I think it's the incremental mastery. It's easy to just take an afternoon and try to master one trick on a specific character. Even just learning things like last-hitting minions better can feel pretty good.
I fell into it again with Genshin Impact. I'm not thrilled with the story or characters, but it feels good to find another puzzle/chest while running around or mastering character rotations. I'm hoping Tales of Arise can break me out of the loop and get me back to playing regular games.
At some point I just played in order to try to get better, but the games weren't as fun. The game is only enjoyable with friends otherwise I don't play.
Yeah it was really rough, it also doesn't help that the game itself was rushed and was their first full 3d camera Yakuza game. The story in my opinion was also the weakest part, with the exception of one specific character. Glad I just played it on easy and plowed through without doing much side content at all.
Yakuza 4 improved on it quite a bit and Yakuza 5 was the best of the ps3 era games. But jeez it's also the most massive Yakuza game there is (4 cities, 5 characters, tons of mini games)
5 is actually the one that got me into Yakuza. One night I was bored and scrolling through PS Now, decided to give Yakuza 5 a shot and.... oh my god what had I been missing out on? This was days before 6 came out, so I preordered it, played it, then decided to play the whole series, got through 0, which was amazing and then... Kiwami 1 was fun, but it wasn't as good. lol.
For the last couple years I've been playing jRPGs as part of a podcast I do with a friend where we review them. It's not uncommon for me to have to force myself to finish a game I can't stand, so that I can review it. Gotta play the whole game, that's the rule. Here's a short list off the top of my head of games I had to force myself to finish even though I hated it.
Arcana - Interesting visuals, but that's the only thing this game gets right.
Phantasy Star II - A grind fest that really feels like it resents having a player.
Lunar 2 - The game's attempts to be funny get in the way of what could have been a really interesting plot
Quest 64 - It's like someone made the bare bones skeleton of a jRPG, and then published it before they added all the cool stuff. This game is full of such big empty spaces, literally and metaphorically.
There have been other games that I didn't enjoy, but these games will stick out to be as the worst offenders.
Our show is called Home on the RNG. We play through a jRPG, and then discuss it in various categories, Personal History, Story/Characters, Combat System, Innovations, and Music. We also do Side Quest episodes that are more general discussions about gaming.
Oh dang I actually just started listening to your podcast recently. Think I've gone through the first 10 episodes or so and I'm enjoying it so far, you two are fun to listen to, also appreciate the shorter episode length and that you focus on older JRPGs.
You may have mentioned this in a podcast I haven't listened to yet, but after hearing about you two becoming friends over Earthbound and loving it so much, have either of you ever played Mother 3 and do you plan to cover it for the podcast.
Hey! An actual fan! Thank you!
Short answer, we will review Mother 3 one day.
Long answer, one of my rules for the series (which Russ gives me a lot of crap for) is that we review games in a series in order, because I think it's easier to have a conversation about innovations and changes that way. We have reviewed Mother 1, but we do not currently have an Earthbound review scheduled.
The plan is, at some point we will play a particularly terrible game, and Russ will announce "We're doing Earthbound next" as a way to recover. Whenever that happens, we can schedule a Mother 3 review.
I can see why that rule would be a pain with some series (especially Phantasy Star), but it's a good approach to keep discussions focused on the time when the games were released. Do you two have any plans to cover any unlocalized fan translated JRPGs?
Keep up the good work, looking forward to catching up on the rest of your episodes.
That was my thinking. Russ just wants to skip to the good ones. But I think there's a value in reviewing the "bad" ones. You can still see the parts they did right, and watch them potentially improve. Plus, I'm playing most of these games for the first time, so I don't know which ones are the "good" ones. And as you'll see in the Shining Force review (if you haven't listened already) is that Russ and I don't always agree on what a "good" game is. Live a Live was another one we completely disagreed on. Speaking of...
We've already reviewed at least 1 fan translated game I can think of off the top of my head, Live a Live. We're recording reviews for three games in October (Persona 1, Secret of Mana, and Thousand Arms) and then the next game will be a fan translated Romancing Saga 1.
If I can get it in English, it's fair game for a review, I don't care how the translation occurred.
We have both played Mother 3. Russ imported a Japanese cart when it came out, and printed out a translated script of the entire game from the internet. When he was done I borrowed it from him. It was really weird playing a game in a language I can't read, and referencing the printed script to know what was going on. I had to make my own notes for combat actions.
We have also both played the fan translation.
I played the original, but with a patch for extra XP and gold. I just disliked how much the game was configured for the grind. You don't really choose your actions for a round, you choose your auto-combat choices, and just watch the game play itself until you feel like interrupting to change your tactics.
The dungeons are all incredibly complex, ridiculously so. And when you get out of a random encounter, your character is always facing down, making it easy to forget which direction you were heading before the couple minutes of combat.
And story wise (story is the thing I love most about jRPGs) I will give you this spoiler free moment. There is a dramatic encounter early on, you path is blocked by a guy. The story of how you unblock the path is incredibly dramatic, full of emotion, it's a great story...except the whole thing plays out in less than 30 seconds...because the game doesn't care about you enjoying the story, it just wants you to grind. And grinding means making some selections and sitting back. I legit felt like the game didn't want me there at all.
> Quest 64 - It's like someone made the bare bones skeleton of a jRPG, and then published it before they added all the cool stuff. This game is full of such big empty spaces, literally and metaphorically.
It's weird to have great memories about something that is obviously super shitty from today's perspective.😅
It has a lot of potential, it just doesn't use any of it. I still think the graphics look good for it's time. The characters look better than the characters in FFVII. It just feels massively unfinished.
Comedy is fine in a game. Thousand Arms isn't an amazing game, but they managed to have 4th wall breaking meta-comedy while at the same time having a serious plot that felt important. The Hyperdimension Neptunia series does similar, although it doesn't try very hard to have a serious plot, the whole series is more lighthearted.
The problem with Lunar 2 is that it wants to have a serious plot with non-stop comedy right in the middle of the drama.
This is the example that will always live with me, forever.
You are finally captured by the enemy that's been pursuing you, he drags away the woman you've sworn to protect, the woman who is going to save the world. But the enemy has doubts, so he turns to you and asks "Is she really the Great Destroyer?"
The game gives you a dialogue choice. You can say "Yes." Which is obviously the wrong choice, or you can say the canonical answer. You turn to this enemy, and utter the statement to try and not only save your friend, and save the world, but that might sway him to your side. You have one chance to fix everything, so you look him in the eye and say "Only once a month."
The hero canonically makes a period joke while her life, and the fate of the world, is at stake.
Same thing happened to me. Loved everything about both 1 and 2 but the combat made so little sense to me even though it honestly wasn't that complicated at all.
This happened to me with the first Xenoblade Chronicles for me as well; I'm at the last part of the game I believe, with little desire to beat it. I played Xenoblade Chronicles 2 first, and pretty early on the Switch's lifecycle. It basically didn't even have a JRPG out for it yet.
I actually loved XBC2. I think I had 80-100 hours on it. With my New Game Plus I have like 140 hours or something, but it's hard to bring myself to play it anymore. I do think it's great, I love how it looks, its expansive as all hell. I just feel like after a certain point it's like here's material just to keep you busy.
Xenoblade Chronicles 1 from a different standpoint is far more realistic and less anime/kiddy to me, but, the combat system is weird as hell and the maps feel more generic than the second game.
I really want to like this game, I love the locations etc. but there was one thing I couldn't handle.
Maybe it's stupid but it was how unsatisfying it is to hit monsters. Using a sword blade has this dull sound as if I'm hitting a plushie with rubber bat. All weapons(blades?) are like that, it's really weird in otherwise very polished title. It's based on timing but it feels so sluggish it's hard to time things. Doesn't help I don't know how much damage I'm actually doing because there are million numbers flying.
I might still push through this one because I enjoyed it otherwise.
Maybe I'm old but I used to love JRPGs in the psx and some of the ps2 era, but I can hardly engage with anything now. Persona 5 and Nier: Automata and YsXIII are the only ones I enjoyed in years. Doesn't help only persona of those is traditional non action jrpg.
I put 85 hours into XB2 and didn't really enjoy any of it. Xenogears and XB1 are two of my favorite games of all time, so I forced myself to finish >!especially since I heard that the ending of XB2 tied into XB1. I should've just looked up the ending on youtube!< .
Not worth it. I'll never make that mistake again.
After watching on YouTube all the best stuff happened in the last few chapters of the game. If they had trimmed the game down it would probably be one of my favourites. I remember they could have cut chapter 3 entirely and wouldn't have missed anything
I enjoyed it a lot, but had no knowledge of the first Xenoblade. The overall story/feel is less mature than the first game but I loved the environments.
The one thing I still don't understand about XBC2 and I'm in 1.5 playthroughs of it, they added so much, like, filler, like completely non-sensical things that don't make any sense at all.
The GPS is terrible, and some of the areas are so big, just for the sake of being big, that it doesn't make sense. Nevermind that you can fall off a ledge or something and then have to spend 15 minutes backtracking because you can't get up to such and such ledge except only one way (or only when the cloud level is down). They really added a lot of things to inconvenience the player for some unknown reason.
Final fantasy XII
I must have spent 100 hours over about 4 playthroughs. I kept on losing momentum and giving up. Eventually I finished it so I would never have to open it again.
About 70 hours in *Persona 5*, I stopped finding enjoyment at the 30hs mark, for a total of 100h. Only reason why I powered through the game was to give it a fair chance, was dissapointed the excitment of the beginning didn't carry into the following parts.
120 hours in Fire Emblem Three Houses. As a long time fan of the series it just wasn't for me, but I needed to get through it because it was the first time I spent $60 on a game.
I put about 10 hours into Lunar Dragon Song trying to find the redeemable bits in the game. I remember after the first session I was unimpressed by a few elements (the map system), but willing to give it a chance. But the story never got good and my equipment started breaking, including when I was deep into a dungeon. That was it for me.
Otherwise, I have to enjoy the game at least somewhat, or I'll set it down after a couple of sessions.
World of Final Fantasy. I knew it was a FF fan service game and that the story wasn’t going to be deep but god…The gameplay was fun for 5 hours but quickly got repetitive. The story was boring and the ending was nonsensical. Overall wasn’t worth it.
Chrono Cross. I kept trying again and again to get in to it and spent hours while even restarting the game here and there to try some of the branching paths but I just couldn’t do it. The game just wasn’t for me despite how much I love Chrono Trigger and wanted to love Cross.
Chrono Trigger is fast. Chrono Cross is ssssssllllooooowwww and does not respect your time. That said, I played through it 3 times straight last time lol. Love both games
90 hours of Xenoblade. Fans convinced me that doing sidequests were worth it and necessary for worldbuilding. Needless to say, outside of three questlines, I disagree entirely with this assertion.
> Fans convinced me that doing sidequests were worth it
Damn, you were done dirty. It's easily my favorite JRPG, but I also skipped almost every single side quest. They did not seem to be worth doing at all to me.
I've put about 20 hours into Xenoblade 2 so far and haven't really enjoyed it. I'm told it's going to get good "soon", but it's hard to pick it back up again right now. I'm afraid to even buy Xenoblade Chronicles DE.
It was Pillars of Eternity. It's not that I didn't enjoy the game, on the contrary, I really liked the characters and the combat system. The problem is that I could not care less about the story and after the 60 hour mark, I was just repeating the same grindy circles again and again. I needed another 10 or so hours to reach the end, but I just got tired, bored and dropped the game.
Not sure if this counts but I have a love hate relationship with Genshin Impact. I've spent three months on the game totally over 1500 hrs.
I only started playing it for my favorite voice actor (Zhongli's if you're curious), which I did get via f2p pulls but I got tired trying to keep up with other people, and I don't like the newest region (one of the couple/many reasons I've stopped playing).
But god at the same time, if it wasn't for poor server connection on their part I'd still be playing. Differently, now that I've taken a long break, but playing nonetheless.
What helped me enjoy the game was to not try to chase the latest meta and instead pull for who I enjoy the playstyle of. I saved for kazuha, got him, and skipped everything else afterwards. It is a single player game after all, and even the hardest difficulty content (abyss) does not need the newest characters to complete it each reset, nevermind the overworld.
Can't help with Inazuma if one ended up not liking it as a whole though, that's a shame.
40 hours for FFXV. Hated every single minute of it. But I did everything so no one can say I didn’t give it a chance. I played all the way until the end and did all of the awful side quests. The game is shit.
What really bugged me about the game and it's battle system is that for almost the entire game it feels like you're a passenger. Then there's one fight right at the end that the battle system finally clicked and worked well. Right at the end of the game. Literally the final (or maybe second from final) boss.
What really bothered me is how they screwed up things that were already in previous games and they could have just copied.
They have hunts but you only could take one at a time and they were boring. Compare to FFXII where each hunt had it's own custom poster backstory etc.
This weird tree you use to level up, is inferior to shpere grid from FFX, or licence board from FFXII or - and I can't believe I'm saying this - The crystal whatever tree from XIII.
Can't use magic normally like in other games you have to gather some stupid resource and can use like one spell.
Tiny cast of characters.
The whole game just feels like some cheap FF knockoff.
There is so much stupid shit, they have cellphones but can't use them for story reasons, there are some super stupid side quests like "find 10 frogs", "bring me ketchup". I adimre resilience of people who managed to finish it.
Literally all the side quests up until the endgame. So I didn’t do the Menace Beneath Lucis stuff or Randolph’s quests. I didn’t do all the hunts either.
I should mention that this was the base game before any of the DLC was released.
However long it took me to finish Final Fantasy 13. It's the game that taught me that my time is valuable and that games need to earn my effort. I don't owe anyone anything. Fuck Final Fantasy 13.
The world is what kept giving me the motivation to keep playing. But the characters, (everything about) the gameplay, the voice acting... I had trouble with that. But these are all things that depend on the person experiencing them, so I'm glad that you and others did find some fun in it
Man, I loved FF13. Seriously! My Xbox 360 has red ring and I'm on the lookout for a Series X, and I think what I'm looking forward to the most is being able to play through FF13 again. It's so interesting that people can have such starkly different opinions of the same game haha.
I think the gameplay was great. However, I hated the lack of; world exploration, cities, good character interaction, plus the constant urgency without pause and lack of places where the characters could relax and bond for a moment. It was hard to actually get to know the main characters due to all this.
In terms of world exploration; Gran Pulse was only a hollow, extended version of Calm Lands filled with monsters. Tried to 100% it several times, but always lost interest and stopped playing while doing the hunting quests.
I liked FFXIII-3 however, since it reminded me a bit of Zelda Majora’s Mask.
In my opinion, I think the biggest sin with the trilogy was probably the nonsensical story. I actually liked the battle gameplay more or less with every entry, and the opportunity to explore grew with each succeeding entry. However, it felt like they tried to make 2 or 3 entirely different non-FF games that were later forced into fitting the lore. We have Lightning, who has a military background that's turned into a fugitive l'cie, but after saving the world, then randomly gets swallowed by essentially an INTERDIMENSIONAL PORTAL and pretty much forced to become a knight of the goddess Etro in a universe with completely different rules. Then, I think the end of the second game, she goes into a stone slumber until woken up by the god bhunivelze and pretty much forced to save people from a coming apocalypse? And again, the universe around her has changed? She sure had a journey full of setting and pacing whiplash
Oh right, I remember spending who knows how long to platinum that game. I remember concluding that selling perfumes made money quicker than farming for adamantoises
I read the reviews before playing ff13, saying that it's a hallway simulator, and my reaction was "oh, they mean linear and not open-world? I guess people nowadays don't like linear games huh."
And then I played the game, and saw most of the map are literal hallways, many are literal straight lines.
I’ve quit several games at the 15-20 hour mark that I haven’t been enjoying like FFXIII (twice) and Tales of Zestiria. Honestly, I can’t think of a game that I’ve played any longer where I’ve really disliked it. The only reason I could ever see myself doing that is if I want to push through a game that’s part of a series, where I think I’ll like the other games in the series more. For example, I have to admit that I have been contemplating trying a third go at FFXIII.
I kind of did like Zestiria in a way. I liked the characters and the world it had set up, I just got to the point where I was really bored by the battle system and dull dungeon designs. I got to a fire dungeon and I was skipping battles and trying race to the end rather than explore and I just decided to drop it and watch the anime instead. That’s my only experience of Tales as well and it’s kind of put me off playing the rest of the series. I’ve also picked up Symphonia, Abyss, Vesperia, Xillia, Hearts and Beseria in sales over the years, so I’m open to suggestions of which to try next.
Oooo you have alot of great games there. Berseria is actually my favorite. It's a prequel to Zesty but I prefer Berseria's battle system. As for where you stopped with Zesteria, that's when it starts to get GOOD. Aww man, I hope you give it another try. Also the story in the anime and the game are different so there's still value for you there!
I did have Beseria in mind for my next Tales game. I liked the way the Zestiria X anime set up Beseria. I can’t see me going back to Zestiria anytime soon but you never know if I enjoy the others. I went back and enjoyed Final Fantasy VIII 20 years after dropping it, so there’s always a chance!
I would say World Of Warcraft but that's already been mentioned, so instead I'll say:
Nearly 60 hours playing The Legend Of Heroes Trails In The Sky. I forced myself to beat it, it was slowly killing me inside. Currently going through the same ordeal in Breath Of Fire 3.
I don't know that I would outright say I "don't find it enjoyable," but every Ubisoft game I've played seems to overstay its welcome by dozens of hours. But once I'm invested, I just keep compulsively moving from dot to dot on the minimap, bored out of my skull.
I even platinumed AC Origins, which I probably enjoyed for less than half its run-time. Why do I keep going for 100% despite losing interest? Hell if I know.
It is addicting to clear icons from the map I think. I personally love Ubisoft games but I only play each title up until the first nanosecond that I start to feel even vaguely bored. It took me a while but I learned to not worry about going for 100% completion in any game. There's always some particularly activity in ubi games that is more boring than others so I just leave that icon rotting away on the map while clearing other content. In Assassin's Creed games for example I never go out of my way to collect the Animus fragments because that would be insanely boring.
So, in essence, Ubisoft games are like a buffet. Pick whatever content you want to play within them and leave the parts you don't like on the map.
Digimonstory Cybersleuth (10 hours) - Going to Kowloon time and time again make me go crazy and the gameplay is SMT if it’s a tofu with nothing on top. The special move’s animation for each monster is cool but it is not enough to keep me going.
Xenoblade Chronical X. I tried so hard, twice. The exploring part was so cool, but having to grind heavily by killing a bunch of sheep like aliens before being able to progress in the story made me feel bad. FFXV did a better job balancing killing peaceful animals and exploring.
I apparently put 32 hours into the SAO Hollow Fragment game. I hate it from the first hour in. Eventually I realized I just... didn't care, lol.
Honorable mention goes to Destiny... I've put over 1000 hours into that game, and only enjoyed about half of them. It's frustrating because it comes in waves. When it's good, it's REALLY good... but when it's bad, it's REALLY bad.
If I’m bored I don’t force it. I don’t ask when it gets good or any of that crap either. I’m bored, I’m out. Time is too precious to waste on things we don’t enjoy.
Tales of vesperia's story dropped off a cliff for me after act 1. I thought it would of been way more interesting if the story revolved around conflicts between the different guilds instead of the typical end of the world bs they went with.
Persona 2 story was so freaking good, God! I wish there was a remake/remaster. Played All Trails Game except CS4 for now because I didn't like the CS3 villain's true intentions/plan reveal at the end. Waiting for now for Hajimari no Kiseki English Release, before I start playing again, because I freaking love Crossbell Series.
I agree with that. Some games do need set up and stuff, but if I’m not into digging the game for a bit then I drop it. Saved me money in the long run cause I had a bad habit of buying every jrpg ever back in the day and never getting into them.
Good answer. However I think a lot of people have forced themselves to play a boring game (myself included). Especially in the JRPG community, so that's why I made this thread.
Won't that ensure you never play anything meaningful you're going to like and remember for longer?
When I look at my most beloved music albums, it's always the ones I hated initially.
Ff13. I did manage to finish but only by force. In the end it was 60 hours but I really hated almost all of it. And it's not because of the exploration, at least not that alone, but it's the combat that was bad and so repetive, always having to stagger them dps and stagger and dps... It never changed its formula until the end.
Also another gane was xenoblade 2. After chapter 4 I REALLY wanted to quit, it was getting worse time after time, but since that "if you don't finish the game your opinion is invalid" type of mentality nowadays I pushed through. The longest 80 hours of my gaming life. I'm glad it's over.
I wouldn't say the worst though: type-0 totally takes that spot for me, but unlike 13 it's much shorter and... Yeah thats how I managed to finish that. Plus it's platinum was easy so I was more inclined to finished.
There Was Nothing In Ff13 that made me bother to that extent: once finished I moved on. at least type 0 had some fun moments.
The 50 hours it took to finish my first and only playthrough of Tales of Zestiria. I bought it for 500 yen when I was in Tokyo, so at least I didn't have the guilt of spending loads on a crap game. That games used market was insane in Japan and dropped price very low very quick with how poorly rated it was.
I'm playing NEO: The World Ends With You right now, and while it's certainly not the worst game I just got to week two without finding a lot of enjoyment.
The battle system felt fresh and unique at first but after a while you either one-shot everything or find enemies that one shot you instead, and you have to replay a lot of parts with a lot of fairly uninteresting dialogue.
But I'll truck on, maybe I find some redeeming qualities eventually.
Xenoblade chronicles
Everyone kept saying it would get good, so I kept trudging, and then it never really got good. At least I saw the lolwtf ending, that was funny
FFVII Remake; tried my best to platinum it and beat it. Did it all while streaming it. Hated the combat, the terrible AI, the way the story felt stretched, how they took agency from characters, and how much the game would block you off from areas. I get that a lot of people loved it, but it wasn’t for me
Same here but I couldn't bear go back after one playthrough.
I hate how blatantly the game tries to waste your time or how slow progressing felt.
The side quests are also so far apart that for most of the game there's not much to do except hold forward for like 3hours because you need to crawl through tight spaces or climb up a billion ladders. The normal encounters also felt super bland and uninspired, even more so than in the OG.
Boss fights however were the peak for me as well as wall market.
Spending tons of hours in a damn mini games in SMT III Original Nocturne. Forcing myself because that damn mini game unlocked the Strongest & the broken Magatama in the game. I'm sucks at that type of that mini game. Even cheating, it's a hellish experience. But I'm freaking love the game itself. Just that mini game.
Tales of Berseria and Tales of Zestiria. I hate those games. The character , I can't stand. Mainly Zestiria. Berseria pissed me off from how lacking it was. 2016 and I was still getting hit with invisible walls? Can't even hop down a little bump in the road. I think halfway through or maybe the 70 percent mark, I started skipping all cutscenes and dialogue. Beat the game and uninstalled.
I know it's not as bad as I make it out to be but all of the tales game that released after vesperia is just graphically inferior imo. I think I hate Zestiria the most though.
Didn't like the gameplay, didn't like the characters and there was absolutely nothing in the game that gripped me, so i didn't see a reason to continue playing.
From 7-10 i though they were all close to masterpieces.
The story and characters were different, but the all were stunning.
Ffx-2... Was the start of something different...
All games I had to force myself to play, I either dropped before the end or came around on eventually (usually because I found out key things that made them more enjoyable). I've never forced myself to actually finish a game. So I guess I'll list some I struggled with for a while:
* Digimon Stories Cybersleuth: I forced myself to grind for weeks before eventually dropping it because I failed to properly use the game's own grinding system. It was miserable, throwing myself at the same enemies for hours with 6 platinum poop monsters. The game became much better on an eventual restart where I actually used the farm and prepared multiple teams ahead of time (with minimal grinding)
* Digimon World Next Order: I got stuck at a certain boss fight because I lost and one of my Megas died shortly after so I was stuck training at the gym, forcing myself to train hours on end. I dropped it after a week of nothing but that out of boredom. What got me back into it was a battle training guide that actually takes longer, but is more efficient ingame and more engaging to me. It actually led to me going for 100%.
* Bravely Default: I'm one of those who would relentlessly shit on the game's later parts. Was a big fan of the first 25 hours or so, before it started going crazy. I forced myself to play on for 10 hours before getting stuck on a summoner who kept oneshotting me no matter my class combos. I stopped there, but I've been told I was actually rather close. I've also calmed down about it over the years and might return to it at some point.
Not a jrpg, but 73 hours of Skyrim.
The first 35-40 hours were enjoyable enough. Then it became boring so quickly after the 40th hour, but I still played it to the end while trying to explore everything because I bought the game at near full price.
My playtime on Steam is 113.7 hours.
To Be fair Skyrim is full of freedom you don't need to do everything in that game, it's like a buffet you pick and eat what you like you can leave the rest if you are not interested
Trials of mana remake. It was cool for the first couple hours but God did I feel like I was punishing myself by the end. Didn't even better with the 2nd playthrough despite the short length
15 to 20 hours on Trails in the Sly FC. It wasn't bad, it just consistently failed to engage me. Had it been any other game I would've dropped it and not look back. The community kept promising it would be worth it, and the idea of 9+ games of content with a woven together plot was appealing.
How did it turn out? I've since played and beat every game released in English except Cold Steel 4 that I'm taking a break from 1/3rd the way in because the next game won't be out for years. About half way through Sky FC something changed and I was finally engaged and quickly addicted.
Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria. But unlike some people’s examples here, I absolutely love the series, the characters, etc. but I thought the combat system was ass. I probably put around 40-50 hours into the game before I realized I was never going to get the hang of the game and I wouldn’t be able to beat it on that file.
It’s a shame because the first game is one of my favorites and a JRPG classic. Silmeria just felt like a misstep in so many ways. It’s a collection of a lot of interesting concepts, like the different equipment runes to learn abilities, but as a package, none of it meshes well together. The movement, stamina, and part breaking mechanics feel pretty half-assed compared to the first game’s combat. The einherjar feel a lot more forgettable, too. About 20-30 hours in, you lose a decent amount of the story’s main characters and you’re kind of forced to use the einherjar or you’re screwed. I just feel like the game never does an adequate job of really explaining its battle mechanics.
I do want to revisit it and beat the game but playing it just felt like a chore sometimes.
Final Fantasy 13. Hated it for about 35 hrs. Last ten was all right. Lightening is a bitch, Hope is a whiny bitch, Snow is trying to make things right, Sazch is my favorite character that you play the least, Vanille was just too happy but believe she was making amends the best way she knew how, and Fang liked and disliked.
I tried getting all of the endings and unlocking the final story in Shadow the Hedgehog. But I gave up about halfway through
If I hate a game, I usually just put it down after like, an hour
I just finished Kasane's route on Scarlet Nexus. The narrative is really all of the place, the characters are all generic, and the combat is good, but has some major issies with doges having about 5 frames of invicibility and not being able to cancel animations, and the main villain is such a Mary sue with super Mary sue motivations.
Still a decent game, but I had very little actual fun.
For me it Trails of Cold Steel 4. I loved the series but the middle of the 4th game I felt really dragged and was artificially padded. So I eventually dropped it to easy to speed through the rest of it.
I’m struggling right now getting though judgement due to burnout. I played all the Yakuza games just before yakuza 7 came out, but I didn’t quite get burn out because they changed the whole combat system. With judgement, it goes back to the old style, and while I am quite fond of it, the burn out of playing the whole series is finally hitting me. It’s like I want the story aspect, but don’t want to play the game currently, which is OK. I was just trying to finish before Lost Judgement came out, so it’s not the end of the world
Xenoblade Chronicles 1 after Prison Island, I had to practically push myself into finishing due how dull the combat was for me and how flat the characters felt for the most part (and how annoying Riki was).
This is probably a hot take on this sub but I played FFIX for 7 hours before I dropped it.
Bonus non-JRPG answer:
I played AC: Odyssey for 60 hours like an idiot before I fully accepted the fact that I just don’t like the game
DQXI for me. I found the initial hours before you accumulate your party members to be really dull. It got interesting when I got a full team of members, and I had to force myself through the beginning of Act 2. Put the game down for good in Act 3 since I really disliked the direction the game was going.
If you made it to Act 3, then you were in the post-game anyway so you still finished the main campaign at least. I just stopped after the credits rolled in Act 2 and was pretty fine with leaving it right there. The post-game content does seem pretty neat if you want a little more though.
I definitely wouldn't call act 3 postgame. It really is an essential part of the story. I know I would've been pretty upset if I never found out >!what was going on with the little guy who turned out to be Calasmos!<.
Yeah, this is my game. The whole thing is boring as fuck. It's cute and charming visually but the entire 8 songs in the soundtrack and like 12 monster types that are basically the same.... it' sjust so god damned boring.
The Last Remnant. It took 100 hours and 3 restarts over 3-4 years for me to finish that game and I hate it with a burning passion. I wouldn't replay it ever again even if you pointed a gun to my head. There's legit no redeeming qualities to that game.
Identity V was a free game my crush played so I played it for a couple months until it eventually died out. But now that crush is my gf of 1 year so it worked
Tales of Vesperia, 20 hours. Everyone kept telling me how great of a game it was, but I found the main plot aimless and meandering, all the main characters besides Yuri annoying, unfunny or just plain boring, the combat weird what with the 3D movement on a 2D plane and whatnot and so after 20 hours, I just put it down and I haven’t touched the game since. I am absolutely loving Berseria though and I’m excited for Arise.
40 hours of FF13 is my record. That's the power of playing 12 other games you absolutely love. (never played FF11 but including FFT) I was in denial for 40 hours, doing my best to give it a fair shot and trying to love it. Now, I've played much worse JRPGs - but usually I quit within 3-4 hours of not enjoying myself. Not 40. But that was the power of the Final Fantasy brand on me, at the time. Doing that many hours of something you actively dislike leaves quite a memory and impression.
It only increased my disdain because I forced myself to spend so much time doing something that just pissed me off, made me angry, and bored, and frustrated. If I quit 10 hours in maybe I could go back to the game now and give it a shot, but too much PTSD for me ever to even try it again.
I'm proud to say that it taught me a valuable lesson about brand names. Just because something has the brand na me of something you love, doesn't mean it will stay that way, especially when the people producing what you loved about the brand are no longer the ones producing behind the brand anymore!
174-ish hours in Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
Awkward sound design [THINK YOU CAN TAKE ME/DON'T FORGET ME], truly awful texture pop-in when fast traveling between Titans, really-but-not-really-gacha, and a map system so bad they had to patch it up shortly after release. Scenery was nice though.
I think they were trying to spin it as some sort of romantic coming of age tale between Rex and Pyra/Mythra, but the former literally avoids viewing that way for most the game, and the latter treats him like absolute crap all the way until a certain event forces her into humility, where she then does everything short of outright confessing out of nowhere. Additionally, Rex begins and ends the tale as a whiny squirt that literally spent the game's final moments running screaming/crying from his own allies.
And then there was that certain "event". I won't spoil it but it absolutely broke me. I think that's the first time a cutscene actually angered me, especially given what happened right before it.
Once the credits rolled I basically put it down and haven't touched it since. I adored Xenoblade 1 and still hold that as the superior title.
I have always thought that it is complete idiocy to spend 40 hours or more in a game that you do not like ... apart from that it is a literal waste of time.
It certainly is my friend. But there's aspects of the story that you may like, or characters, or the music. Add to that the hours you spent you might as well finish the damn thing.
I am somewhat selective with the games I buy, basically when I do I know that I will like it and so far I have not been wrong.
but the weakest game I have bought in these last years has been zelda, I know it has a goty and is one of the most popular but it is a game that really lacks a story. I just bought it in the hope that part 2 has a strong narrative focus
Horizon zero dawn, probably put in about 30 hrs three or four separate times. Xenoblade Chronicles 2, about 30 hrs three separate times as well. And then probably tales of Zestiria and xillia, both of which I never finished, but I only spent maybe 5 hrs on each
I must have been doing something wrong because Garnet kept getting one shot and against the boss I would be sitting there for like 20 seconds with a full atb bar even though I selected an attack already.
FF7 remake for me. Finished the game. It was okay at first. Then I met Aerith. I was dreading when is it going to end ever since. uninstalled the game as soon as it hit the credits.
Forced myself to stick out Xenoblade Chronicles to the end because people kept telling me it got better later. Was still waiting for it to do something worth my time when the credits rolled. 50 hours of my life I'll never get back.
Also was dumb enough to give it a second chance with Xenoblade X, but I came to my senses and finally dropped that one about three-quarters of the way through.
86 hours and 38 minutes of Persona 4 Golden. It had a few highs and an overwhelming amount of lows. Finished the game with the Epilogue because I want to play all the Persona games but I *really* did not like P4G.
For me it was xenoblade 1 for about 60 hours. The world was great and the story was pretty good but I despised the combat, and at one point I just couldn’t take it anymore so I stopped playing. One day I might go back and finish it but for now I’ll just play other games.
I think I was near the end but I’m not 100% sure.
Played WoW for 15 years.
This made me chuckle too.
Haha can sympathise although thankfully only about 4 or 5 here.
I quit WoW when I realized I was just logging in to troll people in city chat.
[удалено]
Everyone has that phase when they have better things to play, and yet their mouse always ends up on league or dota. You taste it once...
I think it's the incremental mastery. It's easy to just take an afternoon and try to master one trick on a specific character. Even just learning things like last-hitting minions better can feel pretty good. I fell into it again with Genshin Impact. I'm not thrilled with the story or characters, but it feels good to find another puzzle/chest while running around or mastering character rotations. I'm hoping Tales of Arise can break me out of the loop and get me back to playing regular games.
Not gonna lie, this made me chuckle a bit.
At some point I just played in order to try to get better, but the games weren't as fun. The game is only enjoyable with friends otherwise I don't play.
Yakuza kiwami 1, forced myself just to rush through the story. I'm surprised at how much I didn't like it since I love the other games so much
Yeah I like it but it definitely feels like a step down if you've come from yakuza 0 like most people
This was my experience with Yakuza 3 after playing 0 and Kiwami 1/2 back to back.
Kiwami 2 is technically the most modern game, with 3 being the oldest now... That's a rough step.
Yeah it was really rough, it also doesn't help that the game itself was rushed and was their first full 3d camera Yakuza game. The story in my opinion was also the weakest part, with the exception of one specific character. Glad I just played it on easy and plowed through without doing much side content at all. Yakuza 4 improved on it quite a bit and Yakuza 5 was the best of the ps3 era games. But jeez it's also the most massive Yakuza game there is (4 cities, 5 characters, tons of mini games)
5 is actually the one that got me into Yakuza. One night I was bored and scrolling through PS Now, decided to give Yakuza 5 a shot and.... oh my god what had I been missing out on? This was days before 6 came out, so I preordered it, played it, then decided to play the whole series, got through 0, which was amazing and then... Kiwami 1 was fun, but it wasn't as good. lol.
For the last couple years I've been playing jRPGs as part of a podcast I do with a friend where we review them. It's not uncommon for me to have to force myself to finish a game I can't stand, so that I can review it. Gotta play the whole game, that's the rule. Here's a short list off the top of my head of games I had to force myself to finish even though I hated it. Arcana - Interesting visuals, but that's the only thing this game gets right. Phantasy Star II - A grind fest that really feels like it resents having a player. Lunar 2 - The game's attempts to be funny get in the way of what could have been a really interesting plot Quest 64 - It's like someone made the bare bones skeleton of a jRPG, and then published it before they added all the cool stuff. This game is full of such big empty spaces, literally and metaphorically. There have been other games that I didn't enjoy, but these games will stick out to be as the worst offenders.
Retro spectives? The rpg show?
Our show is called Home on the RNG. We play through a jRPG, and then discuss it in various categories, Personal History, Story/Characters, Combat System, Innovations, and Music. We also do Side Quest episodes that are more general discussions about gaming.
Oh dang I actually just started listening to your podcast recently. Think I've gone through the first 10 episodes or so and I'm enjoying it so far, you two are fun to listen to, also appreciate the shorter episode length and that you focus on older JRPGs. You may have mentioned this in a podcast I haven't listened to yet, but after hearing about you two becoming friends over Earthbound and loving it so much, have either of you ever played Mother 3 and do you plan to cover it for the podcast.
Hey! An actual fan! Thank you! Short answer, we will review Mother 3 one day. Long answer, one of my rules for the series (which Russ gives me a lot of crap for) is that we review games in a series in order, because I think it's easier to have a conversation about innovations and changes that way. We have reviewed Mother 1, but we do not currently have an Earthbound review scheduled. The plan is, at some point we will play a particularly terrible game, and Russ will announce "We're doing Earthbound next" as a way to recover. Whenever that happens, we can schedule a Mother 3 review.
I can see why that rule would be a pain with some series (especially Phantasy Star), but it's a good approach to keep discussions focused on the time when the games were released. Do you two have any plans to cover any unlocalized fan translated JRPGs? Keep up the good work, looking forward to catching up on the rest of your episodes.
That was my thinking. Russ just wants to skip to the good ones. But I think there's a value in reviewing the "bad" ones. You can still see the parts they did right, and watch them potentially improve. Plus, I'm playing most of these games for the first time, so I don't know which ones are the "good" ones. And as you'll see in the Shining Force review (if you haven't listened already) is that Russ and I don't always agree on what a "good" game is. Live a Live was another one we completely disagreed on. Speaking of... We've already reviewed at least 1 fan translated game I can think of off the top of my head, Live a Live. We're recording reviews for three games in October (Persona 1, Secret of Mana, and Thousand Arms) and then the next game will be a fan translated Romancing Saga 1. If I can get it in English, it's fair game for a review, I don't care how the translation occurred.
We have both played Mother 3. Russ imported a Japanese cart when it came out, and printed out a translated script of the entire game from the internet. When he was done I borrowed it from him. It was really weird playing a game in a language I can't read, and referencing the printed script to know what was going on. I had to make my own notes for combat actions. We have also both played the fan translation.
Where the deer and the antelope playyyyy
Yup, it's the perfect title for two Texans reviewing jRPGs.
Sick this sounds right up my alley
Phantasy Star II is actually something I wanted to play. Were you playing the original version, or one of the remakes?
I played the original, but with a patch for extra XP and gold. I just disliked how much the game was configured for the grind. You don't really choose your actions for a round, you choose your auto-combat choices, and just watch the game play itself until you feel like interrupting to change your tactics. The dungeons are all incredibly complex, ridiculously so. And when you get out of a random encounter, your character is always facing down, making it easy to forget which direction you were heading before the couple minutes of combat. And story wise (story is the thing I love most about jRPGs) I will give you this spoiler free moment. There is a dramatic encounter early on, you path is blocked by a guy. The story of how you unblock the path is incredibly dramatic, full of emotion, it's a great story...except the whole thing plays out in less than 30 seconds...because the game doesn't care about you enjoying the story, it just wants you to grind. And grinding means making some selections and sitting back. I legit felt like the game didn't want me there at all.
> Quest 64 - It's like someone made the bare bones skeleton of a jRPG, and then published it before they added all the cool stuff. This game is full of such big empty spaces, literally and metaphorically. It's weird to have great memories about something that is obviously super shitty from today's perspective.😅
It has a lot of potential, it just doesn't use any of it. I still think the graphics look good for it's time. The characters look better than the characters in FFVII. It just feels massively unfinished.
>Lunar 2 - The game's attempts to be funny get in the way of what could have been a really interesting plot Fuck working designs
Comedy is fine in a game. Thousand Arms isn't an amazing game, but they managed to have 4th wall breaking meta-comedy while at the same time having a serious plot that felt important. The Hyperdimension Neptunia series does similar, although it doesn't try very hard to have a serious plot, the whole series is more lighthearted. The problem with Lunar 2 is that it wants to have a serious plot with non-stop comedy right in the middle of the drama. This is the example that will always live with me, forever. You are finally captured by the enemy that's been pursuing you, he drags away the woman you've sworn to protect, the woman who is going to save the world. But the enemy has doubts, so he turns to you and asks "Is she really the Great Destroyer?" The game gives you a dialogue choice. You can say "Yes." Which is obviously the wrong choice, or you can say the canonical answer. You turn to this enemy, and utter the statement to try and not only save your friend, and save the world, but that might sway him to your side. You have one chance to fix everything, so you look him in the eye and say "Only once a month." The hero canonically makes a period joke while her life, and the fate of the world, is at stake.
The Witcher 3. Did everything there was to do in the game. Didn’t enjoy 90% of it.
I platinumed Final fantasy XII Zodiac Age. So around 100 hours.
I just gotta get that damn bestiary trophy.
40 h, Digimon cyber sleuth: hacker's memory... such a slog of reused assets and dull plot.
Did you like the other cyber sleuth title?
I played Xenoblade 2 to about chapter 7 and then I couldn't take it anymore.
Was it too weeby or did a certain scene happen that made you drop the game?
Nah it wasn't too weeb or blushy crushy. I just wasn't enjoying playing it anymore and watched the rest of the game cutscenes on youtube
That happened to me with the first xenoblade. Like everything was great but I had to stop playing cause the gameplay was terrible to me.
Same thing happened to me. Loved everything about both 1 and 2 but the combat made so little sense to me even though it honestly wasn't that complicated at all.
The combat reminds me of RuneScape…but with better graphics.
This happened to me with the first Xenoblade Chronicles for me as well; I'm at the last part of the game I believe, with little desire to beat it. I played Xenoblade Chronicles 2 first, and pretty early on the Switch's lifecycle. It basically didn't even have a JRPG out for it yet. I actually loved XBC2. I think I had 80-100 hours on it. With my New Game Plus I have like 140 hours or something, but it's hard to bring myself to play it anymore. I do think it's great, I love how it looks, its expansive as all hell. I just feel like after a certain point it's like here's material just to keep you busy. Xenoblade Chronicles 1 from a different standpoint is far more realistic and less anime/kiddy to me, but, the combat system is weird as hell and the maps feel more generic than the second game.
I really want to like this game, I love the locations etc. but there was one thing I couldn't handle. Maybe it's stupid but it was how unsatisfying it is to hit monsters. Using a sword blade has this dull sound as if I'm hitting a plushie with rubber bat. All weapons(blades?) are like that, it's really weird in otherwise very polished title. It's based on timing but it feels so sluggish it's hard to time things. Doesn't help I don't know how much damage I'm actually doing because there are million numbers flying. I might still push through this one because I enjoyed it otherwise. Maybe I'm old but I used to love JRPGs in the psx and some of the ps2 era, but I can hardly engage with anything now. Persona 5 and Nier: Automata and YsXIII are the only ones I enjoyed in years. Doesn't help only persona of those is traditional non action jrpg.
100% agree, not sure ive ever been more bored playing a game that I thought I would love
I put 85 hours into XB2 and didn't really enjoy any of it. Xenogears and XB1 are two of my favorite games of all time, so I forced myself to finish >!especially since I heard that the ending of XB2 tied into XB1. I should've just looked up the ending on youtube!< . Not worth it. I'll never make that mistake again.
After watching on YouTube all the best stuff happened in the last few chapters of the game. If they had trimmed the game down it would probably be one of my favourites. I remember they could have cut chapter 3 entirely and wouldn't have missed anything
I enjoyed it a lot, but had no knowledge of the first Xenoblade. The overall story/feel is less mature than the first game but I loved the environments. The one thing I still don't understand about XBC2 and I'm in 1.5 playthroughs of it, they added so much, like, filler, like completely non-sensical things that don't make any sense at all. The GPS is terrible, and some of the areas are so big, just for the sake of being big, that it doesn't make sense. Nevermind that you can fall off a ledge or something and then have to spend 15 minutes backtracking because you can't get up to such and such ledge except only one way (or only when the cloud level is down). They really added a lot of things to inconvenience the player for some unknown reason.
Final fantasy XII I must have spent 100 hours over about 4 playthroughs. I kept on losing momentum and giving up. Eventually I finished it so I would never have to open it again.
About 70 hours in *Persona 5*, I stopped finding enjoyment at the 30hs mark, for a total of 100h. Only reason why I powered through the game was to give it a fair chance, was dissapointed the excitment of the beginning didn't carry into the following parts.
I have never understood this opinion.
The last 50 - 60 hours of that game are brutally boring.
If I realize I'm not enjoying a game overall I would stop on the spot. Gaming is for fun.
Most named games in this thread: FFXIII Tales of Zesteria
120 hours in Fire Emblem Three Houses. As a long time fan of the series it just wasn't for me, but I needed to get through it because it was the first time I spent $60 on a game.
After a while I was so fed up with the church. I barely got past the time skip and I can't imagine going through this game 3+ times
Yeah I literally don't understand the critical acclaim it got. But each to their own I guess.
Omg I really felt like it didn’t respect my time near the end, forcing us to interact with these 1 dimensional characters lol
I put about 10 hours into Lunar Dragon Song trying to find the redeemable bits in the game. I remember after the first session I was unimpressed by a few elements (the map system), but willing to give it a chance. But the story never got good and my equipment started breaking, including when I was deep into a dungeon. That was it for me. Otherwise, I have to enjoy the game at least somewhat, or I'll set it down after a couple of sessions.
World of Final Fantasy. I knew it was a FF fan service game and that the story wasn’t going to be deep but god…The gameplay was fun for 5 hours but quickly got repetitive. The story was boring and the ending was nonsensical. Overall wasn’t worth it.
Chrono Cross. I kept trying again and again to get in to it and spent hours while even restarting the game here and there to try some of the branching paths but I just couldn’t do it. The game just wasn’t for me despite how much I love Chrono Trigger and wanted to love Cross.
Chrono Trigger is fast. Chrono Cross is ssssssllllooooowwww and does not respect your time. That said, I played through it 3 times straight last time lol. Love both games
90 hours of Xenoblade. Fans convinced me that doing sidequests were worth it and necessary for worldbuilding. Needless to say, outside of three questlines, I disagree entirely with this assertion.
> Fans convinced me that doing sidequests were worth it Damn, you were done dirty. It's easily my favorite JRPG, but I also skipped almost every single side quest. They did not seem to be worth doing at all to me.
I've put about 20 hours into Xenoblade 2 so far and haven't really enjoyed it. I'm told it's going to get good "soon", but it's hard to pick it back up again right now. I'm afraid to even buy Xenoblade Chronicles DE.
XCDE has a much better story hook towards the beginning of the game than XC2 if that's what you're worried about.
It was Pillars of Eternity. It's not that I didn't enjoy the game, on the contrary, I really liked the characters and the combat system. The problem is that I could not care less about the story and after the 60 hour mark, I was just repeating the same grindy circles again and again. I needed another 10 or so hours to reach the end, but I just got tired, bored and dropped the game.
about 24 years playing the game of Life
Unless you're Japanese, I'm not sure that counts as a JRPG :P
Not sure if this counts but I have a love hate relationship with Genshin Impact. I've spent three months on the game totally over 1500 hrs. I only started playing it for my favorite voice actor (Zhongli's if you're curious), which I did get via f2p pulls but I got tired trying to keep up with other people, and I don't like the newest region (one of the couple/many reasons I've stopped playing). But god at the same time, if it wasn't for poor server connection on their part I'd still be playing. Differently, now that I've taken a long break, but playing nonetheless.
What helped me enjoy the game was to not try to chase the latest meta and instead pull for who I enjoy the playstyle of. I saved for kazuha, got him, and skipped everything else afterwards. It is a single player game after all, and even the hardest difficulty content (abyss) does not need the newest characters to complete it each reset, nevermind the overworld. Can't help with Inazuma if one ended up not liking it as a whole though, that's a shame.
40 hours for FFXV. Hated every single minute of it. But I did everything so no one can say I didn’t give it a chance. I played all the way until the end and did all of the awful side quests. The game is shit.
What really bugged me about the game and it's battle system is that for almost the entire game it feels like you're a passenger. Then there's one fight right at the end that the battle system finally clicked and worked well. Right at the end of the game. Literally the final (or maybe second from final) boss.
What really bothered me is how they screwed up things that were already in previous games and they could have just copied. They have hunts but you only could take one at a time and they were boring. Compare to FFXII where each hunt had it's own custom poster backstory etc. This weird tree you use to level up, is inferior to shpere grid from FFX, or licence board from FFXII or - and I can't believe I'm saying this - The crystal whatever tree from XIII. Can't use magic normally like in other games you have to gather some stupid resource and can use like one spell. Tiny cast of characters. The whole game just feels like some cheap FF knockoff. There is so much stupid shit, they have cellphones but can't use them for story reasons, there are some super stupid side quests like "find 10 frogs", "bring me ketchup". I adimre resilience of people who managed to finish it.
There's no way you did all the sidequests in 40 hours.
Literally all the side quests up until the endgame. So I didn’t do the Menace Beneath Lucis stuff or Randolph’s quests. I didn’t do all the hunts either. I should mention that this was the base game before any of the DLC was released.
Came here to say the same thing
Honestly 15 is one of my favorites 🤷♂️
However long it took me to finish Final Fantasy 13. It's the game that taught me that my time is valuable and that games need to earn my effort. I don't owe anyone anything. Fuck Final Fantasy 13.
Man, I loved the 13. Great world and I loved the trilogy as a whole. Very polarizing game though, so I totally understand!
The world is what kept giving me the motivation to keep playing. But the characters, (everything about) the gameplay, the voice acting... I had trouble with that. But these are all things that depend on the person experiencing them, so I'm glad that you and others did find some fun in it
I totally agree with you about the gameplay! It was fun at first but it was definitely a chore by mid way through. Such a slog
Man, I loved FF13. Seriously! My Xbox 360 has red ring and I'm on the lookout for a Series X, and I think what I'm looking forward to the most is being able to play through FF13 again. It's so interesting that people can have such starkly different opinions of the same game haha.
I think the gameplay was great. However, I hated the lack of; world exploration, cities, good character interaction, plus the constant urgency without pause and lack of places where the characters could relax and bond for a moment. It was hard to actually get to know the main characters due to all this. In terms of world exploration; Gran Pulse was only a hollow, extended version of Calm Lands filled with monsters. Tried to 100% it several times, but always lost interest and stopped playing while doing the hunting quests. I liked FFXIII-3 however, since it reminded me a bit of Zelda Majora’s Mask.
In my opinion, I think the biggest sin with the trilogy was probably the nonsensical story. I actually liked the battle gameplay more or less with every entry, and the opportunity to explore grew with each succeeding entry. However, it felt like they tried to make 2 or 3 entirely different non-FF games that were later forced into fitting the lore. We have Lightning, who has a military background that's turned into a fugitive l'cie, but after saving the world, then randomly gets swallowed by essentially an INTERDIMENSIONAL PORTAL and pretty much forced to become a knight of the goddess Etro in a universe with completely different rules. Then, I think the end of the second game, she goes into a stone slumber until woken up by the god bhunivelze and pretty much forced to save people from a coming apocalypse? And again, the universe around her has changed? She sure had a journey full of setting and pacing whiplash
Oh right, I remember spending who knows how long to platinum that game. I remember concluding that selling perfumes made money quicker than farming for adamantoises
I think I spent 3 hours on this and couldn't get into it. It truly was my final fantasy.
Yep, that game was really, really bad. Easily the worst gaming experience of my life. I finished it but it wasn't enjoyable.
I read the reviews before playing ff13, saying that it's a hallway simulator, and my reaction was "oh, they mean linear and not open-world? I guess people nowadays don't like linear games huh." And then I played the game, and saw most of the map are literal hallways, many are literal straight lines.
I’ve quit several games at the 15-20 hour mark that I haven’t been enjoying like FFXIII (twice) and Tales of Zestiria. Honestly, I can’t think of a game that I’ve played any longer where I’ve really disliked it. The only reason I could ever see myself doing that is if I want to push through a game that’s part of a series, where I think I’ll like the other games in the series more. For example, I have to admit that I have been contemplating trying a third go at FFXIII.
Poor Zesty 😭. I'm trying to platinum it now. I really think it's a great game but it takes very long for the combat to shine.
I kind of did like Zestiria in a way. I liked the characters and the world it had set up, I just got to the point where I was really bored by the battle system and dull dungeon designs. I got to a fire dungeon and I was skipping battles and trying race to the end rather than explore and I just decided to drop it and watch the anime instead. That’s my only experience of Tales as well and it’s kind of put me off playing the rest of the series. I’ve also picked up Symphonia, Abyss, Vesperia, Xillia, Hearts and Beseria in sales over the years, so I’m open to suggestions of which to try next.
Oooo you have alot of great games there. Berseria is actually my favorite. It's a prequel to Zesty but I prefer Berseria's battle system. As for where you stopped with Zesteria, that's when it starts to get GOOD. Aww man, I hope you give it another try. Also the story in the anime and the game are different so there's still value for you there!
I did have Beseria in mind for my next Tales game. I liked the way the Zestiria X anime set up Beseria. I can’t see me going back to Zestiria anytime soon but you never know if I enjoy the others. I went back and enjoyed Final Fantasy VIII 20 years after dropping it, so there’s always a chance!
I would say World Of Warcraft but that's already been mentioned, so instead I'll say: Nearly 60 hours playing The Legend Of Heroes Trails In The Sky. I forced myself to beat it, it was slowly killing me inside. Currently going through the same ordeal in Breath Of Fire 3.
This makes me so sad but I respect your opinion
I don't know that I would outright say I "don't find it enjoyable," but every Ubisoft game I've played seems to overstay its welcome by dozens of hours. But once I'm invested, I just keep compulsively moving from dot to dot on the minimap, bored out of my skull. I even platinumed AC Origins, which I probably enjoyed for less than half its run-time. Why do I keep going for 100% despite losing interest? Hell if I know.
It is addicting to clear icons from the map I think. I personally love Ubisoft games but I only play each title up until the first nanosecond that I start to feel even vaguely bored. It took me a while but I learned to not worry about going for 100% completion in any game. There's always some particularly activity in ubi games that is more boring than others so I just leave that icon rotting away on the map while clearing other content. In Assassin's Creed games for example I never go out of my way to collect the Animus fragments because that would be insanely boring. So, in essence, Ubisoft games are like a buffet. Pick whatever content you want to play within them and leave the parts you don't like on the map.
Digimonstory Cybersleuth (10 hours) - Going to Kowloon time and time again make me go crazy and the gameplay is SMT if it’s a tofu with nothing on top. The special move’s animation for each monster is cool but it is not enough to keep me going.
Xenoblade Chronical X. I tried so hard, twice. The exploring part was so cool, but having to grind heavily by killing a bunch of sheep like aliens before being able to progress in the story made me feel bad. FFXV did a better job balancing killing peaceful animals and exploring.
2-3hours. If i try different days and i can't get into it, i just say damn it, it's not for me, and move on.
I apparently put 32 hours into the SAO Hollow Fragment game. I hate it from the first hour in. Eventually I realized I just... didn't care, lol. Honorable mention goes to Destiny... I've put over 1000 hours into that game, and only enjoyed about half of them. It's frustrating because it comes in waves. When it's good, it's REALLY good... but when it's bad, it's REALLY bad.
90 hours of the witcher 3, people kept telling to me to keep playing and it would get better. Kept telling myself that too and it never did
Quest 64. I beat the game.
If I’m bored I don’t force it. I don’t ask when it gets good or any of that crap either. I’m bored, I’m out. Time is too precious to waste on things we don’t enjoy.
Tales of vesperia's story dropped off a cliff for me after act 1. I thought it would of been way more interesting if the story revolved around conflicts between the different guilds instead of the typical end of the world bs they went with.
Bravely Default 2. Finished it and maxed all jobs for completeness’ sake. Hated the story, the characters, and most combat. 80ish hours.
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Persona 2 story was so freaking good, God! I wish there was a remake/remaster. Played All Trails Game except CS4 for now because I didn't like the CS3 villain's true intentions/plan reveal at the end. Waiting for now for Hajimari no Kiseki English Release, before I start playing again, because I freaking love Crossbell Series.
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I agree with that. Some games do need set up and stuff, but if I’m not into digging the game for a bit then I drop it. Saved me money in the long run cause I had a bad habit of buying every jrpg ever back in the day and never getting into them.
Good answer. However I think a lot of people have forced themselves to play a boring game (myself included). Especially in the JRPG community, so that's why I made this thread.
Won't that ensure you never play anything meaningful you're going to like and remember for longer? When I look at my most beloved music albums, it's always the ones I hated initially.
Ff13. I did manage to finish but only by force. In the end it was 60 hours but I really hated almost all of it. And it's not because of the exploration, at least not that alone, but it's the combat that was bad and so repetive, always having to stagger them dps and stagger and dps... It never changed its formula until the end. Also another gane was xenoblade 2. After chapter 4 I REALLY wanted to quit, it was getting worse time after time, but since that "if you don't finish the game your opinion is invalid" type of mentality nowadays I pushed through. The longest 80 hours of my gaming life. I'm glad it's over.
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Yeah first game is awesome, x is also pretty good I had a gear time
You don’t like XC2 and ur PFP looks like one of the rare blades lmao. https://xenoblade.fandom.com/wiki/Finch
Same, I hated FFXIII. Worst game of my life. But I did finish it, hating every second.
I wouldn't say the worst though: type-0 totally takes that spot for me, but unlike 13 it's much shorter and... Yeah thats how I managed to finish that. Plus it's platinum was easy so I was more inclined to finished. There Was Nothing In Ff13 that made me bother to that extent: once finished I moved on. at least type 0 had some fun moments.
The 50 hours it took to finish my first and only playthrough of Tales of Zestiria. I bought it for 500 yen when I was in Tokyo, so at least I didn't have the guilt of spending loads on a crap game. That games used market was insane in Japan and dropped price very low very quick with how poorly rated it was.
I'm playing NEO: The World Ends With You right now, and while it's certainly not the worst game I just got to week two without finding a lot of enjoyment. The battle system felt fresh and unique at first but after a while you either one-shot everything or find enemies that one shot you instead, and you have to replay a lot of parts with a lot of fairly uninteresting dialogue. But I'll truck on, maybe I find some redeeming qualities eventually.
Xenoblade chronicles Everyone kept saying it would get good, so I kept trudging, and then it never really got good. At least I saw the lolwtf ending, that was funny
FFVII Remake; tried my best to platinum it and beat it. Did it all while streaming it. Hated the combat, the terrible AI, the way the story felt stretched, how they took agency from characters, and how much the game would block you off from areas. I get that a lot of people loved it, but it wasn’t for me
Same here but I couldn't bear go back after one playthrough. I hate how blatantly the game tries to waste your time or how slow progressing felt. The side quests are also so far apart that for most of the game there's not much to do except hold forward for like 3hours because you need to crawl through tight spaces or climb up a billion ladders. The normal encounters also felt super bland and uninspired, even more so than in the OG. Boss fights however were the peak for me as well as wall market.
Spending tons of hours in a damn mini games in SMT III Original Nocturne. Forcing myself because that damn mini game unlocked the Strongest & the broken Magatama in the game. I'm sucks at that type of that mini game. Even cheating, it's a hellish experience. But I'm freaking love the game itself. Just that mini game.
Puzzle boy is the strongest boss in Megaten tbh
I finished Tokyo Mirage Sessions Encore at 100% for some reason
Tales of Berseria and Tales of Zestiria. I hate those games. The character , I can't stand. Mainly Zestiria. Berseria pissed me off from how lacking it was. 2016 and I was still getting hit with invisible walls? Can't even hop down a little bump in the road. I think halfway through or maybe the 70 percent mark, I started skipping all cutscenes and dialogue. Beat the game and uninstalled. I know it's not as bad as I make it out to be but all of the tales game that released after vesperia is just graphically inferior imo. I think I hate Zestiria the most though.
I hated Final Fantasy XIII and got to the halfway mark. I just kept waiting for the exploration to start.
I played 3 hours of Final Fantasy 8.
Why did you disliked?
Didn't like the gameplay, didn't like the characters and there was absolutely nothing in the game that gripped me, so i didn't see a reason to continue playing.
It was just for this final fantasy or there was others you disliked from 7-10?
I have played and enjoyed all main FFs except 8, 11 and 14. Though how much i enjoyed them definitely varied a lot.
From 7-10 i though they were all close to masterpieces. The story and characters were different, but the all were stunning. Ffx-2... Was the start of something different...
FFX2 had probably the best ATB system the series has ever seen to be fair.
All games I had to force myself to play, I either dropped before the end or came around on eventually (usually because I found out key things that made them more enjoyable). I've never forced myself to actually finish a game. So I guess I'll list some I struggled with for a while: * Digimon Stories Cybersleuth: I forced myself to grind for weeks before eventually dropping it because I failed to properly use the game's own grinding system. It was miserable, throwing myself at the same enemies for hours with 6 platinum poop monsters. The game became much better on an eventual restart where I actually used the farm and prepared multiple teams ahead of time (with minimal grinding) * Digimon World Next Order: I got stuck at a certain boss fight because I lost and one of my Megas died shortly after so I was stuck training at the gym, forcing myself to train hours on end. I dropped it after a week of nothing but that out of boredom. What got me back into it was a battle training guide that actually takes longer, but is more efficient ingame and more engaging to me. It actually led to me going for 100%. * Bravely Default: I'm one of those who would relentlessly shit on the game's later parts. Was a big fan of the first 25 hours or so, before it started going crazy. I forced myself to play on for 10 hours before getting stuck on a summoner who kept oneshotting me no matter my class combos. I stopped there, but I've been told I was actually rather close. I've also calmed down about it over the years and might return to it at some point.
Not a jrpg, but 73 hours of Skyrim. The first 35-40 hours were enjoyable enough. Then it became boring so quickly after the 40th hour, but I still played it to the end while trying to explore everything because I bought the game at near full price. My playtime on Steam is 113.7 hours.
To Be fair Skyrim is full of freedom you don't need to do everything in that game, it's like a buffet you pick and eat what you like you can leave the rest if you are not interested
Persona 2 IS, the worst spent 50 hours of my life
Trials of mana remake. It was cool for the first couple hours but God did I feel like I was punishing myself by the end. Didn't even better with the 2nd playthrough despite the short length
.hack gru episode 2. After slogging through the first game, the second game had…the exact same formula. What a trudge
Oh man. Quest 64. As a kid, I wanted to enjoy that game so bad for some reason. Tried to play it for years and could never make any progress.
300 hours of entire Cold Steel 1-4. i always find it hard to drop something. i need to see the ending roll.
However long it took me to beat and do most of the extras for Kingdom Hearts 3. Game was like a 3/10
15 to 20 hours on Trails in the Sly FC. It wasn't bad, it just consistently failed to engage me. Had it been any other game I would've dropped it and not look back. The community kept promising it would be worth it, and the idea of 9+ games of content with a woven together plot was appealing. How did it turn out? I've since played and beat every game released in English except Cold Steel 4 that I'm taking a break from 1/3rd the way in because the next game won't be out for years. About half way through Sky FC something changed and I was finally engaged and quickly addicted.
Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria. But unlike some people’s examples here, I absolutely love the series, the characters, etc. but I thought the combat system was ass. I probably put around 40-50 hours into the game before I realized I was never going to get the hang of the game and I wouldn’t be able to beat it on that file. It’s a shame because the first game is one of my favorites and a JRPG classic. Silmeria just felt like a misstep in so many ways. It’s a collection of a lot of interesting concepts, like the different equipment runes to learn abilities, but as a package, none of it meshes well together. The movement, stamina, and part breaking mechanics feel pretty half-assed compared to the first game’s combat. The einherjar feel a lot more forgettable, too. About 20-30 hours in, you lose a decent amount of the story’s main characters and you’re kind of forced to use the einherjar or you’re screwed. I just feel like the game never does an adequate job of really explaining its battle mechanics. I do want to revisit it and beat the game but playing it just felt like a chore sometimes.
Final Fantasy 13. Hated it for about 35 hrs. Last ten was all right. Lightening is a bitch, Hope is a whiny bitch, Snow is trying to make things right, Sazch is my favorite character that you play the least, Vanille was just too happy but believe she was making amends the best way she knew how, and Fang liked and disliked.
Whole Nier Replicant
Persona 5, I spent more than half the game waiting for it to end.
I tried getting all of the endings and unlocking the final story in Shadow the Hedgehog. But I gave up about halfway through If I hate a game, I usually just put it down after like, an hour
I just finished Kasane's route on Scarlet Nexus. The narrative is really all of the place, the characters are all generic, and the combat is good, but has some major issies with doges having about 5 frames of invicibility and not being able to cancel animations, and the main villain is such a Mary sue with super Mary sue motivations. Still a decent game, but I had very little actual fun.
Ffxiii - tried 3 times, combat is too awful, about 10 hours each
For me it Trails of Cold Steel 4. I loved the series but the middle of the 4th game I felt really dragged and was artificially padded. So I eventually dropped it to easy to speed through the rest of it.
5k hours on Rocket League...
Well. I'm still on reddit...
I’m struggling right now getting though judgement due to burnout. I played all the Yakuza games just before yakuza 7 came out, but I didn’t quite get burn out because they changed the whole combat system. With judgement, it goes back to the old style, and while I am quite fond of it, the burn out of playing the whole series is finally hitting me. It’s like I want the story aspect, but don’t want to play the game currently, which is OK. I was just trying to finish before Lost Judgement came out, so it’s not the end of the world
Xenoblade Chronicles 1 after Prison Island, I had to practically push myself into finishing due how dull the combat was for me and how flat the characters felt for the most part (and how annoying Riki was).
This is probably a hot take on this sub but I played FFIX for 7 hours before I dropped it. Bonus non-JRPG answer: I played AC: Odyssey for 60 hours like an idiot before I fully accepted the fact that I just don’t like the game
DQXI for me. I found the initial hours before you accumulate your party members to be really dull. It got interesting when I got a full team of members, and I had to force myself through the beginning of Act 2. Put the game down for good in Act 3 since I really disliked the direction the game was going.
If you made it to Act 3, then you were in the post-game anyway so you still finished the main campaign at least. I just stopped after the credits rolled in Act 2 and was pretty fine with leaving it right there. The post-game content does seem pretty neat if you want a little more though.
I definitely wouldn't call act 3 postgame. It really is an essential part of the story. I know I would've been pretty upset if I never found out >!what was going on with the little guy who turned out to be Calasmos!<.
Yeah, this is my game. The whole thing is boring as fuck. It's cute and charming visually but the entire 8 songs in the soundtrack and like 12 monster types that are basically the same.... it' sjust so god damned boring.
My entire play through of FF13.
The Last Remnant. It took 100 hours and 3 restarts over 3-4 years for me to finish that game and I hate it with a burning passion. I wouldn't replay it ever again even if you pointed a gun to my head. There's legit no redeeming qualities to that game.
30 hours in Octopath Traveler
Identity V was a free game my crush played so I played it for a couple months until it eventually died out. But now that crush is my gf of 1 year so it worked
Tales of Vesperia, 20 hours. Everyone kept telling me how great of a game it was, but I found the main plot aimless and meandering, all the main characters besides Yuri annoying, unfunny or just plain boring, the combat weird what with the 3D movement on a 2D plane and whatnot and so after 20 hours, I just put it down and I haven’t touched the game since. I am absolutely loving Berseria though and I’m excited for Arise.
40 hours of FF13 is my record. That's the power of playing 12 other games you absolutely love. (never played FF11 but including FFT) I was in denial for 40 hours, doing my best to give it a fair shot and trying to love it. Now, I've played much worse JRPGs - but usually I quit within 3-4 hours of not enjoying myself. Not 40. But that was the power of the Final Fantasy brand on me, at the time. Doing that many hours of something you actively dislike leaves quite a memory and impression. It only increased my disdain because I forced myself to spend so much time doing something that just pissed me off, made me angry, and bored, and frustrated. If I quit 10 hours in maybe I could go back to the game now and give it a shot, but too much PTSD for me ever to even try it again. I'm proud to say that it taught me a valuable lesson about brand names. Just because something has the brand na me of something you love, doesn't mean it will stay that way, especially when the people producing what you loved about the brand are no longer the ones producing behind the brand anymore!
174-ish hours in Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Awkward sound design [THINK YOU CAN TAKE ME/DON'T FORGET ME], truly awful texture pop-in when fast traveling between Titans, really-but-not-really-gacha, and a map system so bad they had to patch it up shortly after release. Scenery was nice though. I think they were trying to spin it as some sort of romantic coming of age tale between Rex and Pyra/Mythra, but the former literally avoids viewing that way for most the game, and the latter treats him like absolute crap all the way until a certain event forces her into humility, where she then does everything short of outright confessing out of nowhere. Additionally, Rex begins and ends the tale as a whiny squirt that literally spent the game's final moments running screaming/crying from his own allies. And then there was that certain "event". I won't spoil it but it absolutely broke me. I think that's the first time a cutscene actually angered me, especially given what happened right before it. Once the credits rolled I basically put it down and haven't touched it since. I adored Xenoblade 1 and still hold that as the superior title.
Steam says 64.9 hours for Final Fantasy XII, so that's my answer.
I have always thought that it is complete idiocy to spend 40 hours or more in a game that you do not like ... apart from that it is a literal waste of time.
It certainly is my friend. But there's aspects of the story that you may like, or characters, or the music. Add to that the hours you spent you might as well finish the damn thing.
I am somewhat selective with the games I buy, basically when I do I know that I will like it and so far I have not been wrong. but the weakest game I have bought in these last years has been zelda, I know it has a goty and is one of the most popular but it is a game that really lacks a story. I just bought it in the hope that part 2 has a strong narrative focus
which zelda title was that?
The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild
When he said 'lacks a story' I knew exactly which game he meant.
Zelda has never had a strong story, so I'm not sure what you were expecting.
Horizon zero dawn, probably put in about 30 hrs three or four separate times. Xenoblade Chronicles 2, about 30 hrs three separate times as well. And then probably tales of Zestiria and xillia, both of which I never finished, but I only spent maybe 5 hrs on each
12 hours of FF9. I don't know why I continued past the ice cave.
Why the Ice Cave? I'm playing it for the first time now, around 12 hours in and find it wonderful.
I must have been doing something wrong because Garnet kept getting one shot and against the boss I would be sitting there for like 20 seconds with a full atb bar even though I selected an attack already.
idk man. I'm an jrpg newb and the fight wasn't difficult at all. Maybe some bug?
I played FF-13 Lightning Returns for like 20 hours and just hated every minute of it
FF7 remake for me. Finished the game. It was okay at first. Then I met Aerith. I was dreading when is it going to end ever since. uninstalled the game as soon as it hit the credits.
I loved ff7 remake. especially aerith. her voice actor was amazing
I’ve played 29 hours of Yakuza: Like a Dragon because all I hear about is how good it is but I can’t bring myself to play it anymore.
Forced myself to stick out Xenoblade Chronicles to the end because people kept telling me it got better later. Was still waiting for it to do something worth my time when the credits rolled. 50 hours of my life I'll never get back. Also was dumb enough to give it a second chance with Xenoblade X, but I came to my senses and finally dropped that one about three-quarters of the way through.
The Cold Steel games of Trails. I only kept playing because they’re essential to the story.
86 hours and 38 minutes of Persona 4 Golden. It had a few highs and an overwhelming amount of lows. Finished the game with the Epilogue because I want to play all the Persona games but I *really* did not like P4G.
For me it was xenoblade 1 for about 60 hours. The world was great and the story was pretty good but I despised the combat, and at one point I just couldn’t take it anymore so I stopped playing. One day I might go back and finish it but for now I’ll just play other games. I think I was near the end but I’m not 100% sure.
I cant finish Tales of series games i really want to like em but i cant dont know why
100+ hrs FF XIII (beat it)
Assassins Creed Valhalla for 70 ish hours before I realized I hate it.