Yes, FF14 does have options to skip story or (most) character levels. They are, like others have stated, primarily targeted towards players who are levelling alts (which the game by nature doesn’t really need as much).
FF14’s story is amazing, but it’s long and not necessarily something you want to repeat.
And while this is effectively buying levels, FF14 is not designed as a pay-to-win game. The amount of experience required to reach maximum level is balanced for someone who is playing the game legitimately – unlike P2W games where requirements are artificially inflated to encourage you to spend money. You will get most or all of the experience you need to hit max level just from following the storyline and a moderate amount of side quests (on one class anyways.)
That said, many FF14 players say that fashion is the true endgame… and there are a lot of nice-looking items on the store. So I suppose it depends on what your definition of “winning” is. 🙃
As others have said, the story skips are kinda awful.
Plus, I gotta say that it doesn’t really make a difference. They don’t give anyone an advantage over anyone else and don’t impact the way you experience the game at all. If you don’t like them, just don’t buy them.
At worst, you’ll run into some guys who are really bad because they skipped a huge portion of the game to get to modern content. But it doesn’t give them any edge over you by any means.
Again, I can’t stress enough how these affect other players 0%.
Some of the best gear in ESO come from their paid DLCs and Chapters. Technically locked behind a paywall, but you’ll still have to farm the gear yourself.
The microtransactions themselves only offer cosmetics, consumables (that aren’t more powerful than the craftable options), and utility stuff (race-change tokens, and skipping some of the skillpoint grind).
There is a player market for exchanging Crowns (microtransaction currency) for gold, and another player market for buying raid clears with gold. Raiding (called Trials) offer some of the best PvE gear. You don’t need to buy clears if you’re skilled enough to run those Trials and can find groups to do it with you.
If you just want to enjoy the game without worrying about min-maxing your build, all the base-game and craftable options will do you just fine.
Ogre Battle on the SNES is the original auto-battler. I would really recommend Ogre Battle 64 though, not only is it one of the very few RPGs on the system but it’s got really unique gameplay. It’s got its flaws but I’m such a sucker for the character designs and job/class system that it’s still my favorite game to this day.
Strongly recommended! It’s one of those rare games where you don’t want a “sequel” because there’s no way it would be in the spirit of the first game. Especially today.
I really don’t want “2” to be a thing. The “trailer” felt like an insult for using the Beyond Good and Evil name for marking. There was nothing about it that had the spirit of the first game.
If there ever is a remaster, then I hope it keeps the original artistic style. Lots of remasters get this wrong.
I don’t think it’s fair to call it a cult classic just yet since the game is rather recent, but eventually i think Kenshi. It’s a really fun game although very grindy and i’m not even sure which genre it belongs to. Also it’s very moddable to fit even more to your preferences. It’s been quite a while since i played it, but i’ll share a little story: I started the game for the first time and i wanted to make a “waifu squad” consisting of only women so i did. Worked my ass of mining copper and selling it in order to hire more ladies. Eventually my two ladies started to build a base near where i was mining copper and then one day, the “prayer day” (or whatever it was called) came and an army of crusaders came to spread the word of god. The bishop asked my main lady if there was any men in this settlement and of course i answered no there is none. To them it was blasphemy to not have any men in a settlement and the army slaughter my two ladies like it was nothing. Too bad i lost this save since i’ve gotten a new PC because i would’ve wanted to go on with my vengeance story, but maybe i’ll fire it up again.
EarthBound for the SNES is one of my favorite RPGs. Very original for its time in terms of setting and battle mechanics. Also, Ness from Smash Bros. is in it!
Such a weird game! The artstyle and just the “weirdness” of it is out of this world.
I’m not a fan of turn-based battles, but this is one of the few games (including Chrono Trigger) where it’s legitimately fun. To this day I still think about it.
Have you played Eastward? Unless I’m mistaken Earthbound is part of the game and plot. If you like Earthbound you might like Eastward. I enjoyed it even having never played Earthbound but I’m sure I missed a lot of references / analogies.
Shout out to Fishery (309 reviews). It’s pretty niche as an aquarium simulator, but very relaxing and well made.
Also, Ozymandias (770 reviews) is a great strategy game that manages to squeeze the feeling of a full game of civilization into less than one hour.
If you’re interested in classic board games, The Conquest of Go (397 reviews) is a great entry point into Go, with nice tutorial features and a campaign mode that scales difficulty as you win games.
Depending on your puzzle solving abilities, Outer Wilds (not Outer Worlds!) should only take around 15-20 hours.
Extra bonus, it can be played in very short sessions very easily and has a great in-game log of events in case you have to put it down for a little while.
I can recommend NEO Scavenger (slightly under 4k reviews). It’s hardcore survival game in post apocalypse world. I haven’t finished it yet, 'cause I always die in the process. Still very enjoyable if you’re into post-apo.
If you’re interested in games that aren’t MMORPGs, Path of Exile fits your criteria for monetization. You can only purchase cosmetics and bank storage upgrades. It’s an online ARPG but it’s mostly single player.
It is pretty much unplayable without the bank storage upgrades though. Given the amount of time they can save you, you may as well say that they are power.
Guild Wars 2 basically makes it impossible to buy power – once you’ve purchased all the expansions, at least. Which is incredibly impressive considering there’s an official way in-game to trade real-world cash for in-game gold.
That’s one of the benefits of having gear be horizontal, you can get a build geared from a fresh account in a few days, and then there’s only minor optimizations you can make (there’s a gear rarity that’s higher than the readily-accessible exotic gear but basically you have to earn it, and then there’s legendary gear which is there for fashion and qol because you can change the stats on it at any time).
Space Tyrant is a 4x space conquest game, but it plays like a fast paced solo board game or adventure. Fun balance between strategy and random space goofiness.
This is a good list! I’ll be checking some of these out for sure. I also have some overlooked games of my own I’d like to list. No links since I’m on mobile, but I may edit them in later.
Qbqbqb (30): Simple arcade game with nice animation and catchy music.
Goetia (496): Spooky point-and-click with some very good puzzles in my opinion.
Under Leaves (530): Relaxing hidden object game with a nice art style. Great game to play when you’re stressed and want to turn your brain off.
Year Walk (1197): Horror adventure game with an off-putting atmosphere and interesting art style.
The Last Door (1541): Horror point-and-click adventure game with a lovecraftian feel.
+1 to Year Walk, I remember playing that on an iPod Touch when it first came out. I love Simogo, with games like Device 6 and Sayonara Wild Hearts, they make really unique games.
Thanks for bringing out Goetia. I bought it back when i had to have any sounds as a distraction, Goetia being very silent at times drove me off almost instantly.
Just seeing that you mentioned good puzzles was enough to give a real go. 3 hours later i’m loving it.
Not me, but a friend’s mom, this was back in 97-98 and I had been playing the Diablo demo for hours and knew the mechanics quite good and the two first levels.
So I visited my friend and his mom had bought the game and was playing a lot, and she was quite deep down, I think like 15 levels down… that’s when I asked why she hasn’t placed here last level up points… Turns out, she hadn’t placed any point at all 😱🤔🤣.
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