No problem, hope you have fun with it!

This ended up way more rambly than intended but hopefully will be of some help. I might clean things up a bit if I have some time later.

Drakengard

First game is a bad Dynasty Warriors clone and can be a really rough experience.
It has very repetitive gameplay and pretty much requires the use of a guide if you want to get the true ending due to things like “get to this already cleared part of the map at this specific time” if I recall correctly. Final boss is… an experience.

It has a great story (with ending E being a direct connection to Nier Gestalt/Replicant), though depending on how resistant you are to the monotony and jank, getting there might be a challenge. There are some absolutely bonkers ideas here, beyond anything you’ll find in later games and that’s honestly the biggest draw for this title.

Finally there’s music. Oh boy, the music. It sounds like a cacophony of a madman and not in an enjoyable way. Don’t expect anything like Nier OSTs.

All in all, don’t feel bad about switching to/going with an LP - this text one by The Dark Id is a classic, with everything you could want (it’s pretty much a play-by-play, with lots of screenshots and music, just without the tedium).

Drakengard 2

Main thing to keep in mind is that this game is kind of its’ own thing and one I remember the least about.

Taro had no involvement beyond helping with a few CG cutscenes and the producer (I think?) of the first game had only a limited power over the development. Because of this writing can be a bit more generic and flat.
It’s not all bad and story has some connections to the first game but it was intended to be a more streamlined experience.

Gameplay is mostly improved but has some issues, like certain bosses requiring specific weapons (you can beat them otherwise but they’ll require a lot of hits).
Play it if you really want to complete the collection but it’s not necessary to experience the “main” series.

Drakengard 3

This one is technically a prequel to all the other games.

Yoko Taro is back in the writer’s seat for this one and the overall story is better than D2 in my opinion. I already mentioned the humor in this one - it can be a bit crude and vulgar so your enjoyment of those parts will depend on how well it clicks with you.
Story has the usual Taro flair and can be further enhanced with the DLC which expands on each of the antagonists (I don’t know how easy it is to get these days).

It’s not a great game from a technical perspective - it runs like garbage on the original hardware (framerate can fall to single digits at times) and can look a bit dated even compared to other games from 2013. Some of it can be improved with emulation but I’m not sure to what extent.

Gameplay is further improved (there’s still a lot of jank) and way easier to fully complete so there’s that. If you survived the original Nier you should be fine.

It can be an interesting experience if you like stories by Yoko Taro, just don’t expect a good game (this sentiment can be extended to all pre-Nier Automata games to various extent).

If you’re looking for something relaxing there’s Afrika - a photography game with a (light?) sim focus.

If you’re fine with kind of mediocre gameplay, rough performance and interesting writing: Drakengard 3. The occasional humor may or may not be your cup of tea but the overall story is worth it - it does require replaying stages and some grinding if you want to reach the true ending however.

This controversy was actually how I found out about the classic XCOM (I may have heard about it before but never really looked into the series before that).

Truth be told, the whole thing could’ve been avoided if not for 2K’s lack of foresight - not only they decided to call the game XCOM but also Enemy Unknown was already in production when they revealed the FPS version. All they had to do was let people know it wasn’t the only project in the pipeline (though lack of such announcement may have been caused by the development issues with EU at the time).

The big part of the initial reactions had to do with the fact that Enemy Unknown wasn’t announced at the time so people were worried series will move in a completely new direction (anybody remembers Close Combat: First to Fight?).

The other issue (post release) was how different it was from what we’ve seen initially - it was suppose to be set in 1950’s, have first-person perspective, open-ended levels, info gathering, research and horror vibes (check this trailer and this gameplay).

By release that game turned into a third-person shooter with simpler, more linear levels, no research of alien technology and other streamlining measures. That doesn’t mean the final product is bad (I enjoyed it quite a bit and the “twist” near the end was a pretty neat addition), it just didn’t live up to the expectations and slowly fell into relative obscurity.

All in all I agree, play The Bureau if you want a different take on the XCOM universe. It’s a decent game.

Oh, totally. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.

Personally I’d love to see a new take on Daggerfall using AI for features you mentioned (though it would have to be an “all in” affair as Bethesda’s approach to randomly generated content these days is… not particularly impressive).

It’s not like they can really avoid it. AI assisted tools will become a standard in the future (“productivity has to go up” after all) and there’s a good chance Valve already received some feedback from AAA publishers on that matter, since they’ll be the main players utilizing such tech.

The good thing here is the exsitance of a disclaimer on store pages, as it will allow people to decide for themselves, and the ability to report content straight from in-game overlay.

Full on ban was never a realistic option.

There are also these two sites:

• Lemmy Community-Browser
• Lemmy Explorer

I looked around and apparently it’s not that bad - his term ends in 2025 (elections are to be held in May at the latest) so he’ll be there for about half of new government’s tenance.

Still not great but there’s a chance for at least some time without sabotage from the other side. Here’s hoping they make it count.

Steam page

Online focused, with battle royale and possibly co-op campaign (store page mentions pilot stories).

Fair enough. In that case I don’t think I can be of any help at the moment but I’ll keep you in mind if I stumble into something with such characters.

May I interest you in Hedon Bloodrite? It’s orcs instead of goblins but there’s plenty of thickness.

It does a good job at pointing out flaws with Steam UI and how they could be fixed (something Valve is apparently unable to do themselves).

While the design in this video isn’t perfect, it’s way better than the current shitshow and I don’t see why people (especially those who know what they’re doing) shouldn’t remind a multibillion company they should do better.

Steam page (demo available).

Good job, should’ve link it myself… (; -_-)

There’s also demo on Steam.

I think these are new - there’s a comment on the project page asking about “playing the classic Red Alert maps” and one of the devs replied they would require some modifications to work.

Besides, original missions can be played with OpenRA so I don’t think they would port them here without at least adding support for the new factions (which in turn would require changes in story?).

That’s just my guess based on some research though, I’m not a specialist when it comes to these projects.

Just Windows, Mac and Linux. There’s no Android build (that’s what would be needed for such tablet).

Man, I have the GBC re-release from LRG but haven’t played it yet. I should get to it one of these days…

Can’t wait to play this one as well.

Besides already mentioned methods there’s also Lemmy Community-Browser.

It has a search bar and ability to toggle specific instances in case you want to avoid some of them. A bit simpler version of Lemmy Explorer mentioned by @DogMuffins.

I guess it depends on your motivation for said project.

Do you enjoy the process of working on the project? Do you use it to learn new things and improve the skills required for it? Or all you care about is the end project?

If it’s the last one I can see why you could get discouraged but if it’s the other two then not really.

If I work on something specific I do it because I want to create this thing using my skills, experience and ideas. I also try to do as much of it as I can on my own, without using other’s people assets etc. For me, the work I put in is an important of the process and each step towards completion makes me a little proud and happy that I can create something.

At the same time I’m a weirdo who tends to use less efficient methods if they aren’t as fun to use when working on personal projects. I don’t really care about using AI in the first place so that might skew my view a bit.

There’s also the fact that AI isn’t omnipotent. It makes mistakes just like us and I’d rather fix my own mistakes since this way I know what I did, how I did it and where to look when things go wrong.

Sorry for the word salad. Your post gave me a reason to spew some unfiltered thoughts about an issue I never really thought about.