Endless Sky. Open source and crowd developed. Its story lines, assets, and general size have only increased with age. Active Discord server as well (but it’s only single player, for now anyway).
Even when the prompt is better (at all?) articulated, threads like these are a waste of time. People who respond barely read the prompt and OPs generally don’t even know what they are asking for. So obviously you should play a little cult classic indie game called Hollow Knight.
My suggestion is to instead put some time in to find an influencer/reviewer you like. Even if you don’t have a similar taste in games, a good reviewer will say WHY they do and don’t like something and you can make informed decisions from there.
So, I’ve spent over 2 hours on Steam searching for a nice game to play. But it’s all junk, as far as I’m fed with Steam recommendations.
Steam does many things well, but its recommendations system is one thing that, in my experience, really falls flat on its face (which surprises me, because they have enough information to do what I would think would be fantastic recommendations).
For finding games on Steam, I’ve had the most luck simply sorting by user rating (which is a pretty darn good metric of what I’ll like, in my experience), and then using the tags to look for games in a genre. There has been one or two times that it’s led me astray, but in general, an Overwhelmingly Positive game is something that I’ll get a ton of fun out of, and a low-ranked game will rarely be a lot of fun.
Sometimes I’ve had luck with looking at “similar games” to a game, which are shown on that game’s store page.
But the recommendations queue is just awful, in my experience.
I basically do the same, searching overwhelmingly positive games. But most I haven’t tried are poorly looking indie games or weird Asian games. I played several really good indie games, I’m not against that, but what I see generally doesn’t catch my interest. And I have over 600 games in Steam alone, so many good ones I already played.
Now it’s just a sea of junk, having to find a needle in a haystack. And user reviews aren’t a gold standard anymore. I’ve seen amazing reviews of mediocre games, as young people don’t have standards anymore as most games these days are empty of story, full of bugs or both.
The game dev community was outraged by bg3, warning people they shouldn’t see bg3 as a new standard. While back in the days when you still bought physical games in a store, it indeed was a standard to sell you a proper product for the price you pay.
These days I illegally download triple A games to check them first, if they are good I’ll buy them. I haven’t bought a triple A game for a long time. Often 2h of playtime for a refund on steam isn’t enough, when you want to see all the storyline videos and conversations. Not enough time to experience the gameplay.
Indie games I often buy immediately, they really put in effort to make something worth playing. Big companies however just put in effort to make it look really good to make a lot of pre-orders, then to abandon it after a few minor bug fixes while gameplay is poorly written and just a few hours. As long as you peek the interest for just over 2h so people aren’t eligible for a refund anymore. This is scamming people, I don’t understand why they keep getting away with it.
In 2024 almost 19.000 games were released on Steam. I have yet to find a single title from 2024 worth playing.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2511500/Dominions_6__Rise_of_the_Pantokrator/ is a pretty involved fantasy strategy game. I haven’t played 6 much, but I’ve played the series a lot in the past, and each game is a pretty direct expansion of prior games. Not sure if that’s up your alley, though. The game turns can get pretty long late-game, as there’s a lot going on.
It’s weird replaying Oblivion but it looks like a modern game. All the original audio is there (along with a few new voices to break up the monotony of hearing the same handful of voices over and over again), and all the locations and gear, but it all feels different. Like it’s very familiar, but it’s still very different from what we remember. Leveling is a bit different this time around as you have seven or so points to divide among your attributes, rather than picking a couple that would get increased by random numbers. I’d recommend trying it if nothing else than to try out the new polished version yourself.
Although some of the jank has been removed from this version, like there are no more items duplication glitches, but the Bound Armor/Weapon glitch works.
Being scammed by Bethesda is bad. I buy indie games, I pirate triple A games to see if it’s worth my money. Usually it’s roughly 3 hours before I remove the junk. Fuck that, they don’t deserve my money. Empty shells, unbalanced bs, bug simulators, dlc hoarding, microtransactions. But if it’s actually good, I buy the game. I just have no more trust in big developers. Maybe except for Rockstar. Blizzard, Bethesda, Ubisoft, EA, they all suck. When they screw me over again and again, they deserve to be pirated. But even for free their games aren’t worth my time. Prove your product is worth it’s money and I’ll happily pay full price. Like Larian studios. Shut up and take my money.
I was being sarcastic, fuck big publishers and big tech (Bethesda is both now), pirate all their shit, and shit on the game online so other people don’t buy it.
Although I’ll admit I couldn’t wait, and bought the remaster as soon as I saw it. Oblivion is a special game for me, and this remaster definitely does not disappoint.
Ah, I expected as much after reading your comment a second time after I already replied.
I spent soooo much time playing Oblivion. I’ve never experienced anything like that before. It was the first game I played on my first self-built pc, the pc my parents had was shit, only for work, no proper gpu. I must have spent at least over a thousand hours playing Oblivion.
But noooooo, Todd Howard won’t get my money!
I don’t know much about pirated games these days, other than that there’s a lot of junk out there. Malware etc. So far I have a great experience with fitgirl repacks so I’m going to wait for a fitgirl release.
I don’t want to pirate but I feel like I have no choice. I stopped downloading games because of Steam. I stopped downloading music because of Spotify. I stopped downloading movies and shows because of Netflix. I feel scammed on Steam, Spotify is a horrible nazi company and Netflix is so fragmented into other streaming platforms that it’s financially not viable to continue watching everything. So back comes the pirate hat. No one provides more service than piracy. I have more rights by pirating because I don’t have to sign any terms of service. Services just limit their customers while making them pay, while forcing them to give up their rights and ownership. Why would I pay for YouTube premium with less rights, freedom and functions than Grayjay or Vanced? I don’t want a car with functions locked behind a paywall and with ads, I’ll boycott the car brand. Fuck big tech.
Each of these I write makes me quite nervous. I’m never sure people will like what I write, or more importantly how I write it
I always look forward to seeing your posts, and (based on the comments) I’m not alone. Keep up the amazing work!
The only minor thing I will say is that these info dumps take a long time to parse, and I’m usually looking for shorter content. I often scroll through your posts fairly quickly looking for things that tickle my fancy, but I always go back a second time to see if I missed anything. Also, commenting on a specific section almost requires quoting it to give context. In a perfect world, each section could be separated out into its own post.
But hey, I recognize that would be even more work for you, so it’s not fair to expect it. Just offering an unsolicited opinion. 😜
I really appreciate all of the effort you put into these posts, and I can’t wait to read the next one!
I immediately bought the Oblivion remaster because I guess I’m that basic. They have done away with my beloved IV LIVI BLIVIO title screen and replaced it with some Doom art, and when exiting the sewer at the beginning I immediately see an Oblivion gate across the river before the point in the story you’re supposed to find them (apparently the new progression lock is that they’re present but non-interactive before then). It seems like it was made with fear that new players would react poorly to the sort of cutesy fantasy that comprises the majority of the game and it needs them to see hellfire quickly so they know it’s “actually” a cool game for cool guys. All the stranger then that they’ve added these bouncy new dialogue animations that would feel at home in The Sims.
But for all my nitpicking, it is still the Oblivion I love and the new visuals are a treat. I really didn’t expect such bold artistic swings as these wacky new heads on the Argonians and goblins or my character’s acrobatic knife moves.
I’m a Khajiit Bard named Stabby Cat who accidentally procured an armored horse because I never bought that DLC before and did not know the consequences of talking to that random Orc. I’ve leveled up twice just from sweet talking shopkeepers to get better prices from them. I crossed paths with a pair of NPCs who immediately complained to each other that they had nothing to talk about, then one thought of a topic but got shut down hard by the other’s direct refusal to participate.
Feels good to be back.
EDIT: I’ve since learned that my non-interactive Oblivion gate was a bug and not actual game design.
Have you tried Kingdom Come Deliverance 2? It’s really good and difficult. It’s a history simulator with a really kick ass story and the hero is just a guy. I really like it a lot.
Yeah but I’m stuck after 2 hours. I got into a battle through a quest I stumbled upon, but there’s an enemy I fail to win from. I seem to be unable to get out of the quest. I played 1, which was really nice although I didn’t completely finished it due to bugs.
I would suggest to load up an earlier save. The beginning is the hardest part of the game (like brutally hard combat sometimes) and if you don’t train Henry up (either find Tomcat or Captain Gnarly, they are trainers) you’ll just die. Or you can do what i did and just brute force the fight with save scumming. The combat is not intuitive until you practice for a bit.
One tip i would give you so you don’t get overly frustrated is if you see what appears to be a combat situation (anyone hanging out on the road or beside it at camps) save the game by exiting. This makes an exit save which will be overwritten by the next exit save but it doesn’t cost you a saviour schnapps to save. This way you aren’t drunk in combat nor are you limited to saving only via schnapps. If you do that right as you see a combat encounter you should be able to try it a few times and if you can’t win just run or sneak past them.
Thanks, I’ll try that. With 1 I added a mod so I could save any time. I don’t like the snapps mechanic.
This time I saw a guy in a tree with wolves under it. I easily killed the wolves, but then had to carry the guy really far. In the end I had to kill some guys at an emcampment so I could bring this dude to his place, but I couldn’t kill the more heavily armored camp leader. So I played an annoying side quest by slowly carrying a guy really far, then to end up being stuck. So rage quit haha
Lol Vostatek is great. If you can’t get Pepik back, try going at night and sneak in and kill the camp leader with a knife to the throat while he’s sleeping. If you’re lucky you can kill two or three before the others notice. Also at night they don’t wear armor or weapons except the guy on guard.
Alternatively you can just run in and grab Pepik and get back to Vostatek post haste. The mission is to get the horse, the guys are just extra loot.
KCD2 is a game which rewards you for thinking outside the box. Frontal assaults don’t work unless you’re a sword god and henry ain’t that in the early game.
Based on your enjoyment of management and strategy, Paradox's grand strategy games might be something you enjoy. Same publisher as Cities Skylines. There are four main series of them, each with their own mechanics but enough broad-scale similarities that knowing one helps with the others. They are:
Crusader Kings, set in medieval Europe, North Africa, and about half of Asia. This one is the most roleplay-heavy, as you play as a succession of characters within a feudal dynasty rather than a country
Europa Universalis, set from the European Renaissance up to the end of the Napoleonic wars. The whole world is playable, and exploration is a big mechanic
Victoria, which covers the world through the rise of industrialism. This one is the most simulation-heavy, focusing gameplay around economic development and the diplomatic manoeuvring of great powers
Hearts of Iron, which is the Second World War game. This is the one to go for if you want to play the military side of things
What distinguishes them from strategy games like Civ and Age of Empires is the greatly-reduced abstraction. There's no expectation of every starting point or playable country being balanced; if you start as Belgium in Hearts of Iron, you're going to have to do something clever to not get steamrolled by Germany. There's also no win condition beyond what you set for yourself. When I start a game of Crusader Kings, I'm not trying to win the game, I'm saying to myself "let's see if I can unite all of Britain and Ireland under a Gaelic ruler"
All Paradox games have quite a lot of DLC, but the base games are solid (often now including several of the earlier DLCs for free, in the case of older games) and they go on steep sales pretty often. If there's not a specific time period or mechanic that sways you towards one of the games, I recommend Crusader Kings 3 for the best new player experience
I played almost all of them. I like them, kinda, but they are games which are hard to master and I get frustrated when suddenly everything goes wrong and I can’t find out why. Like with HOI4, my logistics are perfect, my army hyper modern and trained, mixed infantry, special units and armor. Yet they fail battle against a few weak infantry. I spend hours and hours on YouTube tutorials but in the end it’s just a bit too much for me.
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