Hollow Knight is my favorite game of all time. It’s tough though, and you will feel lost and “where the fuck am I supposed to go?”.

I recommend that new players install the mod manager and enable “free” Gathering Swarm and Wayword Compass charms mods. Frees up 2 charm slots for two QoL charms – those two free slots will make the midgame a tad easier.

Edit: The mod manager you want is called “Lumafly” (formerly Scarab).

I’ve only ever really liked the original 2 isometric ones, and Vegas. The Bethesda ones are boring.

Early-mid 90s.

The latter years of the NES, the entirety of the 16-bit console era (SNES/Megadrive [“Genesis”]), the golden age of PC adventure games & the dawn of multimedia (CD-ROM based games & talkies).

Just before the release of Doom, where FPS took over; and the PSX/N64, where (bad) 3D was teh hotness; is where it’s at for me – likely why I love my MiSTer FPGA so much.

Project Diablo 2 is a pretty vanilla version of Diablo 2 LoD. Yes, it rebalances.skills and items, and adds corruptions and endgame maps, but there’s no new skills. For a complete overhaul, you want MedianXL.

That said, I’d still forego both and go with D2R. Modding is coming along, finally. After a regular playthrough or eighteen (6 classes × 3 difficulties), give Diablo 2 ReModded a try.

Play retro adventure games, or modern Telltale ones.

Lemme guess on the two cheevos:

“Bounce the 'rang 25 times”
and
“Equip a certain relic and do some boss fights”

For the first, just find an enemy you fight CLOSE to and just button mash.

For the second, it’s not hard, just do it on NG+ and start EARLY.

Also, did you do the Kickstarter? If so, what’s your statue code, I’ll check you out – would share mine but don’t want to dox myself based on what i provided.

Try Sea of Stars, it scratches that Chrono Trigger classic RPG itch, while nearly completely eliminating the grinding. I got every achievement in it, and at no time did it feel like a slog.

• Wanna get every item? There’s a feature that facilitates that, which lets you know what areas still need to be swept, near the endgame.

• Feel like you’re not leveling fast enough? There’s an easily purchased in-game item to double XP (toggleable)

• Only got time for short sessions? Save points are everywhere

And yet, the game isn’t too easy, either.

King’s Quest III

It was the first game I remember playing solo without help, I really sunk my teeth into it. I was 8 and it had been released a few years prior, so it was also the first game I bought with my own money when I found it in a bargain bin at a computer convention show in the late 80s.

My Dad was busy and couldn’t install it for me right away, so it was also the game that got me started using MS DOS (everything I ran prior was installed by my Dad and launched via [IIRC] WordPerfect Shell).

Yes, I’m old.