The Best Metroidvanias, Ranked
The metroidvania is the rare genre named after its own two greatest achievements, which sets an awkward bar for everyone since. It's also the genre indie developers return to more than any other — the loop of exploration, ability-gated progress and mounting mastery fits small teams and big ambitions equally well. This ranking covers what we consider the essentials. The criteria: how well the world rewards exploration, how good the moment-to-moment movement and combat feel, and whether the game earns its length.
10. Guacamelee! 2
The genre's best pure comedy, and sneakily one of its best combat systems. Drinkbox's luchador brawler chains wrestling throws into platforming challenges that would feel at home in Celeste, and its dimension-swapping mechanic keeps the second half inventive. It loses points only for a world map that serves the jokes more than the exploration.
9. Metroid Dread
Samus's long-awaited 2D return is the genre at its most polished: controls so responsive they feel psychic, and the E.M.M.I. stalker sections add real menace. It ranks lower than its craft deserves because it's also the most linear game on this list — Dread guides you firmly, and the joy of being genuinely lost is mostly absent.
8. Blasphemous 2
Spanish folk-Catholic horror rendered in some of the most striking pixel art in the genre (a topic we love — see our pixel art feature). The sequel fixes the original's stiff movement, adds weapon-based traversal gating, and keeps the unforgettable art direction. Its lore is impenetrable in the best way.
7. Ori and the Will of the Wisps
The most beautiful game on this list and the best pure movement this side of Celeste. Will of the Wisps turns traversal itself into the reward — by the endgame you're flowing through the map like water. Combat took a huge step up from the first game. It sits mid-list only because its exploration is gentler and its challenge lighter than the games above it.
6. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
The best of the GBA Castlevanias and the purest distillation of the "vania" half of the genre. The soul-collection system — every enemy can drop an ability — remains the genre's most addictive collect-a-thon, and its twist ending recontextualizes the whole series. On a modded Game Boy Advance it's still a perfect commute game; our console collecting guide makes the case for the hardware.
5. Nine Sols
The newest entry here and the genre's best combat, full stop. Deflection-based fighting borrowed from Sekiro translates into 2D with shocking elegance — every boss is a rhythm you learn until it becomes a duet. Wrapped around it: a taopunk world with genuine narrative ambition and an ending that lingers. Only its relatively modest exploration keeps it out of the top three.
4. Hollow Knight: Silksong
Sacrilege to some that it isn't higher; sacrilege to others that it beats Dread and Ori. Silksong is bigger, faster and more mechanically generous than its predecessor, and Pharloom is a magnificent setting. What costs it: a brutal early-game difficulty spike (we wrote a survival guide for exactly this) and pacing that occasionally mistakes friction for depth. Still a monumental game.
3. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
The 1997 game that gave the genre half its name and most of its vocabulary. The inverted castle remains gaming's greatest "wait, what?" moment, Alucard is still the genre's most stylish protagonist, and the RPG systems gave the formula its addictive backbone. Some jank has fossilized around the edges — but the confidence of this game, nearly thirty years on, is untouched.
2. Hollow Knight
Team Cherry's debut is the modern genre standard for a reason: Hallownest is the best-realized world the genre has produced, a place with geography, history and mood that unfolds across dozens of hours without a single wasted room. The combat is simple but exact; the atmosphere is unmatched. That it was made by three people and sold for the price of lunch is still hard to believe.
1. Super Metroid
Thirty-plus years old and still the blueprint. Super Metroid invented — or perfected — nearly everything this list is built on: wordless environmental storytelling, ability-gated map design that respects the player's memory, sequence breaks left in deliberately, and an atmosphere of isolation no sequel has topped. Modern games are more generous and more polished. None are more whole. If you somehow haven't played it, it's the single best argument for exploring the SNES library — hardly a hidden gem, but the gateway to them.
The snubs
Axiom Verge, Environmental Station Alpha, Rain World (a metroidvania the way a wolf is a dog), Animal Well (we count it as a puzzle game first — it made our 2026 indie list instead), and the Ori original all had cases. That the bench is this deep says everything about the genre's health.