games

Earthbound can be a real piece of shit, everybody knows the clunky and limited inventory is a pain in the ass, and it is completely true. Furthermore, the story, while good, lacks a lot of personality building for the main cast of characters, which is funny cause every npc has amazing dialouge. While the lack of character building doesn't harm the ending overall, it certainly does not hit as hard as Mother 1 or 3's endings, due to them actually taking a few moments to flesh out the main cast of heroes at several points.

Total War: Empire, a buggy mess that likes to crash in the late game. Unfinished, AI is illogical in both diplomacy and a lot of battle tactics (Which makes the few times they pull a clever maneuver incredibly surprising) and nearly requires modding to be playable, either through script edits or from installing overhauls.

EU4: Now this is one I haven't thought of much, but there certainly are many flaws to find in this one. First off, 93% of the gameplay is just finding buttons to press with the right timing, that's it. The DLC's have mostly been focused around adding more buttons to press. Powercreep has been a real issue, like how Spain will have colonized most of Oregon and Alaska before a Russia player can even hope to have gotten to East Siberia. Many intended paths require RNGesus to smile upon you, and whose alternative requirements can be very difficult to achieve in comparison. (So many MP games of my friends grumbling over many such cases.) And, despite being an 11 year old game, some regions are still not very fleshed out. India and parts of the Americas lack flavour and content. And of course, the UI can be a bit inscrutable at times, with a few features hidden away or poorly explained, like the macrobuilder diplo screen. And yeah yeah, the DLC policy is terrible as it locks out critical features behind a paywall, which has only been partially fixed with updates and working older DLC into the base game.

Morrowind should have a start that gives just a little more direction and reason to keep playing.

Why the fuck do so many enemies have elemental weakness before you ever get access to anything that uses an element. Wasted ideas that hopefully wilo be fixed in the re-release

(OFF)

Idk if it's my favorite but it's one that I've played a lot recently:

Cassette Beasts would be better without fusion. It's so strong that it is necessary (sans grinding) for a lot of boss fights, and it's very cool and dramatic when the combat music's lyrics start, but going from two to one party member reduces the complexity of fights so much that they become less enjoyable.

Imma hit STALKER franchise (haven't played S2) and Project Zomboid (with great pain because it's an indie game but I have to)

STALKER: The worldbuilding of GSC is not great to be honest. A place like the Zone in real life would be an insane mess of world powers and ridiculously big and powerful corporations butchering each other to control it. To think that a place that can naturally warp reality, spawn science-shattering artefacts and control the minds of people like it's nothing is not object of contest between AT LEAST NATO and Russia is insane to me. In the game the Zone is known to relatively few people and the Ukrainian state is able to more or less "keep it under control". Everyone inside appears to be ukrainian or russian but most are freelancer weirdos who go there to be rich or hide from authorities. There is little to no foreign interference. It makes little sense that such place would go unnoticed by the world's biggest powers. In the real world a place like this would have their weak "loner", "bandit", "duty" and "freedom" factions, among others (including the mutants) be swept aside by the sheer power of entire militaries called to intervene and control the place, all of this would have immense geopolitical rammifications. It is implied in the game that outside forces know about the Zone and are interested in it's riches, but these outside forces do not intervene other than sending Mercs to do their shit and maybe finance the Monolith, but in general they leave that place alone and do not try to directly control it which is not very realistic imo. Yet despite all this I love the Zone as it is in STALKER, it's just me being insufferable, that's all.

Project Zomboid: Best zombie survival game that ever existed but it has an awful development cycle. They released one update in two years and frankly it sucks, it's broken and it added uninteresting stuff like animals and pointless crafting. Devs refuse to listen to players (who have been asking for NPCs since day ONE AND THAT WAS OVER A DECADE AGO) .Also the devs have left a lot of stuff just incomplete for years and years, from bugs to half-baked gameplay features. And tbh the game lacks a purpose and general depth, like one you get to your first month there is NOTHING ELSE to do other than finding your own way to just die or you'll just get bored and drop the game. The game is easy when you figure out the basics and surviving becomes trivial unless you push it to the absolute limit.

Mai won't STFU when you're doing difficult enemy battles in FF7 Rebirth. The camera won't stay locked to the enemy you are fighting so a kot of battles are framed sideways or away from thr enemy as they charge, mow you on your ass or repeatedly strong strike you. You can't know when they are about to because the camera is not showing the enemy it's showing you.

Oh you just finished a section. Let's FATAL ERROR even though the game so still going. So hopw "fatal" was that error actually? Ok let's just wait for them to stop talking get control....menu....save and a crash. But at least the game autosaved at the transition.

Oh in SOTC killing the collosi made me way too sad

space station 13 can vary wildly from being one of the best gaming experiences out there to actually soul sucking gameplay with unpleasant people. Also the interface is dogshit but upon playing the remakes I realized that I actually LIKE that dogshit. I just wish it ran better and had a couple QoL touchups

also the mechanics can get very stale unless youre playing antagonist roles. But I guess that's what you get for playing Low-RP servers and relying on mechanics for storytelling instead of roleplay

Hard, because I have many favourite games.

Uh... Shit.

Can you just choose one for me to dunk on?

StarCraft is too hard to play with friends and StarCraft 2 made the wrong things easy making the big army fights take 2 seconds.

Magic the gathering not only has power creep but rules and mechanics creep making the game even more complex over time. Also the focus on printing cards specifically for EDH/commander makes the format less interesting.

Pokemon TCG none of the meta decks use guys i like and it's because the ones i like all suck.

DotA and mobas are basically entirely suffering and the games are often prolonged by people who enjoy suffering.

You think those fuckers would have let me boil the rice before coming out of early access... DayZ

if anything the Jet Set Radio Future soundtrack is too good

Baldur's Gate 3 can be too safe art direction wise. I get they are trying to do the DnD aesthetic and I'm sure WotC had a specific view on what it wanted the Forgotten Realms to look like, but it feels a bit too generic fantasy.

Final Fantasy XIV needs new quest design for the main story. Dawntrail suffered because of the quest design.

Trails is lib as hell with a focus on Good Monarchs, just like most JRPGs. There are also a bunch of anime tropes, although I think this has been exaggerated and people play Persona and Xenoblade, both of which have just as many if not more tropes. Barely anyone dies in the story even though there are multiple wars and one plot point muddles the anti-imperialist themes. Missable quests suck and the soundtracks used to be amazing, but are now mostly farmed to one composed who is mostly just okay.

Ys is usually either way too hard or way too easy with little middle ground. The same complaints I already had about the Trails soundtracks also apply.

Yakuza has too many nonsensical plot points, even though some of them have become memes because of how dumb they are.

The turn-based gameplay sucks because it makes every fight against a level 1 enemy a slog that lasts forever because you can't skip or speed up the animations. There's also nothing as satisfying as doing a heat action in that whole gameplay loop.

I wish Eastward had made more of an attempt to tie the plot together. I spent the entire game excited to see how all the details relate and then it just ended with almost no clear explanations at all.

Path of Exile is ubermensch slop with the same morals as gambo or whatever name UlyssesT had for GoT.

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."

Genshin's character quests are a hairball. Too easy to accidentally trigger once unlocked, and then you end up with other quests locked out, including dailies. There's also limited story reward-- I don't really need a deep dive into some B-plot character who you'll never see again in the main story progrrssion.