I’ve played a couple of non Zelda Zelda-likes over the years. Here’s a list of some of them.
Anodyne
Blossom Tales
Hyper Light Drifter
Tunic
Ittle Dew
Lenna’s Inception
Ocean’s Heart
Tunic
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion
World to the West
I might have forgotten or misremember facets of them by now. Some of them have sequels now, some are more of the same and other more experimental.
Anodyne and Ittle Dew were the most puzzle focused of the bunch from my memory.
Tunic is kinda vague, it tries to capture the feeling of playing a retro game with a missing manual. I remember it having more secrets rather than puzzles. I kinda got the same vague feeling from Hyper Light Drifter too. The vagueness might not be for everyone.
Blossom Tales and Ocean’s Heart felt much like copies of Zelda games. I remember feeling kinda underwhelmed with Ocean’s Heart.
Lenna’s Inception at first glance look a loot like the Gameboy era Zelda, but it does some wired storytelling and also randomly generated worlds.
Hyper Light Drifter was probably the most action focused of them.
Ittle Dew and Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion got a lot of humor. Check their store pages or reviews if it’s your style before going in.
World to the West used a bunch of character switching to solve puzzles around a whole world map. Not so much classical go save to world story and setting, but I remember having a decent time solving some of the puzzles.
Anodyne, Lenna’s Inception and Hyper Light Drifter had kinda bleak stories. Most Zelda games are pretty cozy, at least initially. If you’re not prepared for the tone, that might be off-putting.
Someone named CrossCode, while I don’t really think it’s a Zelda like it’s a great game nonetheless. While definitely not a Zelda like, Toki Tori 2 is a pretty cool mix of metroidvania and puzzles. You only got a few abilities and have to figure out how they interact with the world and it’s critters to progress.
I play games with my wife every now and then and it’s great. I wouldn’t say regularly but every few months we’ll play something like State of Decay 2 or Astroneer and get really in to it for a week.
I was in the military and we had this big conference table that could fit a good 12 people at. About once a month our boss would give us the key for the weekend and we’d play Unreal Tournament, Quake 3, and Red Alert 2 for 12-18 hours straight while pounding back Mountain Dew Code Red.
Vermintide 2 dlc where Saltzpyre gets a piglet as a hat. Best goddamn $5 I’ve ever spent on dlc. His little legs and his butt wiggle around when you move and ofc the purity seals are on point.
Also way back in DCUO when fire tank was busted AF I kept summoning fireballs that I would then Chuck into my buddy trying his best to actually complete whatever task we were doing.
Also Also max difficulty helldivers 2 against the robots on Mavelon Creek. It was a struggle to survive more than 10 seconds out of the drop pod and it was some of the funniest shit I’ve ever played.
I mean…you just described large portions of 1997 and 1998. On the weekend.
Some houses had a rule. No oddjob. I had a different rule. You’re oddjob. It was no fun if it was an even fight. I needed a handicap to make it harder.
1v1 where you’re expecting Oddjob is a lot different than 4P deathmatch where one guy is Oddjob. That’s where it’s a real dick move cause he’ll catch you by surprise.
I was probably 10 when my best friend (at the time) and I would play Super Contra on the NES for hours. We loved everything about it. We’d get as far as we could. We’d give each other lives. We could sing the soundtrack. When it was game over, we just restarted it.
Those days were simple and beautiful. I don’t think another game could give me anything like that experience, since it wasn’t really entirely about the game.
I’ve probably played an uncomfortable amount of FF7 to most. During covid, I recently became single so I decided to find some like-minded discord communities to pass that time. I met someone who was streaming FF7. I hopped into the stream and kicked it off with explaining how to get a golden chocobo to reach the final red materia. We’re married now and have a dog :D
Okami. That game was an absolute joy to play and the visuals and music were beautiful. My wife even mentioned that I seemed calmer and relaxed while playing it.
Well we’ve had a couple Jedi RPG-lites in the Fallen Order series.
But nothing quite like KotOR I’ll give you that. They just had incredible atmospheres on each planet. I loved the city planets the most, like Taris, Nar Shaddaa, and Manaan.
idunno, to me the heavy reliance on platforming and metroidvania-style traversal far outweighs any superficial RPG elements in those games. I just get annoyed rather than immersed in the game.
It was just amazing to hang out and focus on playing a game deeply for 24 straight hours with my two closest friends. Can’t recall otherwise being so pleased with how I spent my time.
Don’t know if it’s the greatest joy, but I absolutely adore the sound effect in the original borderlands where you set a Crimson Lance person on fire and they scream before being disintegrated after their health depletes. Sounds horrible, but it’s just a sound I think they did a really good job on.
I have sort of a love hate relationship with this series. I’ve played most of the games, but think that they went the wrong way and that the management and directors just can’t fulfill the potential of this series.
AC1 Great idea and for the time it was actually something new and different. The setting was wholly fresh and the story telling was leading to something and had a payoff that worked really well. It was also a clunky game 😅
AC2 Absolutely loved it. This was the game that made me fall in love with the series. Great setting, again very original and fresh. Great set of characters. Story was interesting and Ezios was actually executed good, but the modern day parts were underdeveloped and had no pay off. The ending was very bad, because it didn’t make sense and was not explained in the game, but rather in some doc in one of the following games. Stupid. Had shock value though.
AC Brotherhood + Revelations Both good games that didn’t really change Much of the formula. I liked the bombs in R. Revelations had a great ending for Ezio and be But again underdeveloped modern day which lead nowhere.
AC3 Very interesting story and a strong conflict at its core. Actually this was where I wanted the series to go. Unfortunately the rest was not so good as the main Protagonist was less appealing than the villain. Was most disappointed with the main protag honestly. Setting was not fresh nor original. Didn’t really fit in with the Parcours. Introduced the ship battles! Absolutely botched the modern day and gave up on it altogether. Disappointing in the end.
AC Black flag Great setting, boring characters, boring Story. But the ship battles were fantastic! Really liked this one!
AC Unity Great art direction! Likeable characters. Tragic, but that’s whatiI like about this series, it’s not always a happy ending. Can’t even remember the story.
AC Syndicate Horrible. I liked the main twin pair. But the story is forgettable, the setting is okay and beautiful. The controls with the hook was horrid and didn’t work reliably.
AC Origins Fresh gameplay! Finally! Really liked this one as it had great setting, likeable characters and new stuff to do. Story was okay. I kinda rushed though, because I played it on one is the free weekend events.
AC Odyssey Same as Origins. Less original, but still good. Less interesting characters. Didn’t finish it.
Didn’t bother with Viking.
The new shadow one looks interesting. But before I play that, I want to try Ghost of Tsushima.
Thanks for the long and interesting writeup! I’m still working through AC 1 and enjoying it, I’ll see if I stay on the train as long as you :).
I did play Ghost of Tsushima. One of the most beautiful looking games I’ve ever played with amazing combat and good characters. For me, it was just way to long and repetitive. I eventually found the solution, playing each of the three acts and the DLC with a long break in between each time, so it felt fresh again. In the end I even got the platinum trophy for it, but I still see it as a great 8/10 game that could have been an all time favorite if it was trimmed to about half its runtime. Here’s hoping that they don’t make the same mistakes for Ghost of Yotei. If they can keep the good and trim the bloat, this could be the game of a generation.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne