The Ally is what you’d want. Laptops aren’t really all that portable if portability is the goal. The Deck would be better from a “pick up and play” perspective but if you use Game Pass it’d be worth it to pick up the Ally instead, obviously.
If your laptop is having issues running Hogwarts Legacy, it might be relevant to include your laptop specs as well as some more specifics on what you’re looking for in a magic game.
Do you just want the magic system to be simple, or do you also want a simple, casual game? For example, Little Witch Nobeta has a simple magic system with a focus on magic combat, but it’s a Souls-like, so it could be on the difficult side.
Thanks for reminding me about specs, I’ll add them to the post. Though I assume that it’s mostly on Hogwarts being unoptimised, because my laptop can play Cyberpunk2077 and X-4 foundations well enough. It’s 8gb ram; Ryzen5 3550h so the processor is only 3 years old. I guess 4g VRAM isn’t enough for the physics sim of MC’s clothes (seriously why is it enabled even on lowest settings).
In a game I want decent magical combat. I want to have magical attacks that have varied effects and counters. Something that makes you think which spell to use and when. I guess the most important part for me is counters. So for example, if the enemy has a magical shield, you have to somehow deal with it first, you can’t just spam click your best spell.
Don’t sleep on the Ally. I fucking LOVE this thing. I haven’t had any issues running anything I’ve asked it to at impressive specs (med to high for most). That includes Diablo 4, Cyberpunk, Witcher 3, No Man’s Sky, Dying Light 2 just to make a few.
I was saving up for a steam deck but then I heard about this bad boy and Best Buy offered financing and I was sold.
I’ve seen it on steam, and while it’s combat is kinda what I’m looking for, the top-down perspective and more arcade-like gameplay aren’t what I want to play right now. Still, thank you!
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!
Depends on your lifestyle and game choices. I have both (and a desktop PC). I would say 97% of my gaming is on the gaming laptop, and the remainder is split evenly.
Handheld is cool but often lacks good ergonomics for longer sessions, as well as limited GPU power. Desktop is obviously “the best” but for my games, my gaming laptop is good enough for 100+ fps so why bother going to my office and booting up the desktop?
The only time my laptop is not good enough is VR simracing, but that’s not a power problem, it’s just a matter of having all my simracing stuff hooked up to the desktop already.
Laptop beats handheld in screen size, power, compatibility, and controls for me.
I have hear not great things about the ROG Ally and its support from Asus. From my experience, the Steam Deck truly is the most pick up and play solution for PC gaming. Add in the best input options of any console (people complain about the trackpads making the Deck too big, but those people clearly haven’t used them) and I think it beats out a gaming laptop as a gaming device. If you’re proficient at minor disassembly and formatting an internal drive, you can pick up the base Steam Deck for $399 and then buy a 1TB-2TB drive for less than what the 512GB model would cost. Alternatively you can buy a 1TB if you don’t want to open the device up.
You can also just add a 512 or 1tb microsd card. Surprisingly the performance of the card hasn’t made a huge difference for me when playing games off of it
The SD card speeds are great. The only thing you need to keep in mind is when you’re doing something that requires managing file paths and isn’t designed specifically for the Steam Deck. I ran into some headaches figuring out how to install the Vortex Mod Manager and get it fully functional for modding Skyrim on my Steam Deck’s SD card. I’m sure things have improved since then, but for people new to Linux it can be a slight hurdle if they choose to go outside the scope of typical Deck stuff.
Steam deck, which gives access to a large subset of PC games and also just about every console up to the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox era plus the Wii via emulation (no jailbreaking required).
Switch, which gives access to a lot of the best WiiU games as expanded ports plus some spruced up versions of Nintendo’s back catalogue.
PS5, which gives access to most of the best PS3 and PS4 games via PS+.
Xbox Series S/X, which has backwards compatibility with the Xbox One and Xbox 360 for some (most?) games.
There will be some slight gaps in backwards compatibility/emulator compatibility for some games, but I suspect the biggest remaining gap will be PC games not capable of running on the Steam deck.
I do currently have a Switch hooked up, but I’m thinking of removing the dock since my partner exclusively plays it handheld and since getting my Steam Deck, I haven’t touched the Switch except to dump games I pick up to emulate elsewhere. I played all of Tears of the Kingdom emulated, though that had to be played on my main rig since the Steam Deck would dip under 30fps too much for my taste.
Since the Steam Deck is a PC and a console, I think there’s definitely an argument to call a PC is a console, so long as it’s designed like one. If not the Steam Deck, then a small form factor PC running something like ChimeraOS. Windows is just too cumbersome to use anywhere other than sitting at a desk, and even then I hate it so much.
Modded PS Vita, since upon modding, its scope of playable games becomes ridiculously high. Native games, PSP and PS1 games supported natively which can be expanded upon modding with homebrews and back ups of official releases you paid for, plenty of emulators for both the Vita and the PSP, wrappers for Android and PC games, as well as ports of game engines, getting released pretty much every week, and OS extensions for forwarding the Vita's screen to another device, making certain bluetooth controllers compatible, fixing/improving the system, and so on and so forth. It's a nice console. :3
Did you know you could make a dock to hook up the Vita to a TV? I tried it and it’s pretty impressive. Really shows you what life would be like in an alternate timeline where Sony actually knew how to market the Vita.
I’m happy to see Sony bring PS3 games to PS5, though it’s not how I would’ve wanted. You’ll have some of Sony’s best PS3 games for sure, but for those games like Folklore you’ll need a PS3 (or Steam Deck, I haven’t tried emulating my copy yet). I also don’t like paying a subscription service to play the games that are already sitting on my shelf, but I’m the minority here as a lot of people I talk to like NSO and PS+.
Wii (which naturally includes Gamecube) Switch (with its N64, SNES, and NES emulation) XBox 360 Steam Deck (Steam and all other Pc games, including emulators)
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