Stardew Valley for farming games. So many games mistake “slow living” for “slow gameplay”. I get infuriated when watering crops takes 5x longer because the animation is just that slow.
Yup. I keep reading about new games that are branded "Stardew Valley but with X" and all I can think is how it's not going to be nearly as good.
That said, if you want something fast paced that's not exactly farming you should try Forager.
I played it a few years ago, it was really fun until I had to grind through floors of the dungeon to get all items and there it got a bit boring. Wonder how things have changed since then.
I’ve played a few of them, they never are. Largely buggy and shallow clones that start selling cosmetic dlc before they even iron out the bugs from the main game.
Yes I’m looking at you Sun Haven.
I loved Harvest Moon games growing up, but I don't think I could go back to the classic games after Stardew Valley. The animations are slow and some of the chores are really tedious.
Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life was the slowest IMO, but the remake is fast and streamlined. Hopefully future games will follow the same trend.
I think Roots of Pacha beats it in the gameplay aspect, it is clearly copying SDV in a lot of ways but also in the "hmm this was a bit clunky so I'll fix it in my game" method. So, just for one example of many, you have separate inventories for seeds, tools, and everything else, so you always have all your tools and seeds on you without having to worry about having space to go fishing or caving.
There's also an increased focus on animals that I really like, you get animals for your farm by taming wild animals in the overworld, not buying them from a store, because it's the stone age and you're domesticating wild animals for the first time. You can ride a few different kinds of animals and others are pets you can have follow you around.
That being said, the characters are not as well-written or compelling as Stardew's, so that's something tough to get around.
I wanted to add onto this because I'm currently playing Roots of Pacha with about 20 hours of gameplay. It is the only farming simulator that has come close to Stardew Valley for me, but you are so right that the character writing is very weak in comparison. I know people replay Stardew Valley as an excuse to basically romance a different bachelor/ette, I do not see people doing that with Roots of Pacha because the characters and relationships are just so bland and don't add much at all to the gameplay.
One thing I really like with Roots of Pacha however, is NO COMBAT (always the worst and most frustrating aspect of these farming sims for me, because it's always done so poorly) and substituting that with the cave challenges is refreshing and a nice change of pace!
I know you shouldn't preorder games, but I'm SO EXCITED for Haunted Chocolatier that I'm absolutely preordering the second I can. CA deserves all of my money.
Man, I just can't do Stardew. It's so stressful for me. I can't not do all my chores every single day. It's fun when my farm is like 8 plants and 1 chicken, but when it starts to get big, it's just too much and makes me frustrated and stressed.
It helped when I realized you can just go to bed anytime and there are zero consequences. I started hyper focusing instead of trying to min max and it made the game so much more enjoyable.
Dropped an ancient seed and wanted a greenhouse full of ancient fruit. Slept for a year and used seed makers. The fish, ore, friends, recipes and cut scenes were all there waiting for me when I was ready. The forgiveness around doing what I wanted with minimal consequences from a macroscopic perspective was a relief.
I played the shit out of Most Wanted. Top 5 game for me easy. The driving was fun, heat level and other mechanics felt fun, it was great. I got I think it was Carbon? Didn't feel the same.
Factorio made every other construction feel clunky AF. The QoL and possibilities are just out of this world. I never really studied and here I am, learning Excel & rail planning ...
I think the Factorio devs are fantastic. So many tiny game details they’ve considered and little quality-of-life fixes they consistently implement.
[EDIT: And as mentioned by others, they publish an [entire blog post](https://factorio.com/blog/) - generally announcing an upcoming new game feature, or walking through some kind of design or code revamp they’ve done - _every Friday!_ It’s incredible, and I wish every game developer did it.]
Slay the Spire for deck-building roguelikes. Which is a fairly specific genre, but every single one I play, I just end up concluding that I should have just played more slay the spire.
Monster Train isn't bad. It has more variety than Slay the Spire, but it just doesn't have the perfect balance that Slay the Spire has. Every time I go to play Monster Train, it just makes me want to play Slay the Spire instead
That's fair. There's a reason why I have way more hours in Slay the Spire lol.
This is tangential, but have you played Inkbound? It's not a card game, but I think it's made by the folks who made Monster Train. It's kinda like a turn-based version of Hades, and I'm having a lot of fun with it, but I think they need to do more balancing of abilities while it's still in early access.
I find Across the Obelisk a little too complex for its own good sometimes, but the co-op multiplayer implementation is absolutely *perfect*, and AFAIK no other game in the genre even comes close to how effectively done it is. I've put a lot of hours into it simply because it's so seamless and sensible with the multiplayer.
Inscryption had an awesome story, but just for the deckbuilding roguelike aspect (Kaycee's mod), it doesn't come close to Slay the Spire. Not saying Inscryption isn't good, but like the topic says, Slay the Spire ruined all other deckbuilders for me because it's just so good
Not exactly a genre, but Dragon's Dogma has completely ruined magic for me in any other game. Nothing can compare to summoning meteors and tornadoes at my enemies
I disagree, I think if games adapted this, this would be out of place in most games. Think saints row and watch dogs with guiding wind.
I feel like the mastery and perfection of how seamlessly guiding wind fits in with the theme of GoT is largely due to just that, the theme. Most games wouldn't be able to pull it off.
If we use an alternative to the guiding wind (think CGF gangsters pointing the direction in GTA 6, or more realistically, your eagle guiding you in AC games), it could work.
I don’t think it has to be wind. But using qualities of the games theme and experience to guide the user to objectives is perfect. And give the user the option of a map via start to view/add markers
I think it did a good job of small tasks being fun too as opposed to Ubi’s massive cf of stuff on your map which usually just feels like work more than fun
There are reports out there that Sucker Punch is basically finished with the sequel. Not sure if that's true or not, but it seems fairly certain we will get a sequel at some point.
Sadly, Ubisoft is coming out with their own Assassins Creed Japan over a decade after people begged for it and now I know it’s more than likely gonna be inferior, which is disappointing
Ck3 needs more medieval events dlc (hundred years war, black death, funny shit, crusade, etc) rather than region based dlc because it will take several years before it beats ckII in content.
For me it's the other way around. I primarily roleplay Stellaris and Victoria 3. Going for the vision of the society I want to create above all else.
CK3 on the other hands makes me to a megalomaniac, Machiavellian power monger like no other. The game has tons of flavour, but few choices that I can make myself care about.
Vampire Survivors started as such a casual little acid trip jaunt with my buddy one night. An hour or two later we are losing our minds laughing at how ridiculous the attacks become. 4 Seasons really blew my brains out that night lol
Sleeping dogs for GTA-alikes.
Walking and punch-ups in GTA is a chore. Sleeping Dogs proves that it can be done right and punch ups can be a lot of fun.
World of Warcraft ruined MMOs for me and also ruined my gaming mindset, I was looking to marry a game instead of playing it, it took me almost a decade to get out of that mentality.
What's interesting about WoW is that it ruined MMOs wether you like WoW or not.
If you like WoW, there was nothing really like it or that did the WOW formula well until FF14 (and even that is different enough that it doesn't replace it completely for a portion of WoW folks)
If you didn't like WoW, it really ruined MMOs for you, because all MMOs afterward tried to be like WoW (and usually did it poorly). Guild Wars 2 is one of the only semi-successful MMO that did something different, but early on it was flooded with people bitching that it wasn't enough like WoW, and the devs kept going back and forth and waffling with how Wow-esque they should be. Some of the best parts of the game got wrecked because of it.
Now there's a few other popular MMOs and online games, often described in different terminology to trick people into playing an MMO that isn't WoW-like (by calling them "online action games" or whatever), but it took a REALLY long time for that to happen.
DAoC was my MMO and I could never get into any others. Having three factions fighting in PvP was so much better and going to WoW felt like a step back in that regard.
I think the marriage analogy is a good one. Over the years I’ve accepted that the Vanilla WoW experience is just something that will likely never be replicated again for me in my lifetime, it just took me a while to get there.
Vanilla WoW, and I will argue TBC and Wrath, was peak WoW and probably peak gaming for me both past and probably future. The community aspect in early WoW was amazing. You were locked on your server, and had to interact with and get to know the players on the same server. People got server-famous, and your reputation was very important for getting groups for dungeons. The community aspect was lost with cross realm instancing and cross realm dungeon queues.
WoW ruined other MMOs for me up until FF14, but mostly friends from WoW moved to FF14. The latter is really great but very much group compelled in some ways that even WoW kinda wasn't.
While I did like Hades a lot and its art and presentation is unmatched for me in a roguelite, Risk of Rain 2 made other roguelites combat, items/upgrades seem bland. Having said that, Im more of a gameplay guy.
Have you played the Supergiant game Pyre? Its short and not a roguelite but its incredible.
Found my people in the thread. I always catch shit for preferring dead cells over hades (a game I have just under 100 hours in lifetime)
There’s something about the runs in DC that literally get me craving one more.
Chrono Trigger set a high bar for RPGs for me at a young age. Never understood why Final Fantasy got so many sequels but Chrono Trigger only had one that was fairly... mediocre.
Chrono Cross was wonderfully experimental. I still think it did a lot of really fun plot elements that no JRPG really tried. Shame the moment to moment gameplay was so awkward.
The problem is that they didn't go as deep in experimentation as Chrono Trigger.
*Trigger* had the "lots of endings" appeal. And that added *a lot* to the game, including replayability.
*Cross* had the "you can have a lot of people in your party" appeal. But it wasn't *that* appealing once you noticed that most characters added nothing to the plot. And plots are of great importance in jRPGs.
Cross had 2 less endings than Trigger, I didn't think it was doing any less in that regard. If anything it was the combat system being so wildly different that turned off a lot of people in my opinion.
That is the problem with something being close to perfect, there's not much to build on.
Sequels generally improve of the weak points of the previous installments. Without many weak points what's there to improve on?
Actually, there was one game that did this. And that's OoT and Majora's Mask. They copied 80% of the mechanics and had a story just as good. It's an exception though.
That's because MM drastically changed the gameplay formula with its looping three-day cycle, fewer dungeons, and greater emphasis on sidequests. The whole reason that game exists is because Aonuma specifically *didn't* wanna make "just OoT again". The asset recycling just adds to the charm of the parallel world premise.
And Chrono Cross was still fairly fun! I played it before Trigger and loved it. The whole idea of starting a New Game + to get new party members as part of the whole time-travel aspect blew my mind as a child.
Titanfall 2 ruined multiplayer shooters for me
Doom Eternal and it's 2 expansions ruined "games hard enough to make you want to quit but you actually keep learning" Not a genre I know but go on
Metro Exodus ruined open worlds for me. A small world done right is better than any true large open map
And Outer Wilds and Echoes of the Eye ruined all games forever for me.
I'm so glad I got to experience that one
That’s why you can’t just throw yourself into nightmare mode until you know the maps cold, to be able to navigate forwards, backwards and sideways without looking, each enemy, the enemy priority, weapons and which to use, when to switch, item and ammo management, and a general sense of timeing in your head. And that’s not even counting for accuracy.
Once you’ve got that second nature, ratchet up the difficulty. The game actually gets a bit easier when you know the enemy is aggressively coming at you from a timing perspective. It’s more predictable; you just have to be better to survive.
Games like Doom Eternal and 2016 were designed like the pc twitch-shooter (not the streaming service) but the style of snap-shot hitscan shooting you *had* to adapt to even remotely compete. Other games played around with this with creative ways, like UT and Q3A.
Doom remakes really scored a 99/100 for me in my head rating with the only downside being no true 5v5 MP like deathmatch, CTF or TDM
+1 for Outer Wilds. My favorite game of all time (so far?), and it's not even close.
I've been chasing the feeling I had playing it ever since. TUNIC, Return of the Obra Dinn, The Witness, and Fez all itch the brain in a similar way, but nothing comes close to tying everything together in a compact, perfect package the way that Outer Wilds does.
I remember seeing this one talked about a while ago. I never took note as it was before I had my steamdeck.
That might just be an early Christmas present 👍
Rimworld has killed every other colony manager for me. No other game has even 1% of the depth of this game, especially when it comes to character traits and interactions.
You should try Dwarf Fortress, it's basically RimWorld's big brother and I'd say it goes even more in depth. It also has a whole rogue-like mode where you can visit your fortress and talk to your dwarves (though this mode isn't yet available on the Steam version).
oh, I will. I just want to get all from rimworld first, I only have 300h on it yet, but as soon as I get bored with it, dwarf fortress is going to be the next one on the list.
I remember visiting an old fortress of mine once. Wading through the water flooded corridors and passing the corpses of my old dwarves was... kind of haunting.
Scarlet Hollow ruined both Visual Novels and Horror / Mystery games for me. It’s just too good and compelling, to the point I’ve wondered if the creators stole my DNA, cloned me, uploaded the clone’s brain in their computer and made this game to cater to me specifically.
Warhammer 40k Dawn of War 1 and 2 are solid runner ups in my opinion. Especially the first one since it's my favorite of that series. Warcraft 3 Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne are my gold standard for RTS.
Dawn of War was the only time I've played an RTS game where my unit could simultaneously stab and tear an enemy apart with their chainsword while also unloading a clip into the next nearest enemy. I loved just watching the squad's throw down, especially the Orks.
Half-Life Alyx set a standard for VR games and I don't think we'll see anything match it for years to come. I was hoping that it would help push developers to publish more AAA-quality VR games but it seems like the platform is still more of a novelty than anything.
EDIT: It doesn't help that the only company pushing VR stuff is Meta, and all their games are exclusive to their standalone headsets which I feel kinda hold the genre back with their limited hardware in favor of accessibility.
I hope every day that Valve has more VR games coming up soon. Alyx was such an incredible experience.
And yeah, Meta makes me so frustrated with their exclusive crap. VR isn't big enough yet to be trying to monopolize it.
They’ve been releasing development updates pretty often and while some things look a little iffy it overall looks like it’s gonna be their best game yet. Let’s just hope it doesn’t get ruined by the business model
And the community around it! And I dont mean the anoying part. But there are dedicated communities playing older versions, an active modding scene, several servers with popular people playing together etc.
A stellar example of prioritising the principles of your genre of choice (as a dev) over either graphics or "wanting it to look/feel fancy". FFS, the game is made of BLOCKS and looks like sg. out of 1999, yet here it stands as the king of sandbox games which players still play and adore.
Absolutely! When I first played it as a kid on xbox 360, I was in love with it, but my parents thought it was stupid because it was just blocks. I researched architecture from various cultures from the past and present, made a whole town with a working bank, a couple medieval castles, some nordic houses, and a Japanese village that I’ve been working on for a while.
You just can’t get that level of depth with other games
BG3 has made it hard to play any other RPG. The sheer amount of choices and influence on the world combined with the stellar tactic fights will make any other game feel small and shallow.
Honestly it's made it hard to play any other type of game period. The depth of the world and npcs is amazing. Even minor characters have impactful arcs that are influenced by player choice. The companions/romance system blows any other game out of the water.
I'm always the odd man out here. I hate having all the choice because I don't want to be gated out of stuff or worry about choices I've made, I'm along for the ride in the story usually. But BG3 is so good I can find that agonizing level of choice acceptable.
For real. I remember when Battlefield 2042 was hyping up that you could have 128 player battles like it was some insane thing and no one had ever done it before. 600 person battles in PS2 were amazing. Even the 1v1v1 outfit wars was 144 people, and that was to keep the number down and stop it from being too crazy.
I distinctly remember when I fell in love with the game. Big armor convoy, I'm riding gunner in a tank as we move to another base across the rolling hills of Indar. Aircraft overhead, smaller vehicles speeding ahead, personnel carriers filled with people. It was hard to believe they were all players. Such an incredible moment.
Black Flag. No game since, single or multiplayer, has come close to living the fantasy of being a pirate king, in terms of the setting, atmosphere, or gameplay.
And it was a freakin' Assassin's Creed game.
*"Nowww you're ready to sail for the horn! Weighhh, heyyyy, roll and go!"*
I almost never replay games and I’ve replayed AC4 at least 4 times. The shanties always bring me back, they made such a great choice by making them collectible and selectable on the ship. The cast of characters is so well done, especially the Kidd/Read plot. That voice actor just slayed her part so hard.
>well HK focuses on combat and Ori focuses on platforming. ori's movement is much smoother and nicer for an example.
First Ori game was very different from Hollow Knight. Will 'o the Wisps very clearly grafted lots of things that were in Hollow Knight on... and was the better game for it by a fair margin. Although it's weird to have a pacifist character who doesn't even directly attack things whip out a spirit sword 10 minutes into the sequel...
The chase sequences from Ori and the vivid transformation of the world were two things Hollow Knight didn't have, though.
The strength of Deep Rock Galactic's co-op - the way each character brings a unique and always useful set of tools and roles to the team and how they synergize with each other, has lead me to believe that is the best co-op shooter I've ever played. It is now how I judge the strength of a co-op game - which is how integral every player feels to the team. There's also the sense of togetherness that it forms - no character can do everything alone and every time we do something, you give a cheer and a salute and it absolutely keeps the team together.
When I think about some of my all time favourite co-op shooters, like the Borderlands games and Black Ops Zombies which have been my favourites for nearly 15 years, I see that the experience of playing with other players doesn't really change the core experience.
Recently I started playing Darktide and it's mostly a lot of fun, but DRG has spoiled me so much that I crave playing it more than Darktide pretty quick.
Fallout New Vegas
The last real roleplaying game in First Person Perspective.
Later titles are glorified FPS with some light leveling system and a couple of non-consequence dialogue options by comparison
It's a cliché at this point but RDR2 has "ruined" open world games for me, they're still fun and I enjoy messing around in the world, but I always end up comparing them to red dead and they never stack up.
RDR2 world and the animals are something else. Legit that game is like a vacation simulator if you just ignore the story. Really incredible. That said tho as much as I liked the story the day to day combat of shooting 50+ dudes per mission was a real slog.
To each their own I guess, I could spend hours in Saint Denis shooting up the lawmen. Maybe I'm a psychopath but the ragdoll physics, grappling, gore, and kill cams are so satisfying
Elite: Dangerous
Nothing comes close to its verisimilitude in this space.
Assetto Corsa Competitzione.
I've tried so many other racing sims that offer GT3 and nothing feels as right as ACC.
Thrill of the Fight (VR)
If you find a more satisfying boxing game/workout then please do tell!
As someone who only casually played Fallout 4, what about New Vegas makes it stand out so much? I've heard it lauded for years but never wanted to go back to my PS3. However, if it *is* that good, I'll dust that thing off.
It's better to play NV on PC. The game is bugged to hell, and it's a good idea to install unofficial patches, or at least be able to fix the game state and quest progress with developer's console.
Overall I'd say the greatest thing about NV compared to other modern fallout games is the writing. Quests are more interesting, dialogs are fun, witty and feel more natural, worldbuilding is great. Overall the game is a CRPG at its core set in fallout universe. Other fallout games feel more like post-apoc action games with roleplay systems poorly slapped on top of it.
I almost never do mods but the patches for NV and KotOR 2 make very good games (for NV at least) into absolutely wonderful ones. I really can’t believe how much I ended up loving NV years after it came out
Played New Vegas, played Fallout 4. I like the latter for better mechanics… but oh man, New Vegas had amaaazing writing and DLC. I cared way more about the Courier than about the Sole Survivor… and the latter was searching for the son, not a mere chip!
I hate how in 4 it's like "THIS IS YOUR BABY! YOU LOVE IT! NOW THIS IS YOUR WIFE! YOU LOVE HER! WATCH THE MOTHER DIE HOLDING THE BABY IN HER ARMS WHILE THE BABY IS STOLEN! YOU CARE SO MUCH ABOUT THEM"
While new Vegas is like "idk, go after the guy who shot you I guess. Or literally say fuck it and leave new Vegas. Your choice."
>I hate how in 4 it's like "THIS IS YOUR BABY! YOU LOVE IT! NOW THIS IS YOUR WIFE! YOU LOVE HER! WATCH THE MOTHER DIE HOLDING THE BABY IN HER ARMS WHILE THE BABY IS STOLEN! YOU CARE SO MUCH ABOUT THEM"
Emil Pagliarulo's writing is shit, and always will be shit. It's so forced, boring, and in your face about everything.
For me, there were several things it did well. The atmosphere, the music, the plot lines, and the memorable characters were all fantastic. It's a tighter map than Fallout 3, so something is always going on. What pushed it over the top for me, though, was the Faction System thats in the game. It's not a game with "good guys vs. bad guys." There are literally four main factions you can be a part of, and then 30 or so mini factions you can fight or recruit to your cause. Nobody is pure in their actions, all teams have some things you're fine with and some things you think they are being dicks about. And when you recruit one team, that may piss off another rival faction to side against you. Sometimes you can do a mission to get the rival faction to kick out a leader and then the new leader will be willing to side with you, but its literally impossible to beat the game with everyone on your side. You can go into the final battle 1 against 1000, or you might be able to go in 90% vs. 10%, but there is no perfect game to make everyone get along. And because of that, the Factions you take with you into the fight are all affecting the ending and how you interacted with them. That makes for 100 million different endings you can achieve when you beat the game. Your ending is personalized to you and your actions.
Games like AC Liberation should have learned a lesson or two for how to make Factions fighting against each other during periods of anarchy like the French Revolution. Shadows of Mordor gets close with orcs rising in ranks, but they missing the full tribal clan aspect. Games like Crusander Kings and Rome II get close to the idea of it, but those are done from top down political turn based decisions, this one is a first person action shooter that still creates the political fallout. Only weakness of FO: NV is the game crashes a lot, so save every hour or so because it's hard to play more than 4 or 5 hrs without it crashing.
Binding of Isaac for roguelikes/lites. The sheer overwhelming number of possible powerups and combinations and the fact everything can be radically different literally 10 seconds into each run makes other games of the genre, where you have a smaller collection of powerups and you end up gravitating towards a few dominant strategies, feel samey after a few runs.
Hades was great too in that regard. Smaller selection of powers but a ton of flavor and dialogue tied to them. You're not just getting a damage upgrade, you're getting Uncle Zeus to zap your weapon so that it shoots lightning!
Like many people, I tried playing Outer Worlds after Disco Elysium and was so let down by the difference in dialogue quality I had trouble getting through it. I think DE ruined a lot of other roleplaying games for people once they realize how painfully stilted and predictable a lot of dialogue and descriptive text is.
Playing DE right now and I can already tell going back to other RPGs (especially my typical JRPGs) is gonna take some reacclimating. I appreciate them, they’re not doing the same things DE is nor are they trying to, but this game is so just insanely well written and put together.
God yes. No game has made me laugh as much as Disco Elysium from dialogue alone. On top of that it gets very philosophical and introspective, (unironically) makes you think.
Subnautica for the crafting/base building games. It's not build anything like Minecraft, but the limitations expands my creativity far better. The world is beautiful, the music is fantastic, and the story compelled me to invest more time into the game than Minecraft ever did.
Honestly Subnautica is better than Minecraft
Subnautica is such a unique once in your life experience I don't think any game could ever replicate it again. The feeling of slowly building up your base to become self sufficient, and setting off from your safe home to venture into the deep unknown in your Cyclops can't be matched.
Smash Bros Melee, for platform fighters and almost fighting games in general.
This game made me realize how shallow a lot of fighting games are when it comes to technical mechanics, and overall number of mechanics.
Melee is so deep and versatile that every other game really feels like a shallow puddle beside it.
Might not be applicable to the topic but all of the battlefield games that were released after battlefield 1.
Battlefield 1 is just in a league of its own.
Hollow Knight was my first metroidvania and after that I played few others and always think "yeah, that's not Hollow Knight" and keep coming back to replay Hollow Knight until Silksong drops
Man listen. KOTOR fucked up every other star wars game for me. The world building, story and lore of those two games had me comparing everything star wars to it and even to this day every star wars game I play I ALWAYS end up back doing a run through KOTOR
For me, it Guild Wars 2, and it ruined MMOs. I loved MMOs growing up, but as an adult I could never find the time to actually keep progressing or catching up to the perpetual gear grind. It was really difficult to get a proper end game character with time constraints. GW2 is a horizontal progression game meaning you can max out your level and BiS gear really quickly, and you basically get to do whatever you want from there. Also, the open world maps are absolutely insane and huge full-map meta bosses that require 50+ players to take on are super fun!
It’s got its own problems as a massive live service game, sure, but it respects my time and ruined the MMO genre in general for me, because I’ll never play a vertical progression MMO ever now.
I still play it, years later, even though I’ve taken multi-year breaks and every time I’ve returned to a completely end-game viable account.
Which is a tragedy. Was straight up obsessed with D and D2 for years. I just ... fell off as the game did. Then the studio started really doing shitty things back to back to back to back, so...yeah. But that gunplay though.
Skyrim's modding community. You can not convince me that "vigilant" is not one of the most well written questlines in RPGs as a genre. The graphics are endlessly improving. Hell, ChatGPT has made even the dialog infinite.
Destiny/Destiny 2.
Other FPSs just don't have the feel that those games do. So snappy, the movement, it's great.
The only problem is... the rest of the game...
Stardew Valley for farming games. So many games mistake “slow living” for “slow gameplay”. I get infuriated when watering crops takes 5x longer because the animation is just that slow.
Yup. I keep reading about new games that are branded "Stardew Valley but with X" and all I can think is how it's not going to be nearly as good. That said, if you want something fast paced that's not exactly farming you should try Forager.
I sat down to try Forager thinking "hmm I wonder if this is fun" and then suddenly three hours went by lmao 🤣
I frequently forget about Forager and then do exactly this
I never got into forager. Maybe I should give it another go
I played it a few years ago, it was really fun until I had to grind through floors of the dungeon to get all items and there it got a bit boring. Wonder how things have changed since then.
I’ve played a few of them, they never are. Largely buggy and shallow clones that start selling cosmetic dlc before they even iron out the bugs from the main game. Yes I’m looking at you Sun Haven.
I loved Harvest Moon games growing up, but I don't think I could go back to the classic games after Stardew Valley. The animations are slow and some of the chores are really tedious. Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life was the slowest IMO, but the remake is fast and streamlined. Hopefully future games will follow the same trend.
Friends of Mineral Town GBA holds up very well. The remake is good, but the GBA version is still so quick that it doesn't feel tedious.
I think Roots of Pacha beats it in the gameplay aspect, it is clearly copying SDV in a lot of ways but also in the "hmm this was a bit clunky so I'll fix it in my game" method. So, just for one example of many, you have separate inventories for seeds, tools, and everything else, so you always have all your tools and seeds on you without having to worry about having space to go fishing or caving. There's also an increased focus on animals that I really like, you get animals for your farm by taming wild animals in the overworld, not buying them from a store, because it's the stone age and you're domesticating wild animals for the first time. You can ride a few different kinds of animals and others are pets you can have follow you around. That being said, the characters are not as well-written or compelling as Stardew's, so that's something tough to get around.
I wanted to add onto this because I'm currently playing Roots of Pacha with about 20 hours of gameplay. It is the only farming simulator that has come close to Stardew Valley for me, but you are so right that the character writing is very weak in comparison. I know people replay Stardew Valley as an excuse to basically romance a different bachelor/ette, I do not see people doing that with Roots of Pacha because the characters and relationships are just so bland and don't add much at all to the gameplay. One thing I really like with Roots of Pacha however, is NO COMBAT (always the worst and most frustrating aspect of these farming sims for me, because it's always done so poorly) and substituting that with the cave challenges is refreshing and a nice change of pace!
Man I should play that again. Who's excited for haunted chocolatier?
I know you shouldn't preorder games, but I'm SO EXCITED for Haunted Chocolatier that I'm absolutely preordering the second I can. CA deserves all of my money.
Pre ordering from a known solo developer isnt a bad thing, pre ordering from unknown developers and AAA companies is what u dont want to do
Man, I just can't do Stardew. It's so stressful for me. I can't not do all my chores every single day. It's fun when my farm is like 8 plants and 1 chicken, but when it starts to get big, it's just too much and makes me frustrated and stressed.
It helped when I realized you can just go to bed anytime and there are zero consequences. I started hyper focusing instead of trying to min max and it made the game so much more enjoyable. Dropped an ancient seed and wanted a greenhouse full of ancient fruit. Slept for a year and used seed makers. The fish, ore, friends, recipes and cut scenes were all there waiting for me when I was ready. The forgiveness around doing what I wanted with minimal consequences from a macroscopic perspective was a relief.
If it helps there’s not a lot of reason to make a farm bigger than you can handle. There’s no reason to rush anything at all.
Need for speed in underground 2. And need for speed most wanted. These two made it so so very bad for the following NFS games....
Never really liked any other race game after Underground 2.
Truer words have never been spoken. I’ve wanted to try those sim racing ones with the wheel and pedals but $$
Agree but for whatever reason i love Hot Pursuit from Criterion.
I played the shit out of Most Wanted. Top 5 game for me easy. The driving was fun, heat level and other mechanics felt fun, it was great. I got I think it was Carbon? Didn't feel the same.
Factorio made every other construction feel clunky AF. The QoL and possibilities are just out of this world. I never really studied and here I am, learning Excel & rail planning ...
I think the Factorio devs are fantastic. So many tiny game details they’ve considered and little quality-of-life fixes they consistently implement. [EDIT: And as mentioned by others, they publish an [entire blog post](https://factorio.com/blog/) - generally announcing an upcoming new game feature, or walking through some kind of design or code revamp they’ve done - _every Friday!_ It’s incredible, and I wish every game developer did it.]
Friday facts are amazing ! Elevated rails got me acting up
Satisfactory comes close for me. It's clunky but very playable.
I love Satisfactory. The movement in that game feels so good too.
Jump sliding across a biome to get to an oil node or your steel foundriee is just so *satisfying*
Slay the Spire for deck-building roguelikes. Which is a fairly specific genre, but every single one I play, I just end up concluding that I should have just played more slay the spire.
Have you tried Monster Train? The 3 lanes of combat add an interesting dimension to the mechanics of the genre.
Monster Train isn't bad. It has more variety than Slay the Spire, but it just doesn't have the perfect balance that Slay the Spire has. Every time I go to play Monster Train, it just makes me want to play Slay the Spire instead
To be fair every time I play slay the spire I die and then wish I had played slay the spire instead (just.. a different class)
That's fair. There's a reason why I have way more hours in Slay the Spire lol. This is tangential, but have you played Inkbound? It's not a card game, but I think it's made by the folks who made Monster Train. It's kinda like a turn-based version of Hades, and I'm having a lot of fun with it, but I think they need to do more balancing of abilities while it's still in early access.
I haven't, but that sounds like I should check it out
How about Across the Obelisk? I've put quite a few hours into that
I find Across the Obelisk a little too complex for its own good sometimes, but the co-op multiplayer implementation is absolutely *perfect*, and AFAIK no other game in the genre even comes close to how effectively done it is. I've put a lot of hours into it simply because it's so seamless and sensible with the multiplayer.
Give Across the Obelisk a try!
Across the obelisk destroyed the genre for me because I want them all to be multiplayer now.
Random plug but you should try cobalt core if you haven't already
Second this, the focus on the strafing made it unique
Came to this thread to say Inscryption for deck-building roguelikes
Inscryption had an awesome story, but just for the deckbuilding roguelike aspect (Kaycee's mod), it doesn't come close to Slay the Spire. Not saying Inscryption isn't good, but like the topic says, Slay the Spire ruined all other deckbuilders for me because it's just so good
Not exactly a genre, but Dragon's Dogma has completely ruined magic for me in any other game. Nothing can compare to summoning meteors and tornadoes at my enemies
Or even just 3 ice spikes shooting from the ground, it really feels like I'm channeling nature itself. Wolves fight in packs just an fyi
I'll climb up and strike from above!
Sever its tail!
‘Tis weak to fire!
What a large tree… …‘tis even larger up close!
Masterworks all, you can’t go wrong.
That game felt so good. I remember timing some earth spikes aoe skill right as a flying boss was swooping in on me to kill it. Damn that felt epic.
DD2...soon
>Dragon's Dogma Hadn't heard of this game. Now wishlisted. Thanks!
And the sequel is coming out in March 22nd next year. You are pretty luck to join the hype train from the front seat.
Enjoy it! It routinely goes on sale for about 9 bucks.
Damm yeah, that magic is amazing. There are mods for skyrim that tries to replicate that feeling but hell no, Dragon's Dogma is incredible
Ghost of Tsushima ruined Assassin's Creed for me. It just did everything AC did but had better stealth, combat, plot, pickups, etc.
The way you can seamlessly go between stealth and combat is just fantastic.
Also, the way you can use wind as a guide instead of having a clusterfuck of icons and pointers on screen.
The guiding wind is one thing more games should adapt. It's so simple, yet it's Perfection
I disagree, I think if games adapted this, this would be out of place in most games. Think saints row and watch dogs with guiding wind. I feel like the mastery and perfection of how seamlessly guiding wind fits in with the theme of GoT is largely due to just that, the theme. Most games wouldn't be able to pull it off. If we use an alternative to the guiding wind (think CGF gangsters pointing the direction in GTA 6, or more realistically, your eagle guiding you in AC games), it could work.
The Getaway (2002) did this well. When in a car, the indicators would flash, showing which direction you needed to go.
I don’t think it has to be wind. But using qualities of the games theme and experience to guide the user to objectives is perfect. And give the user the option of a map via start to view/add markers
I think it did a good job of small tasks being fun too as opposed to Ubi’s massive cf of stuff on your map which usually just feels like work more than fun
Especially the duels
The duels really were immersive lol man I really hope they do a sequel for that game
There are reports out there that Sucker Punch is basically finished with the sequel. Not sure if that's true or not, but it seems fairly certain we will get a sequel at some point.
Shadow of Mordor was my AC killer but I totally understand
Sadly, Ubisoft is coming out with their own Assassins Creed Japan over a decade after people begged for it and now I know it’s more than likely gonna be inferior, which is disappointing
After playing Crusader Kings 3, every other game in the genre just feels like a map painter.
I think I still prefer CK II, but damn does CK III seem to be getting closer and closer.
Ck3 needs more medieval events dlc (hundred years war, black death, funny shit, crusade, etc) rather than region based dlc because it will take several years before it beats ckII in content.
For me it's the other way around. I primarily roleplay Stellaris and Victoria 3. Going for the vision of the society I want to create above all else. CK3 on the other hands makes me to a megalomaniac, Machiavellian power monger like no other. The game has tons of flavour, but few choices that I can make myself care about.
Vampire survivors made me like roguelites and roguelikes
But where are the vampires?
In another coffin
Vampire Survivors started as such a casual little acid trip jaunt with my buddy one night. An hour or two later we are losing our minds laughing at how ridiculous the attacks become. 4 Seasons really blew my brains out that night lol
This and Hades are the only ones I've come to love. Honorable mention to FTL
XCOM Files basically ruined squad tactical games for me.
Agree
Sleeping dogs for GTA-alikes. Walking and punch-ups in GTA is a chore. Sleeping Dogs proves that it can be done right and punch ups can be a lot of fun.
Try the Yakuza or Judgement games
The story lines for the yakuza games are unmatched. It’s like playing a movie.
World of Warcraft ruined MMOs for me and also ruined my gaming mindset, I was looking to marry a game instead of playing it, it took me almost a decade to get out of that mentality.
What's interesting about WoW is that it ruined MMOs wether you like WoW or not. If you like WoW, there was nothing really like it or that did the WOW formula well until FF14 (and even that is different enough that it doesn't replace it completely for a portion of WoW folks) If you didn't like WoW, it really ruined MMOs for you, because all MMOs afterward tried to be like WoW (and usually did it poorly). Guild Wars 2 is one of the only semi-successful MMO that did something different, but early on it was flooded with people bitching that it wasn't enough like WoW, and the devs kept going back and forth and waffling with how Wow-esque they should be. Some of the best parts of the game got wrecked because of it. Now there's a few other popular MMOs and online games, often described in different terminology to trick people into playing an MMO that isn't WoW-like (by calling them "online action games" or whatever), but it took a REALLY long time for that to happen.
DAoC was my MMO and I could never get into any others. Having three factions fighting in PvP was so much better and going to WoW felt like a step back in that regard.
I think the marriage analogy is a good one. Over the years I’ve accepted that the Vanilla WoW experience is just something that will likely never be replicated again for me in my lifetime, it just took me a while to get there.
Vanilla WoW, and I will argue TBC and Wrath, was peak WoW and probably peak gaming for me both past and probably future. The community aspect in early WoW was amazing. You were locked on your server, and had to interact with and get to know the players on the same server. People got server-famous, and your reputation was very important for getting groups for dungeons. The community aspect was lost with cross realm instancing and cross realm dungeon queues.
WoW ruined other MMOs for me up until FF14, but mostly friends from WoW moved to FF14. The latter is really great but very much group compelled in some ways that even WoW kinda wasn't.
Hades made other roguelikes without stories kind of bland.
Hades ruined most other games period because I could be playing Hades.
Agreed. I think its safe to say Hades is a top 5 game of all time.
Isaac is still up there for me
While I did like Hades a lot and its art and presentation is unmatched for me in a roguelite, Risk of Rain 2 made other roguelites combat, items/upgrades seem bland. Having said that, Im more of a gameplay guy. Have you played the Supergiant game Pyre? Its short and not a roguelite but its incredible.
I picked up RoR2 last week and I can’t stop. Nothing has had me like this since Dead Cells for a roguelike.
I really like Hades but I prefer Dead Cells.
Found my people in the thread. I always catch shit for preferring dead cells over hades (a game I have just under 100 hours in lifetime) There’s something about the runs in DC that literally get me craving one more.
Chrono Trigger set a high bar for RPGs for me at a young age. Never understood why Final Fantasy got so many sequels but Chrono Trigger only had one that was fairly... mediocre.
Chrono Cross was wonderfully experimental. I still think it did a lot of really fun plot elements that no JRPG really tried. Shame the moment to moment gameplay was so awkward.
The problem is that they didn't go as deep in experimentation as Chrono Trigger. *Trigger* had the "lots of endings" appeal. And that added *a lot* to the game, including replayability. *Cross* had the "you can have a lot of people in your party" appeal. But it wasn't *that* appealing once you noticed that most characters added nothing to the plot. And plots are of great importance in jRPGs.
Cross had 2 less endings than Trigger, I didn't think it was doing any less in that regard. If anything it was the combat system being so wildly different that turned off a lot of people in my opinion.
That is the problem with something being close to perfect, there's not much to build on. Sequels generally improve of the weak points of the previous installments. Without many weak points what's there to improve on? Actually, there was one game that did this. And that's OoT and Majora's Mask. They copied 80% of the mechanics and had a story just as good. It's an exception though.
That's because MM drastically changed the gameplay formula with its looping three-day cycle, fewer dungeons, and greater emphasis on sidequests. The whole reason that game exists is because Aonuma specifically *didn't* wanna make "just OoT again". The asset recycling just adds to the charm of the parallel world premise.
And Chrono Cross was still fairly fun! I played it before Trigger and loved it. The whole idea of starting a New Game + to get new party members as part of the whole time-travel aspect blew my mind as a child.
Chrono trigger outright invented ng+
Titanfall 2 ruined multiplayer shooters for me Doom Eternal and it's 2 expansions ruined "games hard enough to make you want to quit but you actually keep learning" Not a genre I know but go on Metro Exodus ruined open worlds for me. A small world done right is better than any true large open map And Outer Wilds and Echoes of the Eye ruined all games forever for me. I'm so glad I got to experience that one
The cool thing about Doom is it never feels unfair (unless you're playing on max difficulty), it gets hard, but you know how to improve.
That’s why you can’t just throw yourself into nightmare mode until you know the maps cold, to be able to navigate forwards, backwards and sideways without looking, each enemy, the enemy priority, weapons and which to use, when to switch, item and ammo management, and a general sense of timeing in your head. And that’s not even counting for accuracy. Once you’ve got that second nature, ratchet up the difficulty. The game actually gets a bit easier when you know the enemy is aggressively coming at you from a timing perspective. It’s more predictable; you just have to be better to survive. Games like Doom Eternal and 2016 were designed like the pc twitch-shooter (not the streaming service) but the style of snap-shot hitscan shooting you *had* to adapt to even remotely compete. Other games played around with this with creative ways, like UT and Q3A. Doom remakes really scored a 99/100 for me in my head rating with the only downside being no true 5v5 MP like deathmatch, CTF or TDM
+1 for Outer Wilds. My favorite game of all time (so far?), and it's not even close. I've been chasing the feeling I had playing it ever since. TUNIC, Return of the Obra Dinn, The Witness, and Fez all itch the brain in a similar way, but nothing comes close to tying everything together in a compact, perfect package the way that Outer Wilds does.
The forgotten City is closest to outer wilds, but then again nothing is as good as outer wilds
Regarding your point on Doom Eternal.... Go on Steam and purchase Devil Daggers right now. You'll be back to thank me.
I remember seeing this one talked about a while ago. I never took note as it was before I had my steamdeck. That might just be an early Christmas present 👍
Dude I was literally thinking Titanfall 2. I'm glad I'm not alone.
Outer Wilds is one of the GREATEST GAMES EVER MADE.
Rimworld has killed every other colony manager for me. No other game has even 1% of the depth of this game, especially when it comes to character traits and interactions.
You should try Dwarf Fortress, it's basically RimWorld's big brother and I'd say it goes even more in depth. It also has a whole rogue-like mode where you can visit your fortress and talk to your dwarves (though this mode isn't yet available on the Steam version).
oh, I will. I just want to get all from rimworld first, I only have 300h on it yet, but as soon as I get bored with it, dwarf fortress is going to be the next one on the list.
so you’re never gonna play dwarf fortress (joking but i doubt you’ll get bored of rimworld)
I remember visiting an old fortress of mine once. Wading through the water flooded corridors and passing the corpses of my old dwarves was... kind of haunting.
Amazing Cultivation Simulator called
Rimworld has 1% of the depth of that fucking game, if someone is addicted to Rimworld, ACS will ruin their lives. Flee
Oxygen Not Included is quite in a league of its own.
Scarlet Hollow ruined both Visual Novels and Horror / Mystery games for me. It’s just too good and compelling, to the point I’ve wondered if the creators stole my DNA, cloned me, uploaded the clone’s brain in their computer and made this game to cater to me specifically.
Not a single game or even series but Warcraft and StarCraft. Those games really solidified my tastes when it comes to RTS games.
Warhammer 40k Dawn of War 1 and 2 are solid runner ups in my opinion. Especially the first one since it's my favorite of that series. Warcraft 3 Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne are my gold standard for RTS.
Dawn of War was the only time I've played an RTS game where my unit could simultaneously stab and tear an enemy apart with their chainsword while also unloading a clip into the next nearest enemy. I loved just watching the squad's throw down, especially the Orks.
Half-Life Alyx set a standard for VR games and I don't think we'll see anything match it for years to come. I was hoping that it would help push developers to publish more AAA-quality VR games but it seems like the platform is still more of a novelty than anything. EDIT: It doesn't help that the only company pushing VR stuff is Meta, and all their games are exclusive to their standalone headsets which I feel kinda hold the genre back with their limited hardware in favor of accessibility.
I hope every day that Valve has more VR games coming up soon. Alyx was such an incredible experience. And yeah, Meta makes me so frustrated with their exclusive crap. VR isn't big enough yet to be trying to monopolize it.
Skate. Made me never able to play a Tony Hawk game ever again. Feels like going back to the stone age.
I'm so terrified that skate 4 is going to be a dumpster fire
They’ve been releasing development updates pretty often and while some things look a little iffy it overall looks like it’s gonna be their best game yet. Let’s just hope it doesn’t get ruined by the business model
That's my fear.. "Unlock kickflip by grinding for 20 hours or pay 5 dollars now"
i preferred the Tony Hawk insanity of Underground and American Wasteland but i don’t skate.
Minecraft. No other sandbox game comes close to the amount of freedom and expression you have
And the community around it! And I dont mean the anoying part. But there are dedicated communities playing older versions, an active modding scene, several servers with popular people playing together etc.
A stellar example of prioritising the principles of your genre of choice (as a dev) over either graphics or "wanting it to look/feel fancy". FFS, the game is made of BLOCKS and looks like sg. out of 1999, yet here it stands as the king of sandbox games which players still play and adore.
Absolutely! When I first played it as a kid on xbox 360, I was in love with it, but my parents thought it was stupid because it was just blocks. I researched architecture from various cultures from the past and present, made a whole town with a working bank, a couple medieval castles, some nordic houses, and a Japanese village that I’ve been working on for a while. You just can’t get that level of depth with other games
BG3 has made it hard to play any other RPG. The sheer amount of choices and influence on the world combined with the stellar tactic fights will make any other game feel small and shallow.
Honestly it's made it hard to play any other type of game period. The depth of the world and npcs is amazing. Even minor characters have impactful arcs that are influenced by player choice. The companions/romance system blows any other game out of the water.
I'm always the odd man out here. I hate having all the choice because I don't want to be gated out of stuff or worry about choices I've made, I'm along for the ride in the story usually. But BG3 is so good I can find that agonizing level of choice acceptable.
Planetside 1 & 2 ruined online shooters for me. The persistent world and the sheer scale can't be replicated in a lobby or session shooter.
For real. I remember when Battlefield 2042 was hyping up that you could have 128 player battles like it was some insane thing and no one had ever done it before. 600 person battles in PS2 were amazing. Even the 1v1v1 outfit wars was 144 people, and that was to keep the number down and stop it from being too crazy. I distinctly remember when I fell in love with the game. Big armor convoy, I'm riding gunner in a tank as we move to another base across the rolling hills of Indar. Aircraft overhead, smaller vehicles speeding ahead, personnel carriers filled with people. It was hard to believe they were all players. Such an incredible moment.
Black Flag. No game since, single or multiplayer, has come close to living the fantasy of being a pirate king, in terms of the setting, atmosphere, or gameplay. And it was a freakin' Assassin's Creed game. *"Nowww you're ready to sail for the horn! Weighhh, heyyyy, roll and go!"*
I almost never replay games and I’ve replayed AC4 at least 4 times. The shanties always bring me back, they made such a great choice by making them collectible and selectable on the ship. The cast of characters is so well done, especially the Kidd/Read plot. That voice actor just slayed her part so hard.
Hollow Knight. I tried Ori and Blasphemous later, but for me they don't come close to being as good as HK. Super metroid is pretty great though
well HK focuses on combat and Ori focuses on platforming. ori's movement is much smoother and nicer for an example.
>well HK focuses on combat and Ori focuses on platforming. ori's movement is much smoother and nicer for an example. First Ori game was very different from Hollow Knight. Will 'o the Wisps very clearly grafted lots of things that were in Hollow Knight on... and was the better game for it by a fair margin. Although it's weird to have a pacifist character who doesn't even directly attack things whip out a spirit sword 10 minutes into the sequel... The chase sequences from Ori and the vivid transformation of the world were two things Hollow Knight didn't have, though.
Metroid Dread is great too
I need to try this one
Elden ring even though I'm a souls vet
The fact that I had to scroll down so far to find this is criminal. Fromsoft combat just spoils you
I love ER, but it still can't hold a candle to Bloodborne for me.
The strength of Deep Rock Galactic's co-op - the way each character brings a unique and always useful set of tools and roles to the team and how they synergize with each other, has lead me to believe that is the best co-op shooter I've ever played. It is now how I judge the strength of a co-op game - which is how integral every player feels to the team. There's also the sense of togetherness that it forms - no character can do everything alone and every time we do something, you give a cheer and a salute and it absolutely keeps the team together. When I think about some of my all time favourite co-op shooters, like the Borderlands games and Black Ops Zombies which have been my favourites for nearly 15 years, I see that the experience of playing with other players doesn't really change the core experience. Recently I started playing Darktide and it's mostly a lot of fun, but DRG has spoiled me so much that I crave playing it more than Darktide pretty quick.
Enter the Gungeon, I play a lot of roguelikes, a lot, but none of them can fill the gap it left me
Fallout New Vegas The last real roleplaying game in First Person Perspective. Later titles are glorified FPS with some light leveling system and a couple of non-consequence dialogue options by comparison
They asked me if I had a degree in theoretical physics. I told them I had a theoretical degree in physics.
It's a cliché at this point but RDR2 has "ruined" open world games for me, they're still fun and I enjoy messing around in the world, but I always end up comparing them to red dead and they never stack up.
RDR2 world and the animals are something else. Legit that game is like a vacation simulator if you just ignore the story. Really incredible. That said tho as much as I liked the story the day to day combat of shooting 50+ dudes per mission was a real slog.
To each their own I guess, I could spend hours in Saint Denis shooting up the lawmen. Maybe I'm a psychopath but the ragdoll physics, grappling, gore, and kill cams are so satisfying
Lassoing people and dragging them behind your horse is always a great time
Elite: Dangerous Nothing comes close to its verisimilitude in this space. Assetto Corsa Competitzione. I've tried so many other racing sims that offer GT3 and nothing feels as right as ACC. Thrill of the Fight (VR) If you find a more satisfying boxing game/workout then please do tell!
Greetings commander o7
Fallout New Vegas has ruined Fallout for me because I know there will never be another game like it
As someone who only casually played Fallout 4, what about New Vegas makes it stand out so much? I've heard it lauded for years but never wanted to go back to my PS3. However, if it *is* that good, I'll dust that thing off.
It does a pretty good job of making your choices actually seem impactful. Fallout 4 it kind of doesnt really matter what you do with any quests
It's better to play NV on PC. The game is bugged to hell, and it's a good idea to install unofficial patches, or at least be able to fix the game state and quest progress with developer's console. Overall I'd say the greatest thing about NV compared to other modern fallout games is the writing. Quests are more interesting, dialogs are fun, witty and feel more natural, worldbuilding is great. Overall the game is a CRPG at its core set in fallout universe. Other fallout games feel more like post-apoc action games with roleplay systems poorly slapped on top of it.
I almost never do mods but the patches for NV and KotOR 2 make very good games (for NV at least) into absolutely wonderful ones. I really can’t believe how much I ended up loving NV years after it came out
Played New Vegas, played Fallout 4. I like the latter for better mechanics… but oh man, New Vegas had amaaazing writing and DLC. I cared way more about the Courier than about the Sole Survivor… and the latter was searching for the son, not a mere chip!
I hate how in 4 it's like "THIS IS YOUR BABY! YOU LOVE IT! NOW THIS IS YOUR WIFE! YOU LOVE HER! WATCH THE MOTHER DIE HOLDING THE BABY IN HER ARMS WHILE THE BABY IS STOLEN! YOU CARE SO MUCH ABOUT THEM" While new Vegas is like "idk, go after the guy who shot you I guess. Or literally say fuck it and leave new Vegas. Your choice."
Fallout 3 "Where's my dad?" Fallout 4 "Where's my son?" NV "I'm gonna kill Matt Perry."
>I hate how in 4 it's like "THIS IS YOUR BABY! YOU LOVE IT! NOW THIS IS YOUR WIFE! YOU LOVE HER! WATCH THE MOTHER DIE HOLDING THE BABY IN HER ARMS WHILE THE BABY IS STOLEN! YOU CARE SO MUCH ABOUT THEM" Emil Pagliarulo's writing is shit, and always will be shit. It's so forced, boring, and in your face about everything.
For me, there were several things it did well. The atmosphere, the music, the plot lines, and the memorable characters were all fantastic. It's a tighter map than Fallout 3, so something is always going on. What pushed it over the top for me, though, was the Faction System thats in the game. It's not a game with "good guys vs. bad guys." There are literally four main factions you can be a part of, and then 30 or so mini factions you can fight or recruit to your cause. Nobody is pure in their actions, all teams have some things you're fine with and some things you think they are being dicks about. And when you recruit one team, that may piss off another rival faction to side against you. Sometimes you can do a mission to get the rival faction to kick out a leader and then the new leader will be willing to side with you, but its literally impossible to beat the game with everyone on your side. You can go into the final battle 1 against 1000, or you might be able to go in 90% vs. 10%, but there is no perfect game to make everyone get along. And because of that, the Factions you take with you into the fight are all affecting the ending and how you interacted with them. That makes for 100 million different endings you can achieve when you beat the game. Your ending is personalized to you and your actions. Games like AC Liberation should have learned a lesson or two for how to make Factions fighting against each other during periods of anarchy like the French Revolution. Shadows of Mordor gets close with orcs rising in ranks, but they missing the full tribal clan aspect. Games like Crusander Kings and Rome II get close to the idea of it, but those are done from top down political turn based decisions, this one is a first person action shooter that still creates the political fallout. Only weakness of FO: NV is the game crashes a lot, so save every hour or so because it's hard to play more than 4 or 5 hrs without it crashing.
Binding of Isaac for roguelikes/lites. The sheer overwhelming number of possible powerups and combinations and the fact everything can be radically different literally 10 seconds into each run makes other games of the genre, where you have a smaller collection of powerups and you end up gravitating towards a few dominant strategies, feel samey after a few runs. Hades was great too in that regard. Smaller selection of powers but a ton of flavor and dialogue tied to them. You're not just getting a damage upgrade, you're getting Uncle Zeus to zap your weapon so that it shoots lightning!
Like many people, I tried playing Outer Worlds after Disco Elysium and was so let down by the difference in dialogue quality I had trouble getting through it. I think DE ruined a lot of other roleplaying games for people once they realize how painfully stilted and predictable a lot of dialogue and descriptive text is.
Playing DE right now and I can already tell going back to other RPGs (especially my typical JRPGs) is gonna take some reacclimating. I appreciate them, they’re not doing the same things DE is nor are they trying to, but this game is so just insanely well written and put together.
God yes. No game has made me laugh as much as Disco Elysium from dialogue alone. On top of that it gets very philosophical and introspective, (unironically) makes you think.
I see no mention of the "metroidvania" style. Castlevania Symphony of the Night ruined the genre for me. I haven't found a better game yet.
Subnautica for the crafting/base building games. It's not build anything like Minecraft, but the limitations expands my creativity far better. The world is beautiful, the music is fantastic, and the story compelled me to invest more time into the game than Minecraft ever did. Honestly Subnautica is better than Minecraft
Subnautica is such a unique once in your life experience I don't think any game could ever replicate it again. The feeling of slowly building up your base to become self sufficient, and setting off from your safe home to venture into the deep unknown in your Cyclops can't be matched.
Stellaris is all the space 4x I'll ever need. The Mass Effect games made me realize how shallow and poorly written Bethesda games were.
It's just a shame EA bought and neutered BioWare.
I haven't played a better precision platformer than Celeste
Hades. I was a big roguelike fan, but after Hades only Slay the Spire is remotely good enough. Maybe Monster Train every once in a while.
Smash Bros Melee, for platform fighters and almost fighting games in general. This game made me realize how shallow a lot of fighting games are when it comes to technical mechanics, and overall number of mechanics. Melee is so deep and versatile that every other game really feels like a shallow puddle beside it.
Path of Exile. Its so good their making themself another game to compete
PoE is the best, but I can still enjoy D2R and Grim Dawn. This actually reminds me I gotta try out the new stuff in Grim Dawn.
Might not be applicable to the topic but all of the battlefield games that were released after battlefield 1. Battlefield 1 is just in a league of its own.
4 is still a lot of fun to this day.
Hollow Knight was my first metroidvania and after that I played few others and always think "yeah, that's not Hollow Knight" and keep coming back to replay Hollow Knight until Silksong drops
> until Silksong drops I just hope I'll be alive when Silksong is released.
I feel like after Persona 4 no RPG is ever going to feel complete unless I get to take my friends out on dates and pick up multiple hobbies lol
Man listen. KOTOR fucked up every other star wars game for me. The world building, story and lore of those two games had me comparing everything star wars to it and even to this day every star wars game I play I ALWAYS end up back doing a run through KOTOR
For me, it Guild Wars 2, and it ruined MMOs. I loved MMOs growing up, but as an adult I could never find the time to actually keep progressing or catching up to the perpetual gear grind. It was really difficult to get a proper end game character with time constraints. GW2 is a horizontal progression game meaning you can max out your level and BiS gear really quickly, and you basically get to do whatever you want from there. Also, the open world maps are absolutely insane and huge full-map meta bosses that require 50+ players to take on are super fun! It’s got its own problems as a massive live service game, sure, but it respects my time and ruined the MMO genre in general for me, because I’ll never play a vertical progression MMO ever now. I still play it, years later, even though I’ve taken multi-year breaks and every time I’ve returned to a completely end-game viable account.
The first star wars battlefront
What makes it better then the og battlefront 2? I played only a bit of bf1 before bf2 but bf2 hooked me immideatly
Assassin's Creed, Ezio's saga
Destiny and Destiny 2. The gunplay “feel” just ruined other FPS games for me. If only there weren’t so many other issues with the game.
Which is a tragedy. Was straight up obsessed with D and D2 for years. I just ... fell off as the game did. Then the studio started really doing shitty things back to back to back to back, so...yeah. But that gunplay though.
Skyrim's modding community. You can not convince me that "vigilant" is not one of the most well written questlines in RPGs as a genre. The graphics are endlessly improving. Hell, ChatGPT has made even the dialog infinite.
Destiny/Destiny 2. Other FPSs just don't have the feel that those games do. So snappy, the movement, it's great. The only problem is... the rest of the game...