Pokemon Pokopia once again overtakes Resident Evil Requiem on Metacritic as the best game of 2026, with a score of 90 that's going to be hard to beat

A screenshot of Ditto transformed into Dragonite - flying next to the real Dragonite - in Pokemon Pokopia. — (Image credit: The Pokemon Company, Game Freak, Koei Tecmo)

Pokemon Pokopia is back on top of Metacritic's ranking of the best games of the year, once again overtaking Resident Evil Requiem as clearly not even hot unc Leon Kennedy is able to keep the cozy life sim down.

With 101 critic reviews logged at the time of writing, as highlighted on ResetEra, Pokopia has regained the average critic score of 90, which it previously briefly saw when the first few reviews started dropping. As is to be expected, this fluctuated somewhat as more scores started coming in, but it remained the highest-rated Pokemon game of all time, and now, almost three weeks on from the game's launch, it seems quite unlikely to shift any more than it has.

Its main competition has been Capcom's latest horror romp, Resident Evil Requiem, which is still following close behind on the rankings with an average critic score of 89. It's a very similar story over on OpenCritic, although on that review aggregator, Pokopia is tied for the top spot with indie hidden object game Lost and Found Co. – it's worth noting that one only has 12 reviews in comparison to the 78 listed for Pokopia, though.

A score of 90 for Pokopia also sees it match Animal Crossing: New Horizons on both Metacritic and OpenCritic – fitting given the comparisons between the two, even if the Pokemon spin-off's building elements make for a rather different experience overall.

Obviously, we're still quite early in the year, so even if Pokopia has been able to fight off Resident Evil Requiem, it remains to be seen if it can hold its own against the slew of other games launching this year. We've got GTA 6, Marvel's Wolverine, and Fable set to release within 2026, and that's just to name a few. Pokopia will definitely have its work cut out for it, but that lethally moreish combination of Pokemon and the cozy life sim genre is going to take some beating.

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I'm GamesRadar+'s Deputy News Editor, working alongside the rest of the news team to deliver cool gaming stories that we love. After spending more hours than I can count filling The University of Sheffield's student newspaper with Pokemon and indie game content, and picking up a degree in Journalism Studies, I started my career at GAMINGbible where I worked as a journalist for over a year and a half. I then became TechRadar Gaming's news writer, where I sourced stories and wrote about all sorts of intriguing topics. In my spare time, you're sure to find me on my Nintendo Switch or PS5 playing through story-driven RPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles and Persona 5 Royal, nuzlocking old Pokemon games, or going for a Victory Royale in Fortnite.

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