Thanks for your advice!

I looked a bit more into x3d CPUs and was able to find a 7800x3d for a great price on ebay, I snagged that.
I will be on the lookout for used GPU options.

I’m slowly continuing my playthrough of Divinity: Original Sin II and absolutely loving it.
I also recently bought Stardew Valley, finally, and started playing it a bit.
Last one, Mushihimesama as the c/shmups Game of the Month.

Voyager works perfectly fwiw

I finished a couple of games last week, SotN and Sayonara: Wild Hearts.

I’m currently back on DOS2 and I quite enjoy the slow pace of the game.
I might also attempt another playthrough of Bloodborne.

• Castlevania: SOTN
• 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

I didn’t think I’d enjoy SOTN so much, as I tend to have mixed feelings towards metroidvanias, but it delivers in many areas - I’d say it’s too easy, but then again it’s a matter of adjusting your equipment to make it more difficult.

I’m attempting another playthrough of 13 Sentinels, I’m not sure why I bounced off of it a couple years ago but I’ve been getting into “gameplay-lite” games lately with great results.

Blue Revolver

100%, their “Famous Burger” is really not bad and a sizeable portion too

Ruby and Sapphire, 100% because of nostalgia as I haven’t played either in 20+ years - those were the last games my grandpa gifted me so they hold tremendous sentimental value.
Gold and Silver would be close seconds, since my sister and I played those games when growing up and I have great memories from back then.

I think web hosting shouldn’t be an issue either way, but once you’re scaling up and trying to use more of their stack, the seams start to crack.

Realistically, I don’t think there’s any good competitor, or not at a scale which would make sense. Finding local/regional cloud providers is usually not an issue.
At larger scale, it feels like we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, with US cloud providers on the one hand and CN ones on the other, and barely any serious competitor outside of that - OVH would be an option, if reliability, tech support, performance and features are not a priority…
That’s my personal takeaway anyway, from professional experience with OVH over the past 5 years.

I finished Pentiment yesterday, what an absolute masterpiece. It’s certainly not for everyone - and I initially hesitantly added it to my backlog for this year as a very different game from what I’m used to - but it resonated so much with me.

I also started Castlevania: SOTN, which I quite enjoy so far - metroidvanias are usually hit or miss for me so I’m going in with tempered expectations.
And I’m attempting a fresh playthrough of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, which I shelved a couple years ago.

I’ve used canhost recently and can’t complain - they offered fairly cheap .ca domains compared to what I could find elsewhere.

If you’re happy with OVH as it is, then I don’t think it can get much worse.
I really wish OVH would get it together and be a serious competitor to other (US) cloud providers…

A quick local search shows quite a few sub-$300 used Pixel 7, youmight be able to find something in that range?

I’ve been using Graphene for 2 years on a (at the time) $400 Pixel 6 Pro - I’m sure you can find a cheap Pixel 6, 6a, or even 6 Pro, to try it out. The 7 might also be in that ballpark now?

Open-Meteo is Swiss (OpenMeteo GmbH) fwiw.

Either option sounds great to me - I’m playing through my backlog of shmups (and shmup adjacent games) this year and would love to share some scores, 1CCs or just have a common goal, so to speak.

What mods did you end up with?
I shelved RDR2 a while ago (year and a half ago?) but would like to get back to it at some point, likely with some QoL enhancements

I started Pentiment last week and am now wearing my detective hat - I can’t wait to see what’s gonna happen next.

I’m also playing Eigengrau, a shmup with elements of a twin-stick shooter - it’s not bad!

Green Beaver has some
FWIW, also available on well.ca

No?

Realistically, as you mentioned with FF XIV ARR now being a classic but also being a pain to get into is true for any other older FF, many people simply have rose tinted glasses to keep them from seeing all the flaws present in those prior entries.
I also started with FF VII, but 25 years after its release, and let me tell you that it did not age well (at all) imo.

Had I not picked up FF XVI, I probably wouldn’t have given the series another chance.
I now played both FF VII remakes to date and absolutely loved them, especially Rebirth, and am going through FF VI, which I also think is a masterpiece tbh.
FF IV didn’t work out for me, but that’s fine.

All that to say, video game series evolve, ARPGs have been quite popular for a while and FF went that route - for now. That doesn’t make for bad games, and the series will keep evolving.