Breath of the Wild is Metacritic’s Top Game of 2025—Again

Eight years after its original launch, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is once again sitting at the top of Metacritic’s annual rankings. This time, it's officially listed among the highest-rated games released in 2025, tied with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 at a score of 93.

It sounds strange at first—how does a 2017 game end up on a 2025 list? The answer lies in the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2 and a series of upgraded re-releases.

Nintendo has brought several titles from the original Switch era forward, giving them new life with visual upgrades and performance boosts. These “Switch 2 Editions” are more than just ports—they’re reworks that take advantage of the new hardware. Breath of the Wild is one of those games, and Nintendo made it a paid upgrade. Even if you already own the original, you need to pay again for the full Switch 2 experience.

The new version doesn’t even come with all the old DLC.

Still, that hasn’t stopped the game from dominating reviews again. The upgraded version pushed it back into the critical spotlight, and under Metacritic’s system, that counts as a new 2025 release. That’s why it now shares the top spot with Expedition 33, a proper new game developed specifically for this year.

That makes Breath of the Wild a 2025 hit by technicality—but a hit nonetheless. And its charting comes with some collateral damage. The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, previously sitting in the top 20, was bumped off entirely after Breath of the Wild climbed in. Blue Prince, another strong 2025 title, also got pushed down the rankings despite glowing reviews.

If this feels like a strange situation, it might not be the last one. Nintendo has already rolled out a similar upgrade for Tears of the Kingdom, which originally launched in 2023. Its updated Switch 2 Edition is sitting on a 94 average, meaning it’s poised to overtake Breath of the Wild entirely—at least if Metacritic updates its rankings the same way again.

What’s happening now is simple: the Switch 2 is creating a new wave of re-releases, and Nintendo is turning those into critical wins. Not every game gets this treatment, but the Zelda titles clearly got the premium push.

Some players are not thrilled with having to pay again for games they already own, especially when the upgraded editions don’t include everything from before. Others are happy to see these classics return with a fresh coat of paint and smoother performance. Either way, this strategy is helping Nintendo dominate the review cycle in 2025, even with games that first released nearly a decade ago.

This kind of move also highlights how game rankings and review aggregators like Metacritic aren’t always clean cut. A re-release can sometimes count just as much as a brand-new game if it hits the right technical benchmarks. And in this case, Breath of the Wild had no problem passing that test again.

With Tears of the Kingdom likely about to do the same, the Metacritic charts for 2025 are starting to look more like a Nintendo showcase than a snapshot of new industry innovation. Whether that’s good or bad depends on how much value you see in polished re-releases versus true new titles.

But from a pure numbers perspective, Breath of the Wild is back on top. Again.

By the way, if you like to fool around and choose a provocative nickname, prepare for a ban from Nintendo, or familiarize yourself with the peculiarities of word selection.