What videogames are you playing in 2026?

Reynard · Feb 2, 2026

Parmandur said:
Ever tried the Dynasty Warriors series?

I have not.

Ruin Explorer · Feb 2, 2026

Parmandur said:
I have watched a four year old play Breath of the Wild...it can be very simple in practice.

For sure, but that's not really the issue I would suggest.

A four-year-old can footle around hitting the easiest monsters (if it's anything but those, they'll be dying a lot, which I doubt they'd enjoy), or monsters made easy because someone else got gear/hearts on the character, and that'll likely be hugely entertaining to them, but I do not believe @Reynard is four years old!

And any adult playing will be using their brain to some extent, whether they want to or not, which changes things, and causes you to be making assessments and plans and analyses a four or eight or maybe even ten year old is very unlikely to making (part of the reason adults are often insanely better at games than children or teenagers is that they can make those assessments too).

And fundamentally, BotW is a slow-paced, low-intensity metroidvania, where cunning plans and tricky trickstering are encouraged and rewarded (especially in the sequel), with a lot of platforming and (mostly easy but sometimes annoying) puzzles not really a jolly mindless hack-and-slash. Just walking around hitting monsters and ignoring goals/mechanics is something you can do in countless games - but it's making that part engaging to an adult (or older child) which is trickier.

Parmandur said:
Ever tried the Dynasty Warriors series?

Yeah now we're talking - that's exactly the vibe. Relatively intense but uncomplicated hack-and-slash, with no complex mechanics even hidden or buried. That's a strong suggestion!

@Reynard the genre as a whole are referred to as "musou" games and almost all of them are by the same company and called either [something] Warriors, with Dynasty Warriors, which is set in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms era as the original. There are a ton of them though, including ones based on Dragon Quest, Zelda, Fire Emblem, Persona, Berserk, and so on.

Omega Force - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Reynard · Feb 2, 2026

Ruin Explorer said:
Yeah now we're talking - that's exactly the vibe. Relatively intense but uncomplicated hack-and-slash, with no complex mechanics even hidden or buried. That's a strong suggestion!

@Reynard the genre as a whole are referred to as "musou" games and almost all of them are by the same company and called either [something] Warriors, with Dynasty Warriors, which is set in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms era as the original. There are a ton of them though, including ones based on Dragon Quest, Zelda, Fire Emblem, Persona, Berserk, and so on.

Omega Force - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I believe many of those are on Playstation Plus as well. I will give one a shot. Does anyone have a favorite?

EDIT: Looks like 9 is the only one on PS+

MarkB · Feb 2, 2026

I'm just starting out playing Ghost of Yotei. Not quite feeling the immediate connection to the main character that I did in Ghost of Tsushima, but the gameplay feels comfortably familiar and I'm looking forward to exploring further.

Ruin Explorer · Feb 2, 2026

Reynard said:
I believe many of those are on Playstation Plus as well. I will give one a shot. Does anyone have a favorite?

EDIT: Looks like 9 is the only one on PS+

9 is pretty much the worst-reviewed one (though Famitsu, the most respected Japanese review mag, thought it was pretty close to 8 in overall quality, and I feel like they're the most trustworthy on this particular genre). However for the low, low price of free, and never having played Dynasty Warriors before, I think it's probably worth trying.

I actually don't know which my favourite one is - probably one of the PS2 ones, but that's quite a lot of possibles! The ones called Dynasty Warriors are all kind of the same game, too!

Hussar · Feb 3, 2026

Reynard said:
Yeah. I love a good open world exploration game, but in this instance I was suggesting I wanted something mindless and easy, like the action RPG equivalent of a racing game.

For me, that's where the turn based combat games like X-Com or Battletech come in. There's a tiny bit of story there, but, besides a bit of book keeping between missions, it's pretty much all action. Slow action, true, but, still action. And there is just something SOOOO satsifying watching an Atlas' head explode from a well placed Gauss rifle shot.

Gears Tactics worked well for this too. Or Phoenix Point. Did I mention I'm excited for the new Menace game coming out today or tomorrow?

Another good mindless fun one are the Fighting Fantasy Books - something like Warlock of Firetop Mountain. Tons of fun.

Jeremy E Grenemyer · Feb 4, 2026

I am playing Mech War on my phone. I can proudly say this game has not gotten one dollar out of me. Slow and steady wins the race.

This game is simple and fun. It’s not Battletech, but it’ll do.

Reynard · Feb 4, 2026

I started playing Inquisitor: Martyr on my PS5 tonight because I need relaxing violence.

Gradine · Feb 4, 2026

I just stumbled across that they added turn-based combat to the original Pillars of Eternity and I have now dropped everything because good lord have I never jived with everything so strongly in a game before but still bounced off of it because of its combat

Gladius Legis · Feb 4, 2026

Problem with turn-based in the Pillars games is that the encounter design and frequency are still geared toward RTwP, which really aggravates the pacing problems in those games (which were bad enough in RTwP). And unlike Wrath of the Righteous, where you can at least keep it in RTwP for those filler trash mobs (which that game STILL has way too many of, mind) and then change to turn-based for the actual battles that are worth anything, in Pillars you can't even change between the two on the fly.