Highly Acclaimed Games -- that you just don't like!

[Tabonga | 2,313]

Dragon Force (Saturn)

With the proviso that RTS games are not my cup of tea, this one failed IMHO as an SRPG - when battles occurred you had two mobs facing each other and you had very little control over your mob.  Which turned out to be not as big a deal as you would think since the battle results were mostly dependent on a gussied up rock/paper/scissors precedent system.  The fact that you really had no choice in how a battle progressed made it as if you were just watching slightly varying loops from  bad adventure movies rather than actually leading troops into battle.

[avatar! | 1,807]

17 hours ago, zeppelin03 said:

I  can't getting into the Sony story driven games.  The last of us held me for only a few hours and Days Gone even less.  People talk about how great Sony's output is but I'm typically underwhelmed.  Horizon Zero Dawn was great but I'm not even sure if that is a Sony studio.

There are some aspects of The Last of Us I really liked, but overall it was WAY overrated. I have 0 interest in ever playing that game again. Here's a great video about why The Last of Us is mediocre. 

 

[DoctorEncore | 3,690]

18 hours ago, zeppelin03 said:

My wife and I were talking about Ubisoft games today.  She started playing AC Origins and stopped after a couple hours.  It felt the exact same as the first two games.  She saw no reason to continue.  I feel the same about Far Cry.   Play one and you have played them all.  Ubisoft is very formulaic to me.

I  can't getting into the Sony story driven games.  The last of us held me for only a few hours and Days Gone even less.  People talk about how great Sony's output is but I'm typically underwhelmed.  Horizon Zero Dawn was great but I'm not even sure if that is a Sony studio.

 

9 minutes ago, avatar! said:

There are some aspects of The Last of Us I really liked, but overall it was WAY overrated. I have 0 interest in ever playing that game again. Here's a great video about why The Last of Us is mediocre.

 

I thought TLoU was pretty much universally acclaimed, but I've heard similar complaints now from numerous people. I still plan to play it, but my expectations are tempered, which will probably result in a much better experience.

Obviously Sony's first party teams are very talented and flush with resources, but it does seem like they make a lot of safe choices. I can't blame them too much because it's the nature of the beast, but I really wish they would make something more interesting than Uncharted, God of War, etc. Of course, the same thing can be said about Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, and all the other big developer/publishers.

[avatar! | 1,807]

19 minutes ago, DoctorEncore said:

I thought TLoU was pretty much universally acclaimed, but I've heard similar complaints now from numerous people. I still plan to play it, but my expectations are tempered, which will probably result in a much better experience.

Obviously Sony's first party teams are very talented and flush with resources, but it does seem like they make a lot of safe choices. I can't blame them too much because it's the nature of the beast, but I really wish they would make something more interesting than Uncharted, God of War, etc. Of course, the same thing can be said about Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, and all the other big developer/publishers.

It certainly is universally acclaimed. Not sure why. Story is good, quite good, although cliche. Characters are somewhat interesting, but again cliche. However the game just becomes so dull. Enemy AI is very poor, they often seem to know exactly where you are, or they're just dumb (video I linked to talks about this)... and honestly I didn't like the fact that you were forced to kill so many people. There is another game, Dishonored, which is in many ways similar to The Last of Us. Both were originally for the PS3. Both involve stealth and numerous enemies. Both are dystopian. Both have crafting, upgrades, etc... However, Dishonored did everything The Last of Us did (hey, they even have a little girl you have to save) better! MUCH better! In Dishonored you're given freedom to explore, to help, to murder, or in fact you can complete the entire game without killing a single soul! Dishonored is a game I wouldn't mind playing again. It was that good, and never seemed to get the recognition it deserved. 

ps Dishonored 2 is a major letdown.

Edited June 7, 2020 by avatar!

[Sir Centroid | 79]

I don't mean to jump on TLoU train, but yeah, it isn't really for me. It was a lot more fun watching someone else play than to play it myself. I wouldn't say that I dislike it though. 

[zeppelin03 | 314]

2 hours ago, avatar! said:

It certainly is universally acclaimed. Not sure why. Story is good, quite good, although cliche. Characters are somewhat interesting, but again cliche. However the game just becomes so dull. Enemy AI is very poor, they often seem to know exactly where you are, or they're just dumb (video I linked to talks about this)... and honestly I didn't like the fact that you were forced to kill so many people. There is another game, Dishonored, which is in many ways similar to The Last of Us. Both were originally for the PS3. Both involve stealth and numerous enemies. Both are dystopian. Both have crafting, upgrades, etc... However, Dishonored did everything The Last of Us did (hey, they even have a little girl you have to save) better! MUCH better! In Dishonored you're given freedom to explore, to help, to murder, or in fact you can complete the entire game without killing a single soul! Dishonored is a game I wouldn't mind playing again. It was that good, and never seemed to get the recognition it deserved. 

ps Dishonored 2 is a major letdown.

I like to think I will give TLOU one more try but with such a backlog I won't. Anymore if I don't like a game after a few hours it's gone.  Just not worth the time.

Thanks for the tip on Dishonored.  I messed with it briefly one night but never gave it a real shot.  Might be the better fit for me.

Edited June 7, 2020 by zeppelin03

[Tanooki | 4,929]

I'm sure someone will get upset, but I'm going to pick on the SNES here for a change.

 

Chrono Trigger and Earthbound(to a lesser degree)

I've had CT over the years a few times, last go around I kept CT on SNES before prices started to creep.  90s, 00s, 10s...I have yet to finish the game.  I find the design of it (not the actual combat) boring and a bit demotivating due to the multiple endings and both jsut their existence and how they're handled.  I basically have never really been much further than this area with floating large rocks and chains as it sucks the care right out of me.

Earthbound -- in the later 90s I played the hell out of it guide and all and finished it, it was a nice ride, but I didn't get the love some had for it as it didn't feel like life altering, and then the asinine level of fanboy rage and love over the years it confuses me to no end.  The game has quite a few questionable to annoying design quirks either can either like or hate, no middle ground really.  In all fairness I could probably just never play it again or casually tap it with the sd2snes and be fine, but seeing the last time I got a copy around 9 years ago when it had crept over $100 even then for all of $2 I decided no amount of bait pricing would make me dump it as it cost me basically nothing.

 

These two games and a few others I have, the awful price is more a motivator than the quality on why I have them still as sad as that may be.

[peg | 370]

Nearly everything made in the last 20 years is complete and utter shit.

[Gloves | 11,759]

4 minutes ago, peg said:

Nearly everything made in the last 20 years is complete and utter shit.

That's just ignorant lol.

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

On 6/7/2020 at 10:45 AM, Reed Rothchild said:

It's very hard for to not like games, much less acclaimed ones.  I don't know that I've ever gotten through a game that was an 80+ on Metacritic, reached the end, and thought "I didn't enjoy that."

I'm not really a fan of fighting games as a whole, so I'm sure if I played Soul Calibur 11, I'd be less stoked than the average individual.

Not a huge fan of classic Sonic games, but I'm not sure if I outright "don't like them."

Looking at the 467 SNES games I've covered so far, were any acclaimed ones in the "don't like" range?  Not really.  Maybe the original Mortal Kombat, but I'd say that game is more notorious than acclaimed.

 

So I guess not really.  Maybe I'm too accommodating.  Maybe I like too many things.  Maybe you're all a bunch of nitpicky complainers 

That pretty much sums up my thoughts as well. I'm not one to be overly critical of games, movies, pretty much any form of entertainment. Movies and games that others thought were mediocre I thought were pretty good, and games people thought were great I thought were absolutely incredible, so I also don't really have any unpopular opinions as far as games go. I'm pretty easy to please I guess. I'm also with you on not being a big fan of fighting games as a whole, but that's really about it. I do enjoy me a good game of Smash Bros Ultimate though, that is one exception.

Oh yeah, I also don't enjoy MMOs a whole lot, I guess that might be somewhat unpopular. Just not the genre for me, I've always been a much bigger fan of single-player games, and I do like the more story-driven games like The Last Of Us (Which I still need to get around to playing)

[Link | 2,708]

Pure RPGs. Zero appeal ever for me.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,509]

On 6/7/2020 at 5:19 PM, zeppelin03 said:

I like to think I will give TLOU one more try but with such a backlog I won't. Anymore if I don't like a game after a few hours it's gone.  Just not worth the time.

Thanks for the tip on Dishonored.  I messed with it briefly one night but never gave it a real shot.  Might be the better fit for me.

Dishonored is awesome.  Like Thief meets System Shock/Bioshock.  But also not like any of them.

[Sumez | 2,931]

My take on some of the games mentioned, where I think comments might have merit.

Celeste: It's a fun game, I enjoyed it. And I'm not usually too much for this style of precision platformers. I think it excelled at throwing new mechanics into the mix periodically, and keeping enough leeway in your movements that the challenge never feels strict and frustrating, as well as switching between puzzle and execution often enough to not wear you out. I also really enjoyed the story, but I felt a huge dissonance between said story and the gameplay (despite the attempt at an overarching theme of "overcoming" stuff), pretty much just playing stages to get the next cutscene. The game also has serious pacing issues, with stages or sections of stages dragging on for faaaar too long. Especially true for the "bosses".
A good game, sure. Amazing? Not really.

Limbo and Inside: I liked Limbo a lot. It's a simple puzzle platformer with a nice atmosphere to it. There's probably not more to it. Inside just felt like a drag. It's not as nice and moody as Limbo, and generally lacks the same toned down approach. It tries to be more than it is, and ends up just feeling very dumb despite trying ot be "smart".

Journey: Agreed mostly on this. I enjoyed it as a SOTC-light, but it didn't have a lot more to it. It's short and pretty, but lacks anything to lift it up over that. You can analyze a lot into whatever the progression of the game represents, but it feels pretty heavy handed, and not really something that adds to the game IMO.

Horizon Zero Dawn: I'm in the same boat. Really cool setting, nice characters, lot of potential. And then you're let out into the game, and it's just "the Ubisoft game" over again. Repeat similar missions at different locations of a samey map. Could have been really really good if it had been a much more condensed adventure with a tighter focus on each thing it does, instead of trying to be a grand open world adventure. I got bored with it before I managed to finish it.

FF4 (SNES US): I love Final Fantasy 4. Still one of my favourite games of all time. It was also one of the first RPGs I ever played, so it never felt "easy" to me. The original Japanese version, and the DS remake especially, is a lot more challeging and only better for it. But I don't think the difference is big enough that the original US release isn't still an amazing game.

Mario Party: Every time I try to play this series I manage to hype myself up for fun party minigames, but end up just being incredibly bored by the insane amounts of downtime in this game. The occasional fun minigame appearing once ever 45 minutes does not make up for that insanely boring approach.

Final Fantasy 15: Was this game "highly acclaimed" at all? It has it fans, but it's my impression that most people recognize its faults. I enjoyed it well enough, but it was so obvious that it was incredibly unfinished, and it suffers so much from it.

Chrono Trigger: I don't understand how the multiple endings can be off-putting from this? Did you read too much into "how to play the game" before picking it up? Because it really benefits from just going in blind. The multiple endings really aren't a thing until after you've beaten the game, on the second playthrough. On the first one, there are still multiple ways to get to the final boss, but it doesn't really affect the ending, and it's not something you should think about. The game opens up and lets you do a ton of optional stuff towards the end, and it's really just a question of how much stuff you want to do.

Edited June 10, 2020 by Sumez

[ICrappedMyPants | 302]

Metal Gear Solid 4 - I think MGS 3 is my favorite. You could play MGS like a 3rd person shooter. It drastically reduced the need to play it using stealth elements. I thought the plot was dumb too.

Resident Evil 4 - It was Great game. However, it was a terrible RE game and almost ruined the franchise with the direction it took it.

Mario 64/Odyssey - I find the more open world nature of these games boring (I don’t like open world games). I much prefer the Galaxy games.

[Sumez | 2,931]

I got one of my own.

Bioshock Infinite

I guess backlash has sort of caught up with it over the years, and it's a lot more popular to criticize it now than it was right when it came out, and everyone for some reason considered it infallible, with a like 97 metacritic score or something.

It's not just overrated, it's really bad.
I loved the first Bioshock game, but Infinite is just painful. The gameplay is convoluted, unfair and just plain not fun. The balance between shooting and worldbuilding is extremely terribly paced, and the game is annoyingly pretentious for such a dumb plot. It had some interesting potential with its racism subplot, but ended up tackling it in such a heavy-handed cartoonish way that it becomes completely irrelevant to even have that theme. At least the original Bioshock game doesn't try to pretend it's not just goofy fun.

I guess Infinite is pretty to look at, but despite that it still loses to the much more creative variation of its own predecessor.

Edited June 10, 2020 by Sumez

[RH | 4,895]

Wow, I came in here to say Xenoblade Chronicles 2, expecting to get rocks thrown at me, but it looks like 10 people beat me to the punch! (Yes, exaggerated for effect.)

There's also Earthbound. I've picked up both games and put them down at least 3 times. I picked up where I left off on Earthbound and even put about 15 hours into it and it's just not for me.

I put about 8 hours into XC2, came back to it 6 months later and restarted the game, put on all of the easy cheats so I could pick up the pace in the story and... I still don't like it 12ish hours into a new game. It really comes down to the combat. Somehow, Nintendo has made a system that both feels complex but really isn't. It's just feels like a hot mess. Granted, I've not played an action RPG since Baulder's Gate on the PS2 and this is obviously quite different, but it's just not my cup o tea.

And if I had to pick Square titles, I think people love the SaGa series, but other than Final Fantasy Legends, I couldn't get into any of them. Even FFL felt a bit too generic but I expect that from an early Game Boy RPG, so I give it a pass.

Oh, one more. Sonic 1. I love classic Sonic games, better than classic Mario games but it's true-- I can't stand Sonic 1. Sonic isn't Sonic without his spin dash. I admit I didn't play Sonic 1 until after playing 2, but since it's a long standing mechanic, I just can't stand the lack of the dash.

 

[Sumez | 2,931]

I liked the first game, but I've never played Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - I just decided to not bother with it due to the terrible reception it got. I didn't realize it was "highly acclaimed".

[Reed Rothchild | 9,509]

10 minutes ago, Sumez said:

 I just decided to not bother with it due to the terrible reception it got

Source?

[themisfit138 | 523]

Mostly new games but here is a short list. 

Witcher Series

Red Dead Redemption 2

Last Of Us

Ass creed

Uncharted Series

Earthbound

Secret of Mana

[Strange | 1,700]

13 hours ago, peg said:

Nearly everything made in the last 20 years is complete and utter shit.

Hollow Knight is a masterpiece, and I say that as someone who is sick of “Metroidvania” games.

[DoctorEncore | 3,690]

16 minutes ago, The Strangest said:

Hollow Knight is a masterpiece, and I say that as someone who is sick of “Metroidvania” games.

I played 2-3 hours and was not impressed, but I DO plan to go back and finish it. I'm hoping it gets better as it goes. I used to love Metroidvanias, but haven't found many that I've really enjoyed in the last five years (with the exception of the Ori games which are phenomenal). Bloodstained was also decent, but too focused on combat and abilities.

Edited June 10, 2020 by DoctorEncore

[Strange | 1,700]

10 minutes ago, DoctorEncore said:

I played 2-3 hours and was not impressed, but I DO plan to go back and finish it. I'm hoping it gets better as it goes. I used to love Metroidvanias, but haven't found many that I've really enjoyed in the last five years (with the exception of the Ori games which are phenomenal). Bloodstained was also decent, but too focused on combat and abilities.

In Metroidvanias, they say the atmosphere is as essential as the gameplay (see the original Metroid and Super Metroid) and I feel that Hollow Knight has it in spades. For what it’s worth, I also initially stopped at 2-3 hours and sold the game. I had an itch to play it again, and now I’m about 10 hours in and hooked. You get more and more story the deeper you go, new environments, and upgrades to increase mobility. There’s lore, side quests, optional areas and bosses, etc. I bring these up because I know the first 2-3 hours are spent in the first area/same-y looking environment with little to no story. I was surprised to see it open up afterwards and give a better sense of freedom in how you tackle the rest of the game.

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

5 hours ago, RH said:

Oh, one more. Sonic 1. I love classic Sonic games, better than classic Mario games but it's true-- I can't stand Sonic 1. Sonic isn't Sonic without his spin dash. I admit I didn't play Sonic 1 until after playing 2, but since it's a long standing mechanic, I just can't stand the lack of the dash.

That one's definitely not an unpopular opinion at all. As someone who loves the Sonic games, I still like Sonic 1 for what it is, but it is easily the worst 2D game in the franchise, and I think just about everyone would agree with that. It can be very frustrating at times.

[zeppelin03 | 314]

3 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Source?

New to me.  I thought it was a well regarded game.

[Strange | 1,700]

15 minutes ago, ZeldaFreak said:

That one's definitely not an unpopular opinion at all. As someone who loves the Sonic games, I still like Sonic 1 for what it is, but it is easily the worst 2D game in the franchise, and I think just about everyone would agree with that. It can be very frustrating at times.

I find myself constantly trying to spin dash in Sonic 1 after having played the other two. I think they added the spin dash to Sonic 1 in the Sega Ages release on Switch?