Two Worlds 2 had a very interesting idea for a magic system where you find cards and slot them to create and modify spells. It's pretty jank but maybe worth a look. The game also had one of the most interesting multiplayer setups for open world rpgs I've ever seen.
1 - Get Recalbox on a GPi Case 2 and you’ll have access to just about every system from before 2000 (including support for commodore and other similar systems). It can handle PSP games as well, but not PS2 or NDS. There are other cases available for a raspberry pi system, but I recommend the GPi Case 2 because you can play it “docked” and handheld. I recommend Recalbox since it already has a lot of support for the GPi case built into it, but if you’re tech-savvy you may prefer Lakka for its flexibility. You may be able to get more modern emulators to run on the lakka as well.
2 - Gaming PC with Lakka, Citra, or whatever other emulators you’d like. And unless you’re playing a lot of super new games, you don’t need anything fancy- you could probably just throw windows 7 on a $100 refurbished business PC and run just about any game from 2010 or earlier, TBH.
3 - Wii or Wii U. I personally find emulation of these (specifically with a wii-mote) to be a bit finicky. If you don’t use a Wii, you can substitute your personal console of choice for this one.
4 - Oculus Quest- though I’m not sure if it counts since you aren’t connecting to a TV. This isn’t the best VR headset but it is the cheapest. It has a good library of standalone games, and for anything else you can use airlink or the virtual desktop to run games off of a VR-ready PC (If you went with one that was beefy for #2). The quest has a lot of modding support through the sidequest. The main concern with this is that you need a phone to set up a Quest when you buy it/after a factory reset. So if Facebook goes under or a meteor hits silicon valley, this could conceivably turn into a fancy paperweight. To my knowledge, nobody has cracked the Quest to skip over this step. If historical preservation is more important to you than money, I would recommend choosing literally any other VR headset because of the setup thing.
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.
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