Not trying to sound like I have rose tinted glasses or whatever but lots of my favorite AA+ games, including AAA, are so low effort now. My favorite game ever is World of Warcraft, and it’s just shocking seeing how little content you get for your $15 a month. They have been drip feeding it for years, now they are going so far as to sell early access to the next expansion for even more money. It’s insane to me. People will pay $30 extra just to access the exact same amount of content, for just a few days earlier. That’s crazy.
Another game that I have really come to enjoy lately is Genshin impact from Hoyo. This is a gacha game, But it’s still relatively fun to play with no monetary investment at all because of how generous they are with being able to obtain the in-game currency, the entire storyline basically is available without any paywall. Cannot say this for a lot of games. You want to play the new Call of Duty or something, $70 minimum. You want to play Starfield, $70. That game was not even half finished upon release and they are still working on it! So gacha games aren’t exactly a bad deal if you take that into account. $0 investment some people spend hundreds on it of course. But still, they are for the most part extremely high quality…
Zenless Zone Zero though is so low effort it’s crazy. It’s just a half-hearted eroge/erotica game. It launched with tons of questionable imagery of imaginary women who are very young, they look like they are 15 years old or younger and half dressed. No healer like other games, so content is extremely challenging. They ignored most feedback from the beta about game features that people didn’t enjoy like the TV system which is globally hated by everyone, and there were tons of comments on their official forums back in December of people saying they didn’t like the system and that it was a really bad system, they launched it in this terrible state anyway even knowing people didn’t like it. Now, after release, still no healer like other games, there’s no support system like star rail and Genshin have so you can’t have a friend to come help you, you can’t borrow a character from someone else. The game is literally half finished garbage and people are just raving over it because of skimpy characters who look like they are 12 years old. Like wow…
I could give you a dozen more examples but these are the ones that are most obvious to me.
I would argue all those games but Elden Ring and BG3 are more indie games (not familiar with Stellaris though).
You would probably also enjoy Dead Cells and Hollow Knight btw
I forgot Dead Cells! It’s so goooood.
And how could I forget Darkest Dungeons! MANY HAVE FALLEN IN THE FACE OF CHAOS, BUT NOT THIS ONE, NOT TODAY 😭
I’ll have to add Hollow Knight to the list, thanks for the suggestion
Why does nobody ever mention Cult of the Lamb? They just added local co-op (which, yes, it works with Remote Play).
I have yet to play that one, but you’re not the first person I’ve heard say it’s good.
The gameplay is fun, though it can be a little frustrating sometimes when no matter what you do your followers are unhappy. But it’s so fucking cuuuuuute in an “I’m going to sacrifice you to the old gods” kinda way.