Two recent underrated gems of mine are:

Bug Fables. Which is literally Paper Mario 64 with more content.

And Hades. SuperGiant Games' (Bastion, Transistor) roguelike (? can never get the term right) game that's on the cusp of exiting Early Access. Apparently its only missing the actual story ending and a few extras, but the main game is finished.

Its extremely fun and fast paced, while having an unnecessary amount of voiced dialogue and story content for a game in its genre.

Also when its on sale (and only then because fuck those DLC prices) Total Warhammer 2 is a great time sink for the pandemic. I'm two months in and still enjoying new campaigns. SETTRA and Skaven always.

Starsector - 4x strategy and space fleet sim, still in beta but has enormous amounts of content. Was reviewed by a certain african warlord.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. - Very polished free roguelike, has tons of races, classes and play modes.

Rive - Intense twin stick side scrolling shooter, hard as balls but the game saves after every enemy wave.

Bloodstained : Curse of the Moon 1 and 2 - Old school 8 bit Castlevania clone, made by the original author.

Children of Morta- great Diablo like, best in co-op mode.

My recent plays are:

Berserk: Band of the Hawk - Also called Berserk Musou. I like musou games and love Berserk so it was fun as hell.

Tales of Berseria - currently playing and has been great so far. JRPG, lots to do, interesting combat system.

Ghost of Tsushima - what I'm going to play as soon as I'm done with Berseria.

I also played the FFVII remake like everyone else on the planet.

I picked up Divinity Original Sin 2 and my god have I lost some days to that game. Very good tactical gameplay that demands you have a strategy or else the encounters will feel outright unfair. There's definitely a learning curve to it.

The writing is also phenomenal. They might just be the only studio I trust to actually take up the mantle for Baldur's Gate 3 if their serious writing is as strong as their humor writing.

if you got a ps4 ghosts of tsushima just came out. i got it the other day and its such a breath of fresh air. its like assassins creed before 3 came out. visual style is amazing like those old school samurai films (you can even go B/W). when getting attacked you can't just wail on one dude at a time you have to improvise like the entire time. its not dark souls hard but its very challenging. i haven't beaten it yet but i'm looking forward to where it goes.

might also suggest dark messiah of might and magic. its a kind of linear but kicking everything has never been more fun.

Hollow Knight. I can't remember the last time I fell in love with a game quite like that one. It is a masterpiece and I can't wait for the sequel. A truly magnificent game

Sengoku Rance. Its a strategy game maquerding as a porn game. It has incredible replayability. IMHO one of the best strategy games ever, better than Galactic Civilization or Paradox titles

The metro series is criminally underrated. And cheap.

And recently I've been enjoying making polygimous incest part of my religion in ck2.

So... Enderal requires the original version of Skyrim to play, but it would appear that Steam no longer has that, and it's missing from my library too. Am I hooped, and can't play it now?

Edit: It seems that the original version IS still there, but it won't show up in either the store or my library. I had to go to the Enderal page on Steam to find a link where I could install the original version.

Broforce

Towerclimb is a superb platformer, and utterly brutal. If you beat the first boss in under 8 hours you're amazing. Been out a while, i adore it, but hardly ever see it talked about. I really ought to dig back in.

Aquaria. My first indie game and a terrific metroidvania. Sad there will never be a 2, but the two devs went on to make other titles separately. One made spelunky, the other made might in the woods.

Spelunky. It's great! Platforming roguelike game. There is the old free version, the vastly more polished paid version, and a sequel coming.

DO NOT recommend, but Intruder by Superboss games. Underappreciated stealth game. Closest I'll ever get to the stealth shenanigans of the old splinter cell spy vs merc multiplayer game modes. Very different though, and its biggest flaw is its very very limited playerbase. Haven't played in years, and the difficulty of getting a game is a large reason of why, hence why I cannot recommend.

I would suggest Kingdom Come Deliverance if you want a 1st person western RPG. It's like a historical version of Skyrim.

I've also been playing Final Fantasy 12 recently and it's pretty good! The combat is a bit slow, but the remake has a speedup feature which helps out a lot.

disco elysium , soulreaver ,, dota

I really enjoyed Return of the Obra Dinn. It's basically a puzzle/detective game set on a ghost ship and you have to figure out what happened and how everyone met their fate.

I liken it to a crossword puzzle, except instead of figuring out what the words are on a grid, you are figuring out the indentities of the crew and how they met their demise.

Much like solving a word in a crossword could give you hints on another word. Solving the death of a crew member can give you clues on what happened to someone else.

I found it very engaging personally and would highly recommend it to anyone into that sort of thing.

If you like investigation + story based games, here's one on NDS - "Hotel Dusk"

Scrap mechanic just had survival mode come out a few months ago, games is pretty cheap and fun

If you have the equipment (joystick) DCS is a great combat flight sim. The base game is free but each module is a decent price.

Insurgency and Insurgency Sandstorm are great FPSs that make you feel like you're there.

RAGE 2!

I just started playing and can't believe this got crapped on so hard. I've had a hard time getting into new games for months now but this was on sale so I bought it and decided to try it weeks later.

I am having a lot of fun with it. You can definitely feel 'Mad Max' under the hood.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX is a fine game to play if you are a fan of the first games of the series. It is a really well done remaster of the original and I'm enjoying every minute of the game (even the times I get punked).

Vanquish is really cool. Story is a bit out there but it's basically gears of war with insane mobility, the ability to slow down time and basically play a bullet hell game and weird SciFi elements. It's underappreciated but not underrated, pretty sure everyone loved it.

Holy shiet, Sengoku Rance, my boi, is in the list, i am proud, really.

Now for the recomendations:

Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Blens in well the Classic RPG aspect with the fact that you are building your kingdom from scratch, politics, wars and nasty assassination plots included

All the Yakuza Series, but start with 0 if you wanna taste it. It's an awesome Beat'n up game if comic moments and breath taking plot and presentation (Dynamic Intros for the Win)

Stardew Valley - Be your inner farmer and relax your body for all the killing

Metal Gear Rising - The best Hack n Slash, you can't go wrong with it

If you have a Switch and like Tactical RPGs, Fire Emblem 3H is a good pick, nice mechanics, characters and world building, the only downside is that the your character is a bland mute avatar with no personality, but the NPCs around him make it less suferable

Also, if you like Action MMOs Phantasy Star Online 2 is going to be released at Steam day 5, so go check it

I love the Sniper Elite series. Well, the first one is a little rough but it's 15 years old. The V2 remastered, 3, and 4 are great! If you liked the old WW2 shooter games but don't like how their single player has become an interactive movie and the entire game is full of social justice BS that isn't representative of how the war was--then these games are for you.

Being a stealthy sniper isn't necessary, if that playstyle isn't for you, and it can be as realistic or arcadey as the difficulty you pick. There's loads of realistic guns too--granted, they don't feel a lot different in game but if you're a gun enthusiast it's cool that they are all real models that were actually used. Some are behind DLC packs, but I've picked up the series for $10-$20 for the full includes everything editions.

Alien Isolation. Outlast, Horizon Zero Dawn, Until Dawn, The Outer Worlds

Total War Rome II and Shogun II.

Rome II has better strategic campaigns, but the RTS battles are better in Shogun II.

Specifically enjoyed over the Pandemic:

• Doom & Destiny, a JRPG style that's a good time without being too serious. One of the top RPG Maker based games I've played, pretty cheap even when not on sale.
• Lisa, a very unique JRPG. Maybe crosses the line that "everyone knows about it" but Undertale, released after Lisa, stole it's thunder and I guess I missed it. Play the game, but IMO skip the DLC.
• Geneforge, a tactical RPG that's maybe 20 years old at this point. The presentation feels old and the UI is pretty rough for current year, but if you can look past that, it's really satisfying.
• 1001 Spikes, a precision platformer. Full disclosure, I played 1000 Spikes on XBIG for like $1 so I balked at playing this one for a while because it's essentially the same game. But, turns out they added so much to it that I didn't regret revisiting.
• Hacknet, a hacking simulation/puzzle game. Played Uplink many years ago and enjoyed it, but I enjoyed this one more because it felt more "local" and high stakes versus a remote gateway that can get raided. Fantastic soundtrack. In fact, also play Uplink but the interface is a little clumsy for current year.

I love Paradox's grand strategy games. Today my Irish Fylkir raided Tripoli to capture this 16 year old female Muslim poet because I wanted a court Skald. The easiest way to get her into my court was to make her a concubine. I threw a bunch of gold at her and swayed her to get her opinion to 100.

tl;dr An Irish Viking kidnapped and raped a Muslim teenager so that she would write his Edda, and now she loves him for it.

Still loving Hunt Showdown, although my gaming time is low atm. I was put off by the battle royale marketing for a long time but tried a free weekend and it's actually really good fun.

It's a PvEvP team free for all but I wouldn't say it's a battle royale. You don't have to scavenge for equipment and you don't get to choose your start location, you end up spread roughly equally around the map so it's a lot less dumb luck. Plus you can extract at any time, it's not an automatic fight to last man standing but a risk/reward choice about how much you try to grab before bailing.

The atmosphere is amazing, and the sound is even more so. Which is great because stealth is such a huge part of the gameplay, with tense old school western standoffs where you think someone is in the next room and hold your breath until you hear a floorboard creak on the other side of the door and you both start blasting through the walls and scramble for cover.

The gunplay is good, and very heavily weighted towards making your shots count because the old timey guns are very clunky to cock or reload but will generally drop people in two hits. I like that there's no artificial deviation when aiming down sights, where your sights point is where the bullet goes, which is important given the importance of making every shot count. The attention to detail is great too, every little crack in the old wooden walls and floors can but shot, seen and have things thrown through. Thinks like dummy round decoys will ignite flammables and dynamite detonating faster when they land in fire gives you lots of creative tactical options.

Final Fantasy X

Deus Ex

**Atelier Ryza **. Pretty much the comfiest Atelier game so far, especially since they did away with turn in deadlines. An entry-level entry to the series and once you understand how to break the alchemy system, you're set.

**Disgaea 5 Complete **on Switch. From what I hear, avoid the PC port, its shit and is missing all the DLC content that Complete edition has from the get go. Otherwise, its the standard Disgaea fare. Hit max level before reaching the final story boss, then go on a grinding spree to farm in Item World for a thousand floors.

The entire process has been streamlined so you don't have to suffer early game item world just to get a full stack of EXP innocents, which is pretty great. Unfortunately, the characters didn't grip me like the other games TBH. As far as my rating of the story and characters goes, D1 = D4 > D2 > D5 >> D3.

Xenoblade DE came out a few months ago. If you want a pretty good JRPG story, highly recommend. Gameplay is fine, but questing may become a little tedious due to some quests becoming missable and ruining a perfect save file.

I started Daemon X Machina, might go back to it. Its a pretty cool mecha game, but it plays a lot like an old late-2000s portable console PVE action rpg with the mission system. The amount of mech customisation looks pretty great.

M.A.S.S Builder is an Early Access PC mecha game, but far slower than DXM. The customisation for your mech though is absolutely insane. You can paint and customise every single part of your mech. You can choose a very wide variety of paint jobs for each individual part, and parts of parts. The only problem is that grinding is tedious.

The controls also feel like KB+M isn't the optimum choice with some of the default bindings (LALT for secondary melee attack, wtf?). The mission pace is slow enough that I think I would prefer playing with a controller instead. Missions last at most 10 minutes so I think I'll give this a try with a controller next time since mashing melee will probably break my mouse buttons.

Persona 4 Golden got its PC release. I've also transferred over my Vita save so its just a standard NG+ run for me. If you don't have the money for P5R or have no PS4, this is a fine entry point into the Persona series. Comes with Dual Audio unlike the Vita version.

5D Chess was just released a few days ago. Its chess, but your pieces can travel backward in time, as well as sideways into parallel universes.

So how does this work? Well all your standard chess piece movements are there, but they are also mapped into multiverse movement and time travel movement. When you send a piece back into the past, you create a new timeline and play until you catch up to the 'present' of the original game. The catch is that all the pieces in that new timeline can attack the pieces in the original timeline since you can multiverse travel.

For instance, a knight can make an L shaped move on the board.

But if you time travel, you can move 1 move backwards, and 2 spaces straight from where you started; or even 2 moves backwards and 1 straight. You can also do this when you have another parallel timeline, 1 level deep, 2 spaces on the board, etc.

Overall, its a cool concept, but often doesn't work very well. One of the issues that some people noticed is that you can play a perfectly normal game of chess then inadvertently checkmate the king in the past. This also goes both ways.

The puzzles are pretty cool, but pvp sounds like it might just be a novelty.

So, it seems as time goes on, even AAA games are starting to seem stale. I haven't given a time for indie games, but I might as well now.

Any good ones? I do remember some supposed good games such as Undertale, Shovel Knight, Hollow Knight, and Shantae, but I fear of SJW shitm so idk if I should even try.

Edit: As for TC, Have you ever tried out any Tekken games? Those are pretty good. The older ones I mean.

I've been having quite a bit of fun in Gunfire Reborn the last few weeks. Super simple graphics, pleasantly colorful roguelite shooter. Simple yet differentiated guns, with enough balance to make most runs come across at least a few exemplary weapons. It's rare to have a complete dud run that ends before the fun starts.

My go-to game for wasting shittons of hours is Guild Wars 2; a somewhat less than standard MMO. Leveling doesn't take forever and zero to max(80) is basically a gigantic tutorial, after which the world opens up entirely. No real gear grind outside cosmetics, and a less strict breakdown between arms of the "trinity" common in MMO. And then there's Canach...

If you want to engage your brain and not stop until you lose the ability to speak, fire up Factorio. Super simple to get started, with a near limitless skill ceiling, this logistics simulator has not only a Turing complete circuit system, but a train network that is ALSO Turing complete. Build a factory to launch rockets, starting with eight iron plates, a coal powered auto-miner, and a hunk of wood. Sounds simple, but when farther research and development exhausts local resources, building the logistics network to bring everything you need back to the factory gets intense if you want it to be fast. Then the pollution hungry aliens get up in your business and eat everything you own if you can't build a defense network to stop them.

I've been liking Hades. Amazing art style, satisfying, fast, arpg gameplay, immersive voiceover that you would expect from Supergiant. Roguelite progression and highly replayable in 30-60 minute sessions.

In terms of "wokeness" I would compare it to something like mass effect 2. There is a homo romance option that you can pursue but decline before boning. There is also a plot point about bringing two "friends" together with strong implications they are butt buddies, but the setting is greek mythology so it doesn't feel particularly forced or intrusive. Artemis is implied to be a dyke in some of her lines but again there is subtlety and isn't immersion breaking.

Overall I highly recommend the game, it is still "early access" but imo it is a complete game and will only get better on "release".