The Miscellaneous PC & vidya Games Thread

[The Minsky Moment]

Even if it's a 3rd/first person rpg like the Divinity series before Original Sin?

Sure if that's how they want to do it.

[Syt]

Even if it's a 3rd/first person rpg like the Divinity series before Original Sin?

I think that was only Divinity 2. Divine Divinity and Beyond Divinity were isometric action RPGs, and Dragon Commander was a mix of RTS/action and Visual Novel.

[The Minsky Moment]

Like I said, whether its first person, or top down isometric, or an 80s style vector multidirectional shooter, Larian gets a free pass me, next game, buy no questions asked.

[Syt]

Yeah. They've always done their thing and they've been doing it well (with some jank on the way).

[Grey Fox]

Just bought Secrets of Grindea on Steam. It had been on my wishlist since December 2015.

[The Brain]

If it's on Grindr, is it really secret? The previous Swedish national security advisor resigned within 24h because some old Grindr pics were sent to media, pics that he presumably hadn't mentioned at his security interview.

[Syt]

Terra Invicta is coming out of early access today: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1176470/Terra_Invicta/

Guess now is a good time to take another look?

[Josquius]

I've had that on my wish list. It does look like one of those games of my dreams.... Though top review sounds like eu5 with it taking forever to learn. So better not.

I've been getting very into rail route lately

[Syt]

I dabbled with it a bit when it launched into early access. I'd put it on the same level of complexity as Shadow Empire, maybe, based on it at the time?

[frunk]

I made a few attempts at Terra Invicta, and it was tough to get past the initial development.  Not because it was difficult, but it takes a long time and there isn't that much that's interesting to do.  I think if you can get further into the game it opens up and becomes pretty fun but I never got there.

[The Minsky Moment]

Most played games on Playstation in the US in 2025:
 1 - Fortnite
 2 - Call of Duty
 3 - GTA V
 4 - Roblox
 5 - Minecraft

Most played games on Playstation in the US in 2024:
 1 - Fortnite
 2 - Call of Duty
 3 - GTA V
 4 - Roblox
 5 - Minecraft

[Syt]

Goes to show why Live Service Games are so attractive ... but also that it will be difficult for anyone new to break into this.

Was listening to Three Moves Ahead's games of the year episode this morning and they lead off with the big disappointments, like Civ7. Meanwhile, for me Civ7 was one of my most played games this year. I bounced off of Civ6 repeatedly, but Civ7 worked a lot better for me out of the box (though I haven't played with recent patches). Then again I also like Beyond Earth (the Civ 5 spin off), so I think I'm just weird.

That said, I didn't play anything on my PC over the two and a half weeks of Christmas break. I mostly played games on my phone while watching Youtube and TV shows, completely turning off my brain.

[Josquius]

I finally decided to play the outer worlds....and....man....this looks like vomit. Like worse than Oblivion. I thought it was maybe from the early 00s but checking up actually 2019.
Wut.

[Grey Fox]

Now go checkout actual game from the first half of the 'OOs and report.

[Syt]

I picked up Railway Empires ages ago on a sale with its DLC.

If you've played Railroad Tycoon you know what it is - build railroads, connect cities, production of goods, buy out your competitors, upgrade trains, plot your routes to both by fast but also cost effective (cheaper to go through the Appalachian valleys than through the mountains), buy businesses, build warehouses to create distribution centers etc.

It adds a few things, like a research tree (plus auctions for some techs), hiring agents who can rob trains, steal technology, boost your passenger traffic for a time etc.

The maps seem a bit weird. The East Coast US map has Baltimore, Washington, NYC, Pittsburgh, Norfolk (VA) ... but no Philadelphia German map looks ok-ish.

Generally a decent time, except for a few things:
- hiring of train personnel and being able to assign them to trains (up to four per train ...) is a bit silly
- the game has more of a cartoony feel which screams late 90s to early 00s German business sim
- creating railroad tracks can be a bit finicky - getting four tracks to leave a station and not getting complaints about "the bend being too tight" is a bit much
- supply stops you need to build supply stops (water towers/coal) along tracks ... thematically nice, but I feel this could be automatically included when building a track

But most of all: the UI. You have a list of trains, but you can see only 8 at a time. If you have, say, 20 (which I had in the 2nd campaign mission yesterday) you are constantly scrolling. What's worse - managing your trains. Say you want to upgrade the engine on a line. Select the train line. Click "manage train". Click "buy train". Buy the train. Similar when assigning personnel - click manage train, click engineer position, select engineer, go back to previous screen, click stoker position, select stoker, realize he has a bad working relationship with your engineer, so you want a different engineer ... etc.

Railway Empire 2 came out a few years ago, and while the graphics look a bit prettier it has a lower review score on Steam than the original (which seems mostly based on it not improving enough over the previous title).

I will stick with it a bit longer - I tried Railroad Tycoon 2 & 3 again on the weekend, and I have to say RE2 has a better UI than those (and the early 3D engine of RT3 is a bit hard to look at for me). If nothing else there's a freeform sandbox mode where you can choose to play without competitors, or simplify the track rules (i.e. you don't have to bother with signals to make sure trains block each other).