Indeed, I often times will play for a few hours and find all sorts of cool things, but nothing that moves the story along.
Case in point, I have been playing BG3 for months a few hours here and there and I’m only in the beginning parts of Act 3. And before that I dumped probably 400hrs into Elden Ring, and then went back in for many, many more when the DLC came out.
I played BG3, put over 100 hours, it took me 2 years. But I don’t mind, it was an easy game to pick up after a break and continue with, and the quests were rewarding in themselves, you didn’t need to complete the whole game to understand it.
There are definitely games I have started played, then couldn’t remember what I was doing after a break and wasn’t enthused enough to return to it. I can’t remember specific games but I know it happens.
I’ve put around 400 hours into that game. But I’ve only “completed” it once.
I came from divinity where you needed to play the game on tactician to experience all the content. Not sure if bg3 is the same way but I went in with that mindset.
Such a great game and so much to explore. Took me back to when I was a kid trying to 100% mass effect.
So many studios fail to breath life into their worlds and pump them full of tedious bs. (Looking at you starfield. What a let down that was…)
Yeah I’m only playing balanced or whatever the middle/default difficult is. I have 263hrs as of right now and have really been enjoying it. And I’m doing Dark Urge so I’m missing a bunch of content just because of “bad decisions”, and the way I ended up in act 2 I also know I missed a bunch of content. I’m not even close to being done with Act 3 (I don’t think) and I’m already debating if I will do another playthrough afterwards, or play something else from my ever growing backlog. And I’ve never been a 100%'er and usually happy/lucky if I even finish it. 😂
The ol Ubisoft formula? Yeah - I enjoy sprinkling them in to my gaming.
Easy to pick up. Only got a bit of time? Go unlock some area or marker. Got a longer amount of time? Make progress towards the main quest. That with achievements gives me a list of short and long goals I can work towards.
Funny that you mention it. I usually play an open world game in parallel with a heavier on rails RPG/CRPG – and opt for the open world game when I want a more “brain off” session.
I’m not totally sure what that would add to the experience. The core battles are still the same, just with more added on. I like pixel graphics and old gameboy music, but I don’t see why people would buy it. It’s seems strange considering it would be the same game as before, but less.
Pokémon: Violet except: it’s 2D, scarcely animated, without double-battles, without shinies, without several types, without terastallizing, without the open world, without the rideable legendary, and so on.
That was me imagining it if it were limited to gen 1 gameplay. Maybe there’s a case to remake regions in like a style like emerald, but I still think it’s just a game that already exists but with less.
If you don’t know about them already, you should look into pokémon rom-hacks. Some are kinda like what you described, but they add their own twist like changing the story, adding new types, or adding newer pokémon or mechanics. A lot of them are really well made too.
Just because there’s more “stuff” in a game like Violet doesn’t mean it adds to the overall experience. Sometimes it detracts from it. A lot of times it detracts from it.
This is of course all subjective and if you enjoy the additional mechanics, it’s good you have them. There are of course others out there who would disagree with you and appreciate a more “core” experience in a Pokemon game.
Pokémon: Violet except: it’s 2D, scarcely animated, without double-battles, without shinies, without several types, without terastallizing, without the open world, without the rideable legendary, and so on.
In my opinion, they can keep everything you’ve mentioned except terastallizing, a rideable legendary, and probably a good amount of your “and so on.” I’m pretty sure Pokemon games have had an open world since the beginning, but maybe some people have different ideas of what constitutes an open world.
If you want a pokémon game without new things, why want a new pokémon game? That doesn’t really make sense to me. I don’t think most of the gimmicks they’ve made have throughout the gens have been very good, but I appreciate them for the splash of novelty and I just ignore the ones I don’t like because I know they’re not permanent. I almost never tera-ed my mons in violet, I just grinded levels and planned my party like I have for 20 years.
By open world, I meant being able to travel through most routes and towns without a black screen or loading screen.
That said I wasn’t making a quality statement. I was comparing the most recent game with the first and I don’t know how there would be a significant market for a much more clunky version of an existing game with a huge chunk of features removed.
I’d say Pokémon is one of the franchises to which the transition to 3D added nothing of value to the experience. Every 3D Pokémon has been ugly as sin.
I definitely think the quality on the 3D models could be better, but I think the move to 3D has made the game more immersive and things like the size variations are charming details that makes “your” pokémon feel more unique. I was mainly questioning whether a product like that would actually sell well enough to be worth the effort, not making any statement of which is superior.
Celeste is one of my favorite games period, and it qualifies. The gameplay parallels the story better than any other game I’ve ever played or seen played, and the soundtrack, art, and characters are amazing. Top tier gameplay and a great story to go with it.
Alternatively, if you’re looking for absolutely unhinged strange gameplay made by a programmer rather than a game designer, check out Fractal Block World. It’s pretty fascinating!
Some I really appreciate that I’m not seeing on this list:
I’m currently enjoying Blue Prince which is a fairly new rogue-like puzzle/mystery game it’s hard to explain without spoiling but it’s worth looking up.
Portals of Phereon is one of my absolute favorites. It’s a fairly deep tactical RPG thing with loads of replayability. It’s kind of like a Pokemon x FF Tactics but with monstergirls and it’s also currently free while it’s in development. Be aware it’s extremely NSFW and horny, which I suspect is the main reason it’s not as popular as some of the others listed (IE rimworld, stardew valley, etc.) however the horny is such a key point to it’s original gameplay and world-building that it wouldn’t be the same without it.
Thea: the awakening is a decent tactical RPG. I love it for it’s original battle mini game, crafting system and world-building. It unfortunately has some balance issues and jankiness that prevents it from being an all time favorite, but it’s definitely one I would encourage at least trying.
Thought of a few others:
Reus (2nd one’s alright, first one’s excellent)
Library of Runia
Book of Hours
Kenshi (saw it listed one other time, but it deserves a lot more love)
I was getting into Blue Prince, then I think I got a little annoyed with a puzzle involving a time lock, that claimed you could set it to open at a future date/time and it would stay for one hour. Fun, inventive way to get people to plan ahead.
But no, then I wasted several out of game days planning only to find that it’s referring to in-game time; something that has not plainly existed through any of the other mechanics thus far. I’ll likely get back to it, just think they could’ve chosen the orientation of “big picture” puzzles like that a bit better.
Oh I agree, but that one didn’t seem to bad to me due to the clocks depicting an in-game time that were everywhere. The ones that I almost rage quit on were:
possible spoilers- The stupid gallery puzzles with the nonsensical images that you have to creatively interpret to get the initial clues to parse together in insane ways to get the correct answer - the culture of nuance
Just looking though some of my higher playtime games, here’s a few I haven’t seen mentioned: (I think they’re all indie or small studio)
Gunfire Reborn - Roguelike fps with infinite replay.
Troubleshooter Abandoned Children - XCOM style battle system with a really really fun way to customize how your character fight. Story is pretty lame though (I ended up skipping it) and it’s pretty grindy.
Thronefall - Pretty challenging base defence.
The last spell - Turn based base defence with lots of different ways to build your characters.
Ratropolis - Roguelike real-time card strategy base defence. Pretty good, although not well balanced at highest difficulties.
I have a personal soft spot for Doki Doki Literature Club because it got me into programming when i was young, but that’s far more sentimental and to be honest i wouldn’t play it again as an adult really. If i had to pick something functionally though I’d say Project Zomboid. there’s a fuck ton of fun to be made in that, especially with Multiplayer. Even in singleplayer i like to turn on a NPC mod and assemble my own makeshift Walking Dead cast
Saw someone else out urquan masters, so I’ll put Caves of Qud and Rain World. they both of some of the best pixel art ever, and caves of qud has some the most dynamic story telling in anything I’ve played
Neat info. Positive comments in this thread prompted me to go read the thing, and I appreciated how it is a ground-up explanation, but still quite accessible. Now I understand why WINE is not an Emulator (I had been wondering, tbh)
Currently it’s Bellwright, among many other titles. what particularly tickles me about it is the shitty ai voices they used for the npcs. I am not pro ai by any means, but nothing makes me happier than hearing “all in a good days of work.” delivered constantly, in the most off-kilter reading imaginable.
Many of the early console and PC games were only solvable by finding answers in published magazines. Nintendo was notorious for this - they had their own magazine called Nintendo POWER and a hotline you could call to get tips. A few that come to mind:
Blaster Master / Goonies 2 / Mad Max / The Kings Quest games / The Black Caludron
On arcades, you’d get fucked by asshole difficulty. At home, you’d get fucked by asshole difficulty and purposeful lack of information. Took me a while to put 2 and 2 together and realize how “predatory games” have been around for a very long time. Can’t sell the game twice, but you can sell information.
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