Jagged Alliance 2 (especially with the 1.13 mod) is the most ludicrously detailed tactical RPG you’ll ever find. It can be a nightmare to actually play until you spend many, many hours learning all its systems, but nothing else comes close immersion-wise. You can customize every mercenary’s loadout down to individual weapon attachments, capturing different parts of the map gives bonuses that actually make sense (like being able to ship in weapons once you’ve taken the airport), you can train militias to hold onto captured sectors for you, and you can even use the in-game internet to send flowers to the main villain.

It’s also already a ninth level spell, so saying he’ll cast it at level nine is meaningless and a failed attempt to establish nerd cred.

Steam is banned in Vietnam because it couldn’t/wouldn’t comply with their restrictive content laws.

The battle pass removed its daily check-in IIRC.

In Starsector markets have infinite money, but the per-unit price actively drops the more of a good you offer. Combined with sky-high taxes if you’re not selling on the black market (which has its own gotchas), this makes it impractical to earn a profit off of hoarding a single good. You’re expected to watch the intel feed for market shortages and take advantage of their desperation if you want to make it as a bulk trader. Or be a little sneaky and create a shortage yourself.

It’s one of only a few games where trading requires more than finding a good route and traveling back and forth. It’s surprisingly fleshed out for a title that’s mostly focused on combat.

China started drafting legislation cracking down on engagement bait daily tasks a few years ago and some games (like Genshin and other Hoyoverse titles) dropped daily check-in bonuses and made more things reset weekly in response. I think China later backtracked (IIRC the politician pushing the laws fell out of favor?), but not feeling forced to log in every day made those games so much less stressful.

I haven’t played anything in the genre in years, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that crap crept back in again.

What other game lets you fight the demonic personification of Fox News and Bill O’Reilly?

I know a lot of people hyped up Outer Worlds as a spiritual successor to New Vegas and were disappointed when it didn’t reach the same heights of writing. Obsidian not being given any time to make New Vegas and then missing their contracted bonus payout by a single Metacritic point was brought up a lot before release, and gamers trumpeted this new game as what Obsidian could have made without Bethesda mismanagement. Then it came out and had the temerity to be average, leaving fans acting like they’d somehow been betrayed by Obsidian.

It wasn’t Obsidian’s or the game’s fault that people decided it had to be a 10/10 masterpiece, it just got caught up in a stupid fanbase war against Bethesda and its reputation suffered when it couldn’t meet people’s sky-high expectations.

Portal 2 has the best introduction to jumping controls of any tutorial in existence.

Metal Gear Solid had a weird halfway version of this: you would automatically eat a ration and heal when taking a fatal hit, but only if it was equipped in the active item slot. It was always fun to get an unexpected game over because you forgot to swap items back before a boss battle.