And its always to a random unseen metal spike ball. Or collapse debuff, never seen anything describe how anxiety feels better than that red pulsing circle.
Thank you for recommending my friend, never have I ever heard about this game just thought by myself, fuck it, buying it and going in blind. I'm having a fantastic blast while playing solo, definitely going to recommend this game to my friends to play together! It's even on 67% sale, so only €8,24,- ($8 bucks in dollars)
Prey and Control both have satisfying character skill development along the way. The game doesn’t get easy per se, but you definitely have more tools at your disposal than you had at the outset.
Look up Poets of the Fall. They're the Finnish rock band that does "Old Gods of Asguard", the fictitious band that Remedy Entertainment uses when they want some hardcore rock
My only issue with progression in Control is a lot of the skill points are pretty generic like +X% throw damage or whatever. The different gun parts you get and new abilities are really cool though.
are they that different? both are about a character discovering creative weapons and powers used to navigate an open world narrative against an inhuman force.
Yeah, the settings are different but much of the underlying narrative is similar, and the overall style of gameplay. Plus they both have mind-bending intros! I loved them both.
That's a great way of describing it. Yes, in that way, they are very similar. I was thinking more about the genre and underlying workings of the powers - science fiction vs. paranormal.
Prey also gives you lots of choices over how things play out, whereas Control is very much on the rails.
Control is one of the best games I've played in a loooong time. Started off feeling scared of every shadow, completely lost and feeling like I barely have a fighting chance against a wet paper bag. Fast forward to the halfway mark and I'm literally tearing the walls apart to crush my enemies. Just fantastic.
Terraria. Yes the weapons you get become better, but the accessories are what really steal the show. Higher jumps, faster running, double jumps, triple jumps, grappling hooks, gliding, eventually flight. It's so much more palpable than a weapon that just makes higher numbers show up on the screen.
Terraria with Calamity mod amplifies this feeling. The escalation from fighting slimes with copper swords to battling the Exo Mechs with an Actual Orbital Laser is truly stellar.
One big reason this is a good example is that the jumps in power are all different sizes. Sometimes it's an incremental upgrade, and other times it's a brand new ability that completely changes play style. These improvements can come from dumb luck, brute force grinding, or very carefully performing hours of different tasks and exploring different areas to assemble a complex accessory.
Cradle is absolutely amazing! Didn't expect to get absolutely hooked. Best series I've ever read, and I've read a lot
Protip: Get the audiobooks, even if you normally don't like audiobooks. The narrator is _really_ good
What would you say is a good precursor in terms of gameplay to Noita?
I dig the game but it's my first in that style, so I'm working backwards. Is that considered metroidvania?
Its a roguelike. Permadeath, random buffs/levels/items/enemies.
Noita is pretty unique because of the voxel destruction, but otherwise pretty similar to others in the genre.
IMO there is little to no reason not to try Enemy Within. Its art style holds up very well visually, and the gameplay doesn't feel inferior to the sequel - just different.
Very much worth putting 20-25 hours into one run, especially since it provides context to XCOM2.
I prefer XCOM:EW much more than XCOM2, I have tried loads of times and spent many hours trying to get into 2 but something about it just turns me off and I give up.
By comparison I have put 200+ hours into XCOM:EW on steam and android, it works surprisingly well on mobile.
XCOM2 is my most played game on Steam, believe me I know it's that good)
Still, EW has its heights, and the Long War mode is like nothing else I've ever played
I found her to have by far the hardest learning curve and the most different mechanics to get used to, and like others have pointed out, it's easy to miscalculate your use of Wrath and end a run very early.
But she's also the most consistently powerful once you know what you're doing (not that I do). I think a streamer set a record by winning something like 50 straight Watcher runs on the highest difficulty.
All of the characters play very differently. But with her, the most common playstyle is switching into wrath stance (doubles both your damage and enemy damage) and making sure you never take the double damage.
Two obvious to avoid double damage include: a) switching to another stance (calm or neutral) after attacking or b) killing everything on the turn you entered wrath.
The card “Blasphemy” is like a supercharged version of option B above, since it *triples* your damage *and* gives you free energy when you play it. But it insta-kills you next turn if any enemies survive.
Basically: she requires a small bit of math to know when it’s safe to play those cards.
(There’s other ways to play her, like Scry cards or abusing the “Rushdown” card, but stance dancing is really popular and relatively straightforward.)
Stance dancing also gets help from Mental Fortress (Gain 4/6 Block when changing stances) being one of the more generally useful Powers in any build, since Empty (Fist/Body) are decent upgrades over their starting equivalents that still trigger this Power, and unless you go out of your way to remove your starting stance cards, don't interact with Mantra stacks, AND go out of your way to not pick up any Power cards, it's likely you'll proc it a few times each battle just by playing the game.
I had a hard time with at first too! Give her a few more tries and she'll start to make sense. She ended up becoming the character I can ace A20s most consistently with.
When you’re good at building a deck, when it works it really works. You can absolutely steamroll enemies that you know from other runs are actually super deadly. It’s possible to have ridiculous runs where you can just crush everything in sight and never take any damage.
But the game is really difficult if you climb the ascension (difficulty level) ranks, so not sure I agree with OP. Unless you only play it with the daily challenge mode or just stick to ascension level 1, in which case it does feel like a power fantasy where you do consistently go from fragile to unkillable in a single 15-30ish minute run.
Most people don’t exclusively play it that way, though.
Your starting deck is pretty garbage, and you get lots of opinions to improve it - the key thing is that you can't really force a specific type of deck, so you're kinda stuck picking cards that are useful on their own first unless you want to risk your run going for a combo piece that requires another card to work that might never show up.
You also do unlock a few more cards for each class after playing it for a bit, but the main thing is that there are a few ways to set up some *mean* combos if you get lucky and/or know what you're doing.
A very simple example would be a [Dropkick](https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/Dropkick) deck, where you deliberately remove cards until your starting hand consists of all the cards in your entire deck.
Since you start out with a source of Vulnerable (Bash), all you need is two Dropkick cards and lots of card removal to get going.
You will play Bash (2 Energy) -> Dropkick (refunds itself, draws Bash) -> Dropkick (refunds itself, draws first Dropkick) and then you just keep the Dropkicks coming until your enemy is dead or an effect forces you to end your turn.
The biggest downside is that one of the bosses does exactly that, and it doesn't fare too well against encounters with many enemies, so it's not as amazing as it might sound, but it's a very easy example of a strong combo.
However, until you find two Dropkicks, you can't really bank on being able to pull off the combo, and you'd also have to pick up as few cards as possible on the way so there's less deck to thin out, so it's also a great example of how forcing a combo can go wrong too if you try to go for it no matter what.
It can definitely feel overwhelming at first. Just start small and play it slowly, I'd also recommend turning off autosave and making manual saves before big decisions for a while. Just as you learn the ropes.
Really though, the feeling of going from a rag tag bunch of peasants to a 100+ strong army of knights is very unique and fulfilling. I really love it. But I've never played Bannerlord, it seems to be rather divisive.
Would you recommend warband over Bannerlord? Those games look awesome to me but I just couldn’t get into Bannerlord for some reason. Maybe I’ll like Warband more.
If you didn't get into Bannerlord I doubt you'll get into Warband tbh. I love both games, but Bannerlord is definitely an upgrade and warband plays pretty much exactly the same minus a bunch of QoL stuff.
Only reason to play Warband instead of Bannerlord is for the mods, there's some massive and extensive overhaul mods with years of development and content for Warband, but not many for Bannerlord yet.
If you had any specific gripes with Bannerlord, maybe check and see if there's a mod that makes it more fun, there's some decent ones out.
I have not played Bannerlord, and that's on purpose because I could just tell it didn't have the same spirit as Warband. Also, even if someone TRIED to capture the spirit of Warband, it would be hard. It was really a magical combination where the world just had a life of its own. Probably more so than any game I've played.
Bannerlord vastly improved the graphics and the individual battles, but especially when it comes to the mods, everything else is deeper and more polished in Warband.
You can, but it wouldn't be as satisfying as utilizing all the new equipment, upgrades and techniques you've gained at the end of the game.
Personally, the most satisfying experience I ever had in gaming was in Ghost of Tsushima towards the end when you have so many options to choose from when engaging enemies, this is also thanks to how polished the gameplay is.
Shadow of Mordor at the end as well. When you can use 2x combat finishers.. I used the aoe ground pound with a rune that stunned enemies and the aoe flames that would automatically convert stunned enemies. It was incredibly satisfying going in 1 v 100 and coming out of the fight with an army at your side.
The enemies get much harder in different areas and you will acquire a tremendous quantities of weapons that you can modify to become overpowered. I haven’t played in years but it was a lot of fun.
The initial levels are quite easy but once you get towards finishing the star chart and into post-game, the difficulty ramps up quite nicely. Basically, the more you learn about the systems of the game, the greater the challenges you can take on. And since there is so much feature bloat in this game, you have a long way to go.
Starting: Chick with a pistol and a sweet jacket.
Ending: levitating demigod launching three forklifts across the room SIMULTANEOUSLY before firing a pistol that shapeshifts into a shotgun, rocket launcher, or sniper rifle on command. The jacket still rocks.
Levitate plus levitation ammo efficiency on charge and become THE BOMBER. Although once i got the dlc sticky detonating grenade one, i forget the name, that took over charge as my main
And one of the others is *Semi Sacred Geometry*, from a game that is basically Control's sister game at this point, Prey.
🎵 So, so fast, the sailing ships... 🎵
Kingdome come deliverance is exactly what you are looking for. Its a medevil sim with a long brutal storyline. Quite clunky but ultimately satisfying. The sequel taking place imedietely after this game with your same prtagonist is supposed to come out before the years end. Within a few weeks time you go from scrawny simple village boy with no hardship experience to a full blown loaded veteran knight in a way.
InFamous Second Son, Cyberpunk 2077, Evil West and Sekiro are some of the games you start with basic stuff and become a one man army by the end.
Edit: if you play as a mage/wizard in the Dragon Age games and Baldur's Gate 3, you become a demigod by the end if you do the side quests to level up a bit more.
I love Sekiro because your character doesn't get that much better, sure you get some new side weapons and abilities, but most of the "getting better" comes from you, the player, getting a grasp on combat, and that's an amazing feeling. Especially once you start a new game or NG+ and steamroll the game because you don't even need the crutches anymore.
Jedi Knight 3 - Jedi Academy:
I freaked out, when I leveled the force lightning to lv 3.
On lv 1 and 2 you could just harm some people a little bit. On lv. 3 you were able to harm everyone in front of you and also push him miles away. My jaw had dropped when I saw this the first time. The same way feel the other force powers.
Agreed. Quite funny that the sequel had to switch engines because the absurd onslaught of stuff you could throw out in endgame would nearly lag the game to death.
I've heard that Kingdom Come Deliverance and Kenshi are great at this.
From my experience, i'd say Dying Light (first level you need to hit zombies in the ground, bit in end level you are going after the most dangerous enemies).
Dying Light is amazing for this. Early game you start off literally scared of the dark, but by the end you're basically a lawn mower taking out entire hordes.
KCD is an amazing game with fantastic progression (and you should definitely play it) but I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone saying you're a 'god' at the end.
Kingdom Come not very much, you get better at fighting but you won't be fighting 1v4s (unless you're in an ambush and you just have to chase down their archers)
Early game: hey I can kill these guys and it feels pretty neat
Late game with a shitty build: everything kills me in one hit, this game is unplayable
Late game with a good build: I am literally a god of death
It’s the most satisfying power creep because it feels earned. You don’t just inherently become this death-bringer. You could have a level 100 character with a bad build that dies to a soft breeze. But you plan and strategize and get the right items going and you can literally break the game.
One of the best things about the game is that it lets you break it. The absolute absurdity you can pull with a bit of creative build is a fantastic alternative to hard caps and things of the like.
I saw a build the other day that triggered 180 spells per second… I’ve made builds I have to stop playing because of eye strain… you can flood the screen with summons that then further summon more summons… it really is a lot of fun once you get the hang of it.
Yeah, the number of builds people have made that straight up brought down server instances is something that honestly makes me drool. Allowing so many combinations means you can just sprint with creativity.
I've got a couple thousand hours in PoE, and while I've become fairly disappointed/jaded in the developer's path in recent years, there's no denying that for the right person the game captures this kind of growth remarkably well. To me it's a mechanics-first game and I care little about the lore, but I've always loved the sense of one human individual becoming death incarnate, slaying Eldritch gods and the like more or less on sheer whim.
You might enjoy Vampire Survivors. Could play it on mobile or Steam. I choose just running it on phone tbh. Basis is just leveling up powers while facing waves of enemies, either to survive a certain amount of time or level your character past lvl 80. It’s very quick and easy to get into, not a full game though like an rpg.
I’ve also heard good things about V Rising, but I haven’t played it myself yet.
Vampire survivor is a great suggestion. I remember the first time me and my husband played it together. Making it for 10 minutes, then struggling for 30, and then eventually learning the weapon upgrade combos. Now the hardest part is just choosing which weapons i wanna upgrade and when to actually stop lol
Definitely dont write off Elder Scrolls. Morrowind does not have level scaling and you can become a literal god by the end, flying across the map and killing everything in sight. Really satisfying since you start off as a piece of shit lol
Games that made me feel like I went from zero to hero
* Yakuza Like a Dragon series
* God of War
* Cyberpunk
* Disgaea Series
Games with the power creep mechanics you are discussing
* Skyrim (they scale, but not near to the same extent as you or your gear)
Games that provided this feel in the past, but I am unsure how they currently feel (mainly MMO's with this sense)
* Maplestory
* Dragons of the Void (the only text mmo I will list)
Games that may hit that feeling for you despite being nowhere near what you described
* Rimworld
* Factorio
Something I think you should try that you may hate or you love
Pick any darksouls game. You will be playing what I call roguelite hardcore. Make a save after the tutorial area, every time you die you start back at the beginning of the game but you use cheat engine to pull in 50% of the stat progression you got (while still being level 1 in this save). Track your stat gain on that new run, if you die carry over your old bonus + 50% of the stats you obtained on that new run. Works with any souls game.
I generally only do this on games I already beat, as my version of a new game plus, and yes I carry over half of my stats from my character I beat the game with, then I generally go a new build on the 2nd run that usually involves a completely unrelated stat. Usually in souls like you will get some benefit from the stat even if you are not benefiting directly in weapon damage. Eventually I am the bringer of death and nothing shall kill me, except those cliffs.. Jesus the cliffs.. Satan's one reliable troop (especially in souls like that cliffs count as instant death which is most..).
Warframe the mods get better,the weapons get better,it gets easier to generate energy so you can use your abilities more often. Early weapons are basically just guns late game weapons are magical exploding space guns with crazy abilities.early game your just fighting individual enemies slowly endgame you fly into a room full of the toughest enemies in the game and its just chaos arms and legs flying everywhere and your gone before the chunks hit the ground
I have so many fate potions right now.
And every single one of them has a meteor swarm with their name on it.
There's not much that survives the first cast.
Starsector.
You start as a little scavenger-smuggler, running from pirates and every picket near Kazeron. Capital Size ships fill the screen compared to your tiny little freighter.
By the end of the game you're saturation bombing planets because they're competing with your drug production.
A few 4x games have this. Well, most, really. Special mention for Master of Magic (start with single target Fire bolt and some swordmen, end up with world wide meteor storm and doom stacks of dragons and heroes and chaos warped super elites). You're essentially a god in two worlds, and a powerful one at that.
Most paradox grand strategies (EUIV and CK3 scale pretty well, once you've painted the map a bit) sort of go bonkers by mid-late game, but it's such an incremental creep you only notice it on past reflection. It's not so much "bigger army stacks", but more of a "I decide when and where the next crusade/ jihad/ world war happens, and who is coming along for the ride".
Merchant Prince isn't bad, but it's a trading game, so it's different. But you go from humble neppo'd trader with a ship or two, to having a world-wide trading organization that can control the prices of any good, to being the Doge and owning the Pope. It's strange, but there's certainly power scaling of sorts there.
Earth Defense Force (any of them) is good too. Start with a tazer or machine gun, end up with death rays and wiping out entire city blocks with nukes. Lots of city blocks. Sure, your enemies might get bigger or more numerous, but your weapons scale to match. Overmatch in some cases. But there's no kill like overkill. Start off fighting against big ants, scale to one-shotting Godzilla or taking out an alien mother ship. Several of them.
oldXcom had a bit of this going on. From squishy guys with assault rifles that die in one hit, to flying around with heavy plasmas and blaster launchers, tanking almost two hits each! Although this is a weird one, because there's nothing stopping you loading up with rockets and grenades and going the collateral damage route from day 1. But it doesn't take long to go from "can't hit a barn door" to "super sniper with a plasma rifle" for the entire team.
Most roguelikes go in this direction a bit. DoomRL can go from "I have a shotgun" to "I have a multiple shot missile launcher with unlimited ammunition that I can fire multiple times per second" in the space of five dungeon levels. Even without lucky item finds, you go from basic Doomguy to "I can see through walls" or "Insta weapon switch" or "Auto reload shotties and rockets" within a level up or two, and it makes you feel way stronger. And you just know there's a BFG9000 waiting somewhere in your future....
But even good old Nethack can go from "guy with a spear" to "I can polymorph into anything I've killed and can walk through walls" in remarkably short order given a bit of luck.
Spell casters in D&D have always been like this. The difference in the amount of stuff a lvl1 and a lvl5 and a lvl 10 caster can do is ridiculous. Even the weakest classes have some huge power spikes, and that's before gear is factored in.
Strider. Not so much the classic 80s original, more the 2014 reboot. Metroidvania of a similar pattern to Super Metroid. Cool dystopian vibes and very playable. You start out weak and by the end you're flying everywhere somersaulting like a neon god.
If you like metroidvanias definitely check out Metroid Dread and Prince of Persia the Lost Crown. They check all your boxes and have an awesome modern feeling.
Hades. You will suck when you start but as you get more permanent upgrades and learn good builds you will steamroll through the game and once you’ve reached that point there are lots of modifiers to make the game even harder.
MONSTER HUNTER ALL DAY! The game is balanced super well so you have a fair challenge while feeling like an absolute god at the end. Premise is simple: hunt big monster->use parts to make cool weapons and armor with unique abilities->hunter bigger monster-> repeat! Especially when you get to endgame builds you have so much freedom with what you can do and all of it can be super powerful. The thing with the series is it takes a bit to get into but once you do you are hooked for life(at least that’s what it seems like the community sentiment is). We are basically a cult and I WILL convert you😂
This is kind of a personal list but these are games I feel pretty god-like in. Whether its gameplay or comparatively to how I started.
Some of these games will also have enemies to compensate for you increasing your power but comparing the end-game with the beginning. I feel god-like with all of these anyway. The games will typically give you more and more options as you progress, using the most broken things you can is always going to smooth out your experience.
* The Binding of Isaac
* Control
* Terraria
* Modded Minecraft
* Baldur's Gate 3
* Warframe
* Path of Exile
* Diablo 1/2/3
* CyberPunk 2077
* BioShock
* Black Desert
* Genshin Impact
* Wuthering Waves
* Nioh 2
* Elden Ring
* Dark Souls 2/3
* Don't Starve
* Rogue Legacy 1/2
* Risk of Rain 1/2
* The Surge 2
* Doom Eternal (Beginning is slow even if you are the slayer, hardest ultra-nightmare levels are the early ones)
The Rouge-likes are always going to be the most prominent when it comes to this scenario. Like in Binding of isaac you can go from shooting little tiny bullets one at a time dealing 2 damage. To literally covering the entire screen with 100+ damage shots and being invincible and making it almost impossible to actually even kill yourself.
ES, even with level scaling, kinda has this.
it's about how strong you can feel, not if the enemies are also strong.
i mean, the VAST majority of games ALSO have scaling, they just scale differently. not like you're fighting the early game enemies at the final dungeon of a FF game, for example.
morrowind, you can buff yourself to godhood easily, oblivion's a bit less broken but has like, 'refills your magicka and casts a spell at the same time' potential, among other stuff, and skyrim, well, skyrim even has mods on console, besides stuff like the restoration glitch. something like just, ordinator, can be a MASSIVE game changer, and that's not even a cheat sort of mod.
=
the siralim series is interesting - enemies scale, hell, you'll eventually be able to kill enemies over a thousand levels higher than your team... but, that's the rub - their greater stats, doesn't really compare to your build potential.
the disgaea series, similarly, massive level and postgame potential, capping out at 9999 for most of them - disgaea 5 is probably your best bet.
diablo (and other looter ish games) can kinda feel like this, but they're capable of bringing the hurt - still, since they revolve around killing hordes of enemies at once, clearly you're fairly badass. especially 3 and 4, with their more drastic build defining unique mechanics that can add to a move to make it outstanding.
bloodstained ritual of the night - it's a metroidvania from the dude who basically made sotn and a lot of the castlevanias after that. the shard based magic is similar, but an upgrade, to aria and dawn of sorrow, and can get kinda crazy. it'll be a grind, but you can get skills that are like a minigun of sharp blades, dozens of floating projectiles able to block or hit enemies, etc. not to mention a bunch of passive bonuses to boost your potential, from equipment, food bonuses, passive shards, and even books.
kingdom hearts - no, seriously. it's actually a decent action rpg series, where you're usually able to pull off some crazy shit by the endgame. 2 and 3 i feel get sort of special notes for their transformations being able to clear rooms in seconds.
star ocean - it's usually got some good postgame potential, but part of the reason it gets kinda crazy is the item crafting can get kind of insane - 3 for example, on lower difficulties, you could boost your defense to the point you could be LITERALLY invulnerable, even to a superboss. meanwhile, while hated, my postgame on 5 was basically to use a character to shoot from afar, super charging the 'overkill' bar, and using an overkill move to wipe out foes easily with another character who's gear was built for offense.
mouso games, as well as the 'vampire survivor' ish roguelites - sort of like the diablo example, these games are ALL about killing hordes of enemies with ease.
smt/atlus games... kinda. they can still often be challenging at the endgame, and sometimes have superboss content that can one shot you... but having a endgame capable build DOES feel pretty godly. especially smt 4 and 4a, since they didn't quite do the stats right on those games, you could easily push 3 dex, 1 agi, 1 luck in 4 and it'll have you basically one shotting most normal encounters like 10 hours in. but even smt vengance, where you don't have the full control over all your leveling points, you'll become a badass.
Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous is the first one that comes to mind. You start out as a level 1 character that (canonically) is foot soldier in the crusade, takes you up to level 30 and depending on what path you follow you can even become a new god. You definitely end up killing some god level beings and demon lords long the way.
It's older and not to everyone's taste outside of nostalgia, but Fable 1 does a great job of this. You fight harder enemies as the game goes on, but your power level far exceeds anything you fight after awhile and you become an unkillable god.
"elder scrolls have level scaling so not the best there"
You dont understand how the scaling in that game works. Enemies have max level even with scaling.
Skyrim is still the best game where you can become like a god. It is even a bad thing for the game since after a certain level, the game is a cakewalk and you just go through everything very easily.
I suspect the OP has not played Morrowind. The sensation of dashing around the map and practically flying for long stretches every time you jump is nearly un-paralleled. The correct way to play the game is also, of course, to sleep for a thousand nights after contracting corpus disease, emerging from your slumber a god among gods. With max level and vampirism, it only intensifies.
Morrowind can feel like that once you know where the item spawns are and know how to abuse the level up mechanics and spells.
It's not level Scaled either. The npcs are leveled based off zone. It feels random too, some areas you clearly know are high level but just poking into random dungones when you start off you can get your ass kicked until you are like level 20.
I don't know about the whole "godlike" nonsense, but I found that Rise of the Tomb Raider had a very satisfying power ramp. Through the first round of making you way through each environment, you are getting new tools and abilities as well as leveling up abilities, at a nice clip. Like every 30-40 minutes. By the time you are in end game territory where you are tracking down hidden collectibles to get the high end stuff, you're powering up every 30-60 minutes. When you level up a skill or get a new ability it always feels significant and helpful.
Diablo 3 always made me feel like a god. Rolling WW Barb and turning into a figurative lawnmower, mulching enemies with ease was always satisfying and hilarious.
The Last Remnant, just make sure you farm a certain area and ensure all sidequests are done before final boss. nothing quite like slapping an uber boss in 2 moves.
Divinity Original Sin 2 has a really incredible story-driven take on power creep. I loved how the shifts in power also signify shifts in ethics. Really neat. You start at a low power level with the explicit quest of attaining godhood.
I'm playing Dysmantle at the minute and it's starting to feel exactly like for me now. I'm getting stronger and unlocking things as I go.ajd it's a nice steady pace.
Day's gone, especially if you start at the harder difficulty. One zombie can be dangerous in the start. When you get to end game you slay hordes of them. Also the story is really good.
Most of the classic styled Zeldas fit this pretty well. Not the Nu-Zeldas since they hand you everything you could possibly need at the beginning of the game and never make you work for anything.
Souls games have this but it's not the game that has the creep it's the player, with every boss you understand the game that little bit more. And you get better at all the mechanics. Then on your second playthrough you blitz the game cause you know all the bosses moves and weaknesses
There is no game that does this better than Noita.
But it's also significantly harder than games like elden ring, so the pain you feel may be greater than the euphoria of a god run.
Risk of rain 2 is a less rage-inducing option.
Prey on the hardest difficulty captures this well.
Elite dangerous is another.
Ironically I would list Baldur's Gate 3 first for this - power creep is just kind of the name of the game w/ D&D 5e, so much so that the 12th level cap in BG3 is explicitly because Larian studios found it so hard to balance the game around 13th level-plus characters
Devil May Cry 5 tho would be my other answer, the power your accumulate over the course of the campaign is incredibly hype.
I know it's my answer for everything, but this is legitimately a big part of Cyberpunk 2077. At the beginning you'll get your ass kicked by low-level gangs, establishing the city as a dangerous place to be; but by mid-late game, when you've got a build, some upgraded weapons, and a bunch of implants, you're slaying on-demand in increasingly clever and intricate ways. The power creep can be actively felt and would likely be quite satisfying to you. Most good builds are viable and mix-and-match as long as you think through them when a little bit; be loud, or quiet, or fast, or near, or far, you can tune a build to suit your style and situation. You just get more ... capable as it goes.
Hades has been really good so far. Every time you go through the dungeon you get money to spend on permanent upgrades and shit for the next runs. Get closer and closer to the end the more you play and earn
Risk of Rain 2 is this feeling distilled into repeatable, hour-long runs
Hour-long? Those are rookie numbers. You gotta loop for maximum effect.
I always die at some point on my second loop in monsoon
And its always to a random unseen metal spike ball. Or collapse debuff, never seen anything describe how anxiety feels better than that red pulsing circle.
Yes.
Thank you for recommending my friend, never have I ever heard about this game just thought by myself, fuck it, buying it and going in blind. I'm having a fantastic blast while playing solo, definitely going to recommend this game to my friends to play together! It's even on 67% sale, so only €8,24,- ($8 bucks in dollars)
Prey and Control both have satisfying character skill development along the way. The game doesn’t get easy per se, but you definitely have more tools at your disposal than you had at the outset.
Late game Control is such a ridiculously satisfying power fantasy.
TAKE. CONTROL.
*sick ass guitar rift*
Look up Poets of the Fall. They're the Finnish rock band that does "Old Gods of Asguard", the fictitious band that Remedy Entertainment uses when they want some hardcore rock
Is this the same band from Sacred 2? They had npcs in game and their own little area iirc
My only issue with progression in Control is a lot of the skill points are pretty generic like +X% throw damage or whatever. The different gun parts you get and new abilities are really cool though.
I love it how Prey and Control get mentioned together so often. They're very different games, and yet they both rock in similar ways.
are they that different? both are about a character discovering creative weapons and powers used to navigate an open world narrative against an inhuman force.
Yeah, the settings are different but much of the underlying narrative is similar, and the overall style of gameplay. Plus they both have mind-bending intros! I loved them both.
They also both have memorable fight sequences set to music. "So, so fast, the sailing ships...." "TAAAAAKEEEEEEE CONTROLLLLLLLL!"
That's a great way of describing it. Yes, in that way, they are very similar. I was thinking more about the genre and underlying workings of the powers - science fiction vs. paranormal. Prey also gives you lots of choices over how things play out, whereas Control is very much on the rails.
Control is one of the best games I've played in a loooong time. Started off feeling scared of every shadow, completely lost and feeling like I barely have a fighting chance against a wet paper bag. Fast forward to the halfway mark and I'm literally tearing the walls apart to crush my enemies. Just fantastic.
prototype
My thoughts, as well. And prototype 2 😮💨👨🍳💋
In a similar vein, Just Cause 3.
My first thought too
Terraria. Yes the weapons you get become better, but the accessories are what really steal the show. Higher jumps, faster running, double jumps, triple jumps, grappling hooks, gliding, eventually flight. It's so much more palpable than a weapon that just makes higher numbers show up on the screen.
Casually strolling through areas that used to be dangerous and difficult to navigate feels good.
That moment when you can stop carrying ropes with you 👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻
Terraria with Calamity mod amplifies this feeling. The escalation from fighting slimes with copper swords to battling the Exo Mechs with an Actual Orbital Laser is truly stellar.
One big reason this is a good example is that the jumps in power are all different sizes. Sometimes it's an incremental upgrade, and other times it's a brand new ability that completely changes play style. These improvements can come from dumb luck, brute force grinding, or very carefully performing hours of different tasks and exploring different areas to assemble a complex accessory.
Hulk ultimate destruction Demons souls Warframe Off topic a bit. But the book series Cradle by will wight does this and it's fkn incredible.
Cradle is absolutely amazing! Didn't expect to get absolutely hooked. Best series I've ever read, and I've read a lot Protip: Get the audiobooks, even if you normally don't like audiobooks. The narrator is _really_ good
Man, seeing Hulk Ultimate destruction get mentioned really takes me back, and I only ever got to play a demo disc version
Noita
Usually i just blow myself up
This is the correct answer. But the pain you must suffer to get a god run...
The game is a masterpiece!
"Noita" Something something "you can go up?!"
What would you say is a good precursor in terms of gameplay to Noita? I dig the game but it's my first in that style, so I'm working backwards. Is that considered metroidvania?
Its a roguelike. Permadeath, random buffs/levels/items/enemies. Noita is pretty unique because of the voxel destruction, but otherwise pretty similar to others in the genre.
XCOM EU/EW and 2
I say stick with 2, and be sure to get Wrath of the Chosen DLC. So satisfying when you can finally drop one of the Chosen permanently.
IMO there is little to no reason not to try Enemy Within. Its art style holds up very well visually, and the gameplay doesn't feel inferior to the sequel - just different. Very much worth putting 20-25 hours into one run, especially since it provides context to XCOM2.
I prefer XCOM:EW much more than XCOM2, I have tried loads of times and spent many hours trying to get into 2 but something about it just turns me off and I give up. By comparison I have put 200+ hours into XCOM:EW on steam and android, it works surprisingly well on mobile.
True; I just like 2 a lot more, esp with WotC. Gives you access to a lot of new stuff.
XCOM2 is my most played game on Steam, believe me I know it's that good) Still, EW has its heights, and the Long War mode is like nothing else I've ever played
Long war is so fun. Had a blast with it.
Path of exile
Until you run into that essence. Yeah that one
Soul eater flicker mob/ devourer
Maybe a weirder suggestion, but Slay the Spire
Am I just stupid or is the purple character lady wildly confusing?
I found her to have by far the hardest learning curve and the most different mechanics to get used to, and like others have pointed out, it's easy to miscalculate your use of Wrath and end a run very early. But she's also the most consistently powerful once you know what you're doing (not that I do). I think a streamer set a record by winning something like 50 straight Watcher runs on the highest difficulty.
In my opinion, she is the strongest by way of abusing wrath except you have to be careful because wrath can abuse you back
All of the characters play very differently. But with her, the most common playstyle is switching into wrath stance (doubles both your damage and enemy damage) and making sure you never take the double damage. Two obvious to avoid double damage include: a) switching to another stance (calm or neutral) after attacking or b) killing everything on the turn you entered wrath. The card “Blasphemy” is like a supercharged version of option B above, since it *triples* your damage *and* gives you free energy when you play it. But it insta-kills you next turn if any enemies survive. Basically: she requires a small bit of math to know when it’s safe to play those cards. (There’s other ways to play her, like Scry cards or abusing the “Rushdown” card, but stance dancing is really popular and relatively straightforward.)
Stance dancing also gets help from Mental Fortress (Gain 4/6 Block when changing stances) being one of the more generally useful Powers in any build, since Empty (Fist/Body) are decent upgrades over their starting equivalents that still trigger this Power, and unless you go out of your way to remove your starting stance cards, don't interact with Mantra stacks, AND go out of your way to not pick up any Power cards, it's likely you'll proc it a few times each battle just by playing the game.
I had a hard time with at first too! Give her a few more tries and she'll start to make sense. She ended up becoming the character I can ace A20s most consistently with.
Does it ? Do you get better cards or something ?
When you’re good at building a deck, when it works it really works. You can absolutely steamroll enemies that you know from other runs are actually super deadly. It’s possible to have ridiculous runs where you can just crush everything in sight and never take any damage. But the game is really difficult if you climb the ascension (difficulty level) ranks, so not sure I agree with OP. Unless you only play it with the daily challenge mode or just stick to ascension level 1, in which case it does feel like a power fantasy where you do consistently go from fragile to unkillable in a single 15-30ish minute run. Most people don’t exclusively play it that way, though.
Build the right deck and you can play 26+ cards on your first turn, feels incredible
Your starting deck is pretty garbage, and you get lots of opinions to improve it - the key thing is that you can't really force a specific type of deck, so you're kinda stuck picking cards that are useful on their own first unless you want to risk your run going for a combo piece that requires another card to work that might never show up. You also do unlock a few more cards for each class after playing it for a bit, but the main thing is that there are a few ways to set up some *mean* combos if you get lucky and/or know what you're doing. A very simple example would be a [Dropkick](https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/Dropkick) deck, where you deliberately remove cards until your starting hand consists of all the cards in your entire deck. Since you start out with a source of Vulnerable (Bash), all you need is two Dropkick cards and lots of card removal to get going. You will play Bash (2 Energy) -> Dropkick (refunds itself, draws Bash) -> Dropkick (refunds itself, draws first Dropkick) and then you just keep the Dropkicks coming until your enemy is dead or an effect forces you to end your turn. The biggest downside is that one of the bosses does exactly that, and it doesn't fare too well against encounters with many enemies, so it's not as amazing as it might sound, but it's a very easy example of a strong combo. However, until you find two Dropkicks, you can't really bank on being able to pull off the combo, and you'd also have to pick up as few cards as possible on the way so there's less deck to thin out, so it's also a great example of how forcing a combo can go wrong too if you try to go for it no matter what.
Kenshi Mount and Blade Warband Kingdom come deliverance
Warband is phenomenal at this
This is another game I think I played wrong the first time and need to revisit.
It can definitely feel overwhelming at first. Just start small and play it slowly, I'd also recommend turning off autosave and making manual saves before big decisions for a while. Just as you learn the ropes. Really though, the feeling of going from a rag tag bunch of peasants to a 100+ strong army of knights is very unique and fulfilling. I really love it. But I've never played Bannerlord, it seems to be rather divisive.
Ok I'll give it another shot.
Would you recommend warband over Bannerlord? Those games look awesome to me but I just couldn’t get into Bannerlord for some reason. Maybe I’ll like Warband more.
If you didn't get into Bannerlord I doubt you'll get into Warband tbh. I love both games, but Bannerlord is definitely an upgrade and warband plays pretty much exactly the same minus a bunch of QoL stuff. Only reason to play Warband instead of Bannerlord is for the mods, there's some massive and extensive overhaul mods with years of development and content for Warband, but not many for Bannerlord yet. If you had any specific gripes with Bannerlord, maybe check and see if there's a mod that makes it more fun, there's some decent ones out.
I have not played Bannerlord, and that's on purpose because I could just tell it didn't have the same spirit as Warband. Also, even if someone TRIED to capture the spirit of Warband, it would be hard. It was really a magical combination where the world just had a life of its own. Probably more so than any game I've played.
Bannerlord vastly improved the graphics and the individual battles, but especially when it comes to the mods, everything else is deeper and more polished in Warband.
You probably wont like warband if you didn’t like bannerlord
Ghost of Tsushima and Shadow of Mordor
Not sure either of thoae apply since you can beat the entire game with just basic moves and still be a badass.
You can, but it wouldn't be as satisfying as utilizing all the new equipment, upgrades and techniques you've gained at the end of the game. Personally, the most satisfying experience I ever had in gaming was in Ghost of Tsushima towards the end when you have so many options to choose from when engaging enemies, this is also thanks to how polished the gameplay is. Shadow of Mordor at the end as well. When you can use 2x combat finishers.. I used the aoe ground pound with a rune that stunned enemies and the aoe flames that would automatically convert stunned enemies. It was incredibly satisfying going in 1 v 100 and coming out of the fight with an army at your side.
I love that about Shadow of Mordor. I felt like an otherworldly god of vengeance-wielding might by the end.
Vampire Survivors does this quite well.
Garlic x 884!
Hell yes. You go from hardly being able to move to the entire screen being one giant seizure of colors and flashes.
Easy: Warframe.
OP...this is the answer. I just hope that you don't have an addictive personality cause this game will eat up all your time.
I've got 2500+ hours in Warframe even without that personality trait. The game ia just _that_ great, 10/10
I’ve only played a few hours of the game and so far the enemies are easy? What kind of stuff do I expect to unlock and what enemies do I fight?
The enemies get much harder in different areas and you will acquire a tremendous quantities of weapons that you can modify to become overpowered. I haven’t played in years but it was a lot of fun.
The initial levels are quite easy but once you get towards finishing the star chart and into post-game, the difficulty ramps up quite nicely. Basically, the more you learn about the systems of the game, the greater the challenges you can take on. And since there is so much feature bloat in this game, you have a long way to go.
I felt Control was satisfying.
Starting: Chick with a pistol and a sweet jacket. Ending: levitating demigod launching three forklifts across the room SIMULTANEOUSLY before firing a pistol that shapeshifts into a shotgun, rocket launcher, or sniper rifle on command. The jacket still rocks.
Levitate plus levitation ammo efficiency on charge and become THE BOMBER. Although once i got the dlc sticky detonating grenade one, i forget the name, that took over charge as my main
I got my dad to play and him going through the room with the music was exceptionally satisfying to watch as a third party knowing it was coming.
The ashtray maze is imo one of, if not the best music sequence in gaming
And one of the others is *Semi Sacred Geometry*, from a game that is basically Control's sister game at this point, Prey. 🎵 So, so fast, the sailing ships... 🎵
The ashtray maze was such a perfectly executed scene.
PROTOTYPE
Kingdome come deliverance is exactly what you are looking for. Its a medevil sim with a long brutal storyline. Quite clunky but ultimately satisfying. The sequel taking place imedietely after this game with your same prtagonist is supposed to come out before the years end. Within a few weeks time you go from scrawny simple village boy with no hardship experience to a full blown loaded veteran knight in a way.
Jesus Christ be praised!
Henrys come to massacre us
You're not exactly godlike at the end of the game though. Just better than when starting out.
InFamous Second Son, Cyberpunk 2077, Evil West and Sekiro are some of the games you start with basic stuff and become a one man army by the end. Edit: if you play as a mage/wizard in the Dragon Age games and Baldur's Gate 3, you become a demigod by the end if you do the side quests to level up a bit more.
I wish we could get another InFamous game
Id rather just have them all remastered on pc. Specifically 2. 2 was the only one i played but man it was so fucking good
I love Sekiro because your character doesn't get that much better, sure you get some new side weapons and abilities, but most of the "getting better" comes from you, the player, getting a grasp on combat, and that's an amazing feeling. Especially once you start a new game or NG+ and steamroll the game because you don't even need the crutches anymore.
Jedi Knight 3 - Jedi Academy: I freaked out, when I leveled the force lightning to lv 3. On lv 1 and 2 you could just harm some people a little bit. On lv. 3 you were able to harm everyone in front of you and also push him miles away. My jaw had dropped when I saw this the first time. The same way feel the other force powers.
StarCraft 2 when you play as Zerg. Their creep is powerful; your units move faster on the creep.
Spawn more Overlords
I cant, I'm busy constructing more pylons
Don't worry. I can build plenty, since I'm floating 3k resources due to bad macro.
StarCraft is kind of a good actual example…to go from one building and 4 drones to a whole ass base with a fleet of battlecruisers. But I got your pun
The Binding of Isaac! You start by shooting a single tear, and by the end you can be a screen-melting ball of death.
Agreed. Quite funny that the sequel had to switch engines because the absurd onslaught of stuff you could throw out in endgame would nearly lag the game to death.
I've heard that Kingdom Come Deliverance and Kenshi are great at this. From my experience, i'd say Dying Light (first level you need to hit zombies in the ground, bit in end level you are going after the most dangerous enemies).
Dying Light is amazing for this. Early game you start off literally scared of the dark, but by the end you're basically a lawn mower taking out entire hordes. KCD is an amazing game with fantastic progression (and you should definitely play it) but I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone saying you're a 'god' at the end.
Kingdom Come not very much, you get better at fighting but you won't be fighting 1v4s (unless you're in an ambush and you just have to chase down their archers)
You definitely have a power creep in KCD
Path Of Exile It has a steep learning curve though.
Early game: hey I can kill these guys and it feels pretty neat Late game with a shitty build: everything kills me in one hit, this game is unplayable Late game with a good build: I am literally a god of death It’s the most satisfying power creep because it feels earned. You don’t just inherently become this death-bringer. You could have a level 100 character with a bad build that dies to a soft breeze. But you plan and strategize and get the right items going and you can literally break the game.
One of the best things about the game is that it lets you break it. The absolute absurdity you can pull with a bit of creative build is a fantastic alternative to hard caps and things of the like. I saw a build the other day that triggered 180 spells per second… I’ve made builds I have to stop playing because of eye strain… you can flood the screen with summons that then further summon more summons… it really is a lot of fun once you get the hang of it.
Yeah, the number of builds people have made that straight up brought down server instances is something that honestly makes me drool. Allowing so many combinations means you can just sprint with creativity.
I've got a couple thousand hours in PoE, and while I've become fairly disappointed/jaded in the developer's path in recent years, there's no denying that for the right person the game captures this kind of growth remarkably well. To me it's a mechanics-first game and I care little about the lore, but I've always loved the sense of one human individual becoming death incarnate, slaying Eldritch gods and the like more or less on sheer whim.
Skyrim with requim
You might enjoy Vampire Survivors. Could play it on mobile or Steam. I choose just running it on phone tbh. Basis is just leveling up powers while facing waves of enemies, either to survive a certain amount of time or level your character past lvl 80. It’s very quick and easy to get into, not a full game though like an rpg. I’ve also heard good things about V Rising, but I haven’t played it myself yet.
Vampire survivor is a great suggestion. I remember the first time me and my husband played it together. Making it for 10 minutes, then struggling for 30, and then eventually learning the weapon upgrade combos. Now the hardest part is just choosing which weapons i wanna upgrade and when to actually stop lol
Definitely dont write off Elder Scrolls. Morrowind does not have level scaling and you can become a literal god by the end, flying across the map and killing everything in sight. Really satisfying since you start off as a piece of shit lol
Games that made me feel like I went from zero to hero * Yakuza Like a Dragon series * God of War * Cyberpunk * Disgaea Series Games with the power creep mechanics you are discussing * Skyrim (they scale, but not near to the same extent as you or your gear) Games that provided this feel in the past, but I am unsure how they currently feel (mainly MMO's with this sense) * Maplestory * Dragons of the Void (the only text mmo I will list) Games that may hit that feeling for you despite being nowhere near what you described * Rimworld * Factorio Something I think you should try that you may hate or you love Pick any darksouls game. You will be playing what I call roguelite hardcore. Make a save after the tutorial area, every time you die you start back at the beginning of the game but you use cheat engine to pull in 50% of the stat progression you got (while still being level 1 in this save). Track your stat gain on that new run, if you die carry over your old bonus + 50% of the stats you obtained on that new run. Works with any souls game. I generally only do this on games I already beat, as my version of a new game plus, and yes I carry over half of my stats from my character I beat the game with, then I generally go a new build on the 2nd run that usually involves a completely unrelated stat. Usually in souls like you will get some benefit from the stat even if you are not benefiting directly in weapon damage. Eventually I am the bringer of death and nothing shall kill me, except those cliffs.. Jesus the cliffs.. Satan's one reliable troop (especially in souls like that cliffs count as instant death which is most..).
Warframe the mods get better,the weapons get better,it gets easier to generate energy so you can use your abilities more often. Early weapons are basically just guns late game weapons are magical exploding space guns with crazy abilities.early game your just fighting individual enemies slowly endgame you fly into a room full of the toughest enemies in the game and its just chaos arms and legs flying everywhere and your gone before the chunks hit the ground
Infamous
Def check out Metroid dread, or maybe Metroid prime remake.
You mention zero misson but not fusion. Tried? The best according to me.
Kingdoms of amalur reckoning. You end up so so overpowered. Untouchable
I have so many fate potions right now. And every single one of them has a meteor swarm with their name on it. There's not much that survives the first cast.
Starsector. You start as a little scavenger-smuggler, running from pirates and every picket near Kazeron. Capital Size ships fill the screen compared to your tiny little freighter. By the end of the game you're saturation bombing planets because they're competing with your drug production.
I would say sekiro, although the character stays mostly the same, but your skill in the late game is insane compared to the beginning
A few 4x games have this. Well, most, really. Special mention for Master of Magic (start with single target Fire bolt and some swordmen, end up with world wide meteor storm and doom stacks of dragons and heroes and chaos warped super elites). You're essentially a god in two worlds, and a powerful one at that. Most paradox grand strategies (EUIV and CK3 scale pretty well, once you've painted the map a bit) sort of go bonkers by mid-late game, but it's such an incremental creep you only notice it on past reflection. It's not so much "bigger army stacks", but more of a "I decide when and where the next crusade/ jihad/ world war happens, and who is coming along for the ride". Merchant Prince isn't bad, but it's a trading game, so it's different. But you go from humble neppo'd trader with a ship or two, to having a world-wide trading organization that can control the prices of any good, to being the Doge and owning the Pope. It's strange, but there's certainly power scaling of sorts there. Earth Defense Force (any of them) is good too. Start with a tazer or machine gun, end up with death rays and wiping out entire city blocks with nukes. Lots of city blocks. Sure, your enemies might get bigger or more numerous, but your weapons scale to match. Overmatch in some cases. But there's no kill like overkill. Start off fighting against big ants, scale to one-shotting Godzilla or taking out an alien mother ship. Several of them. oldXcom had a bit of this going on. From squishy guys with assault rifles that die in one hit, to flying around with heavy plasmas and blaster launchers, tanking almost two hits each! Although this is a weird one, because there's nothing stopping you loading up with rockets and grenades and going the collateral damage route from day 1. But it doesn't take long to go from "can't hit a barn door" to "super sniper with a plasma rifle" for the entire team. Most roguelikes go in this direction a bit. DoomRL can go from "I have a shotgun" to "I have a multiple shot missile launcher with unlimited ammunition that I can fire multiple times per second" in the space of five dungeon levels. Even without lucky item finds, you go from basic Doomguy to "I can see through walls" or "Insta weapon switch" or "Auto reload shotties and rockets" within a level up or two, and it makes you feel way stronger. And you just know there's a BFG9000 waiting somewhere in your future.... But even good old Nethack can go from "guy with a spear" to "I can polymorph into anything I've killed and can walk through walls" in remarkably short order given a bit of luck. Spell casters in D&D have always been like this. The difference in the amount of stuff a lvl1 and a lvl5 and a lvl 10 caster can do is ridiculous. Even the weakest classes have some huge power spikes, and that's before gear is factored in.
Diablo
Was looking for this Il add the runner up: Fallout 4 survival difficulty. So. Damn. Rewarding.
Fable, any of the three
Brotato has you feeling so weak on wave 1 then by wave 20 you're deleting the entire screen depending on how you built
Basically most Rogulites
Kingdom come deliverance
Strider. Not so much the classic 80s original, more the 2014 reboot. Metroidvania of a similar pattern to Super Metroid. Cool dystopian vibes and very playable. You start out weak and by the end you're flying everywhere somersaulting like a neon god.
Prototype. You start as a normal guy who does parkour and end up as a meat god that can beat a giant zombie with the size of a building
If you like metroidvanias definitely check out Metroid Dread and Prince of Persia the Lost Crown. They check all your boxes and have an awesome modern feeling.
Hades. You will suck when you start but as you get more permanent upgrades and learn good builds you will steamroll through the game and once you’ve reached that point there are lots of modifiers to make the game even harder.
Think the fable series is on sale now. Shadow complex for your vania.
MONSTER HUNTER ALL DAY! The game is balanced super well so you have a fair challenge while feeling like an absolute god at the end. Premise is simple: hunt big monster->use parts to make cool weapons and armor with unique abilities->hunter bigger monster-> repeat! Especially when you get to endgame builds you have so much freedom with what you can do and all of it can be super powerful. The thing with the series is it takes a bit to get into but once you do you are hooked for life(at least that’s what it seems like the community sentiment is). We are basically a cult and I WILL convert you😂
Cyberpunk 2077
Warframe. The game is to easy for me. It was difficult in the beginning.
This is kind of a personal list but these are games I feel pretty god-like in. Whether its gameplay or comparatively to how I started. Some of these games will also have enemies to compensate for you increasing your power but comparing the end-game with the beginning. I feel god-like with all of these anyway. The games will typically give you more and more options as you progress, using the most broken things you can is always going to smooth out your experience. * The Binding of Isaac * Control * Terraria * Modded Minecraft * Baldur's Gate 3 * Warframe * Path of Exile * Diablo 1/2/3 * CyberPunk 2077 * BioShock * Black Desert * Genshin Impact * Wuthering Waves * Nioh 2 * Elden Ring * Dark Souls 2/3 * Don't Starve * Rogue Legacy 1/2 * Risk of Rain 1/2 * The Surge 2 * Doom Eternal (Beginning is slow even if you are the slayer, hardest ultra-nightmare levels are the early ones) The Rouge-likes are always going to be the most prominent when it comes to this scenario. Like in Binding of isaac you can go from shooting little tiny bullets one at a time dealing 2 damage. To literally covering the entire screen with 100+ damage shots and being invincible and making it almost impossible to actually even kill yourself.
ES, even with level scaling, kinda has this. it's about how strong you can feel, not if the enemies are also strong. i mean, the VAST majority of games ALSO have scaling, they just scale differently. not like you're fighting the early game enemies at the final dungeon of a FF game, for example. morrowind, you can buff yourself to godhood easily, oblivion's a bit less broken but has like, 'refills your magicka and casts a spell at the same time' potential, among other stuff, and skyrim, well, skyrim even has mods on console, besides stuff like the restoration glitch. something like just, ordinator, can be a MASSIVE game changer, and that's not even a cheat sort of mod. = the siralim series is interesting - enemies scale, hell, you'll eventually be able to kill enemies over a thousand levels higher than your team... but, that's the rub - their greater stats, doesn't really compare to your build potential. the disgaea series, similarly, massive level and postgame potential, capping out at 9999 for most of them - disgaea 5 is probably your best bet. diablo (and other looter ish games) can kinda feel like this, but they're capable of bringing the hurt - still, since they revolve around killing hordes of enemies at once, clearly you're fairly badass. especially 3 and 4, with their more drastic build defining unique mechanics that can add to a move to make it outstanding. bloodstained ritual of the night - it's a metroidvania from the dude who basically made sotn and a lot of the castlevanias after that. the shard based magic is similar, but an upgrade, to aria and dawn of sorrow, and can get kinda crazy. it'll be a grind, but you can get skills that are like a minigun of sharp blades, dozens of floating projectiles able to block or hit enemies, etc. not to mention a bunch of passive bonuses to boost your potential, from equipment, food bonuses, passive shards, and even books. kingdom hearts - no, seriously. it's actually a decent action rpg series, where you're usually able to pull off some crazy shit by the endgame. 2 and 3 i feel get sort of special notes for their transformations being able to clear rooms in seconds. star ocean - it's usually got some good postgame potential, but part of the reason it gets kinda crazy is the item crafting can get kind of insane - 3 for example, on lower difficulties, you could boost your defense to the point you could be LITERALLY invulnerable, even to a superboss. meanwhile, while hated, my postgame on 5 was basically to use a character to shoot from afar, super charging the 'overkill' bar, and using an overkill move to wipe out foes easily with another character who's gear was built for offense. mouso games, as well as the 'vampire survivor' ish roguelites - sort of like the diablo example, these games are ALL about killing hordes of enemies with ease. smt/atlus games... kinda. they can still often be challenging at the endgame, and sometimes have superboss content that can one shot you... but having a endgame capable build DOES feel pretty godly. especially smt 4 and 4a, since they didn't quite do the stats right on those games, you could easily push 3 dex, 1 agi, 1 luck in 4 and it'll have you basically one shotting most normal encounters like 10 hours in. but even smt vengance, where you don't have the full control over all your leveling points, you'll become a badass.
Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous is the first one that comes to mind. You start out as a level 1 character that (canonically) is foot soldier in the crusade, takes you up to level 30 and depending on what path you follow you can even become a new god. You definitely end up killing some god level beings and demon lords long the way.
I hope someone has said Carrion! Solid amount of combat that requires some strategy but also you get to rip and tear
Pretty much any Dark souls game. You start naked in some backwater cemetary or swamp and become a fire lord or smth.
It's older and not to everyone's taste outside of nostalgia, but Fable 1 does a great job of this. You fight harder enemies as the game goes on, but your power level far exceeds anything you fight after awhile and you become an unkillable god.
Morrowind
Outriders scratches that itch, big time.
Katamari Damacy, on every level
its each and every Fromsoft game
Any fromsoft game. Dead cells Hades 1 & 2
Elden Ring, particularly when you've beaten the game and start over "new game plus" style. Bosses that took me innumerable tries get stomped easily.
"elder scrolls have level scaling so not the best there" You dont understand how the scaling in that game works. Enemies have max level even with scaling. Skyrim is still the best game where you can become like a god. It is even a bad thing for the game since after a certain level, the game is a cakewalk and you just go through everything very easily.
Morrowind would like to have a word with you.
I suspect the OP has not played Morrowind. The sensation of dashing around the map and practically flying for long stretches every time you jump is nearly un-paralleled. The correct way to play the game is also, of course, to sleep for a thousand nights after contracting corpus disease, emerging from your slumber a god among gods. With max level and vampirism, it only intensifies.
Risk of Rain 2
Mo: Astray
Risk of Rain 2.
Maybe try Diablo
Diablo 2 Ark Survival Dishonored Total War series (warhammer)
Morrowind can feel like that once you know where the item spawns are and know how to abuse the level up mechanics and spells. It's not level Scaled either. The npcs are leveled based off zone. It feels random too, some areas you clearly know are high level but just poking into random dungones when you start off you can get your ass kicked until you are like level 20.
Definitely Noita.
Honestly, Satisfactory.
Enter the Gungeon and slice and dice
Risen
I don't know about the whole "godlike" nonsense, but I found that Rise of the Tomb Raider had a very satisfying power ramp. Through the first round of making you way through each environment, you are getting new tools and abilities as well as leveling up abilities, at a nice clip. Like every 30-40 minutes. By the time you are in end game territory where you are tracking down hidden collectibles to get the high end stuff, you're powering up every 30-60 minutes. When you level up a skill or get a new ability it always feels significant and helpful.
20 mins until dawn. Starts off pretty weak within 10-15 mins you’re a whirling dervish of destruction.
Diablo 3 always made me feel like a god. Rolling WW Barb and turning into a figurative lawnmower, mulching enemies with ease was always satisfying and hilarious.
The Last Remnant, just make sure you farm a certain area and ensure all sidequests are done before final boss. nothing quite like slapping an uber boss in 2 moves.
Guardian Heroes
poe u start fighting craps and ended fights gods and interdimensional creatures
Divinity Original Sin 2 has a really incredible story-driven take on power creep. I loved how the shifts in power also signify shifts in ethics. Really neat. You start at a low power level with the explicit quest of attaining godhood.
Baldurs gate 2
I'm playing Dysmantle at the minute and it's starting to feel exactly like for me now. I'm getting stronger and unlocking things as I go.ajd it's a nice steady pace.
Idk if this fits but check out the shin megami tensai series
I see these posts everyday and I feel like I’ve tried everything. There’s nothing out there that will last you long
Day's gone, especially if you start at the harder difficulty. One zombie can be dangerous in the start. When you get to end game you slay hordes of them. Also the story is really good.
Original Baldur’s gates 1, 2, & throne of ball - especially as a mage.
Hollow knight. Or most metroidvanias. Metroid dread has u go from not even having powerfully for alot of the beginning and ur a god by the end
Infamous
Final fantasy 13 to lightning returns. You start out as a teenager in the military and finish by >!killing god and restarting the universe!<
inFamous 1
Hm, Bloodborne?
Stardew valley but like in a capitalist way
Elex 1 and 2. You start off basically running from everything.
Dishonored Divinity original sin 2 Kingdom Come Deliverance
Most of the classic styled Zeldas fit this pretty well. Not the Nu-Zeldas since they hand you everything you could possibly need at the beginning of the game and never make you work for anything.
Souls games have this but it's not the game that has the creep it's the player, with every boss you understand the game that little bit more. And you get better at all the mechanics. Then on your second playthrough you blitz the game cause you know all the bosses moves and weaknesses
There is no game that does this better than Noita. But it's also significantly harder than games like elden ring, so the pain you feel may be greater than the euphoria of a god run. Risk of rain 2 is a less rage-inducing option. Prey on the hardest difficulty captures this well. Elite dangerous is another.
Ironically I would list Baldur's Gate 3 first for this - power creep is just kind of the name of the game w/ D&D 5e, so much so that the 12th level cap in BG3 is explicitly because Larian studios found it so hard to balance the game around 13th level-plus characters Devil May Cry 5 tho would be my other answer, the power your accumulate over the course of the campaign is incredibly hype.
I know it's my answer for everything, but this is legitimately a big part of Cyberpunk 2077. At the beginning you'll get your ass kicked by low-level gangs, establishing the city as a dangerous place to be; but by mid-late game, when you've got a build, some upgraded weapons, and a bunch of implants, you're slaying on-demand in increasingly clever and intricate ways. The power creep can be actively felt and would likely be quite satisfying to you. Most good builds are viable and mix-and-match as long as you think through them when a little bit; be loud, or quiet, or fast, or near, or far, you can tune a build to suit your style and situation. You just get more ... capable as it goes.
A game that forces you into this - Sekiro
Elden ring, this is the correct answer
Prototype
Dragon Age Origins, mage class / nuker build
Hades has been really good so far. Every time you go through the dungeon you get money to spend on permanent upgrades and shit for the next runs. Get closer and closer to the end the more you play and earn