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.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 20 hours ago
I usually have a good time with isometric fantasy rpgs in the vein of Baldur’s Gate. They don’t really have grind, the world is generally well-filled with a relatively dense story and interesting quests (denser than Skyrim at least), and if the game becomes too hard you can turn down the difficulty. Though you do need to actually be interested in the combat mechanics (which are much more complicated than e.g. in Elder Scrolls games) to really enjoy these games, IMO. One downside is that these types of games are usually really long; I’ve dropped a couple of them halfway because they overstayed their welcome.
Some examples:
Baldur’s Gate 3 (don’t really need to have played 1+2 to enjoy this one, though they’re still very good)
Divinity: Original Sin 1+2
Pillars of Eternity 1+2 (2 has much better combat, but the first one is pretty important to understand the world)
Tyranny (this is a relatively short one)
Pathfinder: Kingmaker 1+2
For more Skyrim-style games, I really enjoyed the Gothic series. I think their level of grind is about the same as Skyrim (probably a little less, but it’s been a while), and if you can get past the outdated graphics of the early titles they’re quite fun. The dialogues are pretty fun!