Personally there are a few games which left me very dissappointed, after hyping myself up for years in certain cases.
Divinity Original Sin: turns out I prefer more streamlined, less packed games (love Pillars of Eternity) and that coop play in a CRPG stresses me out.
Wasteland 2: I actually managed to finish this one but secretly I admit I was hoping for a better Fallout which I didn’t really get. New Vegas did the cowboy theme much better.
INSIDE: while the design was cool, it was just a ton of boring, easy puzzles in comparison to LIMBO, its predecessor.
RDR2, I eventually caved and bought it after months of friends telling me how good it is. But the movement and control scheme are just so bad it instantly ruined the game for me. Even qwop has better controls.
YES!
I’ve been a PC gamer for 25 years, and RDR2 is by far thebmost annoying control setup. Everything feels laggy due to the emphasis on fluid and realistic animations.
Plus it suffers feom the same issue as GTA5: “Press Key to progress story”. They both seem more like open world tech demos to me.
Good graphics, though. But graphics don’t matter if the gameplay is good.
Same here! It seems like a great game otherwise, but I just couldn’t get immersed in it because of the controls. Didn’t feel like I was playing as Arthur so much as watching him and hoping he’d do what I want.
That tops my list. I started out maybe 4 or 5 times and then decided I had better things to do with my time. Like housework or getting a root canal.
I think this was why I started playing it for a while but just dropped off and never went back. I was always fighting the controls.
If the controls are even remotely close to the first game (or GTA:IV) I totally understand what you mean.
Cyberpunk 2077 CD project red was the golden boy after Witcher 3 and the dlcs. They could do no wrong. Of course their next game was gonna be critically acclaimed GOAT right? Nope. Dumpster fire. Couldn’t play it for more than 30mins without it crashing. Unimmersive and confusing. That’s when I learned corporate greed has no limits
Honestly the worst about CP2077 wasn’t even the bugs. I also pre ordered it and while the performance was kinda shit and there was a bug or two, it was still playable. Yes we shouldn’t let it slip but unfortunately it’s also kind of the standard these days.
However the game was shallow af and not at all matching what we had been told for years. The whole, create your own story from scratch? Yea you choose some background option, have a 1 min cutscene and then that’s basically it. We had been told that would be hours of gameplay depending on the option and it was a short cutscene.
The whole city was supposed to feel completely alive and you were told that you would be able to do whatever you wanted. That wasn’t close to true either. Plenty of stuff like that.
Luckily I had bought it on GOG to support CDPR because I had loved the Witcher games. Was able to refund it entirely and never locked back. Not even looking to play it anytime soon and maybe ever.
I only played the beginning of the street kid and was so disappointed when the cutscene kicked in. Like that was it? 3 separate pathes that connect to themselves after what? Like 30 minutes? Was totally borked on Linux in the beginning anyways. I am waiting for the new patch. Hopefully this one is gonna be good
God I hope I don’t add starfield to this list!
It’s a modern bethesda title. Not to be pessimistic, but you should probably lower expectations for it. It has a high chance to be 1. Buggy. 2. Shallow and derivative in both mechanics and story. 3. Full of DLC and shady monetary models. Bethesda succumbed to corporate greed and formulaic design principles a long time ago.
See, that’s the part that baffles me about Starfield. I’m hyped as fuck for it, since a bethesda space game is exactly what I want (and let’s be honest, aside from the horse armor back in oblivion, their DLCs have been pretty solid with some misses)… but whenever I read people hype about it, it seems like they are expectont a completely different game, made by IDK, rockstar or something.
I don’t know, if I’m honest, if there is one AAA developer out there that makes games that will keep me engaged for at least a couple of hundred hours, it’s probably Bethesda. I think Starfield will be the same. Will there be bugs: yes. Will it be a variation on a well-known theme? Most definitely. Will it be less good than the hype: very likely. Will it be totally worth it nonetheless: probably yes.
I was hoping Cyberpunk 2077 would be an answer closer to Deus Ex than what we got with Deus Ex: Human Revolution. But the skill tree and upgrades weren’t doing it for me. Not to mention the game running like shit and being rushed out the door.
Still salty that we lost out on the conclusion of the DeusEx trilogy because Eidos Montreal ended up doing the Avengers game that no one even remembers or talks about now.
To me it was immersive af, except the Johnny Silverhand levels, even though I played on a weaker rig that I have currently and the framerate wasn’t great. What I did was focus on the story and largely ditch the open world aspect, since I hadn’t been fond of this type of games for some time anyway. I played it almost a year ago and don’t remember it notoriously crashing, or at all tbh, but maybe I was just lucky.
I’m very curious about Phantom Liberty, although being a patient gamer, I’ll probably wait a bit before buying it to see if it’s any good.
The Outer Worlds… Hyped so much for it… Even snorting through my nose at the outer wilds… Thinking they use to similar name just clicks
Now the outer wilds is one of my favorite games of all time. And the outer world is currently sat in my steam library with less than 10 hours. Just couldn’t engage me.
How did they manage to take many of the elements that could make a good game and just make it… forgettable? I played it to the end, because I like walking around shooting things. I think that is about it.
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Quite literally the best description of it. I enjoyed it. I played it through 1.5 times. I’ll probably never touch it again.
When the only thing I remember fondly of it is “It’s not the best choice… it’s spacer’s choice!”… eh. I think they tried to be Fallout in Space but failed because of imperfect mechanics and (of all things) not taking itself seriously enough. I’m waiting for slapstick when I see a brand advertised as “we suck, buy us”.
I can’t quite explain it either but it felt like the devs were totally unfamiliar with the engine and its capabilities. It felt like a very polished fanproject rather than a full fledged Obsidian title.
I’m not disappointed at the game but on myself.
I patiently waited for Elden Ring to go on sale, excited to play it. But the reality is i don’t have enought time to play.
So what happens is I die a few times, restart my progress, die a few more, then my IRL game time has ran out. And I’m still where I started, no progress made,.
If i consistently evade enemies just to get far on the map, then what I’ve done is stunt my character progression and just horse around the map. I mean that’s not playing, it’s being a tourist inside the game.
May I offer some unsolicited advice.
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Your damage output is as important if not more important than “getting gud”. The more damage you do, the fewer attacks you have to dodge. That’s kind of the secret to all these Souls games.
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Damage output and damage mitigation come from stacking many small, incremental bonuses. The most important upgrade for damage output is upgrading your weapon with ores. Pick one weapon (eg. Longsword) and invest all ores into it. Any weapon is viable for the whole game as long as you upgrade it. Don’t be afraid to commit ores into your chosen weapon as you will eventually have an unlimited supply.
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It’s possible to suicide-run into dangerous areas for powerful items since you don’t lose items upon death. You can collect mid and high-tier ores this way even at low level.
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It’s perfectly okay to farm exp from higher level, non-bosses. It’s low risk since you’ll be near a rest site. A good example is killing Vulgar Militiamen from the Farum Greatbridge site in the most northeast area of Caelid. You can horse yourself there ignoring everything. There are plenty of ideal spots that people have found, just look them up.
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If you’re still having trouble, do each step in the following video as you see fit. Notice that most of these improvements are obtained by acquiring items, and not obtained by leveling up. https://youtu.be/GYI5Z3jhKB4
Thank you so much! I’ll try this on my next play through.
Definitely! I truly believe Elden Ring is accessible, it’s just not immediately clear how.
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A lot of them you are meant to run past, you don’t get meaningful xp from mobs until you get to late game secret areas, early game just Google where dungeons are, ride torrent to them and kill bosses for levels
You mean, grinding on mobs won’t give me meaningful xp? So it’s the bosses that I need to kill.
Nah. There’s a middleground of things worth your time, that you can discover fairly easily.
When you’re getting 50 runes per enemy and you need 5,000 to level, run past em because you’ll soon find enemies that net you 2000 runes per kill. If you find an enemy that gives good runes, then consider grinding killing it.
Bosses give decent runes, but I don’t think they’ll float ya (and I hate that git gud shit. I suck bad and only barely squeaked by a win by getting absurdly overleveled with an OP weapon).
thanks for the tip! at least now I have a goal that’s not story dependent. I can get by that, setting a small goal for my limited time. and I believe achieving that personal goal will give me more satisfaction than finishing a part of a story in one run. because I expect to drag this game out as long as I can.
I’m not young anymore where finishing as many games as possible is the goal, I’m an old gamer where enjoyment of even a few intervals of play is sufficient.
Each enemy gives you a set amount of runes (souls) that you can use to level up, harder enemies give more.
More unsolicited advice. Consider an easy mode mod (if you have it for PC). There’s a few good ones that rebalance it to be a “normal” dodge-and-hit action game instead of a full on soulsborne. I also like a “keep runes on death” mod to take away that terror of actually leaving your little stomping grounds and exploring the beautiful world.
The game is so much more fun when it isn’t forcing “play it this way” down your throat.
Thank you for the advice, but my 9 year old son has now marked the computer as his territory and I’m now exiled to the Playstation.
Fair enough. There’s always Persona 5. It’s a lot less headache inducing.
Yes! , jrpg one of my “go to” genre 👍
I can agree wholeheartedly. I found Elden Ring to be a very boring game.
That’s not at all what they said lol
Eh…that’s what I heard. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I’m going to call it now and say Starfield…
That demo thing they did a while back looked pretty lack-luster.
“make any ship you can imagine” while they cycle through like 5 premades, 2 of which have the exact same cockpit…
Stiff character models again, too. The lead animator must be the bosses nephew or something.
Yep…
Fallout 4…
I was patient on it. Mostly involuntary, but patient still. It was incredibly disappointing. So many amazing features from 3 and NV was gone. Speech is a joke. So you want to agree, agree but be an ass about it, disagree, or disagree and be rude about it.
Those are your options in every single encounter.
It’s a good RPG game overall. Just not a good Fallout game.
I was coming to this thread to answer the same. New Vegas was probably my favorite game of all time, with it’s unique charm and creative blend of stories and character mechanics. I couldn’t make it past 5 or 6 hours of the FO4 (I really wanted to give it a chance), before I dropped it for good. Bethesda wanted to make an action shooter with a twist, and they did a good job of that, but it lacked the creative “it” factor that made me sink 600+ hours in NV across multiple playthroughs. Just talking about it makes me want to boot it back up right now!
Ironically, this is my “I don’t get why everyone is so disappointed in it” game. I have more played hours in Fallout 4 and Skyrim than I do any of the earlier games in either franchise. Don’t know why, and it’s not that I came into them recently. I have nostalgia for the others, but I just can’t be bothered playing spreadsheet simulator even against Mr. House.
With F4, I know I can dream a build and it happens, even if as I reach higher levels the builds start to blend a bit.
Also, I used to work in the Institute Building, which is placed on the squashed Boston map NOT at MIT, but at the office complex called the Arsenal.
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Sorry, between the wine and your reductionist overview I have to respond.
Unless you want to fondle their balls, lick their butthole, or just fuck off and 69 with yourself, agreeing or disagreeing are essentially the only options one is given in conversation. Or you could just listen and not reciprocate, but that’s not interactive.
If you want something deeper or more varied just hit up ChatGPT.
I played F3, NV and F4 and I don’t see anything so lacking in F4 that I have to return to the previous games. It definitely wasn’t limited to “I agree”, “I agree, you clod”, “I disagree”, “I disagree and you smell bad” as you seem to make it out to be.
Spore. 'nuff said.
Bro! We dont talk about spore…
Yo, that’s my childhood you’re shitting on, and I won’t take it.
You’re right though.
I pre-ordered that game 😞
The original Fable. I wasn’t yet aware of Moleyneux’s reputation as a liar and bought into all the neat shit that was supposed to be in the game. Like at one point he said you could cut a tree and then adventure for years in game and the scar would still be there. Outrageous to think now, but he also said there would be a dragon fight and even back then this wasn’t difficult to make happen, yet it didn’t even have a dragon.
Also Oblivion. I had found Morrowind and fell in love, went back and got Arena and Daggerfall and loved those, too. They talked about all kinds of things it would have and showed graphics that looked top tier in magazines during development. It came out and didn’t look as good, was majorly dumbed down compared to Morrowind, and had even more technical issues. It was disappointing, but it still turned out to be a fun game regardless.
I was getting pretty sick of the chicken chaser bs until I was doing battle with town guards for shits and giggles. I parried an attack and the game loaded a different zone and auto-saved over my file. There was no way to go back because manual saving and loading were not a feature of the game. It completely ruined the whole thing and I never returned.
I liked Oblivion but I loved Morrowind. The ui and controls were substandard but the atmosphere and pacing of that game were amazing. Oblivion was Bethesda’s turn to mainstream and love for money.
Elden Ring
It’s just Dark Souls 3.5. Which is not necessarily bad if you really liked DS3 and just want more of the same thing, but I considered DS3 by far the weakest in the series to begin with, and playing the Nioh series after it has opened my eyes to just how much room for improvement there is in the DS series as a whole. From Soft has basically followed the same path as Bethesda - they used to make varied games until one of them randomly became wildly successful, and from that point onward they haven’t had the balls to deviate from the winning formula and have just been remaking that same game over and over with a slightly different coat of paint each time. Which makes sense from a business point of view, I guess, but after this many repetitions, it’s become clear to me From Soft is totally creatively bankrupt. Hell, it’s been more than a decade since Demon’s Souls, and they still can’t even figure out a better counter to the “roll behind them and stab them in the butt” strategy than making enemy tracking ever more effective and their movements ever more spasmodic and unreadable in each subsequent game. The end result of this complete lack of willingness and/or ability to innovate is that despite being expertly crafted, Elden Ring feels very by-the-numbers and utterly soulless (if you’ll pardon the pun).
I often describe Elden Ring with the following sentence: “If you gave me this game with no title and told me it’s Dark Souls 4, I would have no reason to doubt you”.
It’s great for everyone that wanted more Dark Souls, and ER is arguably a good starting point for anyone that hasn’t played any of the Dark Souls, but it’s still Dark Souls. If someone had tried Dark Souls in the past and realized that they don’t like the game, I really wouldn’t expect Elden Ring changing that.
For me personally: Elden Ring is pretty much my favourite game of all time. I feel like it’s the “culmination of Dark Souls design”, and just happens to be exactly what I was personally looking for in DS games - but even with this in mind, I don’t feel the need of getting more of the same.
But hey, as for Fromsoft just doing the same thing over and over - Armored Core VI coming out next week, and that’s quite different. :D
Elden Ring is pretty much my favourite game of all time. I feel like it’s the “culmination of Dark Souls design”, and just happens to be exactly what I was personally looking for in DS games
I’d probably feel the same way if I hadn’t played a few other similar games while waiting for ER. Nioh and especially Nioh 2 showed me how much more Dark Souls could do. Their combat system is much richer and deeper, and I find it baffling that From Soft hasn’t tried copying even a few of their ideas. I hadn’t realized anything was missing from the Souls formula until I played them, but now I can’t unsee it. Maybe my expectations are excessive. From Soft seems incapable of copying even its own good ideas. Dark Souls 2 made quite a few good (if relatively minor) changes to the formula, all of which were erased the moment Miyazaki took back control of the series.
I also recently replayed Blade of Darkness, which I consider the forgotten true originator of the souls-like genre. Being more than twenty years old, it’s much simpler than its spiritual successors, but it showed me that Dark Souls also does a bunch of things it really doesn’t need to do, such as bullshit artificial difficulty. I used to think BoD was really hard back when I played it for the first time more than two decades ago, but after several thousand hours in Souls and Nioh, it feels easy. And you know what? That makes it great fun. Enemy attack patterns are quite basic and easily readable and predictable, there are no surprise ganks and no spoiler enemies (which is what I like to call annoying enemies specifically added in order to spoil what would otherwise be a fun combat encounter). Hell, there’s even friendly fire among enemies, so it’s much harder for them to gang up on you, and you get none of that toxic and abusive encounter design based around ranged enemies shooting you through melee ones that From Soft seems so very fond of. Nioh showed me what the Souls series is missing, and BoD reminded me that sometimes less really is more.
Seeing that ER is just more of the same has really sapped my motivation to play, and I haven’t gotten very far in it as a result. I’ll probably finish it someday, but I’m definitely not going into the NG+ cycle and PvP for hundreds of hours like I used to do with previous Souls games.
as for Fromsoft just doing the same thing over and over - Armored Core VI coming out next week, and that’s quite different. :D
Ah yes, the sixth game in a series. More than halfway to double digits. Such innovation. ;D
I do like Nioh, it’s always on my list of suggestions for people interested in that type of games. But I feel like it’s also quite a different game from Dark Souls - there’s room for both in the market, and I enjoy both for different reasons. While similar, Nioh’s combat feels more like a fast-paced arcade-y brawler, while DS feels slower and more methodical. Personally I can’t really say one is better than the other, since I just enjoy both of them - but they’re different enough that it’s clear that some players will prefer one over the other.
Outside of combat, I again feel like DS is a bit “slower”, I spend more time just exploring and wondering where to go next, etc. Nioh areas and levels are (usually) a bit more straightforward and faster to progress due to its mission structure. Storytelling format is also really different. But again, I just enjoy both of them for different reasons.
Especially during New Game+ rounds 2 to 5, Nioh also gets much deeper in the gear minmaxing department compared to DS - I’ve 100%d all DLCs in both Niohs. The gearing system in Nioh is also made in such a way that sometimes it’s useful to just go farm the same bosses over and over - this is something that doesn’t really exist in DS. Then there’s even the infinite boss arena mode. I personally often think about Nioh as “a game with DS-style combat design, Diablo-style progression”. I love the end result.
As far as I know, they’re planning to do similar DLC content in Wo Long too (new round of NG+ per DLC), and I’m waiting until they release all DLCs so I can go complete those too.
Blade of Darkness has been on my to-do list for quite a long time now, I really should get into it some day. :D
I was originally about to mention Fromsoft also creating Sekiro and Bloodborne in between Dark Souls sequels, but I guess it can be argued they’re all just the same with different skin. AC is at least completely different. Personally I have no issues with game devs finding what they do best and just keep doing it with only minor improvements - as a player, I can just choose to play games from different devs anyway.
I think the combat speed is probably the most noticeable difference between DS and Nioh, and I’d probably prefer some middle ground between the two, but IMO it’s far from the most interesting or impactful one. For example, I love the sheer variety of attacks in Nioh and the emphasis on special moves. In Dark Souls, you mostly just spam the same basic attack over and over. Nioh gives you three stances to switch between (a system copied from the old Jedi Knight games, btw.) and a bevy of special attacks that you can learn. And I love that those special moves aren’t tied to specific weapons but rather to your character and those three stances, so your moveset is not only much larger than in DS but also customizable. And I do think this is straight-up better than DS, because it’s not just a difference, it’s an addition. All that complexity and depth is there for you to explore if you want to, but you don’t have to. If you wanted to, you could play Nioh like Souls and just use the basic medium attack. The reverse is not true, you can’t play Souls like Nioh.
Another interesting difference is that Nioh lets you put pressure on enemies in ways that DS disallows. In DS, when an enemy’s stamina is depleted and their guard broken, you’re given the opportunity to do a finisher. But regardless of whether or not you take it, they regain their stamina and the fight basically resets, forcing you to dodge the enemy’s attacks and chip away at them again. That can also happen in Nioh, but you can also choose to forego the finisher and keep the pressure up instead with a zero-ki combo. Attacking an exhausted enemy again will knock them on the ground, opening them up to a different type of finisher, but you can also still attack them normally (probably requiring a stance switch) in order to force them to stand back up without giving them the opportunity to regain their ki/stamina. At the same time, you can use well-timed ki pulses to replenish your own stamina, so if you have the timing down, you can keep an enemy stunlocked pretty much indefinitely. And you can even do this to bosses. Dark Souls doesn’t allow you to keep the upper hand in a fight, it goes so far as to give the enemy several seconds of invincibility after a finisher in order to reset the fight. Nioh isn’t like that, it does let you keep the upper hand and really exploit it if you know what you’re doing. And once again it’s not a difference, it’s an addition. That basic DS cycle of “dodge enemy attack, break their guard, do a finisher, rinse and repeat” is present in Nioh too, but whereas in DS it’s the end point and the pinnacle of player skill (because they game doesn’t allow you to do anything else), in Nioh it’s the start. It’s what newbies do. Over time you learn to dominate enemies in far more effective ways, and it feels oh so much more satisfying than anything Souls can offer.
In short, I think Nioh is just a straight upgrade to Souls in terms of gameplay. Souls starts you off as a weak little hollow, and you fight like one. That’s all well and good, but you never move beyond that, you’re always the one under pressure even after you’ve absorbed the souls of lords and acquired legendary weapons. That slow, methodical combat is also present in Nioh, but it’s an early-game element, it’s something for you to grow out of as you upgrade your character and improve your own skills as a player. That late-game fast-paced brawling action is no less skill-based, mind you, I’d even argue it requires way more skill than Souls. But it also rewards you for your skill way more than Souls ever does.
I could list Wo Long right alongside Elden Ring as a game I found disappointing. It doesn’t seem to have been very well received in general, and I stopped playing at the first boss. I could write a whole other diatribe about how the tutorial bosses in From Soft games become more and more unfair bullshit over time, and to my dismay the first boss of Wo Long is basically Iudex Gundyr, whom I absolutely despise. In other words, he’s a fairly easy humanoid boss with clearly telegraphed attacks in his first phase, but in his second phase he turns into a mutated shapeless blob that spazzes the fuck out all over the place in ways specifically designed to kill you because you can’t tell WTF he’s even doing. You know the saying “when people show you who they are, believe them”? When Team Ninja showed me they were doing a Dark Souls 3, I believed them and lost all interest in playing further.
Sekiro and Bloodborne are interesting, since they’re variations on the formula that show that From Soft is actually capable of trying new things. It’s just a shame that, as with DS2, basically none of the improvements they pioneered were carried forward to Elden Ring (such as showing you the enemy stamina bar, which is also something Nioh does). Pretty much their only legacy is the replacement of poise with hyperarmor, which I consider a detriment. In Nioh, stunlocking an enemy is possible but requires a lot of game knowledge and practice to get the timing right. In From Soft games since Bloodborne, stunlocking an enemy requires nothing more than hitting them before they hit you, at which point you’re free to keep swinging for as long as your stamina lasts. That’s just dumb and boring.
As for farming a specific spot over and over, that is absolutely something that exists in Souls. It’s usually not a boss, since most of the games don’t let you easily respawn bosses (DS2 being the exception, with the Giant Lord specifically designed to be farmed), but farming for souls and/or upgrade materials has been a staple of the series since its inception.
If you do play Blade of Darkness, temper your expectations. I love it because of massive nostalgia, but it was clunky as hell even by the standards of its day. There are good reasons it wasn’t a commercial success.
Mirror´s Edge. 9/10 on Steam. I bought it during the last sales. The gameplay is playing again and again and again the difficult jumps until you make it. It’s boring.
I recently replayed that game after 10+ years. I think I could count the number of difficult jumps that required more than two attempts on one hand. The game is like $1-2 on a sale and you can beat it in 3 or 4 hours. I thought it was fun, but I could see how it would be disappointing if your expectations were higher than minimal.
Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst was much better IMO. Actual story. Decent characters. Free roam. Side quests.
ME has some cool first few levels, and then it barely evolves from that.
Yeah initially it felt really cool, but got old really fast. It just felt like doing the same thing over and over again.
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I was in it for the parkour; I didn’t really like the combat and kept being forced to fight people.
Part of the charm of the game was to make its combat unwieldy to push people into parkour-ing past/out of each encounter. The whole game was made so that you could finish it without ever picking up a gun.
It sounds like you didn’t get far enough to learn this.
There was one fight against a boss that was a huge pain in the ass because he tackles you just as you exit a door to the roof and if you don’t use the right maneuver, blam! you have to restart and listen to his monologue. Again and again and again. Dear gods, it was so bad it’s actually the only thing I remember from the game.
Which is a damn shame because it really was revolutionary, the architecture is fantastic, and the parkour is flawless. Even the “you don’t have to fight” thing was genuine! I literally did not fight a single guy… until that damn roof, where I suddenly had to learn the parry maneuver the hard way. Shame.Well… the game is designed so that
- Combat is optional
And
- Combat is so hard you’re more likely to do the parkour thing that you’re supposed to be doing anyways.
I agree, ME wasn’t for me either.
When I finally played Red Dead Redemption 2. I usually don’t play this type of big budget game, but my friends loved it and kept talking it up. I waited for years for a steam sale until it was finally about $20. Also, I loved outlaws (1997) and was pretty keen for another cowboy game.
An hour of listening to guys walk through the snow and I was out.
I finished the prologue because I was told the prologue is slow. But the whole game is slow. I think people just get used to it. But I couldn’t. It’s too slow. I was chasing a bear and I was so bored that I put it down and never touched it again.
People complain about slow games?? I love that in not just rushing from A to B and to do stuff in the open world
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This resonated with me. The prolog is so long I didn’t finish either. I also tried Red Dead Online which was quicker to getting to the action, but just didn’t take with me.
The Elder Scrolls IV - Oblivion is probably my best answer. Remains the only modern Elder Scrolls that I’ve only played through once with no desire to return to. Feels clunky and sluggish, the world is washed out and bland, the enemy scaling is a slog, itemization is not interesting or impactful, the UI is uncomfortable, etc. While it does a lot of things better than Skyrim, I just can’t bring myself to enjoy the experience like I did Morrowind, and I admit I’ve sunk far more hours into Skyrim as well.
This one is wild to me. Oblivion very well be my favorite game of all time. I love the world it is set in so much. Skyrim is actually my answer for this question because I was expecting the game to to be as good as Oblivion.
I was going to say the same thing. I’ve still only played Skyrim once, but I’ve played through oblivion at least a few times. I played through Morrowind even more, but oblivion surpasses Skyrim without question for me.
I can’t go back to older ES games. The levelling system is just too much boring work for me. I have been a tES fan since the early 90’s when I got Arena, but Skyrim is the only one I’ll pick up anymore. I’d love to do another Morrowind playthrough with Skyrim’s systems (and I hear there’s a mod out for that, but I’ve never dug into it)
There’s a mod for it, but i never add it to the manager when I replay Morrowind. Maybe because I only played it once, I can’t even remember the difference in the leveling. What did they change in Skyrim?
Levelling and skills are dramatically simpler in Skyrim than in previous titles. The Elder Scrolls games and Fallout games generally have a middlegame where mislevelling can lead to you being dramatically underpowered. It’s still hypothetically possible in Skyrim, but a lot less so because it’s easier to just not screw up a build.
Others here call it “watered down”. I guess it technically is.
I’m sorry for asking, and I’ll look it up if you don’t want to explain it here, but can you give me just an example of the gameplay experience of what you’re talking about? Just elder scrolls to elder scrolls player.
I’m sure it is there, I’m just curious because I didn’t notice it when I was playing Skyrim, but like I said, I only played it once.
And I think that was about the time they stopped providing user manuals which i always read before games so I don’t even know if I got to read the skill tree.
Dude I remember when Morrowind came out, I read that pamphlet like a tome multiple times.
With Skyrim I don’t remember anything except running from dragon to dragon, then killing the main dragon and then I couldn’t believe the game was over so quickly, and I thought it was like a false ending, but it wasn’t.
And there was a really cool laboratory on a mountain near the wizard school that was very versatile but didn’t actually matter but I felt like it should have played some part in the main storyline.
Yeah as you can tell, sorry, my memories aren’t super strong of that game.
Sure.
Oblivion is a great example. In Oblivion, skills level similarly to Skryim (with use). Unlike Oblivion, a lot of skills do not provide survival value as feedback. Simply “living your best life” often leads you to have a master of Acrobatics and Atheletics. You run and jump too much, you end up finding enemies are outpacing you because they scale from you running and jumping too much.
This exists to a lesser extent in Skyrim. The difference? Feats. Your feats improve your build focus in two ways. They’re virtually ALL good even if you only dabble in your skill of choice. And they create a pressure to focus on a skill to reach the feat. Yeah, you could blow 10 levels in heavy armor and then run around naked, but dead builds are a bit more contrived.
But then, there’s part 2. In Oblivion, the skills drive your attribute gains. When you level, you pick an attribute to gain, but how much you gain is based on how many skill points you spent. If you overblow a level, you will find you have to choose between 2 or 2 maxed +5 (I think +5 was max), and then in future levels you will have fewer increased +x options. It’s a great little spreadsheet game to be “better”, but if you screw it up, you feel it.
Actually, check out “the Leveling Problem”
Ditto in a way with Morrowind. I had to google to remind myself. Morrowind is similar to Oblivion, but still had more “firm” classes. How you level and train will still affect whether your attributes are good or shit, even if you end up levelling basically the same skills with basically the same overall attribute goals.
In both, you are heavily disincentivized from organic leveling because “some of this, some of that” gives you a net lower attribute gain. And level after level, you start to feel it.
Yeah, I realize it’s an insanely unpopular opinion. Oblivion, on paper, is an objectively better RPG that is truer to the Elder Scrolls formula than Skyrim, but I just don’t know, man. I’ve always had great difficulty liking it and tend to come up with nothing but gripes. I will give it another honest shot if this remake I’ve heard wind of ever comes to fruition. I owe it that much.
To each their own, obviously. Some games just don’t click for some people.
Oblivion, on paper, is an objectively better RPG that is truer to the Elder Scrolls formula than Skyrim
Hard disagree on that one. It’s truer to the Morrowind formula, but Morrowind itself was a radical departure from the previous TES games’ design philosophy. And I despise Oblivion precisely because of that, because it slavishly apes Morrowind’s formula without really understanding what made it tick. I’ll spare you the diatribe. Morrowind was a great triumph but also a turning point for Bethesda. Up until that point, they used to make varied games. Ever since they found success with Morrowind, they’ve stopped trying to innovate and improve and have just been remaking the same game over and over with a slightly different coat of paint each time.
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You ain’t the only one. To this day, it’s the only proper Elder Scrolls game I have not completed. I’ve even beaten Arena.
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. It was so tedious to get through the opening area that by the time I got to the first dungeon I was getting tired of it. It did get better after that dungeon and the game opened up a lot more, but it one of my least favorite Zelda games.
I had forgotten how long the twilight princess opening is until I read your comment. I’ve played pretty much every Zelda game there is and tp is my favorite of all the 3D games, but man can that first part of the game be slow.
I’m playing Skyward Sword and the beginning also felt quite long. I just finished the first dungeon, which is way better than anything Breath of the Wild offered, so I’ll forgive the initial slow pacing.
Skyward Sword’s 1st dungeon is the one dungeon I think of when I try to discern what “atmospheric” means.
Overall TP is a superior game to SS imo. But I played the original version of each; I hear SS had some big issues addressed in the port.
Yeah, the first dungeon really feels like a nod to older games, while also showing that it’s something else entirely. It’s also interesting that it’s a “water temple,” but not really. Everything in the game screams that it’s a Zelda game, but different, and it fits really well.
So far it’s not my favorite, but it feels really good coming from Breath of the Wild.
I’m still probably going to prefer ALttP, Minish Cap, OoT, and TLoZ, but I’m glad SS exists. Now I need to pay the rest of the GC and Wii games.
My problem with Skyward Sword from what I remember was that each enemy needed to be hit in a different specific way, so each individual enemy was a mini puzzle in itself. At the time I wasn’t interested in something like that and I missed being able to just run up to a few baddies and slash through them. Plus, I didn’t have enough room to properly use the wii mote plus and it kept desyncing every minute. I should give the remake a try.
I like it so far, though the “hit enemies a specific way” is still kind of annoying. But it’s a unique mechanic and doesn’t feel overused, and there aren’t a ton of enemies (at least not yet).
I’m using the joystick, so the movements are pretty quick to do. But attacking in a specific way is very much a large part of the game.
For me it’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. After Breath of the Wild I was super hyped for a successor. When they announced they were gonna reuse the same exact game world I was a bit worried but thought it could work if they do it well.
Well here we are with like 90% of the content being reused. The gameplay is more interesting than Breath of the Wild and the dungeons are better and so is the story. But my main draw for Breath of the Wild was exploring the world. All this fun is missing in TOTK. The new parts of the world like the sky and underground are pretty bland and not quite as much fun to explore as an entirely new game world would be.
I really wonder what it is about TotK that makes for such wildly different opinions. Everything about TotK was a vast improvement over BotW for me. Up to and especially including revisiting the same locations to see how they’ve changed and exploring all 3 levels of the map to their fullest extent. I stopped playing BotW the moment I beat it after ~90 hours of play time. But I’ve continued to return to TotK nearly 300 hours in now, after beating it in about the same 90 hours originally. It’s just endlessly interesting wandering and getting sidetracked and finding / figuring out side quests.
I have a couple friends who beat it for the sake of beating the next Zelda game but the majority of my small circle continues to play, some even putting off beating it just to explore more. It’s very interesting seeing such different approaches, hearing what people focused on and how they tackled the openness. I’m not sure I witnessed the same phenomenon with games like Skyrim. Something about this one feels different at least. Hard to describe.
I think what confuses me most is that the majority of posts knocking TotK say things like “it’s exactly the same as BotW” or say it’s using the “exact same map”.
Having poured over 100 hours into each I just don’t understand this take. It’s objectively untrue. Yes, the core topical map is largely the same, but the content of it is extremely different. Having put so much time into BotW I’ve been very surprised at how few things are the same and like you have enjoyed seeing what has changed and where.
And that is to say nothing of the sky or the depths. The sky is somewhat limited but has such a sense of verticality and focus on flight that BotW didn’t have. The depths are gargantuan and chock full of things to explore, including some fun ties to the upper world if you can find them.
I’ve also found the enemies to be more varied, and more difficult to defeat across the board. This has been a fun challenge for me as well.
So yeah. I don’t know. It’s just a much, much larger game. If people simply don’t like it, or played BotW too recently for the core mechanics to feel fresh, then I kinda get it. Similarly if you are more into discovering more and more map and don’t care what’s in the map, then I can see how it could be a bit boring also. And overall maybe the open world style just isn’t for you. Fair.
But I don’t understand the criticisms I see most often about limited new content vs BotW because that is just very untrue.
Personally, a lot of the “content” in totk feels like busywork for me. With botw I didn’t know that to expect so I was willing to explore. But now, I know there’s only so many things I can find - a shrine or a korok seed. Totk just adds more of those tiny rewards (like bubblefrogs) and it just doesn’t feel worth it. At best, you sometimes get an armor piece but I barely even used any of those. There was one interesting side quest I found on the great plateau and I kept wondering what I would find, and it was just a heart container.
If any of the exploration lead to something other than a marginal reward, I think I’d enjoy my time a lot more. Maybe it’s just because I played outer wilds between the games, and find story to be a much more interesting thing to find than an item.
Lmao, thank you. I said this yesterday and had people screaming at me. It’s a glorified standalone expansion. I thought the game was really good overall, but the fact that it was so similar to BotW really detracted from how good it was. If BotW didn’t exist and it was only TotK, it would have easily been a 9.5/10. But the fact that I had literally just played BotW made it feel more like a 6/10.
While I am currently enjoying the hell out of this game, I don’t know why it took 6(?) years for this to come out. The sky stuff isnt that expansive, the depths are pretty basic, and the main world isn’t changed all that much.
After about 50 hours I realized that I was only going to play this game once, so I better try and get the most out of it.
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The irony of complaining about lack of fast travel on patient gamers is great.
RDR2 is pretty much my all time fave because of story/character but I never liked hunting and never felt the need to do any of the myriad achievements. I really enjoyed the slow pace of the game, so often the main story feels so urgent it is totally immersion breaking to do anything other than immediately pursue your next quest objective. By contrast RDR2 there were breaks in the story that felt natural to chill in camp or explore randomly or side quest or whatever.
