The clown makeup has been scrubbed off, the circus tents folded away. After years of desperate E3 no-shows, faked leaks, and a meme culture that practically invented a new genre of copium, Hollow Knight: Silksong finally materialized in 2025. No more ritualistic clown emojis in every Nintendo Direct thread—just a serene, gothic butterfly-winged heroine ready to conquer Pharloom. But once the sugar-rush of release day faded, a sobering question fluttered into the minds of gamers: in a year absolutely bursting with bangers, did Silksong truly dominate, or was it merely a beloved ghost finally laid to rest? The answer, as seen through the unfiltered lens of Metacritic user scores, is a deliciously humbling six-place finish—and it’s far more interesting than any critic’s perfect 10.

User scores are the internet’s fever dream: raw, irrational, occasionally weaponized by review-bombing crusaders. But for the vast majority of games released in 2025, they offer a genuine temperature check of fandom—no PR manager can fine-tune thousands of individual emotional reactions typed at 3 a.m. with a half-eaten pizza nearby. Silksong’s critics’ chorus was undeniably rapturous, but the players? They gave it a 9.0 out of 10 on Metacritic, which is like being handed a gold ingot and then learning five other people received slightly heavier gold ingots. Who dared to outshine Team Cherry’s magnum opus? A motley crew of a French surrealist RPG, a Digimon game that nobody would’ve bet a dollar on, a Sonic racer, a Falcom remake, and a barrel-bashing ape.

Here’s the scoreboard that made Hornet pause mid-leap:

A 9.0 is nothing to sneer at—it’s the kind of rating most developers would trade their best character model for. But the top spot belongs to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a debut from Sandfall Interactive that landed in April 2025 like an art-house bomb wrapped in a love letter to classic JRPGs. Users have showered it with a 9.6, and it’s not slowing down; reviews continue to trickle in well into October, proving that its painterly turn-based combat and existential storytelling have lodged themselves deep. Digimon Story: Time Stranger followed in July, resurrecting a franchise that had been napping more soundly than a Metroidvania protagonist, and a 9.2 suggests fans are absolutely here for more digital monsters with surprisingly tear-jerking plotlines. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds (9.1) somehow turned a hedgehog into a karting deity, while Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter (9.1) reminded everyone that the Legend of Heroes series is basically a cult you never want to leave. Then there’s Donkey Kong Bananza (9.1), an explosion of nostalgia and physics-based chaos that presumably made the entire 3D platformer genre blush.

This lineup feels almost surreal, like a Nintendo Direct fever dream where the VIP lounge is populated by characters who normally wouldn’t share a frame. And where were the other heavyweight GOTY contenders? Hades 2, with its 8.6 user score, seems to have traded some of its predecessor’s universal adoration for a more demanding early-access journey. Death Stranding 2 earned a respectable 8.8, but Kojima’s parade of bewildered couriers apparently left a few players craving a bit less exposition and a few more ladder deliveries. Split Fiction, Josef Fares’ latest co-op narrative gamble, landed at 8.7—still stellar, but not enough to crack the 9.0 club. The Metacritic masses, it appears, are a fickle bunch, more likely to rally behind a fresh surprise than a polished sequel.

Does any of this mean Silksong stumbled? Hardly. Over 1,500 user reviews have cemented that 9.0 as a monument to everything Team Cherry got right: a sprawling map so dense with secrets it makes your in-game map feel like a liar, combat that flows like velvet-lined glass, and enough melancholic bug lore to fill a college syllabus. The five games above it simply ignited a slightly different fire—sometimes a game’s ambition resonates beyond its genre bubble, and 2025 was a year where an arthouse turn-based RPG and a Digimon entry found that frequency. Clair Obscur’s still-active influx of reviews shows that a game’s user score can be a living thing, rising or falling long after the review embargo dust settles. Silksong’s 9.0, stable and glowing, suggests a consensus that’s immune to mood swings: it’s a masterpiece, just not the only one in the room.

Looking back from 2026, the Metacritic snapshot of October 2025 now reads like a prophecy. The Game Awards 2025 saw Silksong snag Best Indie and Best Art Direction, while Clair Obscur won the night’s big prize, validating the user-score hive mind in a way that rarely happens. Yet the true legacy of this era might be the quiet death of the clown meme. With Silksong finally out there, pirouetting through thorn-draped cathedrals, fans no longer need to paint their faces; they just need to leave an honest review. And maybe, just maybe, give that Sonic racing game a spin—after all, the numbers don’t lie.

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