adjacent building, and there, lo and behold, among the craft beer and personal pizzas, was an N64 running Mario Kart. I felt like home 600 miles away.
Mario Kart is ubiquitous to our popular culture in a way that few other things in my life are. All of my musical tastes are esoteric. No one knows who Glassing is. You didn't grow up listening to Sigur Rós and Mogwai and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. My favorite movies are by PTA and the Cohen Brothers and Zemeckis. I read Chaim Potock and Salinger. My tastes are all over the place and unique; but Mario Kart - everyone fucks with some Mario Kart.
I don't think this list would be complete without me mentioning Mario Kart World. It is, afterall, the game that was bundled with the Switch 2. As I play it, I can't help but feel like it's Mario Grand Theft Auto - Open World Mario, which we've never really seen before. The open world is pretty great too despite some early criticisms to the contrary. There's all sorts of nooks and crannies, treasures and secrets, nods to past games, and tokens of the Mario World. I love it. While it’s not on this list proper, it is a key part of the Switch 2 Launch, and despite the Switch 2 Launch not being a game at all, it is on the list.
Also of note: I finally got around to beating Red Dead Redemption 2 earlier this year. I rarely ever beat video games - don’t go away from reading this blog thinking I play all of these games to completion. Noooo…. It takes me years. RDR2 is a perfect example of this. It came out in 2018 and I never started it over. It took me 7 years before I rolled credits.
I also beat Mario Odyssey this year thanks to the Switch 2 update, which brought me back in and gave me a reason to finally wrap it up. I so rarely beat video games these days, so these two are giant exceptions and should speak to their overall quality.
The Switch 2 itself is a GOTY contender because it brought along so many free (ish) updates to already established games. Like, since I started writing this, I loaded up my old 200+ hour save in the Zelda games and tested out the new 4K60 presentation and Nintendo App integration. It's actually really cool and something I had yet to play around much with since the launch in June. So it's not just Mario Odyssey that's got a facelift, but practically all of the Switch 1 big hits - and I'm sure there are more on the way.
The Switch 2 with all of its upgrades and performance improvements, both paid and otherwise, is a real winner this year and worthy of my list in its own right. Tears of the Kingdom, one of my favorite Zeldas ever since the N64 ones back in the day, is so great on Switch 2. It's like it just released all over again. I feel the same about Mario Odyssey and Mario Galaxy and Hyrule Warriors, etc and etc. It's such a great piece of hardware.
I don't think people appreciate yet just how good the Switch 2 is.
Banaza
I've never cared about Donkey Kong. I still don't care about Donkey Kong actually. He was always a character that just needed to be created to throw barrels at Mario, or Jump Man as he was called back then. He was supposed to be called "Monkey Kong," an allusion to King Kong even though he's an ape and not a monkey, but because Nintendo is a Japanese company they accidentally translated it to donkey - which is hilarious.
I admire the Country series from afar but I never really got into them. Me and a friend played through 1 and 2 over the summer on Switch Online and had a pretty good time, and I really love the look and the feel of Tropical Freeze as far as classic platformers go, but none of those games really do much for me. Donkey Kong has always just been a background Nintendo guy to me. He's there in Mario Kart. He's there in Smash. And that's about it. I knew of DK64 but I never had it back in the day and only just played it a few years ago for the first time.
Yet, Banaza is easily my GOTY Bronze Medalist this year. As soon as it was revealed, I knew it was the Mario Odyssey team; the UI and look were exactly the same, so I knew we were in good hands. They essentially took the voxel based destructive elements from Odyssey and turned it into its own game, but they replaced Mario with DK. I still haven't beaten it as of writing this, so I'm still not sure why Pauline is there, but I'm looking forward to figuring that out.
Mechanically, this game is about as perfect as it gets. It is Hulk Smash The Video Game and I love it. It's good for just letting loose and relieving some stress - it's therapy. It really reminds me a lot of the old NES game Rampage, right down to the colorful graphics and sound effects. I always thought a modern version of Rampage would do well, and this is probably about as close as we'll get to that. Banaza is amazing - a natural extension of 3D Platformers, an evolution of the formula started by Nintendo themselves, and a really great game in its own right. Some people would disagree but I think it's a perfect reason to get a Switch 2 - it probably should have bundled with the console.
The Musous
I've never cared much for Musou games. I remember one time in 2011 going to Auburn University to visit some friends and sitting around bored in their apartment one day while they were at class. All they had were some Robocop DVDs, which I watched because why the hell not, and Dynasty Warriors 2 on PS2. Those games have always just been dumb fun, and this was no different. I turned on the PlayStation, slayed hundreds of hapless Chinese dudes, put up with the choppy performance, indecipherable storytelling, and wonky controls; but generally had a pretty good time. It was kinda meh, but I can't say forgettable - because here I am remembering it 14 years later.
In January this year, OmegaForce (a Koei Tecmo developer in Japan) released Dynasty Warriors Origins - a reboot of sorts for the series. I was taking a bit of a gamble on it, but I figured I'd check it out. I'm glad I did. I turned on the PlayStation, slayed hundreds of hapless Chinese dudes, but now the performance was 4K and a rock solid 60fps. The story was actually easy to follow and entertaining. The controls were perfect - right up there with the best action games like DMC and Nier. And all of this presented in a classic RPG map in miniature over world with sidequests and NPCs to visit. I was blown away - finally the Warriors games had grown up. You could play in short bursts and go on small quests to hunt down one bad guy, or take on one of the set-piece epic battles. It won't win any awards for storytelling or graphics, but what's here is rock solid and leagues better than its predecessors. As the months continued on, I tried not to forget about Origins - often games that come out early in the year get overshadowed by subsequent releases, but this made such an impact that I really tried to keep it on my list all year.
Then in early November, Nintendo released Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, also made by OmegaForce but this time exclusively for the Switch 2. It’s the third game in the Hyrule Warriors series: a franchise designed as pure fanservice for Zelda fans. The first game told a wholly original story that was a hodgepodge of practically every Zelda game up until that point in 2015. It was wonky, silly, and honestly a lot of fun.
The original Hyrule Warriors ties into my praise overall for the launch of the Switch 2. When the game originally came out, it was pretty bare bones and barely even HD. It was then ported to the 3DS where it got more content, sure, but the performance tanked on the little handheld. Finally, in the form of a definitive edition it came out on the original Switch - where it ran terribly and was anything but “definitive.” The Switch 2 fixes this. It now runs and plays beautifully, and it feels great with the new Pro controller. It wasn’t exactly unplayable before, but it’s leagues better now - much like most of the Switch 1 library.
After the success of Breath of the Wild, OmegaForce developed a sequel to Hyrule Warriors called “Age of Calamity.” This game told the story of what happened before the events of Breath of the Wild, and much like the original, it went completely bonkers. Both games are not considered canon by Nintendo nor by the fans, but they are fun romps with some of the most iconic characters and settings in Video Game.
The third Hyrule Warriors, Age of Imprisonment, tells the story of what happened in the ancient past when Zelda inadvertently gets thrown back in time to the founding of Hyrule. This time the story is canonical and penned by the Zelda team themselves (in some capacity). The Imprisoning War is a big event in Zelda Lore as a whole. It was mentioned in A Link to the Past, and seemingly acted out in Ocarina of Time, and now we have an entire video game about it. Of course, like all Zelda Lore, it’s a little more complicated than that…
Regardless, this is the best looking and best playing Hyrule Warriors yet. It’s honestly kind of perfect - it’s the Musou experience at its best. Perfect performance, perfect controls, a well told, emotional story, with stakes and soul. And you can throw it in your bag and play it at Grandma’s house.
This was the year that Musou games were like “Hey what’s up? We live here now in your Game of the Year lists.” And honestly, I have no problem with it. They’re adventure games that play like fighting games. They’re epic stories that you don’t really have to pay a lot of attention to, like a chill anime. It puts you in a certain floe state. It’s art.
Mouso games are works of art. And they bracket my Top 7 list.
However, they’re not my Number 1.
My Top 7 Games of the Year 2025
7. Dynasty Warriors Origins
6. Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion Remastered
5. Xenoblade X Definitive
4. The Launch of the Switch 2
3. Donkey Kong Banaza
2. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment
1. Sword of the Sea
Sword of the Sea
Long ago, me and a couple of friends gathered in one of our living rooms, got a little inebriated, and flipped on a PlayStation 3 hooked up to plasma television and a really excellent sound system. A game called Journey had just released and we knew it was going to be special. We also knew it would be short, and indeed we played it start to finish in that one sitting. This was my first taste of a That Game Company experience. It was magical, incomparable; living breathing art and a beauty to behold. It's also one of the rare games I got all the trophies for. I even found all the little secrets - the white cloak, the super long scarf, etc.
I eventually went back and played Flower and Flow, their earlier work, and then as the years passed I eventually checked out Sky. Some of the founding members of That Game Company split off and formed a new studio called Giant Squid. Their first game, Abzu, was every bit as magical and kept true to the same spirit that Journey had established, while Sky went on to be a live service sort of thing.
Journey was set among rolling sand. You could fly and float. Abzu was about the ocean. You could swim and dive. They shared DNA and yet couldn't be more different. In some ways it was an evolution of the formula they had set forth in Journey, but now it was underwater and you could swim with whales.
Sword of the Sea combines both of these concepts: the lonely journey through the sands with the adventures under the sea and somehow it just works. You’ve never played anything like Sword of the Sea even if you’ve played both Journey and Abzu. It’s a perfect amalgamation and something entirely new. I’m not even sure if I can describe it: it’s a game where you surf… On a sword… And you turn Sand into Water by gathering Light. Along the way it tells a more explicit story than those older games, yet it’s every bit as thoughtful. It’s almost like it plants a seed in your mind that you keep coming back to. Like a myth. You find out that you’re probably not the first entity that’s tried to restore the Sea, it’s been going on a long time, and there’s some sort of nefarious dragon and a tower ascending into the sky… Just go play it. My prose cannot compete. It’s the reason why I play video games. It’s interactive art. It’s a spiritual practice.
It’s enlightenment in ones and zeroes.
If you’ve read this far: why? lol. Merry Christmas, Happy Winter Solstice. 2025 has been pivotal, one of the years of all time, yada yada. I’m going to try my best to pass this cert, automate the hell out of my daytime job, and get back to drawing FLOLAS asap. As of writing, I’m inking Page 70. It took me almost a month just to get the sketch done - something that normally only takes a few hours. That’s how little time I’ve had, but I suppose that’s life.
I’ll figure it out. Thank you for reading.
Now go surf on a sword.
