Hello there!

The purpose of this thread is to give community members a platform to report their GOTY contenders for 2025. The idea here is to 1) inspire each other to play games we may have otherwise skipped and 2) give each of us a larger pool of experiences to pull from during the forum's GOTY voting process in December.

A few tips:

• Your nomination doesn't need to be the GOTY of 2025. Think of the games as GOTY contenders -- titles that would make your top 10-12 games list at the end of the year
• Feel free to list collections and remasters, but we mainly want new games, including transformational remakes like Resident Evil 4 (2023)
• Please list the game, the platform you played it on, your score, and a short blurb about what makes it special

Please feel free to come here and post every time you finish a new GOTY candidate! I'll track total mentions in the post below.

I'll get the ball rolling!

Monster Hunter Wilds (PS5)
An outstanding action-RPG with tons of content and arguably the best moment-to-moment gameplay in the series
Score: 8.5/10

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy (NS)
A clever genre hybrid that delivers mind-bending visual novel twists, rewarding social simulation, and engaging turn-based tactical combat
Score: 8/10

There is only three so far, in order. I have KCD2 installed, just can't get in the mood and KARMA the Dark World just isn't in the discussion, a good game though. 

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - 10/10 Game of the generation, trying and succeeding at entering my top five knocking out the immaculate Bloodborne for 5th place. An absolute phenomenon when games have become so stale.

A very wide gap - I'm not sure many will have heard of this one. It's the difference between a near flawless game and a game that is amazing but has a small few pretty irritating faults.

The First Berserker Khazan - 9/10. Incredible Soulsbornekiro game that beats Nioh and Nioh 2 for me. Difficult as hell, allows for skill to close the gap but uses some mechanics to make battles of pure attrition but in the best way. It takes that final boss of Sekiro and designs every boss to have that feeling and this easily has the most consistent great boss roster in Souls games, beating From Soft. It fails in level design, some are good but it wavers to many being bad and most are just decent. The Stanima system is backwards, should have separated posture from Stanima at the very least. Continuously updating the game making changes that effect the players current playthrough even though nothing was in any way broken. Pretty good story but lacks context. 

Last 10 years for context. 

2024 - Stellar Blade

2023 - Diablo 4 (BG3 easily knocks this off, I just need to roll credits)

2022 - Elden Ring

2021 - Tales of Arise

2020 - Ghost of Tsushima 

2019 - Sekiro

2018 - Divinity OS2

2017 - Neir Automata 

2016 - Xcom 2

2015 - The Witcher 3

Avowed - 9/10 - To be fair, I am a huge fan of Obsidian and I think they nailed it. The game was really pretty through and through. The replay value is definitely there. I’ll replay the game when I feel like being a jerk to the living lands…or maybe not…

My guess is that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 will win most of the GOTY awards this year - I don't play JRPG (even if this is "only" J'RPG), so once that I do get to it, I can't really assess if it's that good, but it seems to be media darling.

When I eventually get to play it, I'm assuming my candidate will be Kingdom Come Deliverance 2.

Clair Obscur E33 and MH Wilds be mine.

So far? Just Ninja Gaiden II Black for me. Xenoblade X was my 2015 GOTY and I still love it but I won't pick it twice. I liked Doom TDA a lot. Tho Ninja Gaiden II Black I am just in love with. I look forward to NG4 tho

WIll have to wait and see on Daemon X Machina Titanic Scion. Loved the first and Raidou I have the PS2 copy my friend gave me still sealed so not played the game yet but will when I get the HD remaster on PS5.

Now that I have played it, I am gonna nominate Mario Kart World.

It's polished, charming, and wildly enjoyable, just a great time through and through.

Granted, there's still a ton of 2025 games still to come, so I'm not sure if it will still be on the shortlist by the end of the year, but so far its some of the best fun I've had this year.

Expedition 33
Split Fiction
Kingdom Come 2
Monster Hunter Wilds

All seen locked at this point

Also not out yet but it's 90% safe to assume Ghost of Yotei will make the final list

Those 5 must be the final list, but sometimes the nominate 6 games so there is a chance for Metroid since they want to all big publishers to have a representative in a given year