Oh man, just made my own comment on black and white, and I assumed I was the only one. Black & White 2 is still the best God game out there for me and it was so much fun.
A bit of an obscurer one, but I would love another Black & White, based on Black & White 2. It’s a god game where you control a giant bipedal creature, control a city (or several) and battle against other gods through architecture and combat. You can train your creature to do things you prefer and expand your influence however you like.
It had a good/evil morality system, is completely winnable by being a pacifist, and has a really cute style of humor.
No other God game has quite scratched that itch and it’s still fun to this day almost 20 years later.
Anything above basic content in 14 (which is lowest common denominator content) can honestly be quite challenging, and savage and ultimate content is very very difficult content overall. It’s all about how much time and effort you’re willing to invest, the first 70 levels of content is pretty braindead so anyone can beat it.
Curious if elder scrolls online is similar because I honestly don’t know, haven’t played it in a decade.
If you like ARPGs, I remember enjoying Untold Legends a lot as a kid. Was a PSP launch title, and had a very dark themeing. I don’t know if my kid memory can be trusted on the quality but I’ve seen a few other people recommend it on here so I doubt it’s bad.
Honestly since the original artist(s) left, I wasn’t interested in a follow-up anyway. A second disco Elysium without the same art and story direction would have little to no relation to the game that came before.
Didn’t they just change the game with the last patch (still being updated, my God the devs are GOATed) so they you can play to 100 in any difficulty? I still imagine you get pasted in elite and ultimate if that’s your issue though.
Definitely I would check out Grim Dawn and Last Epoch.
Grim Dawn is an insanely sprawling game with tons of class combinations and builds, made by the people who made titan quest. The graphics are dated as hell but it never stopped me from loving it. I also find the lore very fun.
Then there is Last Epoch, which is coming out on the 21st. I’ve been playing it for 3 years, even done some testing for them. Personally some of the more casual friendly things that you can’t find (like the crafting actually being amazing, seasons giving content to non-season characters, etc) just are unmatched and give the game a very good flow. It will be out in 1.0 in ~ a week and I definitely think it’s worth a glance because I find it is a great middle ground between diablo’s dumbed-downness and Path of Exile’s sweatiness.
Absolutely Hi-Fi Rush. I loved many games this year, but Hi-Fi Rush was so fun, so wholesome, so loveable that the music it used carried me through some insanely hard times. It is very obviously a passion project made by incredible creators, and I legitimately cannot find a single issue with it (which I can’t say of any other game this year).
I still feel swells of emotion listening to the music from that game. Absolutely incredible.
The original Mount & Blade at an office max, I think? 5 dollar bargain bin game. I remember being blown away by the army combat in that game. The first one was so barebones but I still love that janky mess.
I have played last epoch for hundreds of hours as well, and I will say I really enjoy it. It’s my go-to ARPG because the skill system feels so damn good. It isn’t the mess of nodes that PoE is, and it isn’t the very braindead level of skills that Diablo 3 had (haven’t played 4 because blizzard). Pretty much every skill has its own skill tree, and you can often make skills cast other skills or find awesome synergies and the game excels at giving you the power to make your own build and have it actually work.
Other notes, the crafting system is absolutely fantastic. You will end up crafting all the time, not just at endgame and it feels so good, and is very easy to understand without being braindead.
Most of the endgame content is great, but it just needs more and extra of it. They have a few dungeons that do different specific things, so you don’t necessarily go there to farm, you go there because you want some feature or thing that place has. It’s a really fun system.
I will say at 0.9.2 there are still some issues with multiplayer sync, so if you want to wait til 1.0 to play it with bros then understandable. What a fun game IMO though.
Tbh, me and at least 2 other people I know bounced off it hard, even after giving it multiple chances in 10+ hours of playing. Some people just aren’t jelling with it even with playtime.