Hello, in the recent years I find myself willing to spend much less time and energy on games, but I do still enjoy them. Oftentimes I end up quitting a new game I tried out relatively early on, because I’m encountering some block, grind, non-optional boring side quest, empty open world, uninteresting clutter or details that I have to manage, or similar. Like, I just wanna play the actual game play, see how the story continues, and visit those areas that were designed with care. Not worry where on the map I can sell the glimbrunses I collected so I can buy a 37% stronger glarpidifice that I’ll need to beat the next glutrey after which I’m allowed to continue the main story.
Sorry if this turned into some kind of a rant, but I hope it’s understandable what I’m looking for and what I meant by fluff. Some games that have fulfilled this for me during the last years:
- Stray
- Skyrim (there’s a lot of fluff you can worry about in Skyrim, but the thing is you don’t have to worry about it, you can also just walk in any direction and see what situation you wind up in, at least for the first 10-20h of a playthrough, which IMO is enough time for a game anyway)
- Life is Strange
- Some Pokémon ROM hacks where the difficulty spikes were not too harsh
Looking forward to hear your suggestions :) Games where there is some fluff but you’re allowed to just ignore it are also fine, but not having any fluff is preferred. Bonus points for anything on the Xbox game pass.
Hearts
I may have missed it, but Dave the Diver deserves a mention here.
Boss battles are very rare, and slow paced enough that I have not run into the dreaded “I understand the pattern but I lack the dexterity”. (I often have this problem with other games.)
I second this, although some of the bosses can be quite a challenge.
I know exactly what you’re talking about with the burnout and decision anxiety for new games that take hours to complete a tutorial or have paragraphs of menu text. It’s not exactly the open world you’re talking about, but I found Hard Space Ship Breaker to be a great alternative to that. It’s got excellent lore and storytelling while still being a very simple game. Think power wash simulator, but breaking apart spaceships in a space trucker stop. It’s simple, and each “day” is a hard 15 minutes, so you’ll always have a stopping point in a reasonable time.
Baldur’s gate 3 would be my suggestion. It has difficulty settings from easy to insane. No quick time events. And the whole world was designed with care.
The combat system is very deep since it is based on DnD.
You can ignore side quests and still see the whole main game but even after 1500 hours in the game i was still finding new questlines and hidden caves to explore.
I loved BG3 but there are serious difficulty spikes. I couldn’t make it to the third act because the second act boss kept wiping the floor with me and I couldn’t adjust my party to make the fight winnable.
If you can get your hands on a misty step scroll, invis potion + longstride/jump spell, speed potion, or dimension door, you can free Aylin in turn 1 (provided you freed her). Granted, that doesn’t make the fight a free win, but she sure can eat a lot of hits. Also, putting sanctuary on a full healer is very useful.
Dragon Age, the first one.
Yes, Origins is by far my favourite of the series
Fe
I loved that game so much. Haven’t had quite an experience like it since
The Stanley Parable and The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe. I’m getting the no play for 5 and 10 years achievements with no cheating.
Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
I only finished it for the first time this year, after about 20 years of giving it a go, getting part way through, then forgetting about it. ADHD is evil. Still, it was fun, there were no long boring parts, nothing was grinding or luck based, and it felt really tight as an experience. Very well thought out, honestly I would consider it a masterpiece.
Have you played any other loz games? They are all amazing like that
I have played a bunch of them, Twilight Princess was an absolute no for me for some reason, but I liked Ocarina and Majora when I was younger. I plan to play a decompilation of both of those soon, native resolution and performance etc. I enjoyed Link’s Awakening as well, finished that on my original Gameboy back in the 90s, and Windwaker looks fun though I have only recently gotten onto a computer able to render it nicely, so that is on my play list.
Alright not every game was 100. Twilight Princess was meh. Windwaker was pretty fun
Yeah, I think I will get Windwaker going soon and beat it. I love the cell shading look and the world is interesting.
Citizen Sleeper
What a soundtrack!
Subnautica comes to mind. It’s a survival game with a heavy focus on exploring and a very structured story. Fluff text and the obligatory random documents and audio logs are mostly optional, though the game does have a mystery to solve so some of those you want to pay attention to. No real spikes in difficulty, it’s honestly an easy game.
And you can turn off some of the survival elements that some people find annoying. For instance, having to spend half your time early on hunting a specific type of fish for freshwater.
spoiler
I’ve done entire runs of this game only salvaging water. No bladderfish, no coral + salt, no stillsuit, no water reclaimer. You can easily make it through to the endgame on the water you spawn with plus what you find in wrecks.
OUTER WILDS!
- zero fluff. every piece of text and every setpiece is in service to the main story.
- no gating. you can go everywhere from moment one.
- no grinding. no combat at all, in fact.
- no time pressure. it may seem like it, but don’t worry.
- the big mystery requires understanding the world and the story, rather than fighting a difficult battle
- it will make you cry
Adding to this one. Incredible game.
I couldn’t bring myself to finishing it because “the timer” stressed me so much :( I loved everything else about it so much.
Timer? Can you elaborate a bit? I was thinking of getting it but I fucking loathe time limits in games.
Trying not to spoil too much, there’s a timer but it doesn’t really matter, you will almost never run out of time and retrying is encouraged. There’s almost no time pressure in this game, and the amount of time in that timer is over 20 minutes, which should be plenty of time to do what you have to, and if not you can reset the timer and try again.
without spoiling the details, it’s a bit like groundhog day, or majoras mask.
i always encourage people to take it slow and drink in the world with ow, and that applies because of the “limit”. which isn’t a limit, you can play as long as you’d like. think of it more as a pomodoro timer. it’s also very well signposted.
i don’t think it’s a spoiler to say this because you learn very early in the game - physically everything in the worlds goes back to square one after 22 minutes (or if you die).
you do get to keep a log of everything you learn about the worlds and story but that’s all that persists. the log is actually helpful, so follow that if you get lost.
slight spoiler:
Tap for spoiler
also the 22 minute reset is not an arbitrary design choice, it’s part of the story and puzzle.
Oh okay. Thanks for the explanation that really helps. I was envisioning something more permanent from the initial description. That didn’t sound bad at all.
understandable, it took me a few times for it to click. i have the same problem with games that count days; i can’t get myself to finish disco elysium or blue prince because the counter going up makes me think i will run out of time, even though you never do.
Its so interesting how different people perceive these things. Disco Elysium was so stress free for me, I didn’t really think the day counter did anything. With Outer Wilds I think its really the anticipation of what I know is inevitable to come. And then I nervously wait for all those cues that tell me how much time has passed already… And yeah, very stressy for me, haha. Still, I should really push myself to finish it sometime because I’m really curious how it all ties up.
maybe it’s reflective of the personality of the player. i can never get to bed at a reasonable hour and i’ve heard a theory that some people have that problem because the mind thinks that the sooner the next day begins the less time they have to themselves.
Disco Elysium was so stress free for me, I didn’t really think the day counter did anything.
It didn’t bother me at all, because I felt like I did about everything I could every day.
I got pretty far with this one and really enjoyed it, and then I spent days trying to get past those goddamn anglerfish and failing over and over again, so I just gave up at that point.
same. the trick is to float by doing literally nothing as slow as possible. it takes some trial and error to figure out when you can maneuver again but you do have to be a little patient.
You probably missed one entry that told you they were blind but not deaf
No, I got that, I just seem to be incapable of silently floating past them. Even when I’m not steering I end up getting too close and they attack.
Obvious spoiler ahead is obvious: Just let go of the controller when you enter that area, you’ll float peacefully (albeit very close to them) until the exit portal.
Unfortunately I tried that too and still kept dying.
That’s weird, that’s the solution, does your controller has some drift that could cause it to still be firing some thrusters?
I’ll see if I can find a different controller and try again. Thanks for helping either way :)
same! turns out you can make it a lot easier for yourself by observation. for example, there are only two of them you actually need to manoeuvre around. also, that entire section takes three to five minutes, but you have like twelve, so it’s fine to take it slow. finally, you can mark your destination from the log to get its location.
Just reading this somehow gave me goosebumps and made me tear up. Such an incredible and unique game.
This song is new to me, but I am honored to be a part of it.
T_T
Slightly old by now, but Portal and Portal 2 remain two of the best games I’ve ever played. Gameplay is intuitive and linear, and doesn’t require grinding or building up resources. I thought the difficulty increased appropriately as well.
Fun fact: Portal was originally a university student project called Narbacular Drop that got hired by Steam. In a sense from its limited narration and story, it felt a bit more like a proof-of-concept than almost a full-fleshed game to me at times, which, for me, was hands-down Portal 2.
They’re great fun to stream and watch, too.
The third party add-on levels are awesome too.
If you liked Life is Strange, I strongly recommend Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. Made by the same team.
Let me offer a spin on this: the point-&-click adventure Technobabylon, which is more a staggeringly creative and massive series of escape rooms, and not that much of an open world to explore and revisit.
Perceptibly, it has zero grinding and is to the point with what you’ve gotta do. It is one of the only point-&-click adventure games that I’ve beaten; I normally dislike the genre, which speaks volumes to how incredible it is.
Dredge is a pretty unique one that I had a lot of fun with. Firewatch is good but short
