It's Level Up time over at Fanatical, and you know what that means: time to distribute your stat points to some new skills and attributes. And by 'stat points' I mean 'relatively small amounts of money,' and by 'skills and attributes' I mean 'absolute banger videogames.'
It's a big old sale, in other words, and it only lasts until April 27. So with that in mind, I've whizzed through Fanatical's offerings to pick out the deals I think deserve your attention, from the big heavy-hitters to the niche-er heaters.
Oblivion Remastered
Bethesda and Virtuos' modernised, UE5-ified re-do of 2006's Elder Scrolls 4 only came out three days ago, but you can already nab it at 17% discount. It's worth it, too. Todd Howard can call this a remaster all he likes, but it has the spirit of a ground-up remake: it looks gorgeous, the level-up system has been overhauled (no more thieves forced to grind heavy weapons and armour), and they even went and scattered in a few voice performances so that the entire province of Cyrodiil doesn't feel like it consists of about three people.
Not to worry, though, because this is still classic Oblivion at its core, full of the strange quirks we fell in love with back in 2006. This is precision work by Virtuos and Bethesda: OG Oblivion's annoying rough edges have been sanded down, but the rough edges that defined it and made it so widely loved? Those are still there in spades.
Link: Fanatical | Price: $41.49 / £41.49
Metaphor: ReFantazio
What happens when you give the director of Persona a whole new world and an art team you can't say 'no' to? You get Metaphor: ReFantazio, a beautiful and absolutely enormous fantasy RPG from Atlus veteran Katsura Hashino that captured the PCG staff's hearts and minds when it came out last year.
Half RPG, half social sim, Metaphor is set in an original fantasy world riven by racism where you play a diverse party of misfits (a heterochromatic boy, a fairy, a noble fallen on hard times, a guy who is also a bat) as they set out to, well, pretty much run for president. Just like real life, you do that by clearing dungeons in a turn-based battle mode that's like the Persona games with added complexity, and where every button press triggers some kind of beautiful gala event in the UI. We scored it 95% in our Metaphor: ReFantazio review.
Link: Fanatical | Price: $42.34 / £36.29
Balatro
Got plans for the rest of your life? Chuck 'em. You won't need them after you've picked up Balatro, the alarmingly compulsive what-if-poker-was-a-roguelike-deckbuilder game from enigmatic creator LocalThunk. The premise is simple: every level has a score you have to beat to move on, and you amass that score by playing poker hands from your decks of cards (pretty much normal playing cards) and jokers (modifiers, often weird ones).
Before long, you've gone from just scraping by a few hundred points to attaining scores so high that the game has to present them in scientific notation. This was our 2024 Game of the Year, and for good reason: I struggled to put it down long enough to write this.
Link: Fanatical | Price: $13.49 / £11.51
Blue Prince
Like 'blueprints,' get it? This is the indie breakout of 2025 so far—a first-person puzzler set in a creaky old mansion. You've inherited the manor from a relative. Your task? To explore its 45 rooms and then, if you're clever, to also find its secret 46th room. The rub is that you're building the mansion as you explore it (your relative was weird, what can I say?), every door you click presents you with cards to choose from—maybe the room ahead is an observatory, or a bedroom, or a kitchen—and each one contains its own puzzle-y challenges you'll need new resources from other rooms to complete.
The game is a constant process of eureka moments as you pick up new stuff and realise, 'hey, didn't I need something like this in that room earlier?' And we can't get enough of it. We scored it 92% in our Blue Prince review.
Link: Fanatical | Price: $25.49 / £21.24
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Not since that one cheat code for Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction has playing a videogame as Harrison Ford been this compelling. Indy and the Great Circle is the latest game from developer MachineGames—who you probably know as the folk behind the excellent new Wolfenstein games—and it's a globetrotting tale that puts you right in the shoes of the world's most handsome archaeologist (sorry, Tony Robinson).
What makes Indiana Jones and the Great Circle so, uh, great is that it gets the Indy fantasy. This isn't some FPS in an Indiana Jones skin, it's a mix of stealth, exploration, puzzle-solving, and hand-to-hand brawling in the best tradition of the films. You can spend hours in the game's first area just poking into every nook and cranny for goodies and secrets, stealthing past blackshirts and zonking dudes with dustpans while barely paying attention to the main plot. It's a game that feels deep in a way few others manage, which'd be why we gave it 86% in our Indiana Jones and the Great Circle review.
Link: Fanatical | Price: $48.29 / £41.39
Other bangers worth a look
Those are my top five picks from Fanatical's current crop in its Level Up sale, but they're far from the only things you can nab. Here's a quick list of some other ongoing deals that I think deserve your time and attention:
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 | $50.99 / £42.49 | Our review
- Dragon's Dogma 2 | $33.59 / £25.91 | Our review
- Yakuza 0 | $9.99 / £7.99 | Our review
- The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind | $5.32 / £4.61 | Our review
- Dishonored 2 | $2.69 / £2.24 | Our review
- Monster Hunter Wilds | $55.99 / £47.99 | Our review
