1. Ni No Kuni 2: close one with Persona 5, but this gets the edge because I'm really craving jRPG with a surfeit of heart. Clearly it's a reaction to the cynical dystopic social media landscape which has now bled out into the real world. This game looks beautiful, combat may be fixed, going to drop everything for this when it comes out.
2. Persona 5: I always just liked megaten games. But I loved Persona 4. Demon synth and dungeon crawling are OK, but it was the believable and grounded character dynamics that sold me on the game. P4 may end being an outlier, and this may be a series that I just like with a standout exception, but, for now, I'm very bullish on 5 from what I've seen and heard.
3. Nier Automata: Nier was one of my favorite PS3/360 era games. I was lukewarm on Taro's other games, but Nier was full of, yes, heart, twisted, dark story notwithstanding. The execution of the extra endings was fantastic I thought. I've always liked Clover/Platinum, so having them doing the gameplay makes this an almost sure thing, even if the story doesn't hit quite as hard as the original.
4. Final Fantasy XII Remaster: XII isn't my favorite Final Fantasy, nor even top 5, but I've always appreciated its take on the series, while lamenting the way the character advancement system, which I found built around making everyone a jack of all trades. I'm psyched to finally play the game with a proper job system.
5. Dragon Quest 11: is this coming out next year? I sure hope so, because, as stated above, I'm in the mood for feel good RPGs.
There are plenty of other games I'll consider, but nothing else I'm actively anticipating. Unless FF VIIR gets announced for 2017, but I seriously doubt that. I'll likely play Horizon and Mass Effect:A, but something about the marketing of both has left me cold, like neither studio is delivering what I want in an RPG (character driven story with a well paced and coherent central plot). Maybe they'll surprise me though! Red Dead 2 could be cool, but I just can't get into Rockstar gameplay loops, and never like how the story is doled out, so I've basically given up on them.
