For my part, I haven't gotten anything new yet, so if you've read my recommendations before, I apologize for any repeats. Roguelike Edition, apparently.
PlateUp! is my favorite couch coop game on Steam. You and up to three friends work together to run a restaurant. It's a little like Overcooked, but instead of having different wacky levels to get through, you choose a menu (starting with one dish), and build up your restaurant day after day. Every few days you will have to choose a new complication (like another dish or reduced customer patience). The goal is to get through 15 days of service without a single dissatisfied customer, so it's like a restaurant roguelike. It's currently 70% off and 94% Positive all time.
Dead Cells is a very fun sidescrolling roguelike that feels a bit like a Metroidvania. Collect weapons, kill monsters, die, repeat. It's currently 50% off and Overwhelmingly Positive all time.
FTL: Faster Than Light is a classic roguelike at this point. You must traverse the different sectors of the galaxy to reach and destroy the Rebel Flagship. You can order crew members around in real time, while the ship weapons take time to recharge, giving a turn-based feel. It's 70% off and Overwhelmingly Positive all time.
Noita is an amazing roguelike as well. You play a wizard attempting to explore down into the earth for treasure. Every pixel in the game is made out of a material, from plain old Dirt to flammable Oil to useful Water. Find treasure and new magic wands. Mix and match the spells on your wands to make new effects -- and even utterly broken bullshit. It's 60% off and Overwhelmingly Positive all time.
What about you? What do you recommend?
I always try to buy games that I pirated but enjoyed so much that I want to make sure the developers get my money. Even if I know I won't play them again. One of them I would like to purchase is Stellaris, but on sale with all the DLC's its $140. For a 10 year old game. And some of those DLC's were very necessary to improve an initially weak 4x space game if I remember correctly. .
All the DLCs are cracked if you go on the high seas.
I played them all pirated of course. Just trying to give the company some money to say thanks for a great game without dropping 140 bucks.
Some DLCs are "worth" getting, others are not.
Utopia more or less always gets recommended, as do a few like Apocalypse, Federations, Machine Age, Leviathans, Distant Stars, and possibly Ancient Relics.
The others are a mix of "adds some fun stuff" like Grand Archive, Nemesis, and some of the species packs, to "outright avoid" such as Cosmic Storms which is so disliked it's the polar opposite to Utopia in terms of recommendations.
That all said if you know where to look you can play them all for free anyway, often the same day new expansions are released, so you don't end up paying to the complete mess that is post expansion patches, broken mods, and wasted time when you keep having to restart because something either wipes out a core part of your empire in a change, stops working, or simply bricks your saves.
I know where to look and have played them all which is why just buying the original game without the dlcs, all of them, isnt good enough for me.
Stellaris is 100% worth it though. They are constantly updating the game and aren’t afraid to change entire mechanics if they’re messing up the game too much.
The ongoing shitshow that is 4.0 would say otherwise. It's now on patch 21 in 2 months since release, multiple older and new features flat out don't work, there have been kneejerk reactions to OP builds nerfing the absolute shit out of mechanics that only worked when paired with other things leaving them now even worse than they were before, certain mechanics have been changed to no longer match what they were originally designed to do, and because Paradox is in based in Stockholm all the devs are currently on mandatory summer holiday so the current state of the game is stuck like that for at least another month after already several weeks or similar holiday related hiatus.
Second what you said about so much being broken. The potential here is huge, and I can see it clearly if I play a basic-bitch empire. The new growth and civilian mechanics have interesting implications. But, 4.0 needed like three more months in the oven minimum.
That said, it is a terrible time for a new player to enter the game. We'll probably lose most who try right now.
Paradox makes the best emperor games, but yes. Their DLC policies are absolutely ridiculous. I give them a little bit of leeway because this genre is kind of niche, but it's still rough. I would absolutely recommend Stellaris, CK3, and HOI4 to anyone interested, but I would always give that caveat.
If you're patient, they occasionally show up in dirt cheap bundles on humble bundle. That's how I ended up with most of the CK2 and EU4 DLC for very little.
Yeah. I'd follow up and say that you definitely don't need to get most of the DLCs. A ton of them are cosmetic stuff like flag or portrait packs. And then you can pick and choose from the substantive ones that you feel would enhance your game. So it doesn't have to be so bad, especially with sales.