RPGamer 2025 Awards – Biggest Letdowns

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This is one of those interesting cases where the height of previous entries proves difficult to return to, and also where staff opinion varies greatly. There’s no denying that Monster Hunter: World was a smashing success for Capcom. Monster Hunter Rise proved to be a successful follow up, as well, seemingly setting up a bright future for what was quickly becoming Capcom’s flagship series. Unfortunately, Monster Hunter Wilds instead severely muddies the waters for the future for many of our staff.

The series is largely known and lauded for its tight gameplay and strong co-op multiplayer experience. Rise in particular made this multiplayer extremely easy to dig into because the single player experience could largely be ignored in favor of the co-op experience. However, Wilds locks multiplayer behind the single-player experience, which features a dull story containing many non-interactive dialogue sequences that can’t be skipped. Add the fact that the story missions can’t even be played via multiplayer and the whole experience feels like a complete misfire, failing to understand what many players love about Monster Hunter. With few new features, and with some removed from Monster Hunter Rise, Wilds managed to find multiple ways to turn off a good number of its players on staff.

 

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All in Abyss: Judge the Fake is a true melting pot of undercooked ideas, shallow gameplay systems, and a repetitive and unfun gameplay loop. The basic premise of integrating a visual novel with a poker-based combat system is perfectly acceptable; however, the game features a narrative devoid of likeable characters going on an entirely self-serving mission that matters to no one but themselves. Worse, the interminable rounds of poker that players are forced to win to earn money, items, or simply move the story along all operate on Texas Hold’em rules, with no options to switch things up. That is, unless one is facing one of the game’s boss encounters, the Five Witches of the Pentagram, who have unique powers that often give them unfair advantages over the player. Sitting this one through is an exercise in grit and determination, losing all semblance of fun early in the opening minutes.

Still, a mediocre poker game bolted onto a dull visual novel may be enough to qualify All in Abyss as a bad game, but in order to top this list as our #1 Staff Regret of 2025, a special kind of failing is needed. Enter the game’s torture scenes, a series of collectible “rewards” for defeating each of the five witches. As a punishment for losing to protagonist Asuha Senahara, each witch is subjected to a sadistic, often stomach-churning torture scene, explored in detail in a vignette that only ends when the unfortunate witch is mercifully allowed to die. While 95% of the gameplay loop is tedious to slog through, it is these torture scenes that actively made us think twice each time we sat down for another session, which ultimately is why it earns the dubious honor of topping this list.

 

 

FuRyu returned once again to a familiar near-future high school template setting for Varlet. Developed by Aquria and following in the footsteps of The Caligula Effect and Monark, it does offer some interesting story ideas. However, that and some decent music are unfortunately all that can be said about the game in a positive light. Not enough to carry the game on its own, the story ideas are instead actively hampered by a completely disinteresting gameplay loop, a very broken battle system, and incredibly shallow systems. At least it’s easy to get through.

Sometimes genre-blending creates amazing results, but other times it yields duds. Unfortunately, Lightbulb Crew’s Nova Hearts is a great example of pushing together too many different ideas but not executing them well enough to make the game impactful. Blending RPG and visual novels can work when the story is compelling and the combat is serviceable, but neither is the case here. While the narrative is pleasingly inclusive and the game features mature themes, the actual writing is uninspired, with the narrative issues compounded by a slow and dull battle system that needs more energy to be engaging. A mixture of higher hopes and its failure to capture its audience sadly makes Nova Hearts a regret of 2025.

 

by Michael Apps, Pascal Tekaia, Alex Fuller, and Sam Wachter