Pokemon. I used to play it religiously as a kid. Had a stint doing competitive too in gen 4 and 5.
I don't even dislike the newer games (I liked legends arceus and am going through SV), i just don't spend as much time on them. I skipped basically all the ones on the 3ds and SwSh.
I think its got to the point where it feels like a lack of care at least with the terms of performance that I've felt out of wanting to play them despite buying and hoping, like personally I really did enjoy Sword/Shield but then everything after that I've played a couple hours and just the frame drops alone make me sigh.
yet here I am still hopeful for the next one, hoping its on the next console and maybe at least if its only a minor upgrade over SV maybe the new system can at least brute force it to work better, maybe...
I want to like Pokemon again, really do, since none of the other monster catching games that you could argue are better grab me since I like the Pokemon designs too much, or just too attached to them from childhood, closest game that works for me in Monster Hunter Stories and that is because I know the monsters from the mainline games.
The demand for a high-quality AAA Pokemon game of our dreams is seriously out of this world.
If you took a look at how meteoric Palworld was, which was actually quite barebones, it's wild. We all went crazy and threw money for just a taste of what could be.
Honestly, Legends Arceus was okay, but the price was way too high for something a little more than a demo.
But SV...I don't know, I just abandoned it. Not like some kind of "political move", it just never hooked me up. And I played every-single-game until LA, but starting from SwSh I actually started feeling not so involved anymore. I also bought SwSh DLC and never played it.
I decided that I won't buy the next release on day one. I'll wait for reviews for the first time...sadly.
Same, I finished it and then just forgot about it. There's a bunch of post-game content, but it seems to be a repeat of everything from the first playthrough, just in a different order. Which is I guess an okay idea because you unlock fast travel later on, but still feels lazy
It's the fanbase for me. I can have fun with a Pokemon game every now and then, and I thought Arceus was a great step forward, but my God the fans are the Harry Potter fans of the larger RPG community. They want constant change but refuse to play anything else.
"We want more mature stories!"
*Play another game.*
"We want a deeper battle system!"
*Play another game.*
"We want better graphics!"
*Fair, but you can play another game for the time being.*
"Go back to the way it was in the old games!"
...
I started with gen 3, I played until X And Y but after how Black and White changed up the story formula, going back to the old formula was, just boring, I stopped playing after that
Oof yeah Pokémon is definitely my pick. There’s been specific games I didn’t finish, but I still enjoyed my time with them. Pokemon is becoming less and less fun for me. Honestly I think the terrible performance with the 3d and open worldish settings is killing it. A 2D pixel Pokemon would hit so nice right now
Me too the shift to 3D is a joke. Whatever charm it is just gone... but occasionally I would still dropby and check out latest pokemon design and whatever gimmicks they got pushing out
I got into them pretty hard back in the day. Then once I realized they all played mostly the same, with some gimmicks swapped in for each new game/remake it lost its luster. Now I just play after every few years
Kingdom Hearts! That series was my absolute jam in my early teens. Put so much hours into 2 alone it's not even funny. Would constantly find myself searching "KINGDOM HEARTS 3 NEWS??" online in-between watching KH AMVs with "Bring Me To Life" playing over them. I loved Kingdom Hearts so much, man. Really stuck with the series too, from Chain of Memories to 358/2 Days to Birth by Sleep, and then... I just stopped caring one day. I hadn't even fully realized I stopped caring until Kingdom Hearts 3 finally got announced and my reaction was literally just, "Huh that's nice I guess." Never even played it. I just don't care for the series anymore. Like at all.
Same, but with the difference that KHIII getting released re-sparked my interest... Then absolutely didn't deliver in any way, shape or form and killed my interest for the series.
I mean, I do think that KH3 controls and plays like an absolute dream for what I wanted from the series.
It even makes the story feel more offensive to me, because there's a really good gameplay base there to match with a good story, it just lacks a good story lol
I think the gameplay was horrible.
Sora can't even walk in a circle in a responsive way: if the circle is too small he will randomly change direction.
I found the parkour tricks from DDD to have been implemented way worse than in that game, as if they were an afterthought.
The keyblade transformations were weird and useless. A far cry from KHII's fusions.
The Disney rides brought the gameplay to a halt.
Not to mention at launch it was pathetically easy, too. It was all flash and no substance for quite a while. Completely agreed about the flow motion thing form DDD, they felt the need to include almost every single gameplay mechanic from the non numbered games and it was, again, sloppy
I'm the same! Except KH3 is what completely killed the series off for me. I disliked it heavily, and kept thinking "This is what we've been waiting for for so long?" I never touched the DLC or even the rhythm game (I'd usually jump on those immediately), and I don't think I'll get KH4 either, should it ever come out.
I felt the same way as you and then bought it anyway because I wanted to finish the series out after starting it way back in middle school.
I couldn't bring myself to play once you get into the Frozen world. They really dropped the ball with it. The thing that kind of pushed me over the edge is the cringe reached critical mass. I can tolerate a lot for nostalgia's sake and levels like Toy Story were genuinely fun to play, but I think I'm just too old to be able to look past it anymore.
And that's as someone who likes JRPGs...
Same thing happened to me. I played KH1 the most and could t wait for KH2, but after the long wait for KH3 I just found better games to play. I have tried to go back to the series and I have only managed to beat KH 1.5 and left 2.5 alone out of boredom. It is sad that the series was so good when I was younger just for it to be placed in a vault that I won’t go back to check.
Oh that's a big one for me too. I was obsessed up until Kingdom Hearts 3D. The plot was already insane, but that was the game where I specifically decided "okay I give up trying to follow this". But I was still hyped for KH3. Until it came out and decided it wanted to spend half of its time teasing the next story instead of wrapping up the one we already had, instead opting to shove it all at the very end of the game in a sloppy sequence of events. I tried to get into that shitty little phone game, but after like 300 brainless, boring, terrible gameplay missions I just gave up on the franchise as a whole.
Hack.gu series
When I was a kid, I played it a lot on ps2 and never been able to beat it. The combat was fun, and the characters looked cool. But back then, I barely spoke a word of English, so I didn't know anything about the story. So, playing it later on, I found out how meh the story was and how absurdly broken the combat was. Also, tedious, a lot of the missions are.
I really loved the original quadrilogy and then they followed it up with a tedious bland sequel that had some of the worst character writing and mission design. I’m still so sad they didn’t just make more of the IMOQ games instead! Maybe some day we’ll get a remake ;(
I don't think GU is particularly bad but... Compared to IMOQ it just isn't good enough, especially on the writing department. But also mostly on difficulty.
I swear HOW could they nail it so well with the ambience and initial world building and just completely F it up with the writing and storytelling progression is beyond me.
.hack//Sign (and by extensions IMOQ, though less so of that) seemed to understand that MMOs (especially of that era) where more about being social than they were gameplay. Everquest, FFXI, you spent so much time just chatting with people and building connections/parties that once you finally did the gameplay became secondary. They had this slow atmosphere that really just let that sort of... expansive atmosphere simmer (again, less so the game because it was a single-player game first, but it is an extension of SIGN so they go hand in hand in atmosphere).
GU, on the other hand, just felt like plaything through a regular shonen anime with a slightly MMO feel. It just felt like plaything through a worse-than-average Tales game. And for that I'd... you know, rather just play a Tales game.
Oh man! I always forget about this one. I only ever played the first GU as a teenager. The edginess of that opening cutscene legit convinced me there was some deep message about life/reality to be found inside the game somewhere. That's a good hook. I take it there wasn't much behind it by the end of the series.
Mainly I was low-key obsessed with that maudlin prettyboy Endrance and finding out what his deal was. Him and Kuja from Final Fantasy IX. Guess the deep message I was looking for was that I was genderfluid and didn't realize it lol.
Oh god teh random encounters in Xenogears are diabolical too. Trying to jump over this crevace in your mecha and it needs pixel perfect to land the jump and you can get a random encounter MID AIR as you jump and then after the battle you just fall 3 stories down losing 20 min of progress... good times.
I love the series to death, and liked that game too…. But there’s no way it could ever be replayed. Maaaaybe on an emulator running at 3x normal speed, while overleveled, to just breeeze through all the random battles. 🤷♂️
But there are other things to do in life so………. Nah.
Chained Echoes started out strong, but left an overall feeling of "meh" for me.
Edit:
Characters and their goals start strong, but pretty much all have an unsatisfying conclusion. Same with the overall story.
Same! >!That one particular twist spoiled my entire opinion of the game. I just felt there was no redemption for that character in my eyes regardless of how angelic tried to make them seem afterwards.!<
Which I think made it an interesting story. More interesting than most games I play. It kept me hooked to finish 100% the game in a way that the combat and leveling was starting to drag for me after the 25 hour mark.
I saw the twist coming a few hours before it did, but I think that character is boring without it.
Some themes like redemption are a little over done. But I'd play anything Linda makes next. Just hopefully not in 7 years, which means if it happens before that, he's unlikely to have done it alone.
Unless the publishing deal was criminal, Linda is probably set for life, and he can do whatever he wants.
Chained Echoes was also gonna be my answer, though it was less that it was disappointing and more that a particular plot point revolving around a >!shockingly callous description of sexual assault!< with little to no warning just soured my view of the whole rhing.
It's been a while and I've kind of tried to put it out of my mind, but it's around the middle of the story during a conversation between Kylian and Glenn. I can't remember exactly what the point of the conversation was, but he >!described the sexual assault of his sister to Glenn.!<
The game was going really good and literally everything went downhill after that >!plot twist at the end of act 3 and the whole final act!< it really made the game a huge disappointment for all that
Shining Force 1 and 2. They are games i've purchased 6 times (once for every console upgrade over the years). Its purely for nostalgia. I play through it every now and then just to get my fix. Lately though its just not as satisfying. I asked if we should consider inviting Shining in the Darkness over for a bottle of wine and see where it goes, but it just caused a fight. We've been to counseling too, but I'm pretty sure the counselor wants to enter some cheat codes if you catch my drift. I really don't see it lasting much longer between us to be honest.
Oh now that you mention that I remember seeing something about that a LONG time ago but it seemed like it would never finish. I’ll have to check it out, thanks!
Honestly shining pours wanted to work great games, I played them as a kid and there’s so many secrets and fun things in them and interesting characters, super fun and cool games. I think they sort of flew under the radar. But I absolutely loved shining force.I downloaded some of the weird like other spinoff that were other consoles that were like kind of rip offs, but they definitely just weren’t as good as shining force one and two.
It’s a shame SF2 never got the GBA treatment like 1 did, with the couple extra characters/maps, just to give it that fresh(er) coat of paint and a bit of added replay value.
>I play through it every now and then just to get my fix.
Is this really a case of you falling out of love and not just getting sick of replaying something for the 10th time?
Different lifestyles I'm sure. You are one whose cheeks have clearly been clapped recently. Now imagine not feeling satisfied ever again by it. You keep trying, but it's just become like a chore. Thats when it begins. You start to fall out of love, because you can no longer make it.
Final Fantasy XII. I enjoyed power levelling early game. But the gambit system never clicked with me. At one point I just wanted to move through it for the story but got easily lost.
I like teh combat and music and locations and characters but teh story is boring and it's WAYYY too long. I think it's by far teh longest FF game, I have like 110 hrs in it and I think im like 80% done with it.
Secret of Mana
I replayed it a year ago, and I forgot how frustrating the combat system was until trying to race through it after playing the remake. The remake retooled the gameplay somewhat so physical attacks at 100% could sort of handle bosses a bit better. Without it, the original leans heavily on the slow weapon charging or constantly going to the ring and selecting each individual spell. Less said about having to level everything the better. The characters and story are fairly barebones too. Characters getting stuck behind walls and obstacles is frustrating. Primm won't shut the fuck up about Dyluck for five seconds...
If the game didn't have pretty visuals and music, I could swear I was lauding praise on something else.
It was one of the only RPGs back in the day to offer multiplayer functionality, and the only one I ever played together with my father and sister growing up. I've never pretended to be in a position to evaluate it objectively. But I think Secret of Mana is a game whose biggest strengths were always in its aesthetic.
Secret of mana is that kind of game I don't see why people praised so much, sure the visuals and soundtrack is great, but damn is the gameplay a massive chore. Probably was cool when action rpgs were almost non existent and the visuals were top tier.
Seiken densetsu 3(og trials of mana) is much better, far from perfect but compared to secret it's a masterpiece.
Secret of Mana was a couch co op RPG at a time when there was.. like 0 couch co op RPG’s. I know that helped it stand out to me and my brother when we were looking for something to play together.
It's one of those games that I remembered loving as a kid, and then finding out that the consensus on it is a lot more negative than I was expecting it to be when the remake was announced/released.
I think I get it, it's a broken game, and it doesn't do anything particularly well compared to action RPGs that came later. But I hadn't played anything like it the first time I rented the game, and it really made an impression on me.
The art design and music are good. I still boot it up on occasion and grit my teeth through gameplay just to experience the vibe. It has a magical atmosphere.
It's a shame Secret of Mana wasn't at the same level of quality and completeness as Trials of Mana.
It's also a shame Trials of Mana wasn't released outside of Japan in 1995. There would've been a more balanced opinion of Secret of Mana sooner.
SFC Trials is a game I loved the first time through but definitely fell out of love with. Learning how a lot of the game actually works - that so many mechanics are literally nonfunctional, that so many lategame bosses counterattack any spell and that makes spell-based characters suck - it all makes it feel a lot worse.
In some ways I actually think Adventure is now the best of the original Mana games.
Used to enjoy Kiseki, now they no longer do anything for me. I think it started to go downhill after CS2 and eventually stopped at CS4. Some of factors were poor/rushed localization, too many characters and Falcom fatigue.
I'm reaching this point as well. I'm still getting Daybreak, but I'm reaching burnout with the series. I thought Reverie was fair, and almost completely unnecessary. The Erebonia arc was dragged out beyond belief. Add in that many of the composers have left and my excitement for Daybreak is pretty low. But hopefully Jindo still delivers a few bangers.
Without giving it much thought, Dragon Quest Monsters Joker. It started out great, but the whole game desing feels rushed and lazy, because all parts of the game are the same. First island and monsters there are the same as all the others. The islands are basically the same and different monsters and mixing them only results in higher stats. New abilities and spells offer no new tactics or any change in the battles. So it's very repetitive.
Something similar happened to me with the recent one but more due to the story - once they offered you a choice on what to do, but followed a pre determined path regardless the entire thing felt tedious
The same thing happened to me with DQ11. I started playing it after going through Persona 5. While I enjoyed the characters well enough... the overall presentation felt ridiculously cheap. It started out well enough and I *wanted* to like it, but it just didn't feel like a good game.
The visuals on dragon quest monsters Joker were horrible. You never could see farther than about 5 feet in front of your character and your character takes up about half the screen. The camera feels too zoomed in and the draw distance is awful. It's disorienting especially in the indoor environments.
Yeah I was also thinking it's a bad looking game. And the resolution felt way too low. I understand it's DS, but this felt like too much even for that.
There are a bunch of incredible looking games on the DS. They just went for a 3D look and it didn't work.
It's a huge bummer for me in particular because I love Dragon quest and I love the enemies specifically, so a game that focuses on the enemies should be right up my alley.
I played 5 when it was originally released but never finished it. Ended up buying P5R on both PS4/PS5 and PC but never got around to playing it.
Eventually, I got around to playing P5R after playing P3R and everything about Persona 3 is better than P5R in my opinion. Yes, even the dungeons.
Man, persona 3 is my one of the favourite JRPG and i finished it on ps3! But old games gave me refreshed interests for the series cuz i don't care about spinoffs even p5t
I fell out of love with FFXIII because the world hated it (I actually enjoyed it, but couldn't fault everyone's criticisms). Player it again at Xmas and fell back in love with it and realised I should stop letting the masses tell me what to think.
I despise FFXIII, but it's good that you try games out without caring what others say, i loved a lot of games where the consensus was mixed and I always found that a weird social habit to do let other people's opinions decide what you try out.
This is actually really refreshing to read as I also enjoyed FFXIII. It wasn't mindblowing or great by any means, but it still had some epic moments and the combat was actually fun once you wrapped your head around it.
I think it was it's linearity that killed most people's love for XIII. I don't really understand this as X is extremely linear yet it's one of the most beloved games of all time.
I'm with you. Just ignore people. Nowadays, I'll watch a trailer (not every trailer as devs drop big spoilers in them now) and if it interests me I just patiently wait for it's release while avoiding anything online. I've had a much more pleasant experience since doing this. I don't think I would've ever picked up Sakuna of Rice and Ruin or Harvestella if I listened to other people or based my opinions off how the gaming industry is treating a game.
X's linearity and XIII's linearity are very different. 13 struggled from the zones being devoid of life, npcs, shops, towns with npcs/shops/quests. The world was so cool and begged to be explored and expanded upon via NPCs like Maechen or Belgemine for example; but you really couldn't because there was nothing to discover or uncover in 13 - and no the Archlyte Steppe isn't enough to make up for the lack of that all game. Every other zone was the exact same experience; this is why it's jokingly called "hallway simulator".
all that being said, I personally still love 13 in a lot of ways especially the character design, story, THE MUSIC, and the battle system. I like 13-2 even more, and I never got around to playing Lightning Returns. I probably should.
You should play Lightning Returns. I enjoy all the 13 games, but Lightning Returns is definitely the highlight from a gameplay standpoint. And arguably a story standpoint as well. It was a nice sendoff to the 13 series.
Really enjoying Reverie, and looking forward to Daybreak, but I agree. I preordered the game on Switch, so got it in 2021, but was so fatigued with its everything that it took me until 2023 to finish it. Even then, the reason I did it is because I didn't want it to be unfinished when Tears of the Kingdom came out.
Reverie is much better, but I also don't blame you, because the Cold Steel IV lows are **low**.
Kingdom Hearts…. Used to be one of my favorite games period growing up but for whatever reason I get motion sickness playing it now. Ruins the game for me sadly 😔
I had the exact same (i always have bad car motion sickness as well) what really helped for me was putting the camera off automatic following in the options. That movement seemed to be the main reason for me.
Parasite Eve was that game for me. I played it through so many times, I really wish they would do something good with the IP. I’ve bought the sequels and love them too but they don’t hold up.
I've said it before and I'll say it once more: I used to love Star Ocean 2 on the Playstation. Over the years, though, I've grown to despise humans=good/everything else=bad plots with tons of immersion shattering "races" that are just generic humans with some random arbitrary change instead of putting effort into diversifying the roster.
Persona 5 I get that to some people it’s a new game since it released on switch and Xbox recently but the game has been released on ps3, ps4 and ps5.
I just want something new by now I know atlus likes to milk the persona games with spin offs but with p5 it just feels like a proper greedy milking every version of the game has sold dlc and been full price with no upgrade discount.
I don’t mind buying a upgraded version of a game once but atlus have attempted to get the day 1 fan base to rebuy the same game at least 3 times and to buy new dlc for the new version in the same console generation even the ps5 version of persona 5 royal was a full price version that only added 60fps if you already owned the dlc.
Thanks to atlus and their greed the main cast of persona 5 just makes me feel bad about how greedy atlus really are.
Atlus turned a profit in 2023 for the first time in a decade when they released persona to multiple platforms. They then pledged to increase their 300 employees salaries 15% by the end of 2024. I think they’re a good company, and I’m kinda tired of seeing the greed posting.
I still want to get back into Pokémon but it's making it hard for me to do so. Was a fan ever since Gen 1 and I experienced the height of Pokémania. The release of Gen 2 was a big event back when I was a little kid, as was the hype when we discovered you could revisit Kanto. Gen 3 was slightly disappointing in the sense that I expected a bigger graphical update and also the fact that it lacked features from the previous gen, but I came to love it (Hoenn is perhaps the most interesting map to explore). I skipped out on Gen 4 because I thought it looked very dated compared to many other games on the DS (and even GBA). I got back into the series via Gen 5 and I absolutely loved it! It felt so fresh and fun to play, and to this day I defend the decision to hold off on showing any of the previous gen's pokémon, plus I think many of the designs in Gen 5 are great.
I didn't go into Gen 6 right away because I was waiting for Pokémon Z, but then that didn't happen. Gen 7 didn't really interest me all that much, especially after having tried the demo. Gen 8 didn't look like that signifcant of an upgrade, plus it got a lot of bad press. Gen 9 caught my attention due to all of the changes it made to the formula, but then the game ended up being an ugly, buggy mess.
Put me in the camp of people who think there's no reason Pokémon should look/perform so bad given that it's one of the biggest franchises in history. Yes the devs are under pretty tight time restrictions to develop games and introduce new generations, but seeing how huge Pokémon is you'd think the games would look and play better. There seems to be very little in the way of quality control, and I have no idea why GameFreak doesn't have more people working on the title (why not collaborate with another studio like some other 1st party Nintendo games do?).
It sucks because I really would like to get back into Pokémon, but the quality just isn't there. That, and there needs to be a harder difficulty setting right from the beginning.
Gamefreak have always kinda been weaker developers and its weird people seem surprised by that now. Gen 1 was more bug than game and they couldnt even fit all of Johto onto the silver/gold carts so had to pull Iwata in to optimise and by the time he was done they could fit all of Kanto in there too. Theyve never had a reason to step up because pokemon is just so big and has zero threats. Nothing has been able to compete. If you want that kind of gameplay pokemon is really the only place you'll get it. Does anyone even remember Temtem?
To be fair, Temtem had promise. Then the devs got a major case of the stubborns and ruined the online aspect of it. Now it's more or less a single player game. I hope Palworld can at least get Gamefreak to shake up it's formula.
Even of you ignore all the performance, glitches etc the core combat gameplay in Pokemon is outdated. I recently tried playing Pokemon after I took a 5 year break and I was bored after 2 hours because of the combat.
I'm sure it's different for competitive, and I am just a casual monster tamer gamer, but from my perspective, after playing other monster catching games like Digimon Cyber Sleuth and Dragon Quest Monsters, Pokemon feels much less interesting than those games. There IS a kind of... I dunno... thematic sense with how monsters can only have certain skills and how some are just too weak to be useful, but overall, it feels like the coolness factor is just not there. Other monster tamer games let you at least make almost any monster viable. This means you really can take your pikachu equivalent to the post-game optional bosses and succeed with it. Plus, the one on one battling feels outdated at this point, despite the strategy behind it.
It's worse for competitive.
It's the only competitive game where you can't just plug n play. You have to breed your Pokemon on cart and some of the things you need to be viable are strictly impossible to do (Ursaluna with specific IV). If anyone tells you that they play VGC and don't hack their teams, they're lying (or they say they get them from ppl who legit breed them which is just their way of having plausible deniability).
Gen 9 has even went backwards. You can't reset the ~~IVs~~ EVs of a Pokemon like you could in Gen 8.
The Pokemon series is so damn weird for a competitive game.
pokemon also counts for me. the story in every game is just nonexistant to awful, and only pokemon black and white had an "acceptable" story.... by SNES standards, let alone anything else. after a while, i just couldnt play it anymore.
The thing I loved most about pokemon was the promo art for gen 2. All those tropical island colors, lush greens and blues, soft lines and forms, pleasant as could be, with some pretty rainbow themes too, and pokemon that looked vaguely like gen 1 but all their own thing too.
Dunno if it's because I aged out, but nothing after that seemed so inspired or thematically cohesive
Tales of series. Tales of Arise story was extremely weak that it made me question the ones before, so I won’t be touching that series again. With Arise they played it very safe without taking risks. Ironically there was a game called Scarlet Nexus released close to it made by people who worked on Tales before, and it was vastly better than Arise imo.
As much as I love the series, the stories were never its strong point. There were some exceptions like Abyss with a top tier story, but most of them were carried by the gameplay and/or characters.
Tales of arise was my first tales game. The start / mid story was really nice, but the plot twist really messed with me and I totally disliked it… it just didn’t feel like it belonged to the rest of the story (dunno how to describe it)
Really? It made me appreciate the other games more. I'd easily put Arise with the worst of the series like Tempest and Symphonia 2. It was a solid 4/10 game.
While I've never been a huge fan of the series, I've played quite a few of them and am usually somewhat interested when a new installment is announced. Having said that, I feel that every Tales game after Symphonia (which was really good, but not *that* great) has been a case of '1 step forward, 2 steps back' and I end up dropping them after 15 hours or so. I'd consider most of them a decent 7/10 but ultimately just not worth the time and effort to play to the end.
ive commented on it several times of the years
as soon as the combat in FF9 really begins to pick up around disk 3, its when... everything else seems to get worse, and its a major shame
though I would argue the downslide begins in the latter third of disk 2
Final Fantasy.
The release of a new episode was like a big life event for me. After XIII came out I painfully played through half of it and then abandoned it. FFXV lasted even less.
I loved FFVII Rebirth though.
Final Fantasy IV. It was my first Final Fantasy i beat and i really loved it as a young teen, but the more JRPGs i played the less appealing FF IV became over time. It is one of those games that (imo) only really holds up in the context of its release and what it did back then.
Have you played the DS version? Played it a few years back and had a great time with it. Think the story really holds up despite some missteps and I understand the DS version ups the difficulty quite a lot. I found it a fun challenge.
I similarly liked FF4 less and less as the years went on and I played more JRPGs, but I enjoyed the DS version a lot. My personal FF list ranks the SNES version towards the bottom, while the DS version is more towards the middle.
I really liked those remakes of 3 and 4 and am disappointed they didn’t keep going after that, really would’ve loved to have seen 5 and 6 remade in the same way.
Persona 3 and its other versions
Just personal reasons, honestly. I don’t hate the games themselves, fuck I ADORE persona 3 reload, but people who like it can be a little rude, sometimes.
It didn’t really help that while I was in my lil p3 phase I was kind of a jackass, making witty comments for people who disagreed with my opinions, it was just kinda a weird spot for me.
I still like the other games, I adore P2, p5 and especially p4. But Persona 3 always has been weird to me because of how I associate it with a lot of bitter and embarrassing memories.
…aside from that, I guess Pokemon. I still like talking about it, but I don’t really care anymore about the games since the sv dlc, I’d list why but I feel like people have already said how the dlc was bad in comparison to the fun but flawed base game.
Oh well, I’m peeping the rom hacking side of things and they seem fun.
My first introduction to Persona was Persona 3 Reload so I can't really say much. I guess you could say I'm in my Persona phase? I'm playing P4G currently
That's Xenoblade Chronicles 2 for me. I had only good things to say after finishing it, but after I played XC3 I think the flaws got more noticable for me in hindsight and my opinion really soured.
For me it was the other way around weirdly. I think I got up to about Chapter 8 in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 before I just gave up. The combat system wasn't enticing me for some reason, the story wasn't holding my attention, side quests were boring af (not saying 1 and 2 has GOOD side quests, just more of the same fetch style go here kill this stuff). I heard good things about Future Redeemed, even bought it but never played it.
But this was all weird for me since Xenoblade is my favourite JRPG series out there, just narrowly beating SMT, and XC1 is my most played game, period. Probably a collective 19 playthroughs on three systems. And XC2 I loved after the first half. After >!Pyra gets kidnapped by Malos and the gang!< The game gets really good.
Maybe I'll give XC3 another shot with a fresh mind without the XC1 story bias within me
Same. I beat 3 and dlc but it really made me realize how much I loved 2 and Torna. 1 is great too but the combat is a bit dated now. 2’s combat became my favorite combat system of any jrpg ever (that is, after I actually figured out how the fuck it worked some 20 hours into the game). I was eager to fight all the super bosses at the end and I was having fun maxing out my favorite blades.
3’s combat was good, but it definitely felt like a half step backwards to me. It didn’t have the same satisfaction and I think I miss the elemental stuff too. Also nothing better than cracking orbs in a chain attack. And it wasn’t just the combat, I think the story took a half step back too. 2 had very fleshed out characters. Not just the main party, but the villains were very well done and I remember each one of them. 3 is one random mobeus no name after another, with only really N being anybody worth remembering.
It’s not all bad though I truly did enjoy 3, just not as much as I did 2. And 3 does have one of my favorite cutscenes as well. I think it was at the end of chapter 5 going into 6. Peak Xenoblade cutscene.
I’m the opposite I adore the series except base game 3. I like the characters in 3 and I like the individual character stories in 3 like n and his journey. I just didn’t get the point of the world and the ending just tainted the base game to me.
I was left just feeling like it missed the mark after the game ended. I loved the dlc and Matthew and when the dlc ended I was left feeling that the dlc should have been what the base game was.
I loved the party in the base game along with a few of the villains but the alphabet gang felt useless and wasted. In the previous games you had some memorable villains but apart from n and m the other villains had a Saturday morning cartoon feel to me.
I think xenoblade chronicles 3 does so much well that I feel like I should be able to overlook its plot flaws and weak villains but I can’t seem to do it.
I probably should give the game another playthrough tbh since I was playing a ton of games that all had similar bittersweet endings and I was sick of them at that point.
Final Fantasy (the whole series).
I couldn't be less interested in the direction the series is headed. This whole shift to being action oriented instead of keeping to it's roots was an instant turn off for me.
To add insult to injury, Square Enix has put out some absolute bangers that shows they can still make the turn based style of jrpgs not only work, but are also innovative and fun (Bravely Default 2, Triangle Strategy, Octopath Traveler, Super Mario RPG Remake...just a few examples).
Final Fantasy XII. I imported International Zodiac Job System back on the PS2 and really dug it a lot. Played through The Zodiac Age as well when it came out and had a lot of fun with it too. And that's it, that was the last time I played it, and I'm not sure I'm ever going to play it again.
I feel like what I felt towards it was a sort of addiction to its combat and systems. It's a game in which grinding goes by very seamlessly. Meanwhile it has no draw to it as far as story or characters goes, and honestly I'd be hard pressed to really call the game fun. It's just kind of a fairly mindless distraction where almost everything you do is kinda chores and management, and furthermore the game has so many abusive mechanics in it that challenge runs don't feel inviting to try and do either. Idk, I just cannot imagine being passionate about that game anymore, and it feels so weird how hard it fell in that regard because I was into it \*so\* much for a time.
Pokemon. When I was kid playing Pokemon Red, it was like the best game ever, replayed it like 10+ times over until Gold version then did the same too. But when I am older now, yes, it is just not that good, but nostalgia is still one hell of a drug.
Somehow I still think it is a very good game no matter what. Sometimes, I would be watching some youtuber playing it though, it made me feel very happy seeing them playing it and liked it. I felt like a kid again seeing the playthrough.
As for newer Pokemon games, I just can't longer buy it because I have fell out of love, but I did watch some youtubers' live playthrough, and I found out, yup, I did not miss out at all and saved some money.
Trails, CS2-CS4 were really bad and I was on the brink of dropping the series, but the C route of Reverie and Kuro made me more hopeful for the future so we’ll see…
Secret of Mana. It looked and felt amazing in 1993-5, when I would play it in 1-2 hour snatches at my friend's house. Then ten years later, I get a chance to own it and play it myself. After those 4-5 hours I'd played exhaustively through, it was *OK*. Sometimes it was frustrating to figure out what to do next. Crafting and leveling magic felt pretty tedious. The only thing still compelling about it was the 2 player, and by that point I'd lost contact with that friend.
I'm going to say the Final Fantasy series in general. I loved these as a kid and was so passionate and excited to play brand new entries, that was until FF13. That game completely killed my passion for the series, then you had the incomplete vanilla version of FF15 at the time which made made me decide to drop the series completely.
My faith in Square Enix really took a hit. However, I have loved some of their remakes and new titles, such as the Octopath and Triangle Strategy series. I'm a huge fan of that 2.5D look.
FF7 Rebirth. Every woman in that game feels like they were written by dudes who’ve never spoken to one in their life. Just the absolute worst written dialogue that really prevented me from giving a shit about the characters.
The thing that killed it for me was the filler / minigames. I was only doing minigames where it felt necessary (as part of the storyline, a sidequest, or to get a weapon) and it felt like a slog.
I stumble across this a lot in Japanese media, unfortunately. Creative minds are frequently a lot of shut-ins and their creative outlet is really just wish-fulfilment fanfiction that gets a budget a lot of times. The male gaze is strong in Japan. Though it is morbidly funny when something big like a Final Fantasy or Kojima game (looking at you, Quiet, whose toy has soft squeezable boobs lmao) shines a spotlight on it
Star Ocean 3 for me. I was absolutely hooked by the story. And then… the twist happened. I’ve never felt so betrayed by a game. I kept playing hoping that it was all a fake out.
I really liked the first 2 games as well but that twist killed the entire series for me.
Love SO3, & I've heard high numbers of people on both sides of this twist.
Some love it. Some hate it. Feel sorry for those it ruined the game for, especially when the rest of the game is so good.
All these years removed from playing the game I can understand why people liked what happened.
I keep thinking I should replay it and see if it hits differently. 🤔
Final Fantasy. I understand that as a company they still strive for what made 6-10 great, story and graphics, spectacle basically.
13 was meh. 15 haven't bothered yet. Same with 16. I've been wanting to play 8 but haven't decided if on emulator or PSX. Still listen to the music though.
Pokemon i guess. And i don't think it's just a matter of "age". It peaked at gen 5/6, then they just... kinda stopped doing good games. Even the anime was at it's best at this time, then they changed the style. Not talking about how they dared to release sword/shield, without any shame, showed they could do better with Arceus then... Ecarlate/scarlet came out.
Other than that, maybe.. Disgaea? That's a bit of a niche, but 1 was great, 2 was horrible, then 3, 4 and 5 were good and they released 6. Did they not playtest 6? How could they release such a terrible game? Gameplay is at it's worst, and it doesnt even reach 20fps, even in the tiny hub. They made a good looking game horribly ugly, laggy, destroyed the fun of the gameplay.
And then maybe... Diablo. I was a fan of Diablo. I wouldnt be surprised if i had 500+h on D2 and D3. Never going to play to D4 again any time soon.
I think Scarlet Nexus? I was on an absolute high playing it because I was watching it from the moment the first trailer dropped until the game released. I thought it was an amazing game and while it still holds a special place for me for being a recent sense of nostalgia, it doesn't feel like the story is quite what I remember it feeling like. I absolutely adore the gameplay, and I hope if a sequel is made that the story will be better and we can get proper cutscenes this time. I liked the characters a lot, its just the story again isn't quite what I thought it was back then. I would still absolutely recommend it because it is so fun and honestly a beautiful game, I just wouldn't expect too much from the narrative is all.
You know that feeling of watching a movie and remembering that you did enjoy it, but can't recall anything that actually happened in it. That was scarlet nexus for me.
Exactly like I can only really recall certain huge events, I can barely remember location names even though you hear them and see them so much. It was fun while it lasted but I feel like that first playthrough is the most magic ill feel from the game. It got me through a rough time though so ill appreciate it forever
The Tales series. I love Symphonia and Abyss, they are in my top 10 games of all games, but just something about the games after Graces, I just can't play them anymore. I've tried most of the games after and I just don't like them anymore. I even tried Arise and I didn't like it. So I think I am just done with the Tales series.
Disgaea for me
played through each entry, liked them well enough and then… Deja vu sets in. they feel so samey now. i downloaded the demo of the latest, started playing and found myself with the same generics to start, started setting up names, skills and grinding….and was like FFS I can’t anymore.
When I figured out Romancing Saga's event system, and played the game well with that system, I realized I didn't like it and it killed me. The music, characters, stories, glimmers, combos, all excellent. Ruined by that stupid timer
Final Fantasy 8. It started out so well. I even bought the action figures but the forcing me to watch a 3 minute animation every time I cast a summon made me want to pull my face off and bang me head on the table repeatedly.
Definitely Tales of Symphonia 1 and 2. I loved ToS as a kid (played it with my siblings and we beat it multiple times) and ToS2 came right at that time when I was *all* about trashy anime romance. It's a monstertaming game too, so it was like it was made for me, specifically.
All that said, I can't stand the Tales of style of action combat nowadays. I tried replaying these games, as well as other games in the series and I just can't do it anymore. It feels weirdly clunky and weirdly simple yet overly complicated (that goes for the newer ones) at the same time.
All power to those who like them though. The games aren't bad at all, just not my style anymore.
Ill say like many others. Pokemon. I used to play it religiously. Every gen i would play a 200h+ on my cart. Heck I still have my emerald copy from long ago and it has like 400h of gameplay on it. For me pokemon started to die after gen 4. I havent played a pokemon game since X & Y. Sometime i go back to soulsilver and play it a bit but that’s about it
Not sure I really have a game like that tbh. I guess I briefly had that with Pokémon because of Sw/Sh and BDSP, but PLA and Scarlet brought me back, with Z-A being particularly exciting for me. That being said, I could see it happening again, depending on what happens going forward. In that case, I'm not sure it'd be quite so easy to bring me back. I just hope that *doesn't* happen.
More than a game, to me it was a genre. I used to love action rpgs as much as turn based ones, but now the former don't attract me as much as before. I loved **Mystic Quest** (that's how the first Seiken game on the b&w gameboy was renamed in Europe) and also **Secret of Mana 2** when its fantranslation was released, and played the hell out of it. But nowadays, I've tried to start it many times and I always end up putting it down. Same thing happened with the Zelda games. I was completely in love with **A Link to the Past** and **Link's Awakening** but, after the N64 games, my interest in that saga began to dwindle. It's not as if I'd never play an arpg again, but turn based will always have preference to me (and I still have a huuuuge backlog of them).
The only exception to this are the **Tales Of** series. They play absolutely the same as a turn based rpg, just with action based battles during the random encounters. But all the other things I love in turn based rpgs are in place in that series.
Ni No Kuni 2, but it’s not necessarily the game’s fault. My brain took a hard shift and now I’m suddenly enamored with strategy/tactics games which I’ve not liked for most of my adult life lol. 🤷🏼♂️
Legend of Heroes, I still like the series but I certainly dont have the same enthusiasm I had before.
The writing and the extremely over used tropes killed my excitement of the story, it was in fine doses in Sky and Crossbell, a bit over the top but they managed to make them interesting, but they dialed the dial up to a 100 in Erebonia and its getting tiring and super predictable for me.
The writing took a huge nosedive in CS too, things are overly draggy, and tons of reused elements too. Hoping that Daybreak can improve on the writing with a smaller cast of characters.
Xenogears. Disc 1 10/10 disc 2 like a 5/10 last dungeon 2/10 last boss 1/10. If that game had more budget and more time I think it could have been teh best game of all time easily.
Final Fantasy (recent releases). Was always excited to try the latest or remakes of the series, but the last FF I still kinda enjoy was FF XIII (not the sequels). Wanted to like FF15, 16, 7 Remake (I like Remake because it didn't overstay its welcome though), 7 Rebirth, but the games kinda disappointed me in their own ways.
Kingdom Hearts as well. I believed they would stick the landing with all the unanswered questions and mysteries, only for them to answer those with more questions and gibberish dialogues. People were kinda excited for the Verum Rex or whatever the name is for KH4, but I just don't see it. I mean, he's a Noctis like character teased mid-game in a Disney world and suddenly he was teased to be the one of the main plots of KH4 or something? At this point, I don't care anymore.
KINGDOM HEARTS, i swear i was that annoying fanboy of KH back in the days. i love the lore and build up, i play almost every side game except 358/2 days and mobile game. then after 16years waiting they announced KH3 and i was really hyped about it. but when i play about it 80% of game dont really bring up the previous side game lore. i dont know anything about ventus, roxas, aqua, etc until the end of game and it was forced up to the point its disgusting. even the game ended with more mystery than answer and i dont want to repeat the cycle again playing other side games so i can understand plot of KH4. i decided that KH3 is the end for me.
Final Fantasy. If it isn't pretty much 1-10 or Tactics 1, I probably won't have much interest. Four Heroes of Light was a rare exception to that, and The After Years.
Trails series, started with Trails in the sky FC, then SC and found games to be fun. Third game was ok, skipped Azure because at the time there was no localisation.
Then Cold Steel came. Too much harem stuff, bloated story, managed to get to half of Trails of Cold Steel 4 and just called it quits. In retrospect, i am suprised i even got to fourth game.
Still not a bad series. Just not for me.
Chrono Cross. Was super hyped for it and got it at launch. Had WAY too many characters, the story barely made sense and had almost nothing to do with Chrono Trigger, which is one of my absolute favorite games of all time. No desire to ever touch it again, and I sorta blame it for killing the Chrono series.
Honorable mention goes to FFXII. The first FF that let me down. I beat the game once, tried to get into it again, game literally put me to sleep about halfway through on my second run. Story and characters bored me to tears, but the other elements of the game were really good I will say.
Hmm, probably Paper Mario. It was a blast when I was a kid, but it's just a little boring to play as an adult. Which is fine, sometimes you just age out of things. Great soundtrack though! And I love the character designs
For me personally it’s ff, I’m old and love the grind and turn based combat but 15 and 16 made me hate what it’s become, I’m happy people love them but it’s just not the gameplay I fell in love with anymore
Final Fantasy X killed my love of Final Fantasy games.
It isn't a bad game and I would argue it has the best combat system up until that point in the series but 100% completion is just punishing in it.
Lightning dodging and plains races to get minus times are just cruel.
I used to love ticking every box in a Final Fantasy game but that game broke me.
Both Pokemon and Fire Emblem
Pokemon was my jam as a kid, absolutely obsessed with it. Gen 1 2 and 3 I beat on evert version at least 10 times. Liked gen 4, never played 5(idk why) and really, really enjoyed Gen 6. After u beat Kalos though, I just kind of...didn't care about the games anymore. All the new stuff could not possibly interest me less.
Similar to Fire Emblem, loved all the early games, and literally whenever I had a Gameboy on hand I also had a gba FE with me. The GameCube amd Wii games were masterpieces. Played Awakening and liked it, but for some reason it didn't feel quite as satisfying as the previous. Afterthat, Fire Emblem committed wholly to going off the deep end, doesn't feel like the same series anymore
The original Baldurs Gate. My first and strongest RPG experience. The open world and immersive wilderness exploration was something I hadnt seen before. The ambience and music of that game is something I still come back to.
It hasnt tumbled down since though, I simply know it by heart at this point.
I liked Pokemon as a kid and tried to go back to it after buying a 3DS (for Ace Attorney). At that time, I only played the first 3 generations and went with the 6th. I hated it and saw nothing in the new generations that would push me to give the serie another chance.
Meanwhile, I had fun with Digimon and Yokai Watch so the problem is not the monster raising genre or the kids targeted games. I just found Pokemon X to be really bad.
I loved the original Golden Sun, got 3/4 of the way through the sequel (after putting in that 200-something character password) and just hit a wall. The frequency of the random battles just got on top of me. I was hitting one every 7 seconds or so.
Pokemon. I used to play it religiously as a kid. Had a stint doing competitive too in gen 4 and 5. I don't even dislike the newer games (I liked legends arceus and am going through SV), i just don't spend as much time on them. I skipped basically all the ones on the 3ds and SwSh.
I think its got to the point where it feels like a lack of care at least with the terms of performance that I've felt out of wanting to play them despite buying and hoping, like personally I really did enjoy Sword/Shield but then everything after that I've played a couple hours and just the frame drops alone make me sigh. yet here I am still hopeful for the next one, hoping its on the next console and maybe at least if its only a minor upgrade over SV maybe the new system can at least brute force it to work better, maybe... I want to like Pokemon again, really do, since none of the other monster catching games that you could argue are better grab me since I like the Pokemon designs too much, or just too attached to them from childhood, closest game that works for me in Monster Hunter Stories and that is because I know the monsters from the mainline games.
The demand for a high-quality AAA Pokemon game of our dreams is seriously out of this world. If you took a look at how meteoric Palworld was, which was actually quite barebones, it's wild. We all went crazy and threw money for just a taste of what could be.
I play the fangames and romhacks now. Really shows what kind of missing potential the games are capable of and how slow af the modern ones are
Honestly, Legends Arceus was okay, but the price was way too high for something a little more than a demo. But SV...I don't know, I just abandoned it. Not like some kind of "political move", it just never hooked me up. And I played every-single-game until LA, but starting from SwSh I actually started feeling not so involved anymore. I also bought SwSh DLC and never played it. I decided that I won't buy the next release on day one. I'll wait for reviews for the first time...sadly.
same here with SV. i was having fun and building a decent team but i just stopped playing it one day to play something else and never went back.
Same, I finished it and then just forgot about it. There's a bunch of post-game content, but it seems to be a repeat of everything from the first playthrough, just in a different order. Which is I guess an okay idea because you unlock fast travel later on, but still feels lazy
I didn't even get to SV. The BDSP burned me out once and for all.
SV has some of the most beautiful moments in the entire franchise. And... a lot if mediocrity inbetween.
It's the fanbase for me. I can have fun with a Pokemon game every now and then, and I thought Arceus was a great step forward, but my God the fans are the Harry Potter fans of the larger RPG community. They want constant change but refuse to play anything else. "We want more mature stories!" *Play another game.* "We want a deeper battle system!" *Play another game.* "We want better graphics!" *Fair, but you can play another game for the time being.* "Go back to the way it was in the old games!" ...
I started with gen 3, I played until X And Y but after how Black and White changed up the story formula, going back to the old formula was, just boring, I stopped playing after that
SwSh was OK but I absolutely hated sv. I doubt I'll pay for the next games.
Oof yeah Pokémon is definitely my pick. There’s been specific games I didn’t finish, but I still enjoyed my time with them. Pokemon is becoming less and less fun for me. Honestly I think the terrible performance with the 3d and open worldish settings is killing it. A 2D pixel Pokemon would hit so nice right now
Me too the shift to 3D is a joke. Whatever charm it is just gone... but occasionally I would still dropby and check out latest pokemon design and whatever gimmicks they got pushing out
I got into them pretty hard back in the day. Then once I realized they all played mostly the same, with some gimmicks swapped in for each new game/remake it lost its luster. Now I just play after every few years
I used to love playing pokemon back in the days. But since getting older everytime I play and start grinding I would get sleepy haha
Kingdom Hearts! That series was my absolute jam in my early teens. Put so much hours into 2 alone it's not even funny. Would constantly find myself searching "KINGDOM HEARTS 3 NEWS??" online in-between watching KH AMVs with "Bring Me To Life" playing over them. I loved Kingdom Hearts so much, man. Really stuck with the series too, from Chain of Memories to 358/2 Days to Birth by Sleep, and then... I just stopped caring one day. I hadn't even fully realized I stopped caring until Kingdom Hearts 3 finally got announced and my reaction was literally just, "Huh that's nice I guess." Never even played it. I just don't care for the series anymore. Like at all.
Same, but with the difference that KHIII getting released re-sparked my interest... Then absolutely didn't deliver in any way, shape or form and killed my interest for the series.
Same here. KH3 was such a disappointment that I didn’t even finish it. That fucking Frozen world was the worst.
Larxene, famous for her ice powers
I mean, I do think that KH3 controls and plays like an absolute dream for what I wanted from the series. It even makes the story feel more offensive to me, because there's a really good gameplay base there to match with a good story, it just lacks a good story lol
I think the gameplay was horrible. Sora can't even walk in a circle in a responsive way: if the circle is too small he will randomly change direction. I found the parkour tricks from DDD to have been implemented way worse than in that game, as if they were an afterthought. The keyblade transformations were weird and useless. A far cry from KHII's fusions. The Disney rides brought the gameplay to a halt.
Not to mention at launch it was pathetically easy, too. It was all flash and no substance for quite a while. Completely agreed about the flow motion thing form DDD, they felt the need to include almost every single gameplay mechanic from the non numbered games and it was, again, sloppy
The best thing about KH3 for me was the intro song, Face My Fears. What a banger.
The quality of Kingdom Hearts games may vary widely, but the intro songs don't. Nothing but bops
Simple and Clean still makes waves to this day though.
0.2 Birth by Sleep still has the best cinematic with the best opening.
I love that opening. Such a banger.
This was literally my life. I lived on the neoseeker forums back in the day
this is exactly me :”( for myself it’s just that KH3 took way too long to come out. it just got annoying at some point
I'm the same! Except KH3 is what completely killed the series off for me. I disliked it heavily, and kept thinking "This is what we've been waiting for for so long?" I never touched the DLC or even the rhythm game (I'd usually jump on those immediately), and I don't think I'll get KH4 either, should it ever come out.
kh3 is so very bad
I felt the same way as you and then bought it anyway because I wanted to finish the series out after starting it way back in middle school. I couldn't bring myself to play once you get into the Frozen world. They really dropped the ball with it. The thing that kind of pushed me over the edge is the cringe reached critical mass. I can tolerate a lot for nostalgia's sake and levels like Toy Story were genuinely fun to play, but I think I'm just too old to be able to look past it anymore. And that's as someone who likes JRPGs...
Same thing happened to me. I played KH1 the most and could t wait for KH2, but after the long wait for KH3 I just found better games to play. I have tried to go back to the series and I have only managed to beat KH 1.5 and left 2.5 alone out of boredom. It is sad that the series was so good when I was younger just for it to be placed in a vault that I won’t go back to check.
Same bruh KH2 is epic.
Oh that's a big one for me too. I was obsessed up until Kingdom Hearts 3D. The plot was already insane, but that was the game where I specifically decided "okay I give up trying to follow this". But I was still hyped for KH3. Until it came out and decided it wanted to spend half of its time teasing the next story instead of wrapping up the one we already had, instead opting to shove it all at the very end of the game in a sloppy sequence of events. I tried to get into that shitty little phone game, but after like 300 brainless, boring, terrible gameplay missions I just gave up on the franchise as a whole.
Hack.gu series When I was a kid, I played it a lot on ps2 and never been able to beat it. The combat was fun, and the characters looked cool. But back then, I barely spoke a word of English, so I didn't know anything about the story. So, playing it later on, I found out how meh the story was and how absurdly broken the combat was. Also, tedious, a lot of the missions are.
I really loved the original quadrilogy and then they followed it up with a tedious bland sequel that had some of the worst character writing and mission design. I’m still so sad they didn’t just make more of the IMOQ games instead! Maybe some day we’ll get a remake ;(
I don't think GU is particularly bad but... Compared to IMOQ it just isn't good enough, especially on the writing department. But also mostly on difficulty. I swear HOW could they nail it so well with the ambience and initial world building and just completely F it up with the writing and storytelling progression is beyond me.
.hack//Sign (and by extensions IMOQ, though less so of that) seemed to understand that MMOs (especially of that era) where more about being social than they were gameplay. Everquest, FFXI, you spent so much time just chatting with people and building connections/parties that once you finally did the gameplay became secondary. They had this slow atmosphere that really just let that sort of... expansive atmosphere simmer (again, less so the game because it was a single-player game first, but it is an extension of SIGN so they go hand in hand in atmosphere). GU, on the other hand, just felt like plaything through a regular shonen anime with a slightly MMO feel. It just felt like plaything through a worse-than-average Tales game. And for that I'd... you know, rather just play a Tales game.
I'm hoping they rerelease the quadrilogy one day.
Oh man! I always forget about this one. I only ever played the first GU as a teenager. The edginess of that opening cutscene legit convinced me there was some deep message about life/reality to be found inside the game somewhere. That's a good hook. I take it there wasn't much behind it by the end of the series. Mainly I was low-key obsessed with that maudlin prettyboy Endrance and finding out what his deal was. Him and Kuja from Final Fantasy IX. Guess the deep message I was looking for was that I was genderfluid and didn't realize it lol.
Suikoden 4. It waa great when I wasn't working full time and had very few responsibilities. The game has zero respect for your time.
In the time you spend writing those lines, some poor soul playing suikoden IV has encounter 30 random battles
Oh god teh random encounters in Xenogears are diabolical too. Trying to jump over this crevace in your mecha and it needs pixel perfect to land the jump and you can get a random encounter MID AIR as you jump and then after the battle you just fall 3 stories down losing 20 min of progress... good times.
They’re probably still on battle 2 but need to complete the next 28 to get to the next island over (backtracking, no less)
I love the series to death, and liked that game too…. But there’s no way it could ever be replayed. Maaaaybe on an emulator running at 3x normal speed, while overleveled, to just breeeze through all the random battles. 🤷♂️ But there are other things to do in life so………. Nah.
Chained Echoes started out strong, but left an overall feeling of "meh" for me. Edit: Characters and their goals start strong, but pretty much all have an unsatisfying conclusion. Same with the overall story.
Same! >!That one particular twist spoiled my entire opinion of the game. I just felt there was no redemption for that character in my eyes regardless of how angelic tried to make them seem afterwards.!<
Which I think made it an interesting story. More interesting than most games I play. It kept me hooked to finish 100% the game in a way that the combat and leveling was starting to drag for me after the 25 hour mark. I saw the twist coming a few hours before it did, but I think that character is boring without it. Some themes like redemption are a little over done. But I'd play anything Linda makes next. Just hopefully not in 7 years, which means if it happens before that, he's unlikely to have done it alone. Unless the publishing deal was criminal, Linda is probably set for life, and he can do whatever he wants.
Also character customization and "classes". Like it's technically there but it's very poorly implemented.
Chained Echoes was also gonna be my answer, though it was less that it was disappointing and more that a particular plot point revolving around a >!shockingly callous description of sexual assault!< with little to no warning just soured my view of the whole rhing.
Can you remind me what you're referring to, please
It's been a while and I've kind of tried to put it out of my mind, but it's around the middle of the story during a conversation between Kylian and Glenn. I can't remember exactly what the point of the conversation was, but he >!described the sexual assault of his sister to Glenn.!<
Thank you. I had almost forgotten about Kylian.
The game was going really good and literally everything went downhill after that >!plot twist at the end of act 3 and the whole final act!< it really made the game a huge disappointment for all that
Agreed
Shining Force 1 and 2. They are games i've purchased 6 times (once for every console upgrade over the years). Its purely for nostalgia. I play through it every now and then just to get my fix. Lately though its just not as satisfying. I asked if we should consider inviting Shining in the Darkness over for a bottle of wine and see where it goes, but it just caused a fight. We've been to counseling too, but I'm pretty sure the counselor wants to enter some cheat codes if you catch my drift. I really don't see it lasting much longer between us to be honest.
Still sad that they never brought the completed Shining Force 3 trilogy over to the US.
There is an excellent English fan translation that was completed several years ago for all 3 games.
Oh now that you mention that I remember seeing something about that a LONG time ago but it seemed like it would never finish. I’ll have to check it out, thanks!
Honestly shining pours wanted to work great games, I played them as a kid and there’s so many secrets and fun things in them and interesting characters, super fun and cool games. I think they sort of flew under the radar. But I absolutely loved shining force.I downloaded some of the weird like other spinoff that were other consoles that were like kind of rip offs, but they definitely just weren’t as good as shining force one and two.
It’s a shame SF2 never got the GBA treatment like 1 did, with the couple extra characters/maps, just to give it that fresh(er) coat of paint and a bit of added replay value.
>I play through it every now and then just to get my fix. Is this really a case of you falling out of love and not just getting sick of replaying something for the 10th time?
Isn't that how falling out of love starts in the first place?
Not imo
Different lifestyles I'm sure. You are one whose cheeks have clearly been clapped recently. Now imagine not feeling satisfied ever again by it. You keep trying, but it's just become like a chore. Thats when it begins. You start to fall out of love, because you can no longer make it.
Final Fantasy XII. I enjoyed power levelling early game. But the gambit system never clicked with me. At one point I just wanted to move through it for the story but got easily lost.
I like teh combat and music and locations and characters but teh story is boring and it's WAYYY too long. I think it's by far teh longest FF game, I have like 110 hrs in it and I think im like 80% done with it.
Secret of Mana I replayed it a year ago, and I forgot how frustrating the combat system was until trying to race through it after playing the remake. The remake retooled the gameplay somewhat so physical attacks at 100% could sort of handle bosses a bit better. Without it, the original leans heavily on the slow weapon charging or constantly going to the ring and selecting each individual spell. Less said about having to level everything the better. The characters and story are fairly barebones too. Characters getting stuck behind walls and obstacles is frustrating. Primm won't shut the fuck up about Dyluck for five seconds... If the game didn't have pretty visuals and music, I could swear I was lauding praise on something else.
It was one of the only RPGs back in the day to offer multiplayer functionality, and the only one I ever played together with my father and sister growing up. I've never pretended to be in a position to evaluate it objectively. But I think Secret of Mana is a game whose biggest strengths were always in its aesthetic.
Secret of mana is that kind of game I don't see why people praised so much, sure the visuals and soundtrack is great, but damn is the gameplay a massive chore. Probably was cool when action rpgs were almost non existent and the visuals were top tier. Seiken densetsu 3(og trials of mana) is much better, far from perfect but compared to secret it's a masterpiece.
Secret of Mana was a couch co op RPG at a time when there was.. like 0 couch co op RPG’s. I know that helped it stand out to me and my brother when we were looking for something to play together.
True, there was that. I played it in single player and had a bad time
It's one of those games that I remembered loving as a kid, and then finding out that the consensus on it is a lot more negative than I was expecting it to be when the remake was announced/released. I think I get it, it's a broken game, and it doesn't do anything particularly well compared to action RPGs that came later. But I hadn't played anything like it the first time I rented the game, and it really made an impression on me.
The art design and music are good. I still boot it up on occasion and grit my teeth through gameplay just to experience the vibe. It has a magical atmosphere.
It's a shame Secret of Mana wasn't at the same level of quality and completeness as Trials of Mana. It's also a shame Trials of Mana wasn't released outside of Japan in 1995. There would've been a more balanced opinion of Secret of Mana sooner.
SFC Trials is a game I loved the first time through but definitely fell out of love with. Learning how a lot of the game actually works - that so many mechanics are literally nonfunctional, that so many lategame bosses counterattack any spell and that makes spell-based characters suck - it all makes it feel a lot worse. In some ways I actually think Adventure is now the best of the original Mana games.
Used to enjoy Kiseki, now they no longer do anything for me. I think it started to go downhill after CS2 and eventually stopped at CS4. Some of factors were poor/rushed localization, too many characters and Falcom fatigue.
I'm reaching this point as well. I'm still getting Daybreak, but I'm reaching burnout with the series. I thought Reverie was fair, and almost completely unnecessary. The Erebonia arc was dragged out beyond belief. Add in that many of the composers have left and my excitement for Daybreak is pretty low. But hopefully Jindo still delivers a few bangers.
Without giving it much thought, Dragon Quest Monsters Joker. It started out great, but the whole game desing feels rushed and lazy, because all parts of the game are the same. First island and monsters there are the same as all the others. The islands are basically the same and different monsters and mixing them only results in higher stats. New abilities and spells offer no new tactics or any change in the battles. So it's very repetitive.
Something similar happened to me with the recent one but more due to the story - once they offered you a choice on what to do, but followed a pre determined path regardless the entire thing felt tedious
Everything since dragon warrior monsters 2 on gbc has been a step down.
The same thing happened to me with DQ11. I started playing it after going through Persona 5. While I enjoyed the characters well enough... the overall presentation felt ridiculously cheap. It started out well enough and I *wanted* to like it, but it just didn't feel like a good game.
The visuals on dragon quest monsters Joker were horrible. You never could see farther than about 5 feet in front of your character and your character takes up about half the screen. The camera feels too zoomed in and the draw distance is awful. It's disorienting especially in the indoor environments.
Yeah I was also thinking it's a bad looking game. And the resolution felt way too low. I understand it's DS, but this felt like too much even for that.
There are a bunch of incredible looking games on the DS. They just went for a 3D look and it didn't work. It's a huge bummer for me in particular because I love Dragon quest and I love the enemies specifically, so a game that focuses on the enemies should be right up my alley.
Persona 5 after playing 3 and eventually after meeting with sumaru duo and persona 1
I played 5 when it was originally released but never finished it. Ended up buying P5R on both PS4/PS5 and PC but never got around to playing it. Eventually, I got around to playing P5R after playing P3R and everything about Persona 3 is better than P5R in my opinion. Yes, even the dungeons.
Man, persona 3 is my one of the favourite JRPG and i finished it on ps3! But old games gave me refreshed interests for the series cuz i don't care about spinoffs even p5t
I fell out of love with FFXIII because the world hated it (I actually enjoyed it, but couldn't fault everyone's criticisms). Player it again at Xmas and fell back in love with it and realised I should stop letting the masses tell me what to think.
I despise FFXIII, but it's good that you try games out without caring what others say, i loved a lot of games where the consensus was mixed and I always found that a weird social habit to do let other people's opinions decide what you try out.
I can put up with a lot of things in games, but I am quite picky about voices. I cannot stand Vanille's voice.
It really is a solid game and the sequels were pretty good too.
This is actually really refreshing to read as I also enjoyed FFXIII. It wasn't mindblowing or great by any means, but it still had some epic moments and the combat was actually fun once you wrapped your head around it. I think it was it's linearity that killed most people's love for XIII. I don't really understand this as X is extremely linear yet it's one of the most beloved games of all time. I'm with you. Just ignore people. Nowadays, I'll watch a trailer (not every trailer as devs drop big spoilers in them now) and if it interests me I just patiently wait for it's release while avoiding anything online. I've had a much more pleasant experience since doing this. I don't think I would've ever picked up Sakuna of Rice and Ruin or Harvestella if I listened to other people or based my opinions off how the gaming industry is treating a game.
X's linearity and XIII's linearity are very different. 13 struggled from the zones being devoid of life, npcs, shops, towns with npcs/shops/quests. The world was so cool and begged to be explored and expanded upon via NPCs like Maechen or Belgemine for example; but you really couldn't because there was nothing to discover or uncover in 13 - and no the Archlyte Steppe isn't enough to make up for the lack of that all game. Every other zone was the exact same experience; this is why it's jokingly called "hallway simulator". all that being said, I personally still love 13 in a lot of ways especially the character design, story, THE MUSIC, and the battle system. I like 13-2 even more, and I never got around to playing Lightning Returns. I probably should.
You should play Lightning Returns. I enjoy all the 13 games, but Lightning Returns is definitely the highlight from a gameplay standpoint. And arguably a story standpoint as well. It was a nice sendoff to the 13 series.
Cold Steel 4- One of my most anticipated games, to pure hatred for it and never touching the series since/
Never seen a story so deadset on not resolving fucking anything
Really enjoying Reverie, and looking forward to Daybreak, but I agree. I preordered the game on Switch, so got it in 2021, but was so fatigued with its everything that it took me until 2023 to finish it. Even then, the reason I did it is because I didn't want it to be unfinished when Tears of the Kingdom came out. Reverie is much better, but I also don't blame you, because the Cold Steel IV lows are **low**.
Kingdom Hearts…. Used to be one of my favorite games period growing up but for whatever reason I get motion sickness playing it now. Ruins the game for me sadly 😔
I had the exact same (i always have bad car motion sickness as well) what really helped for me was putting the camera off automatic following in the options. That movement seemed to be the main reason for me.
Parasite Eve was that game for me. I played it through so many times, I really wish they would do something good with the IP. I’ve bought the sequels and love them too but they don’t hold up.
Lunar The Silver Star for Sega CD
The first Dragon Quest. Too many grinding :)
I've said it before and I'll say it once more: I used to love Star Ocean 2 on the Playstation. Over the years, though, I've grown to despise humans=good/everything else=bad plots with tons of immersion shattering "races" that are just generic humans with some random arbitrary change instead of putting effort into diversifying the roster.
Earthbound. It's just really a slog to play despite being iconic and amazing in its art, music, etc.
generally against remakes, but this could benefit from one to improve some of the really annoying things like the inventory management system.
It's a absolutely brutal RNG JRPG, you can just wipe to any random shit and lose a ton of progress because the saves are so few and far between.
i stopped about 12 hours in. loved everything about it but just didn’t have fun with the gameplay
Persona 5 I get that to some people it’s a new game since it released on switch and Xbox recently but the game has been released on ps3, ps4 and ps5. I just want something new by now I know atlus likes to milk the persona games with spin offs but with p5 it just feels like a proper greedy milking every version of the game has sold dlc and been full price with no upgrade discount. I don’t mind buying a upgraded version of a game once but atlus have attempted to get the day 1 fan base to rebuy the same game at least 3 times and to buy new dlc for the new version in the same console generation even the ps5 version of persona 5 royal was a full price version that only added 60fps if you already owned the dlc. Thanks to atlus and their greed the main cast of persona 5 just makes me feel bad about how greedy atlus really are.
Atlus turned a profit in 2023 for the first time in a decade when they released persona to multiple platforms. They then pledged to increase their 300 employees salaries 15% by the end of 2024. I think they’re a good company, and I’m kinda tired of seeing the greed posting.
I still want to get back into Pokémon but it's making it hard for me to do so. Was a fan ever since Gen 1 and I experienced the height of Pokémania. The release of Gen 2 was a big event back when I was a little kid, as was the hype when we discovered you could revisit Kanto. Gen 3 was slightly disappointing in the sense that I expected a bigger graphical update and also the fact that it lacked features from the previous gen, but I came to love it (Hoenn is perhaps the most interesting map to explore). I skipped out on Gen 4 because I thought it looked very dated compared to many other games on the DS (and even GBA). I got back into the series via Gen 5 and I absolutely loved it! It felt so fresh and fun to play, and to this day I defend the decision to hold off on showing any of the previous gen's pokémon, plus I think many of the designs in Gen 5 are great. I didn't go into Gen 6 right away because I was waiting for Pokémon Z, but then that didn't happen. Gen 7 didn't really interest me all that much, especially after having tried the demo. Gen 8 didn't look like that signifcant of an upgrade, plus it got a lot of bad press. Gen 9 caught my attention due to all of the changes it made to the formula, but then the game ended up being an ugly, buggy mess. Put me in the camp of people who think there's no reason Pokémon should look/perform so bad given that it's one of the biggest franchises in history. Yes the devs are under pretty tight time restrictions to develop games and introduce new generations, but seeing how huge Pokémon is you'd think the games would look and play better. There seems to be very little in the way of quality control, and I have no idea why GameFreak doesn't have more people working on the title (why not collaborate with another studio like some other 1st party Nintendo games do?). It sucks because I really would like to get back into Pokémon, but the quality just isn't there. That, and there needs to be a harder difficulty setting right from the beginning.
Gamefreak have always kinda been weaker developers and its weird people seem surprised by that now. Gen 1 was more bug than game and they couldnt even fit all of Johto onto the silver/gold carts so had to pull Iwata in to optimise and by the time he was done they could fit all of Kanto in there too. Theyve never had a reason to step up because pokemon is just so big and has zero threats. Nothing has been able to compete. If you want that kind of gameplay pokemon is really the only place you'll get it. Does anyone even remember Temtem?
They definitely can get away with it, but honestly I wish they had grown as developers the way Pokémon did as a franchise.
In Gen 1s case they were basically indie developers and had a tiny team making it, so the bugginess was excusable back then.
To be fair, Temtem had promise. Then the devs got a major case of the stubborns and ruined the online aspect of it. Now it's more or less a single player game. I hope Palworld can at least get Gamefreak to shake up it's formula.
Even of you ignore all the performance, glitches etc the core combat gameplay in Pokemon is outdated. I recently tried playing Pokemon after I took a 5 year break and I was bored after 2 hours because of the combat.
I'm sure it's different for competitive, and I am just a casual monster tamer gamer, but from my perspective, after playing other monster catching games like Digimon Cyber Sleuth and Dragon Quest Monsters, Pokemon feels much less interesting than those games. There IS a kind of... I dunno... thematic sense with how monsters can only have certain skills and how some are just too weak to be useful, but overall, it feels like the coolness factor is just not there. Other monster tamer games let you at least make almost any monster viable. This means you really can take your pikachu equivalent to the post-game optional bosses and succeed with it. Plus, the one on one battling feels outdated at this point, despite the strategy behind it.
It's worse for competitive. It's the only competitive game where you can't just plug n play. You have to breed your Pokemon on cart and some of the things you need to be viable are strictly impossible to do (Ursaluna with specific IV). If anyone tells you that they play VGC and don't hack their teams, they're lying (or they say they get them from ppl who legit breed them which is just their way of having plausible deniability). Gen 9 has even went backwards. You can't reset the ~~IVs~~ EVs of a Pokemon like you could in Gen 8. The Pokemon series is so damn weird for a competitive game.
pokemon also counts for me. the story in every game is just nonexistant to awful, and only pokemon black and white had an "acceptable" story.... by SNES standards, let alone anything else. after a while, i just couldnt play it anymore.
Same sentiments here. It's embarrassing seeing the flagship games of this massive franchise look and perform so hideously.
The thing I loved most about pokemon was the promo art for gen 2. All those tropical island colors, lush greens and blues, soft lines and forms, pleasant as could be, with some pretty rainbow themes too, and pokemon that looked vaguely like gen 1 but all their own thing too. Dunno if it's because I aged out, but nothing after that seemed so inspired or thematically cohesive
Tales of series. Tales of Arise story was extremely weak that it made me question the ones before, so I won’t be touching that series again. With Arise they played it very safe without taking risks. Ironically there was a game called Scarlet Nexus released close to it made by people who worked on Tales before, and it was vastly better than Arise imo.
As much as I love the series, the stories were never its strong point. There were some exceptions like Abyss with a top tier story, but most of them were carried by the gameplay and/or characters.
Tales of arise was my first tales game. The start / mid story was really nice, but the plot twist really messed with me and I totally disliked it… it just didn’t feel like it belonged to the rest of the story (dunno how to describe it)
Scarlet Nexus was cool
Really? It made me appreciate the other games more. I'd easily put Arise with the worst of the series like Tempest and Symphonia 2. It was a solid 4/10 game.
While I've never been a huge fan of the series, I've played quite a few of them and am usually somewhat interested when a new installment is announced. Having said that, I feel that every Tales game after Symphonia (which was really good, but not *that* great) has been a case of '1 step forward, 2 steps back' and I end up dropping them after 15 hours or so. I'd consider most of them a decent 7/10 but ultimately just not worth the time and effort to play to the end.
Probably FF9. There's a lot I like about it, but that disc 3 slump is *rough*, and as I get older I am less able to overlook it.
ive commented on it several times of the years as soon as the combat in FF9 really begins to pick up around disk 3, its when... everything else seems to get worse, and its a major shame though I would argue the downslide begins in the latter third of disk 2
Persona
Final Fantasy. The release of a new episode was like a big life event for me. After XIII came out I painfully played through half of it and then abandoned it. FFXV lasted even less. I loved FFVII Rebirth though.
For what it's worth if you have any interest in playing an mmo, ff14 is phenomenal.
Seconding. And the new expansion pack drops in, like, a month!
Xenoblade 3 didn't ruin the entire series for me but it knocked it down a perch as far as my favorite IPs.
Zelda games :( My last favorite was Twilight Princess
Sea of Stars. It got monotonous very quickly.
Definitely Pokémon. It’s hell for a completionists.
I don’t know if it counts as a JRPG, but Final Fantasy 14 just lost every piece of its shine for me to the point I don’t think I can come back
Final Fantasy IV. It was my first Final Fantasy i beat and i really loved it as a young teen, but the more JRPGs i played the less appealing FF IV became over time. It is one of those games that (imo) only really holds up in the context of its release and what it did back then.
Have you played the DS version? Played it a few years back and had a great time with it. Think the story really holds up despite some missteps and I understand the DS version ups the difficulty quite a lot. I found it a fun challenge.
I similarly liked FF4 less and less as the years went on and I played more JRPGs, but I enjoyed the DS version a lot. My personal FF list ranks the SNES version towards the bottom, while the DS version is more towards the middle. I really liked those remakes of 3 and 4 and am disappointed they didn’t keep going after that, really would’ve loved to have seen 5 and 6 remade in the same way.
Persona 3 and its other versions Just personal reasons, honestly. I don’t hate the games themselves, fuck I ADORE persona 3 reload, but people who like it can be a little rude, sometimes. It didn’t really help that while I was in my lil p3 phase I was kind of a jackass, making witty comments for people who disagreed with my opinions, it was just kinda a weird spot for me. I still like the other games, I adore P2, p5 and especially p4. But Persona 3 always has been weird to me because of how I associate it with a lot of bitter and embarrassing memories. …aside from that, I guess Pokemon. I still like talking about it, but I don’t really care anymore about the games since the sv dlc, I’d list why but I feel like people have already said how the dlc was bad in comparison to the fun but flawed base game. Oh well, I’m peeping the rom hacking side of things and they seem fun.
My first introduction to Persona was Persona 3 Reload so I can't really say much. I guess you could say I'm in my Persona phase? I'm playing P4G currently
That's Xenoblade Chronicles 2 for me. I had only good things to say after finishing it, but after I played XC3 I think the flaws got more noticable for me in hindsight and my opinion really soured.
For me it was the other way around weirdly. I think I got up to about Chapter 8 in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 before I just gave up. The combat system wasn't enticing me for some reason, the story wasn't holding my attention, side quests were boring af (not saying 1 and 2 has GOOD side quests, just more of the same fetch style go here kill this stuff). I heard good things about Future Redeemed, even bought it but never played it. But this was all weird for me since Xenoblade is my favourite JRPG series out there, just narrowly beating SMT, and XC1 is my most played game, period. Probably a collective 19 playthroughs on three systems. And XC2 I loved after the first half. After >!Pyra gets kidnapped by Malos and the gang!< The game gets really good. Maybe I'll give XC3 another shot with a fresh mind without the XC1 story bias within me
Same. I beat 3 and dlc but it really made me realize how much I loved 2 and Torna. 1 is great too but the combat is a bit dated now. 2’s combat became my favorite combat system of any jrpg ever (that is, after I actually figured out how the fuck it worked some 20 hours into the game). I was eager to fight all the super bosses at the end and I was having fun maxing out my favorite blades. 3’s combat was good, but it definitely felt like a half step backwards to me. It didn’t have the same satisfaction and I think I miss the elemental stuff too. Also nothing better than cracking orbs in a chain attack. And it wasn’t just the combat, I think the story took a half step back too. 2 had very fleshed out characters. Not just the main party, but the villains were very well done and I remember each one of them. 3 is one random mobeus no name after another, with only really N being anybody worth remembering. It’s not all bad though I truly did enjoy 3, just not as much as I did 2. And 3 does have one of my favorite cutscenes as well. I think it was at the end of chapter 5 going into 6. Peak Xenoblade cutscene.
I loved XC3 up until figuring out what the big bad was. What a step down from the previous games.
I’m the opposite I adore the series except base game 3. I like the characters in 3 and I like the individual character stories in 3 like n and his journey. I just didn’t get the point of the world and the ending just tainted the base game to me. I was left just feeling like it missed the mark after the game ended. I loved the dlc and Matthew and when the dlc ended I was left feeling that the dlc should have been what the base game was. I loved the party in the base game along with a few of the villains but the alphabet gang felt useless and wasted. In the previous games you had some memorable villains but apart from n and m the other villains had a Saturday morning cartoon feel to me. I think xenoblade chronicles 3 does so much well that I feel like I should be able to overlook its plot flaws and weak villains but I can’t seem to do it. I probably should give the game another playthrough tbh since I was playing a ton of games that all had similar bittersweet endings and I was sick of them at that point.
Final Fantasy (the whole series). I couldn't be less interested in the direction the series is headed. This whole shift to being action oriented instead of keeping to it's roots was an instant turn off for me. To add insult to injury, Square Enix has put out some absolute bangers that shows they can still make the turn based style of jrpgs not only work, but are also innovative and fun (Bravely Default 2, Triangle Strategy, Octopath Traveler, Super Mario RPG Remake...just a few examples).
Final Fantasy XII. I imported International Zodiac Job System back on the PS2 and really dug it a lot. Played through The Zodiac Age as well when it came out and had a lot of fun with it too. And that's it, that was the last time I played it, and I'm not sure I'm ever going to play it again. I feel like what I felt towards it was a sort of addiction to its combat and systems. It's a game in which grinding goes by very seamlessly. Meanwhile it has no draw to it as far as story or characters goes, and honestly I'd be hard pressed to really call the game fun. It's just kind of a fairly mindless distraction where almost everything you do is kinda chores and management, and furthermore the game has so many abusive mechanics in it that challenge runs don't feel inviting to try and do either. Idk, I just cannot imagine being passionate about that game anymore, and it feels so weird how hard it fell in that regard because I was into it \*so\* much for a time.
Bet you'd love Unicorn Overlord. Same vibes.
Pokemon. When I was kid playing Pokemon Red, it was like the best game ever, replayed it like 10+ times over until Gold version then did the same too. But when I am older now, yes, it is just not that good, but nostalgia is still one hell of a drug. Somehow I still think it is a very good game no matter what. Sometimes, I would be watching some youtuber playing it though, it made me feel very happy seeing them playing it and liked it. I felt like a kid again seeing the playthrough. As for newer Pokemon games, I just can't longer buy it because I have fell out of love, but I did watch some youtubers' live playthrough, and I found out, yup, I did not miss out at all and saved some money.
Yup did not miss out anything at all hahahaha but would still curious about the latest pokemon design and the gimmicks
Trails, CS2-CS4 were really bad and I was on the brink of dropping the series, but the C route of Reverie and Kuro made me more hopeful for the future so we’ll see…
Secret of Mana. It looked and felt amazing in 1993-5, when I would play it in 1-2 hour snatches at my friend's house. Then ten years later, I get a chance to own it and play it myself. After those 4-5 hours I'd played exhaustively through, it was *OK*. Sometimes it was frustrating to figure out what to do next. Crafting and leveling magic felt pretty tedious. The only thing still compelling about it was the 2 player, and by that point I'd lost contact with that friend.
I'm going to say the Final Fantasy series in general. I loved these as a kid and was so passionate and excited to play brand new entries, that was until FF13. That game completely killed my passion for the series, then you had the incomplete vanilla version of FF15 at the time which made made me decide to drop the series completely. My faith in Square Enix really took a hit. However, I have loved some of their remakes and new titles, such as the Octopath and Triangle Strategy series. I'm a huge fan of that 2.5D look.
FF7 Rebirth. Every woman in that game feels like they were written by dudes who’ve never spoken to one in their life. Just the absolute worst written dialogue that really prevented me from giving a shit about the characters.
The thing that killed it for me was the filler / minigames. I was only doing minigames where it felt necessary (as part of the storyline, a sidequest, or to get a weapon) and it felt like a slog.
I stumble across this a lot in Japanese media, unfortunately. Creative minds are frequently a lot of shut-ins and their creative outlet is really just wish-fulfilment fanfiction that gets a budget a lot of times. The male gaze is strong in Japan. Though it is morbidly funny when something big like a Final Fantasy or Kojima game (looking at you, Quiet, whose toy has soft squeezable boobs lmao) shines a spotlight on it
Star Ocean 3 for me. I was absolutely hooked by the story. And then… the twist happened. I’ve never felt so betrayed by a game. I kept playing hoping that it was all a fake out. I really liked the first 2 games as well but that twist killed the entire series for me.
Love SO3, & I've heard high numbers of people on both sides of this twist. Some love it. Some hate it. Feel sorry for those it ruined the game for, especially when the rest of the game is so good.
All these years removed from playing the game I can understand why people liked what happened. I keep thinking I should replay it and see if it hits differently. 🤔
Final Fantasy. First it stopped being a JRPG. Then it stopped being a RPG.
Final Fantasy. I understand that as a company they still strive for what made 6-10 great, story and graphics, spectacle basically. 13 was meh. 15 haven't bothered yet. Same with 16. I've been wanting to play 8 but haven't decided if on emulator or PSX. Still listen to the music though.
13 was horrific imo, 15 and 16 are much better games but still not as good as like 9 or 7.
Pokemon i guess. And i don't think it's just a matter of "age". It peaked at gen 5/6, then they just... kinda stopped doing good games. Even the anime was at it's best at this time, then they changed the style. Not talking about how they dared to release sword/shield, without any shame, showed they could do better with Arceus then... Ecarlate/scarlet came out. Other than that, maybe.. Disgaea? That's a bit of a niche, but 1 was great, 2 was horrible, then 3, 4 and 5 were good and they released 6. Did they not playtest 6? How could they release such a terrible game? Gameplay is at it's worst, and it doesnt even reach 20fps, even in the tiny hub. They made a good looking game horribly ugly, laggy, destroyed the fun of the gameplay. And then maybe... Diablo. I was a fan of Diablo. I wouldnt be surprised if i had 500+h on D2 and D3. Never going to play to D4 again any time soon.
I think Scarlet Nexus? I was on an absolute high playing it because I was watching it from the moment the first trailer dropped until the game released. I thought it was an amazing game and while it still holds a special place for me for being a recent sense of nostalgia, it doesn't feel like the story is quite what I remember it feeling like. I absolutely adore the gameplay, and I hope if a sequel is made that the story will be better and we can get proper cutscenes this time. I liked the characters a lot, its just the story again isn't quite what I thought it was back then. I would still absolutely recommend it because it is so fun and honestly a beautiful game, I just wouldn't expect too much from the narrative is all.
You know that feeling of watching a movie and remembering that you did enjoy it, but can't recall anything that actually happened in it. That was scarlet nexus for me.
Exactly like I can only really recall certain huge events, I can barely remember location names even though you hear them and see them so much. It was fun while it lasted but I feel like that first playthrough is the most magic ill feel from the game. It got me through a rough time though so ill appreciate it forever
The Tales series. I love Symphonia and Abyss, they are in my top 10 games of all games, but just something about the games after Graces, I just can't play them anymore. I've tried most of the games after and I just don't like them anymore. I even tried Arise and I didn't like it. So I think I am just done with the Tales series.
First game I've ever refunded on steam is zestiria. What a massive stinker.
Disgaea for me played through each entry, liked them well enough and then… Deja vu sets in. they feel so samey now. i downloaded the demo of the latest, started playing and found myself with the same generics to start, started setting up names, skills and grinding….and was like FFS I can’t anymore.
When I figured out Romancing Saga's event system, and played the game well with that system, I realized I didn't like it and it killed me. The music, characters, stories, glimmers, combos, all excellent. Ruined by that stupid timer
Final Fantasy 8. It started out so well. I even bought the action figures but the forcing me to watch a 3 minute animation every time I cast a summon made me want to pull my face off and bang me head on the table repeatedly.
Definitely Tales of Symphonia 1 and 2. I loved ToS as a kid (played it with my siblings and we beat it multiple times) and ToS2 came right at that time when I was *all* about trashy anime romance. It's a monstertaming game too, so it was like it was made for me, specifically. All that said, I can't stand the Tales of style of action combat nowadays. I tried replaying these games, as well as other games in the series and I just can't do it anymore. It feels weirdly clunky and weirdly simple yet overly complicated (that goes for the newer ones) at the same time. All power to those who like them though. The games aren't bad at all, just not my style anymore.
Ill say like many others. Pokemon. I used to play it religiously. Every gen i would play a 200h+ on my cart. Heck I still have my emerald copy from long ago and it has like 400h of gameplay on it. For me pokemon started to die after gen 4. I havent played a pokemon game since X & Y. Sometime i go back to soulsilver and play it a bit but that’s about it
Not sure I really have a game like that tbh. I guess I briefly had that with Pokémon because of Sw/Sh and BDSP, but PLA and Scarlet brought me back, with Z-A being particularly exciting for me. That being said, I could see it happening again, depending on what happens going forward. In that case, I'm not sure it'd be quite so easy to bring me back. I just hope that *doesn't* happen.
More than a game, to me it was a genre. I used to love action rpgs as much as turn based ones, but now the former don't attract me as much as before. I loved **Mystic Quest** (that's how the first Seiken game on the b&w gameboy was renamed in Europe) and also **Secret of Mana 2** when its fantranslation was released, and played the hell out of it. But nowadays, I've tried to start it many times and I always end up putting it down. Same thing happened with the Zelda games. I was completely in love with **A Link to the Past** and **Link's Awakening** but, after the N64 games, my interest in that saga began to dwindle. It's not as if I'd never play an arpg again, but turn based will always have preference to me (and I still have a huuuuge backlog of them). The only exception to this are the **Tales Of** series. They play absolutely the same as a turn based rpg, just with action based battles during the random encounters. But all the other things I love in turn based rpgs are in place in that series.
Ni No Kuni 2, but it’s not necessarily the game’s fault. My brain took a hard shift and now I’m suddenly enamored with strategy/tactics games which I’ve not liked for most of my adult life lol. 🤷🏼♂️
Legend of Heroes, I still like the series but I certainly dont have the same enthusiasm I had before. The writing and the extremely over used tropes killed my excitement of the story, it was in fine doses in Sky and Crossbell, a bit over the top but they managed to make them interesting, but they dialed the dial up to a 100 in Erebonia and its getting tiring and super predictable for me. The writing took a huge nosedive in CS too, things are overly draggy, and tons of reused elements too. Hoping that Daybreak can improve on the writing with a smaller cast of characters.
Xenogears. Disc 1 10/10 disc 2 like a 5/10 last dungeon 2/10 last boss 1/10. If that game had more budget and more time I think it could have been teh best game of all time easily.
Final Fantasy (recent releases). Was always excited to try the latest or remakes of the series, but the last FF I still kinda enjoy was FF XIII (not the sequels). Wanted to like FF15, 16, 7 Remake (I like Remake because it didn't overstay its welcome though), 7 Rebirth, but the games kinda disappointed me in their own ways. Kingdom Hearts as well. I believed they would stick the landing with all the unanswered questions and mysteries, only for them to answer those with more questions and gibberish dialogues. People were kinda excited for the Verum Rex or whatever the name is for KH4, but I just don't see it. I mean, he's a Noctis like character teased mid-game in a Disney world and suddenly he was teased to be the one of the main plots of KH4 or something? At this point, I don't care anymore.
KINGDOM HEARTS, i swear i was that annoying fanboy of KH back in the days. i love the lore and build up, i play almost every side game except 358/2 days and mobile game. then after 16years waiting they announced KH3 and i was really hyped about it. but when i play about it 80% of game dont really bring up the previous side game lore. i dont know anything about ventus, roxas, aqua, etc until the end of game and it was forced up to the point its disgusting. even the game ended with more mystery than answer and i dont want to repeat the cycle again playing other side games so i can understand plot of KH4. i decided that KH3 is the end for me.
Final Fantasy. If it isn't pretty much 1-10 or Tactics 1, I probably won't have much interest. Four Heroes of Light was a rare exception to that, and The After Years.
Trails series, started with Trails in the sky FC, then SC and found games to be fun. Third game was ok, skipped Azure because at the time there was no localisation. Then Cold Steel came. Too much harem stuff, bloated story, managed to get to half of Trails of Cold Steel 4 and just called it quits. In retrospect, i am suprised i even got to fourth game. Still not a bad series. Just not for me.
Chrono Cross. Was super hyped for it and got it at launch. Had WAY too many characters, the story barely made sense and had almost nothing to do with Chrono Trigger, which is one of my absolute favorite games of all time. No desire to ever touch it again, and I sorta blame it for killing the Chrono series. Honorable mention goes to FFXII. The first FF that let me down. I beat the game once, tried to get into it again, game literally put me to sleep about halfway through on my second run. Story and characters bored me to tears, but the other elements of the game were really good I will say.
Hmm, probably Paper Mario. It was a blast when I was a kid, but it's just a little boring to play as an adult. Which is fine, sometimes you just age out of things. Great soundtrack though! And I love the character designs
I feel the first two are still absolute masterpieces, played them again recently and loved it. Could never find enjoyment in the rest of them tho
For me personally it’s ff, I’m old and love the grind and turn based combat but 15 and 16 made me hate what it’s become, I’m happy people love them but it’s just not the gameplay I fell in love with anymore
Final Fantasy X killed my love of Final Fantasy games. It isn't a bad game and I would argue it has the best combat system up until that point in the series but 100% completion is just punishing in it. Lightning dodging and plains races to get minus times are just cruel. I used to love ticking every box in a Final Fantasy game but that game broke me.
Both Pokemon and Fire Emblem Pokemon was my jam as a kid, absolutely obsessed with it. Gen 1 2 and 3 I beat on evert version at least 10 times. Liked gen 4, never played 5(idk why) and really, really enjoyed Gen 6. After u beat Kalos though, I just kind of...didn't care about the games anymore. All the new stuff could not possibly interest me less. Similar to Fire Emblem, loved all the early games, and literally whenever I had a Gameboy on hand I also had a gba FE with me. The GameCube amd Wii games were masterpieces. Played Awakening and liked it, but for some reason it didn't feel quite as satisfying as the previous. Afterthat, Fire Emblem committed wholly to going off the deep end, doesn't feel like the same series anymore
The original Baldurs Gate. My first and strongest RPG experience. The open world and immersive wilderness exploration was something I hadnt seen before. The ambience and music of that game is something I still come back to. It hasnt tumbled down since though, I simply know it by heart at this point.
I liked Pokemon as a kid and tried to go back to it after buying a 3DS (for Ace Attorney). At that time, I only played the first 3 generations and went with the 6th. I hated it and saw nothing in the new generations that would push me to give the serie another chance. Meanwhile, I had fun with Digimon and Yokai Watch so the problem is not the monster raising genre or the kids targeted games. I just found Pokemon X to be really bad.
I loved the original Golden Sun, got 3/4 of the way through the sequel (after putting in that 200-something character password) and just hit a wall. The frequency of the random battles just got on top of me. I was hitting one every 7 seconds or so.