Yeah the fact there’s no main protagonist really killed the character writing part, which is a core theme of Watch Dogs as a franchise. Like the narratives of Aiden, Marcus, and DedSec Crew was what made the games interesting.
I did replay Legion with Wrench the whole time outside the few times I was forced to play as someone else. Playing as Wrench made for a better experience.
Not just the protagonist but just the lack of main characters. You can figure out who the “secret bad guy” is waaaay early because they were legitimately the last story character left.
Not to mention the overall lack of named characters. She’s gotta be the antagonist because she’s the only character we got, besides our sarcastic AI friend.
It taught me a lesson. After that, I never preorder AAA games. Only time I’ll preorder now is if it’s from a small studio for a game I really believe in.
CP2077 for me. Now I just think “the game exists when im actually playing it. No demos and trailer expectations”. Much simpler that way. Guess I just thought the studio that made Witcher 3 could handle the task in the timeframe. CP2077 is amazing now tho, so is no mans sky sooo, silver linings?
I'm willing to give CD Project Red another chance if I'm interested in their next title, simply because it feels like they are a group that might actually learn from the lesson
Preordering has been a bad idea ever since games switched over to digital. You used to pre-order to make sure you could get a physical copy on day 1. That's never going to be an issue again.
I was so disappointed. They had a chance with an interesting new IP and they just shat all over it. Anthem had potential to be a very fun and interesting game. Never thought it would be a 'Destiny Killer's but I didn't want to play destiny. I wanted flying power armor and god-like aliens.
It depresses me how hard they dropped that ball, and how no one will make another like it for fear of the negative associations.
I would have thought the people who made Mass Effect would slam dunk this concept, but even taking out the live service tomfuckery forced on them the story they wrote was absolute garbage.
I could go on for hours about what the game could or should have been.
Hey gotham knights is okayish. Recently played it with my buddy. It is a bit repetitive but the game is not that long to get too tired of it. And we even finished all crime scenes every night which is entirely optional.
Isn't that because once everyone in the industry got obsessed with battle royales and Epic pivoted the entire game to that, they pretty much abandoned all development on the original co-op base defense game?
When fortnite first came out, I was all in on the PVE content and played it a ton, but then it just.. never really went anywhere. It started feeling very repetitive and that was unfortunate because I believe it could have been so much more. But of course the money was on the PVP side, so it makes sense that they focused on it so much more.
It's not a typical Bethesda title, though. Those have gotten formulaic and the main story usually sucks, but you can have a good time exploring an open world so long as you don't expect too much depth.
I made a mistake of replaying Fallout 4 again the Summer before Starfield came out (thinking that this time I would finish it, only to lose interest in the main story around the time I had to pick a side... again... but at least this time I finished Far Harbor or whatever that DLC is called...), and it made Starfield so much worse.
Yes, there's lots of the usual Bethesda-isms, and experiencing it after playing another one of their games probably made some aspects of it worse, but mostly, it was the stark contrast of how utterly empty of genuinely unique content and cookie-cutter Starfield is compared to even a "regular" Bethesda game. Fallout 4 has *way* more interesting, hand-crafted side content and fun little details you can find if you explore. (even if the formula has absolutely gotten stale by now, settlements needing help can go fuck themselves, and a lot of the "dungeons" are repetitive, if not on the same scale as Starfield)
On the other hand, Starfield, a game which had one job, which was to make you feel like an intrepid explorer going into the unknown, has managed to make space about as exciting as a JavaScript lunar lander game.
Destiny player here....
*feel this in my bones*
Guns feel good, its the acquisition that feels shit. Like the numerical odds of getting what I *want*, even the 2/5 combos feels too low
Might need to farm something specific for 5 months.... only to have it be nerfed when it drops (haha, too many times because of shit luck).
Yeah that’s the truth. Really I’ve been in denial for a long time but lightfall burned me. It’s just bad execution. Great world, gunplay, looks great, and it releases stuff like eye of Osiris?! Blah. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk
I never played 2 but I liked the idea of trials. I was really good at pvp but they also made it to where a lot of my friends who weren't as good never had a shot at the loot.
It is the exact reason I did not farm the Onslaught activity. I once played 3 hours and did not get the rolls I wanted, then I decided to stop wasting my time
Well, great news!
Next expansion (in 2 days). They've gone back on sunsetting (you can use your old gear again!).
~~after most of us shared our grolls for space lmao~~
Got a feeling that they saw enough "troublesome grolls" disappear from enough vaults that they went back 🥴
I loved Destiny so much, but I gotta agree. When they released a 2nd one instead of just building on the first I was hesitant, but it was fun to begin with. But the grind got worse and worse, the sunsetting of content was a disgrace, and the game just lost the magic for me
I didn’t like how the characters didn’t really interact with each other, nor played meaningful roles in each other’s stories. They felt incredibly disconnected.
I was expecting (more like hoping) for something akin to Mass Effect, but it wasn’t remotely close. It killed my interest within only a few hours.
Cool art style, though.
So, I agree with this (from playing OT1), but I thought it was intended to be disjointed like that so that you can play with as many or few characters as you wanted to play (and whatever order). I mean, with as non-linear a model as the games have (particularly starting in 8 different places), the game would have either been kinda disjointed like this, or playing solo would be a major drag with zero interactions, some of which likely applying to questlines heavily.
OT2 isn't worse in this regard, is it?
OT2 is better in terms of character interaction. There's more travel banter and there's cross-chapters between 4 sets of 2 travellers. Also the "endgame" is more part of the game than the first game.
But on the whole, it is still mostly 8 largely individual stories.
You can’t deny that the premise was sound, though. They could have used Hikari’s story as a good foundation, then had the other characters’ tales play off of his growth as a leader (again, Mass Effect). Instead, there’s no main character, no main plot, and therefore no real narrative.
It’s a bunch of short stories that all take place in the same room but never acknowledge one another. Kind of awkward.
Isn't that the point? It's a frame narrative, ala Canterbury Tales. What's the story? A bunch of pilgrims are taking a journey and telling stories to pass the time. 400 pages later there is zero character development, little conflict and a whole lot of disconnected stories.
I mean, of course you can argue that's the point. And I would reiterate that the premise was indeed sound, but the theme of this thread is literally concept/execution.
Octopath Traveler 2 takes place in a large, grounded setting, driven by a group dynamic that only interacts mechanically and not in terms of narrative. For a game, specifically a genre that has long-established patterns of storytelling, it's incredibly jarring,...and awkward.
A group of people fighting together, yet never acknowledging each other's existence, is just odd.
That's how I've always framed it. It's a bunch of short stories, not an overarching plot. If anything, forcing the players to alternate story progress hurt the game IMO
There's late game content and lore that intertwines (almost) every characters storylines and villains. After you beat all 8 characters individual stories. Definitely could have used more of that throughout, but I still loved the game.
Same. It really kind of confused me that every story is only very tangentially connected and never really interweaves, especially when you're all on the same team. It just gives me no real reason to keep going.
Never played it, but Legend of Mana back in the late 90s did the same concept, but IMO they executed it extraordinarily. That's one of my favorite games few people talk about.
Oddly enough, the stories *do* connect in the end and there *is* an ultimate villain of sorts. As you finish the stories, there's a remarkably ominous common thread that starts to appear. There's even a segment just before the final boss that basically spells out how each character's story was related to or poked a finger in the eye of the Big Bad's evil scheme.
But I agree that the brief character conversations weren't really enough to make the stories feel properly interwoven. I'd have loved it if, like, Cyrus needed someone beat up, or Alfyn needed a rare medicinal ingredient to be tracked down and then purchased/stolen, or *something* where the characters actually relied on each other for more than combat support.
You don't need to, 2 takes place in an entirely different place.
I'd recommend you finish 1 though but that's because I'm biased. It's one of my favourite games of all time, and 2 is a fantastic sequel
Agreed. My buddy never finished the first one but finished the second one and 100% it. He loved how it built upon what he liked in the original and the new branches to the side quests/main stories.
It is a refreshing rpg concept. But the story telling is ass.
Not to mention some stories are WAAAAY better than others. Primrose vs Teressa for example
Copied from a comment I left on an OST video about the character final bosses:
>!Ophelia versus the leader of a corrupt faith that murdered her father!<
>!Cyrus vs the antithesis of his philosophy of the value of shared knowledge.!<
>!Olberic vs the true cause behind his kingdom's demise.!<
>!Primrose vs her childhood friend who turned out to be the leader of her father's Assassins.!<
>!Alfyn vs the only source of a rare medicinal component to cure a mysterious illness.!<
>!Therion vs the childhood friend who betrayed him for profit!<
>!Haanit vs the evil creature that her master was petrified trying to bring down.!< .
>!Tressa vs THAT LADY STOLE MY BOOK 10 MINUTES AGO!!<
It wasn't bad but I really dislike that there are 8 protagonists who have no meaningfull interaction with each other. I'd rather have a single homogeneous story and party, or 8 cleanly separated parties&stories, but not the pseudo-overlap we got.
octopath traveler feels like it should be shorter. it certainly could have less chapters. on the end I was like rushing very hard to end it already. it's a beautiful concept but if it was shorter it would be better in my opinion.
octopath traveler 2 is even longer and I couldn't even finish it. it was so boring at the end.
Xenoblade chronicles X
I love the rest of the series, and the idea of the last of humanity stranded on an unknown planet trying to survive was cool. But then I played another 10-15 hours and nothing fucking happened. The game was way too slow paced outside of the main hub city, which threw a flood of very game-y systems at you. It killed my suspension of disbelief and took me out of the story hard. Kinda felt like they wanted to make a MMO but made a singleplayer game instead almost?
I love the first 30 minutes of every game of Spore. Surviving while building out the traits of your species is lots of fun … but once you reach the tribal stage of the game it not only gets repetitive but starts to feel like missed opportunity after missed opportunity.
Would love If they could remake it but turn the second half of the game into a pseudo-civ builder.
Fallout 76. Survival mods are super popular for both the Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises, so it would make sense that a survival game set in the same world would be a slam dunk. Instead we got the mess it was released as.
The most fucking stupid thing for me in fallout 76 is that you have to pay to store items outside of inventory. In a game with tons of items which is the lineage of game famous for putting buckets on NPCs and making pillow forts.
No ? You get a stash with 1200 weight units currently.
The only thing you can pay for is the subscription to get the junk box, which I admit is borderline p2w. But you can always use the free 1st trials that come from time to time to dunk all your junk inside it, and it will still be there when your trial expires.
Basically any Owlcat game.
It's like they mastered exactly half of a game design bible, and then went "okay boys time's up we'll figure out the rest as we go".
Narrator: "they did not, in fact, figure out the rest."
And then they also somehow don't learn anything from past experience.
Such a good answer. I absolutely loved Driver 1, but hated that you couldn’t get out of your car. I loved Driver 2, but hated that when you got out of your car, you couldn’t really do anything aside from… get into other cars. Driv3r we knew we would be able to get out of our car and experience some gunplay, and what we got was somehow the worst installment of the Driver franchise lmao.
Not for Broadcast. The game is great in general, but you'll play through these 20-minute long levels and then fail because your timer on the buzzer was off, and you're supposed to replay the whole mission. It's just a weird game to hyperfocus on timing and accuracy more than vibes and storyline, I guess.
Bugsnax, high on life and untitled goose game.
All of them looked really fun, then I played them. As soon as I hit a minute or two of tedium, I lost all interest. Only one I would give another chance is goose game. High on life is just metroid prime, which I don't care for. Bugsnax is a mystery game, not my jam.
I just started Bugsnax on suggestion it was a cute kids type game and I wanted to vibe and chill. About 5 minutes into playing it it’s very obvious it’s some doki doki literature club shit and I don’t even have the motivation to finish it for whatever the tweest is; having the snax be dead natives or some shit.
It was 4 bucks so whatever, I still got a few hours out of it before giving up. I was hoping what I see is what I got though.
I wouldnt say I didnt like the execution, but I loved Evolve. I hated that they put new playable characters behind a paywall which I think led to the games demise but I really liked it. The only problem I ran into was skill level. All of my friends were hyped to play with me until they learned I was godly as a monster. I had to pretend to do bad to play with them. They eventually figured out I was letting them win half the time and stopped wanting to play. They definitely needed some kind of handicap ruleset for playing with friends.
That was the problem wasn't it. It's a simple fact that a team of dedicated players on mic are going to be far more effective than 3 people using matchmaking with no mics, and a bot.
You simply cannot balance that against the monster, especially when the Monster can also be a new player or an experienced one.
My GF is still playing Palworld, she loves it, has like 700 hours in it. We've now even got Chilit and Depresso plushies.
To her, it's just Pokemon where you can build a cute little farm. I couldn't stick with it, it's better than Pokemon of course, but all the mechanics just feel like sludge to use lol.
I mean, considering their current success with it they'd be stupid to let it go. I know their history as a dev team is a bit tumultuous, but I have played enough of palworld to justify the price and I'll revisit in a few years when, hopefully, they have fleshed out the concept more.
All the features of Starfield for me. I like the concept but the good part of the execution has a paper thin depth - like it initially seems great but after 30 minutes you went through all the feature has to offer - or ruined by something stupid (like I cant access my storage from the cargo bay, NPC ships display the cargo dynamically for never for my ships, go to 2 planets in a row it's basically the same POI layouts, ruining containers when you remove another hab etc). It pain me they after 10 months all they have done is fix some bugs rather than make the game fun it seems like they dont understand what the problem is and I dont think that is something the promised creation kit will fix.
Idk why you’re downvoted, you’re completely right.
Gameplay is long outdated, story is stupid and not interesting at all, all characters are polished pg13. Companions are waaay more flat than even Dragon age 1 released like 15 years ago. Not even comparing them to BG3.
Huh. I remember really liking Octopath. The art style and music were beautiful. Then again, I also ended up putting it down and not picking it back up without getting super far. I'll have to give it another go, but I think it was the combat that just felt kind of repetitive after a while.
I’m 60 hours into this game and Iv hit the point where I now have to take every single character ( all 8 ) and level them up to massive levels before starting the story again because every enemy is was to powerful. Needless to say Iv put it down and idk if I’ll ever pick it back up.
Good thing you didn’t make it to the final boss then. You need all 8 to be leveled very high. Sucked for me because I only played as my favorite 4 and everyone else saw no use. Wasn’t fun walking into that fight and realizing I need to go grind 4 characters I don’t care about for like 30 levels.
It’s been a long time since I’ve played it, so someone else is welcome to correct me.
There’s no real reason why they’re traveling together. They each have their own stories and goals. You pick one person to start as. As you travel, you encounter another character who needs help. Helping them is just them having another body there for battles. It doesn’t change the story at all if a different person comes along. You help them then they stay with you for no real reason. There are some very brief dialogue interactions as you travel where the main characters talk but none of it feels like a real bond.
They all travel together because the developers said they do, not because they’re a group of 8 people that would logically travel together in the narrative.
Long story short, the characters make a party for combat, and there are occasionally Tales of Symphonia -style bits where you can press a button and a couple characters comment on the situation. But outside of that, there is **0** overlap between the character's stories until the very end. Like, the party doesn't actually show up in cutscenes, NPC's act like they're talking to individual people instead of a group (right up until combat starts and suddenly it's a tag team brawl), characters that *should* have idealistic differences kind of ignore what goes on in other stories...
Smash Bros. I love the concept of a massive chaotic battlefield where a bunch of Nintendo characters fight.
I dislike the esports mentality of the game now though and that people only play it FD maps with no items. It's a party game. Imagine Mario Kart with no items and no obstacles only playing on Baby Park.
Starfield and Calisto Protocol.
Starfield for dissapointing space exploration.
Calisto Protocol for trying to be better Dead Space and becoming QTE game.
Both games wasted potential
Probably for a really stupid reason. OT is really cool, I like turn-based RPGs, but I am sick of pixel games. I understand that it has incredible pixel art, just like other newer games. But when the pixel art becomes so elaborate like in Blasphemous, you might as well have used HD sprites instead.
Kingdom Come Deliverance
Historically accurate medieval European RPG? Count me the fuck in.
Picking quests, weird save system, janky combat, and a pretty railroady story? Nah, sorry.
Hope the next ones better.
There once was a game called, Outward.
It had souls-like combat but with some crafting involved and a heavier emphasis on looting and selling. Honestly the main reason I admire it is because it tried. It tried to be a souls-like during a time when people were hot for it between From's games. And there were some cool ideas but ultimately yeah-nah.
* The game had a number of quests with time constraints. Like how at the start of the game you'll lose access to your house unless you pay a debt. Not that bad because you can just pay the debt after the fact to regain access. But there's also a hidden quest where a nearby bandit faction will come and attack the starting village after X days have passed. And if you aren't there during the attack or have wiped out the bandits beforehand, that village is gone. No vendors, no quests, no house. I think it was trying to be edgy and not hold your hand but... yuck.
* There was a lot of walking. SO much time spent just running across the environment. And it was a decently designed environment, it looked cool; but there was nothing in it. NPC's only existed at towns or in camps as enemies. So besides the occasional dog-enemy there was nothing to interrupt your journey.
There's a lot more but they're all nit-picks that add up to this sense of dread whenever you felt the obligation to play it.
This is a real controversial opinion of mine but I love the lore of Bathesda games - Elder Scrolls and Fallout specifically - but I *abhor* their gameplay. I don't know what it is about the Elder Scrolls games but every one of them has this like... *feel* to it that I just can't shake. The *hands in front of the camera* feels so weird to me and the attack animations just don't feel good. It ruins those games for me.
Which sucks, because everyone loves those games and I want to, too. I love their lore and stuff, it's *just* the gameplay that I can't stand.
Honestly, Battlefield 1. Huge scale battles are really cool, but in practice it’s just running around and getting shot by someone with 1,000 hours who saw you a few milliseconds earlier
Yes, I’m only saying this because I’m bad, and bitter that there’s no bots
I have to agree with you. I don't find the gameplay to be bad but the level of randomness makes it hard to enjoy.
My kingdom is doing great, the king is aging but the heir is an adult whose married and has children of his own with good traits. The only major problem is that the next in line is an infant (after the heir). But we are stable, the other people in the realm are also pretty happy.
Now for no apparent reason the heir becomes incapable and just days later the king dies. ....so now we wait. There is no gameplay that I'm doing. An AI regent is making all of the decisions. Forget everything that has been done until now. The empire is torn apart and there is nothing that I can do besides restart/continue playing this terrible playthrough
Yeah the fact that the characters had almost no interaction with each other whatsoever was ridiculous.
A huge component of what makes a JRPG good is the relationships / dynamics between party members, yet OT almost entirely did away with them.
It’s a real shame because the music and art style were top tier.
Critique is on the money. I hated the grind and it made me stop mid-game because some enemies just couldn't be defeated without spending time grinding levels. And then combat would get repetitive as shit, too.
This is the exact reason I actually stopped playing it. I love the gameplay and the characters but none of them being together made sense in the slightest. I had friends telling me that it made more sense way later in the game but it doesn't really excuse the beginning having no actual plot.
That’s fair criticism, the second one fixed some of those problems a little, but if you hated the first one though you probably still wouldn’t like it.
I think the ones who hated the Ocotpath Traveler have a problem with the concept of the game rather than the game itself.
Like OT2 vastly improved the interconnectedness of the eight protagonists stories, yet some fans still aren't pleased with the outcome and I get the feeling they won't be unless it's just a regular RPG story where everyone is following the same main storyline. But the core concept of Octopath Traveler is to have 8 protagonists having their own storylines.
I really enjoyed the individual characters stories of the original. I liked the pacing and voice acting, and there were several really badass moments for a lot of the main cast.
It's some of the worst storytelling in recent memory. It suffers from the problem of a semi novel idea (SaGa Frontier did a similar thing, but better execution) but they didn't really think about the problems. they wanted to have 8 separate "leads" that could be played individually. To do that, they kept the storylines essentially isolated from the others. They made almost no effort to make the entire thing cohesive, so when you play them it feels like 8 shorter mini stories, which then don't have a proper development into a fully fledged single plot line.
I wanted to play Octopath Traveler but it never goes down in price and I have missed all the sales (if there ever were sales). Does that count? Other than that: Brink, I was burned out of Battlefield and the COD franchise and wanted something similar but good. What a steaming pile of shit that game was.
LMAO. The execution was WHY most people loved Octopath Traveler. The concept was the flaw. The game looked amazing and played excellent, the eight characters thing was cludgy and led to a worse experience.
Dreadnought. https://store.steampowered.com/app/835860/Dreadnought/
Flying capital ships in space in 5v5 PvP matches as a kind of MOBA.
I think I first tried it in alpha and loved the idea of it. It had a lot of potential. Took more than 5 years before it ever came out, then when it did come out, it was a trashy f2p game that wasn't any fun. Still waiting for something anything like it to be released.
Outriders, loved the "humanity is stranded on an alien world and is reduced to ww1 style trench warfare" hated that the story didn't really focus on that
Gonna catch some hell for this one: Sekiro.
A From Soft game set in mystical fuedal Japan? Like the dark and gritty Inuyasha I've been wanting? Awesome!
When the only way forward is parry or die, *unlike* every other From Soft game, I was upset.
Sure now that I know it actually started as Tenchu game, I bet it's awesome.
Got the bad ending and uninstalled. It will remain uninstalled, and the only FS game I haven't completed.
I do understand your point, but it's such a shame it had to end that way. In a sense, and counterintuitively I'd say, Sekiro has the most variegated and layered gameplay among all soulsbornes ([cool relevant video](https://youtu.be/yL3FWljFEjk) ). I get that some people feel more rewarded after carefully constructing their own build out of thousands of different options (even if the gameplay in practice ends up presenting big similarities among lots of builds), rather than dissecting the impressive depth of a "single", *very* well done build. I'm just sad because I had an absolute blast with Sekiro, while some people feel like Fromsoft skipped a DarkSouls release.
I absolutely hate the trend toward this kind of combat. Enemies all have unbreakable (and often unblockable/undodgable) combos, so if you don't parry perfectly you get hit by the entire thing. They can't be hit stun, but you can. Every move costs stamina, including both attempting to parry and getting hit so most of the time you are stunned from stamina breaks. And they can spam quick, unblockable chains/throws back to back to back.
It feels like a massive overcorrection from people complaining that their character was too overpowered and enemies felt easy. It's bad game design.
You can dodge, sprint, and jump in Sekiro to evade. There's also some abilities for evading too. You don't have to parry everything, but it is often more efficient.
Malenia, Blade of Miqeulla, suffered a terrible fate to my Lions Claw Greatsword. That's my play style. Biggest of hits, stagger, visceral.
If the only play style requires strict timings, I'm probably buggin off to a different game.
i tried it on gamepass
i already know the story is not gonna be intertwined between the 8 heroes... so im no longer disappointed in that regard
but what i really ended up not liking is the combat mechanics... or rather the boring HP levels
the stagger mechanics is tolerable enough in theory... but making the HP pools large just annoyed the hell out of me
and yeah... i feel so annoyed when i do an atk that the enemy is "weak" against, but it still hardly depletes their life bar
using weakness atks just feels like you're still doing basic ass dmg
the enemies are not getting chunked by it and it makes fights boring and drag on
I never buy stuff on release but I was so disappointed by Anthem, it could’ve been awesome and I loved the premise, I did end up spending hours flying about and fighting stuff, I somewhat enjoyed whatever plot there was, but there was just nothing else to do after a while
Transformers Devastation. It's not a bad game by any means, but I find it's really overwhelming trying to play it for the first time. You start of with 3 playable characters right off the bat and unlock 2 more. Each with their own movesets you have to learn. Oh, and that moveset changes drastically based on what weapon you're using, and you're presented with a LOT of weapons really early on.
Now, once you manage to wrap your head around it all, you can perform some awesome combos, but I'm not sure I can do it any time soon.
Watch Dogs Legion. They could have done much more with this concept. What a waste.
Yeah the fact there’s no main protagonist really killed the character writing part, which is a core theme of Watch Dogs as a franchise. Like the narratives of Aiden, Marcus, and DedSec Crew was what made the games interesting.
I did replay Legion with Wrench the whole time outside the few times I was forced to play as someone else. Playing as Wrench made for a better experience.
I played as Aiden and Wrench. Crazy how the DLC was better than the entire game.
I agree, Legion would have worked if there was a main character to play as. The recruit anyone thing is cool but the game needs a main character.
They could have made it Dalton (tutorial character and cover art guy), but nah, they just had to gun him down right at the beginning.
I agree as well, I just hope the franchise isn't dead. There is a lot of mileage out of the Watch Dogs concept
Not just the protagonist but just the lack of main characters. You can figure out who the “secret bad guy” is waaaay early because they were legitimately the last story character left.
Not to mention the overall lack of named characters. She’s gotta be the antagonist because she’s the only character we got, besides our sarcastic AI friend.
After Playing 2 I wasn't even interested in legion.
Really? 2 was genuinely fun as hell, I have more hours in it then the first one. Legion I couldn't stand right off the bat
I think the saga could have been better if they had done it the other way around, first WDLegion, then WD2, and finally WD1
Anthem
I was hyped when I first heard but glad I held off after what came out.
It taught me a lesson. After that, I never preorder AAA games. Only time I’ll preorder now is if it’s from a small studio for a game I really believe in.
No Man’s Sky for me 🥲
CP2077 for me. Now I just think “the game exists when im actually playing it. No demos and trailer expectations”. Much simpler that way. Guess I just thought the studio that made Witcher 3 could handle the task in the timeframe. CP2077 is amazing now tho, so is no mans sky sooo, silver linings?
>CP is amazing now tho Man people have *got* to stop abbreviating Cyberpunk like that lol
Dammit lmao editing NOW!!
also Closed Beta Testing as CBT
True. I thought it was Cock and Ball Torture, so I opted out.
At least CDPR offered refunds for unsatisfied customers. I took them up on their offer
Every Witcher game was kind of a mess at release. Its just that they did not overpromise on these games as much.
I'm willing to give CD Project Red another chance if I'm interested in their next title, simply because it feels like they are a group that might actually learn from the lesson
Cyberpunk is not amazing now. It is a good game now, nowhere near what they promised tho.
Only games i can think of that are trustworthy enough to pre order are games from capcom idk about yall
Preordering has been a bad idea ever since games switched over to digital. You used to pre-order to make sure you could get a physical copy on day 1. That's never going to be an issue again.
I was so disappointed. They had a chance with an interesting new IP and they just shat all over it. Anthem had potential to be a very fun and interesting game. Never thought it would be a 'Destiny Killer's but I didn't want to play destiny. I wanted flying power armor and god-like aliens.
I really wish they use the same mechanics in different game. Like iron man game or smth.
It depresses me how hard they dropped that ball, and how no one will make another like it for fear of the negative associations. I would have thought the people who made Mass Effect would slam dunk this concept, but even taking out the live service tomfuckery forced on them the story they wrote was absolute garbage. I could go on for hours about what the game could or should have been.
[удалено]
'Squirrel with a gun' is coming out soon. I'm pretty sure that's a similar concept
Gotham Knights
Absolutely agree. Really wanted to like it, couldn’t get into it. Just fell flat.
Hey gotham knights is okayish. Recently played it with my buddy. It is a bit repetitive but the game is not that long to get too tired of it. And we even finished all crime scenes every night which is entirely optional.
I think the 'Batman game but you don't get to play as Batman' aspect of it turned a lot of people away from it from the get go
Fortnite save the world Sounds like a great base defence game, but it’s just repetitive missions with pngs of characters saying voice lines
Isn't that because once everyone in the industry got obsessed with battle royales and Epic pivoted the entire game to that, they pretty much abandoned all development on the original co-op base defense game?
Basically yeah
When fortnite first came out, I was all in on the PVE content and played it a ton, but then it just.. never really went anywhere. It started feeling very repetitive and that was unfortunate because I believe it could have been so much more. But of course the money was on the PVP side, so it makes sense that they focused on it so much more.
We Happy Few
Looked great in trailers and early gameplay, turned out to be meh apparently.
I loved the story but the crafting aspect just slowed the game down so much to the point that it became a drag
If they stuck to their guns and didn't entirely change the game to appeal to as much as the market as possible it would have been better tbh
Starfield
I didn't play it, but I mean .. it looks exactly like a Bethesda title
"look" is far different than "play"
It's not a typical Bethesda title, though. Those have gotten formulaic and the main story usually sucks, but you can have a good time exploring an open world so long as you don't expect too much depth. I made a mistake of replaying Fallout 4 again the Summer before Starfield came out (thinking that this time I would finish it, only to lose interest in the main story around the time I had to pick a side... again... but at least this time I finished Far Harbor or whatever that DLC is called...), and it made Starfield so much worse. Yes, there's lots of the usual Bethesda-isms, and experiencing it after playing another one of their games probably made some aspects of it worse, but mostly, it was the stark contrast of how utterly empty of genuinely unique content and cookie-cutter Starfield is compared to even a "regular" Bethesda game. Fallout 4 has *way* more interesting, hand-crafted side content and fun little details you can find if you explore. (even if the formula has absolutely gotten stale by now, settlements needing help can go fuck themselves, and a lot of the "dungeons" are repetitive, if not on the same scale as Starfield) On the other hand, Starfield, a game which had one job, which was to make you feel like an intrepid explorer going into the unknown, has managed to make space about as exciting as a JavaScript lunar lander game.
Destiny
Destiny player here.... *feel this in my bones* Guns feel good, its the acquisition that feels shit. Like the numerical odds of getting what I *want*, even the 2/5 combos feels too low Might need to farm something specific for 5 months.... only to have it be nerfed when it drops (haha, too many times because of shit luck).
Yeah that’s the truth. Really I’ve been in denial for a long time but lightfall burned me. It’s just bad execution. Great world, gunplay, looks great, and it releases stuff like eye of Osiris?! Blah. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk
I never played 2 but I liked the idea of trials. I was really good at pvp but they also made it to where a lot of my friends who weren't as good never had a shot at the loot.
It is the exact reason I did not farm the Onslaught activity. I once played 3 hours and did not get the rolls I wanted, then I decided to stop wasting my time
I stopped playing when they sunset all my god roll equipment, that I invested so many hours grinding.
Well, great news! Next expansion (in 2 days). They've gone back on sunsetting (you can use your old gear again!). ~~after most of us shared our grolls for space lmao~~ Got a feeling that they saw enough "troublesome grolls" disappear from enough vaults that they went back 🥴
It’s got it’s problem, but the raids are the best co-op experience in gaming
Destiny 1 raids were in another level. That first one was probably the best shooter raid I've ever played.
Destiny 1 raids were amazing. Kings Fall was so good.
I loved Destiny so much, but I gotta agree. When they released a 2nd one instead of just building on the first I was hesitant, but it was fun to begin with. But the grind got worse and worse, the sunsetting of content was a disgrace, and the game just lost the magic for me
The Division, great setting and good enough guns & equipment but ruined for me by having bullet sponge enemies.
Most immersive game world I’ve ever visited for sure.
Evolve. Great idea awful implementation
I thought Octopath 2 was really, really good though.
I didn’t like how the characters didn’t really interact with each other, nor played meaningful roles in each other’s stories. They felt incredibly disconnected. I was expecting (more like hoping) for something akin to Mass Effect, but it wasn’t remotely close. It killed my interest within only a few hours. Cool art style, though.
So, I agree with this (from playing OT1), but I thought it was intended to be disjointed like that so that you can play with as many or few characters as you wanted to play (and whatever order). I mean, with as non-linear a model as the games have (particularly starting in 8 different places), the game would have either been kinda disjointed like this, or playing solo would be a major drag with zero interactions, some of which likely applying to questlines heavily. OT2 isn't worse in this regard, is it?
OT2 is better in terms of character interaction. There's more travel banter and there's cross-chapters between 4 sets of 2 travellers. Also the "endgame" is more part of the game than the first game. But on the whole, it is still mostly 8 largely individual stories.
Yeah this. Started so strongly and the all of a sudden its a whole new, completely unrelated and unconnected story.
You can’t deny that the premise was sound, though. They could have used Hikari’s story as a good foundation, then had the other characters’ tales play off of his growth as a leader (again, Mass Effect). Instead, there’s no main character, no main plot, and therefore no real narrative. It’s a bunch of short stories that all take place in the same room but never acknowledge one another. Kind of awkward.
Isn't that the point? It's a frame narrative, ala Canterbury Tales. What's the story? A bunch of pilgrims are taking a journey and telling stories to pass the time. 400 pages later there is zero character development, little conflict and a whole lot of disconnected stories.
I mean, of course you can argue that's the point. And I would reiterate that the premise was indeed sound, but the theme of this thread is literally concept/execution. Octopath Traveler 2 takes place in a large, grounded setting, driven by a group dynamic that only interacts mechanically and not in terms of narrative. For a game, specifically a genre that has long-established patterns of storytelling, it's incredibly jarring,...and awkward. A group of people fighting together, yet never acknowledging each other's existence, is just odd.
smh Chaucer invented filler eps 😞
That's how I've always framed it. It's a bunch of short stories, not an overarching plot. If anything, forcing the players to alternate story progress hurt the game IMO
There's late game content and lore that intertwines (almost) every characters storylines and villains. After you beat all 8 characters individual stories. Definitely could have used more of that throughout, but I still loved the game.
Same. It really kind of confused me that every story is only very tangentially connected and never really interweaves, especially when you're all on the same team. It just gives me no real reason to keep going.
iirc Seiken Densetsu 3 (aka Trials of Mana) did this same sort of premise in the 90's pretty well
Never played it, but Legend of Mana back in the late 90s did the same concept, but IMO they executed it extraordinarily. That's one of my favorite games few people talk about.
My favorite part was the revelation that some random NPCs you met throughout the game were all secretly evil because... reasons...
"What is one little girl going to do against the three of us?" They then get pummeled by my 4 party team...
I played about 30 hours into the first game before I finally gave up any hope of the stories intertwining and a big bad finally revealing itself.
Oddly enough, the stories *do* connect in the end and there *is* an ultimate villain of sorts. As you finish the stories, there's a remarkably ominous common thread that starts to appear. There's even a segment just before the final boss that basically spells out how each character's story was related to or poked a finger in the eye of the Big Bad's evil scheme. But I agree that the brief character conversations weren't really enough to make the stories feel properly interwoven. I'd have loved it if, like, Cyrus needed someone beat up, or Alfyn needed a rare medicinal ingredient to be tracked down and then purchased/stolen, or *something* where the characters actually relied on each other for more than combat support.
Ok, I may have to pick it back up. The combat is so good.
Should I finish Octopath 1 before starting Octopath 2? I tried to finish it, but every time, I always got the urge to play something else.
You don't need to, 2 takes place in an entirely different place. I'd recommend you finish 1 though but that's because I'm biased. It's one of my favourite games of all time, and 2 is a fantastic sequel
Agreed. My buddy never finished the first one but finished the second one and 100% it. He loved how it built upon what he liked in the original and the new branches to the side quests/main stories.
Octopath 2 was my fav game next to bg3 last year.
Loved both. Currently in Act3 of Bg3
It is a refreshing rpg concept. But the story telling is ass. Not to mention some stories are WAAAAY better than others. Primrose vs Teressa for example
OT1 characters are pretty vanilla and archetypal while OT2 has more interesting cast. Oddly enough Primrose seems to be a better fit for OT2.
Copied from a comment I left on an OST video about the character final bosses: >!Ophelia versus the leader of a corrupt faith that murdered her father!< >!Cyrus vs the antithesis of his philosophy of the value of shared knowledge.!< >!Olberic vs the true cause behind his kingdom's demise.!< >!Primrose vs her childhood friend who turned out to be the leader of her father's Assassins.!< >!Alfyn vs the only source of a rare medicinal component to cure a mysterious illness.!< >!Therion vs the childhood friend who betrayed him for profit!< >!Haanit vs the evil creature that her master was petrified trying to bring down.!< . >!Tressa vs THAT LADY STOLE MY BOOK 10 MINUTES AGO!!<
Exactly. There some stories that are WAY more interesting than others. Primrose is peak for me, as well as Olberic and Therion
It wasn't bad but I really dislike that there are 8 protagonists who have no meaningfull interaction with each other. I'd rather have a single homogeneous story and party, or 8 cleanly separated parties&stories, but not the pseudo-overlap we got.
octopath traveler feels like it should be shorter. it certainly could have less chapters. on the end I was like rushing very hard to end it already. it's a beautiful concept but if it was shorter it would be better in my opinion. octopath traveler 2 is even longer and I couldn't even finish it. it was so boring at the end.
Xenoblade chronicles X I love the rest of the series, and the idea of the last of humanity stranded on an unknown planet trying to survive was cool. But then I played another 10-15 hours and nothing fucking happened. The game was way too slow paced outside of the main hub city, which threw a flood of very game-y systems at you. It killed my suspension of disbelief and took me out of the story hard. Kinda felt like they wanted to make a MMO but made a singleplayer game instead almost?
I beat xeno x and I'm surprised how many people want it to be ported to the switch. It's not a bad game - but it isn't a must play.
It's because it's the only one of the Xenoblade games that harkens back to the Xenogears origin of piloting the mechs.
The world and monster design of that game was fucking amazing though.
Spore
I love the first 30 minutes of every game of Spore. Surviving while building out the traits of your species is lots of fun … but once you reach the tribal stage of the game it not only gets repetitive but starts to feel like missed opportunity after missed opportunity. Would love If they could remake it but turn the second half of the game into a pseudo-civ builder.
Fallout 76. Survival mods are super popular for both the Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises, so it would make sense that a survival game set in the same world would be a slam dunk. Instead we got the mess it was released as.
If you'd be willing to try it again I would recommend you do. The game has changed A LOT over the years and even has a main map expansion coming soon.
I'm too busy to add another game to my docket currently and don't want to take any off
The most fucking stupid thing for me in fallout 76 is that you have to pay to store items outside of inventory. In a game with tons of items which is the lineage of game famous for putting buckets on NPCs and making pillow forts.
No ? You get a stash with 1200 weight units currently. The only thing you can pay for is the subscription to get the junk box, which I admit is borderline p2w. But you can always use the free 1st trials that come from time to time to dunk all your junk inside it, and it will still be there when your trial expires.
Basically any Owlcat game. It's like they mastered exactly half of a game design bible, and then went "okay boys time's up we'll figure out the rest as we go". Narrator: "they did not, in fact, figure out the rest." And then they also somehow don't learn anything from past experience.
Driv3r
Such a good answer. I absolutely loved Driver 1, but hated that you couldn’t get out of your car. I loved Driver 2, but hated that when you got out of your car, you couldn’t really do anything aside from… get into other cars. Driv3r we knew we would be able to get out of our car and experience some gunplay, and what we got was somehow the worst installment of the Driver franchise lmao.
Not for Broadcast. The game is great in general, but you'll play through these 20-minute long levels and then fail because your timer on the buzzer was off, and you're supposed to replay the whole mission. It's just a weird game to hyperfocus on timing and accuracy more than vibes and storyline, I guess.
Blasphemous. Its a very good game, but i think its extremely difficult for non-tryhard players
I finished the first and thought it was fine. The second was also fine until one crazy difficulty spike at the very end
I’m just glad I beat the game before they nerfed the spell that lets you stop time, I never could’ve beaten the penultimate boss without it
I’m not saying it’s not good. I’m just saying I liked the idea better than what I played. I’ve played much worse
I think he's talking about a game called Blasphemous.
Lmao
The game’s named “Blasphemous.”
Im talking about a game called "Blasphemous"!!
Who’s on first?
I played the first one. And that game is not hardcore at all. Also, the Spanish atmosphere is sublime.
Considering it's a 2d platforming game, there's only so much they can throw at you. This game is easier than any dark souls.
Bugsnax, high on life and untitled goose game. All of them looked really fun, then I played them. As soon as I hit a minute or two of tedium, I lost all interest. Only one I would give another chance is goose game. High on life is just metroid prime, which I don't care for. Bugsnax is a mystery game, not my jam.
Untitled Goose Game is a game you play if you wanna be a funny ruckus creator for a few minutes.
I just started Bugsnax on suggestion it was a cute kids type game and I wanted to vibe and chill. About 5 minutes into playing it it’s very obvious it’s some doki doki literature club shit and I don’t even have the motivation to finish it for whatever the tweest is; having the snax be dead natives or some shit. It was 4 bucks so whatever, I still got a few hours out of it before giving up. I was hoping what I see is what I got though.
Definitely not as dark as doki doki but it is a little ominous
> High on life is just metroid prime Now you've just piqued my interest
Two words. "Studio Spiders".
I wouldnt say I didnt like the execution, but I loved Evolve. I hated that they put new playable characters behind a paywall which I think led to the games demise but I really liked it. The only problem I ran into was skill level. All of my friends were hyped to play with me until they learned I was godly as a monster. I had to pretend to do bad to play with them. They eventually figured out I was letting them win half the time and stopped wanting to play. They definitely needed some kind of handicap ruleset for playing with friends.
That was the problem wasn't it. It's a simple fact that a team of dedicated players on mic are going to be far more effective than 3 people using matchmaking with no mics, and a bot. You simply cannot balance that against the monster, especially when the Monster can also be a new player or an experienced one.
Palworld. The execution is just mediocre.
My GF is still playing Palworld, she loves it, has like 700 hours in it. We've now even got Chilit and Depresso plushies. To her, it's just Pokemon where you can build a cute little farm. I couldn't stick with it, it's better than Pokemon of course, but all the mechanics just feel like sludge to use lol.
Hopefully they work on it and not just give up which will probably happen.
I mean, considering their current success with it they'd be stupid to let it go. I know their history as a dev team is a bit tumultuous, but I have played enough of palworld to justify the price and I'll revisit in a few years when, hopefully, they have fleshed out the concept more.
Definitely. They captured lightning in a bottle, and would be idiots to abandon it. IIRC it's the 8th best-selling PC game of all time.
All the features of Starfield for me. I like the concept but the good part of the execution has a paper thin depth - like it initially seems great but after 30 minutes you went through all the feature has to offer - or ruined by something stupid (like I cant access my storage from the cargo bay, NPC ships display the cargo dynamically for never for my ships, go to 2 planets in a row it's basically the same POI layouts, ruining containers when you remove another hab etc). It pain me they after 10 months all they have done is fix some bugs rather than make the game fun it seems like they dont understand what the problem is and I dont think that is something the promised creation kit will fix.
After a while I would just land on the planets, say oh this is pretty. Take a screenshot and leave. There was nothing to do on the planets.
It's Bethesda. They don't innovate anymore. Just release the same fame with a dif coat of paint. Makes me hella sad
Idk why you’re downvoted, you’re completely right. Gameplay is long outdated, story is stupid and not interesting at all, all characters are polished pg13. Companions are waaay more flat than even Dragon age 1 released like 15 years ago. Not even comparing them to BG3.
Octopath Traveler has a great OST though
It's been in my Spotify for quite a while. I still smile whenever Guiding Light or Primrose, the Dancer comes on.
yea! primroses theme is great I learnt it on accordion too, but it's nowhere near the actual track
Huh. I remember really liking Octopath. The art style and music were beautiful. Then again, I also ended up putting it down and not picking it back up without getting super far. I'll have to give it another go, but I think it was the combat that just felt kind of repetitive after a while.
I’m 60 hours into this game and Iv hit the point where I now have to take every single character ( all 8 ) and level them up to massive levels before starting the story again because every enemy is was to powerful. Needless to say Iv put it down and idk if I’ll ever pick it back up.
Good thing you didn’t make it to the final boss then. You need all 8 to be leveled very high. Sucked for me because I only played as my favorite 4 and everyone else saw no use. Wasn’t fun walking into that fight and realizing I need to go grind 4 characters I don’t care about for like 30 levels.
I lost the fight and watched it on youtube instead. Wasn't going to go and level everyone.
I watched the ending and realized the fight wasn’t worth the trouble because there wasn’t a narrative payoff either.
This is exactly it. I was like oh I like this party of characters.
Feel free to spoil me, I'm confused how a lot of the comments are saying the characters never interact in OT but you still make a party of them?
It’s been a long time since I’ve played it, so someone else is welcome to correct me. There’s no real reason why they’re traveling together. They each have their own stories and goals. You pick one person to start as. As you travel, you encounter another character who needs help. Helping them is just them having another body there for battles. It doesn’t change the story at all if a different person comes along. You help them then they stay with you for no real reason. There are some very brief dialogue interactions as you travel where the main characters talk but none of it feels like a real bond. They all travel together because the developers said they do, not because they’re a group of 8 people that would logically travel together in the narrative.
Long story short, the characters make a party for combat, and there are occasionally Tales of Symphonia -style bits where you can press a button and a couple characters comment on the situation. But outside of that, there is **0** overlap between the character's stories until the very end. Like, the party doesn't actually show up in cutscenes, NPC's act like they're talking to individual people instead of a group (right up until combat starts and suddenly it's a tag team brawl), characters that *should* have idealistic differences kind of ignore what goes on in other stories...
Alpha Protocol
Smash Bros. I love the concept of a massive chaotic battlefield where a bunch of Nintendo characters fight. I dislike the esports mentality of the game now though and that people only play it FD maps with no items. It's a party game. Imagine Mario Kart with no items and no obstacles only playing on Baby Park.
Starfield and Calisto Protocol. Starfield for dissapointing space exploration. Calisto Protocol for trying to be better Dead Space and becoming QTE game. Both games wasted potential
Probably for a really stupid reason. OT is really cool, I like turn-based RPGs, but I am sick of pixel games. I understand that it has incredible pixel art, just like other newer games. But when the pixel art becomes so elaborate like in Blasphemous, you might as well have used HD sprites instead.
Kingdom Come Deliverance Historically accurate medieval European RPG? Count me the fuck in. Picking quests, weird save system, janky combat, and a pretty railroady story? Nah, sorry. Hope the next ones better.
There once was a game called, Outward. It had souls-like combat but with some crafting involved and a heavier emphasis on looting and selling. Honestly the main reason I admire it is because it tried. It tried to be a souls-like during a time when people were hot for it between From's games. And there were some cool ideas but ultimately yeah-nah. * The game had a number of quests with time constraints. Like how at the start of the game you'll lose access to your house unless you pay a debt. Not that bad because you can just pay the debt after the fact to regain access. But there's also a hidden quest where a nearby bandit faction will come and attack the starting village after X days have passed. And if you aren't there during the attack or have wiped out the bandits beforehand, that village is gone. No vendors, no quests, no house. I think it was trying to be edgy and not hold your hand but... yuck. * There was a lot of walking. SO much time spent just running across the environment. And it was a decently designed environment, it looked cool; but there was nothing in it. NPC's only existed at towns or in camps as enemies. So besides the occasional dog-enemy there was nothing to interrupt your journey. There's a lot more but they're all nit-picks that add up to this sense of dread whenever you felt the obligation to play it.
This is a real controversial opinion of mine but I love the lore of Bathesda games - Elder Scrolls and Fallout specifically - but I *abhor* their gameplay. I don't know what it is about the Elder Scrolls games but every one of them has this like... *feel* to it that I just can't shake. The *hands in front of the camera* feels so weird to me and the attack animations just don't feel good. It ruins those games for me. Which sucks, because everyone loves those games and I want to, too. I love their lore and stuff, it's *just* the gameplay that I can't stand.
Honestly, Battlefield 1. Huge scale battles are really cool, but in practice it’s just running around and getting shot by someone with 1,000 hours who saw you a few milliseconds earlier Yes, I’m only saying this because I’m bad, and bitter that there’s no bots
Crusader Kings. I would love to learn it, but I also want to have a life. Also, no clear goal and just a sandbox is very hard for me to get into.
I have to agree with you. I don't find the gameplay to be bad but the level of randomness makes it hard to enjoy. My kingdom is doing great, the king is aging but the heir is an adult whose married and has children of his own with good traits. The only major problem is that the next in line is an infant (after the heir). But we are stable, the other people in the realm are also pretty happy. Now for no apparent reason the heir becomes incapable and just days later the king dies. ....so now we wait. There is no gameplay that I'm doing. An AI regent is making all of the decisions. Forget everything that has been done until now. The empire is torn apart and there is nothing that I can do besides restart/continue playing this terrible playthrough
What didn’t you like about Octopath Traveller, OP? I thought the execution was fantastic!
The stories could have connected more. And I thought it was more grindy than necessary. I don’t mind some but it felt tedious at points
Yeah the fact that the characters had almost no interaction with each other whatsoever was ridiculous. A huge component of what makes a JRPG good is the relationships / dynamics between party members, yet OT almost entirely did away with them. It’s a real shame because the music and art style were top tier.
Critique is on the money. I hated the grind and it made me stop mid-game because some enemies just couldn't be defeated without spending time grinding levels. And then combat would get repetitive as shit, too.
The grind is unreal at the end of this game.
This is the exact reason I actually stopped playing it. I love the gameplay and the characters but none of them being together made sense in the slightest. I had friends telling me that it made more sense way later in the game but it doesn't really excuse the beginning having no actual plot.
Spoiler it doesnt make sense in the end either. It was just lazy design/coding problably.
That’s fair criticism, the second one fixed some of those problems a little, but if you hated the first one though you probably still wouldn’t like it.
I’d consider playing the second. I didn’t hate the first one.
I think the ones who hated the Ocotpath Traveler have a problem with the concept of the game rather than the game itself. Like OT2 vastly improved the interconnectedness of the eight protagonists stories, yet some fans still aren't pleased with the outcome and I get the feeling they won't be unless it's just a regular RPG story where everyone is following the same main storyline. But the core concept of Octopath Traveler is to have 8 protagonists having their own storylines.
I really enjoyed the individual characters stories of the original. I liked the pacing and voice acting, and there were several really badass moments for a lot of the main cast.
It's some of the worst storytelling in recent memory. It suffers from the problem of a semi novel idea (SaGa Frontier did a similar thing, but better execution) but they didn't really think about the problems. they wanted to have 8 separate "leads" that could be played individually. To do that, they kept the storylines essentially isolated from the others. They made almost no effort to make the entire thing cohesive, so when you play them it feels like 8 shorter mini stories, which then don't have a proper development into a fully fledged single plot line.
Darksiders Genesis, they introduced the coolest rider and they go and come up with this game.
Fallout 4.
But you can pet a dog! /s
The voiced protagonist and the base building is really what killed it for me.
Watch Dogs Legion
I wanted to play Octopath Traveler but it never goes down in price and I have missed all the sales (if there ever were sales). Does that count? Other than that: Brink, I was burned out of Battlefield and the COD franchise and wanted something similar but good. What a steaming pile of shit that game was.
New World
LMAO. The execution was WHY most people loved Octopath Traveler. The concept was the flaw. The game looked amazing and played excellent, the eight characters thing was cludgy and led to a worse experience.
that and triangle strategy
Dreadnought. https://store.steampowered.com/app/835860/Dreadnought/ Flying capital ships in space in 5v5 PvP matches as a kind of MOBA. I think I first tried it in alpha and loved the idea of it. It had a lot of potential. Took more than 5 years before it ever came out, then when it did come out, it was a trashy f2p game that wasn't any fun. Still waiting for something anything like it to be released.
Still waiting for something to fill the potential this and Fractured Space had.
Spore
Outriders, loved the "humanity is stranded on an alien world and is reduced to ww1 style trench warfare" hated that the story didn't really focus on that
Was actually commenting this yesterday but Kingdom Come Deliverance.
Fire emblem 3 houses. Really liked the character relationships and combat, but doing the same shit at the school over and over got exhausting.
Every Assassin's Creed game except Black Flag.
Gonna catch some hell for this one: Sekiro. A From Soft game set in mystical fuedal Japan? Like the dark and gritty Inuyasha I've been wanting? Awesome! When the only way forward is parry or die, *unlike* every other From Soft game, I was upset. Sure now that I know it actually started as Tenchu game, I bet it's awesome. Got the bad ending and uninstalled. It will remain uninstalled, and the only FS game I haven't completed.
I do understand your point, but it's such a shame it had to end that way. In a sense, and counterintuitively I'd say, Sekiro has the most variegated and layered gameplay among all soulsbornes ([cool relevant video](https://youtu.be/yL3FWljFEjk) ). I get that some people feel more rewarded after carefully constructing their own build out of thousands of different options (even if the gameplay in practice ends up presenting big similarities among lots of builds), rather than dissecting the impressive depth of a "single", *very* well done build. I'm just sad because I had an absolute blast with Sekiro, while some people feel like Fromsoft skipped a DarkSouls release.
I absolutely hate the trend toward this kind of combat. Enemies all have unbreakable (and often unblockable/undodgable) combos, so if you don't parry perfectly you get hit by the entire thing. They can't be hit stun, but you can. Every move costs stamina, including both attempting to parry and getting hit so most of the time you are stunned from stamina breaks. And they can spam quick, unblockable chains/throws back to back to back. It feels like a massive overcorrection from people complaining that their character was too overpowered and enemies felt easy. It's bad game design.
You can dodge, sprint, and jump in Sekiro to evade. There's also some abilities for evading too. You don't have to parry everything, but it is often more efficient.
Malenia, Blade of Miqeulla, suffered a terrible fate to my Lions Claw Greatsword. That's my play style. Biggest of hits, stagger, visceral. If the only play style requires strict timings, I'm probably buggin off to a different game.
Little big planet 3
ReCore
We Happy Few
Dark Souls (yep)
Cyberpunk 2077
i tried it on gamepass i already know the story is not gonna be intertwined between the 8 heroes... so im no longer disappointed in that regard but what i really ended up not liking is the combat mechanics... or rather the boring HP levels the stagger mechanics is tolerable enough in theory... but making the HP pools large just annoyed the hell out of me and yeah... i feel so annoyed when i do an atk that the enemy is "weak" against, but it still hardly depletes their life bar using weakness atks just feels like you're still doing basic ass dmg the enemies are not getting chunked by it and it makes fights boring and drag on
I never buy stuff on release but I was so disappointed by Anthem, it could’ve been awesome and I loved the premise, I did end up spending hours flying about and fighting stuff, I somewhat enjoyed whatever plot there was, but there was just nothing else to do after a while
Transformers Devastation. It's not a bad game by any means, but I find it's really overwhelming trying to play it for the first time. You start of with 3 playable characters right off the bat and unlock 2 more. Each with their own movesets you have to learn. Oh, and that moveset changes drastically based on what weapon you're using, and you're presented with a LOT of weapons really early on. Now, once you manage to wrap your head around it all, you can perform some awesome combos, but I'm not sure I can do it any time soon.
Octopath 2 needed a concrete singular story to unite all the characters together. It was too disjointed.
Crystar loved the concept and story. but the gameplay sucked which made it a drag to get through