10 Best PlayStation Games Of 2025

2025 has been a relatively quiet year for first-party PlayStation exclusives, but there was still an abundance of excellent games that came to the PS5 this year. Even if Ghost of Yotei and Death Stranding 2 were the only true PS5 exclusives, there are a number of wonderful console exclusives otherwise only playable on PC—and let’s not forget transcendent multi-platform games like GOTY winner Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

Screen Rant‘s criteria for selecting the best PlayStation games of 2025 weighs our own reviews, critic aggregates like Metacritic and OpenCritic, and user reviews. To ensure a personal touch, however, we also take into consideration the preferences of our editors and writers, especially when debating the order in which the following games appear.

10

ARC Raiders

Embark Studios

ARC Raiders is the breakout multiplayer game of the year, carving a massive audience out of a notoriously volatile live-service market. The retro-futuristic, post-apocalyptic extraction shooter deftly blends survival mechanics with atmospheric exploration. Our 9/10 review by Kyle Gratton calls ARC Raiders “an anecdote machine, a game that is at once awe-inspiring, terrifying, meditative, frustrating, and humanity-affirming.”

Although more approachable than its hardcore counterparts in the extraction genre, ARC Raiders‘ standout feature is its deadly robotic enemies, trained by machine learning and taught to exist believably within their virtual world, simulated physics and all. Its other crowning achievement has been its social aspect, allowing ostensible enemies to team up to hunt giant machines or break each other’s hearts by betrayal.

9

Lumines Arise

Enhance Games & Monstars Inc.

Lumines Arise is the series’ first new mainline console entry in 16 years, and it did not disappoint. From the development house behind the vibe-heavy Tetris Effect, Lumines Arise is one of 2025’s most intoxicating games. The musical puzzle game tasks you with arranging squares into larger blocks, which are then cleared by the Timeline, a vertical line that crawls across the playing field in time with the soundtrack.

Lumines is proving to be a timeless, easy-to-pick-up puzzle game, but Arise takes its skill ceiling to another level with a Burst mechanic that rewards you for cleverly building around a single expanding block in the limited play area. Lumines Arise‘s visuals are enchanting, its soundtrack is hypnotic, and its gameplay will practically force you into a flow state.

8

Ball x Pit

Kenny Sun (And Friends)

Ball x Pit is one of many indie smash hits in 2025, cementing itself as a must-play if you’re a fan of roguelikes or classics like Brick Breaker and Breakout. Its main gameplay apes Brick Breaker, with boxy enemies descending from the top of the screen as you sling all manner of balls, combining special ones into increasingly wacky combinations.

Its meta-progression centers on light city management mechanics, and Ball x Pit quickly becomes a power fantasy as you sling an absurd number of balls down range. Developer Kenny Sun and his friends mastered the “just one more run” pull that so many iconic roguelikes boast, making Ball x Pit one of the year’s most charming and addictive titles.

7

Ghost Of Yotei

Sucker Punch Productions

A lot of expectations were put upon Ghost of Yotei as the PS5’s only first-party exclusive of the year, and Atsu’s journey for revenge met all of them. Kyle Gratton’s 9/10 Yotei review for Screen Rant notes that the game’s “visual excellence is almost overwhelming,” and that its gameplay “strives to keep you engaged in the wandering samurai fantasy, [succeeding] without question.”

Ghost of Yotei iterates on nearly every facet of its predecessor, Ghost of Tsushima, taking its place in the upper echelon of open-world games. Erika Ishii scored a Game Awards nomination for their portrayal of Atsu, a deeply troubled character consumed by the bloody violence that permeates the game. Ghost of Yotei set a new bar for Sucker Punch Productions, and gave PlayStation a much-needed first-party hit.

6

Sword Of The Sea

Giant Squid

Gorgeous games were in abundance in 2025, but the word is an understatement when applied to Sword of the Sea. You ride around on a massive sword like a surfboard, bringing marine life back to a desolate desert. The land and seascapes are vibrant, towering, and mystifying, and its minimalist storytelling is equally captivating.

In the same lineage as games like Abzû and Journey, exploration is the primary draw in Sword of the Sea, made infinitely satisfying by revolving around the momentum you build up while surfing. You’ll trick your way through platforming segments and minor combat encounters, but Sword of the Sea‘s most satisfying facet is being the steward of an ecological resurgence.

5

Dispatch

AdHoc Studio

Dispatch is the triumphant comeback of the Telltale style game, with developer AdHoc Studio founded by Telltale Games veterans. Self-described as a superhero workplace comedy, Dispatch released episodically, with two episodes released weekly for eight weeks. Its interactive narrative was so successful that fans are already clamoring for AdHoc to develop a second season.

You play as Robert Robertson III, a mech pilot turned dispatcher for a superhero outfit, who is voiced by Aaron Paul. Paul is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to a star-studded cast that includes Jeffrey Wright, Laura Bailey, Matt Mercer, Alanah, Pearce, Jack McLoughlin (jacksepticeye), Charlie White (MoistCr1TiKaL), Joel Haver, rappper Yung Gravy, and more.

4

Hollow Knight: Silksong

Team Cherry

2025 was the year that the long wait for Hollow Knight: Silksong finally ended. Initially conceived by Team Cherry as yet more DLC for its predecessor, our perfect 10/10 review for Silksong from Chris Carter notes that it “initially appears to be an expansion, but it gradually opens up to become a completely different game, worthy of the sequel moniker.“

Chris had no shortage of praise to heap on the Hollow Knight sequel, concluding, “Silksong is the purest form of a Metroidvania I’ve played in years.” The game’s difficulty has been divisive, unearthing an eternal debate that surrounds the likes of Elden Ring and Cuphead, but fans have been unanimous in celebrating Silksong‘s delightful exploration and unparalleled ambiance.

3

Blue Prince

Dogubomb

Blue Prince became a phenomenon upon its release in April 2025, compelling players to scrawl pages of increasingly esoteric notes as they desperately tried to reach the bottom of the game’s unfathomable rabbit hole. When Blue Prince begins, and you inherit a mysterious mansion from a deceased great uncle, your goal is rather simple: find the hidden 46th room. The problem is, the mansion has 45 rooms arranged on a 5×9 grid, and every day the enigmatic domicile reconfigures itself.

With a limited number of rooms you can enter per day, you set out from the foyer each morning, drafting rooms as you go. As you learn the mechanics and begin solving some early riddles, you may quickly reach the 46th room, but that’s only the beginning of a much larger mystery. Critics and players alike were infatuated by Blue Prince‘s seemingly endless vault of puzzles, and the game’s simultaneously charming and unsettling atmosphere helped it become one of the year’s best games.

2

Death Stranding 2: On The Beach

Kojima Productions

As for PS5 exclusives, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is 2025’s best. Kojima Productions’ follow-up to the divisive 2019 original—which won Screen Rant‘s 2019 Game of the Year—built on its predecessor in nearly every way, including ironing out a lot of wrinkles to make the bizarre delivery game more approachable. Kyle Gratton gave Death Stranding 2 a 10/10 in SR‘s review, saying, “there is simply no comparable experience.”

The extensive hiking you conduct on deliveries is wrapped up in a larger system of asynchronous multiplayer to rebuild infrastructure in the wake of the titular cataclysm. Death Stranding 2 emotionally explores themes of found family, fatherhood, and community in a narrative “so genuine and earnest that it’s hard not to fall for its romanticism,” according to our review.

Death Stranding remains divisive at large because of its idiosyncrasies, but it is a triumph for the medium as an art form, demonstrating visionary writer and director Hideo Kojima’s deep knowledge of the cinematic language. Kojima Productions remains independent, but with PlayStation publishing Death Strading 2 exclusively for the PS5, it’s one of the console’s must-play games of 2025.

1

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Sandfall Interactive

It’s impossible to make a 2025 best-of list without acknowledging the year’s most preeminent title: Sandfall Interactive’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Heavily influenced by classic JRPGs, praise for Expedition 33 is never ending. Securing the coveted GOTY award marked the moment Expedition 33 made Game Awards history; its nine wins on the night are the most ever won by a single game.

Screen Rant‘s Lee D’Amato reviewed Clair Obscur and said, “If I were to make a wishlist of everything I wanted out of a turn-based RPG, it would tick every box.” Quite literally every facet of the game has been emphatically received by critics and players alike. Expedition 33 immediately delivers an emotional gut-punch with, as Lee puts it, “an irresistible premise: every year, once a year, a mysterious entity called The Paintress emblazons an ever-shrinking number on her Monolith in the sky. A year later, in an event known as the Gommage, everyone of that age fades to dust.“

You take control of Expedition 33, which embarks on a voyage to confront the Paintress—a journey that the previous 67 expeditions never returned from. Clair Obscur is inventive, weird, engaging, and so astoundingly heartfelt. Its turn-based combat is crisp and exciting; its exploration is satisfying and breathtaking. It may be a multi-platform release, but Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is still the best PlayStation game of 2025.