Good thread, OP.

Played Recently

• Cult of the Lamb: I actually just finished the main story this past week. I'm completely burnt out on rougelite anything so I was wary of picking this one up. YMMV, but the near 50/50 split of town management and exploring other locations kept me engaged. I played it on the normal difficulty and found it to be generally easy, probably less than 5 deaths the entire time.

• Age of Empires IV: I'm a older guy so I played a lot of RTS games back in the heyday of the genre. Aside from Company of Heroes 2, nothing has hooked me like AoE4 since then. There are a lot of intelligent features baked into the design, simple things like showing current worker count per resource and resources per minute that help balance your economy. Plus, all the civilizations play very differently from one another. It also has an interesting mastery system that gives you per-civilization challenges to complete that teach you the nuances of each faction.

• Undertale Yellow: A high effort fan game. Pretty solid experience. It didn't have quite the impact that the original had on me and felt underbaked in a few areas, but was pretty fun overall. It's also hard as nails.

What I Will Play

• I'm debating on going into Laika, Dave the Diver, Bug Fables, or OMORI next.

• Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age: My only exposure to DQ is via Builders 2 (which I enjoyed), but I've wanted to try a mainline game.

• Elden Ring: I bought it on launch, but my PC couldn't handle it. I should be able to do it now though.

• Final Fantasy VII Remake: I really enjoyed the original so I've been a bit grumpy about the remake being episodic and changed, but I'll see where they go with the second part to determine if I want to invest time in it.

• Yakuza Series: I really need to start making headway in these. I own them all on physical (including The Man Who Erased His Name) because my partner enjoys them, but I want to experience them all.

What I'm Looking Forward To

• Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth: Enough said above.

• Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes: The spiritual successor to Suikoden, especially 1 & 2 which are some of my favorite JRPGs of all time. It's looking great so far.

• Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth: Enough said above.

• Hollow Knight: Silksong: Maybe???

• Metaphor: ReFantazio: Very curious about this one.