I’ll be a contrarian and throw in my vote for the second game - it’s rushed and flawed and the asset reuse is blatant to the point of being legendary, but the setting and story are the best and most original of these 3 games. Just being a hero of one single city instead of the entire world is surprisingly refreshing.

In general I’d say that 1 has the best combat/tone, 2 has the best setting/story, 3 has the best characters. I’ve heard that 3 can be quite enjoyable if you pretty much only do the main story and companion quests - but I wouldn’t know, I’m one of the poor fools who got stuck in the Hinterlands, and that mistake + the very underwhelming main story sapped my will to continue playing.

Way less gross. Human and centaur are both intelligent, can communicate, and give consent, so it would be fine. With a horse (which has none of these things) the centaur would be committing bestiality.

The 2 hour refund window is for automated refunds, you can still make a request if you’re past that - it’s just going to need a human to take a look at it. I’ve once succesfully returned a game I’ve played for about 5 hours because it had game-breaking bugs and ran like crap for no reason, and it got accepted within a day without an issue.

So Helldivers owners have a chance. I’m assuming that Steam’s Customer Support department is having some kind of an internal discussion right now on how to handle this case.

…wait, you just throw socks onto the pile without putting matching pairs together beforehand? I’ve learned that an alternate universe exists, and I’m not okay with it.

The spices are pretty good - great, portable money source that won’t get you killed for being a witch. Everything else sucks.

I have a T450, I’m dual booting Windows 10 and Ubuntu (…I know, I know, I’m just too lazy to swap) on it and it works great, I get better performance on Ubuntu than I do on Windows. The fans worked oob.

Not mentioned yet: Chronicon. A small indie game that doesn’t take itself very seriously. It has much less build variety than something like Grim Dawn (obviously) but it’s got some, and it’s aiming to be a much more streamlined/casual experience. Won’t demand as much of your time and attention, will deliver hugely satisfying colorful explosions across the screen. When I’m in the mood for an ARPG it’s a toss up whether I’ll install this or Grim Dawn.

All of them, honestly.

The Crucible is the weakest - it’s just an arena mode, but it’s got a lot of utility for speed leveling new characters + some QoL for existing ones.

Ashes of Malmouth is the direct continuation of the base game’s story, adds Necromancer and Inquisitor which are both very well-loved masteries, and you need it for Forgotten Gods anyway. The zones are a bit meh - great overall mood but you spend a lot of time in cramped corridors.

Forgotten Gods adds Oathkeeper (very fun) and tons of huge new zones with a refreshingly different vibe to the rest of the game. And you can go to this expansion’s zones from the start! (Except that you probably shouldn’t on your first playthrough, you’d get destroyed and you probably want to focus on the main story anyway.)

I’d wait for a sale and get them all if you like this genre, or just base game + AoM if you just want to give it a shot (and technically you could hold off on AoM until you’re close to the end of the campaign).

Something kind of adjacent to this happens in Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis series. Aliens come over to fix the Earth and humanity, but decide that human nature is part of the problem, and set out to modify it. It’s a really interesting read.

Trams are, as you’ve noticed, a different usecase - subways are for getting you from A to B quickly, and trams are for getting you to the subway stop/straight to your destination on a shorter trip. One prioritises speed and throughput, the other - access and ease of use. Both should be used together to form a good transportation network, with buses and trains going to more remote/less dense areas.

Just finished Lies of P. My hands are still shaking from fighting the final boss, that one was a nightmare, took me 3 hours of attempts.

Still, this is a great game for fans of Soulslikes - more of an iterative improvement than anything revolutionary, and not as thematically interesting as Fromsoft titles, but a very polished experience. Really good boss fights.

I got a highly ominous one

I’ve finally decided to give Cyberpunk 2077 a shot, deciding that it has had enough time in the oven, and… yup. I’m happy to have waited all these years to play something that’s a finished product, runs well, looks beautiful and is engaging and fun to play. Honestly I spend half of my time in this game just walking around the city - it’s the first city in a game that feels realistic, with all the street markets, food stalls, drunk people wandering the streets at 4 am…

BG3 was overall the best game I’ve played this year though.

I would like Persona 5 Royal, never really had a chance to get into this series but I’ve heard good things!

Maybe Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente? Her Orphan’s Tales have some interesting cities too, but that’s a bit of a stretch.

Again, not just one city, but take a look at Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino - it was a direct inspiration for Fallen London.

China Miéville might be worth checking out - go for either the City and the City or for Perdido Street Station.

I grabbed Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Sleeping Dogs Definitive Editon, both of these are supposed to be great on the deck! Still stuck in Packaged purgatory though, so it’s going to be a while before I actually get the chance to play them. There were some other games I was considering, but I gotta stop spending so much money right after buying a new piece of hardware… One day Sekiro will be at 70+% off, and that is the day I’ll buy it.

My favourite tactic is based around Hunger of Hadar, a Warlock spell that creates a zone that a) deals damage to everything in it at the start and end of its turn; b) is difficult terrain (aka slows everything down); c) blinds everything in it; d) best of all, has no save. Plonk it down in the middle of the enemy team, use another control spell to slow everyone inside even more, use shove/repelling blast/whatever to push anything that’s made its way to the edge back to the middle. Wait for everything to die, rinse & repeat.

But the greatest cheese in the game must be casting darkness (or shooting arrow of darkness) on your own party. As long as you’re inside the cloud you are basically untargettable by spells and ranged attacks - and the enemies don’t seem to be smart ebough to be throwing Fireballs on just any weird clouds they see. On your turn you just need to step out, cast/shoot, step back in. The only way they can get you is if they come inside the cloud with you (aka in range of whoever is on blender duty, Lae’zel or Karlach like this posting a lot), and the AI gets a bit confused when it can’t see you so it’s not a sure bet that they’ll even try. It’s a thing of beauty.