April 2017

There are tons of great-looking video games coming out in 2017. Many of these are western releases, but a huge number of fantastic titles are coming out of Japan also. In fact, many of my most hotly-anticipated games are Japanese this year.

In any case, here's a list of all the best (or at least most important) video games currently announced for a 2017 release. I'm putting them in alphabetical order and including trailers whenever possible. I'll keep this list updated with other important releases as well.

Take a look and let me know which of these video games you're excited about.

Arms - One of the Nintendo Switch's first releases, Arms is a boxing game that uses both button and motion controls. Fighters have boxing gloves and long, spring arms and duke it out in a ring. It looks novel, as far as fighting games go, and exactly the sort of quirky little game that Nintendo would come up with.

Berserk and the Band of the Hawk - The game based off the popular, and uber-violent, manga is a spin-off of the also popular Dynasty Warriors franchise. I admit, I kind of wish it were a rip-off of Dark Souls rather than the hack-and-slash chaos of Dynasty Warriors, but that's probably just a personal bias. Maybe I'm just not that much of a Dynasty Warriors fan.

Call of Cthulhu - A Gothic, Lovecraftian mystery and psychological horror game from Cyanide Studios. Could be great, could be "meh." But I like the trailer.

Dark Souls III: The Ringed City - The final DLC for the Dark Souls franchise takes the player to the Ringed City, at the end of the Age of Fire, at the edge of the world.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 - The follow-up to the original Divinity: Original Sin which was one of the most charming, clever role-playing games to come out in years. Divinity: Original Sin 2 looks to expand on everything that made the original so great with better graphics, a bigger world, and more choices. If you can't control your hype for this one, nobody will blame you.

Dragon Quest Heroes II - Fresh off the heals of the amazing Dragon Quest Builders, Dragon Quest Heroes 2 is described as a "hack-and-slash, field-roaming action RPG that sends players on a new adventure to restore order in a once peaceful world filled with hordes of monsters and battles of epic proportions." Sounds good to me. I like the more cartoony, less-serious style here. It's a nice contrast to something like Final Fantasy.

Dynasty Warriors 9 - Finally a fully open-world Dynasty Warriors game. Dynasty Warriors 9 promises to be the biggest, best-looking in the long-running epic action franchise.

Fire Emblem Echoes - A "re-imagining" of the second Fire Emblem game (Fire Emblem Gaiden) Echoes comes to the 3DS surprisingly soon after the launch of Fire Emblem Fates last year. But we're not complaining. The more Fire Emblem the better. The game looks to diverge from the modern entries in the series, with some dungeon-crawling and no marriage mechanic.

Fire Emblem Warriors - This Dynasty Warriors spinoff follows in the footsteps of Hyrule Warriors on the Wii U by taking the Fire Emblem universe and cast of characters and inserting it into the massive-scale action combat of the Warriors series. It should be good, mindless fun, if not the tactical goodness of a core Fire Emblem game.

The Flame in the Flood - A girl and her dog survive in a roguelike wilderness by raft and over land, scrounging for resources, setting up camp, and evading predators like huge bears. Cool art-style and a great trailer for its PS4 release.

For Honor - Knights, Vikings and Samurai do glorious battle in this quirky multiplayer title from Ubisoft. If you like action fighting games with a touch of MOBA, this might be the game for you. I've played the alpha, but am waiting for the upcoming beta and full release to offer up any sort of valuable judgment. It's a great concept, but so much hinges on how satisfying the combat ends up being.