Yeah, I hope you keep at it. If you are fighting blood knights it shouldn’t take too long now.

Either way I recommend Carbot’s Diablo 1 cartoons for everyone new or old to the game: https://youtu.be/Odi5iR9Ni50?si=i7LIEWEwzN73foZN

I’d say you can try the Witcher 3. It’s story rich so could be interesting to just watch too. Lots of violence though, but most of it is quite cartoonish imho so maybe it’s still okay.

I think Diablo 1 is much more punishing than Diablo 2. I don’t think you can get away with not chugging potions. The sorceror is even worse than the warrior because he’s completely dependent on mana. So until you get the mana shield spell you’ll need to have both mana and healing potions ready on him.

The best you can do is try to get as high resistance and armour values as you can so you don’t take as much damage when you get hit.

For example, if you find a high lightning res ring that you don’t have much use for now you might want to keep it and put it on when on a later level has enemies dealing lightning damage. Stuff like that.

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.

Morrowind and FTL. Both I revisit every couple of years.

I suspect Stardew Valley might become something like that too, but I only had one cycle of stopping and coming back with it so far.

Are you sure that’s Outer Wilds? https://store.steampowered.com/app/753640/Outer_Wilds

Maybe what you are thinking of is Outer Worlds, which is a common mix-up. https://store.steampowered.com/app/578650/The_Outer_Worlds

I don’t think Outer Wilds is on GOG unfortunately.

For me there are a couple.

Hades (2020) - I’m not in any hurry with this one. I’d get it if GOG starts to sell it, otherwise I’ll wait a bit more.

Outer Wilds (2020) - I’m getting impatient with this. I’d like this more on GOG too, but I think I’ll just buy it when Steam winter sale comes.

The Guild III (2022) - quirky trade/life sim game and I have some fond memories of the second one. But that had quite a few bugs even long after release and I hear the third game still looks unfinished so I’m patient.

I’m afraid I’m a victim of algorithms because I pretty much only look at stuff from GOG and Steam front pages or games that are recommended as ‘similar’ over there. And of course youtube.

As a side note. I should even stop checking those because I just keep playing the same games nowadays instead of chipping away at my backlog.

I had this too. I decided that I’ll get the max rating from Grampa and the everything will calm down, but after reaching that point in game I was sort of burnt out and stopped playing.

Also I never could get into the island part of the game. I felt like I abandoned what I worked for all that time!

Papers, Please just turned ten recently. It’s a simple concept (just check the papers!) getting progressively more difficult as you get further. The bleak setting with the colours and music gives that very “nice” 50’s soviet vibes. Definitely recommended.

I guess I should mention 4 more. Most of these are playable in some form or other too, but still.

• Dune II - I didn’t understand any English when I was playing this as a kid, but had lots of fun with it either way. Open source remake (needs original data files): https://dunelegacy.sourceforge.net/website/index.html
• Golden Axe - This one was somehow memorable to me out of all the cheesy beat 'em ups. https://store.steampowered.com/app/34276/Golden_Axe/
• Stunts - The first racing game I played. Very nice map editor too. I even remember the bug where if you hit a peak between two ramp edges you’d fly straight up towards the sky! A brief search didn’t give me any faithful offline remakes, but here’s the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stunts_(video_game)
• Secret Agent - I’m fairly sure this or Dune II was the first graphical game I ever played on PC. https://store.steampowered.com/app/358350/Secret_Agent/

I second XCOM, if we are talking about the original two, Enemy Unknown/UFO Defense and Terror from the Deep. I heard good things about the more recent ones, but I never played those.

Might I recommend the timeless classic Heroes of Might and Magic III? Most of the campaigns are not too difficult after you get the hang of things, if I remember correctly. And you can get a hundred hours out of it even if you only play the official campaigns.

Quake III Arena. It came out in the 20th century, which sounds crazy to me. It was about 10 years ago I last played it or its remakes.

I got into Q3 a few years late, but there was still a fairly healthy local community for it back then. Quake 4 came out and then Quake Live, which I played for a while, but the local community was missing by then.

Sure I could still play it, but I’m guessing there aren’t even enough people to fill a 5v5 capture the flag match anymore, Q3 or QL… a shame. But at least I have good memories of it.

Papers, Please. Maybe not crying, but could definitely put you into a depressed mood if you manage to get into character. Needing to make a choice between letting some poor bastard’s wife follow him without proper papers and feeding your family is tough.

10k? I hope it’s hours and not money. Even though 10k is some insane amount of hours too.

Yeah, my intention was to ask more in the spirit of the capital Patient Gamer, as in the community name, instead of just a gamer who is patient. Some good discussions happening here so it’s all good either way.

I’ve been slowly playing through Vampire Survivors again with each hero only using their starting weapon. I did the lightning ring dude on the first map the last time. Only barely made it to 30 minutes with that one.

GTA 3D universe games: GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas

You can go as deep as you like from just doing the main missions to 100 percenting them. I think they hold up well enough on most fronts, even graphically, but seeing some of the games in your list that shouldn’t matter.

Battle for Wesnoth is a nice and polished turn based strategy game. You need to get used to the sometimes annoying rng hit system, but it can get addicting trying to protect a favourite unit, give them the last hits so they can level up and then faceroll the map.

I don’t care much as long as level scaling is gone. It’s lazy and it signals that the world is built for and around you instead of you just being a part of that world.

When I’m walking around some well travelled road between cities I don’t want to meet wolves first and then some damage sponge minotaur lord slaughtering every guard patrol coming through two weeks later, just because I levelled up a couple of times in between.

Most classic RPGs have lots of combat. What I don’t see mentioned here so far is Neverwinter Nights. Especially the first expansion of the second game. Mask of the Betrayer. Lots of combat of course, but a story that your behaviour has an impact on. Search for a cookie cutter build, lower the difficulty. You can skip through the combat parts quickly that way, if you don’t like them.

Also mentioning Planescape Torment again because it’s weird and not so combat focused.

I recommend a simple little game called Rush. I don’t even know what motivated me to get it some time ago, but I had fun with it even though I wouldn’t say I usually like puzzle games. It’s all of 0.22€ on sale where I’m sitting, might be worth trying.

I used to enjoy arena shooters waaay back in the day when Quake III Arena and later Quake Live had a still somewhat active playerbase so I could just randomly find games. No multiplayer games caught me since then.

Nowadays it’s ARPGs (mostly Path of Exile), but I enjoyed Vampire Survivors too so I might go for that genre again.

Also I randomly get cravings for playing Elder Scrolls games. I just started my Nth Oblivion playthrough and I did it with Morrowind last year. It will be Skyrim again next year I suppose…

Oh and I have a few hundred hours in Dwarf Fortress too. And of course I played it the way it was meant to be played. With ASCII graphics!

One Finger Death Punch

Simple, but surprisingly addictive stickman fighting game. Although the title is a lie because you probably need two fingers to play it. I think this was the first game I went for 100% achievements.

Apparently it has a sequel which I didn’t know about. Both are on sale for pretty much pocket change now too.