I have a 16 with a discrete GPU. Couldn’t recommend it more. It does sound like a rocket ship sometimes, but performs like a midrange tower, which is exactly what I wanted.
For me, it highly depends. Turn-based strategy games, I can easily play at a much lower framerate (30 is fine tbh though I always appreciate more). FPS-style games? 60 is a bare minimum, but 100+ is what I would consider to be enjoyable.
Don’t forget Intel’s latest GPU launches either! For custom PCs, there are some really affordable and relatively powerful GPUs available now (for the price). Despite their performance otherwise, Intel is killing it in the GPU space now.
For a lower spec build, you could definitely put together something with a 12100F (or other cheap CPU) and a battlemage GPU. Depending on where you get all the parts, you might be able to hit sub-$500 and get great 1080p performance, or for sure sub-$1k 1080p and likely 1440p performance.
Handhelds also have a lot of good options available too. To save some cash, you can get low end Steam Deck and swap the hard drive yourself. Got myself the cheapest LCD variant and swapped the tiny drive in it with a 2TB drive off Amazon.
I don’t really care for multiplayer games as much since I don’t like to commit my time to others to play games (I like being able to get up and leave when I need to), but there’s a solo challenge that sounded fun, so I’m giving that a shot.
Factorio is not for everyone, but it’s also one of the all stars of its genre. With the upcoming expansion in a couple weeks, it’ll probably eat another few hundred of my free hours over the next few months, and I know I’m not alone on this one.
Fortunately, if you need character backstories and such, you could instead read the books or watch the TV series instead. I jumped straight into Witcher 3 and had no issues with missing background knowledge.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t play 1 or 2 though, just that there are other options.
For what it’s worth, I feel the same way about normal settings for FP1 in that it’s pretty easy. Switching to extreme though, it felt as though I needed to play perfectly to finish a scenario. To me, I think it comes down to most of the difficulty being frontloaded. A solid start sets you up for the rest of the game, while a rough start can ruin a run as the game continues to kick you down with every temp drop, event, etc.
I keep looking at this game not because I want to play it, but because I want to see how it was made. As someone who’s played with bevy a bit, it’s amazing to me what they were able to do with it, and it would be so cool to see how it was done.
I made the mistake of starting Frostpunk (1) since I saw that 2 released. It’s an incredibly well-made game. The art style is beautiful, the game is intense, there is a lot of emotion, and it does its one thing just so well. Unlike a lot of modern games these days, Frostpunk wants you to lose, which is fitting for its setting. It sees that you’re behind, then kicks you in the shins for good measure rather than lending a helping hand. I’ve lost so many hours of my time to this game in the past week.
I’ve read that Frostpunk 2 is a completely different game. That one might be next on my list if I get to it before Factorio updates and the expansion for it comes out.