Sickday

These are a few I’ve played over the years and really enjoyed. I think most are still available, but some are unfortunately only distributed via discord servers.

No particular order to these:

• Pokemon Prism - A very in-depth mod of Pokemon Crystal with 2 entirely new regions and a large catalog of Pokemon from multiple generations to capture. To my knowledge, it is a successor to Pokemon Brown
• Pokemon Brown - A very in-depth mod of Pokemon Red. This was made 2 decades ago, and was the first mod I ever played. Includes a new region and many Pokemon from different generations.
• Polished Crystal - A faithful (or not) upgrade to Pokemon Crystal.
• Pokemon Crystal Clear - A mod of Pokemon Crystal that brings in many new features and vastly upgrades the AI.
• Pokemon RedStar/BlueStar - A mod of Pokemon Red/Blue that includes the SpaceWorld 1997 assets.
• Pokemon Crystal Kaizo - A mod of Pokemon Crystal that adds in much better AI and a fair bit more difficulty. All Gen 2 Pokemon can be captured and just about every trainer presents a new level of difficulty.
• Altered Emerald - A massive mod of Pokemon Emerald that adds “(almost) every move and ability from gen 1 to 7” along with a few extras while making all 386 Gen 3 Pokemon capturable.

Edit: Just realized this wasn’t strictly Pokemon mods… Oops lol.

For-gy-o

Now there’s a winner. F-Orgy-O. Like a Federated Orgy.

Here’s my top 8 in no particular order

• Golden Sun / The Lost Age
• Drill Dozer
• Kirby Nightmare in Dreamland
• Summon Night Swordcraft Story 1/2
• Mega Man Battle Network 3, 5, and 6 (either flavor of each is good)
• Mother 3
• Astro Boy Omega Factor
• Sonic Battle

I can reccommend Trilium. I think it has what you’re looking for. | Nevermind. Looks like the project is in maintenance mode for now.

You should give Squadron 42 a shot on one of their Free Weekends. It’s pretty close to Elite as far as flight mechanics and maneuvering goes and a lot more forgiving about getting the parts you want in your ship. It’s pretty jank on foot though. Not sure if that’s a dealbreaker.

Sort of surprised Elite Dangerous never made your list. It seems like it would be right up your alley! I’ve invested thousands of hours in Elite Dangerous and several thousands hours across the entire Elite franchise.

I’ve had lots of fun with more recent space games, but to this day Star Citizen’s Squadron 42 is the closest I’ve seen any game come to Elite’s level of flight control and maneuvering. I would say it’s currently held down by how they try to manage additional content and flushing out existing content. Endgame content isn’t as exhilarating as I’d hoped, but there’s still plenty to do in the game to keep you busy for hundreds if not thousands of hours.

Elite certainly isn’t without it’s faults and I’d be pleased to see more contenders in this space (ha!), but I also recognize that space sandbox games are very difficult to get right.