Games to get invested in.

Hello,

Recently I've been looking for a new game to get into, and I do mean for a good time. Here are some examples that have been similar in my past.

Toribash - This fighting sim was amazing, it was incredibly deep gameplay wise and extremely hard as well, and I must have spent at least 500 hours on it.

Space Station 13 - While it's a laggy piece of shite, it also had deep gameplay as well as a roleplay factor, as well as half the gameplay being secret meant I spent hours toying in Chemistry for new compounds.

Mount and Blade : Warband (specifically Napoleonic Wars) - The clan system in this made it incredibly addictive, and within 6 months I found myself leading up to 30 actual people over teamspeak in replica battles, with almost 1000 hours into the game, although of course drama struck as it always does with clans.

Also, EvE online deserves a mention. While I didn't quite get into it, I could see it had potential to be another one of those games, but as many times as I've tried it simply didn't have the attraction I needed.

From what I can tell no popular triple A games can provide what these have, and I'm wondering if anyone knows any other similar, independant games with deep gameplay.

I'm pretty invested in Darkfall Unholy Wars. It is a very unconventional MMO. The only way to enjoy it is to invest heavily into it, since it is such a hardcore PvP game.

Distant Worlds with all expansion packs is an incredibly in-depth 4x space strategy game. You could get hundreds of hours of fun out of that game.

Planetside 2 can be fun for a long time, if you like the core game. It has given me over 80 hours of gameplay, trying to get more unlocks.

Various sandbox indie games like Minecraft, Terraria, and even SpaceBase DF9 could provide tons of entertainment.

FTL is a deceptively small indie game, but I have played through it more than 50 times trying to get all the ships, and beat the game with all the ships and variants.

The entire Heroes of Might and Magic series is thousands of hours if you like turn-based strategy in a fantasy setting. It's a legendary series. Ditto on the Civilizations series. The old X-Com games are amazing. I recommend X-Com: UFO Defense, X-Com: Terror from the Deep, X-Com: Apocalypse, and X-Com: Interceptor. As you can see, I really like turn-based strategy.

DOTA 2 has incredible depth and is one of the more complex games out there. You could invest thousands of hours and still feel like you haven't breached the surface.

I'll mention Civilization 5. I had to recently force myself to stop playing it for a while, I was really putting time into it. Its so addictive being involved in massive world wars when all civilizations are trying to annihilate you and you fight back and eventually burn their civilizations to the ground with nukes and all. Such a feeling seeing them beg for peace after threatening you while you were weak.

Secret World is my latest obsession, I love conspiracy theories, illuminati, that kind of thing and there's a hint of Alternate Reality gaming where the lines between RL and in-game become blurred, like some of the websites you have to look up for clues actually exist on the web. Very unique, niche MMO.

Path of Exile is decent, and very addictive.

It's free as well. :)

I've actually given POE a little bit of time too. Seems quite good.

Not sure how long it would last before it got repetitive.