I’m not so sure about all perpetual licenses being scams. I’ve personally used Jetbrain’s perpetual fallback license for the 2018 version of their IDEs for 4+ years until I decided to renew. I never once felt scammed there, so I would say there IS a right way to do perpetual licenses.
Cult of the Lamb - Got this for my birthday from my buddy and it’s been very solid. I see why the reviews hype this game up; it’s a weird rpg with base building elements and that’s right up my alley. I’ve been playing it on the steam deck with a conservative power profile and it’s been a lot of fun.
Tactics Ogre Reborn - I’m a FF Tactics fan and I was told this game would scratch the itch. So far I can say it’s at got a captivating story. It’s great that my choices matter in this game and that character development is based on those choices. The gameplay is familiar and fluid. The AI also seems to scale well with the difficulty setting. I’d say fans of FF Tactics should definitely pick this up.
Here’s my top 8 in no particular order
Cosmo-nix