The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky (Part 1 + 2) are really the first ones that come to mind for me. They reignited some of the feeling of excitement I have for JRPGs, where you become deeply invested in the struggles of the characters and enjoy every last “Big damn heroes” moment and sudden twist they pull out. The villains in those games are pathetically irredeemable, a far cry from some of the better written ones, but their amazing quality is in forcing out the most dramatic possible circumstances from the characters. Combat keeps its pace and was generally enjoyable for me, plus it had an XP catchup/slowdown system that stopped the game from ever feeling too grindy.
Funny thing is, I personally bear no recommendations for any games in that series beyond those two. They are, to my mind, a testament to good singular stories that leave the opportunity for future ones - even if those follow-ons didn’t click with me.
For Metroidvania style, Aquaria is one I don’t see mentioned much. I got it in one of the classic Humble Bundles, and it had a LOT more content than I was expecting for an indie game. Many different abilities to gather, a soundtrack and appearance that all blended together so well, and even optional bosses hidden in the waters.
And then, it comes up every so often to divisive opinions, but there’s plenty of shooter players that still need to try Spec Ops: The Line. It’s not terribly well-done in terms of gameplay, but tells a very compelling story about heroism and violence - even if it is NOT the one you hope to see. Much of the controversy over the game’s ranking has to do with how much it offers freedom of choice - but I’ve always felt that freedom of choice starts in the type of adventures you choose to play. You see the assault rifles on the cover. You’re planning for this.
Trails in the Sky‘s story is so goated, it‘s in my top 5 favorite stories. The combat wasn‘t my cup of tea, but I managed to get through without any bigger problems, I forgot how though lol
Dragon Age: Origin Ultimate Edition: My personal favorite game of all time. Got me into the dark fantasy genre and RPGs in general. A simple story that has so much replay value based on the various decisions you can make with an amazing cast of characters. The rest of the series has been steadily going downhill since, unfortunately (in my opinion, at least).
Celeste: Best platformer ever. I’ve sunk hundreds of hours into it, and ever since I discovered there was an active modding community (seriously, the modding tools are so good now) I’ve been going through modded community expansions.
Slay The Spire: The most fun I’ve had playing a card game. It’s extremely challenging, but very well balanced, and there’s nothing else quite like it.
Okay, since you mention Celeste, maybe you could help me out? I bought it, played it, liked it, finished it and that was about it. A short, excellent platformer I thought. Since then, I’ve read several times how people said Celeste had an amazing replayability and how they
sunk hundreds of hours into it
so, could you tell me what to aim for after finishing the game? Why play it again?
Personally, I just really liked the platforming and movement. There aren’t many platformers that come close to Celeste’s polish, and I 100%-ed it (there’s some secret strawberries that are pretty damn hard to get), the golden strawberry challenges where you have to not die are super challenging, and I ended-up trying to speedrun it for fun. The modding community also has some excellent maps with practice areas that teach you advanced movement mechanics (I highly recommend the “Strawberry Jam” community map pack).
Oh hey, a fellow Cloudbuilt fan. I didn’t try the new version (Super Cloudbuilt) but I enjoyed playing the original.
Asura’s Wrath gets my vote as a great underlooked/underrated game. It got miffed reviews on release and is unfortunately only exclusive to PS3. It’s essentially a playable anime with ridiculously fun and over the top fights.
Although this is half the price of the steam deck I’d recommend that because it’ll last a whole lot longer and you can put whatever version of android you want on it or just stick to Linux. The streaming is top notch especially with the oled model having a more powerful wireless chip.
I’m sure the last few Ubisoft games I got from Steam all installed UPlay before letting me run them anyway…
I’m not buying it because £45 is not a budget price for what feels like an indie game experience. I can wait for a sale on that, or more likely for it to go to PSN Extra. Still got plenty on my backlog.
I’ve generally stopped buying Ubisoft games not because I don’t want to, but because of an issue with my Connect account. I think I had let my PS3 set one up for me back in the AC2 days with an email that is now long defunct (I deleted it after an acquisition that put my privacy at risk).
Now they want me to verify that email so much that some games have actually refused to let me play. I contacted their “support” to request the option to update my email, proving that the registered email is inactive and that I am in complete control of the linked PlayStation account, but they pretty much told me to kindly F off because they care too much about my privacy (lol).
I like some Ubisoft games, I just don’t have confidence spending money on anything they publish when I don’t know which ones might preemptively lock me out.
I figure I’ll just replace the account entirely at some point, but only when there’s a game I absolutely think would be worth the hassle. It just sucks to see my OG account end up trashed over such a dumb reason.
i stopped buying ubisoft games when i noticed every single one of them just follows the same path of mediocrity. There is some story, you follow it and along the way there is some busywork like collecting pointless things. If there ever are new ideas its like something wished with monkey’s paw and its ultimately just more same old shit in new wrappings.
Yeah I get it, but I don’t really mind that sort of stuff. You know what to do, it’s only mildly challenging, traversal is kind of fun. For me it’s relaxing.
I can’t stand rogue-likes or arena style multiplayer games, so I never touch any of that.
I kinda liked the first game more. Felt a lot more cohesive in terms of themes and story, Little Nightmares 2 felt like it was about something else entirely. And yeah, that ending.
Yeah it feels like they tried something different. With the first one, all the big ennemies were underlings of the Lady. Here, even though they inhabit the city (except for the hunter), they are not linked to the Thin man. It’s a bit confusing.
But overhaul the game is still really good and scary. IMO being chased is one of the scariest thing, so stressfull.
I heard from a “friend” that it runs very well on a Switch emulator on a Steam Deck. Some pre-rendered cutscenes are janky. It has a pretty cool system where you can take a screenshot that will pin to the map to indicate places you need to find back to once you unlock a new ability, and sometimes those don’t render right either. But otherwise, gameplay is flawless. Or so I’ve heard.
Most of my emulation happens on my phone, because most of the games I like from back in the day play well enough with touch controls and are quick things I can play while waiting for various things while out of the house.
edit: to znaczy, słyszałem o tym, ale wyobrażam sobie, że to się ogranicza do stricte IT, gdzie słowami kluczowymi mogą być języki programowania, środowiska, konkretne oprogramowanie, a nie, gdy mowa o pracy nieprogramistycznej w korpo, gdzie wymogami są takie kwestie jak umiejętności miękkie, ogólnie sformułowane doświadczenie w jakimś działaniu i obeznanie z ogólniej lub konkretniej sprecyzowaną branżą
As a soon potential buyer, how is the track pad for mouse central games? My biggest concern is playing old crpgs with anything like the control scheme on Switch. It was a waste of 30 bucks to get Baldur‘s Gate on Switch for the control alone in my experience.
I love it. The key is setting the triggers as the left and right clicks though. I find clicking the trackpad not great for precision. There is a certain level of tinkering/customizing that will be needed to get the most out of the controls.
I’ve played several 20 year old FPS games with absolutely no native controller support and completed them all. If you put in a little work in getting the controls how you like them it makes it hard to play stuff without all the Steam Deck options.
On what settings? Mine mimics a jet engine every time I fire up BG3, no matter what settings or scaling I used so far and I already have the quieter fan in the SD.
I wanted to check out Pillars because I think Avowed looks cool, but I do see Divinity Original Sin 2 on sale pretty frequently so I might pick it up. I’m still trying to take a big bite out of my backlog before buying more games I won’t end up playing for years. (I finally played GTA5 last month.)
We need more villain-as-protagonist games. Tyranny giving you evil choices that were both meaningful, and reasonable, is so much better than the usual "I'm the hero, but I do enjoy kicking puppies on weekends" evil choices in most RPGs.
The thing is, it’s not really villain-as-protagonist. It’s more like “goon-as-protagonist”. You are just a cog in the real villain’s machine. That’s why the choices are so interesting. Because they are often trolley-problems constrained by the world Kyros has created. So you don’t get choices like “will you kill this baby or not” because then it’s easy to not be the bad guy. You get choices like “Kyros demands someone from this town is getting killed. You can choose this baby or this old person. You can also choose not to make a choice, but that would be shirking your job as a judge and omniscient daddy Tunon wouldn’t like it”
I loved the original Fallout games. Pillars is a lot like the original two Baldur’s Gate games and the other games like it. Icewind Dale and Planescape Torment. Though I haven’t really earnestly played any of them. I did play the Dark Alliance games when they were new and I was a kid, but those are action RPGs.
Torment: tides of Numenera plays similar to PoE, although I’m mainly recommending it because it was my gateway into the Numenera universe, itself more interesting than the OK game.
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