Ugly. Confusing. Mechanically unintuitive. Designed by a madman. These are the comments I've received on Hinge dates, but they're also how I'd describe Brigand: Oaxaca , a baffling but brilliant immersive sim from 2017 whose emphasis is on "total freedom of action" and murdering you repeatedly. It's hard, and has an uncompromising old-school design approach that demands you spend a few doomed playthroughs figuring out its character build system before you can really progress past the early game.
If you're the kind of weirdo who's into Stalker, Morrowind, Kenshi—worlds that fundamentally don't care about you and adhere strictly to their own rules—consider this my unreserved recommendation. Brigand: Oaxaca feels like burying all those games a mile underground, subjecting them to an eon of heat and pressure, and pulling out the mystifying diamond that results.
