Nope, but like I said, other folks are better traveled than I am. Still, I have sampled lots of RPG systems, and 5e’s is the best I’ve come across. I’ve played the Pathfinder 1 system via Kingmaker, and I’ve played both Pillars of Eternity games, which share a lot of the same DNA, and I’d for sure take 5e’s multiclassing over what those offer. Yes, BG3 is 5e. Yes, it changes some things, but so, so much of it is intact, including multiclassing. It’s one of the things I miss most as I’m playing through the first Solasta.

If the dongle you need is USB-C, I’ve got one for my phone that let’s you charge at the same time, and it’s pretty low profile. Not ideal, but an option.

There’s very little out there that will check all of those boxes. Never Knows Best did a great video on it. Lots of imitators have decided to hone in on a few of those aspects that make Bethesda games tick without spreading their focus like Bethesda games do, because one can easily argue that in a Bethesda game, no one part of the formula is every truly great on its own. That said, other than KCD2, which you’ve acknowledged as non-fantasy, there are two other options that I know of.

There’s Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon that came out last year. I haven’t gotten around to it yet, but I hear good things. Never Knows Best had his own issues with things that it did worse than Bethesda, but I think that was while the game was in early access or something. The other is called The Lantern of the Laughless Saint that I first heard about on the Computer RPG community here on Lemmy; it isn’t out yet, but has a release date listed as 2026, which might be early access for all I know. They put together a somewhat funny stereotypical TikTok trailer for the game where they’re really honing in on the systemic nature that people romanticize about Bethesda games, touting that you can use magic to make yourself jump so high that you won’t survive the fall.

Yeah, it’s a great game. It’ll check every box for the OP except #6.

EDIT: Actually, thinking about it, there might be some asterisks on #2 and #4 too, as they’re only partially satisfied the way OP wants.

You already named Baldur’s Gate 3, and I don’t think I’ve found one more interesting or elegant than D&D 5e. Maybe other folks are more well-traveled than I am, but I’ve played most of your examples, and 5e still takes the cake. You can still do better, especially since not every attribute is equally important across classes, but it still makes for fun synergies as is.

It’s way easier to get rid of an entire computer second hand than it is bespoke parts that you’ve replaced, so this is what I do too. I used to be on a 4-year cadence with new PCs, but then I kept getting more and more mileage out of my machines, since graphics don’t leap forward so quickly like they used to. My current machine is 5 years old and still runs the latest games on high settings.

Highgaurd didn’t even last a month, and they definitely didn’t have the funds left over to make that game self hostable while they were in their death throes, even if they wanted to.

The studio’s previous game, which is very similar on a gameplay level, sold over 1M copies. Saros costs $10 more than Returnal cost and almost twice as much as Xenonauts 2. Beyond that, Returnal was a difficult game, and trophy data shows lots of people didn’t get anywhere close to finishing it; distaste for the previous game and a slightly higher price for what is, by Sony’s standards, less production value than you can find in other PS5 games at $70, are far better explainers for Saros’ performance.

No, I was commenting on just the first paragraph. January 2027 is too soon for any game that’s currently in development to be reasonably expected to pivot by then, and the same goes for any game that’s already available and expects to have a long tail on its sales, so it’s sort of like lighting the fuse on a bomb. The licensing argument is stupid nonsense, and they know it.

It is very much not clearly indicative of that. It has 1/10th of the reviews because it is expected to be relevant to far fewer people than Saros. The audience tends to value games that they’ve had marketed to them, which is a correlation for what should be obvious reasons.

Not being able to sell in California is a huge loss though. I agree January 1st is a little too soon, but better to have a little bit of pain now to make things better later.

That is not made by clear by comparing those two games the way we just did, no. Game review and news outlets cover the games most likely to be of value to their audiences, partially because they foster that with their own interest, and partly because the data tells them what their audience is reading or watching. Saros got 130 different outlets reviewing it because it’s generally seen as a big deal for their audiences. Xenonauts 2, not so much, which is why it was only covered by 1/10th as many publications. We’re here on Lemmy because we’re more likely to leave a thing we don’t like even if we’re used to it, like reddit. If you don’t like traditional games media, fair enough, but I don’t think either that preference or our choice of being on Lemmy is representative of broader trends. I was just at a board game night where we had to give clues about Sabrina Carpenter, and I knew nothing about her. It doesn’t mean her publicist is bad at marketing; it means I’m not the target audience for it.

This is the only gaming space I’ve encountered on the internet that has this many people unaware of Saros’ existence. The prevailing theory elsewhere for its lack of success is launching at $70, only on PS5, and people having already bounced off of its predecessor, Returnal. There aren’t 130 outlets reviewing the game because no one is reading them.

Rumor has it the Kingdom Come: Deliverance devs are doing a Lord of the Rings project, so if that’s the case, then they’re outsourcing a lot of risk.

I played Artful Escape for 10 minutes on a PAX show floor years ago and knew that game was not for me, so I expected Mixtape to also not be for me. I have access to it via Steam family share, and I figured I may as well play it, given its runtime. This is better than Artful Escape; I’m about halfway through it and will finish it tonight. I can at least sort of dig the characters and story, and I’m definitely into the presentation, but I’m not getting anything out of any of the interactive bits of it. So far, I think I would have enjoyed it better as a movie.

“Is Mixtape a game?” I remember Telltale discussions years ago, so we’ve got younger folks re-litigating this. I figure it doesn’t matter. It’s a “video game”, because we’ve got nothing better to describe it, and people who play/review other products built with the same technology that run on the same machines are best equipped to partake and enjoy it. I’ve seen many examples where, outside of accomplishing an objective or trying to “win”, the interactivity was used to great effect to convey the story. There’s a famous example at the end of Metal Gear Solid 3 where the game won’t move forward until you do something as simple as press the square button on the PS controller, but the context around that made it extremely emotionally effective in a way that movies can’t do. In the first half of Mixtape, I haven’t seen anything close to that, and that’s where it’s not blowing my mind.

Several million hits across Saros’ trailers there. It definitely comes up on all the biggest gaming podcasts. So I’m not sure what the other poster’s blind spot is, but Saros is definitely there.

At the same time, that’s not them setting the game up to fail; that’s you purposely excusing yourself from everywhere that people normally hear about games. I’m not sure by what metric you’re basing declining track records on, but wherever you hear about games on Bluesky or YouTube is probably still one of these outlets. Right here on this Lemmy community, we cite those same outlets for news, and Saros has been posted here four times on its own, as well as in a Sony State of Play mega thread.

What sites do you follow for gaming news? OpenCritic aggregated 129 different outlets that reviewed it, and it’s a front page sort of deal for any of them.

I’m not sure we can help you if you’ve never heard of this game. It’s been in every major gaming news site’s release calendar, reviewed very well, and it’s been in several of Sony’s showcases.

EDIT: Folks, I don’t care if you also personally never heard of it. That wasn’t the point. This game had a marketing budget and was not set up to fail.

When I see a new company formed, raising $100M, touting how it’s led by some big name you’ve heard of from some different studio years ago, the odds are against it. This game had only barely started development when we saw a CG announcement trailer. Hudson doesn’t want to spend 5 to 7 years developing it, but I noticed he didn’t rule out 4 years, which is still a long time for a brand new studio.

From experience, don’t get your hopes up for this game. If it doesn’t get cancelled before it’s finished, it’s unlikely to blow your mind. Starting a new studio with a project this big has historically not worked out most of the time.