Yeah, I hope you keep at it. If you are fighting blood knights it shouldn’t take too long now.

Either way I recommend Carbot’s Diablo 1 cartoons for everyone new or old to the game: https://youtu.be/Odi5iR9Ni50?si=i7LIEWEwzN73foZN

I’d say you can try the Witcher 3. It’s story rich so could be interesting to just watch too. Lots of violence though, but most of it is quite cartoonish imho so maybe it’s still okay.

I think Diablo 1 is much more punishing than Diablo 2. I don’t think you can get away with not chugging potions. The sorceror is even worse than the warrior because he’s completely dependent on mana. So until you get the mana shield spell you’ll need to have both mana and healing potions ready on him.

The best you can do is try to get as high resistance and armour values as you can so you don’t take as much damage when you get hit.

For example, if you find a high lightning res ring that you don’t have much use for now you might want to keep it and put it on when on a later level has enemies dealing lightning damage. Stuff like that.

For ARPGs if you feel burnt by Diablo IV, I can recommend Path of Exile. Arguably the king of the genre today.

Others mentioned Grim Dawn, which has a bit slower gameplay, but a good choice nonetheless.

If you’re looking for indie ARPG, then there’s Chronicon. Nice little game that I really want to go back to again.

Morrowind and FTL. Both I revisit every couple of years.

I suspect Stardew Valley might become something like that too, but I only had one cycle of stopping and coming back with it so far.

For me there are a couple.

Hades (2020) - I’m not in any hurry with this one. I’d get it if GOG starts to sell it, otherwise I’ll wait a bit more.

Outer Wilds (2020) - I’m getting impatient with this. I’d like this more on GOG too, but I think I’ll just buy it when Steam winter sale comes.

The Guild III (2022) - quirky trade/life sim game and I have some fond memories of the second one. But that had quite a few bugs even long after release and I hear the third game still looks unfinished so I’m patient.

Exactly true with it not being a primary hobby for most people who game.

When I was a kid gaming wasn’t as widely considered as an acceptable hobby in general, but as a kid you just didn’t care what grown ups thought (games make people violent anybody?). By the time I hit university, people got shamed for it by non-gamer peers and I did a computer science degree too so it wasn’t a group of non-tech people who did the shaming either. By my early twenties I learned not to talk about it and just mention gaming as a hobby if asked and never elaborate further…

I’m afraid I’m a victim of algorithms because I pretty much only look at stuff from GOG and Steam front pages or games that are recommended as ‘similar’ over there. And of course youtube.

As a side note. I should even stop checking those because I just keep playing the same games nowadays instead of chipping away at my backlog.

Good for you if that’s your experience, but I cannot say the same. The difference I found is with the way those people ignore arguments and insult you.

I can talk to a person from a technical field and come out of that conversation feeling like shit because I was called all kinds of stupid indirectly.

I had this too. I decided that I’ll get the max rating from Grampa and the everything will calm down, but after reaching that point in game I was sort of burnt out and stopped playing.

Also I never could get into the island part of the game. I felt like I abandoned what I worked for all that time!

Papers, Please just turned ten recently. It’s a simple concept (just check the papers!) getting progressively more difficult as you get further. The bleak setting with the colours and music gives that very “nice” 50’s soviet vibes. Definitely recommended.

I second XCOM, if we are talking about the original two, Enemy Unknown/UFO Defense and Terror from the Deep. I heard good things about the more recent ones, but I never played those.

Might I recommend the timeless classic Heroes of Might and Magic III? Most of the campaigns are not too difficult after you get the hang of things, if I remember correctly. And you can get a hundred hours out of it even if you only play the official campaigns.

Quake III Arena. It came out in the 20th century, which sounds crazy to me. It was about 10 years ago I last played it or its remakes.

I got into Q3 a few years late, but there was still a fairly healthy local community for it back then. Quake 4 came out and then Quake Live, which I played for a while, but the local community was missing by then.

Sure I could still play it, but I’m guessing there aren’t even enough people to fill a 5v5 capture the flag match anymore, Q3 or QL… a shame. But at least I have good memories of it.

I’ve been slowly playing through Vampire Survivors again with each hero only using their starting weapon. I did the lightning ring dude on the first map the last time. Only barely made it to 30 minutes with that one.