Best Games of 2016?

[antisocialmunky]

Given the tastes of the RB community when it comes to video games, I'm curious what everyone thought were the best games of 2016.  We already kinda do this in the "What are you playing" thread spontaneously anyway so might as well organize it a little bit better in its own thread.

In no particular order by 5 favorite games of the year are:

XCOM2
Fireaxis did a great job building on the good parts of their wonderful XCOM reboot.  I haven't revisited it since beating it the first time so I haven't seen the DLC goodies.  I'm waiting for when I have a chunk of time to play Long War 2.

Total War: Warhammer
It finally happened, Total War did a fantasy setting with some store/quest focused RPG stuff.  I'm planning on buying it sometime this year when most of the DLC and the rest of the trilogy is released.

Civ6
Finally a fun 4x game.  Its definitely not perfect but it has the charm and personality that is missing from those otherwise mechanically fun Endless [Noun].

Banner Saga 2
Sequel to the great Oregon Trail + Tactical RPG hybrid.  Beautiful everything all around.


Predynastic Egypt
A fun little puzzle/strategy game based on the early days of the Egyptian Kingdom.  Its very much a fun little worker optimization puzzle game rather than a true grand strategy game.  For some reason I really like these.

[AdrienIer]

I have to cite Stellaris and Hearts of Iron IV, who are both very good in their own ways. Go Paradox Interactive !

I agree about XCOM 2, it's a very solid game.

Honorable mention to Ubisoft for NOT releasing an Assassin's Creed game this year. Forcing themselves to release one game a year was part of the problem, so I have high hopes for the next one.

[GermanJoey]

I didn't play a lot of new games this year, but the one I loved the most for sure was Hadean Lands.

I've also played and enjoyed quite a bit of Seravy's Master of Magic overhaul, Caster of Magic.

[Bobchillingworth]

XCOM 2 is a genuinely magnificent strategy game. I'm struggling to think of other GOTY contenders though- perhaps DOOM, if it ran on my admittedly outdated system at more than 25 FPS. The Winter Patch kind of killed my interest in Civ VI.

[Fenn]

I'm not sure if I played a single 2016 game. Closest I can think of apart from mods are Another Metroid 2 Remake and the PC port of Trails in the Sky FC (JRPG from Falcom; very engaging plot and great attention to detail but the combat was prettys imple and peaked in the prologue chapter)

But then, I've only been gaming on a laptop recently.

[RifleAvenger]

I started to try and put together arguments for a less subjective list, including some games I haven't played, but ultimately thought better of it.  So the following isn't "Best" so much as "the 4 new releases that came out this year I actually played."

Final Fantasy 15: An excellent roadtrip/buddy adventure narrative, horrifyingly stitched together with a downright unfinished plot that hits nearly every cliche in the series.  That the game changed lead director halfway through development cycle seems strikingly evident to me in the two faced nature of the game's narrative.  Franklly, given that the newer director is responsible for the parts of the game I actually like, I wish he'd been in charge from the beginning.  Combat-wise a very simple action RPG that is inoffensive, but not very filling.  I really enjoyed the main villain; too bad he got so little screentime, and most of what he did get is in the unfinished/rushed part of the game.  Also, hiding away important characterization and events that are helpful or critical to understanding the story in supplemental movies and anime (that are mediocre at best) was an insane thing to do.

Blazblue Central Fiction/Guilty Gear Revelator: These two are both fast paced fighting games with anime aesthetics made by Arc System Works.  Mechanically I love them both, and Guilty Gear's art and models are amazing (they capture the look of a 2D, sprite based game using 3D models).  Gameplay is fast, sleek, and easy to learn (there's even a beginner's control scheme for people unused to fighting game motions).  Has delay based netcode so good it can get ~4-5 frame delay or better even cross the US (screw the US's awful net providers and infrastructure).

Story wise, Blazblue takes its bizarre train wreck of a visual novel plot all the way to a predictable end.  I'm also a little bitter because two games ago Blazblue had a salvageable story by focusing on its characters instead of the insane time travel plot (also this was the final game in the series, and it's the only one that didn't get a dub).   I enjoyed watching the crash, but it WAS a crash.  Guilty Gear gets props for having the guts to actually wrap up every major plotline from the original game until now, and actually explain shit, in a satisfying manner.  It's still a plot as hokey as Blazblue, if not more so, but it had a few stellar moments and overall shows some real artistic integrity from the main writer in truly moving the plot irreversibly forward for the first time in 20 years (hey, Warhammer 40k, take some goddamn notes).

Dark Souls 3: A game I've played several hundred hours in (like most Soulsborne titles, an honestly good game, the one that finally got some of my friends to try the series, and a game that severely disappointed me.  The inclusion of several Bloodborne mechanics really killed part of the Souls feel.  The faster movement speed and super cheap on stamina dodges feel right at home in Bloodborne, but are ill-suited for Dark Souls.  I beat my first playthrough solo just spamming various fireballs until the enemy got close, and then spammed roll to escape.  It wasn't that I was too good at the Souls formula after 5 games, it's that I could bruteforce through the formula with no effort.  That isn't even restricted to spells; the basic straight sword weapon class is by far the best in the game for PvE, stunlocking weak foes and allowing the player to mash attacks at elites or bosses before dodging away free.  The PvE in 3 is better than Dark Souls 2.  The encounters in 3 actually feel hand designed and made with some real care, unlike 2's "we're going to throw 10+ enemies at them in a small room, and then do it again and again for the entire game.  Prepare to Die LOL!"

PvP is awful; As a fighting game player, I've always found Dark Souls PvP shallow, but DS3 isn't even a kiddie pool, it's a water filled pothole.  Cheap rolls, slow attacks, greatshields being near impossible to guardbreak, and some weapons with some incredibly good defensive movesets create an environment where going on the offensive first is severely punished in duels (that carefulness is a great trait in PvE, it defines Souls, but it makes PvP frustrating).  Changes to how invasions work has also caused a great deal of angst in the community.  Oh, also Fromsoft killed the Anti-Pker covenant by restricting it to the auto-summon to protect an invaded player system from Dark Souls 2, which never worked for me then and never works now.

Shin Megami Tensei 4 Apocalypse: The development team who made Shin Megami Tensei 4 found themselves with nothing to do, started making a substantial SMT4 DLC, which quickly turned into developing a proper sequel instead.  Though it reuses nearly all its assets from SMT4, Apocalypse has made amazing improvements to the combat.  Light and Dark attacks are no longer relegated to instant kills, the smirk system is better integrated (instead of just being an absurd stats boost), SP costs have been adjusted to make weaker moves viable alongside stronger ones in the endgame (trading power for sustainability), and higher level SP restoring items have been reduced in power to further incentivize proper resource management and efficient tactics in fights.  More enemies, at least in the back half of the game, have ways of disrupting buff/debuff strategies, making buff management no longer an "apply and forget"strategy.  More bosses have diverse movelists and interesting/unique abilities to have to work around.  Abilities are more staggered in when they're acquired level-wise to force the player to adjust their tactics as the game goes on.

Story wise, however, I'm left divided.  Technically I've yet to finish SMT 4A myself (I'm reporting my run of the final dungeon here on Realms Beyond), but frankly I could tell what direction the plot was going before entering the final dungeon (I've also watched the endings I'm not getting).  Apocalypse wants to focus entirely on the path that is usually the "best" ending in SMT, the humanist "neutral" route.  It does of good job of examining the regular people and hunters of Tokyo at both their best and their worst.  I can forgive the game for presenting Law and Chaos in a light even worse than normal given the themes they wanted to emphasize for the game.  However, the way the game ties into the series' overall mythos retroactively makes Law/Chaos unacceptable and Neutral the unquestioned best choice in all previous games!  This makes me very upset, to say the least.  The neutral route then offers you a choice between a ridiculously cheery ending where you kill God with the Power of Friendship (triumph of the human race), or a polar opposite ending where you kill every human, god, and demon on Earth to become the maker of your own universe (triumph of the human individual).  These endings are so extreme and non-nuanced (like the worst of the series' Law/Chaos endings) that they leave a bad aftertaste, souring what was otherwise an amazing game.

I understand that I probably seemed a bit negative, given that this is supposed to be a "Best Games" thread.  I suppose that's just how I am, and I do want to say that I enjoyed every game I listed here.  A lot of the issues with DS3 and SMT4A only came to mind after I had played for a long time, and FF15 and BB/GG were net positives.

[Whosit]

I'm putting in another vote for XCOM 2 and DOOM. Though as a caveat, just best out of the games I have experienced this year.

[Mardoc]

Predynastic Egypt
A fun little puzzle/strategy game based on the early days of the Egyptian Kingdom.  Its very much a fun little worker optimization puzzle game rather than a true grand strategy game.  For some reason I really like these.

I played this one too! It made me stay up about three hours past my bedtime, and I think I learned some interesting facts about the history, too.

Not much replayability, but the price was such that I feel it was value anyway.

[chumchu]

Through the Ages - A New Story of Civilisation. A careful, well designed and thoroughly playtested update to of a classic game feels rare these freebooting rebooting days.

[Sareln]

Predynastic Egypt
A fun little puzzle/strategy game based on the early days of the Egyptian Kingdom.  Its very much a fun little worker optimization puzzle game rather than a true grand strategy game.  For some reason I really like these.

I played this one too!  It made me stay up about three hours past my bedtime, and I think I learned some interesting facts about the history, too.

Not much replayability, but the price was such that I feel it was value anyway.

This has a demo, I played it and bought it.  Thanks!