I’ve been revisiting anno 2205, infamously the ugly duckling of the Anno series of RTS games. I don’t mind so much the fact that it’s different, lacks customisation and random map generation - I’m bothered because the game is so slow to progress through on challenge settings, and it feels like a game designed just to artificially waste your time; in other anno games, you can always pull tricks to dig yourself out of economic crisis - selling off assets and surplus goods, completing quests for other parties, or taking loans. 2205 is very very confined in terms of what you can do to financially recover in the early game and forces you into a lot of military events.
I would have loved Sims Medieval if it didn’t have that roguelite meta progression where it expected me to restart my game from zero all the time and repeat the same quests over and over to progress the “god” unlocks. In every game I like long campaigns that I can sink my teeth into and build up meaningful progress, so this one aspect just sucked the joy out of any replays after the first run.
But I remember I loved the graphics (and music!) bc they used my fav Sims 3 engine, just made the textures prettier.