Enshrouded (Early Access)
This will probably by my game of the year, in the year that it actually comes out; I was immediately hooked on it. It's functionally very similar to Valheim; a solo or co-op world where you explore, craft, build a base and explore. Except that it really puts Valheim to shame - it's already got WAY more content. It has an immersive hand-crafted world, a fantastic building system, satisfying combat and loads of content. It's been patched regularly during EA so far and has a really interesting roadmap of things still to come.
Pros
- A large varied skill tree which allows you to take skills from all over the place
- Deformable terrain. You can mine tunnels, create a base INSIDE a cave, explosive barrels blow chunks out of the land and walls
- The building system is excellent. It's kind of like minecraft for blocks, but also optional snapping, roofing, lots of decorative objects and an undo button
- The deformable terrain means you can actually build a base inside a mountain, unlike Valheim which only lets you deform downwards
- The huge world map is hand crafted, which makes it actually interesting to explore
- Melee, ranged and magic builds, or something in between
- Has co-op, but works perfectly well solo
- Everything about the game can be customised. Day/night length, difficulty, enemy amount, XP gains etc. You can also introduce hunger mechanics
- Lots of gear to be found, which can be upgraded and have gem slots
- You acquire crafters, assistants and villagers over time which is rewarding and unlocks loads of recipes
- Grappling hook & glider are great for getting about
- Looks amazing and runs really well
- Re-speccing your skills is cheap
- The land outside your base restores to it's original state over time, so you can loot places more than once
- It has something I really love in these kinds of games - the ruined buildings you come across give you inspiration for your own bases - or you can use them as your base and just repair them
- No weight limit (looking at you, Valheim)
- Lots of lore books to find, and those tableaus you find in Fallout locations like a love letter on a desk, and two skeletons in a bed
Cons
- The gem forges are cool, but it doesn't make sense that they only take a specific kind of archaic essence. Essence should be universal and just use different amounts, like runes.
- The land outside your base restores to it's original state over time, so your structures and tunnels disappear. Would be great if you could keep your shortcuts
- Inventory management is annoying. There is no "Deposit to nearby chests", which makes emptying my inventory a chore
- You can create multiple bases, but magic chests only share they inventory to the base they're in, which makes building more than one base impractical
- The main mechanic of the game - the risk of dying if you spend too long in the shroud - is completely negated by the fact that if you log out, you respawn back at your base. So if you're going to die, just log out and you're fine.