Hades 2 Metacritic score makes it the new highest-rated game of 2025, so Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's inevitable Game of the Year award pile might be a little smaller

(Image credit: Supergiant Games)

Hades 2 reviews are out, and not only is it currently surpassing the beloved original, but it's now the highest rated original game of 2025, beating out Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

Since it was released back in April, it's been a given that Game of the Year awards are going to be heaped onto Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. The excellent JRPG unsurprisingly got extremely high reviews, cementing it as the highest rated game of 2025 on both Metacritic and OpenCritic, with contenders like Hollow Knight: Silksong, Death Stranding 2, and (the real game of the year) Donkey Kong Bananza failing to overtake it. However, just as it seemed like no one had a chance of beating out the French JRPG, a new (well, old given the early access release was over a year ago) contender has entered the ring.

On Metacritic, it's currently the third highest rated game of the year behind the Switch 2 Zelda ports (notably, ports of games not released in 2025), although it beats the previous high score of 93 by Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. On OpenCritic it's also behind the 94-scoring Japanese language learning-JRPG hybrid Shujinkou – which, granted, only has seven critic reviews on the site and not enough user reviews to have a user score. However, Expedition 33 has a score of 92 on the site, meaning Hades 2 is now the leader of the pack on both websites.

The GamesRadar+ Hades 2 review by Ali Jones gives it 4.5/5, and says "Hades 2 is a hugely ambitious sequel that occasionally stretches itself too thin in an attempt to make up for its increased scope, but that only distracts temporarily from a game that's intricately crafted in every facet of its existence. Impeccable combat and flawless characterization across a huge roster make for a follow-up that surpasses even its excellent predecessor."