If you’re interested in 4X games at all Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri is only $1.49. It absolutely holds up and to this day probably still has the best story of any 4X game.
It also works great on Steamdeck with a couple of easy tweaks. Unfortunately the instructions for those tweaks are currently in Reddit blackout shutdown limbo so I can’t copy them here, but when the blackout ends you can Find The Instructions Here.
This is mine. It’s such a disgusting, horrifying world…
That I felt almost homesick for when I’m playing other games for monthsafterwards.
Even though it’s a Soul’s game, there was a hilarious contrast between the Bloodborne subreddit and the Souls subreddits. The Souls subreddits had a lot of non-ironic “git gud” type comments, while the Bloodborne subreddit would just be thrilled that someone was playing their game and even years later posts by newcomers to the game would get really happy responses and the comment section of a newbie’s post that they had defeated the first boss would be a virtual party of congratulations and cheering them on… even when there were many such posts per day.
Probably because it was the smallest community, due to being locked to one system, but it always made me laugh how different the subs were. In fairness the Souls subreddits have chilled out a lot though, but even to this day the Bloodborne subreddit is unrelentingly welcoming in comparison.
I like Nier Automata a lot, but I still think the advice you got was pretty crappy. If you don’t find the world interesting and don’t like the combat then beating the game multiple times is not going to change your mind. That’s like encouraging someone to read a book series they don’t like because you think the ending of book 5 is great.
I liked how the choice of what faction to join was a legitimately tough choice. Too many games are like “Do you want to join the Puppy Huggers or the Puppy Punchers?”. In Elex they’re all much more grey than black and white.
I was in the exact same boat you are now before I played. I almost never play platformers, and so even though I owned Hollow Knight, I always left it for some imaginary day when I felt up to it.
By complete coincidence though I also owned Steamworld Dig 2, due to loving Steamworld Heist by the same developer and wanting to see more of the world they’d created. Not feeling as intimidated by Steamworld Dig 2 because it didn’t have the same difficult reputation as Hollow Knight, I gave it a try.
It couldn’t have worked out better. Not only is it an amazing game in its own right, but the difficulty curve was absolutely perfect to prepare me for Hollow Knight. After finishing Steamworld 2 I was still craving more gameplay of that type, and was able to jump right into Hollow Knight and the difficulty just felt natural and achievable, since it was relatively close to the difficulty Steamworld 2 had ended on. The games are similar enough that my skills carried over, and I honestly think it helped me get the most out of Hollow Knight as a player who never played similar games prior.
That was my experience, and I’m always glad it worked out that way because now I love Hollow Knight and it’s one of my favourite games. So for anyone who has any doubts about their ability to play Hollow Knight due to their inexperience with the genre, playing Steamworld Dig 2 first may set you up perfectly to tackle Hollow Knight. It did for me, and I had a blast with both games.
Elex had some really rough reviews, and didn’t exactly have me chomping at the bit to try it. A while back I noticed it was included in my PS+ subscription, so I gave it a shot out of curiosity.
It’s actually pretty great. The beginning of the game is really hard (tip - get a companion ASAP, as they are substantially better than you at first), which is kind of refreshing to be honest to have a game where you’re told ‘you have lost your power and are weak’ and you actually are. But as you level up and get used to the systems, you gradually become an absolute monster on the battlefield. There’s nothing more satisfying in a game than returning to a monster that once killed you if it even looked at you, and being able to beat the crap out of it now.
I also felt it did “post apocalyptic world’ very well. Where most games of the type take the approach of making a world that looks like the world was destroyed a month before you set off on your adventure, Elex takes a different approach of showing a mixed world of areas that are well on their way to recovery, and areas where the land itself is so damaged it’s unlikely to ever recover, and a few places in between. It works, at least it did for me.
The game is not perfect by any means, there is a level of jank that can be both charming and annoying, but it’s a very solid adventure that at least dares to try to be different than the top games in its genre. Definitely worth a try for fans of RPGs, open world games, or adventure games.
I’ve played the GOG version of Witcher 3, Alpha Centauri, and Wasteland 2 on my Steamdeck. All worked great, though Alpha Centauri needs some easy tweaks you can find here when the Reddit blackout is over.