Best Video Games for Fantasy Nerds – Part 3

This week we will be re-visiting our favorite video games for Fantasy Nerds! Honestly, there are a lot of good fantasy games out there, so we may do more of these posts. We hope you enjoy our list!

Dark and Darker

Dark and Darker is a fairly newer game created by IronMace based in South Korea, it is a punishing PVP and PVE dungeon crawler. I had the good fortune to discover this game early on, I’ve been playing it since the second playtest! You spawn into the dungeon either solo, duo, or in a trio group. When I say punishing, I mean it, you bring in gear when you enter the dungeon, and you also loot for items, gear, and treasure. If you die in the dungeon, you lose not only what you’ve looted but every single item you brought in with you. You can sell what you’ve looted to the various Merchants, in the Trading Post or the newly added Marketplace!

In the dungeon, you have mobs you fight against, like skeletons, wraiths, goblins, minotaurs, flying skullbats, and many more! There are also bosses within the different dungeons like liches, cave trolls, giant worms, and more. The NPC mobs all have different attacks that you can learn to master to avoid their hits, it doesn’t take many hits from a mob to die so this is key when mastering this game. You will also run into other players in the dungeon, so be prepared for PVP battles! If you kill another player, you can loot everything on their body and in their inventory.

Currently, there are four dungeons you can play in, the Ruins, the Howling Crypts, the Ice Caverns, and the Goblin Caves. But, you can take a portal to go down into the Inferno which is a Dante’s Inferno hell-like landscape with harder mobs and enemies like demon dogs, minotaurs, and other Inferno-type creatures. The areas in this game are so detailed, and it’s a true fantasy setting! There is a locust swarm that closes in slowly during each match, and if you’re in it too long it will kill you. In the Ice Caverns, it is a snowstorm that slowly kills you over time. You need to survive and find an escape portal out of the dungeon, a static portal, or a down portal to descend into the Inferno.

There are multiple classes you can play, those being Rogue, Ranger, Wizard, Fighter, Barbarian, Warlock, Bard, Cleric, and soon-to-be-added Druid! Each class obviously has its own perks, spells, and abilities that you want to fine-tune for your play style. The fighting mechanics are incredible and relatively difficult to master. The closest I can compare them to would be Chivalry, but it’s not exactly like that. I’ve dumped so many hours into playing this game, and honestly, I could easily get a lot more in-depth but to not make this post too long let me know in the comments below if you’d like me to dive more into this amazing game! Currently, it is in Early Access, so there are still bugs and fairly consistent patches and hotfixes. Cannot recommend this game enough though! 

Not even close to the best cloak (don’t make fun of me), but I was excited to find a decent one so have a screenshot of me in it during a match!

This is the loading in screen, you can see your other party members sitting at a tavern table with you, fantasy vibes FTW! Additionally while loading into the match you spawn into a tavern where you can run around and interact with other players.

Hogwarts Legacy

As someone who grew up reading Harry Potter, this game was one that Clever had been following well before its release. I signed up for the edition that came with an early release, and did nothing but eat, sleep, and play Hogwarts Legacy for days. It is easy to lose yourself in this open-world RPG. The scenery, puzzles, and secrets blew me away. It was obvious that the developers had worked tirelessly to recreate the Wizarding World down to the tiniest details. 

In this game, you play a witch or wizard who existed long before Harry Potter. You attend classes to learn spells and potions, which then aid you as you go out into the surrounding world to fight monsters, poachers, and other enemies. You learn of your ability to use forgotten ancient magic and embark on quests to solve the mysteries surrounding the secret magic, attempting to outwit those who wish to use the ancient magic for evil. 

As someone who is admittedly not great at playing video games, I found the combat style just challenging enough to be entertaining, but not so difficult to hinder my enjoyment of the game. It was interesting to play around with different spells and chain them for maximum effect. I found myself wanting to level up to learn more spells and skills and upgrade my favorite gear. 

Once you progress in the game, you can unlock the Room of Requirement. This not only gives you a place to decorate but also to grow plants and brew potions that are helpful in combat. My favorite part of the game was taming magical creatures to place in my Vivarium, which is found in the Room of Requirement. Once you place a creature inside, you can care for them by feeding, petting, and playing with them using various toys. If the magical creatures are well cared for, they will produce crafting materials for you, such as feathers, fur, or fangs. You can even breed beasts to hatch baby creatures!

Exploring every area of the game will keep you busy and in constant amazement. Not only were there abundant side quests and puzzles but there were so many secrets to uncover. It was also fun to visit the shops and purchase new crafting recipes and outfits. Hogwarts Legacy was an incredibly immersive experience with so many elements that kept me entertained. I highly recommend it to any Harry Potter fan or Fantasy Nerd who enjoys RPGs. 

Disney Dreamlight Valley

If you are looking for another game to satisfy your childhood nostalgia, Disney Dreamlight Valley will certainly do the trick! This one is perfect for cozy gamers who watched Disney or Pixar movies growing up. You start off the game meeting Merlin in a valley that has been overtaken by “The Forgetting”. Your goal is to use magic to clear away Night Thorns, unlock new biomes, and solve the mystery of what caused The Forgetting to take root. 

Along the way, you will help iconic characters from Disney and Pixar to rebuild their homes and return to Dreamlight Valley. You also get to visit realms that are set in various movie locations, such as Belle’s castle or Andy’s room from Toy Story. I enjoyed discovering new crops, crafting materials, and creatures in the various areas as I progressed through the game. You can use these to garden, cook, and craft items. 

The level of customization in the game is incredible. You can of course collect and design different clothing, and I had a great time dressing my character and saving my favorite outfits on the mannequins to change into. You can decorate not just your home, but the entire valley to your liking. I loved collecting the different furniture from Scrooge’s Shop to decorate my home in the style of my favorite Disney characters! 

Fae Farm

Now we come to another cozy game that is perfect for Fantasy Nerds. This game is similar to Stardew Valley but set in a fantasy world! It is a farming life sim game, where you can run your own homestead in Azoria. You have the typical tasks in this type of game, like cooking, fishing, growing crops, crafting, caring for animals, and resource gathering, but each has a magical twist. You can use spells to clear the land faster, brew potions to grow rare magical crops, and use magic to defeat monsters. 

Similar to Stardew Valley and other games of the genre, you have days and seasons that require you to prioritize what you want to focus on, as the days go by quickly. There are seasonal items that you will want to make sure to collect and grow before time runs out. Making this more realistic, your character can overheat in summer or get too cold in winter. However, you can craft hot or cold drinks to help with this problem. There are also special seasonal festivals that take place. Sometimes the limited time can be frustrating, like when you are deep in a dungeon when the clock strikes midnight, but I enjoyed trying to collect all the seasonal items. 

While leveling up your skills, like mining or farming, is pretty standard, one interesting aspect of this game that I haven’t seen in typical farm sims is how you level up your stats. You can actually do this by decorating your home. If you want to improve a specific attribute, such as energy, you craft and use furniture to do so. It adds an additional motivation to the crafting and decorating elements that cozy gamers already love.

As you progress in Fae Farm, you will eventually journey to Elven Village. This allows you to gather magical ingredients, grow new fae crops, and meet Elven villagers. This was the main draw for me, so I focused on the main quest line so I could unlock this additional area. The area is gorgeous and the creatures found there are adorable. You can place the creatures you catch in your Fae Critter Conservatory, where they will produce ingredients for you before flying away. You can even unlock a second farm location, Fae Acres, where you can grow your special crops and raise Elven animals. In addition to building relationships with the human inhabitants of Azoria, you can date Elves, so be sure to get to know these characters if the relationship aspect interests you. If you are a Fantasy Nerd who liked Stardew Valley, you will love Fae Farm!

…

Have you played any of these games? What Fantasy games would you recommend? Let us know in the comments below! You can check out our first post on this here, and our second installment here!

Thank you so much for reading!

–CleverandWTF