Try red dead 2. The story was great and if you grow fond of the game they have a great online following.
The biggest thing that separates Stellaris from Civ is the end-game crisis in Stellaris. Which may, or may not, happen, and you never know which crisis you’ll get.
https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Crisis
Anybody who’s thinking of playing Stellaris, READ THAT ARTICLE and you’ll be sold.
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Radioactive waste just everywhere polluting everything, think I may have created the Fallout universe in my civ games.
I actually wanted to play that game, but I felt like it would piss me off because “building it right” would be to build it the way the creators think it should be built. I had actually come up with my own theory for revamping our penal system, and wrote a research paper on it in law school. I have a feeling I would get frustrated because the game won’t let me do things the way I really want to because it’s never really been done before.
Same, though you still have jump gates in the newer version, but there’s also an already present version of them in-universe called L-gates that can lead to a hidden constellation off-grid and otherwise inaccessible.
I was tangling with a really nasty Empire that was allies with another faction on the other side of me and controlled the L-gate hub so they kept moving fleets from the front-line of their territory into my rear. >_<
Ground that war to a near-standstill since I didn’t have the fleets to guard the troops necessary to take their planets away and guard my rear as well. First time I ran into the war exhaustion mechanic as well. :\
The best game of Stellaris I ever played was centered around a massive War in Heaven event where I formed the Non-Aligned worlds. We had a huge galaxy-wide 3-way fight going on. And then the Prethoryn Scourge showed up and it became a 4-way fight.
One of the best gameplay experiences I’ve ever had, in any game.
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Total War: Warhammer 2 is an incredible game. I have over 500 hours (for me that’s A LOT) in it and don’t see myself stopping anytime soon, if a grand strategy game with RTS battles interests you (set in the Warhammer universe)
Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order is also incredibly good.
Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes are both awesome, I’ve been playing through the series again because of them (and my hype for 8)
Divinity Original Sin 2 is about as good as it gets for a good RPG experience.
And if you want a shooter with a suprisingly dark story Spec Ops The Line is fantastic.
Wait. What?
Gods, I need to pay more attention to the outside world
Okay everybody, STOP! This thread was a big mistake. I have spent the past hour or so watching videos of various games, and I am now terrified of the endless amounts of time-suck that is now staring me in the face. What’s great about WoW is that it’s really easy to step away. I can play for 5 minutes, or 5 hours. Most of these games seem like they will easily lure me into playing all night long, all weekend long, all to the detriment of my wife, my work, and my home projects.
So I have determined to just stick with WoW. But I thank you all for your suggestions. I love you all.
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Are you sure we can’t convince you to try just one or two?
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Pretty much all games are a time sink. You could try some RPG games like SC2 or WC3. They take some time to progress each mission, but not much. If you want to stop, you can and just pick up where you left off.
I’m pretty addicted to Satisfactory and No Man’s Sky right now myself, but they will make you sit in your room and never come out again.
Skyrim is always fun to just mess around in. And on pc you can mod like crazy and change the game completely. With a modding communitty of years millions of mods. The only limit is your imagination and/or your computer skills.
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I’m dating myself, but if you have a switch or 3DS (or an NES emulator) as far as adventure games go you can’t do better than OG 8-bit Legend of Zelda. There are no tells like in the super nes version (like a wall that needed bombed had a visible crack), so if you’ve never played it be prepared to bomb and burn everything looking for those secrets. It’s the game that put me on the path to gaming that I’m on now, and I’ve never enjoyed another game as much. Not even this, but pretty close.
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And now I remember the long stretches of time that got devoured by Civ 4. Those were in my single, no career, apartment living days when I had that time to spare. I just can’t let that happen now. Maybe when I retire lol.
Morrowind, D2, and Doom95 had to be my biggest time sinks outside of WoW. D2 obviously MP, but I played it on single player a lot too.
And as others have said, there are a lot of console SP games to sink your teeth into.
And then there’s Steam. The amount of free games alone can keep you busy way beyond SL.
My entire Junior (high school) year Summer was spent playing one of the early SPQR mods for Rome: Total War.
When you played by the house rules of the Legion formats, with 4 turns per year and only able to re-build Legionaries every 20 years it was brutal.
I documented over 1 Million Macedonians slain on the field of battle over a 45 year war with Macedon where I would wipe at least a full stack of hoplites every turn.
It was the slowest grind down the Illyrian coast imaginable and I could only afford 6 Legions, 4 of which were holding the Gaulic front. So 4th Legion would move forward, smash a stack, end turn. Smash a stack in the defense, my turn, smash a stack, end turn, smash a stack in the defense and then retreat to have casualties replaced by Auxilia, and 2nd Legion would move up to take their place in the meat grinder.
I started playing when Summer started, woke up and finally took a city and it was time to go back to school.
That was probably the largest stretch of time I’ve had where I just flat out was consumed by a game.
Man I loved Morrowind back in the day. Hard to look at it now without mods.
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That sounds like my highschool life. And to think, other people were wasting their time playing basketball and getting laid. Losers.
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If you are a civilization fan, there is a game on Epic games if you don’t mind that platform. It’s called Old World. It’s made from the original makers of the Civilization games. It’s Civilization if your ruler could die of old age and have heirs. They mixed Civilization with…forgetting the name of the game now. It’s in early access though… Still a very good game however.
I just watched a short trailer for that, and it looks really epic. I think I might have to say screw it, and just play that sucker.
Don’t worry Blizz, I’m keeping my sub. (I already got the 6 mos. sub lol)
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