Whats a game that everybody seems to love that you cant stand for one reason or another?
recent: tears of the kingdom, or as i like to call it botw 1.2, its the same thing all over again just with one or two added gimicks, the open world is dead, npcs are boring and nintendo just got away with it like that
not so recent: i cant stand persona 5, joker and his entourage are annoying teenagers, the time management is a horrible gameplay addition and the artstyle is just a visual overstimulation
with that being said,~~ plz dont kill me~~
Didn't see anyone else mention it, so I'll say MMOs. Pretty much all of them. WoW, FFXIV, Guild Wars 2, Star Wars one (can't remember the name). I really like the idea of MMOs, having a huge shared world that feels alive, tons of lore, epic quests, but I just find the gameplay loop so boring. They just feel like endless busywork to me.
The content and world in MMOs feels superficial. I much prefer a tightly constructed narrative with deep, meaningful character development. The Last Of Us is a great example of this.
This will be an extremely hot take for some: Almost all recent online games are complete garbage that solely exist to make profit and create addicted user bases and they hurt what videogames truly are, a revolutionary and interactive form of art.
This is why I can basically only play old games or indies. Games shouldn't feel like work or require me to pay tons of money. I play games to have fun, which I guess is a radical idea now.
I also mainly just post old games and indies, too. Modern games for the most part are pretty garbage due to the way they are designed to take all your money.
I have liked a lot of indies lately as well, but the have been a ton of good AAA games recently, for me at least. Elden Ring, TotK, Star Wars Jedi Survivor, Hogwarts Legacy, God of War Ragnarok, to name a few.
That is fair, besides the star wars one, I am generally interested. i think at the moment, I am most interested in elden ring. I'll have to see how it runs on my hardware. I guess it will run well enough.
Potentially worded a bit abrasively but...kinda yeah. They rely so heavily on fomo, gacha, and other skinner box tricks to keep you playing other than FUN. Just remember what happened to Titanfall 2: "ohhh it was SO FUN it just didn't have the events and grinding and stuff I wanted >:( "
How dare they keep the chores out of my fun videogame. Now how am I going to press my dopamine button?!? Huh?!? Think it's just gonna happen cause I grapple 180 no scoped a guy with a kraber???
I need checklists! Grind! If the game isn't a part time job I can't even conceptualize it being fun!
not just an online game problem for quite a few years now
DOTA, or any MOBA. I'm an old-school RTS fan and for whatever reason these games slide off me like water off a duck's back, despite being told multiple times from different folks that I'd probably like them.
I used to play LoL back in 2012 or so but got tired of not being able to play as I wanted so I left and never looked back. Having to choose characters based on the needed role was bad enough, not being allowed to explore new builds and possibilities but what the current meta dictated was so ridiculous. I felt some vindication when a build I was exploring later turned out to be considered too powerful and got reworked (AP Yi, fuck you those who shit on me when I bought the magic ring as my first item).
I also couldn't get into Witcher 3. I don't have anything against other people liking it, I just couldn't do it. For one, there's so much rape talk even early in the game that really put me off. It felt like cheap world building.
Hollow Knight. On the exploration side I didn't like the way the map works. On the combat side it just felt... weird? Like, it's not really clunky, but I just couldn't vibe with it. Beautiful game though, "100 and something. "-percented it just for the aesthetic. But I will probably never replay it; wasn't worth the time I spent with it.
When you take about the way the map works do you mean needing the charm to see your location and buying the maps, or is it all the back tracking?
Buying the maps and using the charm for position. I found the idea neat in concept but annoying in practice.
I totally get it, there were times where I was a little frustrated looking for where to buy the map. But overall I liked it. Needing to use the charm for position was annoying. It was kinda pointless and made you need to menu a lot more just to swap stuff.
Monster Hunter. It's just so painfully slow and boring. Combat just feels clunky.
Out of curiosity, which one(s) did you try?
MH World was the first and only one I've tried.
I recently tried to play MH: Rise and bounced so hard. They really need to consider how to ease new players to the genre into the game. The first hour included so much exposition, paragraphs of text, and detailed menu tutorials before I really had any context for why anything is important. I know that the games have always been this way, but it felt lazy.
I feel like World unintentionally offered a better experience with the Defender set. I guess it was brought in to help people "fast forward" to Iceborne content. But I was appreciating it even just for playing through the main game. I would use Defender weapons, with no Defender armor, dealing far more damage than I should have at that point in the game, and monsters still took a good 15 minutes; about as long as I would ever want a fight like that to take without getting seriously bored.
If I ever return to try Rise, I'm a bit worried that it will feel grueling.
Got through all of that to play with a friend cuz we played the beta together and thought it would be promising
We were so disappointed we spent less time playing together than we did the initial text/cutscenes.
I forget which monster Hunter game I played, but I dropped it before the tutorial/ into ended. I just want to pay a game, but read a book of history and how-to.
I wouldn't say I hate Witcher 3 but it didn't engage me at all because of the "everything sucks" aura it gives. There's nothing really nice to look forward to or that makes the fight against the Big Bad worth it. However, now that I'm writing this, maybe that was intended and I should get back to the game with the mentality of a jaded mercenary only doing it for money, as I believe the Witchers are supposed to be.
I could never get into The Witcher 3. I recognize that it's purely a subjective thing, but it honestly feels like they handcrafted that game sitting there going "Well what would Action Bastard REALLY hate mechanically?"
Just absolutely nothing clicked for me aside from bits of the story, and even that wasn't really holding my attention all that well since I've already had a lot of exposure to Eastern European mythology and folklore and just don't really care about any of the main characters.
That said, some of the side quests were absolutely delightful in terms of being fun ideas. I just didn't enjoy the minute to minute gameplay enough to be able to stick with it.
Genshin Impact or as I recently started to call it Genshit impact
-Microtransactions -Botw 0.01 -Visuals are not original -Bad touch controls besides having 99% of its players playing on mobile.
I'll probably get roasted for this but.. Pokemon. It just seems like endless copy/paste and might be one of the laziest game franchises I've ever seen. I've really tried to get into them. I was there when the Pokemon cartoon started, I saw it rise to the phenomenon it is today, but damn if it isn't the most boring grindfest ever.
That's a very common complaint for the last, hell I don't even know, 20 games or whatever.
@Mandy
1)Any competitive online multiplayer game.
2)FPS games.
3)Any game with subscriptions or unlimited microtransactions.
BOTW. I just don't get it. It's not really that I can't stand it; rather, it's just that it didn't feel like a Zelda game to me. Yes, it's gorgeous; yes, I had some decent fun at the beginning. But in the end, I moved on. First zelda game where I didn't want to finish it and it felt like a chore playing. Like, get out of here, I don't want to micromanage how many attacks with a sword I can make. That's so annoying.
Breath of the wild, I hated it, thought it was the worst Zelda I've ever played. Just didn't feel like a Zelda to me.
I agree, it did not feel like Zelda. But now when I go back to play other older titles they don’t feel like Zelda. This new style has really become the new standard for me.
I got sick of Hades. Everything that happened in the house before and after runs was great, it was just I shame I had to repeatedly slog through a run for half an hour to get new conversations. I came to the conclusion that roguelikes probably aren't for me.
Couldn't agree more about Tears of the Kingdom however I'd go one step further and say I can't stand Zelda. I've played a fair few including BotW. Thought they were complete garbage.
The other for me is any game made by FromSoftware, and to that any "soulslike". The game design and gameplay of these types of games are atrocious imo. It has always bewildered me how much love they get. I can't comprehend it.
Any game made by From as in their Souls series or that includes Armored Core and Another Century's Episode too?
Honestly I haven't tried Armoured Core or others prior, the Souls series was my first introduction to them.
Total agreement on all points.
I tried Sekiro, really gave it a solid go for a couple weeks, thought it was insanely difficult but I was getting the hang of it…
Then the tutorial basically ended. Fuck that game. The difficulty scale looks more like a cliff that turns over your head. No clue how anyone can enjoy that kind of thing. How is it enjoyable or relaxing to die 30, 40 times before beating a boss??
For some context, what are some games you enjoy? Or, perhaps, do you think are underrated?
(As a Zelda fan who also enjoyed but did not complete Elden Ring)
I have a broad taste, but tend to focus on more narrative RPG/Action Adventures.
As for underrated, I loved This is the Police but don't think I've ever really heard it talked about.
I have the exact same opinion as you do. I really don't understand the hype around zelda games.
I hated the soul’s games for a while. After some time I decided to stick with it for a weekend And but get frustrated if I die over and over.
I finally got it and really started to enjoy the series. I only played 3 and really enjoyed it but I did not finish it. I think I got pretty close to the end though.
Once you get used to the mechanics, it’s not so hard. I was able to defeat bosses on the first try in some cases, but most I could do on the second try.
Disagree, but won’t kill you don’t worry.
Personally, I don’t see much appeal in online fps games.
That’s funny, I was thinking of finally picking up Cyberpunk since I’m winding down on tears of the kingdom. I’ll still give it a shot but if it’s like Witcher 3 I don’t think I will enjoy it.
I didn’t pay a lot of the Witcher 3, but I completed cyberpunk. They are very different games. It has a slight rpg system where tire character levels up and get new abilities. But it’s its own thing.
I adored Cyberpunk. Played in Q1 2022. The bugs were mostly worked out and it was a delightful experience.
I can't stand pretty much any kind of shooter. Is that mostly because I suck? Probably, but I still don't like them.
What about games like Half Life or Metro? I don't like most mutiplayer shooters either, but storydriven singleplayer games can be great imo
To be honest I haven't played either
Those games might be worth checking out, it's a very different experience than online multiplayer shooters. But maybe shooters just aren't your thing at all, which is okay as well :) If you need more game-recommendations, both shooters and non-shooters, I'm happy to scroll though my Steam list and gather some more for you!
What about shooters that are offline? I stopped enjoying online shooters, but I still can enjoy some retro titles.
Dark souls, castlevania, smash bros, FIFA (I dont mind a game or two with a friend but it's the same game every year reskinned but worse).
Final fantasy games past 10
The new cod games, last one I liked was the original mw2
Which castlevania? The metroidvania ones, or the classic ones?
I love the metroidvania ones.
Just in general , its just not my jam. I do like the metroid games however.
Any MOBA really, particularly League of Legends. A number of my friends played these obsessively, but I could just never get into it. I've sat in on quite a few Discord calls with people playing this game and I gotta say, not once did anyone ever sound like they were having fun. I'm not sure what it is, but it just seems like the genre attracts toxicity like no other, especially when playing with strangers. On the occasions I tried them myself, the gameplay just wasn't engaging enough for me to want to put in the tremendous amount of time necessary to become somewhat decent at the game.
There's one opinion that I've been afraid to say out loud forever because people are so passionate about it... Disco Elysium. I love rpgs and I love choice-based, narrative-driven games. But there were two main things which drove me crazy:
I'm with you on this one. I got moderately stuck at one point pretty early on in the game (I'm not sure, but I think my save was probably bugged). Anyway, I put the game down and never touched it again. Didn't feel like I had lost anything at all.
I've had a hard time finishing the game because of #2. DE is such a weird blend of "the devs thought of everything" and "all conversations are railroaded into insanity". What at first felt like a game allowing the player to explore and develop political views in an alternate universe is actually more of a hamfisted, cynical parody of all possible idealogies. I think the moment I got South Park vibes (not from the writing, but from the " everyone is stupid " vibe) is when I was doomed to never finish it. That said, I actually love so much about the game, I want to enjoy and finish it. I just find it so tiring.
I agree. People were raving about this game and it was just a complete miss with me.
For one thing it was marketed as an RPG but really it felt more like some kind of point and click adventure which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing but the writing style just didn't click with me anyways. And, yeah, a lot of the choices in the game are just false anyways. After a few different starts experimenting with the different choices you just get railroaded into the same thing no matter what.
For me Skyrim, The Witcher 3, botw and all souls games.
Skyrim never clicked, it just felt buggy and empty and punishing. Trying to climb that mountain just so a yeti can beat you up? Great, here is your save spot form 15 min earlyer, please try again. I know that's why it's fun for so many, I just hated it.
The Witcher 3 was too... much dialogue. Most of the time I can play 1-3 hours every couple of days. And in the Witcher you walk 15min through beautiful but otherwise empty forest, killing 1-15 something, walk back and talk like another 15min with the guy who gave you the quest. It's really deep worldbuilding, but when you don't have a lot of time it's more "damn, what happend last?" 5min walking "ah, that happened" takes new quest, so much talking..."ah damn, my hour is gone, so I finish the quest another time." PC off.
Botw cause the world felt empty and everything broke in an instant and I'm the player ending with 50 healing potions, 10 big scrolls and so on cause MaYbE I'll need it another time. Doesn't match with botw. TotK is so much better handling this, cause you can craft any good item in an instant.
And Souls Games are just a broken mess. They're not hard by default, they're hard cause of all the buggy and mushy controls. It never feels crisp, it's just a big blob and maybe your character rolls or maybe it feels like an invisible wall, who knows. Games like Jedi Fallen Order in hard mode or Hollow Knight were so much more fun, cause the controls were crisp and everytime I lost, it was because of me. I did wrong and not some squishi spaghetti code.
It's funny because to me Skyrim wasn't punishing enough. The game literally lets you get away with murder. I would've liked more lasting consequences for your actions in the game.
It's funny, your description of Souls games echoes how I feel about 3rd person action games that aren't made by FromSoft. To me, Dark Souls 1 felt like the crisp combat I had been wanting but never getting from stuff like God of War or the older Monster Hunter games. Bloodborne refined it somewhat, and to this day, that style of 3rd person combat is my favorite.
Crazy how perceptions of a game's controls are so individual. Our difference really illustrates to me how hard it is to nail a game's "feel."
It definitely is! I have a lot of friends who love the souls games and tried to convince me to give it a try over and over again. And one of them speaks about the controls like you do. It was an interesting evening figuring out how different our views of other games were. That's why I love the variety of games. You can never have a game everybody likes or even feels the same for everyone. And that's also why I love threads like these, cause even though it seems like everyone likes X or Y, every game will be disliked by someone.
All those Telltale episodic games, like The wolf among us and The Walking Dead. It's so boring and slow that it makes me both extremely mad and uncomfortable.
Do not care for open world crafting games. Minecraft, Day Z, fuck even the new Zelda looks to have some kind of crafting system. That just feels like endless fucking grinding to me.
Skyrim. I can't quite place it but there's something about it that hits the uncanny valley for me and I can't get immersed. I've tried to get into the game three times and it just never grabs me.
I hate the Persona franchise. I don't like the playstyle at all. It felt very uncomfortable to me.
Kingdom Hearts: I played the first for some time and watched some videos of the series, but I don't get the appeal. The character design is strange, the story does not hit me on an emotional level and the Disney characters... Just no.
Final Fantasy: Played 7 and X and just like Kingdom Hearts, it just did not hit me on any level. It is strange, because I love JRPGs like the Legend of Heroes series.
I'm with you on FF. I played VII, because at that point in time, especially where I'm from (small, inconsequential country with a low population and before the internet hit it big, we were always months behind on trends), you just played any title presented to you by others with a PS.
My siblings and I mostly played the demos that came with free PC magazines as we couldn't afford much else lol.
All of that rambling to say: Even then, when I didn't have much else, it bored me to tears. It was so wordy, but without the type of substance I enjoy, the battles were tedious (though I enjoy other types of turnbased combat - like xcom), the style was cute, but I did not enjoy the mishmash of characters (similar feelings on Kingdom Hearts which you also mentioned), it didn't feel irreverent, it felt inconsistent to me.
I can completely understand why others might enjoy it though. I tried playing other FF titles, because the games are quite different to each other, but unfortunately couldn't get into them. But hey ho, everything can't be for everyone.
For me it's the GTA games since San Andreas and Red Dead Redemption 2.
I still try GTA V and RDR2 once in a while as I love the worlds in those games. But they always feel grindy really fast and just don't manage to hold my attention. A shame, as RDR2 looks gorgeous and I love the western setting, but the gameplay just doesn't connect with me. Also doesn't help that each time I want to try picking GTA V or RDR2 up again I end up starting from scratch as I have no idea what the control scheme was. Another thing that just doesn't resonate with me, perhaps its better with a controller, but as an avoid mouse & keyboard guy all my attempts to use one ended with utter frustration.
For me, GTA has always been like "I can play the story and get a car as a reward, or I can just steal a car". So I always start to steal my way up, until the cops become too powerful. Then it turns into a senseless shootout and once I'm dead, the game is done for me.
It's fun for an hour or so, and that's that then.
I totally agree with BotW. So many people seem to love it, but it's just lots of empty land, boring/non-existent characters/story. It's just empty and there are no real pointers where to go.
Also, Zelda without dungeons doesn't feel right at all, and the shrines aren't a suitable replacement.
Fallout: NV and Skyrim. People kept recommending them to me but neither really clicked. I put about 20 hours into each before just kinda dropping them and not looking back. Even tried mods since everyone says they're better modded, but just found I was spending more time modding the games than playing them. Maybe Bethesda games just aren't my thing.
Any game that has daily login bonuses or a bonus for playing every day. Animal crossing pocket or whatever it is. Pokémon go. A bunch of afk phone games. A bunch of gacha games. It just feels so shallow to me. Like, I’m not being manipulated to play something, I just end up feeling so guilty to lose a streak I’d rather delete the game.
While not a daily login bonus, the weekly and monthly tasklist of Forza Horizon 5 killed the game for me. It triggered some sort of fomo and I would rush in every week to grind the new tasks/events. That burned me out very fast, so I could not enjoy the rest of the game.
Hollow Knight. It feels gross af to die only to have to walk like 10 minutes back to the boss I die to again, and the exploration is some of the least rewarding in the metroidvania genre imo.
honestly most competitive multiplayer games like league (stretching the definition of everyone loves I know). I just have a hard time learning the game when I feel like I'm dragging the team down
I finished Fallout New Vegas but never really enjoyed my time with it. Was a boring open world with emotionless NPCs and a forgettable storyline. Tried Fallout 76 recently and it was still the same type of thing. I played the hell out of Skyrim though and loved it the whole time. Maybe I just don’t like an apocalyptic open world? People always seem to love Fallout but it’s just not for me.
Souls games.
I like difficult games but I just don't enjoy the gameplay of Souls games. They feel sluggish and repetitive.
Please give sekiro a try if you ever get a chance. It's like dark souls but for people like us that want good fun gameplay instead of constant bs :D
Have you tried Nioh/Wolong? While I really like the Souls games for the exploration and world design I much prefer the faster and more complex combat of the Nioh games.
I tried Nioh, I think last I remember I came up against a boss that could instantly kill me in a single attack, at the end of a gauntlet of enemies. It wasn't even that far into the game, so I just dropped it since it was clearly the exact kind of bullshit difficulty that Dark Souls is known for.
I just got done with Subnautica. Man, either I just had shit luck, or that game does NOT respect your time. It's infuriating to me when I know exactly what I need to do to progress, but I'm blocked by not being able to find a single damn rock out in a giant ocean. I dug the story, but man I was glad to be done with it.
I enjoyed some parts of it, but I'm the same way. I was often scouting the world for that one piece of that one vehicle option so I could continue playing the actual game. Ended up spending as much time reading online guides and maps as actually playing.
Destiny 2! The game is total trash. The combat is so fucking boring, its just nothing but bullet sponge bosses with simple ass mechanics.
I know that lots of people love it but man I do not understand lol
Monster Hunter. I don't understand any of it. I tried rise and generations and I just... I just don't get it.
Honestly, Stardew Valley for me. I've tried it a couple times and it just didn't work for me. I wanted to like it, and I like the idea of it, but in practice, I hated the time management aspect and not being able to just run around and do as much as I wanted in a day (I haven't played on PC with mods; I know there's at least one or two that let you change that). I also hated the fishing. 🙃
I can see why the time mechanic is there but I agree it can be a negative point to the game. You're not the first person I see complaining about this.
I liked the game enough but needing to get a rare fish that can only be fished at certain season, certain time period and only when raining to complete quests was annoying, as was needing to get out of the dungeon while I was having a good run because of time. It would have been better if there were alternative means to get the fish, like buying from the fisherman, and the option to camp in the dungeon.
The game is kind of a chore at first when you have to manually water your crops. Once you’re more established and have sprinklers you can really put a lot of the farming on autopilot.
I actually feel like Harvest Moon was more chill and relaxing. Stardew Valley stressed me out because I felt like if I didn't manage my time properly I was doing it wrong which felt weird given the game's message about leaving the demanding stressful work life of the city behind.
Elden Ring, I get why the game appeals to so many people, but the entire Soulsborne series as a whole just doesn't appeal to me (because of gameplay style and fantasy setting).
Never into the 3d Metal Gear Solid games. Also most RTS; no matter how cool they look they just aren't my cup of tea.
I like Metal Gear Solid a lot. Metal Gear Solid 2 was okay but the bait and switch from Solid Snake to Raiden was just aggravating and the plot started getting more crazy than I cared for. By the time Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater came out I was just done. I know I'm in the minority here but it just isn't for me. The first Metal Gear Solid for the PS1 was about the right balance of game play and funky off the wall story for me.
Hideo Kojima needs someone to tell him when enough is enough.
Counterstrike. I was raised on Unreal Tournament and Battlefield 1942/Vietnam, every iteration of CS I've tried is just slow and boring comparatively. Doesn't help that the maps and guns never change either. I'll probably give it a go again with CS2 but I'm not expecting anything different.
Speaking as a player with thousands and thousands of hours in CS... I definitely get why it doesn't appeal to some people. But what you describe about it is exactly why I and so many other people like it. The game changes very little, and pretty much only gives you guns and grenades as weapons, no fancy abilities or anything like most modern titles.
That unchanging-ness and limited toolset means that raw strategy and to a lesser degree reflexes are the only ways to get ahead. With the map designs set in stone, many with decades of refinement and balance adjustments, you get intimately familiar with every door, corner, and corridor. It becomes much more about predicting what the other team will do and strategizing against it, rather than just grappling with the game and mechanics.
Super Hero mod for 1.6 was awesome, though. Zipping around the map like Spider-Man with a rifle was so fun.
Honestly, Animal Crossing (new & old). What's sad is it really is a fun game if you have a good attention span and no depression. I have a hard time keeping basic routines so logging into a game regularly was really challenging for me. By the time I'm reminded of the game it'd be weeks or months since I touched it. In the old game this meant everything you worked on has been undone and you have roaches. The newer one is better about overgrowing weeds and I haven't got roaches yet, but the neighbors notice your disappearance and have some things to say about it. Last time I logged on one of the characters was so personally slighted by my disappearance I just logged out after the conversation. I haven't logged on since. When I can keep up with it, it's fun and cute. When I can't I'm made to feel guilty for hurting the feelings of an unsympathetic AI. At least my friends in real life understand depression and it's ability to steal my motivation. I do miss Sherb tho.
Terraria - I just don't understand what you're meant to do or why it's interesting.
I actually really like TOTK though, it's a big improvement over BOTW with a slightly more alive world and the vehicle creation stuff is fun.
Idk if I'm just dumb or something but I have tried to play terraria on 5+ separate occasions and the controls and UI just DON'T make sense to me. Like how to craft?! How to equip? How to do stuff? It was just so confusing. I tried on mobile and steam deck. I even looked up the controls online and mapped it out. It just never clicked for me. I felt like an 80 year old using a smartphone for the first time.
The turn based RPG genre .
That stupid Goose game. Pissed me off how simple and repetitive it was. Completed it in a few hours and felt like a total rip off. I still get angry when I see the memes.
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/01/the-value-of-videogames-or-why-i-think-untitled-goose-game-was-a-rip-off/
It's not like the game was supposed to be a renaissance of gaming or incredibly deep. For me it was a fun time while I played it and then I put it down. It was a nice change of pace to play something semi original instead of playing the next Halo or Diablo game or watching the same movie rehashed and spit out that is the Marvel and Star Wars franchises. Wish I could get the time back from those. To each their own though.
Borderlands
I apparently hate looter shooters. I loved the art style, tone, and everything else about the game, but I just really didn't like the gameplay. I bailed on it in like 20 minutes.
In fact, I don't like loot in general. I also don't really like Diablo, and I dislike managing loot in most RPGs (esp. Elder Scrolls games). I care very little about what items I have in games.
Maybe not quite the spirit of the question but: Endwalker killed FFXIV for me.
Played the game a ton from ARR to Shadowbringers, but can't bring myself to even log in any more. The house I've had for seven years will be demolished later this week and I don't even care.
I know people loved the story but I hated it. Job design, job balance and encounter design are in terrible states. Patches are taking longer. The new content they added for this expansion has been bland and uninteresting.
First time I've heard this take. Both stories were close competition for best expansion for me.
I wanted to love FF14 and tried it after shadowlands in WoW. But I felt like the entire game was terribly dull. The story felt pretty generic to me, and the cutscenes were sooooo slow (long pauses and generic emotes between lines drives me nuts). But the thing I disliked the most was how samey all the dungeons felt.
I played a WHM for the campaign up until SGE came out and actually enjoyed the way that class played, but the world just felt kinda flat to me.
@Harmageddon WHM is notoriously slow and plodding early levels and the A Real Reborn story is a realllllllllly slow burn that drags too long in places.
I'll probably take some flak for my answers, but here I go!
Undertale
Maybe I would've loved it if I had got to the game before the fandom madness got to me. But to be fair, it looks like it's visually designed to tap into that 80's nostalgia, which would've bore me anyway.
Destiny 2
I used to enjoy that game (and Destiny). Played it way more than I'd like to admit. But as my anxiety got worse, the more I abhorred the way they force you into matchmaking for PvE content, then give you all kinds of reasons why you have to do those PvE content where you're forced to play with random players. Then there's the changes Bungie had made that made the game more and more hostile to me on a mechanics level. Lately, it also feels like they're treating Destiny 2 as a money-printing machine.
Diablo 4
Because Blizzard. I had a whole rant but I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable. I simply will not give Blizzard any money moving forward.
As far as Undertale goes at least even if maybe the design kind of looks like it's designed to tap into 80's nostalgia I really don't get the impression that's the main appeal for most people. The fandom thing is definitely true though, I'm glad I was young and chronically offline enough not to see any of that before I'd played the game through in its entirety
The Souls games.
I can see the appeal of the story and stuff, but they're just impossible for me to get into cause of their difficulty
See I originally was like this, and then I tackled it like a coin eater arcade game. Its is begging you to throw yourself over and over at the enemy and learn their patterns. It becomes so satisfying when after a few hours your a master at parrying an enemy the day before killed you in seconds. The games do a fantastic job of giving you that feeling of a protagonist whose finally learned to work their powers. Then you get a new enemy and its back to square one.
Here's the thing I never got: most Souls-like aren't actually that difficult, they're just tedious. And I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because people don't seem to notice and/or care.
I don't mind doing a boss encounter 20 times to get the move set down. I like the feeling of beating a boss by actually becoming better. But why the hell do I need to run trough a dozen enemies before I get back to him? It's like a damn unskippable cutscene where I need to mash the same buttons over and over again! And people rightfully get mad at those, but put it in a souls-like dress and people love it.
I'm a 40 year old dad, I really don't have the time to waste doing stuff I already mastered 20 times over. Just give me a damn quick save that disables during combat. It doesn't make anything easier, it's just less tedium.
Right? I so agree. Further, I feel like a lot of games are just as hard... but they give you a little wiggle room so that you can learn how to fight while you're fighting, and you get this pleasing feeling of being smart and overcoming something difficult just the same, and you can get into the flow of it and let the music sink into you and feel fucking awesome even if it's hard and you do end up dying multiple times.
But with souls games, one (1) tiny mistake and bam, you're dead, and now you have to sit through this long-ass loading screen. That doesn't feel like more difficulty to me; that feels like the type of bullshit that is like getting sniped from across the map by an NPC you can't see. It just interrupts the flow of the fight, and the player's immersion, repeatedly, when it doesn't need to imo. And without difficulty settings, it screws over people who have hand pain or stiffness for any of a number of reasons, or people who have shitty cheap knockoff controllers, or people who have minimal hardware and maybe the game stutters just enough sometimes to make them die, and so on.
And the 'community', at least the one on reddit, is insufferable (in aggregate! I don't automatically think you're an ass because you like souls games, I promise. I'm just tired of people trying to use their like souls games as some of kind of proof that they're better than other people, and of their complaining about difficulty settings and other accessibility measures.)
But yeah. Something like Hyper Light Drifter, that respawns you right by the fight immediately after you die, or something like Celeste where again you respawn right at the same level immediately after you die, is fine. But souls' games death screen is too long on its own, let alone combined with all the stupid backtracking.
Even though it’s a Soul’s game, there was a hilarious contrast between the Bloodborne subreddit and the Souls subreddits. The Souls subreddits had a lot of non-ironic “git gud” type comments, while the Bloodborne subreddit would just be thrilled that someone was playing their game and even years later posts by newcomers to the game would get really happy responses and the comment section of a newbie’s post that they had defeated the first boss would be a virtual party of congratulations and cheering them on… even when there were many such posts per day.
Probably because it was the smallest community, due to being locked to one system, but it always made me laugh how different the subs were. In fairness the Souls subreddits have chilled out a lot though, but even to this day the Bloodborne subreddit is unrelentingly welcoming in comparison.
Final Fantasy 7 came out when I was in high school and I was getting more into PCs at the time and only had enough money for one. By the time I got around to playing FF7 years later, the graphics were way outdated and it never clicked for me.
FF7 is a great game. One of my favorites. And for quite a long time, people say that it aged well.
I don't think that's true anymore. And probably hasn't been true for years.
But you know what's even better than the original? The FF7 Remake. I was somewhat ambivalent about it. Cautious, even. Because I knew it was going to be real-time active battles instead of the old traditional turn-based system. And I like the latter (because I'm bad at real time stuff). But SE did a fantastic job on the remake with the battle system. It's so much fun. I even think the updated story is great. I highly recommend it to anyone who didn't really like the original FF7.
Somehow, even though I felt like I was following all the tutorial advice in the demo about how staggering worked, battles were taking an incredibly long time to finish.
I'll admit the original had somewhat dumb writing at times, but it made up for it in snappy pacing, not having you linger on any one moment. The most fantastic moment of the original was zooming straight from the city overview down into the train station for instant action. For the remake, they seem to overload on nostalgia in order to take a 3-second shot in the first game, and wind it through into a 30-second orchestrally-scored scene; imo even going so far as to ruin that opening shot.
Zelda. Breath of the wild.
Just find it repetitive. I'm probably not doing it right, but i get bored every time I try.
BotW is fun because of either physics abuse (same with TotK) or it being a large open world to explore with lots of side or mini quests. The combat is the same as the rest of the 3d Zeldas.
So is it not really like a Zelda game at all? I've never played it but I read recently that there are no dungeons.
There are 4 dungeons, 8 iirc with the dlc, that correspond to the main story. Besides the tutorial area, everything is optional; you can go right to the main boss. (I think speedrunners may have a glitch out of the tutorial now though)
There are a lot of puzzles, something like 160 shrines which give a 1/4 heart container (or stamina wheel piece) that each contain their own puzzle to complete our enemies to defeat. There are hidden koroks all over the world that give you an item when found that you can use to increase equipment carry capacity. There are NPCs all over that have some small problem and they reward you with money or cooking ingredients /etc. There's a variety of clothing hidden around and available from shops.
The story is, like most Zeldas, cryptic and expansive but told in a very kid oriented way. Skyward sword has the best fit for the tone imo.
Playstylewise I would say think of the original nes Zelda in the skyward sword engine minus the wiimote control. And add in durability mechanics on your weapons to encourage a variety of use
The focus is not so much puzzle dungeons with a boss at the end but exploration so you can figure out the story and get strong enough to comfortably kill Gannon.
The physics engine is very much this Zeldas gimmick, like how skyward sword has the wiimote controls or the ds games used the stylus. Many things are manipulable and can cause damage. The core combat however is very much the same as all 3d Zeldas.
The open world suffers from the Ubisoft problem of there is something slightly useful literally everywhere but it fortunately does not point this out for you with waypoints and stuff, meaning your clues are all environment based or clue based from NPCs.
The main dungeons are very similar to each other and not very difficult. Similarly the end boss is not super difficult.
The biggest reason I think people that don't like it on the first playthrough is the focus on exploration and just how long that can take. It's a big game
Second is the guys can be pretty beefy against weak weapons so combat can get tedious unless you try to do stuff with the environment
The Assassins Creed series. It’s got all the things I love from the Uncharted and Tomb Raider games, I could just never get into it. Maybe I should have started from the beginning, I dunno. Arkham games were the same way, totally my preferred style of game and gameplay, but it just never grabbed me.
The original trilogy of AC games was my jam back in the day, very solid games, still a new concept at the time and not run into the ground. The story was super interesting too, lots of history imparted through the locale and story as well. If you haven't played AC Odyssey, its the only AC game in the last few years that I genuinely enjoyed. It takes a new approach on the assassin gameplay by interspersing it with some genuine Arkham-Knight-like combat. Its open world too so you kinda choose your battles and can choose to go in hot and fast or slow and sneaky, lots of greek references and even famous philosophers and leaders of the time so a fun history lesson here and there as well. Genuinely recommend you take a look if you haven't. I feel the same about the Arkham games though, Batman was never my favorite superhero anyhow
When people say AC games I just think of Armored Core.
I’ll keep an eye out for Odyssey. I don’t game much these days, just here and there, but a recommendation is always good!
I don't know if everyone loves it but I just can't get on with Ni No Kuni. I love JRPGs, I love anime. But the battle system in this game is just, annoying. It's real time but you input commands through a menu. And you have creatures that can fight for you, but they share your health points. I've gone back to it a few times but I just don't enjoy it.
I really tried to like Ni No Kuni, especially because of the Ghibli artwork, but I just bounced off it.
The latest PlayStation games like The Last of US and God of War. Story is fine, graphics are nice but damn is the gameplay loop boring and easy. I don't care for 'press forward for story into arena fight and back again to press forward for story.
They are great casual games, almost visual novel like, but they don't really offer anything in challenges or deep mechanics.
The Last of Us is fine for about one playthrough. When I played through I was sad the story was ending but I was kind of glad I didn't have to keep playing. I feel like it stayed just long enough where it didn't wear out it's welcome. Haven't gotten around to the 2nd yet so I have no opinion there.
God of War I've enjoyed in limited doses but I'm with you. I've bought a handful of installments for it and I don't think I got much further than a few hours on any of them. I know it's dumb I keep buying them but for whatever reason they always seem to have a great sale going on everytime I think about giving it another shot. The thing is I've enjoyed other hack and slash games and I enjoy Greek mythology but for whatever reason the gameplay in this series has never clicked with me
Witcher 3. I tried to get into the game multiple times, and I have the complete edition on PC. I don't know why exactly it isn't clicking for me, but I just can't vibe with it.
Same all my friends loved it, i didn't get far past the Barron. For me combat felt dull, but it could also just be I find rpgs super hard to get into now. As a whole I really liked the universe and since failing to play the game the first time i've read all the books and thoroughly enjoyed them. Went back to try the game again after but still no go for me.
Red Dead Redemption 2. Everyone goes on about how awesome it is, but I just found the story and gameplay really slow and dull.
RDR2 suffers heavily from the same problem as GTAV's single player mode: it's a movie posing as a video game and both aspects suffer for it.
RDR2 would have been great if it was just the part where you wander around tracking critters and collecting flowers and playing cowboy dress-up, but the game really doesn't want you to do that. Not to belabor the point, but between how unpredictable the connection between "interact with item/character X" and "start mission with character Y" can be and the game's tendency to fail missions the second you go off-script, RDR2 often felt like it was directed by someone who actively resented the concept of player agency.
You articulated my issue with it perfectly. In theory it was this amazing open world with tons of player freedom, but the minute you engage with the actual story at all you have no choice in anything. There was one quest where I HAD to rescue Micah and kill a butt load of people which really annoyed me given I was going for a white hat run.
Fallout mostly. It's all just so grey and boring and not fun at all. If I want to see a wasteland I can just go outside /s
Have you tried new vegas? I love new vegas but dislike any other fallout especially fallout 4
Grey? I suppose Fallout 3 is very dingy, but Fallout 4 is very colorful. In fact I personally find it too colorful and end up making it more depressing with mods.
Same. I played 3 and new Vegas and 4 is in my list but the world is dirty and the mutants are disgusting. I don't mind the mad max vibes but I don't want to be seeing rotten skeleton looking creeps.... No thanks.
New vegas ghouls-... The reason I quit playing the game.
🤢🤮
Nier Automata. I played it for a few hours but it didn’t really catch me. I found the combat and the world too boring. People were telling me it gets better especially if you play through the multiple endings. I mean I couldn’t even get myself to finish it once… I just moved on to another game.
My situation was worse; I played through to Ending A, and decided to stop because it was miserable, both on a gameplay and a writing level. A fanatic for the game insisted it was about to get much better, and so I continued. It got much, much worse and the ending felt incredibly pointless.
I like Nier Automata a lot, but I still think the advice you got was pretty crappy. If you don’t find the world interesting and don’t like the combat then beating the game multiple times is not going to change your mind. That’s like encouraging someone to read a book series they don’t like because you think the ending of book 5 is great.
CK3 seemed like it was tailor made for me, but I ended up not liking it at all. The complexity from paradox, the rp aspects and the medieval setting are things I individually love, but I bounced off this HARD.
This is how I feel about Stellaris, it should be a perfect game for me but playing just feels like a chore
You'd think we'd have perfected an onboarding tutorial for this kind of game by now, but they always seem to either not tell you anywhere near enough to actually play the game, or intimidate you with so much detail that you lose focus. It's unfortunate.
I hated Prey 2017. Everyone raves about it, but the storyline was very predictable and cliche and the combat was just atrocious.
og, as per usual, was better
I enjoyed the original too. Not sure what it had to do with the new one though. The tone and gameplay were totally different.
Borderlands: I mean the combat is fine and all, but the story is super weak. What is my incentive to keep playing? Just to click on more heads? There are better games for that (Doom, Quake, etc)
Yeah basically. It's a loot shooter, it's very fun in co-op but not good enough to carry itself in singleplayer.
I was watching an escapist video about modern life service games and he said "saying a game is more fun with friends is a virtue of your friends, not the game."
If a game needs friends to be fun, I think it's just a garbage game.
I don't think that always holds water, some games are just made to be played with others. Nobody is going to accuse Counter-Strike of being bad just because playing against bots isn't the most thrilling experience. But for games like Borderlands definitely. Point being, the logic goes it's bad and only saved by playing with friends doesn't stop it from being a bad game, not that a game is bad just because it's more fun with friends.
I guess I'm more specifically referring to the modern looter shooter live service bullshit that's been taking over the industry. Not standard PvP multiplayer. Of course that's the intended experience there, can't blame that.
Stardew Valley. I don't find it relaxing at all but a chore and stressful due to the day/night cycle. I feel like Terraria is handling day/night much better.
Yep. I love planting things, harvesting them... I want Stardew Valley without the time management stuff.
If you’re on PC, there’s mods to help with the time (even stopping it altogether). I haven’t tried them out myself, but this mod would solve the time management issue: https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/169
Yeah, I've tried those out before. It tends to make the game feel weird, if that makes sense? Like, everything is still expecting time to progress.
Really, I want a game like Stardew, but without the hard timeline baked in from the start.
Oblivion, Morrowind and probably Skyrim too. The open world didn't captivate me, it just felt too big, too sparse and ultimately not interesting.
Same goes for Breath of the Wild. The world is just too barren. It doesn't help that I feel like the weapon breaking is extremely stressful.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is too slow and clunky. The skinning animation made me uninstall. It does not respect my time.
Kinda funny, because I don't mind grinding in arpgs. Maybe because they are faster-paced when the combat happens, and then you start wracking your brain with the theorycrafting side of builds.
I've never been a Zelda fan, but this list makes me think I should try BotW :D
Oh you should, there's a good chance you'll like it. I'm thinking about giving it another spin too, since the new Zelda game seems to follow in its footsteps.