What I mean is… sometimes people are very loyal to a videogame franchise or a company because they loved a game they released years ago (Silent Hill/Konami with Silent Hill 2, Blizzard/Bethesda with their respective golden eras, some could argue this happens too with Pokémon and Final Fantasy, etc). Ethical/consumer reasons aside to stop supporting certain companies, sometimes some franchises/companies aren’t necessarily creating the best examples of games of those specific genres anymore, yet many fans are loyal to them (and a chunk of them also seem to suffer/complain with every new release).
Meanwhile some people that explore less known titles and different niches occasionally pop-up and say stuff like “the last Pokémon games are formulaic and uninspired, there’s actually this and that incredible examples of somewhat recent monster collecting games” or “the last FF wasn’t actually bad but if you want turn-based RPGs that’ll remind you of your old favorite FFs then check Chained Echoes or whatever” or “don’t look for something like Silent Hill 2 with Konami, instead I recommend these survival horror games”.
So the idea of this thread is for people to recommend alternatives to franchises. Especially if they’re standalone instead of other alternative franchises and especially if they’re indie (since most of my enjoyment these last few years has been from indies like Roadwarden, Citizen Sleeper, Darkest Dungeon, Celeste, Slay the Spire, Tacoma, Hellblade).
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Help and suggestions
Currently looking for one to total war after all the revelations.
Not many alternatives, other than playing older titles with overhaul mods like Divide e Impera
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OOTL… What revelation?
Enjoy. https://youtu.be/43YY49jizPE?si=bbMdJo6klXb3v0Ky
Pretty random list off the top of my head:
Hyperlight Drifter, Sayonara Wild Hearts, Ruiner, Grim Dawn, Rime
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Stop playing AAA games!
CrackFactorioManagement games like Software INC, Startup Company, Big Ambitions, Sim Airport and SimCasino.
Don’t forget Cities Skylines and the recently released sequel. They’re both a lot of fun but for the sequel they really listened to the community. It’s a bit of a performance hog. There are performance patches coming but in the interim there area lot of settings one can change to make it run better on lower end hardware.
I am giving CS2 a year or so to clean up the performance issues and wait for the workshop to kick into gear.
Counterstrike 2 has great performance
I wouldn’t know. We were talking about Cities Skylines 2
I’ve got a decently beefy machine but it’s not top of the line or anything (Radeon RX 6950 XT, Core i7, 16GB memory) and with a few tweaks it runs pretty well. Definitely looking forward to the performance updates, though, because it’s a truly beautiful game.
That’s still a fairly beefy GPU though.
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if you enjoyed diablo 2,grim dawn feels like a spiritual successor to that game specifically, whereas d3 didn’t really.
You mean like it’s game where you could rush/grush and mass level, make mfer, farm stuff and make your pvp characters with skill trees and skill synergies?
Yes to all of that. In fact the synergies that you can pull off in GD make you feel godlike.
Awesome! Added to watch list.
And if you enjoy Grim Dawn, don’t forget Titan Quest. Grim Dawn was meant to be the spiritual successor to that. It’s very dated but a great game.
Titan Quest is pretty great with mods
Path of exile is a arpg made by a small studio
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As an alternative to what?
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For anyone that likes horror, I can’t recommend Red Candle Games enough.
Detention takes place during the White Terror in Taiwan in the 1960s, and is about a student trying to get out of the school after a typhoon, but it turns into something so much darker and sadder as the story unfolds.
Devotion is probably the best PT-esque horror game out there, taking place in a Taiwanese apartment during three different years in the 80s, and is about a script writer trying to create his “perfect future” while he’s trying to figure out what happened to his young daughter. It is one of, if not the, best domestic horror I’ve ever played. And anyone against censorship should definitely get it, because the game was pulled from Steam because of an art asset that got left in by accident that called Xi Jinping Winnie the Pooh, and then GoG said THEY would sell it, but it seems CD Projekt worried China might retaliate and not allow CP2077 to be released in China and backed out a day or two after they said they would carry it (they claimed it was because of “gamer response,” but refused to respond to anyone asking for more details).
Detention, you can get anywhere - it’s even on iOS and Android along with PC, PS Store, and Switch, but Devotion, you can only get from Red Candle’s website, and it is more than worth the $17 bucks: https://shop.redcandlegames.com/
These look and sound great, thank you!
I need to go back to Detention. I was really enjoying it but I think something spooked me too close to bedtime and I hadn’t picked it up since.
I feel like the Sonic franchise’s last great game was Adventure 2. There’ve been a couple good ones since then, but not great.
Anyone got a good replacement?
You could check out Freedom Planet. It didn’t quite do it for me, but it has a decent fanbase
Above but the chao garden is required to be in the replacement.
Lunistice
It’s relatively short, and there’s no chao garden. But it’s got a lot of soul. With a sequel on the way.
For ARPGs if you feel burnt by Diablo IV, I can recommend Path of Exile. Arguably the king of the genre today.
Others mentioned Grim Dawn, which has a bit slower gameplay, but a good choice nonetheless.
If you’re looking for indie ARPG, then there’s Chronicon. Nice little game that I really want to go back to again.
I second Grim Dawn as it’s clearly labor of love from the developers and still getting updates. I also like the fact that its not live service like Path of exile meaning that it does not require online connection and can be even be modded.
It remains to be seen with GGG will do with Path of Exile 1 when they release Path of Exile 2, it would be cool if they would release something like POE Unlimited a premium version of the game that would allow people to play the first game as single player experience, mod it and host their of servers.
But in this day and age it’s much more likely that they’ll just force people to move on to their next big thing.
They already said that PoE 1 will stay playable.
Sure but for how long and in what state?
There’s a lot of enshittification going around with games and services with more greedy business practices and it would be naive to think GGG is immune to it. When it comes to live service games certain level of skepticism is healthy to have. Now I do hope we’ll be able to play POE1 even 10 or 20 years from now with it being just as good.
An arpg that doesn’t require online is actually a negative for me. I’m not going to farm content offline
To Each Their Own I guess. Single player games tend to respect players time a lot more and thus usually require a lot less grinding or farming to complete. That being said Grim Dawn does have online multiplayer and community hosted seasons.
Path of exile is great because it doesn’t shy away from complexity at all, instead it does the exact opposite, it just goes balls deep. It really make for a very refreshing change to typical AAA games where your intelligence as a player doesn’t feel insulted.
I just beat furi and loved it.
Outer wilds, tunic, a short hike, fez,
Outer Wilds is amaaaaazing
Tunic was shockingly good. Looks like its for little kids but there is a lot of surprises and neat puzzles tucked away in there. Absolutely worth checking that out
Second this. Tunic is a masterpiece.
what are these alternitives for?
Yup, I did not answer the question, I just put some personal recommendations
nevermind then. guess i dont care.
a short hike reinvigorated my love for indie games! it’s such a beautiful game with a cute little story and fun things to do, and doesn’t overstay it’s welcome.
Due process is a fun alternative to rainbow six siege. Unlike siege you actually have to coordinate and play tactically but unfortunately it’s pretty much dead at this point.
I guess I may suggest my all time favourite RPG. It’s Disco Elysium. A brilliantly written and crafted gem. You will find an amazing storyline, crazy dialogues and choices, psychedelic visuals. Such a gem must not be forgotten. What a pity the company almost dissolved after the release and the original authors won’t have a part in the sequel.
why is nobody here saying what the game is an alternative for or what ki d of game play to expect?