Welcome to what looks like it will be a yearly feature for me now. Last year, I wrote about my top seven games that I abandoned. This year it’s eight. And when I compare these lists, I’d consider the games I abandoned in 2025 to be significantly better on the whole than the 2024 games.
I wouldn’t say that I’ve grown more impatient this year. Simply, 2025 was freaking insane for video games, and it was hard to keep up. In several of these cases, I just came across a long game, took a break at the wrong time, and then never came back.
My general goal is to beat video games, but one of the big lessons I’m trying to impart from this now annual tradition is that completing games isn’t everything. Yes, it’s ideal, but video games can be a pretty serious time investment. If you enjoyed a game for 40 hours, I think that’s pretty valid and good value for whatever amount of money you spent on that game. If you aren’t quite vibing with a game after that many hours, I think it’s okay to both drop the game and still consider it a good or even very good video game.
Obviously, the very best games are the ones you will probably try to beat at all costs, but I have had several games that I didn’t beat in my top 10 over the years. Baldur’s Gate 3 and Elden Ring are two of my most recent examples.
With that, let’s get to the games! This list will either make you mad or happy, depending on your perspective. But I genuinely enjoyed at least some of my time with everything here. Also, I am officially not allowed to abandon any more games this year, because then I’d have to update this list.
8. Murder in Buckfield
This is a game from a friend of mine that is playable via RPGMaker. Until I played this game, I had no idea that there was a pretty nice community of people making high quality games via RPGMaker.
What really impressed me about Murder in Buckfield is that my friend took the RPGMaker tools and decided to make a detective game with them instead of an old school JRPG. Murder in Buckfield is a game about investigating a murder in a small town and trying to figure out who did it. It’s a fun whodunit, and the game can change a bit depending on how thorough your investigation is.
I ended up setting the game aside for a few weeks because of some other releases, and it was a tough game to jump back into from there. I definitely have regrets about not finishing this one, as I was genuinely enjoying the story and the writing quite a bit. I think a few quality of life features would have been nice to help with my exploration, as I definitely was lost figuring out where to investigate next a few times, but this is still a really neat experience. The developer, Nestor, has already teased another game coming out next year, and this time, I will make sure I finish it.
(You can read my interview with Nestor here)
7. Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time
I ended up logging something like 12 hours into Fantasy Life i, and there was an eight hour stretch where I was absolutely in love with it. I enjoy some good ol’ fashioned leveling up, and Fantasy Life i has that in spades. You can level up damn near everything in this game. If you want to see some numbers go up, you will have plenty of opportunities here. There’s also a whole lot to do, with a main quest, an open world type area, and a little village you can build up.
Unfortunately, the longer I played, the more everything started to feel kind of empty. The main quest really just seems like a way to introduce all of the areas in the game to you. Building up the village felt slow and unsatisfying to me. And the open world is really just a big area for grinding and isn’t utilized very well. The combat in the game also isn’t terrible for a cozy game, but I felt like I was doing way too much of it for what the quality of it is. The mining, farming, and all the other tasks aren’t any better either. I can see how someone could get lost in this world, but my bite sized fill was more than enough. But I also can’t deny how much fun I had for at least a short stretch.
6. Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii
Pirate Yakuza is a perfectly fine Like A Dragon game from what I played. But it also reminded me of why I was never able to complete a full run through of all of the Yakuza games.
You see, several years ago, I played Yakuza 0, and I absolutely loved it. So, of course, my next thought was that I should play through all of the Yakuza games. I played Yakuza Kiwami, which was good, and then in the middle of Kiwami 2, I just completely burned out and felt like I could never touch a Yakuza game again, or at least not for a long time.
As good as these games are, seeing the same tropes over and over and dealing with the pretty average combat was too much for me to be able to get through all of them. So I put the series down for years and picked it back up with Like a Dragon, which I once again flamed out on before finishing.
FINALLY, I finished Infinite Wealth last year and felt like I was ready to be re-engaged with every release in this series. So I picked up Pirate Yakuza this year. I was having an okay time with it, but I think I’ve finally realized that I need a good amount of space between games in this series. I can’t go along with every one, especially since they seem to want to drop one every year.
Pirate Yakuza is a competent game, but nothing really stood out for me. The pirate ship combat is fine. The brawling combat has a few awkward elements, but it’s passable. The story is goofy and wasn’t doing much for me, but it had personality and charm. I ended up giving up on the game when I got to Hawaii and started playing substories. I quickly realized that most of these substories were practically just replaying a lot of the same types of stories as Infinite Wealth, sometimes even with the same characters.
And look, there are a lot of substories in these games, so I get how it’s kind of hard to have them be really unique. But the more you play these games, the more the general way they are all going to play out gets obvious, and experiencing them again in such close proximity to another game in the series really makes that stand out on a level I did not enjoy.
The substories are usually one of the things I like the most about the Yakuza/Like a Dragon games. So when I wasn’t enjoying those, that felt like enough for me.
Once again, this game is competent in most ways. I’m sure the superfans of the series will dig it, but it mostly showed me that I might be better off exclusively playing the more “mainline” games every four years or so.
5. ARC Raiders
I feel like the fifty hour mark is about what I’d need to consider a multiplayer game “completed.” In the past decade, the only games I’ve reached that mark with are Halo Infinite, Rematch, Overwatch, and Apex Legends.
I’ve had plenty of multiplayer games that I thought were genuinely fun where I still didn’t reach that mark. I had a lot of fun with Helldivers 2 last year, but still only made it about 14 hours.
Sadly, ARC Raiders seems like another game destined not to reach that mark. I still want to play at least a few more times, but considering I’m already feeling close to retirement after 6ish hours, I think it’s safe to say that I’m not going to get to 50.
I will say that I still greatly respect this game. I felt pretty sucked in almost immediately after the opening mini tutorial. The shooting in ARC Raiders feels great. The sound design, in particular, really stood out to me. It’s also very tense in some interesting ways. The goal of the game is to acquire as much loot as possible while avoiding both enemies and other players. By getting better loot, you can upgrade your weapons and craft equipment so that you can have an easier time on future runs. However, if you die, you will lose everything you have (outside of one thing that can be protected).
It’s an intriguing concept. It leads to a lot of interesting interactions with other players, as you try to decide whether to trust others and cooperate with them, or to attack them. I’ve had runs where I worked with strangers to take down enemies in the environment, and I’ve had runs where some random player shot at me while I was trying to take down an enemy. You always have to be somewhat on guard while playing the game.
However, after the initial period of adjusting to everything, I have increasingly found that there is probably just a bit too much that I don’t click with here. First off, the inventory maintenance work is a complete pain in the ass. I don’t mind spending some time in menus in between runs, but it just seems like everything is laid out in a way that makes it all take way more time than it needs to. I found myself getting increasingly frustrated if I played for more than a few runs. I’m sure if I played the game more often and more consistently, this would get a little better, but I’ve heard from people with many more hours than me that it doesn’t improve as much as you’d hope with time.
I also kind of wish I could play in playlists where the rules of engagement were clearer. I think solo play in ARC Raiders can be particularly annoying because it really is all over the place in terms of how people will play against you. Many people are friendly, but then there are the occasional scumbags that will try and take you out. I’m constantly on guard because of this, which ends up feeling kind of dumb, because a lot of my solo runs end up being very uneventful. A bit of looting, running by one or two other players, maybe one fight with enemies, and then I’m out. It honestly can get a bit boring. I don’t really enjoy being the asshole, so I’m not going to be the one to spice things up either.
Playing with a team definitely enhances the experience for me, as when you play with squads of three, everyone seems to have a much more “shoot first” mentality. I like that this kind of clarifies the rules of engagement. Unfortunately, I have very limited time when I can actually organize game time with others due to parenthood, so I’m stuck playing solo more often than not if I really want to get some time in with this game.
I also wish I had more compelling goals to work toward. Acquiring better guns in the game is nice, but it’s not that rewarding, as you can always lose that gun. From there, you can also make and upgrade crafting tables, which is useful, but once again, not really something that makes me feel super warm and fuzzy inside. Apparently, you can work to gather supplies so that your character gets upgraded for the next season, but it seems like a lot of work for what it’s offering.
So basically, it’s a good game, but it just doesn’t click with me. I doubt I have more than one or two sessions left in me. I’ll release a statement through my agent when I decide to officially retire.
4. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor
Timing is so important when you are a game hopper. Even though I’m often flipping between 4-5 games at a time, I try to be really careful with which games I throw into my rotation. Having two games that don’t flow together can really hurt my experience. For example, I still haven’t played Hell is Us this year despite being pretty interested in it, because it came out while I was playing Hollow Knight: Silksong, and I didn’t want to play two games at the same time that made me feel lost.
Unfortunately, I think I made a classic mistake when it comes to Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. I ended up starting it pretty close to around when I started playing Ball x Pit. While these games are very different, they both have clear inspirations from Vampire Survivors. And unfortunately, I just prefer Ball x Pit, which kind of meant that Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor got the shaft.
Galactic: Survivor is a really solid game that manages to carve out a unique place in the “Survivor-Like” genre. It mostly does this with its more bite-sized levels, an extraction mechanic (after you clear a boss, you have 30 seconds to escape to a shuttle), and its mining mechanic.
Essentially, each level of Galactic: Survivor has a bunch of rock walls, which you can mine through to escape enemies. They can also store resources that create a constant risk/reward mechanic when you try to acquire them. The core “survivor” gameplay is well done too, with plenty of level ups, build decisions, and movement strategy.
Even though it’s a well made game, I think there’s a general sameness to every outing that made it hard for me to get addicted. The biggest strength of Ball x Pit is how hard it works to make each run feel pretty unique. That game has such a nice variety of characters with very different skills, so no two runs are perfectly alike. This becomes even more the case as you get later in the game. So, juxtaposing that with this game, where runs mostly felt the same, even with different characters, ended up making it hard to motivate myself to keep going after nine hours or so. If I had started it at a different time, maybe things would have gone better for me. It’s definitely still a well made “survivor like” that fans of the genre should enjoy.
3. Hell Clock
I love to get review codes and play games on day one when they drop. But undoubtedly, sometimes there is a price to pay for being one of the first to play a game. Hell Clock is a great example of a game I likely would have beaten and loved if I had waited a few months before playing it, but unfortunately, I was just a bit too early, and it didn’t work out for me.
Hell Clock is essentially a game merging the ARPG formula with a roguelite, and both sides of the equation are extremely well done. There’s fun loot and tons of upgrades to go for. The combat is also really solid. You have a lot of flexibility to craft the build you want, and it feels great. The game also has a timer mechanic that I really enjoyed.
There was only one thing that I didn’t like about the game, and that was the balancing. Runs in Hell Clock are supposed to be short, but I was coming across bosses that were taking me 10+ minutes to beat each time. It was a slog, but I still liked the game enough to keep soldiering on.
Eventually, the devs admitted they messed up the balancing with the game. They came out with an easier mode and essentially called the original difficulty the hard mode. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to make it so you could switch your game to the easier mode if you started it on that difficulty. I was still going to try and power through the rest of the game, but the devs also totally nerfed my build in this same patch. I didn’t have the desire to keep going from there.
There is a timeline where this game is at least on my “honorable mentions” list for top games of the year. Sadly, that did not come to pass. I definitely easily recommend this one for Diablo and roguelite fans at this point, though. With the balancing ironed out, this is a very good game.
2. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
Man, this game was a freaking roller coaster for me. Outside of enjoying the story, I did not like KCD2 much at all for the first 5 hours or so. The game has a really long linear opening before it gets going that dragged at times for me. The game also has so many systems, it can be annoying to figure out a rhythm and flow while playing. You have to get used to spending 30 minutes doing various “prep work” when you get to towns. Finding a place to sleep (which can be weirdly very annoying. There are several inns where simply finding the proper bed to sleep in is a process), sharpening weapons, repairing gear, and brewing potions is all stuff you have to do fairly often.
But once I got into it, I was really immersed for something like 35-40 hours. As annoying as the maintenance work in KCD2 can be, it’s exactly why this is a “role playing” experience like no other. Outside of Cyberpunk 2077, I’m not sure if a game has ever made me feel more immersed in a world. Playing this game really makes me feel like I’m in the 1400s.
But despite how immersed I was, a few elements of the game were consistently grating for me. The combat in the game always felt a bit clunky. Sometimes I’ll go somewhere in a town, and everyone will get mad at me, and I’ll have no idea why. Some of the main quests have really obnoxious quest design that can feel a bit trial and error. When I reached the giant town in the game, Kuttenberg, it felt like time for a break because some of the “slog” elements of the game were wearing me down. Unfortunately, KCD2 is a brutal game to pick back up after a break, as you have to relearn a lot of things, so I just couldn’t get back into it.
I totally respect those who love this game, as I certainly did for a time. The story is great, the characters are awesome, and it really is unlike anything else. But it just slowly wore me down, and I couldn’t reach the finish line.
1. Assassin’s Creed: Shadows
Sometimes, it’s just too much of a good thing.
I was absolutely in love with Assassin’s Creed: Shadows for 40 hours. I felt like it was doing a lot of things right and fixing a few of the mistakes from Valhalla. I loved the way the exploration was almost like a bit of a puzzle, and you had to scour the map to figure out the proper area to explore. The stealth was absolutely on point, with lots of depth, enemies that weren’t completely stupid, and lots of huge bases that were a real challenge to sneak around. The amount of stuff you can climb on remains impressive, even if it is occasionally clunky. The combat was also serviceable. I also love the little touches, like how well made the menus are.
But after a while, I finally reached a point where I was ready to just mainline the game. Sadly, that wasn’t great for me, because as good as the game is, the mainline content really isn’t much better than any random side mission. Everything in the game blends together, and after some incredible story moments in the early hours, the story becomes completely uninteresting. I was really excited for both Yasuke’s and Naoe’s stories, but neither reached their full potential.
I was in a similar situation recently with Ghost of Yotei. After way less time in Yotei, I felt ready to just mainline the game. But Yotei’s main story is actually compelling, which made the main missions a blast to run through.
When I tried a similar path in Shadows, I still felt the burnout because the game wasn’t feeling any different than it already had when I was doing main missions.
It’s a bummer because I genuinely really enjoyed the game. While I think Yotei is better in story, characters, and combat, I actually think Shadows has more fun and rewarding exploration, better side content, and significantly better stealth. I was having more fun playing Shadows than I was playing Yotei, so it’s unfortunate that I only ended up completing Yotei.
But like every other game on this list, despite the flaws and the fact that I didn’t finish it, I have absolutely no regrets about purchasing it. It was a really great time, and 40 very fun hours is nothing to scoff at.
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