NPCs have at least some rude remarks for you, but a good number also have hints and background info hidden in their dialogue.
You should eat to heal, but on the lowest difficulty setting this is not required anymore. Just meditate and everything is refilled.
You can explore different landscapes and their flora and fauna, but you can also go to the towns and cities and checkout their sociological patterns. The settings even change after you meddle with higher politics in the main and side quests.
If you prefer something besides swords and monsters maybe (haven’t played it myself) Cyberpunk 2077.
Another one I have started (but far from finished) is Mass Effect. In my first sessions I was overwhelmed by the many dialogue options and factions present in the citadel.
IMO WoW is not a good game at all if you are looking for “role playing”. It’s a multiplayer online game and all the quests boil down to simple linear stories. There is very little player choice, and the other humans playing the game make it impossible to suspend your disbelief and actually imagine your character as a real person in the game world.
I would recommend Dragon Age: Origins. BioWare games in general have always been great at letting you build a character where role playing choices matter a lot. Other games I would recommend for RPGs with a capital R and a capital P:
Tyranny (choices matter a lot in this one. There are basically 4 or 5 distinct stories in the game depending on choices you make)
Fallout New Vegas (any of the fallout games are good, but this one has the best writing IMO)
Mass Effect Legendary Edition (play all three in order)
Pillars of Eternity 2
Pathfinder (Kingmaker or Wrath of the Righteous)
Divinity Original Sin 2
Baldur’s Gate 3 (Early access right now but should be releasing soon)
If price is an issue, my top recommendations are definitely Dragon Age Origins and Fallout New Vegas
IMO, smartphones had the chance to revolutionize the gaming industry, but ended up wasting almost all of that potential on skinner boxes riddled with ads and microtransactions. Most of the best mobile games are ports from other systems, like the mobile edition of Minecraft and whatnot.
I think Pokémon Go was possibly the closest any major publisher has come to actually realizing the full potential of mobile games as a format, but it still fell painfully short with massively dumbed down mechanics and an absolute grindfest of a progression system.
There are still a few good indie projects out there (I like Soul Knight) but generally the mobile gaming market is so full of absolute dreck that I usually just don’t bother.
After trying bunch of Android games I found Nintendo DS games that can be entirely played with a stylus have been the best games to emulate and play on mobile.
Edit: Kirby Mass Attack is great and felt like a native experience.
There are a few hidden gems (I enjoy Plague inc. and Rebel inc. on occasion, for example), but for the most part, the majority of mobile games are mtx-laden cash grabs. So the actual quality is commensurately low because the devs figured out they don’t have to put in real effort to implement gambling and hook addicts.
Stealth was necessary in the early chapters of Death Stranding. As you get access to better equipment it becomes less necessary, but the early game was definitely the most stressful stealth experience I think I’ve had in gaming.
I really enjoyed the BT stealth sections, but the sections with MULEs or Terrorists never really felt that stealth wast the best approach there, mainly because of the level design just being so open.
Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine is a really fun stealthy top-down 2D story game. It support 4P coop. There are several characters with very different abilities allowing for unique ways to tackle the map’s challenges. There is also a scenario editor to create custom challenges.
loved it as well, caught myself thinking about it very long after playing. i was really impressed with how it captured a feeling of nostalgia for a digital community and for an internet of another time, I think hypnospace Outlaw is something quite relevant for many of us now who moved away from r*ddit
I’m probably alone in remembering this game but I loved Hardwar back in the day. It’s an Elite style trading game set on Titan. The player pilots a ‘moth’ ,a small flying craft, between craters.
It had an interesting story that played out as you explored with areas blocked out, due to events, and made accessible later on.
The developer closed doors but IIRC at least one member of the team released a patch that had been developed later on.
I played it pretty obsessively and it had a small passionate community but it wasn’t a hit.
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