I feel exactly the same as you. I have ADHD so fluff is painful and pointless grind is just depressing. I thought the most obvious way to recommend my favourites would be to go by hours played, so here's my top four:
My Time At Portia - 594hrs
Hardspace Shipbreaker - 498hrs
Kingdom Come Deliverance - 370hrs
Just Cause 3 - 255hrs
Special mention too for Assassin's Creed Odyssey (164hrs) because that is one well made game in almost every respect. Very little fluff, grind and you're always in control of how big a challenge you feel like facing. To my mind it makes all the other AC games look clunky and drab.
Also I hate difficulty spikes so much that whenever they happen and just seem to be there so the devs can grind a few more hours of playtime out of you for their analytics, I just reach for WeMod. Big shout out to WeMod in fact :) It's made so many games I'd abandoned fun again.
I know right. I think it's the worst I've ever seen. I kept scrolling through for something good but all of it is was like those bargain bins you used to see in petrol stations full of old DVD's. Honestly they should be ashamed of this. I went through my whole wishlist to check if any of the games on there had demos and literally none did. Last Next Fest most of them did. That's some impressive enshitification right there...
Actually I was wrong... Probably just needed to eat something and be less grumpy lol. Just found a fantastic demo that I'm downloading now. it's called Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream. Amazing people animation and great dialogue. I love top down games and this is easily better than anything I've seen before. Thanks to a NextFest roundup from Nookrium or I would never had spotted it.
There must be so much paid review manipulation out there but I don't know if it amounts to much. At the end of the day, if the game is good people will play it. I mean No Man's Sky came back from the entire world dumping on it from the stratosphere. Also, often overly negative reviews will actually make me more interested in a game, specially if all the negatives don't sound that bad "Horrible game! I didn't continuously die and how dare they allow the player to explore anywhere!".
So... will this mean we'll finally be able to restart as a new player in the offline mode? I've wanted to start from scratch with TC2 for ever. It's been such a frustration that you can't have more than one player profile per Ubisoft account.
Yeah it kinda does. It's this weird sandfishing minigame though with a kind of claw thing that you throw out. Nowhere near as fun as the fishing in Portia imho.
Of those 3 I've easily spent the most time in Portia. I really love the fishing in that game and when you get the super valuable fish you really feel like you earnt it :)
Just nabbed Salt 2 and it's so good already and I've only just started! I love how colourful everything is. Also, I made the mistake of going for a wander on the first island too late in the day without realising how DARK night times get. Fumbled my way to the nearest beach and managed to spawn my little raft and just about navigate back to camp. Thanks for the recommendation. I can see this is going to claim many, many hours of my life already 🤣
"In a world where every breath you take might just be your last"...... oh dear.
I love to applaud creative ideas but this just looks like a shopping list of cliches.
Yet another post apocalyptic setting "Do you remember the forests?" ✅
Co-op in spacesuits ✅
Same goals as in a million other games "Build, research, survive, scavenge" ✅
Giant mutant bugs ✅
Writing cringe-fest: "Up here, we don't let the past become our prison" ✅