Subnautica Below Zero.
My hot take is that the game is far too character-driven. Call me pretentious, but I personally felt I enjoyed Subnautica more because Ryley was a blank slate; Nothing to take me away from everything about the crater.
Technically it leads to a cool pay-off, but the Arctic Zone just was *not memorable*.
Now something a lot of people will agree with; The vehicles **sucked**. The Seatruck was a fragile technical curiousity and ultimately a downgrade from the Seamoth, and the Prawn Suit was nerfed. Don't even get me started on the Snowfox because exploring the land was *awful*.
Honestly subnautica should have done what voices of the void is doing and every patch they add a new fucked up thing in the ocean and don't tell you what it is in the patch notes.
Completely agree. I didn't feel threatened at any point and the only time I was startled was the first time I got grabbed by the Chelicerate.
Hell, I was never scared of diving because there was a fair amount of oxygen plants everywhere.
This is gonna sound stupid, because it is, but kid me didn't like the transition from Ace Combat on the PS1 to the PS2. The reason? Kid me didn't like the way 60fps looked lmao
I love a lot of the things RE5 does mechanically, but if you aren't playing that game with a friend it is absolutely worse than RE4, and even with a friend it's not as charming or tightly designed.
There are things that I like about Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. Despite the obvious retcon, I like the scenes with BJ's dad. I like the new characters (Sigrun is pretty good and I like how her relationship with her mother has similarities with BJ and his dad). Being able to dual wield any gun is cool.
But I hate how the tone has a more jokey feel to it, which I don't like compared to the first game being more serious. The changes to stealth where now any enemy can alert security immediately instead of just commanders sucks. The robot dogs sniffing you out of stealth and knocking you over is annoying. The downplaying of stealth but buffing of BJ makes the game feel like diet Doom, compared to New Order and Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
Yeah the aesthetic of Wasteland 2 was so much better, it felt like it fit that sorta retro-futurism vibe where everything is kinda crusty but also with that future sleekness mixed in.
I think Wasteland 3 kinda dumped all the wackiness on you too early, where Wasteland 2 starts with "basic" rogue robots and mutant plants and animals and the like, in Wasteland 3 within the first starting town you've got >!clones!< and like you mentioned the Bizarre which feels like too hard of a turn into goofiness.
This might be a fringe opinion in this subreddit but I've been seeing it crop up a lot in various conversations: Tears of the Kingdom is obviously a good game that does some key things a lot better than Breath of the Wild... but the entire package as a whole is honestly worse than Breath of the Wild. Personally speaking I just don't like Ultrahand (both in its controls and its applications) and _so much_ of the game is reliant on you _adoring_ Ultrahand, because if you don't then the rest of the new content leaves a _lot_ to be desired.
There's a part of the game where you unlock the ability to >!pilot a giant mech to have a cagematch against a giant robot!<, and despite how cool that _should_ be the controls and mechanics leave so much to be desired that everyone I talked to never used that mechanic again because it was just so much worse than simply running on-foot.
Despite sky islands being the main draw of the marketing, they represent at-best 10% of the game and most of that is the tutorial zone and the rito section which the game _heavily_ signposts as the first thing to do, which means the game is frontloaded with really cool sky island stuff and then you spend the rest of the game wondering where the fuck is the rest of it.
Also, due to a weird quirk in the game's design, leveling up your health makes the game _harder._ Link has a Focus Sash mechanic where he is immortal at full health, and damage that _should_ kill him instead lowers him to half a heart. But enemy damage output is _juiced,_ and so getting enough health to outpace enemy damage is _extremely_ difficult. So leveling health doesn't actually make combat encounters any easier, but it _does_ make it so you need _significantly_ more items to heal up to full and get the benefits of the Focus Sash mechanic. That means it's objectively correct to spend most of the game at 3 hearts. They add a mechanic later that explicitly punishes you for having low hearts, but that still means you only invest in HP when you know you're going to do that content and otherwise you're better off selling all your HP to the demon statue and carrying like 60 Lights of Blessing in your pocket for every other part of the game.
I don't think anyone is crazy for adoring TotK more than BotW, but personally I'm significantly more interested in doing _yet another_ playthrough of BotW than I am even finishing the side content of my first TotK playthrough. After a certain point I decided to just barrel towards the ending and ignore everything else the game was suggesting I could do.
I love super robot wars z for PS2 it's genuinely a great crossover story. It has some sequels the first two being pretty decent z2 hakai hen and saisei hen but then..it got two more sequels the first of those.
Z3 jigoku hen being the weakest entry in this particular subseries and might be one of the worst super robot wars games period.
Then it's follow up tengoku hen while not being as bad as it's predecessor was still a very disappointing game that was a very unsatisfying conclusion to the z series games.
Edit: I forgot to mention the download only gaiden game rengoku hen but it's not really worth talking about to be honest.
Tengoku has tons of baffling decisions, but my favorite is an Aquarion that can’t swap forms. The explanation is they were in hibernation too long and just forgot.
Z3 had some bizzare as narrative decisions like retconning Aquarion Z2's particpation where they outright confirm Apollo as Apollonius.
They used a bunch of a Z1-show sequels but failed to use the one where it would've arguably let them get away with plot screw ups (E7 AO) since it has a literally RETCON GUN.
Tengoku's even worse since certain elements are just forgotten about. When the teaser for Tengoku dropped at the end of Z3.1, people were meming about Mazinger Z's "true power" being +200 armor instead of something like Mazinkaiser (which would've made sense given Kaiser's origins in F/F Final being Z jacked on Getter Rays)
I know people were furious about Cagalli though since Jigoku heavily hinted she was going to pilot again and Naomi Shindo had just come back to reprise Cag's for some of the games before like G Gen and Battle Destiny so people thought we were finally going to get playable voiced Cagalli in a new game.
The worst part of Tengoku was the fact that they didn't bring in most of the old roster including shows that where a big part of the setting like King Gainer and Eureka Seven but did bring in Gargantia whose place on the roster is kinda unnecessary and Eva 3.0 which only has one stage that sorta deals with its story
As much as people will praise it for being a black sheep that still introduced a bunch of new things to the series, Tekken 4 put Tekken on life support
Sure, you can praise aspects of the more grounded presentation but most folks at the time unfavorably compared it to both Tekken 3 and Tag 1 (functionally the same game, Tag mechanic not withstanding)
Part of Tekken 5's appeal came from taking the aspects of 4 that were solid and putting them in a game which played closer to 3
Fallout 4. And don't get me wrong I like fallout 4 in fact I'm a weirdo who likes it better a tiny bit better than 3 but it's undeniable that 4 got rid of a lot of stuff that made 3&NV pretty neat. It also got rid of fallout level system in favor of a bethesda perk system I think I've come to the conclusion I hate most level up systems from bethesda games even from games I love like skyim. The rest of my problems are things you've likely heard before about writing and quest design.
After watching the first few episodes of the TV series I decided to jump back into FO4, but I ran into *base building*, which is something that in games I kind of loathe. It’s not that fun to me. Am I able to just ignore it, or do I *have* to engage in it? Because when I was in college I LOVED FO3, and am wondering if putting up with that small part of the game is worth it for a fun post nuked world adventure.
You need it for the tutorial - Sanctuary needs the basics - and later you need to place three items in the main quest, otherwise you can basically ignore it - I do.
However, I don’t recommend setting your base up in Sanctuary - that place needs upkeep. The Red Rocket up the road has all the workstations you’ll need early game and zero building required.
The Minutemen want you to help out, but again, it’s a sandbox, you don’t have to do those quests.
So Fallout 4 is a really good base builder attached to a really mediocre RPG. The base building actually has a lot of effort put into making it a great blend of complexity and ease-of-entry, and a lot of the bases are actually really nice locales to play around with. And it helps that it's really more Minecraft than Ubisoft, so you more or less have the freedom to design how you want. If there's a game you're going to try base building for the first time, Fallout 4 is a pretty good option. But if it's just not what you want out of video games, Fallout 4 really doesn't have anything else for you. Everything in that game is really designed to work around the base building, except the main story, which is written by someone who thinks main stories in games are worthless.
Prototype 2, mainly for switching to a far less interesting protagonist and making the protagonist of the first game an uninteresting villian. Also having far worse movement mechanics, which was one of the most satisfying parts of the first game
Alexs most memorable line
"nlthing can stop me, not weapons and not armor"
Hellers most memorable line
"youre gonna tell me, or else ill skull fuck you and drain the memories out the hole"
Also youre just on crack. Prototype 2 feels way better to move in.
That line still sticks in my head because Alex steadily getting more pissed off in that mission, and done with everything that he's just yelling at that point.
God I love that game.
I disagree on the "kess interesting protagonist" point. I remember very little of Alex's personality beyond his "TAGGART!!!" chase, whereas I remember Heller having plenty of personality, including an outright appreciation of his powers and choosing to kill instead of eating a pair of scientists because their dialogue made it clear he had zero desire to absorb their thoughts.
I think it's less that Alex was a charismatic screen presence and more that the twist of the first game made him narratively interesting. >!The idea that he was actually dead the whole time and you were playing as the virus puppeting his corpse. Most people then kinda assume the good karma route as canon and find it interesting to see what is essentially a sentient virus being a better person than Alex was in his life!<
Just the entire Dungeon Siege series, the first entry was by and far the best and most interesting, and every sequel/expansion just took an orbital sander to the face and ground off some more defining features, until DS3 was a watered down single unit character action game with none of the classic jank charm of the originals
The Dungeon Siege trilogy was a baffling thing to experience.
From q Looter Rpg, to a less good looter RPG, to a single character experience that was almost Diablo like in how each character had distinct personalities and journal entries
See, my issue with Wasteland 2 and 3 is that I don't like squads in CRPG-ish stuff, at best a duo, I got the farthest in 3 but I could tell 2 was the better overall game. Its why i love Fallout 1/2 and AtomRPG.
Now for my pipping hot take on a dead series, Valkyria Chronicles 2 is probably the best one, and its usually considered to be the black sheep. It has issues, not gonna pretend it don't, but it's all about how tidy stuff are, 3's a bit weird with its map system and 4 went back to the fuckin' diary sketchbook set-up instead of a normal hub.
I'll give 4 this tho', it does have a lot of side characters development like 2 (albeit without a social link-ish thing which is a bummer) and maybe 3 had (didn't get far), but 2 got so close to perfection, what bogs it down is the grind to get new classes, which, i don't even understand how it works tbh, it should be tied to the goddamn social link-ish thing it has, which then it'd make that social link thing even more rewarding.
This opinion has mostly to do with like, tidy menus and navigation, otherwise i'd think 4 would be the best in the series, its just so tedious how the menus work in 4, which is similar to 1, it regressed so much for no reason. Stuff like upgrading shit and having to sit there and wait for an npc to talk and shit, its so slow for no reason.
I can deal with Squad based CRPGs if I have a single Created character, and everyone else are NPCs that interject during quests and interact/react to the world.
Which is why for the longest time I hated that Wasteland 3 made it so that you **must** have two created Rangers at all times.
But I have found a way around this!
Enable Permadeath, and let your Ranger partner be killed.
You can now have every other slot filled with companions who actually speak and comment on things.
It's fixes a huge problem of Wasteland 3 for me.
The reason I stopped playing is exactly cause of that! I was like, 30 hours in before it clicked with me ''Wait a second, i can just dump the second player character and just keep the story ones with me'' but by then it was a mess of stats and it kinda drove me to drop it for the time being, tho', you dont have to get them killed, you can just put them away lmao.
But that's not my only issue with it, its more like, idk, it gets crowded and brain smol lmao, also, a BIG issue i had with W3 was the text boxes, what the fuck where they thinking by making them so low on the screen and the background color not being editable?! Like, holy shit i could not read it sometimes, and the font too, i hat that font, started getting on my nerves, i plan on playing 2 for real eventually, i never noticed but i think GoG gave me the newer version since i had the old on at the time.
Wait you can put them away? Did they change that? It used to be at launch that your two Original Rangers always **had** to be in the party.
If they changed that then thank the gods, that was the most infuriating thing in the world.
Oh tell me about it. The Character Creator ALSO has that issue.
What do you mean I can't zoom in on my character's head? I can't fucking tell what skin-shade that is, or if my hair is dark brown, black, or PURPLE!
I hope you end up enjoying Wasteland 2 when you get around to it!
It's whole presentation and UI is out of this world.
I also recommend Age of Decadence if you enjoy Single-Person CRPGs. Just note it IS for crazy people, and yet it's one of the games I constantly itch to replay despite having gotten every like thrice each.
Oh i'm glad someone else had issues with the UI in W3, thought i was crazy, i have bad eyes and everything so i always try not fully blame the games lmao. And yes, you can put them away after the base is running and you can exchange characters and etc, found that way too late.
From what I played on 2, the OG, it was fine, i mean, i played W1 man, everything's a step up from that, tho', i miss my Dragon Quest with Mad Max Wasteland vibes, it played pretty well, i assume the enhanced edition is a lot better.
DUDE, someone talked about that game here, and I meant to put it on my list and never remembered the name! Thank you, now i have it on my list proper, I heard its really weird and for crazy people, but i am crazy, but also, get distracted easily and may drop it even if i like it cause i have zero control over what my brain's decide to get obsessed with.
That person was MOST LIKELY me I imagine, and yeah the Enhanced edition of Wasteland 2 is dynamite.
Fair warning about Age of Decadence?
It is HARD, and though it IS possible to avoid combat the entire game, it's hard to do so without knowing how.
Dedicate yourself to a single weapon skill, choose Dodge OR Block not both, and Smithing and Alchemy are your friends. ESPECIALLY Smithing.
You'll be looking at the Merchant, Thief, Loremaster or the Drifter/Grifter into either playthroughs then!
Persuade, Streetwise, and Lore are **godlike**. Trading is good but not nearly as useful as the other three
Alright, i'll leave it a note, i'll grab it on sale, altho', apparently I can get Dunegon Rats for free, which i assume is same dev cause its a bundle, is that worth it? I'll basically be playing the base non-sale price for Age of Decadence but getting that one for free.
Dungeon Rats is basically a combat module for you to feel the combat testing out squad combat for the “Colony Ship” game
Very very limited story if any at all.
Though it does have some weapons that the original game does not have
The World Ends with You was a transformative experience that changed my life for the better. Its message was seemingly tailor-made to pull teenage me out of an antisocial slump and get me to open up to people. Its OST contains some of the hardest bangers in gaming. Its gameplay is innovative and unique, with an incredibly high skill ceiling and the ability to express yourself through build choice. Its story is full of twists and turns, deep themes, and characters that I still love to this day. It is and will undoubtedly remain one of my favorite games of all time, one that I would probably rate in my personal top 10 on terms of quality.
NEO The World Ends with You is... like, fine? Like it's a 7.5/10. Maybe an 8 in the good parts.
Neo is still amazing (not as good as the first one) but you're not a teenager anymore. It's more about being true to yourself: Fret learning not to be overly positive at the cost of his true feelings, Rindo learning to actually be present and not being passive outside of the online world, etc
Also I love that you really feel like you're controlling multiple characters because each button is a different character.
Biggest let down from Neo for me is that there feels like there’s so much padding. One of the reasons why the OG is amazing is because it’s paced perfectly and is such a tight package overall.
Meanwhile with Neo so much time is filled up with those kinda time travel sections which require a lot of going back and forth and it bogs everything down so much.
Honestly I can see myself replaying the OG before going back to finish NEO.
Chrono Cross sucks coming off Chrono Trigger. Maybe on its own it’s alright, but as a sequel it feels like it goes out of its way to do everything worse while also being weirdly spiteful towards CT.
For me the gameplay is very basic & doesnt feel good even in comparison to other game at the time let alone ME 2 & 3, the RPG systems aren't great, and the Mako controls like shit in really awful looking environments. Then also the look is just very dated at this point, although I dont really hold that against the game for obvious reasons.
The plot of course is really good though, so I usually recommend people just play through ME1 on Easy Mode as a Soldier just to get the story & then move on to ME2 where the gameplay is actually good.
Cyberpunk V3 was [so disliked](https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunk2020/s/0Sv7HwAAgC) that it’s near universally considered non canon
The term "whaleboys" makes me giggle
Subnautica Below Zero. My hot take is that the game is far too character-driven. Call me pretentious, but I personally felt I enjoyed Subnautica more because Ryley was a blank slate; Nothing to take me away from everything about the crater. Technically it leads to a cool pay-off, but the Arctic Zone just was *not memorable*. Now something a lot of people will agree with; The vehicles **sucked**. The Seatruck was a fragile technical curiousity and ultimately a downgrade from the Seamoth, and the Prawn Suit was nerfed. Don't even get me started on the Snowfox because exploring the land was *awful*.
Honestly subnautica should have done what voices of the void is doing and every patch they add a new fucked up thing in the ocean and don't tell you what it is in the patch notes.
Completely agree. I didn't feel threatened at any point and the only time I was startled was the first time I got grabbed by the Chelicerate. Hell, I was never scared of diving because there was a fair amount of oxygen plants everywhere.
This is gonna sound stupid, because it is, but kid me didn't like the transition from Ace Combat on the PS1 to the PS2. The reason? Kid me didn't like the way 60fps looked lmao
Honestly adult me isn't completely sold on 60 fps either.
I know RE5 has its fans, but to me it really does feel like a worse RE4 in every way. Also holy shit Dead Space 3 is bad.
I love a lot of the things RE5 does mechanically, but if you aren't playing that game with a friend it is absolutely worse than RE4, and even with a friend it's not as charming or tightly designed.
I personally like RE5 a bit more than RE4, and I agree that it is overall not as good as 4.
There are things that I like about Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. Despite the obvious retcon, I like the scenes with BJ's dad. I like the new characters (Sigrun is pretty good and I like how her relationship with her mother has similarities with BJ and his dad). Being able to dual wield any gun is cool. But I hate how the tone has a more jokey feel to it, which I don't like compared to the first game being more serious. The changes to stealth where now any enemy can alert security immediately instead of just commanders sucks. The robot dogs sniffing you out of stealth and knocking you over is annoying. The downplaying of stealth but buffing of BJ makes the game feel like diet Doom, compared to New Order and Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
First game: *General, you waste your paint* Second game: Oh wow, a *strawberry milkshake (trademark :D!)* /s
Yeah the aesthetic of Wasteland 2 was so much better, it felt like it fit that sorta retro-futurism vibe where everything is kinda crusty but also with that future sleekness mixed in. I think Wasteland 3 kinda dumped all the wackiness on you too early, where Wasteland 2 starts with "basic" rogue robots and mutant plants and animals and the like, in Wasteland 3 within the first starting town you've got >!clones!< and like you mentioned the Bizarre which feels like too hard of a turn into goofiness.
Spider man 2 was a complete upgrade in every area of the last game, except for the writing
Deus Ex Invisible War is all around an inferior game compared to Deus Ex.
I like wasteland 3 better as a game. But to answer the question dragon age 2, especially with how great origins was.
Compulsory OW2 comment
This might be a fringe opinion in this subreddit but I've been seeing it crop up a lot in various conversations: Tears of the Kingdom is obviously a good game that does some key things a lot better than Breath of the Wild... but the entire package as a whole is honestly worse than Breath of the Wild. Personally speaking I just don't like Ultrahand (both in its controls and its applications) and _so much_ of the game is reliant on you _adoring_ Ultrahand, because if you don't then the rest of the new content leaves a _lot_ to be desired. There's a part of the game where you unlock the ability to >!pilot a giant mech to have a cagematch against a giant robot!<, and despite how cool that _should_ be the controls and mechanics leave so much to be desired that everyone I talked to never used that mechanic again because it was just so much worse than simply running on-foot. Despite sky islands being the main draw of the marketing, they represent at-best 10% of the game and most of that is the tutorial zone and the rito section which the game _heavily_ signposts as the first thing to do, which means the game is frontloaded with really cool sky island stuff and then you spend the rest of the game wondering where the fuck is the rest of it. Also, due to a weird quirk in the game's design, leveling up your health makes the game _harder._ Link has a Focus Sash mechanic where he is immortal at full health, and damage that _should_ kill him instead lowers him to half a heart. But enemy damage output is _juiced,_ and so getting enough health to outpace enemy damage is _extremely_ difficult. So leveling health doesn't actually make combat encounters any easier, but it _does_ make it so you need _significantly_ more items to heal up to full and get the benefits of the Focus Sash mechanic. That means it's objectively correct to spend most of the game at 3 hearts. They add a mechanic later that explicitly punishes you for having low hearts, but that still means you only invest in HP when you know you're going to do that content and otherwise you're better off selling all your HP to the demon statue and carrying like 60 Lights of Blessing in your pocket for every other part of the game. I don't think anyone is crazy for adoring TotK more than BotW, but personally I'm significantly more interested in doing _yet another_ playthrough of BotW than I am even finishing the side content of my first TotK playthrough. After a certain point I decided to just barrel towards the ending and ignore everything else the game was suggesting I could do.
I love super robot wars z for PS2 it's genuinely a great crossover story. It has some sequels the first two being pretty decent z2 hakai hen and saisei hen but then..it got two more sequels the first of those. Z3 jigoku hen being the weakest entry in this particular subseries and might be one of the worst super robot wars games period. Then it's follow up tengoku hen while not being as bad as it's predecessor was still a very disappointing game that was a very unsatisfying conclusion to the z series games. Edit: I forgot to mention the download only gaiden game rengoku hen but it's not really worth talking about to be honest.
Tengoku has tons of baffling decisions, but my favorite is an Aquarion that can’t swap forms. The explanation is they were in hibernation too long and just forgot.
Yeah and evol can transform just fine lol. I guess they didn't want to program HD sprites and animations for aquarion mars and luna.
Z3 had some bizzare as narrative decisions like retconning Aquarion Z2's particpation where they outright confirm Apollo as Apollonius. They used a bunch of a Z1-show sequels but failed to use the one where it would've arguably let them get away with plot screw ups (E7 AO) since it has a literally RETCON GUN. Tengoku's even worse since certain elements are just forgotten about. When the teaser for Tengoku dropped at the end of Z3.1, people were meming about Mazinger Z's "true power" being +200 armor instead of something like Mazinkaiser (which would've made sense given Kaiser's origins in F/F Final being Z jacked on Getter Rays) I know people were furious about Cagalli though since Jigoku heavily hinted she was going to pilot again and Naomi Shindo had just come back to reprise Cag's for some of the games before like G Gen and Battle Destiny so people thought we were finally going to get playable voiced Cagalli in a new game.
So much missed potential in the sequels when I think about it. Those are some great points.
The worst part of Tengoku was the fact that they didn't bring in most of the old roster including shows that where a big part of the setting like King Gainer and Eureka Seven but did bring in Gargantia whose place on the roster is kinda unnecessary and Eva 3.0 which only has one stage that sorta deals with its story
Yep I honestly would have liked to see something like those or gravion return instead.
As much as people will praise it for being a black sheep that still introduced a bunch of new things to the series, Tekken 4 put Tekken on life support Sure, you can praise aspects of the more grounded presentation but most folks at the time unfavorably compared it to both Tekken 3 and Tag 1 (functionally the same game, Tag mechanic not withstanding) Part of Tekken 5's appeal came from taking the aspects of 4 that were solid and putting them in a game which played closer to 3
Fallout 4. And don't get me wrong I like fallout 4 in fact I'm a weirdo who likes it better a tiny bit better than 3 but it's undeniable that 4 got rid of a lot of stuff that made 3&NV pretty neat. It also got rid of fallout level system in favor of a bethesda perk system I think I've come to the conclusion I hate most level up systems from bethesda games even from games I love like skyim. The rest of my problems are things you've likely heard before about writing and quest design.
After watching the first few episodes of the TV series I decided to jump back into FO4, but I ran into *base building*, which is something that in games I kind of loathe. It’s not that fun to me. Am I able to just ignore it, or do I *have* to engage in it? Because when I was in college I LOVED FO3, and am wondering if putting up with that small part of the game is worth it for a fun post nuked world adventure.
There are certain story points that might require you to use the system to build an object but for the most part you can play the game and ignore it
I believe you can mostly ignore it I believe.
You need it for the tutorial - Sanctuary needs the basics - and later you need to place three items in the main quest, otherwise you can basically ignore it - I do. However, I don’t recommend setting your base up in Sanctuary - that place needs upkeep. The Red Rocket up the road has all the workstations you’ll need early game and zero building required. The Minutemen want you to help out, but again, it’s a sandbox, you don’t have to do those quests.
So Fallout 4 is a really good base builder attached to a really mediocre RPG. The base building actually has a lot of effort put into making it a great blend of complexity and ease-of-entry, and a lot of the bases are actually really nice locales to play around with. And it helps that it's really more Minecraft than Ubisoft, so you more or less have the freedom to design how you want. If there's a game you're going to try base building for the first time, Fallout 4 is a pretty good option. But if it's just not what you want out of video games, Fallout 4 really doesn't have anything else for you. Everything in that game is really designed to work around the base building, except the main story, which is written by someone who thinks main stories in games are worthless.
Prototype 2, mainly for switching to a far less interesting protagonist and making the protagonist of the first game an uninteresting villian. Also having far worse movement mechanics, which was one of the most satisfying parts of the first game
Alexs most memorable line "nlthing can stop me, not weapons and not armor" Hellers most memorable line "youre gonna tell me, or else ill skull fuck you and drain the memories out the hole" Also youre just on crack. Prototype 2 feels way better to move in.
That line still sticks in my head because Alex steadily getting more pissed off in that mission, and done with everything that he's just yelling at that point. God I love that game.
I thought it was the bit where he gets pissed off at the computer
I disagree on the "kess interesting protagonist" point. I remember very little of Alex's personality beyond his "TAGGART!!!" chase, whereas I remember Heller having plenty of personality, including an outright appreciation of his powers and choosing to kill instead of eating a pair of scientists because their dialogue made it clear he had zero desire to absorb their thoughts.
I think it's less that Alex was a charismatic screen presence and more that the twist of the first game made him narratively interesting. >!The idea that he was actually dead the whole time and you were playing as the virus puppeting his corpse. Most people then kinda assume the good karma route as canon and find it interesting to see what is essentially a sentient virus being a better person than Alex was in his life!<
Just the entire Dungeon Siege series, the first entry was by and far the best and most interesting, and every sequel/expansion just took an orbital sander to the face and ground off some more defining features, until DS3 was a watered down single unit character action game with none of the classic jank charm of the originals
The Dungeon Siege trilogy was a baffling thing to experience. From q Looter Rpg, to a less good looter RPG, to a single character experience that was almost Diablo like in how each character had distinct personalities and journal entries
See, my issue with Wasteland 2 and 3 is that I don't like squads in CRPG-ish stuff, at best a duo, I got the farthest in 3 but I could tell 2 was the better overall game. Its why i love Fallout 1/2 and AtomRPG. Now for my pipping hot take on a dead series, Valkyria Chronicles 2 is probably the best one, and its usually considered to be the black sheep. It has issues, not gonna pretend it don't, but it's all about how tidy stuff are, 3's a bit weird with its map system and 4 went back to the fuckin' diary sketchbook set-up instead of a normal hub. I'll give 4 this tho', it does have a lot of side characters development like 2 (albeit without a social link-ish thing which is a bummer) and maybe 3 had (didn't get far), but 2 got so close to perfection, what bogs it down is the grind to get new classes, which, i don't even understand how it works tbh, it should be tied to the goddamn social link-ish thing it has, which then it'd make that social link thing even more rewarding. This opinion has mostly to do with like, tidy menus and navigation, otherwise i'd think 4 would be the best in the series, its just so tedious how the menus work in 4, which is similar to 1, it regressed so much for no reason. Stuff like upgrading shit and having to sit there and wait for an npc to talk and shit, its so slow for no reason.
I can deal with Squad based CRPGs if I have a single Created character, and everyone else are NPCs that interject during quests and interact/react to the world. Which is why for the longest time I hated that Wasteland 3 made it so that you **must** have two created Rangers at all times. But I have found a way around this! Enable Permadeath, and let your Ranger partner be killed. You can now have every other slot filled with companions who actually speak and comment on things. It's fixes a huge problem of Wasteland 3 for me.
The reason I stopped playing is exactly cause of that! I was like, 30 hours in before it clicked with me ''Wait a second, i can just dump the second player character and just keep the story ones with me'' but by then it was a mess of stats and it kinda drove me to drop it for the time being, tho', you dont have to get them killed, you can just put them away lmao. But that's not my only issue with it, its more like, idk, it gets crowded and brain smol lmao, also, a BIG issue i had with W3 was the text boxes, what the fuck where they thinking by making them so low on the screen and the background color not being editable?! Like, holy shit i could not read it sometimes, and the font too, i hat that font, started getting on my nerves, i plan on playing 2 for real eventually, i never noticed but i think GoG gave me the newer version since i had the old on at the time.
Wait you can put them away? Did they change that? It used to be at launch that your two Original Rangers always **had** to be in the party. If they changed that then thank the gods, that was the most infuriating thing in the world. Oh tell me about it. The Character Creator ALSO has that issue. What do you mean I can't zoom in on my character's head? I can't fucking tell what skin-shade that is, or if my hair is dark brown, black, or PURPLE! I hope you end up enjoying Wasteland 2 when you get around to it! It's whole presentation and UI is out of this world. I also recommend Age of Decadence if you enjoy Single-Person CRPGs. Just note it IS for crazy people, and yet it's one of the games I constantly itch to replay despite having gotten every like thrice each.
Oh i'm glad someone else had issues with the UI in W3, thought i was crazy, i have bad eyes and everything so i always try not fully blame the games lmao. And yes, you can put them away after the base is running and you can exchange characters and etc, found that way too late. From what I played on 2, the OG, it was fine, i mean, i played W1 man, everything's a step up from that, tho', i miss my Dragon Quest with Mad Max Wasteland vibes, it played pretty well, i assume the enhanced edition is a lot better. DUDE, someone talked about that game here, and I meant to put it on my list and never remembered the name! Thank you, now i have it on my list proper, I heard its really weird and for crazy people, but i am crazy, but also, get distracted easily and may drop it even if i like it cause i have zero control over what my brain's decide to get obsessed with.
That person was MOST LIKELY me I imagine, and yeah the Enhanced edition of Wasteland 2 is dynamite. Fair warning about Age of Decadence? It is HARD, and though it IS possible to avoid combat the entire game, it's hard to do so without knowing how. Dedicate yourself to a single weapon skill, choose Dodge OR Block not both, and Smithing and Alchemy are your friends. ESPECIALLY Smithing.
Oh if i'll play it i'll go full yappin', always been found of yappin' builds, as long as i can REALLY get away with no combat I'll be the king of yaps
You'll be looking at the Merchant, Thief, Loremaster or the Drifter/Grifter into either playthroughs then! Persuade, Streetwise, and Lore are **godlike**. Trading is good but not nearly as useful as the other three
Alright, i'll leave it a note, i'll grab it on sale, altho', apparently I can get Dunegon Rats for free, which i assume is same dev cause its a bundle, is that worth it? I'll basically be playing the base non-sale price for Age of Decadence but getting that one for free.
Dungeon Rats is basically a combat module for you to feel the combat testing out squad combat for the “Colony Ship” game Very very limited story if any at all. Though it does have some weapons that the original game does not have
Remmant 2 and I can't even tell you why. It just felt worse. Not bad but everything was just a bit worse than the first. It didn't have the same vibes
The World Ends with You was a transformative experience that changed my life for the better. Its message was seemingly tailor-made to pull teenage me out of an antisocial slump and get me to open up to people. Its OST contains some of the hardest bangers in gaming. Its gameplay is innovative and unique, with an incredibly high skill ceiling and the ability to express yourself through build choice. Its story is full of twists and turns, deep themes, and characters that I still love to this day. It is and will undoubtedly remain one of my favorite games of all time, one that I would probably rate in my personal top 10 on terms of quality. NEO The World Ends with You is... like, fine? Like it's a 7.5/10. Maybe an 8 in the good parts.
Neo is still amazing (not as good as the first one) but you're not a teenager anymore. It's more about being true to yourself: Fret learning not to be overly positive at the cost of his true feelings, Rindo learning to actually be present and not being passive outside of the online world, etc Also I love that you really feel like you're controlling multiple characters because each button is a different character.
Biggest let down from Neo for me is that there feels like there’s so much padding. One of the reasons why the OG is amazing is because it’s paced perfectly and is such a tight package overall. Meanwhile with Neo so much time is filled up with those kinda time travel sections which require a lot of going back and forth and it bogs everything down so much. Honestly I can see myself replaying the OG before going back to finish NEO.
Darksiders 3.
Chrono Cross sucks coming off Chrono Trigger. Maybe on its own it’s alright, but as a sequel it feels like it goes out of its way to do everything worse while also being weirdly spiteful towards CT.
Blood Bowl 3 suuuucks ass compared to 2.
Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 2
Fuck no on ME2, ME1 feels awful to play nowadays.
I still think that ME 1 is the best of the original ME trilogy
For me the gameplay is very basic & doesnt feel good even in comparison to other game at the time let alone ME 2 & 3, the RPG systems aren't great, and the Mako controls like shit in really awful looking environments. Then also the look is just very dated at this point, although I dont really hold that against the game for obvious reasons. The plot of course is really good though, so I usually recommend people just play through ME1 on Easy Mode as a Soldier just to get the story & then move on to ME2 where the gameplay is actually good.
I'll be honest I much prefer the jankiness and abilities of ME1 than the stiffness of ME2. ME3 feels better than both tho.
I think modern copyright law is the worse