Happy new year! Welcome to 2025, and congratulations for living through yet another complete rotation around the giant firey gas ball we call the sun. The start of a new year is as good a time as any to take a look at what games are currently on the horizon, so here are the biggest game releases of 2025 that we know about right now!

On January 17, Tecmo Koei’s flagship musou series returns with Dynasty Warriors: Origins, its first full-fledged entry since 2018. It will, of course, take full advantage of current gen hardware to flood your screen with enemies that you can plow through while yelling the titular battlecry, “DIE, NASTY WARRIORS!” It’ll be available on PS5, Xbox Series consoles, and PC.

If you prefer to make warriors die in nasty ways from really far away, on January 30 Sniper Elite: Resistance continues the long-running and long-range gratuitous-Nazi-castration-simulator series. This latest installment doesn’t seem to be shaking up the formula too much, but it’s hard to complain about that when the formula involves shooting the private parts off of fascists. Did I mention you can shoot Nazis in the junk? Because you can. That’s on all the Xboxes and PlayStations, plus PC.

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Well, none of the above, but it is technically a bohemian rhapsody – Kingdom Come: Deliverance  picks up where the first sprawling historical RPG left off, continuing the adventures of Henry of Skalitz, a poor boy with no need for sympathy. And while KCD2’s immersive and historically grounded simulation of 14th century Bohemia is by no means easy come or easy go, the deep role-playing mechanics and massive open-world means you can take Henry any way the wind blows. Doesn’t really matter to meeeeeee. That’s on current gen consoles and PC, launching February 11.
If you like simulated history on a much larger scale and even larger timeframe, Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 drops that same day. When a game franchise has had 7 installments over three decades, it really shouldn’t need much in the way of introduction, but in a nutshell: you’re in charge of seeing a society and guiding its progress through history by Exploring, Expanding, Exploiting, and a 4th X word as needed, which unsurprisingly, can get a bit complicated. That’s out for basically everything, including Linux, but excluding mobile – but that’ll probably come later.
On February 14, Assassin’s Creed Shadows sends Ubisoft’s flagship open-world series into the much-requested setting of feudal Japan. If you can’t decide if you’d rather be a ninja or a Samurai, we have great news: this one lets you do both, thanks to its dual protagonists. That’s on current gen and PC.
If you’re feeling lonesome on Valentine’s day, there’s also Date Everything!, a sandbox dating simulator where you may in fact be able to date an actual sandbox – and if not, there’s 100 other anthropomorphized inanimate objects with which you can become romantically involved, from the windows to the walls – or the floor, anyway – and they’re all fully voice acted. That’s on PS5, Xbox series consoles, Switch, and PC.

On February 18, Obsidian’s Avowed hits Xbox series consoles and PC. This is set in the same fantasy universe as the studio’s isometric Pillars of Eternity games, but this time offers a whole new point of view thanks to its first-person perspective and realtime action combat. It may look like Skyrim, but don’t expect an epic timesink – the devs have said it’s more comparable to their previous sci-fi RPG, The Outer Worlds (which takes around 40 hours to do the main quest and sides), which is great news for anyone who sucks at finishing games.
Speaking of timesinks, if you think it’s time to sink some ships and terrorize the high seas, well you’re in luck because Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is… well, I feel like the title really covers its bases there. This’ll see Goro Majima, the fan-favorite foil and frenemy to the series’ usual protagonists, taking the wheel – somewhat literally – after he gets amnesia and decides to explore a new career as a pirate. Classic Majima. That’s on the Xboxes, PlayStations and PC on February 21.
Pirate Yakuza actually moved its release date up a week to get the hell out of the way of one of the biggest games of the year, Monster Hunter Wilds, which comes to Xbox Series, PS5 and PC on February 28. Again, it’s one of those series that requires little introduction, especially after how many new players got hooked on Monster Hunter World last gen. With Wilds, Capcom is aiming to refine and improve the core experience in a way that satisfies longtime fans and newcomers alike, but also introduce new features that take advantage of current hardware to keep things interesting. Oh yeah, and it also needs to be accessible enough to attract more new players – so, if you’re wondering why this game has taken so long… that might have something to do with it.
On March 6, it’s time to buddy up for another co-op adventure from Hazelight, the studio behind It Takes Two and A Way Out. This time it’s Split Fiction, which sees a sci fi and fantasy author getting stuck in virtual reality and undergoing a bunch of bizarre adventures, including but not limited to getting turned into pigs who are subsequently turned into hot dogs and cooked on the grill – though the hot dogs are still playable. Best of all, buying one copy lets two people play online together. That’s on PC and current gen consoles.
On March 25, you can experience the upper-middle-class corner of upper-Middle-earth with Tales of the Shire, a cozy life sim that focuses entirely on ordinary hobbit life. You know, for regular hobbits who just like to garden and smoke pipes and drink brandy and have petty rivalries over trivial neighborhood bullshit, not going on long hikes to throw jewelry into volcanos. Honestly, sounds lovely. Be a shame if this Shire were to be ruthlessly scoured by ruffians in the thrall of Saruman. Anyway, that’s on PS5, Xbox series consoles, Switch, and PC.

If you’d prefer to explore a version of the Shire-like pastoral English countryside that’s been doused in radioactive particles, there’s Atomfall, which as you’ve hopefully put together is taking some cues from Fallout – though as this one leans a bit more into survival than role-playing, I’d say the Stalker influence is also pretty strong. Plus, this is also showing an alternate future in which a major real nuclear disaster went a whole lot worse. That’s coming to everything but Switch on March 27.
To me, DNF has always been short for “Did Not Finish” or “Duke Nukem Forever,” (which they probably shouldn’t have finished.) But to a few million people, it’s shorthand for Dungeon & Fighter, the multimedia universe stemming from the 2005 South Korean multiplayer beat-em-up that was released stateside as Dungeon Fighter Online. In any case, that universe gets a little bigger with the single-player action RPG The First Berserker: Khazan, which hits the Xboxes, PlayStations and PC on March 27 as well.
On March 28, the potential Sims-killer inZOIhits PC, another South Korean joint which is hands down one of the prettiest video games I’ve ever seen. If this one delivers, I could very easily see it being one of the biggest games of the year. Something tells me that after 11 years, 12 game packs, and 17 expansions for The Sims 4, Sims fans might be in the market for something new and different. And there are a lot of Sims fans out there. That’s on PC at launch, with current gen console versions in the works for later.
On April 24, Fatal Fury gets its first new game this century with Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. And while Terry Bogard, Mai Shirunai and company have kept busy with appearances in other fighting game series like King of Fighters, Street Fighter, DOA, Tekken and Super Smash Bros, this’ll be the first mainline Fatal Fury since 1999’s Mark of the Wolves. Hopefully it’s worth the wait – that’s on both PlayStations, Xbox Series, and PC.

As of writing this article, those are all the major games that have official release dates. But that’s not every game slated for 2025 – there’s plenty more that we’re expecting over the coming year.