Monthly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing?

I'm enjoying Control. It's pretty good fun to play, but the story has really grabbed me.
- Hope sequel will be as good as first one

I finished Nine Sols last month and I can't recommend it enough. Aside from being a great metroidvania all around: great art, great music, great combat... I was most surprised by how good the story is. The world they built is really cool. Also, it's currently on sale. Would recommend.

forgotten city! a masterpiece of storytelling
- I LOOOOVED that game.
- I got the notification that it's on sale now. I'm buying it today and can't wait to play it when I get the time
  
  Great! don't read anything about the game, don't watch previews, don't do anything except play the game - your in for a treat.
- Indeed the game is very good.

Started playing Factorio again with a friend, been fun so far. Just today I played Tooth and Tail again which is really cool, as well as Skullgirls Second Encore which I'm not great at but is still fun.

Been playing for the first time Disco Elysium, but also have Kingdom Come:Deliverance and Titanfall 2 (Although I played it already 6 years ago) installed on my PC after getting them on deep sale recently.

On the Deck, Skyrim with mods and specifically beyond Skyrim Bruma. I have figured out how to install mods and you can sink a lot of hours in good ol' Skyrim.
I also play Life is Strange: True Colours on the Deck.
Additionally the farmer was replaced is a fun little Python like game where you need to write Python like code to automate the manual labor on your farm. But this I play on the desktop.

Battlefield Bad Company 2 (from 2010)
It's still very much playable in multiplayer! If you happen to have a copy - via "Project Rome" you litterally just have to drop one file from them into the game folder and boom - you got a working server browser again! I forgot how incredible the sound design in this game is.
- Aw man I forgot about the sound design. I am tempted to try this.
- People are still playing? That's tempting, I still haven't found something that hits the spot this game did.
  
  Yeah I was surprised as well. There is not an overwhelming amount of players, but the last few days there were consistently 2-4 servers with close to 32 people online.

BattleBit Remastered
I'm not sure if it counts for patient gaming but it's super lightweight and so damn fun.

I just soft modded my old PS2 so I could boot game backups from a network share. So I'm playing Gran Turismo 3, NFS underground 2, Tony hawk's Pro skater 4, NBA street vol. 2, and GTA: San Andreas. Basically everything and anything my teenage self loved at the time.

Replaying Kingdom Come: Deliverance, but this time no save scumming and on the Steam Deck. It's really good, but the slight vibe of sexism bugs me.
Also playing the excellent Tactical Breach Wizards.

Pokémon Emerald, and PixelJunk monsters.

Just installed Word of Goo 2
- It's really good, much recommend.

I've been enjoying Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. It's got just the right level of compulsivity to keep me playing without destroying my life. Pretty relaxing, to be honest, although I don't think "easy" mode is actually easy!

DOOM (2016). I originally got it when it came out, I wasn't very patient then, but largely played multiplayer. I've been playing the campaign this time around and I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

Hitman 3 freelancer mode. The ultimate James Bond simulator.
- It's incredible, feels like such a perfect addition to an already excellent game.
- What's the deal with the Hitman 3 DLC? Which version do I need to buy if I already own Hitman 1 and Hitman 2?
  
  Do you own both on the same platform? If you have them on same platform just download the basic hitman woa pack with all hitman 3 missions and it'll sync the other maps from the games you own automatically. If you have it on different stores (epic/steam) you need to contact ioi.

Persona 5 Royale. Its my first time playing a persona game and also my first JRPG. Currently 20 hours in. The lawyer woman is really funny.

Just got a surface duo i will use for nintendo ds emulation, so when i get my new gamepad and stylus in the mail later this week i will pick up and start an old ds game i have never played. But i havent decided yet so im not really answering your question.....
- If you like JRPGs and haven't played it, Radiant Historia would be a great choice.
  
  Thanks for the rec!

Divinity original sin 2. It is not as good as I was expecting it to be. I keep getting bored and fustrated even if I really want to like it.
- Oh howcome ? What did you expect from it ?
  I remember being plesently surprised by the gameplay and the degree of freedom you are given. It felt rich and was actually a good time.
  
  I had a similar experience. I think it was mainly the small combat encounters that dragged out, as well as there being something off about the tone. But it's hard to put my finger on exactly.
  
  With how much hype I saw online I thought they had improved on the systems from from DOS 1 but in a lot of ways it feels worse.
  The new initiative system means it makes no sense to invest points into it since no matter how high it is, your enemies will get to go first.
  In my first attempt at playing I tried to have a varied team that can do different types of damage but the new armour system made that useless. The only thing that matter is getting as much raw damage as possible. Most of the interesting effects only apply once you take down all the enemy armour. This also make most traps useless since you can walk right through without any I'll effects.
  But the thing that irritated me the most was the inventory. It's slow and annoying to use and so I decided to try the official mod. After using it to sort all of my inventory into specific bags I found out that you cannot trade or craft using anything that was put into those bags. At that point I just started a new game.
  Now on my new game I am getting bored with how slow the fights are. This isn't helped by the unintuitive puzzles and the weirdly toned story.

I'm playing Pacific Drive right now. Its pretty fun and spooky

TerraFirmaGreg mod pack for Microsoft Minecraft Java Edition.
- Based and gregpilled. TerraFirmaCraft and Gregtech in one pack sounds rather sadistic. I'll have to keep my eye on that one.

Oxygen Not Included. it's taken over my brain.
- It helpedel me understand thermodynamics intuitively the way Kerbal Space Program helped me understand orbital mechanics.

Stardew, trying to get that 100% thingy

Getting back into ACC after taking the summer off. Still my favorite racing game.
- Ps. I just recently discovered Wreckfest, which is a racing game but not a simulator game. Still it's very fun game to play haha. (also works with multiplayer)
  
  Wreckfest is a fun one. I had a lot of fun with it a couple years ago. I'm looking forward to Wreckfest 2.

I'm playing Read Dead Redemption 2 for the first time, it's a really good game

I've started on X4, and love it!

I got myself mildly addicted to Mindustry. Wiping out enemy bases can be pretty satisfying.
- I'm addicted to Mindustry, and I wouldn't say it's mild lol. Started playing it a few months ago, absolutely love it

🤣 it's a 20 year old MMO called Wurm Online. The pacing and skill depth is pretty amazing for an older more patient audience.

Atomicrops. It's a solid rogue-lite farming game that is a lot of fun to just pop into and make a run.

Just got the this new game called Knack. Heard of it?

I've been playing Pokemon Go, started back when it came out after niantic killed their other game I was playing to make pokemon go. (Not bitter at all)
Played a few weeks gave up.
Now I'm 30 and was out running and thought hey why not do this at the same time.

HyperRogue. The lack of statted items means less time thinking andore time playing. Same complaint as many rogue likes though, it lacks a save and quit. I don't care if it makes save scumming possible, it's shitty to force people to finish a game in one sitting.

Recently finished my first playthrough of Dragon's Dogma 2 and started a new one playing Rogue this time. Lots of fun and reminds me of old-school RPGs similar to Fable

High on life. Terrible, boring gameplay. I think I'll drop it.

Oddly enough I've been playing High on Life on the Steamdeck. I give it a solid 6/10.
The art style is cool and the characters aren't as annoying as I thought they would be, but damn is it shallow.
All levels are basically the same but the gunplay and movement are nice enough to keep me around. I just play it while watching TV with my girlfriend. Nice mix of a wave shooter and platforming. It really reminds me of Doom in a way

Starter playing "To the moon"
Great game so far, but I wish there was controller support and it could be fullscreen instead of a small box. It makes playing on the 32" TV difficult

Returned to my 3DS and playing Etrian Odyssey 4. That series is great for party based dungeon crawls, with a good amount of choices for how you want to build your party.

Anyone who owned doom 1 and doom 2 got a new item in their steam or gog library with damn near everything included including stuff like sigil and a new episode they just made.
There's a new doom 2 RTX mod that clips into that version and it combines ray tracing with voxel art to give the most impressive raycast doom 2 I've imagined so far. Well worth a look especially since it's free for a lot of gamers.

I tried playing Bahamut Lagoon, a Japan only SNES TRPG, but had to stop due to some technical issues with the unofficial translation. The little bit I did manage to play (prologue and the first scene after that) was interesting enough so I'll definitely try again, I just need to get back to my PC so I can research what's wrong with it.
To keep with the theme I started Jeanne d'Arc, the PSP TRPG, instead. I like the art style, animated cutscenes and gameplay. Not a huge fan of the fantastical elements but they're not a dealbreaker either. I'm not sure what to think about the story just yet - I like it for the most part but there are some things that make me a bit wary since they might potentially turn into tropes I'm not going to be happy with. It's a "wait and see" for now since I'm still pretty early on. It's good so far.

Just picked up Dave the Diver on sale and am loving it.
Edit to remove a game newer than 12 months! :-p

Playing Yakuza 3. I've basically played one each year starting from Yakuza 0 and I'm really enjoying the pace. I find I get a bit tired of the game around 3/4 in, so I don't think I could handle playing them back-to-back.
Aside from that, I've been playing:
Cities Skylines II - performance seems to largely be fixed, so I finally broke down a bought it; will probably play it some more during the holiday season
Dragon Age: Origins - I usually burn out on RPGs, so hopefully this one sticks, because it looks interesting
I'm also playing through a bunch of games I've owned for a while, such as some random point and click games (Syberia, Agatha Chrisie games, etc) and some random platformers. I'm basically forcing myself to finish two games I already have before getting more, and I've found some fun gems.

I got the Resident Evil bundle from Humble and decided to finally give RE2make and RE3make a go. But before that, I replayed the original games on my PS1. The last time was quite a few years back... I remember learning English by playing RE3, lol.
Short review of each under spoiler (although they are very much spoiler-free)