PC Video game recommendation

I've had a Mac for the last 5+ years. It's finally starting to become so obsolete and slow that I have justified purchasing a new computer.

Since a lot of games are PC only I've decided to go with a windows machine.

Any advice on great games I may have missed in the last few years that I should definitely look into?

Oh, One such game is Pathfinder online. Is that playable or did it peter out. I haven't seen much chatter on it.

What kind of games do you like? My favorites of the past few years have been Witcher 3, Fallout 4 and Dark Souls 3.

Endless Legend

Fantasy style strategy game, you control a culture as it explores the world around it, send leaders on quests, fight your neighbors, etc. It's well structured and a major improvement over it's predecessor (Endless Space). I like it enough I based a campaign world on it for 5E.

This War of Mine

A game based on the Siege of Sarajevo. You play a group of civilians who are trapped in a city that is part of a war. You spend your day time completing projects in your home, fortifying, repairing, building, etc. At night you go out scavenging supplies. You're regularly given moral dilemmas, such as finding a cache of medicine and food, but you have to beat up an elderly couple to take it (which isn't hard).

Skyrim, Pillars of Eternity, and the new editions of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 have been the highlights of fantasy RPGs for the last few years.

I've had a Mac for the last 5+ years. It's finally starting to become so obsolete and slow that I have justified purchasing a new computer.

Since a lot of games are PC only I've decided to go with a windows machine.

Any advice on great games I may have missed in the last few years that I should definitely look into?

The Dragon Age trilogy games are, IMO, must plays as are the Mass Effect trilogy games. Also if you like turn based strategy with a smattering of RPG advancement then the XCOM games are also must haves.

Last I checked Pathfinder Online is still in Alpha but they have their website here.

I'll second Mass Effect series (assuming you haven't played them on console.)

If you like retro I got some recommendations too.

Not Fantasy, but Fallout: New Vegas is a master class in connected world building, ambiguous morality, and player-directed storytelling. That, and the Witcher 3 are the best examples of the roleplaying sandbox I've ever seen in a video game, so play both of those. NV gets special mention because it's so much improved by mods (not only does it get prettier, play better, but fan patches fix a lot of the technical problems.) Definitely get the complete edition, since the narrative DLC is not superfluous and has some really good writing.

Also, play Undertale.

Oh, One such game is Pathfinder online. Is that playable or did it peter out. I haven't seen much chatter on it.

It's in Alpha but people with early access are playing it. Goblin Works had a huge layoff in 2015 and pivoted to a position of trying to sell the game to a new developer so that the game can be finalized. The new company, dubbed only newcom, is still in the process of finalizing it's funding. In the meantime the goblin Works "legacy" team is working on bug fixes. There has been a lot of negativity on the forums and it seems that the player base that existed has lost a lot of faith, but the Goblin Works official stance is one of faith in "Newcom" and that they are confidant that the game will be able to realize its goal after the transition and some additional development time.

So take that however you will.

I agree with every game mentioned so far, except this:

The Dragon Age trilogy games are, IMO, must plays as are the Mass Effect trilogy games.

Dragon Age and Mass Effect have one thing in common: Only the first two games are worth playing.

The gameplay in both ME3 and (especially) Inquisition is so boring and un-fun compared to the previous installments that it makes the story involved not worth it. Play the first two, watch the story on Youtube or something for the last one.

I got both of these games pretty soon after they came out. I have beaten the first and second installments of both series' multiple times. I could not force myself through a single playthrough of ME3 or DA:I.

Anywho, Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen finally got released for PC, and it is a GREAT Action RPG, third person view, with a GREAT combat system that's like Shadow of the Colossus with cool RPG abilities. The story is a bit simplistic, but not terrible, and the quests are overall pretty varied and fun.

Divinity: Original Sin is another good isometric RPG like Pillars of Eternity (and I'm hearing good things about Tyranny as well from Obsidian).

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is really good. Not sure about Mankind Divided, my PC can't run it.

Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin, and Dark Souls 3 are all excellent games. You've probably heard "OMG they're so hard oh noooooo" enough to turn you off, but trust me it's worth it, and they're not really that hard if you take your time and move cautiously through the world instead of sprinting everywhere. Also, roll, don't block. Rolling makes you invincible, blocking does not.

Dishonored is the best stealth game I've played in a long, long time.

I can rattle of more if you're okay with straying from sci-fi and fantasy.

Dark Souls 1, 2 and 3 are all excellent. Make sure to grab Artorias of the Abyss and Scholar of the First Sin (for 1 and 2 respectively) for the full experience. I can't speak for 3's DLC yet.

Darkest Dungeon is the best roguelike I've played in a very long time, and if you are a fan of horror and mood in a game with punishing gameplay this is the one.

I also can't give enough applause to Shadowrun: Dragonfall; not exactly high end AAA but it is wonderful if you like cyberpunk at all.

And Witcher 3 is well, Witcher 3.

Going to agree with P-Cab and suggest Undertale. It's super cheap, doesn't take to long to beat, and it can be very satisfying. Just make sure to go in blind. Don't even watch the trailer. I can say the soundtrack is amazing, though.

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines is an oldie but a goodie. You play as a freshy created vampire in a city filled with monsters and their you get caught up in their power struggle. It does an amazing job of capturing the feel of its pen & paper source material.

Stellaris plays like a Civilization game, but on a grander scale. You create an alien species using a detailed list of choicess such as cultural pilosophy, politics, biological traits, and weapons technology. Explore the galaxy, research new tech, and try to be the best species out there... and eventually, some joker develops sentient AI with the expected results.

Last but not least, Shovel Knight. If you liked Mega Man, you will like Shovel Knight. If you like platformers, you will like Shovel Knight. If you have a fondness for the NES era of gaming, you will love Shovel Knight. The music is also pretty great. It's even being updated with a few alternate story modes where you play as some of the bosses!

Fonv
Morrowind (there's a mod that's a combination of several mods that's easy af to install)
Witcher 3
Pillars of eternity
Grim Dawn
Divinity original sin
ALL of the shadowruns (returns, dragonfall, Hong Kong) seriously this one, these RPGs have impressed and I thought was the most fun

As others have mentioned, Undertale is inexpensive, not long, and very good. You will want a game controller for it though, don't try it with just keyboard controls.

"Recent" games I like:
Civilization VI
Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 4
Skyrim
Dragon Age Origins

Older games:
Knights of the Old Republic
Vampire: Bloodlines
Mass Effect Trilogy - I did like the third but the second was best IMO

"Retro" Games: (available on Good Old Games)
Might and Magic 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Wizardry 6, 7, 8
SSI "Gold Box" AD&D games

As a PFO backer who stayed in PFO for a Long time, it is limping along unfortunately...

As for games there are tons, it would be better to mention genres and game-playstyles so we could narrow then down some.

Recommended (most are Multi-platform)
using steam here

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Note that with Steam having over 10,000 games in it's store, it is literally impossible to list every good game they have, and it does not help that some games are region locked thus being unbuyable in certain areas of the world.

Make sure you get a good video card because modern games really shine with them. If your graphics card is struggling to play the games smoothly then it detracts from aesthetic in a pretty heavy way. Just throwing that out there.

Skyrim is now 5 years old but I put hundreds of hours into that game. I highly recommend it if you've never played it. It is a contender for the best video game RPG ... ever... in my discerning opinion.

Diablo III is awesome. It is a non-stop hack'n'slash gore fest filled with lootz, lootz, demons, and lootz! Been playing it for years and I still find myself logging back in to level up a new character.

Witcher II and Witcher III are super awesome. The story, the mechanics, the graphics, the bad guys, the combat... all very juicy.

Dark Souls II has some wicked combat and fun gameplay. Recommended highly. Dark Souls III is coming soon (or possibly out already?)

Pillars of Eternity is a lot of fun too. It is not a graphics-heavy game but it has tons of flavor. It was designed to be similar to isometric games of the 90s (similar to Baldur's Gate) but with better graphics and modern themes. It has lots of story, lots of fun exploration, and is heavy on fantasy flavor.

Honorable Mentions:
-My buddy said that Shadows over Mordor was fun though I've never played it. The trailer made it look like fun.
-My little bro plays ESO (Elder Scrolls Online) and he enjoys it. It is similar to Skyrim (same game world) but it is a MMO with a community. MMOs are great fun if you've the time and energy to invest.

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edit-- Get yourself Blizzard's Battle.net app and the Steam app on your PC and you will have access to so much goodness that you'll never run out. I'm an old WoW fan who doesn't play it anymore (but recommends it for anyone who never played it. It's still good after 12+ years), but all of Blizzard's products are good. Diablo III, StarCraft II, Hearthstone, Overwatch... (omg Overwatch is so addicting) all are worth playing.

Steam constantly has big sales on games (10-90% off, so yeah, super cheap games sometimes) and so you can build a library of games with your Steam account very quickly.

Not fantasy, but GTA V is absolutely incredible. DOOM is a beautiful FPS that is oozing with gory goodness.

Admittedly I haven't look at it in awhile, but last time I did Pathfinder Online frankly looked like dog crap. The graphics looked like Everquest from 15 years ago and the gameplay looked clunky. When you have beautiful, content-filled gaming worlds like in Witcher III and Skyrim I would find it unpalatable to play a "new" game that looked and played like something from 15+ years ago, even if based on my favorite tabletop RPG.

My personal favorites have been:
A moderately modded Skyrim, Borderlands 2 (get the Game of the Year Edition or the Handsome Collection, they're worth it), Grim Dawn (the spiritual successor to the Diablo series), Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition, Undertale, Witcher 3, Overwatch, Minecraft, and if you have a really nice computer, get ARK Survival Evolved (don't get it if your computer doesn't have at least a GTX 750+ graphics card and 8 gigs of RAM).

I can't help you. I really only play old roguelikes, and I spend ages tracking down ones I can run on my mac. If you want a roguelike, I can give all the help you want.

Stuff I have played kinda recently that is good (in no particular order):

Battlefield 1
World of Warcraft
League of Legends
Overwatch
Hearthstone
Total War: Warhammer
Pillars of Eternity
XCOM 2
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Dying Light
The Wolf Among Us
Assassin's Creed: Black Flag
Warhammer: The End Times - Vermintide
Borderlands 2
Transistor
Fable 2
Goat Simulator
Bastion
Saints Row IV
Hacknet
Metro 2033 Redux
Darkest Dungeon
Assault Android Cactus
Black Desert Online
Tom Clancy's The Division
Torchlight 2
The Flame in the Flood
The Witcher III: Wild Hunt
Sunless Sea

Stuff I haven't played yet but heard is pretty good (in no particular order):

Thumper
Tree of Savior
Assassin's Creed: Syndicate
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Zero Time Dilemna
Sleeping Dogs
Inside
Tales from the Borderlands
Salt & Sanctuary
Jotun
Superhot
Don't Starve Together
Firewatch
Watch Dogs 2
That Dragon, Cancer
Dishonored 2
Grand Theft Auto V

I may suggest skipping out on Skyrim. The world is huge, but oddly shallow in places. I once went to a city that was racist agains Darks Elves. And a Dark Elf asked me character if they were also racist against Dark Elves.

Yep. My character was a Dark Elf.

There's also the problem of skill progression. Skills are leveled by use, so knce your favorite 2 or 3 are maxed, you're kind of penalized by using them because you stop gaining EXP. This lead to my Light Blade Stealthy Conjure specialist using a Greataxe and heavy armor.

The game does have a thriving mod community, however, and that can add a lot of value to it. There are a couple mods that even add fully voice acted quests and whole new powers.

There are some real quality games mentioned on this forum. My favorites are:

1. Mass Effect series (there is a reason why James Gunn mentions it as an inspiration source for the "Guardians of the Galaxy).

2 Dragon Age series: great character development and enjoyable stories in which you can truly design your character.

3. Xcom Enemy Within \ Xcom 2: Simply a great strategy game.

4. Endless Legend: a wide variety of civilizations and stories in a strategy game.

5. Dishonored / Dishonored 2: A great take on using stealth to solve missions in various ways.

The computer should come in the mail today or tomorrow. I'll be compiling a list based on your recommendations. Thank you everyone. Time to see what i've been missing out on. :-)

Oh, One such game is Pathfinder online. Is that playable or did it peter out. I haven't seen much chatter on it.

The technical term for pathfinder online's present state is pretty much kaputsky.

I just picked up an Alienware Laptop that I'm going to Hackintosh.

Banner Saga. Available on Steam and a really good, if short, RPG.

edit-- Get yourself Blizzard's Battle.net app and the Steam app on your PC and you will have access to so much goodness that you'll never run out. I'm an old WoW fan who doesn't play it anymore (but recommends it for anyone who never played it. It's still good after 12+ years), but all of Blizzard's products are good. Diablo III, StarCraft II, Hearthstone, Overwatch... (omg Overwatch is so addicting) all are worth playing.

Diablo is having it's 20th anniversary, and Azeroth is seeing some rather strange new denizens about. You might want to come back for a spell.

Zedth wrote:

edit-- Get yourself Blizzard's Battle.net app and the Steam app on your PC and you will have access to so much goodness that you'll never run out. I'm an old WoW fan who doesn't play it anymore (but recommends it for anyone who never played it. It's still good after 12+ years), but all of Blizzard's products are good. Diablo III, StarCraft II, Hearthstone, Overwatch... (omg Overwatch is so addicting) all are worth playing.

Diablo is having it's 20th anniversary, and Azeroth is seeing some rather strange new denizens about. You might want to come back for a spell.

Blizzard is one of the few that makes it a point to be Mac compatible. However, my computer no longer keeps up with Diablo or WOW. I may revisit them with the new comp

I might be in the minority here, but I found Diablo 3 to be awful and not worth my time.

Same with Dragon Age 2.

However, despite the ending not being that great, Mass Effect 3 was a great game and decent capstone to one of the best series.

One thing of note on the horizon is the return of single player Mechwarrior 5

I might be in the minority here, but I found Diablo 3 to be awful and not worth my time.

Don't know whether you're in the minority, but I find it just the opposite.

Skyrim
Divinity: Original Sin (sequel coming out around now)

Probably my two favourite games in the last 10 years.

D3 was a bit of a mindless click-fest for me, but it's horses for courses; a lot of people like it.

I might be in the minority here, but I found Diablo 3 to be awful and not worth my time.

Did you play it when it first came out? If so, that's why.

Blizzard did a full overhaul on that game, multiple times. Still do class rebalances fairly regularly. It's pretty good now.

Pan wrote:

I might be in the minority here, but I found Diablo 3 to be awful and not worth my time.

Did you play it when it first came out? If so, that's why.

Blizzard did a full overhaul on that game, multiple times. Still do class rebalances fairly regularly. It's pretty good now.

Maybe it has. I did play it early on and just found the game controls and character options utterly lacking. I will admit my expectations were really high since the game was in development forever.

IT CAME! Now to turn into that guy from the WOW southpark episode.

Definitely check out the Harebrained Schemes Shadowrun, Shadowrun: Dragonfall, and Shadowrun: Hong Kong isometric squad based strategy RPG's. Very very worth the time.

Fallout 4 & Skyrim (the recent edition) will consume HUGE amounts of time if you let them.

Overwatch looks brilliant.

Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 4, Skyrim, XCOM & XCOM 2, Mass Effect I - III, Dishonored, Assassins Creed, Batman Arkham Asylum, Crusader Kings II, Europa Universalis IV, Hearts of Iron IV, Stellaris, Sid Meyers Alpha Centauri (an oldie but very goodie), Borderlands I & II, Portal I & II, The Witcher I - III, Shadowrun, any of the Spiderweb Software games, Baldur's Gate I & II, X3 - Terran Conflict... I will look at my collection to add to this tomorrow.

I advise caution with Fallout 4 and Skyrim. Personally I like them (despite them having made changes from the predecessors which I absolutely don't like) but their gameplaytends to be repetitive and a lot of people get bored by these games.

I advise caution with Fallout 4 and Skyrim. Personally I like them (despite them having made changes from the predecessors which I absolutely don't like) but their gameplaytends to be repetitive and a lot of people get bored by these games.

Its true, you will get a lot more mileage out of FO and Skyrim if you are the completionist type of gamer.

Undertale just went on sale for 50% off on Steam. I'll pick it up based on the recommendations in this thread.

Mass Effect is a fantastic SF game with tons of depth, intriguing characters, a somewhat shallow combat system and only a few truly amazing levels, but those are spectacular. It also has a pretty bad minigame.

Mass Effect 2 is a truly mind-bogglingly stupid SF game, without the ambition to present a coherent setting, a plot that makes you go guh bluh guh whattttt? The characters are absent, the same, or rather uninspired. The minigame is the epitome of boring.

Mass Effect 3 is what they could salvage after the very large number of monkeys who wrote ME2 had done their job. All in all, pretty decent, considering what they had to work with.

Regarding the Dragon Ages and Mass Effects, I'm the weirdo who likes Dragon Age 2 more than the other ones (and Inqusition more than Origins) and ME3 more than ME2.

So I think if one of them is worth playing, they all are. But I'm not sure the OP needs to be in a rush, since each of them seems to have one or two expansions that are narratively/lorewise/emotionally necessary for the series and those things tend not to be included in the versions you can currently buy. Considering the trend for remasters in video games these days, you can probably afford to wait for some fancy Mass Effect edition with everything included.

Regarding the Fallouts and Elder Scrolls, I think you'll get everything good out of those series with Fallouts 1, 2, and New Vegas and Morrowind. IMO FO3&4, Oblivion, and Skyrim are primarily just time sinks. If Skyrim is your happy place and you just want to walk around the snowy woods, you'll be getting enough out of it, but I found it to be a pretty shallow "go to dungeon, clear dungeon, repeat" sort of thing. Fallout 4 was like this, but everything felt disconnected from everything else (and the game makes constant assumptions about your character, something I find really irritating in what is ostensibly a roleplaying game).

Planescape: Torment...it is simply the best RPG, not the best visually anymore by a long shot, but the game play is fun, and the character interaction between Nameless and those that are (and have) walked his path before is beyond compare and every decision has a consequence.

Just don't forget to read your journal... :)

Dungeon Hack. Sure it is old and outdated, by you can basically solo dungeon delve forever, as easy or as hard as you want to set the controls, and the game can be disturbingly hard if you let it, a killer GM in a box for those who like lots of pain.

Baldurs Gates 1 and 2 hold up well.

Dark Legions an odd older game, but it is basically fantasy war chess, will real time fights, still love this game

The Elder Scolls III-V all good, can easily eat your life if you let them

So Fallout 4 wont run in Steam for some reason. That sucks. Going to have a more tech savvy friend look at it this weekend.

Edit: oh, also Fallout 3 "runs" but thoroughly crashes my computer every so often because apparently Windows isn't backward compatible. Awesome. /sarcasm

Fallout 4 should run just fine in Steam. Validate your files.

Fallout 4 should run just fine in Steam. Validate your files.

Should, but doesn't. Hence my problem.

Did validating not work? Usually when a Steam game won't run it's because a file didn't download right.

You should also see if your drivers are up to date. I'd be very surprised if they were out of the box.

I doubt it's a system issue. My laptop is just slightly better than a toaster at this point and can run Fallout 4 with some tweaking.

Sundakan wrote:

Pan wrote:

I might be in the minority here, but I found Diablo 3 to be awful and not worth my time.

Did you play it when it first came out? If so, that's why.

Blizzard did a full overhaul on that game, multiple times. Still do class rebalances fairly regularly. It's pretty good now.

Maybe it has. I did play it early on and just found the game controls and character options utterly lacking. I will admit my expectations were really high since the game was in development forever.

I enjoy Diablo III on a console...not so much on the PC. Diablo 2 was absolutely awesome.

If you are in that category, then you should really give Torchlight and Torchlight 2 a whirl. The Schafers (the guys who made Diablo and Diablo II, but then left before their vision of diablo III came out due to disagreements on it's direction between them and the New Activision) created Torchlight and Torchlight 2.

They recently separated from Runic and created Rebel Galaxy. I have that game, but haven't given it a shot yet.

Dungeon hack is a very special game. However, unless you have cleric spells, you will have to rest for ages and ages to heal. Unless you have identify, you will not be able to use magic items you find. Makes it kind of limited, but a cleric/fighter/mage is okay to play.

Without any more indication of the sort of games you like, there's such a huge range that many recommendations are going to leave you puzzled. Lately I've been enjoying two games, one where you are running a race's future on the stage of the whole galaxy, another where you're operating a small shop and finding romance with potential assistants. And the medieval dating sim Crusader Kings 2, thinking about it.

If there's one piece of advice I'd give, it's to wait for the sales on Steam and GoG, rather than pay full-price for a lot of games that you might not enjoy. And get a one month Humble Bundle subscription to get XCom 2 for $12 plus whatever else comes with it. You might decide to cancel after the first month, but you'll get several games - and XCom 2 is very good - for a very good price.

If you like MMOs, then there's some very nice (and a lot of not so nice) 'free' ones around. Star Trek Online is one I enjoy, Champions is very good superhero action, LotRO is another that I enjoyed.

Did validating not work? Usually when a Steam game won't run it's because a file didn't download right.

You should also see if your drivers are up to date. I'd be very surprised if they were out of the box.

I doubt it's a system issue. My laptop is just slightly better than a toaster at this point and can run Fallout 4 with some tweaking.

I'll try re-downloading. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by validating. Remember I've been MAC for years now. My windows troubleshooting skills are rusty.

If I'm remembering how to do it correctly, go into your Steam library, right-click the game and there should be an option to Verify the Game (it may be under Properties, thinking about it). That will check for possible errors and correct that rather than re-download the whole thing.