Deal Breakers

[Vyk]

Teenagers being treated like veterans with years of battle experience, the strength and ability to pilot and wield upright bipedal tanks or swords bigger and heavier than they are. All while acting like either the biggest airhead or a cutthroat lone wolf Marty Stu

Even Persona had to "prove" it's worth to me because of this. Leading up there was a ton of speculation and rumor that it was going to move beyond high school and move to college. Japans obsession with high school is beyond over done at this point. It isn't just annoying to always be the same age and playing the same coming of age story, it very frequently gets immersion breaking when they try something new but still can't let go. So you play as a doctor. A 13 year old doctor. Who has to be a ridiculous prodigy to even make sense. But what government is going to let a kid practice medicine. And he still acts like an airhead instead of a genius.. (Tales of Xillia in case you're curious. One of my favorite games almost ruined)

[Spuuky]

My dealbreaker is fanservice-y anime girls.

[Black Magic Shopkeeper]

ok, this is gonna sound weird, but.... aesthetics/color palette. Worlds made up entirely of bright, over-saturated colors are jarring for me, as is a world made up entirely of pastels. So, while I would LOVE to play games like Tales Of, I'm unable to bring myself to even so much as TOUCH most of them because the color swatches make me

Alternatively, make things TOO muted and give it either too much or too little contrast, and I'll be turned off of it as well. This usually goes hand-in-hand with overdone realism. But... nowadays that's a little hard to avoid on the mainstream game market. (see trope: "Real is Brown")

I know that narrows things down for me one heck of a lot, but I know what my eyes like. And my eyes sure are picky. They need a good balance of color, and saturation, and contrast, and...and stuff.

addendum: Exceptions to my stupid preference are games like Nier/Drakengard, Lunar Eternal Blue/Silver Star Story, and FFXII. Just had to say-- I do have exceptions.

[The Captain]

BAD voice acting now has become a deal breaker. For any game to be enjoyable enough to warrant a full playthrough, I need to not want to hang myself by the 3rd cutscene because the voice acting is so over the top or just plain irritating. Luckily, I've only encountered that on a couple of games since I do my homework most of the time before I start a game but there have been some that I started and just could not finish.

Likewise, any game that doesn't have the quick travel option might be a deal breaker for me moving forward. I'm not a big level grinder, though I do love to explore. If I have to constantly go back and forth through the same area on quests and backtrack, I will lose interest.

Take care all.

[Wolf Kanno]

I forgot to mention that one of my deal breakers is tank controls. I've never played a game where they are useful and couldn't have been vastly improved with a more intuitive control scheme. I don't really know why it exists because being able to back up while still fighting is not only not as useful as it sounds in non-action games, but games like Devil May Cry and Zelda show that there are better ways to do this like having a goddamn lock on feature for weapons.

[Vermachtnis]

A bad soundtrack. Music is one of the most important parts of a game and if a game has a bad one or a lack of one, I'm done.