RPG Site Best of 2025 Awards: Readers' Choice in Detail

RPG Site is a completely independent website. We have no media conglomerate ownership and no brand sponsors. We are completely dependant on you, the reader, reading our website & sharing our articles. We cannot do any of this without you and we appreciate all of you immensely. So, every year we want to ask YOU want your favorite games of the year are. As usual, we allow consideration for both pure-blood RPGs and a few adjacent games that we feel RPG fans would enjoy. 

Throughout the month of December, we had you vote in two separate polls: Your favorite RPG of 2025 and your most anticipated RPG for 2026. We already posted our Staff Best of 2025 Awards and our own Most Anticipated for 2026, but we wanted to hear what you had to say. We have results for both polls listed below.

In some places, your votes reflect similarly to our staff decisions, but it some places the reader consensus took a different stance.

Without further ado, here are the results. Results are given as percentages of the total number of votes.

Small reminder: Our polling release period goes from December 2024 to November 2025.

Your Top Ten RPGs of 2025

1. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - 22.0% (Kepler / Sandfall)

2. Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter - 20.3% (GungHo / Falcom)

3. The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy - 10.7% (Aniplex / Too Kyo Games)

4. Digimon Story: Time Stranger - 5.6% (Bandai Namco / Media Vision)

5. Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition - 4.2% (Nintendo / Monolith Soft)

6. Deltarune Chapters 1-4 - 3.9% (tobyfox)

7. Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake - 3.4 % (Square Enix / Artdink)

8. Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles - 3.0% (Square Enix)

9. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II - 2.8% (Deep Silver / Warhorse)

10. Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time - 2.6% (Level-5)

Readers' Choice Favorite 2025 RPGs - Additional Facts and Comments

• Our eleventh year of the fan poll sees Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 join Metaphor: Refantzio, Baldur's Gate 3, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Shin Megami Tensei V, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Dragon Quest XI, Persona 5, Final Fantasy XV, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as our readers' poll winners.
• This year, there was only one "narrow miss" outside the top ten, which was Pokemon Legends: Z-A, losing out on the tenth spot by only a handful of votes.
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the first game to win the Reader Poll as a brand new IP from a new developer.
• Square Enix is the only publisher with more than one title in the top ten vote getters. Nine different publishers is the most represented in the top ten results since 2015 (which showcased ten different publishers).
• Coincidentally, 2015 was the last time tobyfox made the top ten list, as Undertale ranked #3 that year among readers.
• Four games were remakes or re-releases of some sort, including Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter, Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition, Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake, and Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles. That is the most in polling history (some previous years had three re-releases in the top ten).
• Last year, only BioWare reached the top ten with the lone Western-style RPG title in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, with no indie RPGs polling in the top ten. This year, we have one Western-style RPG in Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, one indie effort in Deltarune, and of course the JRPG-inspired French-developed RPG in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

Your Readers' Choice Most Anticipated 2026 RPGs

1. Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave - 18.3% (Nintendo / Intelligent Systems)

2. The Legend of Heroes: Trails beyond the Horizon - 14.2% (NIS America / Falcom)

3. Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter - 13.9% (GungHo / Falcom)

4. Dragon Quest VII Reimagined - 9.1% (Square Enix)

5. Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection - 3.8% (Capcom)

6. Octopath Traveler 0 - 3.6% (Square Enix / DokiDoki Groove Works)

7. Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement - 3.0% (505 Games / Artplay)

8. Fate/Extra Record - 2.9% (Bandai Namco / Aniplex / Type-Moon)

9. The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales - 2.5% (Square Enix / Claytechworks)

10. Onimusha: Way of the Sword - 2.1% (Capcom)

Readers' Choice Most Anticipated 2026 RPGs - Additional Facts and Comments

• This is RPG Site's eighth year polling our readers for their Most Anticipated RPG of the upcoming year. Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave joins Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Final Fantasy XVI, Elden Ring, Shin Megami Tensei V, Final Fantasy VII Remake, and Kingdom Hearts III. 
• Narrow misses for the reader top ten Most Anticipated include Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties, Abyss X Zero, Alabaster Dawn and Clockwork Revolution.
• While Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave is the top individual vote getter, Falcom's Trails series comfortably sit in both the #2 and #3 spots with both The Legend of Heroes: Trails beyond the Horizon and Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter, although the two titles have different Western publishers. The combined votes from these two entries considerably outpace Fire Emblem. 
• Only one new IP made the top ten list this year in The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales, although it is broadly in Square Enix's 'series' of HD-2D titles.
• Due to our December-to-November eligibility period, Octopath Traveler 0 is the first December release to make the Readers' Most Anticipated list, which places it in the admittedly-weird situation where it launches during the polling period. It is NOT the first RPG to hit the Reader's Choice Favorites list (Chained Echoes in the 2023 poll, having released in December 2022.) We'll have to see how Octopath Traveler 0 ranks in the top-ten favorites of 2026 list next year.