Fenixp

I think the game is designed for player to get by without doing much grinding well enough, in fact, one of my more perceptive friends managed to put like 40 hours into it and grind was "just" some 3, 4 out of those according to his words - but he's the kind of person who remembers absolutely everything and makes ALL the connections when it comes to stories, so he managed to find a lot more than I did. I think a wee bit more handholding would actually help the game, along with more information accessible trough UI such as which items can be bought in which ports and which ports still have open stories, stuff like that - purely because a lot of people, including me at one point, hit a spot where it seems there's just not much more to do than just trading runs and port reports, even when there's still a ton of things to do they've quite simply not unlocked (hell, there's a whole bunch of alternate endings in the game) I do hope that added space for exploration in Zubmariner will help alleviate the tendency to grind somewhat, after all, it adds a bunch of new things to explore.

Play Doom on Ultra Violence or unlock Nightmare for maximal enjoyment. If you enjoy challenge that is. The game felt kinda meh on normal to me, higher difficulties are where the awesome lies (and later levels I suppose)

You mean... You can level up heroes? That's about the only similarity. Well, there's a separate battle screen, but it sucks so badly I used it like twice, might as well not be there. As for similarities with SMAC, there's colonization of a hostile planet, strong focus on strongly thematized factions and their stories, a bunch of ecological undertones albeit presented differently, designing units (via equipment screens) and it stops pretending to be a fantasy game rather quickly. Sure, there's also a ton of Civ and Age of Wonders in there, but what I valued the most about SMAC - how it strived to mechanically and narratively reinforce its factions and its world - well, that's all there. Then again, the games are rather different, so then it kinda depends on what is it you're looking for I suppose. Edit: Okay, I guess mechanically they're very different. Shows what I remember of the game.

Compelling, intriguing, captivating, addictive?

Well... Given the fact there's no XP system in Dishonored, you didn't have to worry about that at all - and in Deus Ex, even if you did not do any of those things, you were fine. Neither are particularly challenging, I'll give you that - then again, I'm not precisely the kind of person to play games for challenge, most of the time. You can ignore the rogue-like aspect of Sunless Sea entirely. It's there, it kinda works, but it also has a free saving mode and enough content to carry a 30+ hours long game. It's more of a classic cRPG than anything, but it's not quite that either. It's... Not designed to be. You can make it grindy quite easily, true enough, and it will get grindy towards the end-game which is a definite issue, but for the most part, you'll be making loads of money by just discovering new things. (problem is that just revisiting the same places and running the same trade routes over and over is safe, which is... Why a lot of players do that.)

I did point you to Sunless Sea in the other thread :-P And there's plenty where that came from, Indie scene can be incredibly imaginative - so I assume you're mainly speaking of AAA titles? Because if yes, you'd be right, those are playing it safe.

Incidentally, that's precisely the kind of stealth game I personally dislike heavily. I want to be given a set of problems, open level and tools to deal with those problems - in fact, for the longest time I was certain that I just hate stealth games since all those that I played were done in the style of "Each location is a puzzle to be solved with just a few solutions". I suppose that would be why I like Dishonored and you don't? (there's a laundry list of other reasons to dislike Dishonored of course) Personally I consider that approach good for second or third playtrough, but improvising out of screw-ups is half the fun in my book.

Presentation.

Oh just... One of the best written games I've ever had the pleasure of playing. Think Lovecraft meets Pratchett in a game which allows you to explore massive underground ocean in the Victorian period. Your home port is London, naturally. It's underground because bats stole it. (the lore is one of the highlights, by the way - it starts off seeming like a mangled mess, but in fact it's shockingly coherent.) I might be a bit of a fanboy. Edit: As to what it is, it's an open-world-ish exploration game with survival elements. Default mode is Iron Man with the world and a bunch of stories reshuffling around on each death, but there's also a free saving mode. It leans heavily towards presenting a great story and interesting world with amazing atmosphere. And it's magnificent because there's nothing else quite like it.

Indie binge, eh? How much of Sunless Sea have you played?

Isn't Endless Legend basically a modernization of SMAC?

Don't have time to watch trough the whole thing right now, but your intro gets repeated - @00:30 the audio track starts off again. Possibly video too but since the game's paused I have not noticed that.

Clean hands or kill? The first target is ... Rather difficult to do on both.

I quite liked Wasteland 2. Not the best RPG ever, sure, but it was a lot of fun regardless. I also liked XCOM. I am not hardcore enough again or something?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXc6ZIK0Rk4 The hype is real! ... For me, anyway.

Isn't necessity to choose your specialization kind of a big deal in RPG games in general?

Our younger selves were ***holes.

To be fair, I'd even consider Doom 2016 on Nightmare to be significantly more challenging than Dark Souls, it's just most other games (including Doom) give you difficulty settings - which, true enough, older titles did not contain at all

Dune is a sci-fi with fantasy elements (or fantasy with sci-fi elements, I don't care.) and that's what sets it apart from many sci-fi and fantasy works I've read in my life. Pillars of Eternity and the world of Eora is Fantasy with sci-fi elements (or the other way around, I don't give a ****) and that's what sets it apart from many other fantastical settings I've ever seen, including exploration of atheism. How are any of these things which make these universes interesting to explore bad is quite beyond me.

You mean as opposed to the alternative where Witcher 3 respects and reacts to your decisions so perfectly? :-P

Oh I love when games contain crafting. What I somewhat dislike is when they contain a "Collect things on a list to make item" minigame and call it "crafting". (To me, crafting has to be creative, like enchanting in Morrowind or weapon crafting in Dead Space 3, as opposed to a glorified fetch quest.)

Random as in I don't see its purpose given either the setting or animus - I always considered UI to be the game relying information from the protagonist to me, the player. What irked me so much about UI in Ass Creed was that the protagonist of most of the game was the person from 'memories' - the one who has no idea about what Animus even is, whereas this same information would be of not much use to one 'living' the memories... I'm not entirely sure how to explain it without getting entirely lost between actual reality, in-game 'reality' and in-game simulation, so I guess I'll just stop here :-P For me it just didn't seem to work, not even thematically. Then again, I'd be glad if all mentions of Animus got completely obliterated from Ass Creed series. Anyway, I'm of the opinion that like 90% of UI elements in all games don't need to be persistent and 50% don't need to exist at all. I consider this a nightmare: There are far more elegant ways of displaying many of those UI elements - and yes, you can toggle them, but that won't improve their display, that'll just get rid of them altogether. I suppose that what I'm trying to say is getting theme in your UI right is cool, getting rid of as much of your UI as possible is even better. I think Dead Space is THE game to look at for UI design.

Well... Given the fact Animus was supposed to help main protagonist recall memories hidden deep in his genome (*shiver*), a random UI thrown on top of it wasn't something I'd consider fitting either the theme or the setting. I don't like when a game reminds me that I'm playing a game, yet UI in Ass Creed keeps reminding me that I'm playing a game embedded in another game.

You're both speaking of Assassin's creed but don't want to admit it