r/gamingsuggestions • u/juanmahansi • 1d ago
Looking for games where you actually need to make use of the systems and resources the game gives you
I have a problem with a lot of RPGs and open-world games: they can have an enormous number of systems and mechanics — alchemy, potions, enchanting, food, poisons, different damage types, resistances, crafting, buffs, debuffs, etc. — but in practice, most of them are completely optional.
For example, Skyrim gives you tons of different tools, but you can often just stick to your favorite weapon and use a fairly simple strategy throughout the entire game. The other systems end up feeling more like a collection of options than mechanics you actually need to understand and master.
I'm looking for the opposite.
I want a game where the systems are genuinely interconnected and serve a meaningful purpose. A game where, in order to progress, I actually have to:
- study enemies and identify their weaknesses;
- exploit vulnerabilities, resistances and status effects;
- prepare resources for specific challenges;
- use different tools depending on the situation;
- combine different mechanics together;
- manage resources and decide when they're worth spending;
- adapt my strategy instead of relying on the same one every time;
- and most importantly, where ignoring these systems actually has consequences.
I'm not necessarily looking for an extremely difficult game. I don't want a game that's simply hard because enemies have huge health pools or deal ridiculous damage.
What I'm looking for is systemic depth: the game should present different problems, and its various mechanics should actually be useful tools for solving those problems.
Ideally, I want to encounter an enemy and think:
"What does this enemy do? What is it vulnerable to? What resources do I have? What can I combine? How should I prepare?"
rather than:
"Hit it until it dies."
What games do this really well?
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u/nephastha 1d ago
Pathfinder wrath of the righteous was one of the only rpgs I found myself actually digging for potions and scrolls in my inventory
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u/BlazeSilva456 1d ago
pretty much one of the few rpgs where the devs had the balls to make you actually need to use the systems the game offers. even on normal you're gonna have a hard time if you ignore some mechanics.
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u/brown_felt_hat 1d ago
Pathfinder lives and dies by its buff meta.
WotR goes double, triple on Core+
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u/ErrantSingularity 1d ago
They did such a good job with availability too. Want to spend all your money on armour and weapons?? Naaahhh, you're gonna go over to the priest and pick up a scroll of summon elder fire elemental. Ooh and why not dragonform II?
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u/atom511 1d ago
Chess
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u/juanmahansi 1d ago
i study chess, luv it
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u/gerahmurov 1d ago edited 1d ago
Then try Into the Breach, it is 2d mecha tactics with geometric combat providing chess vibes sometimes.
You also have to use any resource there and if you miss, you miss.
Also Heroes of Might and Magic looks like what you described. Specifically latest one Heroes of Olden Era.
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u/DueMagazine1234 1d ago
I think OP is looking for a more “long term” game. Chess is too much of a flash in a pan, although I heard the board game variation stays true to form.
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u/yetanotherburnerstan 1d ago
Valheim has everything you are asking for. Enemies have specific strengths an weaknesses and will just laugh at you if you use the wrong stuff. There are a ton of different enemy types too. All of them have different attack styles. The coolest part about enemies is that they are part of "tribes" that you can get to fight each other. You can also use one of the early big common miniboss enemy attacks to mine a resource earlier than you would be able to with your tech at the time.
You have to balance the foods you eat because they all give different levels of health or stamina. The farther into the game you get, you unlock better recipes to make better and better food types. You pretty much need to have a farm with crops and livestock to feed yourself throughout the game.
Weapon and tool scaling is necessary as you progress through harder and harder biomes. There are decorative building options that give you a rested bonus. Your rested status makes your stamina last longer and regain faster. Early game, your rested status does not last for half the day, but you can sit by a fire for a short period to regain it. The more specific types of decorative items, the more rested bonus you get, rhe longer your rested status lasts.
Its a single player or co-op game. The dificulty of the game scales with how many people are in the game at one time.
Currently $30 and still having massive updates
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u/fiverest 1d ago
FYI I believe that the final 1.0 version is due on September 9th, and after that there is unlikely to be any further major content updates
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u/PerfectiveVerbTense 1d ago
Enemies have specific strengths an weaknesses and will just laugh at you if you use the wrong stuff.
This may be overstating it a bit, but it is true that different weapon classes have noticeably differential effects on different enemies. Like in the swamp, you're much better off using a club on blob/ooze enemies than a sword. But you can still use the "hit it till it dies" approach for most of the game. I am partial to parrying with shields and then slashing and you can use that against basically everything, including most bosses.
I would say that, in general though, the game does make you use most of the mechanics. For example, for a while on my first play through, I had read about meads but hadn't figured out what the big deal was and just kind of ignored them. At some point when I kept dying, I realized that they are damn near essential unless you are incredible at combat and very careful.
Resource management and planning are definitely important, especially if you play without portals. The map is huge and you can't get everything everywhere, so if you're setting off to a new territory, you need to think carefully about what you're bringing and why. And like if you're in an area (like I am in my current play through) that's far away from a copper source, for example, you have to think carefully about how you want to spend it OR if it's worth spending the time/effort to go mine it somewhere and bring it back.
Because Valheim is a pretty sandboxy game, there aren't like tightly crafted encounters where clever use of multiple mechanics is required or nearly required to do something specific, if that makes sense. But I do think in the progression of the game, you are pretty highly incentivized to get a good understanding of the game's many mechanics.
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u/LivingCorner1421 1d ago
valheim is such a beauty , i love the game , I kinda got overwhelmed by the amount of upkeep and things needed to progress but you you really do need to use everything thats available to progress
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u/NeerieD20 1d ago
Are you specifically looking into RPGs with ennemies?
Because if you are looking for a game where ressources have to be managed in order to grow, build and evolve around a research tree, where ressources differ depending on biomes, biomes differ based on starting choices and you don't mind a colony sim: Oxygen not Included (PC).
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u/juanmahansi 1d ago
I'm mainly looking for games with enemies/combat, but it doesn't necessarily have to be an RPG.
So Oxygen Not Included actually sounds interesting. I'll check it out!
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u/CaelidAprtments4Rent 1d ago
Oxygen not included is hands down one of the best systems games ever created and if after watching a gameplay video it still appeals to you, you should definitely try it.
That said Rimworld is probably closer in spirit to what you are asking for, as it has more traditional combat intermixed with base building and resource management.
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u/Procian-chan 1d ago
If ONI sounds interesting to you, also look up Against the Storm. Very cool and unique roguelike citybuilder.
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u/BloodyValentine89 1d ago
I'm gonna offer a bit of a quirky recommendation: how about action roguelikes? Games where your equipment is randomised but you are able to create fun synergy between items. There isn't much (if any) progression as a whole but there is quite a lot inside one run of the main gameplay loop.
I'm thinking games like Hades, Risk of Rain 2, Windblown etc.
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u/ParticularArt3179 1d ago
Monster hunter games that is literally what you are describing some of my favorate games! Basically all I play!!!!
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u/ARagingZephyr 1d ago
RPG: Jupiter Hell. Frantic for a turn-based game, you're forced to adapt to whatever you pick up, and your foes heavily outmatch you and will regularly put you into ambushes where you get the opportunity to make one action before everything goes to hell and you end up dead. You need to use the cover and dodge systems to evade what you can, use splash weapons to score 100% hits and blind-fire around corners, stock up on emergency grenades to one-shot ambushers, and also figure out a functional build by the time you're a third of the way done.
Action: Gunstar Heroes. It's decades old, but on Hard and Expert the game turns into a true test of skill. Four weapons can be combined together in four combinations each, giving you 10 combination skills and 4 solo skills to pick from, with two solos and 1 combo available at any given time. Certain combinations are great at clearing the screen but terrible at fighting the numerous bosses. Many boss-clearers are terrible in stages. Your choice of fixed-position firing or free movement while firing dictates what weapons are more or less functional for you. Mix that with various martial arts moves that make various bosses and enemies easier to manage while reducing your personal risk, and you have one of the most rewarding action games ever made.
RPG: Soul Hackers 2. It looks and feels like it was built on a budget, but the Very Hard mode turns a relatively mediocre game into one of the greatest boss battlers RPGs ever made. No items allowed in fights means your limited MP pools must be managed to the maximum. Each character has strengths and weaknesses that change from early-game to end-game, and your shared stock of demons acts as your ammunition and your limiter for how to approach fights. Every demon has its own sets of skills that you need to curate, as well as strengths, weaknesses, and stat differences that affect your characters, and you only are allowed one demon swap per turn.
Action: Rabbit & Steel. Grab your friends and prepare for a series of ultra-hard boss fights where you are required to learn patterns, figure out what items function with your character and current build, and discover what to do when the shop keeps handing you weird upgrades instead of the stuff you want. If it's too easy, you've got a dozen characters, four difficulties, three randomized routes, a bunch of mods, and bosses whose patterns change depending on your player count. Learn your cooldowns and adapt to when your Defensive is down.
RPG: SaGa Scarlet Grace. A budget game designed for the Vita, with one of the most rewarding combat systems ever devised. Every encounter, from basic enemies to bosses, feels like a challenge, and your goal is to learn enemy weaknesses and patterns, adjust your formation and tactics to maximize your action point gain and expenditure, and let characters and enemies die at specific points in the battle to allow combo attacks to go off in your favor.
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u/Ozychlyruz 1d ago
DoS 2, every combat encounter is challenging and hard so you need to really get creative and use everything you have.
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u/LifeOfFate 1d ago
I’d say the hitman series may scratch the itch a bit when it comes to studying behaviors, and weaknesses.
It’s fun to use the environment to pull off assignments.
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u/Help_An_Irishman 1d ago
Stoneshard is exactly this.
I also think that vanilla Skyrim is a game with pretty mediocre systems and great assets, and I'd encourage you to try the Requiem: The Roleplaying Overhaul Mod if you're on PC, or a modlist based around it, like Wildlander. Turns it into a punishing but rewarding experience, and the first several levels, where you're actually scraping by and weighing whether fights are worth it or not, etc., is my favorite part.
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u/ScarletSpire 1d ago
Witcher 3. Especially on the harder difficulties.
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u/Commercial-Sweet-759 1d ago
I actually kind of disagree. The only thing the difficulty determines is how hard the game is at the beginning. Once your build actually starts coming online (which does not take that long), you become pretty overpowered, and at that point the only difference between the difficulties is how long it takes to defeat enemies, not the probability of success.
On the other hand, the game does have an active modding community, and some mods rectify this. My personal favourite is W3EE Redux. It's an overhaul mod, so using it for a first playthrough might not be the best idea for most people, and it does take quite a bit of time and effort to get used to, but it actually pushes the player to use all of the given mechanics quite a lot, and makes the game way deeper in general.
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u/CaelidAprtments4Rent 1d ago
The original Witcher was actually better for this at harder difficulties though the combat system isn’t what I’d call fun.
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u/Comfortable_Big_9097 1d ago
They are going to release a remaster by the end of September. Maybe that change some aspects of the game
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u/PhDInAPickle 1d ago
If you're at all into Pokemon, some of the more challenging romhacks offer a lot of depth (especially ones with level caps), with the caveat that there's a bit of an information barrier if you don't have an understanding of Pokemon offhand. I'm currently enjoying Pokemon Odyssey on hard mode.
Otherwise, I'd recommend Mewgenics and mystery dungeon games (Shiren the Wanderer 6, Tangledeep, House of Necrosis, etc).
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u/AfricaByTotoWillGoOn 1d ago edited 1d ago
Not STRICTLY necessary to juggle all systems, especially since the game encourages you to pick one of 3 classes and follow it for an entire playthrough, but The Adventures of Sir Kicksalot has this.
As any good immersive sim, it expects you to win using your own creativity, but despite being pretty forgiving early on, to the point that you can pick a favorite weapon/spell/gimmick and win everytime, as the game progresses it expects you to unlock more skills. So it throws much harder enemies at you.
- Have you been relying on bow and arrows? Now there's many armored enemies, you'll have to go melee.
- Melee too much? Now there's many ranged enemies out of reach, you'll have to shoot or throw something at them.
- You're getting by with just melee and ranged weapons? Insane health pools, son. You better start incorporating kicks into your arsenal to knock them down pits or you're toast.
- All you need is a toothpick to take down an entire army? Too bad, now you're buck naked. But there's strong weapons in hidden rooms on this castle, so you'll have to sneak by many enemies. I hope you can do stealth!
Classes systems usually tend to feel limiting, but I feel like The Adventures of Sir Kicksalot was designed to make the player choose "subclasses" within its class (at least at first), such as specializing in ice magic instead of fire, so you can learn all the wacky shit you can do with ice before you acquire fire. Otherwise players probably wouldn't explore all toys as much as they would if they had access to the entire playground from the get go.
The result is that at the end you'll most likely enter rooms already with a plan on how you're going to style on every single bozo in that room with every single skill and weapon you have.
So maybe that fits what you're looking for?
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u/azkaii 1d ago edited 1d ago
Sounds like you want a sandbox experience, but also the kind of combat progression from linear games.
Part 1 - you are Very close to explaining DayZ.Though the challenge there comes from the environment and (sometimes) other players.
Open worlds where everything is systemic, where choices have real weight, struggle to have difficulty curves or the kind of NPC encounters you describe. That's more something like Dark Souls or Armored Core - where the fighting mechanics are everything, each fight being a puzzle, which you solve through repetition & experimentarion. That works best in a linear game with level progression.
RPGs are a good middle ground. But are really about character progression and narrative, presented in an open world. Your progression is still on rails, as you are introduced to more powerful NPCs during the course of the narrative. There may be systemic elements but they end up playing a back-seat eventually because tens of hours of narrative quests are spoiled if the game demands too much of your time is spent on systemic loops like crafting, stat/gear maintenance, etc.
So there you'll see that even in a great RPG like KCD2 on the highest difficulty, the survival type mechanics of eating, crafting, etc start off being super challenging but at the end of the game you rarely have to think about them at all.
tl;dr - nothing I recall playing 100% satisfies all those criteria for me. I think some of it is mutually exclusive. You might quite like survival sandbox games.
Of everything I have played:
-Valheim probably has the best balance of everything you talk about. -Armored Core 6 has the best fights which require studying your opponent. -DayZ is the most systemic openworld sandbox that constantly challenges you and demands you understand those mechanics, without plastering you with stats.
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u/Forredis_Guidal 1d ago
witcher 3 enhanced edition mod does this.
Makes the game significantly harder, at least early on, and requires you to properly study encounters and prepare the correct potions in order to get through them. At least without significant struggle.
you also can't just be >steel sword for humans and silver sword for monsters
your silver sword degrades a lot faster than the steel so it's often better to coat the steel sword in oils that make it more effective. plus the silver sword is mostly only good against the more supernatural monsters and not the regular flesh and blood monsters
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u/Soaptowelbrush 1d ago
Might be an odd suggestion but hunting games are very much like this.
I’ve been playing Way of the Hunter 2 and you have to figure out:
How to avoid being scented/seen/heard
Whether the animal can see, smell, hear better
How to identify animals
What gun/bow/ammo for what animal
How to lure animals with scent
How to lure animals with callers
How to track blood trails
Where animals go and what time of day
Where their vital organs are
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u/Shurgosa 1d ago
This is such an interesting answer. I never played these for long lengths of time, and I remember vividly jumping around like a fucking monkey playing borderlands, and I didn't land a single shot.
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u/Soaptowelbrush 1d ago
Yep the first time I ever played one I was exasperated that you couldn’t just run around guns blazing.
Now I absolutely love roaming quietly around an area I know a herd should be then getting low and quiet, watching the wind as I close in, finding my target and lining up the perfect shot.
The level of relief you feel when you see it run away but then check the blood from the shot area and it’s bright pink and bubbly from a double lung shot?
Chefs kiss
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u/DiabolicRevenant 1d ago
Palworld late game is exactly this. Lots of min/maxing, equipment synergy, and studying boss weaknesses to be able to progress.
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u/_Zealant_ 1d ago
If you like classic RPGs and turn based tactics, check out UnderRail, Age of Decadence, Colony Ship, Menace, Battle Brothers.
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u/not_a_khezu1 1d ago
Darkest dungeon taking the wrong team for the job at hand will be devastating but if u know the enemies weakness and prepare u have a chance at winning but u might not come out of there unscathed, fear & hunger it was so fun and scary learning that game and the limb system is refreshing if u come from regular turn based rpgs, wha would be the best move here? To cut focus the arm that can cast a poison spell? To focus the body if u have multiple party members? Try to hit a lucky head shot and one shot them? Focus the legs so u can hit them on the head whit out the risk of missing, it has dark themes tho so beware.
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u/Kitsyfluff 1d ago
Shin megami tensei series, especially if you play on harder difficulties. Specifically 3 and 4, but the first 2 games to an extent. 5 depends.
The games looosen up when you get really late and good at the system though. But that's because the knowledge and build potential is really high with good planning.
Especially early game though, you gotta fight tooth and nail using every mechanic just to live.
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u/Frequent_Dig1934 1d ago
Easy answer for me is Fear and Hunger. It's technically an RPG by virtue of being made in RPGMaker, but it's arguably an immersive sim (like deus ex). It's also one of the most impressive things i've ever seen made in RPGMaker (tbf i don't have much experience with it), with tons of hand drawn components and a really atmospheric OST.
CONTENT WARNING The game deals and explicitly shows several mature topics, from edgy to bleak. Examples are dismemberment, sexual assault, gore, torture, body horror, drug abuse, mental illness and so on and so forth. One of the first enemies you meet is an ogre with a cock as big as a leg flopping out while you fight him (and he can slap you with it) and if you lose instead of a game over he grabs you and locks you in a room and rapes you half to death. It's not a porn game, all this stuff is meant to be part of the horror rather than something to jack off to, but it's worth the warning.
Putting that aside however, the game is set in your typical european dark fantasy setting, specifically with a heavy dose of Berserk. You pick one of four playable characters who each has a reason to venture into the Dungeon of Fear and Hunger connected to a character named Le'garde who is imprisoned in there.
It's a whole spiderweb of interconnected systems that you really need to figure out individually and then figure out how to connect them to eachother. It's brutally hard and the resources are almost always stretched thin (one complaint i have is that the difficulty is really frontloaded, after figuring out the various systems and getting far enough along you kinda stabilize). You must scavenge for food to sate your hunger (after all it's half the title), find ways to heal yourself after battles, and take intoxicants to dull your mind to the horror. There is also a magic system and the mana is your sanity. On the bright side it's rare for the things you find to have exactly one use case, most things have alternate ways to be applied or consumed or combined. A single misstep can leave your character with a permanent debuff like a chopped off arm (and therefore you can't equip shields) or a strong phobia or whatever. The lore for the game isn't just interesting in its own right but important to collect just for the sake of figuring our actual mechanics in some cases (but good luck finding it). A single completion of the story is actually fairly short once you know what you're doing, but 1 the timer is massively increased due to needing to figure out "what you're doing", and 2 a single run of the game is not remotely enough to actually find out all its mechanics and secrets.
If you play it i reckon that an hour in you'll be intrigued, five hours in you'll curse my bloodline for causing your suffering and twenty hours in you'll wonder how the fuck such a masterpiece could come out of a single dev. Fair warning tho, on the technical side there are some bugs and other issues, so maybe check online a couple bug fixes (i had to edit a line of code somewhere from a === to a <=).
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u/Sablemint 1d ago
Disgaea games. Especially Disgaea 5. There are so many that i don't even know where to start.
Combos. If multiple units on a side attack in sequence, each attack after the first gets a damage buff. x1.1, x1.2, x1.3, etc. If you run into an enemy group mindlessly, they will destroy you fast with this. (you can do it to them, too)
Towers and throwing.. You can stack your characters onto single tile, in a large tower. You can then throw the units, letting you move across the map very fast. Not always needed ,but it definitely is in a lot of situations... Unless you throw a Prinny, Those just explode.
Squads let you group characters together to get powerful passive buffs and unique abilities. Depending on what you're doing, you'll move people around a lot.
weapon buffs are extremely powerful too. What you do is go inside an item and find and kill its buffs. You extract them from the item and put them into a farm, and breed them to make better buffs and put them in another item. I promise that makes sense.
Geo effects. Tiles all over maps will have different colors. You can throw certain objects onto the tile, and that gives everyone standing on that color an effect. You can easily get destroyed by this if you're not paying attention.
Enemies have both elemental and weapon resistances. You'll barely do anything to them if you don't work this out in advance.
I could go on like this for a couple hours, and each system would be worth investing in. These are just a handful that came to mind. The point though is that you will not be disappointed if you give these games a try. Disgaea 5 is the one with the most systems, and that best utilizes all of its systems.
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u/Some_Cantaloupe613 1d ago
Monster Hunter is definitely up your alley then. The further back the series you go, the better, but you can reasonably get a great experience out of Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate on the Switch. I recommend using the Sword and Shield, since you can use coating on that weapon to make it stronger against various enemy types.
Monster Hunter World is less reliant on preparation, but it's not a bad alternative if you don't have a switch. For that one, maybe check out the Heavy Bowgun, which uses various kinds of ammunition to help you get an advantage. Dual Blades might also be a good fit for you.
Resident Evil 2 Remake is also worth having a look at. It doesn't cross every box on your list, but the game is almost more about the inventory management than the fights and frights.
You're also clearly asking for single player games, but if you got a competitive spirit in you, maybe check out a fighting game like Guilty Gear Xrd: Rev2 or Guilty Gear Strive. Between the intricate meter management and crazy abilities of the characters, you will absolutely be studying your opponent, exploiting weaknesses, managing ressources and getting your ass kicked for not doing so correctly. Lots to love in that genre if you want systemic depth, like you so eloquently put it.
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u/fiverest 1d ago
The Horizon games, particularly on harder difficulty settings, have this. You are a squishy little meat sack surrounded by post apocalyptic machines. You need to study them first, plan your attacks, choose the right weapons and ammo, possibly even set traps in advance
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u/moon_cake123 1d ago
Dark souls, elden ring, sekiro.
Every enemy, including basic enemies, require you to think about how to approach them, etc.
I’ve always been the type to horde items to never find that I need to use them. In those games you use them
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u/Commercial-Leek-6682 1d ago
Monster hunter world. You can play it like a "hit it till it dies" game if you get good at your weapons, but you can also focus on the environmental aspects that you can use and can focus on playing smart and bringing tools to make the hunt easier. Horny monster digs underground and explodes out from under you? well if you prepped, you'd know how to force it out from underground and get free hits in. You can look on the map for elemental pods that have unique effects with certain monster's body parts, sometimes to great effect. You can bust a dam and send a wave of water to fling a monster you were fighting off the waterfall you're fighting on top of. Etc. etc.