Lunarium

While not quite perhaps at the level of a Nine Sols or Hades, Lunarium's combination of those two games' mechanics and aesthetics is only a level below those two all-time greats. If you like your search-action-with-a-touch-of-souls games atmospheric and your music baroque and beautiful, your mood somber and your parries abundant, you could do much worse than Lunarium. I'd guess I'm about halfway through the game, perhaps a bit further, and as a serial interest-loser, I just can't see that happening here. It's too compelling and too damn fun. I actually bought this game at launch after it piqued my interest during a past Steam Next Fest, and then quickly refunded it because I felt there were a few too many small flaws that made the combat experience more frustrating than satisfying. Getting apparently stunlocked on an early boss was the last straw for me. But I kept thinking about the game's vibes and potential, and when I saw that the devs were releasing frequent post-launch updates addressing the combat balance and mechanical cohesion that I'd been frustrated by, I did what I've never before done and ctrl-z'd my refund and bought it again. Now that I'm pretty deep into the game I'm glad I did. Combat is very much, as I mentioned above, Hades meets Nine Sols. Isometric action rpg with a heavy focus on parrying. The parry feels a bit slow at first, but once you get the timing down it's a true joy to do. Excellent visual and audio feedback and a satisfying whittling away of an opponent's stamina bar a la Sekiro just doesn't get old, as it grows in complexity to counter the player's increasing mastery. You've got plenty of exploration, a moderate amount of well-written (and surprisingly well-translated for a Chinese indie studio) dialogue with an unconventionally somber tone, build variety through equipment management and upgrades, a Hollow Knight-style talisman system (done here with cloaks and embroidered patches, which is fun), and that excellent combat, all coming together to create an addicting gameplay loop. Performance is a bit worse than you might expect for what appears to be a flat 2D isometric action RPG, but it does take some seriously notable hits on Steam Deck in larger areas, particularly where there's a lot of water. I suspect it's due to the fact that the game is (I think) actually fully rendered in 3D, which only becomes apparent during occasional transitional sequences at the beginning or end of areas, when the camera rotates a bit. I have no idea why they decided this game that plays like a 2D game needed to be built in 3D, but the look of it is stunning, so I suppose it wasn't a decision made in vain. It does run perfectly on my PC at 120+ fps, so it's not terribly optimized, just a bit much for the Deck. This game deserves some serious attention, if you enjoy this style of game and it looks like your cup of tea, give it a shot and give yourself a couple hours to adjust to the parry timing.