I’ll start. pokemon. doesn’t matter if the game’s old or new I just can’t get into how it plays. idk the gameplay just gets old to me pretty quickly, palworld is an upgrade in every way tbh
I can think of lots of series that I don’t like, just because I’m not into the genre. I think that everyone has genres that they don’t like.
I think a more-interesting question is about popular series that I don’t like within a genre that I do like.
I didn’t like Frostpunk, despite liking city-builders. Felt like the decisions were largely mechanical, didn’t involve a lot of analysis and tweaking levers.
I didn’t like Sudden Strike 4, despite liking lots of real time tactics games, like Close Combat. It felt really simplified.
I didn’t like Pacific Drive, despite liking survival games. It has time limits, and I often dislike time limits in games.
I didn’t like Outer Wilds, despite liking a lot of space games. Didn’t like the cartoony style, the low-tech vibe, felt like it wasn’t respectful of player time.
I didn’t like Elden Ring, though I like a number of swords and sorcery games. Just felt simple, repetitive and uninteresting.
EDIT: A couple of honorable mentions that I don’t hate, but which were disappointing:
Borderlands. The gunplay can be all right, and the flow of new guns and having to adapt to them is interesting. But every Borderlands game I play, the always-respawning enemies are a turnoff. Feels like the world is immutable. Also don’t like the mindless farming of every container with glowing green dots. And for a combat-oriented game, it doesn’t make me mix up my tactics much based on whatever I’m facing. While I finish the game, I always wind up feeling like I’m not having nearly as much fun as I should be having.
Choice of Games. I like text-based games, but a lot of games published by this company, even otherwise well-written ones, have adopted a convention of making one win by playing consistently to certain characteristics of a character, so one tries to just figure out at every choice what option will maximize that characteristic. That’s extremely uninteresting gameplay, even if the story is nice and the text well-written. I feel like the same authors would have done better just writing choose-your-own-adventure type games if they weren’t focused on the stats. I also really dislike the lack of an undo, to the point that I’ve put some work into a Choicescript-to-Sugarcube converter.
Frostpunk
I get it. I like city builders too and the idea of a game that’s constantly threatening your city with crisis seemed interesting, but every run seems to be the same.
Outer Wilds
Alright, you and I are gonna fight now.
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Some of those can be explained by bad expectations.
Frostpunk is not a city builder, more like a puzzle game.
Outer wilds is not a space game, it’s a time loop mystery.
Fantasy sword and sorcery is hardly the most important side of souls games. They’re technical performance games.
They all technically include those elements you like, but were more about something else.
I’m not sure I’d count Outer Wilds as a space game (assuming you mean something in the vein of Elite Dangerous), despite it objectively including a lot of space travel. It’s a detective game, the point is to unravel a mystery
maybe they’re confusing it with Outer Worlds?
I’d be very surprised if “cartoony style” and “low-tech vibe” is not describing Wilds. I assume the bit about respecting of time is something to do with the various timed events in each loop like Ash Twin. I don’t agree with them in the slightest, but I assume that’s what it is
Walking simulators
Something like outer wilds should be fine but i get easily annoyed from just running around
Even that i know that in some cases its very fast running around or somethingthat’s not really a franchise. and outer wilds is most definitely not one.
have you tried What Remains of Edith Finch? pinnacle of the genre.
Final Fantasy, it’s too grindy for me.
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Xenoblade Chronicles
The turn based but also realtime combat makes me so uncomfortable.
Metroid*
Pokemon, TCGs in general, Fallout, Darksouls and the related things
tgc pokemon and magic, has so problems with scalpings its pratically not worth it. also the online version of pokemon are pretty bad LIVE is not a good game but people are still addicted to playing it, when the previous version ptgco was a better UI. MTG has something called UB, which means they use other IP as part of the card sets they release: so far they released FINAL FANTASY , spiderman, some racing game? LOTR. people also hate this because its not orignal IP, its money grabbing ventures.
Animal crossing.
And back when this was a thing, Candy Crush.
Souls games.
I really want to like them too, but they seemingly aren’t compatible with how I play games. I need to be able to put a game down for a couple of weeks and not feel like I’m back at square one because the specific muscle memory for that game has gone.
Just kinda kills the fun when the game is effectively telling me to get good, when I don’t actually have the amount of free time IRL necessary to do that.
Yeah. Heard so much about Elden Ring, and watched the kids play it, so I thought I’d give it a shot.
After about 45 minutes of wandering aimlessly and nearly as many deaths, I decided I wasn’t having a good time.
That has been my experience with it too. It’s probably more fun with good gear, but i just see hours on the couch in my future that I don’t want to spend.
The gear would not have saved you. The game gets substantially more difficult as you progress, even accounting for your character getting stronger, and if you don’t do a decent job of levelling up appropriate skills that will compound the issue. The starter gear for most of the classes is actually perfectly viable all the way to the end of the game for most players too, it’s not notably weak at all
I love Elden Ring, but I can absolutely respect why it wouldn’t be for everyone. No sense in playing it if you’re not enjoying it, the point is still to have a good and/or interesting time
The beauty of Elden ring is that you can explore without actually killing much. Eventually you’ll find some cool weapons or smithing stones to upgrade your current weapon and some runes to get a couple of levels (putting points on vigor helps a lot early on)
And then the game starts feeling less rough.
But I can definitely understand why it’s not for everyone.
I finally had the Get Good moment where everything clicks recently, its very real. Now im on Nightreign like its crack.
Level your Vigor, people. Farm that little village with the soldiers and get a few levels into your health bar. And boom! Now you don’t die bc you missed a dodge. There’s good starting gear there too.
Once you “get it”, suddenly Elden Ring becomes like the coolest DnD game ever from an old-school perspective. Honestly, its not much different from Zelda - if you can play that, you can play Elden Ring i think.
I feel similar. After having tons of people tell me for years I need to get into them, I finally played Bloodborne, which multiple people have told me is their favorite.
I pushed through it on my own first. I actually didn’t die quite as much as I expected, though I definitely had to spend time watching YouTube videos and reading 3 different fan-made wiki’s to figure everything out. I managed to finish it, but I didn’t think it was worth it and would not have finished it if not for wanting to be able to talk about it with my friends.
Then I did another playthrough with a friend doing co-op. When it worked (ugh) it was a way better experience. Partly because of my previous experience - I had a better feel for how to build my character, I remembered most of the environments and enemy placement, and still had that muscle memory from my first run. Partly because it’s better as a cooperative experience. Having an ally makes the world feel less desolate. Having another player to take aggro so you can heal is huge- some bosses almost feel like they were designed for multiplayer. And it’s fun just cracking jokes and hanging out, making fun of how ridiculous some of the stuff is.
I still don’t have the love for it that other people do though. I agree 100% on the aesthetic: everything in Bloodborne is just dark and wet and looks the same. FromSoft makes a LOT of game design decisions that are different from most other developers in terms of what they prioritize. Which is fine, but there are aspects of design where they clearly cut corners and the fanbae seems to laud it as a desirable artistic choice. I shouldn’t need to spend hours watching YouTube and researching fan sites to learn how to play the game, and I would argue I shouldn’t have to do that to appreciate the story. They simply do not respect my time.
The multiplayer barely works. It’s restricted to bosses and the areas leading up to them, and costs Insight (a valuable and kind-of finite resource) to use. Simply connecting is a tedious pain. You can only play either completely online or offline, so if you want to play with a friend you have to accept your whole world cluttered with annoying and distracting messages from random players and the specters where other players died. And that also opens you up to having hostile players gank you. Like… Why can’t my friend and I just pair up and play through the whole game together without inviting the rest of the internet too? Why does it cost Insight? Why are the caps for stats never communicated to the player? Why does the Hunter’s Axe do primarily Blunt damage while the KirkHAMMER does almost no Blunt damage, and for that matter why aren’t the damage types explained anywhere? I’m still not sure why some gems increase Attack, others increase Physical Attack, and others increase Blunt or Thrust, plus there are hidden damage types.
The game feels like it was designed to really get good on your second playthrough and beyond. Especially NG+, although even starting a fresh file again is much better than the first playthrough. Kinda reminds me of how some MMO fans like to say “it gets good after the first 100 hours”. For most developers, the player onboarding experience is one of the most important parts to be developed, but FromSoft basically skills over that and outsources it to their community of hardcore fans.
The only real way to play full co op is using the Seemless Co-op Mod. Also disables other players jumping in to kill you. You would have to play on PC though.
Soulslikes are fucking boring. I did that beat my head against the too-hard boss fight 289348923x when I was a kid because that was the only option and I had all the time in the world. Neither of those is still true.
Try Jedi Fallen Order. It’s got a lot of the ingredients, but a lot shallower learning curve.
for me it feels like they don’t respect me as an adult. i need to be able to pause and save games. sometimes i get phone calls. sometimes the power goes out. sometimes i spill my drink. but no, it’s all just “get gud”.
also i just can’t handle the aesthetics .
Souls games autosave constantly, you can quit out at any time and reload to where you were. The only exception being that if you quit out during a boss fight you’ll have to restart.
Could you talk a little more about the aesthetics thing? I have no intention to pick a fight with you or tell you that your opinion is wrong, I’m just curious because I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that about them before
Also yes the no pausing thing is very frustrating
everything is dark and gray and meaty and slimy and gory and bloody and disgusting and sad and lonely and unpersonal and depressing and hopeless and evil and hateful and murderous and dead and off and…
even screenshots fucking wreck my mental health.
There are some stunningly beautiful scenes too though. I get what you mean regardless, its a grimdark setting for sure.
yeah let me just wade through this ocean of death so i can see a dying sun set over a dead world.
things may be beautiful in isolation but the context is what gives them meaning, and the meaning in most fromsoft worlds (and things inspired by them) is “look at how awful everything is here; it’s your fault if it doesn’t get better”.
“haunting” is a better word than “stunning” there.It’s okay if grimdark doesn’t appeal to you. I like stories about people doing the right thing in a hostile setting,
that was my point yes
Omg I feel seen. Yeah I might not be fully unappreciative of the aesthetic, but shit can be dark and grim in real life as it is and it feels edgy and emo to go all gore gothic all the time. Every videogame trailer that starts with “shit’s horrible around here” is an instant “next”. Also I’ve always had a problem with eternal unliveable dungeons that make no architectural sense. Even though it is fantasy, it makes it far more childish, which matters if they’re trying to take themselves seriously.
Is it particularly more your fault that things don’t better in Souls games than in any other game in which you are meant to save the world? I think the only difference is that in the Souls ones and others like them, the world is already horrible and needs repaired in some way rather than on the verge of becoming horrible
Interestingly Elden Ring went for quite a different direction. The world is, unquestionably, still an enormous mess that would be horrendous to live in, but they’ve left in far more of the beauty. I particularly like how every so often you hear hostile NPCs playing music or singing if they haven’t spotted you yet, and how there’s a little puzzle side quest about a painter; people are still making art in this ongoing apocalypse. One important allied NPC even actually openly makes an argument that the world is worth preserving if it looks like you’re going for the “destroy everything” ending
Of course the atmosphere and gameplay are still heavy going, both in the Souls trilogy and Elden Ring. I get why that wouldn’t be for everyone. It’s like playable Cormac McCarthy stories, except you can punch your way out of most of the misery if you get it right
idk i can barely look at the games without feeling awful, im just going off of the opinion of others
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You clearly lack the context of the world and story of the main souls games beyond only what is on the cover.
…yes? i don’t know how much more clearly i can spell out that what’s on the cover is preventing me from playing the games.
You are very much in the wrong and deeply at that, over what the meaning of the worlds of from soft games.
until this sentence i was completely certain that you were agreeing with me
I disagree with you completely on this but I really enjoy your point of view here
i’m glad.
Try “Death Door”. It is as hard but fun to play.
bro the difficulty is yet another reason why i don’t want to get into it. you really think i’m in a mental state to be beaten to a bloody pulp after a rant like that? i gave up on tunic because the combat was too hard.
it is my firm belief that soulslikes have ruined metroidvanias because they now apparently all need to beat you to death for attempting to enjoy them.
Death’s Door isn’t nearly as difficult as the Souls games; it just felt like a solid metroidvania. I don’t enjoy beating my head against high difficulty curves these days and it felt very approachable and fun to me. I even went back after my first playthrough and did the achievement where you only use the weaker umbrella weapon.
Same for me!
Pokemon. Never played one, never will. Hot take is it’s a gateway into IRL hunting which is honestly just very cruel. Do not approve.
I’m enjoying the idea of someone going IRL hunting and their only training is the Pokémon games.
Just out in the woods, gently tossing pokeballs at very confused deer.
that is a swealtering take if I’ve ever seen one
hot take
You weren’t kidding
Kinda like how GTA produces violent killers right?
Fair point. Tbh, the mirroring between the point behind Pokemon and IRL hunting are just too similar. Don’t agree with it.
Persona
Pokemon - having to watch animations and not being able to speed anything up killed my interest
Skyrim - tried a melee run recently and the combat feels like you’re whacking air
The legend of Zelda - played Tears and the story and puzzles were a bit too kid friendly
Doom - I really tried to like it but I felt like I didn’t get anything out of it. It doesn’t scratch that itch I get out of FromSoft’s Souls games where I want to learn a boss’s patterns and die to it a million times.
In general I don’t think I can do story games anymore
Pokemon - having to watch animations and not being able to speed anything up killed my interest
That’s why I play on emulator most of the time, especially for games I’ve already beaten
Yeah that’s the way to go, sadly. Funny enough I was eventually able to enjoy Pokémon through the fan game Pokerogue then a RuneScape rom hack called pokescape
The legend of Zelda - played Tears and the story and puzzles were a bit too kid friendly
It’s actually a kid friendly franchise, all of it. The only surprisingly mature themed zelda game is Majora’s Mask, it deal with death and loses and hopelessness way more than BOTW is comfortably touch, and it’s made in a year.
Twilight Princess is worth mentioning too. It was rated Teen, and had this scene (no gore or sex or anything, just weird surreal horror).
Zelda is such a diverse franchise it really depends on the game. I love Twilight Princess and Majora’s Mask, but didn’t like BotW or Windwaker at all. It’s almost like 2 or 3 different franchises crammed into one.
Up until Breath of the Wild, maybe Skyward Sword, the Zelda series didn’t shy away from being a bit fucked up. There’s an entire torture-themed dungeon in Ocarina of Time. Majora’s Mask is an exploration of impending doom, Twilight Princess features a botched execution. These games used to have characters in actual danger, scary enemies, confronting themes…Breath of the Wild is post apocalyptic and everyone is just happy clappy.
Couldn’t agree more with Skyrim, Oblivion was the same when I tried that too I just can’t stand it. Easily some of the most over rated games IMO.
Also agree with Zelda but I think the same about all of the Nintendo IPs, they are just boring and the fan base makes me dislike them even more!
Same for me, but starting with Morrowind. The leveling system was too weird, compared to other RPGs of that time. I remember I missclicked, fallen out of the window of some tower, got an Acrobatics skill improved and a level up.
well falling out of a tower window is quite the experience, and if you survived you learnt a lot about how to cope with deep falls, so the level ups are well earned
the combat in Skyrim always felt so stiff so i get you, just didn’t feel enjoyable to me
Modern DooMs are… strange. The legendary status of Doom is granted by Doom 1 and 2. And those games are very different from Doom 3-5.
Original gameplay is quite saved by GZDoom and similar projects. Add there something like BrutalDoom add-on and you’ll get the best from both worlds: old Doom gameplay and more modern graphics.
I still need to finish Dark Age but the level design was quite good. Felt way more like the original Jaquays type maps, lots of loops and alternate paths you naturally explore.
Project Warlock is still better tho
i think you can disable the animations in the console games for pokemon, unless they changed it for the new games.
They removed the options to skip battle animations for the newer games. There’s an option that removes cutscenes, but that doesn’t affect anything in battles like the ten minute long terastallizations.
i see, they did that for the online card game too. in the older ones i removed the animations so i can progess through the battle tower faster. good thing i never gotten into the post- burnt out masuda games.
In general I don’t think I can do story games anymore
Wow, that’s the complete wrong take if you ask me! It sounds like your problems with these games are mostly in the gameplay, not the story? Have you ever played Outer Wilds or The Talos Principle? Unique puzzle games with a great story.
I’ve played both of those, and I really enjoyed Talos 2 since it mostly just fed you lore while you were trying to do a puzzle, but don’t ask me what the story was because I couldn’t tell ya.
I didn’t mean I couldn’t connect with the story in just those games, but in games in general. So when I talk about a game, I don’t really put much weight into my thoughts on the story, just the mechanics.
Anything Bethesda sadly. I want to like them, something about the control and movement is just so janky it’s not fun.
I thought Fallout 4 was okay but I agree Bethesda clunk is hard to get used to
I find the games very appealing. I would love to love New Vegas but every time I try it just feels… off.
I always thought it was because they tried for an “anatomical” perspective and it never worked. Like I think the goal was supposed to be you could look down at your own character model but it was never really inplimented, leaving a janky forward and back motion to the vertical tilt. It’s just enough to make some people a little motion sick.
It’s like the controller is reacting to your inputs after they are pressed, rather than your inputs reacting as you press them. It’s a very very small difference, but it just feels clunky.
Fallout 4 is a surprisingly good colony builder though. Shame that’s literally the only thing it has going for it haha
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I think I/we were too old to get into pokemon. I tried 3 games, and got bored about 4 fights in. I’m sure back when that was the peak of gaming, it was amazing. But now after modern games, turn based gameplay is just not for me too
Except Baldurs Gate 3, that’s an awesome way of doing turn-based combat
God of War. I played 1,2, and 3 and they were all pretty much the same. I think a lot of the hype was from marketing and edge lords who were thrilled to have so much blood and some low-poly tits on the PS2. Once you get past the spectacle, the combat is a slog of mashing the Square button until the game decides to stop spawning HP sponges for you to hit. The puzzles are tedious and annoying. The platforming they try to force in just doesn’t work with the physics and controls. The music is bland and generic “epic symphony” stuff that may as well just be from a stock music library, with no Greek influence at all. The story is a generic and modern story with a thin vineer of Greek mythology. Kratos is less of a character and more of a reason to move the game along to the various locations. I know it’s not a completely fair comparison, but Hades used Greek instruments to create greek-influenced and interesting music that I still find myself humming and drumming to years later. Hades also did a way better job of using actual Greek mythology to create a narrative that would actually fit in that cannon.
I remember playing Knack 1&2 and thinking “wow, this is like if the old God of War games were fun”. Knack is far from perfect of course, but is largely a similar series that cares more about being fun than being mature.
I’m playing through the 2018 God of War now. Completely different, and honestly a few hours in I’m still not sure why they chose to make this a God of War game staring Kratos instead of just making it a fresh IP. Maybe more lore reasons will be revealed, but so far it seems it was just to capitalize on the brand for marketing reasons. The music is still not a strength, but it’s better. The environments are better. The combat is still pretty boring with way too many boring enemies with way too much health, but it’s better. This is the first game where I’m starting to get tired of the same UI and over-the-shoulder perspective that other Sony games have used lately (Ratchet and Clank, Uncharted, Horizon, Spiderman). GoW, like most of those games, has an unnecessarily complicated itemization and leveling system that just bogs the game down, and feels almost inspired by MMO’s or gacha mobile games.
It does a great job of characterization, with plenty of small, subtle, beautifully written moments that grant insight into personalities. The boy is annoying, but I can see that’s the point so I mostly don’t mind. It’s really annoying how the game won’t shut up- there’s always someone saying something, and if you even just stop moving for a second someone pipes up to remind you of what you should be doing. It doesn’t have space to breath. The puzzles are better than the prior games- they are an acceptable tool for pacing but aren’t great by themselves. The story seems a lot better, with much more attention given to original Norse mythology.
With Uncharted I could push last the mediocre puzzles and bullet sponge enemies because the cutscenes were really good and the stories were fun. For Ratchet and Clank I can ignore how the humor has gotten worse and more juvenile over time because it’s still fun to platform, dodge, cycle through weapons, and kill tons of enemies. For Horizon Zero Dawn… Actually I don’t have many complaints, that was a solid title. For GoW (2018) there’s just nothing pulling me back to it.
I’m not going to spoil anything but them making the 2018 god of war a god of war game absolutely does have story reasons. And I didn’t even play the earlier games till after so it’s not so much “tied” to the story of the earlier games, but it uses them as a back drop.
That’s where I’ll end it, but both of the new God of War games are some of my favorite games of all time. Continue playing them, they just continually get better.
Yeah, stick with GoW. It’s one of my favourite games of last gen just for the story telling.
Post game there’s some vicious challenges that took all my ability just to beat them on normal.
