Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rails.
Genshin Impact successfully had my attention for over five hundred days. It’s a regularly updated game that can be played entirely F2P, and I love that concept. Anyone who claims that you have to whale to get good at the game is wrong. You just have to play the game and ignore that some Youtubers and Twitch Streamers seem to believe that fake big numbers are the only way to improve in that game. In reality, I’ve watched streamers ignore that, and instead opt to play with their favorite romantic pairing or favorite character because they just enjoy the game more that way.
Honkai Star Rails seems to be a similar concept, however it faces a dilemma where it is a turn-based game and as a result the battle mechanics, so far, have to be more carefully considered. For example, I run a defense-healer-single attack-AOE attack team. So far, I tend to die if I don’t do that. The gameplay is more simplistic than Genshin Impact, but the battles are stronger and tend to take longer. Bright side: because it was recently launched you get a bunch of free pulls! Yeah!
I love visual novels but I’m so bad at playing them. I keep buying them because I love to support the industry, but they tend to be hours and hours long so I don’t finish them, aha.
The last one I played through a route on was “Life After Magic” which is a pretty relatable queer VN about a Sailor Moon expy who dropped out of high school and ended up in a dead-end job, having to reunite with her friends / potential love interests. I’d like to finish this one because I know you can date the villain in one route.
Fata Morgana.
Listen, whether you like Visual Novels or not doesn’t matter. But Fata Morgana is just somehow…perfect. Everything is resolved and I don’t feel any need to complain about any aspect of it. It was an experience to play a game that left me with no questions afterwards. It was just a really good story.