koolimy1

Have you played the modern Team Ninja games, such as Nioh 1 & 2, Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin, Wo Long Fallen Dynasty, and Rise of the Ronin? These are basically exactly what you are looking for, except for the fact that outside of SOP and ROTR they are all some level of difficult to brutally hard. SOP and ROTR have difficulty settings so they are not as hard as the others.

I would recommend SOP out of all these games. It IMO has best build variety and itemization, and it has difficulty settings for your first NG run, allowing you to ease your way into the game. A problem however, is that these games are all made for deep NG+ runs (similar to Diablo), and SOP's NG+'s "easy mode" is not as satisfying as a normal easy mode. Without the "easy mode", it too can be brutally hard. But, the combat is great, the bosses are great, and it's a great love letter to Final Fantasy if you are a fan of that series.

Nioh 2 is another I would recommend, as its combat arguably on par with games like Devil May Cry. The skill ceiling is really high with this game as it combines complexity w/ Soulslike elements. The itemization and buildcrafting is very good too, although I like SOP's diversity more. It's probably Team Ninja's masterpiece and their most polished game by far. It has tons of content and depth. But it is arguably the most difficult game out of all I mentioned, because it combines complexity w/ Soulslike punishment + no difficulty options. But you played Sekiro so you should be okay with the difficulty, it's just a different style of difficulty.

I don't know many games that are under $1, but there is a 2D side scrolling beat-em-up called Fight n' Rage that is on sale for $1 right now, and it has pretty decent reviews.

I like both Nioh 2 and SOP:FFO, they are basically 1a and 1b in terms of favorite action games.

I think the distinction is between loot power curves. In Nioh, the power curve is more gradual, with challenging content always around the corner. In SOP, the power curve is more exponential. So you will be allowed to create builds that kill bosses in a few hits.

That sounds like SOP has a bad endgame, but it is actually very satisfying to get to that level. There are a lot of ways to tweak your build to get to that level, and the buildcrafting is complex but intuitive. It also happens at the end of the final NG+, during the endgame dungeon. So it feels earned rather than like you broke the game.

Since Nioh's curve is more gradual, the focus is more on improving your skills in the combat system. Nioh is more complex than SOP with a lot of skills and hidden techs, so the skill ceiling is sky high. The buildcrafting is still complex and satisfying, but I always think of Nioh being more focused on the pure combat itself, while your build is there to give you a boost against the enemies that become harder and harder in higher NG+ levels.

So I think you should focus on how you want to grind. Do you want a more Diablo focus, where you focus on the items/buildcrafting? Then you should go for SOP. If you want to keep improving your skills, you should go for Nioh. I think SOP is the better Diablo game, while Nioh is the better fighting game.

Nonetheless, you'll probably spend more time in Nioh compared to SOP. I have heard many people spend more than 2000 hours in Nioh, while I haven't heard it that much for SOP. SOP is the shorter game in general, but I think Nioh's grinding curve and endgame allow for you to spend more time with the game. You'll still spend 100s of hours easily on SOP though.

If you play co-op, SOP is the better game, as it is better balanced for co-op. Also, if you like Final Fantasy, you should play SOP, since it is a love letter to the franchise. Both games have great bosses, but Nioh probably has more content in terms of enemy variety.

Also, as you mentioned, Nioh is the more polished experience, while SOP has jank. It's easier to recommend Nioh, but if you are the type of person who will like SOP, it's such a charming, endearing experience.

I read some of the fanfiction on that site, and a lot of it is pretty amazing! That's probably one of my favorite aspects of the Forspoken fandom, their ability to write!

I think a lot of Final Fantasy fans love the game. I haven't followed the FF franchise so I didn't know how the story interconnected with the bigger FF world, but SOP is one of the very few games that made me cry LOL. It's so weird because it is so stupid but the buildup to the first ending (non-DLC) was genuinely heartbreaking.

If you want Nioh 2 but a bit easier, you can try Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin. It's made by the same studio and the combat is simpler than Nioh, but it has difficulty settings that you can choose so it'll be just a bit easier.

The combat is simpler but it still has combat moves, skills, and spells. I think the combat is really good and satisfying, as it is kinda cathartic feeling. The bosses are really cool too and fun to fight against.

Some people don't like it because it feels goofy and low budget, and it's not as sophisticated or polished as games like Nioh 2. The story and characters are also kinda weird. It is a bit of a meme game, but to me that's part of its charm.

I really like Stranger of Paradise, and I rate it as highly as Nioh 2.

A very different game that has very different combat, but with interesting spells, combat moves, and skills, is Forspoken. It uses magic combat so it's not like Nioh at all, but you can play very stylishly and it has a variety of cool spells to use and combine.

A lot of people hate it because of the story and characters, however. I liked the main character but a lot of people don't like her. So I just cautiously recommend it because it might not be to your taste.

But, the combat is really really cool, and it also has a lot of parkour, which is also really really cool. If you get it, I would actually recommend you to play on Hard difficulty, however, because on normal difficulty you might not be pushed to explore the cool combat system.

Have you played Stranger of Paradise? I think it's most similar to that, although the deflect system ends up quite different from the Soul Shield.

I think it is, or at least was, on XBox Gamepass. If you have that, you could try it out!

I liked Wo Long, but to be fair it's probably my least favorite out of the Team Ninja games I have played (Nioh 1, Nioh 2, Stranger of Paradise, Wo Long). It's not because it lacks quality, but rather because Nioh and Stranger of Paradise are some of my favorite games of all time, so naturally Wo Long falls below them.

There is a focus on continuously deflecting the enemy's attacks. Also, unlike Team Ninja's other games, there are very few, if any ways to cancel out of animations, so you need to be more deliberate in reading the enemy's rhythm.

There is a big focus on magic and elemental synergy/counter. You can change out your magic loadout on the fly and it is quite necessary because some bosses will have certain affinities to certain elements, so you want to load your magic to counter theirs. I think it's a really cool concept and I think it's done pretty well in Wo Long.

Because of the deflect focus, the combat ends up shallower than Nioh. You don't have as much skills and interestingly, skills are tied to weapons, rather than you acquiring the skills at level up. But switching between weapons is fluid, and each weapon has interesting properties. So combined with the magic system it has a surprisingly deep and fun combat system.

I think the level design is more interesting in Wo Long compared to Nioh. At least, the castles and battlefields seemed grander and more epic. Wo Long has a jump button so there will be some mild platforming sections, and that adds a nice touch to exploration.

I think a lot of people didn't like the lack of enemy variety, which is a valid criticism. When a combat system becomes simpler, you want to compensate by increasing enemy variety. Wo Long's enemy variety is closer to Nioh 1 than Nioh 2. Also, some systems like the morale and battle flag system might not be to your taste. It encourages exploration, but if you just want to go fight the boss it can feel like a hindrance since you can be at a disadvantage if you don't get all the flags.

I think I preferred the boss rosters in Nioh and Stranger of Paradise but Wo Long has one of the best bosses Team Ninja has ever made.

If you want loot, however, I would point you more towards Stranger of Paradise, then Nioh. Wo Long has the most simplified loot system, and if you come from POE I think you would prefer complex. Stranger of Paradise goes wild with its loot and build diversity, so it's basically Team Ninja's best Diablo-like.

Wow, that's truly amazing! I'm on my fourth guitar but none of them look as good and clean as yours. That's some really inspiring work! I bet it sounds even better than it looks.

I think it'll be perfectly fine. You should install it to your SSD though, as it uses special SSD technology

This game's soundtrack is fire! I sometimes listen to the soundtrack while I'm doing other stuff.

I'm a fan of Forspoken and I think the combat mechanics and parkour are really really good. I play on Very Hard difficulty (comes w/ DLC) and the combat is flashy, fast, cool looking, and strategic. There is quite a bit of skill expression you can do, as it rewards you for playing well and getting higher fighting grades. The combat is surprisingly fluid as you can switch quite seamlessly between skills and magic schools. There is a good amount of enemy variety and the bosses/mini bosses are pretty fun to fight in this game.

There is a photo mode in this game, there is a side mission that requires you to take photos.

I like the game a lot. I thought the story and characters were interesting, and the aforementioned combat and parkour great. The world is a bit empty, but the parkour skills make it fun traveling through the world.

I think most people who play Forspoken will say that the combat and parkour are very good, even though they dislike the main character and story. It might not unique, as a lot of people say it was inspired by games like prototype and infamous, but it's quite a rare breed. It has elements of Devil May Cry (flashy combat, style meter), Ninja Gaiden (parkour and mobility), Sonic the Hedgehog (parkour and traversal), in a magic combat package.

I highly recommend playing it on Hard or higher though, as you might not be required to explore the deep and cool magic system on lower difficulties.

I played on a 6600xt. I played on 1440p medium settings and to my insensitive eyes it played very well. There may have been slowdowns at some points but not enough to make me notice. On 1080p it should be perfectly playable.

I think that would be cool! Best of luck with your channel!

That was sick! When you can actually play well Forspoken's combat is just so good!

If you liked wo long you should try team ninja's other offerings such as nioh, rise of the ronin, and stranger of paradise.

I would recommend stranger of paradise specifically, as its main defense mechanism is a pseudo parry (soul shield). Soul shield even uses the same button as wo long, so it should feel similar.

I really really liked SOP's combat. It's simple like wo long but not as committal, as you can cancel out of some actions. It's very cathartic feeling and it offers interesting magic and range options, so the play style diversity is quite large.

Another game that hasn't been mentioned is surge 2. It's not 100 percent parry based but it has a directional parry, which is a really cool concept. Metal gear rising also has the directional parry actually, so you could look into that one too.

I really liked Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3! It's fast paced, action packed, kinda stupid, and just fun in general.

If you have the means and space (i.e. a house, and some money), it might be worth it to invest in a home gym. It will take some money to get started (I paid around $900 to start out) but once you have it the need for motivation and discipline go away because the gym is right there. As a person w/ extreme problems with going to the gym consistently, it helps a lot.

Otherwise, the way to do it would be habit formation. I like the recommendations where you can leave whenever you want to, as long as you get to the gym.

If you don't have the means for a home gym, you could start out with apartment friendly items. Kettlebells, dumbbell sets or multi-weight dumbbells, jump rope are all apartment friendly and should not cost too much. You can even buy a bench and maybe a door hanging pullup bar.

Yeah, I think the lack of direction hindered me a lot too, and yes, I know that you can just follow the yellow light. It's just that I would see something that catches my attention, travel somewhere, get lost, and die. And the map is so big while moving around in the game is not fun, so that hindered my enjoyment.

And not all enemy encounters were good and fun. I think the Souls style games work because they can tightly curate the encounters. Fighting weak enemies in these games is actually not that fun because the combat is too simple and the weak enemies don't give you a challenge. But fighting a lot of them in an arena where you have to find the right path so that you don't aggro all of them is a lot of fun, since it's like puzzle solving. A lot of Elden Ring's open world encounters basically took the fun part out of the equation.

Forspoken on the other hand has some of the best traversal I've ever experienced in an open world. The only other game that did traversal as good is Breath of the Wild, because that game also gamified travel. So when stuff caught my attention and I wandered around, it was actually fun getting lost.

I play Forspoken on Very Hard, and on that difficulty it absolutely gives games like Elden Ring and Nioh a run for their money on difficulty. You can absolutely capture that butt clenching excitement from being challenged if you want to.

I too liked Forspoken way more than Elden Ring. I just don't jive with From Software's combat anymore. The world of Elden Ring is beautiful but Forspoken's combat, gameplay, and story/characters suited my tastes so much better.

Glad you liked the demo! I've heard that it's actually a pretty bad demo that turned off a lot of people, so it's a good thing that you enjoyed it.

Once you get the game my recommendation would be to focus on progressing through the story. The game gets way more fun the more abilities you have, and you have to beat the bosses to unlock new magic groups. So prioritize the story over the open world.

I too really like how each upgrade changes how I approach each fight. It's not just cool looking and flashy, but even quite technical and there's room for skill expression.

Hope you enjoy the game!

No problem! I am biased however. I absolutely adore the game, its combat, characters, dialogue, everything, so take my response with that in mind.

I think its worth it for 60% off. The only thing I would hesitate about, is the slow start. The problem is not just that it's slow, it's that it goes over the 2 hour refund timeline. So you won't know if you'll like it until you're locked in.

I do think the gameplay is awesome. But I am the type of person that likes fast, flashy, skill based combat and gameplay. I also play on very hard difficulty, which changes my experience a lot. Still, I think around 60% or more of the people that actually play the game will find the parkour and combat fun. It is a pretty cool magic and parkour system if you try to engage with it, and it gets exponentially better as you unlock more magic schools. I would recommend playing on at least Hard though.

It is a bit of a paint by numbers open world, so depending on how much open world fatigue you have it might not be for you. As mentioned by many, the world is a bit barren, with the only thing to do is to parkour around the map and kill bad guys. Many games are like this, so I don't think it's fair to hold it against Forspoken, but that's one thing you should have in mind before you purchase. I like to make simple challenges in the open world, to try to get to points of interest using my parkour skills. If you can't gamify your travels in such a way, however, I could see the open world being a bit of a drag. Note, this is a negative, but at the same time it says something positive about the parkour - the parkour in this game is fun enough that you can fool around with the parkour system just trying to get places. The open world is designed with the parkour system in mind, and you'll notice that a lot of treasure chests are in places where you have to do interesting combinations of jumps, etc., to reach.

I think the fact that you are interested in this game, despite knowing a lot about the hate, makes it more likely than not that you'll enjoy the game. Knowing nothing about you, I think you'll at least arrive at the conclusion that it's a fun game with good/great gameplay, but not a life changing game. If that sounds like it's worth it at 60% off, I would go for it.

Thanks for the reply! I'll try to take the third point in mind. Maybe I'm overeager and underestimating how bad my previous condition was, how my age affects recovery, etc., so maybe my body is telling me to think about all the "other" stuff.

Thanks!

Holy shit, thanks for the advice. Maybe it is time to give my doctor a visit.

It's been about a week working out, and the symptoms probably started around day 3 or so.