This even being on a Nintendo system–subject to Nintendo’s review–was a major change. Nintendo of America was as puritanical as it came up through the 16-bit era. Something like this releasing on a Nintendo system was unconscionable as late as 1995.

Following up on this conversation since I just saw this PC Gamer article:

I played a whopping 23 city builders in 2024, and here are my 5 favorites

How is Stormgate innovating? Genuine question–I’ve been avoiding it largely because it looks so much like StarCraft (and Pottinger even calls it out specifically in the article as something not innovative).

I’d add They are Billions as another evolutionary branch that’s doing something different. Starting to see some clones of this formula.

That said, I don’t think Against the Storm or Manor Lords are the kind of games Pottinger is talking about. Against the Storm doesn’t even have combat. Those are more in the city builder realm.

I think there are too many JRPGs that still use their battle system in support of their narrative for it to be considered anything other than a core system in those games. That’s especially the case in lower budget games in the genre.

Larger budget projects are branching more and more into side content/worldbuilding, but I’d argue it’s still highly underdeveloped in the genre when compared with western RPGs, in quality if not also in quantity. Persona and Yakuza are exceptions, rather than the rule. Persona is doing something entirely different (and well enough that it’s being emulated now) while Yakuza, as you say, carry a lot of that over from prior development into its RPGs from the series’ action games.

This is what I was wondering. Was the genre that quiet this year? Manor Lords isn’t just early access, it’s early early access. So many outright unfinished systems.

2002 for Warcraft III. Always blows my mind how that game spawned both World of Warcraft and the whole MOBA genre.

For sure. Kinda surprised one never got made, really.

Some of my favorites in a variety of genre:

• TIE Fighter and/or Freespace
• Planescape: Torment
• Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri
• Pharaoh

Also one of Sierra’s adventure games. A popular one is King’s Quest VI.

Unfortunately, Cyberpunk is exactly the kind of product that is going to keep driving the realistic approach. It’s four years later now and the game’s visuals are still state-of-the-art in many areas. Even after earning as much backlash on release as any game in recent memory, it was a massively profitable project in the end.

This is why Sony, Microsoft, and the big third parties like Ubisoft keep taking shots in this realm.

I had an intense love affair with this one earlier in the year that fizzled out quickly once the credits rolled. Solid game, but the only thing that keeps it from being in my collection of 1000-hour games is that it’s a little too dense for my taste. Keeping track of what builds what (and which build I had currently unlocked) was taking up a smidge more brain power than I’d like once the difficulty started demanding it. By the end I’d started layering in how to evaluate cornerstones, the best way to do trade, map modifiers, and it became too much. Ironically, I’d probably get to a level of comfort just by putting more time into the game but it’ll just feel like work.

One of those “almost there” games for me.