Somehow they made Hades 2 even better.

While I enjoy building a shiv deck without needing to worry about Time Eater, I currently find StS2 very unbalanced on high ascensions. Act 1 feels harder than Act 3 in most runs and some hallway fights are tougher than some elites. Hopefully that gets addressed during the course of the Early Access period.

Ok but how on earth did you miss The Legend of Zelda?

Steam box price and release date, more Slay the Spire 2 info, next Zelda teaser. All very unlikely.

If matchmaking wasn’t 90% CR7 wannabes.

For old school RTS, Total Annihilation or if you fancy something a bit different then The Settlers II (Pioneers of Pagonia is a more modern remake). I grew tired of RTS and moved on to turn-based but Stellaris is one that recently drew me back in.

For tactics I’d say Advanced Wars, Fire Emblem and Disgagea are decent shouts. Into The Breach is probably my favourite indie of the genre, a lot of strategy packed into a small game.

If you like turn-based then Civ has always been top of my list.

Anecdotally Fifa (EA FC or whatever they’re calling it now) would have to be up there. Hadn’t played it in years but gave it a go last season as it was free on Game Pass.

They’ve combined the addictiveness of card collecting with loot box mechanics, FOMO and moving the goalposts (pun intended) to get the best players. The gameplay also seemed pretty rigged to prevent grinding rewards out.

Then when the new game is out, rather than dishing out all the rewards to those still playing it instead becomes infeasible to unlock any more decent players so you’re pretty much stuck with what you have.

Even if you pay full price for the next game you’ll have to use low stat players as they only seem to start releasing decent ones half way through the season.

Hard disagree. Most trailblazing console ever with one of the strongest lineups of first/second party games we’ve ever seen. Yes there were some shoddy third party ports but you didn’t buy it for those.

People moan about the controller but forget it was the first time a joystick was used and the only real issue was the redundant left prong. Loved the feel of the Z button for shooting games coupled with the Rumble Pak.

Oh right I see it’s like a quality vs quantity thing. To me I’d pick quality (as that is what triggers my nostalgia).

If I want quantity there are thousands of modern indie games I’d rather play.

I agree, not common, which is why I don’t understand the “only 20 or so great games” take.

Can you list 20 great first party games on any platform?

Yep, chuck Rumble Pak in there too.

Did platform fighters exist before Smash?

Did proper 3D platforming with free camera exist before Mario 64?

Did third person adventure games exist before OoT and has anything drastically changed the formula since?

Not to mention all these games shipped fully built with no updates and amazingly few bugs.

It seems as though OP didn’t actually experience these things at the time so making a post about nostalgia for them is strange. Firing up an emulator and going “These games don’t hold up now.” is entirely missing the point.

Pretty sure the aforementioned list makes up for one mid Castlvania game.

We referred to Rare as a “second-party” developer at the time. So sad when they got bought by M$.

To answer your question on third-party games, some of my favourites were…

Star Wars: Rogue Squadron

Star Wars: Episode 1 Racer

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire

Vigilante 8

Extreme-G

Snowboard Kids

Turok

Bomberman 64

Resident Evil 2

San Francisco Rush

This doesn’t track, Rare were banging out so many good games and as others have mentioned the Star Wars games were also awesome.

I feel you are also still missing the point about trailblazing. There was more gameplay innovation than anything since.

Yes my list was not exhaustive either and tried to focus on exclusives to make the point.

Good point.

Unlikely many of the games of the current gen will hold up in 25-30 years…

Many of the first party games on those systems broke new ground and much of modern gaming wouldn’t exist without them.

Woodwork dweller here, you seem to have forgotten:

Majora’s Mask

Star Fox 64

Jet Force Gemini

Donkey Kong 64

Diddy Kong Racing

Excite Bike 64

Paper Mario

Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door

Pokémon Stadium

Yoshi’s Story

Pokémon Snap

Mario Party

Felt at the time that there was always a high quality “AAA” release on the horizon interspersed with some of the greatest games ever made. Many of the gameplay techniques these games pioneered during the transition from 2D to 3D are still used to this day.

Obviously a lot of them don’t stand the test of time a quarter of a century on but we haven’t had a system with the same consistent quality of games for a long time, if ever, IMO.