Hard, because I have many favourite games.
Uh... Shit.
Can you just choose one for me to dunk on?
Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.
3rd International Volunteer Brigade (Hexbear gaming discord)
Rules
Hard, because I have many favourite games.
Uh... Shit.
Can you just choose one for me to dunk on?
Tf2: remove sniper. Game should have been updated to source 2 for better mod support and mod accessibility. Removing quick play was bad. There should be a way do see other people's sprays. Let people be exposed to horrible sprays, could not be worse than all the bots. Removing speech from f2p is bad. I am not paying for that shit.
The price model in Victoria 3 is shit. They should have used labour theory of value instead.
Path of Exile is ubermensch slop with the same morals as gambo or whatever name UlyssesT had for GoT.
Gambo was originally a bit from IIRC.
Monster Sanctuary runs into the same problem too many metroidvanias run into, where a ton of secrets aren't really "hidden" it's more just "come back with the right ability" so there's relatively little actual problem solving and more "this is arbitrarily locked until you get the right monster." Also the character writing sucks and the plot is very meh, they fall into the trap of assuming "cool lore = cool story."
Xenoblade Chronicles: 1 and 2 are very hard to play after all the QOL in 3/FR (auto pick up items, for instance). I hope they make X DE have all the QOL stuff from 3.
Monhun: archdemon mode being weaker than demon mode made no sense
Oh yeah, Xenoblade, let me piggyback off that.
1 is very very good, best story, but there's a bit of a plot lull in the midpoints of each of the Titans that can feel like I'm going through the motions. Due to how extensive the areas are, it exacerbates the needed downtime a bit far for my liking. As well, too many placeholder quests that just serve as padding/easy XP. Also, if I have to look for Black Liver Beans again, I'm reaching through the screen and killing Juju myself.
2 has my favorite combat (I miss step-cancelling ;–;). However, even though I do genuinely like the story and characters–I'd die for Nia–it's hard not to cringe recommending it to other people, especially people who aren't desensitized to animeisms. A lot of moments that feel like they're there to hit quota, a lot of things I think just feel awkward. Some of the character designs are just straight-up egregious (my go-to on this is Dahlia) and it sometimes has the aura of "we were making a gacha game specifically for that demographic but then Nintendo told us to remove the monetization so we just nixed that specifically." I love this game but with a large asterisk on it.
3 is rather polished gameplay-wise and probably my favorite in sum but it's a bit all-over-the-place due to having to accommodate both returning and new players from the outset in the story. It's the most disjointed feeling one for me, feels like it kinda scrambled to tie up a lot of ends. It's still a good story, It just doesn't have the unfettered cohesiveness of, say, 1. Best main party overall in the series though, IMO. Named my cat Mio.
The blades in 2 are also an absolute mess artstyle-wise because of all the different artists involved and there are so many annoying mechanics. I have to figure out what a blade's favorite food is to get the field skill I need? Fuck off.
Affinity in 2 is a general mess and annoying to parse. Doesn't help that you have to actually go to the screen to unlock the new nodes and start progress on the next level (from scratch, IIRC, because fuck you for assuming its a passive unlock)
Also, Ursula's blade quest, extremely tedious. so many fucking merc missions. stop
also I pulled everyone but KOS-MOS
Have you played X though? I will admit a lot of it is lost in haze for me because of a particularly rough mental health episode right after I finished it, but I remember a lot of it being great (it was actually my first Xenoblade game).
The anime-isms of 2 began in X, though it was tempered by the setting some. Also, getting the mech is one of the top gaming moments. Elma is a great character, and the recruitable characters are cool too. Very neat story too, though it lacks a lot of the QOL from 2 and 3.
If you haven't, the remaster comes out next month and you should give it a shot (though I don't know if I'll be getting it right away... Monhun coming out)
Never had a Wii U, pre-ordered X DE! v excited since they kept talking like it'd never be ported because the codebase was apparently switch-hostile
So my other critique of X: the soundtrack truly slaps (early Sawano work), but only having 2 tracks for the main city (day/night) when you spend most of your time there (versus say, 3 where you're splitting time between a LOT of colonies) was a huge mistake.
If they haven't changed it, get ready for the NLA theme to haunt your dreams.
In Tales of Symphonia backtracking to collect the summons with Sheena doesn't add much to the narrative and only serves to take time.
The player base is trash. Self included
lost izalith is not a very good area
Reforger doesn't seem to have very strong moderation, it's all too easy to run into random racists. Squad on the other hand does a surprisingly good job with this, but it doesn't have that same level of realism.
I hate how in Darkest Dungeon there's moves than lower the enemy's dodge, but if their dodge is high enough they'll just dodge the debuff attempt. They also could have used a few more Healbot items. Up until the Crimson Court DLC, the Vestal was one of the only reliable healers. And I say this as someone who ran a lot of teams that were just 3 tanks and Arbalest.
Cassette Beasts maybe needed a couple more quests to hide the grind, but they did a good job at hiding the grindy elements otherwise.
Stalker sucks. You die in one hit, the game bugs the fuck out (especiallu vanilla clear sky), and the storyline isnt really anything special.
Night Striker relies too hard on the homing missiles as a source of difficulty in the later stages.