You’ve got RPGs and strategy/tactics games listed as some of your favorites, but Baldur’s Gate 3 never caught your eye? How about Starfield or Cyberpunk, or the early access game Dread Delusion? Given tactics games and an interest in MGS, you could check out the Metal Gear collection or Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew (or Shadow Gambit’s developers’ previous games, Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun and Desperados III, which I think I like better than Shadow Gambit). There’s Wargroove 2, if you like the Advance Wars brand of tactics. It’s 2D, but given your interest in other space games, you could take a look at another early access game (not on Steam) Starsector that a friend of mine got really into.
There’s just so much out there this year that I’m not sure who’d be left unhappy.
Something like Baldur’s Gate 3 could be an enjoyable game for me, but unfortunately the world didn’t click. A friend is really into it and let me play for a while, and it just didn’t feel like a good fit. I ran into the same problem with both of the Divinity Original Sin games. I’ve never been a big fan of most fantasy settings for some reason, although I do enjoy some of them. Dread Delusion, Shadow Gambit and Wargroove 2 could fall into the same category, although I would have to watch some gameplay first. Some of the advance information on Starfield looked interesting at first, but gameplay footage I’ve watched hasn’t made me want to buy it. I would be more excited if things would be a bit more seamless. I got Cyberpunk on sale a while back and put about 10 hours into it before I quit. I can’t really put my finger on what it was, but I just wasn’t enjoying it. I haven’t played it since that point, so it may have changed for the better. I already have the Metal Gear Collection with MGS4 for PS3, so the PC port won’t be anything I’ll pick up until it goes on sale.
The two older games from Mimimi both look interesting. In fact, I did purchase Desperados III on a sale, I’ve just never downloaded it yet to play between XCOM runs!
I either never saw or overlooked Starsector, so I will have to look into that one a bit. Endless Sky is top down, so it sounds somewhat similar!
Starsector is definitely a sleeper hit building a cult following. I wouldn’t have heard of it if not for a friend of mine. If fantasy settings don’t typically do it for you, you can encroach on a lot of things that people like about Divinity and BG3 in the Wasteland games. Wasteland 1 is an old RPG that’s almost a text adventure, but Wasteland 2 and 3 are pretty modern. Cyberpunk also got a huge revamp right before its latest expansion drop, so even the original game’s RPG systems and world systems work very differently now, and there’s a lot of positive buzz behind it (I haven’t gotten to it yet myself, but I liked the launch version).
For fantasy settings, definitely don’t play Wargroove for the story, but one thing I learned to enjoy about fantasy stuff is it can create a rock/paper/scissors of strengths and weaknesses of classes/races that you can’t quite hit in most believable sci-fi settings. I never got far into Divinity, but one thing that really worked for me in BG3, apart from its production value, is that it doesn’t just bombard you with lore. It gives you the bare minimum setup you need to get going, and then it diagetically fills you in on the larger world as you go, with dialogue that doesn’t feel like an info dump, much like Game of Thrones managed to do. Plus, IMO, there are far more interesting tactical options in BG3’s combat than in XCOM; and I love XCOM.
I’ll look into the Wasteland games and see what I think, might be something I’ll enjoy. I have heard some good things about the 2.0? update for Cyberpunk, so I should probably start a new save and give it another chance. I enjoy some of the cyberpunk aesthetic, so that helps.
Interesting point on the fantasy classes, I hadn’t thought of it that way previously. I’ve never been able to figure out what fantasy elements don’t work for me, because it doesn’t seem to follow any particular logic! I may give BG3 a shot if it comes up on sale at some point, it might just be a slow build and I might just need a bit more time playing for me to enjoy it.
I can definitely see why you’ve struggled so much since the common factors between the games you didn’t like are the most rampant in the industry right now. I’ve tended to find myself in a similar situation and would only remove Spider-Man from the list of not liked. Because of constant push-backs, I’m honestly not sure what the release forecast looks like at this point because I’ve refused to play into the hype train for a while now.
In case you haven’t already tried them, based on your favourites list, I’d recommend taking a look at Satisfactory and Jusant. The first is Factorio but in 3D so it plays into some of what people like about Stardew, in my opinion and Jusant is an interesting blend of Journey and Shadow of the Colossus from what I’ve played so far. It also has a rare thing called a ‘demo’ on Steam so you can at least easily and freely give it a try.
I’m hoping to eventually find something that checks all the right boxes! In the meantime, I still find a few that I really like here and there, and old favorites are always fun!
I’ve definitely seen Satisfactory before, I’ve just never bought it. It looked like it could be interesting, I’ll have to look into it a bit more. Jusant I hadn’t heard of, but I’ll check it out. Thanks!
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The games that I tried for the first time and enjoyed this year were:
Then the games that I tried and didn’t like:
Games that I would be excited about if they were announced/launched:
My all time favorites list that I keep coming back to is currently this:
You’ve got RPGs and strategy/tactics games listed as some of your favorites, but Baldur’s Gate 3 never caught your eye? How about Starfield or Cyberpunk, or the early access game Dread Delusion? Given tactics games and an interest in MGS, you could check out the Metal Gear collection or Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew (or Shadow Gambit’s developers’ previous games, Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun and Desperados III, which I think I like better than Shadow Gambit). There’s Wargroove 2, if you like the Advance Wars brand of tactics. It’s 2D, but given your interest in other space games, you could take a look at another early access game (not on Steam) Starsector that a friend of mine got really into.
There’s just so much out there this year that I’m not sure who’d be left unhappy.
Something like Baldur’s Gate 3 could be an enjoyable game for me, but unfortunately the world didn’t click. A friend is really into it and let me play for a while, and it just didn’t feel like a good fit. I ran into the same problem with both of the Divinity Original Sin games. I’ve never been a big fan of most fantasy settings for some reason, although I do enjoy some of them. Dread Delusion, Shadow Gambit and Wargroove 2 could fall into the same category, although I would have to watch some gameplay first. Some of the advance information on Starfield looked interesting at first, but gameplay footage I’ve watched hasn’t made me want to buy it. I would be more excited if things would be a bit more seamless. I got Cyberpunk on sale a while back and put about 10 hours into it before I quit. I can’t really put my finger on what it was, but I just wasn’t enjoying it. I haven’t played it since that point, so it may have changed for the better. I already have the Metal Gear Collection with MGS4 for PS3, so the PC port won’t be anything I’ll pick up until it goes on sale.
The two older games from Mimimi both look interesting. In fact, I did purchase Desperados III on a sale, I’ve just never downloaded it yet to play between XCOM runs!
I either never saw or overlooked Starsector, so I will have to look into that one a bit. Endless Sky is top down, so it sounds somewhat similar!
Thanks for all the suggestions!
Starsector is definitely a sleeper hit building a cult following. I wouldn’t have heard of it if not for a friend of mine. If fantasy settings don’t typically do it for you, you can encroach on a lot of things that people like about Divinity and BG3 in the Wasteland games. Wasteland 1 is an old RPG that’s almost a text adventure, but Wasteland 2 and 3 are pretty modern. Cyberpunk also got a huge revamp right before its latest expansion drop, so even the original game’s RPG systems and world systems work very differently now, and there’s a lot of positive buzz behind it (I haven’t gotten to it yet myself, but I liked the launch version).
For fantasy settings, definitely don’t play Wargroove for the story, but one thing I learned to enjoy about fantasy stuff is it can create a rock/paper/scissors of strengths and weaknesses of classes/races that you can’t quite hit in most believable sci-fi settings. I never got far into Divinity, but one thing that really worked for me in BG3, apart from its production value, is that it doesn’t just bombard you with lore. It gives you the bare minimum setup you need to get going, and then it diagetically fills you in on the larger world as you go, with dialogue that doesn’t feel like an info dump, much like Game of Thrones managed to do. Plus, IMO, there are far more interesting tactical options in BG3’s combat than in XCOM; and I love XCOM.
I’ll look into the Wasteland games and see what I think, might be something I’ll enjoy. I have heard some good things about the 2.0? update for Cyberpunk, so I should probably start a new save and give it another chance. I enjoy some of the cyberpunk aesthetic, so that helps.
Interesting point on the fantasy classes, I hadn’t thought of it that way previously. I’ve never been able to figure out what fantasy elements don’t work for me, because it doesn’t seem to follow any particular logic! I may give BG3 a shot if it comes up on sale at some point, it might just be a slow build and I might just need a bit more time playing for me to enjoy it.
I can definitely see why you’ve struggled so much since the common factors between the games you didn’t like are the most rampant in the industry right now. I’ve tended to find myself in a similar situation and would only remove Spider-Man from the list of not liked. Because of constant push-backs, I’m honestly not sure what the release forecast looks like at this point because I’ve refused to play into the hype train for a while now.
In case you haven’t already tried them, based on your favourites list, I’d recommend taking a look at Satisfactory and Jusant. The first is Factorio but in 3D so it plays into some of what people like about Stardew, in my opinion and Jusant is an interesting blend of Journey and Shadow of the Colossus from what I’ve played so far. It also has a rare thing called a ‘demo’ on Steam so you can at least easily and freely give it a try.
I’m hoping to eventually find something that checks all the right boxes! In the meantime, I still find a few that I really like here and there, and old favorites are always fun!
I’ve definitely seen Satisfactory before, I’ve just never bought it. It looked like it could be interesting, I’ll have to look into it a bit more. Jusant I hadn’t heard of, but I’ll check it out. Thanks!