So, one year of absolute slog later, I'll admit that I didn't really have a lot of time for my own hobbies...
But that's life isn't it?
Of what little I did manage to get in, this was the standout.
Sora no Kiseki FC & SC (Trails in the Sky First Chapter and Second Chapter)
Though FC came out in 2011 and SC released in 2015, my promise to myself not to touch it until I had both on hand and the inevitable work trainwreck meant I didn't get onto it until 2016. While it's basically a 13 year old Japanese game with a
traumatic localisation history, XSEED games really knocked this one out of the park with a stunningly good English port. Trails in the Sky is a classic text heavy RPG (716,401 words in SC alone), takes a lot of reading and it's slow in places - I don't recommend it to anyone who fast-forwards through RPG dialogue, but Nihon Falcom are masters of terms of plot, character depth and world building with throwaway NPC villagers with more depth and character development than the protagonists of most games. It was originally designed for the PSP before the PC port so don't expect stunning graphics, but it's not an unpleasant game to look at by any means (with the side benefit of being able to run on a potato).
Plus it made a grown man cry, so there's that.
Trails in the Sky is the personal story of Estelle and Joshua, an pair of adopted siblings and their journey to qualify for membership in a prestigious adventurer's guild known as the Bracer Guild in the pastoral country of Liberl, which is itself on the cusp of an industrial revolution due to developments in harnessing elemental energy in a field known as Orbal Technology. If I had to sum it up in a nutshell, "Steampunk Studio Ghibli".
I picked up the English release on GOG, but I think it's available pretty much everywhere under the Trails in the Sky branding. It is bar none, probably the greatest RPG experience I've ever had.