31 KiB
[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread
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Author: u/AutoModerator *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/1cljrk3/d_monday_request_and_recommendation_thread/
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Score: 28
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Created: 2024-05-06T14:00:11
Post:
Welcome to the Monday request and recommendation thread. Are you looking something to scratch an itch? Post a comment stating your request! Did you just read something that really hit the spot, "rational" or otherwise? Post a comment recommending it! Note that you are welcome (and encouraged) to post recommendations directly to the subreddit, so long as you think they more or less fit the criteria on the sidebar or your understanding of this community, but this thread is much more loose about whether or not things "belong". Still, if you're looking for beginner recommendations, perhaps take a look at the wiki?
If you see someone making a top level post asking for recommendation, kindly direct them to the existence of these threads.
Previous automated recommendation threads
Other recommendation threads
Comments:
u/cretan_bull [+25] (6 hours later)
I recommend: The Years of Apocalypse
My initial impression was that this looked like a rip-off of Mother of Learning, and considering how many mediocre time loop stories there are on Royal Road my expectations were not high. That impression was wrong: it is in fact an extremely well-written Mother of Learning rip-off, and while it's just getting started I think it has the potential to do Mother of Learning better than Mother of Learning did.
The story starts slow, with the first ten chapters covering the initial loop and acting as a sort of extended prologue, but things pick up rapidly after that. Our protagonist, Mirian, is sort of a female, less misanthropic Zorian, but that's perhaps a bit overly reductive and there are other differences as well. For instance, while Mirian is similarly academically inclined and has no magical combat experience, she is a reasonably talented rapier duelist, which while not directly applicable to modern magical combat at least gives her a foundation to build upon.
There's a Zach expy too, but Mirian is the only one who is looping, so no Red Robe either. It's not impossible that will change, but that's how things are right now. You may think that makes things too easy for Mirian, in the sense of Frodo getting a lightsaber but Sauron not getting his Death Star, but honestly, she has her work cut out for her. The invasion is only the first thing she'll have to address, as it's followed shortly after by an extinction-level cataclysm that she'll have to somehow stop as well. And even stopping the invasion isn't as simple as just finding the right people and mustering a military response. She's already tried that and, for a variety of reasons -- logistics, communications time, wide-ranging sabotage, conspiracies, traitors, limited force availability and the overwhelming strength and novel technology of the invasion force -- it's clear even doing that much will be extremely difficult and rely heavily on her own abilities.
That said, one thing this story does very well compared to Mother of Learning is its portrayal of systems of people and institutions. Mirian has been much more proactive than Zorian in trying to convince people of the existence of the time loop and reveal the conspiracies that prelude the invasion. That alone won't be enough, but she's far less resistant to seeking help from other people. For example, just a few loops in and she's already getting personal lessons from her Xvim-expy.
So is it a ratfic? I think, overall, tentatively yes. It fairly realistically represents people and how they might respond to out-of-context events. Mirian's decisions have been sensible and she's been fairly aggressively experimenting with exploiting the time loop. The behavior of other people is mixed, with some acting intelligently, others not, and some, even after accepting the existence of the time loop and the imminent invasion, failing to update their decisions accordingly. It's not a world of uber-competent rationalists, but I think it reasonably represents a gamut of personality and competence. There haven't been any idiot-balls at least, and the enemies are very competent even if the time loop is as much an out-of-context problem for them as it is for everyone else.
u/DrTerminater [+16] (a day later)
As someone commented in a previous thread, I feel like the only real letdown is that theres been no real displays of extremely competent magic users, which I think would be pretty interesting. I know realistically, most professors aren’t gonna be amazing fighter, but narratively, not seeing the magic system at or near its peak, is kind of a let down.
u/Dragongeek [+14] Path to Victory (a day later)
My review of this one from a month ago here.
TLDR: I wouldn't consider it "extremely well written", but it's not terrible. In fact, besides the pacing issues in the earlier chapters, the actual writing from a voice/style perspective is the weakest element of the work.
I give it a solid "good for RoyalRoad"
u/cretan_bull [+11] (a day later)
Thanks for linking that. Before making my post I searched for anything previous comments on the story, but Reddit search came up empty. I tried again and confirmed it. Lesson learned, I guess: Reddit search is useless. In future I'll use google.
I think your point about the magic system being somewhat weak is well-taken. A countervailing point is that it's a magitek setting except all the magitek was lost in the distant past and a new magitek industrial revolution has only just started. And even basic questions such as "how should mages be trained to maximize their magical potential" and the importance of MoL-style shaping exercises (versus enchantments) haven't yet been resoved, so people are still figuring out how to magic properly. I don't think that's a bad approach, just different. It's a time of transition, which provides ample opportunity for exploration and growth, which serves the story. And, it looks like the bad guys are well ahead of the curve which makes up for the protagonist being the only looper.
I'm reserving judgement about the dreams and the questions about what's going on with the Elder Gods, soul magic, celestial magic, etc. The story has established promises there but yet to fulfill them, so it's too soon to tell.
I'll grant that it's stylistically unexceptional, but I also didn't notice any problems with it. While I enjoy clever and engaging prose as much as the next person, there's also nothing wrong with competent, clear prose that does its job and gets out of the way. So long as it's not jarring, I consider literally everything else -- characterization, plot, premise, setting, worldbuilding, story structure, pacing etc. -- more important. It could be that there are technical problems with it that I simply didn't notice, and I do have a tendency of looking at a story with rose-tinted glasses right after I've read it for the first time, but if nothing leapt out at me on a first read I don't think any such problems can be all that bad.
Contrary to yourself and some other commenters, the reason I think the story has the potential to be better than MoL is that I think it addresses MoL's biggest weakness. MoL treated the world like a puzzle. Zorian would go off, generally alone, learn some new magic and eventually make a new contact. It added in the wrinkles of Red Robe and the need to escape the time loop, but it was ultimately the culmination of bringing all those individual disjointed puzzle pieces together. The Years of Apocalypse, by contrast, has greater verisimilitude in describing a complex, interconnected society with sophisticated institutions, and how it responds to out-of-context problems like the time loop, the invasion, and the calamity. Miriam's approach to the time loop is correspondingly very different to Zorian's and I think as such, shows greater potential though as it's still early in the story it's too soon to tell if that will pan out.
u/AviusAedifex [+6] (2 days later)
Reddit search sucks. Using "site:https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/ "year of Apocalypse"" on google is better but not by much.
Although I'm not sure why searching for "Years" only gives two results, and yet searching for "year" gives more. Even though they both have "Years" in the text.
u/Neither_Guitar7687 [+9] (3 days later)
The lack of common teleportion is the major differnece in my opinion. It'd been hinted that the protaganist may gain access to this later but it completely changes the logistics of the story.
The lack of hypercompetent magic users as someone mentioned can be explained by this being a second rate school. Whereas the school Zorian went to was a school at the capital.
Im interested to see the strength of the archmage. It seems magic is mostly a series of disparate fields with society curently pioneering a new system. It'll be very interesting to watch the protaganist pull together all these fields and to see if there's anyone of comparable power further afield.
u/Relevant_Occasion_33 [+12] (4 days later)
Minor correction: Cyoria in Mother of Learning was an important city, but not the capital.
u/steelong [+13] (2 days later)
I bounced off after about 15 chapters due to the characters. None of them or their relationships were especially interesting.
In the pre-loop chapters of MoL, we had:
Grumpy and irritable MC who nevertheless is willing to stop and help a little girl get her bike out of a river
His sister, who clearly loves her brother but is still annoying to him.
His mother, obsessed with reputation and who appears to use some classic guilt trip shenanigans to manipulate her son.
Extremely uptight Akoja, gossipy Benisek, mysteriously competent Zorian, overly demanding teacher Zvim, overly enthusiastic teacher Nora, the absolute mess of complicated feelings that is Taiven, and several other characters with character.
And then here you have:
MC who loves her (off-screen) family uncomplicatedly. She likes fencing and seems like a decent enough person.
Her friend and roomate who is friendly and seems decent enough.
The rich guy who is surprisingly friendly and seems decent enough.
That guy who is really good at fencing. I don't remember anything about his personality.
That one teacher with the plant who seemed decent enough.
Edit: And I just remembered Pointlessly Antagonistic Girl Who Probably Has Reasons For Being Antagonistic That Are Revealed Later. The fact that she's the only contrast to all the Vaguely Decent I Guess people is not great.
Some others I think.
And the funny thing is, I think unique character voices is something MoL is pretty weak at. The character is expressed exclusively through actions rather than style, and that's still enough to overshadow this story.
u/LarsinDayz [+8] (3 days later)
Does anyone know any isekai/portal fantasy novels where there is no initial plot? That is to say, Mc shows up in fantasy land and simply explores. No world ending threats, no getting locked in to defending a place or anything like that.
I'm thinking witcher style mini adventures if that makes sense.
u/None [+7] (4 days later)
Wandering inn maybe? It is very long, and the start isn't very good, but I find each new chapter to be an absolute banger.
u/happyfridays_ [+5] (4 days later)
This is a great answer. Up to maybe Volume 7, the story is more about different (very diverse and interesting) characters having intertwining experiences in a fantasy world.
There are some subplots before this, but around Volume 7 she begins to kick off a main plot and focus the story around it.
Fwiw I liked 2-5, got bored and dropped some of 6, liked 7-8, and am now on hiatus mid Volume 9. Vol 9 I found some bits of the main plot to be in a story form I didn't like >!too much generic everyone fights 1d bbegs!<. I am curious to hear if >!she deepened or complexified the antagonists or fight against them!< since then.
u/chiruochiba [+3] (4 days later)
Since my previous reply to you fell afoul of automatic deletion filters (possibly because I linked to the full Kindle Unlimited versions of each story), here's my second try:
Here are some slice of life isekai stories that I think might fit your request.
Beware of Chicken - A man gets isekaid into a low-tier cultivator in a Xianxia setting. He promptly quits his sect and journeys out to the sticks to start up a farm by himself. The story eventually develops a broader, province-spanning plot, but the focus always remains centered on the slice of life around the farm and the MC's growing family.
Dark Lord of the Farmstead - A man gets isekaid into the body of an evil dark lord who had been leading his necromantic army in a war of extermination against a neighboring nation. The setting is a high fantasy world with a LITRPG system interface. The MC promptly runs away into the wilds incognito and seeks to live a peaceful life in a small town hidden in the borderlands. The story remains focused on his idyllic life and relationship to his chosen family as they integrate into the town, with only rare intrusions of wider plot.
u/junkie_purist [+8] (3 hours later)
Any suggestions for LitRPG or progression books that feature a human-ish protagist, where the progression is tied to a device/entity rather than the body of the main character? Probably the closest to what I'm looking for are books in the "city-building" genre.
Basically, I'm looking for something with some of the same appeal as a "core" (e.g. "dungeon-core") stories, except rather than the main character being a sentient cave, the main character is a dungeon-builder who is a bipedal person who walks around building traps and whatnot.
And while "dungeon-core" is the most convenient analogy, I'd actually have a preference for something that isn't a dungeon. For example, something like a Mad Max story where the main character is upgrading and "leveling up" a car, or a space outlaw who is making upgrades to their ship, or a mecha pilot who is upgrading their exoskeleton suit.
Bonus if the work is available in audiobook form.
(Also: while I'm looking for recommendations in a specific genre described above, my biggest sorting criteria tends to be, for lack of a better way to put it, "competent writing." I don't mind occasional typos and the prose doesn't have to be great, but it should at least aspire to the level of "mid," if I can use that word non-pejoratively. Which is to say, I prefer stories written by people who understand how to use correct punctuation when writing dialog tags, and whose narration doesn't randomly flip-flop between past and present-tense narration for no reason.)
u/TheColourOfHeartache [+7] (6 hours later)
The Dungeon Lord series has a protagonist whose class is one part Sauron one part dungeon heart. So you get normal litRPG mixed with dungeon core. Its one of the better series too IMO.
His class isn't unique but it is much stronger than average, however its balanced by the fact he's enemy number one to large parts of the world and the other parts are a backstabbing pit of vipers.
(I say dungeon heart specifically, its clearly based on Dungeon Keeper)
u/DomesticatedDungeon [+9] (5 hours later)
LitRPG or progression
human-ish protag
progression is tied to a device/entity rather than the body of the main character
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something with some of the same appeal as a "core" (e.g. "dungeon-core") stories, except the main character is a dungeon-builder who is a bipedal person who walks around building traps and whatnot.
something like a Mad Max story where the main character is upgrading and "leveling up" a car, or a space outlaw who is making upgrades to their ship, or a mecha pilot who is upgrading their exoskeleton suit.
•DK Ami [r] — prot's a dungeon manager in Dungeon Keeper. IIRC, there weren't any significant blunders or badly used tropes;
•Dungeon Hunter [r] — mostly rational, but also somewhat bland / popcorn-y.
(partial matches:)
•Reincarnator [hypercompetence] [r-adj] — upgrading / revamping entire "system"-levels for use as strategic assets, bridgeheads, and cross-level infrastructure. [R-adj] for the first ~75%, then significant quality drops;
•Emperor of Solo Play [hypercompetence] [r-adj] — improving his real-world reputation and popularity (as a pro-gamer) → monetising those→ using the earned money as an additional in-game asset / power-up source;
•Tree of Aeons [r] — investing in infrastructure, state-building, foreign relations, research, etc;
•Reverend Insanity [hypercompetence] [xianxia] [ruthless] [r] — investing in research / upgrade of techniques, >!Gu superstructures!<, business projects, political relations and reputation, etc;
•Terror Infinity [r]; DC Carl [r-adj] — upgrading lounge, group privileges, etc;
?WtC [hypercompetence] [r-adj] — the gold-magic arc.
•Legendary Mechanic, The — not rational; somewhat similar to EoSP;
?the Mass Effect videogame series — ship upgrades, though the effects of them are seen during the story fragments rather than direct gameplay. Maybe check for relevant fanfics?
𐄂derec:Systemic Lands, The
u/NTaya [+12] Tzeentch (7 hours later)
DK Ami: super dead—haven't updated since 2021, and I haven't heard the author announcing that they plan to return to it. I also found it kinda boring, even though I love Dungeon Keeper.
Tree of Aeons: done better by Reborn as a Demonic Tree, which is saying a lot since RDT is not great either (but at least readable; edit: last time I checked, RDT had writing slightly below "mid" that the OP requested, while ToA was worse than that). Also, as far as I can recall, the protag never gets a "bipedal person" form.
Reverend Insanity, DC Carl, WtC: while all three are really, really good, they feature very little dungeon/vehicle/guild upgrades, especially proportionally to their high word count.
Haven't read any of the others.
u/serge_cell [+8] (a day later)
I'm still not getting why Reverend Insanity was forbidden by Chinese communist government. Not exactly forbidden but it was "strongly recommended" to author to stop writing it. Even though it was ~90% written already. It's rebellious for sure, but not much more then other xianxia.
u/ahasuerus_isfdb [+12] (2 days later)
I am not familiar with the way Chinese censorship works internally, but at one point I read hundreds of Soviet-era documents produced by various censorship offices and published after the fall of Communism.
There was a great deal of variety with government priorities shifting drastically from decade to decade and sometimes from year to year. On occasion, multiple agencies and/or multiple officials got involved and the ultimate decision was a compromise.
Other times a single censorship office struggled internally. For example, in May 1925 the office responsible for deciding which plays, operas, etc could be performed in the USSR described a number of 19th century operas as "ideologically unacceptable" for various reasons, e.g.:
- Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's The Snow Maiden (1882): "democratic-monarchist tendency" [sic]
- Giuseppe Verdi's Aida (1871): "imperialist odor"
- Anton Rubinstein's [The Demon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon_(opera)) (1871): "mystical biblicalism"
yet ultimately decided to allow them "in certain cases" because the music was good and because "the overwhelming majority of the current repertoire is so ideologically alien" that "a certain tolerance" had to be shown.
u/gfe98 [+4] (4 days later)
Although "rebellion against heaven" is common in Xianxia, fewer have content that can so easily be interpreted as antigovernment sentiment. For example, this section from the fate war could be interpreted as a metaphor saying that CCP control is no longer needed in the modern era.
!“Among all the people present, heroes among people's amplification on Fang Yuan was actually the strongest.!<
!"Why? Why!? You are clearly a demon who brings disaster to the world, you are an atrocious demon who commits countless sins! Why would you receive the greatest help from the human wills?" Duke Long roared in shock and fury.!<
!"Do you still not understand it? Duke Long! The current era is no longer the same, the hearts of the people have already changed!"!<
!"In the Olden Antiquity Era, humanity sought for survival space. Thus, the three Demon Venerables held back when they invaded Heavenly Court."!<
!"And now, it has already been over a million years since the Olden Antiquity Era has ended! Your Heavenly Court is unable to represent the will of all the humans in the world by now!"!<
!"These are the innermost voices of almost all the world's people!"!<
!"They don't want to be shackled any more, they thirst for freedom, even if this freedom is beyond impractical!!<
u/thomas_m_k [+8] (a day later)
I second Dungeon Keeper Ami. "Ami" here is Sailor Mercury from Sailor Moon. There isn't much about building traps for adventurers though. It's mostly trying to survive as a Dungeon Keeper while most of the world is hostile to you.
The writing is generally competent but the author has one habit that slightly annoyed me: >!when a character is referred to multiple times in a row, the author somehow thinks that it's bad to just repeat the name (which I think is actually the correct way of doing it) so instead the author comes up with other descriptions for the character, like "the blue-haired teenager", which gets really annoying!<
u/Darkpiplumon [+5] (19 hours later)
Years ago there was this game called Evoland, made for a game-making competition.
It's a very simple zelda like rpg where you "unlock" stuff like walking to the right, color, pixels, music, types of combat and things like that. A short and fun idea.
Then came Evoland 2. It's longer yes, but the core idea is heavily diluted. The first hour or so is incredibly boring, especially compared to the previous game that lasted less than an hour. You're forcing me to spend a lot of time doing dull rpg stuff instead of what I paid for, the main mechanic. And it costs 20$ in steam with no sales for a 10 mediocre year old game wtf.
Why does this matter? With time I've been walking further away from long sandbox games, both because of time concerns and just because of preference.
I'm looking for tight and self-contained games that I can play on pc. I want to experience the story, core mechanics or whatever the game wants to tell me without worrying about side missions, bullshit mechanics or spending a lot of time without getting to the good part.
As a good example of what I'm looking for, I'd recommend Portal 1 and 2 (best games of all time, fight me). Maybe more like Portal 1, in the length and "essence density" department.
u/GlueBoy [+13] anti-skub (a day later)
spending a lot of time without getting to the good part
I was going to recommend The Outer Wilds as it reminds me a lot of Portal 2 in a lot of ways, but it might not match the above criteria. Also it's kind of a sandbox, as well as a puzzle game within a space sim game an archaeology game within a time loop game. The pacing can be pretty slow, depending on your own ability to solve puzzles, to manage and prioritize tasks, and propensity to explore. It's never boring, though, in fact I'd go so far as to say it's consistently magnificent, overall a top 5 gaming experience for me. I highly recommend it.
Some stuff I played recently that I liked, may or may match your request:
- Terra Nil - short and sweet, good theme and engaging mechanics.
- Slay the Spire - Top 10 game for me probably. Almost pure mechanics.
- High Strategy: Urukon - Again, pure mechanics. Great way to zen out for a couple dozen hours.
- Balatro - A new deckbuilder roguelite (a la Slay the Spire) that's managed to catch my attention for much longer than usual.
u/NTaya [+7] Tzeentch (20 hours later)
Hmm... I have over 1000 games on Steam, but I have a strong preference for long sandboxes and rogue-lites (which is why I didn't like both Evolands, lol). Still, let me see...
Pony Island: Took me only 3 hours to finish it. Tightly packed with content. Lots of little cool stuff. Probably my favorite game from the developer (who is better known for Inscryption).
The Case Of A Golden Idol (see also: Return Of The Obra Dinn). Detective games that depend on your, the player's, knowledge and investigation skills. There is no hand-holding or filling the blanks for you. What you deduce is what you get. Both are really good, but Obra Dinn wastes time a bit with walking and cutscenes. Still, highly recommend both.
Celeste: fairly difficult platformer with a cool story and pixel-art style. Doesn't waste your time with anything, just plain fun. Of course, you should have the mechanical skill for 2D platformers to enjoy it.
Mimic Logic: really fun and unique puzzle rogue-lite. You have N boxes in front of you, some tell the truth while others are mimics that always lie. Deduce which boxes are not mimics to progress further. Pretty much no story or anything of the sort, just fun gameplay.
Before Your Eyes: the first two-thirds of the game I was sitting stone-faced, wondering why all the praising comments said the game was very emotional. The last third I was bawling my eyes out, interfering with the game's main gimmick. Short, sweet, the first two-thirds were also great in hindsight.
Baba Is You: best puzzle of all time. 'Nuff said.
The Stanley Parable (better to get both versions, but if that's not possible, then only the Ultra Deluxe version). Amazing narrative, cool idea, short individual runs (~15 minutes each).
That's what jumped at me first, but I can give out more ideas later.
Edit: Another person in this thread recommended Outer Wilds, and I 100% agree with that rec. While it's a fairly slow sandbox game (I think I completed it in 20+ hours?), it features zero grind. Most of the "time-wasters" are your explorations of scenic environments. And all-in-all, it's a superb game.
u/Dragongeek [+6] Path to Victory (20 hours later)
When I'm bored and looking for something that's lightweight to play, I always find myself playing FTL: Faster Than Light.
t's basically a roguelike spaceship captain game, and one of my favorite games of all time. Simple to get the core mechanics, but challenging and rewarding if you really push it to the limits.
The music also absolutely slaps too, especially with how the regular music turns I to combat music.
u/Flashbunny [+5] (2 days later)
It's been a few years since I've played FTL, but I recall there being a decent modding scene that added some longevity to the game, too.
u/WarZealot92 [+2] (a day later)
You might want to try Cosmoteer as well. To me it scratched the same itch as FTL, but personally I liked it more.
u/AviusAedifex [+4] (2 days later)
Path of Achra is a roguelike that recently came out of early access. Runs last about 20 minutes or so. It has very streamlined gameplay that still has a lot of depth.
If you like puzzle games I'd recommend Opus Magnum. It has really nice presentation and my favorite part is that unlike other puzzles games it's not that hard to find a solution, the hard part is finding one that's efficient. Other Zachtronic games also fit.
u/brocht [+2] (6 days later)
You should absolutely try Outer Wilds. Portal was one of the best games I've played. Outer Wilds is, IMO, different but equally good.
The game is tight with very little time wasting. There were a few tricky bits, but nothing that took more than a few tries once you figured it out. The expansion is also excellent, but not at all necessary to play the original game.
Alternatively for something very different, have you tried Hollow Knight? If you're into 2d metroidvanias, it's the best one. Pretty tight plot, and while there are some side missions and whatnot, they're well integrated and mostly not required. It is a medtroidvania, though, so expect a certain amount of exploring, re-visting, and practice to get through the game.
u/causalchain [+1] (5 days later)
I mostly play puzzle games, so here are a couple tight ones that haven't been mentioned
- Antichamber- trippy, unintuitive spatial puzzles
- Linelith - short game, satisfying "aha" moments