Decades:
Genres:
Welcome back. This part of the series will be primarily focusing on genres. So far I have [Turn based RPG, Action RPG, Board Game, Arcade Game, third person shooter, MMO, Action, 4X (Civilization-like), 3D Platformer, Roguelike, Dungeon Crawler, Card Game, Point and click, Indie, Text dungeon, Stealth, Rhythm, Horror, Metroidvania, Survival, Sandbox, shoot/beat 'em up, City Builder, Adventure, Simulation, Puzzle, Bullet Hell, Fighting, MOBA, Real Time Tactics, grand strategy, Racing, Walking simulator, Tower Defense, Sports, Idle, Trivia, and Casual] as available genres. Let me know if I missed something, and I will try to get it added.
This is eventually all going to get compiled into one megathread for people who want gaming recommendations from Chapos specifically. Other consoles and genres will come in sporadic subsequent threads. Please contribute to previous threads if you missed them. This is meant to be an exhaustive list.
Expanding on your choice(s) is definitely a plus. Not everyone knows about or has played non-mainstream titles.
VA-11 Hall-A is really good. You play as Jill, a bartender in a cyberpunk city and serve drinks to the various people that come to your bar. There aren't any dialogue choices so the only real way to interact is through making different drinks to alter how conversations and relationships develop. For example giving a different drink than what that person asked for or increasing the alcohol content of a drink to get a customer drunk. The player character is a fully fleshed out character with backstory and development which is interesting, I feel like a majority of VNs just have a player self insert who doesn't speak, not that's a bad thing its just interesting. The game does a good job of having a large variety of characters with interesting stories to tell and different interactions/relationships with Jill and each other. The dialogue is very casual for the most part and has a tendency to be fairly crude which is entertaining while also having plenty of serious moments. The game uses the cyberpunk setting really well, with a lot of commentary on AI, technology and cooperate control over society. Overall an extremely solid visual novel that I've actually replayed multiple times despite the fact that the game doesn't have any branching paths/ different endings, I just enjoy it that much. I'm really looking forward to the sequel N1RV Ann-A which has a similar premise but takes place in a Caribbean resort bar instead of a city bar. I might as well mention Coffee talk here as well since it has the same gameplay loop of serving drinks during a visual novel just in a coffee shop in Portland with fantasy races living along side humans like elves and orcs. It kind of captures the same energy as VA-11 Hall-A but I didn't enjoy it quite as much but still had fun playing it. It's fairly cheap and has a demo so it's worth taking a look at if you really like VNs.
As a side note you could add "Walking Simulator" as a genre if you wanted to. I think games like Stanley Parable and Gone Home are unique enough that they could have their own thread although they could also just be considered adventure games. The term "Walking Simulator" is pretty silly and kind of pejorative but it seems to be what people are ok with calling the genre.