Criticise the game you're playing right now!

[Del Murder]

Zero Time Dilemma - While I like the fragment system in some ways (see praising thread), it really makes the story hard to follow. I think I prefer the 999/VLR approach of taking the narrative through a whole playthrough and then going back to redo the different branches. I get that there's a time component to ZTD (it's in the title!) and a flow chart to help you see how the fragments connect, but the fact that the characters lose all memory of the prior segments and you can kill them left and right makes it really hard to follow why who died in this timeline and how it relates to the other timelines. I'm sure it will come together in the end.

[Wolf Kanno]

This might be the most linear "grab you by the hand and force the plot onto you" entry in the Persona series. Its a bit jolting to go from the previous entries that basically dropped the calendar/time spending element onto your head like a ton of bricks to jump to this entry, where the game is constantly consuming my days. The fact the first Palace dungeon has a seriously bad case of teasing you by constantly pulling the rug from under you and forcing you to retreat for plot reasons was a bit jarring as well. I kind of miss the earlier games habit of just throwing you in and forcing you to figure shit out yourself instead of the long tutorial that is the month of April. It's not a major gripe mind you, but it is a bit jarring.

Also, how dare you have the Sunday shopping network and not have it be Tanaka's show. :( You can't tell me this game doesn't take place in the same universe as the previous entries cause Naoto has already been named dropped and Rise has concert posters plastered all over Shibuya.

[fat_moogle]

Resident Evil VII -

I completed it a couple of days ago and the ending made me want to eject the disc and snap it in to a million pieces. The story really let it down for me in the end which is a shame because it had potential, but overall I feel like I wasted my time.

[Wolf Kanno]

Dear Persona 1, why is your poker machine so screwed up? I mean, in most poker games that do the High and Low mini-game afterwards, getting a card of the same number usually either means an automatic win, or you usually choose one side for it to be on. Instead, you make it an automatic lost and that has caused me to lose thousands of coins that I could have used, instead I need to break you...

[Example]

Star Wars: Republic Commando: Being able to command your own squad in the heat of the action is cool, but it's otherwise a fairly unremarkable Halo wannabe, and you're reminded of this every time you're forced to go solo.

Mark of the Ninja: Level design could use a bit more polish. Way too easy to get yourself stuck and be forced to redo the whole level again.

Warhammer 40k Dawn of War: Base building feels lame and gimmicky, even Lego Rock Raiders did it better.

Final Fantasy VIII: Story started off cool but went off the rails after the first disc, characters are annoying and unlikable, battle system is just plain tedious. Will more than likely drop or at the very least put on hold.

Final Fantasy IX: Gameplay is a bit too slow and overly grindy for my taste.

Grandia: Voice acting could have been better, game also needed a map function.

Skies of Arcadia: Story and characters aren't anything to write home about, battle system is a bit slow and lacks depth even when compared to Final Fantasy games of that era, ship battles are painfully boring and dull.

Legend of Dragoon: Story and characters are bland and derivative, not a fan of magic being inaccessible outside of dragoon mode.

Xenogears: Too much cutscene, not enough gameplay. Dialogue can be a bit pretentious and masturbatory at times. None of the characters registered with me either.

Mega Man Legends: Dated gameplay, Roll is annoying, sudden difficulty spikes.

Deus Ex: Just flat out impossible to do a perfect stealth run.

Super Mario Galaxy: Much more linear and straightforward than I expected.

Metal Gear Rising: Trying to infuse Devil May Cry beat-em-up hack-and-slash style gameplay with stealth was a very poor idea.

[Vyk]

You are dabbling in a lot of games, sir

[Example]

What can I say, I get sidetracked very easily. I also have a huge backlog mostly composed of JRPGs. I wonder how many of them I'll finish this year.

[Fynn]

Dear Persona 1, why is your poker machine so screwed up? I mean, in most poker games that do the High and Low mini-game afterwards, getting a card of the same number usually either means an automatic win, or you usually choose one side for it to be on. Instead, you make it an automatic lost and that has caused me to lose thousands of coins that I could have used, instead I need to break you...

You brought this on yourself, now suffer :p

[fat_moogle]

Tekken 7 - I really enjoyed the story mode, but it could have incorporated all the playable characters in it in some way. Instead most of the characters have their own (practically pointless) episode with a tacked on paragraph about why they're fighting and each episode is literally one fight.

[Nice]

Persona 5 -- None.

[maybee]

Harvest Moon New Beginning. I brought this game believing that it was going to be chill out, relaxing, no stress game. But I'm always stressing out in order to get all of the material for the blueprints so I'm not behind in fixing the town.

@-@';;

[Wolf Kanno]

The next time someone on this forum whines about Xenogears being a bad game with a great plot, I'm going to point them to Drakengard. The story and setting are really cool and interesting, but my god the gameplay is atrocious.

Imagine if Dynasty Warriors and Panzer Dragoon got together and had an RPG baby, but then the baby had a host of physical and mental issues because the two soon found out they were actually brother and sister separated at birth and now the powers that be were punishing them for their unholy union.

I don't quite know which is worse in the Dynasty warrior sections: the awful camera, the awful tracking, or the inability to control either. For the Panzer sections, the controls are terrible and the dragon feels like piloting a jumbo jet through molasses, you know your turning because you're doing so with the controls, but I'm not sure if the game and screen are on the same page as you. Also the enemies in that section have way better range and tracking than you do.

[Fynn]

Sooooo... I'm really surprised the Witcher 3 is appreciated by as many people as it is. Make no mistake - it's my current number one game of all time and has plenty of stuff to keep you entertained whether you've read the books or not. But there are a couple of things I imagine fall a bit flat if you haven't read the books. Like, the Wild Hunt don't seem to get much characterization and seem like generic doomsday villains. Yeah, they have a cool, creepy air of mystery about them, but knowing what happened in the books, I kind of feel like the game knows there's a lot more to them, it just decides not to share it with the player,

[Pumpkin]

L.A. Noire - WHY CAN'T I SKIP CUTSCENES, I'M REDOING A CASE I KNOW WHAT HAPPENS

[Wolf Kanno]

Yeah, I think it's safe to say that Drakengard has some of the worst gameplay I've played for an Action-RPG. 90% of the games challenge comes from dealing with the games awful camera and getting cheapshot from an off screen enemy. Not to mention I love how the Crossbow enemies not only have ridiculous range in the air, but their A.I. ranges from "stand there and block with your face" to "I'm motherfucking Legolas here, watch as I fire three arrows in rapid succession with my two partners and scoot back without moving my legs a good 10 feet when you try to attack me". I wasted a whole evening trying to finish one of the simple expedition missions but kept getting reamed at the last second thanks to being constantly cheesed by these ranged enemies. Don't even get me started on the dragon mode where half the enemy cannonballs work like you think they would and the other half are homing attacks. Good luck figuring out which is which when the enemy fills the screen with them.

[Sephiroth]

Yeah, I think it's safe to say that Drakengard has some of the worst gameplay I've played for an Action-RPG. 90% of the games challenge comes from dealing with the games awful camera and getting cheapshot from an off screen enemy. Not to mention I love how the Crossbow enemies not only have ridiculous range in the air, but their A.I. ranges from "stand there and block with your face" to "I'm mothersmurfing Legolas here, watch as I fire three arrows in rapid succession with my two partners and scoot back without moving my legs a good 10 feet when you try to attack me". I wasted a whole evening trying to finish one of the simple expedition missions but kept getting reamed at the last second thanks to being constantly cheesed by these ranged enemies. Don't even get me started on the dragon mode where half the enemy cannonballs work like you think they would and the other half are homing attacks. Good luck figuring out which is which when the enemy fills the screen with them.

Drakengard is gameplay-wise very lacking. Even Drakengard 3 is. As a matter of fact I do not even call them RPGs for real. And it is a pity because the Drakengard series has incredible story. They should have straight gone to more normal RPG gameplay. Nier and Nier 2 are really the only ones were the gameplay is okay. Drakengard 3 even has an amazing story but you pretty much have to deserve it by going through that gameplay first. And that you start of with just one of four weapons and the same kind of enemies is not really helping. They should have asked Platinum Games for normal Drakengard installments earlier.

[Wolf Kanno]

Drakengard is gameplay-wise very lacking. Even Drakengard 3 is. As a matter of fact I do not even call them RPGs for real. And it is a pity because the Drakengard series has incredible story. They should have straight gone to more normal RPG gameplay. Nier and Nier 2 are really the only ones were the gameplay is okay. Drakengard 3 even has an amazing story but you pretty much have to deserve it by going through that gameplay first. And that you start of with just one of four weapons and the same kind of enemies is not really helping. They should have asked Platinum Games for normal Drakengard installments earlier.

I've heard the series has crap for gameplay, which is why the development team asked Platinum to make the battle system for Automata.

I think what bugs me the most here is that Drakengard has some serious potential to be good, but it's held back by it's amateurish game design. I mean, who makes a 3D world and gives you no means of controlling the camera? The Shoulder buttons and even the RL3 buttons are mapped, but not circle? The dragon acts like it's a rail shooter during it's sections and the game has to let the A.I. cheat in order to maintain a threat level. It's fun to try out new weapons but you have to practically return to the starting missions to level them up because the game doesn't scale properly. Yet despite all that, if the game had better controls and A.I. it would actually be a pretty good game.

As it stands, the story and plot are what keep me invested which is why I'm sticking to it, but my goodness, the game is going to seriously try my patience.

[Example]

Resident Evil 1 and 2: These games have absolutely NOT aged well at all. Though the story and dialogue can be enjoyable due to the unintentional hilarity, the tank controls, camera angles and massive amounts of backtracking (mostly due to the severely limited inventory space) not so much.

Star Wars Dark Forces: This game has quite possibly the worst control scheme I've ever seen.

Star Wars Dark Forces 2: The level design leaves a lot to be desired.

Half-Life: ...I got nothing.

[Scruffington]

Dark Souls II: The drop rates for Sunlight Medals are godawful. Thank god I found a sunbro to help me farm medals so I could finish collecting all 30.

[Del Murder]

Salt and Sanctuary (Vita). This game really frustrates me. I want to like it because I love the art style and the Castlevania vibe and all the cool weapon options. Here are my gripes:

Lack of pause button. Going into your inventory keeps your character live on the screen and able to be hit. This isn't a problem most of the time since you can find safe spots, but it's annoying and unnecessary in a 1 player game.
Item usage. Every other action in this game is a button but for some reason the items require you to use the touch screen. Very annoying to be jumping and dodging around and then need to slide your thumb over to drink that potion. Also, the lack of pause means you have to switch through items in real time which is also annoying since it uses the d-pad meaning you can't move around and switch at the same time.
Respawning. The game does give you plenty of save points but sometimes they are far from your objective. So if you beat 4 challenging spots and die on the 5th, you have to redo those 4 things again. The game is very challenging and while I don't mind that I do mind having to repeat several areas just to get back to where I was. Reminds me of old NES games and not in a good way.

I hear this game is like a 2D Dark Souls. I always wondered if I was missing something by not getting aboard the Dark Souls train. I think it's safe to to say these aren't the games for me (at least not anymore) so I'm not sad I passed them up. They would frustrate the hell out of me!

[Pumpkin]

Little Witch Romanesque - Ugh the inappropriate fanservice. I hate it. Also I can't get some quests to show upppp which is very frustrating

King of Fighters XIV - I wish they had subtitles for their little intro and exit quotes. Also its a lot of half circles and quarter circles and those hurt my thumbs. Also that menu screen music ugghhh

Steins;Gate - The art style is not to my liking. Some of the eyebrows are just awful.

Yomawari: Night Alone - Some areas can be frustrating

Battle Princess of Arcadias - So much grinding

L.A. Noire - A huge, beautifully detailed open world, but it doesn't really encourage using it

[Vermachtnis]

Final Fantasy XII

Vossler: Don't break the lights set off the alarm.
5 seconds later he runs through the laser to get to an enemy.

[Wolf Kanno]

Mega Man Zero - Damn this game is ridiculously hard, especially when you put in account the games nasty grading system and the fact you're punished for using one of the features. Pure Capcom logic there. I think what bugs me the most is the weird control scheme and your inability to map the buttons where you need them. Having your sub-weapon and more importantly, the dash button mapped to a shoulder key is incredibly awkward.

Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain - This game's U.I. is terrible. Too many menus with too many useless skills, and an awkward vertical menu that takes up a third of the screen at all times, what were the devs thinking? Also the load times are horrendous, and made more obnoxious by not being able to fix them despite being on better hardware to play it.

Persona 1 SQQ - "Oh man I love conveyor belt puzzle stages where I can't tell where the conveyor is going to force me until I step on it and send me back to the beginning of the puzzle!" said no one ever.

[Pumpkin]

Blue Reflection - Repetitive and minimalstic and too much unnecessary fanservice

Kona - I can't tell if this is supposed to be spoopy

Valkyria Chronicles - It's not grabbing me yet

Grandia - Can get pretty grindy

The Sims 4 - Why do my Sims stand in place for like an hour before they actually do the thing

Higurashi Episode 2 - Sexism ahoy! Also some pretty amateurish writing and a bit too much mood setting considering I already know the characters from episode one

[Fynn]

Innocent Sin may have one of the best stories and casts in an RPG, but man, am I tired of thr long-ass zodiac temples with their minimal plot relevance

[Bubba]

How long do the battles take to come on screen in FFIX??

I've read some of you say this before but I didn't think it'd be that bad.

[Pumpkin]

The slow battles sure are fun during the Festival of the Hunt and other timed segments

[Edge7]

On a first playthrough, Metroid Zero Mission has some weird terrain puzzles that really break the game's pacing, and sometimes go against what I've learned from playing other games in the series.

[KleinerKiller]

The story of the new Prey is interesting enough, but the flow of it can be summed up as "jump through these hoops so you can learn the truth from this person, oops you only learned a fraction of the truth but the REAL truth is past these many detours and hoops we promise, oops that person doesn't actually know much more either now jump through these hoops to see if you can learn together, oops the bad guy stopped you from learning the truth right now so jump through just a few more hoops," and so on.

Also I'm nearing the endgame and every standard enemy still makes me want to peel my face off and dance on it.

[Fynn]

Loving Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, but I really wish I could clearly see each party member's affinity to specific personas.

[Rez09]

I was going to play through the original Final Fantasy again, but decided to check out Final Fantasy Negative One instead, and it's been great so far, except that the creator went waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay overboard with elemental weapons, weaknesses, and resistances. My Dark Knight hits about half of the enemies in every dungeon for 1 damage because every weapon I find for him has some form of attack element and damn near every enemy appears to resist at least four of the eight elements in the game. Wouldn't be such a problem if I had more inventory space or I could change gear on the fly, but, this is FF1, so . . . no equipment swapping in battle and four slots per character are kind of a thing. I also love that I finally sold my dark sword, since EVERYTHING resisted it, only to find a temple filled with holy elemental enemies almost immediately afterwards. > .<

[Wolf Kanno]

Silent Hill - Is it me or do melee weapons totally suck in this game? Thankfully the title is fairly generous with ammo, but it seems to me that I'm holding like four weapons that can't do trout because either everything is too fast to be hit cause Harry has to think about winding up a hit or mentally prepare himself to life a pipe cause he's never lifted anything heavier than a pen, or the damn thing can shrug off the hit and continue with it's own at which point we're just trading blows like Rock'em Sock'em Robots. I'm eating through my ammo and health potions faster than I would care to.

[Wolf Kanno]

Silent Hill 3 - Honestly, I'm not too impressed with this one. The levels start off interesting but then the game just bogs you down with more pointless filler as you try to get home. I'm just now reaching Silent Hill and I learned I'm like 2/3rds of the way done with the game. Throw in a plethora of monster that are a pain in the ass to fight and the game has kind of become a chore for me. I'm kind of taking a break at the moment from it.

Suikoden II - Konami and Sony's odd reasoning to make this game unplayable for the PSP for... reasons? I would love to play this game on the go like I did with the first game but it looks like I'll have to resort to emulation to do so which is a pain.

Persona 1 - Man why does leveling take so long in this game?! I mean I just got everyone's Ultimate Personas and have learned I'm going to have to make everyone level a good five to ten more levels to equip them and it's so painfully slow... The leveling system in this game sucks and I don't quite want to resort to killing off the whole team to power level them one by one but that may end up being the way to go. The only issue is that the girl characters can't use Lilim (absorbs all magic and has access to a really powerful spell) and I have no secondary persona of it's caliber for them to use. Considering they make up 3/5ths of the party, this strategy to power level has a lot of risks involved.

Mega Man Zero - I hate how good Capcom is at making you restrict yourself in order to make their games challenging. You have access to several special items that grant fantastic powers to make this game easier but using any of them permanently destroys your score for missions and prevents you from getting access to some of the unlockable modes. I had to finally convince myself I'm here for the plot and fun battles and not these arbitrary completionist nonsense to finally move on with this game but ugh...

[Scotty_ffgamer]

That’s really weird that suikoden II doesn’t work on psp. I know it used to, and it works on the vita as well.

[Fynn]

Honestly, even though I still like it a lot, SH3 is easily my least favorite Team Silent SH.

[Slothy]

Disagree. SH3 is hands down my favourite.

[Fynn]

A lot of people have that opinion. But, idk, it never grabbed me that much. The story is interesting and it has my favorite cast, but I also felt it was the least scary and the themes just weren't that strong. It really can't hold a candle to 2 and I enjoyed 4 much more, even though I know a lot of people disliked that game.

[Edge7]

Resident Evil 2 is an amazing game with a fun, campy plot, but it suffers from what I call Ocarina of Time syndrome where subsequent playthroughs don't really feel engaging or enrich the experience.

[Vyk]

Had to take a few months off from Persona 5. Finally getting back in and thoroughly enjoying it. But what turned me off very early was dying deep into a palace or in mementos without reaching a save or boss room. And I can take no credit for the deaths since I wasn't pushing myself too hard. I died at nearly full health every time. And by every time I mean not once, not twice, not THREE TIMES. But FOUR FREAKING TIMES I was hit with either my weakness or, more frequently, Lucky Punch followed by a normal critical. Finding a persona strong to physical or having no weaknesses is not easily going to happen early on. And dying in a boss fight is fine since you get to retry. These were mostly normal enemies or minibosses. So I'd lose a couple hours of progress, which is especially disheartening after the fourth time. And I don't get a lot of consecutive free days from work. So to have wasted a couple hours of my time is a precious loss of time on my only day off. So the game had to wait until now, when I had a few days off and it wouldn't hurt as much. Great game. Rough start

[Fynn]

Welcome to MegaTen :p

[Rez09]

For as much as I'm enjoying Wayfarer of Time, the combat in this game, particularly the magic, could have used a bit more forethought from the developers. Each spell has an unskippable 6 - 15ish second casting animation that pauses everything while it is going off, which makes what should be quick encounters sometimes excruciatingly long, especially with the AIs apparent ability to quick cast things like heal. This has bumped up at least one mission I was in to around the ten minute mark when it should have been less than four, and that is absolutely not something I want in a portable title. I mean, it isn't something I want in ANY title, but especially not in a portable one.

The game also has a problem with some important information, most notably AP gain, not being relayed to the player at all, so I have absolutely no idea how effective any enemies are for learning skills. Hell, I didn't even know I was gaining AP for a while because of this, which was especially confusing when I started gaining skill levels for no apparent reason. It was even worse when I started trying to figure out how I was learning these skills, because not only was I learning abilities from invisible AP, but because only the character that kills a monster gets AP (another thing I don't recall being explained), the whole thing was wildly inconsistent and damn near impossible to pin down; it wasn't until my character was alone and I started gaining tons of skills that I finally figured out what was going on.

Actually, on that subject, limiting AP gains to killing blows is another problem on its own: skills are powerful and, because you can stack crystals, can be learned quickly by focusing kill xp, so the game is balanced around that, but it makes training new characters an absolute chore. I got this dual wielding noblewoman in my party, but I haven't even bothered teaching her anything yet because of how long the process takes. The same is true of weapons as well, because they gain better slot levels as you use them, but it takes time to pump them up. Ugh. At least it isn't the Item World again, I suppose. . _.

Outside of combat related stuff, I have no idea what my familiar actually does, other than getting shot, or if I should care about leveling her, so . . . she's just a thing that I have for now. A very polite thing, mind you, due to the nothing but constant etiquette training I've been giving her, but a just a thing all the same. I really wish the game had more information about her and what exactly she does, because I'm probably missing out on something important there.

OH, and the game has that movement thing where you walk into a wall and it tries to move you up or down going on, which is damn near my biggest pet peeve in all of gaming. Yeah. I seriously spent about 15 seconds trying to get into a desk at one point, and I can just imagine how that must have looked to everyone else in the classroom waiting for my ass to finally sit down. Probably the reason they locked me up. . _.

[Example]

Dropped KOTOR 1 after 4 hours. Where do I even begin? The combat is quite possibly the worst I've ever seen in a RPG, anyone who complains about turn-based JRPG combat being "boring" should be forced to play this game so they know the true meaning of the word, it's not like it requires any strategy or skill either. The level progression makes absolutely no sense, as you level up you can level both skills and feats but you can't level feats until after you level skills regardless of whether or not you actually want waste points levelling up skills you don't want or need, and if you change your mind (i.e you just found out you don't have enough points for the skills you need) that's too bad since you can't exit the levelling screen until you've levelled at least one skill and feat. The UI and menu design is just hideous and tedious to navigate through. And last but not least, the ridiculous amount of bugs and glitches this game has out the ass. I'm not kidding when I say you have a 50% chance of the game glitching out after every fight, resulting in you being unable to move, and this isn't just a one-off thing either but it happens time and time again even after reloading a save/checkpoint, which I spent most of my playing time doing. And there are times when you would just outright fail to perform an action for no reason. Or dialogue in a cutscene failing to load properly (did I mention how amateurish this game's cutscene presentation is? Because it looks worse than most 90s RPGs I've seen). I'd probably have much more to complain about had I kept playing, but I'd much rather spend my time playing a better game instead. Greatest Star Wars game my ass, Jedi Outcast and Republic Commando came out around the same time and are lightyears ahead of this overrated buggy piece of shit.

[Wolf Kanno]

Tactics Ogre: Let us Cling Together

Whoever thought that magic should have a line of sight deal on the team should be shot, more annoying because it's inconsistent as only some spells have this line of sight targeting while others don't care.

Whoever complains about the Guest A.I. in FFTactics never played this game apparently. Vyse and Catiua are incompetent. Vyse loves to jump into the fray as quickly as possible with no bearing on his safety, which may be due to Catiua prioritizing healing only him and MC over everyone else. She might heal an actual ally besides them if both of them are too far away from her range and her own HP is above 60% but it rarely happens and I've watched her heal Vyse who had lost a third of his health over my actual healer unit who had only a third of their health left. Even more aggravating is that I've been fighting a lot of undead in the game and despite healing magic hurting them and even knowing the Exorcism spell, Catiua refuses to use either to help in some of these fight causing me to have to reset after a fight against a horde of them went south cause I killed most of them right on top of each other but then the necromancer decided to keep running out of my party range just long enough for all of them to resurrect all at once and murder my weakened party.

My other two gripes have more to do with just mechanics I don't like in general. I'm not fond of loot systems for getting money. It works sometimes for certain games, but here it's a hassle, especially since I need a ton of cash to keep my troops well armed and I'm annoyed that I have to first sell all these coins I'm collecting for cash instead of just getting cash. My lord doesn't give me enough cash very often. My other gripe is that I don't really understand why the game sends tons of recruits my way when there is a limit to how many people I can use, and the flow of gameplay will always make the characters you have used the longest far more useful than new people. So I'm kind of annoyed my party inventory is getting clogged up with people I'm probably never going to use. Even with the game's quirky leveling system, skills and weapon levels are more valuable and those require you to use them so even the leveling system doesn't really save the new recruits from being dead weight.

[Del Murder]

Wild Arms
This is an old game, so I knew battles are going to be slow. But man are they slow, and without much variation. Attack attack attack, maybe a group skill on a large monster set every once and a while, then unleash your standard debuffs and best attacks on the boss. Repeat for every dungeon. The variation also is impeded by the fact that you only have three characters with very set skills.

Witcher 3
The auto-save seems a little random in this game, which sucks when you play a single character who could easily get overwhelmed in the wrong situation. I've lost 15-20 minutes of progress before which gets annoying. Also the load time after a death is painfully long.

I also don't like how quickly things turn to lethal violence. You can either pay people off, use that one jedi mind trick skill, or kill them. It's usually fine when it's some bandits who slaughtered a village but there are some people who just had an argument or are showing off or whatever and resisting them leads to swords drawn almost immediately. And then I cut their heads off without even trying!

[Wolf Kanno]

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together

I've decided that I'm not really a fan of the game's way of doing the class system. I kind of wish they had done a streamlined version of Ogre Battles to be honest, which is something I never thought I would say. So you know how in the FFTactics series classes unlocked once you reached a certain level of mastery with lower tier or like-minded classes? Yeah this game doesn't do that, instead you need to either buy or collect Job Cards from fallen enemies, meaning that I'm stuck with the classes I have until the game decides to introduce a new one and even then, I have to hope the class drops their Job Card. What this all kind of does is just make the feeling of progression slow to a crawl since it takes a while to unlock everything.

Oh, a crafting system... *sigh*

[Psychotic]

Death Road to Canada has stores that trade on food and they're basically pointless. I don't get enough food to feed my party - maybe it's my own fault for having a big party - let alone buy fancy trout for huge prices from you!

Attack on Titan Wings of Freedom does not have English voices. It's especially annoying when it's a video game as opposed to a show or movie because I'm trying to pay attention to the on screen action rather than glancing down at subtitles every few seconds.

I'm going to kick a hornet's nest here, because in searching for AoT S2 I learned that there's a section of the internet that gets disproportionately angry about dubbed anime, but here goes nothing. I watched the anime in English and I think the English voices are way better. The worst culprit is Armin, why the smurf is he a girl in the Japanese version? Flame suit on. :p

[Slothy]

I'd prefer English voices probably and did watch season 2 dubbed. I saw season 1 on Netflix though and for some reason subbed was the only option at the time unless I'm just an idiot.

[Psychotic]

Watched it dubbed on Netflix last week so it's definitely A Thing!

[Slothy]

Idiocy confirmed. Good to know.

[Wolf Kanno]

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together - Okay, I've now decided what it is about the leveling system that bothers me. So levels are linked to classes, so as long as someone is that class, the class levels up when it participates in battle. The good about this is that if you switch to another class, your character will be the level of that class so it makes switching classes you've been using much easier when you gain new recruits. The problem is when you get new classes. I recently picked up Rogue and Ninja and it's been a serious uphill battle trying to keep them viable in battle because everything is ten levels higher than them and can one-shot them. Compounding this issue is the game's bright idea to make equipment level based, so on top of having pitiful stats, the classes can only equip my weakest gear making them even easier targets. They also don't level as quickly as I would like and Blessed Stones (Phoenix Downs) are incredibly expensive. As it stands, I have to level up new classes one at a time which is really inefficient.

Also, Matsuna and the Quest team, we need to talk about your schizophrenic handling of Ninjas. I know they are always OP once they're properly outfitted and leveled, which itself is a bit concerning; but what is up with unlocking this class so early and yet locking their gear behind hours of gameplay? You can unlock ninjas early in Tactics, but they won't have any good gear until Chapter 3. It seems to me that Tactics Ogre is where you got this idea from.

[Krizzy]

I'm not actually playing but just watching the walkthrough of FF III (DS version)

I find it boring, no story and no interaction between the main characters. This getting a DS remake rather than FF VI is beyond my comprehension. :roll2

I'm also watching the walkthrough of FF XII. While I like some of its characters (Basch and Balthier) I can't finish watching the damn thing, it's just so boring.

[Wolf Kanno]

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together - This one map in the optional Forest Dungeon in Chapter 2 is seriously testing my patience. The map is filled with a combination of three undead, anywhere from two to four dragons, occasionally an octopi, and about three to four Fairies and Imps. Now the interesting thing about the map is that for some reason, the undead will occasionally fight with you, ignoring your party as long as you don't attack them and focusing on the other enemies which makes the fact the fight is usually my six party members against about nine to ten enemies on the map a bit more manageable, but it's difficult to figure out what causes this.

My issue is that the dragons hit hard, take little damage unless inflicted by Threaten, and are more efficient with killing my front line by ganging up on them than I am against them. The Fairy/Imp combo is weird as well since they can pepper me with arrows and magic from a distance and for depending on their skill load out, they either dodge everything that isn't augmented with a Skill ability with exasperating frequency, hit me as hard as the dragons with high critical hit rates, or simple make the battle a chore by inflicting Sleep and Poison on my party from a safe distance. There range is their real issue. The battle pretty much hinges on the undead enemies fighting with me since they draw the attention of the dragons and imps long enough for my party to set-up an effective assault but their Dragon Tail skill will generally OHKO anyone that doesn't have full health or isn't one of my knights. The scary part here is that the enemy level is the same as mine, so it's not like I'm fighting with a level handicap.

What's annoying me is that I have come close to winning this fight but it almost always turns into a Pyrrhic Victory for me cause I either have to decide to let one of my units die and lose their loyalty points and a Title I'm working towards, or I could resort to the Chariot mechanic (let's you rewind the battle back to change your decisions) which also screws me out of a title I'm working towards, and I'm just opposed to the mechanic in general since I feel it cheapens the whole gaming experience. I have spent most of this afternoon fighting this one battle over and over again. My last battle had me finish off the last of fairies with the aid of the undead, only to learn the battle doesn't end until they are dealt with as well, and sadly I had let one of my character left for the three turn incapacitated because I was under the illusion that I can win without killing the undead and I simply didn't have enough time to kill the undead without losing that unit.

[Example]

While Chrono Cross certainly lives up to the hype, I feel like Square really needs to take the phrase "less is more" to heart. One of the things I and many others loved about Trigger was its simplicity and that it chose what elements worked best and executed them really well. Cross on the other hand tries to cram too much when it isn't necessary. Why do we need so many (easily missable) characters when most of them aren't relevant to the plot and receive little to no development? Event the battle system has so many arbitrary mechanics i.e having to spam attack before you can use an element, and certain elements can only be used once, that I feel it would have been a much smoother experience without. Also the battle music sucks, but the rest of the soundtrack is amazing.

[Vyk]

Idiocy confirmed. Good to know.
Just to let you know, you're not crazy. When Netflix first grabbed it, all they had were the subbed versions, which for some reason Funimation re-subbed, and it was atrocious compared to the fansub. The english dub that came later made up for some of its short-comings, but they still lost some of the gravitas of the dialog that the fan-sub captured, and I'm not entirely sure what was going on with that decision. I'm so glad they partnered with Crunchyroll so things like that doesn't happen in the future

You take something like "I hate their existence and I'll kill every last one of them", and re-subtitle it to say something like "I'll drive them all out". It loses a lot of its punch, and they got a lot of flack for muting the emotion it was meant to convey. The english dub changed it to something like "I'll kill them all", which was much closer to the original, but still not quite as punchy. But way better

Just a small rant about the weird history of the localization. At least with North America and Netflix/Funimation

[Darth Ganon]

The second DLC pack came out for Breath of the Wild only for me to discover that there's limited inventory space for armor. Meaning I'm unable to collect the new pieces without selling something first.

I reluctantly sold the worn pieces to finish the first quest I had started, but I feel like holding off on playing the DLC to see if Nintendo patches this issue.

[Skyblade]

The second DLC pack came out for Breath of the Wild only for me to discover that there's limited inventory space for armor. Meaning I'm unable to collect the new pieces without selling something first.

I reluctantly sold the worn pieces to finish the first quest I had started, but I feel like holding off on playing the DLC to see if Nintendo patches this issue.

Yeah. I had picked up all the amiibo gear available and have maxed my inventory as well, only being able to pick up two of the new pieces. Also currently hoping for a patch to fix it. Wish I had some way to bring it to Nintendo's attention.

[Wolf Kanno]

Tactics Ogre: I think what hurts this game the most for me is the overhaul of the leveling and job systems. Like it sounds nice on paper, but is actually a fucking pain in the ass in practice due to several gameplay quirks.

So So to get some people up to speed, the original Tactics Ogre used to utilize a job system and leveling mechanic similar to FFTactics with several elements from Ogre Battle. Basically you raised individual units and in order to unlock classes, you had to meet certain stat requirements like raising a unit to have a certain amount of points in magic or strength in order to make them a Wizard or Knight. Leveling skills and basic levels worked like FFTactics where your unit is rewarded for individual accomplishments in battle.

Let Us Cling Together changes all of this. So instead of meeting class stat requirements, the game simply requires you to purchase or collect Job Marks of the specific jobs to change units into them. Frankly, this is really boring and eliminates any sense of accomplishment for obtaining them since it's now either relegated to a purchase in shops or subject to RNG shenanigans in battles. The exception being the unique classes, but as that word may infer, very few characters can actually use those classes so the game thankfully gives you enough of them when they are initially unlocked.

Characters no longer level individually instead, Jobs level up. This has the interesting effect of letting two characters you've used for some time have the ability to switch jobs with minor hiccups in terms of level issues. That sounds great on paper except outside of equipment restrictions not being an issue, the two characters are still going to be less useful than if they had stayed in their professions due to how important skills are. The mage you turn into a warrior can't utilize any of the magic based skills you've been pouring your skill points into and vice versa for the warrior turned wizard. It doesn't hurt as much if the classes have overlap of course, but considering how specialized a lot of the classes are in this game, it's not difficult to switch a character into a new class without feeling like you have to start over.

The real bitch here is that the game utilizes a variation of Tactics Advances mechanics of rewarding XP and Skill points after battles instead of during them. Combining this with the fact that equipment is restricted by level, you have a perfect storm for hating on new classes as they become an absolute chore to get them on par with your main unit. So yeah, you just unlocked a new class, but it's now level 1 and can only use level 1 gear, meaning whoever you turn into this class will be next to useless for battles and needs to be constantly babysat. Made worse by the fact all the XP is given after successful battles which can last anywhere from ten to twenty minutes per battle. This is also the type of game where an enemy being a few levels higher than you is enough to make your character next to useless against them, so that means you'll have to fight anywhere from five to ten battles to get these Jobs on par with the rest of the unit, meaning every time you have a new job rewarded, you have to essentially stop all momentum in the plot to go level it up if you want to use it. Considering how important skills are as well and their slower growth for most units, the unit spends forever trying to catch up with the rsest of the team and the whole mess just deters you from wanting to bother checking out new classes which kind of defeats the very spirit of the job system in general.

I had four new recruits join me in the game, with two new jobs as well. Only one of the four characters is actually of any use due to being a generic job I have kept in my battle unit since the beginning. Leveling the other characters with their new jobs has been a complete chore for me due to how long it takes to level up in this game and the fact they make battles more frustrating due to employing them being the same as giving the enemy a huge advantage since they can generally one shot these guys despite only being a few levels in difference. Either the game should have let some classes start with level based on your party average or we should have ditched the whole system and returned to FFTactics rules. I mean starting with a level 1 Cloud in Chapter 4 sounds awful until you throw him in battle, let him hit your Level 60 Chemist with Auto X-Potion and watch as Cloud gains twenty levels.

It has been seriously hampering my ability to really like this game as I feel I've been spending too much time grinding out my classes, and making me less inclined to change classes due to the skill system. The strength of a Job Class system is suppose to be giving the player options and instead I find all of these mechanics just make the system more restrictive and less fun. Which is a shame cause the classes and game are otherwise fun.


So yeah, I'm starting to lose my patience with Tactics Ogre.

[Wolf Kanno]

Suikoden V - The one annoying thing about adding a skill system to Suikoden is that it undermines the beauty of its leveling system and large playable cast of characters. Getting new characters up to speed is easy in earlier installments because your party levels with the difference between their level and enemy level. So a Lv. 5 scrub only needs to fight three or four battles to catch up to your Lv. 35 team, but adding a skill system that doesn't do this means these characters are still going to come off as weaker than the core team you've been running. Yes there is a Party Skill Point pool you can dive into, but the XP you get for that is really low and difficult to fill back up without more grinding. So, unless you know what skills to bother with, you're trapped grinding. Not helped that SV has so many good characters... ^^;

Pokemon GO ~ I hate Raids, and I hate any missions requirement that requires them. I've been stuck with a Yamask for the better part of a year now because I have to complete ten raids with him as a partner (I'm at 6 I believe). I just have the worst luck with getting Raids to work for me. I either find the Raid too late and don't have enough time to finish it, or I can only find Five Star Raids that require a full team of players to complete that my introverted ass is not going to bother with. Not helped is that they jacked up the price for Remote Passes since COVID-19, and I don't have many convenient Gyms in my area to farm Gold or Raids from.

Romancing SaGa Re:Universe ~ Typical Gatcha bullshit where new characters they drop from pulls are overpowered as all hell and leaving other characters in the dust. I finally acquired a character that was God-Tier the first two years of the game's life and now I think he's been knocked down to A-Tier in fan rankings. I'm also just trying to catch up on the plot because the story has shifted to a new scenario with a new main character, and I'm still trying to finish the original scenario. :lol:

[Slade]

The Evil Within 2 - "Sebastian? Why do you run so dang slow!?" Probably my only complaint, tbh.

[Dr. Acula]

Tales of Vesperia is great but just... *feels* long. Not because it's boring or anything, but so much happens that I feel like I should be way further in the game than I actually am. I felt like I was 30 hours in at 15 hours. I've had this with a few other Tales games but not to this extent.

[Slade]

Persona 3 - Story and characters are great but the world just feels, I dunno, empty? Like there's only a very small amount of things you can do when you're not in Tartarus and it becomes very samey and even boring at times waiting for the next full moon and big plot point. How many times can I run track? Or go to the art room? Also, I literally have three girlfriends in the game now. Like, I get that it's an earlier title in the series with more limitations, but Persona 5 definitely improved the everyday world stuff.

[cheesesteak]

Star Ocean: Second Story R - dumb party mate AI. Perhaps my biggest pet peeve about Japanese party-based Action RPGs. I swore them off years ago, but it sorta slipped my mind w/ SO:SSR. At least it's limited to just the mages being stupid.

[Slade]

Fallout: New Vegas - I'm not a huge fan of the delayed health regain system. I tend to be the type that downs a lot of food and drink on the fly as I'm fighting to regain health in both Fallout 3 and 4 so it needs to be instantaneous. Unfortunately in New Vegas every food and drink has a "cool down" period after you consume it before it gives you health. Kind of annoying. On the flip side of this, I have to rethink my strategies to combat so in some ways it's kind of a mixed bag of annoyance and refreshing. It was just a little off putting to begin with.

[Wolf Kanno]

Star Ocean: Second Story R - dumb party mate AI. Perhaps my biggest pet peeve about Japanese party-based Action RPGs. I swore them off years ago, but it sorta slipped my mind w/ SO:SSR. At least it's limited to just the mages being stupid.

I remember the A.I. being very spotty in the original.

[Wolf Kanno]

Mostly playing FFXI, but my biggest gripe so far is that while the devs have done a lot to speed up leveling and make the game smoother for misanthropic loners like myself to play, the crafting system does not feel that way. Inventory nonsense aside, leveling crafting skills is a chore and just involves making the same useless stuff over and over again, and it's not like I'm going to be using all this brass and bronze equipment for very long since leveling is much faster and easier now. I just don't understand why this hasn't really been addressed.

[Loony BoB]

I do recall feeling like crafting was demoralisingly bad in FFXI when I played it in 2008. I feel like it involved just repeatedly trying to craft stuff and hoping it works (RNG)? Is that right?

[Wolf Kanno]

I do recall feeling like crafting was demoralisingly bad in FFXI when I played it in 2008. I feel like it involved just repeatedly trying to craft stuff and hoping it works (RNG)? Is that right?

Essentially yes. There is a an RNG factor but the higher your skill level with that particular craft, the more likely you will succeed. The issue is that it takes forever to level the skills. We're talking like a 0.1 increases maybe every other attempt if you try. The other issue is that failure always results in one of more materials being destroyed, so now you're also dealing with the inventory system if you want to level and while some crafts can be easy like say smithing and woodworking, which both require two materials at most with one being a crystal, stuff like alchemy and leatherwork require three to four materials just to make basic stuff that is needed for other crafts. Heaven help you if an item requires two or more craft skills to make.

Also, you can't craft materials outside of your skill range, so even if you wanted to just test RNG and try to make some high level item, the game flat out won't let you. There is also an advanced crafting system called Synergy that involves an NPC group and I believe other players to actually do, but I am not even there. I've been playing for two months now and I don't think I have a single crafting skill above lv. 4 at this point. I will remind people that the guilds don't start really recognizing you as a member until after you reach lv. 10. I've got two jobs close to the game's original soft cap at this point and I'm at the midpoint of the base game campaign. I feel like I should at least be lv. 10 by this point in a few of the crafts, but I'm barely anywhere with any of them.

[Loony BoB]

Ah, yep, that's the system I played too then. Pretty hard to make a crafting system I won't enjoy but FFXI managed it!