I’m a bit surprised by your premise, games with local co-op have certainly almost disappeared entirely, but I haven’t noticed a trend in online co-op. Some good ones off-hand (that haven’t been mentioned). These are in descending order if my personal playtime as a rough proxy for how good I think they are.
I just started back up one that I rarely see talked about: Ever Oasis. Does it do everything perfect? No, but it’s a cute little handheld game where I get to help an adorable water spirit save adorable seedlings and owl people. There’s characters to befriend and take on quests too! It offers a lot, but cause it was on the 3ds I don’t think too many people have played it.
Outside of that, Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life is my nostalgia favorite so I am hopeful about the remake.
Freelancer is an incredible game indeed. How it handled ship to ship combat was simply the best, as it was the first time I actually played “space combat” instead of “aerial dogfight in space”. Ships were plenty of fun and their strengths/weaknesses always made sense.
Ever gave Evochron Legacy a shot? It’s quite the game once you get the hang of it, though that can take a while
Freelancer just got everything right. First and foremost are the controls. Combat is just so much fun because of it. It might not be the most strategic combat system, it might not be the most realistic, but boy is it fun. It's responsive and immersive, the weapons feel great to shoot and sound amazing. The only other game that came close was Aquanox in this regard.
It's not trying to be too much, most of the game is rather simple but to the point. The UI gives you all the information you need but doesn't overload you.
The progression was spot on. You spent enough time in each area to get familiar with it but you moved on before it had a chance to get boring. Same with your ship progression. You got new ships at a decent rate. The mix between free exploration time and furthering the story was right. The spacing between points of interest was just right, big enough that you could feel the vastness of space but not too wide to spend endless time traveling. Especially the difference between traveling amongst established lines and going "offroad" was right.
Freelancer just focused on what is important and delivered on it. There are a few areas it could have been more. Especially faction diplomacy and economy is an area that in a game released today would feel too shallow. But it didn't matter for Freelancer because it delivered where it matters and that was a fun space shooter game.
I love the entire game, but there's one part that stands out for me, and that I always look forward to - the flight through the asteroid field with Juni when you first arrive in Kyushu. It's just this beautiful, tranquil interlude in the middle of all the danger and drama.
To me, the thing with the game is that it's just quality all the way through - the story, the characters, the mechanics, the graphics, the controls, the gameplay, the combat, everything.
There are so many places to go and things to see snd so many different ways to approach it. And it's all balanced so well - there's a constant calculation of risk vs. reward.
The only thing I don't really like about it is that there are so many mooks. It gets tedious when I'm trying to explore or trade and some scrubby ships pick a fight that they're absolutely guaranteed to lose. There's no risk and no challenge - all it is is an interruption. But I can put up with it - all the rest of the game makes it worth it.
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