Elden Ring Nightreign, FromSoftware's surprise roguelike spin-off game, seems more or less over when it comes to new updates. After the release of the Forsaken Hollows DLC, there hasn't been any hints at more to come.

While desperate fans despair at FromSoftware's silence, the rest of us can enjoy the fruits of some fans who are making their own fun. Animator and artist Keith Garces—who made some of the best "Hop on Nightreign" videos out there—and programmer Spagato just dropped an endless runner based on Nightreign.

It's called Revenant Run and it stars the short doll Nightfarer and the gigantic sword that players love to give her in every meme. Your goal in it is pretty simple: smack monsters, collect runes, level up, and avoid running into trees.

There are some clever nods at some of my favorite enemies from Nightreign, like the big guy with a pumpkin head and the little pot boys. Revenant slashes through them with one swipe and keeps moving like someone just told her there's a bigger sword somewhere to the right of the screen.

If I had access to this game in the computer lab of my middle school I would've never went back to class. Flash games might be gone, but at least we have people on Itch.io keeping the dream alive.

Garces says the game was made to "celebrate a very dedicated community," in a message below the game on Itch.io. They also thanked all the players who enjoyed their videos in the description of the YouTube trailer. "It really is a pleasure to know that the same videos I do for fun is something that can resonate with others," they wrote.

We can only hope The Duskbloods cultivates a similarly creative bunch of players who will keep the game alive much longer than FromSoftware will. Or whatever games studio president Hidetaka Miyazaki was talking about in a recent statement about what's on the docket for the future.

Elden Ring Nightreign was a bold yet flawed Soulslike experiment, but I think it could shape the entire industry's future

FromSoftware is in a curious position. It released Elden Ring, its most successful and arguably best game, and ever since has exclusively released games that are very different to Elden Ring. And yes, that does include Elden Ring Nightreign, an experimental spinoff that cleverly reuses some assets and shrinks the world, then builds a PvE battle royale experience around it.

We've had Armored Core 6 and we've got The Duskbloods coming, but FromSoftware hasn't announced a new single-player dark fantasy RPG of the kind it's known for. This has left many fans revisiting the RPGs FromSoft has already released, most especially Elden Ring and its gargantuan world and DLC. It's hard to think of anybody who has gotten more out of Elden Ring than Bushy, a challenge runner who's beaten this famously long and difficult RPG over 400 times by his best estimate.

On Twitch and YouTube, Bushy is known for completing challenge runs in Elden Ring, and occasionally other games, that put restrictions on how he plays. Across hundreds of clears, he's amassed a huge collection of absurd rule sets. You have the classics, like one-hitting bosses, never dying, never getting hit, always getting hit, or kicking enemies to death. Mods, some of them commissioned by Bushy just for this purpose, also allow for stranger runs with teleportation, mismatched areas and enemies, or randomized items. Then we get to the truly specific stuff, like his most recent video: "Elden Ring But I Can Only Use White Items".

It was this color-specific video series that pushed me to reach out to Bushy. Man, I thought, this guy has done everything. And it's easy to think that Bushy must be running out of ideas or growing sick of the game by now, but he tells me he's every bit as in love with Elden Ring as he has been for the past "3,500 to 4,000" hours of game time.

"I think it's the greatest game that's ever been made," Bushy says. "I always just have a ton of fun with it. If I didn't have that much fun with it, I wouldn't still be trying to come up with new, inventive ways to beat it. Don't get me wrong, part of that is absolutely that it's my job, and there are external forces that are encouraging me to play Elden Ring. But I think it's honestly more of a blessing than it is a curse."

The release of Elden Ring Nightreign did give Bushy some space to play another game, and the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC was a refreshing injection of new content and items, but he always comes back to the game.

He considers the pessimistic read of his position. "You could look at that in a negative light," he says. "You're playing Elden Ring because you have to, because it's the only thing that makes you money. But that's not really how I look at it. Elden Ring is a game that is big enough, massive enough, deep enough, that has such a breadth of content, that having motivation and a reason to actually play it that much is really quite the blessing. I get to play it a whole lot more than other people do."

Bushy's putting every last grain of Elden Ring under the magnifying glass. Like a speedrunner, he talks about individual bosses as things to "practice". His videos often see him deliberately rotate through spells, weapons, and items in order to explain and engage with multiple parts of the game rather than simply using the first winning option he can find, and his rule sets regularly lead to interesting discoveries about overlooked items and strategies. I'm reminded of MMO players running self-sufficient accounts, whose self-imposed challenges force them to play the game in novel ways.

His favorite challenge runs are those that dramatically change the game and are "higher effort" overall, like the one where he was teleported to a random checkpoint every five minutes. He also played the game with an aggression mod that made every enemy follow and attack him at all times, with basically no way to lose or avoid aggro. It didn't go well.

Now, Bushy can just throw out obscene sentences like this: "I've on average beaten the game probably twice a week since the game came out." This schedule wasn't immovable, but his channel history bears it out. I've learned not to underestimate FromSoftware fans, but I certainly haven't met anyone else who's rolled credits this many times. Additionally, Bushy says, "the longest I've gone not playing Elden Ring since it came out has probably been like three weeks."

Bushy is certainly looking forward to future FromSoftware games, but somehow reckons he's got more than enough Elden Ring challenge run ideas left in the tank. When he started playing the game for a living, building on years of streaming other games, he was "hopeful" after his early challenges got some attention. "I made lots of very bad videos and got more views than I had ever gotten at the time," he recalls. Elden Ring's massive audience was enough to turn the game into a career for him, not unlike how creators like VaatiVidya make a living by interpreting FromSoftware lore.

"I still want to do them," Bushy says of his challenge runs. "Simply because it's cool to talk about all of the unique interactions that I can find with specific weapon types and what I think they're strong at, what I think they're weak at, and share the experience that I have in this game with the people that are interested in it. As long as people are interested, I'm more than happy to do it."

FromSoftware boss Hidetaka Miyazaki teases unannounced games, says the studio should do what it wants as the investor that told Nintendo to charge "99 cents just to get Mario to jump a little higher" fights its parent company.

Destiny world design lead Niles Sankey recalls that one of the game's early challenges was inspired by Dark Souls.

Maybe not as much in the modern era where we all know what a Souls game is, but the first Dark Souls was a magical moment. After the introduction boss area, you arrive in the Firelink Shrine, and I'd wager a lot of us didn't realize we had to go into the aqueduct behind us first thing, and instead ventured straight into the graveyard in front of us. In said graveyard, you'll inevitably have gotten rocked by a group of skeletons and pondered if the game was really this hard. But this was an important lesson in where not to go in this vast world.

Sankey recalls working on Destiny's Cosmodrome area and hiding mysterious areas behind high level enemies. After a fan mentioned the "skull health bar knights" (the Hollowed Knight enemy from the Destiny beta), Sankey reveals: "I specifically placed the 'skull health bar knights' in Cosmodrome for this reason. It was inspired from my experiences playing Dark Souls."

However, Sankey also says that he had to fight a lot to make sure these enemies stayed in the game. "There were situations where other devs would say 'These knights are too high level, this must be a bug. Delete them.' and I would say 'Nooo!!! Please leave them please, it's by design.'" But over ten years later, Sankey is "happy to know players still have fond memories of these guys."

He also teases a "really tragic but also funny development story about these Knights," but says it'll be saved for "another time."

Personally, I do have an appreciation for games that will let you get your ass kicked as a learning experience, but I am also ashamed to admit that those Dark Souls skeletons I mentioned earlier got around an hour or so of battering me before I realized what the game was trying to tell me.

Destiny 2 and Bungie as a whole were "very close" to closing before Sony buyout, according to ex-community lead: "It was an emergency acquisition."

FromSoftware owner Kadokawa has locked horns with investors over a proposed plan for the company's leadership. Amidst the crossfire, FromSoftware president and Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki shared a simple message: we just want to make games, man.

Japanese outlet Denfaminico published a statement from Miyazaki today, June 12, after inquiring about his thoughts on Kadokawa's ongoing fight. A June 12 news release from Kadokawa confirms that it's elected to oppose shareholder proposals regarding its "medium-term management plan."

Miyazaki's statement (which I'll quote very sparingly, as it's been machine translated from Japanese) affirms that he and FromSoftware are familiar with Kadokawa's situation, but is quick to stress that the whole thing is complex and largely beyond them, and his thoughts here are purely his.

Miyazaki says he's "satisfied" with FromSoftware's development environment, which has seen it produce multiple hit games following Elden Ring, the studio's critical and commercial magnum opus. Armored Core 6 and Elden Ring Nightreign both performed well, and Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive The Duskbloods is 2026-bound with a closed network test just announced for this summer.

It's not that FromSoftware can't make improvements to its processes, Miyazaki adds, but the studio is already able to "freely" create the games it wants to make, which is his priority. Preserving that development environment, which he says is one of the main reasons it's been able to make games "of value" in the past, and letting FromSoftware concentrate purely on making those games is "of the utmost importance."

Additionally, Miyazaki tells fans reading his message that they can look forward to upcoming titles, both announced games like The Duskbloods as well as "the unannounced titles yet to come."

The investor fight, per a June 5 Kadokawa news release, relates to "the company proposal to elect director candidates Takeshi Natsuno and Hiroo Unoura." In other words, some investors want to get rid of the CEO, citing alleged underperformance, and change the company's strategy.

As Denfaminico reports, the driving force in this pushback is investor Oasis Management Company, which, per Kadokawa's June 1 shareholder meeting notice, holds (a non-exact) 20,500 shares, or 13.76% of the company, making it the largest shareholder, beating Sony's 11.01%. Oasis has steadily raised its stake throughout the year, per Automaton.

Oasis even created a whole website, called "A Better Kadokawa," to air its grievances against the company – namely, that it "fails to capture FromSoftware's full value, ceding economics to external partners" and its "'quantity over quality' strategy for core Publication / IP Creation business has weakened profitability" as earnings per share declined "89% during [CEO Takeshi Natsuno's] tenure."

"Oasis Calls on KADOKAWA Investors to Vote AGAINST CEO Takeshi Natsuno," the website reads. Kadokawa said in a May 28 presentation that it "believes" this website "contains statements that differ from the Company's understanding and do not fully reflect the Company’s initiatives."

Oasis, you may recall, is the same company that once implored Nintendo to inject microtransactions into its games. An immortal letter from Oasis founder and still-CEO Seth Fischer, to late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, reads: "We believe Nintendo can create very profitable games based on in-game revenue models with the right development team. Just think of paying 99 cents just to get Mario to jump a little higher."

So, you can imagine why Kadokawa and, by extension, FromSoftware might hesitate.

Ever since Elden Ring, FromSoft fans have been awaiting the studio's next traditional single-player-focused action RPG. Armored Core 6 is its own beast, and Elden Ring Nightreign and The Duskbloods are more experimental multiplayer titles. However, Miyazaki's said that FromSoftware hasn't made some internal pivot away from single-player games, and Nightreign director Junya Ishizaki told us games like it are an extension of the studio's philosophy, not a change to it.

"We've had these two titles, Nightreign and the recently announced Duskbloods, with multiplayer at their core. But that's not necessarily to say that we are leaning in that specific direction going forward," Ishizaki told us in May 2025.

"FromSoftware is making steady progress" amid push "to develop IP in games" and film, says owner Kadokawa as Elden Ring movie looms.

The Duskbloods, FromSoftware's Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive, will hold a closed network test this summer ahead of a still-unannounced launch later this year.

The Duskbloods made an extremely brief appearance during today's Nintendo Direct live show. A few environment and character shots – featuring the likes of Pajama Hammers and Magic Rat, as I've dubbed them – and some light narration leads us right into a simple closed network test reveal.

The test is "coming soon," the trailer description adds, and I'd certainly hope so with summer starting June 21. It's currently unclear how long the test will run, or how we'll be able to sign up to participate.

Notably absent was any trace of a release date. The Duskblood was one of the first games announced for the Nintendo Switch 2, a rare exclusive game for FromSoftware, yet we still don't know exactly when it's coming out.

The Duskbloods is an oddball in more ways than one, and it's come at a strange time for FromSoftware. After the monumental success of Elden Ring, the pinnacle of the dark fantasy action RPGs that the studio's become known for, we've seen the return of Armored Core in Armored Core 6, and the experimental multiplayer of Elden Ring: Nightreign. The Duskbloods, a PvPvE game of some sort, is in a similar space. This has left many fans wondering when the next full-fat, Dark Souls-style RPG will come along. (I wouldn't complain about a Bloodborne or Sekiro-adjacent single-player experience, either.)

The blurb on the new trailer reads: "Step into this new PvPvE multiplayer action game from FromSoftware, where you take on the role of a Bloodsworn. Fight through a world overrun with enemies using unique weapons and abilities, while occasionally forming transient alliances on your path to victory."

They can never compete with Elden Ring, but FromSoftware owner says Nightreign "performed strongly" and The Duskbloods is still coming in 2026.

As Summer Game Fest continues amid rumors of a Nintendo Direct coming next Tuesday, we're expecting to finally get that Elden Ring on Switch 2 release date… oh wait, never mind, they just tweeted it out.

Over on the Elden Ring Twitter account, a post confirms that Elden Ring Tarnished Edition is coming to Nintendo Switch 2 on August 28, 2026, finally bringing the beloved RPG to the portable console after it was literally the first third-party game featured in the big Nintendo Switch 2 Direct.

The Tarnished Pack DLC adds some minor new content, including armor and starting classes, will be released for all platforms on the same day.

The Tarnished Edition was delayed until 2026 for "performance adjustments," after reports that the port was real rough came out of the Gamescom 2025 demo.

And while it's coming out later than expected, Bandai Namco is finally delivering in a couple months. Our more recent hands-on impression found that the port is feeling a lot better, so hopefully it'll end up a great way to play the RPG– at least on a handheld that is.

And while the game won't be getting a reissue on other platforms as far as we know, the account also confirmed that the additional content that is being added to the game as part of the Tarnished Edition on Switch 2 will also be available to purchase on other platforms the same day as 'The Tarnished Pack DLC.' This DLC will include the two new starting classes which includes the heavy knight, who probably has the best starting stats in the game. Plus there some new armor sets and a nice bit of horse armor for those Elder Scrolls enthusiasts out there.

Elden Ring player achieves "the hardest one-shot kill" in the game, downing an 89,000 HP boss after 8 hours of punishing trial and error: "It's absolute hell"

Of all the Elden Ring challenges out there, defeating serpent demigod Rykard in just one hit might stand as the most impressive to date – or, at least, it's certainly up there.

Now that the FromSoftware RPG has been out in the wild since 2022, players have found all sorts of creative ways to challenge themselves. Heck, folks have managed to tackle no-hit saxophone runs and more… if you can believe it. There have also been plenty of attempts at one-shot boss takedowns – and successes, as Reddit user Cheppitos survives to prove.

In his latest post, he announces that he's not just killed any boss in a solo hit, though.

Cheppitos has done the seemingly impossible and dealt nearly 100,000 damage in one shot, as he writes, to Rykard – a boss he describes as "the hardest one-shot kill in all of Elden Ring, including the DLC." It took the skilled player a whopping eight hours to do, too, and a whole lot of luck thanks to RNG. Cheppitos explains just why this part of his one-shot journey was so difficult in the comments, noting that the stars had to align.

Rykard One-Shot Kill! Nearly 100,000 total damage dealt. Without a doubt, the hardest one-shot kill in all of Elden Ring, including the DLC. An absolute nightmare that took eight hours. from r/Eldenring

"It's RNG," he says, "Rykard in phase two needs to perform the specific breath attack, which is the rarest. Furthermore, the angle and timing of the spell need to be perfect, or the lightning bolts won't kill him, and the buffs might expire."

In a separate reply, he expands on this, calling Rykard "the only boss in the entire game that's truly impossible to One-Hit Kill legitimately compared to all the others." He has the "highest HP pool in the whole game," after all.

The Elden Ring mastermind concocted a strategy that involved damage stacking with poison debuffs to "burst him down" and then the Sacred Bloody Flesh, White Mask, and Lord of Blood's Exultation for the second phase – and he did it.

His attached clip proves as much, highlighting how Cheppitos destroyed Rykard without breaking a sweat… er, at least during that one pull, anyway. His conclusion? "It's absolute hell."

It sure sounds like it is – but somehow, I feel the community will somehow manage to go on and pleasantly surprise me with an even wilder challenge run, honestly.

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis boss fight lead points to Elden Ring as a stellar example of how to make sure they're fair

Terrifyingly, Bloodborne was released on PS4, a console apparently doomed to be the game's forever tomb, on March 24, 2015. A substantial DLC, The Old Hunters, hit the game in November. Ever since, one player, who goes by Noahman90 on Reddit, has been up to his eyeballs in The Old Hunters for one specific purpose: the Orphan of Kos, one of the hardest bosses on FromSoftware's roster, absolutely must die.

Noahman has spent over a decade, and some 3,500 hours across multiple characters, playing Bloodborne. The vast majority of that playtime was spent helping other players fight the Orphan of Kos, much like Elden Ring hero Let Me Solo Her's famous Malenia support. But with the Bloodborne population dwindling to the point that Noahman doesn't even "get summoned anymore," it's finally time to hang up his hunter's hat.

Speaking with GamesRadar+, Noahman explains that he originally focused on the Orphan of Kos because it is "easily the highest demand boss in the game for summon requests," which makes for fast runs. Eventually, he caught the bug. "I started to really like the boss even more than I already did," he tells me. "Fighting the Orphan was so, so much [fun]. I started to get good and I liked the feeling of helping people out."

The nature of FromSoftware's multiplayer summoning system is perfect for players like Noahman, who says he isn't very social. "The relationship between Summoner and Cooperator is like two ships passing in the night," he reasons. "Except in this instance I'd help the ship get to port safe and be on my way."

Noahman has helped a lot of ships get to port. After the first few years of play, he says there were "very few losses" during his summoning sessions. By his best estimate, he's helped anywhere from 5,000 to 6,000 hunters beat the Orphan of Kos. You can find years-old clips of him running circles around the boss on his Reddit profile.

Slowly plugging away, mostly on Fridays and weekends, Noahman mastered the fight and dialed in his character. "My favorite setup for the Orphan of Kos was the Blade of Mercy and that's it," he says, referring to a pair of trickshop daggers that combine into a short sword. "No guns (the parrying trivializes that fight). Blade of mercy is a very, very close-range weapon. Usually used by people in PvP settings. Although against the Orphan the BOM (if used well) matchup was like a dance... nothing in any other Souls game quite like it."

Bloodborne was actually Noahman's first Souls game – that is, his first exposure to the modern FromSoftware action RPGs – and even as "every boss in that damn DLC kicked my ass," the Orphan of Kos proved to be an especially fierce nemesis. This neatly mirrors the origin story for Let Me Solo Her, who likewise struggled with Malenia before resolving to help others through the fight.

Noahman reckons the Orphan isn't the hardest boss in Bloodborne, though. For his money, that crown goes to either Laurence himself or the Watchdog of the Old Lords, but they're kind of cheating with their difficulty. "They are hard because they are not designed well with bullshit AOE hitboxes and fire splash damage," Noahman says, speaking pure facts.

I always have the same question when I speak to players like Noahman, who stick to self-imposed challenges for years on end: why? Noahman's answer is a perfect summary of what pushes people to engage with games at all, setting and chasing their own goals: "Because it was fun."

"After a while it became an obsession trying to perfect that battle with the Orphan," he concludes. "Even now I feel as though there are areas that I can still improve."

Jordan writes: I couldn't love Dark Souls or Bloodborne, but Phantom Blade Zero is the action RPG I wanted them to be.

Separating the goods from the greats is never easy, and the best DLCs prove why that is. This list began as a humble collection of five must-play video game expansions, but after careful (see: impassioned) deliberation with my colleagues here at GamesRadar+, we've expanded our rankings to seven.

If you're here off the back of the new Witcher 3 DLC announcement, you're in the right place. There's something magical about the transformative power of an excellent DLC, whether it sees a glorious journey come to a well-rounded conclusion (as per one of the best Witcher games) or a beloved FPS shown in a whole new light. Many games on this list count among the best RPGs, but rest assured: we're thinking broadly for this one, meaning no genre has been ruled out.

We'll be keeping this list updated as more new games deliver post-launch offerings, but for now, join us as we crown the best DLC of all-time.

7. Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser

Base game: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Platform(s): PC, PS4, Xbox One
Release date: September 8, 2015

Serving as an essential epilogue to Dragon Age: Inquisition, the Trespasser DLC was the final major expansion to come to BioWare's third fantasy RPG. With so many narrative threads still to wrap up in the main story – which left us with a major revelation regarding companion Solas' identity and motivations – the Trespasser DLC allows you to confront the complex elf and perfectly sets up what's to come in Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

Set against the backdrop of Thedas' political tensions, you also get caught up in a curious plot, and eventually determine the fate of the Inquisition in a satisfying conclusion. It's as necessary as it is enjoyable, with the bonus of being given the chance to spend more time with the loveable companions (and your chosen paramour).

6. Lies of P: Overture

Base game: Lies of P
Platform(s): PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X
Release date: June 6, 2025

Lies of P charmed me as one of the most impressive and best action-RPGs of 2023, and Overture somehow managed to top it. Introducing difficulty levels in what has to be a first for the Soulslike subgenre, Lies of P: Overture sees our steel-armed hero sent back in time to the moment the city of Krat fell apart. The new map areas breathe life and dimension to the otherwise Belle-Epoque gothic vibe of the base game – think snow-capped mountains, mutated zoo animals in a deviation from all those puppets, new status effects, and brand new weapons to craft. It's a beautiful, engaging DLC that adds plenty of narrative backstory to the events of the base experience, and it really should be top of every Souls fan's list to try out.

5. Dishonored: The Knife of Dunwell

Base game: Dishonored
Platform(s): PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Release date: April 16, 2013

Casting you as one of Dishonored's antagonists, assassin leader Daud, Dishonored: The Knife of Dunwall manages to both complement the main adventure and stand relatively alone. In fact, with three dense missions that the superpowered stealth assassin can complete in a variety of ways, the greater focus lends this side-tale more replayability – I've probably zipped through this one twice as much as the main game. This expansion allowed developer Arkane room to experiment as well, many of Daud's powers having their own twists on Corvo's moveset, like how Blink actually pauses time while you aim, allowing for ultra-precise assassin moves (can comes with its own charms, for further refining abilities, too). In fact, I'm redownloading it right now.

4. Mass Effect 3: Citadel

Base game: Mass Effect Legendary Edition
Platform(s): PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X
Release date: May 14, 2021

Saying goodbye is never easy, particularly when it comes to an RPG trilogy that made you fall in love with its characters so deeply. So, when Mass Effect 3 first came around, it was hard to let go of Commander Shepard and the Normandy crew. Thankfully, a year later, BioWare dropped the Citadel DLC to round off the adventure. Not only did it serve as a fond love letter to the series and its fans, but it also delivered the perfect, bittersweet way to bid farewell to the RPG's beating heart: the companions.

Centered around putting on a party on the Citadel during a much-needed spell of shore leave, you get caught up in an incredibly wild conspiracy involving your own clone (because Shepard can never catch a real break). Packed full of self-aware jokes, meaningful moments, and incredibly entertaining scenarios, it has everything you could ever want from an expansion.

3. Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty

Base game: Cyberpunk 2077
Platform(s): PC, Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series X
Release date: September 26, 2023

How CD Projekt Red managed to turn one of the best first-person RPGs into a spy thriller is a feat in and of itself, but Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is proof of how well it works. As both a polished-up "do-over" of sorts that saw multiple in-game systems and processes reworked as part of the major 2.0 update it released with, Phantom Liberty has become essential material that no playthrough would be complete without.

There's new weapons, new characters, and a whole new district of Night City to explore – oh, and a couple of new endings, if collecting 'em all is your thing – and it's more than deserving of being one of the best DLCs ever made for the sheer magic of how it makes Cyberpunk feel the way it was always meant to.

2. Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree

Base game: Elden Ring
Platform(s): PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X
Release date: June 21, 2024

A long two-year wait separated the base game from Shadow of the Erdtree, but the Elden Ring DLC was more than worth it. It offers a uniquely narrative-driven approach, offering a glimpse into the Land of Shadow and how Queen Marika rose to power – and yes, you need to touch a withered arm to make that temporal jump.

It's a suitably gruesome, fascinating expansion that peppers the already rich tapestry of Elden Ring with even more lore-bites, a new host of weapons, a reworked magic system, and some of the cleverest open world design among any of the other best DLCs on this list. It's easy to see why fans call it a vital part of the overall experience, so you don't want to miss this one.

1. The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine

Base game: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Platform(s): PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Switch 2, Xbox One, Xbox Series X
Release date: May 21, 2016

Geralt's journey to Toussaint is an unmissable experience that truly completes the base game, and a decade later, I think our Witcher 3: Blood and Wine review was a little harsh on the best DLC of all-time. The lush expansion sees Geralt taking up the moniker of wine baron in a picturesque land – one with a vampire problem on its hands.

It stands out not only for its thrilling storytelling and worldbuilding, as is par for the course for CDPR, but for how beautifully it ties things up for our monster slayer (though you can still engage with the open world and clean up those side quests once the credits roll). Blood and Wine is everything a DLC should be, the definition of a must-play RPG expansion, and I won't hear a word against it.

FromSoftware parent company Kadokawa has just released new financial results revealing the Dark Souls developer is committing to more self-publishing and self-funding while it works on converting video game IP to big deal movies like Elden Ring's.

The Elden Ring movie is already in production under A24 and 28 Days Later writer Alex Garland, who is serving as both its scriptwriter and director, and it's due to release on March 3, 2028. But 2028 feels so far away when Kadokawa predicts 2026 profits will drop something like 40.3％ "due largely to ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN main game and DLC," the company exclaims in its financial report. So, since FromSoftware's catalogue is getting stale, Kadokawa wants another round of everything – more game IP, more film adaptations – as it relies on the Dark Souls developer for business.

"FromSoftware will steadily advance initiatives aimed at maximizing earnings by developing titles using its own capital and optimizing the business scheme including its publishing structure," says Kadokawa. "We are making steady progress in strengthening the ability to develop IP in games and the cultivation of human resources."

On that last point, Kadokawa later explains in its report that it's beginning to roll out a "special early-retirement program" for employees aged 45 and older.

It seems the aim of this program, which will begin on July 31, 2026, is to cull staff numbers, but in a nicer way. Anyone who meets the age and job rank requirements, and has been with Kadokawa for at least five years, will, seemingly, be helped to retire extra early.

"This initiative is expected to optimize fixed costs and improve productivity, directly contributing to improved profitability," says Kadokawa. The company doesn't explicitly state if the program is exclusive to parent company employees, or if it will extend to properties like FromSoftware, too.

Kadokawa is clear, however, in saying it wants FromSoftware to "make further advances in the development of the media mix, including adaptation into videos." Several projects have already been announced in pursuit of this goal: in addition to the Elden Ring film, FromSoftware has a Sekiro anime coming to Crunchyroll this year, and there's an R-rated Bloodborne animated movie in the works.

Side note: I consider myself a Tier 1,000 Bloodborne fan, and even so I'm skeptical when I say fellow superfan and YouTuber JackSepticEye is producing the movie. I'm curious about why Sony prefers a, however well-meaning, gaming personality to manhandle its beloved IP rather than another studio. But, you know. At least we're getting more Bloodborne.

A strong message throughout Kadokawa's report is, go big and FromSoftware. The parent is eager to "further expand the fan base globally," it says, while "FromSoftware is making steady progress in revamping its business model to maximize earnings."

The developer, an expert in punishing dark fantasies, is a strange cash cow with weird lumps and boils. But Kadokawa is clearly hoping that's what game and film audiences want – and, based on all the hours of the day I've lost to Yharnam, I'm inclined to agree.

They can never compete with Elden Ring, but FromSoftware owner says Nightreign "performed strongly" and The Duskbloods is still coming in 2026.

We might not have The Elder Scrolls 6 yet, but that's all right – a talented Elden Ring modder is working to get one of Bethesda Game Studios' classics to us instead, bringing Morrowind to FromSoftware's own fantasy RPG.

In case you've not heard of the big project yourself, legendary Halo and Elden Ring modder InfernoPlus has been working to port Morrowind to Elden Ring for quite some time now – heck, he first unveiled his plans in 2025, explaining that he was "about halfway done."

A good while has passed since then without much word from the creator, but a new update from InfernoPlus proves the mod is indeed still happening. Explaining the current state of the project in a YouTube video, he dubs it "the most complex mod ever created" – and, yeah, I can see why. Morrowind is 24 years old, and Elden Ring is, you know, a completely separate game.

"It's been some months since the last update, and we have made tremendous progress on the mod," InfernoPlus says. "Many things that I thought would be impossible have taken shape, and the game has entered a fairly playable state."

That's good news, to say the least – but that doesn't mean the mod is ready. "It's still got a ways to go before it's done, but what we have built here is actually really quite interesting," as InfernoPlus states.

He goes on to show it off, from the functional combat to spells and gear, and it's certainly a sight to behold. There's plenty to anticipate, but he does clarify that it's not been easy. Elden Ring doesn't provide too much to work with.

For example, crime and punishment are big in The Elder Scrolls. Guards will arrest you – a system that's not actually in Elden Ring itself. So, InfernoPlus and his team of modders have had to do everything from coding to scripting to bring the decades-old Bethesda RPG to life in the FromSoftware game, and they're still working on it.

He leaves a call for volunteers in the video, too, asking for artists and voice actors to hop on board the project.

That's not to say the mod isn't chugging along well, however – InfernoPlus reiterates that it's "progressing quite well," all things considered. So, we might just get to replay Morrowind in Elden Ring soon… sooner than The Elder Scrolls 6, I'd wager, anyway.

A new Elden Ring world record was set just 2 weeks ago, and like everyone else I keep rewatching the same part of the 52-minute speedrun.

A new Elden Lord has been crowned. On April 21, Elden Ring speedrunner N1ghtglow, a Chinese player sporting a respectable profile picture of Persona 5's Haru on Speedrun.com, set a new world record for the glitchless any% category of FromSoftware's open-world epic, beating the previous holder, fellow Chinese runner Okkotsu_Yuta, by just four seconds at 52:12. That's how tight the Elden Ring races have become, but this run stands out not just because it's a bit faster, but also because it makes for incredible TV.

The YouTube version of the run mirroring the bilibili video is a one-hour Elden Ring masterclass (run time pauses during loading screens, hence the time discrepancy). Like the other world record contenders, it starts with a mad dash to one of the most overpowered weapons in the game: Death's Poker, a frostbite-stacking weapon capable of deleting bosses in seconds. The Death Rite Bird that drops it rather clumsily and mysteriously falls off a ledge – a running theme for these speedruns.

The part that kills me – and, according to YouTube's watch timeline, the part everyone else keeps coming back to – is the workaround for the Draconic Sentinel fought outside Leyndell city. And by the way, this fight, much like Radahn, is done before Margit, which is the main boss most people fight first in standard playthroughs.

Around 23 minutes in, N1ghtglow kills this mini-boss, once known as a reasonable difficulty wall following Elden Ring's release, in a single hit. The execution is spellbinding.

The Draconic Sentinel, like some other mounted enemies, has a unique stagger animation. When you hit him with enough attacks, or simply parry him flat, he'll buckle and pause rather than fully collapse like humanoid bosses. If hit during this state, he'll sort of limp away in the opposite direction of your attack.

N1ghtglow combines all of these behaviors to parry the sentinel right next to a ledge, swiftly run behind him, and send him flailing over a cliff with one hit to his horse's rear, the movements perfectly mirroring those samurai film parodies where the hero sheathes their sword at lightning speed and entire trees fall to pieces behind them. I would be furious if I were this Draconic Sentinel.

Commenters on YouTube flagged another exceptional moment: the Maliketh fight 59 minutes in. By setting up frostfire with Death's Poker, N1ghtglow is able to beat the first phase of the fight the moment it begins, and a stylish mid-air stagger angled upward makes short work of Maliketh proper.

The entire run is just Death's Poker and gravity making hamburger beat out of some of the most feared bosses in gaming, and one mad lad samurai starter class beating all of Elden Ring faster than I usually get through a few bosses. It's no wonder Elden Ring has a famously long sales tail – people are still actively pushing this game beyond its limits.

Elden Ring movie set photos suggest the Loathsome Dung Eater and Raya Lucaria will appear in the A24 adaptation.

Even though Markiplier found huge success with adapting Iron Lung into a film, Jacksepticeye isn't planning on enlisting his help for his own upcoming Bloodborne adaptation.

Jacksepticeye, real name Seán McLoughlin, is a producer on the film – and he's also a superfan of the game, so it would seem Bloodborne is in excellent hands.

When asked by Radio Times at the BAFTAs if he'd be speaking to Markiplier to get any tips, Jacksepticeye responded: "No. This is my thing. I have to figure it out on my own, and do it on my own. But the team we have around me already are already incredible, and that's kind of my job is to figure out who those people are. I can handle it. I'll do it."

Markiplier wrote, directed, and starred in his adaptation of Iron Lung, which turned out to be a surprise hit at the box office. The Bloodborne adaptation, meanwhile, is an R-rated animated movie announced at CinemaCon during Sony's panel, and it was teased to be "very true" to the beloved FromSoftware action-RPG.

"I know a lot of you are gonna be surprised to hear that my name is attached to this thing. Again, I'm a producer. I'm not the writer or director of this. That stuff will come out later, about who's involved. But as the producer of it, whatever is within my power to be able to do, I will do it," Jacksepticeye said in a video after the announcement.

"I will fight tooth and nail to make this thing the best it possibly can be from my standpoint. I assure you. I promise you. I'm not going into this and taking it lightly. I know what an absolute gigantic honor it is. No one knows that better than I do."

The Bloodborne movie doesn't yet have a release date, but, while you wait, check out our guide to the most exciting upcoming video game adaptations for everything else worth getting excited about.

An Amazon listing has been spotted for the delayed Elden Ring Nintendo Switch 2 port, and we're looking at an $80 Game-Key Card

As spotted by Wario64, the Amazon listing for Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition on Nintendo Switch 2 is live on the site, and while the delayed FromSoftware hit doesn't have an official release date yet (instead, it currently lists a December 31, 2026 placeholder), Amazon has released a price for it. The Tarnished Edition for Switch 2 will seemingly be $79.99 in the US, and it's also going to be a Game-Key Card – one of Nintendo's somewhat controversial physical games with nothing on the card.

Elden Ring was the first third-party title announced for the console during the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct, but after reports that the port was real rough when shown to fans at Gamescom 2025, the port was delayed until 2026 for "performance adjustments." And, after a recent hands-on, GamesRadar+'s James Daly reported that the port is feeling real good now, signalling that it may be closer to release.

The $80 price may seem like a lot for the now four-year-old game, and it is, but this price does match with what Bandai Namco is charging for the Shadow of the Erdtree Edition of the game on other platforms. And, with the Tarnished Edition including the DLC, it makes some sense why its priced this way. A user on Reddit notes this, but given that it's called "Tarnished Edition" unlike the Shadow of the Erdtree Edition, "They better put a big blurb on the front saying it's included though, because if they don't the only thing people are going to see is '$80 GKC.'"

However, we've seen the likes of Square Enix and Capcom price games differently when bringing them to Switch 2, with the likes of Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Street Fighter 6, and the Resident Evil Generations Pack allowing players to pick up Resident Evil 7 and Village alongside Requiem for about £10 more, so I understand why some are shocked Bandai Namco is sticking to its guns with this release. As one Reddit user puts it, "I think these companies don't understand that they need to not maximize per unit revenue, when they are trying to break into a new audience."

4 years later, new Elden Ring cutscene uncovered with massive lore implications for DLC star Miquella.

Elden Ring is still keeping secrets, but dataminer Lance McDonald is good at easing them out – the YouTuber just discovered a piece of cut content illuminating more of FromSoftware's arcane story.

Lore spoilers for the 4-year-old game to follow! Turn back if you want to watch a VaatiVidya video first.

McDonald has uncovered a new cutscene showing demigod Miquella planting the Haligtree legacy dungeon – and a literal, crooked tree – with his own pale hands. While I believe everything in Elden Ring is intentionally vague enough to warrant your own interpretation, regardless of director Hidetaka Miyazaki's vision, this missing scene shows Miquella didn't just settle on the towering Haligtree as his refuge – he created it with the hope of lending its strength to his sick sister Malenia.

In the deleted scene, a young Miquella kneels with his shadow of white-gold hair trailing down his back. The Haligtree sapling sits delicately in his hands before he sinks it into the dirt and smears it with his blood, dictating, "Young seedling. Young seedling. Grow larger, stronger.

"My dear twin. Accept this gift. A gift of abundance. My last drop of dew – let all things flourish, whether graceful or malign. If thou covetest the throne, impress my vision upon thine heart, in the new world of thy making, all things will flourish. Whether graceful or malign." Watch the scene for yourself below.

Miquella seems to address the Haligtree and Malenia, whose Scarlet Rot is eating her limbs, at once – he encourages both to siphon his power for the sake of cultivating their own.

To me, this signals the Haligtree is not only an alternative to Elden Ring's religion around the Erdtree, but also physical proof of Miquella and Malenia's success – or lack of it. Though a fellow lore hound on Reddit posits, "This implies that the Haligtree was a gift from Miquella to Malenia. So, maybe the Haligtree project didn't 'fail' by rotting and was abandoned by Miquella. He simply gave his gift and focused on his own ascension plan." Either way, I'm crying.

Being a FromSoftware fan requires recognizing that the studio often cuts enough content from its fantasy games to populate several other planets, but I would have liked to see more of Miquella's history in the base game in addition to the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC.

That said, if the developer had kept this Haligtree scene, I'd have less to speculate on – and how is that any fun?

Even Elden Ring legend Let Me Solo Her can't always solo her, as he admits defeat to Malenia: "Bro has sometimes known defeat."

The mighty have indeed fallen, knee-deep in a puddle of shame at Miquella's Haligtree. Who could have predicted that the storied Elden Ring player Klein Tsuboi, best known as Let Me Solo Her, would end up this way?

Oh, sorry. Let Me Solo Her, who's been collecting a cabinet of bruises while helping Elden Ring players as a summon over the past four years, actually says it wasn't him who recently died screaming and in pain during a battle with the indefatigable goddess Malenia. See? Look at what he wrote on Twitter: "If you summoned me for Malenia on March 27th, 2026 at 7:14PM CST and I died in 2nd phase that wasn't me haha."

Haha. Right. However, on the off chance that Let Me Solo Her's apparently intimate knowledge of the situation on March 27th, 2026 at 7:14PM CST means that it actually was him who perished, Elden Ring community members have begun kindly paying their respects.

"Imagine being that guy, it's like summoning mahoraga and seeing him die," says a Twitter reply with 10,000 likes, referencing Jujutsu Kaisen's mythically powerful cursed spirit Eight-Handled Sword Divergent Sila Divine General Mahoraga. That's nice, comparing Let Me Solo Her to such a formidable being.

"Bro has sometimes known defeat," another reply with over 2,000 likes says. That's generous of them to include "sometimes."

Placing the final rose on Let Me Solo Her's casket, a player cries out, "MY GOAT IS WASHED." OK, everyone, that's enough. We must recognize that the message of Elden Ring – and life itself – is that death is inevitable, even if you have a giant, sexy jar on your head. And frankly it's a small comfort to know that Let Me Solo Her is still out there, soloing her, with a success rate that may or may not be below 100%.

Let Me Solo Her has finally been freed from Elden Ring jail after getting a 180-day ban for using a Fortnite dance mod.

Someone in the bowels of FromSoftware had the difficult task of playing Demon's Souls and Dark Souls before they were out. Imagine being those playtesters; the Undead Burg must be seared into their brains. A researcher at CD Projekt Red wishes he could've been a part of that team, just to see how the findings impacted the games.

"Either the original Demon's Souls or Dark Souls, even though I'm not a Soulslike player," says Dawid Zalewski, research operations coordinator and senior UX researcher, on the CDPR AnsweRed podcast, when asked about what game he wishes he could've seen early builds of. Zalewski has experience on both Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 4, according to his LinkedIn profile.

"That would be a very interesting challenge, because it was something new," he believes. "It was people waiting in queues, and some saying this is the worst experience they ever had, and the other going back to the queue to play it again and again."

Within that divide, what would've been illuminating is finding just the right amount of push-and-pull for players. "Where do you draw the line between challenge that motivates you to push forward, to try again and again until you reach the mastery?" he muses. "And at what point it becomes plain frustration and you need to change something."

As he says, "the game is supposed to be challenging," so how are changes decided? What's a problem and what's something where people simply need to get better and understand what they're up against? Necessary debates, and things I imagine the devs at FromSoftware agonized over extensively for both Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, all overseen by Hidetaka Miyazaki.

There aren't many simple answers, and the general obtuseness of those games will tell you From has no problem being vague or esoteric. The studio certainly found a good balance for those releases, and maybe one day developers like Zalewski can get insight into the research involved to help their own endeavors - or just defeat From's bosses quicker in future.

The Witcher 4 is "steaming ahead" as CD Projekt rapidly expands with 220 new developers in the past year, and nearly 500 in total working on the RPG

8.86% of FromSoftware's majority owner, Kadokawa Games, is now owned by an investor who infamously made a terrible pitch to Nintendo a decade ago.

As reported by GameBiz (spotted and translated by Automaton), Oasis Management Company, a Hong Kong-based international hedge fund management firm, has acquired an 8.86% share of Kadokawa, the Japanese media conglomerate behind a number of manga, anime, and video game properties. Oasis describes its acquisition of shares as being for "important proposal activities."

Most notably, the company is a majority owner of Dark Souls and Elden Ring developer FromSoftware, with Sony its next-largest shareholder after talks to acquire the company.

In a 2014 request, Oasis urged then-Nintendo president Satoru Iwata to develop Nintendo games for mobile devices, which it later did with games like Super Mario Run, Pikmin Bloom, and Fire Emblem Heroes. That wasn't an uncommon request. However, this same group is best known for saying, "We believe Nintendo can create very profitable games based on in-game revenue models with the right development team. Just think of paying 99 cents just to get Mario to jump a little higher," and have since been ridiculed for it in the decade since.

Of course, Nintendo did not, in fact, charge players 99 cents to make Mario jump higher, because Nintendo understands how video games work. That being said, that was over a decade ago now. Nintendo did enter the mobile game market, and aside from Super Mario Run and the best Nintendo mobile game, Dr. Mario World, it seems to have been pretty successful. And perhaps a decade of ridicule over that comment would have caused the minds behind it to understand games a bit more. Regardless, I don't expect we'll be paying 99 cents to post "try finger, but hole" in Elden Ring 2.

I played Elden Ring Tarnished Edition on Nintendo Switch 2 and rolled through the Lands Between as the new Knight class.

I've spent too many hours in the Lands Between. I've gone from a lowly Prisoner to Ranni's consort, delved deep below Leyndell in pursuit of the infamous Flame of Frenzy and, like most players, massacred countless Albinaurics along the way. Having earned every achievement across PC, PS5 and Xbox, I figured I was finally free of FromSoftware's open-world action-RPG masterpiece – but after playing Elden Ring Tarnished Edition on Nintendo Switch 2, I fear I will once again be charmed by the Grace of Gold.

Despite my initial concerns about the Nintendo Switch 2's limited hardware compared to the other platforms I've played on, I'm delighted to say Elden Ring runs very well in handheld mode, which is the only way I tested the game during my session. Although, I did briefly see the game running in docked mode and observed some lightly choppy visuals.

Field trip

Starting a new game run, I sprinted out of the Chapel of Anticipation. I was on a schedule, having been challenged to beat Margit before the playable demo timed out. I'm no speedrunner, but 15 minutes proved ample time to take a few swings at the Fell Omen – although that wasn't really my priority.

This brief scouting mission into Limgrave was to see how Nintendo's hardware handled FromSoftware's enormous title: the frames stayed consistent throughout, the audio was crisp and clear, the controls were responsive, and the Erdtree looked as majestic on Switch 2 as when I first laid eyes on it back in 2022.

The only downside I found while playing in handheld mode is the initial loading screen when beginning my session, which was long enough to awkwardly make eye contact with myself in the screen's reflection. Uncomfortably long wait over, I had as enjoyable an experience in Elden Ring Tarnished Edition as ever, dashing across the Tree Sentinel's path, before acquiring Torrent and galloping through the winding hills that precede Margit's spawning point. However, I did delay my assault to slaughter Varré because I've simply no time for anyone who calls me maidenless in 2026.

Having chosen the new Knight class for my playthrough, I immediately fell in love with the starting curved greatsword. It's huge (no, not too big to be called a sword), feels naughtily hefty when two-handed, and comes with an Ash of War that, when unleashed, sees the player character strike with a flamboyant spin that is reminiscent of Link's Beyblade-esque attack in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, albeit without the cartoonish lack of control.

As someone who enjoys playing strength builds in FromSoftware games ever since picking up the Zweihander in Dark Souls, I felt right at home with the Knight and their strikingly large suit of armor. However, the character type starts off on the overencumbered side, which means we're reduced to fat-rolling – dodging slowly, in lighter layman's terms.

This isn't how I'm used to playing Elden Ring but it's something I learned to live with quickly enough. Sadly, I made the discovery that my character was carrying too much weight when I tried to dodge one of Margit's attacks and took a comically hard hit to my helmeted face. I then realized the curved greatsword wasn't as long as I'm used to, resulting in another emphatic blow to the jaw. This time I didn't get back up.

Flattening Varré with my new weapon was over too soon, but Margit proved a perfect sparring partner for getting to grips with the Knight class. It's a hardy build that makes most field encounters feel trivial, but against a relatively agile boss character the vibe shifts to a more balanced, fair match up. I'll no doubt need to level up the starting blade, but otherwise this Tarnished Edition exclusive is exactly what I want for my next run of Elden Ring. Now I just have to wait for it to be released this year. Oh, and buy a Switch 2 now that I know Nintendo's device is capable of handling such a massive and magnificent game.

Here are 10 games like Elden Ring for when you've conquered The Lands Between

From Demon's Souls to Elden Ring, the obtuse, challenging dark fantasy RPGs FromSoftware is known for trace their roots back to King's Field, which launched in 1994 just weeks after the PS1 debuted in Japan. In hindsight, building an ambitious, open-ended RPG on a brand-new console with then-cutting-edge 3D graphics was a bold choice for a debut game, but it seems FromSoftware's very inexperience is what allowed it to lay out the blueprint.

At least, that's how Shinichiro Nishida saw it at the turn of the century. Nishida was one of the developers on the original King's Field, and still works at FromSoftware to this day, having most recently served as a systems designer on Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree. In an interview for the King's Field Verdite Trilogy Perfect Guide in 2001, recently translated by Shmuplations, Nishida laid out his feelings on the series up to that point and how it came to be.

"We considered various ideas" for a debut game, Nishida explained, "but since we were going to develop for the PlayStation, we decided fairly early that it would be a polygon RPG. It was the type of challenge a first-time game developer naively takes on – a kind of ignorance, in a way. Our president said, 'This game absolutely must be full polygon. We will be the first to release a full polygon RPG.' But it was tough in the beginning. (laughs)"

FromSoftware had existed for nearly a decade before it started making games, and it originally developed business applications. Nishida credited that experience in software development for how well the programmers were able to transition into making games for a platform that hadn't yet gotten a ton of development tools.

"We were originally an application developer and everyone was a programmer," he said. "In the very beginning we couldn't figure out how to display polygons, but once we got that working, it was like, 'ah, so that's how it's done.' So I don't recall the lack of development tools being particularly troublesome for us."

Nishida described the contract work FromSoftware was doing as a "tough business," which is part of why the company wanted to transition into making games. "We had concerns that continuing down that path would lead to a shrinking market, coupled with a desire to release our own creations to the world," he explained. "So it wasn't exactly a revolution for us, but we decided to try making games. The PlayStation was about to launch, and SCE was very supportive."

Sony and FromSoftware have ended up having a long relationship, with PlayStation having a hand in publishing both Demon's Souls and Bloodborne many years later. The King's Field series never proved to be more than a cult hit in its day, but it gave FromSoftware the formula that continues to power its biggest hits to this day.

Dev of acclaimed Persona-like says he "could find you 10 companies" that have pitched Bloodborne games, but it won't happen until FromSoftware thinks it's time.

"Hey, do you remember that Donald Duck game we used to play as kids?" My sister casually asks me, while watching Mickey Mouse Club House with my 10 month old niece. My eyes fog over. My heart races, and I'm seized by memories of a giant yellow bird hurling eggs at me.

Of course I remember Donald Duck: Quack Attack (or Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers if you're from outside Europe). How could I forget Donald Duck: Quack Attack? I don't think it's physically possible to forget the first game that ever truly scorned me and made me rage quit. Donald Duck: Quack Attack is worse than any FromSoftware title I have ever touched – it may look innocent from the outside but I assure you it's anything but.

"But Maddy, it's a Disney game, how bad could it be?"

Strap in and let me take you on a little journey through the horrors of this almost 26-year-old title.

Absolutely quackers

The premise of Donald Duck: Quack Attack is simple. Daisy Duck, who is now an investigative journalist, has been kidnapped by the evil magician Merlock because she went into his evil volcano lair on live TV and tried to tell the world his evil schemes.

Donald is racing against his arch-rival Gladstone Gander (an obscure character who I believe was only in Disney Comics, two episodes of Duck Tales and this game) to get Daisy back to safety. Luckily for Donald his friend Gyro Gearloose (another obscure Disney character) can get Donald to Daisy as he invented the brand new Gyro Gamma Tubal Teleport System – but it's too weak to reach Merlock's lair, so Donald must spend the game planting Gamma-Weather Vanes to boost its signal.

What ensues is essentially Crash Bandicoot via Disney. There are four worlds with four individual stages, plus one bonus one involving Huey, Dewey, and Louie which are only there if you really want 100% completion.

Much like Crash, it's a 3D platformer where you have to reach the end of the level, defeat enemies who are in your way and kill a big bad boss at the end to plant a Gamma-Weather Vane. It is a game for kids at the end of the day, so it has pretty simple controls and story, but oh boy is it anything but simple to actually play.

It may seem like I was hyping up the difficulty of this children's game by comparing it to the likes of Bloodborne and Dark Souls, and I really wish that was the case.

Here's the thing: I've completed those games. I have beaten bosses in the best FromSoftware games after hours of trial and error. I have come out of those titles with my head held high. But, and I'm ashamed to admit this, I have never bested Donald Duck: Quack Attack.

I know, I know, let's all point and laugh at me. Ha! Ha! I have never been able to beat a Disney game made for kids in my numerous attempts throughout the years.

Perhaps it's just me, maybe I just need to git gud. Or maybe it's the absolutely awful controls, camera and insanely large hit boxes for all enemies and harmful objects that are stopping me from completing this game.

The normal Crash-style sections are awful, as the camera constantly trails behind and struggles around corners. I can never actually tell how close I am to a hole or an enemy. I will die on the hill that Donald Duck: Quack Attack has the worst hit boxes in any video game I have ever played. Sometimes when I feel I am several steps away from an enemy I inexplicably get injured, causing Donald to fly off in a blind rage until he gets his hand on a milkshake.

Yes, that is how your health system works in this game. A little icon on the top right hand side of the screen shows a happiness meter for Donald, which is essentially your health bar. Get hit once and he becomes "Angry-Donald, hehe!!". This turns Donald into a cartoonish cloud of smoke who screams what I can only assume are the duck equivalent of expletives. This cloud of smoke makes you briefly invincible, which is nice – I'll give the game that. Get hit again though, and it's back to the start. That's right. Two hits and you're done for. Now I don't mean to sound like a baby, but it's that a little unfair for a kids game?

Then you have the side scrolling platforming sections, which are an absolute nightmare. The camera lags constantly, and Donald just seems to float around the place. I can never guess if the jump is actually going to land Donald on one of the platforms or send him into the abyss. The platforming is so difficult and precise that I fully expect to find a Dark Souls-esque message on the floor reading "Try jumping off" before I immediately fall to my untimely demise.

All of this cumulates into the absolutely gruelling boss fights. Forget Malenia, Blade of Miquella, she is absolutely nothing in comparison to Bernadette the Bird. This duck-chicken-thing was the bane of my life as a child. I hate her more than I hate the Godskin Noble, and that is saying something, because that roly-poly bastard still haunts my dreams.

Water off a duck's back

I've sifted through YouTube comments where people claim this game is easy, where the nostalgia wave hits and they say how much they love this game. I can't help but think they actually haven't picked this game up since they were seven. Watching YouTube playthroughs is one thing, actually picking up the controller and replaying it is another.

I was so confused about people saying it was easy that I actually sat my FromSoftware fanboy of a fiancé down and told him to play this game to see if I was just a bad gamer (I am, but that's not the point). He laughed, but after 40 minutes the laughter turned into despair, then despair to rage. He managed to reach the second boss fight, the Beagle Boys, before he rage quit and told me he never wanted to touch the game ever again. I have seen this man beat pre-nerf Malenia solo with a nasty bout of Covid. I have seen him power through some of the worst boss fights in FromSoft history and come out grinning. Yet, he was defeated by Donald Duck: Quack Attack.

Classic Disney games are a weird mix of pleasant nostalgia and pain. My father to this day still happily quotes the "OOF! What the!?" from the Mulan PC game in the part where you have a snowball fight. I remember happily baking cakes in My Disney Kitchen. But then when I think about the platformers Disney produced during this time I get a cold sense of dread. Many people bring up The Lion King for the SNES when they think about gruellingly difficult Disney games, but if you want something that'll make you fly into a blind rage like Donald, then try and get your hands on Donald Duck: Quack Attack.

Check out the best PS2 games of all time if you're hunting for more retro classics (ouch, I feel old)

Now that Sony's announced the closure of Bluepoint Games, the studio behind the Shadow of the Colossus and Demon's Souls remakes, the dream of a Bloodborne redux seems that much further away. A solo dev, who was purportedly told to stop working on his own take on FromSoftware's horror action RPG by Sony, has expressed his frustration and bemusement at the move.

"Sony sent me a cease and desist letter regarding my second Bloodborne remake project that I posted about in November 2024," Maxime Foulquier says on Twitter, with an image of the mail in question. "I told myself, 'OK… I expected this might happen. Maybe it's because a real Bloodborne remake is actually in development, with Bluepoint leading it for the PS6 launch?'"

This happened in March 2025, and he went on to repurpose the work he'd done for a new game influenced by Yharnam. The hope was to discuss it when this project was ready to be revealed, contextualizing its roots. Recent events make it more pertinent, though.

"Unfortunately, plans have changed. I'd rather speak about it now, as my disappointment is immense," he states. "The disappearance of Bluepoint is a tremendous loss for the industry and for the dream of a Bloodborne remake."

To be clear, there was no confirmation Bluepoint had anything to do with a Bloodborne re-release, but given the studio's success with Demon's Souls, it seemed somewhat probable. I mean, Sony bought the outfit after Demon's Souls came out – as a launch game for the PlayStation 5, no less.

"Why are you making such absurd decisions, Sony?" Foulquier asks, saying what I suspect many are thinking. "Shutting down such a talented studio while you're not even making a Bloodborne remake and on top of that, sending cease and desist letters to small fan projects? Are you serious?"

He's since shared a clip of his Bloodborne-inspired game, involving the player wielding a blade and a gun, taking out demonic entities in a gothic take on Paris. It's looking good, and definitely worth keeping an eye on, regardless of anything Bloodborne-related we see in the future.

Bloodborne "is a special game for me" says Hidetaka Miyazaki, and it's "the strongest reflection of my type of flavoring of a game that one can experience"

Fine, its post-apocalypse wasteland isn't as sexy as the thigh-high boots you'll find in a comparable game like Stellar Blade, and some people may not even see the romance in a chunky man made of steel, but Armored Core 6 Fires of Rubicon has its admirers. In fact, a whole fleet of fans in Japan have just decided FromSoftware's 2023 mecha shooter is actually an otome game, and they're in love.

This international update comes courtesy of Automaton, which has translated some posts fans made in support of a new decree: Armored Core 6 is a game for girls, because we said so.

More traditional otome games include popular titles like Piofiore or my beloved Love & Deepspace – they usually ask you to take on the, no doubt, tiresome role of a woman being pursued by many handsome men with no pores or facial hair. To the untrained eye, FromSoftware's stern robot game about being a laser-blasting mercenary may not seem very similar to this average, biscuits-and-tea otome experience.

But otome professionals in Japan can see Armored Core 6 blends right in with other suitors, particularly because the Augmented Human Rusty is so debonair.

"As an otome game player who was forced to play AC6, my impression is that it's an otome game," says one translated post. "Rusty is literally the typical guy from an otome game. That's why, my comrade, I don't want you to get killed by anyone except me. Let's kill (and love) each other like we should. Since you're gonna die anyways, let it be by my hand."

Another post explains, "His mecha is handsome, His weapon is handsome, His voice is handsome, His personality is also handsome, His theme is handsome," and on, and on.

So how can you resist? Trick question. As one player puts it, "I think Armored Core 6 is such a strange game because, though it wasn't made with women as the target audience, even when people call it an 'otome game' nobody gets mad.

"And the reason is because it turned everyone, even the guys, into pure-hearted girls. Yeah, I get it."

World's most popular horny RPG with over 50 million downloads gives up on decorum in "divine" update that's probably illegal somewhere: "WAITT WHATT??? FROM BEHINDD?"

Elden Ring and The Duskbloods both felt like very likely choices for games that had a chance of showing up during today's Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase, but after yet another presentation with no news for either, fans are starting to get slightly worried about FromSoftware's upcoming titles.

Elden Ring Tarnished Edition and The Duskbloods were both revealed to be coming to Switch 2 during the big dedicated Direct properly unveiling the console last year, with the former originally supposed to arrive last year and the former pitched as a 2026 release. However, Elden Ring ended up being delayed last October "to allow time for performance adjustments," while news on The Duskbloods has remained basically completely silent out of its series of Creator's Voice interview posts shortly after the reveal.

Needless to say, it feels like we're about due for an update on both, but that's not what happened today, and fans aren't taking it particularly well.

"NO DUSKBLOODS NEWS? I'M FALLING TO MY KNEES IN THE PARKING LOT," one dramatically writes. Riffing on the comparisons folks made to Bloodborne when it was reveal, saxophone-playing Soulsborne legend Dr. Doot jokes: "Man, Duskbloods really IS Bloodborne 2 (we're never seeing it)."

"Starting to think Elden Ring on the Nintendo Switch 2 has gone back to the drawing board," says another, while another concerned fan tweets: "I'm worried about Elden ring, maybe they're working on 60 FPS mode or something. I hope they didn't cancel it."

Meanwhile, if you've looked at any of Nintendo's tweets from today's Direct, you might have noticed perhaps the most dedicated Elden Ring on Switch 2 advocate in the replies. "Where is Elden Ring? god damned!" they write… 21 times. As you might expect, Nintendo hasn't replied.

So, disappointing as it may be, it's really just a waiting game for now – hopefully Nintendo and FromSoftware have news for us soon. The Duskbloods never got a narrower release window, so if it's looking to release nearer the end of the year, it might be a while yet before we hear anything.

The Duskbloods' winged rat "elderly gentleman" was actually FromSoftware's rare attempt at something "Nintendo-esque" and "cute."

Nintendo has confirmed the rumored Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase is, in fact, taking place later this week on February 5, 2026.

Rumors of a Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase arose last week, and it turned out to be on the money, so apologies to the fans disappointed that we won't be finding out about a new Mario or Zelda. Nintendo confirmed via the Nintendo Today app that the showcase will air later this week on Thursday, February 5 at 6am PT | 9am ET | 2pm GMT and will run for "roughly 30 minutes."

Obviously, Nintendo didn't say what would actually appear in this Nintendo Direct, aside from "upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 and Nintendo Switch games from Nintendo’s publishing and development partners." But a pretty safe bet would be Elden Ring, which was meant to come out on Switch 2 last year before being delayed to improve performance following a poor showing at conventions. And given how much Square Enix loves a Nintendo Direct, The Adventures of Elliott: The Millennium Tales is probably a shout too.

Speaking of Square, when it comes to surprise predictions, it may be time for the Kingdom Hearts series to finally arrive on Nintendo platforms in a form it deserves after the terrible cloud versions plagued the original Switch – like Capcom is doing with Resident Evil 7 and 8.

Plus, Capcom is bound to show a Resident Evil Requiem, Monster Hunter Stories 3, or Pragmata trailer, or maybe go even further with a port of Monster Hunter Wilds or Onimusha: Way of the Sword. And surely a port of a game like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 would be a no-brainer.

So in closing: I'm expecting only farming games and JRPGs, as is standard.

As Nintendo Direct rumors swirl, an updated Splatoon Raiders trademark releases copium

Bloodborne is "perhaps the strongest reflection" of soulslike legend Hidetaka Miyazaki's "flavoring" of a game, which makes the continuing absence of any kind of sequel even more painful.

Speaking to Game Informer, Miyazaki said that "Bloodborne is a special game for me" and that there were a couple of major reasons it remained so important to him. The first is that "it was probably the most challenging development cycle we've had from a studio perspective." To come out of that tricky creative process with the highest critical acclaim FromSoftware had ever received (at least until Elden Ring) clearly means a lot.

But possibly even more important than that, Miyazaki says, is how "personal" Bloodborne was for him. "I've imparted a lot of my own ideas into this game," he says, "whether it be the story, the world-building component, or even the game mechanics and the game systems that are in place." The result, he claims, is that Bloodborne "is perhaps the strongest reflection of my type of flavoring of a game that one can experience."

That's high praise, especially since Miyazaki has lent his expertise to so many excellent games. Bloodborne, however, retains a significant cult following, helped in no small part by the fact it's never escaped from its PS4 exclusivity. There's no PS5 version, PC port, or even a proper 60fps patch, despite the long-term efforts of the community. This year's Switch 2 exclusive, The Duskbloods, seems like it might be something of a tonal successor, but we're still yet to learn much about that, and a successor and a sequel are certainly not the same thing.

The worst part about all this is that Miyazaki knows just how popular Bloodborne is, and he's not afraid to tell us all about it. In 2024, he said he was "very happy" that so many people wanted to see a Bloodborne remake, and acknowledged just how badly people want a Bloodborne PC port. But apparently, it could be that popularity, as well as Miyazaki's fondness for the game, that's holding things up. Former Sony exec Shuhei Yoshida suggested that Miyazaki might be too "busy" to oversee work on a Bloodborne remake, remaster, or even sequel, but he also "doesn't want anyone else to touch it," which leaves all of us stuck in Yharnam limbo. Maybe 2026 will be the year.

10 years on, Bloodborne remains an unmatchable feat of atmosphere thanks to the mind-boggling oppressive scale of Yharnam.

The world of Elden Ring changed so significantly from the starting point established by Game of Thrones' George R. R. Martin that game director Hidetaka Miyazaki thinks his collaborator would be surprised by the end result.

Speaking with Game Informer, Miyazaki explained that while Martin helped lay the groundwork for the world-building and some character backstories, FromSoftware's narrative team were the ones that brought them to life within the world of the game itself. In some instances, he suggests, those changes were so substantial that Miyazaki thinks Martin would be surprised by exactly what ended up in the game.

The reason Miyazaki takes over, he explains, is because "as a player walks through this world, [...] they have a very fragmented understanding of the lore, the surroundings, and the type of monsters, whereas I don't." As someone who knows the game and its world in their entirety, he wants to make sure that the game's most important moments "aren't lost." To do that, he says that he brings "the map and level design" together "to serve as a guide, to help players pick up more information and piece together what they think that world is."

It might surprise GRRM – who did actually say that he thought the game "looks incredible" – but Miyazaki certainly thinks his approach was successful. Experimenting with the narrative base provided by Martin allowed the entire game to coalesce into an experience that he claims is a game that remains "in a league of its own," even several years after launch.

FromSoftware head Hidetaka Miyazaki says games like Elden Ring and Dark Souls aren't about "simply cranking up the difficulty; it’s doing so fairly"

Dr. Doot, a streamer known for completing difficult games using a saxophone as a controller, has defeated Dark Souls hitless. This recent achievement means that he has completed the entire Dark Souls trilogy and Elden Ring without taking any damage from enemies.

The streamer, who holds a doctorate in music composition, has made a name for himself by playing difficult games entirely on an electronic saxophone called an aerophone. Dr. Doot has not only completed these four FromSoftware soulslikes without being hit using his unusual input method, but has also finished Bloodborne and Sekiro deathless.

Dr. Doot posted a clip to Twitter, showcasing his dootful, but hitless fight against Dark Souls' final boss Gwyn, Lord of Cinder, marking the end of the run.

The streamer doesn't only use his dooting skills to complete challenge runs, such as the hitless soulslike fiesta, he also completes other challenging games on the aerophone, such as Cuphead, Hollow Knight: Silksong, and Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon.

Dr. Doot has previously completed Hollow Knight on his musical instrument of choice, but will now set his sights on full completion of the difficult Metroidvania. This includes the additional Pantheons added in the Godmaster update, which are known for their incredible difficulty.

The infamous platforming challenges, Path of Pain, isn't part of the game's 112% completion, but that doesn't mean he can't be convinced into trying it.

This streamer just beat a no-hit run of Dark Souls 3 with a saxophone controller, and they've got their sights set on Monster Hunter Wilds next.

Ever since Demon's Souls first came out in 2009, FromSoftware has had a reputation for releasing some of the most grueling games available. Dark Souls even came in a 'Prepare to Die; edition, proudly flaunting just how comfortable you’ll be getting with death during your playtime. Hidetaka Miyazaki director of many of these games, including Elden Ring, maintains that the difficulty spikes aren't unfair.

Speaking to Game Informer, he discussed the philosophy around putting players through their paces consistently. "I know we get a lot of credit saying that our games are difficult, but it's not a matter of simply cranking up the difficulty; it's doing so fairly," he states. "When players are killed and they can understand why they were killed in an instance, and it feels justified, that makes sense. That's the game we’re trying to achieve."

The devs have always understood, Miyazaki reveals, that people will occasionally be surprised and frustrated, but that's part of the rhythm of FromSoft releases. You enter an encounter, get flounced, but then learn from the experience, even if it was short. Was that an immediate attack? Or something environmental? Then rinse and repeat until cleared.

"I know a lot of players out there are probably going to disagree: 'What are you talking about? This game doesn’t make sense! What the heck?'" Miyazaki says. "But we try to make sure that there is a learning curve and a feedback loop that the players are able to extract that they can bring into the next attempt. We believe in difficult games, but not games that are unjustly or unfairly so."

Despite how many times I've died to Ornstein and Smough, I've long shared a similar view of FromSoft's wares. The team produces games that feel stricter than most competitors, with bosses that seem relentless at times. But it all stems from faith in your power to overcome - you have the tools and the ability, you just need to find the right alchemy between them to do so.

Little comfort when you’re trying to subdue Malenia in Elden Ring, mind, I'll give you that. But just know Miyazaki and the other devs aren't trying to ruin your day. It just comes with the territory, apparently.

FromSoftware didn't work with Sony on Dark Souls because of how the company failed Demon's Souls, says ex-PlayStation boss: "We definitely dropped the ball"

Since the release of Demon's Souls in 2009. FromSoftware has come to be the defining studio for 'Soulslikes', games that emphasize open exploration and character-building amid strategic combat where gnarly difficulty spikes. Hidetaka Miyazaki, the director of many of From's releases in this vein, doesn’t necessarily agree the company deserves such credit.

He spoke about the etymology of the term to Game Informer, where he explained that, really, From just understood what some players were looking for. "I know we've been credited [with inventing the term 'Soulslike'], but in terms of the game design, this idea of having death and learning as part of the core game cycle is something that the gaming audience was perhaps ready for," he says. "But there just wasn't the perfect answer for that appetite just yet."

Originally working on Armored Core, Miyazaki requested to be moved onto the nascent Demon's Souls, then a project higher-ups at FromSoftware weren't especially sure about. He introduced ideas from King's Field, an earlier sword-and-sorcery action-RPG series From developed through-out the '90s, and merged them with persistent online play, and eventually, the core loop of dropping your 'souls' when you died, and returning to retrieve them afterward.

This became fundamental to the entire SoulsBorne lineage, encompassing Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, and the assorted releases since, recurring across all Miyazaki's projects since. "What we discovered is it is okay to make games with death as part of its core gameplay loop, and our answer happened to land and resonate with various audiences," he explains.

"I don't necessarily think it's a new invention, per se," he adds, "it was more the FromSoftware DNA and our game design overlapped with what was perhaps missing from the market."

However you want to look at it, FromSoftware's games have only gotten bigger and bolder since, all connected by the frustration of losing tens of thousands of souls in an unexpected fight, then dying again on the mission back to a regular enemy you underestimate. It's not a Soulslike until you distill such frustration.

FromSoftware didn't work with Sony on Dark Souls because of how the company failed Demon's Souls, says ex-PlayStation boss: "We definitely dropped the ball"

Elden Ring Nightreign was a brave experiment, but not a wholly successful one. It's a swing, and while it's not a miss, it's also not exactly a home run. It's such a significant twist on a formula so well-defined and so beloved that it was always going to struggle to find its core audience, an attempt to fit the niche into the mass-appeal.

But while that might make Nightreign a strange victor on our best multiplayer games of 2025 list, the very fact that FromSoftware was prepared to give a project like this a chance will see it stand as one of this year’s most important titles — and I don’t think this is the last time we see an experiment like it.

Adapt or die

In many ways Nightreign is just more Elden Ring, and in the relative FromSoftware drought we find ourselves in after Shadow of the Erdtree and ahead of The Duskbloods, that was clearly welcome.

It's more casual than anything the solo Lands Between experience offered, but there was a zen-like quality in whaling on an unfortunate boss that I enjoyed, safe in the knowledge that even if I did get whacked, I wasn't going to get combo'd to pieces without one of my allies repaying our foe in kind.

And over time, as we learned the intricacies of the ways Nightreign's maps work — the speedy routes from place to place, the bosses that might be lurking around certain corners — it became less of a game of individual skill and more of optimization. It was still the Elden Ring we know, but with its own unique qualities. It's a game where as long as you're lucky enough to have friends to play with, playing as a team is far more important than defying overwhelming odds on your own.

That twist, away from raw ability and towards team-based efficiency, where picking the wrong fight at the wrong time could spell doom even if you won, was a fascinating adjustment to the Elden Ring format.

With the genre expertise that FromSoftware has spent decades refining, Nightreign was unlikely to be anything but a success from a technical standpoint. But restructuring the Soulslike format remained a gamble, an experiment around the studio's core ideas that wasn't a guaranteed success.

And while Nightreign's moment-to-moment gameplay is as clean as Elden Ring's ever was, that experiment still wasn't wholly successful. But in the years to come, it could prove crucial.

Good Night

Depending a little on your Soulslike skills, your mileage may vary, but I think there's 40-50 hours of gameplay where Nightreign is as good a twist on the original formula as I could have hoped for.

While you're getting your head around the best way to use the map to your advantage – contending with Shifting Earth, finding the best Relics, and remembering which version of Bell-Bearing Hunter you should flee from in abject terror – the roguelike structure is an excellent addition. It's repetitive enough to ensure you can actually develop the skills needed to progress, with enough random chance that runs feel meaningfully different from one another. It maintains the threat inherent to an hours-long Soulslike game, while granting enough resources to the player that it never feels trivial. It's an adaptation that feels like it truly understands both parts of itself - the Soulslike and the roguelike - in which no one genre feels totally dominant over the other.

As you gradually gain mastery over Nightreign, streamlining each run until you're maxing out your levels and finding time to actually think about your build rather than grabbing any weapon you see, the roguelike structure starts to wane.

Know the game, and you know your limitations. Know those, and the threat of Limveld starts to dissipate. You're not likely to die mid-run once you're familiar with Nightreign's tricks, which usually means hitting the roadblock of the Nightlords instead.

In standard FromSoft fashion, some of these final bosses are excellent pieces of design, and some of them are…not that. The less said about my experience fighting Augur, the better. But eventually you start ticking off each Nightlord too, and then Heolstor falls, and the world of challenging Everdark bosses and Deep of the Night beckons. And it's here for me that the Nightreign experiment faltered.

By the point at which you're ticking off Everdark bosses, you're about as intimately familiar with Nightreign's core experience as you're ever going to be. Often, I found that meant running the same route around the same map to look for the same gear, only to reach a final boss and get whacked by a moveset designed to be far more punishing than the original.

Both sides of Nightreign's late-game avenues are designed to give dedicated players enough to do that this spin-off can match-up to the original, and that means applying a lot of friction in a way that doesn't really match the roguelike feel of the rest of the game. In the end, I think my trio eventually decided we'd had enough collective beatdowns, and wordlessly decided to move on.

Onto the next?

If I sound peculiarly negative for a 'Best Of' retrospective right now, that's because my intention is to explain why the Nightreign experiment was only mostly successful, rather than a runaway triumph.

FromSoftware nailed the new, streamlined Elden Ring format, but didn't totally stick the landing on creating a roguelike endgame that could last dozens of extra hours. And that's fine – I got dozens of hours in before I hit my personal wall, and I had a great time. But even if Nightreign didn't totally excel from a design standpoint, it deserves recognition for a different reason.

As the amount of time between major AAA franchise releases swells into decades at some studios, projects like Nightreign will become an increasingly important part of the games landscape. Sure, you could be like Bethesda and re-release Skyrim 117 times in-between Elder Scrolls releases, or like Rockstar with a 13-year gap from GTA 5 to GTA 6, but I'm much more interested in what else could fill those spaces.

My mind turns to games like The Blood of Dawnwalker or Exodus, more modest projects attempting to occupy the space left open by the cadences of series like The Witcher and Mass Effect. Ironically, FromSoftware's intense workrate means that it's one of the bigger names that could get away without launching interim projects like this, but I hope that the success of Nightreign will stand as a message about how useful it can be to continue serving your audiences, even away from your biggest releases.

Look back on the year with our GamesRadar+ GOTY: The 25 Best Games of 2025 list.

2025 should have been the year where the maw that is Grand Theft Auto's cultural cachet consumed all. It only took five months for Rockstar to release a little oxygen into the room, the studio pushing GTA 6 into 2026 – a small act of mercy that allowed a very different conversation to shape.

We've had AAA behemoths clashing with AA trendsetters. The long-awaited emergence of Hollow Knight: Silksong after years spent in shadow. The launch of the Switch 2, powering a new generation of first-party Nintendo games. Xbox Game Studios' acquisition strategy blossomed as PlayStation took steps to reaffirm its market-leading position. Legacy franchise revivals and genre-redefining indie games, and titles which found strength in fostering connection and collaboration.

I have been covering the video game industry for almost two decades in one form or another, and I've long believed that you can learn a lot about the current state of play by examining the games which define any given year. That's certainly true of the best games of 2025 which, when taken together, tell a pretty compelling story about where interactive entertainment is today and where it may be heading in the future.

Below you'll find the GamesRadar+ ranking of the 25 best games of the year, culminating in our pick for Game of the Year 2025. And before you go, we would love for you to share what your GOTY 2025 pick is in the comments below. – Josh West
Editor-in-Chief, GamesRadar+

Games of the Year 2025

25. Mario Kart World

Developer: Nintendo EPD | Platform(s): Nintendo Switch 2

The decade-long reign of Mario Kart 8 finally drew to a close in 2025. Considered to be the pinnacle of kart-racing games, MK8 registered as the most popular title on the Wii U (8.4 million sales) and Nintendo Switch, with the Deluxe release finding its way into 69.5 million homes. So it came as no surprise when Nintendo engineered a sequel to help propel the Switch 2 launch into the stratosphere on day one.

Mario Kart World advances the core foundational design of its predecessor, expanding its scope with an interconnected open world and larger races than ever before. Innovative modes like Knockout Tour demonstrate that Nintendo is still capable of iterating in a genre it conquered long ago, while vibrant visuals and punchy performance ensure that Mario Kart World is undoubtedly an early system showcase. Fun for all ages and designed to thrive in multiplayer scenarios, Mario Kart World is a true delight.

Read Rollin Bishop's full review of Mario Kart World to learn more.

24. Two Point Museum

Developer: Two Point Studios | Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, Switch, Switch 2

Two Point Studios came into this world with a single purpose: to channel the spirit of Theme Hospital into a new vessel. The success of Two Point Hospital fuelled the creation of Two Point Campus, an entertaining expansion that nonetheless made us question whether the same trick could be pulled indefinitely. If Two Point Museum proves anything, it's that this foundational formula can work for as long as Two Point Studios can locate the appropriate settings.

The simulation is wider and more rewarding here, with Two Point Museum settling into compulsive cycles far faster than its predecessors once the depth of its underlying curation concept reveals itself over time. Establishing a popular exhibit, furnishing it with all manner of oddities and curiosities, feels more like an act of artistic expression than the workings of a demanding role in project management. It's rare to find a business simulation game that feels so full of life.

Read Heather Wald's review of Two Point Museum to learn more.

23. Dying Light: The Beast

Developer: Techland | Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X

After completing development of Dying Light 2, Techland faced a fork in the road. It could have followed in the footsteps of other independent studios like CDPR, leveraging measures of success to push for increasingly ambitious, risky horizons. Or it could head into the wilderness, taking time to interrogate why Dying Light attracted over 20 million players while its sequel seemed to only sow division. Techland decided to take the second path, and so Dying Light: The Beast was found.

It's remarkable, really, that an act of creative self-restraint led to such strong results. A shift away from a narrative-Legos approach to storytelling and world-building afforded Techland the space to deliver a far narrower, more confident vision. The sprawling playspace is densely detailed; daytime action freedom personified, the night a ballet of tension; combat, visceral and hard-hitting. The Beast is a careful iteration of the Dying Light concept rather than a grand revolution, and is all the better for it.

Read Jasmine Gould-Wilson's full review of Dying Light: The Beast to learn more.

22. Monster Hunter Wilds

Developer: Capcom | Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X

Monster Hunter World became one of the most important video games in Capcom history when it released in 2018, a revelatory action-RPG that transformed a niche series into a global phenomenon. A long-awaited sequel to the best-selling Capcom title was always going to draw attention and scrutiny in equal measure, which is part of what makes Monster Hunter Wilds feel like such a wild success story.

Questions remain as to whether Wilds has the longevity of its predecessor, although few would debate that this is pure Monster Hunter – the concept distilled and refined to its finest. There's something obviously compelling about the idea of journeying with friends to fell creatures, crafting increasingly audacious weapons from the remains, and then rampaging into combat against even more audacious monsters. Wilds perfects this by stripping out busywork and distraction, and by greatly increasing the depth of buildcrafting and customization. Whether you're solo or with friends, Monster Hunter Wilds is a riot.

Read Austin Wood's full review of Monster Hunter Wilds to learn more.

21. Ninja Gaiden 4

Developer: Team Ninja, PlatinumGames | Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X

In an era where difficulty has become almost synonymous with the Soulslike genre, what space remains for the traditional character-action game? That was the challenge development partners Team Ninja and PlatinumGames faced as they sought to revive the Ninja Gaiden franchise, some 13 years after Ryu Hayabusa's last 3D outing. Ninja Gaiden 4 is by just about every measure an unabashed success – a blistering combat experience which seems to revel in its balanced, bloodsoaked brutality.

PlatinumGames is perhaps best known for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and the Bayonetta trilogy, a collection of pristine character-action games that match dizzying spectacle with intricate underlying designs packed with punch and personality. That much is true of Ninja Gaiden 4 too, which quickly settles into a thunderous rhythm and never lets up across its runtime. It's frantic, demanding, and comically bloody at times, but we would have accepted nothing less from this franchise. All hail the ultra-violence.

Read Oscar Taylor-Kent's full review of Ninja Gaiden 4 to learn more.

20. Assassin's Creed Shadows

Developer: Ubisoft Quebec | Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, Switch 2

It may have taken Ubisoft 18 years to appropriately calibrate the Animus, but Assassin's Creed finally centered its attention on Japan. The setting had been long requested, and is thankfully well delivered. Assassin's Creed Shadows captures the majesty and beauty of feudal Japan, an expansive space that's densely populated with detail and distraction in equal measure. It's a staggering achievement; the sort of landscape that you'll gladly sacrifice hundreds of hours to exploring and uncovering.

In a sense, Shadows is a culmination of the journey Ubisoft has been on through the development of Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla to redefine what Assassin's Creed can be. Dual protagonists in shinobi Naoe and samurai Yasuke mean there's greater harmony between the series' stealthy spine and its action-RPG impulses than ever before; there's a degree of freedom here that is wondrous. So too are improvements to combat, movement, and progression. Assassin's Creed Shadows is an adventure worth taking.

Read Andrew Brown's full review of Assassin's Creed Shadows to learn more.

19. Pokemon Legends Z-A

Developer: Game Freak | Platform(s): Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2

It is somewhat ironic that a franchise so entirely centered around the concept of evolution is so incapable of doing so for itself. It's almost as if developer Game Freak has spent the better part of 30 years clutching an Everstone, afraid that letting this peculiar item slip through its fingers could inadvertently alter the appeal of a true titan of popular culture. Perhaps that's why Pokemon Legends Z-A feels so refreshing.

While Legends Z-A is hardly a true shock to the system, Game Freak introduces just enough iteration to revitalize Pokemon in a way that 2022's Scarlet and Violet failed to do. The battle system is the biggest draw with real-time combat that brings a dynamism to encounters in a way the tired turn-based framework never could. If you've been an aspiring trainer for a couple of decades, having routine battle strategies upended is thrilling – as is returning to Lumiose City so many years after Pokemon X and Y.

Read Catherine Lewis' full review of Pokemon Legends Z-A to learn more.

18. Split Fiction

Developer: Hazelight Studios | Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, Switch 2

Game director Josef Fares is such a chaos agent that it can be all too easy to forget that Hazelight has been quietly developing some of the best co-op games of the modern era. A Way Out was a sharp declaration of intent, It Takes Two a revelation – so what then of Split Fiction? Calling it a masterwork seems too overt of a suggestion, though there's little doubt that Split Fiction has raised the bar to new heights.

Designed to be played entirely in split screen (either local or online, mercifully), Split Fiction uses its strict two-player setup to deliver a staggering, consistently brilliant stream of unique scenarios and challenges – each conquered through the power of collaboration. The way Hazelight is able to wield its storybook frame to constantly rewrite the rules of engagement is truly brilliant, as is Split Fiction's ability to constantly subvert expectations with big ideas and bolder executions.

Read Sam Loveridge's full review of Split Fiction to learn more.

17. Lost Records: Bloom & Rage

Developer: Don't Nod | Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X

When Don't Nod deployed Life is Strange in 2015, it was a true turning point for a model of adventure game best epitomized by studios like LucasArts Games and Telltale Games. It also cast an exceptionally long shadow, setting a benchmark for quality and execution that's been virtually unreachable. Until the release of Lost Records: Bloom & Rage that is. Having spent five years experimenting outside of the genre it once redefined, Don't Nod returned with plenty to say.

While it's true that nostalgia is wielded as a weapon for self-reflection for those of the Gen X and Y persuasion, the way Lost Records is able to playfully reckon with its '90s setting is brilliant. The ability to seamlessly record anything and everything around you, piecing together little home movies, makes the personal playable – fostering real connection with the world and those who inhibit it before Bloom & Rage veers into strange, unfamiliar, inescapable territories.

Read Rachel Watts' full review of Lost Records: Bloom and Rage – Tape 1 to learn more.

16. Battlefield 6

Developer: Battlefield Studios | Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X

The reports of Battlefield's death were greatly exaggerated. It's astonishing that developer DICE was able to rally after the cataclysmic launch of Battlefield 2042, where a toxic combination of trend watching and over indulgence left an iconic FPS franchise fighting for relevance in a fast-moving market. And so DICE joined forces with three other studios at EA to plot a new offensive. Battlefield 6 is a resounding success.

While it's undoubtedly a love letter to the Battlefield 3 and 4 eras of all-out-warfare, the latest installment has plenty of new ideas to bring to the table. The grand-scale multiplayer experience is effectively unrivaled – particularly at a time where the genre's frontline has been drawn between battle royale and extraction shooters. Cooperation is key, bravery and bold action is rewarded, while the push and pull of its battle rhythms always makes it feel as if you're just inches away from victory or defeat.

Read Joel Franey's full review of Battlefield 6 to learn more.

15. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

Developer: Kojima Productions | Platform(s): PS5

There's an almost paradoxical tension at the heart of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. It wasn't the labyrinthine storytelling that defined the original adventure, but rather the friction that was generated through its interlocking systems and mechanics. Yet, Kojima Productions so clearly worked to sand down as many rough edges as it could for its Australia-set sequel – did the studio, helmed by iconic writer and director Hideo Kojima, not risk dispelling some of the magic?

That Death Stranding 2 is able to so resolutely succeed, even as it shifted focus away from long, solitary hikes across hostile, barren territories, speaks to its absolute quality. Movement and inventory management is slick, careful refinement making even the smallest action feel gratifying. Combat is greatly improved, making On the Beach feel like an expansive, Metal Gear Solid 5-inspired sandbox. And the social connective tissue tying everything together is better implemented, fueling a more well-rounded, albeit still utterly bizarre experience that's a must-play for all PS5 owners.

Read Oscar Taylor-Kent's full review of Death Stranding 2 for more.

14. Peak

Developer: Aggro Crab | Platform(s): PC

It's been a pretty torrid year for the video game industry. Mass layoffs, studio closures, consolidations, and increasingly widespread use of generative AI (automating work which could have otherwise been done by people working behind the polygons) all point to a core unsustainability in the market. But then something like Peak comes along, shifting no fewer than 10 million copies in just two months.

Peak is proof that a small, creative group of developers with a smart, central idea can still cut through the noise and find monstrous success. It's you plus three friends communicating over proximity chat, facing a massive mountain to climb together. A simple concept that belies the utter carnage that's created as players clumsily grasp at outreached hands, battle diminishing stamina bars, and manage fraying relationships as teamwork crumbles across increasingly hostile terrain. Peak is an essential co-op game, and undoubtedly some of the most fun you can have online with your buddies this year.

Read Ali Jones' review of Peak to learn more.

13. Dispatch

Developer: AdHoc Studio | Platform(s): PC, PS5

It's difficult to pinpoint the exact reason the episodic model Telltale Games pioneered fell out of favor, eventually leading to the studio shuttering in 2018. You could point to a lack of real forward momentum in design principles, or uneven release schedules which led to long delays between instalments, and plenty more besides. AdHoc Studio, staffed by former Telltale developers, has reckoned with these realities and delivered something that is truly definitive in Dispatch.

An interactive animated TV show as much as it is anything else, Dispatch saw its eight episode run deploy over three weeks like clockwork – a scheduling miracle that helped make this feel like a prestige release from Netflix or Prime Video. It certainly didn't hurt that every batch of episodes arrived with exceptional production values, and enough points of interaction to put you in control of the narrative. Factor in an all-star cast and Dispatch is a definitive superhero workplace comedy.

Read Oscar Taylor-Kent's all episodes review of Dispatch to learn more.

12. Avowed

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment | Platform(s): PC, Xbox Series X

2025 is the year Obsidian Entertainment emerged as one of Microsoft Gaming's shrewdest acquisitions. The studio launched two RPGs and a survival game into early access; what's staggering is how high the quality is for all three titles. Avowed launched early into this year and was undoubtedly the biggest risk of the group, a fully fledged role-playing game set in the wider Pillars of Eternity universe. This project could quite easily have gotten caught between two worlds.

Instead, Obsidian delivered one of the best fantasy RPGs of the year. Rather than act as an anchor, the lore of Eora was carefully woven into the fabric of the Living Lands – achieving balance between depth and approachability. The decision to focus on larger explorable zones rather than a seamless space paid dividends, allowing Obsidian to pack more detail and warped beauty into its landscapes, while a variety of combat setups ensure encounters never lose their magic.

Read Anna Koselke's full review of Avowed to learn more.

11. Blue Prince

Developer: Dogubomb | Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X

Blue Prince is special. It's also difficult to accurately describe, pushing anyone trying to explain this puzzle-adventure game into a series of 'what ifs'. What if Myst was reimagined as a roguelike? What if Mark Z. Danielewski's inimitable novel House of Leaves was adapted into a video game? What if an experience ostensibly about architectural drafting was one of the most engrossing games of the year?

Blue Prince is all of these things and none of them at all; a true curiosity. Each day you are tasked with exploring a mansion with an ever-shifting layout, your footsteps the key expendable resource determining when the 45-room space resets to zero. Randomized cards help you plot new routes around the mansion, with rooms leading to everywhere or nowhere at all – circuitous loops develop, only hastening a desire to solve the puzzle. The roguelike genre is saturated with smart video games, but Blue Prince shows there's still plenty of room for creative developers to innovate.

Read Oscar Taylor-Kent's full review of Blue Prince to learn more.

GOTY 2025: The Top 10

10. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2

Developer: Warhorse Studios | Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X

When this console generation draws to a close, it's likely that we'll view it as an era defined by the strength of its RPGs. From Baldur's Gate 3 to Elden Ring and beyond, we've been absolutely spoiled for choice. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 will undoubtedly be a part of that conversation, which is shocking when you consider just how purposefully hostile this realistic medieval RPG can be at times.

Warhorse Studios has delivered a massive, sprawling adventure that refuses to compromise on its core creative vision – a video game where friction and frustration are treated as features, rather than bugs. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 builds an exceptional experience around the hardships of existing in 1403, effortlessly immersing you into the period with rich storytelling, system-heavy progression and combat, and a lush visual design. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is an ambitious video game that succeeds on its unwavering commitment to kicking players down a few pegs.

Read Alan Wen's full review of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 to learn more.

9. The Outer Worlds 2

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment | Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X

The Outer Worlds 2 is a really interesting example of what a bigger budget can unlock for a fantastic development team. When the original The Outer Worlds released in 2019 from Obsidian Entertainment and publisher Private Division, it was clear that a great concept was being throttled by a restricted scope. What then of its sequel, built in partnership between Obsidian and Xbox Game Studios? Well, it's undoubtedly one of the best RPGs of the year.

The Outer Worlds 2 is a clear love letter to Fallout: New Vegas, with Obsidian inspired by the depth and flexibility of its legendary 2010 RPG. But that isn't to say that this venture across the Arcadia colony system is some sort of throwback. The Outer Worlds 2 is a rich RPG with an expansive creative vision, with deep character building, nuanced storytelling, and exceptionally slick combat propelling the series to new heights. Whisper it, but The Outer Worlds 2 may just be Obsidian's best game to date.

Read Heather Wald's full review of The Outer Worlds 2.

8. Elden Ring Nightreign

Developer: FromSoftware | Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X

Elden Ring was our Game of the Year for 2022, our staff captivated by the billowing scale and complexity of FromSoftware's opus. The promise of more was unsurprisingly well received, even if Nightreign did threaten to take a somewhat unfamiliar shape. The honed, measured design of Elden Ring's first area, Limgrave, replaced by a procedurally generated Limveld – home now to three-player cooperative action. A big gamble, but FromSoftware is always up for a challenge.

Elden Ring Nightreign takes the underlying combat principles which defined the original adventure and hastens them, shoving your group into increasingly difficult encounters across a three-day cycle to prepare for battle with a final boss. It's frantic and frenetic, the threat of a shrinking gameplay circle and risk of sacrificing all of your progress in death a compelling wrinkle to the Soulslike standard FromSoftware established long ago. Nightreign is a big change of pace, and a fun new challenge for genre veterans.

Read Will Sawyer's full review of Elden Ring Nightreign to learn more.

7. Ghost of Yotei

Developer: Sucker Punch | Platform(s): PS5

It's funny to think there was a time where many believed that 2025 would be a slow year for the PS5. It's an exceptionally silly observation in hindsight, although few could have predicted that Sucker Punch would deliver a defining system showcase in Ghost of Yotei. The platform recently celebrated its fifth anniversary and here we are with an open-world adventure that feels truly boundary-pushing.

Whether you're coming in for the striking vibrance of its environments or the sheer violence of its expertly crafted samurai combat, Ghost of Yotei is a wonderfully smart sequel. Sucker Punch shifted the action a few hundred years beyond the events of Ghost of Tsushima, a decision which allows the studio to take some bigger swings with its revenge thriller story, open-ended approach to exploration, and meditative progression systems. If you're after an open world game where beauty and brutality is in equal measure, don't delay your dive into the wilds of Ghost of Yotei.

Read Andrew Brown's full review of Ghost of Yotei to learn more.

6. Silent Hill f

Developer: NeoBards Entertainment | Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X

It's been three years since Konami embarked on its Silent Hill redemption tour. A salvo of new video games were announced all at once, an effort designed to return some relevance to a franchise that's been on life support ever since the great Silent Hills debacle of 2015. The Message hardly set the world alight, although Bloober's remake of Silent Hill 2 demonstrated that the series still holds some power.

And so all eyes turned to Silent Hill f, a standalone spinoff that shifted perspective away from misty, rural American to the fictional Japanese town of Ebisugaoka. An inspired decision, with developer NeoBards Entertainment engineering one of the series' most oppressive atmospheres to date. Unsettling storytelling and a more robust approach to combat encounters makes this one of the strongest original Silent Hill adventures in decades, and a sharp declaration that Silent Hill still has plenty to offer the horror genre.

Read Oscar Taylor-Kent's full review of Silent Hill f to learn more.

5. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Developer: MachineGames | Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X

You may be wondering why a video game that was released in 2024 is on our list of the best games of 2025 to begin with, let alone ranked so highly. Well, that's easy: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle landed on PC and Xbox Series X after our voting cutoff, making it eligible for this year's showing. As for why it's a top contender: MachineGames overdelivered with this original Indy adventure.

Anchored by an exceptional performance from Troy Baker, expertly capturing the gravitas and mannerisms of Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is an exceptional globetrotting journey that may as well have been unearthed from some hidden Steven Spielberg archive. The blend of first and third-person perspectives sells the idea that you are embodying one of the most iconic characters of all time with ease, while the grandiose puzzle solving and slapstick combat only adds to the authenticity of this adventure.

Read Josh West's full review of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle to learn more.

4. Hollow Knight: Silksong

Developer: Team Cherry | Platform(s): PC, PS5, Switch, Switch 2, Xbox Series X

The weight of expectation should have been crushing for Team Cherry. Hollow Knight was a slow burn success story that effectively redefined what a modern Metroidvania could be, making its sequel one of the most anticipated video games on the planet. Team Cherry worked for six years in relative silence, the internet filling the void with an exhaustive flood of memes, rumors, and speculation. Could Silksong ever truly live up to the hype that had been thrust upon it?

Within minutes of its release, Hollow Knight: Silksong brought the world to a standstill. It literally crashed Steam. And what did millions of payers find when they were finally able to step into the unfamiliar land of Pharloom? A mesmerizing, utterly uncompromising sequel that wields its blunt edges as a mark of honor. The challenge dramatically increased, combat imbued with fluidity, platforming sections far more unforgiving; and yet, at its heart, Silksong is brilliance personified.

Read Oscar Taylor-Kent's review of Hollow Knight Silksong to learn more.

3. Donkey Kong Bananza

Developer: Nintendo EPD | Platform(s): Switch 2

The Nintendo Switch 2 was always going to be a hit on day one. Its predecessor is on track to outstrip the Nintendo DS as the best-selling Nintendo console of all time, so it's no surprise that millions were ready to leap onto a more technically proficient system. The question mark here was always what Nintendo would align within the launch window to keep players hooked into the ecosystem. Who'd have thought Donkey Kong would be entrusted to carry that great burden?

For his first starring role in a 3D adventure in over two decades, Donkey Kong absolutely smashed it out of the park. Donkey Kong Bananza has echoes of Super Mario Odyssey in its underlying DNA, though Nintendo has gone out of its way to imbue this experience with dazzling personality and transformational gameplay hooks. Destruction shines bright in Bananza, and the opportunity to really dig into the depths of some iconic Nintendo level designs should not be missed.

Read Dustin Bailey's full review for Donkey Kong Bananza.

2. Hades 2

Developer: Supergiant Games | Platform(s): PC, Switch, Switch 2

Supergiant Games develops brilliant video games with outrageous consistency. What it doesn't do is develop sequels. There are legions of players who were left wanting more from the worlds Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre inhabited, but it was Hades' labyrinthine underworld that the studio couldn't resist returning to. A cynic may point to the success of Hades as the sole reason for Hades 2's existence, but it's quite clear that Supergiant had more that it wanted to say.

Hades 2 is a phenomenal roguelite dungeon crawler. A best-in-class addition to the genre, setting new standards for combat, characterization, and progression. Supergiant routes many of its freshest ideas through Melinoë, a new protagonist who shines in expanded, vibrant playspaces. Refined combat allows for more skillful expression, while buildcrafting finds new depth through a wider selection of tools and divine boons. Hades 2 is a more than worthy successor to the game that redefined the roguelite forever.

Read Ali Jones' final review of Hades 2 to learn more.

GOTY 2025

1. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Developer: Sandfall Interactive | Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X

The rise of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been meteoric. The debut from Sandfall Interactive started the year in relative obscurity, on the radar of few beyond true genre enthusiasts. By the year's end, this stunning RPG is clearly the defining video game experience of 2025. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 cleaned house at our reader-voted Golden Joystick Awards, and was the clear GOTY 2025 choice from the GamesRadar+ team by a considerable margin. Let's dig into why.

At its heart, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a love letter to the Hironobu Sakaguchi games of old. The father of the Final Fantasy series clearly left a lasting mark on the relatively small group of developers who make up Sandfall Interactive, inspiring the studio to deliver a high-fidelity, turn-based RPG the likes of which are so rarely seen in the modern era. In many ways, Expedition 33 picks up where legendary Xbox 360 exclusive Lost Odyssey left this style of game back in 2007.

There's a similar commitment to storytelling excellence, with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 quickly establishing an exceptionally vast, layered world to tumble into with ease. Lost Odyssey also had this perverse obsession with trying to make players cry, another aspect which shines in Expedition 33 through its expressive character development and wonderful performances. And then there's the combat, another modern interpretation of classic turn-based battle systems that gradually reveals its tactical depth through streams of challenging encounters.

I say all this not to accuse Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 with being some sort of throwback, succeeding off of pure nostalgia alone. But rather because it's worth highlighting just how long the wait has been for a studio to pick up this particular baton and run with it. Expedition 33 pushes the genre forward with its flexible and expressive systems, with real-time actions helping to heighten the tension of every turn-based encounter. Progression is nuanced, the world-building precious; the story and soundtrack work in perfect harmony to create this gripping, heartbreaking atmosphere that you can't turn away from.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a transformative RPG that should be experienced by everyone.

Dive deeper into why Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is our Game of the Year for 2025 with our interview with the team at Sandfall Interactive.

Celebrate the best of 2025 with GamesRadar+

There are a few things you can count on in a FromSoftware game: inscrutable lore, lots of dying, and a swamp. There's always a swamp, and though late to the party, Elden Ring Nightreign is no exception. New DLC The Forsaken Hollows has brought on some swampy marshland, and even the devs are in the joke at this point.

Wandering around Limveld post-The Forsaken Hollows, you'll notice some muddy, toxic areas that'll poison you or inflict several other status ailments. These parts of the map are as tricksy as Blighttown or Valley of Defilement, and should be treated with caution. The team is conscious of FromSoft's reputation here, but it really is just a quirk of how they design games.

"We're definitely aware of the [swamp] meme," Junya Ishizaki, Nightreign's director, tells GameSpot. "It's not like there's a rule or any sort of policy here where it's like we have to have a swamp in there, but it always seems to be [that before you realize] someone's come up with the idea, it's already sort of in there, and it's just sort of taken a life of its own."

To be fair, these toxified marshes do tend to be quite different from one another. The Ashina Depths in Sekiro are a separate mutation to BloodBorne's Nightmare Frontier, and they're a contrast again to Farron Keep in Dark Souls 3. There are tropes - frustrating enemies and some truly annoying heath-draining side-effects - but they do feel distinct from one another.

"The main game for Nightreign did not have a swamp, so I do see what you mean now, having it added after the fact with the DLC," Ishiazaki adds. "But yeah, it's definitely one of those things that [it] always just seems like [our game] ends up with a swamp. Even if there's not a specific rule like, 'Oh yeah, we have to put that in there,' [that's] just always how it kind of ends up."

The Forsaken Hollows comes out December 4, bringing two new Nightfarers with which to trudge through Limveld's newfound murky depths.

Elden Ring Nightreign stats reveal FromSoftware survivorship bias, suggesting its "most deadly" world bosses had their numbers padded by bruised loot goblins

What are the hottest video games that you need to have on your radar as the end of the year approaches? With Summer Game Fest and Gamescom in the rearview mirror, knowing where to place your attention is easier said than done. That's why Hot 25 exists, to help you cut through the noise and connect with the world's most anticipated video games.

GamesRadar+ launched Hot 25 in the summer, a list updated quarterly that tracks the hottest games of the moment. The Fall Edition of Hot 25 is designed to reflect the games that are turning our heads right now – the ones we know you're going to fall in love with too. It doesn't matter whether a title is set to release in a couple of weeks or years beyond that, Hot 25 tracks the 25 hottest games deserving of your time today.

We've been keeping a close eye on the video games GamesRadar+ readers have been gravitating towards, not to mention the titles you keep shouting about in our comments section and across our social media channels, to help build a list of viable titles. From there, the GR+ Editorial Team voted to lock in the hottest of the lot, and from there Hot 25 was born. So keep scrolling to find the Fall 2025 Edition of Hot 25, and don't forget to let us know what your most anticipated video games are by voting for your favorite and leaving comments below.

The Hot 25: Summer 2025 Edition

The Final Countdown

11. Forza Horizon 6

Platform(s): PC, Xbox Series X | Release date: TBC 2026

2026 is going to be a massive year for Xbox Game Studios. The publisher is working to deliver new installments to the Forza, Fable, Gears, and Halo franchises within a single calendar year as Xbox celebrates its 25th anniversary. Forza Horizon 6 was announced at the Tokyo Game Show in September, a fitting location as developer Playground Games revealed that the open-world racing adventure will be set in Japan. That's been a long-requested locale for a series best known for letting you race around some truly stunning vistas. There's still so much we need to learn about Forza Horizon 6, but with Playground already out there promising its largest open world to date (not to mention a stunning realization of the Japan setting) we cannot wait to get our hands on this one.

10. The Blood of Dawnwalker

Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X | Release date: TBC 2026

The Blood of Dawnwalker is going to be one of the most talked-about video games of 2026. It's the debut project from developer Rebel Wolves, a studio staffed by former CD Projekt RED veterans (including the game director of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt). This upcoming single-player RPG has you take on the role of a Coen, a Dawnwalker that's suffering both silver poisoning and a vampiric curse – an ailment which pushes and pulls you in different directions as you set out on a quest to save your family. You'll have just 30 days to try and achieve this, with every major decision that you make in the gothic open world shifting the time of day forward. Time is as valuable a resource here as the weapons you carry on your back, making The Blood of Dawnwalker one of the most unique offerings of 2026.

9. Onimusha: Way of the Sword

Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X | Release date: TBC 2026

It has been 20 long years since the last mainline installment to the Onimusha franchise, a legendary action-adventure series that was once considered one of the best reasons to own a PS2 (here's a fun fact: Onimusha: Warlords was the first game on the platform to achieve one million sales). Capcom is looking to wield that legacy as it prepares to unleash Onimusha: Way of the Sword in 2026. If you're looking for an old-school action-adventure game then you need look no further, with Capcom going out of its way to stress that Way of the Sword is not a Soulslike – there's a more resolute focus on fast-paced action, clashing blades, and sharp timings to survive vicious onslaughts. Everything we have played of Way of the Sword so far has impressed, so the return of Onimusha can't come soon enough.

8. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

Platform(s): Nintendo Switch 2 | Release date: December 4, 2025

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond may not be the last video game to release in 2025, but it's certainly the most anticipated. It's been 18 long years since developer Retro Studios delivered Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, with the extended wait leaving many worried that we'd never again steer Samus Aran through a strange, hostile alien world. But here we are, readying ourselves for a descent into the depths of Viewros, a planet besieged by rival bounty hunter Sylux of Metroid Prime: Hunters fame. Retro is taking some big swings with Beyond, embellishing Samus' power suit with a suite of new psychic abilities and the introduction of a far broader world to explore – a space you'll navigate with a motorbike. There's a lot of unanswered questions about Beyond, but it is undoubtedly the Switch 2 release we can't stop thinking about.

7. Fable

Platform(s): PC, Xbox Series X | Release date: TBC 2026

Playground Games has never released a third-person RPG before, yet it has been entrusted with bringing about a return to Albion in 2026. It's an undoubtedly massive undertaking, although we have faith that the team can bring about a faithful reimagining of Fable for modern audiences who have instead grown up playing fantasy RPGs like The Witcher 3 and Baldur's Gate 3. Playground is best known for developing the Forza Horizon series, games that contain stunning depth and detail, with best-in-class mechanics packaged into some of the best-looking open-worlds the industry has to offer. From what we have seen so far of Fable 4, that same commitment to excellence is being applied here. It's been a decade since Fable Legends was canceled and Lionhead was shuttered, so expectations are high; but all signs are pointing towards this being one of the definitive RPGs of the incoming year.

6. The Duskbloods

Platform(s): Nintendo Switch 2 | Release date: TBC 2026

The release of a new video game from FromSoftware is always cause for celebration, with the studio on a frankly ridiculous hot streak. The last decade has brought us Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Elden Ring, Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon, and Elden Ring Nightreign – so what then should we expect from The Duskbloods? Well, it's a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive for one thing. Legendary game director Hidetaka Miyazaki is hard at work shaping one of the key reasons to adopt the new platform in 2026, with The Duskbloods promising action-RPG brutality in PvP and PvE combat. FromSoftware is clearly building on its experience with Nightreign here, shifting gears into more gothic territories to inform its world design and combat specialties. The Duskbloods is different, but FromSoftware has never been afraid of bucking expectations.

5. Grand Theft Auto 6

Platform(s): PS5, Xbox Series X | Release date: November 19, 2026

Delays out of Rockstar North are as expected as day turning to night. It's why we weren't all that surprised when GTA 6 was delayed from May 26 to November 19, 2026. The developer has cited a need for additional polish to explain away the release date change. It's likely those six months will help prepare Rockstar for what will surely be the biggest entertainment release of all time, particularly as hype for this long-awaited return to Vice City is already stratospheric. It's already been over 12 years since the release of GTA 5, so surely we can all hold out for just a little longer.

When GTA 6 does land in 2026, you'll be following dual protagonists – Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos – as you set about causing chaos in the wide open world of Leonida. We're yet to see raw gameplay footage, but everything shown to the world so far demonstrates Rockstar's proficiency for delivering technical excellence. So much of GTA 6 has been under lock and key, but the promise of guiding Duval and Caminos through a statewide conspiracy after a failed bank robbery is sure to be the only thing the world is talking about come November 19.

4. The Witcher 4

Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X | Release date: TBC

Of all the video games which have charted on our updated Hot 25 list, The Witcher 4 is the only one unlikely to launch in 2026. In fact, it's likely that this RPG is still years away from release – with developer CD Projekt RED working to both deliver on its massive ambitions and avoid the pitfalls which sank the launch of Cyberpunk 2077. Still, The Witcher 4 has been lodged in our minds ever since the studio released a stunning Unreal Engine 5 tech demo over the summer, a showcase of the technology that's threatening to raise expectations for open-world RPG design.

It's still early days for The Witcher 4, but we do know that the experience will focus on Ciri – charting her journey as a Witcher following Geralt's retirement at the end of Wild Hunt. A new protagonist means you should expect a new powerset to grapple with, particularly as CDPR has already been vocal about its desire to integrate Ciri's proficiencies with sorcery directly into combat. Fiery new weapons and more dynamic monster encounters are inbound, so too is a more densely detailed and reactive world to explore. The Witcher 4 may be on the distant horizon, but it looms large over a genre CDPR has revolutionized time and time again.

3. 007: First Light

Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X | Release date: March 27, 2026

007: First Light is transforming into something relatively unexpected. When it was announced that IO Interactive was taking up the challenge of developing a modern James Bond game worth playing, many assumed we'd be getting a reskinned Hitman. The studio has, after all, built a reputation for creating wildly reactive stealth games set across self-contained environments. It was easy to imagine Bond working in this sort of framework, albeit with the focus shifted from assassination towards espionage.

What we're getting instead is far more ambitious, and exciting. 007: First Light tracks a young Bond as he works his way through the MI6 training program, yet to earn the legendary '007' code name and the license to kill which comes along with it. What continues to surprise us about First Light is how cinematic its action and set-pieces look. Hitman meets Uncharted is a comparison that's being made, and not all that far from the truth. What's staggering is the wealth of choice and opportunity that is being put on display, giving you the freedom to roleplay Bond like never before.

2. Resident Evil Requiem

Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X | Release date: February 27, 2026

What secrets will emerge from the ruins of Raccoon City? That's the question on everybody's mind as we inch ever closer to the release of Resident Evil Requiem. Capcom is shifting gears after RE7 and RE8, looking beyond the adventures of the Winters family to refocus on the core timeline. You'll be playing as Grace Ashcroft, daughter to Alyssa Ashcroft – one of the primary protagonists in Resident Evil Outbreak, the co-op focused spin-off from 2003. She'll be venturing into a city which defined the earliest years of the franchise, some 30 years after the US Government eradicated it with an experimental thermobaric missile.

Everything we have played of Resident Evil Requiem so far points to it being a horrific celebration of all eras of the series, perhaps best represented in how the game gives you the freedom to play in either first- or third-person perspectives. Regardless of how you choose to play, the action is tense; Capcom is working to create something truly terrifying, the sort of experience where your movements are measured in inches due to the fear of what awaits around every corner. Expect Resident Evil Requiem to not only be one of the biggest games of 2026, but a true GOTY contender to GTA 6.

1. Marvel's Wolverine

Platform(s): PS5 | Release date: Fall 2026

Just as we were starting to fear that Marvel's Wolverine would slip beyond 2026, Insomniac Games appeared to not only lock in a Fall 2026 release window but deliver an absolutely stunning first look at this adventure in action. The studio has of course established a reputation for delivering best-in-class superhero games through its work on Marvel's Spider-Man, so it should come as no surprise that Wolverine appears set to be an authentic realization of the character and the violent world he occupies.

Marvel's Wolverine isn't pulling any punches. It's an exceptionally bloody action-adventure where you'll guide Logan on a globetrotting journey for answers. The combat is slick and fluid, environments bathed in blood as you slice, rip, and tear through foes with sharp adamantium claws. There's a ferocity underlying everything which we just didn't expect to see from such a prominent first-party exclusive.

Ferocity, and a keen attention to detail. Marvel's Wolverine will clearly be the PS5 system showcase for 2026, with its dazzling visual effects and cinematic setpieces. There are still questions to be answered surrounding the difficulty (Logan does have a rapid healing factor, after all), but these concerns fade to the background every time we see more of the game in action. Wolverine and Insomniac appear to be a match made in heaven, which is why Marvel's Wolverine is clearly the hottest video game on the planet right now.

Elden Ring Nightreign players are already frightened of its new DLC thanks to one fight that looks like the worst part of every Soulslike game.

The big finish for Sony's first big State of Play Japan show was Nightreign DLC, with FromSoftware introducing a new area, two new classes, and two new bosses to the co-op action RPG. The base game was somewhat of a FromSoftware greatest hits collection, with returning boss fights from previous Soulslikes, and The Forsaken Hollows DLC is set to bring one of the most terrifying bits of past entries with it – the multi-man melee.

One of the boss fights included in the new DLC shows off seven figures all armed with spears, and this evokes the worst part of every Souls game – the dreaded multi-enemy boss fight. Some of these are iconic, like Ornstein and Smough, while some are considered the worst fights in their respective games, like the Skeleton Lords… Deacons of the Deep gets away with it for having a great song attached.

Fans on the Nightreign subreddit are somewhat fearful, with a screenshot posted of the seven enemies captioned, "This fight is either gonna be one of the best, or one of the worst, there is no in between." One user comments that it'll depend on whether this is a boss fight where all seven attack you at once for the ultimate gank, or if they have set patterns to go by where you're required to play carefully.

Another user says FromSoftware has shown that "consistently they aren't very good at making multi-enemy boss fights," while someone else argues "most of their multi-enemy boss fights are good when the 'multi' part is a core design choice and not them slapping two enemies in the same arena and calling it a duo boss" – which, given the Godskin Duo's existence, I'm inclined to agree with.

However, some fans have theorized that this isn't going to end up being a multi-man fight at all, with one user saying, "I feel that the boss fight isn't in truth seven bosses, but yes, that the boss moveset is her cloning herself." Regardless, I know for a fact we'll be seeing complaints from players about this fight the instant they arrive in-game.

Elden Ring Nightreign "performed well beyond initial expectations," FromSoftware parent company says, and DLC could take it even further

Arrowhead Game Studios, maker of last year's gargantuan shooter Helldivers 2, takes inspiration from fellow heavyweight developer FromSoftware in one crucial way: they don't mind turning some players off.

That's according to Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani, who tells the Game Business Podcast that the company's unofficial slogan is "'a game for everyone is a game for no one.'"

What does that mean in terms of production? "We try to stick to our design guns and design what we think makes sense for us rather than try to go for the widest audience possible," Jorjani explains. "That doesn't mean that our hope and intent isn't that the game will resonate with a very wide audience, but kind of like how FromSoftware does it as well. They don't compromise, they go for the connoisseurs, but a lot of people can be attracted to that."

You can see that thinking pop up in Helldivers 2 in all sorts of ways - friendly fire that leads to hilarious, if sometimes annoying deaths, or the massive enemy types that force you into cooperation. Helldivers 2 clearly chases a very specific type of experience, and that's not too dissimilar to the way FromSoftware makes its games, hair-pulling quirks included, whether that's Dark Souls or Elden Ring. And, as Jorjani points out, that philosophy can also lead to massive hits.

"One of my mandates as a CEO is to be a force of good for the industry, I think if we can inspire a few more studios to stick to their guns and show that giving more power to the creators and believing their vision can actually go all the way, I think, is a strong thing rather than going the opposite direction," Jorjani concludes.

Helldivers 2 has "no plans to add cross progression" even though Arrowhead CEO says "we'd love to" as "other things take priority"

While the overlap of FromSoftware fans and Switch 2 owners may not be huge, they've received some bad news all the same. The Elden Ring port for Nintendo's portable system is delayed into 2026, and people are shockingly alright about it.

FromSoft's epic was announced for the Switch 2 back in April of this year. While Nintendo players have had to wait a few years to get their hands on the fantasy action RPG, they get a special version, the Tarnished Edition, which includes the base game and the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC.

Originally, and optimistically, planned to make 2025, the release will now come out sometime in 2026, per the official Twitter account. "While development on Elden Ring Tarnished Edition continues wholeheartedly toward release, we have decided to move the launch to 2026 to allow time for performance adjustments," reads the post, which goes on to apologize to fans.

Though disappointing, it's not surprising. We'd heard very little about this iteration of the hit game since it was first revealed, and with only two months left of the year, a push was starting to seem likely.

Players are taking the announcement surprisingly well. "Fair play, I'd rather it releases in a better state than broken for two weeks whilst you sit around for a patch that breaks your internal memory due to size when you DL it," says one response.

"Makes a change for them to delay a game rather than just release it in a mess," another dryly adds. Poking at FromSoft working on performance problems is a common theme, since ports of the studio's projects often need some work post-release to become stable.

There are demands for physical, non game-key card cartridges rather than being digital only too, as some Switch 2 releases have been. That's a detail we probably won't hear about until launch, but it's good to know the demand is there. However it comes out, a whole bunch of new players are about to discover the wrath of Malenia, the Goddess of Rot, and I can't wait for their reactions.

The FromSoftware modder who put Halo maps into Dark Souls is back with an equally absurd but exciting mod: "I ported Morrowind to Elden Ring"

Bandai Namco and FromSoftware have been hard at work improving their new multiplayer roguelike spin on Elden Ring, the long-awaited Nightreign, since its release in May – and a new patch following the Deep of Night launch proves that work isn't over.

The Deep of Night was added earlier this month after Nightreign's biggest patch ever as a "high-difficulty" mode with enhanced enemies and a challenging Nightlord whose identity isn't revealed until the expedition begins. It's brutal – so brutal, in fact, that FromSoftware basically decided to add its first-ever easy button to the game with this latest update, allowing players to voluntarily demote themselves and make it easier. That wasn't enough, though, it seems.

New Elden Ring Nightreign patch 1.02.3 has now finally arrived, as detailed on the official Bandai Namco website, and it doesn't just add "a feature to decrease your Deep of Night Depth level by one level" – it also boasts various "balance adjustments," with nerfs for Elden Ring Nightreign bosses and various buffs for the roguelike action RPG's players. The first one increases both "attack power and stagger damage" for the strong and dash attacks of most weapon types.

The second boosts "the stagger damage for dual-wielding jump attacks for Thrusting Swords" – but the buffs don't end there. Another increases "the potency of the 'Improved Skill Attack Power (+1, +2)' passive effects," while other tweaks target healing and more. One that has personally caught my eye (I struggle to keep my health up, OK?) is an adjustment to the Gradual Restoration Flask, allowing it to "provide a small instant heal upon use."

It's not all about buffs, though – and trust me, there are many – as FromSoftware has brought a plethora of nerfs to make expeditions a bit smoother in light of recent difficulty complaints. "Reduced the HP of the night boss version of Ancient Dragon, The Duke's Dear Freja, Tibia Mariner, and Great Wyrm," as reads the first of the so-called "combat and enemies balance adjustments." The next makes Valiant Gargoyle "easier to stagger and reduces its HP."

Patch 1.02.3 also reduces "the HP and attack power of 'Maris, Fathom of Night' during an Everdark Sovereign 'Augur' Expedition in the Deep of Night mode." There's plenty of other helpful changes, and if you're a struggling Nightfarer yourself (as I am), the full notes from Bandai Namco are worth a read – I'm just hopeful they don't spark some of the typical "git gud" discussions such updates on Soulslike games usually do.

It seems like much of the community agrees that the Deep of Night mode is indeed quite challenging, however, judging by discussions online – so who knows, perhaps a majority might agree that the patch 1.02.3 adjustments are much-needed.

Bloodborne remake hopefuls, brace yourselves: Insider says "nothing is happening with Bloodborne, so don't expect that"

FromSoftware diehards have been pleading for something, anything, Bloodborne-related for several years now, in particular a remake/remaster or official PC port, but sadly it seems like none of that's happening for quite some time.

During a recent episode of Jeff Grubb's Game Mess podcast (thanks, GameSpot), Grubb and his fellow Giant Bomb co-owner Mike Minotti got onto the topic of PC ports, which Minotti remarked have seemingly "slowed down a little bit recently."

Referencing Bloodborne on PC specifically, Minotti said Sony "can't move on that unless FromSoftware is involved, and they're busy," presumably with the recently released Elden Ring Nightreign and the upcoming Switch 2 game, The Duskbloods.

Grubb chimed in and said, "it seems like they don't want to do it with Sony," they seemingly meaning FromSoftware, clarifying,

"Anything beyond From Software would have to be involved and they're not going to do it right now, I don't know. But that's my understanding of the situation and it continues to be that way. I checked in on it relatively recently and kind of continue to hear, 'Nothing is happening with Bloodborne, so don't expect that.'"

While Grubb, like any human being, has gotten things wrong in the past, his track record is generally solid. Unfortunately, that means he's probably right about this and Bloodborne fans will likely be waiting a long time for a PC port, remake, or dare I say it, sequel.

Hopefully the next time I update y'all on Bloodborne it's with better news.

Fortunately, we still have everything on our list of the best FromSoftware games to keep us busy until then.

No one thought it would happen, but it happened. FromSoftware is adding an easy button to one of its notoriously challenging games.

You are not daydreaming, and this isn't fanfiction – no judgement on what tabs you have open, though. It's the gritty truth: Elden Ring Nightreign recently got the atomic-level difficulty mode Deep of Night, which has proven to be simply too destructive, so a new update will allow players to voluntarily demote themselves and make it easier.

This apparent first for FromSoftware rides along with several Deep of Night changes the developer details in a set of patch notes posted September 19. "An issue resulting in your Depth level ranking not increasing after a victory in the Deep of Night mode has been identified," the developer explains. While introducing what it describes as a "temporary fix" to this ranking error, FromSoftware has chosen to make several notable "quality of life" adjustments. The most interesting, I think, is that "new feature to voluntarily decrease your Depth ranking by one level."

In another notable tweak, the Nightreign update – which does not yet have a release date – will give out "rank demotion protection" to players who reach Depth levels 3, 4, and 5, making sure they won't lose a Depth level after facing defeat.

"The rank loss protection will be applied for 1 defeat for Depth level 3," FromSoftware writes, "and 2 defeats for Depth levels 4 & 5. This protection also applies even after reaching these levels again after a Depth level demotion."

"Lets go voluntary derank," one Elden Ring Nightreign player reacts on Reddit. Don't mind if I easy mode.

Elden Ring Nightreign's Deep of Night mode is out today, and it's "high-difficulty" even by FromSoftware standards: new red-tier gear, 3 more relic slots, and uber-buffed enemies.

All games used to be hard by virtue of not really having endings. It's not like the sort of difficulty challenge you find in Hollow Knight: Silksong is only a modern trend. Arcade games stretching back to the '80s were designed to balance the thrill of score chasing with munching quarters – no game was truly finished before a kill screen literally broke the code. Donkey Kong will be beaten but always rise. The Centipede will keep descending. And Pac-Man will forever be hounded by ghosts. And, as we all know, video games have come a long way since Pac-Man.

To grossly oversimplify the trajectory of tricky games – this trend continued with home console gaming through the '90s where relatively short and simple games would last you multiple replays with life systems, and began to soften up when storylines came to the forefront alongside memory cards for saving game progress. Eventually, on PS3, the enigmatic world of Demon's Souls captivated many with its old school design, developed by the equally old school FromSoftware. Demon's Souls' sheer hostility and demanding nature of its fights became a defining trait that'd be honed to a fine edge with Dark Souls. It's from this trend of Soulslikes that Hollow Knight: Silksong takes inspiration.

The bigger they are...

Difficulty isn't the only thing that makes a Soulslike, but it is one of the most obvious – both to spot as a player, and to hone in on as a designer. Not all imitators match up – and I have played a lot – sometimes leaning too hard on sheer difficulty for difficulty's sake and missing all the other ways FromSoftware's games feel so good to play.

One of the reasons Hollow Knight and Silksong stack up is that – despite being in 2D and fusing Soulslike DNA with that of a Metroidvania – developer Team Cherry really understands what makes FromSoftware's series tick. Exploration isn't just about progression, but about unravelling a mysterious world and piecing together scraps of information to build a bigger picture of a land fallen to ruin. Strange characters aren't just hanging about waiting to be killed, but provide vital color and clues to move forward. The ancient insect kingdoms of Hallownest and Pharloom in Hollow Knight don't just go horn-to-horn with Dark Souls' worlds – they drip with so much atmosphere that at times they can genuinely surpass them.

Crucially, Hollow Knight and Silksong's boss fights – often large and intimidating just like in Souls (though both series also have some superb duel-style fights) – aren't trying to be hard simply to make you crumble. Instead, these flashy moves all have clear tells that enable you to learn how to react, and lists of moves that aren't long so you can actually remember them. Even FromSoftware stumbles with this from time to time – I'm looking at you Dark Souls 3 DLC.

Compared to its predecessor, though, Hollow Knight: Silksong is definitely harder – feeling like there's a direct line between it and the original game's more challenging post-launch updates. Silksong is more demanding from earlier on, from harsh platforming gauntlets to how all the bosses dish out double damage like they got a bargain two-for-one offer they couldn't refuse.

Plenty of bosses feature lengthy and tricky 'runbacks' to re-challenge each boss when you die, and a currency-hungry resource system means nabbing checkpoints, maps, or even refilling your tools to use in battle can force you to grind screens at a time just to get back on neutral terms with boss fights. They can factor towards an unwelcoming hostility and get in the way of enjoying Silksong's best moments, which I grappled with in my Hollow Knight: Silksong review.

All the above may be familiar to those who have played FromSoftware's own games. Dark Souls revels in it, and the gothic-dripping followup Bloodborne even more so (where you're especially delicate due to a lack of shields). Likewise Sekiro, which centers more around a specific authored ninja character build, also has you burn through resources to use its own ninja tools.

Yet, even in older FromSoftware games, the lengthiest runbacks aren't too tough to master, dodging respawning enemy hordes in three dimensions and cutting down ledges where you please just makes it more forgiving to sprint to the boss fight without taking damage.

Even though I was raised on tricky 2D platformers, I have to say – I think Hollow Knight: Silksong being a side-on platformer as well as a game about epic combat clashes is one of the major reasons so many will find it tougher. I can feel my battle scars from the likes of The Revenge of Shinobi, Rocket Knight Adventures, and heck, I'm not afraid to say it, Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (the blue blur is colorful but back in the day he took no prisoners – I'd like to see you revisit Metropolis Zone), itch when I tumble into thorns and meet my demise in Silksong.

Bell to pay

There's one specific sequence in Hollow Knight: Silksong that'll stump many towards the end of Act 1. Each time, you have to chain together multiple bounce jumps over health-shredding hazards, evade strong aerial enemies that shoot projectiles that ricochet off walls, and also stay away from a couple of big hulking tanky dudes as well. I can clear it 90% of the time perfectly, and it takes about 30 seconds to do so. But having to do it every time you want to retry a boss fight is brutal even for me, and I've become pretty numb to this kind of high skill jump gauntlet. The simple truth is that few high-profile games play in this space at all. Silksong as a cultural phenomenon will likely entice many to jump in who wouldn't even think to play a tough-as-shells platformer.

Nothing in Elden Ring requires that amount of consistent dexterity every time you need to retry something. It has its fair share of tricky jumps as you explore, but rarely does it ask you to repeat them over and over again, and there it's more about careful falling and angling that it is about flips and precision. Solid reaction times will help you out in Elden Ring, but it's not quite the bee-all-end-all it is in Silksong (by the way, that's not a typo – I was going for a kind of bee as an insect thing to fit into the game's bug theme).

Even when it comes to boss fights, Hollow Knight: Silksong is less forgiving than Elden Ring. For starters, simply being on a 2D plane limits your ability to avoid boss enemies, meaning you can only really go over or under hulking foes – while feeling the pressure of encroaching attacks. No circle strafing here. In my experience too, Hornet's dodge doesn't have the kind of iframe grace you often get in Elden Ring. You better have a clear window of escape.

Elden Ring and its Dark Souls brethren are just different kinds of games too, where despite serving tough challenges there are always a multitude of ways to mitigate the difficulty. Online co-op is one, of course – but even solo you can level up and build your stats in certain ways to, for instance, focus on dodging while dishing out immense damage, or go the other way, turtling up to soak as much as possible.

Crucially, though, Elden Ring represents a culmination of FromSoftware's many years making these games, and knowing where to shave off friction just enough to keep players invested in mastering its most devious designs. Almost every fight in Elden Ring did away with runbacks entirely, Stakes of Marika provided respawn points distinct from its full-featured checkpoints to give the option to jump back into the fray. On the rare occasion Elden Ring ditches having a Stake of Marika, the pain of runback repetition is well and truly felt. It's why I have such a vendetta against Dragonlord Placidusax. And, thankfully, we've not felt the pain of running out of Sekiro's Spirit Emblems since.

I'd prefer it if Hollow Knight: Silksong made more use of some of the quality-of-life improvements FromSoftware has brought to the table over the course of its series. With a whole bunch of rebalancing coming from Team Cherry for Silksong already, maybe we even will. But I think it's because Hollow Knight: Silksong channels even older magicks that its own challenges are truly difficult – the pain of feeling so overwhelmed you have to yank that cartridge out of the Sega Genesis and click it back into the large plastic box, jamming something more soothing inside instead, like Columns.

Hollow Knight Silksong has made me realize how much the Steam Deck has changed the way I play games

On the heels of the biggest Elden Ring Nightreign patch yet, developer FromSoftware and publisher Bandai Namco released a new trailer for the action RPG's incoming Deep of Night mode, which will bring new challenges, gear, and multi-day sagas.

Deep of Night is coming to Elden Ring Nightreign today, September 10, at 6:30pm PT / 9:30pm ET / 2:30am BT (September 11). This "high-difficulty" mode sees players cleave through day after day of bosses and enhanced enemies to delve deeper into the night, with Depth 4 being some sort of finale that leads into an "endless battle for those seeking even greater thrills."

"We encourage you to try and see if you can surpass Depth 3," Bandai previously teased.

Today's trailer goes into much more, er, depth. Deep of Night modifies the normal gameplay loop with a new tier of gear, special weapon affixes, and three extra slots for relics with their own unique affixes.

"Depth Relics" are only active in Deep of Night, and since you get three extra slots for a total of six, they won't derail your normal builds.

These relics can roll new and stronger effects, as well as detrimental effects to counterbalance them. It looks like every roll can have a downside, so you'll have to weigh the advantages and disadvantages against each other for your build.

Here are some of the new negative relic effects shown in the trailer:

• Reduced Vigor and Arcane
• Reduced Dexterity and Faith
• Reduced Intelligence and Dexterity
• Taking damage causes Madness buildup
• Taking damage causes Poison buildup
• Taking damage causes Blood Loss buildup
• Reduce damage negation for flask usages
• Lower attack when below max HP
• Poison buildup when below max HP
• Rot buildup when below max HP
• Near death reduces max HP

Some weapons will also spawn with multiple affixes – some positive, some negative. In the trailer footage, there's a recurring theme of negative affixes punishing you for being below full health, but there's a greater variety of effects beyond that. You can also roll multiple positive affixes on one weapon, it seems.

Red-grade weapons, which share the level 7 wield requirement of purple-rarity weapons, feature unique new bonuses. We saw a Jar Cannon that summons lightning on precision shots, and a Blade of Calling that triggers Holy shockwaves on charged attacks.

Even normal enemies will be stronger in this mode, and super-buffed red-tinged variants will also appear. Terrifyingly, this includes a red version of the Bell Bearing Hunter, an enemy so tanky and lethal even in normal Nightreign that most players avoid it entirely. As you might expect, these variants drop those fancy red weapons. Red-eyed, red-tinged BBH, here we come.

"In Deep of Night, the target Nightlord will not be revealed until the battle begins, and ongoing Shifting Earth at the Roundtable Hold will not be reflected," the trailer narrator explains.

"It is advisable to prepare relic presets in advance to be ready for each Nightlord fight."

The deeper you go, the stronger enemies become. You'll also run into special modifiers, including a nasty one that conceals points of interest on the map and another that completely hides the target Nightlord. Additionally, Everdark Nightlords can randomly appear.

With Everdark versions of all the non-final Nightlord bosses already available, Deep of Night feels like the next step in the Nightreign arms race as we wait on that DLC. The fact that it has a true endless mode feels like FromSoftware saying, "Here you go, sickos, knock yourselves out." And as a sicko who was just getting tired of Nightreign, yeah, I'm thinkin' I'm back.

I love Elden Ring Nightreign but I'm not sure if it's good for my mental health.

Elden Ring Nightreign patch 1.02.2 is rolling out on all platforms, and it's by far the largest update to ever come to FromSoftware's oddball PvE action RPG. It's also among the most player-friendly updates in the developer's modern history, drowning fans in so many buffs and boss nerfs that we're practically playing a different game.

Publisher Bandai Namco has the lengthy patch notes posted here. For starters, every single Nightfarer has been buffed. Here are the key points:

• Wylder's skill got minor boosts for poise and stamina damage, but his special relic effects for added fire damage got significant buffs.
• Guardian gains more strength and dexterity when leveling, deals more damage with halberd guard counters, has greater "angle range" on his Steel Guard passive, and his ultimate art's weapon portion has a wider range.
• Duchess now gains more dexterity when leveling, deals more damage with some dagger attacks, and her ultimate art's invisibility lasts longer.
• Raider deals more stagger damage with greataxes and great hammers, and his skill has longer range. (Relatedly, dual-wield jump attacks for "some large weapons" now deal reduced stagger damage.)
• Revenant's spirits have "adjusted" transparency, and you can now pass right through the spirits Helen and Frederick.
• Recluse deals more damage with the offensive Magic Cocktail, and this will cast spells more quickly. The relic effect that boosts her max HP after her ultimate has increased potency and now "persists until an attack is received, even after the art's duration ends."
• Executor has higher attack power with his Cursed Sword, which is higher still when it's in its unleashed state, and some of his beast-form attacks will deal more damage.
• Ironeye didn't receive character buffs, presumably because he's already one of the best Nightfarers in the game, but his "extends duration of weak point" relic now extends the duration even more.

Several neutral relic affixes have also been enhanced, including continuous HP recovery, HP and FP restoration from specific weapon attacks, runes earned from critical hits (this was previously a pathetic flat amount), and HP restored from using items like healing boluses.

There are a few player nerfs slipped in here. Two legendary weapons, the Grafted Blade Greatsword and Marais Executioner's Sword, got some adjustments, and it sure sounds like a nerf. Their passive effects now have a cap, reining in the infinitely stackable stat boosts, but their effects have also had their potency adjusted "accordingly," so maybe we'll gain more power more quickly. I don't think FromSoft wanted us to have 10,000 HP or one-hit bosses, though.

One popular relic, which improves poise and damage negation when knocked back by an attack, has had its duration reduced, seemingly to weaken the functional invincibility that can be attained by stacking low-HP and knockback effects.

Some nerfs work in our favor. As expected, the notoriously difficult Everdark Sovereign Equilibrious Beast has been adjusted.

The summoned condemned Guardian now has reduced attack power, re-summoning condemned no longer increases their damage negation, and various condemned behavior – like reaction to ranged attacks, or target priority "under specific combat rules" – was tweaked. The light dropped by defeated condemned Nightfarers will also grant "increased" enhancement.

Other bosses have been buffed. Everdark Fulghor deals more damage with "some attacks" and – here comes the FromSoftware-mandated Guardian downer – greater HP and stamina damage through guard. Everdark Sentient Pest also deals more guard damage, but the stagger duration of some of its attacks has been reduced (hopefully reducing the stunlock AoE combos).

Two other points stand out to me. Firstly, the Night's Tide will now deal more damage after you beat the second night boss, further limiting farming strategies.

Secondly, FromSoftware has "adjusted the design of the Holy attribute icon," which was famously hard to distinguish from the Lightning icon. The Holy icon now has a noticeable dark orange tint to it. It is a glorious day.

Elden Ring Nightreign answers your unholy prayers with extreme "Deep of the Night" challenge mode, and it even has an endless option.

Wait, I don't know if anyone's ever said this to you before, but did you know that FromSoftware games are actually considered extremely difficult? Yeah, I've been trapped in a Smithing Stone mine for the past three years and wasn't aware. This is a phenomenon invading the globe like wind – even beloved composer Yuka Kitamura, whose music encouraged FromSoftware bosses to be at their most soul-crushing for 12 years before she left the developer in 2023, has trouble playing the games she helped create.

"During composition, I would often watch the gameplay in debug mode," Kitamura says in a new interview with French site PlayStation Inside, translated by the publication, "partly because I couldn't beat the boss myself! Experiencing the game directly like that helped me time the music in a way that felt more authentic and emotionally synced with the player."

Kitamura has worked on a number of landmark FromSoftware titles, including Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring. It seems like, the whole time, she sensed you might have trouble with some of the monsters she made music for – Malenia, the magisterial, health-regenerating Blade of Miquella being one of the more notorious examples. But while she says "I always try to create music that follows the player's experience closely," Kitamura also thought the average player's experience with FromSoftware was similar enough to her everyday life.

"To be honest," she admits, "I'm also someone who struggles to defeat bosses in games, so I genuinely empathize with the frustration and difficulty players experience. That sense of 'I understand' has always been at the core of my music.

"During the creative process, I often found myself facing challenges as well – going through revisions or feeling stuck creatively. In many ways, I was also in a position of persistence and trial. I think that natural sense of resonance with the player's emotional journey may have found its way into the music."

Elden Ring, Bloodborne, and Dark Souls' seminal composer is now making music for the last game anyone expected.

Are you a FromSoftware sicko who loves doing challenge runs to make these tough games even more difficult? If you said "yes," you're in luck, because Elden Ring Nightreign is getting a new difficulty mode: Deep of Night.

Starting September 11, you'll be able to try out this "high-difficulty challenge mode designed for seasoned players who have navigated through the Night many times." But what's actually harder about it?

First of all, and probably most obviously, the enemies you face will be stronger. You also won't be able to choose which Nightlord to face, so you'll have to prepare for them all.

Some new items called Depth Relics, which can only be found doing the Deep of Night challenge mode, will be available to find. I don't know what they do, I just know that I want them. Additionally, there will be weapons with more effects on them, but some of these will be detrimental to you.

Like Bloodborne's Chalice Dungeons, the difficulty of the Deep of Night challenge will increase the deeper you descend. Bandai Namco states, "the ratings will fluctuate based on wins and losses, affecting the 'depth,'" and encourages you to try and get past Depth 3.

If you do, Depths 4 and 5 will have an endless battle, so you can really test your mettle and see how long you can survive. You can read Bandai Namco's full explanation of the new feature right here.

Over on ResetEra, fans are joking about FromSoftware finally adding a difficulty option. "Monkey paw. From adds difficulty settings — it's hard mode," reads one comment.

While you wait, check out the best online games you can play with friends right now.

Elden Ring Nightreign's new, enhanced Everdark Sovereign Equilibrious Beast fight is here, and in what's a pretty appropriate turn of events for a foe all about balance, the fanbase is completely divided on him.

The original, base form of Libra, Creature of Night, is one of Nightreign's toughest foes. He's a Madness-based boss – which is already one of the trickier status effects to deal with – not to mention his arsenal of aptly chaotic moves that can easily lay waste to a team if he's not dealt with effectively.

So, how did FromSoftware go about making him even stronger for his Everdark version? As well as giving him a few more tricks up his sleeve like the ability to turn your allies invisible and remove a level from you mid-fight, he's also able to spawn in multiple Condemned – basically, hostile clones of the Nightfarers who can also deal massive damage to you alongside the actual boss, turning it into a gank fight.

Some fans are embracing the chaos this new fight has brought with it. "It's definitely a Madness-themed boss fight. I love him," one player on Reddit writes. "Hate it," another comments, before editing their post: "Edit: love it now."

Another adds: "First boss in a while that got my heart-rate to spike. I don't like gank bosses but this one seems more chaotic than unfair," while one says: "Honestly it's my favorite fight thus far."

Others aren't so convinced. "Not a fan of it. He creates the clones too often," one argues, while another says that it "feels like of all the cool bosses with infinite potential (three fingers, body warping/horror, chaos flame) they went with the most irritating gimmick. It's not that hard but it is kinda repetitive and irritating compared to what could have been done for the most hyped Lord."

Some fall more in the middle, declaring that it's "both way too fun and way too hard." Perhaps that's how more players will feel when we've had more time to get used to the fight.

It'll be interesting to see how players feel about the upcoming Everdark Gladius when he releases, given it'll be an enhanced version of what's currently the easiest Nightlord in the game. For now though, as one player puts it: "Half the community hates Libra, half loves him. This is what he would've wanted."

Elden Ring does it again: Bandai Namco lights a cigar with digital profits up ¥7 billion partly thanks to 5 million+ Nightreign players, and doubles down on Sony collaboration.

If there's one thing Germans can do, it's rave. Streamer HandOfBlood put his commitment to dance to the test by playing numerous games, from Elden Ring to Street Fighter 6, all while partying to some hard techno behind the DJ at a club I now desperately want to go to.

As reported by Dexerto, the streamer played several games in a packed club as pounding techno played and strobe lights flashed all around him. Being able to get through any game with that level of distraction is wild, but playing Elden Ring that way is next level.

While this isn't a challenge run per se, it certainly puts a lot of them to shame. At the very least, it makes me want to see all the challenges redone in this setting – especially the one where someone beat Malenia using a dance pad.

This all started for HandOfBlood when one of his friends sent a DJ to his place to mix while he was playing Elden Ring at home. Apparently, the stream was a hit and so the gimmick became a regular feature.

HandOfBlood does look at home in the club, pumping his fist one moment and then settling back to his mouse and keyboard the next.

You may be familiar with Crossmauz, another German streamer who brought the spirit of raving to their gaming sessions by blasting pyrotechnics and techno whenever they got a kill in Modern Warfare 2. Well, HandOfBlood is just like that except he's playing in a club, not his bedroom.

While you're here, check out the best FromSoftware games you should play.

Elden Ring Nightreign recently released the Everdark version of what's widely regarded as its most boring boss fight, Augur, and as many players had feared, the beefed-up version has made a long, floaty boss fight even longer and floatier.

Augur is basically a giant floating wisp that occasionally deigns to attack the player with magic and sleep spells. Everdark Augur is a massive floating wisp that unleashes sleep carpet bombs and constantly flies across the entire, gigantic boss arena. The kicker is that, after dealing with the normal, puny first phase, you get a special magic weapon that you can use to regenerate FP and launch projectile attacks at Everdark Augur, whittling away its chunky health bar.

The thing is, those special projectiles are about the only meaningful way to damage Everdark Augur. Even ranged characters like Ironeye and Recluse will struggle to hit the boss with arrows or spells due to how high it floats and how much it moves, and other attacks probably wouldn't deal much damage anyway.

This means that all the gear you pick up on the way to the final boss is mostly irrelevant, because you're going to be pigeonholed into spamming projectiles no matter what. As a result, buildcrafting for an Everdark Augur run boils down to maximizing stats like magic or weapon skill damage, healing, stamina recovery, FP recovery, and universal bonuses like that.

It's not that Everdark Augur is hard or brutal. The boss genuinely isn't very threatening. Its attacks are pretty easily avoided or blocked, and since the charged projectiles on the special weapons have more range than an anti-tank rifle, you can kind of ignore any concept of spacing or proactivity. But would you believe that a monotonous, pigeonholed, tedious boss fight has not gone down well with a lot of FromSoftware fans.

"'I love the Augur fight so much, I wish it was longer and he traveled a full zip code away with every attack' - No one ever," writes Reddit user CtrlAltDoom, summing up much of the response to Everdark Augur.

SynthLup questioned the bizarre decision to force players to use custom magic weapons against a boss that has high magic resistance. (It is weird.) "Honestly impressed how Everdark Augur made Base Augur look fun," chimed in No-One-9424.

I would actually disagree there. With a buddy, enjoying Nightreign's new duo expeditions, I died to and then beat Everdark Augur last night, and I would argue that at least the music and visuals are good. That said, it is very underwhelming compared to the other Everdark bosses, but I suppose this was expected given how dull Augur is as a baseline.

The special weapons feel like a solution to a problem that didn't really need to exist, but I suppose it is at least different, and arguably interesting, to buildcraft for one specific strategy that's unique to this boss fight. It is kind of lame how multiple classes are just inherently unfavored in the matchup, though. All characters have their bad matchups, but nothing else quite like this, I would say. But this fight does get some brownie points for reminding me of the Storm Ruler boss in Demon's Souls, which is still one of my favorite FromSoftware games.

The good news is that there are a few ways to make Everdark Augur very manageable, if not particularly electrifying. Your_Pal_Kailum has a pretty good writeup that includes many of the strategies my friend and I incorporated in our successful fun. The tragic irony is that this actually makes this boss exceedingly farmable, as it can be difficult to fail once you know what you're doing. Here's a shortlist:

• Stay far away from your teammates (unless you need to revive them) to reduce AoE overlap
• Make an empty spot in your main hand weapons to instantly equip the special weapon when you acquire it
• Focus on transferable stat bonuses when drafting rewards and gear throughout the run
• Take any form of sleep resistance you can get
• If the lock-on will cooperate, focus on Augur's energy orbs when they appear to stun the boss
• Use your weapon's fully charged projectile attack when the boss is extremely far away, as it seems to have functionally infinite range
• Try to find a Sacred Seal with a healing spell on it, because you'll have infinite mana, and therefore infinite healing, thanks to the custom weapon's FP regeneration

FromSoftware had one big problem turning an old Dark Souls 3 boss into an Elden Ring Nightreign boss, and apparently it solved it by yeeting him into the sky.

After countless requests and a mixed reception at launch, Elden Ring Nightreign has finally made good on its promise of adding a two-player duos mode to the game.

Developer FromSoftware dropped a new update, patch 1.02, earlier today, introducing what is by far the co-op hit's most-requested feature. Nightreign's patch notes explain that you can now begin expeditions with two people, so you might notice the 'Expedition Type' setting has now been replaced with a 'Number of Players' button when you set up a game.

FromSoft previously admitted that it kinda forgot about duos while in production, which means the final game was almost entirely balanced around and mainly dependant on three people journeying around The Lands Between in Elden Ring Nightreign multiplayer. Don't worry about Nightreign becoming substantially harder with just two people, though. "The game balance will be adjusted to the current number of players," the patch notes say.

Of course, an Elden Ring Nightreign solo mode with downscaled difficulty has been available from the start and you could technically play with two people if one player happened to run away from a three-player game. The community's favorite "Seamless Co-Op" modder also managed to get duos working in mere hours after launch. Not having to jump through extra hoops if you want a date night or only have one friend sick enough to endure those bosses is very handy, though.

Elsewhere in the patch notes, the studio details various bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements, as well as a new Relic filtering option "to allow a more precise selection of Relic effects."

FromSoftware had one big problem turning an old Dark Souls 3 boss into an Elden Ring Nightreign boss, and apparently it solved it by yeeting him into the sky

What video games do you need to have on your radar right now? That's always tricky to figure out over the summer months, where our most anticipated upcoming releases are suddenly vying for attention with the countless new titles announced across Summer Game Fest, Future Game Show, and the other various mainstay showcases.

That's why we are launching the GamesRadar+ Hot 25: a living list of the biggest video games in the world right now. Updated quarterly, Hot 25 is designed to reflect the games that are turning our heads – and that we know you're going to fall in love with too. It doesn't matter whether an upcoming game has a release date that's just a few weeks away, or whether it's a new project still a few years out from launch, Hot 25 are the 25 hottest games deserving of your time and attention today.

We've been keeping a close eye on the video games the GamesRadar+ readers have been gravitating towards, not to mention the titles you keep shouting about in our comments section and across our social media channels, to help build a long-list of viable titles. From there, the GR+ Editorial Team voted to lock in the hottest of the lot, and from there Hot 25 was born. So keep scrolling to find the Summer 2025 Edition of Hot 25, and don't forget to let us know what your most anticipated video games are by voting for your favorite and leaving comments below.

The Hot 25: Summer 2025 Edition

The Final Countdown

11. The Outer Worlds 2

Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X | Release date: October 29, 2025

Obsidian Entertainment is preparing to unleash its most expressive RPG to date. The studio is perhaps best known for its work delivering Fallout: New Vegas and the Pillars of Eternity universe, and it's taking all of that learning and applying it towards this lushly-presented sequel. The Outer Worlds 2 is really leaning into player freedom, with Obsidian establishing a foundation where you are free to define the outline of a character and then role-play your way across a universe that's desperate to account for every one of your actions. Keep staring into the sun? Maybe you'll develop a trait that trades health regeneration while under its rays for a blurry world. That's one fun example of over 100 perks and flaws available. We're certain that The Outer Worlds 2 is going to be one of the biggest RPGs of 2025.

10. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

Platform(s): Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2 | Release date: TBC 2025

It's been almost a decade since the release of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and we couldn't be happier that Retro Studios is set to usher in the return of Samus Aran here in 2025. While this new first-person adventure is set to land on both Nintendo's last- and current-gen systems, we're expecting Metroid Prime 4: Beyond to be a real system showcase for the Switch 2. The Prime series has always been about quiet exploration of hostile alien worlds, and that is absolutely true of this long-awaited sequel touches down on the planet of Viewros. You'll be scanning for secrets, upgrading Samus' Varia Suit with new psychic abilities, and carefully battling space pirates and bounty hunters flanked by metroids. Everything we've played so far has impressed, and all we're waiting on now is a firm release date.

9. The Duskbloods

Platform(s): Nintendo Switch 2 | Release date: TBC 2026

A new action-RPG from FromSoftware is always cause for celebration, the legendary developer responsible for causing many a stress headache through its Dark Souls and Elden Ring franchises. It should come as no surprise that The Duskbloods has become one of our most-anticipated games of next year, although there is still plenty for FromSoftware to reveal of its debut Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive. For starters, The Duskbloods is a big change in foundational design, with the studio opting to frame its next adventure as an eight-player multiplayer game which supports PvP and PvE encounters. You'll pick from over a dozen Bloodsworn characters, vampire-like beings which each possess their own unique weapons and abilities, and then battle to survive and thrive across some truly gorgeous gothic environments.

8. Fable

Platform(s): PC, Xbox Series X | Release date: TBC 2026

Honestly, we can hardly believe it's happening either. Almost a decade after Xbox shuttered Lionhead and the collapse of Fable Legends, we're now just months away from returning to Albion. That's right, in 2026 Playground Games, the studio behind the beloved Forza Horizon series, is taking its expertise in open-world design and applying forward to a sprawling RPG – a Fable reboot that's heavily weighted towards player choice. With a dark threat looming across a fairytale land, it's your decisions that will change Albion forever. While Xbox Game Studios has only teased out details thus far, everything we've seen points to a luscious open-world to traverse, densely detailed cities and characters to meet, and explosive third-person combat as you wield all manner of blades and magics.

7. Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater

Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X | Release date: August 26, 2025

How is it that a remake has landed so high up on our ranking of the hottest video games in the universe? To answer that we've got to start with the legacy of Snake Eater, arguably one of the greatest games ever made. When Konami unleashed Metal Gear Solid 3 in 2004 for the PlayStation 2, it proved to be something of an opus for creative director Hideo Kojima. A stunning work of stealth-action that set a new standard for storytelling and cinematic presentations, dazzling with its intuitive stealth systems and innovative boss battles. So for Konami to bring about its return with a stunning remake is cause for celebration. Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is introducing new gameplay mechanics, upping character detail and revamping the camouflage systems, and overhauling the visual design. What a thrill…

6. 007: First Light

Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X | Release date: TBC 2026

Talk about a match made in heaven. The studio responsible for the Hitman: World of Assassination trilogy embracing James Bond, a world renown IP that never really settled as a viable video game property. IO Interactive earned the opportunity to succeed where Activision failed by promising an adventure that wouldn't solely present weapons as the solution to every problem. 007: First Light is spotlighting espionage as we embody the role of a young, inexperienced MI6 agent trying to earn their 00 status. The decision to remove 007: First Light from any existing iterations of the character is bold, but IO has built a reputation for delivering stunning stealth systems, densely detailed environments, and layered mission objectives – which is why 007: First Light could be the Bond game we've been waiting decades to play.

5. Ghost of Yotei

Platform(s): PS5 | Release date: October 2, 2025

There's something special about the way that Sucker Punch approaches open-world game design. Ghost of Tsushima proved that it was possible to merge outlandish scale with quiet, contemplative action – an adventure as much about existing in a world as it was carving your own path through it. Sucker Punch is leaning even further in this direction with Ghost of Yotei, a 2025 PS5 exclusive that's being crafted to primarily focus on the exploration of the lush expanse surrounding Mount Yōtei.

Set some 300 years after the events of the first game, Ghost of Yotei puts you in the role of Atsu, a wandering ronin who adopts the persona of a spirit of vengeance – out on a mission to slay a samurai lord and his five servants of death and destruction. With that in mind, Sucker Punch is dialing in some key quality-of-life improvements to combat, from slick sword encounters which mimic classic genre productions to more desperate battles with chain blades and spears. Still, despite the flashes of violence, Ghost of Yotei is still wholly focused on cultivating good vibes in a beautiful world.

Where the first game touched upon your relationship with nature, the sequel is seeking to deepen your connection with the world around you. Dynamic weather creates a more realistic world, systems are in place to allow Atsu to settle beneath the stars to take stock of her journeys, and who knows what secrets lay scattered around you. Ghost of Yotei is the sequel to beat in 2025.

4. Grand Theft Auto 6

Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X | Release date: May 26, 2026

For every video game developer set to launch something in 2025, the delay of Grand Theft Auto into 2026 is a blessing. That's because there's a very real chance that GTA 6 is going to be the biggest release in entertainment history, the sort of experience that commands the attention of the entire world. It's often said that waiting makes the heart grow fonder, but for those of us who have been waiting to play the first new GTA game since 2013 the push to next year feels like a curse. A punishment for wanting a return to Vice City too much.

With all that in mind, you might be wondering how anything could eclipse GTA 6 on a list of the hottest upcoming games. But the truth is this: Rockstar Games' intermittent updates have left us wanting more, and the lack of live gameplay leaves us with more questions than answers. Then again, if we've learned anything it's that you should never underestimate what this studio is capable of.

So here's what we can say about this long-awaited trip to the state of Leonida. GTA 6 will feature dual protagonists Jason Duval and Leonida Keys, a criminal couple with vastly different motivations for survival in the Florida inspired environment. Everything we have seen of the open world thus far indicates that Rockstar is about to unleash one of the most detailed and expressive playspace ever committed to a video game. I can't believe I'm saying this, but the wait is almost over.

3. The Witcher 4

Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X | Release date: TBC

The Witcher 4 is still years away from release, so how has the upcoming RPG found itself placed so highly on our list of the hottest 25 games? Well, for starters, this is CD Projekt RED that we're talking about here – the studio that has revolutionized open-world RPG design twice in the span of 10 years. Anything this team is working on is going to grab our attention. That's not all though, as a series of recent reveals have transformed The Witcher 4 from a curiosity into something that's become quite all-encompassing.

CDPR teamed up with Epic Games in the dying days of the spring to deliver a sprawling Unreal Engine 5 showcase. It was designed to spotlight Kovir, the setting for Ciri's adventure, and the staggering detail the studio is looking to capture within it. While technical demonstrations aren't always representative of the final product, they are a signal of intent – and we are certainly listening intently now.

There's a lot for us still to learn, but we do know that it'll be Ciri taking on the mantle of Witcher after Geralt's retirement, and that CDPR is looking to channel the character's proficiencies with sorcery into combat. It means you'll still be able to go up against towering beasts with steel and silver swords, but you'll also have the option of deploying new chain weapons and powerful abilities. The Witcher 4 is undoubtedly one of the most ambitious RPGs out there right now.

2. Hollow Knight Silksong

Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X | Release date: TBC 2025

There was a moment earlier this year, during a Nintendo Switch 2 Direct, where Hollow Knight: Silksong gameplay was shown and a 2025 release was confirmed. We hardly believed it – this isn't the first time Team Cherry has announced and then missed a launch window. But then the upcoming metroidvania appeared again, resurfacing during the reveal of the ROG Xbox Ally X. Two sightings in two months? We're hesitant to even say this out loud but… folks, this might actually be happening.

While it's true that the dizzying speculation and anticipation for Hollow Knight Silksong has become something of a joke online, there is a strong foundation of reality underlining the excitement. It didn't take long for the original Hollow Knight to turn heads in 2017, regarded by many to be not only one of the best games of the decade, but a metroidvania that can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the genre titans.

Hollow Knight Silksong started life as DLC before its scope spiralled out of control. There's a new character to control and kingdom to explore, with Hornet boasting an expanded suite of combat skills and acrobatic movement abilities. Expect over 100 new enemies and checkpoints across a wildly expanded playspace, complete with a new quest system to help drive you through it. We are in the home stretch now – prepare for impact, because Hollow Knight Silksong is almost here.

1. Resident Evil Requiem

Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X | Release date: February 27, 2026

Resident Evil Biohazard and Resident Evil Village should be viewed as a deep breath of fresh air, a sharp shift away from the shenanigans of the wider Resident Evil timeline. Running parallel to these first-person reinventions, we received groundbreaking third-person remakes of Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil Nemesis, and Resident Evil 4. In 2026, Capcom appears to be bringing all of these disparate threads together to form a nightmarish tapestry.

Where RE7 and RE8 focused on a new protagonist with few existing ties to the Umbrella Corporation or graduates of the S.T.A.R.S. initiative, Resident Evil Requiem is taking a different direction. You'll be taking control of Grace Ashcroft, daughter to Alyssa Ashcroft – a key protagonist in Resident Evil Outbreak, a co-op focused spin-off from 2003. And you'll be heading back to Raccoon City too, some 30 years after the US Government eradicated it with an experimental thermobaric missile. All that combined, and you've got something of a fever dream for long-time fans of the franchise.

That's especially true as Capcom takes learnings from both its modern mainline titles and the remakes, giving us the ability to switch between first and third-person perspectives at any time in RE9 – the freedom to choose how we wanted to be scared silly by pursuant creatures and in caustic environments. With a mission that begins with an investigation into a series of mysterious deaths at a hotel, the promise of returning to decayed Raccoon City haunts means there's no telling where this adventure will go – nor which of the legacy characters will make a return.

Resident Evil Requiem is undoubtedly the hottest video game around right now, hot off the heels of what was undoubtedly the best reveal from Summer Game Fest. A compelling core concept, a dazzling mix of gameplay styles, and a genuinely awe-inspiring visual style are making RE9 stand out from the crowd, and there's a very real chance that Capcom's latest horror adventure is the only thing capable of drawing some amount of attention away from GTA 6 in the 2026 GOTY race.

Let's look at the data

Looking at the data behind this edition of Hot 25 in a little more granularity, it's pretty clear that RPG and horror fans have some particularly fantastic experiences incoming. While there's always a chance that this outwardly reflects the interests of the GR+ team, I think it's pretty clear looking at our lists of upcoming RPGs and upcoming horror games that these are key genres for developers looking to make a mark.

It's always interesting to see what games are turning heads, and right now it is largely all eyes on the near horizon. The range of new games for 2025 is impressive, with the vast majority of the Hot 25 titles landing in the next few months. Still, with behemoths like Resident Evil 9 and GTA 6 set to land next year it's no surprise that we're already starting to get excited about what's going to be Big in 2026.

Elsewhere, we were surprised to find no one publisher pulling ahead this period. Konami's return to AAA gaming is rewarded as both Silent Hill F and its MGS3 Remake make the cut, along with two entries from Nintendo as the Switch 2 exits its launch window. Just two of Xbox's upcoming Series X games featured in the final Hot 25 list, while Bandai Namco finished well through its incoming horror and RPG titles.

Have your say

We're had our say, now it's time for you to have yours. Do you agree with our pick of the Hottest 25 games out there right now? You can use this voting block to tell us your favorite of the games that made the cut. And if you think we overlooked your most anticipated title (or ranked one too highly or lowly) don't forget that you can sign in and drop us a comment below.