Dark souls
Demons souls through Dark Souls 3 I bought, tried, and quickly ended up on my shelf.
Knew they were amazing games, but I just couldn’t figure it out. Always played with a shield, was slow and methodical, and just didn’t get anywhere.
Then I read a post about someone who was having trouble so summoned another player. The summon showed up “Naked with a katana and charged in like a Jedi”.
So I said screw it, and tried a light no shield build. Didnt care how far I got, I just started grinding the early enemies and leveling up. Then it all just sort of clicked.
Got my girlfriend into the games, and we’ve played through them all together, just now finishing on bloodborne.
Same. I still suck. I haven’t finished a single one of them games. It took me months of playing on and off to get past Vordt in DS3. But once I beat him and reached the undead settlement, that was it. I was hooked. I also just rarely finish RPGs in general lol. The art direction and general ambiance, the combat hitboxes, the music, the learning curve, the variety of builds… Fromsoft just knows something about games that most other companies don’t.
Not gonna try that again until I’m retired. I don’t need my play to feel like work.
Factorio. I tried it years ago and it just never clicked. I just started playing it again and suffice it to say I have gotten very little sleep over the past couple weeks.
The factory must grow
The factory must expand to meet the ever expanding needs of the factory.
Ohh no. Just started Satisfactory. It’s going well, well into my sleep.
I refuse to play that game knowing that I have an addictive personality and an unhealthy obsession with maximizing efficiency. It just doesn’t seem like a good idea to give a person with my type of personality the equivalent of heroin.
Cyberpunk 2077
Got it on console first, and it was … rough. Got it as a gift on PC and finally got to experience the glorious story and wonderful characters.
Outer Wilds. I went to the hollow planet early and got very frustrated with the platforming and falling rocks.
I returned to it almost a year later and gave it a chance based on everyone’s praise. Very glad I did.
This is one that I have to come back to.
You should. Make sure you pick it up when you have time to really wrap your head around it. When I finally played through it, it was over a Christmas holiday. I don’t think it’s the sort of game that would lend itself well to being played in 1-2 hour chunks after work every night for a week when you’re feeling burned out. You gotta be able to sink your teeth into it
Baldur’s Gate. I’ve never played DnD so there was a bit of a learning curve. I rage quit after two hours, almost returned it. Three days later I fired it up again and haven’t really stopped playing since.
Baldur’s Gate was a special game. It’s the only game my wife liked to play, and we couch-coopted it. We played the rest in the series together, full play through all of them, a couple of times. Never found that magic combo again, sadly, and to this day she laments that there are so few 3d isometric couch coop games.
Well, there’s Baldur’s Gate 3 now… should keep you entertained for the next 5 years 😃
I’m excited to try that. No couch co-op :-( Nobody makes those anymore.
Maybe not on console but you can couch co-op on PC.
The BG3 website doesn’t mention couch coop; only online multiplayer. The Steam page for it says it’s a single player game, with online/LAN coop. Where do you see that it has couch coop? It’s frustrating that you have to buy it to find out it has that.
Speaking from experience is all. Plug in another controller and the screen splits and you can make a new character or choose a premade.
That’s great! Thanks for letting me know; it’s crazy that it’s not easily discoverable.
Pretty sure it isn’t out on Xbox yet because they are struggling with couch co-op on series s
It’s a phenomenal game, probably the best I’ve played since Red Dead 2
If you liked the first two, have you tried Planescape Torment? Basically the same engine
I didn’t know about that one - it looks great! no couch co-op, sadly, so my wife won’t be interested, but I think it looks great!
Thanks for the recommendation.
It has a great story, you’re in for a ride!
I also realised that the Shadowrun games (Returns, Dragonfall, and Hong Kong) might scratch that itch - the setting is a cyberpunk/fantasy mashup, and the game play is similar isometric point and click until you get into combat when it becomes isometric turn based tactical. I was recommended to start with Dragonfall
And now I’m 158 hours in and can’t bear the thought of finishing it now that combat has become sooooo monotonous.
Control.
The beginning of the game is really slow, hard to understand what’s happening, and you literally have only minimal throwing ability. The manual navigation with overlay fullscreen map also doesn’t do justice to the game. Combining with the fact that I wasn’t used to playing these types of games, this was an easy pass for me after like 1 hour of the game.
But boy it’s awesome as you actually get more abilities and understand more of the story. Currently it’s one of the games I usually come back to.
I didn’t realize it was in the Alan Wake universe. I still need to play Control.
Yeah there’s only a couple subtle hints in the regular game and I think more in the dlc. I’m guessing they’ll lean into it more with control 2 now that AW2 is out as well.
I bounced off Dwarf Fortress a lot over the years, even with the packs to help. Eventually I got the hang of Adventurer Mode and quite enjoyed it! Now I’m just waiting for that mode on the steam version!
When the Steam version was announced, I decided to dive in to the game blind. In the months before the release, I ended up seeing some interviews of Tarn and fell in love with their vision and quiet dedication.
Steam version came out and I dumped easily 200+ hours into the game. I’m waiting for adventure mode to dive back in. Can’t wait.
The game is definitely not for everyone. But it is very special.
Do you know if there’s a noob friendly Lemmy community for Dwarf Fortress. I want to get into the game
I don’t know, I’m sorry!
Terraria. At first I compared it to Minecraft before I started to like it on it’s own. Thanks to pre-Fandom wiki I broke through not getting it’s gameplay at all to enjoying it.
This one for me. The controls were hard to get used to and I died a whole lot and lost my stuff the first dozen nights. But once it clicked it got better and better, and holy cow the game has a lot going on inside of it.
Same for me. But then a friend played like an hour together with me, showed me the ropes and I haven’t stopped playing since. Not all the time, but like one playthrough a month or so.
Unironically The Witcher 3. It just didn’t click at first.
Same. I wasn’t even an hour in. I was fucking around on some rocks and died from a ten foot drop. Early gameplay before getting some skills was kinda meh too. I didn’t come back for almost a year.
That’s one of my all time favorite games now. Same thing, didn’t like it at first, but once I started playing more of the game, they had some of the most interesting side quests.
I had the same experience! I got as far as the first boss, died, and thought this game just wasn’t for me and fuck all the hype.
Came back a few years later and actually paid attention to the lore and was blown away.
I tried playing this on Xbox one, but I couldn’t figure out the combat due to input lag.
Played it again on a different system, and it was excellent!
Diablo III. First time I played it was at the urging of my friend, who told me unironically, “don’t worry about the plot, the plot doesn’t matter.” Unsurprisingly my experience wasn’t particularly engaging and I lost interest, not seeing much reason to play it over any number of other games that didn’t have an always-online requirement.
Flash forward several years later. My then-girlfriend (now spouse) asked me if I’d ever played a Diablo game, and I related my experience. After she was done sputtering and emitting various noises of extreme outrage she insisted that I set things up so we could play through Diablo 1, 2, and then 3 together. I went in to D1 expecting to be similarly disappointed and instead found an incredibly dark, atmospheric, and compelling story. Oh and we did get The Butcher so I also shat myself. After that I was way hyped for 2, and by the time we hit 3 I was far more interested in playing. Loved the hell out of it, found myself not only enjoying the game but completing through the last stages of a season journey to score extra stash space and all that. Not out of obligation either, I was legitimately enjoying the grind.
I gotta ask - given all that, what’d you think of 4?
Played the Beta, thought it was… good. Better than 3 in some ways, but not up to that oppressive, almost claustrophobic ambiance in D1 that made it so damn good. That said, I loved rolling around as a Shaman Werewolf tanking everything. Was it the most effective? Nope, but I tanked Butcher twice and the World Boss and survived. Felt great.
Haven’t played the game proper on release though. Got drawn into other things actually. Am looking forward to it.
Hollow Knight. Bought it and played a few hours, died and got very annoyed that I couldn’t find my shade so lost motivation.
Picked it up again 2 years later and it’s arguably my favourite game ever now.
Rimworld. Did the standard start (industrial with 3 pawns) on cass. Died of hunger. Uninstalled the game.
Next week I was bored at my intership and redownloaded it and gave it another shot. Now I have close to 4k hours in Rimworld.
Same thing happened with Crusader Kings, funnily enough.
Edit: oh, that happened with M&B: Warband and Kenshi as well.
RimWorld is incredible. I’m hard pressed to think of another game with as much customization of play style or as vibrant a mod scene.
Dwarf Fortress. There aren’t many mods in the steam version afaik (tons for the free ascii version though) but… You don’t need mods for it. Want to capture invaders and host gladiator fights? Yep. Water trap to push invaders off a cliff onto some grates so you can collect their items after blocking the water trap again? Easy peasy floodgates Parcheesi. Want to gift lead mugs to the filthy elves? Strike the Earth, brother. (Doesn’t poison them though, sadly). Want your dwarves to only drink alcohol? They only have to drink water when they’re injured, 24/7 drinking besides that makes for happy dwarves. You’re battling a bunch of invading goblins and you have some dwarves die? Better bury them or their ghost will haunt your fortress. Oh, and don’t forget your necromancer will probably grab some new friends from the fight.
There’s very little you can’t do in Dwarf Fortress. It doesn’t get very high tech since it’s fantasy based, most high tech that you can get is windmill driven mills and water pumps I think, but there is so much depth to the game that honestly that’s perfectly okay with me
Edit: there are mods for the steam version too, baked right into the steam workshop
I don’t play dwarf fortress, but isn’t the steam version the same game just with a different tileset, replacing the ascii with pictures? This would mean mods still work the same.
Basically yes, all the changes that have gone into the steam edition (with the exception of graphics) has been added to the free ascii classic version, which can have tilesets added to it (though the ones that come with the steam edition are better than any of the tilesets I tried imo ). Also I was wrong actually, they did release steam workshop support for mods and there are several hundred on there already, so mod away!
Kinshi is such a deep game. I get how it’s hard to get into but damn once it clicks it’s crazy how far down the rabbit hole that game goes.
I still can’t get into Kenshi. It’s too much jank. I love the ideas and the stories people share.
Elden Ring. So glad a friend dragged me back. Stone cold masterpiece.
Yessss! This is the game that caused me to have the idea to do this post.
I first played it about a year ago. I used the two hour Steam refund period, which in retrospect probably caused me to rush or not give it enough of a chance.
Fast forward to now, when I’m dealing with a nasty chronic health condition and lots of time on my hands. And I’m between games - basically waiting for stuff to come out, like the Factorio DLC.
So I poked around and somehow Elden Ring came up as a possibility. And then I found THIS video:
Elden Ring Is a Masterpiece — my thoughts after 60 hours
https://youtu.be/kdstSHeoNGA?si=xo1ea2b1WGYBexJJ
And it got me so hyped that I ended up watching a ton more videos. And finally I plunked down the $60 and gave it a shot.
Now I can’t stop thinking about it. I am in love with the jaw dropping terrain, inventive enemies, depth of play styles and options, the brilliant way it hints at things instead of spamming a map with quest markers and to do lists. I’ve had moments that felt like I was on the inside of an epic fantasy novel, living an otherworldly fever dream of awesomeness.
Oof, this one pains me.
I bought it on release and played for like 2 hours, only to never pick it up again.
Fallout 3 took me a couple tries to get going, but it was hard to put down once hooked.
I wouldn’t really call it a favorite, but I definitely ended up liking Nier: Automata pretty well after bouncing off it really hard when trying it at a friend’s house. That’s because we were trying from the start, and it starts with a section that’s about half an hour long, with only two checkpoints, vastly harder than anything else in the game, and in which the first half isn’t even the same genre as the rest of the game. It’s seriously one of the worst intros I can think of in a video game. The rest of the game is, y’know, a pretty good third-person action RPG.
