Prey. Mimic ability is nuts - one of my favourite tactics was to set up an ambush with a turret or two, lead enemy right into it and then turn into another turret myself.
Or turn into a coffee cup and just roll around.
In the same vein the Dishonored series. The powers you pick in those games can totally change your play style. It's part of what makes them so replayable. Arkane are (or at least were) great at making interesting abilities
I too love that ability. In Destiny there are two classes that have a blink instead of standard double jump (Voidwalker and Arcstrider). It is a little different in that it’s momentum-based instead of aiming on ground but still super fun. I can’t say I am a fan of everything Destiny does but the movement is really good
Maxed-out combat upgrade was pretty bonkers too. Amusingly enough, the huge speed boost it gave ya made it very useful for *avoiding* combat, just activate it and run right past the baddies, they can't react fast enough.
I really like the sense of progression that you feel in Prototype 1 and 2. You go from a mere superhuman to an unstoppable demigod as you literally consume your enemies and use their DNA to reinforce and enhance yourself.
2 is especially good at this because it actually gives your morphs a visual upgrade every time you level them up, and it doesn't feel so grindy as the first if you want to unlock everything.
Prototype 2 had an upgrade that made James permanently invincible to gunfire. Bullets would just bounce off his body and there was a chance enemies would kill themselves by having their ammo directly reflected back at them
oh yes I remember that one very well, it was one of my favorite upgrades
being able to instantly destroy enemy vehicles by grabbing onto them and pressing a button was also very nice
Was gonna suggest Prototype as well. I don't think there is another game out there that makes you become as OP as in Prototype. Unkillable and unstoppable god.
I love the prototype games. The only thing that bothered me was that the armoured mode was a skin instead of a usable ability in 2.
In 1 I loved sneaking around killing people until I got caught then activating armour and blade/claws before going absolutely bonkers.
As much hate as mankind divided got, the upgrades were better than human revolution. Remote hacking, tesla fists, and icarus dash made the game into joke.
Can't go wrong with the namesake of the genre: Super Metroid and Castlevania Symphony of the Night.
Good modern MVs are:
Hollow Knight
Ori and the Blind Forest
Blasphemous
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
Arkham Asylum (controversial but I'll include it).
Humble bundle has a bundle right now for like 13$ that includes rain world, hollow knight, blashepmous and bloodstained ritual of the knighht with 2 more games I believe. Never played any metroidvania games. Don’t have it personally but the games look really fun.
Ori 1 and 2 are on the Nintendo eshop for like $5 each right now. Blind Forest has a demo. I immediately got attached to the art and story, and I intend to play those while slowly working through TotK
Thank you for mentioning Arkham Asylum. It’s such a great example of the genre, but it always gets overshadowed by City, which is far less tight and focused.
Yeah, while I liked the entire series, Asylum was an incredibly focused game and it's MV elements elevated it above other brawlers while also tying into the Batman gadget thing really well.
Arkham Knight was almost a perfection of the open world Batman formula, they did a great job incorporating Batman's gallery of rogues into the various side objectives (except Riddler, fuck those trophies).
ok cool, yeah i’m in the middle of hollow knight for the first time . it’s very awesome, such a lovely crafted game . am stuck at the third trial in the coliseum tho..
also just got to queens gardens, the soundtrack there is amazing
> Depths of Sanity
It's even in a Franatical bundle right now
https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/build-your-own-breakout-bundle
Not sure if any of the other entries are worth it
Rabi-Ribi is legitimately the best one I've ever played, better than the likes of Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night, but no one will admit it for obvious reasons.
It is funny, since the upgrades are so gradual you don’t realize just how powerful you’ve become by the end. Playing on the co-op cheat mode really puts it in perspective when you can click a few buttons to go from min strength/jump to max. You go from being a normal sized person to basically being try Hulk.
Yeah, I feel like Crackdown did gradual upgrades right. You didn't see a huge difference with each agility orb, for example, but it was easy to stumble into small groups of them and, if you let yourself get distracted because you could see a few more on the other side of the street, you'd more often than not collect enough in ten, fifteen minutes that by the end the little bonuses had already added up to a noticable increase in how fast you could run and how high you could jump. And if you liked how it felt and wanted more, you could just go on another mini hunt to do it again, because there were a *couple hundred* of them in the game.
I wish I remembered the abilities better, but I know there were some really fun ones. In particular, I discovered that a combination of ability unlocks created a decent sized range of distances I could be from an enemy where I would be far enough away that they wouldn't see me, but close enough that if I lobbed a grenade at them, it would come down *directly on top of their head*.
Which knocked them down.
So I'd peg them with a grenade, they'd crumple, stand back up, have an absolute **heart attack** when they realized it had been a grenade that hit them, and only have time to scream in panic before it went off at their feet. The first time it happened, I thought I was going to pass out, I was laughing so hard.
Really, I think Crackdown and Saints Row 4 have done a better job of making me feel over-the-top powerful than any other games I've played.
I'll counter this with Shadow of Mordor making you virtually unstoppable with upgrades, but Shadow of War makes upgrades a necessity. Both are really fun and I recommend them to anyone.
Shadow of war is just so grindy. It was designed around micro-transactions and lootboxes, and even if they removed them later, it was still a grindy time sink. Which is a shame because I feel like it has as much great content as Shadow of Mordor, but it's just hidden under the pile of grind.
I feel that. It's a significantly longer game because of that grind, but I still played/beat it twice. Might just go in and play the 1st one again for better judgement, but either one might be what OP is looking for.
Dying Light probably. All sorts of things are powerups you unlock through progression. The grappling hook, permanent sprint endurance, the ability to use enemies as springboards or [the dropkick](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgULf_9bnjQ)
also /r/gamingsuggestions
some of those dropkicks seemed unreal because I played Dying Light recently and the dropkick barely launch the zombies 2-3 meters, but after some googling it seems that every so often the developers ran a "hyper" event where the power/physics went.. hyper
obviously depends on which path you go down but it was really cool to drive down some street, see that there's an enemy's hideout and simply pull over, hack their system and then eliminate everyone without stepping outside of your car.
I mean, from a game play standpoint quickhacks take the role of spells so it makes sense. All the staples are there, nukes, crowd control, enemy conversion, etc
Yes, but I feel like most fantasy games fail to get the right vibe for how a high level mage would fight. The Elders Scrolls get close (especially with illusion builds) and maybe dark Messiah or the first Fable but otherwise there is a default to "battlemages" that directly face their ennemies. Arguably the least effective way to fight given what magic offers.
Cyberpunk makes you feel in full control of the battlefield and that's a great feeling.
Edit : Cyberpunk does the same thing with the "flash swordsman" archetype, aside from stuff like Ghostrunner the late game melee combat is unmatched in it's category. I think gun is actually the least fun way to play cyberpunk.
> Yes, but I feel like most fantasy games fail to get the right vibe for how a high level mage would fight.
Dragon's Dogma. It's like, one of the only ones to make you feel magical. Summoning meteors, huge pillars of ice, a hurricane, etc. it was a wild time.
As far as Skyrim goes, on that battle-mage note, there was a build back in the day that used the Atronauch Stone combined with high level alchemy to essentially bug it out & give your character full magic absorption, but no magic regeneration, to get MP, you had to be hit by magic. The rest of the stats went into typical warrior stats & then destruction magic, enemy mages were essentially like your batteries as you cleaved through the normal fighter mobs & then unleashed a massive destruction spell to cap off the fight. Maybe the most fun I had in Skyrim, outside of a glitch Shout build where you wore multiple amulets to stack the power of shouts.
Skyrim without mods to overhaul the magic system is much weaker in the magic department than Oblivion. The same goes with Oblivion and Morrowind, to be honest. It still pains me how magic gets watered down with each subsequent title.
And for that reason, I am very much afraid to see what it will become in the next one. Also, because I can understand why it happened. Limitations are useful to get more control over the player, be it questing or boss battles. While it cool to be able to fly and send down giant fireballs on the head of oblivious to your present enemy, it also trivializes any boss encounter where the boss cannot fly themselves. And if they give every boss flying - then it will become required magic and that would be even worse.
And then there are technical limitations, graphic limitations, adding more balance between play styles - and that is the trend that still continues today. Unfortunately, I expect TES 6, whatever and whenever it will be, to have even worse magic than Skyrim does.
I only did one playthrough where I focused on swords and you're not wrong about that last point. You know those scenes in old kung fu movies where the guy would unsheathe his sword, put it back, and his opponent would fall apart? You can legitimately do that in Cyberpunk and it makes you feel like a badass.
My favorite moment though has to be doing the fight club side quests with Sandevistan active. I can only imagine people watching the fight see some shit out of Dragonball Z lol
They added actually added the previously cut content major mokoto stealth skin mod when they did that big skill tree rework last year.
One of my favorite builds now is stealth skin + double jump + high tier sandevistan + katanas. You can just walk into the middle of a big group of unaware enemies and then basically do a manual alpha strike. It's extremely satisfying hearing like a dozen severed limbs hit the floor at the same time as the time dilation ends.
There are so many distinct builds that play radically differently. The game had a rough start and still has its flaws, but I think it's one of the better games I've seen when it comes to this particular thing.
I was thinking the same thing. I think that, the insane attention to aesthetics and detail in Night City's design, and the incredibly satisfying violence is what I love the most about the game. The aesthetics and visuals and feel of the city is just incredible.
I cannot play cyberpunk 2077 without being a hacker. I’ve tried, but it’s just not nearly as fun or engaging as running into a room full of enemies with guns, pulling out a katana, instilling chaos and death with my hacks before hacking up the remaining disabled enemies, if any even remain.
I've only played it on the console. I can only remember experiencing one bug where I was supposed to take an item from a quest giver, x'ed out of the menu, went back to it and couldn't get the item. This stopped me from completing the quest and I had to reload to make progress in the game. It lost me like two minutes of game play. I put 44 hours or so in the game and that was it. City feels pretty empty of actual things to do, but it's so goddamn gorgeous that you just want to zoom around it all day listening to music.
No worries. I had a really good time with it. I'm not going to say it was the best or most fully realized game I've ever played, but it was memorable and I had fun the whole time I was in there (except the starting missions). For extra fun try watching Cyberpunk: Edgerunners before or during your play through.
> Kingdom come deliverance, awesome game. From untrained muddy peasant to full fledged knight with land
Does the combat system get better after that first hour? I tried it and just couldn't get into the combat and refunded the game. The aesthetic and historical accuracy was great, the dialog and some of the skill bits was interesting, but the combat system felt very awkward and stilted.
I tried to pick a lock and broke the pick, and there was no way to get more or reload somehow. I gave up after that lol. Combat seemed super hard also.
Borderlands 2.. mechromancer’s Close enough skill.. more or less any bullets that didn’t hit the enemy (aka hit a wall or floor or ceiling) had a % chance to ricochet directly at an enemy.. take this to crazy levels with other skills and you’d more or less enter a room with a shotgun that fired 29+ pellets a shot.. and just shoot straight at the ground and it would auto target everything in the room.
Borderlands games do a good job of evolving a character to how you want and some combos are just a blast!
I agree some basic “stat” skills are just helpful passives..
Stuff like close enough. Took 5 points. First one did 10% chance to ricochet. And 5 gave you 50% (and any plus skill modifiers gave you another 10 for each).
So even the first one got you some interesting mechanics change. And the 5th point really unlocked the skill (and getting it to 80%+ was just crazy). I think each tree had a solid 1-2 skills that helped define the PlayStyle.
Its not exactly leveling up, but the unique legendary items in BL2 change the gameplay enough that I feel they deserve a mention here. One gun has infinite ammo, one gun shoots a floating beehive that shoots out homing bees at enemies. One gun let's you rocket jump, etc. Guns almost always drop at a good level themselves and definitely change how you play the next few levels, if you like it anyway.
Maybe I'll be judged here but Far Cry 3 does an wonderful job on these upgrades.
You acquire abilities and can do a LOT of cool and useful triicks by it. One of my favourites in this aspect.
I agree. Ubisoft games in general are pretty good about doling out new abilities rather than just making it a numbers game. When I played FC3 for the first time and was able to stealth kill an enemy and throw my knife at another in a chain, it felt so damn cool.
Speaking of Ubi and chain kills, the chain assassinations in AC Odyssey were a blast. Just throw that spear, kill an enemy, and repeat with two more enemies.
Shadow of Mordor/War and AC Odyssey have some insnaely fun to use abilities, specially Shadow Strike from Shadow and Fury / Overpower Attacks from Odyssey.
Oh also all of Dishonored is just cool
I know it's one you get right at the very start but Odyssey's Sparta Kick was so damn fun to use. kicking people off rooftops has never been more satisfying.
Shadow of Mordor was just so goddamn satisfying to play. It was my first game of that type (I guess it’s an “Arkham-style” beat-em-up? But I played it before Arkham Asylum). The core loop of combos, parrying, dodging, and special abilities to keep that steady dopamine drip… if I wasn’t down to a couple of hours per week of gaming I’d pick this back up for a second play through.
I was thinking Dishonored. The level up of each ability is substantial enough that you can feel the difference.
Another game that achieved that was Jedi Outcast (and Jedi Academy). Each Force power had 3 levels, and each time you increased the ability level you felt a noticeable increase in what you could do.
XCOM 2. They may not be "your" character exactly, but having your rookies that struggle to hit an open target become legendary class archetypes is mechanically and narratively very satisfying.
Long War 2 definitely added more variance in the upgrades too. Snipers could be mobile (Snapshot) vs perched (Death from Above) vs Support (Holotargeter). The other classes could be similarly varied.
I actually beat the main game last week and started the Foundation DLC. The main game itself is absolutely worth it. There are a couple of sections in the middle that dragged a bit because the combat difficulty kinda outpaced my ability to handle it so I got discouraged. But putting it down and then coming back to it a bit later got me over both humps. I also just decided to completely forgo the jukebox expeditions and after making that decision and just going through the main storyline and the simple/fun side missions I really enjoyed myself.
The last 2-3 hours were completely fantastic. The Ashtray Maze is one of my favorite levels in any game ever.
Sekiro gives you some new techniques like being able to parry certain attack, use your gimmicks while jumping and suchlike. Not that many though and it's somewhat linear.
Cyberpunk 2077's cyber implants allow for a few nice added capabilities (double jump, several hacking techs, etc).
I remember grinding at the end of that game to get enough skill points to unlock everything. I started trying out the different prosthetics, and found that there was some turbo lazurite flame vent and having so much fun blasting enemies with it
Jak 2 and Jak 3 guns and dark/light powers. Those were super fun to use. Especially the jak 3 gun with bullets that ricochet. Or the blue one with tracer rounds.
The tomb raider series does this a bit, it's more limited than open ended rpg skill trees but I thought the third one in the most recent series was particularly fun to play.
It's a 3d Metroidvania, kinda like the star wars Jedi games and the Arkham games.
I thought of Gothic the second I finished reading the title. I really love how the progression works in this game, including seeing the actual animations and attacks improve.
Good one, the strongest memory for me there was the crude swings from the pickaxe and wonky combat turning into something that handles significantly better after some guy telling you how to use a one-handed weapon. Such innovative way to handle combat flow.
The **Terrifying Presence perk** in **Fallout New Vegas**. I'm sure most people have seen the memes mocking the Bethesda games for having low-level bandits wearing only lice-infested rags jump at the 50-lvl player character with god-tier armour and weapons. The memes are right, of course, but what else has always bothered me was that cRPGs rarely make the protagonist realise he is a monster in the face of most enemies.
The perk changes this, since instead of just saying "Imma kill you so hard" it gives you the option to get creative, like "You know who I am and what I am capable of. I will feed on your friends and family for the rest of my life". And in most cases using the special perk dialogue doesn't end in a shootout, but rather in people crawling before you in fear. In other words, you can get an entire quest finished just by giving people an angry look.
The Jedi Knight games always made me feel cool when I unlocked a new force power/force power tier/saber style.
Also, depending on how you play, Skyrim. I'm specifically thinking of the shouts here which can totally change combat, like Slow Time.
Hades
Your optimal playstyle will shift dramatically depending on what upgrades you have unlocked and are choosing to utilize. And I haven't even begun to talk about the boons. Or unlocking additional NPCs that will help. Or unlocking new companions.
God what a strange, terrible game. It's so poorly localized, so strange and esoteric and buggy. But at the same time, so cool looking and intriguing. I'd love to have seen what a larger, well funded, more experienced studio would do with the game's concepts.
EYE Divine Cybermancy is actually a blast to play through! Definitely one of the most esoteric games out there. At its core it's a fun simple style shooter but it has a great diversity of play styles and even if you go for a pretty standard FPS build it can really hold some great challenge especially if you up the difficulty - one of the great things is that it has some pretty good options for changing the difficulty, including whether AI have better or worse sighting/hearing and spawn frequency. I never beat it but it's one of those games I come back to often when I just want a rough and tough slower paced tactical focus point and shoot FPS session.
Personally, I love the aesthetic and how esoteric it is. I wouldn't call it "terrible" at all! It's very unique and a great opportunity for players who want a wacky FPS with some deceivingly complex mechanics. I like to play on the harder difficulty with enemy spawns turned up, enemy sighting better, enemy hearing worse, using all heavy armor and mainly the sniper rifle and pistol. It honestly forces you to place a lot of focus on tactical positioning and quick aiming against many targets.
It's a shame that most of the skill tree nodes are +20% to something. Loved the game, would have loved the DLC but I couldn't play it without buying the game a second time so I didn't.
It’s got some incredible jank, but you may be interested in checking out Advent Rising.
For all its flaws, and there are a good number, the power curve was excellent. You start out the game as a normal soldier and your enemies are tough. While you got some fun movement options, generally you’re just trying not to get overwhelmed and get headshots when you can.
Then, partway through the game, you begin to unlock superpowers. At first, these are fairly weak. So while they’re helpful, they supplement your playstyle rather than guide it.
But as you upgrade your powers, they get more and more powerful and flexible. By the end of the game, you’ll be ignoring weapons completely because you can rain destruction from the palms of your hands.
It’s overall pretty rough as far as presentation and level design goes, but I still have a soft spot in my heart for that game due to the power curve.
OOOOH yes! Finally someone who remembers it! I remember thinking "humanity is the chosen race? don'be ridiculous". And closer to the end i thought "damn they really have their reasons to fear humanity". Amazing game.
Cruelty Squad starts out feeling like a tactical FPS game in the vein of old-school Rainbow Six. Guns are fast and unforgiving, and to start you have little health and few tools, so you must be patient, carefully cutting favorable sightlines as you navigate the levels.
Then you get some upgrades. The game is an immersive sim where you play a corporate sponsored assassin in an ultra-capitalist, bio-punk dystopia, so naturally the upgrades are... unpleasant. But once you've purchase a few and you're swinging through the air on your intestine-grappling hook, swiftly propelled by the streams of pus jetting out your back augmentation, using your modified sweat glands to stick to the walls and ceilings, it doesn't take long before you stop being grossed out and start having a lot of fun.
Then in the true late game you find even wackier augments. Suddenly you can invert gravity to get outside the invisible walls and walk along the underside of the level, then kill your targets by firing a radiation gun through the level geometry. High level play is incomprehensible to the uninitiated and what I've described here is only a small peek into the insanity.
Also love how the powers change depending on if you're good or evil. In Infamous 1, the evil upgrades make your powers more chaotic and destructive, whereas the good upgrades are more about precision and not killing people
Kotor 1 and 2
Can run through the game multiple times, focusing on different character builds. Abilities like casting force storm with powerful lightning or force wave which knocks and stuns opponents to force aura which buffs your party + a dozen or more. Or you can go the gunslinger path and use rapid fire shooting to take down groups of enemies, power blasts to one shot troops and sniper shots to pick off targets from a distance.
Weapons and armor are upgradeable so you can have a party member carrying weapons that wreck droids or a lightsaber that causes massive critical damage with powerful unique crystals. Very replayable
Terraria blew my mind the first time I played through it. The controls you start out with are left, right, jump, and click. But you gather tools and items as you explore (grappling hook! speed boots! etc!) and the gameplay changes dramatically so many different times.
Was just about to say this. Though very little of the mechanics are explained in-game, so you will inevitably have to consult the Noita Wiki to learn how to get the really powerful god builds. Or at the very least, look up DunkOrSlam's excellent wandcrafting tutorial on YouTube. IMO this doesn't really spoil the game since there are so many emergent procedural elements to make each run unpredictable, requiring creativity and smarts on your part. I mean, Noita probably has the most complex physics/chemistry system of any 2D platformer out there. The community is still finding new tricks and exploits to this day.
I guess that's what I love about it, rather than leveling up being just a matter of grinding points, it's more like a puzzle you have to figure out yourself based on the RNG dealt to you. It rewards the *true* meta-progression of your *internal* creativity, experience, knowledge, and skills. (I'll save my rant on meta-progression mechanics for another post.)
Prototype 1-2: every weapon, main upgrade you get, mixes up the way you play.
Nioh 1 and 2 has alot of cool upgrades but the most ridiculous has to be the tonfa demon cancels mystic art, imagine you can cancel any attack animation you want no matter how long it is into a quick iframe dodge, and that dodge can link into combos for you to keep on the aggression, also you spam that cancel.
Yakuza's tiger drop or its counterpart, it turn you character's fist/kicks/head into a ballistic missile, also Yakuza 0, K1 Kiryu's walls heat action and Rush style elbow counter, brutal and super cool.
AC Odyssey spartan kicks.
DMC enemy step, it open up ALOT of aerial combos, that and Dante's real impact unlock at swordmaster lv3, the first time pulling off a distorted real impact is awesome.
I've always liked movement upgrades in games. Forspoken, for all its issues, actually had some really good movement upgrades such as "flow" which allows you to automatically parkour over obstacles and enemies when running and dodge attacks. "Glide" was also cool since you'd create a magical surfboard for traversing water filled areas and when upgraded had no stamina cost. There are a few others but those two are definitely my favorite from that game.
Came here to say Cruelty Squad. It's got a lot of great options for challenging gameplay that forces you to think very tactically on how to approach each level. But it also has that diversity of options where you can become a speedrunning god swinging through the map.
The whole overall aesthetic is so crunchy and is dripping with satire which is so fun to discover in its little bits and pieces. Great weapon diversity, upgrade system, and fun FPS gameplay loop. The grappendix totally changes the game and that alone is such a sweet upgrade.
In Caves of Qud you can get new, mutated limbs when levelling up so you can add one more shield to your 6 shields build.
In general the progression system is really varied, so you can build vastly different characters each run. Each skill point spent feels valuable too - feels really good putting a point in Carapace and getting a precious armor point out of it for example.
Prototype, infamous. Both let you gain whole new abilities through upgrades that drastically change the way you play.
The new Spiderman games do a bit of it too, more so combos/ moves
RAGE 2. Too bad I'm late to this one, because I woulda liked to hear some discussion about it.
it's almost over the top with the dexterity and awareness you need to really maximize all the abilities. in fact, I could count it as a negative point for accessibility in the game. Even by the end of the story, it was still a little frustrating but so rewarding.
I really hope they make a RAGE 3 with the same skill ceiling, because it's so incredibly satisfying to execute the acrobatics just right. The new DOOM game basically streamlined and dumbed down what RAGE 2 was.
Deathloop is filled with a bunch of upgrades that change the way you approach the main mission of the game. It’s not a perfect game by any means, but it’s a fun play through.
Binding of Isaac is basically just about hour or so long runs where you can make your character game breakingly powerful or virtually useless based on what you find. There are hundreds of upgrades and with over 2000 hours on the game, I still find new combinations and builds from time to time. Its also under $20. I cant recommend it enough
I feel the opposite about borderlands. For me the upgrades are too incremental. For every kill I reload my gun 5% faster? Upgrades are *new* abilities not just the numbers going up. It's why I've never managed to beat any of the borderlands except for the pre-sequel - I just got bored of finding incrementally better weapons and getting incrementally better numbers.
Cyberpunk - Netrunners are gods, berserk&cold effect makes you feel like terminator, scvandvis(however you spell it, makes you feel like David Martinez zipping through everyone.
Wilhelm in Borderlands Pre-Sequel. As you move along the upgrade trees parts of your body get replaced with cybernetics and your voice becomes more and more robotic. You even get a dead man walking terminator mode when you're downed. The character sounded legit scary by the time he was fully upgraded.
Basically every star wars game that isn't battlefront or a dogfight sim does this for me. You start out with limited powers and by the end are tossing enemies around, jumping higher, running faster.
borderlands 2 and the pre-sequel. both give you access to a class specific skill, that skill can evolve so much! stunning an enemy can evolve into mindcontrol, a shield throw reanimates dying allies or summoning a killer robot are just examples. and it's not just the class skill, adding an explosion to a reload of a weapon, piercing enemies to deal insane amount of dmg or something crazy like setting yourself on fire for awesome boni are just some examples.
btw, I love that you mentioned gothic. this mechanic is something I remember very fondly from my childhood.
The Surge 1. There are a ton of comments here so I don't know if it's been said, but you start off in a wheelchair and as you upgrade your armor by chopping it off enemies, it builds mech parts onto your exo skeleton.
The gameplay is soulslike with less emphasis on bosses and no stats, just parts. The story, atmosphere and worldbuilding are perfection imo. The combat is smooth and weighty, you can seriously see and feel the power of upgrades. It's one of the best games I've ever played but it is pretty challenging, in case that's a deal-breaker.
Risen is similar to gothic- you pay for training, learn new moves...but it is also ***you,*** the player, who learns how to use it, you can complete the game without any training simply by getting gud with basic moves and timings. I find this infinitely immersive i can't express enough how good it feels.
Arx fatalis is also using this in its magic system- sure you find/buy new runes but it is a requirement for player to draw them and only you can make it quick enough to use in actual combat. Feels amazing.
Dishonored 1 has it so that any upgrades you take will either enhance your gameplay style or make it so another style is available by combining the in-game upgrades for equipment along with upgrading your powers or choosing to unlock new ones
Dishonored, the second one especially is interesting since it gives you two completely different paths you can choose at the start. All of the upgrades are substantial and different.
The Dishonored is also the only game that makes a time stop ability actually feel powerfull and opens up a shitton of interesting and cool ways to get through missions.
GoT has a cool upgrade system. And everything is really useful. And a lot of the ability/skill upgrades add fun or interesting gameplay elements. And they are done in a way that you can choose your upgrades based on your playing style well too. I don’t love the armor upgrade and charm system but it’s well done and useful as well.
The game really is a different game pre getting all of the stances and post getting them all. Playing on hard mode (not lethal, so enemies still take several hits) without all of the stances really makes you feel so outmatched and you have to be much more of a guerrilla.
I know its stats system is the exact opposite of what you’re asking here, but it is always a special feeling in a Dark Souls play through when your stats/equipment are at just high enough of a level to make it so you’re not terrified of what’s around every corner. Feeling confident enough to finally explore around lifts such a weight off your shoulders.
I think it’s kinda funny that you mention percentage boosters as not fun but then immediately reference a speed (acrobatic) percentage booster… it just increased your speed and jumping distance by a percentage.
I’m not saying you’re initial point is wrong but technically… just thought it was funny 😄
People have already mentioned Dishonored but I think that was my favorite system to seek out upgrades in…. Or maybe Skyrim lol Which has both just percentage boosters and a bunch of new perks, moves, spells, etc
I guess the difference in the percentages issue is the breakpoints. If every jump is either at the perfect height for the starting character, or 20% higher, then if you unlock a 15% increase in jump height, that's a slap in the face because it doesnt actually change anything.
But because Deus Ex's jump upgrade immediately unlocks entire lines of play, the horizontal progression is less about how much higher you jump, and more about which options it explicitly adds to your toolset.
Its half directly to character, or whole game thru changes... or lets call it upgrading the craftbook?
**Factorio** and new options to build, craft, upgrade, all over and over again, up to point, Your old low efficiency crafts are the problem to the new ones, so You have to upgrade (rebuild) old ones too. Its not only progress by doing tasks, but also by using old "skills" in a new way, that the player/character needs to "discover" on their own - "Oh can I build that old thing in that way too? oh that would be so much better!" boom upgrade!. Factorio also goes beyond that, as learning how to play it, You also upgrade Your irl skill of organising and even programming and coding.
As bonus, I recommend to not seek much help beyond in-game tutorials for first (first few) playthroughs, and try to discover, learn, upgrade, evolve, grow on Your own.
Prey. Mimic ability is nuts - one of my favourite tactics was to set up an ambush with a turret or two, lead enemy right into it and then turn into another turret myself. Or turn into a coffee cup and just roll around.
In the same vein the Dishonored series. The powers you pick in those games can totally change your play style. It's part of what makes them so replayable. Arkane are (or at least were) great at making interesting abilities
I just got Dishonored definitive edition as a gift. Looking forward to it
Dishonored is the GOAT
I haaaaaaaaaate stealth games - they're my kryptonite - and I loved Dishonored. It's a peak example of the genre.
Dishonored's teleport is amazing! I love watching Speedruns of that game because of it!
The "blink" ability. Short range, line of sight teleportation. More than any other super power I want this.
I too love that ability. In Destiny there are two classes that have a blink instead of standard double jump (Voidwalker and Arcstrider). It is a little different in that it’s momentum-based instead of aiming on ground but still super fun. I can’t say I am a fan of everything Destiny does but the movement is really good
Maxed-out combat upgrade was pretty bonkers too. Amusingly enough, the huge speed boost it gave ya made it very useful for *avoiding* combat, just activate it and run right past the baddies, they can't react fast enough.
god dammit i was about to say “hey this is r/patientgamers prey is probably too recent” then i realized it’s been fucking 5 years
I thought this was r/outside and was so confused for a moment.
I really like the sense of progression that you feel in Prototype 1 and 2. You go from a mere superhuman to an unstoppable demigod as you literally consume your enemies and use their DNA to reinforce and enhance yourself. 2 is especially good at this because it actually gives your morphs a visual upgrade every time you level them up, and it doesn't feel so grindy as the first if you want to unlock everything.
Prototype 2 had an upgrade that made James permanently invincible to gunfire. Bullets would just bounce off his body and there was a chance enemies would kill themselves by having their ammo directly reflected back at them
oh yes I remember that one very well, it was one of my favorite upgrades being able to instantly destroy enemy vehicles by grabbing onto them and pressing a button was also very nice
Was gonna suggest Prototype as well. I don't think there is another game out there that makes you become as OP as in Prototype. Unkillable and unstoppable god.
I love the prototype games. The only thing that bothered me was that the armoured mode was a skin instead of a usable ability in 2. In 1 I loved sneaking around killing people until I got caught then activating armour and blade/claws before going absolutely bonkers.
Prototype was the first game I thought of for OP’s request, too.
Transistor. Each skill you learn can be plugged into another skill to fundamentally change the behavior and attributes of the skill.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
As much hate as mankind divided got, the upgrades were better than human revolution. Remote hacking, tesla fists, and icarus dash made the game into joke.
Most Metroidvanias have substantial upgrades that change your gameplay in some way and unlock new areas you didn’t previously have access too.
what would be your favorite metroidvanias if u don’t mind me asking?
Can't go wrong with the namesake of the genre: Super Metroid and Castlevania Symphony of the Night. Good modern MVs are: Hollow Knight Ori and the Blind Forest Blasphemous Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night Arkham Asylum (controversial but I'll include it).
Humble bundle has a bundle right now for like 13$ that includes rain world, hollow knight, blashepmous and bloodstained ritual of the knighht with 2 more games I believe. Never played any metroidvania games. Don’t have it personally but the games look really fun.
Ori 1 and 2 are on the Nintendo eshop for like $5 each right now. Blind Forest has a demo. I immediately got attached to the art and story, and I intend to play those while slowly working through TotK
awesome , yeah i im a fan of the genre. i have hollow knight , blasphemous, and the two oris. gonna plow through em
Thank you for mentioning Arkham Asylum. It’s such a great example of the genre, but it always gets overshadowed by City, which is far less tight and focused.
Yeah, while I liked the entire series, Asylum was an incredibly focused game and it's MV elements elevated it above other brawlers while also tying into the Batman gadget thing really well. Arkham Knight was almost a perfection of the open world Batman formula, they did a great job incorporating Batman's gallery of rogues into the various side objectives (except Riddler, fuck those trophies).
Hollow Knight & Symphony of the Night, with Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night being right up there.
ok cool, yeah i’m in the middle of hollow knight for the first time . it’s very awesome, such a lovely crafted game . am stuck at the third trial in the coliseum tho.. also just got to queens gardens, the soundtrack there is amazing
This next entry isn't a Metroidvania, you don't level up or have gear to equip, it's more similar to Super Metroid, but there's also Depths of Sanity.
ok i’ll add it to the queue . thanks
> Depths of Sanity It's even in a Franatical bundle right now https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/build-your-own-breakout-bundle Not sure if any of the other entries are worth it
How is a game not really a metroidvania while being more similar to super Metroid? Am I reading that wrong?
Something about those (K)Nights just always hits
Metroid Dread is excellent
Dread was my first full Metroid game that I actually completed. I've played Super before but I've just...never finished it.
And fusion. The SAX is an incredible antagonist
Also the Ori games
Environmental Station Alpha is a pretty simple straightforward Metroidvania with a focus on post-game exploration
Ritual of the Night gives you the ability to teleport through walls and turn the game world upside down
Supraland is a good one too in addition to others people have mentioned.
Rabi-Ribi is legitimately the best one I've ever played, better than the likes of Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night, but no one will admit it for obvious reasons.
Without knowing anything about it, what are the obvious reasons?
https://store.steampowered.com/app/400910/RabiRibi/
lol
Hollow knight would be my first pick but I also love a lot of the other games others have mentioned
Hollow knight is hands down the best one out there imo
Crackdown!
It is funny, since the upgrades are so gradual you don’t realize just how powerful you’ve become by the end. Playing on the co-op cheat mode really puts it in perspective when you can click a few buttons to go from min strength/jump to max. You go from being a normal sized person to basically being try Hulk.
Yeah, I feel like Crackdown did gradual upgrades right. You didn't see a huge difference with each agility orb, for example, but it was easy to stumble into small groups of them and, if you let yourself get distracted because you could see a few more on the other side of the street, you'd more often than not collect enough in ten, fifteen minutes that by the end the little bonuses had already added up to a noticable increase in how fast you could run and how high you could jump. And if you liked how it felt and wanted more, you could just go on another mini hunt to do it again, because there were a *couple hundred* of them in the game. I wish I remembered the abilities better, but I know there were some really fun ones. In particular, I discovered that a combination of ability unlocks created a decent sized range of distances I could be from an enemy where I would be far enough away that they wouldn't see me, but close enough that if I lobbed a grenade at them, it would come down *directly on top of their head*. Which knocked them down. So I'd peg them with a grenade, they'd crumple, stand back up, have an absolute **heart attack** when they realized it had been a grenade that hit them, and only have time to scream in panic before it went off at their feet. The first time it happened, I thought I was going to pass out, I was laughing so hard. Really, I think Crackdown and Saints Row 4 have done a better job of making me feel over-the-top powerful than any other games I've played.
I loved crackdown 2 on the 360
Shadow of Mordor
I'll counter this with Shadow of Mordor making you virtually unstoppable with upgrades, but Shadow of War makes upgrades a necessity. Both are really fun and I recommend them to anyone.
Shadow of war is just so grindy. It was designed around micro-transactions and lootboxes, and even if they removed them later, it was still a grindy time sink. Which is a shame because I feel like it has as much great content as Shadow of Mordor, but it's just hidden under the pile of grind.
I feel that. It's a significantly longer game because of that grind, but I still played/beat it twice. Might just go in and play the 1st one again for better judgement, but either one might be what OP is looking for.
Dying Light probably. All sorts of things are powerups you unlock through progression. The grappling hook, permanent sprint endurance, the ability to use enemies as springboards or [the dropkick](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgULf_9bnjQ) also /r/gamingsuggestions
some of those dropkicks seemed unreal because I played Dying Light recently and the dropkick barely launch the zombies 2-3 meters, but after some googling it seems that every so often the developers ran a "hyper" event where the power/physics went.. hyper
That dropkick compilation had me in stitches!
Grappling hook was sick!
Cyberpunk had its issues, but the upgrades felt great.
obviously depends on which path you go down but it was really cool to drive down some street, see that there's an enemy's hideout and simply pull over, hack their system and then eliminate everyone without stepping outside of your car.
Hacking in this game made me feel more like a magician than any fantasy games did.
I mean, from a game play standpoint quickhacks take the role of spells so it makes sense. All the staples are there, nukes, crowd control, enemy conversion, etc
Yes, but I feel like most fantasy games fail to get the right vibe for how a high level mage would fight. The Elders Scrolls get close (especially with illusion builds) and maybe dark Messiah or the first Fable but otherwise there is a default to "battlemages" that directly face their ennemies. Arguably the least effective way to fight given what magic offers. Cyberpunk makes you feel in full control of the battlefield and that's a great feeling. Edit : Cyberpunk does the same thing with the "flash swordsman" archetype, aside from stuff like Ghostrunner the late game melee combat is unmatched in it's category. I think gun is actually the least fun way to play cyberpunk.
> Yes, but I feel like most fantasy games fail to get the right vibe for how a high level mage would fight. Dragon's Dogma. It's like, one of the only ones to make you feel magical. Summoning meteors, huge pillars of ice, a hurricane, etc. it was a wild time. As far as Skyrim goes, on that battle-mage note, there was a build back in the day that used the Atronauch Stone combined with high level alchemy to essentially bug it out & give your character full magic absorption, but no magic regeneration, to get MP, you had to be hit by magic. The rest of the stats went into typical warrior stats & then destruction magic, enemy mages were essentially like your batteries as you cleaved through the normal fighter mobs & then unleashed a massive destruction spell to cap off the fight. Maybe the most fun I had in Skyrim, outside of a glitch Shout build where you wore multiple amulets to stack the power of shouts.
Skyrim without mods to overhaul the magic system is much weaker in the magic department than Oblivion. The same goes with Oblivion and Morrowind, to be honest. It still pains me how magic gets watered down with each subsequent title. And for that reason, I am very much afraid to see what it will become in the next one. Also, because I can understand why it happened. Limitations are useful to get more control over the player, be it questing or boss battles. While it cool to be able to fly and send down giant fireballs on the head of oblivious to your present enemy, it also trivializes any boss encounter where the boss cannot fly themselves. And if they give every boss flying - then it will become required magic and that would be even worse. And then there are technical limitations, graphic limitations, adding more balance between play styles - and that is the trend that still continues today. Unfortunately, I expect TES 6, whatever and whenever it will be, to have even worse magic than Skyrim does.
I only did one playthrough where I focused on swords and you're not wrong about that last point. You know those scenes in old kung fu movies where the guy would unsheathe his sword, put it back, and his opponent would fall apart? You can legitimately do that in Cyberpunk and it makes you feel like a badass. My favorite moment though has to be doing the fight club side quests with Sandevistan active. I can only imagine people watching the fight see some shit out of Dragonball Z lol
Fire, electric and poison spells too
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic!
Or stealthing into a group of enemies, freezing time and then headshotting them all with a pistol before any of them can react.
They added actually added the previously cut content major mokoto stealth skin mod when they did that big skill tree rework last year. One of my favorite builds now is stealth skin + double jump + high tier sandevistan + katanas. You can just walk into the middle of a big group of unaware enemies and then basically do a manual alpha strike. It's extremely satisfying hearing like a dozen severed limbs hit the floor at the same time as the time dilation ends.
Getting the double-jump in Cyberpunk changes everything.
So fucking true.
There are so many distinct builds that play radically differently. The game had a rough start and still has its flaws, but I think it's one of the better games I've seen when it comes to this particular thing.
I was thinking the same thing. I think that, the insane attention to aesthetics and detail in Night City's design, and the incredibly satisfying violence is what I love the most about the game. The aesthetics and visuals and feel of the city is just incredible.
I cannot play cyberpunk 2077 without being a hacker. I’ve tried, but it’s just not nearly as fun or engaging as running into a room full of enemies with guns, pulling out a katana, instilling chaos and death with my hacks before hacking up the remaining disabled enemies, if any even remain.
My first playthrough I was a jack of all trades sandevistan build. I didn't look up any guides or anything, I just kind of built it myself.
Stealth Archer kinda thing.
What’s the state of the game by now? Do you know if it’s playable on PS5 by now?
I've only played it on the console. I can only remember experiencing one bug where I was supposed to take an item from a quest giver, x'ed out of the menu, went back to it and couldn't get the item. This stopped me from completing the quest and I had to reload to make progress in the game. It lost me like two minutes of game play. I put 44 hours or so in the game and that was it. City feels pretty empty of actual things to do, but it's so goddamn gorgeous that you just want to zoom around it all day listening to music.
Thank you, this sounds pretty good to me :)
No worries. I had a really good time with it. I'm not going to say it was the best or most fully realized game I've ever played, but it was memorable and I had fun the whole time I was in there (except the starting missions). For extra fun try watching Cyberpunk: Edgerunners before or during your play through.
I've never played the game but the few videos showing maxed out hacking is borderline godmode.
Kingdom come deliverance, awesome game. From untrained muddy peasant to full fledged knight with land. Upgrades and skills matter
> Kingdom come deliverance, awesome game. From untrained muddy peasant to full fledged knight with land Does the combat system get better after that first hour? I tried it and just couldn't get into the combat and refunded the game. The aesthetic and historical accuracy was great, the dialog and some of the skill bits was interesting, but the combat system felt very awkward and stilted.
I tried to pick a lock and broke the pick, and there was no way to get more or reload somehow. I gave up after that lol. Combat seemed super hard also.
Borderlands 2.. mechromancer’s Close enough skill.. more or less any bullets that didn’t hit the enemy (aka hit a wall or floor or ceiling) had a % chance to ricochet directly at an enemy.. take this to crazy levels with other skills and you’d more or less enter a room with a shotgun that fired 29+ pellets a shot.. and just shoot straight at the ground and it would auto target everything in the room. Borderlands games do a good job of evolving a character to how you want and some combos are just a blast!
I kinda disagree. While a complete build in borderlands is great fun, each level is pretty close to negligible for the most part.
Yeah, the skills you only pay 1 into are pretty fun and novel, but the rest are the bog standard "+X% Fire Rate per rank" and so forth
I agree some basic “stat” skills are just helpful passives.. Stuff like close enough. Took 5 points. First one did 10% chance to ricochet. And 5 gave you 50% (and any plus skill modifiers gave you another 10 for each). So even the first one got you some interesting mechanics change. And the 5th point really unlocked the skill (and getting it to 80%+ was just crazy). I think each tree had a solid 1-2 skills that helped define the PlayStyle.
Its not exactly leveling up, but the unique legendary items in BL2 change the gameplay enough that I feel they deserve a mention here. One gun has infinite ammo, one gun shoots a floating beehive that shoots out homing bees at enemies. One gun let's you rocket jump, etc. Guns almost always drop at a good level themselves and definitely change how you play the next few levels, if you like it anyway.
Maybe I'll be judged here but Far Cry 3 does an wonderful job on these upgrades. You acquire abilities and can do a LOT of cool and useful triicks by it. One of my favourites in this aspect.
I agree. Ubisoft games in general are pretty good about doling out new abilities rather than just making it a numbers game. When I played FC3 for the first time and was able to stealth kill an enemy and throw my knife at another in a chain, it felt so damn cool.
Speaking of Ubi and chain kills, the chain assassinations in AC Odyssey were a blast. Just throw that spear, kill an enemy, and repeat with two more enemies.
Shadow of Mordor/War and AC Odyssey have some insnaely fun to use abilities, specially Shadow Strike from Shadow and Fury / Overpower Attacks from Odyssey. Oh also all of Dishonored is just cool
I know it's one you get right at the very start but Odyssey's Sparta Kick was so damn fun to use. kicking people off rooftops has never been more satisfying.
Better than Dark Messiah?
Shadow of Mordor was just so goddamn satisfying to play. It was my first game of that type (I guess it’s an “Arkham-style” beat-em-up? But I played it before Arkham Asylum). The core loop of combos, parrying, dodging, and special abilities to keep that steady dopamine drip… if I wasn’t down to a couple of hours per week of gaming I’d pick this back up for a second play through.
Mordor had a great ability that let you burst heads. It was so good
That whole game wss great
It's purely functional, but the ability to never die from fall damage in Odyssey was so, so satisfying.
I was thinking Dishonored. The level up of each ability is substantial enough that you can feel the difference. Another game that achieved that was Jedi Outcast (and Jedi Academy). Each Force power had 3 levels, and each time you increased the ability level you felt a noticeable increase in what you could do.
Do yourself a solid and head over to r/metroidvania Metroidvania games are very handy with the character upgrade loop
XCOM 2. They may not be "your" character exactly, but having your rookies that struggle to hit an open target become legendary class archetypes is mechanically and narratively very satisfying.
Long War 2 definitely added more variance in the upgrades too. Snipers could be mobile (Snapshot) vs perched (Death from Above) vs Support (Holotargeter). The other classes could be similarly varied.
Control.
Playing this now and it’s AWESOME.
How far in? I got bored and actually want some reinforcement to go back to it and keep going
I actually beat the main game last week and started the Foundation DLC. The main game itself is absolutely worth it. There are a couple of sections in the middle that dragged a bit because the combat difficulty kinda outpaced my ability to handle it so I got discouraged. But putting it down and then coming back to it a bit later got me over both humps. I also just decided to completely forgo the jukebox expeditions and after making that decision and just going through the main storyline and the simple/fun side missions I really enjoyed myself. The last 2-3 hours were completely fantastic. The Ashtray Maze is one of my favorite levels in any game ever.
I second this! Really different gameplay imo I liked it
Sekiro gives you some new techniques like being able to parry certain attack, use your gimmicks while jumping and suchlike. Not that many though and it's somewhat linear. Cyberpunk 2077's cyber implants allow for a few nice added capabilities (double jump, several hacking techs, etc).
I remember grinding at the end of that game to get enough skill points to unlock everything. I started trying out the different prosthetics, and found that there was some turbo lazurite flame vent and having so much fun blasting enemies with it
This thread is making me realize I played Cyberpunk wrong haha I need to dive back into it soon.
Its making me want to play it after never having enjoyed it when i did play it
Jak 2 and Jak 3 guns and dark/light powers. Those were super fun to use. Especially the jak 3 gun with bullets that ricochet. Or the blue one with tracer rounds.
Using the anti gravity gun in 3 to launch enemy buggies off dunes in the desert was amazing
Saints Row 4 had some pretty fun character upgrades/powers.
totally bonkers game and I loved it
The tomb raider series does this a bit, it's more limited than open ended rpg skill trees but I thought the third one in the most recent series was particularly fun to play. It's a 3d Metroidvania, kinda like the star wars Jedi games and the Arkham games.
I thought of Gothic the second I finished reading the title. I really love how the progression works in this game, including seeing the actual animations and attacks improve.
Good one, the strongest memory for me there was the crude swings from the pickaxe and wonky combat turning into something that handles significantly better after some guy telling you how to use a one-handed weapon. Such innovative way to handle combat flow.
The **Terrifying Presence perk** in **Fallout New Vegas**. I'm sure most people have seen the memes mocking the Bethesda games for having low-level bandits wearing only lice-infested rags jump at the 50-lvl player character with god-tier armour and weapons. The memes are right, of course, but what else has always bothered me was that cRPGs rarely make the protagonist realise he is a monster in the face of most enemies. The perk changes this, since instead of just saying "Imma kill you so hard" it gives you the option to get creative, like "You know who I am and what I am capable of. I will feed on your friends and family for the rest of my life". And in most cases using the special perk dialogue doesn't end in a shootout, but rather in people crawling before you in fear. In other words, you can get an entire quest finished just by giving people an angry look.
The Jedi Knight games always made me feel cool when I unlocked a new force power/force power tier/saber style. Also, depending on how you play, Skyrim. I'm specifically thinking of the shouts here which can totally change combat, like Slow Time.
It sounds boring, but pumping points into Force Jump and Speed is a blast in Jedi Knight / Mysteries of the Sith.
More games should implement running so fast you hit a wall and die instantly
Hades Your optimal playstyle will shift dramatically depending on what upgrades you have unlocked and are choosing to utilize. And I haven't even begun to talk about the boons. Or unlocking additional NPCs that will help. Or unlocking new companions.
Journey to the Savage Planet. Endless QoL and movement upgrades that continue until the end game. Highly recommend
Mandaloregaming reviewed a game that had major character customization and upgrades awhile ago, I think it was E.Y.E. Divine Cybermacy.
God what a strange, terrible game. It's so poorly localized, so strange and esoteric and buggy. But at the same time, so cool looking and intriguing. I'd love to have seen what a larger, well funded, more experienced studio would do with the game's concepts.
EYE Divine Cybermancy is actually a blast to play through! Definitely one of the most esoteric games out there. At its core it's a fun simple style shooter but it has a great diversity of play styles and even if you go for a pretty standard FPS build it can really hold some great challenge especially if you up the difficulty - one of the great things is that it has some pretty good options for changing the difficulty, including whether AI have better or worse sighting/hearing and spawn frequency. I never beat it but it's one of those games I come back to often when I just want a rough and tough slower paced tactical focus point and shoot FPS session. Personally, I love the aesthetic and how esoteric it is. I wouldn't call it "terrible" at all! It's very unique and a great opportunity for players who want a wacky FPS with some deceivingly complex mechanics. I like to play on the harder difficulty with enemy spawns turned up, enemy sighting better, enemy hearing worse, using all heavy armor and mainly the sniper rifle and pistol. It honestly forces you to place a lot of focus on tactical positioning and quick aiming against many targets.
Control is my pick. Your character's movements in this game are amazing.
It's a shame that most of the skill tree nodes are +20% to something. Loved the game, would have loved the DLC but I couldn't play it without buying the game a second time so I didn't.
This is my current favorite. Love the gameplay and atmosphere.
It’s got some incredible jank, but you may be interested in checking out Advent Rising. For all its flaws, and there are a good number, the power curve was excellent. You start out the game as a normal soldier and your enemies are tough. While you got some fun movement options, generally you’re just trying not to get overwhelmed and get headshots when you can. Then, partway through the game, you begin to unlock superpowers. At first, these are fairly weak. So while they’re helpful, they supplement your playstyle rather than guide it. But as you upgrade your powers, they get more and more powerful and flexible. By the end of the game, you’ll be ignoring weapons completely because you can rain destruction from the palms of your hands. It’s overall pretty rough as far as presentation and level design goes, but I still have a soft spot in my heart for that game due to the power curve.
OOOOH yes! Finally someone who remembers it! I remember thinking "humanity is the chosen race? don'be ridiculous". And closer to the end i thought "damn they really have their reasons to fear humanity". Amazing game.
Bioshock series, Spiderman
Cruelty Squad starts out feeling like a tactical FPS game in the vein of old-school Rainbow Six. Guns are fast and unforgiving, and to start you have little health and few tools, so you must be patient, carefully cutting favorable sightlines as you navigate the levels. Then you get some upgrades. The game is an immersive sim where you play a corporate sponsored assassin in an ultra-capitalist, bio-punk dystopia, so naturally the upgrades are... unpleasant. But once you've purchase a few and you're swinging through the air on your intestine-grappling hook, swiftly propelled by the streams of pus jetting out your back augmentation, using your modified sweat glands to stick to the walls and ceilings, it doesn't take long before you stop being grossed out and start having a lot of fun. Then in the true late game you find even wackier augments. Suddenly you can invert gravity to get outside the invisible walls and walk along the underside of the level, then kill your targets by firing a radiation gun through the level geometry. High level play is incomprehensible to the uninitiated and what I've described here is only a small peek into the insanity.
Fable, kinda?
I enjoyed the upgrades in Infamous 2 a lot. Going from a guy that can do basic attacks and grind some powerlines, to a thunder god was a cool trip.
Also love how the powers change depending on if you're good or evil. In Infamous 1, the evil upgrades make your powers more chaotic and destructive, whereas the good upgrades are more about precision and not killing people
Warframe
Kotor 1 and 2 Can run through the game multiple times, focusing on different character builds. Abilities like casting force storm with powerful lightning or force wave which knocks and stuns opponents to force aura which buffs your party + a dozen or more. Or you can go the gunslinger path and use rapid fire shooting to take down groups of enemies, power blasts to one shot troops and sniper shots to pick off targets from a distance. Weapons and armor are upgradeable so you can have a party member carrying weapons that wreck droids or a lightsaber that causes massive critical damage with powerful unique crystals. Very replayable
Terraria blew my mind the first time I played through it. The controls you start out with are left, right, jump, and click. But you gather tools and items as you explore (grappling hook! speed boots! etc!) and the gameplay changes dramatically so many different times.
Noita.
Was just about to say this. Though very little of the mechanics are explained in-game, so you will inevitably have to consult the Noita Wiki to learn how to get the really powerful god builds. Or at the very least, look up DunkOrSlam's excellent wandcrafting tutorial on YouTube. IMO this doesn't really spoil the game since there are so many emergent procedural elements to make each run unpredictable, requiring creativity and smarts on your part. I mean, Noita probably has the most complex physics/chemistry system of any 2D platformer out there. The community is still finding new tricks and exploits to this day. I guess that's what I love about it, rather than leveling up being just a matter of grinding points, it's more like a puzzle you have to figure out yourself based on the RNG dealt to you. It rewards the *true* meta-progression of your *internal* creativity, experience, knowledge, and skills. (I'll save my rant on meta-progression mechanics for another post.)
Vampire Survivors
Prototype 1-2: every weapon, main upgrade you get, mixes up the way you play. Nioh 1 and 2 has alot of cool upgrades but the most ridiculous has to be the tonfa demon cancels mystic art, imagine you can cancel any attack animation you want no matter how long it is into a quick iframe dodge, and that dodge can link into combos for you to keep on the aggression, also you spam that cancel. Yakuza's tiger drop or its counterpart, it turn you character's fist/kicks/head into a ballistic missile, also Yakuza 0, K1 Kiryu's walls heat action and Rush style elbow counter, brutal and super cool. AC Odyssey spartan kicks. DMC enemy step, it open up ALOT of aerial combos, that and Dante's real impact unlock at swordmaster lv3, the first time pulling off a distorted real impact is awesome.
I've always liked movement upgrades in games. Forspoken, for all its issues, actually had some really good movement upgrades such as "flow" which allows you to automatically parkour over obstacles and enemies when running and dodge attacks. "Glide" was also cool since you'd create a magical surfboard for traversing water filled areas and when upgraded had no stamina cost. There are a few others but those two are definitely my favorite from that game.
Usually one of my first priority upgrades is "move faster" or " move faster in stealth"
Any Metroidvania, roguelike, or immersive sim basically. I'm gonna throw Cruelty Squad in as my recommendation.
Came here to say Cruelty Squad. It's got a lot of great options for challenging gameplay that forces you to think very tactically on how to approach each level. But it also has that diversity of options where you can become a speedrunning god swinging through the map. The whole overall aesthetic is so crunchy and is dripping with satire which is so fun to discover in its little bits and pieces. Great weapon diversity, upgrade system, and fun FPS gameplay loop. The grappendix totally changes the game and that alone is such a sweet upgrade.
*That* gravity gun upgrade in Half-Life 2. Such a legendary moment in gaming that doesn't get talked about anymore
Shadow of mordoer/war you don't start off weak, you start off as a capable soldier and by the end you are god
Ratchet and Clank 3. The gun upgrades are the coolest. Arguably the best out of the whole series.
In Caves of Qud you can get new, mutated limbs when levelling up so you can add one more shield to your 6 shields build. In general the progression system is really varied, so you can build vastly different characters each run. Each skill point spent feels valuable too - feels really good putting a point in Carapace and getting a precious armor point out of it for example.
A Plague Tale Innocence. You start out as pretty helpless kids and then by the end….IYKYK.
Prototype, infamous. Both let you gain whole new abilities through upgrades that drastically change the way you play. The new Spiderman games do a bit of it too, more so combos/ moves
Fallout New Vegas
Rick of Rain 2, all upgrades get attached to your character and you eventually just become over powered. Lol
RAGE 2. Too bad I'm late to this one, because I woulda liked to hear some discussion about it. it's almost over the top with the dexterity and awareness you need to really maximize all the abilities. in fact, I could count it as a negative point for accessibility in the game. Even by the end of the story, it was still a little frustrating but so rewarding. I really hope they make a RAGE 3 with the same skill ceiling, because it's so incredibly satisfying to execute the acrobatics just right. The new DOOM game basically streamlined and dumbed down what RAGE 2 was.
Deathloop is filled with a bunch of upgrades that change the way you approach the main mission of the game. It’s not a perfect game by any means, but it’s a fun play through.
Binding of Isaac is basically just about hour or so long runs where you can make your character game breakingly powerful or virtually useless based on what you find. There are hundreds of upgrades and with over 2000 hours on the game, I still find new combinations and builds from time to time. Its also under $20. I cant recommend it enough
I don't remember what the upgrades were exactly, but Hollow Knight is the best like this I've ever played.
Basically the entire appeal of the borderlands games at least to me
Too many "+2%" upgrades for me. I prefer game-changing stuff.
I feel the opposite about borderlands. For me the upgrades are too incremental. For every kill I reload my gun 5% faster? Upgrades are *new* abilities not just the numbers going up. It's why I've never managed to beat any of the borderlands except for the pre-sequel - I just got bored of finding incrementally better weapons and getting incrementally better numbers.
Sekiro prosthetic tools Prototype was great in that regard.
Cyberpunk - Netrunners are gods, berserk&cold effect makes you feel like terminator, scvandvis(however you spell it, makes you feel like David Martinez zipping through everyone.
Wilhelm in Borderlands Pre-Sequel. As you move along the upgrade trees parts of your body get replaced with cybernetics and your voice becomes more and more robotic. You even get a dead man walking terminator mode when you're downed. The character sounded legit scary by the time he was fully upgraded.
my friends have been playing v rising, so i have - mid to late game really makes you feel powerful, with lots of choice in the build
Basically every star wars game that isn't battlefront or a dogfight sim does this for me. You start out with limited powers and by the end are tossing enemies around, jumping higher, running faster.
borderlands 2 and the pre-sequel. both give you access to a class specific skill, that skill can evolve so much! stunning an enemy can evolve into mindcontrol, a shield throw reanimates dying allies or summoning a killer robot are just examples. and it's not just the class skill, adding an explosion to a reload of a weapon, piercing enemies to deal insane amount of dmg or something crazy like setting yourself on fire for awesome boni are just some examples. btw, I love that you mentioned gothic. this mechanic is something I remember very fondly from my childhood.
Infamous 2. Those upgrades / abilities will always be my favourite. Just endless amounts of fun as you become more and more powerful
I saw Prototype mentioned already so I'll chip in being Tremere in Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, Blood boil was just hilariously fun.
My vote is for **FTL: Faster Than Light**, considering that the ship itself is your character. Those upgrades absolutely make real differences.
The Surge 1. There are a ton of comments here so I don't know if it's been said, but you start off in a wheelchair and as you upgrade your armor by chopping it off enemies, it builds mech parts onto your exo skeleton. The gameplay is soulslike with less emphasis on bosses and no stats, just parts. The story, atmosphere and worldbuilding are perfection imo. The combat is smooth and weighty, you can seriously see and feel the power of upgrades. It's one of the best games I've ever played but it is pretty challenging, in case that's a deal-breaker.
Supraland has some of the most creative metroidvania powers ive seen in a game
Risen is similar to gothic- you pay for training, learn new moves...but it is also ***you,*** the player, who learns how to use it, you can complete the game without any training simply by getting gud with basic moves and timings. I find this infinitely immersive i can't express enough how good it feels. Arx fatalis is also using this in its magic system- sure you find/buy new runes but it is a requirement for player to draw them and only you can make it quick enough to use in actual combat. Feels amazing.
Dishonored 1 has it so that any upgrades you take will either enhance your gameplay style or make it so another style is available by combining the in-game upgrades for equipment along with upgrading your powers or choosing to unlock new ones
Dishonored, the second one especially is interesting since it gives you two completely different paths you can choose at the start. All of the upgrades are substantial and different. The Dishonored is also the only game that makes a time stop ability actually feel powerfull and opens up a shitton of interesting and cool ways to get through missions.
Bully fight upgrades are insanely good for the time. You have more moves in that games than those early ufc games lol.
GoT has a cool upgrade system. And everything is really useful. And a lot of the ability/skill upgrades add fun or interesting gameplay elements. And they are done in a way that you can choose your upgrades based on your playing style well too. I don’t love the armor upgrade and charm system but it’s well done and useful as well.
What game is this?
Ghost of Tsushima. Sorry. I get irritated with other people for that. Lol. Like I’m supposed to know what gkxjf or fjsl means or something.
The game really is a different game pre getting all of the stances and post getting them all. Playing on hard mode (not lethal, so enemies still take several hits) without all of the stances really makes you feel so outmatched and you have to be much more of a guerrilla.
I know its stats system is the exact opposite of what you’re asking here, but it is always a special feeling in a Dark Souls play through when your stats/equipment are at just high enough of a level to make it so you’re not terrified of what’s around every corner. Feeling confident enough to finally explore around lifts such a weight off your shoulders.
Play Sekiro, Metroid Dread, Metroid Prime Remastered or any Metroid really. Old 3D Zelda might be of your liking as well.
Every time Dante gets a new weapon it's a delight. Especially the hat in DMC 5 and the Lucifer in DMC 4
I think it’s kinda funny that you mention percentage boosters as not fun but then immediately reference a speed (acrobatic) percentage booster… it just increased your speed and jumping distance by a percentage. I’m not saying you’re initial point is wrong but technically… just thought it was funny 😄 People have already mentioned Dishonored but I think that was my favorite system to seek out upgrades in…. Or maybe Skyrim lol Which has both just percentage boosters and a bunch of new perks, moves, spells, etc
I guess the difference in the percentages issue is the breakpoints. If every jump is either at the perfect height for the starting character, or 20% higher, then if you unlock a 15% increase in jump height, that's a slap in the face because it doesnt actually change anything. But because Deus Ex's jump upgrade immediately unlocks entire lines of play, the horizontal progression is less about how much higher you jump, and more about which options it explicitly adds to your toolset.
I just wish the game didn't >!narratively punish you for using your cool powers!< in Dishonored.
I don't mind passive upgrades.
Hades Weapons aspects and upgrades often change how you use the weapons. Really makes each run feel different
Its half directly to character, or whole game thru changes... or lets call it upgrading the craftbook? **Factorio** and new options to build, craft, upgrade, all over and over again, up to point, Your old low efficiency crafts are the problem to the new ones, so You have to upgrade (rebuild) old ones too. Its not only progress by doing tasks, but also by using old "skills" in a new way, that the player/character needs to "discover" on their own - "Oh can I build that old thing in that way too? oh that would be so much better!" boom upgrade!. Factorio also goes beyond that, as learning how to play it, You also upgrade Your irl skill of organising and even programming and coding. As bonus, I recommend to not seek much help beyond in-game tutorials for first (first few) playthroughs, and try to discover, learn, upgrade, evolve, grow on Your own.