Sickday

I’m not so sure about all perpetual licenses being scams. I’ve personally used Jetbrain’s perpetual fallback license for the 2018 version of their IDEs for 4+ years until I decided to renew. I never once felt scammed there, so I would say there IS a right way to do perpetual licenses.

Cult of the Lamb - Got this for my birthday from my buddy and it’s been very solid. I see why the reviews hype this game up; it’s a weird rpg with base building elements and that’s right up my alley. I’ve been playing it on the steam deck with a conservative power profile and it’s been a lot of fun.

Tactics Ogre Reborn - I’m a FF Tactics fan and I was told this game would scratch the itch. So far I can say it’s at got a captivating story. It’s great that my choices matter in this game and that character development is based on those choices. The gameplay is familiar and fluid. The AI also seems to scale well with the difficulty setting. I’d say fans of FF Tactics should definitely pick this up.

Here’s my top 8 in no particular order

• Golden Sun / The Lost Age
• Drill Dozer
• Kirby Nightmare in Dreamland
• Summon Night Swordcraft Story 1/2
• Mega Man Battle Network 3, 5, and 6 (either flavor of each is good)
• Mother 3
• Astro Boy Omega Factor
• Sonic Battle

You should give Squadron 42 a shot on one of their Free Weekends. It’s pretty close to Elite as far as flight mechanics and maneuvering goes and a lot more forgiving about getting the parts you want in your ship. It’s pretty jank on foot though. Not sure if that’s a dealbreaker.

Sort of surprised Elite Dangerous never made your list. It seems like it would be right up your alley! I’ve invested thousands of hours in Elite Dangerous and several thousands hours across the entire Elite franchise.

I’ve had lots of fun with more recent space games, but to this day Star Citizen’s Squadron 42 is the closest I’ve seen any game come to Elite’s level of flight control and maneuvering. I would say it’s currently held down by how they try to manage additional content and flushing out existing content. Endgame content isn’t as exhilarating as I’d hoped, but there’s still plenty to do in the game to keep you busy for hundreds if not thousands of hours.

Elite certainly isn’t without it’s faults and I’d be pleased to see more contenders in this space (ha!), but I also recognize that space sandbox games are very difficult to get right.