Horizon Zero Dawn?

I put out hints for multiple games at once, because I am still trailing behind:

#35: Persona Q as guessed by The_Liquid_Laser.

#34:
Storm, Drizzle, Clearance, repeat.
Beavers, Humans, Lizards, Harpies.

#33:
Pig verruca heritage.

#32: (not Getting over it, Celeste)
Should be called: an insightful climb.

#31:
Start the game by playing with members of the dawn brigade.

#30: Deus Ex: Human Revolution as guessed by haxxiy.
Transhumanism the game series - the third entry but the first in the timeline of the series.

32. Getting Over It?

30. Gotta be Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Yep, that's the one. I would replay it again.

#31 Dragons, party banter and an underground dwarven city to explore (concept art below)

The game drew some ire for shamelessly putting a DLC quest NPC in the base game, to start the quest buy the DLC.

#32: Never heard of Getting over it. Must google now... Oh, ok, I've seen pictures of it. I guess my hint fits it as well. But no, it isn't that.

#30: Yeah, completely right.

I would've said Baldur's Gate III until the DLC stuff. Now I have to think elsewhere. The art rendering let's me think of Kingdom of Amalur and I think it started underground with a Dwarven city, so I go with that.

Nope, it's more party based although you can go at it alone as well. People are recreating the main characters of this game in BG3 to play as. Of course that won't bring the banter back. I did 4 playthroughs to hear all the different interactions between the party members taking different combinations along on different paths through the game.

#33

Change YoY: -15   My Rating: 9.2 / 10

Although Dark Souls II is the weakest of the Fromsoftware Soulsborne games by quite a comfortable margin, that is only in relation to what are in my opinion some of the greatest video games of all time. In many ways, Dark Souls II feels like a very different game from the other two entries in the series, and not just because Hidetaka Miyazaki was less involved in its creation. The story and world are much less connected to the lore of the first and third games and especially the story of Gwyn, although in Scholar of the First Sin, Gwyn's breaking of the cycle of the world becomes a significant inciting incident for one of the major antagonists of the game. However, despite this disconnect, I find Dark Souls II a fascinating game from lore perspective. It feels much more of a human story, about the emergence and eventual downfalls of human kingdoms because of their own mistakes, while the other two games were more concerned with the actions of gods and the consequences of those actions.

Other notable differences include the world design, which is much less insular and connected than in DS1 and DS3. The various locations don't really wrap around each other or connect to one another, rather they are a series of long chains that shoot out from a central location. Neither is inherently better, and both can result in exceptionally well-designed locations, though the general consensus is that overall DS2 is weaker in this particular aspect. However, Dark Souls II does also feature some of the best designed locations in the entire series, specifically in the three DLC expansions, though weirdly, each of them also contains an optional area that is among the most infuriating locations in any Dark Souls game. The gameplay can also, at least in comparison to the other games, feel weirdly unbalanced and even disjointed at times, owing much to the slightly off-feeling hitboxes.

Yet, for all its faults, this is still at its core a Dark Souls game, and even at their weakest they tend to be superior to almost all other games that have attempted to copy their formula over the last decade. The beautifully bleak world, intriguing lore, challenging gameplay, and the excellent score are just some of the aspects of the game that I still love. It may be the worst of the Dark Souls games, but that only makes it the least great game in the series. Even with so many soulslike games that have arrived in the wake of the series' success, none (that I have played) have yet to match the quality of even the weakest entry in FromSoftware's flagship franchise.