The 2025 league is now officially done. The end time was 17:00 Pacific time yesterday.
Fantasy Critic League – Like Fantasy Football, but for Video Games
Any changes after that will be ignored.
So the final scores for the 2025 TAGN Fantasy Critic League are as follows:
TAGN FCL 2025 – Final Scores
The league still thinks Cyanbane has a shot at third place, but we’re calling things as they stand right now.
Congrats to Bhagpuss, who secured the top spot and held off contenders for many weeks!
That is quite a ways from the opening estimate by the league immediately after the draft, which put Bhagpuss in 10th place. A rise to the top indeed
The initial standings estimate
I am dubious of the early projections at this point, but it did get Potshot up at the top, and he ran a close second.
Even when we all finally had a score at week twelve, Bhagpuss was still being projected down in eighth position.
The Standings for Week 12
At that point Shintar was the pick for first. But Bhagpuss has held the top projection since week sixteen, which was the last time Potshot was projected to win.
The Standings for Week 16
Potshot had a run in first place, and was only a few points shy in the end, but then Bhagpuss picks started coming in and he rose to the top and stayed there.
So the final scores and ranking looked like this:
| Rank | Name | Publisher | Score |
| 1🥇 | Bhagpuss | Pretty Blue Fox Games | 134.66 |
| 2🥈 | p0tsh0t | Hare Brained Schemes | 130.46 |
| 3🥉 | Shintar | Play Forever Mwahahaha | 109.25 |
| 4 | Cyanbane | Neutical Publishing | 108.68 |
| 5 | Shawn | Crash and Burn Games | 106.65 |
| 6 | Shilgrod | Rusty Shackleford | 96.56 |
| 7 | Wilhelm | TAGN HQ | 76.46 |
| 8 | Archey | Frabjous Day Enterprises | 65.46 |
| 9 | Arhanta | Rodent Entertainment | 55.3 |
| 10 | Kluwes | Slightly Scuffed Studios | 51.14 |
Shintar held out in the end, with Octopath Traveler 0 bubbling up a bit more in the reviews, giving her a half a point gap ahead of Cyanbane.
Octopath Traveler 0
Still, very close.
Looking at the final scores, the top ten highest scoring picks in the league were:
| Title | Reviews | Score | Picked By |
| Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 | 92.1 | 24.2 | Bhagpuss |
| Donkey Kong Bananza | 91.3 | 22.7 | Shilgrod |
| Hollow Knight: Silksong | 91.1 | 22.3 | Shintar |
| Split Fiction | 90.7 | 21.5 | Potshot |
| Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter | 90.1 | 20.3 | Kluwes |
| Death Stranding 2: On the Beach | 89.6 | 19.6 | Arhanta |
| Blue Prince | 89.6 | 19.6 | Bhagpuss |
| Monster Hunter Wilds | 89.4 | 19.4 | Shintar |
| Kingdom Come: Deliverance II | 88.9 | 18.9 | Kluwes |
| Monster Train 2 | 87.8 | 17.8 | Cyanbane |
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was the best pick for our league. (Pity about the AI thing.)
Clair Obscur Expedition 33
And yes, the first place winner picked the highest scoring title for the league, and had two in the top ten.
But Shintar also had two picks in the top ten, and Arhanta had one and ended up in ninth position.
At the other end of the list, what picks were dragging us down? Here are the bottom ten lowest scoring picks.
| Title | Reviews | Score | Picked By |
| Tales of the Shire: A Lord of the Rings Game | 61.1 | -8.9 | Archey |
| Lost Soul Aside | 62.8 | -7.2 | Arhanta |
| Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 | 63 | -7 | Arhanta |
| Shadow Labyrinth | 69 | -1 | Shintar |
| Killing Floor 3 | 69.3 | -0.7 | Kluwes |
| Ultimate Sheep Raccoon | 0 | 0 | Wilhelm |
| RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business | 70.7 | 0.7 | Archey |
| Little Nightmares III | 71.2 | 1.2 | Arhanta |
| Sniper Elite: Resistance | 73.2 | 3.2 | Wilhelm |
| Mafia: The Old Country | 73.6 | 3.6 | Kluwes |
I have two on that list, as does Archey, while Arhanta has three. That out weighed any decent picks.
Out of 84 titles picked in the league, only four went into negative territory. And then there were the zero score titles.
My Ultimate Sheep Raccoon pick is the only title to ship and not receive sufficient reviews for a score.
Ultimate Sheep Raccoon – womp womp
There were three other titles, locked by counter picks, that did not get a score because they failed to ship. Those were Fable, picked by Archey, World of Warcraft: Midnight picked by Shilgrod, and Unannounced Mainline Half-Life Game, picked by me, giving me two zero point titles.
Speaking of counter picks, this is how we did as a league on those.
| Counter Pick Title | Picker | Target | Score Impact |
| The Outer Worlds 2 | Shilgrod | Shintar | -12.7 |
| Dynasty Warriors: Origins | Cyanbane | Archey | -11.1 |
| Assassin’s Creed Shadows | Arhanta | Shilgrod | -11.1 |
| Dune: Awakening | Kluwes | Shawn | -10.7 |
| Mafia: The Old Country | Potshot | Kluwes | -3.6 |
| Unannounced Mainline Half-Life Game | Shintar | Wilhelm | 0 |
| Ultimate Sheep Raccoon | Archey | Wilhelm | 0 |
| Wonder Woman | Bhagpuss | Shilgrod | 0 |
| World of Warcraft: Midnight | Wilhelm | Shilgrod | 0 |
| Fable | Shawn | Archey | 0 |
So nobody made any headway with their counter pick, but half the league lost some points in the transaction. Still, failing to choose a counter pick gets you negative fifteen points, so nobody did worse than not taking a shot.
Picking something that won’t ship seems to be the safest bet.
Overall, the average score for a pick in our league was 11.73 points, or about an 82 review score. That makes for 105.7 as the overall average score for nine picks, not factoring in counter picks. Bhagpuss was in with 14.96 points on average per pick. Meanwhile, half the league was below average! It is almost like math works.
Then there is how things went overall. You can use the league search functions to find the best and worst titles for the season. These were the ten highest score titles that we could have chosen.
| Title | Score | Released | Hype | % Picked | Our League |
| Hades II | 29 | 25-Sep-25 | 22.7 | 26.40% | none |
| Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 | 24.2 | 24-Apr-25 | 78.2 | 93.50% | Bhagpuss |
| The Séance of Blake Manor | 22.9 | 27-Oct-25 | 1.3 | 1.30% | none |
| Donkey Kong Bananza | 22.8 | 17-Jul-25 | 74.8 | 87.90% | Shilgrod |
| Hollow Knight: Silksong | 22.3 | 4-Sep-25 | 84.1 | 94.90% | Shintar |
| Split Fiction | 21.5 | 6-Mar-25 | 90.4 | 98.20% | Potshot |
| Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter | 20.3 | 19-Sep-25 | 28.5 | 39.90% | Klulwes |
| Death Stranding 2: On the Beach | 19.6 | 26-Jun-25 | 86.4 | 97% | Arhanta |
| Blue Prince | 19.6 | 10-Apr-25 | 40.6 | 57.60% | Bhagpuss |
| Monster Hunter Wilds | 19.4 | 28-Feb-25 | 97.3 | 99.20% | Shintar |
While we grabbed eight of the top ten scoring titles in our league, we missed out on Hades II, the top scoring pick for 2025.
Hades II
The only other title in the top ten we missed was The Seance of Blake Manor.
The Seance of Blake Manor
That was not on anybody’s radar it seems. With a 1.3 hype factor is only ended up being picked in 1.30% of leagues.
Flipping that on its head, the ten worst scoring titles for 2025 we could have picked from were the following:
| Title | Score | Released | Hype | % Picked |
| MindsEye | -18.4 | 10-Jun-25 | 5.6 | 6.50% |
| Dead Static Drive | -18.3 | 5-Nov-25 | 0.7 | 1% |
| Captain Blood | -15.5 | 6-May-25 | 0 | 0% |
| Tamagotchi Plaza | -14.6 | 27-Jun-25 | 0.6 | 0.80% |
| Let It Die: Inferno | -14.2 | 3-Dec-25 | 1.2 | 1.10% |
| Neptunia Riders VS Dogoos | -13 | 28-Jan-25 | 0 | 0% |
| Scar-Lead Salvation | -12.9 | 29-May-25 | 0 | 0% |
| Creature Keeper | -12.5 | 8-May-25 | 0.2 | 0.20% |
| The House of the Dead 2: Remake | -12 | 7-Aug-25 | 0.3 | 0.30% |
| Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact | -11.1 | 17-Jul-25 | 1.7 | 2.10% |
I can say that we stayed pretty clear of that segment, our worst pick only being 20 rows down the page. We could have done worse. So that is a wrap for 2025.
2026 League Starts Next Week
Now, the final reminder for the 2026 league. Everybody has created their publisher and most people have set themselves to auto pick.
The draft is slated for Saturday, January 3, 2026, at 11:00 Pacific time, which is 19:00 UTC. At that time you, me, or the league will be picking four titles. That will leave five titles and a counter pick to be chosen later.
You do not have to be there for the draft. But if you are not there and you have a watchlist of picks, you should turn on the Auto Draft option which is located under Player Actions on the left side of the league window.
Here is the Auto Draft setting
We have an even dozen in the league right now, which means we will be picking 48 titles, so your watchlist should be pretty deep if possible. If it is not, then the league will pick the title available with the highest hype level for you… or if you didn’t set auto draft, then I will pick the highest hyped available title for you.
The draft order and picks will be broadcast on the TAGN Discord server since I have the bot setup for it.
A reminder of the rule changes made for the coming year:
- Number of ‘any unreleased’ droppable games per publisher changed from 4 to Unlimited
- Number of ‘will release’ droppable games per publisher changed from 4 to Unlimited
- ‘Counter Picks Block Drops’ from ‘Yes’ to ‘No’
So nobody will be stuck behind a counter pick and, more importantly, I won’t have to go in and manually resolve titles that get cancelled. I would like to not have to intervene in the league.
There is still time to join for 2026.
I wrote a whole post last year about how to join and what to do that goes into greater detail. But the summary was:
- Go to Fantasy Critic League and create an account
- Click on this link, which will invite you to join the TAGN League [updated for 2026]
- Follow the instructions which includes creating a publisher that represents you
- Click on the Auto Draft link in the side bar and turn that on
- Recommended – Create a Watch List of titles you are interested in
- Profit!
Once the draft is run the league will be locked for 2026, and then we’ll see how it goes.
Addendum Dec 29 16:07 Pacific Time update:
- Publisher Score Updates
- Neutical Publishing (Cyanbane)
- Moved from 4th place to 3rd place
- Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)
- Moved from 3rd place to 4th place
- Neutical Publishing (Cyanbane)
Really? But I called the final score on Saturday, so this is just some post game trivia.
Related:
The Ancient Gaming Noob 