OlaSarcasm

Luke said on the WAN show that he wouldn't want to be in your shoes these days and I agree, it's silly how expensive it has become.

It's been the Azela town track from 2nd generation of Pokemon for years, but the entirety of Slay The Spire OST are a row of absolute bangers

I've played Path of Exile for 6.5 thousand hours, it's pretty cool. It's free as well. The micro transactions are cosmetic, but you can also buy storage space. Don't make the same mistake as me, though. After playing it for years, I've gotten about 60 tabs, and 50 of them go unused. You don't need more than the 4 tabs you get when you start playing, I mostly just bought it to support the devs.

I usually agree with Zero Punctuation

The first one was great and is probably dirt cheap atm. The second one I've only read horror stories about. More of the same, awful port and the character choice boils down to pessimist/genocide. Just what I've heard, but I still stand by the first game. Exploration is fun and rewarding, mechanically it has no glaring issues and it had a cool style. It's been a few years since I played it, might not hold up.

honestly think Factorio will be way too hectic, too many moving parts

I don't know, but check out GBA emulators. My favorite games on GBA is Lord of the Rings, Return of the King. You get 3 or 4 different story lines depending on which character you pick, a surprisingly deep RPG skill and passive system, a megaton of randomly generated loot in a style thats straight out of Diablo and of course that classic LOTR music. There are side games and bonus stuff, it's honestly surprising how much stuff in in that game. Oh and you know, GBA sim, can't go wrong with pokemon.