Games you didn't expect to like

[SoulWeaver]

On 5/30/2018 at 6:09 PM, eclipse said:

After reading these. . .Conception still isn't my cup of tea.  But it's good that others found some value out of it.  Ahem. . .

It isn't really a lot of people's cup of tea. The main problem I find with it is they expect you to pay $30-40(don't remember exactly how much) for it on the eShop or else find the game if you want to go physical. Even if someone like me finds out they like the game, it's definitely not worth $30 for most of us out there. I felt like I paid just about the right cost at $10, and considering it's not a bite-sized story length that's a problem. This is of course also ignoring the fact that we never got the first game, so if there was any connections between the two or things we were supposed to know from Conception Please Have My Child(<-Actual Game Name), they were lost on most players. For the average human, the Demo is pretty much just the right amount of the game to tell you that it's enjoyable in that small of a size, but the actual game is way too long unless you get really, really attached to one of the Heroines.

Anyways, I remembered another one: Project Mirai DX.
I am not generally much of a fan of rhythm(<-screw this word btw) games, and on its face the game looks childish and...weeb-y. I only gave the demo a chance because a friend(WHAT SOULWEAVER HAS FRIENDS?!) and her sister used to sing Rolling Girl a lot, so I thought what the heck.
To my surprise, I found myself loving Senbonzakura, and consequently gave the game a try, eventually ending with me buying a Vita so I could play the Diva series as well. The songs are, for the most part, enjoyable even without a knowledge of what any of these adorable little chibi people are saying, and, considering it's basically Nintendogs with a chibi person instead of a dog and rhythm games, Othello, and PuyoPuyo instead of playing fetch or...whatever you're expected to do in Nintendogs, it ended up being surprisingly fun to play Othello with Luka, who coincidentally became my favorite VOCALOID(since Ring doesn't count) through this game, to the point where I have Luka versions of several songs on my iPod, like Human by the Killers or Somewhere Only We Know by Keane or even Disturbed's cover of Sound of Silence.
While it's very much Baby's First VOCALOID Game compared to the Diva series, the game was still definitely more enjoyable than I thought it'd be.

[eclipse]

3 minutes ago, SoulWeaver said:

It isn't really a lot of people's cup of tea. The main problem I find with it is they expect you to pay $30-40(don't remember exactly how much) for it on the eShop or else find the game if you want to go physical. Even if someone like me finds out they like the game, it's definitely not worth $30 for most of us out there. I felt like I paid just about the right cost at $10, and considering it's not a bite-sized story length that's a problem. This is of course also ignoring the fact that we never got the first game, so if there was any connections between the two or things we were supposed to know from Conception Please Have My Child(<-Actual Game Name), they were lost on most players. For the average human, the Demo is pretty much just the right amount of the game to tell you that it's enjoyable in that small of a size, but the actual game is way too long unless you get really, really attached to one of the Heroines.

There's so many things that could've made it more bearable.  Tone down the player worship, make an option to skip the cutscene for the units (the fact that they're referred to as children and refer to the MC as dad is creepy as fuck on its own), dear gods that's not what I want to use a stylus for, or introduce the difficulty spike well before the final chapter.  There's only so much I can stomach before I back away.

I don't think it's a bad concept, but I think the execution leaves much to be desired.

[Tediz64]

Ironically I like Conception enough to clock about 10+ hours but for reason I'll leave out, I had to stop. Albeit it was fun and pretty nice. But I grinded too much and I don't want to re-do all that beginning effort. Plus the game in general requires alot of hours and I'd like to spend them elsewhere.

 

So to answer the thread, for me it was Harvest Moon (A New Beginning). I remember first seeing my sister play it and asked "So what do you do in it?" To which to she told me is basically farm and date the town villagers.  I can't remember what all I said but I remember being pretty against it saying simulation games like that are a waste to spend money producing. But a year later I picked it up out of sheer boredom and got super hooked. I loved it and clocked more than like 120 hours on it. I made it to year 7 Summer.

 

Later my sister smirked at me when I told her and said she knew id love it. I asked her why she knew that and sure enough she said "because I know you love to micro manage and do menial tasks. Your good with your hands and hate thinking so if you get into a rhythm you tend to lose track of time with what you do". She also introduce me into sewing/tailoring and now I can proudly say my outfit design (not worn by me but people I know as well as friends) won an anime cosplay competition. At Oni-con. (I say won but Oni took first place in outfit but not overall since the skit they performed didn't come first place. Some other chick one did a dance and stole 1st place.) I make outfits now for 2 friends and at least 6 people (friend's of friends). (Gets off soap box. Way too much attention grabbing)

[SoulWeaver]

11 hours ago, Tediz64 said:

Ironically I like Conception enough to clock about 10+ hours but for reason I'll leave out, I had to stop. Albeit it was fun and pretty nice. But I grinded too much and I don't want to re-do all that beginning effort. Plus the game in general requires alot of hours and I'd like to spend them elsewhere.

...You found out about the Harem Ending that expects you to beat the game seven times(using New Game+ the whole way) and get the endings for all the Heroines individually first, didn't you.

15 hours ago, eclipse said:

There's so many things that could've made it more bearable.  Tone down the player worship, make an option to skip the cutscene for the units (the fact that they're referred to as children and refer to the MC as dad is creepy as fuck on its own), dear gods that's not what I want to use a stylus for, or introduce the difficulty spike well before the final chapter.  There's only so much I can stomach before I back away.

I don't think it's a bad concept, but I think the execution leaves much to be desired.

Oh, definitely. The Star Child thing was funny every now and then, like when the game calls itself out for the ridiculous anime outfits(in one of the little mid-exploration things I saw one of the children tell Fuuko she could see her underwear and Fuuko got embarrassed), but when you have the gift merchant, who as a Star Child looks like seven, tell you to 'buy gifts for all the mommies' and to 'say hi to mommies for me' you know someone was on crack at multiple points in development. The cutscene for the Units...you mean the, uh...'interesting' blurb when you actually Classmate, where the singer says 'touch my heart, just wanna make love to you'? You can skip it with Start, if memory serves, at least in the 3DS version, I don't know about the Vita one. I'd prefer an option to just not let it show up at all, honestly. It's frankly why I plan to one day defy all odds and obtain the rights to at least four of the Heroines and make a separate game(s) featuring them that's actually bearable. I mean, almost every Heroine could feasibly appear in a non-JRPG setting - Fuuko, Chloe, and Narika could all work in a platformer game in the style of Metroid or MMZ/Gunvolt easily or be used in an FPS, Serina could be in a fighting game with the Exiv Cannon featuring in her moveset, and I could see Torri and Feene in a Warriors-style game. Ellie's the only one that might be awkward to put into something else, but then again Warriors has made some kind of weird movesets work so who knows.

[BrightBow]

Path of Radiance is probably the best example. It just didn't look very good. The graphics weren't very impressive even back then and character designs like that of emo kid Soren looked quite offputting to me at first glance. Needless to say, that changed once I actually got to play it.

 

Also Echoes. I mean, it came after Awakening and Fates. Those games basically thought me that I knew nothing about barrels and the bottom thereof. At that point it was impossible for me to imagine a new game that didn't involve a selfobsessed protagonist and his harem of sociopathic butchers. I sure as hell did not expect to see a protagonist who actually cares about the people they rule, nor that the story would put so much emphasis on these things. And I did not expect believable villains whose actions actually follow a certain logic. Well, except for Rudolf but that one was kinda unavoidable. Even the presentation of the female characters is not anywhere close to being as awful as in Awakening and Fates. I mean, we upgraded from Panty Emblem (Or even Zipper Panty Emblem) to Bloomer Emblem. Still sucks but in this age I take what I can get. I'm still baffled by how not terrible the game is.

 

I suppose another interesting candidate would be a certain h-game which is apparently called Momoko Wonderful Pink 2 or something like that. I mean, the game's visual style obviously appealed to me or otherwise I would have never tried it out. It kinda reminded me of old DOS games, although in retrospect it's visuals were probably based on 80s arcade games. But then again, as I said it's a h-game. And I've never seen a h-game that actually plays well. This game though plays absolutely amazing.  So much in fact that I would consider it my absolute favorite Beat 'em Up.

Quite frankly, it was also just a very interesting experience in general. The game follows the style of games like Kung-Fu Master, which I don't think is done very often these days, at least not by good developers. Games usually use that Final Fight / Streets of Rage style. So there are plenty of interesting ideas in there in order to make that kinda game actually play well and give it a decent amount of depth, which all in all resulted in a very fascinating experience.

Edited June 3, 2018 by BrightBow

[Tediz64]

@SoulWeaver lol exactly. When i saw how much time was needed to 100% i just gave up. I had other games pending and with college i just couldn't find the time

[DragonFlames]

On 3.6.2018 at 9:05 PM, SoulWeaver said:

...You found out about the Harem Ending that expects you to beat the game seven times(using New Game+ the whole way) and get the endings for all the Heroines individually first, didn't you.

That was my only gripe with the game, honestly. I don't like harems in general (I am a firm believer that your romantic love is meant for one person and only one person, because that's the way I was raised, I guess) and thus stay far, far away from any harem anime as well. When I found out about the harem ending, I was a bit miffed, and to this day, I still haven't seen it (I would also be cheating on Torri, so there's that, too).

[henrymidfields]

While was already excited for Pokemon XY and the French-looking Kalos region, I was surprised with the amount of backstory put in that built the culture as an alternate universe of France. I only found out much later that Lysandre and Team Flare referenced what far-right businessman Francois Coty could have been in a possible alternate scenario for French far-right politics in the 1930-40s. It may have been unintentional, but now I love XY's backstory even more for its headcanon potential.

Edited June 7, 2018 by henrymidfields

[Jotari]

Oh yeah, I picked up Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria for €2 in Gamestop once. Never heard of the series before (got it confused with Valkyria Chronicles), but the game turned out to be really creative and different from basically everything I've ever played. It's like 3d, a free roaming, yet still turn based rpg. If that makes any sense. I was actually a bit disappointed when I checked it out online after finishing and discovered that fans of the series look down on the game quite heavily for not being as good as the first.

[SoulWeaver]

On 6/6/2018 at 11:53 PM, DragonFlames said:

That was my only gripe with the game, honestly. I don't like harems in general (I am a firm believer that your romantic love is meant for one person and only one person, because that's the way I was raised, I guess) and thus stay far, far away from any harem anime as well. When I found out about the harem ending, I was a bit miffed, and to this day, I still haven't seen it (I would also be cheating on Torri, so there's that, too).

I definitely agree in reality, but I'd say in gaming one's Potential Waifu List is often far too large for such a belief to remain practical. For example, I have difficulty deciding which Conception 2 Heroine is best girl as it varies from day to day based on how I'm feeling - generally, Fuuko comes out on top, but there are days I'm willing to overlook Serina's physical qualities because she's Legal, and some days I find myself needing some Narika in my life because...well, that should be obvious, we all need more shy girls in our lives. Fire Emblem also provides another realm in which it can be difficult to select merely one Waifu due to the astounding overabundance of potential candidates - when faced with the lovely Palla and the equally lovely Cordelia, how on earth does one such as myself choose? I also generally avoid Harem Anime as well, mostly due to the fact that such Animes are generally...less than child-safe. I gave MonMusu a chance because a friend kept going on about it, and overall I was somewhat surprised by how decent it was compared to what I was expecting(plus Suu is adorable for similar reasons to Torri), but in the end I couldn't say it was amazing because it was still something I wasn't about to go around saying 'hey, you should watch this, it's about...uh...you know what, never mind...' so I've avoided them since.

[DragonFlames]

6 hours ago, SoulWeaver said:

I definitely agree in reality, but I'd say in gaming one's Potential Waifu List is often far too large for such a belief to remain practical. For example, I have difficulty deciding which Conception 2 Heroine is best girl as it varies from day to day based on how I'm feeling - generally, Fuuko comes out on top, but there are days I'm willing to overlook Serina's physical qualities because she's Legal, and some days I find myself needing some Narika in my life because...well, that should be obvious, we all need more shy girls in our lives. Fire Emblem also provides another realm in which it can be difficult to select merely one Waifu due to the astounding overabundance of potential candidates - when faced with the lovely Palla and the equally lovely Cordelia, how on earth does one such as myself choose? I also generally avoid Harem Anime as well, mostly due to the fact that such Animes are generally...less than child-safe. I gave MonMusu a chance because a friend kept going on about it, and overall I was somewhat surprised by how decent it was compared to what I was expecting(plus Suu is adorable for similar reasons to Torri), but in the end I couldn't say it was amazing because it was still something I wasn't about to go around saying 'hey, you should watch this, it's about...uh...you know what, never mind...' so I've avoided them since.

You got a point there.

[Busterman64]

Fire Emblem

It's weird for me to remember how I shyed from the series as a kid for a bit when my friend told me about it. But I decided to say "screw it", I'll give it a shot. This series is now one of my all time favorites...all because I gave it a shot. It's why I felt like I should give stuff a shot more because "I could find another FE". That said however, I sucked at the games and wasn't as big of a fan till I played Path of Radiance, which I randomly found in a gamestop about 2 years later. My love and passion for this series SKY-ROCKETED at that moment. And so...here I am now. 

Harvest Moon

When I was a kid and Melee was all the rage, I wanted the game so bad since my friend owned it. One day, I saw the case for the game ins Thrift Store and was so happy...till I took it too the front so my mom could buy it...and Harvest Moon Magical Melody was there. I was rather sad it wasn't Melee, but I still gave it a shot because, you know, maybe "it'll be another FE". Surprise, surprise...I ended up playing the game for hours straight without realizing it. I never thought a farming game could be so...fun! It's rather nostolgic for me nowadays.

Mario Basebal

I'm not really into sports and I sure as heck have never played a real baseball game in my life, but after playing it...I was glued to it! This was one of my friend's games that he let me borrow(along with Melee...he's pretty cool dood, but I haven't talked to him much lately).

 

[sirmola]

Steam World Dig:

I am generally really bad at action games in general and platformers in perticular (due to really bad reflexes), so i expected to not like it, but i have liked some action games in the past, (such as anything 2d zelda) so I bought it when it went on sale for a few bucks. I actualy really enjoyed it (and the sequel, but i expected to enjoy it by that point)

Radiant Historia: perfect chronology:

I loved the original and consider it one of my top ten rpgs (i played it when it first came out), but story/text heavy rpgs tend not to replay well. THat being said, i have forgotten just enough of the fine details of the plot for it to feel fresh, but remembered enough to get all of the forshadowing. It helps that this game's normal mode is exactly my preferred level of difficulty: not brainless, but no grinding required (i have not tried easy, hard, or "deadly"). THe new coat of paint (art/voice acting) is the icing on the cake. THe new story content is not as good as the original, but is still good, and is all entirely optional.

[Tamanoir]

Glory of Heracles IV : This one is really recent. I was browsing for SNES JRPGs, and decided to try it. I've played a bit through GoH III, whihc had a pretty crazy plot, but was still quite hard, and the GoH DS wasn't that exciting either, so I wasn't expecting much. the serie started as a DQ rip off based on Greek Mythology, and ended up becomming its own thing eventually.
Instead of barely touching it, and adding i to my ever extended backlog, I ended up rushing through the game in a few days. And I still can't explain entirely why.
The Hero and his friend Plato (no relation with teh historical character.) comes from Atlantis, and due to some events ends up separated from their bodies. Their souls survived, but their bodies ares still sealed inside Atlantis. That leads to a pretty interresting sytem. It works as a basic Class System, every characters (including animals) offering different abilities, and having different proficencies in weapons. Depending of the character you possess, your interactions with other my think, allowing you to access unknown places, or getting items/Money.

But the main reason I appreciate the game is that saving the world isn't the main goal. You ends slaying Fiends along the way, but it's mostly by chance, or as an afterthought. Your only goal is to get back your bodies. This leads to a more personal journey, and a grayer morality. There aren't any truly bad guy, or truly good guy (escept maybe Heracles, though he is flawed. Being too impetuous and quite close minded). Most important characters ends up being quite tragic.
WHich leads us to Plato. Plato is the protagonist's main friend, and contrary to the silent protagonist, he is quite the chatterbox. Upon recruiting him, you get his Journal where he write his personal version of the story. He is also the one moving the lot along by pushing you to the next destination. And since he tends to often clash wth the other characters, it leads to good character dynamics as well.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Tamanoir said:

Glory of Heracles IV : This one is really recent. I was browsing for SNES JRPGs, and decided to try it. I've played a bit through GoH III, whihc had a pretty crazy plot, but was still quite hard, and the GoH DS wasn't that exciting either, so I wasn't expecting much. the serie started as a DQ rip off based on Greek Mythology, and ended up becomming its own thing eventually.
Instead of barely touching it, and adding i to my ever extended backlog, I ended up rushing through the game in a few days. And I still can't explain entirely why.
The Hero and his friend Plato (no relation with teh historical character.) comes from Atlantis, and due to some events ends up separated from their bodies. Their souls survived, but their bodies ares still sealed inside Atlantis. That leads to a pretty interresting sytem. It works as a basic Class System, every characters (including animals) offering different abilities, and having different proficencies in weapons. Depending of the character you possess, your interactions with other my think, allowing you to access unknown places, or getting items/Money.

But the main reason I appreciate the game is that saving the world isn't the main goal. You ends slaying Fiends along the way, but it's mostly by chance, or as an afterthought. Your only goal is to get back your bodies. This leads to a more personal journey, and a grayer morality. There aren't any truly bad guy, or truly good guy (escept maybe Heracles, though he is flawed. Being too impetuous and quite close minded). Most important characters ends up being quite tragic.
WHich leads us to Plato. Plato is the protagonist's main friend, and contrary to the silent protagonist, he is quite the chatterbox. Upon recruiting him, you get his Journal where he write his personal version of the story. He is also the one moving the lot along by pushing you to the next destination. And since he tends to often clash wth the other characters, it leads to good character dynamics as well.

If I recall, Plato is the only ancient source to actually write about Atlantis, so yes relation to the historic character.

[Tamanoir]

43 minutes ago, Jotari said:

If I recall, Plato is the only ancient source to actually write about Atlantis, so yes relation to the historic character.

Yeah, Plato is the one who mentioned Atlantis for the first time. No idea if he invented the idea, but it's clearly used it as a metaphor.
What I meant is that if someone is a big fan of Plato, they may not love this version of him. he doesn't really sounds like a great philosopher here.
Unless you consider the MC is Socrates. Then it is actually quite funny.

It's still a better reference than most. I think this game actually do a decent work compared to its mythological source. I'm not an expert, but nothing really shocked me. There are some level of interpretations, and few biblical things added to the mix (the Fiends are somewhat reminiscent of the 7 deadly sins, and they have their own version of the Tower of Babel, though with a far more pragmatic goal). But I liked the interpretations of the God. Hades not being a villain, but simply  the ruler of the Underworld was a nice touch.