Some folks have pointed out X-Com is a turn based game, and I agree with the suggestions that fit that.
On the off chance you actually want a real time game, I’m a huge fan of the Kingdom series. The co-op one is called Kingdom Two Crowns. It’s an interesting take on real time strategy as it’s a 2d side scrolling game. You are managing a growing colony in a hostile land, and you have to build up your economy enough to construct a boat and sail to a new island. You end up having to double back to earlier islands as you unlock new tech, sometimes finding your village chugging along nicely, sometimes finding quite a grim scene in need of cleaning up.
It’s a very chill game for the most part, with some higher stress moments that are paced well imo. I personally love the art style and music.
Kind of applies to the souls series. I’d be happy with any of the games being re-released with only new levels added. I just wanna slap monsters with a sword in beautiful castles
It sounds like you’re actually looking for turn-based tactics/strategy? In that case maybe check out Civilization VI and the Advance Wars 1+2 remake. They’re both supposed to have local multiplayer on the Switch, although I don’t know how good it is. I don’t think you can play the Advance Wars campaign co-op, but it sounds like you can at least play individual battles like that.
If you’re really looking for real-time strategy, Pikmin 3 seems to have a good co-op story mode. Pikmin 4 technically has one too but the second player isn’t able to do much, so it’s probably not very fun.
RTS means real time strategy, it’s stuff like warcraft, starcraft, age of empires etc. X-COM is turn based, so not real time.
If you are searching for turn based tactical games (I don’t really play RTS), yeah, Mario + Rabbids is very reminiscent of X-COM, only with an emphasis on movement combos (using other characters/enemies to boost your jumps, that kind of things). It does have multiplayer maps, though I have not tried them myself. Main campaign is single player.
In that move combo aspect it looks quite a bit like Chroma Squad, a tactical game with a cast of super sentai/power rangers-like actors who do combo stunts as they move. It’s pretty fun, though I have not tried the switch version and I think it’s single player only.
Fire emblem has two episodes on switch, three houses and engage. I have played a lot of three houses. It’s not for everyone, it’s a very long game with loads of dialogue, many characters, a lot of schedule planning etc. Battles are turn based, though in Fire Emblem fashion more about tricking the (basic) AI to break against your high defence “wall” characters while protecting your glass cannons characters. Difficulty being there is a lot of those (admittedly dumb) enemies with various strengths and weaknesses. It’s fun but again, single player only. I haven’t played Engage, because honestly, Its character design is terrible and it looks quite silly.
Triangle Strategy is another turn based tactical RPG with an heavy emphasis on story. Lots and lots of dialogue, to the point you may ask yourself when the strategy starts when you begin. It has branching story paths, with a rather unique voting mechanic where you have to convince your people to choose the path you want to take. Battle maps are typically less flat than fire emblem, and turn order is determined by each unit’s speed instead of being player turn/enemy turn. Again, single player.
Into the Breach is turn based strategy on a very small scale (each battle is 5 turns on a 10x10 map). It’s almost more of an open-ended puzzle than a strategy game, requiring you to use your squad effectively to defend key locations against waves of bugs with different abilities. It’s very good.
Wargroove is Advance Wars inspired, so instead of unique characters like Fire Emblem etc, you play one commander with a special ability, and armies of nameless soldier units that you recruit in cities you control. A remake of Advance Wars 1 and 2 is on switch too, I have not played it. Not a fan of this type of game personally, but they have their fans. Those are multiplayer, kind of like chess with more rules.
Now for something turn-based and strategic but completely different, Civilization 6 is on the switch, though I don’t know how well it works on it. It’s Civilization, so long games on random maps where you found your cities, find resources, develop technologies, trade, and choose a way to overpower the other empire. This one is multiplayer.
Thief: The Dark Project and Thief II: The Metal Age. Luckily, people are still making amazing fan missions and entire campaigns for both entries in the franchise after over 20 years. That’s probably the best outcome a commercial game can have…
I got one of these recently and I’m pretty happy with it. It’s a repurposed iPad screen, 2k, 4:3, and put into an aluminum frame. slightly larger than your requirements tho. Got the version with usb-c and mini-hdmi inputs, and is USB powered. www.aliexpress.us/item/3256801503431249.html
I agree partially. For indie devs: get the game directly from the dev if possible, never get the codes, because the dev doesn’t really get money for those.
With AAA games, the picture is different. The business model for most has now pivoted to be about extracting money to the point where its absurd. And for them, I have absolutely no qualms with taking advantage of their bad business decisions.
I mean that might be true, but those key reseller sites are also often grey-market. Sometimes they are legit, but sometimes they resell keys they bought with stolen credit cards etc.
I personally wouldn’t buy from a site that I couldn’t easily verify is legit (steam, gog, hb, etc)
Multiple indie developers I’ve seen (wube who makes factorio has been very vocal about it) have complained about losing significant amounts of money from grey/black market keys since they end up being on the hook for fees when people do credit card chargebacks.
I have purchased literally hundreds of steam keys from such shops over the years and have had a grand total of only 3 keys be removed from my account within days or weeks, and was granted refunds from the shops when I provided proof from Steam that the keys were rejected as duplicates. Every game I’ve installed other than those 3 have worked without issues. It’s an educated risk that I failed to mention because it’s been over 99% successful for me. Make your own call.
edit: Also worth mentioning that there are many games in my Steam account that were added after the games were delisted, such as the original GTA Trilogy, solely because I could still find keys on keyshops. If you want a delisted game, it’s worth considering.
They aren’t taking about dupes that don’t work and you get screwed out of money. They are talking about legit keys bought by stealing money from other people. If you buy such keys (no way to know whether one is or isn’t), then you are splitting the profits from fraud with a criminal enterprise. You get a discount, they get laundered stolen money.
Your reply doesn’t address the core problem in any way.
Like you said, no way to know one way or the other. Disapprove of me if it makes you feel superior. I’ve still spent a mint on Steam and GOG, and I’m still pirating. And half this community bitches about paying for anything so excuse me while I lol.
I’m for piracy when the ones being hurt are massive companies who can cover it by lowering their quarterly bonus .5%. I’m not for knowing your neighbors bike was stolen and then buying one “just like it” from a pawn shop at a steal.
This isn’t about feeling superior, this is about having empathy for the people whose money was stolen and frustration that this business model is profitable because of people who support it.
Do what you’re going to do, but folks reading this thread deserve to understand the moral implications of taking part in this.
Ok then, everyone is informed about things you cannot verify as true per key, and that you support piracy when it screws the right entity with employees, so you’re a model of selective morality.
Like he said, do as you will, everyone.
edit: honestly, I love the usual “it’s ok to screw gaming corporations” angle, when if you had a sense of morality worth talking about, you’d advocate zero piracy and that everyone should wait until games were something like 1/2 price or bargain bin, because at least then the corporations may reverse course on raising prices, and maybe not lay off so many workers. But when you say it’s fine to pirate that, you’re possibly contributing to those massive layoffs, regardless of how much money the company still has, because such decisions are determined by performance metrics. Like I said, model of selective morality.
They didn't say piracy is good. They said piracy is (by a massive amount) less malicious and less harmful than buying from fences for stolen keys like all the disgusting sites you're promoting.
I’m for piracy when the ones being hurt are massive companies who can cover it by lowering their quarterly bonus .5%.
That is selectively supporting piracy, like it or not.
And to be clear, the only site I actually promoted and linked to is gg.deals, where you can compare the prices at regular storefronts in one place, not just for keyshops. Where I got my keys were mentioned but not linked. As said before, options for every moral stance.
They interpreted it better than I said it. Who’s acting superior now? This is clearly a real sore spot for you. I don’t pirate but I also don’t go around telling people how immoral it is to pirate. Plus piracy is part of the business model for some companies and it’s how we went from cable to streaming (although thats getting all fucked up again).
So yes I have much less moral problem with piracy. But like I said I didn’t come here to get all morally superior, I spoke up because you clearly didn’t understand the nature of the harm you are doing since you took the wrong message away that someone was warning about being scammed by these companies.
I don’t actually care about the morality of pirating, I said that bit to point out the total hypocrisy you have on display. It’s not a sore spot for me at all, I have no problem doing it, the same way I have no problem buying hundreds of games directly from Steam and GOG, or hundreds more from keyshops. You’re the one actually complaining about morality, you made it specifically clear you wanted everyone to know such implications.
Honestly, totally amazing that needed to be explained to you.
It’s almost 3am here, so I’m cutting off this nonsense now for something more productive. Sleep.
Been on the Internet for a while. 100% of people who say this are not entertained and are really saying this to stroke a badly bruised ego. OP, it’s clear to me that you got your ego damaged when people poked holes in your plan to make less money by buying things from shady sites. I hope after your sleep you come back to engage in a healthy manner without constantly trying to act morally superior or at least uncaring about real moral grey areas. Supporting these sites negatively affects real people.
It's weird cos you're the only person bringing up pirating first (others are bringing it up as a talking point you've raised), and that's not the dichotomy - it's not dubious reselling sites or pirating, it's Humble Choice, the topic of your post, where the games are already discounted, the developers have decided to opt in, and some money is actually going to charity.
Even if you bring up your original post as providing "options for everyone", it was written in the spirit of advertising grey market sites as an alternative to Humble Choice, and therefore it's entirely fair that others are bringing up the harms of grey market sites so that everyone knows what the risks are between them. I used to use those grey market sites as a kid more than a decade ago before I understood that they were a tool by scammers to make their money, and now I no longer use them. It would only be honest for you to have talked about that in your original post rather than ignoring it because the only alternative to you is piracy.
Even developers would rather people pirate than buy from key resellers
where they said developers would prefer that to keyshops, and in the order I read them and answered people, that was the one I read and replied to, before first mentioning it myself in reply to another person here
If you want me to stay in the piracy section, just say so. I’m there anyway.
I’ve also plainly stated in the same comment
I have also purchased literally hundreds of games directly from Steam and GOG, so the sum total of my soul in gaming is in the positive, as far as I’m concerned.
so the rest of your reply is ignorant nonsense, because piracy is not the only alternative for me. It’s one of many options for me.
edit: if you want to argue about the order I read and responded to messages, feel free to check my comment history. They are listed in order of creation regardless of last edit.
I’ve just given them away on reddit. The trading sites are fine but rarely does anyone have a key I want, while also wanting a key that I have. Just easier to donate to a random gamer.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne