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RPG Site Awards 2016: Readers' Choice in Detail

by RPG Site Staff on 03 January, 2017

As part of our 2016 end-of-year awards to mark what the biggest and best RPGs of the year were, we also reached out to you, our readers, to find out what you felt the very best RPGs released throughout 2015 were. With thousands of votes cast and counted, the winner was decided extremely closely, as previously featured in our previous Game of the Year posts.

Our readers' top games differ somewhat from those picked by our site staff. You can see our picks in a variety of categories through these links in Part One and Part Two of our full Game of the Year coverage. But what about beyond that? What was the top ten for our readership, and what other interesting facts can be observed in the voting? Here, we'll reveal a bit on all that. Here's your voting for the RPG of the Year for 2016.

Your Top Ten RPGs of 2016

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10.   Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir - 3.8% (Atlus / NIS America - PS4, PS3, Vita)

9.     Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE - 4.2% (Nintendo / Atlus - Wii U)

8.     Fire Emblem Fates - 4.4% (Nintendo / Intelligent Systems - 3DS)

7.     Dark Souls III - 6.5% (Namco Bandai / FromSoftware - PC, PS4, Xbox One)

6.     Stardew Valley - 6.8% (Chucklefish Games - PC, PS4, Xbox One)

5.     Pokemon Sun & Moon - 7.8% (Nintendo / Game Freak - 3DS)

4.     The Witcher 3: Blood & Wine - 8.4% (CD Projekt RED - PC, PS4, Xbox One)

3.   Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse - 9.4% (Atlus - 3DS)

2.   The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II - 11.3% (Falcom - Vita, PS3)

1.   Final Fantasy XV - 12.9% (Square Enix - PS4 / Xbox One)

Additional Facts and Figures:

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  • Narrow misses for our top ten include Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past, World of Final Fantasy, Bravely Second: End Layer, Tyranny and Monster Hunter Generations.
  • Bolstered by a huge quantity of released RPGs this year and the top-placing RPG Final Fantasy XV, Square Enix garnered more votes than any other publisher. Square also released one of the least-voted RPGs of the year, however, with Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness - it picked up just 0.2% of the vote.
  • Last year's most-voted publisher Nintendo was close behind Square as the second most prolific publisher thanks to a year of Fire Emblem, Yokai Watch and Pokemon.
  • The Witcher 3's Blood & Wine Expansion and Stardew Valley are the only Western RPGs to make our top ten. Tyranny almost made it, but other Western RPGs such as Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Darkest Dungeon struggled to pick up votes, with the former even being outclassed by tiny budgeted efforts from its own publisher such as I Am Setsuna.
  • Despite not technically being an RPG, XCOM 2 picked up a number of additional votes from you all.

That about wraps up our reader's choice for the best RPGs of 2016 according to you, our readers, but we're now moving on into a jam-packed year of RPGs in 2017. The next vote will be an even more difficult one! If you want to get involved, be sure to keep up with the site more fully on our various social channels: You can Follow on Twitter, Subscribe on YouTube, or add the site itself to your RSS reader or bookmarks. It's going to be a hell of a year.