Fabled Lands is awesome but super short. If you've ever played any of the old solo pen and paper RPG novels like Joe Dever's Lone Wolf series, this is pretty much a graphical representation of that. Lots of dice rolling and decision making with simple turn-based tactical combat. I wouldn't recommend it for everybody, but if you're an old school role player or boardgamer like myself, then you'll love it.

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Arcanium is a fun little game. Sort of a Hearthstone / Slay the Spire mix. It has a few issues that may be due to the alpha state of the game or maybe due to Proton, impossible to say right now, but it's worth checking out.

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Thank you for this. Everybody kept raving at how amazing CKII was, so a few years ago, I picked it up on sale with all the expansions and bounced off of it hard. I didn't understand anything that was going on. I couldn't figure out how to do much, had no clue what half the icons meant, and it was a frustrating experience that thankfully Steam refunded even though I was a few minutes over two hours. And yes, I know that I "didn't give it enough time" but I had spent over a $100 on the damn thing so there was no way I was going to not refund it in the hopes that one day it might get better.

So I am glad to hear that the new one might actually be accessible.

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Obviously our experiences were different, but I am not a min-maxer (in fact, I'm not even a power gamer, I prefer to RP as my character and never ever use mods or strategy guides) and while some fights were challenging, none were impossible. Unless you're talking about the encounters at the keep - the ones where you assign advisors to handle situations - those can be impossible, but you are not supposed to succeed at everything there. Maybe it's because I am an experienced tabletop gamer, but to me "you aren't a god and will fail sometimes if you attempt difficult or risky things" is practically the definition of 'balanced.'

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I personally did not encounter a single bug in my 126 hour playthrough. I'm actually surprised to hear that it is considered buggy so I don't know if it's been fixed (I played it for the first time in March of this year) or if I just got lucky. What are the balancing issues? If you mean are some player character builds way more powerful than others, then yes that still exists but it also should exist because that's an artifact of Pathfinder itself and a holdover from classic pen and paper RPGs.

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I don't like playing games until they are fully released, but I may bite the bullet and buy this one early. It ticks a ridiculous amount of my boxes.

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Dragon Quest XI.

I recognize the complaints about it being too old-school or not bringing anything new to the table, but dammit I don't care. The first Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior here in the states) was the game that really got me into video games. I, like most kids my age, enjoyed Super Mario and Zelda and whatnot but enjoyed playing outside with my dogs more. Then Nintendo Power, a magazine that my grandmother bought me a subscription for as a birthday present, sent me a free copy of Dragon Warrior. I was 10 years old and have been obsessed with RPGs, both computerized and tabletop, ever since. My mother hated how much time I spent on that game and refused to buy me the sequel when it was released. So this, thanks to Proton, is the first Dragon Quest game I have played since the original sucked me into its world 30 years ago. So I don't give a flying rat crap that the game feels 'too old' - it feels exactly like what I wanted to be. It feels like Dragon Warrior.

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What's the difficulty level like?

I got Darkest Dungeon when it came out and I absolutely loved it right up until the final dungeon where the difficulty spiked so hard that it made me uninstall and never play again. That game was tough, and I can handle tough. It slowly increased in difficulty as your stable grew in power and was very well balanced throughout almost the entire game. Then it suddenly went straight from "Only by careful planning, strategic gameplay, and a bit of luck can you beat this boss" to "The first minion you encounter is going to wipe your max level party without breaking a sweat."

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Pathfinder: Kingmaker

3.5 was the edition of D&D that I fell in love with so I knew that, mechanically, Pathfinder would be a good fit for me. I still didn't expect to love it as much as I do. I used to adore big meaty cRPGs, but have found that I had been bouncing off of them for the last 10 years or so. But not this one. It's giving me that same feeling I got the first time I played Baldur's Gate II way back when it first launched.

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I didn't know you could force Proton on games with Linux builds. I'll look that up and give it a shot. Thanks!

EDIT: It worked! At least I think it did. I got an error about the language not being loaded but then the launcher came up and I was able to get into the main menu. You are a scholar and a saint. Thank you.

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