games

Fire Emblem: Three Houses: Manages to feel like one of the most packed Fire Emblem games while also feeling incomplete. It has 4 routes, but the first half of the game feels very similar in all routes, and two of the routes are also very similar in the second half. Master Classes are horrible, as are gendered classes. The game should have done Divine Pulse via save points instead of a turnwheel, and should have left the weapon triangle in the game. The graphics/animations are not great, and considering what they did with Shadows of Valentia it's shocking how a switch game feels like a downgrade compared to a 3DS game. Last thing I'll mention is Byleth and queer representation. Should have been more queer people in the game, and while Three Houses is better than the rest of the avatar characters in terms of characters being avatarsexual, it's still present. I feel like the game would have been better if Female Byleth were the only Byleth (I do not like Male Byleth), could not have her name changed, and was made more of her own character who's one of the co-protagonists to the other 3 protagonists (depending on route choice), rather than being a (not so great) stand-in for the player. Also the story, while pretty good, leaves things to be desired (they did Edelgard DIRTY).

Tears of the Kingdom: "Demon King? Secret Stone?"

This was not a well-researched post, and I'm not going to try to make one. I haven't played through either of these games too recently, I could be forgetting things or misremembering things.

FFXIV has too little content being released once you actually get through everything they made in the last decade.

Ocarina of Time was TOO perfect and ahead of it's time, so the water temple was very difficult on the low resolution CRT screens that was the technology at the time.

Rimworld encourages you to perform Eugenics on any undesirable colonists, especially with the biotech DLC. Also encourages cannibalism and harvesting your opponents organs to sell on the market for greed and profit.

Also too many quality of life mods should be in the base game.

More criticism, indie game edition

OneShot: having a hard time thinking of criticism for this one, maybe the music could have been improved in some parts but I generally like the soundtrack. I think this game's gimmick is something I'm a sucker for, but not everyone finds it appealing or engaging as I've experienced with people I've tried to share the game with.

Hyper Light Drifter: Also hard to criticize, but I am ambivalent towards the lack of dialogue or solid explanation of what is happening in the world. A lot of lore explanations stipulate that what they're saying is sort of up to interpretation because lore just happens through pictures (ignoring some of the coded sections, which I'm not fond of either). I'm still lost as to what happens to "drifters" that leads to their demise. Some of the pacing is also off in the game, namely the crystal forest/west section (I think). I'm also not a fan of the artistic direction of the sequel, but that's another game.

Katana zero: Amazing concept, but the ending is unsatisfying and leaves too much unexplained. (not sure if we're getting a sequel or not). Also makes no sense how Headhunter is killable even though she's also NULL, but you're not. Maybe I misunderstood something. Also don't really like the vehicle chase/helicopter fight level, doesn't feel like it fits with the rest of the game.

Undertale: Chara's motivations don't make sense

Signalis: YOU COULD HAVE BEEN SO FUCKING GOOD, BUT YOU JUST HAD TO BE ANTICOMMUNIST SLOP, FUCK OFF

Prey (2017)

• Poorly balanced in some ways. The Typhon Neuromods give you some nasty diminishing returns, requiring more and more Psi to the point that it's not worth it to max them out. Same with some of the standard Neuromods. It's to the point that I always recommend the Core Balance mod you can find on Nexus.

• Really blows its wad with the mindfuckery early on and doesn't take more chances to layer it further, ending notwithstanding. When I first broke out of the apartment my jaw genuinely dropped. It surprised me in a way few games or even other pieces of media have. Then it just kinda peters out. It had the potential for more.

• Poor pacing on the plot. It kind of herds you through every sector of the station and implies an urgency that can undercut the exploration if you take it at face value. It also locks you out of half the station for half the game. Not a great thing to have in an ImSim.

• Visual variety on the Typhon is lacking. The Weavers look super cool and the way the Phantoms move is pretty unsettling, but the Telepaths and Technopaths are just big black blobs that kinda float around mind-controlling other enemies and hurling annoying projectiles at you. Likewise with the variant Phantoms just being tougher versions of the base one with different damage type auras.

Still my favorite goddamn game it is so fucking amazing

The pacing in Half Life 2 is sometimes off. Specifically, going from Route Kanal to Water Hazard is bad pacing, there needs to be a change in scenery. Also, the helicopter fight on the airboat sucks and is an absolute slog. My most controversial opinion perhaps is that the episodes are where Half-Life fell off, not the lack of Episode 3. Yes, the gameplay is good but the story is convoluted and doesn't make as much sense. It makes the ending of Half Life 2 worse in my opinion.

The gameplay loop was developed in the 80s for the sole purpose of munching quarters and dick all has changed despite how much gaming has evolved

i dunno what my favourite game itself is (current or all time), but I'll gladly shit on the battlefield franchise because there is no greater example of a continuous, slow motion, generational bag fumble culminating with 2042 killing the last vestiges of good favour DICE ever had.

while there are a few nonsensical chud criticisms of the franchise in the last decade (V getting bombed before release because customised woman skin existed), the consistent elimination of game mechanics specifically on the tactical/team management side to try and chase the COD/Fortnite moneybag through simplification and monetisation left everyone eventually realising that the only thing moderately 'battlefield' about 2042 was conquest being a mode and vehicles being usable. but the downward spiral started years before.

everyone knows about EA enshitification, given that they've cratered almost all of their non-sports IP at this point (and even the sports fans hate the games but keep buying that garbage), so i'm not going to write an essay on what we already know. but my boomer-ass contention is that the removal of the commander position in BF3 is like one of the core blunders for the whole franchise, the attempts to re-add it were half-baked in 4, and it subsequently killed the overarching layer of (optional) tactical teamwork that actually kept more players invested.

BC2 not having it can maybe be forgiven, as Bad Company was specifically console-focussed, still had decent squad-order mechanics and the destruction physics in Frostbite at that point were amazing. But then they nerfed the destruction, the commander role, the squad orders, the fucking class system, the availability of vehicles and even making the maps boring flat fields with fuck-all assets left anyone playing 2042 thinking "what are we actually doing here? what's the point?"

honestly, if BF1 wasn't the absolute marvel of sound design (and arguably graphic design & tech) or untapped setting that it was, the franchise would have died over a decade ago. the "love letter to fans" PR and overpromising for 2042 didn't help things. we've basically been watching EA and DICE uppercut themselves over and over for 15 years at this point, and no amount of begging for them to stop has worked.

it honestly makes me sad, which is so lame... but 1942, Vietnam, 2 and 2142 were just so engrossing for my formative online gaming years that i can't help it

DotA 2: Should have had random items as rewards from matches based on the hero you are playing, instead of entirely random. Also, they should have had in-game currency for their stores rather than just barter and RMT.

Disco Elysium: Thought cabinet should not cost a skill point to remove an already internalized thought.

EU4: More internal realm management/struggle.

WoW: Raising the level cap is always a mistake. Obsoleting content is always a mistake. Worst storyline imaginable.

Heroes of Might and Magic: Conflux in HoMM 3 was lame

Stormworks: I think overall I'm pretty happy with it. There are some things where they don't change stuff because too many people's creations would break if they changed (e.g. parallel jet turbine bug). Also, the actual overworld game is pretty undeveloped. I think people would really appreciate a semi-live economy, though simulating the physics of that would be wild.

My main frustrations with the game are usually because I want to make things by myself, instead of downloading other people's engine controllers and ballistic computers >.>

Also having a creation tip over outside of the de-spawn range and having to restart a game because there isn't enough money to re-make it.

Then there's just a pile of parts that are either too big (pivots, sliding connectors) (usually from the early era of the game), only in one size despite it being quite a broad range of products (pneumatic piston), or just missing.

It would be nice if you could simulate/control things with hydraulics without an intervening electrical component (e.g. carburetor, piston control units), but I also get that that might be rather complicated.

It would also be nice if there was a way to have parts on non-cardinal directions at the start without shenanigans.

Also, I always play by myself and wish my friends would come join me and say "Oh wow, you're not a complete idiot" or something. :(

I love Portal but I would vehemently disagree with anyone who says it's a better game than Portal 2. Even just ignoring all the stuff like plot structure and graphics, Portal 2 is way ahead in terms of puzzle design. Also Portal 2 does better job at fully exploring the concept of portals, while Portal 1 feels like a tech demo in some parts

Binding of Isaac can be unfair, and while yeah that's kinda the point and mastery can overcome most of that, some rooms are laid out in a way that it's impossible to avoid damage. For example, a closet filled with spikes and a large troll bomb spawning and immediately homing in. This never feels good even if damage is avoided through pure luck (such as flight or explosion immunity).

Also most bosses are fine but they do love to add at least one bullshit boss per version. Rebirth brought us the dreaded Bloat, then in AB they added Hush, a bullet hellish, tanky completion mark boss that can only be attempted if reached within 30 mins or less. That wasn't bullshit enough, so in AB+ they added Delirium, another mark boss that is hidden somewhere on the largest map in the game among 6 other bosses (which included other end bosses). Before Rep there was only 1 way to guarantee access and that was by killing Hush (2 bs bosses in a row!) Oh and the fight itself is a disorienting chaotic nightmare and honestly never fun.

I don't think anything added in Rep compares to Delirium, though I'm never happy to see Scourge or Colostomia. Mother is difficult, but honestly getting to that fight is more annoying than the fight itself. Then Rep+ added the most devastating boss of all: barely functional online co-op that can delete your save.

The atmosphere and ballistics are the only things in Shadow of Chernobyl that aged even remotely well.

The canonical explanation for what the zone is and how it works is sorta dissapointing because running (incorrect) theory that the NPCs talk about is tight as hell "Oh yeah its a totally unprecidented organism brought about by people fucking with psychic energy in some secret experiments and btw it hates us and the emissions are its immune response and also the zombies and monolith dudes are basically the zone hijacking the nervous systems of other organisms to act as extensions of itself"

while the actual explanation is basically "Nah yeah after the meltdown a bunch of government scientists were like 'yo lets do some fucked up experiments in the abandoned nuclear place' and shit kinda got crazy with the genetic modification and it all went nuts after we tapped into the psychic field that surrounds the earth... so anyways we're literally just five or so dudes hanging out in tubes of goo, we got a spot open if you wanna join the goo gang... please join the goo gang"

(though i may be misremembering/misinterpreting a lot of stuff here)

Had to recreate this one because I refreshed instead of posting

For Undertale, I disagree with the final Chara scene at the end of No Mercy. It muddies the waters on an otherwise very-deliberate thematic overtone of the whole route (you are engaging in a gameplay strategy that is designed to be extremely tedious and grindy in a continuous slog of deliberate cruelty so banal that it’s probably for no other reason than wanting to experience everything). I’d honestly prefer that the game continued to specifically lambaste me and reinforce my culpability rather than give room for anything else.

Like, okay, let’s spitball. Chara is the only entity in the game that has enough natural determination to step in and override you. Instead of being just ‘evil child’, let’s have them be an entity that is generally non-interfering but wants to enforce 'responsibility for deliberate acts' to counteract the godlike nature of SAVE/LOAD. Maybe Chara is the intermediary who allows us to interface with SAVE/LOAD and/or Frisk, or maybe they’re just an observer of beings with high determination, or something else entirely. Instead of the consequence in Tainted Pacifist being 'evil kill bad now spooky haunted' at the very end, have Chara make a show of them seizing control in the middle of the ending sequence (at the most unresolved moment possible) and leverage the metanarrative elements of the world to inflict a depth of dissatisfaction that can only come from a game—back to title screen, save wipe. Instead of 'you experience true pacifist but game haunted oh nooo' it would be 'you can never experience true pacifist in full again. live with your choices.'

Alternatively, let’s take another option. Don't involve Chara. Don't give a true 'conclusion' in that sense. Just end with a black screen after killing Flowey that persists until you manually go into the files and unfuck the save—i.e. 'What are you still doing here? The monsters are all gone. There’s nothing left. Isn’t that what you wanted?'

Instead, it really just kinda serves to make talking about the route annoying (no Patrick, you were not possessed to do evil, you chose what buttons to press) and feels a little hackish in retrospect. 'wow evil child monster haunts the game kill everyone and you too ooh wow' is a bit of an eye-roller when tailing one of the most otherwise ludonarratively-consonant gameplay routes in an RPG, IMO.

Moving on, encounter and non-encounter area differentiation is a bit unintuitive. Pokémon solves this by having special encounter tiles, and Deltarune solves this with roaming encounters. Properly adds to the tedium of No Mercy, annoying elsewhere.

Speaking of Deltarune, you can feel the lack of a run button on replay. Rather annoying now that I’ve been spoiled with having it.

Lastly, I don’t really like Muffet’s heart mechanic. Idea is cute, but it feels like it'd give me RSI if played for a good bit.

Kenshi: after hundreds of hours put into the game and going thru multiple cycles of starting a new game, struggling to make money, fighting, losing, fighting again, building and automating a base, etc, and all the emergent storytelling that comes out of that -- I feel like it was only the combat-related systems that were fully fleshed out and ultimately, the only way to interact with the world in a meaningful way is through combat. Though the visuals and worldbuilding do great of offering the promise of a lot, the dialogue system is not developed enough to allow for any dialogue mods that integrate well with and impact the world or player characters. Animations systems are similarly limited, with the system allowing for minute customization and replacement of combat animations, and very little room for any animations not combat-related.

Xcom 2 shouldn't be so demanding of my video card and it gets worse as the campaign goes on. Not a big fan of the chosen either, especially with the long war mod - they're either unfairly overpowered and unfun or just a bullet sponge and unfun and neither the mod nor vanilla can hit the right balance to make them fun. Also not particularly fond of the story, but that's kind of secondary to what actually makes the game fun.

The first Dead Space was magical (the remake is also really good) and then everything afterwards falls off hard. Dead Space 2 is still worth playing I guess, but it's not the same - the way the markers effects manifest as hallucinations and psychological conditions makes more sense and works better in the first game, but in the second one, idk, the final boss fight just feels like an overdramticization of mental illness (literally going into your own head and having a gun fight with your hallucinations? Idk just feels gaudy compared to DS1's reveal). The only thing that makes DS2 strong is how it expands on the theme of religions mimicking cults and causing damage to society and people's psyche, something that was mostly junt hinted at in the original DS1.

All that to say everything that comes after DS1 makes it feel worse in retrospect and I really wish they'd finish the story in a more satisfying way. The only other criticism I'd offer is that DS doesn't need so many weapons and, in fact, it both makes the game harder and removes tension if you carry more than one. Multiple types of weapons work best in games where each weapon fills a role or purpose that the others can't (this is accomplished with stasis and telekenesis, the other weapons have nothing else to do besides do damage) and it might actually create MORE tension in the game if you're only offered the plasma cutter to fight with and nothing else.

Final Fantasy X, a game with heavy enphasis on death and mourning, didn't feature the death of a party member. Sin is terrible and named characters die to it, but it's not the same. In fact there were few on-screen deaths.

Also, I wish the world didn't feel like it had a population of 200. I get the population was dwindling after the thousand years, but it just felt so small. I think this could have been solved by having a larger unexplored world or by explicitly stating there are villages dotted all over Spira that the protagonists cannot explore on their journey.

Also also, over the course of 1000 years only five people performed the pilgrimage to the point of defeating Sin. The practice of the pilgrimage would have fallen out of favor with such a low success rate. I'd sooner expect Spirans to move underground in tunnels as mole people.

Also also also, there was no water Aeon. Leviathan deserves justice. More Aeons in general could have explored more heroes who defeated Sin in the past.

• Ratchet and Clank 1 (PS2) has tank controls that make zero sense.
• Streets of Rogue 1's NPC AI is super easy to exploit that using items isn't necessary for most runs.
• Fallout New Vegas isn't actually that deep narrative wise, the NCR have the most quests while everyone else is underdeveloped. On closer examination a lot of it is libshit sophistry apart from chasing down the guy who shot you in the head and some companion quests.
• Hitman WOA's NPC AI is extremely exploitable while also being frustrating to babysit, some levels are a snoozefest.
• Mother 3's rhythm mechanic was annoying because I could never actually do it (probably because I was playing on a emulator with a patched fan-translated ROM)

Shadow Empire's user interface is quite possibly the least intuitive I've ever used, and I play Paradox games.