Can’t speak for PoE1, but the second one (deadfire) is a treat. Though I would not recommend playing it through turn based mode, it feels very much like retrofitting the existing RTwP system into a turn based system, which is what happened.
It takes some time to get used go it (or at least it did for me since I don’t really enjoy RTwP) but still.
Remnant is a coop soulslike shooter, if that’s up your alley. Fun bosses, some puzzles with unique rewards if you get the clues (some are really hard and you’ll definitely end up looking up guides for most of them), and build variety is okay. Haven’t played Remnant 1, but Remnant 2 is fun.
Outward is an indie open world RPG with survival mechanics. With mods, you can play with more than 2 people. It’s janky, but it has an old school approach to game design that feels refreshing. For instance, the ingame map is just a map, not a gps. You orient yourself with the on-screen compass and landmarks off in the distance. The levelling system is completely non-standard compared to modern rpgs, as it is classless, has skill trees (with passives and actives), and uses money, not XP, to level. So every red cent counts. The story is honestly not impressive. Not because of the presentation, but because there really isn’t much there. If you end up playing this, is because the exploration and builds are fun. Having to deal with environmental threats while you’re low on resources (e.g: can’t see but you ran out of lantern oil, freezing but don’t have a campfire, starving or dehydrated but have no food) adds a lot to the game, because combat is not easy until you get a good build going.
Valheim could work if you’re up for it. Though not much of an RPG, it can be played like one with the right mods and world settings. You can tone down the survival aspects and increase the combat aspects. Nearly 0 story though. My only gripe in this regard with the game is that build variety only comes online in the latter half of the available content. Before Mistlands, everyone is either melee or range. Once you get Eitr, you can combine melee or range with magic. With mods though, you can get classes and unique enemies to hunt down.
Same as before, Project Zomboid can be played like an RPG with the right mods, but you won’t find much of a story besides the ones you shape yourself in-game. There’s a lot to building a character, and you will get attached to them since infection is certain death, and then you have to roll up a new character. B42 just released on the unstable branch, but is only single player atm. B41 can be played multiplayer, and it has thousands of mods for you to tailor the experience. I’ve had a lot of fun playing on private servers with my friends. I treat it as a survival game, and they treat it as an RPG.
Return to Moria might work? It’s not much of an RPG, but it has a loose story to egg you on. No builds, however.
Wasteland 3, though its similar to BG3 I think. Haven’t played it online, and I think it’s limited to 2 people. Build variety is up there though, and the story is great.
Not really much to offer, now that I realize. If BG3 wasn’t your cup of tea you might not have a lot to choose from.
And, although not as thoroughly fleshed out as Ready or Not, and not multiplayer, Black One : Blood Brothers looks interesting enough to follow. It’s basically the bones of the first Ghost Recon with modern assets. I’ve not played it yet but it’s in my library.
Prepping, still, for a DnD campaign. Pulling all the stops, with music (ripped from Cyberpunk 2077 and looped), art (done by me), branching narratives when my players do something unexpected, custom homebrew mechanics (it’s cyberpunk red ported into 5e, so as best as it can be ported), etc. I really want to start it soon but I have to migrate all the stuff I had made on a foundry server to my computer, and that’ll take time since I’m cleaning it up as I go.
Apart from that, killing bugs and heretics on Space Marine 2, killing bugs and heretics on Rimworld, and killing imperialists and fascists on Squad.
Maybe it was the botched launch. Baldur’s Gate 3 was an early access title made by a known developer (at least in crpg spaces) of an existing IP, though BG 1 and 2 are old as hell and I imagine most of the player base didn’t play them, myself included.
I played KSP and was waiting for performance to get better before buying KSP 2. Oh well.
I work in the industry, and yeah. Before, marketing was based on utility. “Buy this because it can do this and this and that”, basically marketing how effective or what it can actually do for you. Around the 50s (in the US) marketing changed to be based around lifestyle. “Buy this so you can be this”. Now nearly all ads appeal to emotion instead of reason, and it is very effective.
Researching about what a product offers is so much harder than just buying on a whim because the ads and the product are colorful.
You can see this change in old (really old) newspapers. Ad spreads were chock full of text about features. Now 3/4ths of the ads are an image of a happy woman if marketed for gals, or a stoic muscly man if marketed for guys.
Replaying Dragon’s Dogma in prep for the new game. I had forgotten how much grind the game requires, honestly. I’ve been Mage 1-11, MArcher 6, Ranger 6, Sorc 30-40 or so, and my magic score is still low as hell. I’m purposefully delaying meeting the duke because I really want to give MArcher a try in the post-game, and it feels like I’ve already played for a long time but sheesh, levelling up is slow. I had never focused on building for stats, honestly. I know now though that most of your damage comes from your gear, so I might quit levelling Sorc when I reach 450 magic instead of the 600.
Hope it’s a little faster in the second entry.
Apart from that, trying the Nordic Souls modpack for Skyrim, and Helldivers 2.
IMO the problem at this point is leadership. They’ve realized people will buy their shit if they sell a cheap, surface-deep fantasy with interesting visuals and let folks do a very limited number of different things in a single playthrough. Because of that, there’s no nuance to their worlds. They want to make a sandbox game with no reactivity.
Unless leadership resigns I won’t expect anything else than the equivalent of a gas station meal.
5e might be easier to grasp than previous editions, and even easier to play than other TTRPGs, but even then. I started playing DnD after my second playthrough of BG3, and even having some experience with CRPGs, reading through the DM book, PHB, and all the sourcebooks I totally legally acquired, felt like trying to map a room with my eyes closed. Bg3 streamlines the math, but the complexity is still there.
Half of all the time I’ve spent as a DM has been spent devising homebrews to streamline the game further.