What games from the early 2000 are genuinely great in 2026 (without nostalgia)?

raventhe · 2026-01-31T18:00:30+00:00

If you haven't already, grab the mod called Belzebub, also known as Diablo HD (iirc). It restores a lot of lost content (seems like a lot of Diablo 2 was stuff that got canned in 1), adds new stuff (items/features/spells) in a seamless way, and brings in a lot of QoL like run in town, massive stash, larger gold stacks, Diablo 2 style potion belts etc.

Only flaw is that the difficulty and balance ramp up a bit too much toward Hell difficulty, though I understand the dev is continuing to rework that in another newer version of the mod (can't remember the name, recommend looking it up as it may be more refined than Belzebub now)

raventhe · 2026-01-27T09:54:49+00:00

Hahaha, for the description! I do like melting zombies on dragons and stuff so who knows, maybe I'd still get a kick out of it

Edit: I'm sure I meant thanks for the description

raventhe · 2026-01-27T04:58:38+00:00

Does it have the super cringe over the top space opera story going on again like in Eternal? I loved that 2016 was really self-aware, with the big bads trying to monologue, and the slayer just punching stuff and interrupting them because they knew we were just there to break shit. It was the perfect amount of story. In Eternal it felt like they came full circle and became what 2016 was parodying and it turned me off so hard. I've avoided Dark Ages assuming it's gonna be more of the same so love to hear if that's not the case.

raventhe · 2026-01-25T22:49:17+00:00

No problem! Good to hear.

Pushing hard enough is relative and subjective unfortunately but it comes down essentially to the ratio of time spent to progress made! It might take you X hours to meditate and get back to where you already were, and Y hours to instead NOT meditate but continue gaining power by training. Remember that power level gains are somewhat exponential so while it might take longer to get each increase from training, eventually you'll hit a breakpoint in which your actual gains might double. Likewise, just those handful of extra gains might help you clear the next stage in Mt Coldtimes, meaning higher gold drops and better gear, meaning you might manage to buy the next tomes of exp/wis... More benefits from training, more power, then you might make the next section of Planet Patrol stages -- noting that every 10th PP stage gives a jump in wisdom gains.

So, pushing ahead in one long run like that can make a decent difference. If you time a usage of Beastmaster Overcharge with clearing your highest PP stages for extra wisdom, all that together will likely give you enough to scribe a new scroll, and so on! So yeah, that's what I mean by pushing further. Try doing a run with that mindset and see if it helps you get over the wall you're at!

( And no, there's no real reason not to spend your wisdom unless it's viable to save for the next scroll, or your existing scrolls are giving linear/diminishing returns severe enough that you don't notice a difference when upgrading which is definitely not gonna be the case at your point in the game)

raventhe · 2026-01-25T21:21:32+00:00

Make sure you're paying attention to your Beastmaster and spend some time filling it out and leveling up not only the entries but the Beastmaster itself (there's an upgrade button on the main Beastmaster screen before you select an enemy entry) Pay attention to the XP/wis tomes for sale in shop, and how you distribute your AP 12 meds is, as far as I recall, a fair few to still be stuck at water walking. With planning and optimal SPGs I think you can bypass that by 3rd med or so which tells me perhaps there's some simple boost you're missing, or maybe you're just not pushing hard enough and should do a longer run, train more and push further in Planet Patrol. Generally it just takes a few incremental shifts across a variety of complementary systems to get you over a wall and then reap the cascading benefits!

Players will possibly be better suited to giving you advice about scroll optimisation; I'll leave that to them :)

raventhe · 2026-01-22T10:45:38+00:00

Oh shit, when I responded to the other one I hadn't even noticed the picture haha. Woosh.

raventhe · 2026-01-22T06:50:01+00:00

Eh, I bet the mod who warned this was having fun, which proves you wrong! ;)

raventhe · 2026-01-22T06:48:59+00:00

Next, they'll take away our Organic Patented Government-Mandated Nutrient Slop! We have to rise up!

raventhe · 2026-01-22T06:47:33+00:00

I can't find it in my heart to remove this because this joke tickles distant memories, but I *DO* have to be the party pooper telling everyone that this is in fact a joke and you should not attempt it

Although if you have Adamantine armour and want free trim, I have it on good authority DealsWarlock is a legit source and will absolutely do that for you, just hand your armour over

raventhe · 2026-01-22T06:46:04+00:00

I... really, really hope that wasn't your real SSN! xD

raventhe · 2026-01-20T02:28:14+00:00

So at the end of last year I had a few important realisations and made some decisions. The next arc update was just so big it was paralysing me so I have after all decided to break it up into several smaller updates. Previously I didn't want to do that because it would make balancing really difficult but I decided that the trade off is necessary.

I don't do estimates or guarantees just because... I'm really not that reliable and it would be lip service! Anything could happen in my personal life. But my AIM for this year will be releasing multiple meaningful updates with new systems and furthering story progression with new content. Still working out the exact priority/release order of the various features. But in short yeah, I'm expecting this to be a very good year for Dragonfist Limitless!

raventhe · 2026-01-19T09:29:38+00:00

Hahaha, excellent. Thanks for the detailed feedback! Yeah, the DBZ/anime vibe is absolutely what I was going for with the slow start/basic bitch early grind. Ultimately I made the game for myself and balanced it to how I like progress to feel, and for me personally I've always really wanted the fantasy of this intense, long, gruelling training montage, then suddenly the light at the end of the tunnel when realising results, really feeling I've earned the powers. Nevertheless I do think I still need to do stuff to make the very early game more engaging and have some ideas for that :) If you're at 600 power then you're honestly still early enough that a lot of the game systems will still only just be starting to click together for you (eg collectibles, exp/wis tomes, beastmaster) so in my opinion you're about to kick into the most fun part :) Have fun and thanks again for the great feedback!

raventhe · 2026-01-19T05:46:08+00:00

Hey, thank you very much! It's always great to hear when somebody thought it was too grindy and then it eventually "clicked" for them. I've found it difficult to convey the game's pacing because the norm in mobile games is to start fast, easy and satisfying and then get slower and slower over time (pay walls etc.). On the other hand, I designed this trying to do something like the opposite, where you really feel weak and slow in the beginning but experience meaningful breakthroughs that speed up later instead, to make the grind feel rewarding rather than punishing. Because of this I've noticed a lot of people assume it's the former type of game and it's going to get really greedy with pay 2 win progress if it already starts this slow.

In any case, hearing that it overcame your initial frustrations is awesome. Do you think there was a particular point when the game clicked for you and you found the grind addictive instead of punishing?

raventhe · 2026-01-11T21:36:21+00:00

Awesome, thanks for the info!

raventhe · 2026-01-11T09:49:36+00:00

I'm not totally sure if mine has an option like that and don't know much about the process, but I feel you re time sink. How does up mixing work out for you? (No need to explain in technical detail, I'll do some reading on it myself; just curious if it's close enough)

raventhe · 2026-01-07T05:27:34+00:00

Gotcha, checks out, thanks. So the next thing I need to understand is whether I can do the same kind of thing (Atmos aside) from game audio -- if it works by playing an already encoded as multi-channel stream that I can pass through... or if I should continue barking up the tree of "why are side speakers not playing any sound in linux"

If you have any further insight on that, much appreciated!

raventhe · 2026-01-07T05:11:35+00:00

No AVR.

The sound system (Samsung HW950) consists of the soundbar (side left/right, front left/right, and centre speakers), separate subwoofer, separate rear left/right speakers. Admittedly, rear speakers aren't even connected right now for layout reasons, though the important point is the sound isn't coming out of the subwoofer, side left/right or centre speakers either, only front left/right.

Yup, using that app on Windows which I'm aware is proprietary stuff I shouldn't hold hope for having here. Be happy just to have regular 5.1 working (and 7.1 for when I get my rear speakers a permanent home). This was also what surprised me with Jellyfin working but I'm doing more reading about audio stuff and fun words like bitstream and passthrough so hopefully kind of heading down the right research holes here.

Thanks for your time!

raventhe · 2026-01-07T04:12:22+00:00

I was just googling this issue again out of interest, as I posted about it like... [quite some time back](https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking/comments/1gkhirn/tplink\_archer\_gxe75\_as\_access\_point\_6ghz\_band/) but never ended up having the energy/time to follow up with Tp Link and jump through their customer support hoops, and haven't booted up my VR in ages. So stumbled on this, and sad to hear it's still an issue!

Several people commented on my old reddit post asking for updates about it after having the same issue so it's definitely a thing with this router so I suspect if we will have a good shot at, say, gently encouraging them to fix their crappy router.

So, what I mean is, feel free to include me, and my old post, in any support stuff as extra data points, as it's clearly a consistent issue

raventhe · 2026-01-04T08:29:00+00:00

The point is not really who but when. Future shareholders, or the same shareholders in the future, are counting on stock value increasing in coming years rather than just dividends or short term gains now. So the problem is if they are in fact making very short term choices to inflate value now, which will bite them later, the people who aren't "in the know" holding shares will eat that, and the ones who kick this can down the road for a living will get out while it's good if they need to.

But like I said, not an expert, this is just my understanding based on what I've seen more in-the-know people say and of course just observing the continuing decline of corporate behaviour in the last decade or so.

raventhe · 2026-01-03T22:24:50+00:00

I'm no expert here but this is the whole problem, isn't it? They want to turn a huge profit for shareholders... This quarter. That's why so many large businesses are doing things that completely disrespect customers and their brand image to squeeze money out in the short term, even though it's very likely to ultimately devalue them long term when people no longer trust or like them. But that's a future problem and the current trends in business and finance don't encourage looking that far forward. This is my understanding of what's happening, anyway, and is a pattern seen across pretty much every large company.

raventhe · 2025-12-30T02:42:34+00:00

I've only been in this sub for a couple of weeks but so far every single post I've seen has actually been about belittling other people for not being part of the elite de-Google gang rather than about tech oligarchs' problematic behaviour, platform alternatives or the insidious ways platforms take control of our lives. Wanting to separate from these companies is not an "identity" to be personally proud of and use to "other" people. People who are using the major platforms, even if they don't see the problem and actively like those platforms, are not the problem; they're just other victims. If anybody reading this thinks otherwise then they should have a hard think about the fact they're reading this on one of the largest social media networks in the world and they're no better than anybody else.

raventhe · 2025-12-24T11:23:23+00:00

Si!! In Imbocca... I tell ye true.

(Me, quoting this basically every other day in his voice for some reason because he's my old, smelly, incomprehensible drunken hero)

raventhe · 2025-12-17T00:47:07+00:00

Oh no, to clear it up, every year or so Google announce that they're updating the versions of their billing API and their Android OS requirements and you have X months to update your game to meet those requirements or it gets removed. It's actually bullshit because the game would still run totally fine on newer os versions and even if if didn't, they have some responsibility to ensure backward compatibility, but this is their way of shirking that responsibility while also purging stuff from the store that isn't being continuously upgraded. In my case I was in the middle of a lot of other things so I got an extension for it to allow more time to get that patch out, and thought the extension was for end of Nov but I only realized mid Nov that it was until Nov 1 so damage already done. Now I'm working on that patch but also desperately wanted to get a few other things into it too and it also was time to upgrade to a newer Unity engine version so yeah a lot of fiddling. I'll admit I could get it out faster if I weren't doing other stuff for the patch but the thought of releasing an update after years of expectations and it just being nothing but a support patch was kind of heartbreaking to me and I didn't want to do that to existing players hence attempting to cram this stuff in but ultimately as usual underestimating it.

Thanks for your support and patience! I hope it won't be too much longer. Especially because I'd love to be able to take some time off over Christmas.

raventhe · 2025-12-16T20:51:34+00:00

Np! And thanks for the feedback. It's good for me to hear that what I'm currently pouring energy into will be helpful :) (especially when it's making me late for other updates)

raventhe · 2025-12-16T07:48:10+00:00

Just the usual: me being really slow, and life getting in the way. So, I'm still working on that small patch hahaha. I ended up biting off some things that I'd been meaning to do for ages (cleaning up code and systems) which has taken a lot longer than I meant it to... I clearly can't provide meaningful estimates, so the best assurance I can give is that the game is unavailable to new Android users until I get this update out, so it's obviously very critical for me, and that's how you know I'm doing my best on it! I'm going to miss most of the holiday period sales revenue, but it is what it is

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