What is your unpopular video game opinion?

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

8 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

Who? I didn't get very far in the game and I didn't learn the names of any of the characters. Plus, this was quite a few years ago.

The very first boss of the game, who can´t be skipped and you meet him in like 5-15 minutes depending on whether or not you explore the first zone if you can even call it that.

1 hour ago, Yexin said:

yes it does, and if your opinion is that it doesn't my only thought is that you put the controller down after like 2 hours of gameplay, or that you dragged yourself to the end of the game but felt unengaged after an initially negative impression and never changed your mind after that because your analytical capabilities were too clouded by those negative feelings to se Automata's merits

it may not be the best hack 'n slash game ever created and half of the side quests are trash gameplay-wise (the other half are really cool, like the puzzle one, the racing one and so on), but it just feels good when playing it, to the point you almost want to be as weak as possible so that battles last as much as possible, especially bosses; it's true that the game doesn't really reward you for being generally good at playing it, but there's a lot of variety in Automata that many other action games lack, and it's simply fun

Mhm, the N:A fan standard response: it either gets good later or you´re stoopid.

[Yexin]

10 minutes ago, Imuabicus said:

Mhm, the N:A fan standard response: it either gets good later or you´re stoopid.

nowhere in my comment did i say you're stupid, in fact i acknowledged that the game's first hours aren't actually good, that it has many flaws and that it's understandable if you felt like it wasn't worth you while

at the same time, though, it's not my problem if you didn't like it, nor is it my duty to make you appreciate it, and also me being an Automata fan doesn't mean i'm right and you're wrong in this discussion, it just means i know what i'm talking about, while you still refuse to elaborate on why is it that you think Automata's gameplay isn't good, so what i'm naturally inclined to believe is that you don't have enough informations to properly explain it (which is not necessarily a shame, mind you), hence my guesses on what your experience with Automata might have been

Edited October 26, 2022 by Yexin

[ping]

"Immersion" is overrated and overused as a talking point about games.

[vanguard333]

1 hour ago, Imuabicus said:

The very first boss of the game, who can´t be skipped and you meet him in like 5-15 minutes depending on whether or not you explore the first zone if you can even call it that.

Ah. He wasn't too bad if I remember correctly. He was a pain in that it took a lot of tries to beat him since I was a beginner and I was hesitant about dodge-rolling (I heard enough SoulsBorne fans say the way to win is to keep on rolling, so I wanted to see how far I could get without relying on it too much), but, after caving and relying on dodge-rolling, I was able to beat him, and then I got as far as the High Wall of Lothric before repeatedly running into dead ends and giving up.

That actually happened to me twice, as I tried Dark Souls 3 twice: the first time as a priest and the second time as a knight. I wasn't sure which class I wanted as my starting template and if I wanted to be a melee fighter or someone who relies on faith spells, so I thought I'd try both and see the difference. The answer was that, at least in the first parts of the game, it makes no difference at all (the priest has a healing spell, but that's balanced out by it using mana and the knight can just not carry mana potions and carry more healing potions instead). My experience against basic enemies was the same, my experience against the first boss was the same, and my experience on the High Wall of Lothric was the same: target enemy, roll when they attack, attack when they leave an opening. The fact that it didn't seem to matter whether I was a heavily-armoured knight or a priest really made me decide to give up completely.

Of course, it was only afterward that I found out that the first boss' second phase is weak to the firebombs that the player character gets just before the boss fight. In retrospect, I guess it makes sense, but that's as close as the game ever felt to being challenging or creative and not just technically difficult.

[Fabulously Olivier]

2 hours ago, ping said:

"Immersion" is overrated and overused as a talking point about games.

Yes and no, I think. I'm of the mind that if immersion makes a game worse (excessive fall damage, survival mechanics, weapon durability, etc.), it's not worth it. But blatant immersion breakers (real world holidays, modern clothing in fantasy games, shortbows that shoot neighing rainbow unicorns, etc.) are a pet peeve of mine.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

7 hours ago, Benice said:

I don't think the original Dark Souls is that hard, and I'm not entirely sure why it earned the notoriety it did for being the difficult game.

I'm gonna need to explain this one day to my grandkids, so let me get some practice in. By the PS3/Xbox 360 generation, games were generally more forgiving then what came before and after. Achievement data from 2006 had been showing developers the small percentage of players that actually make it to the end, or even past the first level. Heartbreaking stats that also corroborate the vastly increased budget spent on focus testing. Adjusting difficulty is a quicker fix than making your game obviously incredible from the moment you Press Start. Furthermore, autosaving had become so ubiquitous that nobody was expected to replay more than a minute or two of gameplay after most game overs. This came about because consoles have harddrives now that they can write to at all times without disrupting the game, and Halo was a big trendsetter for the feature. Dark Souls was notorious because it asked you to replay entire levels. Running from the bonfire to get your souls or reach the boss door. Why would they make you lose your souls? The fear of losing More Progress after a series of understandable mistakes was unheard of. Of course we know now you can run past the enemies, but not everybody had the prior gaming experience to think about it that way. They were used to enemies getting KOd with no resistance. Used to video games that lock the door in front of you, mandating that you beat them all.

What still makes DS1 unique among later games is its bonfires. Not being able to fast travel at the start, and not being able to fast travel to all of them. It's demonstrable fact that later Dark Souls games ask more of the player's reflexes and pattern recognition of its fights. But there's less of a run back. They cut out the part where players need to replay the level. If they really wanted to make the games more hostile, make it so retrieving your souls takes 3 seconds of un-interrupted channeling. Now you have to fight all the enemies in that room, and the enemies still chasing you. I'm glad they didn't go that route, and instead realized the Estus Flask was the better mechanic for building game difficulty around.

 

Edited October 26, 2022 by Zapp Branniglenn

[Fabulously Olivier]

11 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Furthermore, autosaving had become so ubiquitous that nobody was expected to replay more than a minute or two of gameplay after most game overs. This came about because consoles have harddrives now that they can write to at all times without disrupting the game, and Halo was a big trendsetter for the feature. 

Good. Games shouldn't be evil and monotonous for no reason, and no value comes from forcing players to replay long stretches of content.

Edited October 26, 2022 by Fabulously Olivier

[Florete]

8 hours ago, Sidereal Wraith said:

Maybe I’ve been stuck in the madness riddled Teehee thread for far too long trying to save the souls of those insane people using it, but from my experience on this forum people seem to like TMS # FE for some unknown reason.

There are obviously people who like it, and you're more likely to find them on a forum like this, but the game bombed each time it was released and people have been making fun of it since the first trailer.

1 hour ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

I'm gonna need to explain this one day to my grandkids, so let me get some practice in. By the PS3/Xbox 360 generation, games were generally more forgiving then what came before and after. Achievement data from 2006 had been showing developers the small percentage of players that actually make it to the end, or even past the first level. Heartbreaking stats that also corroborate the vastly increased budget spent on focus testing. Adjusting difficulty is a quicker fix than making your game obviously incredible from the moment you Press Start. Furthermore, autosaving had become so ubiquitous that nobody was expected to replay more than a minute or two of gameplay after most game overs. This came about because consoles have harddrives now that they can write to at all times without disrupting the game, and Halo was a big trendsetter for the feature. Dark Souls was notorious because it asked you to replay entire levels. Running from the bonfire to get your souls or reach the boss door. Why would they make you lose your souls? The fear of losing More Progress after a series of understandable mistakes was unheard of. Of course we know now you can run past the enemies, but not everybody had the prior gaming experience to think about it that way. They were used to enemies getting KOd with no resistance. Used to video games that lock the door in front of you, mandating that you beat them all.

What still makes DS1 unique among later games is its bonfires. Not being able to fast travel at the start, and not being able to fast travel to all of them. It's demonstrable fact that later Dark Souls games ask more of the player's reflexes and pattern recognition of its fights. But there's less of a run back. They cut out the part where players need to replay the level. If they really wanted to make the games more hostile, make it so retrieving your souls takes 3 seconds of un-interrupted channeling. Now you have to fight all the enemies in that room, and the enemies still chasing you. I'm glad they didn't go that route, and instead realized the Estus Flask was the better mechanic for building game difficulty around.

Keep in mind it was Demon's Souls that actually kicked all this off.

1 hour ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Good. Games shouldn't be evil and monotonous for no reason, and no value comes from forcing players to replay long stretches of content.

You can value what you do, and you can let others value what they do.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

Sorry for the weird format - I submitted before being done and couldn´t insert quotes.

@vanguard333

Spoiler

Spoiler

snip

Well, technically you can parry Iudex. If you start with a class that has the nessecary equipment.

On the one hand I wanna disagree with you, because the whole game is about observing the enemies moveset, but on the other hand once that´s done it´s just a rythmgame. And a lot of the time you play as an anklebiter against much larger guys - 1v1 with similar sized enemies are where the games is better, but then there is Sekiro which does that but better.

Stopping in Highwall of Lothric is like... 2% of the game XD

Somebody else would have to elaborate on the poise system in DS alltogether - to my understanding it has been changed in every game. Builds can take a while, though there´s at least 1-2 mods that make magic builds neat.

Spoiler

The fact that it didn't seem to matter whether I was a heavily-armoured knight or a priest really made me decide to give up completely.

Somebody else would have to elaborate on the poise system in DS alltogether - to my understanding it has been changed completely in every game. 

@Yexin

Spoiler

Spoiler

nowhere in my comment did i say you're stupid, in fact i acknowledged that the game's first hours aren't actually good, that it has many flaws and that it's understandable if you felt like it wasn't worth you while

at the same time, though, it's not my problem if you didn't like it, nor is it my duty to make you appreciate it, and also me being an Automata fan doesn't mean i'm right and you're wrong in this discussion, it just means i know what i'm talking about, while you still refuse to elaborate on why is it that you think Automata's gameplay isn't good, so what i'm naturally inclined to believe is that you don't have enough informations to properly explain it (which is not necessarily a shame, mind you), hence my guesses on what your experience with Automata might have been

I hit a nerve, didn´t I.

The reason why I didn´t remark anything in regards to N:A´s gameplay quality is because I don´t think it belongs here and it was the first time I´ve seen someone praise N:A gameplay, for the most part praised for it´s story? But yeah, my opinion of the game stems from playing through it, being entertained by it for the first few hours and then being... kinda surprised and disappointed that that was it, with a short lived period of "uh shiny" with hacking until it´s inclusion into near everything made it a bothersome intrusion.

Not to mention the fucking around with the camera. I can deal with a fucky camera, but intentionally locking me into certain views or angles... naw. The amusement park, with it´s quirky perspective changes, made me strongly consider quitting the game.

Edited October 26, 2022 by Imuabicus

[Zapp Branniglenn]

1 hour ago, Florete said:

Keep in mind it was Demon's Souls that actually kicked all this off.

If by kicking it off you mean From Soft's first Souls game, then you're actually looking at four Kings Field games before Demons Souls. But Dark Souls was the one that actually stuck. And even more specific than that I feel like the series didn't blow up until it released for PC with the Prepare to Die Edition. 

[Florete]

2 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

If by kicking it off you mean From Soft's first Souls game, then you're actually looking at four Kings Field games before Demons Souls. But Dark Souls was the one that actually stuck. And even more specific than that I feel like the series didn't blow up until it released for PC with the Prepare to Die Edition. 

I know of that series, but Demon's Souls is the game that first put From on the map. Demon's Souls came at a time when gamers were lamenting the lack of difficulty in modern games and massively overshot its estimated demand. Dark Souls is more like the Three Houses to Demon's Souls as Awakening.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

1 hour ago, Florete said:

I know of that series, but Demon's Souls is the game that first put From on the map. Demon's Souls came at a time when gamers were lamenting the lack of difficulty in modern games and massively overshot its estimated demand. Dark Souls is more like the Three Houses to Demon's Souls as Awakening.

Well the person I was responding to was specifically asking about Dark Souls, so you can sub in Demon Souls for 100% of what I said about the gaming zeitgeist of ~2010. But not the particular details involving bonfires and the estus flask. Those weren't in Demons Souls, just like Demons Souls' dodging and blocking weren't in Kings Field.

 

[Fabulously Olivier]

21 hours ago, Florete said:

You can value what you do, and you can let others value what they do.

Please get off your high horse, or also step in when some pos says it's good when my preferred playstyle is killed off in modern FE.

 

I'm all for hardcore modes in games, on that note. Like in Breath of the Wild. If people see value in that, there's nothing wrong with accomodating that. Games are better when players have more options. I'm genuinely supportive of games having the option to remove minimaps, HUD, quicksaves, etc., and even okay with having games being designed without these features in mind (with the option to add them in on top, mind you!) 

 

However, the design philosophies are otherwise mutually exclusive, and you should be perceptive enough to realize that. When not accomodating both as modes, adding more QoL inherently makes games less of that "hardcore" experience and removing the "hand-holding" inherently makes them less enjoyable to those who like the modern QoL. It is completely fair to not want to see the other approach become mainstream.

Edited October 27, 2022 by Fabulously Olivier

[Florete]

2 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Please get off your high horse, or also step in when some pos says it's good when my preferred playstyle is killed off in modern FE.

I'm all for hardcore modes in games, on that note. Like in Breath of the Wild. If people see value in that, there's nothing wrong with accomodating that. Games are better when players have more options. I'm genuinely supportive of games having the option to remove minimaps, HUD, quicksaves, etc., and even okay with having games being designed without these features in mind (with the option to add them in on top, mind you!) 

However, the design philosophies are otherwise mutually exclusive, and you should be perceptive enough to realize that. When not accomodating both as modes, adding more QoL inherently makes games less of that "hardcore" experience and removing the "hand-holding" inherently makes them less enjoyable to those who like the modern QoL. It is completely fair to not want to see the other approach become mainstream.

Calm down.

I don't disagree with any of this. You said, and I quote, "no value comes from forcing players to replay long stretches of content." But some people do value that. People value that in Souls games and people value that in Fire Emblem.

Quote

also step in when some pos says it's good when my preferred playstyle is killed off in modern FE.

Sure, I'll start following all your conversations to make sure I don't miss it.

[Fabulously Olivier]

2 minutes ago, Florete said:

I don't disagree with any of this. You said, and I quote, "no value comes from forcing players to replay long stretches of content." But some people do value that. People value that in Souls games and people value that in Fire Emblem.

Fine. I get it and apologize. I'm just tired of people modding me specifically over every little thing.

 

Anyway, for some more thoughts:

 

* Pokemon's decline in quality started with Gen 4, not Gen 5 or 6.

 

* Digimon games are just... not good. As a whole. Which is a shame since its anime is far better than Pokemon's.

 

* SRPGs and grid-based non-strategy JRPGs (ie: Trails, Monark) are uniquely unsuited to grinding due to the slow speed of gameplay.

 

* We earned bloated, mediocre games through our dollar/hour discourse.

 

* The Zero games were peak Megaman.

 

* Devil May Cry > anything Platinum's ever done.

[Fire Emblem Fan]

• I don't like The Witcher games at all. The characters are inconsistent and don't interest me, the storyline drags, and the gameplay feels monotonous.
• All those Skyrim mods aren't funny (with a couple exceptions) and don't make the game any better.
• I think the PS1 has a library that's possibly better than the PS2's. Obviously the tech improved, but I think "quality over quantity" was lost somewhere in there.
• Speaking of the PS2, I think the Jak & Daxtar series peaked with the first game. The second game has weird and inconsistent difficulty spikes and exploring the world doesn't feel very good. The third game is better than the second, but it doesn't feel as good to play as the first.
• I'm actually not 100% sure about this, but sometimes I think I like Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando more than Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal?

Edited October 27, 2022 by Fire Emblem Fan

[henrymidfields]

I have had a strong preference with the real-life based worldbuilding that Pokemon (or at least the Japanese original) started with, for example:

• Inazuma-American Lt Surge, or
• allusion to the real world and its events like the Columbia Shuttle.

It felt mostly unique for its time with the other RL-set game being the crazy-dark Shin Megami Tensei...which I only started getting interested enough to possibly overcome the grimdark setting and possibly purchase a game after knowing that for nearly two decades.

And I did not like how RSE ended up getting rid of this real-life based worldbuilding. I never understood why the real-life references and setting had to go out of the window and make the series feel...like generic modern. If they wanted to create a tropical region far away from Kanto or Johto, what eventually became Alola could have been the Gen 3 game. Or Guam-Saipan, or Brisbane-Sunshine Coast-Cairns in Queensland, Australia, all which were frequented by Japanese tourists (and migrants for Hawaii). Or even Florida thanks to Orlando and Disneyland being another fairly well-known destination for Japanese tourists. Even implying that Hoenn wasn't an isolated island but actually part of the Kanto-Johto mainlands would have been better.

Another thing I really didn't like was Unova's region design. I really had a hard time putting this into words, but I now understand why.

Because Earthbound, another game I played, did America better with Eagleland. Unova in BW1+2, on the other hand, felt like there were too many residue Japanese references (though later Gens still had them), like the Clerk NPCs when I could have seen lookalikes of that Wolf from Wall Street or that aspiring investor Eddie Murphy starred in Trading Places. Or Arceus forbid, the Kami Trio - fuck, I hated that so much, because they just looked out of place. Was there really nothing they could use from American folklore for at least one of the legendaries?? Like Bigfoot, or the Jersey Devil, Mothman, or King Kong??? Again, Earthbound had a number of enemies and other characters that referenced fairly common stuff we see in stereotypical Americana.

Or stuff looking too generic or otherwise out-of-place like the buildings in many cities in general and Castelia/Opelucid in particular when the former could have been the historical brick walkups with Art Deco and McKim-Mead-White-style highrises like Fourside or Ellay in the Earthbound series, and the latter could either be Old Town Philly vs Silicon Valley, and other towns resembling closer to Onett, Twoson, or many other places that resemble the Everytown, USA setting. Or even having Ghetsis as a career politician that carries out an insurrection a la the January 6 instead of some out-of-place Euro-monarch.

I can't believe it took all the way until XY to start having regions actually based on, and looking like, overseas, and starting to imply Gen 1-4 as what used to be recognized as Japan. It's for this reason why I have preferred Gens 1-2 and 6 onwards.

[3PercentCrit]

.

Edited October 28, 2022 by 3PercentCrit
Accidentally submitted it twice

[3PercentCrit]

Yes, I'm a little biased due to the fact I play way more FE than healthy for the average human, but Smash doesn't have too many Fire Emblem characters, but they have the wrong characters. Instead of another sword user (Which smash has a ton of) you could have someone like Hector, who could easily be a heavyweight with high attack, Ephraim, who could us a lance for reach and a javelin for ranged, or even someone less known from the series. But I guess there idea is that all the new lords use swords and everyone only knows the lords, hence why we have Marth, Roy, Lucina, Ike, Chrom, and Byleth, who all mainly use swords.

Three Houses, while being quite popular, wasn't worth the money I spent on it. I beat it twice, and both times I barely beat it due to how little I played the game, and I feel like there were a lot of things in the older games that weren't in Three Houses, and I prefer the art of more pixelated games like the GBA and even the FE4 and FE5 for the SNES, and the art of the 3DS games, with the pixelated map sprites. Some parts of the gameplay just threw me off a little, but I can't put my finger on what exactly. Finally, I feel like the story is quite lacking, and has a large amount of things that just don't make sense, and were just thrown into the game mid-production. I do like the anime-style of the cutscenes though.

Not my opinion, but an opinion I've heard. My uncle, the original owner of my GBA that I use for Fire Emblem, had gotten The Sacred Stones on his 3DS from some special promotion. He got it, played a little, and hated it. His preference is Advance Wars, which I never understood. Just the overall lack of value for the units always threw me off. But I mean, I guess it's just his preference.

Finally, Terraria is not simply 2D Minecraft. Terraria and Minecraft, while sounding similar when explained, are different in how they are developed.

[Lord_Brand]

42 minutes ago, 3PercentCrit said:

Yes, I'm a little biased due to the fact I play way more FE than healthy for the average human, but Smash doesn't have too many Fire Emblem characters, but they have the wrong characters. Instead of another sword user (Which smash has a ton of) you could have someone like Hector, who could easily be a heavyweight with high attack, Ephraim, who could us a lance for reach and a javelin for ranged, or even someone less known from the series. But I guess there idea is that all the new lords use swords and everyone only knows the lords, hence why we have Marth, Roy, Lucina, Ike, Chrom, and Byleth, who all mainly use swords.

However, Chrom and Lucina do have access to lances (via Great Lord and Cavalier), axes (via Great Knight), and bows (via Archer), so in my opinion their movesets should be changed to incorporate these as well. That at least would represent the various recurring weapon types in the Fire Emblem series. While we're at it, they could get unique costumes for their different classes as well: Lord, Great Lord, Cavalier, Paladin, Great Knight, Archer, Sniper, and Bow Knight. If we want to distinguish Lucina further, she could get costumes referencing her different possible mothers: Tactician (Robin), Pegasus Knight (Sumia), Cavalier (Sully), Troubadour (Maribelle), and Dancer (Olivia), leaving Archer as her other default class option and, let's say, Myrmidon as the second-most common class she can inherit after Pegasus Knight. Her specials could incorporate tomes and staves to reflect her expanded skillset and make her distinct from Chrom.

[Yexin]

On 10/26/2022 at 8:43 PM, Imuabicus said:

@Yexin

 

  Reveal hidden contents

  Reveal hidden contents

nowhere in my comment did i say you're stupid, in fact i acknowledged that the game's first hours aren't actually good, that it has many flaws and that it's understandable if you felt like it wasn't worth you while

at the same time, though, it's not my problem if you didn't like it, nor is it my duty to make you appreciate it, and also me being an Automata fan doesn't mean i'm right and you're wrong in this discussion, it just means i know what i'm talking about, while you still refuse to elaborate on why is it that you think Automata's gameplay isn't good, so what i'm naturally inclined to believe is that you don't have enough informations to properly explain it (which is not necessarily a shame, mind you), hence my guesses on what your experience with Automata might have been

I hit a nerve, didn´t I.

The reason why I didn´t remark anything in regards to N:A´s gameplay quality is because I don´t think it belongs here and it was the first time I´ve seen someone praise N:A gameplay, for the most part praised for it´s story? But yeah, my opinion of the game stems from playing through it, being entertained by it for the first few hours and then being... kinda surprised and disappointed that that was it, with a short lived period of "uh shiny" with hacking until it´s inclusion into near everything made it a bothersome intrusion.

Not to mention the fucking around with the camera. I can deal with a fucky camera, but intentionally locking me into certain views or angles... naw. The amusement park, with it´s quirky perspective changes, made me strongly consider quitting the game.

no really, you didn't hit any nerve, i just never got the chance to properly discuss about Automata and took this chance to do so (maybe a bit too aggressively, i'm sorry about that)

yeah, you might hear Automata being praised for the story more than for the gameplay, but that's because people are stupid and mistake "story" for "narrative and/or writing"
Automata's story is terrible and anyone that says otherwise is either delusional or doesn't know what the definition of "story" is

i actually loved how Automata forces you to play with certain camera angles, because i felt like they help make some areas unique (the castle's ruins is basically a metroidvania-like area), but i can definitely see how this might be a problem for some players

 

more potentially unpopular opinions:
- Bravely Second is literally Bravely Default but better, and i really don't get how japanese players disliked it so much to the point the developers thought about abandoning the series

- Inazuma Eleven GO isn't as bad as some people might remember, myself included

- Bloodborne isn't the best Fromsoftware soulslike game (still haven't played Sekiro and Demon's Souls)

- just like @Fabulously Olivier said, i liked Trails of Cold Steel 2 more than 3 as well

- unlike many, i liked Trails in the Sky the 3rd more than Trails in the Sky Second Chapter

- agreeing with @Benice, Dark Souls 1 is not that hard at all

[Fabulously Olivier]

^ I can see why you might prefer Sky 3C to Sky 2C. Most, myself included, prefer 2C for its incredible storytelling, but I found 3C's pacing and gameplay to be a lot more compelling.

 

It was nice having a Trails game that didn't make me consult a guide every 5 minutes out of fear of missing some obscure quest or item. It was also nice not being buried in 45 minutes of dialogue after every mission.

[vanguard333]

On 10/27/2022 at 2:08 PM, Fabulously Olivier said:

* Pokemon's decline in quality started with Gen 4, not Gen 5 or 6.

Gen 4 is my favourite, and I sort-of agree with this. If it weren't for Platinum, gen 4 would have been a weak gen (though still stronger than half the gens that have come after it). There were definitely signs in Diamond and Pearl that they hadn't been able to fully implement all their ideas as much as they would've liked in time for the finished game. The lack of fire and electric types, for example, while somewhat fitting that the region is based on Hokkaido, definitely stands out as more a product of an unrefined Pokedex than anything else given the presence of an electric gym leader and a fire elite four. The massive level gap between the last gym and the elite four also speaks to a lack of polish in places.

In short, while gen 4 was a great gen once everything about it was fully realized in Platinum, it definitely showed signs that, going forward, the games were not going to meet deadlines without making compromises to the finished product.

 

5 hours ago, henrymidfields said:

I have had a strong preference with the real-life based worldbuilding that Pokemon (or at least the Japanese original) started with, for example:

And I did not like how RSE ended up getting rid of this real-life based worldbuilding. I never understood why the real-life references and setting had to go out of the window and make the series feel...like generic modern. If they wanted to create a tropical region far away from Kanto or Johto, what eventually became Alola could have been the Gen 3 game. Or Guam-Saipan, or Brisbane-Sunshine Coast-Cairns in Queensland, Australia, all which were frequented by Japanese tourists (and migrants for Hawaii). Or even Florida thanks to Orlando and Disneyland being another fairly well-known destination for Japanese tourists. Even implying that Hoenn wasn't an isolated island but actually part of the Kanto-Johto mainlands would have been better.

I can't believe it took all the way until XY to start having regions actually based on, and looking like, overseas, and starting to imply Gen 1-4 as what used to be recognized as Japan. It's for this reason why I have preferred Gens 1-2 and 6 onwards.

All the Pokémon generations were based on real locations. Gens 1-4 were based on different parts of Japan:

• Gen 1 was based on the Kanto region, to the point where its name in the game is the Kanto region.
• Gen 2 was based on the Kansai and Tokei regions.
• Gen 3 (Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald) was based on the island of Kyushu: the southernmost of Japan's four main islands.
• Gen 4 was based on the island of Hokkaido: the northernmost of Japan's four main islands. Incidentally, the island of Hokkaido is also the setting of the anime Golden Kamuy.

I don't understand the complaints about gens 3 and 4 feeling like "generic modern" and not like real places; they were very clearly inspired by real locations and made a lot of references to those places.

 

On 10/27/2022 at 7:17 PM, Fire Emblem Fan said:

• I don't like The Witcher games at all. The characters are inconsistent and don't interest me, the storyline drags, and the gameplay feels monotonous.

I've only played The Witcher 3, but I largely agree. I really wanted to like the game, since I thought it had a lot of neat ideas, but I really didn't like a lot of the gameplay. In particular, I really didn't like the sword-combat. I'm not a fan of light-attack/heavy-attack systems, I don't like how much of it relies on numbers and levels (I'm playing as essentially an experienced hunter of monsters; shouldn't my approach to fighting rely on, well, hunting, rather than on making sure all my equipment is at a high enough level?)

 

[Fabulously Olivier]

Unpopularly positive opinion about a popular game - I like the Witcher 3's combat. I find it feels weighty and fluid, and there's just enough variety to keep engaging.

[vanguard333]

1 minute ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Unpopularly positive opinion about a popular game - I like the Witcher 3's combat. I find it feels weighty and fluid, and there's just enough variety to keep engaging.

The variety was definitely good: bombs, signs, potions and sword combat (and I'm sure I'm forgetting something) were interesting. One thing I enjoyed doing was using the bomb that freezes monsters, hitting said monster with a heavy attack to knock them to the ground, and then using the finishing attack to finish them off. It rendered a few different fights anti-climactic, but I thought it was a good reward for experimenting. Remembering which forms of combat was best-suited for different monsters was also good.

Perhaps my main problem with it, which is part of my main problem with the game as a whole, is that I think the game would actually have been far better if it didn't have a level-up system; if it wasn't nearly as dependent on numbers. There is nothing the level system does in the game that isn't already done by some other mechanic that better ties into the rest of the game's systems, and it actively brings down a lot of the game's systems: it discourages exploration, it discourages combat against anything that isn't at the player's exact level, and it clashes heavily with the idea that Geralt is an experienced protagonist, and this isn't the full list of problems that it causes.

I'm also just personally not a fan of light-&-heavy attack combat systems.