In all honesty, genshin impact is a pretty reasonable facsimile of that sort of game. It’s really grown into its own, and it’s really fun and absolutely massive
That said, I’d only advise it if you are 100% confident you won’t engage in any of the gacha systems – you can play and enjoy the game with the free characters the game gives you, but once you start engaging with the gacha that can be a really dangerous slippery slope. If that’s something that you could fall prey to, I wouldn’t recommend it. But if you think you can play it without investing any money (or, really, more money than you can afford, I don’t know your financial situation) it’s actually a really great time, and the story’s only gotten better as it’s gone on. There’s definitely some stipulations with it, but it’s worth experiencing if you feel like those are acceptable
+1 for Genshin. While I think your gacha warning is excellent I do want to point out that the amount of resources you get for getting characters is more than enough to clear all story content. Hell if you’re a good player you could probably clear the whole game without using a single primogem, not even the countless thousands you get along the way.
And massive is also the understatement of the year. There is voiced content here that dwarfs even whole trilogies. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more recorded lines than all of Dragon Age and Mass Effect put together. And the story is likely not even at the halfway point yet, there’s still years to go. Closest analogy would probably be SWTOR, the MMO, but with much better combat.
that’s totally fair. I think you can do most of the story and exploration stuff without grinding much but if even that is too much grinding it’s probably not worth the effort. Hope you find what you’re looking for!
similar open world games with good combat systems,
This might be a tall order. Most of the “open world” games I’ve found either fall down in the open world department (lots of restricted areas or nothing varied/interesting enough to make exploring fun) or fall down in the combat department (awkward, unresponsive, or annoying in some other way). Some high-profile games even manage to suffer from both these problems despite being great in other ways (I’m looking at you, Geralt).
I hoped for quite a while that the next Elder Scrolls game would keep the good parts of Skyrim (beautiful environments full of unique things to discover) and overhaul the combat into something good, but recent showings from Bethesda make me less than optimistic.
Some people praise the Dark Souls series (including Elden Ring) for both openness and combat. However, if you loved Breath of the Wild, I wonder if the Souls style would be a bit too combat-focused for your taste, leaving the world feeling cold and empty. I haven’t played them enough to have a strong opinion about this; perhaps someone else can chime in.
I look forward to the suggestions you get in this thread.
Edit:
I just remembered Subnautica! I recommend this game, but there’s caveat in the context of your question: The way it avoids bad combat is to give the player reason to avoid combat as much as possible.
Skyrim and the mainline Elder Scrolls games (Oblivion, Morrowind) can run fine on most setups these days. Skyrim: Special Edition was released in 2016, which is almost a decade ago now.
Edit: Forgot you mentioned platforms. Considering your hardware, don’t play them on anything other than PC. The PS3 version of Skyrim in particular is a disaster.
Problem with them is sometimes mods are required for performance because they can be optimised terribly. There are actually some good mods which make the games play a lot better on older hardware, but it’s been a while and I don’t remember them.
Still, you’re going to want to play mostly un-modded because too many mods will tank an older system. I personally think vanilla Skyrim can be pretty fun, so it’s not a big deal, IMO.
The combat is a huge con, though. Bethesda hasn’t ever really been “good” at melee combat, and have only started to improve their gunplay starting with Fallout 4.
That said, since I’ve brought up FO4, Fallout 3 and New Vegas should run fine on pretty much anything. Although, when I say “fine”, I mainly mean “work”, because optimisation is still terrible and bugfix patches might be needed.
OoT for me. ALttP and Link’s Awakening were already my favorite games at the time, but OoT came out at that perfect time in my life when consoles were being made for kids my age and 3D was this mysterious, exciting new thing. To this day, I usually end up replaying it about once a year, and I suspect I’ll continue doing that until I pass on.
Phantom Hourglass was my first but Spirit Tracks is my favorite. I actually really like the stylus DS controls (and it’s not even that bad using a mouse on an emulator either) but the main thing I like is the music and story. Music and story I would say are both better in Spirit Tracks than any other game in the series. It also is one of the few games in the series that you can really call a legend of Zelda. She’s there the whole time and the main story focuses on her character arc.
Just overall an amazing experience with some really dramatic moments, if I had to summarize what I like about it more than the other games in the series I’d say it’s the most “cinematic & dramatic”
Honestly, I think the original. I know its inferior to most of the other games in most ways, but I’ve found a lot of the modern Zelda games feel pretty shallow and formulaec. Not to say they’re bad, but none of them really feel like they stand out to me either - they’re just good games. The original on the other hand, feels very different from a lot of the games since then. The world is kept a lot more foreign and hostile both in terms of aggressive enemies and in terms of tutorialization. Its makes the exploration so much more rewarding, and when you do find a new item, that much more special.
I love Links Awakening due to nostalgia, but Oracle of Ages is still the longest game I’ve played (since I’ve yet to beat it). Seasons is fine but not my cup of tea, and minish cap is a bit too shaort
Honestly, I think Wind Waker is and I didn’t like it when it came out. The art style has grown on me over the years, the combat is satisfying without being to complicated, and the exploration is fun and unique for a Zelda game.
I’ve sunk more time into TotK than any of the others. I have nostalgia for OoT, TWW and TP, but their gameplay don’t hold up to BotW or TotK if you take off the nostalgia glasses.
Marvel Midnight Suns. Disregarded it on announcement and launch because I wasn’t interested in the core card-based system. Played a little bit of Slay the Spire, which didn’t catch with me but did suggest I might actually be able to enjoy a card-based system with enough narrative context to keep me interested.
So far, so good. I just completed Act 1 (which prompted me to exclaim “that was only act 1??”) and I’m a little worried that I’m going to tire of the side missions soon and lose steam overall, but it hasn’t happened yet. The characters are fine enough, although they definitely give off MCU fanfic vibes (it’s jarring to me having a Peter Parker voiced by Yuri Lowenthal who is such a little remora sidekick in his characterization). The loop is pretty satisfying, if not a little clunky, and I wish the balance between doing battles and running around the abbey grounds leaned a little less on the abbey stuff.
But it’s a lot of fun and very addictive. I’m saddened that it performed poorly but I bear my part of the responsibility willingly.
which didn’t catch with me but did suggest I might actually be able to enjoy a card-based system with enough narrative context to keep me interested.
FYI, you can learn bits and pieces about Slay’s lore through the various events that come up. A pretty large chunk of lore comes up upon one particular respawn/new run.
That’s cool. I do enjoy lore, but more in an “explain it to me on YouTube” kind of way than an “uncover it organically through gameplay” way. I need characters, acts, and arcs to be immediately engaged.
I’m guessing maybe you don’t like detective games in which you have to uncover the plot yourself. I suppose it’s all about the method of presentation for me.
The most recent detective game I played (if it qualifies as such for you) was Paradise Killer, which surprisingly I enjoyed quite a bit. Again though, the lore has close ties to the interpersonal relationships of all the characters on the island.
When I was a kid I was on holiday with my parents in Spain. Since Mortal Kombat was verboten in Germany I went to every shop that might have SNES games to find it. I think I was finally able to find Mortal Kombat 3 in Andorra. And it was glorious!
Probably a Link to the Past. Although I’ve only played the games in the series up to Link’s Awakening so that might change although the game would have to be pretty damn good
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