It’s definitely both for me, time management and responsibilities definitely play a part in what I’m able to dedicate to a game and some games definitely have subjectively useless filler for me.
I’ve definitely moved from playing RPGs and competitive shooters to just RPGs as I’m done with grinding for the most part and don’t want to spend my limited time that way lol. Totally get that a lot of people like rogue likes and souls type stuff where the grind is more the point, but it’s not really my cup of tea anymore.
I also see that there’s a trend for studios to just pack their games with a lot of content (Red Dead Redemption 2 having had some more interesting filler, to me, and stuff like Assassin’s Creed getting more grindy).
I find my gaming is more like how I consume books, now. I’ll have a couple RPGs going at a time (usually a replay of something I’ve enjoyed and want to reexperience and another that I’ll be trying out of my backlog) and just play what strikes my fancy.
I get what you’re saying with the bundle kinda thing where you may just skip a game if it’s not something that really grabs you.
I’ve definitely had a few false starts and games where I just kinda saw what they were about and didn’t want to continue or wasn’t super interested.
There are definitely games I’ve put on my docket that I’m more interested in because of their history and relation to the gaming industry, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines and S.T.A.L.K.E.R for example.
I think most of it is that I’ve needed to extend my playthroughs to make them work with my life as I’m no longer able to just come home from school and game for like 3 hours a day. I mostly want to either get into (or back into) a cool plot or story and/or consume some older gems I had not been exposed to earlier as I definitely don’t have as much free time.
I’m in a similar boat. I like to focus on more unique and interesting games nowadays (e.g., Outer Wilds), and let me tell you, Vampire The Masquerade is surely one them. I loved that game despite the jank, even if it won’t be your cup of tea, there’s nothing like it. (and STALKER is great too)
Haha I actually kind of loved the jank at points. It was also delightfully early 2000s campy (love those kinds of movies and still show 10 Things I Hate About You in my Shakespeare unit).
Big fan of STALKER so far and I’m slowly getting through the trilogy lol.
I do yearly rewatches of Until Dawn - Scary Game Squad. It’s five slightly drunk guys keeping teenagers in a horror movie alive. They played this at release so all their guesses and theories during the game aren’t influenced by what they saw on the internet.
The Scary Game Squad is fantastic, and Until Dawn is their finest work. It’s a perfect marriage of a group of guys who know all the horror story tropes and clichés and a game that is deliberately built around them.
I left right before High Isle came out, but nothing I’ve tried since has really caught my attention the same way. Even GW2, as awesome as it is, and as many QoL features it has that I deeply missed in ESO, just… isn’t the same.
Did they ever get the Champion Points re-worked into something that doesn’t suck? I hate the way the green constellations worked, particularly; whose idea was it to say “Nobody harvests, chest-hunts, fishes, and searches for crafting recipes at the same time, so obviously it’s silly to let players equip all those bonuses at once”??
Even if not, I think I might drop Netflix and re-up my subscription. If just to remind me why I left, maybe?
Getting access to all the weapon skills is so much faster, which makes trying out new builds a thousand times easier.
Not having to find and speak to the quest giver before I can do the quest is great. I like just having to get into their radius without having to track them down before and after.
I’m a big explorer, so I really appreciate the rewards for exploring the maps (and the compass pointing me towards the things I missed).
The jumping puzzles are amazing.
The free mount not being a boring-ass horse is pretty cool. Mounts having different abilities is also cool. Not having to spend 120 real days upgrading your mounts is really nice.
Getting experience from harvesting and crafting. Not having to spend real-time months researching things to craft them.
Underwater exploration. Yeah, underwater combat is kind of a pain, but it’s still cool to have the option.
The directed story mode complete with boss fights in instances that can be done solo.
Classes are all totally different from each other; there are no “meta” skills for a specific role no matter what class you’re playing (eg, unstable wall, aggressive warhorn).
Enough skill points in the game to learn every skill and every specialization, along with the ability to switch builds on the fly just whenever (without having to go back to a shrine and pay to do it).
I’m not sure how I feel about having a centralized auction house. A lot of my endgame in ESO was shopping and flipping valuable things from one trader to another, but I have to admit it’s really handy to just be able to go buy a bunch of crafting materials in any city for the lowest available price.
Like, I could just keep going; there are so many things, both little and big, that I love about GW2. But for some reason, I just can’t get into it. Maybe it’s that it levels me up so fast that I don’t get to really enjoy the view and learn the class. Maybe it’s because the elite specializations change the class so dramatically that most of what I did learn during leveling is immediately obsolete at 80. Maybe it’s because the combat feels kind of clunky due to being a weird hybrid of action combat and tab targeting. Maybe it’s how complicated the buff system is, that I can’t really wrap my brain around all the different boons and when I need them. None of those are really big deals, just quirks of the game that make it unique, like all games have. But it’s not doing the same thing that ESO did for me.
Yo! I love guild wars 2, if there’s anything I can offer to help you click with the game? Or answer any questions for you? Regarding tab targeting vs action, really you can play it almost entirely like one or the other and you don’t need to interact with the other system if you don’t want to. And I’m happy to give you a breakdown of boons, hopefully it’s not as complex as it seems as first blush? But I love helping people click with the game because it took me a while and I’m glad I finally stuck so I’d love to pay it forward
I can't speak on that specific timeline, but CP has had a pretty large makeover recently. You still only have 4 slottable abilities, but quite a few have moved to passive status. Unsure if the ones you reference specifically are though, green tree is usually a throwaway tree for me.
I love beautiful environments and such, so if I could pick anything that wouldn’t exists based on something that does exist, I would make a 3D or even VR version of this old Korean 2D sidescrolling game called Maplestory.
Not gonna lie, that’s going to be 99.9% nostalgia, but it has a couple of awesome areas that have amazing backgrounds and thoughts behind it. Like typical magical forests, dungeons, cloud cities, but also a lego-gone-interdimensional city where time is weird.
I haven’t played ESO but I can tell you the standard of writing in the other ES games is, IMO, very high. Morrowind is my all time favourite, the lore in that game is fantastic.
When Todd leaves after TES VI, I hope someone from the ESO team takes the reins. They seem to care a lot about the world and lore. Lol, like I’m obviously not holding my breath for TES VII, but still.
I want a GTA style game set in the early 1900s Lovecraft world mixed with a procedural world builder like Covert Action had. So the overall world would be set but the inside of buildings and tunnels and etc as well as the overall story would change. Then release DLC for each of the Great Old Ones that each came with 6-8 major plot lines. With 8 player coop. No lazy pvp bs. PvP can be included but it’s not the focus so as to not give a shit about anti-cheat or stat tracking on a master server.
Then implement a scab system like in tarkov but for cultists. You turn PvP on and a cultist can come play in your game doing things.
Can really recommend if you like a story-driven MMORPG with a nice amount of different builds and lots of achievement hunting and stuff to do. It’s gotten lots of addons by now and basically you can roam all around Tamriel.
I want to play a sci fi horror game that’s got violence, terror and mysteries, but that doesn’t rely on quick reactions or precise timing to beat. I want the full experience of creeping around somewhere derelict and haunted, full of blood and physical plot devices and all the rest, solving puzzles and exploring, doing all the usual stuff, but without any time pressure whatsoever. I want the enemies to give me time to think. I think that if that was done right, in a clever enough way, it could make for a really strange and scary experience for being more deliberately paced. Maybe it’s a dimensional thing. Maybe the monsters exist in a different kind of time. Maybe they can only react to the player for some reason, or take turns. Or maybe the player can leave or hide or manipulate the way things occur, but always has go back to and solve the situation from some angle. I feel like the right person could come up with something really cool. I’m not that neurologically well suited to the kinds of games I like the most, so I just want somebody to invent me a very slow, scary, ridiculously dense game that’s got resident evil or dead space or soma vibes but relies on different combat mechanics somehow.
Have you played the System Shock remake. It seems to be exactly what you’re asking for. Enemies respawn, but you lower security on a level by destroying cameras and CPU nodes. Once it’s zero, there’s no more respawning enemies and you’re free to explore. It’s fairly slow and more tense than horror, with one of the best villains ever made in gaming.
So a horror game in the style of SuperHot? Or like, the ethos of the game is you’re being hunted or stalked, but it’s treated like a puzzle where you can set up stops and traps ahead of time, and the win condition is you set up well enough that you keep it at bay while you escape?
Maybe Amnesia: The Bunker is something to look into. I’ve not played it myself yet, but the reviews I saw made it sound like it might meet most of your criteria.
Black & White 3. Just more Black & White, slightly updated and improved since technology is better, but it doesn’t have to be much better. Just a little bit. But basically more of the same.
You might consider looking at Fata Deum which was kickstarted specifically as a spiritual successor to the Black and White games, and the god game genre in general.
So something like Stardew Valley (I haven’t played Animal Crossing) in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, Australia or Island where you have to survive the harsh conditions but build up your house, maybe even build a village, where you can then start an economy and make the best of the conditions given? Maybe even with some natural disasters and extreme weather destroying everything if you aren’t prepared like Banished. I think this could actually be fun, maybe even add some multiplayer.
this reminds me of cataclysm dda innawoods challenge. dunno how it is now, haven't played for a good while but looks like you can make camps and assign tasks to fellow survivor npcs.
it's a pretty solid game, beats any survival game any day if you are into turn based roguelikes.
I was thinking more like Silent Hill, except I can find any abandoned storefront and turn it into my base. And not just add crafting stuff, but full on furniture and decorations like Raft. Stardew Valley seems very built around the town and the farm IIRC and I want something that could be maybe more randomized like Don't Starve, and then other people could drop in and play like Animal Crossing.
This. The reviews never seem to add up for the FF series. I thought the same thing about 15. Not sure who all these mega fans are nowadays, but it’s not those of us were playing FF2 on snes back in the day and whatnot. I’ve wondered about review manipulation on Square Enix’s part though I could just be majorly out of touch. It is possible that people genuinely are seeing something there that I’m not.
I don’t know if I count as a mega fan, but I’ve been playing the FF series since FF1 on the NES. I loved FF1-FF9, but then I sort of lost interest in the series. I kept trying each new game, but they never really clicked for me.
Then I tried FFXV when it came out, and while it was a big departure from what the series was before, I loved it. It wasn’t perfect, but it finally clicked again for me. Same with FF7 Remake. I haven’t played FF16 yet, and I won’t until it comes out on PC, but I have a feeling I’ll like it.
I guess my point is, there are plenty of long time fans that are into the new games. And plenty that aren’t! I think the new direction is pretty polarizing.
@catfishman I'm a long time fan (6 & 7 my favorites, I know not very unique opinion) and have no interested into the newer games. From the reviews, looks like 16 is not for me (as 15 wasn't). Did you play 12? That is a very traditional Final Fantasy.
I played it a little bit of FF12, but I may not have given it enough of a chance. I remember losing interest when I had to set up all of the gambits for my party.
I wrote a longer reply on someone else’s comment. Mostly, I’ve been a fan since I was a kid and I’m less thrilled with the creativity, heart, innovation and originality in the series as of late. Tho, as you get older I suppose lots of things start seeming less exciting haha
It’s kind of a long standing quality of the series, since they are always trying new stuff that will resonate with different people. Outside of like actual FF2 (I assume you are talking about IV since you mention the SNES) I think I have heard people make a case for every FF being their favourite. Which is great, I am glad they try to shake it up every time.
Both of the projects Yoshida has been involved with I have been pretty lukewarm on though, so I am just a bit concerned if he is going to be the proverbial face of the series moving forward.
Yes, that was a ref to the weird choice to brand 4 as two in the US. Which I as a kid only later learned was what has happened
I can believe it. I’ve kinda figured I might just be settling into old person syndrome and thinking everything from my younger days was somehow better. I loved the series changing styles, vibes, characters, stories, worlds, etc., while some themes and elements remained the same. Nowadays tho, little changes and the stories and characters seems less and less compelling.
The thing with Yoshida is interesting because I feel exactly the same way, but I also changed opinion on his works over time.
I don’t know what changed, but Heavensward era FFXIV was pretty cool in both gameplay and story, and Stormblood too has some great moments (primarily in the 4.X patch quests) while being even better, gameplay wise.
Since then the gameplay has been going in a direction I really don’t care for, and the same goes for story (though Shadowbringers had some great moments). I couldn’t make myself finish Endwalker.
I’m curious if you experienced this shift as well or you just didn’t care for FFXIV from the outset.
I wasn’t a massive XIV fan at the outset, but there has definitely been a trend in the game design I didn’t like as it moved towards later expansions. They continually moved away from any kind of player agency/customization, so everything is super homogenized now (or at least when I last played). I stopped around the end of Shadowbringers, never actually got into Endwalker content.
They used to have cross-class skills and things like that, so it really felt like a FF job system where you would play different classes to unlock skills for your main. I think any FF player should be pretty comfortable with that. They have since simplified that, which I am sure is great for newer players but I don’t really like it. Now, if I am a level 80 warrior I am exactly the same as every other level 80 warrior, except for the number next to my item level. That kind of customization is a big part of both MMOs and FFs for me, usually.
They have definitely gone further down the path of homogenisation and simplification. I don’t actually mind customisation being sacrificed for better encounter balance, but many classes started to lose their identities as features and mechanics got scaled back, Dark Knight and Astrologian being two examples. And of course what they did to healers in general. Personally the removal of Hissatsu: Kaiten from Samurai was the last straw.
Killer soundtrack though, Soken does good work.
He does produce some bangers, but I’m such an unabashed Uematsu fanboy. I actually felt Soken did some of his best work remixing, building on and riffing off of Uematu’s themes and melodies, which is another reason I enjoyed the earlier expansions.
The Bioshock series supports a spellcasting-based play style with a decent skill tree.
CONTROL also involves a lot of eldritch force powers in its combat sequences
I know you didn’t really want sidescrollers or top-downs but Noita and Magicka are pretty great at delivering on the creativity of mage combat and scratch this itch for me.
This YouTube creator has published several quality videos what’s going on in Wizard Games lately, which is a quick way to catch up on the genre: youtu.be/quPKQIVEX5A
I’ve played Bioshock 3 a long time ago and while fun, it isn’t what I’m looking for in terms of magic. I’ve heard 1 and 2 are a bit more deep in this regard but afaik it’s still mainly a shooter. I’m currently playing Dishonored 2 and Bioshock seems more similar to that than to Hogwarts.
Control was something I’ve wanted to play for a while, mostly because of SCP-inspired story, I didn’t know anything about it’s gameplay. Will 100% check it out.
Currently Noita is my magic game and Hogwarts was in part attempt for variety. I’ve seen Magicka on steam and I dunno why, but it didn’t click for me.
Anyway, thank you very much for the recommendations!
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