Finding alternate ways of playing a game, whether by doing a self-imposed challenge, or just playing a game differently than it was intended, are a good way of spicing up games you’ve played hundreds of times.
Or in some cases, playing the game how it’s meant to be played. Like in a lot of RPGs, you’re not really supposed to grind.
I played Final Fantasy VIII without grinding cards, draws, items, or anything until end game content. It was relieving to not have to worry about any of it.
I had the opposite FF8 experience. I got lost like 3 times, and between over leveling and limit breaks, none of the bag guys ever got through their dialog trees during a fight. It was funny, but I don’t recommend it.
I’ve finished Kingmaker and WotR is in my backlog.
Pathfinder is a really decent RPG system with tons of choice, but the game Kingmaker comes out as quite linear, you don’t really have much choice in how you play the game apart from being good or evil.
The game is split between being a typical adventure explorer RPG and being a kingdom management game, the former is interesting and has good quests, the latter is opaque, difficult to get to grips with and inflexible.
The worse part is no matter your best intentions, it you don’t do exactly the right things with your kingdom you can find yourself in a dire losing position by the late game.
I don’t mind games that have failure conditions, but losing the Kingmaker game after 30+hrs of playtime because your kingdom starts rioting and you can’t complete any events seems too harsh to me.
Personally I had to turnoff all the failure conditions in the options so that I could grind through the game to get through the final quests, it ended up leaving a bitter taste for the game which started off as promising.
I hear most of these issues have been addressed in WotR though so I’m looking forward to picking up that.
Yeah, the more people mention, the more that kingdom management part is not looking good. Thankfully, as someone already mentioned, there are mods to handle both that and the crusade management part in WotR. But turning off all failure conditions is also a good option to keep in mind, so thanks.
I had a bug where I didnt get a treasurer until late in the game. So I kept losing to stupid bullshit over and over because my guy was underleveeled and I had a huge backlog of things for him to do. I just ended up using cheat engine and giving myself a hundreds of the +% success tokens to make it playable late game.
Man, I haven’t played through Myst since… the original Myst. I heard that Firmament was a bit of a letdown, but I really should go back and play Myst in VR. Thanks for the reminder!
Welcome to the Patient Gamers world. Now that I’m in my late 30s with responsibilities, I’ll take a short linear game (e.g. Mafia Definitive Edition) with a compelling story over long, repetitive games (e.g. Assassin’s Creed). Quality over quantity for me. Since I don’t have a lot of time, I want to spend some quality time with the game.
I don’t really see how what you’re describing relates to patient gaming – isn’t patient gaming moreso to do with waiting until games drop in price, then getting them patched up with all their DLC?
I have to say, it’s also a subculture of it. When I used to participate in r/patientgamers, a lot of people (myself included) realised that we didn’t care about the latest releases because of our responsibilities (and maturity), and many of us preferred short to long.
I’d say it’s parallel to or supportive of patient gaming.
Like, that commentor has less time to dedicate, so they’ll go for games with plots they may have heard were good/engaging which may not always be the latest, pricey, AAA content. They may also return to a game they’ve already bought because they enjoyed it so much.
In researching games that they’re interested in, they’re already making value decisions based on content, so it makes sense that they may add in value considerations based on pricing as well.
I’m trying to put it in a way that won’t spoil clues for those who haven’t played it yet, but I ended up with plenty of notes and even took screenshots of the ship maps to scribble notes on.
God I wish I could forget all about it and play it for the first time again.
This was going to be mine as well. The fact that you don’t start to investigate the mystery in chronological order turned out to be quite a treat, as I need some way to organize my thoughts.
Fantastic game, honestly, I’ve had quite a few good detective experiences the past few years that nearly perfected the genre to me.
A RPG type game where you play as a single character, in a world of simulated NPCs, where some of those NPCs are playing something like a 4x or grand strategy game in the background and things happen independently of your actions.
Or something along the lines of being a background/supporting character in some grand fantasy adventure. The story isn’t about you; you exist within a greater plot that isn’t hinging on your actions. Basically I want NPC the game lol. I’m sure there’s a way to do it in an interesting manner
Maybe I’m mistaken because I haven’t played it as much as some people but this is pretty similar to Mount & Blade. I think if the NPC factions simply did more and were more effective at sieging one another it would be that almost exactly.
Similarly, Dwarf Fortress Adventure mode is almost exactly this but it leans deeply into roguelike survival and is still part of the old school ASCII version.
The problem is if you’re just a pawn in a dynamic procedural strategy game against NPCs it seems very easy for the factions to be procedurally put in a situation where one AI absolutely dominates another and the lack of control you would have over the bigger events would become frustrating.
A few series exist that let you do this, but none offer agency to the other players outside of battles to go talk to NPCs and get their own quests.
I think Divinity OS2 has this. You can go off on your own and do side quests. But you're probably going to be restricted by how tight the difficulty curve is and can't handle major battles solo. Though I guess a mod could change that.
There is an item that allows you to teleport to your party members, so you could still split up and do sidequests separately, only joining forces when combat is triggered.
Apart from being a sidescroller, it sounds like you might really like Noita.
Divinity: Original Sin 2 also has incredible magic co.bat, but that’s top-down, turnbased tactics.
Or maybe Psychonauts? Not a wizard, but an assortment of ESP powers gained at a summer camp like boy scout badges as you go through the game. 3d platformer. But the powers and their variety are really fun.
And there’s Witcher 3, which is 3rd person. But it’s close 3rd person at least? Might not run on your machine though. Maybe the 1st game might? Though it has its flaws.
For first person… Hmm. A surprisingly tough call. Most of the 1st person games I know have really straightforward battle magic, the wizard game included. Which is kinda weird now I think about it.
The Dishonored games? If you’re okay with steampunk setting (very well done steampunk though!) 1st person immersive sims. Stealth or kill everyone however you like with a nice assortment of magic powers. I’d put this on top of the list honestly. It’s old and stylized enough it might run alright.
Prey, like dishonored, also allows you to learn (optional) magic powers and use them in a variety of situations, but it’s also set in space, if that’s a dealbreaker. 1st person though!
Or the Persona games? It’s not strictly speaking classic wizardry, but it’s definitely magic of a sort, and I think it should run on most anything, especially Persona 4 Golden. But the fights are turn-based strategy. And 3rd person. Goddamn.
Legend of Grimrock? It’s an odd duck, and you learn magic slowly, but maybe it’s the right odd duck for you? First person, real time but you and enemies only move along a grid, old-style dungeon crawler.
I’ve played Noita. It’s fun but not exactly what I’m looking for.
Divinity isn’t a magic game I’m looking for, but it is an RPG I want to play at some point, I’ve only heard good things about it.
With Psychonauts, I’ve heard of it as a cult classic that every True Gamer™ has to play, but I’m not really into platformers.
AFAIK Witcher’s combat isn’t really about magic, it’s an RPG with some magical abilities that help you win swordfights, which is not what I want to play at the moment. It’s a maybe, but I think there are better fits.
Legend of Grimrock 2 looks very interesting, it looks like the RPGs that were made before I was born and I wanted to play one for a while. A game in that style that can run on modern PC? Sign me up!
I have conflicted feelings about Persona. I’ve never played one, I haven’t even seen the gameplay. From what I know of the gameplay it’s unique and interesting to me. Visual style looks cool. But I also know that some of the story and character decisions made by the devs are really weird even by Japan weirdness standards, and very weird to me personally. Considering that the story and characters are the main part of that game, I would rather wait for the next one, and hopefully they’ll stop doing that weird stuff and fix it.
I’m playing both Prey and Dishonored 2 right now. I really like them both, which makes me think that the game I want is an immersive sim with extensive magic system. Given that an immersive sim is a rare genre, I don’t think a game like that exists. Still, thank you for all your suggestions.
Can confirm, Grimrock 1 and 2 are super tight. Extremely true to their inspiration while modernizing basically everything. Slower, Not a slog. Tough, Not cruel.
Here is what I believe to be the definitive answer for maxing out your library on 4 inputs:
Gaming PC/Steam Deck - you'll have access to a sprawling library of games from all generations and can even emulate console exclusive games from previous generations. The reason I'm not recommending an Xbox console on this list is because basically every current gen Xbox One (+ X|S) game is already on PC (as are many OG Xbox and most Xbox 360-era games), GamePass is an option if you wanna play some OG Xbox/360 games legally, and emulation can get you any games that aren't available otherwise. Sony is also making many recent PS5 exclusives available on PC now with more to come.
Nintendo Switch - it's got a kick-ass library of exclusives, almost every Wii U game has been ported over (minus like ~8, I think?), they've been remaking/remastering a lot of older games and are reportedly going to go hard on that for the remainder of the Switch's lifespan, and with NSO it has a respectable library of retro Nintendo and Sega Genesis games if you wanna go the legal route.
PS4/PS5 - A PS5 would be ideal for maxing out your possible library size, because it can play any PS4 or PS5 game; however, there also aren't a ton of PS5 exclusives at this point in time, PS5 games are being ported over to PC faster than PS4 exclusives, many recent PS5 games are also on PS4, PS4s are cheaper, and the PS4 can be jailbroken. There's a case to be made for getting a PS4 instead.
Modded PS3 - Especially if you can track down a phat model with hardware back compact support, you can load up a HDD with games and play the entire PS1, PS2, and PS3 libraries.
With these four, you should be able to play essentially any game ever made. You will have...
Official hardware support for:
PlayStation
PlayStation 2
PlayStation 3
PlayStation 4 and/or 5
Nintendo Switch
PC (Astonishingly huge library)
You will have the (paid) option of legal software support for many of the best games from:
NES
SNES
Sega Genesis
Game Boy
Game Boy Color
Game Boy Advance
Nintendo 64
Xbox
Xbox 360
You will have the capability to emulate anything from Atari 2600 through to some Nintendo Switch, including Xbox, Xbox 360, GameCube, Wii, Wii U, arcade classics, and many, many more.
IMO, this is the best way to max out the 4 ports on your TV. You can also get a PS Vita and mod it for PS Vita + PSP games, and a 3DS modded for 3DS and NDS games. They don't need to be plugged into your TV, so they weren't included on my list of 4, but they are both excellent handheld consoles with great libraries.
Wouldn’t a Series X be better than a PS5 for range of titles, the PS5 only natively supports PS4 back cat, where as the Series X also supports a range of 360 and OG XB titles. It also adds improvements to spend of them with better frame rates or resolution.
I don't think so, only because most of the 360 games available for back compat on the Series X are already ported to PC, a lot of them can be accessed on PC by way of GamePass, and the rest can be emulated on PC. You cannot currently emulate PS4 or PS5 games and only a handful have been ported to PC so far, so original hardware is the only option for playing PlayStation exclusives. Whether to get a PS4 vs PS5 is debatable imo.
If you're planning to do everything the legal way (i.e. no emulation of games you don't own), don't want to buy discs to rip, and prefer the available Xbox & Xbox 360 games to the PlayStation exclusives, you could get a Series X--but honestly, if you are cool with buying discs and don't care about PlayStation exclusives, getting a 360 would be a significantly cheaper solution than a Series X, especially since there aren't really any console-exclusive Xbox games in the last couple of hardware gens and the 360 had better back compat for OG Xbox games than the current gen Xboxes do. So if you were gonna swap the PS for an Xbox, I'd personally go 360 over Series X.
I need to add to the dishonored pile here. Deathloop is a much more doom-able game. Dishonored can be played in a fast way, but you can play the entire game with killing anyone, or being seen by anyone, or both. I highly recommend it, they scratch the itch.
Adding onto that, Dishonored 2 feels way more fun when playing non-lethal. Dishonored 1 kind of handicaps you if you decide not to kill enemies, whereas Dishonored 2 gives you a few more Options.
Both are incredible games though, definitely worth playing.
Yes, Dishonored is really fun. Having a good saving system (with quick save and load) makes it even better. I love to have the option to just fool around.
+1 for Mark of the Ninja. The gameplay is so polished, great art direction, and simple but satisfying. It is a staple Klei Entertainment game. Not to mention the good story, at least as I remember. It’s not a new game, released originally in 2012, however there’s a remastered version on Steam.
bin.pol.social
Ważne