Games with lots of customization

[markec]

I always loved games that allowed a lot of ways to customize your soldier/mech/ship or anything else. This is one of the reasons why I started to love RPGs and tactical games. One of my favorite tactical games is MissionForce: Cyberstorm that allowed huge amount of ways to upgrade and customize a wide variety of mechs.

I just find is satisfying spending hours trying out different builds and finding those best suited for my style of play.

That said I have been casually playing Galactic Mining Corp, a action game where you mine planets, gather resources and upgrade your drill. Pretty simple and fun game which was made addictive by the extensive upgrade systems that makes gameplay feel rewarding.

As Im coming closer to finishing the game can someone recommend other action games with lots of customization. Im not looking for something exactly like this, it could be anything from game like Brigador, Hotline Miami, a Metroidvania, or a side scrolling shooter.

 

[anvi]

Path of Exile has a huge amazing skill tree that you take various routes through. It looks amazing but I don't know if it's any good. The gameplay is too mindless and retarded for me, but I read that at higher levels it changes and becomes more hardcore, so maybe it's worth playing if you can hang around. It's worth just looking at that skill tree though, it's like stat porn.

I love EverQuest which has great character customization. But I play it 'multiboxing' which means I run the game 6 times and I get to build and control all 6 characters in the party by myself. Then I use a thing called MacroQuest which gives the characters AI so they behave like real people. It's like an advanced version of Dragon Age Origins's AI rules building thing, only more advanced, and the rest of the game is awesome instead of crappy Dragon Age. Also I play it on a special server that's set up for people who enjoy playing like this, so there are some people playing solo but most people are running their own group of 6 the same way. And they added various shortcuts and quality of life tweaks the game desperately needed, so I love it. You could just play normal EverQuest though.

Also I recommend people try MTG Arena. It seems overwhelming at first but you can learn it very quickly. But then getting good at it takes years, decades even. It's an amazing game and you can be kind of as casual or hardcore as you want with it. It's also free and not much of a limit for staying free.

 

[spectre]

Yeah, I'm a sucker for customization as well. What usually kills it is when you discover "the meta", i.e. the combination that's simply better than everything else,
to the point of invalidating the apparent abundance of choice. It's a rare thing to see it well balanced, so that a lot of stuff is actually valid.

When it comes to side-scrolling shooters, I think the oldie Tyrian is unparalleled when it comes to this.
You earn credits by shooting things, buy a front gun, rear gun, various subsystems and powerups, then upgrade them.
Jets and Guns is rather similar if you're looking for something a bit more recent, though this one is a sidescroller.

Faster than Light also offers quite a bit of ship customization (though you're at the mercy of RNG and you may need to unlock a few ships before you get going with it).

Path of Exile is a weird one to recommend. On the one hand, you can build pretty much anything you can think of as long as you take some time finding the right items and skills.
A teleporting witch that swings a massive two-hander?
A wolf-headed hunter using the bow to bleed the enemies dry whilst you sit behind bear-traps?
Or an archer raining elemental arrows.
A potion-lobbing assassin? Gotcha.

There's quite a lot of possibilities, unfortunately, the gameplay is tailored for zoomers who want purdy assplosions and clear maps in nanoseconds following "S-tier" build guides,
so in the end your darling build might only take you so far as you discover not everything viable in the endgame (however, with this type of games, chances are you'll get your fill long before your reach that point,
so I wouldn't dwell too long on this). It's possible to take a more methodical approach, and one might even enjoy but you'd be gimping yourself and might burn out earlier than otherwise.
Well, it's free, so no harm in trying. Paid content is mostly cosmetics (some of it absurdly priced).

Not sure if you're a car guy, but perhaps you can discover the itch you never thought you had. e.g. a rather obscure Revhead did that for me. The game is about playing a mechanic in the australian outback
with aspirations to become a professional raciste. In practice, you buy wrecked cars and strip them for usable parts, then sell them for profit or throw them together
to build a car to take part in the races (there's drag racing, tarmac racing, street racing and offroad), even allowing you to build franken-monsters like
slapping 4x4 long suspension and big wheels on a racing supercar then take it out for some bush-bashing.
It's more on the arcadey side, so pretty accessible.

I would second MTG Arena, but can't to that on a clean conscience because it's online PvP.
HOWEVER, if you like the idea of playing with customizable decks of cards, you can try something like Slay the Spire or Roguebook. Both are single player.
The customization here isn't that straightforward, because you can't freely swap out cards out of your deck but instead shape it in the course of the game one card at a time,
forcing you to adapt on the fly and use the things the RNG throws at you.

I heard you can customize plenty in Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children. It's also a decent tactical game. Unfortunately, I cannot get into animu, so I've got limited first hand experience.

If, by any chance, you're into gunporn, Escape from Tarkov is the only game you will ever want or need in this regard. There are single player mods for it
which more or less follow the main game's updates, so that pesky online PvP thing can be removed from the picture. But if you want to customize guns and
see the stats reflected in the handling as you shoot people with them, that's THE game.

Then there are also games where all you do is customization for customization's sake. I understand that's not your cuppa, but if I'm mistaken,
there's plenty of tacticool dressup to do in the recent Ghost Recon: Breakpoint. You can customize your char, the guns and each of the AI companions.
It's pretty much all cosmetic and the game is more of a hiking sim with guns.

You probably know Jagged Alliance 2 with 1.13. Just customize your squad with however the hell you want in terms of loadout. I'm only dropping it here for completion's sake.

 

[Baron Dupek]

STALKER Anomaly - quite impressive amount of addons. Best bet is to pick some ready-to-play build like GAMMA (which also have some RPG elements, whoope-doo, how long people classified it as RPG even though there was little to no RPG elements) but none of them make better story or quests.

Also Path of Exile - you can build p. much anything... until high tier maps where only best defences & offences are acceptable if you want to get higher levels for your characters. You can spend a lot of time fiddling in the 3rd party app where you create your dream characters without additional cost like in the game.
Skillgems that grants spells and attacks can be altered to some degree.
Some folks says that a lot of builds died along the way due to numerous and merciless nerfs while new builds rarely pops out to replace them...

 

[spectre]

Skillgems that grants spells and attacks can be altered to some degree.

Well, that's a bit of an understatement. I mean, a leap attack or a double weapon swing will always fundamentally be the same thing,
but you can tweak pretty much every parameter with support gems as long as you have them and the item to put them in.
Might not be practical, might not be optimal dps, but you can do shit like convert damage into a different type,
partially or even fully, resulting, for example, in a frost bolt that both freezes and burns enemies at the same time.
Then add all kinds of debuffs to it. Bleed, impale, stun, blind. Or make the skill heal you. Or make it fire multiple projectiles. Or pierce opponents.

With simple shit like summon skeletons, you can use it to pop a bunch of skeletons between you and the enemies,
or use a corrupted version of the skill which feeds on souls and once it's fed enough will raise an entire army in one pop.
You can cast this spell with mana, as intended, or pay the cost from HP. You can put it on a totem which will shit out a stream of skellies as long as it stands or you hit the summon cap.
You can make the skeletons pop out when you score a critical hit on an enemy, or when you are hit by enemies. It's even possible to make those skeletons turn shit they kill into ghosts.
The AI isn't spectacular, but I've seen support gems that would produce skeletons with a defensive profile, or an offensive one. Or ones that let you mark specific enemies for them to kill.
Skeletons that explode on death are also within the realm of possibility, but you'd have to look for the right nodes in the big ass skill tree.
So yeah, you can have this much fun just enslaving nations with necromancy, and that's one skill.

Not *every* combination of effects is possible, but there's still plenty to work with, and most of the logical combinations work as one would expect. Here's a wiki page to give you some idea:
https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Support_gem

But, let's not turn this into a PoE wank thread. A few more off the top of my head.
Since you know and like MissionForce Cyberstorm, you probably also know about Mechwarrior games. Plenty to choose from, from MMO, to single player "sim" and RTS,
each letting you kit out your mechs with different weapons. There's even a recent-ish turn based tactical offering which seems to be tolerable when modded
(though resident battletech enthusiasts will happily give you an earful about everything that's wrong with it).

Myself, I had good fun with the older ones, Mechwarrior 2 and 3 mostly, Mechcommander was good as well. Spent some time on Mechwarrior Online,
but I must concede that it turned to shit eventually. Tried picking it up some time ago and it ended up pretty horrible.

I've also had the WWE series of wrestling games on my radar for some time. Plenty of red flags, as far as I'm concerned,
for one it's released every year, like the fifa games, and judging from the youtube vids I've seen, it's not there yet when compared to other, proper fighting games,
though the WWE2K22 edition looks like it's getting there. Seems to deliver when it comes to character customization.

There's also this game, Bionic Dues, which looks rather similar to the stuff posted in the OP, so you might give it a go as well.
Basically, a roguelike where you build custom robots and send them out on different kinds of missions. Turn based, top down view.

Now scraping the bottom of the barrel, there's Spore. Damn that game, it had so much potential and could be so much more.
Why did they have to make it so painfully shallow and simplistic? Still, it's fun customizing and "evolving" your own race of creatures from single cell to sentience.
Especially in the first couple of stages, because that's the only point where your choices actually matter.
Despite its age, the in-game creature editor remains a very powerful tool which, to my knowledge, hasn't been copied or even matched in functionality since then.
Pretty fun to play in its own right.

And how about Peter Molyneux's Fable? It's an RPG-lite slash action game where you basically build your own breed of fantasy hero, down to the nickname you'll be called by the villagers.
You pick the skills, loadout, morality, and it's all reflected in the characters appearance.

 

[Shuruga]

I always loved games that allowed a lot of ways to customize your soldier/mech/ship or anything else. This is one of the reasons why I started to love RPGs and tactical games. One of my favorite tactical games is MissionForce: Cyberstorm that allowed huge amount of ways to upgrade and customize a wide variety of mechs.

I just find is satisfying spending hours trying out different builds and finding those best suited for my style of play.

As Im coming closer to finishing the game can someone recommend other action games with lots of customization. Im not looking for something exactly like this, it could be anything from game like Brigador, Hotline Miami, a Metroidvania, or a side scrolling shooter.

You might enjoy Starsiege, which is set in the same universe as Cyberstorm but plays more like a FPS set inside a mech (or HERC as they were called in that game). There aren't an insane number of customizations compared to some games, but as the game progresses you get access to a number of mechs ranging from light assault vehicles to lumbering weapons platforms, lots of different weapons, and the ability to customize engines, armor, sensors, etc. The story is pretty well done, too, if a bit trope-ish, and has two campaigns. The first is from the perspective of humans fighting a civil war and then against machine invaders, and the second is from the invaders themselves.

I'm not sure if you can get the game retail anymore but I've seen it posted on abandonware sites.

 

[Darkozric]

Now scraping the bottom of the barrel, there's Spore. Damn that game, it had so much potential and could be so much more.

Agree, what a wasted opportunity...The game is more interesting in the early stages, there are a lot of customization options but the later stages of the game felt rushed and the whole game left me with a sense of uneven, unbalanced gameplay evolution.

 

[anvi]

Spore what a shame. I can't believe they would create so much and then just stop so far short of where it needed to be. Blows my mind.

 

[Valestein]

Tekken and the Soul Calibur games as far as fighting games are concerned.

 

[markec]

Thanks for replies, got myself some interesting recommendation that i havent played before, both Roguebook and Jets'n'Guns looks interesting.

 

[forumvisitor#451]

Armored Core games (even on PSP they have surprising amount of depth and customization). It's From Software.

Gundam Breaker 3 Break Edition (on PS4 and Vita) was amazing on Vita - you could use parts of other robots to create your own robot. It's almost impossible to have same Gundam as someone else. Online MP is still working.

 

[Darkozric]

Thanks for replies, got myself some interesting recommendation that i havent played before, both Roguebook and Jets'n'Guns looks interesting.

Prestigious recommendations from spectre, I didn't know either of the 2 games. Also I second the recommendation of Troubleshooter.

I'm not too much of an animu stuff fan either but don't be fooled by the style, it's bearable and there's a lot of stuff going on.

Played it for a few hours and it's richer than nuXCOMs. There are many passives and combos, in a sense it's like they infused PoE with nuXCOMs in a vigilantes setting.

I stopped playing cause they are constantly releasing patches, and I'm secretly hoping for a GOG release still (I doubt it but a man can hope).

 

[markec]

Thanks for replies, got myself some interesting recommendation that i havent played before, both Roguebook and Jets'n'Guns looks interesting.

Prestigious recommendations from spectre, I didn't know either of the 2 games. Also I second the recommendation of Troubleshooter.

I'm not too much of an animu stuff fan either but don't be fooled by the style, it's bearable and there's a lot of stuff going on.

Played it for a few hours and it's richer than nuXCOMs. There are many passives and combos, in a sense it's like they infused PoE with nuXCOMs in a vigilantes setting.

I stopped playing cause they are constantly releasing patches, and I'm secretly hoping for a GOG release still (I doubt it but a man can hope).

I have some 15 hours on Troubleshooter and I enjoyed playing it, but I had a same problem like you the constant patches. Im just that kind of person that avoids playing Early Access games and waits for a full release.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

troubleshooter is ruined by typical anime-esque plot, completely ruins the game even if you're someone who doesn't care about the story in games due to the terribleness of it

 

[markec]

troubleshooter is ruined by typical anime-esque plot, completely ruins the game even if you're someone who doesn't care about the story in games due to the terribleness of it

I didnt go too far in the main quest, I remember its something stupid about some cult of spoons or something, since I mostly just skipped the story parts.

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

Path of Exile has a huge amazing skill tree that you take various routes through.

There is nothing amazing about that skill tree. It's huge. A huge disaster.

Anyways my contribution shall be... Conan Exiles! You can customize everything. Literally everything.

 

[wishbonetail]

Voidspire/Alvora Tactics, the best, richest character building and game mechanics i've ever experienced. Huge amount of combinations of classes and skills and, since system is levelless, you constantly getting upgrades to experiment with.

 

[ChaDargo]

I'd suggest Fell Seal. Insane amount of classes and subclasses.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

The Freedom Force games, especially with mods, allow an incredible amount of customization. Its an action/strategy game, but its only problem is that you don't really get a lot of freedom to use that stuff. And its about superheroes if you hate that.
Obligatory mention of Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
Ironseed, a moody but little known space adventure game, allows you to choose a ship and its crew, and once the game starts, you can customize that ship as you see fit...assuming you have the resources for it.
The Xpiratez mod for X-COM has an absolute ton of stuff to outfit your soldiers with.
Haven't played it myself, but the Zero4 Champ series is supposedly very customizable for a racing game.

 

[ChaDargo]

Voidspire/Alvora Tactics, the best, richest character building and game mechanics i've ever experienced. Huge amount of combinations of classes and skills and, since system is levelless, you constantly getting upgrades to experiment with.

I've wanted to try this game and your description makes me totally interested. I'm gonna get it. That's what I like about Fell Seal, the ability to level up a ton of classes/subclasses and customize my squad. Is there a lot of customizing of the difficulty? How's the endgame (if there is one) or new game plus?

 

[Pots Talos]

Check out Gjallarhorn on Steam. Your character has 16 equipment slots and much of the gear can be further customized by socketing gems that give various bonuses.

The game also has a class/subclass system with 15 classes that you can mix and match to make any type of build you like. Mastering a class gives permanent buffs that carry over even if not equipped with that class and there are various skills for each class like Support, Passive, and Command that can be equipped separately from the class for even further customization.

Besides character customization the story is based on C&C. You are sold off into slavery during the introduction and based on your choices decides which location and story you playthrough. There are 4 main stories and in those stories they can play out differently based on the actions you take in the story.
You can fully customize your party too. If you have a high enough charisma score you can pretty much recruit or tame almost any NPC/Animal in the game.

Gjallarhorn is still in closed beta and I know you said you don't like to play early access but figured I'd let you know of the game to add to your wishlist.
If anyone wants to join the closed beta just join the Horizon's End discord channel and PM me. Phase 3 of the beta will be happening shortly.

Sent from my Pixel 6 using Tapatalk

 

[wishbonetail]

Voidspire/Alvora Tactics, the best, richest character building and game mechanics i've ever experienced. Huge amount of combinations of classes and skills and, since system is levelless, you constantly getting upgrades to experiment with.

I've wanted to try this game and your description makes me totally interested. I'm gonna get it. That's what I like about Fell Seal, the ability to level up a ton of classes/subclasses and customize my squad. Is there a lot of customizing of the difficulty? How's the endgame (if there is one) or new game plus?

There are six combat difficulties which increase opponents' stats and 5 AI settings, so it is pretty customizable. No new game+ but you can unlock Insane difficulty and new playable races.There are 3 games in the series. They are different.
- Voidspire tactics. Exploration is kind of metroidvania-style. Or NWN original campaign. You got one big central location and different branching paths on the sides, where you collect the mcgufins.
-Alvora tactics is a smaller, more linear campaign. Quite a few more character classes. It is like tactics games, where you have a base to train, buy and sell stuff, hire mercs. Then you go to explore semi-random consecutive locales until you reach final boss.
- Horizon's Gate i consider the apex of the series. It is a full-fledged open world naval exploration/trading/questing game similar to Uncharted Waters New Horizons on top of a top-notch tactical combat and character building. It is quite big. While i put around 20 hours in previous games, I dumped 120 h in this gem.

 

[luj1]

Path of Exile has a huge amazing skill tree that you take various routes through.

There is nothing amazing about that skill tree. It's huge. A huge disaster.

have to say as former poe player that tree is full of bloat nodes

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

troubleshooter is ruined by typical anime-esque plot, completely ruins the game even if you're someone who doesn't care about the story in games due to the terribleness of it

I didnt go too far in the main quest, I remember its something stupid about some cult of spoons or something, since I mostly just skipped the story parts.

Only a portion of Troubleshooter's plot relates to Spoonism, and it actually starts to make sense if it you pay attention to its tenets and structure.

 

[ChaDargo]

Voidspire/Alvora Tactics, the best, richest character building and game mechanics i've ever experienced. Huge amount of combinations of classes and skills and, since system is levelless, you constantly getting upgrades to experiment with.

I've wanted to try this game and your description makes me totally interested. I'm gonna get it. That's what I like about Fell Seal, the ability to level up a ton of classes/subclasses and customize my squad. Is there a lot of customizing of the difficulty? How's the endgame (if there is one) or new game plus?

There are six combat difficulties which increase opponents' stats and 5 AI settings, so it is pretty customizable. No new game+ but you can unlock Insane difficulty and new playable races.There are 3 games in the series. They are different.
- Voidspire tactics. Exploration is kind of metroidvania-style. Or NWN original campaign. You got one big central location and different branching paths on the sides, where you collect the mcgufins.
-Alvora tactics is a smaller, more linear campaign. Quite a few more character classes. It is like tactics games, where you have a base to train, buy and sell stuff, hire mercs. Then you go to explore semi-random consecutive locales until you reach final boss.
- Horizon's Gate i consider the apex of the series. It is a full-fledged open world naval exploration/trading/questing game similar to Uncharted Waters New Horizons on top of a top-notch tactical combat and character building. It is quite big. While i put around 20 hours in previous games, I dumped 120 h in this gem.

I will definitely check out Horizon's Gate. Thanks for the suggestions and info, bro.