I watched a few videos on Lord of the Rings which looked fun. And I know Hobbit There And Back Again has a dedicated solo mode, but I've read it's pretty lackluster

I haven't seen this question answered anywhere else and I'm curious

I'm gravitating towards Duel of Meloch, and I don't mind learning the two games before going in. I heard Scythe is a pretty mediocre solo game, so is DoM a better game for purely a solo player overall?

Which of these would give the most bang for my buck?

City of Ancients ($90)>Swamps of Death($90)>Frontier Town($50)>Blasted Wastes Other Worlds($60)>Basic Traits Enemy Pack Supplement 1-3($25)

Or CoA($90)>SoD($90)>Gates of Valhalla($75)>Valley of the Serpent King($75)

Edit: Please read the post before making reddit comments I can smell through the screen

This is in reference to games with an absurd amount of reading with little gameplay like Tainted Grail and Lands of Evershade, but to a lesser extent Oathsworn, Middara and Descent Legends of the Dark. I assume it's because the narrative enhances the gameplay for them, but every time I forced to read more than half a page of writing when playing a board game, it completely takes me out of the experience and usually feels like a chore.

I've read parts of most of these games excerpts, and they all read like extremely amateur writing. I've wanted to get into these games because I thought they would be immersive, but reading actual fantasy books proved to be much more immersive, because you can fully enter the world while reading instead of having to stop every so often to play the game for a couple hours. Not to mention critically acclaimed fantasy series are generally better written than board game Kickstarter projects.

I understand that these games are probably just not for me, and I'm not trying to put these games down or the people who play them, I'm just disappointed from having high hopes of how these games would actually play. As an aside, I'm obsessed with Shadows of Brimstone, because I can roleplay and formulate a narrative as I'm playing, while never being taken out of the mechanics of the game. I also just ordered Sleeping Gods, which I'm excited for and might change some of my opinions about these types of games.

Like would I be able to play the Valley campaign+valley camp with the missions and other worlds from city of Ancients, and vice versa (CoA heroes and town phase but with Valley missions added

The only channels whose new game reviews I can actually trust are John Laruffa and the Broken Meeple, and to a lesser extent No Pun Included. Genuinely every other reviewer I've come across with a significant following has only good things to say about every single game they review, which means that they aren't reviewing games but marketing them.

I was excepting more synergy and combos between the cards, but most of the cards were instant and I literally couldn't get a Recharge engine built on the 6 games I played, because they were that rare. Ark Nova/IAWW both look interesting. I'm not explicitly looking for a combo tactic game, just something where the cards feels less piecemeal ​

I've been looking for something lighter, since my entire collection is medium/heavy euros and deckbuilders, and I need some type of palate cleanser for when I don't feel like setting up and playing a longer game. A lot of the "cozy" games I keep looking at feel like they have barely any actual game in them (like Cozy Stickerville).

Or should I pair Valley with something else? I like the idea of a beefed up town phase, but don't know if it's better than just going for a 2nd core box.

I've done a lot of research trying to find this type of game, and the ones that stick out to me and are in the vein of what I am looking for are:

Shadows of Brimstone with Frontier Town

Elder Scrolls BotSE

Hexplore It

Too Many Bones

and to a lesser extent Massive Darkness 2 with Heaven fall expansion

I'm leaning towards Shadows lf Brimstone, simply because it seems like the most loot/progression based put of all of them, but Hexplore It and BotSE seem much less dated.

I'm 300 pages into Cryptonomicon, and so far Neal Stephenson has spent those pages putting characters into situations that exist solely so that he can mansplain his niche tech bro interests to the reader. Not a single character has shown any interiority. Events just happen one after another​ to the main characters. It really just feels like a manic person sat down at a typewriter and decided that the entire world needed to be blessed by their superior minds machinations and arcane knowledge.