Games you expected to like but didn't/liked but not as much as you thought you would

[henrymidfields]

Fite Emblem Shadow Dragon and Awakening: The former was only good for, you know, actually experiencing Marth's actual story instead of superficially fanboying/fangirling him in Smash Bros. I looked forward to it as a possible remaster, but it's dissapointing that they didn't even put Canto in, to say nothing of other standard features or even new dialogues. The latter I was a bit excited about, as it was my first FE that I could immediately buy in ages, but both the story and the game were unappealing.

Pokemon Black 1: This one's not entirely the fault of the game itself, but I would be lying if the Wi-Fi shutdown did not sour my experience with it. I picked this up right after finishing the main story of XY in December 2013, in order to experience the region and complete the regional dex - which became much more stressful after a real-life time limit was imposed. Who in their right mind would expect bloody Nintendo to throw me umder the bus when past external services/features were kept for much longer after the console's lifetime??? There may be other things that Nintendo dropped the ball, but this would possibly be the most infuriating.

Edited June 8, 2018 by henrymidfields

[MagicCanonBalls]

Baldur Gate 2. It's too big for me to handle and keep track of every members's feud and alignment. Control is clunky and too much random dialogue options. It's like I can be a nice guy in this sentence and then tell someone to shove it up their butt next sentence.  

Witcher 2- The combat throws me off. The story wasn't as interesting as people made it out to be. I also dislike one person adventure RPG.

Final Fantasy- See I am not sure why I keep playing any game in this series at all, even the spin off like tactic advance. I never finish any game in this series but still fascinated by the characters. 

FE4/5. 

[Caster]

Paper Mario Sticker Star: I was younger, and the surprisingly decent reviews of the game when it came out got me interested in it. Oh boy, was I wrong. This game... is an absolute mess. I absolutely hate this game. It has so many issues in it. There's no point to battling, half the bosses are awful to fight without a specific item that you won't know about prior to it, and then they're just a joke. There are minimal characters in the game, and it's just.. so bland. I will give it credit that the 2nd half of the game isn't as bad, and gets rid of a lot of issues i had with the first half, but the first half is just... such a slog, and it there's a huge decline in balance again once you get to the final boss, so... like... why bother.

Trails in the Sky: Many of my friends bugged me to play this game, so I decided to try it out once a friend gifted it to me. I... really... don't care. I'm sorry, I played a couple hours, and I already didn't like how this game was going to be playing out. I play many RPGs, and the combat in this... really doesn't interest me that much. I can't say the story interested me much either. World building is fine, but usually being someone very interested in seeing everything a game has to offer, I hate how so much happens regularly with every nearly every character in a town, I want to play the game, I don't want to spend all day talking to every NPC everytime I do something for more world building. It's too much, and I don't want to put up with it. And I actually do not care about every NPC's story in every town, I really... don't. I like a decent chunk of world building, but not too much. This game has too much for me to even want to get invested. And knowing a plot point that happens later in the game focusing around the 2 main characters, I really don't feel like slogging through a game I barely want to play in the first place, only to be greeted by one of my absolute most hated tropes in storytelling. So... I know a lot of people like these games, but I'll pass. I'm fine. I can live without it.

Tales of Xillia: Coming off the tail of playing a lot of other Tales of games, I got it as a gift and decided to start playing it... I just... don't really like it that much, I don't like, hate the game or anything. I think it's just... okay. It took me forever to even get back to playing the game.... ironically I went back to playing it after starting the SEQUEL, and enjoying that so much I wanted to finish off the rest of the story from the first.

[Armagon]

Gotta add another one

Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht. Yeah, it's pretty surprising that me, arguably one of the biggest Xeno fans on this site, isn't enjoying a Xeno game. Well, i am enjoying it but the one thing that's keeping me from enjoying the game to it's fullest is the fact that the music is basically non-existent. The music that is there is good but i've spent more time in the game without music than with it, which is shame.

Edited June 9, 2018 by Armagon

[Tamanoir]

On 07/06/2018 at 10:20 AM, Slumber said:

  Hide contents

The problem is that he makes EVERYTHING about himself.

Yes, I'm aware he's in a world that's not his own(Sort of). But his lack of understanding the world around him is more him absolutely ignoring things people keep telling him and less him being awestruck by a culture and lifestyle completely different from his own. Yeah, he eventually stops mentioning Sin and Zanarkand, but after how hours of everybody telling him to stop, and after how many blank/baffled stares? And them not explaining why things are bad isn't an excuse. Either Tidus is COMPLETELY socially/mentally inept, or they flat-out just don't have rules in dreamfart Zanarkand whatever fiction the Fayth conjured him to have. If you go to a new country, no matter how culturally foreign, and somebody tells you "Hey, don't pee on our sacred statues", you don't go to pee on the statues anyway because they never explain why peeing on sacred statues are bad. You won't do it because any well-adjusted human can step back and see "Oh, whoops. They clearly care deeply for these sacred statues". Tidus gets told to not pee on sacred statues and starts chewing diuretics. I've NEVER seen a character in a fish-out-of-water story like him, and that's not a good thing. Not being told to do something, and then doing it anyway because nobody explained why you shouldn't is something kids do when they think they're being clever.

And him being inconsiderate comes back to it all being about him. He's mad that nobody told him about what the pilgrimage meant, but after and before he can reconcile this, he's still acting more or less the same way. He might be a little more considerate towards Yuna, but other than that he's the same old Tidus for most of the game, pretty much right up until the very end. So again, I don't think him being kept in the dark about a key detail suddenly excuses or explains his inconsiderate/selfish nature. I'm not even really mad here that he brings the attention back to himself when he can, I'm more mad at the ways he does it. He's just such a prick about somethings, and he's a prick with a stupid grin on his face, thinking he's being nice.

And again, it's made worse because I don't think the writers thought they were writing a character like this. I think they were trying to make Tidus a genuinely nice character who did silly, out-of-character things sometimes because he's stupid. "Oh look at him, he's acting like a monkey and taking peoples' things while the people on the ship are on the look out for a world-ending catastrophe that could attack at any moment. What a guy!"

Outside of just the things he does, there are a bunch of things narratively that all add up and rub me the wrong way about Tidus. Like him ultimately being written as a tragic character.

 

Tidus being so self absorbed is also the main issuea big issue of the game for me. First of all, it's impossible to believe in the romance betwen Tidus and Yuna when you kow it's gonna fall apart as soon as things calm down.
...And obviously, in the end, he proves me right by totally disregarding her feeling, and being outright manipulative. (That's the point when I started really loathing him, instead of being simply bored and annoyed.)

 

[Rapier]

Oh yeah, I knew I was forgetting some.

The Witcher: The first game. It is clunky, the camera is terrible and seriously, what is that gameplay supposed to be.

Knights in the Nightmare: Again, what is that gameplay supposed to be? It's weird, the tutorial doesn't even teach you properly and it feels too complex for me to care about learning.

Castlevania - Lords of Shadow: It started fine, but soon became an uninspiring hack and slash that didn't decide if it wanted to be GoW or Shadow of the Colossus and ended up being something mediocre inbetween.

Mystery Chronicle - One Way Heroics: The first game was great, so I had high expectations for a One Way Heroics with overall better elements, except it feels bland compared to the first game (which I might as well be playing instead of this one).

[Hawkwing]

X-COM: UFO Defense: Although I haven't played the reboot yet, I have seen most of Zemalf's perfect playthrough of the game, and someday I want to try out it myself. For the time being, I was very excited when GOG added the original game to their library. I read through the manual before playing, and it did a good job at showing what you'll be getting into, and at setting the tone for the game. Then I actually played it and... sigh.

If I had to sum up most of the games problems in a single phrase, I would say it lacks convenience. And not in the kind where you have to go to an extra menu or two to do a simple action, or where it lacks modern day improvements. No, the game just plain doesn't tell you almost anything. You don't know how far your troops can move during combat, meaning you have to basically walk one or two steps every time just to make sure you don't accidentally put your soldiers in a bad spot. Some of the gameplay mechanics are reliant on percentages (and I'm not just talking about the chance to hit something), so good luck trying to find those out easily. The ambiguity of cover is a double-edged sword, and night missions can die in a fire. And I'm just talking about the ground combat. Good luck predicting ahead of time how much money it will take to build another base, or how far your radar coverage goes. And the sheer amount of logistics you have to be aware of is... sigh.

I really wanted to enjoy this game, but it's too archaic for my tastes.

That being said, I just received Xenonauts as a free gift from GOG, and it solves most (though not all) of the above problems. It's too early to say my opinion on it, but it's essentially what I wanted my first impression of X-COM to be.