(Full disclosure: I work at an unrelated business for someone who contributed some writing to this game.) Sunless Skies is a worthy successor to Sunless Sea, improving on its predecessor in almost every way: a larger world, more stories, faster pacing, streamlined controls, and improved graphics and visual effects. Perhaps most importantly, it is also much more accessible. The biggest problem with Sunless Sea was probably its initial difficulty curve and the requirement to start over almost from scratch with each death. Skies allows you to choose to make the game easier, for example by letting your captain to return to the last visited port after death or by being able to stretch fuel and supplies farther. If you're not familiar with Sunless Sea or Fallen London, this is a great place to start. If you like narrative games like 80 Days, RPGs with deep and strange stories like the Torment games, or games where survival and exploration of a physical space play an important role, you'd be remiss not to give this a go.
If you've ever watched an anime in the style of Macross and thought it looked cool when the Valkyrie ships transform into robots mid-flight and unleash a swarm of missiles, this game is for you. It's an arcade game, not a space sim, with fast-paced, mouse-friendly action more alone the lines of Freelancer than Freespace. Gameplay is mission-based rather than sandbox, with the option to replay previous missions to unlock upgrades. My only real gripe is that sometimes you have to put the strike suit aside and play as a fighter or torpedo bomber.
A decade and a half after its release, there is still no other game that plays quite like Master of Magic. It features city and empire management with depth comparable to Civilization, heroes with special abilities that grow with experience and enchanted items, tactical combat, and a magic system inspired by Magic: The Gathering. Along with King's Bounty, it is credited with inspiring game series such as Age of Wonders and Heroes of Might and Magic. But those later games lack the depth of Master of Magic: they tend to revolve around pre-made scenarios with fixed city placement and emphasize achieving short-term goals over building an empire. If you'd ever wondered what Civilization would be like with monsters and magic, this is the game for you.
