I’ve been revisiting anno 2205, infamously the ugly duckling of the Anno series of RTS games. I don’t mind so much the fact that it’s different, lacks customisation and random map generation - I’m bothered because the game is so slow to progress through on challenge settings, and it feels like a game designed just to artificially waste your time; in other anno games, you can always pull tricks to dig yourself out of economic crisis - selling off assets and surplus goods, completing quests for other parties, or taking loans. 2205 is very very confined in terms of what you can do to financially recover in the early game and forces you into a lot of military events.
Social deduction games have never appealed to me and Among Us is possibly my least favorite iteration of any of them. I doubt people would even be talking about it if it didn’t hit big as a streamer game.
I generally don’t mind them, it’s just Among Us’s style that irks me. I actually kinda like them in board game form; Battlestar Galactica’s board game, arguably having the same core premise and a similar setting, is actually one of my all-time favorites. Sticking with video games, Push the Button from the Jackbox series is alright as well.
Maybe the format works better when players aren’t forced to scatter and stay quiet.