Any games that you really wanted to like but just couldn't?

[ciphertul]

1 hour ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Trails of Cold Steel 3

The king of my unpopular opinions. I like the series, but its pacing issues and easily missed collectibles can exhaust me, but never so badly as with this one. Sky 1-2 are masterpieces. Sky 3 is good, easily digested fun. Cold Steel 1 immediately hooked me, and the much-maligned Cold Steel 2 was actually one of my favorites so far.

 

The much-loved 3rd Cold Steel on the other hand? I'm having trouble getting into it. Going back to the school setting after a civil war is such a huge step down, the new Class VII is so inferior to the originals, and they seem intent on turning Ouroboros into a joke.

Wait 3 is overall better received then 2? I don't believe that, 3 was the worse in everything out of the 4.

[Fabulously Olivier]

16 minutes ago, ciphertul said:

Wait 3 is overall better received then 2? I don't believe that, 3 was the worse in everything out of the 4.

Yeah, if you spend 5 minutes on the Falcom reddit, you'll find that they practically worship Cold Steel 3.

 

I'm sure that if I kept going, I'd probably hit my stride because all Falcom games become god-tier in the last 20% of the game or so, but it's just been such a dull roadbump for me so far.

[ciphertul]

1 minute ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Yeah, if you spend 5 minutes on the Falcom reddit, you'll find that they practically worship Cold Steel 3.

 

I'm sure that if I kept going, I'd probably hit my stride because all Falcom games become god-tier in the last 20% of the game or so, but it's just been such a dull roadbump for me so far.

I get that, I struggled thru 3 so hard. Musse alone saved that game.

[Yexin]

Fire Emblem Fates
i expressed myself on the matter a considerable amount of times, i don't think i have to reiterate

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE
aside from the definitely good battle system, i found basically everything else to be so painfully bland, generic and boring that i just couldn't bring myself to finish it

Fire Emblem Three Houses
it's not like i hate it nor anything like that, in fact i definitely don't dislike... but i can't say i like it: it has many good aspects, but the flaws are just too many for me to ignore them

Any Tales Of game I've played
aka Symphonia, Abyss and Phantasia: this is completely personal, as i just can't appreciate the battle system (i didn't dislike Phantasia though)

Dark Souls 2
i knew of its bad reputation, but i hoped i could get past it
i couldn't, and they were right

Final Fantasy XV
looks stunning, plays the same from beginning to end, great soundtrack (thank you Yoko Shimomura), its development has been so problematic they had to cut story elements from the base game, except they added them as DLC contents even though the game's story ended up not being able to fit those elements anymore

 

[vanguard333]

Shadows of Valentia is definitely another example. I remembered liking Shadow Dragon overall, and I was looking forward to a remake of the second game, especially since it looked like it was going to be more of a full-overhaul remake where Shadow Dragon was a 1:1 remake.

However, when I played it, while I enjoyed aspects of it, I really did not like it overall. It really felt like a remake where a team sat down to make a remake, but couldn't agree on what type of remake they wanted to make. Parts of it are given a full overhaul while other parts are kept 1:1, and the whole thing feels disjointed and less than the sum of its parts as a result. The worst thing is that I've never played the original Gaiden, and it was painfully clear what was changed and what wasn't when playing the remake.

[Benice]

Three Houses is the game I was the most excited for in my life. I bought a Switch exclusively to be able to play it in mid-2020. There wasn't really anything else on the Switch I wanted to play, I was happy simply to have the FE everyone said was the best since Radiant Dawn, some even saying it surpassed it. I was ready to spend hundreds of hours on it, and I could barely contain my excitement to get started on Hard Mode, choosing the Golden Deer; however, by chapter 4, the only reason I kept playing was because I wanted the game to get better and because I spent a large premium for the privilege to play it. Three Houses isn't the worst game I've ever played in terms of visuals, characters, music, or even production value, but I'd still say it's the worst game I've ever played simply on the basis of how insulting the cost is compared to what you get.

...I do admit that a large portion of my anger towards it stems from the praise it got and the comparisons to Fates, which I've still not played. If it had recieved the same criticism that Fates had, I think I probably wouldn't have been as angry at this game as I was.

 

Dark Souls 2 is a game with sheer genius behind it. The only problem was that the genius ideas behind it didn't know how to make a Souls game, and sadly ran out of time to make one. I admire Dark Souls 2 a lot. It refused to live in the shadows of the legendary Dark Souls and tried something new, and remained unflinching after the success of Bloodborne; it wanted to be the greatest, biggest and most beautiful game ever made, and it wanted to push what Dark Souls was. There are so many fantastic ideas here, but most of them never made it into the game, and what we actually got was, sadly, a dreadful experience from start to finish. I don't enjoy it at all, as much as I admire it. Still, I can actually recommend playing it, with the caution that it's generally considered inferior to its brethren.

 

Trails in the Sky FC (Pending)

It's a game I've seen nearly nothing but praise for, but... Oof, not sure it's my thing. I'm not big on anyone in the cast just yet aside from Josette, and I think I may have already predicted the twist villain. I'll keep goin', though. I still have high hopes for it.

...Keep in mind that I play this game the wrong way, so pretty much any criticism of it is going to be exclusively my fault.

[henrymidfields]

Pokemon Sun and Moon was one that I ended up ditching. Didn't hate the game itself, but good Sothis there are some serious QoL issues here. Firstly, the battles were very laggy for my 2DS, and every input and every sequence seemed to take several seconds each to get through. Secondly, the "call for help" in the one Trial I did was annoying in that it seemed to never end. (Does anyone know if that had a hard limit on the number of occurances?) Finally, thanks to the bigger focus on the cinematics, I had to wait for the cinematics (which took forever) to finish the cutscenes when it's just a matter of button mashing for most other Pokemon game and every conversation took severalfold longer to get through.

Edited February 27 by henrymidfields

[lenticular]

Fire Emblem: Fates: I've tried multiple times to get into this, tried approaching the game different ways, focused on different systems, done everything I can to try to find the fun, and I just can't. I don't like the game mechanics, the map design, the story, the characters, the graphics, or the UI. 1-2 range staves are great, and I love the concept of the opera house, but that's far from enough to make up for all the stuff I don't like.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: This was the reason I bought my Switch in the first place. I'd heard so many people talk about it in such glowing terms and it sounded amazing. And then I played it and I just fond it boring. It was as if I was playing a completely different game to everyone else. I wanted to play the great game that everyone else was talking about, but instead I got this? Nothing about this game worked for me.

Civilization: Beyond Earth: A spiritual successor to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri? Yes please! Oh man, I was so excited for this. And then I actually played it. There was none of the personality or worldbuilding of SMAC, and the gameplay was bland and generic 4X stuff. It wasn't a bad game, necessarily, just a completely forgettable one.

Guild Wars 2: I played the original Guild Wars so damn much, and I loved pretty much everything about it. And then the sequel came out. And I played it a fair bit, and there were some things that I did quite like about it, but the more I played, the less fun I had. So many of the things that I enjoyed in the original were gone, and replaced with a cash shop and grindy gameplay. Thinking about it too much mostly just makes me sad.

Pokémon Sword and Shield: I thought that most of the fan outrage over this one prior to release was completely misplaced. I still think that cutting back on the number of Pokémon available is actually a good idea, and the graphics never bothered me personally. They weren't great, but they were fine. So I was all ready to go into this and have a great time with it, just so I could prove the nay-sayers wrong. But then I played it, and didn't care for it. It had all the linearity of the 3DS games, but without any of the story to compensate for it. And its online features were just a mess. Half of them were locked behind a paywall, and the other half just didn't work reliably.

[Imuabicus]

FE: Three Houses; coming from someone who really only discovered the FE franchise after playing SD for a good ... 5-8 years methinks and after having played Awakening and then Fates with a very short dip into SoV I was kind of expecting/hoping that TH would be able to provide even a tiny bit of what makes Fates range from meh to great - the versatility in classes, skills, weapons, the units as well as the map and dare I call it even its own thing - the enemy design with inventory and their strategic placement? It just didn´t. The units are the same, with 1-2 exceptions per house if even that, there is no variety in skills, for there are few skills ultimately worth it to commit reclass shenanigans, the reclass and weapon rank system itself not fitting into a FE game, the maps being designed in such a way, as if they could only come up with overlapping enemy ranges, gambits, while fun either being overkill, or the only solution with a terrifying change of just missing. The game requires you to actively not use it´s mechanics to be challenging in any way whatsoever a sure-fire sign of the game failing at it´s core. Oh yeah, almost forgot the literal elephant in the room, the monastery.

[Jotari]

19 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Xenoblade Chronicles 2

While it improves about 10+ hours in, it's not going from okay to great. It goes from woefully subpar to aggressively average. The combat system is boring except in fights long enough to pull off those high-end combo effects. The cast is mostly unlikeable (except for Morag and Zeke), and Rex is truly the worst protagonist I think I've ever experienced. Imagine a JRPG where Carol Kapel from Tales of Vesperia is your protagonist, and that's XBC2 in a nutshell.

Heavy agree, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is aggressively average and I kind of hate it for that fact. Though I don't think the characters are the worst, the story just doesn't do with them. Despite how long the game is, nothing actually happens. I also feel this way about Xenoblade Chronicles X and even more intensely so. I think the characters there are super unlikeable there, especially Elma whom the ending reveals is a liar, a hypocrite and really manipulative yet doesn't expect us to view her any differently. And it's a real shame, as I really did like the first Xenoblade Chronicles, but the two follow ups have been so bad, I haven't even bothered to watch the Xenoblade Chronicles 3 trailer yet, and I don't think I'll get the game even if people recommend it to me.

Another one that I really wanted to like more is Final Fantasy Tactics. It's a highly renowned title and even if it weren't it's Final Fantasy meets Fire Emblem, what's not to love? Well personally I found basically nothing to like about the game. The gameplay boiled down to finding cheap tactics and abusing them to win rather than rewarding taking maps in creative ways. While the story looks like it's an epic political drama, and if people like it i certainly can't fault them for it, but it utterly failed to pull me in and make me care about the world. It was just a torrent of names of houses of people doing things without any personal connection. What even is Ramza's role in that world? I honestly can't even tell you now. Was he a prince or a knight or a lord or something? I honestly don't know, that's how little I remember. The only things that stand out to me from the plot were the demon stuff. I feel like if I play it again I might enjoy it more as I'm more familiar with the world (if vaguely so through half forgotten memories) and gameplay, but my first experience of the game doesn't have me rushing back to play it any time soon.

Tear Ring Saga. Yeah, it's pretty cool and all to see Kaga explore Fire Emblem concepts parallel to the actual series...but I just can't get into it. I've been trying to play it for like, two years now, completing chapters intermittently every now and then. I think most of my problems aren't even with the plot or the gameplay, it's all down to the UI and just how old and slow it feels even compared to old Fire Emblem games.

Edited February 28 by Jotari

[Sasori]

On 2/27/2022 at 4:01 AM, vanguard333 said:

Xenoblade Chronicles. I really wanted to like it: the story was really interesting, the characters are compelling, and the world is really unique and interesting, and I remembered really liking Xenoblade Chronicles X, so I wanted to see how the series began. However, I ended up growing bored of it and stopped playing at the Fallen Arm. A game being story-driven is fine, but it really shouldn't come at the expense of gameplay, and I really didn't like the gameplay.

One thing that really brought it down for me was the combat; it's MMO-like combat that revolves around auto-attack and abilities that have cooldowns, and I'm really not a fan of that kind of combat as it's very boring and uninvolving; once you figure out the best order in which to use the abilities, it basically plays itself.

But perhaps the biggest thing was that, while the world was unique and interesting, it was not fun to explore, and I realized that the reason I was able to finish Xenoblade Chronicles X, despite it having similar combat, was that the world in that game was very fun to explore, especially after the player acquires Skells. Xenoblade Chronicles' world is not at all fun to explore, and with how uniquely designed it is, it easily could've been fun to explore.

Its funny how far me the complete opposite happened. I eventually really got into the original Xenoblade and I finished it right in time for when X came out.

But X never really clicked for me. Part of it was because of the many little annoyances (No party freedom, switching characters being a total pain, etc.). And partly because I wasn't really invested in either the story or the characters. 

I was ready to like Brilliant Diamond, but I ended up greatly disliking it. Them not doing anything new greatly reduced the charm of the game and I felt very bored because all that free exp turned the game into a mindless slog. Its the only Pokemon game I never finished and i'm not in a rush to pick it up again.

[Fabulously Olivier]

14 hours ago, lenticular said:

Guild Wars 2: I played the original Guild Wars so damn much, and I loved pretty much everything about it. And then the sequel came out. And I played it a fair bit, and there were some things that I did quite like about it, but the more I played, the less fun I had. So many of the things that I enjoyed in the original were gone, and replaced with a cash shop and grindy gameplay. Thinking about it too much mostly just makes me sad.

Damn, that resonates with me so hard.

 

While Guild Wars 2 certainly has its advantages over the original - graphics, presentation, exploration, gear, visual customization, and passive traits - it is nothing like the original game. And the original game was a peerless masterpiece with no equivalent type of game today. No other game has Guild Wars' unique blend of infinite build depth with convenience, user-friendly flexible customization, peerless PvP modes, and excellent knowledge-based encounter design. 

 

I get making live service/MMO sequels completely different so they don't compete with eachother, but if you're going to do that, you need to keep live development support on both entries.

Edited February 28 by Fabulously Olivier

[vanguard333]

I only have my first impressions of the current demo right now, but I really have not been enjoying Terrible Name (I know the game's called Triangle Strategy, but with a terrible name like that, I refuse to not call it Terrible Name).

There's already a thread about Terrible Name, so I won't go into too much detail here, but I wanted to like Triangle Strategy; I was skeptical about the game revolving around a moral choice system, but the game otherwise looked really interesting; I like turn-based strategy RPGs, so I wanted to like this. I really have not been liking it so far.

 

EDIT: Forget what I said here; the game has grown on me a lot since my first impressions of it.

Edited March 24 by vanguard333

[DarkSage861]

Any Fire Emblem game past 2016 :)

[CyberZord]

Xenoblade Chronicles 2: After playing through Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, I decided to buy and play its sequel, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 as well. I actually enjoyed the prologue, but by the point that you get to the first village area in Chapter 1, I was already bored with the game, and couldn't get myself to play past it. Plus, Rex, Pyra and Co. don't feel as interesting as the likes of Shulk, Reyn, Fiora and Dunban. It sucks because Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is coming out and that game looks pretty interesting, but I'm not sure if Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is worth playing through 50+ hours of content just to see if there's any important references or links between XC2 and XC3. I dislike the combat system of XC2 as well, more so than XC1's combat system. At the moment, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is in my gaming limbo of games I'm procrastinating on playing, and I doubt that I'll change my opinion on the game anytime soon. 

Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest- Once I had completed Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright (a game I thought was simply okay, both as a video game and a Fire Emblem title), I figured that I'd give Conquest a shot for a different perspective on the whole Hoshido vs Nohr thing. I found the story to make very little sense and was pretty bad overall for the Conquest route (not that Birthright was much better), and the gameplay just felt like Birthright: Hard mode with some different objectives but more annoying to get through. I couldn't bring myself to finish Conquest, and I stopped playing somewhere around Chapter 9 or 10. I haven't even bothered with Revelations. Charging $40 physical for Birthright and Conquest individually doesn't help either (or about $25 digital if you're buying Conquest within Birthright, and vise versa). I feel that Three Houses did the whole kingdom vs kingdom thing way better (but with three major territories instead), and it gave you way more time to care about the characters fighting in the war, unlike Fates, which briefly describes Corrin's relationship to both the Hoshido and Nohr people, then forces you to pick a side by Chapter 6 unless you only bought Birthright/Conquest, then you don't really get much of a choice in the matter. Overall, I find Three Houses to be a far better game in the Fire Emblem series and video games in general. I'd play it over Fates any day.

Tales of Arise: I played a little bit of the demo for this game and thought it would be interesting to try out since I'm a big fan of RPGs, so I decided to buy it. Not even an hour into the game did I decide that I've got plenty of other, more enjoyable RPGs on my list to beat (Dragon Quest 11, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Paper Mario TOK, Fire Emblem Three Houses- My Blue Lions playthrough) and Arise wasn't worth the 50+ hours of my time that I could spend in a different game. 

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity: I was a huge fan of Breath of the Wild when it originally came out all the way back in 2017, so I was excited to experience what Hyrule was like 100 years ago up until Calamity Ganon basically murdered the only hope Hyrule had of stopping him for a whole century, save for Zelda and Link. Unfortunately the game ended up being some non-canon alternate timeline crap which has Link, Zelda, the four Champions and Co.(along with the 4 Champions' successors who managed to time travel at a very convenient time) actually do the opposite in what I was hoping to see. Just like the other games in this list (excluding XC2), I sold Age of Calamity and don't plan to come back to it again. I was never too keen on the Hyrule Warriors games because I don't care much for the Dynasty Warriors gameplay.

Elden Ring: I never really played much of the first Dark Souls game, and I never got around to its sequels. I did manage to play through Code Vein, which sort of played like the Dark Souls games but with an AI partner that may or may not be useless at points. I finished the game to completion, and I had a good time with it overall (we do not talk about those two bosses in Code Vein that are just Ornstein and Smough wannabes). When I heard about Elden Ring's announcement, I must admit that I ended up being curious enough to buy the game and try it out for myself. The game isn't bad by any means, and I believe that the hype for it was well founded, but I could not get myself to play through what is essentially a more open world Dark Souls. Plus, I was never a big fan of the trial and error gameplay that the Dark Souls series has. 

EDIT: A few more titles came to mind, so I added them in here. 

Edited May 8 by CyberZord

[avensis]

I think it's Chronicles of Xenoblade, I didn't manage to like it, the mechanics and the game play didn't please me

[vanguard333]

On 4/30/2022 at 8:48 PM, CyberZord said:

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity: I was a huge fan of Breath of the Wild when it originally came out all the way back in 2017, so I was excited to experience what Hyrule was like 100 years ago up until Calamity Ganon basically murdered the only hope Hyrule had of stopping him for a whole century, save for Zelda and Link. Unfortunately the game ended up being some non-canon alternate timeline crap which has Link, Zelda, the four Champions and Co.(along with the 4 Champions' successors who managed to time travel at a very convenient time) actually do the opposite in what I was hoping to see. Just like the other games in this list (excluding XC2), I sold Age of Calamity and don't plan to come back to it again. I was never too keen on the Hyrule Warriors games because I don't care much for the Dynasty Warriors gameplay.

I know how you feel; I'm not really a fan of Warriors gameplay either, so the only reason I was interested in Age of Calamity was that Nintendo falsely advertised it as an actual prequel to Breath of the Wild. The moment I found out the truth, I was extremely disappointed by the wasted opportunity, and upset because of the false advertising.

However, I can't list it here as an example of a game I wanted to like but couldn't, because I never actually played it. I got suspicious when I heard about the robot egg going back in time in the demo, so I waited until the game released and looked to see if it actually was a prequel to Breath of the Wild; when I found out the truth, I chose not to buy the game.

[Lord_Brand]

Chocobo GP, one of the worst racing games I've ever played.

For starters, there's of course the menu screen that you can't change, though that's far from the most egregious offense on my list.

The story cutscenes take far too freaking long to play out, and most of the characters are really annoying or otherwise unlikeable. Especially Atla. Seriously, who thought a greedy, lazy, cowardly, manipulative, disrespectful, self-absorbed Moogle with the voice of a 12-year old was a good idea?

Trying to replay story missions is a pain thanks to the lack of a very intuitive "Retry" button. If you want to restart the race - say, because you tried and failed yet again to place first on lap 1 - you can only "Go back to story select" or "Quit", which forces you to sit through a bunch more screens to replay the race with the same character/vehicle configuration you were already using.

Many of the tracks are far too short, which gives you hardly any time to catch up with your opponents if they get ahead. Even worse is when there are short versions of tracks, which take up space that really should have gone to additional tracks for the sake of variety.

The items are horribly imbalanced, with virtually no tiering based on position. Some are borderline useless, like Quake (except when they're being used against you, of course), others are ridiculously overpowered (like the aforementioned Bahamut and warp). Even worse are the character specials, which likewise range from useless (like Claire's invisibility) to infuriating (like Shiva's Diamond Dust).

I'm exceptionally disappointed. This looked like Mario Kart 8 just with Final Fantasy characters, but it turned out to be far, far less than that. Team Sonic Racing looks better than this, and I'm not even interested in that one with the vastly superior MK8D and CTRNF available. Worst game we ever bought for Switch. Do not recommend.

[Chaos Man]

Pokémon X/Y. Let's just say that I was ruined by Drayano's Pokémon ROM mods that I played prior to X and Y getting released. I have yet to also play any other unmodified Pokémon game released since then.

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, Chaos Man said:

Pokémon X/Y. Let's just say that I was ruined by Drayano's Pokémon ROM mods that I played prior to X and Y getting released. I have yet to also play any other unmodified Pokémon game released since then.

Same, honestly. Main series Pokemon offers little to me in terms of entertainment. It's all too samey, their attempts to vary it up just haven't scratched the right itch for me since I was a kid. Still like the battle system for Pokemon, but if I want to seriously play that I'll just play Pokemon showdown rather than spending countless hours trying to breed a pokemon with good IVs. X and Y at least made EVs visually clear to the player, shame they didn't go all the way and making IVs fully maniuplatable, they sort of almost went half way with by giving held items to the parent pokemon, but creating a perfect IV pokemon was still left completely up to chance. Not to mention the time it takes to train a pokemon to level 100.