What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?

Got to revisit the classic puzzle game Into the Breach for our roguelike podcast episode this week

Such a lovely game, from the animations to the a-ha moment you get when you finally see the solution to a mission you've been puzzling over for 30 minutes. I think if you're a fan of any kind of tactics game, you'd be well served to play it and will get a lot of enjoyment even out of just grinding easy mode missions.

Also there was a content update a couple years ago, so if it's been a while since you played it at launch, there's a few new mech squads, pilots, items, and bugs to take into consideration. I kind of wish there was more stuff for Into the Breach, but it's such a streamlined experience that any additional story or mechanics would just get in the way of what's already a great, near perfect experience.

I've been playing Slice and Dice after hearing some chatter about it here and some other forums! I really enjoyed it, bought it twice (though apparently the Steam version gives the Android APK edit: misinformation, it was the itch.io version and has been fixed!) It's been scratching my perpetual meeting game itch, and it's very engaging. The only difficulty I have right now is that the "unfair" difficulty is actually unfair LOL. I don't see how I can beat it at all, but maybe I just need to git gud.

I've been playing Helldivers with my friends too. It's still fun but honestly, probably the buggiest game I've played in recent memory. (That includes Starfield too, surprisingly less buggy than I thought).

Finally I've been on my long waiting for the new Monster Hunter game by jumping back into Monster Hunter World. I can't behlieve I'm at 400 hours of just Normal shelling Gunlance, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

There's been a trend in modern board games, over the past decade or so, towards providing randomness first and then allowing the player to make decisions about how best to apply that randomness to the game state. For example, the player might roll some dice and then decide where to place the dice on his board, or draw some cards and then decide how best to use those cards with no further randomness involved. I'm very glad that this trend has been becoming more prominent in video games.

Slice and Dice epitomizes this style of gameplay exquisitely. It's a very tactical game that presents the player with a bad situation, and the challenge is to use the party's abilities to find a way out of it. Aside from the initial randomness of the ability dice rolls the decisions afterwards are completely deterministic. There is even an undo button so that you can do a series of actions to see what the results will be, then back out of them to try and find a better path forward. The decision space of each encounter is large, but not so large as to be unwieldy. The designers have hit a sweet spot of short, medium and long term decision making that suits me almost perfectly. I think this game improves on the formula of Slay the Spire roguelikes immensely. While I do enjoy the deck-management of card battlers, I find that I enjoy the dice-management of Slice and Dice even more. It's worth playing the demo for a few runs to get the hang of the game.

Sanctum 2

My friends and I finished the full main-game campaign as well as all of the DLC levels. They all retired from the game and we're moving on to something else collectively, but... I don't know, the game has a pull on me that I haven't felt in a long time. I wanted to keep playing. I felt deeply compelled to keep playing. That doesn't normally happen to me.

So, I set out to try the game on solo hard mode. For context: I am extremely casual when it comes to game difficulty -- I play almost everything on easy and prefer a walk in the park to any actual challenge. I can't describe why though, but Sanctum 2 makes me want to face up against awful odds and try to win -- even when I know I probably won't.

"Hard Mode" in the game means activating the all of the Five Feats of Strength concurrently. Each one is a modifier that makes the game more difficult (one of them allows enemies to move faster, one allows them to regen health, etc.). Completing levels with 5FOS can already be quite challenging with a group, but it's downright masochistic for a solo player. Nevertheless, I'm currently beating my head against that wall and learning a lot in the process.

The base game campaign is 16 levels long, and the DLC adds another 16 levels. At present, I've completed 8 levels in the base campaign as Solo 5FOS levels. Level 9 (Train Station) is currently kicking my ass.

Part of me wants to stop, because the game is patently unfair for solo play, and it's very easy to lose a run to something completely unrelated to skill or strategy such as glitches or irregularities. I lost a run on a level because I fell through a seam in the level geometry. I lost another one because a punch from one of the enemies rocketed me across the level WAY more than it should have, throwing me out of bounds. Certain "rules" that the game puts in play are broken by the game itself, and usually not in the player's favor.

It's easy to get frustrated, and at times I definitely have, but there's this undefinable something about the game that keeps me coming back run after run. It has a genuine magnetism for me. I think it's a combination of always having a new strategy to try, as well as the fact that I just really like the base gameplay so even losses are still exciting and invigorating. It's the first game I've played in a while where I'll look up and realize an hour has gone by, but it's felt like 10 minutes.

I very much doubt that I'll be able to complete all 32 levels as Solo 5FOS levels. I think my current goal is to try to do as many as I can, and for ones that I can't, give them a solid, good-faith effort before I throw in the towel. Once I've done what I can, I'll ask my multiplayer group to reconvene on the game and see if we can tackle the remaining ones together (despite it still being challenging, the game is genuinely SO much easier with 4 players).

I've said it before, but the intensity with which I feel it has only grown: I want Sanctum 3 something fierce. I feel about it the way people feel about Half-Life 3.

Super Mario Wonder - Really enjoying it as it's everything I love about Nintendo. It's challenging without being punishing, full of charm, and a really great experience that we haven't had in 2D Mario games of the past. One thing that I absolutely love is how they've animated the characters for this game. It's something that had it not been pointed out in this New Frames Plus video, might have taken me a few hours to notice. Now I know, it's so easy to see how much style and personality it has. Just a brilliant game.

I'm into MMO for years and for years I'm playing Guild Wars 2. The pro's: there's no sub, variety of stuff becomes unlocked per account. There are QoL items in their mtx store rather than p2w stuff. There's no gear treadmill beyond max level - unless you want to pursue fancy skins and/or QoL feature of legendary armor and weapons. Instead of classic fetch quests there are dynamic events that allows random players to participate and share rewards. And because of this, it's more a collaborative rather than competitive game when it comes to PvE stuff.
The con's: game uses in-house engine that didn't aged well and it struggles today in some particular spots; it's more a CPU dependent piece. Company never managed to keep focus on one way of delivering content and for nearly 12 years danced around few ways of keeping the game alive. The lack of focus is also clearly visible when it comes to working on bugs - stuff doesn't get patch for years while really low priority changes tend to get introduced out of blue.

I could go for hours listing all the issues but to do tldr: it's a good game that fits casual needs of many but it suffers from being poorly managed. Arena should ditch the rose-tinted glasses and stop pretend they're some triple a company that can hide all the issues behind corporate newspeak.

I can't believe how well Nintendo stuck the landing with Tears of the Kingdom. It's an amazing and expansive world to live in - one that I'm genuinely excited to play each time.

We're (my wife and I) are exploring the depths before heading to the final battle and each time I careen off of a sky island, down through the clouds and into a pit, I get goosebumps at exactly how far Link needs to fall before being underground.

The sense of space and place in this game is UNREAL

I finished Yakuza 0 after 56 hours of play time a week ago, and then was out of town for a week. I've been playing a bunch of Yakuza games lately from the selection that are on Gamepass, and have fallen in love with them. Yakukza 0 was great fun, with so much side content to engage in.

While I was gone I took my Steam Deck with me and developed a severe addiction to Balatro, the poker-styled roguelike/deck builder. I don't normally care for deck builder games, but the poker trappings sucked me in, and now I'm finding this game hard to put down. I'm terrible at it, but it doesn't matter. It keeps scratching that 'just one more hand' itch. I have struggled to explain this game to people.

As soon as I got back I started playing Yakuza Kiwami, the 2016-2017 remake of the original first Yakuza game. I'm 4 chapters in on that one now, and enjoying it a lot too.

I'm back into Trackmania.

The learning curve is very easy in my opinion, low floor but extremely high ceiling because once you learn a few (of very many) core mechanics, there is such a good flow to this game. It's like the car becomes an extension of you and the game loop is like no other racing game I've played. Some tracks are super hard, and it might take several hours to master them, but as you keep playing, you start to realize that bit by bit, you are learning it. You start consistently nailing the corners and jump that were hard to begin with, until you're all the way to the finish. And if you didn't get a good enough record, you go back to start polishing your line and learn the corners even tighter. Progress in this game is so very satisfying!

I played this series a ton over the years, the most hours I logged was in my teens so it's very nostalgic for me as it's still the same core game. There's been a lot of additions through different versions of the game, but it's back to basics + extras with the 2020 version. It's annoying as hell that it's become a live service game, and the free tier is essentially a dumbed down tiktoky version of it which is a shame. But I paid the €20 for 1 year of "club access" which is honestly not all that outrageous compared to something like WoW which is €13 for 1 month. There are tons of updates and a lot of campaign maps to play - I'm currently going through them to get all medals on all the past seasons' tracks. So far I've completed 3 seasons out of, I think 16? Anyway, it's a lot of fun!

On a whim started playing FFVII: REMAKE INTERGRADE (available on PS Plus). There have been some mixed reviews and I'm usually hesitant to play remakes. So far I am impressed. I like action/adventure and this leans into that. Switching between party members and using the skills recalls the old turn based combat but is much faster paced. For such a story/environment heavy game modern graphics help to do it justice. Touches like Barrett humming the victory song after a battle are nice.

I'll definitely keep putting some time in as I'm excited to relive the story in this reimagined game.

Palworld.

On the surface it's like Pokémon and Breath of the Wild, but with guns.

Weirdly, I've been playing quite a bit of Pokemon HeartGold. I say "weirdly" because I am not a Pokemon fan in any way, I do not and have not ever watched the anime, I've tried numerous other Pokemon games (Red/Yellow/LeafGreen/Emerald/Black/Y/Sun) and gotten bored extremely rapidly with them and their outdated design. But, all that said HG/SS was my first brush with gaming nostalgia and it holds a special place in my heart; I recall being at a friends house around the time of release and flipping through the guide for it, which struck a chord. I was about 26 at the time and looking at the guide reminded me of having old NES guides and seeing screens for Legend of Zelda laid out in their complete form, so I ended-up picking up a DS, as well as the game and the guide. I played about 120-hours of it before my house was broken into a few years later and it was stolen, but I'd always intended to go back and now here I am; I convinced a friend to play it with me, which is helpful too. I don't really have any commentary on it, as again, I'm not really a Pokemon fan, but I am enjoying myself and looking forward to when I get to keep putting more time into it.

Honestly, the thing I'm torn on now is playing it on my DSi or my N3DS. It looks fantastic on DSi, but I'm really loving all the extra options in terms of other games that my hacked N3DS gives me, even if DS games look a bit shit on it. So all that said, I've been also dabbling in DS games, but haven't really put any substantial time into anything other than maybe Advance Wars: Dual Strike and even that has been intermittent.

I've dabbled a bit with Red Dead Redemption 2 after picking it up for $20 last week, but I haven't spent much more than a couple of hours with it, as it's difficult for me to find time to sit down with it. It generally seems to request at least and hour of your time whenever you sit down and play, which is just something I do not have at the moment, so it's been intermittent.

A few days ago I picked-up Evil Genius 2 for $3 on Steam and I'm loving it. I've been really wanting to play something like Dungeon Keeper again and this hits the spot in a way that something like War for the Overworld never did. I actually reinstalled War a few weeks ago before uninstalling it, as it just doesn't have that certain thing that the original Dungeon Keeper (2) has and it just feels like playing a simulacrum while I could play the actual thing; same goes for Two Point Hospital as it relates to Theme Hospital, it's just not the same and feels inauthentic compared to the original.

Lastly, I'm still making my way through Lies of P little bits at at time. Time is a little more limited with this one, as my wife and my oldest like watching me play through it, which is something we can really only do after the youngest is in bed. But I just beat the Green Swamp Monster(tm) yesterday, which was probably one of the more challenging boss fights in the game, though I think I only had like 5-tries on it compared to some other fights which definitely took me more. I'm glad this game finally clicked for me though. I wasn't entirely sure about it, but after about 7-hours, something just slotted into place and I've found myself really loving it and having a great time of it. I think I'm actually enjoying it a lot more than Elden Ring, which I've put more hours into, but I love that Lies is the focused experience that Dark Souls was, rather than the sprawling, directionless, sometimes bullshit fights of Elden Ring.

been playing final fantasy 7 rebirth. wow what a game. im around 122 hours in doing end game stuff. some of my gripes with the game were the "story" mini games. making you absolutely play minigames for the "story".

After all the puzzling in The Talos Principle 2, I figured I'd relax with a nice platformer, which is how I found myself playing The Cub, the first of three Steam Sale purchases.

You play as a feral child (raised by wolves!) in the post-apocalyptic ruins of the human civilization on Earth. You found an astronaut's helmet, which constantly plays a transmission of Radio Nostalgia From Mars, which you can hear on youtube. The idea is that a few surviving wealthy humans fled to Mars on rockets. They don't like it there, though, and are sending an expedition to see if it's OK to come back. These martians really want to... capture? kill? the cub, and also - we're told - play golf, which is seemingly a reference to a previous game by the same developers which I did not play.

The idea is pretty original and the visual aesthetic of the game is pleasant and consistent. There is OK voice acting for the cub in addition to the radio transmission, which is well mixed. Too bad it tends to cut out when you pause, leaving you with no music until you reach the next area (and this is seemingly irrecoverable).

Through the radio transmission, narration cutscenes and collectibles, the game hits you with the designers' opinion about humankind with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Hint: It's extremely negative, pretty much the opposite of TTP2. The misanthropy is extreme, but also hollow and cartoonish. The game seems to be trying to hit about fifty points at the same time, including child labor, wealth inequality and species' extinction but also mixing in things like GMO food that kind of erode the credibility of the whole thing even further. Corporations and millionaires are mentioned directly with just tiny spelling changes, like the evil Jeff Bozos or rocket mogul Musker, founder of Tesla City on Mars.

Instead, we're supposed to sympathize with the protagonist child, who - the game will drop offhand - is a (noble?) cannibal, and in addition to eating the human visitors from Mars also keeps trying to get them, and himself, killed in a most infuriating manner. None of his story makes a lick of sense - there are many feral children, but no feral adults. Maybe the wolves ate the adults? He learned to speak english from Radio Nostalgia, and at one point takes a sabbatical to learn every single academic discipline imaginable but when the game resumes he hasn't aged a day. What?

There are several different types of collectibles you're trying to find (and which grant achievements), vestiges of humankind's inglorious past, including books, newspapers with really on the nose headlines, huggable toys that say things about consumerism, "USB" sticks with messages and more. There seems to be no way to see how many you have of each of these. The whole UI is in fact severely lacking. Maybe they figured they didn't need one, since every single hazard instakills you.

The platforming is just miserable. Trigger zones seem unreliable, such that you learn not to trust that your moves are repeatable and get yourself killed, compounding the problem. It's often hard to tell where you can stand or not. Enemies will rush at you from offscreen. The checkpointing is extremely uneven. The game embraces how easy it is to die by giving you an achievement after you die in 10 different ways (there are more than 10). In one sequence, you need to jump onto the back of a bison, and then ride the herd of bison while occasionally a bison will buck and throw you off and you need to adjust your fall so you land on another bison. There are no visual cues, and if you're in the wrong part of the screen it's impossible not to die, and every time you die you restart seven seconds before the beginning of the whole sequence. This sort of thing happened multiple times. Fortunately, you can finish this game in less than 7 hours.

Back to puzzle solving, then. My next game was The Entropy Centre. My fiber has been out (again) for five days and counting which gave me time to play through this in just a few days! This one can be solved in 13 hours if you're good at the puzzles.

TEC is really obviously inspired by Portal and Portal 2 (the mazelike hallways with desks and computers also brought The Stanley Parable to mind). Except, unlike most Portal-likes, and much to my surprise, this game largely created by a single developer is... really good?

One thing that separates good from bad narrative puzzle solving games is whether it makes any sense for you to be there solving those puzzles. Portal/2 and TTP/2 both have good reasons, but TEC puts serious work into having an interesting sci-fi mystery story incorporating the puzzles (which I won't spoil), and I really enjoyed the whole premise (even if the twist is largely predictable).

You wake up with no memories as Aria, a Junior Puzzle Operative (yes, that's her job). Throughout most of the game, you're accompanied by your trusty portaltime rewind gun, Astra. Both Aria and Astra are well voice acted! Because, yes, your gun has an AI assistant that chats with you. Unlike Glados, she's actually very friendly and helpful. The ability to rewind time is key to solving the puzzles, which make use of a series of different types of "cubes" which are affected by physics. You can store 38 seconds of time per object, and rewind time for each object separately, but the gun's ability also comes up a lot when navigating the ruins of The Entropy Centre and even when being attacked by crazed cleaner robots, since you can rewind the "rubble" of broken things to make them whole again and rewind blasts to return them to sender. The physics, puzzle solving mechanics and time rewind gun all seem quite polished and work well; I found no issues. (The combat scenes weren't strictly necessary, but there aren't too many and you can get through them without much effort.)

Since you're alone (except for robots and AIs), you have to find "intel" by carefully checking people's e-mail in all the functioning computers you find (there are many, though not nearly as many as broken ones) in order to piece together what happened to you and to TEC. This works pretty well, and is also bolstered by a couple dream sequences.

I don't have much else to say. In terms of production quality this is obviously no TTP2. Some graphical elements can become repetitive, and I found a few glitches. But overall this was fun and interesting to play, clearly the devs worked hard to make it the best it could be, and I'm looking forward to checking out more of their games in the future.

Previous

I've been playing Jedi Survivor lately. The first game, Fallen Order, I tried playing a few years ago and it didn't really "click " for me, then I picked it up last year and loved it.

I like that the new one has bigger open worlds, and a lot more cosmetic customizations. The combat is still punishing at times, and the platforming can be frustrating, but as I'm unlocking the right skills (and some patience) I'm really enjoying it.

I think both games are flawed, but I think they rise above their flaws and I end up really appreciating them as a whole.

Just finished Unicorn Overlord and am now trying Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology, and wow. I think Stocke is my favourite JRPG protagonist. This game feels like something really special.

Minishoot Adventures - I'm having an absolute blast with it so far. I love the artwork, level design and upgrade system. It's been described as Zelda meets Shmups and I'd say the comparisons are apt. Made by only 2 people, it deserves some love. Also runs great on my Steam Deck. Check it out!

I got myself Helldivers 2 because hype and I got a gift coupon.

Lots of fun... for 2 hours.

That game gets repetitive so fast, and the grind just isn't worth it.

I broke my own rules and pre-purchased the PC port of Horizon Forbidden West. Though it has its issues, I really enjoyed the first one, and all the reviews of the PlayStation version of the sequel were basically "more of the same, but a little prettier," which is fine by me. I'm only a few hours in at this point. I only just got to the point where the world opens up.

The introduction, well, it sort of has the stink of a sequel that doesn't have the courage to just be it's own thing. Imagine if "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" felt the need to put a button on what happened to the Ark, and where the hell is Marian? Remember Tanis and the snakes? Let's swing by and have some kind of useless dialogue with John Rhys-Davies about how great Indy is. For all its faults (and it has more than its fair share, to be sure) at least ToD knew to just let Indy loose without faffing about trying to establish that he has done all this great stuff in the past, and to catch the audience up on forgettable characters who played semi-important roles in the first movie. ToD was a prequel, so that wouldn't really make sense anyway, but you see what I mean.

The performance of Aloy had a kind of disingenuous feel to her in the first entry, and this one continues the tradition. The character is a certifiable badass, but whoever directs the mocap and writes her dialogue doesn't seem to know how to consistently get that across effectively. Lots of 'I need to do this alone!' and saying something kind of dumb and cliche and then staring off into the middle distance for no discernable reason. That sort of thing.

There is a bit with a stuck-up clergyman/diplomat whom she just shuts down that did far more to establish her as a no-nonsense, get-shit-done kind of lady than any amount of grimacing and cliched posing will ever accomplish, so I'm hoping to see more of that as the story progresses. I just want her to have an actual personality, if you see what I mean. I'm not holding much hope for that, though.

As for gameplay: it's very much more of the same, which as I said, is a plus for me. The biggest addition so far is the pullcaster, a sort of general purpose, arm-mounted winch-cum-grappling hook. Mostly it's just a contextually prompted traversal mechanic like the grappling hook in the first, but it's also used to pull item caches from hiding spots up high, which scratches that exploration itch pretty well.

Speaking of which, there does seem to be more verticality in the design than in the first, which was already somewhat vertical. One of the parts I liked about the first game was climbing up the giraffe-like walking machines to open up map sections and side-quest markers, in a sort of Assassin's Creed bell tower way. The opening set piece of this game is similar, though of course very linear owing to the purpose it serves in the plot.

I get the impression that this game involves swimming to a great degree, so it makes sense that the focus is more on vertical traversal and climbing than perhaps the first was. The first side quest I completed was in a flooded mine, which reminded me a lot of the tombs in the first Tomb Raider reboot. It was essentially a traversal puzzle in a confined space, which wasn't exactly earth-shaking in its novelty or cleverness, but served adequately for an early-game side quest. I haven't gotten far enough to really say if things improve in complexity or cleverness, and from what I remember of the first, I'd give about even odds.

Where both games really shine for me is in the combat. I could see how some might find it a bit uninspired, but there's something about lobbing an ice grenade at a robot cougar, leaping off your robot bighorn sheep mount to slide under the robocat's chassis and slow down time to shoot off that electric arc component you need to craft a weapon, then knocking the sucker down with a heavy attack and impaling it in its heart. When the combat system is firing, it can really get your heart racing. It always seems like you're down to your last arrow or bomb when you take down a boss, too, which is some good combat design. The enemies in this one seem a bit more bullet-sponge-y than the last one, but I also haven't upgraded the skill trees very much yet, so we'll see.

I should say that I'm very impressed with the performance of the port. The DLSS probably works the best out of pretty much any game I've played that supports the feature. I've consistently gotten 60+ FPS throughout, with only minor dips when there's a lot happening. I remember being impressed with the first port, too. For reference, I'm running a Ryzen 5 3600 with 32GB DDR4 and a 12GB RTX 3060, and quality is set to High with minor tweaks to shadows, motion blur and with Vsync enabled. All in all, it seems pretty well optimized.

Just from the first couple of hours, I can see how the game got just OK reviews. There's nothing revolutionary about the gameplay. The writing and acting is mostly stiff, though it has its moments. It's a damned pretty game, for all that's worth, and the art direction sticks close enough to the feel of the original to be engaging and fun. I don't see anyone putting it on their GotY lists, but then I didn't expect that. I expect people who really liked the original will like this one too, but I doubt this alone will win many converts. If you haven't played the first and an open-world robot hunting action game sounds interesting, I recommend you pick that up first when it happens to go on sale.

Found my Wii U recently again and have been playing The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD a lot. Definitely miss how the Zelda games were structured back then. Love Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, but there's just some elements missing from the newer games.

I pulled the trigger on a Steam Deck OLED! That said, I'm pretty disappointed in the screen, what was supposed to be the highlight of the new upgrade (never had the original). Instantly noticed mura/graininess when the familiar Steam interface opened to greet me. Maybe I'm just extra sensitive to it, but others are reporting similar problems with the Samsung screen. It's not that noticeable unless in dark/grey scenes, but still pretty distracting. I'm on the fence about returning it, because it's otherwise such a fun little system. Not sure if trying the screen lottery RMA:ing would be worth it... I don't have a Windows machine ATM so it would be perfect to expand my available game library, as well.

I've been playing some Balatro, Boneraiser Minions and Halls of Torment. All great on the deck.

I recently picked up Diablo 3 again, because i enjoy mindlessly mowing down hordes of skeletons and whatever. I decided to branch out and try a barbarian instead of an necromancer for once and uh...
Anyway i started another necromancer on a higher difficulty bc, have i mentioned? i really like mindlessly mowing down hordes of enemies whilst also gaining experience ridiculously fast :p

I've also started back in on my collection of Zachtronics games. I strongly prefer the "make shapes with things" family of games (SpaceChem, Opus Magnum, and Molek Syntez), and of those, Opus Magnum is by far my favorite. You are an alchemist, and you have to use the alchemy engine to automate making shapes with things. I'm not very far along, only in chapter two (of 5? i think?) and i'll be honest, i'm already struggling lmao. Then again, i also tried picking back up TIS-100, Shenzen IO, and Exapunks and.....i did like half a puzzle each and gave up so 🤷‍♂. If you ever wanted to feel like you're prgramming in assembly language, those are good games. For a mere mortal such as myself? i don't enjoy pain that much lol.
I also gave last call BBS a go, but tbh i didn't especially enjoy any of the games. I don't like games that seem to be stupid hard for no reason, and all of the BBS games felt that way. Like...In the shapes with things games, they're hard but like. It always feels like there's a solution. The BBS games just feel unfairly punishing for no good reason. Anyway, i highly recommend Opus Magnum if you like shapes with things, and Exapunks if you want to use assembly language. They feel like nicer versions of SpaceChem and TIS-100 respectively, (although, i'm pretty sure there's some vauge plot that i'm missing by jumping around like i do? idk. I'm not sure i care all that much, these games are basically digital rubik's cubes for me, in that i pick em up, fiddle around to kill time, put em down, let em collect dust for a while, pick em up, fiddle around to kill time, etc.)

Last Epoch. It is kind of like the diablo games and I have been having a blast playing it. I have 2 characters a Necromancer and a Paladin. I highly recommend the game if you are into games like Grim Dawn, Diablo etc...

I ended up finding two smaller titles that really impressed me, so I've kept going in them now and then.

The first is a first person, rogue-ish dungeon crawler called Devil Spire. It looks and feels very much like a Kings Field game, but unlike that series focuses on procedural levels and multiple runs. Death means starting over, but you do get some of your progress counted, and can eventually unlock new game modes. While it is a slow paced game, combat is fluid and you have a few tactical options games like this don't always give you, like ducking under attacks and kicking enemies away, as well as being able to use environmental objects as both weapons and obstacles. It's straightforward to understand and building your character is pretty simple. One neat thing is it lets you customize your 2d portrait in ways usually only 3d creators let you do. In looking at their discussion forums and update feed, the devs were deeply committed to making it an enjoyable experience. They engage in the forums, they helped with troubleshooting and took feedback, just all around good things to see. They consider the game finished too; the latest update is the last. So, for ten dollars I was pretty happy with this one.

The second game is Svarog's Dream, which is an open world action RPG. What makes it interesting, is you don't play as a person. You're instead a spirit, who possesses a character, and when you die you'll move on to someone else. The game is built with this in mind; you are meant to keep going after you die, and what you did the first time around persists. You can go find your dead guy and get your stuff back, as well as finish up the quests they left undone. It's not really designed to be incredibly difficult nor particularly easy; you're just free to go wherever, and what you find may or may not be something you can handle. Go further away from the populated areas and you'll find more monsters. Go deep into a cave and you'll find some worse monsters. All throughout the game you come across people with quests and stories, and you're given choices for how to resolve various situations. There is a conflict taking shape between a monotheistic religion and a polytheistic one, reminiscent of Christianity and paganism, and while it appears one is good and the other is not, you find the nuance as you complete quests and talk to people. Combat is pretty standard ARPG faire, with a hotbar and active/passive skills you can put points into. Those you actually keep from character to character, and you can change class/put the points elsewhere with those new characters if you wish. It's fun to have a nice build and then use the points to come up with a nicer alternative on the next go. Similar to Devil Spire, the devs consider the game finished, so not much if anything about it will change. It's a bit rough around the edges with respect to its visual presentation, but the concept and execution are interesting enough for me to put that aside. One minor thing, it does not have proper controller support. You'll need to map keyboard keys to a controller in order to use one, and it will feel kinda clunky. It does support using WASD to move and gives you a button to quickly remap to that, at least.

Both of these have been a joy to play. I can see myself doing runs in Devil Spire every so often, and the structure of Svarog's Dream means it's easy to do the same with that. I intend to reach the end on both so I'm hopeful they'll be solid experiences the whole way through.