Pretty sure they figured that out more than a decade ago. Blizzard (RIP) certainly did.

Sounds like roblox stage capitalism. Or slave owner mindset, I guess? Buy 2 slaves, force them to breed nonstop for extra slaves, profit

You know how E3 and other game expos used to have these people dressed up as game characters that company stands would hire to promote their games? All these characters look like that.

My old PSP3000 is one of my favorite pieces. It hasn’t seen any action in 5+ years now, but it will probably get some around september.

Mandatory jab at the switch. Not awful but cmon, the controls suck

cries in 3 left joycons with drift

Another of my least fave is my laptop’s monitor. It’s an ASUS ROG whose screen sucks major balls. If it ever gets over 40ºC, it starts showing some “scanlines” or something like that, with horizontal lines that don’t refresh correctly or something, kinda hard to describe. In any case, if I ever game straight on it without anything blowing cool air on the screen, games will become unplayable because it’ll reach a point where I literally can’t see shit, because the screen won’t be refreshing correctly, several lines will be “stuck” for 1 second or more. The keyboard is also a piece of shit.

If New Horizons was your first animal crossing game and you were disappointed by the lack of personality that the villagers had, go play the original AC.

Is the original N64/GC the one where other villagers have the most personality? What are some other differences regarding NH, New Leaf and City Folk?

The game offers a small number of first-party servers, but anyone that owns it can host a dedicated server, or have their current play session work as a server by turning multiplayer on and sharing the invite code. You can also change several settings of your own server/world whenever you feel like, like material drop rates, experience rates, building deterioration, damage taken/done multipliers, stamina use, day/night length, etc.

I have the game, played it a lot, love it despite the bugs and somewhat frequent crashes. Save wipes after a crash are annoying, but I think it’s good that they happen to me, they help me stop playing for a while

To me, strategy games, mainly the real time ones. Command and Conquer, Age of Empires, Warcraft, Rise of Nations. Not only that, a large number of games had online multiplayer (which I never played back then because dial up), with every player on their own machine and screen!? HOLY SHIT!!!

Oh, even better than any console for the longest time, a significant number of PC games could be SAVED ANYWHERE AT ANY TIME.

Then there was emulation, where even old '95 computers could easily run the majority of SNES/Mega Drive (Genesis) games and back.

Oh, 2 and 3 are also great on the PSX. Way more missiles than needed for any mission, but the flight controls are amazing

It took me a number of attempts before FFTA grew on me. I’m not too fond of race-locked classes there, or the judges, but the progression felt fun.

Worth noting: Ogre Battle (Tactics Ogre) was released for SNES (then re-released more than Skyrim) and is basically FFT’s father. FFTA’s sprites come straight from TO.

I’ve been hesitant of the mega man games for some reason, I’ll check em out!

I can understand that hesitancy for the NES games. If you never played anything like them, they can feel unfair or too hard. A lot of people love Mega Man 2, but my personal favorite of the NES era is 6, which could be a decent entry point if you ever decide to venture that way. X improves everything and the first is my personal favorite as well (it easily has the best music of the 3, too).

Battletoads, Little Nemo: Dreammaster

Those games are hard as fuck. The train stage in Little Nemo is a nightmare (pun totally intended)

The Thief games are all available on GOG, probably Steam, too, but I prefer GOG.

Mega Man X on the SNES is an amazing trilogy and still holds up. Moving on, X4 and X5 are great to play as well, X6 and beyond can be avoided.

Mega Man Legends 1 and 2 (PSX) are interesting games, a mix of action platforming and light RPG elements, but I have deep nostalgia and still enjoy the games, so you may find them very archaic. Playing the first game, the first thing you should do is change controls so turning around is left/right and L1/R1 strafe.

If you haven’t tried them yet, Donkey Kong Country 1, 2 and 3 are well worth playing, but the games can be unforgiving, especially in later levels. While there’s no coyote time, doing a forward attack off a ledge will allow you to jump once anytime during the fall. It’s very clearly a deliberate feature, as some level skips can only be accessed with that trick.

Castlevania Symphony of the Night on the PSX, if you haven’t played yet, you definitely should. This motherfucker stood the test of time with gold marks.

I know you asked to avoid final fantasy-esque titles, but Final Fantasy Tactics (PSX) is worth checking out. If the battle system, or the party management/job system, don’t pique your interest (things that you should get a feel within the first 20-30 minutes), then it’s not for you, no problem.

Tekken 3 on the PSX is probably the best 3D fighting game on the console. Graphically ancient by today’s standards, but it still has its charm. Later games got better with more characters and everything, but that game has the normal arcade mode, a “volley” mode and a beat-em’ up mode.

Bomberman games are their own category. The SNES ones are some of the best, but playing them all in sequence will get really tiresome, as the formula doesn’t change. Bomberman World on PSX can be completely avoided, it sucks.

Gonna wait a week or more to see if/how pirates manage to play it online

My first experience was with a demo of the first game, it came with 3 maps, the only one that I remember by name being the Battle of Kadesh, despite the 2nd map being the one that I played to absolute exhaustion (it was the map with base building, but no gold), since it was very easy to beat the first computer enemy.

Once I got a 🏴‍☠️ copy of AoE2 (2002-ish?), brother, I spent more time on the map editor than anything else for the first couple of weeks. I loved the huge map size but hated the paltry 200 unit limit. My older brother definitely spent more time playing than I did during that period.

As much as I played, I was always kinda bad at it, mostly because I’m more of a turtle player and always got pissed at how medium AI enemies would always build 4 separate town centers with at least one being very close to my starting area. Yet I would still play and, more importantly, I always loved the numbers and graphics at the end of a game.

Frankly, I think AoE2 really stood the test of time. For a game originally released in 2000 to remain not only relevant but also enjoyable without any official updates or patches for over 15 years (the remaster was announced in 2017) is a noteworthy feat.

I just received an email from GOG saying the mod is available for free there (you still need to own the FO4 base game). The “catch” to download from them is that you have to subscribe to their email advertising.

https://www.gog.com/en/game/fallout_london

And older game that people seem to like a lot is Sword of the Stars (2008), while despising the 2nd for lacking features and bugs aplenty. You can get it on GOG too, if you prefer, and being old makes it very cheap even out of a sale. I’ve tried it once but got slightly intimidated by the UI, but then again I barely spent 10 minutes in game (I also gave up on X3 the very first time I played, so…)

For a “lite” version of space empire building, Sins of a Solar Empire can probably satisfy you as well. It’s an RTS, you only play skirmishes, but there’s a lot of setting up new colonies, researching new tech, building stuff besides shipyards, propping up your fleet, etc. Combat doesn’t require a lot of micromanagement, usually just using a capital ship’s power every few seconds and defining target priorities.

I’d personally put quotes in combat. Haven’t checked this latest update yet, but combat has always been a complete letdown, especially on foot. Your character starts putting down your weapon if you spend 1 second without firing. Once the animation starts, it will add considerable lag between your click/button press and it actually firing, which can make you miss shots very often during fights. Beating those orange drones never feel like any sort of challenge, just an annoying chore, especially when the repair ones start healing your target from very far away

Space combat is fine, but nothing to write home about. It’s all about dogfights among small craft, which is much better than doing anything on foot. Freighters and corvettes exist solely as stationary space rocks with maybe some cargo you can blow up to steal.

I wouldn’t say trading is even a secondary factor, much less important in any manner. It’s just a crutch for players that don’t accidentally stumble on an easy way to get boatloads of credits. Getting nanites can be a much bigger chore (I’ve set up a macro to turn in food in the Anomaly for nanites, since I was playing on permadeath, so mold->nanites wasn’t feasible), quicksilver is even worse. A good chunk of my playtime was setting up active indium mining farms and uploading them in the hopes someone else could use the money, back before the price was nerfed down hard.

it is the best game available at what it does

Only at the “infinite* planets, infinite* universe” thing and seamless space to planet transition. It’s not the best at ground combat, space combat, base building, ship building/customization, trading, crafting, storytelling, being a space pirate, space exploration, ground exploration… Of course, no other game offers all of these things in a single package, at least not that I’m aware of, but I can name some games that do some of those things better than NMS

It wasn’t, but it was added I think back in 2017 or 18, so at least 6 years being able to play multiplayer. Not that it really matters, aside from base building, the game doesn’t feel better when played with a buddy or a rando.

Dude literally mentioned that racing games offer arcade (a number of things unlocked) and career (progression) as separate modes, dunno why you ignored it