It’s a meme at this point.

“Turn based RPGs are dead!”

points at, well, everywhere

“No, I meant turn based JRPGs”

points at Like a Dragon, Persona, Metaphor

“No, I meant turn based JRPGs developed by Square”

points at Bravely Default, Dragon Quest, countless remasters/remakes

“No, I want AAA mainline Final Fantasy to be turn based!”

🤷‍♀️

I don’t think these people will ever be happy, even if Sakaguchi came back to Square and brought the whole gang back with him.

I personally don’t think the monsters add much to the game. While I haven’t tried it, the “safe” mode seems like a fine way to play it. There is some atmospheric horror similar to Subnautica’s, too.

That said, SOMA is Existential Horror: The Game, and removing the monsters isn’t going to change that. So I’d tread carefully if you can’t handle horror.

Been considering jumping back into this one. I absolutely hate it when loot-oriented RPGs make it easy to find gear with level requirements, and boy did Everspace 2 ever do that. I was finding stuff level +5 or higher. The inventory system made it even worse.

I don’t know if there’s a mod now or a change that eased up on this, but it was enough to push me out of the game when I tried it earlier in the year.

I played the demo a couple months ago and have only played a few hours since release (the save carried over), but so far this is in the running to be my personal game of the year. I’ve discovered a love for these repetitive problem-solvers like Papers Please and Hardspace: Shipbreaker, and this has been absolutely brilliant so far, with a very solid plot hook and a mature, wacky, occasionally gross vibe that totally fits the setting.

It’s quite difficult, and the gameplay loop is clearly intended to be meta-progression driven, with player knowledge of how to repair the ships being the major factor. Hopefully it doesn’t fall apart once I’ve “solved” it, and also would be nice if the story holds up. It’s damn interesting. It’d be great too if this turned out to be as replayable as something like Papers Please, where a year from now I drop into the game from time to time to do some repairs.

Edit: Now that I’m in the late game, I’ve unfortunately discovered a couple of bugs that make things more difficult than they should be (or even impossible in one particular case). I’d say wait for a patch for this one at this point.

I’m thinking the online component isn’t going to going to be full-blown MMO, would be ambitious for this developer.

I like the concepts here, but it always comes down to execution and scope for space-based games.

I still distinctly remember the first time I used a bedroll in Divinity: Original Sin 2 and knew immediately it’d be impossible for me to ever go back to the first one.

I enjoyed the original D:OS a lot more later once I had more chances for XP. Both D:OS games are brutal about punishing you for trying encounters while underleveled, to the point where I didn’t feel like I had much flexibility. That’s tough when freedom to roam and not worry about skipping things–or saving them for replays–is one of the things I most like about Western RPGs. I wasn’t a fan of spending a ton of time in town early on, too, for that reason. Was itching to get to the combat again and I just kept getting stomped. So yeah, okay, I’ll go chat everyone up for every last bit of experience.

For historical perspective developed in parallel with Half-Life 2, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault is worth a look. With Call of Duty being the revenue juggernaut it is now, I think we sometimes forget how it started. Allied Assault is a landmark game that’s an ancestor in CoD’s lineage.

On the other end of the timeline, the founders of the studio that developed the original Call of Duty went on to make Titanfall. Titanfall 2 has an excellent single-player campaign that holds up very well.

It wasn’t for me, but I’ve heard that some people like Noita, which is built around granular physics interactions.

Oxygen Not Included was more my speed, but that’s more about complex, larger systems (like fluid dynamics and heat) than collision.

This is me with current books and music. For books, common styles of prose or an abundance of certain tropes used now simply don’t hit with me, and I’ve even gone back to mid-to-late 20th century books recently to try to avoid all that.

I’d say the best way to try to broaden your taste is to make sure you’re touching on the hits in different genres, and–if you can handle dated gameplay and visuals–to go back and try games from previous generations as well.

Zero DRM isn’t the only reason games aren’t published on GOG right away, and that may not even be the main reason for the countless games that release day one without Denuvo.

GOG also doesn’t have the best infrastructure for pushing updates. Stories abound of it being a slow process, whether physically uploading the files or authentication taking a while. Invariably, game updates will show up later on GOG than they will on Steam. GOG also has a very consumer-friendly return policy. All that, combined with it being simply a smaller marketplace, doesn’t place it well in cost-benefit analysis.

Darkest Dungeon, Jedi Fallen Order, and Titanfall 2 are all super cheap. Darkest Dungeon pissed me off 15 hours in or so, enough to ragequit the game, and I’d still consider it well worth the current price.

Disco Elysium and the original Hades are also great buys at 10€.

Did you ever play Divinity: Original Sin 2? Since you mentioned Baldur’s Gate 3, it plays a lot like that, just minus the license and a much greater emphasis on environmental effects. It was super well-received at the time.

That’s me with Atelier. Usually I’m good to go right away with Ys right from the start, even with the ones I don’t like as much. Ys VIII was especially good as soon as the island landing.

Honkai: Star Rail and Ys IX: Monstrum Nox. Took me multiple chapters to get into Ys IX (very unusual for me, I love the series) but I’m finally starting to enjoy it.

Also started a replay of The Witcher 3.

Some slightly more obscure ones:

• Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean
• Planescape: Torment

Also surprised Metal Gear Solid hasn’t been mentioned yet.

Someone hasn’t played NieR!

For a differing opinion, the artwork is great, but as a metroidvania it’s below rate for my taste. I went four hours with the game and didn’t see any new enemies and virtually the same environments. In this genre, that’s a long time to go without seeing something new.

Maybe I went in with the wrong expectations and should have looked at this as a platformer/2D action game. The combat is certainly the centerpiece of the game, but that wasn’t enough for me.

Similar story for me. I bounced off this game several times, going back to it repeatedly because (to this day) Matsuno’s games are some of my all-time favorites. Then maybe 15 years after release, I realized I’d stopped just short of the crafting station which was such a strong hook for me I ended up with multiple spreadsheets!

Unfortunately, as I began to realize as I delved into the game, it had a lot in common with looter ARPGs, a genre that ages so rapidly. I probably would have loved the game back in 2000 but didn’t give it enough of a chance back then. By the time I did, it was just too dated.

Was the big one, misskey.io. I found a federated instance I was able to register at, I just wonder just how federated it’s all going to be if the big instance is restricted.

What’s funny is the voice of Navi has turned out to be one of my favorite Japanese voice actors.