Sometimes the best games of a year aren’t exactly games of that year. In our Best Remake/Remaster category, we honor the attempts to preserve and restore favorites of yesteryear. Who did we pick? Read on.
These awards represent the consensus of the Siliconera staff. For more of the year’s award selections, check out our Game of the Year 2025 archive.
Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles
For such a beloved game, there was never a truly ideal way to play Final Fantasy Tactics on modern systems. The Ivalice Chronicles solves this, with a full recreation of the original look and two different options for those who prefer quality-of-life updates as well as traditionalists. While it wasn’t an overhaul in the way some were wanting, preserving the original in this way is warranted when the original is this good.
Raidou Remastered
Atlus has been on a remaster kick lately, but few games deserved or needed it as much as Raidou. It’s an action game in ways that we haven’t seen from Shin Megami Tensei since, and it’s also become something of a grail game in the intervening years because of how tough it was to track down. This new edition preserves the original’s appeal, while making it a lot more accessible than the original Devil Summoner releases.
Winner: Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition
It escaped! One of the Wii U’s last remaining exclusives is no longer so, and the many Xenoblade fans who joined on in the Switch era finally gained access to the cult favorite spin-off. And it gained some new content and mechanical refinements in the journey. It may be fairly recent in terms of games needing remasters, but the circumstances surrounding it make the move not only justifiable but appreciated. It’s our Best Remake/Remaster of 2025! And heck, maybe there’s still hope for Kirby and the Rainbow Curse.