Based on your enjoyment of management and strategy, Paradox's grand strategy games might be something you enjoy. Same publisher as Cities Skylines. There are four main series of them, each with their own mechanics but enough broad-scale similarities that knowing one helps with the others. They are:
Crusader Kings, set in medieval Europe, North Africa, and about half of Asia. This one is the most roleplay-heavy, as you play as a succession of characters within a feudal dynasty rather than a country
Europa Universalis, set from the European Renaissance up to the end of the Napoleonic wars. The whole world is playable, and exploration is a big mechanic
Victoria, which covers the world through the rise of industrialism. This one is the most simulation-heavy, focusing gameplay around economic development and the diplomatic manoeuvring of great powers
Hearts of Iron, which is the Second World War game. This is the one to go for if you want to play the military side of things
What distinguishes them from strategy games like Civ and Age of Empires is the greatly-reduced abstraction. There's no expectation of every starting point or playable country being balanced; if you start as Belgium in Hearts of Iron, you're going to have to do something clever to not get steamrolled by Germany. There's also no win condition beyond what you set for yourself. When I start a game of Crusader Kings, I'm not trying to win the game, I'm saying to myself "let's see if I can unite all of Britain and Ireland under a Gaelic ruler"
All Paradox games have quite a lot of DLC, but the base games are solid (often now including several of the earlier DLCs for free, in the case of older games) and they go on steep sales pretty often. If there's not a specific time period or mechanic that sways you towards one of the games, I recommend Crusader Kings 3 for the best new player experience
I played almost all of them. I like them, kinda, but they are games which are hard to master and I get frustrated when suddenly everything goes wrong and I can’t find out why. Like with HOI4, my logistics are perfect, my army hyper modern and trained, mixed infantry, special units and armor. Yet they fail battle against a few weak infantry. I spend hours and hours on YouTube tutorials but in the end it’s just a bit too much for me.
I immediately bought the Oblivion remaster because I guess I’m that basic. They have done away with my beloved IV LIVI BLIVIO title screen and replaced it with some Doom art, and when exiting the sewer at the beginning I immediately see an Oblivion gate across the river before the point in the story you’re supposed to find them (apparently the new progression lock is that they’re present but non-interactive before then). It seems like it was made with fear that new players would react poorly to the sort of cutesy fantasy that comprises the majority of the game and it needs them to see hellfire quickly so they know it’s “actually” a cool game for cool guys. All the stranger then that they’ve added these bouncy new dialogue animations that would feel at home in The Sims.
But for all my nitpicking, it is still the Oblivion I love and the new visuals are a treat. I really didn’t expect such bold artistic swings as these wacky new heads on the Argonians and goblins or my character’s acrobatic knife moves.
I’m a Khajiit Bard named Stabby Cat who accidentally procured an armored horse because I never bought that DLC before and did not know the consequences of talking to that random Orc. I’ve leveled up twice just from sweet talking shopkeepers to get better prices from them. I crossed paths with a pair of NPCs who immediately complained to each other that they had nothing to talk about, then one thought of a topic but got shut down hard by the other’s direct refusal to participate.
Feels good to be back.
EDIT: I’ve since learned that my non-interactive Oblivion gate was a bug and not actual game design.
If you’re up for ARPGs, something like Titan Quest or Grim Dawn have many hours worth of gameplay.
Worth looking at as well is anything in the Monster Hunter series. World and Rise are both amazing along with their expansions and Wilds just recently released.
All of my recommendations are long-term games with many hours worth of playtime.
Going Medieval is a pretty great building/management type game! It gets updated often with new content too
You build your castle and manage the sims in their daily jobs. There’s a great building system, farming, defense against raiders, mining, a good crafting pipeline. It’s a lot of fun
I played all with er games but never finished any of them as it’s just not for me weirdly. I played elder scrolls games which were nice but the Witcher just doesn’t catches my attention.
If you’re saying that you liked the (unfinished, abandoned, poorly-rated) Kerbal Space Program 2, you might play the original, which is better-regarded.
Dwarf Fortress is another colony sim, has a freely-available classic version or a commercial graphical build on Steam. Steep learning curve, but lots of mechanics to explore.
I like https://cataclysmdda.org/, though it has a pretty punishing learning curve. Open-world roguelike. It touches on both the RPG (well, not much by way of plot, but in terms of building a character) and the factory (build buildings, faction camps with NPCs, and vehicles) side. You aren’t going to run out of gameplay complexity to explore any time soon on that. Open source and freely-available, though there’s also a commercial build on Steam.
It only changes it so that you get your +5 choices if you have even one skill up in the category.
Without it the best way to play is to choose your main skills as Minor Skills and skills that are easy to avoid leveling up (and preferably easy to level up when you want to) as Major Skills to always get 3x +5 every level up.
With it you can let your character have major skills that you actively use during gameplay without gimping yourself.
I played all elder scroll games (except online) and fallout games but Bethesda lost me. They scammed me with fallout 76 (I have the special edition with power armor helmet) and their games after Skyrim just flatline imo. Fallout 4 got fixed somewhat, but that’s it. They won’t get my money anymore. Screw Todd Howard.
I don’t see Bioware titles on the list. Dragon Age series for fantasy, Mass Effect for sci fi. Since BG3 is on the list, I wanted to mention in case you haven’t gotten to them yet.
I’ll second Dragon Age since it’s less action oriented than Mass Effect (which is great but OP seems more interested in strategy/management than shooting)
Mass Effect has a “tactical pause” feature though, but it feels less Baldur-like :)
Hmm, how about mindustry (its open source and free outside of steam)? It’s like factorio with tower defense. Note: after playing for few hours you might get access to many more stuff in game which might feel overwhelming
Those are some impressive scores, sucks that I don’t own anything I could play it on. Hopefully there’s a Switch 2 port in the future, since I’ll likely get one once a new Xenoblade game is on the horizon.
I’m not big on hardware, is a Switch 2 stronger than the weak Xbox version?
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Aktywne