That’s a fair critique of Kenshi, yeah 😂 I have a soft spot for it because I started following it back in, like, 2011, when Chris was the sole dev and didn’t even want to do a Kickstarter for it. It’s up there with Grim Dawn amongst the greatest success stories of games I’ve backed (it’s quite a short list lol).

Star Sector is indeed a bit tough to get into, and I still don’t like actively piloting ships. This might be attributable to inputs: I’ve got a Kinesis Advantage II ergo keyboard, which is stupid comfortable for 14-hour stretches of typing, but means I have to remap every single key in every single game I want to start playing. What keeps me playing is the sheer amount of community-made content available, which adds a lot of replayability in the form of new ships, weapons, factions, and questlines. Also Nexerelin, which adds a lot of 4X elements, changes the gameplay significantly.

I was looking at Cosmoteer just recently, funnily enough! I was thinking about buying it, but my brain actually used the meme on me:

We have Cosmoteer at home

I’ve just pulled up the store page again, will probably watch some more recent Let’s Plays to get a better idea of the experience.

How about Avorion? I like what I’ve played, I just suck at building and haven’t put in the time to learn it any better, but it has heaps of good reviews.

What’s your jank tolerance like? If “moderate to high”, Mount & Blade or Outward might scratch the itch for you. If you’re up for post apocalyptic ronin shenanigans with more of a strategy feel, Kenshi might be enjoyable. Technically, Noita is an open-world fantasy game. It’s really hard (I’m really bad), but I love it nonetheless.

Going more mainstream there’s shedloads of mods for classics like Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim to update graphics, mechanics, or just new content. Witcher 3 is still really good, too.

Oh boy, based on your list there you might be me. Have you played Kenshi or Star Sector by any chance? If not, I would like to recommend both.

… Right, the topic… Yeah, I agree, less crunch = good, more time to play all these fantastic games = good!

Play with your kids, then you can all get mad at your wife if she doesn’t join in hahaha! 😈

Has anyone here played it yet? Thinking about getting it for co-op, but maybe we can play through the first game (which we already have) to scratch the itch? Thoughts/opinions?