We've chosen GRIND of the Year 2025!

🏆 Ladies, gentlemen, and especially gamers! Habemus GRIND of the Year – 2025!

But before I tell you who the winner is, or, more accurately, who the winners are (and you’ll see why I’m speaking in the plural below), I’d like to entertain you with a little story. I promise I’ll do my best not to drag it out, so I don’t keep you in suspense for too long. Not that you couldn’t skip the intro with two scrolls…

Probably some of you already know that I’ve mentioned in articles, and even magazines – and here I’m speaking on behalf of my colleagues – that in the history of gaming there have been, and we hope there will be again, some magical years. The first example is 2004, the year Vlad wrote about in GRIND IV, when the “gaming nation” was marked by the release of legendary titles like Half-Life 2, DOOM 3, GTA: San Andreas, and NFS Underground 2.

The second example would be 2007, the year of DOSboi Aidan, when the planets, or rather the joysticks, aligned and the gaming gods gifted us Halo 3 and BioShock. If you ask Aidan, he’ll surely tell you that this moment was more important than when Prometheus stole fire from the gods and brought it to humanity. Writing these lines, I realise I’m among the lucky ones who experienced these moments… but I was too absorbed by what I saw on the monitor to understand their, probably unique, importance.

Making this semi-historical digression, I wonder: is 2025 also a landmark year for us, the gamers? Will we remember in 10–15 years the moments we were playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance II and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33? Or will we be so enchanted by the “AI effect” that traditional gaming as we know it today will become just a ChatGPT-generated page for the youth of the future — but alive in the hearts of those of us who still feel emotion when we start a Diablo II session and grin from ear to ear when we race in Mario Kart?

2025 started strong! From spring onwards we had Avowed, Atomfall, DOOM: The Dark Ages, and in June came the highly anticipated launch of Switch 2 – also known as the second coming of Switch. Nintendo kept us on tenterhooks, but delivered what it promised: a hybrid console twice as good as the first! For some, the beginning might not have been what they expected, but for those who got their hands on a Switch later, this second Nintendo iteration is exactly “what’s needed”, the perfect toy for previous generation titles and a truly incredible machine for new ones, such as Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bananza, and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond.

It’s been an excellent year (I’ll allow myself to say “it has been” and not “it is”, because we only have a few weeks separating us from 2026) especially for our project. We launched a new magazine, thicker and glossier than the others, perhaps even the thickest and glossiest to appear in our lands (if I’m wrong, Klamath from I like to play can correct me). GRIND V not only reached all cities in the country, to you, our readers, but also across countries and seas, all the way to the Museum of Play in New York. Now, a copy is also in a museum, this time in Bucharest, at the exhibition The Art of the Game — in short, TAG.

I’m taking this opportunity to thank everyone for their involvement in GRIND V, and especially my colleagues, who wrote and wrote so much that we now have enough material for at least two more magazines of 200 pages each. By the way: for those of you who arrived late to the party, issue VI can already be pre-ordered from our Patreon page, with a minimum one-month subscription to the “Rodipet” membership.

Another aside: I just wanted to mention that we have the COOLEST community on Discord and Patreon. If you’re on either of those platforms, I salute you and thank you (press F). If you’re not already active, you have no excuses: join the dark side, we need cool people like you to bring value. As Vlad says, we still have something to say before we hit the ESC key!

This year we started giving scores to the games we review, and that made us responsible for organising this small, mostly for fun, event called GRIND of the Year 2025. What you’ll see next is a list that, from the perspective of the editorial team and the GRIND community, gathers the best games of 2025. We listened to your feedback, so we didn’t just limit ourselves to nominating a GOTY. No, no, we are gamers and we like to play on the hardest difficulty, therefore, we chose to compile an extended list with different categories, all customised according to the games we played this year and adapted to our favourite community activities, such as collecting and retro games.

If you’re wondering why we have two GOTY winners, well, it wouldn’t have been fair, from our point of view, for only us, the editors, to choose a single title. We wanted you to be involved too. Thus, we have one “Game of the Year” winner chosen by the editorial team and one chosen by the community. Which is the real winner? I’ll tell you a secret: there isn’t one — the cake is a lie. Each of us has a personal GOTY, a title that blew our minds, changed our desktop and phone wallpaper, haunted us in endless meetings, and became a topic of discussion over coffee with friends.

Well, ladies, gentlemen, and gamers, here is GRIND’s list of the best games of 2025. Enjoy!

Best Action

Winner: Ghost of Yotei

Nominations: Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, Ninja Gaiden 4, Hell is Us, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers

Best Horror

Winner: Silent Hill f

Nominations: Cronos: The New Dawn, Dying Light: The Beast, Hell is Us

Best Adventure

Winner: Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

Nominations: Keeper, South of Midnight, Donkey Kong: Bananza

Best Shooter

Winner: DOOM: The Dark Ages

Nominations: Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Battlefield 6, Borderlands 4, The Outer Worlds 2, Atomfall

Best Retro

Winner: Heretic + Hexen

Nominations: Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2

Best Remaster

Winner: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered

Nominations: Gears of War: Reloaded, Syberia Remastered

Best Story

Winner: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Nominations: Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, Ghost of Yotei, Hades II, Mafia The Old Country

Best Video Game Collector

Winner: Darky

Nominations: Noru, Klamath, Morphi

Best Strategy

Winner: Anno 117: Pax Romana

Nominations: Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, Endzone 2

Best Challenging Game

Winner: Hollow Knight: Silksong

Nominations: The Rogue: Prince of Persia, Hades II, Elden Ring: Nightreign

Best Co-op

Winner: Split Fiction

Nominations: LEGO Party!, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, Donkey Kong: Bananza, SOS OPS!, Mario Kart World

Best RPG

Winner: Kingdom Come: Deliverance II

Nominations: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Pokemon Legends: Z-A, The Outer Worlds 2, Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army, Avowed, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon

Best LEGO set

Winner: LEGO Game Boy #72046

Nominations: LEGO Arcade Machine, LEGO Star Wars V-19 Torrent Starfighter, LEGO Star Wars Invisible Hand, LEGO SEGA Genesis Controller

Most Anticipated Game

Winner: Grand Theft Auto VI

Nominations: Resident Evil Requiem, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, Marvel’s Wolverine, The Blood of Dawnwalker, Valor Mortis

Best Gaming Hardware

Winner: PC

Nominations: Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series S/X, ROG Xbox Ally X

GRIND of the Year (Popular vote)

Winner: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Nominations: Hades 2, Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bananza, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, DOOM: The Dark Ages, Hollow Knight Silksong, The Outer Worlds 2, Henry Halfhead, Geamana Village, Mafia The Old Country, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, Hell is Us, Ghost of Yotei, Silent Hill f, Cronos: The New Dawn, Atomfall, South of Midnight, Battlefield 6, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, Borderlands 4, Blue Prince

Conclusions:

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 fully deserves the title of masterpiece… when you can play it. It has the most engaging and enjoyable turn-based combat system I’ve encountered in a game. The story warms your heart. The universe looks outstanding. The sound and music are the best I’ve heard since I first picked up video games. I give it a solid 7 and hope to see Sandfall Interactive lift the Game of the Year Award. – Constantin Dumitru

This year I’m going without hesitation with Sandfall’s game: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. It captivated me from the first minutes (obviously, after you get past the prologue, haha) with impeccable mechanics that instantly reminded me of Legend of Dragoon and Lost Odyssey, two iconic titles from PlayStation and Xbox 360. Then the music hit me: emotional, dramatic, typically French, and it genuinely melted me a few times, I won’t lie.

In terms of content, the game delivers enormously: you can experiment with a multitude of builds, all flexible and adaptable to your playstyle. The achievements/trophies are balanced, neither trivial nor exaggerated, focusing on exploration and player attention. You can do everything in approximately 70–80 hours, depending “on things”.

Overall, it was a unique experience, with a story different from anything I’ve seen in recent years, and I’m glad this game managed to give a well-deserved slap to many in the industry. For me, Expedition 33 is undoubtedly Game of the Year. “Tomorrow comes!” – S. Viorel-Nicoale

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is, without a doubt, the game that manages to stand out most strongly in 2025, even in a year full of remarkable releases. Its French-perfumed story captivated me from the first accent, and the gameplay experience feels like a canvas painted by Paul Cézanne and exhibited in a museum of time. Yes, of time, because what the small studio behind the project has achieved seems like a benchmark that will be invoked for a long time to come in the gaming industry.

Clair Obscur becomes a true testament to creativity, a legacy offered to gamers in the form of a treasure rich in innovation, imagination, and authentic emotion. – Bogdan Menci

Just the other day I was thinking about the current situation of “writing” in games. What happened to get us here? How did we get here? And of course, I wondered if we still have a way out of all this. And immediately my mind drifted to Clair Obscur. The little light in the dark sky of creativity. Such a cool idea with impeccable execution. A story so creative you rarely see even in books.
I’m not saying this because we’re up to our eyebrows in “AI SLOP”, in uninspired dialogues full of current political ideology in 200% fantasy settings, or by authors who forget to delete prompts given to ChatGPT in books and texts. I’m saying this because the effort to create something truly “cool” seems to be “torpor”, that state which is something between hibernation and a total lack of physical or mental activity. Lethargy.

And then, I ask myself, in a year full of interesting little games that didn’t step out of their comfort zone, others that were effectively daggers, and bright hopes that turned out to be just “MEH”s at their “roll credits” moment and when the dust settled, how can I not consider that something made by a handful of people who escaped the clutches of the big, lazy Ubisoft bear, who just wallows in the comfort of creating tired and tiring banalities from legendary IPs, those at Sandfall Interactive, managed to make something new, fresh, ambitious, emotional, but above all CREATIVE, is worthy of GOTY. How? How was it possible?

Whatever argument you, or anyone, might have against this game only demonstrates that progress is not sought, but merely the next game with yellow paint, with soulless dialogues, full of repetitive exercises, pointless quests, or any thought put behind them. A kind of “just put it there to be there”. Well, this year, at least in gaming, I vote for “No more banality”, I vote for “No more ideology” and obviously I vote for “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33”, because yes, even the music touches you somewhere if you don’t have all your senses numb and you expect the next renowned dev to spoon-feed you and wipe your chin. – Silviu Tănase

GRIND of the Year (Editors vote)

Winner: Kingdom Come: Deliverance II

Nominations: Hades 2, Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bananza, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, DOOM: The Dark Ages, Hollow Knight Silksong, The Outer Worlds 2, Henry Halfhead, Geamana Village, Mafia The Old Country, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, Hell is Us, Ghost of Yotei, Silent Hill f, Cronos: The New Dawn, Atomfall, South of Midnight, Battlefield 6, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Borderlands 4, Blue Prince

Conclusions:

DOOM: The Dark Ages, Ghost of Yotei and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 are just three of the games that blew me away this year. However, I can’t help but also mention Death Stranding 2: On the Beach and Donkey Kong: Bananza, or more recently Metroid Prime 4: Beyond — other fantastic titles. But, because we are at the most important gaming moment of the year, where we have to choose the best of the best, my vote goes wholeheartedly (luckily I still have 99 more) to Kingdom Come: Deliverance II.

Warhorse Studios proves for the second time that games are not just an opportunity to relax after a hard day at the office, but a form of art. We received a magical game that transports you to the medieval world and makes you forget all your worries. From its appearance, thanks to the CryEngine graphics engine, to the exceptional gameplay and the way the story was written, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is a gem of a game that should not be missing from any gamer’s collection. – Leo Luția

Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 manages to be not only one of the most complete games and one of the most satisfying single-player experiences ever made, it single-handedly raises the bar of expectations when it comes to RPGs or immersive sims. It manages to push the entire genre forward by itself, to set an example of how an open-world RPG should be made, and to be one of the most landmark titles in gaming history. And it achieves this by simply being an exceptional game. If you haven’t bought it yet, the advice is not to hesitate – it’s friendly enough for both beginners and advanced RPG players.

With this game, Warhorse Studios can be placed on the podium alongside Larian as some of the most talented video game developers, and KCD 2 goes into my personal top as the best RPG of all time. Yes, above BG 3. Yes, above Witcher 3/Cyberpunk. Yes, above Planescape, above Disco Elysium, above any Bethesda/Bioware/CD Projekt… – Retro_Adrian

For me, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is undoubtedly the game of the year. It hooked me from the first hours and didn’t let go. It’s not perfect, but that’s precisely what makes it so human and memorable: the world is harsh, history is alive, and every choice matters. You feel like you’re fighting for something, that you’re evolving, that you’re making mistakes and getting back up again. It’s the experience I’ve immersed myself in the most this year, and the title of “game of the year” comes naturally. – Stafnot

The most accomplished game of 2025 seemed to me, with some lead, to be Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. It managed to be rich without seeming artificially bloated. The realistic, detail-rich story, along with the eclectic ensemble of secondary characters, keeps you immersed in 15th-century Europe, while harmoniously intertwined progression systems reward almost any activity with abilities that make your life easier. An ambitious title, with more than decent execution and a rare opportunity to see the extraordinary in the life of an ordinary villager. – Zuluf

The storyline is absolutely superb, offering a perfect conclusion to the original’s story. All the game’s mechanics lived up to my expectations, and without any shame, I can say it’s one of the few titles that received 10/10 from me. – Rafael Popa

The year 2025 brought an unexpectedly pleasant surprise for the adventure game-loving child in me. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II managed to trigger the strongest wave of nostalgia for old-school RPGs I’ve experienced so far. With a soundtrack that stays in your mind, graphics that look painted, and a story that grips you without escape, the game outclasses many “heavyweight” titles in the industry. Warhorse Studios shows how a real RPG is made — and the rest of the gaming world would do well to take notes. – Iulian Ursaleș

Instead of a conclusion…

Thank you, 2025, for being good to us!

The fun doesn’t end here; in fact, as we say “in gaming”, a new level is just beginning: 2026. A year full of memorable games awaits us, which, at least on paper… or if you prefer, in trailers, look absolutely promising.

Don’t believe me? Then maybe Rockstar will convince you with its much, much… much anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI, or, as we’ve liked to call it since we were kids, “Getea”. If you’re not a GTA fan, though hard to believe, then maybe the new Resident Evil will win you over, in which we already know the famous police officer Leon S. Kennedy returns. And if that doesn’t convince you either, maybe Wolverine will manage to intimidate you in the new Insomniac title.

In short, we still have many games to play, and we, the Grindians, the guardians of gaming in Romanian lands, will still be here: playing, writing, and trying to bring you at least a pixel of the nostalgia of good old times. Times when we timidly asked the lady at the newsstand: “Excuse me… have you received the LEVEL magazine?”