Honestly, not quite sure what I'm looking for. Or if I'm looking at all. The idea sorta came to me after the Elex release, and I just bought the two later Fallout games from the sale so I guess post-apoc is on the brain.

To counter the post- games, just about every RPG it seems is a pre-apocalypse story, where you're preventing the bad dude from doing his or her worst. (Whew! Thank goodness that chick with amnesia came along to save the day! We should just make an army of forgetful soldiers!) Since I just finished DA:O and started Divinity 2, that had me thinking of world-changing events, too. You know, of the "If you don't solve this giant problem for us then we're all doomed" variety.

A few months back I finished reading "Seveneves" by Neal Stephenson, with a similar plot: big bad thing happens, someone figures out it spells doom for humanity and there is no way to stop it, humanity takes steps to survive, less-than-hilarity ensues, and the story continues through the initial survival phase and eventually into a many-years-later phase.

Many RPGs have a backstory of an apocalyptic event far in the past that was overcome by some plucky band of rebels and life has been grand for milennia, but now the banished thing has been reawakened by Whosits. Rinse, repeat. But I don't recall seeing a game that really spans the whole thing.

Anyway, it's more a matter of my curiosity.

Have you played Final Fantasy 6, by any chance? (This is the game that was released for the Super NES under the title "Final Fantasy 3", not to be confused with the Famicom game (and its remakes) that share that title.)

Haven't played any of them, FF1 through FFBajillion, on any platform.

Any reason why you mentioned "Final Fantasy 3" aka FF6? I don't know anything about the story but I'm still curious, presumably something happens mid-game, an apocalyptic level event, and the story continues after it.

That's also an important part of the crop cycle in the game - as it was in Egypt a few thousand years ago. The Nile flooding brings mineral-rich silt to the flooded land, and makes it possible to grow crops year after year in a country that is otherwise very much a desert.

(Some FF6 spoilers here)

Yes, there is indeed such an event.

Interestingly enough, while the game, before that point, is as linear as you would expect a Final Fantasy game to be, the game becomes non-linear after the apocalypse. Once you get the airship, you can go anywhere, even to the final dungeon (though doing so right away is *not* recommended; your level is too low and you only have 3 characters when the game is expecting you to have at least 12). The game does provide guidance of where to go next, but doesn't hold you to that order.

UnderRail maybe? I haven't played but people say good things about it and its similarities with Fallout.

Thank you for letting me know that. I've been playing Link to the past recently, so maybe FF6 will be my next game. I'm curious to see what all the cool kids are talking about, hailing it the best game FF/ one of the best RPGs.

To be honest, I don't think it was as good as FF5.

Was the story better/closer to your sensibilities? Or was it something else?

I totally agree with you.

The gameplay is *much* better in FF5; there is *so* much strategic diversity in FF5, much of which was removed in FF6 (Sing, Mix), plus Blue magic was nerfed heavily in FF6 (example: the spell that halves level, sometimes useful in FF5, is useless in FF6 because it doesn't work on enemies immune to instant death). Plus, FF5 is not as bad with excessive cutscenes as FF6. (FF5 only has a couple points where cutscenes get a little overbearing; FF6 has that issue until you get the second airship (the one you get after the apocalypse). Also, FF5 is better balanced than FF6.

Edit: I could give more reasons why I prefer FF5, like the fact that in FF5, there's an opportunity cost to giving a character some type of magic (there's other abilities you could equip instead), while in FF6, everybody can eventually learn all regular magic with no opportunity cost (the character retains all their other abilities).

The closest thing I could think of was Crysis, with its icepocalypse half way through the game. Though its not much of a slice of life experience to begin with, also kinda short really.
Project Zomboid unfortunately starts out at the beginning of the zombie plague. Though they've been adding more world erosion features, so you start out with a totally normal house with electricity, water and a nice normal town to loot. Aside from the threat of zombies breaking in of course.

Then in a few weeks the power and water goes out...

I guess if the pre-to-post apocalypse genre isn't a thing we're just going to have to crack whips and get GoG to make the game for us.

So the problem was the gameplay changes. Got it! Thanks for that.

Unless the collapse in complexity is on the level of Fallout1,2->Fallout 3->Fallout 4 dialogue system, I've never had a problem with enjoy games that end up simplifying an aspect of a game.

I wouldn't really call it simplification; FF6 still manages to be complex enough for things to interact in strange ways, some which the developer did not intend. In fact, while playing FF6, I encountered a softlock that was not the result of a programming mistake. (I was fighting an enemy that turned invisible, that it was impossible to run away from, and my only living characters were Gau and Umaro, both of whom kept absorbing the enemy's attacks and couldn't harm the enemy.)

In any case, the collapse in complexity could actually be comparable to the dialog system collapse that you mention (though I haven't played any of the games you mention). In FF5, you choose a job (what some other games call a class) for each character, which affects the character's stats, equipment options, and special ability; mages are more fragile than fighters, but can use magic. You can then assign each character an ability from another job, and much of the strategy is finding out what combination works well. Do I give my knight the ability to cast white magic (in case I need more healing), or do I give her an ability that makes her a better fighter?

In FF6, on the other hand, each character has a special ability, but there isn't much difference statwise between the characters. Furthermore, after a certain point in the game, you can teach everyone (except a couple lategame only characters) and regular spell, and you don't have to choose between magic and another ability. In this case, I might as well teach everyone healing magic; there's no need to make a decision between that and another ability. Also, characters tend to have similar stats (especially HP and MP), so that effect is significantly less of a factor here.