Okay let me start with two heavy hitters right from the get go and don’t forget these are only personal oppinions and I absolute understand if you like those games. Good for you!
Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Not a bad game per se, but I don’t get the hype behind it. Sure the dungeons are fun but the world is so lifeless, the story non existent, the combat pretty shallow, the tower climbing is very much like FarCry but for some reasons it’s okay here while Ubisoft gets the blame…like I said I dont get why the game is so beloved. Never finished it after the 20 hour mark and probably never will.
Red Dead Redemption 2 - Just like Zelda not a bad game, but imho highly overrated. Graphics and and atmosphere are amazing but the controls are clunky and overloaded, nearly everybody is an unlikable douchebag who I would love to shoot myself at the first opportunity (maybe except Jack and Abigail) but I have to root and care for them. The game is just so long and feels very stretched, you already know that you won’t get Dutch because it’s a prequel and for an open world game you often get handholded in your weapon selection or things you can do because you have to wait for them to be unlocked by the game. I’m now nearly done with the game, playing the epilogue at the moment and I would say the last chapters are more entertaining than the rest of the game, but I still can’t understand why this game was on so many game of the year lists and I really wanted to put the controller down a dozen times.
So there they are, two highly controversial oppinions by me and now I’m really curios what your takes are and how highly I get downvoted into oblivion 😂
Zelda BotW and TotK. I just kind of get board cus the game is so wide but so shallow. I wish I could like it cus there is a ton to like.
Any souls like. They just seem very lazy and the combat is just silly to me.
Just about any competitive game honestly. Part of it is I suck at them but mainly the trash talking toxic communities. Plus honestly I’m not very competitive.
Pokemon. I can’t wrap my head around the complexity and “meta” and the story doesn’t real matter anymore. I did like my first Pokemon game but that’s it.
Most Mario except Mario RPG. I played the heck out of SMB 1-3 but when that was all that was available. When games expanded so did my tastes I guess.
I’d like to hear a bit more about your thoughts on souls-likes. What makes them lazy and silly?
Not the OP, but IMO it’s that difficulty is an actual feature. And that feels stupid. Difficulty should be a parameter, not a goal.
I’m a story guy myself, so if the game doesn’t have a really good story, it’s not for me. And souls-likes usually sacrifice everything to difficulty. And even if the story was good, dying 20 times with every new boss would break me out of it all the time.
I think with Souls games in particular, difficulty can be part of the atmosphere. Whether or not that is your sort of thing is another story. My husband completely bounced off of Dark Souls even after playing Elden Ring. To him, Elden Ring was the first Souls game that was more interested in being a fun game rather than a difficult experience.
Difficulty is not the goal of any of the Souls games (not talking about soulslikes). The challenge is a means to get you to think methodically and strategically, and is a vessel to bring you catharsis and release when you overcome it.
That’s what I said to him. I personally think overcoming the challenge is very enjoyable. I love Dark Souls.
For games that are in genres that I’d actually play:
Final Fantasy 6 (3): I grew up with the NES, and when we got a SNES I got whatever games I could from the $20 bin at Toys R Us. I had some friends who were a bit better off that loaned me some games, and I eventually managed to get my hands on a copy of Chrono Trigger (as well as other RPGs like Breath of Fire), but when I borrowed FFIII from one of them I was just… underwhelmed. I didn’t really care for the characters, it felt pretty slow initially, and I remember getting to a bit with a bunch of moogles in the party and I just put it down and never went back.
I’ve since tried to play it a few times here and there, but it never really manages to hook me… but people sing the praises of it high and low and I just don’t really get it because I can’t get over the hump.
The Witcher 1/2/3: I just really don’t like the combat, honestly. I’ve tried playing all three, and managed to get enough time into them to appreciate the good bits (voice acting, story, quest lines) but the main meat and potatoes for me in a game are exploration and combat, and only one of those really works for me in those games. I had a better time in the first game, all things considered, because I guess I was willing to allow a bit of jankiness from an older game, but I bounced off Witcher 2 pretty quickly combat-wise, and didn’t manage to get more than many 1/3 to 1/2 way through Witcher 3 before I just admitted that I wasn’t having fun.
Persona 3: I got into the games with P4G on my Vita, so part of this is ‘going backwards is hard’ in terms of QoL improvements and what not. But I also played the PSP port of Persona 2 (whichever one was actually ported in English) and had a good time (not so much with the PS1 version of the one that didn’t get the English PSP port… that one was rough) so I guess its just the game didn’t resonate with me as much as the other ones did… Maybe it was the characters or maybe it was the cuts that were made for the P3P version of the game, but it just didn’t hit the same.
Otherwise, a lot of military-style FPS games (stuff like Halo or Destiny or Timesplitters or even Goldeneye 64 are/were fun), the more recent sports titles (up to the Dreamcast/PS2 I was fine with them, but more realism doesn’t do anything for me), and stuff like MOBA or visual novels or ‘walking sims’ or battle royale or whatever those asynchronous horror games just don’t tick the boxes for me in terms of what I want from a video game.
FF6 is my favourite JRPG of all time. I like it more than Chrono Trigger. I loved the characters and the soundtrack.
I’m with you on FF6. The leveling system for abilities was interesting (but slow), but there were too many characters. The previous one on SNES (called 2 in the west but I think it’s 4?) had a better balance with number of characters to story.
FF6 is still my favorite.
Ugh I feel the same way about The Witcher. I tried 2 and 3 and just couldn’t get into it. The combat was not enjoyable and it felt really clunky to me. I actually tried 2 a couple of times because everyone raved and I thought maybe I was just missing something, but it wasn’t for me.
Anything made by guerrilla. Beautiful, boring tech demos
proprietary games that install rootkits(wrongly called anticheats) on the system. the corporations in charge have brainwashed masses into thinking that it’s just a benign thing there to fend off “cheaters”, conveniently brushing aside the fact that this is a massive and lucrative attack vector. it only helps bad actors(including three letter agencies).
and this is not a what-if scenario. every year you can find an incident where such a “solution” is exploited.OP just doesn’t like horses…
that’s a bold statement.
Elden Ring for me. The kids have all played the shit out of it and killed literally everything in the game. I hopped on for about two hours, wandered around aimlessly, died a few times, avoided everything to prevent dying, died a few more times and decided I never needed to do that again.
Elden ring is the hardest of the soulslikes imo. A company that treasures not telling you shit and loves to kill you for mistakes also giving you too much freedom to make them imo.
Not really a critique on it, just ruminating on why i think it’s the toughest one of the souls games I’ve played.
I found it to be the easiest. If you’re having trouble with a boss, you can just go somewhere else and level up or upgrade your weapon before coming back. Unless you’re at the very end and explored nearly everything, there should be plenty of other bosses you could be fighting instead. Other soulslike games tend not to have as many options and I would often end up stuck on a particular boss that I had to best because there were no other areas available.
Also spirit ashes. I know a lot of people refuse to use them, but if the game gives you something that makes the game easier and you choose not to use it then that’s on you.
It’s funny cuz you think it’s easy and i think it’s hard for the same reason haha. Dark souls games being what they are, I could never decide if i should move on or keep trying to git gud. A few times i gave up on a challenge only to find another challenge just as difficult, causing me to wonder if i could have given up on that first challenge, etc.
The comparitive lack of options in DS1 for example made it easier for me to decide how to move forward.
Anyway, just two ways of looking at the same thing. :D
Same exact experience. Then someone from Reddit messaged me some non spoiler wary game tips and I went back in and played 130 hours. It was my first souls game since PS3 Demon’s Souls. I ended up loving it. But I fucking hated it at first, and I don’t blame anyone for being turned off.
Would you mind sharing? I can’t get into the vibe, but absolutely loved DeS and DS1 on the ps3
Oh gawd I wish I still had access to my Reddit account. The biggest things were how to do stats—just pumpIG to like 30 after getting enough STR and DEX to use what ya want.
Another huge thing for me was getting a weapon I actually liked. The twinblade is obtainable super early on and carried me through a loooot of the game.
Another hint was for when I felt really weak but didn’t want to grind forever, there’s a portal to a place where you can just run up and down the map, sneaking and backstabbing dudes for 1k runes each. It’s behind the Third Church of Marika, in the bushes.
Thanks, much appreciated
I think what blocks me is doing a strength build like I always used to and not trying out things. It seems that things can be tried out a lot easier due to the many ways of buffing
I’ll look out for twinblades, thx
I did a DEX twinblade build and once I figured out upgrading it, it ROCKED. Keep a mace or flail handy as well for when you go into caves.
Monster Hunter, it’s just so clunky and boring.
Edit: Also the multiplayer is god awful, why can’t my friend and me just team up and play, instead you have to jump through all types of hoops to play together.
I so wish I could like Monster Hunter. I mean there are huge monsters, what’s not to like about it. But the rest just isn’t fun or enough to me so I get bored really fast. It’s a bummer.
Installed it. Spent two hours in unskippable tutorials and dialogues learning about a million different mechanics. Sent out into wild; collecting mucous for 45 minutes. Find monster, hit it a bunch. Monster runs away. I chase it for 10 more minutes, then Quit and uninstall.
Agree. This was exactly my experience too.
Hell yeah. This is what I come here to see.
I love all monster Hunter games. I’ve played since the first PSP game.
They’re jank and clunk and that’s why I love them. The new games aren’t as clunky and I like the old ones more hahaha
Surprised this hasn’t been said more in this thread, to be honest. All it seems to be is Breath of the Wild and Soulslikes.
I’ve tried 3 different Monster Hunter games, I’ve really tried to see what people enjoy about them. But the controls are so awful, the loop is tedious, and I could never find anything good to say about them. This series truly confuses me.
I’m going to have to tar and feather and entire genre I’m afraid.
It’s the weird intersection of visual novel and dating simulators.
They are truly horrible derivative fantasy, written by severely emotionally stunted incels with less sexual/world experience and writing skill than the average grade 7 student.
I was never a fan either. Doki Doki Literature Club was good though.
Class Of 09 I loved, but it’s REAAAALLY CRUNCHY
Tbhey are, quite literally, the campy romance novels of the videogame world.
deleted by creator
The 2 that you mentioned and God of War 2018.
I honestly don’t get what people love so much about that game, the combat is simple and kinda sloppy, boss and enemy variety is non-existent and traversal is a joke.
I get that the story is good but it’s not so good that I can look past everything else, it even has a few big issues like the amount of times the game throws a dumb obstacle in your way to justify some fetch quest like the black mist.
God of war is the best game I ever watched on YouTube. Playing it not so much.
Maybe the change of style helped? IDK I remember I enjoyed it a lot, but yeah, the enemy variation was its greatest fault, I hope they fixed this with the sequel, that I haven’t played.
I missed the frenetic combat from the original games. Just wasn’t God of War without it
- GTA 3 ->
- Fallout 3 ->
- Skyrim
- Souls series and most games like it
- Halo
Zelda breath of the wild - it’s one of the worst Zelda games I’ve ever played and I’ve played so many. There were so many bad decisions made with this game from weapons breaking to getting rid of traditional dungeons. It’s a great open world game but a terrible Zelda game.
The Horizon series by Guerilla Games - These games are good for the most part, however they suffer from long stretches of boring open world where you have to fight robot dinosaurs with underpowered weapons. The whole point of the combat is to find weaknesses with the enemies and exploit/attack those weaknesses, but the game never at any point explicitly explains that concept or focuses on that concept. It expects you to just understand what to do. Not to mention the absolutely stupid grinding for mats to make new weapons and armor. Melee combat is terrible, the story for the most part is pretty good but man does it take forever to pick up, it overstays it’s welcome. They are technical powerhouses but just so grindy and boring.
BioShock Infinite. Mostly because I hated all of the characters, with the exception of the Luteces, and even they were on thin ice, mostly because of Rosalind. And Elizabeth as a NPC companion? I would prefer Ashley from Resident Evil 4 over Elizabeth any day. It didn’t help that every time I tried to listen to a voxophone, she’d start talking about some bs, so I’d wait for her to finish and start the voxophone over, only to have her start talking again. When it happened 4 times with one vox, I had to take a break from the game. I just wanted to listen to the damn recording.
Gameplay is great though. I’ll play the heck out of the Clash in the Clouds dlc. I get the fun action, and none of Booker and Elizabeth’s constant whining.Basically any game where crafting is a central mechanic. Why do people love repetitive boring tasks and looking at grids of items for hours on end.
Balders gate 3. Just couldn’t get into it
Did you play any of the Dragon Age games? I’ve heard the combat is pretty similar, which is a bummer because that was the thing that kept me from continuing DA:O. I feel like I’d enjoy the story of both but can’t get past the actual gameplay.
I played DA:O too but also couldn’t get into it. And yes same as yourself, I just couldn’t get passed the gameplay
Curious: what about it, do you know?
For me it’s not a bad game by itself. But I think it’s the worst recent CRPG by far, so it irks me that it’s heralded as the best game ever everywhere. Some details:
- The character building is so incredibly shallow, this is mostly the fault of DnD5E, but Larian could have at least given us more Subclass options. Multiclassing doesn’t really help because some combinations are just so incredibly overpowered that it doesn’t make sense to play anything else (For example: adding 2 Warlock levels to your Sorcerer is always better than playing a plain sorcerer), this is exacerbated by the next point
- Why is 12 the level cap? The game is long enough to go the full 20 levels. Level 12 is particularly odd because almost no classes get anything special at around that level (exception: fighter with the 3rd attack at 11). Going to 20 would have the advantage that all classes get a capstone ability which would make single-classing worthwhile.
- The amount of companions available is laughably low, and all of them seem to be the creation of a 13 year-old with how uber-cool they are. We got: Vampire boy, Mystras loverboy, Tiefling badass, stuck-up Githyanki, Shar’s pet and Warlock superhero. Each and every one of them makes me yawn.
- This also extends to the main character even when you are not of the defaut origins, you are an instant super-hero starting at level 1. Nice power fantasy, would have maybe been compelling to me when I was a teenager.
- All conversations are voiced, whoop-de-doo. The flip side is that all conversations are extremely short. Compared with “real” CRPGs the writing is shallow, once again this feels like it was made for pre-teens. I’d rather have writing that rivals a good book.
- Why in the nine hells is this game even called Baldurs Gate 3? It continues neither the story nor uses similar mechanics beyond pretending to be a CRPG. The familiar faces you can meet feel extremely forced. At the very least they should have allowed 6 party members.
You forgot about “Bear Himbo”
It’s Baldur’s Gate in name only. They took Divinity and slapped a Forgotten Realms skin on it.
It’s still the same terrible Larian game: player-punishing gameplay (low hit chance, overwhelming enemies), traps/hazards fucking everywhere, shallow class mechanics, and rage-inducing camera and UI controls. I will finish the game once and never touch it again (like all the other Divinity games).
That’s the thing I’m not entirely sure. I expected the graphics to be better and combat to be more exiting I guess? Especially for GOTY. Voice acting was a bit basic too
Same but I’m just not into RPGs or D&D generally.
So I got on that game and it was kind of fun up until the first town when my friends were like “we need to talk to people to figure out what to do.”
I don’t mind games having a bit of lore and story but … I want to be doing (read: typically fighting) stuff in my games not just talking to a bunch of people… And when I don’t even know what people I need to talk to, to most quickly get back to the action, I’m out.
The one exception to that is possibly RuneScape because I’ve been playing that game for ages. However, even there I use quest guides and sometimes just spam through all the dialogue.
KOTAR
After growing up with Star Wars games like X-Wing/TIE Fighter, Dark Forces, Jedi Knight, Shadows of the Empire… The whole choose your own adventure text game was a really lame step down.
So many people say it’s the pinnacle of SW games and I just see it as a game that could have been made for Commador 64 that has has some cut scenes added over it.
So many people say it’s the pinnacle of SW games
nah Jedi Knight 2 was the pinnacle of SW games and maybe the second Battlefront.
I want Disney to rethink removing Kyle Katarn from the canon because I hella wanna see a show or movie following him, if not another awesome FPS where I can be him. Kyle and Dash Rendar (another video game protagonist) are my favorite SW characters.
Hell yeah, Kyle Katarn is the baddest mfer in the star wars universe.
