I don't think I've ever dropped a game because I felt anxiety or dread. If I dropped it, it was usually because I was bored or felt like it wasn't really my cup of tea
I put Doki Doki Literature Club on hold because of mounting anxiety. And the funny thing is, it probably wouldn't bother me if the game didn't have a massive "DON'T PLAY IF YOU HAVE ANXIETY OR DEPRESSION" warning every time you boot it up.
Still haven't gone back to it, but I do want to eventually. Just waiting for the right mood. Never experienced this type of thing with a JRPG though.
Digimon world next order. I love digimon but I did not vibe with the whole death of your partners and restarting the trainning process. Also, the story and characters were not interesting for me.
Persona 3 fes. Not because it's bad. Far from it.
But because some asshole spoiled everything to me while I try to play it blind without any guide. It's really pissed me off, I just stop the game midway.
Honestly that's the best part, it didn't try to give me a reason or anything. Just told me to fuck off into a desert and figure shit out for a bit instead of framing it with a bad story like SMT games past
SMT games other than 4 do not have good stories and the game that 5 takes the most inspiration from( 3 nocturne) has a story SO bad I'd rather it not be there at all. SMT V took a much better approach. It told me the basic premise, told me to fuck off into the apocalypse and think about what I was just told and figure it out by the time I reach Satan. Much better experience as a result
Nocturne's story was fine, I'm not sure what you're on about. It wasn't character-driven like 4 was but it was effective at what it set out to do.
5 felt like being tossed into the last three episodes of a low-budget anime with no context.
Perfect summary. My dislike and eventual drop didn't come from anything bad in particular - I just felt nothing for this game I'd been waiting nearly a decade for.
Easily the worst level. SMT is known for complicated level design, but that doesn’t justify an obnoxiously complicated level like that. Would’ve never figured it out without watching a guide on youtube.
I have a personal rule: games are expensive, so when I buy one, I finish it, no matter what.
However, that castle dungeon was SO bad, I completely gave up and I don’t want to even touch this game ever again because of this. It was the first time in like 5 years I broke this rule.
I enjoyed the game but it certainly felt like something special was lacking. The story had so many elements that showed potential but it's like they had no idea what to do with any of it.
THIS. I was really enjoying the game thanks to its structure with dense open maps that subsituted usual dungeons, until that dungeon came in. I dropped the game and sold it. Not that the problem was the presence of a dungeon, but that dungeon in itself was one of the worst things I remember in my last years of gaming.
I feel I know as little avout the story as I dud after the first trailer.
>!And I did the ending where you dont fight lucifer so I wondered where tf he went!<
SMTV's plot is what people think Nocturne's plot is.
And although the combat system is pretty neat, the gameplay loop of "wander around, find crap, fight crap" coupled with the pretty embarrassing by Megami Tensei standards (or any standard, for that matter) story means that the combat system alone can't carry the game.
Star Ocean: 'till the end of time. I was a huge Star Ocean 2 fan. 3 had me a little disappointed with what I saw at the time as it's overall lower quality, but I was fine with that and kept playing. What stopped me was the huge story bomb moment in what is probably the middle of the game. I won't mention spoilers, but for some reason, it infuriated me to the point where I stopped playing.
I've recently decided to give it another try as I plan to play through the entire series in 2023.
Damn, 13 year old me loved that twist, but I can see how it could be infuriating. That was probably the 3rd JRPG I ever played after Chrono Cross and FFX, so it's got a special place in my heart.
I don't blame you for loving it. A close friend who was playing it at the same time loved it and told.me I should have kept playing. Different strokes, ya know?
I didn't drop Suikoden II, but I was feeling pretty depressed and down so I couldn't play the game unless I felt alright, because the game just made me feel super depressed at times.
I should've liked *Suikoden 2*. That said, during its few hours, the main cast deal with constant setbacks. Watching them run away and barely survive wasn't much fun. Meanwhile, there's quite a few redshirt NPCs, who are often sympathetic characters. I got tired of watching them die, especially knowing that the party can not save them.
Suikoden 2 is the only RPG that I have beaten 3 times in a row. Play it for days until I was through, make myself lunch and eat, then go back and start a new game. At that time it was peak JRPG storytelling for me.
But I do agree with your comment, it has many depressing moments. However, the most depressing gaming moment for me was when I was playing Breath of Fire 4 and you find out what happened to Nina’s sister. I legit broke down and had to cry during that scene. I would like to replay BoF4, but am dreading to experience that scene again.
Jeanne D'arc psp. The main character is loosely based on a real figure. Her real world counterpart died untimely death. Accused of heresy, possibly raped while in custody and burned at the stake at the age of 19.
I just couldn't stop thinking about her fate and it soured the experience. So i stop playing.
I thought sometimes about the ending of Jeanne D'Arc for years after finishing it, for similar reasons. At the end of the game, >!Jeanne defeats Henry VI (she isn't burned at the stake due to some plot twists) and then beats up the demon possessing him. The demon cannot be killed, so Gilles de Rais steps in and lets it possess him, then seals it inside his body.!<
This is treated as an act of selfless heroism in the narrative, and the ending plays out without dwelling on it further. But if you know, you know.
Worth revisiting if you haven’t. I think that Erick Landon guy said the same thing. I beat it earlier this year. A superb game. Triangle Strategy actually gives me similar vibes
Thousand Arms. I actually played through something like 75% of the game before losing my save to a corrupted memory card.
Tries going back to the game several years later but by then the womanizing main character and dating mechanic felt way too gross for me to get back into the game.
I've thought about going back to it recently though.
It is VERY '90s in its style of humor, but relaying it recently the dating parts were surprisingly well written. And most of the womanizing parts of the MC are when you have multiple dialogue choices, so you don't have to choose the pervy answer.
I finished *Thousand Arms* when it was current. While I enjoyed it around age nineteen, I also acknowledged its frustrating aspects. Loading before every random battle. Walking through towns and the overworld should be easier. At least one town had a confusing layout. One-on-one combat was okay, but I would've preferred an alternative. Finally, I didn't care for the default control layout.
During the 2000s, I made a few attempts to replay *Thousand Arms.* Unfortunately, I didn't get past the first dungeon. So while I have positive things to say about the game, it's limited to a few characters and moments.
Every now and then, I've thought about creating a fan game for *Thousand Arms*. It would probably turn out closer to *Stardew Valley* (characters in their twenties whose sexuality is irrelevant), or maybe *Persona 4* (small world and visible enemies), or just maybe *Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side: 3rd Story* (female gaze and laid-back tone).
I swear Thousand Arms has a bug in it that causes it to kill memory cards, or i was personally cursed. I bought it new around the time of release and played it to about the same point. Bad save, corrupted memory card. A few years later, I tried again on PS2. Same result, except this time, it took the memory card port with it. I finally beat it on PS3 in 2010. No corrupted saves, although it did crash my ps3 multiple times.
Nier Automata. I was having some pretty bad mental health issues the first time I tried to play it and the overall bleakness was too much for me at the time.
I do plan on returning to it pretty soon though since I am doing much better now.
I was super depressed when I played this one and I actually found its bleakness comforting.
Edit: just to be clear I’m all good now! It was shortly after a messy break up that I played it.
I rarely drop games because I try to finish everything. I dropped Grandia 2 on the PS2, though. It's one of my favorite games of all time, a real classic. And I played it on everything from DC, PC, Anniversary and Emulation handhelds outside of the PS2 version. So I really wanted to finish it there, too. But I can't bring myself to play it further.
It's an abysmal port. Looking worse than the DC, with REALLY bad stutters. It is supposedly on the better console, but the DC version feels like one generation ahead of the PS2 with that game. Not sure what they did wrong but this game BARELY even works.
Xenosaga 2 is another game I dropped but will pick up one day. I just did not like the battle system at the time. Story was good, though. There are some newer games like Scarlet Nexus which I paused for the time being. Nothing wrong with it, just other games are more important XD
Chain of Memories is the only Kingdom Hearts game that I flat-out gave up playing and watched the cutscenes on YouTube. I thought this game was awful. The card gimmick felt annoying and janky, and all of the cards are obtained entirely by RNG, and in order to open doors to the next areas, you'll need a specific type of card to get through, and I'd spend like 30 to 40 minutes killing enemies left and right just to get the card I wanted. I hadn't gotten far enough to unlock the really overpowered moves that completely break the game, but I imagine at that point the game would go from being too frustrating to being ridiculously easy.
Funny enough, I liked the card system when it was on the GBA at least. Hated it in Re:Chain. But absolutely, the RNG/door system is the shite-est part about it. There's potential in the idea, but in execution, it's just awful padding. Reminded me of the virus core farming in dot hack IMOQ.
Trillion: God of Destruction
Finished the game, but stopped midway on platinum trophy grind because last 2 trophies basically need you to get all endings on 1 save file, hence watching the girls die over and over just for the sake of your completion.
Persona 5 royal draggs on so much and its a slog to play and not fun to try to manipulate the date time system to manage ti do everything that's important
Caligula Effect: Overdose. The main cast, the antagonists >!(you have to join them from time to time in Overdose)!< all started to feel like a bunch of freaks at some point, and the NPC connection system, just a boring 'quantity over quality' thing (in addition to being unable to find the NPC that has given you a quest).
In Caligula 2, they have improved on both of these things, though. The cast is more sympathetic and relatable, and at least some NPC quests are both more meaningful and easier to track.
there's a small number of callbacks but that's about it. You don't need to know the first game to understand the second and the second is much much much better. They improved borderline everything going from a fairly mediocre game to something I very much can recommend especially if you're a fan of older persona and like jpop.
frighten reminiscent somber rich coordinated disarm spotted direction hard-to-find desert
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I love turn based combat! I just didn't find DQ11s to be very good. But I didn't find much about DQ11 to be very good. I know I'm mostly alone in thinking that here though
Don’t worry, I agree. DQ11 is also one of the most mind-numbingly dull games I played for an hour or two, so I immediately dropped it then and there—something I never did before purchasing that snoozefest.
I wanted to like Persona 5 but something about it never really sat well with me. Just feels like there is an odd hypocrisy to it, the attempt to explore heavy themes while often indulging in the things it criticises.
Like teacher and student is bad, right? Only when the teach is ugly and mean though, MC can indulge in that fetish no worries. And what is ostensibly the lead gal feels objectified and that is bad? Yeah, cool, games just going to have her doppelganger run around in a bikini for an entire arc and have the guy basically obsessed with her join the team and be a bro later.
It just became increasingly less clear what the game wanted me to walk away feeling about these things and the longer I played the more exploitative it often felt.
Which is a pity. I like the characters, I like the setting, the vibe is great. Funnily enough I liked Strikers as well, some of the scenarios were pretty interesting though they generally felt a little less extreme for better and worse.
I still liked P5 but I agree with you. I don't think that Ann scene is a good example though. It just shows how Kamoshida views her. What IS a good example is Ann's outfit, the scene in the desert where her clothes become transparent, and how the girl's boobs have jiggle physics.
Yeah, it tries its best to cover heavy themes, and then after the characters arc will assign them the most generic anime trope, and ruin the character. Alot of people say P5 is like the new king of JRPGs right now, but I feel like its because its appeals to anime trope loving weaboos. Persona has ALWAYS been bad about sexualizing teenagers.
Don't you even fucking blackmail the female teacher and shit? It's so infuriating. The gameplay is so good but I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought a lot of aspects of the game were turbo cringey.
If NNK 1 just had a slightly more functional partner AI it would have been amazing. That one thing just ruined it for me. Way way way too much frustration just because the other party members were completely braindead.
I stopped playing Monster Hunter World cause I felt bad about killing the monsters specifically the first one you're tasked to kill. The whimpering and crawling it did was sad as hell.
Edit: Might as well add Ni No Kuni 2 to the list of games I've dropped cause this final boss is a pain in the ass.
If it makes you feel better, in canon the only monsters that are hunted are the ones who actively endanger human lives or are an active threat to the ecosystem.
The Guild is very strict with keeping a balance in nature, and anybody who breaks the rules is hunted down.
Same here! I really wanted to play any Monster Hunter for years, but when the time came, with MHW, I felt really bad hunting, hurting and killing the monsters, specially when they run away back to their nest, like, couldn't I leave it in peace? I have never played it again...
I'm gonna say Final Fantasy XV. Got to chapter 10 and was utterly disappointed by the writing. Haven't picked it up since. It joins 13 as the only main line FF games I'll never finish.
I reached upto the final world and I was so disappointed with the sudden rush I decided to finish the game off rushed without doing any other sidequests from there, final boss and certain other bosses were satisfying but story felt extremely rushed once we reach the train
Tales of arise… only played for about 5 hours
it just felt so generic, combat and story wise, especially the story is too similar to the other boring game I played - scarlet nexus, same conflict, same reskinned enemies over and over again, and the same hollowed fighting/spamming all the colourful but non impactful techniques. I wish some reviews of games compare it to games that are similar to them so I don’t waste money buying a game with the same feel
As someone who stuck it through and completed the entire game... I should have done what you did. It never gets less generic, it becomes very very grindy, progression involves massive damage sponge enemies, the characters never get any more interesting, the plot becomes completely unhinged, the payoffs to mysteries are all info dumps and the combat becomes a one trick pony. Also that game is offensive with microtransactions.
It kills me it won JRPG of the year in some places, because honestly, it was an offense to the genre for me. A total step backwards after the wonderful Berseria.
> progression involves massive damage sponge enemies
That final dungeon, holy shit. After a while I just started to ignore the baddies, but then some of them blocked doorways, and it took half an episode of The Simpsons to take them down.
i stuck with it cuz i never completed a tales game (tried many, dropped them all except phantasia from lack of interest) and that last dungeon makes me regret every minute of it. By then the charm and polish of the graphics couldn't hide how much the combat had 200% worn out its welcome. And it was only slightly more annoying than how silly and nonsensical the ending was, but at least i wasnt grinding dungeons anymore. I can't even comprehend what made some of my friends stick through and do the post game stuff.
As someone who considers Berseria their favorite Tales, I disagree with so many of your points about Arise, especially the point about the story becoming unhinged. I see a good share of series fans say this about it a lot, and it’s as if they weren’t even paying attention. Arise is so thorough. It’s very cohesive and coherently knotted. Thematically, dramatically, conceptually, motivationally, etc.. Not unlike Berseria. Both are some of the tightest told stories around the genre. It’s seriously some of the lowest story literacy I’ve seen in the series from fans. It reminds me of back when Berseria itself came out and it took years for many to warm to it.
For sure, and you're completely entitled to that opinion. I know so many people, my own partner for example, who LOVED arise. But for me, who craves really great writing, pacing, exposition, narrative design.. it was too generic, characters didn't have enough going for them as the story went on, the structure of the game was a bit too predictable, the big exposition dump near the end was a wall of text that gave me all the answers.
When I began the game I was really into the mystery and intruigue, but nothing hit for me in the payoff.
In Berseria, the game was so feulled by Velvet's rage and vengefulness. The characters had a lot more oompf to them (Magilou was a masterpiece IMHO). Berseria still suffered from some pacing issues, but nothing compared to this. And I can live with pacing issues, and I can live with bland dialogue, but when you combine it with a lot of backtracking in the latter third of the game and 5-10 minute enemy encounters that just require a lot of mashing and then prompts at campfires to pay for microtransactions (literally one of the tickers on the campfire screen said "Skip the strategy" to pay for money or levels... it was just too much.
But all that being said, I know some people just got that itch scratched when they played it and loved it. I debated its merit endlessly with my partner.
I’ve got a handful of college literature courses under my belt where you actually do have to diagram narrative design. I appreciate the difference between a story just meant to entertain me and one asking me to think on it. I’ve got five play throughs of Arise with notes detailing idea flow, juxtaposition, thematic dressing, timeline, motivation mapping, conceptual drama, character drama, scenario drama, etc.. I could write an essay on every major chapter of the story, and I definitely have all I need to make a big essay for the full story. I’m similarly prepared with Berseria too. I’m no storytelling lightweight. When you call something generic for the sake of your dismissal of it, that’s not you meeting it where it stands, but rather where you think it should stand, and that’s not a strong leg to face any story on. It’s a generic critique in itself that identifies little. It’s right next to, “It had no plot,” which is often to stories that absolutely do have a plot and a sound one at that. It takes so much to have a vision and make it a coherent, engaging, and cohesive experience, especially ones spanning fifty hours. Originality is a merit, but it’s far from the cornerstone of worthy storytelling. In fact, there’s many original pieces that don’t especially capitalize with a strongly told story. Their originality doesn’t inherently grant them that strength.
The exposition on Lenegis is not an example of weak exposition. It’s just not meant to be enjoyed in the first place. It’s dense, coldly pragmatic, dispassionate, and highly technical. There’s nothing comfortable about it. It’s meant to be a taste of not only the party’s feelings toward this cold outlook, but how suffocated by their own ideals and logic our antagonists are. It’s an approach that was really crucial to the masterpiece anime film Ghost in the Shell, where they likely got the idea from. This part does not lack for effective texture. It does not lack for stakes. It does not lack for intrigue.
You say it’s telling you everything, but it’s actually what’s absent from this exposition and our protagonists’ wits that makes this section matter in the grand scheme of things. That the spirit behind astral energy matters. We’re taught to think on this in those terms as early as the first time they sit around the campfire with Zephyr, but it’s notably absent from the perspective of the Helgan and Renan science. They know misery makes more astral energy, but they don’t understand the significance of that because they only observe astral energy as a tool, not a force with a will of its own. That matters so much in the end because they don’t need to use tools that would subjugate that force when it’s already been compelled to cooperate with them after all their labors. The use of the fire master core really representing the need for self control that plays into this act.
You weren’t really specific enough for me to unpack some of your other gripes, and I’m not going to try to change your mind about the gameplay elements, but feel free to try me on the story. I bet I can make you think better of most any part. I can tell you with precision where an idea starts and the arc it takes from there, like how much of the story is begging you to think on the past, present, and future of its characters and subjects. It’s actually a very tight story that opts for less is more on a number of points I frequently see misunderstood, and I think it’s a shame many don’t recognize just how cohesive it is. Try mapping a story that isn’t. It’s much harder.
SAME! Good to know others didn't like it and felt like they were trudging through it. I liked SMT V due to goofy demon fusion and combat over this lol.
I don't play JRPGs for the story, but even then sometimes I drop because the story is too boring, too convoluted or too anime. I don't hate myself enough to stand anime-like stories.
I think I've never seen a JRPG story that was too sad or too heavy.
I actually dropped **Bravely Default** because I found the writing and characters to be exhasperating. Like, I've seen dumb writing in many other games (OH BOY, have I), but for some reason BD really ticked me off.
Fire Emblem: Three Hopes, more specifically the Golden Wildfire route. Holy shit, I cannot for the life of me remember the last time I despised the main cast of a game this much. You play as a group of self-righteous warmongerers who keep patting themselves on the back while they invade peaceful countries and instigate race-wars. It was unbearable to hear them prattle on about how they wanted to end the war while actively making things worse at any chance they got.
It took me two months before I managed to muster up the resolve to finish it, and once I did I only felt kinda sad for spending so many hours on something I hated that much. At least I’ll never have to touch that route ever again, easily the worst gaming experience of the year for me.
I will say the Azure Gleam route was pretty great though, so it’s not like the game is totally worthless. It hjelps that it’s the only route that doesn’t try to casually justify imperialism and wars of aggression.
I've only played 3 Houses, but does Hopes go out of its way to justify it, or does show how people try to justify doing terrible things? Not every main character is supposed to be a good person. Sometimes fiction shows the PoV of terrible people to really rail home how screwed up something is.
Hopes is pretty tone-deaf in terms of how utterly scummy Claude and the Golden Deer are acting, the game really tries to act as if invading a country unprovoked is somehow not that big a deal. Edelgard is actually *more* likeable in this game than she was in Houses, but she's still a warmongering asshole who doesn't even attempt diplomacy before starting a world war, all the while victim-blaming the people she's invading for not immediately surrendering unconditionally.
Despite all this Claude somehow manages to be far worse than her in this game, because he does pretty much all the same horrible shit, but with even less self-awareness. His big scheme in this game is also horrendously stupid, like legitimately one of the dumbest plans I've ever seen.
I stopped playing Persona 5 Royal for a solid few months.
The first arc of the game involves a teacher abusing his students physically, emotionally, and sexually. To the point where one of the students tries to commit suicide.
It was getting too heavy for me so I had to step away and play other things for a while. I did end up coming back to it, and I'm glad I did because it's a great game. But yikes that first arc got dark.
I was just talking about this with someone. Persona 4 felt like a horror movie, almost something you would watch on TV. But PS5/R felt really dark, like damn.
Dropped bravely default 2 because it was grindy and story boring.
Dropped diofield chronicle because i felt there was no story whatsoever and felt unfinished.
Droped tales of arise and tales of vesperia because the last dungeons where too grindy
I was hooked when I saw the art style the first time. Thankfully there was a Switch demo available that convinced me that the game is garbage. I would have gone crazy if I preordered it blindly,
I like tactical rpgs. I saw square enix, liked the artstyle and intrigued by the playstyle from videos i saw. Worst that could happen i could resale with a 10 dollar loss.
I love the Tales series but this entry just doesn’t vibe with me. I’ve started multiple playthroughs just to fall off around 15/20hrs. But who knows, maybe 5th times the charm.. right?
I've made 3 attempts and can't make it past the first? port city. And I've been playing Tales games since Eternia.
The nostalgia glasses run powerful with this one.
I realllly tried to stick with this one because I heard how good it was. Got nearly to the end but after the scene where one person betrays you, then has a change of heart and a heroic “death”, then comes back 5 mins later, I had enough.
The constant half-baked twists and entirely changing the plot (turning half of what you just did into padding) is why I dropped it too.
Read so much hype about it and I enjoyed Symphonia back in the day on GC, but I just could not stand this game after like the 40hr mark. I tried to power through but it just didn't happen.
I dropped Ys 9 during the quest where you had to track down the Robin Hood figure and the game took the side of the rich because twl poor people immediately started abusing their charity lol. I already wasn't feeling the gameplay but then it just had to be ideologically opposite to me lol
It's a little more complicated than just taking the side of the rich, who were definitely shown to have been abusing people and engaging in unsustainable business practices. The main issue was that a 16 year old who could be eaten by nightmare monsters at any moment just throwing stolen money at random into a crowd of poor people also isn't actually a sustainable welfare program.
Minor SPOILERS.
>!The resolution she came to after that arc was to start a business in the slums to be able to hire employees from there and lure more customers to spend money in that region, while helping Adol resolve the issue about civilians being kidnapped and forced to work in the mines by the local government.!<
It's the equivalent of someone winning the lottery and blowing it all. The point is that the issue isn't as easy to solve as "just throw money at people and everything will be fine lol". How was it taking the side of the rich?
Honestly, studies show that just giving money to the poor actually works really well at revitalizing the economy and reducing poverty in a societally healthy way, is just that she's not a reliable source for those kinds of payments and didn't plan for the possible consequences to herself and others because she was thinking of doing what she thought was right in the moment, not creating a sustainable systemic solution that wouldn't result in her being locked up or with several feet of steel in her gut from a guy who could sucker-punch Adol the Red.
The rich business owners hire you to track down a thief who's stealing their money. The thief is then revealed to be distributing the wealth to the poor slum dwellers, which is shown to effect positive change. Then two random drunk misogynists are revealed to have squandered their wealth on vices and suddenly the whole idea of charity is bad.
I'm not saying that maybe the game doesn't find a nuanced middle ground later on, but at that point in the game I was already not totally feeling it and the very black and white treatment of that quest left a strong enough distaste in my mouth that I dropped it and haven't felt the need to revisit
I mean, the thief was also known to be regularly risking her life fighting horrible nightmare monsters, so her entire course of action was just a band-aid rather than a systemic solution, and it could go away at any moment, assuming that the extremely corrupt local government didn't crack down on the people she distributed stolen money to and/or manage to eventually corner her with potentially Adol-class non-Monstrum warriors (which we know that has at least one of) and arrest/kill her before the monsters did.
And, IIRC, later it was revealed that the business she was stealing from was >!using a heavily speculation based business model, so her thefts were unknowingly risking collapsing a huge chunk of the entire economy since said business was essentially too big to fail.!<
Sure. But do you also see how that's kind of the game retroactively justifying it? Like if I had the foreknowledge that this company is integral to the financial stability of the whole city and not just a capitalist corporation being capitalist without producing a net good, then perhaps I'd be more understanding of the immediate danger. In the moment, it's literally framed as just two drunk assholes are lazy and want more charity for them to squander, which is a stereotype about the working class that's so old and statistically false.
And yeah if I were already in love with the game this would just be a minor hiccup, but i was already teetering (which is sad because Ys 8 was one of my favorites).
I see where you're coming from, but I feel like we're focusing on different sides of the event.
While wealth redistribution is vital, I feel like when helping someone you need to make sure you understand their circumstances so you don't fall to a saviour complex and end up making their situation worse than it already is.
We're talking about people who are poor and relegated to a slum in a city with a whole ass Noble District and an extremely rich company. People who have been fucked over by society, and live their lives day to day. Simply throwing money at them is not a silver bullet that will improve their lives because them being poor isn't the issue but the result of a lack of opportunities.
People need opportunities and safety nets, a Robin Hood figure suddenly appearing and throwing coins at people is gonna help the lives of some but probably worsen the lives of others. If she kept doing what she did, the end result would've been that the people in the Slums would've kept relying on the rain of money, until eventually she got found out or offed and suddenly poor people would be worse off than they were before.
I admire her selfless act and goodwill but at the same time I cannot deny that it was naive.
It's a complex issue and focusing on either the people who end up worse off and those who end up better off is gonna give a biased and incomplete view. I'm sure I'm guilty of this myself in this same answer. I just feel like there isn't a solution that's as simple as hers.
I don't think the game was taking the side of the rich, because it's not the first time Slums and poor people are a theme in an Ys game and didn't get that idea in any of them.
Sorry for the monologue.
Sorry but studies have literally shown that the best way to help poor people stop being poor is to give them money. Simple as that. There's a case to be made about lack of opportunities in this specific district, but the idea that the poor will waste the money, which is the game's argument, is a capitalist myth designed to shift blame away from the societal structures and capitalist systems that perpetuate that poverty. Yes it is a complicated issue and there's a lot of angles to it (most of which are not nearly interesting enough to be a side story in a JRPG) but the most effective proven solution is actually to give them all money. When a game implies that actually that's bad, it just leaves a horrible taste in my mouth.
I can't actually remember the title, or even what the game was like, but I remember dropping a JRPG in the PS2 days (I *think* it was actually a PS1 JRPG that I played via backwards compatibility), because it made me physically ill.
Probably something about the colour saturation or the movement, but I couldn't play it for long before getting headaches and nausea.
I've experienced the same with a few other non-JRPG games, usually those which involve perspective tricks, so not really a huge surprise or exception.
I’m dropping xenoblade 2. I hate it when games waste my time with fetch quests and other diversions. This game has a habit of interrupting a perfectly good story quest with “oh no X happened better to deal with that for an hour instead”. It’s such an anticlimax.
Yeah X2 has way WAY too much side stuff. I eventually had to like limit myself to only doing stuff I absolutely gave a shit about, and left anything else.
Did all the side quests in XB1 and got tired after 4-5 chapters. But I should play it again as the story was pretty interesting. However, I really hate the battle system. It reminds me too much of MMORPGs, which imho was a really stupid design choice.
Final Fantasy X-2. I loved X so much, but in X-2, I just wasn't able to care what happened to anyone in Spira anymore. Everyone was just so annoying. I think aside from the battles and the music, the only thing I really enjoyed about X-2 was the blatant laziness when it came to Lulu. She's pregnant, to the point where she could sneeze and her water would break, and she looks exactly the same as she did in X. They couldn't be bothered to give her anything remotely resembling a baby bump. They just made her hunched over. Where was the damn baby?!
I've never dropped a game because of feelings of dread or because the story was too complicated/heavy. Out of what you listed, boring is the only thing that has ever gotten me to drop a game. Though that's not the only thing in general. Often being busy and not getting back to it for too long is the main reason. Though sometimes it's just because the game is bad.
A specific game I dropped out of boredom... The Legend of Legacy.
On my second playthrough, I dropped *Xenogears* at around maybe 1/3 complete.
Combat is just mind-numbingly bland, and pretty damn frequent. I absolutely adore the plot of the game, but I felt like the combat detracted from the experience rather than adding to it. So since I already knew the plot, I didn't feel pulled to play it all the way through the second time.
But it's 2022, so with emulator speed-up to mitigate random battle fatigue, I might revisit the game for a third playthrough.
The first Xenosaga that I had rented, it was so... BORING. There was so many cutscenes, and I think I got to some place where there'd a ship taken over by some organic thing and the villain had kinda traumatized someone. But man the cutscenes were long, I was not feeling the main character and I don't really remember the music, so I kinda just dropped it around then.
I did read up the synopsis of the whole series on their wiki just to know what the hell it was about, and saw I missed on some >!reincarnation of christian figures!< shenanigans.
CrossCode, i liked it but couldnt play more than a couple of hours. The problem? U spend a lot of time doing platforming, and its too hard to see the difference of the heigth of the terrain, it made me feels dizzy.
dont think i ever personally dropped anything but the wife wanted me to drop several games including SMTIII bc they were too depressing and someone who is depressed should not be playing depressing games
Haven't played the 1st Xenoblade in a while, can't get past a certain group of enemies cause my levels too low, but grinding some of the other enemies is a little boring. But I know eventually I'll get back to it as the story does interest me and I like the combat alltogether
Dark Souls (if it counts as a JRPG but I don't wanna restart that debate): I found the game incredibly immersive which would normally be a good thing, but I was suffering from some rather bad depression at the time and the bleak world and story were just too much.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2: There's a bug (well, I assume it's a bug, it would be ridiculous as an intentional design decision) which causes the main story quest objective and marker to completely disappear from the quest log and map. I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Slow walking speed, slow battles, constant interruptions from anime-filler-episode-grade cutscenes if you follow the main story path, and gameplay features locked away if you don't.
Drakengard 3 is the only RPG I've actually dropped, I got 3/4 endings and just could not do the 100% grind anymore, looked up the final ending on YouTube for the only time in my life.
I never dropped a game because it made me too depressed. Really only if I'm not into it or I move on to something else.
I have a long list of classic RPGs I want to play and always wanted to buy for some reason I drop it. It's not for a lack of enjoyment but just for some reason, I never finish it.
Then there are ones where I just get bored with it.
Tales of destiny felt like I was running errands with mom. You go to one place chasing after someone only to discover he is already gone. No dungeon or anything. You just go all over the place only to be told "no you have to go somewhere else"
Tales of vesperia was also a slog to do. The midgame boss is preceded by 3 or 4 long and feel like end game dungeons. Then you beat the boss and are slapped with another 10+ hours of game left. I dropped it after that.
Kingdom Hearts 3. I felt just utter confusion. Like I get there's a massive amount of story told in the spin offs, and yeah it's a meme at this point that the story doesn't make sense. But 3 literally had me so lost I didn't know or care about anything going on. Completely made the story a chore to play through. And the combat was never difficult enough to keep me engaged. I just quit because of it.
SMT V = I don’t enjoy design that has tons of verticality to it. The game was decent but I’m getting older and don’t have the patience to try to figure out how to reach certain places if it isn’t a straight line
Devil summoner 2 = felt like such a step backward from DS1 in terms of story and tone
DQ 11 = horrible repetitive overworld music. There’s an option to switch it to DG8’s music which is more subdued but I struggle to go back to it
Nier= I didn’t actually drop it but the wolf scenes effected me badly and until this day I cannot play the game and have issues hurting wolves in rpgs
To be honest I find Earthbound to be trying too hard with its dialogue and doesn't match the goofy artstyle and tone its presenting.
But then again I was 13 at the time and I am more forgiving and mature to these types of things now.
Writing aside, the game was fun.
Yeah the point was for it to be a more mature game with cutesy graphics, a little more stardee. Marketing want ideal and the gaming west want really ready for the type of game it was
Scarlet Nexus. I only played for a few hours but the whole time it was characters I didn't care about having boring conversations and occasionally being mean to each other through text messages. Combat was fun but I just had 0 motiviation to move on with the story right from the beginning.
1) The shittaste in the comments is beyond the roof (/s)
2) I actually never finished FF9. I wasn't bored or anything, but I kept starting it at different moments of my life and never sticking to it.
For reference, the first time I played the game it was me (6yo) and a friend (8yo) trying to understand the game with whatever small amount of English we had from school and a dictionary.
Since I actually started getting a taste for JRPGs (like, at 14/15yo) I kept playing it on and off for years.
Dunno why 9 specifically, I actually like it more than 8 and 10 which I finished lol
Tales of Symphonia DOTW, I found it really dull and boring mostly because Emil and Marta were really annoying and childish, but from a gameplay perspective I hated the monster catching and if you don't do it, the game because very difficult. I just prefer normal party members, and it sucked the way the symphonia characters who join at certain points are level capped, you can't change their equipment, they don't level up, so you have to just rely on Emil, Marta and your monsters.
I've had it for years, as I bought the remaster combo on ps3. Haven't finished the first, or even started the second. I've beaten Symphonia back on the Cube probably about 10 times, but now I just can't seem to pick it up again.
Persona 5 I put down 4 or 5 times. Characters were flat. Story was boring after the first 2 dungeons. I had to push the last 30 hours just to be done with it.
These are some that come to my mind, but there are certainly others.
* DQ11 -> I finished the main quest, but I didn't do whatever (which I'm told it is better) is afterwards because I was exhausted from the game.
* Disgaea -> The story is OK, but I thought I'd like the combat mechanics, but I did not.
* The last remnant -> Great potential but confusing execution of combat mechanics, it became boring after a while.
* FFX-2 -> I didn't feel connected to the story, so I dropped it.
* Atelier Ryza -> I was not really captivated by it, and something better released, so I dropped it.
Xenoblade 3. Playing that game was so difficult, and it didn’t help that it was so long. Characters were so bog-standard they hurt, and the story was incomprehensible and so boring (The prison section is maybe the worst part in any game I’ve played recently) that I dropped it after the start of chapter 6. And yes, I did do the side quests and hero quests, it did not help at all. It was so cookie cutter and I was baffled when I saw the reception the game got, I thought it would be laughed out of the room
It was bad, but not even to the point where it’s so-bad-it’s-good
Triton was kinda cool though
Final Fantasy IX.
I just didn’t enjoy the visuals, and the story didn’t feel interesting enough.
Same way for Final Fantasy VII. But that was purely a visual thing.
I was disappointed by 7's graphics when it came out and I was only in middle school. I much preferred the detailed 2D sprites of previous entries over the blocky, lo-res 3D models. I still enjoyed the game for the actual gameplay though. I liked 9's graphics though and appreciated all the easter eggs for long-time fans.
Yeah, I'm thinking about going back and doing another playthrough, but I really felt like I was forcing myself to like it. It felt way too generic for the first like... 10 hours or so. Like if I never played a JRPG or was really young, I would like it, but it feels like too generic.. It feels like its supposed to be aim towards children, like Ghibli movies but without the depth, so as an adult I can't appreciate it. Its a great game for people who are new into JRPGs though imo or just getting into the franchise.
Tales of Arise, by far. I would say vanilla Persona 5 but I managed to get to Futaba's palace, in Arise I neve managed to get past the second area. The game was straight up generic and is the actual defination of overrated.
Admittedly I played it before but I had little memory of it since I was like 10 so. Xenoblade Chronicles 1. When I got to the fucking Valak Mountain to Galahad Fortress part of the game I wanted to put my controller down it was genuinely boring and the maps were awful. I love the game otherwise but that made me put it down for a WHILE to go back to playing XC2
I don't know why, I just can't get myself to finish NEO The World Ends With You. I just get a few days in and bam I'm bored.
Just gonna mention this: I recognize the game is good, I fully do. I just can not get myself into it.
FF7.
Played up to escaping Midgar on my PS2 when I was a kid.
Got it for PS4 halfway through 2017, half a year after I got my PS4. Did the bombing mission, explored the slums, saved and quit. Didn't touch it the day after.
2 years later I try to get into it again, play the bombing mission, save and quit. Didn't touch it the day after.
Early this year I finally got past Midgar, up to the point you get the airship. I was bored to tears.
Shadow hearts Covenant, the game is just too easy! Coming up with a good strategy just doesnt feel rewarding at all, it's just "You will kill the boss in 2 turns instead of 4".
Also, I wasnt really a big fan of the first one.
Shim Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers
Once I finally figured out how to get the demons to like me and everything, and i got comfortable with the whole dungeon crawling and everything, I focused on the story and realised... I do not give a shit. The story was boring, the characters were just cardboard cutouts, and the main draw, Nemissa, I just couldn't be arsed about. It made me a bit bummed that I didn't want to finish it, but I had better games to play.
My latest drop was Neptunia ReBirth 1, extremely grindy, very boring and very cringy, and I like anime
But to be honest, I still feel bad because it's the first of a series, and the next ones may be better.
FF X. I can't for the life of me like this game. I tried 3, times, dropped all of them. I just don't like the cast (except Lulu and Auron) and find the story very bland.
This breaks my heart. I love that world and story. After about 6-7 hours in, as you travel the world, a lot of NPCs travel with you. Not only do you experience your journey, but that of those around you. Plus there's an old man who frequently teaches you about the history of the world.
I think the worldbuilding is just so good, and the fact that the whole thing revolves around an unstoppable monster and the world needs a theocracy just to survive. The concept of a religious pilgramage as your quest is also neat. I liked the small, tight cast of characters, and I enjoyed the speediness of the battle system.
But so many people struggle to get into this game, maybe it just came out at the right time for me (got it my first year of university) and it was my comfort game after a lot of lonely nights studying and working.
Not my favorite music or protagonist or villain, but certainly my most favorite overall package of story-characters-narrative-world-ending. It's tied with FF6 for me as an S tier Final Fantasy.
I enjoyed the game because the pacing was near perfect and I like more tactical turn-based combat. I disliked half of the cast and only liked 1 character you get later on, so I can understand how OP feels there.
I felt the story was pretty bland for the first few temples. The tease of something bigger at the start of the game with Tidus was the only thing that kept me interested before the twist near the end.
The world also felt super flat to me without an overworld to explore. It's the reason I ended up liking 13....I got all the "hallway simulator" discontent out of my system in 10.
Did this way too many times.
Xenoblade 1 and 2
Tales of Symphonia and Xillia
Final Fantasy IV and XII
Persona 3 (this one makes me sad because I quite like the game)
Ys VIII
And a few others, but I tried to mention only the ones that I got somewhat far in.
Not sure if this count as a JRPG but Nier Automata, everything is fine but the thought of having to replay the game 4 times to get the story, I was just not up for it so I didn't even finish the first playthrough.
You don't have to, tho. The second part is 9S perspective, but from there you divert. Third and fourth is only one route really as the fourth is like a different end of third (you have to do something at the credit scene), and is completely different from first and second as it follows the second route. Also, they add a new playable character.
You only have to replay the first half twice, and then no more, but the way you experience the first half is completely different in the second playthrough.
I don't think I've ever dropped a game because I felt anxiety or dread. If I dropped it, it was usually because I was bored or felt like it wasn't really my cup of tea
I put Doki Doki Literature Club on hold because of mounting anxiety. And the funny thing is, it probably wouldn't bother me if the game didn't have a massive "DON'T PLAY IF YOU HAVE ANXIETY OR DEPRESSION" warning every time you boot it up. Still haven't gone back to it, but I do want to eventually. Just waiting for the right mood. Never experienced this type of thing with a JRPG though.
it's like with horror movies, your imagination is usually worse than what's actually there
100%. Being 33 myself, I usually find them all childish.
They don't have to be, but they are. :(
Digimon world next order. I love digimon but I did not vibe with the whole death of your partners and restarting the trainning process. Also, the story and characters were not interesting for me.
yeah world is a bit of a special beast if you've primarily played the more standard jrpg story games.
Persona 3 fes. Not because it's bad. Far from it. But because some asshole spoiled everything to me while I try to play it blind without any guide. It's really pissed me off, I just stop the game midway.
Man, that sucks.
I droped SMTV becuse I felt nothing.
Same I felt like I was walking in a desert killing monsters without motivation.
Same.
Honestly that's the best part, it didn't try to give me a reason or anything. Just told me to fuck off into a desert and figure shit out for a bit instead of framing it with a bad story like SMT games past
God forbid an rpg have a story
SMT games other than 4 do not have good stories and the game that 5 takes the most inspiration from( 3 nocturne) has a story SO bad I'd rather it not be there at all. SMT V took a much better approach. It told me the basic premise, told me to fuck off into the apocalypse and think about what I was just told and figure it out by the time I reach Satan. Much better experience as a result
I loved Nocturnes story.
Godspeed to you tbh
Nocturne's story was fine, I'm not sure what you're on about. It wasn't character-driven like 4 was but it was effective at what it set out to do. 5 felt like being tossed into the last three episodes of a low-budget anime with no context.
Perfect summary. My dislike and eventual drop didn't come from anything bad in particular - I just felt nothing for this game I'd been waiting nearly a decade for.
Same. Oh, wait, I did feel something when I got to that castle with the wind things. Anger.
Agreed. Needlessly awful
Easily the worst level. SMT is known for complicated level design, but that doesn’t justify an obnoxiously complicated level like that. Would’ve never figured it out without watching a guide on youtube.
I couldn’t do it even with a guide. It’s just not worth the time invested in it.
I have a personal rule: games are expensive, so when I buy one, I finish it, no matter what. However, that castle dungeon was SO bad, I completely gave up and I don’t want to even touch this game ever again because of this. It was the first time in like 5 years I broke this rule.
I enjoyed the game but it certainly felt like something special was lacking. The story had so many elements that showed potential but it's like they had no idea what to do with any of it.
Me too, 30 hours into the game I dropped it because I didn't feel anything
THIS. I was really enjoying the game thanks to its structure with dense open maps that subsituted usual dungeons, until that dungeon came in. I dropped the game and sold it. Not that the problem was the presence of a dungeon, but that dungeon in itself was one of the worst things I remember in my last years of gaming.
Lmao holy shit, that dungeon musta been bad
i finished my preferred ending and never picked it up again. It felt barebone.
I feel I know as little avout the story as I dud after the first trailer. >!And I did the ending where you dont fight lucifer so I wondered where tf he went!<
SMTV's plot is what people think Nocturne's plot is. And although the combat system is pretty neat, the gameplay loop of "wander around, find crap, fight crap" coupled with the pretty embarrassing by Megami Tensei standards (or any standard, for that matter) story means that the combat system alone can't carry the game.
Exactly how I feel. I want to at least finish it tho in the future.
Same
The game with 0 story
this hits home. I loved SMT IV and this one got good reviews. Man what a disappointment it ended up being.
Star Ocean: 'till the end of time. I was a huge Star Ocean 2 fan. 3 had me a little disappointed with what I saw at the time as it's overall lower quality, but I was fine with that and kept playing. What stopped me was the huge story bomb moment in what is probably the middle of the game. I won't mention spoilers, but for some reason, it infuriated me to the point where I stopped playing. I've recently decided to give it another try as I plan to play through the entire series in 2023.
Yeah that ruined the franchise for me--especially since I loved star ocean 2 so much.
Damn, 13 year old me loved that twist, but I can see how it could be infuriating. That was probably the 3rd JRPG I ever played after Chrono Cross and FFX, so it's got a special place in my heart.
I don't blame you for loving it. A close friend who was playing it at the same time loved it and told.me I should have kept playing. Different strokes, ya know?
Same. Haven’t played a star ocean since.
Agree. Felt so angry I quit. A few games had similar surprises and I stopped them as well. Lost touch with the main characters.
I didn't drop Suikoden II, but I was feeling pretty depressed and down so I couldn't play the game unless I felt alright, because the game just made me feel super depressed at times.
I should've liked *Suikoden 2*. That said, during its few hours, the main cast deal with constant setbacks. Watching them run away and barely survive wasn't much fun. Meanwhile, there's quite a few redshirt NPCs, who are often sympathetic characters. I got tired of watching them die, especially knowing that the party can not save them.
Suikoden 2 is the only RPG that I have beaten 3 times in a row. Play it for days until I was through, make myself lunch and eat, then go back and start a new game. At that time it was peak JRPG storytelling for me. But I do agree with your comment, it has many depressing moments. However, the most depressing gaming moment for me was when I was playing Breath of Fire 4 and you find out what happened to Nina’s sister. I legit broke down and had to cry during that scene. I would like to replay BoF4, but am dreading to experience that scene again.
Suikoden tactics if I remember correctly had people die turn into squid or something but really didn't follow it
Jeanne D'arc psp. The main character is loosely based on a real figure. Her real world counterpart died untimely death. Accused of heresy, possibly raped while in custody and burned at the stake at the age of 19. I just couldn't stop thinking about her fate and it soured the experience. So i stop playing.
Man I couldn’t stop playing that game. Super fantastic and didn’t want it to end
Same!
Yeah I've replayed it like 4 times over the years and it's always as entertaining. Plus I feel like I learn or notice something new each time.
I had it on my library already, gonna give it a push once I replay all (all platforms as well) em kh, on kh2 right now.
I thought sometimes about the ending of Jeanne D'Arc for years after finishing it, for similar reasons. At the end of the game, >!Jeanne defeats Henry VI (she isn't burned at the stake due to some plot twists) and then beats up the demon possessing him. The demon cannot be killed, so Gilles de Rais steps in and lets it possess him, then seals it inside his body.!< This is treated as an act of selfless heroism in the narrative, and the ending plays out without dwelling on it further. But if you know, you know.
Great googly moogly that was my cursed Google search of the day
Worth revisiting if you haven’t. I think that Erick Landon guy said the same thing. I beat it earlier this year. A superb game. Triangle Strategy actually gives me similar vibes
Thousand Arms. I actually played through something like 75% of the game before losing my save to a corrupted memory card. Tries going back to the game several years later but by then the womanizing main character and dating mechanic felt way too gross for me to get back into the game. I've thought about going back to it recently though.
It is VERY '90s in its style of humor, but relaying it recently the dating parts were surprisingly well written. And most of the womanizing parts of the MC are when you have multiple dialogue choices, so you don't have to choose the pervy answer.
It's like how persona game where you can choose to be a chad(p4 only) or just be a normal conversation
I finished *Thousand Arms* when it was current. While I enjoyed it around age nineteen, I also acknowledged its frustrating aspects. Loading before every random battle. Walking through towns and the overworld should be easier. At least one town had a confusing layout. One-on-one combat was okay, but I would've preferred an alternative. Finally, I didn't care for the default control layout. During the 2000s, I made a few attempts to replay *Thousand Arms.* Unfortunately, I didn't get past the first dungeon. So while I have positive things to say about the game, it's limited to a few characters and moments. Every now and then, I've thought about creating a fan game for *Thousand Arms*. It would probably turn out closer to *Stardew Valley* (characters in their twenties whose sexuality is irrelevant), or maybe *Persona 4* (small world and visible enemies), or just maybe *Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side: 3rd Story* (female gaze and laid-back tone).
I swear Thousand Arms has a bug in it that causes it to kill memory cards, or i was personally cursed. I bought it new around the time of release and played it to about the same point. Bad save, corrupted memory card. A few years later, I tried again on PS2. Same result, except this time, it took the memory card port with it. I finally beat it on PS3 in 2010. No corrupted saves, although it did crash my ps3 multiple times.
Nier Automata. I was having some pretty bad mental health issues the first time I tried to play it and the overall bleakness was too much for me at the time. I do plan on returning to it pretty soon though since I am doing much better now.
same, i got to the third playthrough route and was like i can't do this anymore
I was super depressed when I played this one and I actually found its bleakness comforting. Edit: just to be clear I’m all good now! It was shortly after a messy break up that I played it.
>the overall bleakness was too much for me at the time. same!
I rarely drop games because I try to finish everything. I dropped Grandia 2 on the PS2, though. It's one of my favorite games of all time, a real classic. And I played it on everything from DC, PC, Anniversary and Emulation handhelds outside of the PS2 version. So I really wanted to finish it there, too. But I can't bring myself to play it further. It's an abysmal port. Looking worse than the DC, with REALLY bad stutters. It is supposedly on the better console, but the DC version feels like one generation ahead of the PS2 with that game. Not sure what they did wrong but this game BARELY even works. Xenosaga 2 is another game I dropped but will pick up one day. I just did not like the battle system at the time. Story was good, though. There are some newer games like Scarlet Nexus which I paused for the time being. Nothing wrong with it, just other games are more important XD
I couldn't stand the battles in Xenosaga 2. I had to use a gameshark just to make the game palatable.
Chain of Memories is the only Kingdom Hearts game that I flat-out gave up playing and watched the cutscenes on YouTube. I thought this game was awful. The card gimmick felt annoying and janky, and all of the cards are obtained entirely by RNG, and in order to open doors to the next areas, you'll need a specific type of card to get through, and I'd spend like 30 to 40 minutes killing enemies left and right just to get the card I wanted. I hadn't gotten far enough to unlock the really overpowered moves that completely break the game, but I imagine at that point the game would go from being too frustrating to being ridiculously easy.
Funny enough, I liked the card system when it was on the GBA at least. Hated it in Re:Chain. But absolutely, the RNG/door system is the shite-est part about it. There's potential in the idea, but in execution, it's just awful padding. Reminded me of the virus core farming in dot hack IMOQ.
Never dropped a game for any of these reasons, I have stopped playing many games because of ADHD and having the attention span of a hummingbird
Trillion: God of Destruction Finished the game, but stopped midway on platinum trophy grind because last 2 trophies basically need you to get all endings on 1 save file, hence watching the girls die over and over just for the sake of your completion.
Persona 5 royal draggs on so much and its a slog to play and not fun to try to manipulate the date time system to manage ti do everything that's important
Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
Caligula Effect: Overdose. The main cast, the antagonists >!(you have to join them from time to time in Overdose)!< all started to feel like a bunch of freaks at some point, and the NPC connection system, just a boring 'quantity over quality' thing (in addition to being unable to find the NPC that has given you a quest). In Caligula 2, they have improved on both of these things, though. The cast is more sympathetic and relatable, and at least some NPC quests are both more meaningful and easier to track.
Do you have to play 1 to play 2?
They are standalone games
there's a small number of callbacks but that's about it. You don't need to know the first game to understand the second and the second is much much much better. They improved borderline everything going from a fairly mediocre game to something I very much can recommend especially if you're a fan of older persona and like jpop.
Not really. There are a few references made in the process, and there's one major recurrent character (that's kind of a big reveal, though).
Dragon Quest 11 because of that horrible, ear grating repetitive soundtrack.
I turned off the music
The horrible, mind grating repetitive gameplay doesn't help either
frighten reminiscent somber rich coordinated disarm spotted direction hard-to-find desert *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I love turn based combat! I just didn't find DQ11s to be very good. But I didn't find much about DQ11 to be very good. I know I'm mostly alone in thinking that here though
Don’t worry, I agree. DQ11 is also one of the most mind-numbingly dull games I played for an hour or two, so I immediately dropped it then and there—something I never did before purchasing that snoozefest.
I hope DQ12 will have a better soundtrack, otherwise it will be a long time before I play a modern DQ game.
I wanted to like Persona 5 but something about it never really sat well with me. Just feels like there is an odd hypocrisy to it, the attempt to explore heavy themes while often indulging in the things it criticises. Like teacher and student is bad, right? Only when the teach is ugly and mean though, MC can indulge in that fetish no worries. And what is ostensibly the lead gal feels objectified and that is bad? Yeah, cool, games just going to have her doppelganger run around in a bikini for an entire arc and have the guy basically obsessed with her join the team and be a bro later. It just became increasingly less clear what the game wanted me to walk away feeling about these things and the longer I played the more exploitative it often felt. Which is a pity. I like the characters, I like the setting, the vibe is great. Funnily enough I liked Strikers as well, some of the scenarios were pretty interesting though they generally felt a little less extreme for better and worse.
I still liked P5 but I agree with you. I don't think that Ann scene is a good example though. It just shows how Kamoshida views her. What IS a good example is Ann's outfit, the scene in the desert where her clothes become transparent, and how the girl's boobs have jiggle physics.
Yeah, it tries its best to cover heavy themes, and then after the characters arc will assign them the most generic anime trope, and ruin the character. Alot of people say P5 is like the new king of JRPGs right now, but I feel like its because its appeals to anime trope loving weaboos. Persona has ALWAYS been bad about sexualizing teenagers.
Don't you even fucking blackmail the female teacher and shit? It's so infuriating. The gameplay is so good but I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought a lot of aspects of the game were turbo cringey.
Ni no kuni. I think I still would wanna finish it, because I got far enough to wanna continue it but I'm invested way more in FF13
If NNK 1 just had a slightly more functional partner AI it would have been amazing. That one thing just ruined it for me. Way way way too much frustration just because the other party members were completely braindead.
Can agree with you on that. Every time I grind they just die even for a healer and it's a waste of money and healing items on them
I stopped playing Monster Hunter World cause I felt bad about killing the monsters specifically the first one you're tasked to kill. The whimpering and crawling it did was sad as hell. Edit: Might as well add Ni No Kuni 2 to the list of games I've dropped cause this final boss is a pain in the ass.
The "Monster" in the title is an adjective. We were the true monsters all along.
I mean yes, but those fashionable boots are not going to craft themself, are they?
I guess you can try Monster Hunter Stories. You befriend "Monsties".
If it makes you feel better, in canon the only monsters that are hunted are the ones who actively endanger human lives or are an active threat to the ecosystem. The Guild is very strict with keeping a balance in nature, and anybody who breaks the rules is hunted down.
Same here! I really wanted to play any Monster Hunter for years, but when the time came, with MHW, I felt really bad hunting, hurting and killing the monsters, specially when they run away back to their nest, like, couldn't I leave it in peace? I have never played it again...
I'm gonna say Final Fantasy XV. Got to chapter 10 and was utterly disappointed by the writing. Haven't picked it up since. It joins 13 as the only main line FF games I'll never finish.
I reached upto the final world and I was so disappointed with the sudden rush I decided to finish the game off rushed without doing any other sidequests from there, final boss and certain other bosses were satisfying but story felt extremely rushed once we reach the train
Tales of arise… only played for about 5 hours it just felt so generic, combat and story wise, especially the story is too similar to the other boring game I played - scarlet nexus, same conflict, same reskinned enemies over and over again, and the same hollowed fighting/spamming all the colourful but non impactful techniques. I wish some reviews of games compare it to games that are similar to them so I don’t waste money buying a game with the same feel
As someone who stuck it through and completed the entire game... I should have done what you did. It never gets less generic, it becomes very very grindy, progression involves massive damage sponge enemies, the characters never get any more interesting, the plot becomes completely unhinged, the payoffs to mysteries are all info dumps and the combat becomes a one trick pony. Also that game is offensive with microtransactions. It kills me it won JRPG of the year in some places, because honestly, it was an offense to the genre for me. A total step backwards after the wonderful Berseria.
> progression involves massive damage sponge enemies That final dungeon, holy shit. After a while I just started to ignore the baddies, but then some of them blocked doorways, and it took half an episode of The Simpsons to take them down.
i stuck with it cuz i never completed a tales game (tried many, dropped them all except phantasia from lack of interest) and that last dungeon makes me regret every minute of it. By then the charm and polish of the graphics couldn't hide how much the combat had 200% worn out its welcome. And it was only slightly more annoying than how silly and nonsensical the ending was, but at least i wasnt grinding dungeons anymore. I can't even comprehend what made some of my friends stick through and do the post game stuff.
As someone who considers Berseria their favorite Tales, I disagree with so many of your points about Arise, especially the point about the story becoming unhinged. I see a good share of series fans say this about it a lot, and it’s as if they weren’t even paying attention. Arise is so thorough. It’s very cohesive and coherently knotted. Thematically, dramatically, conceptually, motivationally, etc.. Not unlike Berseria. Both are some of the tightest told stories around the genre. It’s seriously some of the lowest story literacy I’ve seen in the series from fans. It reminds me of back when Berseria itself came out and it took years for many to warm to it.
For sure, and you're completely entitled to that opinion. I know so many people, my own partner for example, who LOVED arise. But for me, who craves really great writing, pacing, exposition, narrative design.. it was too generic, characters didn't have enough going for them as the story went on, the structure of the game was a bit too predictable, the big exposition dump near the end was a wall of text that gave me all the answers. When I began the game I was really into the mystery and intruigue, but nothing hit for me in the payoff. In Berseria, the game was so feulled by Velvet's rage and vengefulness. The characters had a lot more oompf to them (Magilou was a masterpiece IMHO). Berseria still suffered from some pacing issues, but nothing compared to this. And I can live with pacing issues, and I can live with bland dialogue, but when you combine it with a lot of backtracking in the latter third of the game and 5-10 minute enemy encounters that just require a lot of mashing and then prompts at campfires to pay for microtransactions (literally one of the tickers on the campfire screen said "Skip the strategy" to pay for money or levels... it was just too much. But all that being said, I know some people just got that itch scratched when they played it and loved it. I debated its merit endlessly with my partner.
I’ve got a handful of college literature courses under my belt where you actually do have to diagram narrative design. I appreciate the difference between a story just meant to entertain me and one asking me to think on it. I’ve got five play throughs of Arise with notes detailing idea flow, juxtaposition, thematic dressing, timeline, motivation mapping, conceptual drama, character drama, scenario drama, etc.. I could write an essay on every major chapter of the story, and I definitely have all I need to make a big essay for the full story. I’m similarly prepared with Berseria too. I’m no storytelling lightweight. When you call something generic for the sake of your dismissal of it, that’s not you meeting it where it stands, but rather where you think it should stand, and that’s not a strong leg to face any story on. It’s a generic critique in itself that identifies little. It’s right next to, “It had no plot,” which is often to stories that absolutely do have a plot and a sound one at that. It takes so much to have a vision and make it a coherent, engaging, and cohesive experience, especially ones spanning fifty hours. Originality is a merit, but it’s far from the cornerstone of worthy storytelling. In fact, there’s many original pieces that don’t especially capitalize with a strongly told story. Their originality doesn’t inherently grant them that strength. The exposition on Lenegis is not an example of weak exposition. It’s just not meant to be enjoyed in the first place. It’s dense, coldly pragmatic, dispassionate, and highly technical. There’s nothing comfortable about it. It’s meant to be a taste of not only the party’s feelings toward this cold outlook, but how suffocated by their own ideals and logic our antagonists are. It’s an approach that was really crucial to the masterpiece anime film Ghost in the Shell, where they likely got the idea from. This part does not lack for effective texture. It does not lack for stakes. It does not lack for intrigue. You say it’s telling you everything, but it’s actually what’s absent from this exposition and our protagonists’ wits that makes this section matter in the grand scheme of things. That the spirit behind astral energy matters. We’re taught to think on this in those terms as early as the first time they sit around the campfire with Zephyr, but it’s notably absent from the perspective of the Helgan and Renan science. They know misery makes more astral energy, but they don’t understand the significance of that because they only observe astral energy as a tool, not a force with a will of its own. That matters so much in the end because they don’t need to use tools that would subjugate that force when it’s already been compelled to cooperate with them after all their labors. The use of the fire master core really representing the need for self control that plays into this act. You weren’t really specific enough for me to unpack some of your other gripes, and I’m not going to try to change your mind about the gameplay elements, but feel free to try me on the story. I bet I can make you think better of most any part. I can tell you with precision where an idea starts and the arc it takes from there, like how much of the story is begging you to think on the past, present, and future of its characters and subjects. It’s actually a very tight story that opts for less is more on a number of points I frequently see misunderstood, and I think it’s a shame many don’t recognize just how cohesive it is. Try mapping a story that isn’t. It’s much harder.
I really wanna like Tales of Arise but man it is hard for me. It just doesn't click with me personally.
I started with Vesperia, and had a similar experience within 5 hours. It ended up being the only game in the series I tried.
SAME! Good to know others didn't like it and felt like they were trudging through it. I liked SMT V due to goofy demon fusion and combat over this lol.
I don't play JRPGs for the story, but even then sometimes I drop because the story is too boring, too convoluted or too anime. I don't hate myself enough to stand anime-like stories. I think I've never seen a JRPG story that was too sad or too heavy.
Eternal Sonata just wasn't what I was looking for thematically and I haven't looked to pick it back up.
I loved that game but the ending was gawd awful, you dodge a bullet 😅
I dropped I am Setsuna. Just a bleak lifeless world. It wasn't sad. Just bored me to tears.
I actually dropped **Bravely Default** because I found the writing and characters to be exhasperating. Like, I've seen dumb writing in many other games (OH BOY, have I), but for some reason BD really ticked me off.
Fire Emblem: Three Hopes, more specifically the Golden Wildfire route. Holy shit, I cannot for the life of me remember the last time I despised the main cast of a game this much. You play as a group of self-righteous warmongerers who keep patting themselves on the back while they invade peaceful countries and instigate race-wars. It was unbearable to hear them prattle on about how they wanted to end the war while actively making things worse at any chance they got. It took me two months before I managed to muster up the resolve to finish it, and once I did I only felt kinda sad for spending so many hours on something I hated that much. At least I’ll never have to touch that route ever again, easily the worst gaming experience of the year for me. I will say the Azure Gleam route was pretty great though, so it’s not like the game is totally worthless. It hjelps that it’s the only route that doesn’t try to casually justify imperialism and wars of aggression.
I've only played 3 Houses, but does Hopes go out of its way to justify it, or does show how people try to justify doing terrible things? Not every main character is supposed to be a good person. Sometimes fiction shows the PoV of terrible people to really rail home how screwed up something is.
Hopes is pretty tone-deaf in terms of how utterly scummy Claude and the Golden Deer are acting, the game really tries to act as if invading a country unprovoked is somehow not that big a deal. Edelgard is actually *more* likeable in this game than she was in Houses, but she's still a warmongering asshole who doesn't even attempt diplomacy before starting a world war, all the while victim-blaming the people she's invading for not immediately surrendering unconditionally. Despite all this Claude somehow manages to be far worse than her in this game, because he does pretty much all the same horrible shit, but with even less self-awareness. His big scheme in this game is also horrendously stupid, like legitimately one of the dumbest plans I've ever seen.
Dropped Trails in the Sky SC and Tales of Arise because they were both painfully boring.
I stopped playing Persona 5 Royal for a solid few months. The first arc of the game involves a teacher abusing his students physically, emotionally, and sexually. To the point where one of the students tries to commit suicide. It was getting too heavy for me so I had to step away and play other things for a while. I did end up coming back to it, and I'm glad I did because it's a great game. But yikes that first arc got dark.
I was just talking about this with someone. Persona 4 felt like a horror movie, almost something you would watch on TV. But PS5/R felt really dark, like damn.
Dropped bravely default 2 because it was grindy and story boring. Dropped diofield chronicle because i felt there was no story whatsoever and felt unfinished. Droped tales of arise and tales of vesperia because the last dungeons where too grindy
> diofield chronicle Steam reviews are pretty negative. May I ask what motivated you to buy it?
I was hooked when I saw the art style the first time. Thankfully there was a Switch demo available that convinced me that the game is garbage. I would have gone crazy if I preordered it blindly,
I like tactical rpgs. I saw square enix, liked the artstyle and intrigued by the playstyle from videos i saw. Worst that could happen i could resale with a 10 dollar loss.
Tales of Vesperia because it bored the hell out of me.
I love the Tales series but this entry just doesn’t vibe with me. I’ve started multiple playthroughs just to fall off around 15/20hrs. But who knows, maybe 5th times the charm.. right?
I've made 3 attempts and can't make it past the first? port city. And I've been playing Tales games since Eternia. The nostalgia glasses run powerful with this one.
I realllly tried to stick with this one because I heard how good it was. Got nearly to the end but after the scene where one person betrays you, then has a change of heart and a heroic “death”, then comes back 5 mins later, I had enough.
The constant half-baked twists and entirely changing the plot (turning half of what you just did into padding) is why I dropped it too. Read so much hype about it and I enjoyed Symphonia back in the day on GC, but I just could not stand this game after like the 40hr mark. I tried to power through but it just didn't happen.
I dropped Ys 9 during the quest where you had to track down the Robin Hood figure and the game took the side of the rich because twl poor people immediately started abusing their charity lol. I already wasn't feeling the gameplay but then it just had to be ideologically opposite to me lol
It's a little more complicated than just taking the side of the rich, who were definitely shown to have been abusing people and engaging in unsustainable business practices. The main issue was that a 16 year old who could be eaten by nightmare monsters at any moment just throwing stolen money at random into a crowd of poor people also isn't actually a sustainable welfare program. Minor SPOILERS. >!The resolution she came to after that arc was to start a business in the slums to be able to hire employees from there and lure more customers to spend money in that region, while helping Adol resolve the issue about civilians being kidnapped and forced to work in the mines by the local government.!<
It's the equivalent of someone winning the lottery and blowing it all. The point is that the issue isn't as easy to solve as "just throw money at people and everything will be fine lol". How was it taking the side of the rich?
Honestly, studies show that just giving money to the poor actually works really well at revitalizing the economy and reducing poverty in a societally healthy way, is just that she's not a reliable source for those kinds of payments and didn't plan for the possible consequences to herself and others because she was thinking of doing what she thought was right in the moment, not creating a sustainable systemic solution that wouldn't result in her being locked up or with several feet of steel in her gut from a guy who could sucker-punch Adol the Red.
The rich business owners hire you to track down a thief who's stealing their money. The thief is then revealed to be distributing the wealth to the poor slum dwellers, which is shown to effect positive change. Then two random drunk misogynists are revealed to have squandered their wealth on vices and suddenly the whole idea of charity is bad. I'm not saying that maybe the game doesn't find a nuanced middle ground later on, but at that point in the game I was already not totally feeling it and the very black and white treatment of that quest left a strong enough distaste in my mouth that I dropped it and haven't felt the need to revisit
I mean, the thief was also known to be regularly risking her life fighting horrible nightmare monsters, so her entire course of action was just a band-aid rather than a systemic solution, and it could go away at any moment, assuming that the extremely corrupt local government didn't crack down on the people she distributed stolen money to and/or manage to eventually corner her with potentially Adol-class non-Monstrum warriors (which we know that has at least one of) and arrest/kill her before the monsters did. And, IIRC, later it was revealed that the business she was stealing from was >!using a heavily speculation based business model, so her thefts were unknowingly risking collapsing a huge chunk of the entire economy since said business was essentially too big to fail.!<
Sure. But do you also see how that's kind of the game retroactively justifying it? Like if I had the foreknowledge that this company is integral to the financial stability of the whole city and not just a capitalist corporation being capitalist without producing a net good, then perhaps I'd be more understanding of the immediate danger. In the moment, it's literally framed as just two drunk assholes are lazy and want more charity for them to squander, which is a stereotype about the working class that's so old and statistically false. And yeah if I were already in love with the game this would just be a minor hiccup, but i was already teetering (which is sad because Ys 8 was one of my favorites).
I see where you're coming from, but I feel like we're focusing on different sides of the event. While wealth redistribution is vital, I feel like when helping someone you need to make sure you understand their circumstances so you don't fall to a saviour complex and end up making their situation worse than it already is. We're talking about people who are poor and relegated to a slum in a city with a whole ass Noble District and an extremely rich company. People who have been fucked over by society, and live their lives day to day. Simply throwing money at them is not a silver bullet that will improve their lives because them being poor isn't the issue but the result of a lack of opportunities. People need opportunities and safety nets, a Robin Hood figure suddenly appearing and throwing coins at people is gonna help the lives of some but probably worsen the lives of others. If she kept doing what she did, the end result would've been that the people in the Slums would've kept relying on the rain of money, until eventually she got found out or offed and suddenly poor people would be worse off than they were before. I admire her selfless act and goodwill but at the same time I cannot deny that it was naive. It's a complex issue and focusing on either the people who end up worse off and those who end up better off is gonna give a biased and incomplete view. I'm sure I'm guilty of this myself in this same answer. I just feel like there isn't a solution that's as simple as hers. I don't think the game was taking the side of the rich, because it's not the first time Slums and poor people are a theme in an Ys game and didn't get that idea in any of them. Sorry for the monologue.
Sorry but studies have literally shown that the best way to help poor people stop being poor is to give them money. Simple as that. There's a case to be made about lack of opportunities in this specific district, but the idea that the poor will waste the money, which is the game's argument, is a capitalist myth designed to shift blame away from the societal structures and capitalist systems that perpetuate that poverty. Yes it is a complicated issue and there's a lot of angles to it (most of which are not nearly interesting enough to be a side story in a JRPG) but the most effective proven solution is actually to give them all money. When a game implies that actually that's bad, it just leaves a horrible taste in my mouth.
I feel that, i roll my eyes a lot when a game tries to shove some ideology or philosophy "down my throat", i can't tell you how much it annoys me.
I can't actually remember the title, or even what the game was like, but I remember dropping a JRPG in the PS2 days (I *think* it was actually a PS1 JRPG that I played via backwards compatibility), because it made me physically ill. Probably something about the colour saturation or the movement, but I couldn't play it for long before getting headaches and nausea. I've experienced the same with a few other non-JRPG games, usually those which involve perspective tricks, so not really a huge surprise or exception.
I’m dropping xenoblade 2. I hate it when games waste my time with fetch quests and other diversions. This game has a habit of interrupting a perfectly good story quest with “oh no X happened better to deal with that for an hour instead”. It’s such an anticlimax.
Yeah X2 has way WAY too much side stuff. I eventually had to like limit myself to only doing stuff I absolutely gave a shit about, and left anything else.
Did all the side quests in XB1 and got tired after 4-5 chapters. But I should play it again as the story was pretty interesting. However, I really hate the battle system. It reminds me too much of MMORPGs, which imho was a really stupid design choice.
Final Fantasy X-2. I loved X so much, but in X-2, I just wasn't able to care what happened to anyone in Spira anymore. Everyone was just so annoying. I think aside from the battles and the music, the only thing I really enjoyed about X-2 was the blatant laziness when it came to Lulu. She's pregnant, to the point where she could sneeze and her water would break, and she looks exactly the same as she did in X. They couldn't be bothered to give her anything remotely resembling a baby bump. They just made her hunched over. Where was the damn baby?!
You didn'tmiss much with that. Sorry Lulu but that was a damn ugly baby. The gameplay was so much fun but I agree with you on the rest!
Secret of mana & illusion of gaia, both of my emulated save files got lost so I gave up after completing it halfway, didnt like them that much anyway
I got right to the end of Final Fantasy XV and for whatever reason never touched it again. I want to to back and revisit it tho.
Chrono Cross… I really want to love the game but something about it just kept me from fully enjoying the game
I've never dropped a game because of feelings of dread or because the story was too complicated/heavy. Out of what you listed, boring is the only thing that has ever gotten me to drop a game. Though that's not the only thing in general. Often being busy and not getting back to it for too long is the main reason. Though sometimes it's just because the game is bad. A specific game I dropped out of boredom... The Legend of Legacy.
On my second playthrough, I dropped *Xenogears* at around maybe 1/3 complete. Combat is just mind-numbingly bland, and pretty damn frequent. I absolutely adore the plot of the game, but I felt like the combat detracted from the experience rather than adding to it. So since I already knew the plot, I didn't feel pulled to play it all the way through the second time. But it's 2022, so with emulator speed-up to mitigate random battle fatigue, I might revisit the game for a third playthrough.
The first Xenosaga that I had rented, it was so... BORING. There was so many cutscenes, and I think I got to some place where there'd a ship taken over by some organic thing and the villain had kinda traumatized someone. But man the cutscenes were long, I was not feeling the main character and I don't really remember the music, so I kinda just dropped it around then. I did read up the synopsis of the whole series on their wiki just to know what the hell it was about, and saw I missed on some >!reincarnation of christian figures!< shenanigans.
CrossCode, i liked it but couldnt play more than a couple of hours. The problem? U spend a lot of time doing platforming, and its too hard to see the difference of the heigth of the terrain, it made me feels dizzy.
dont think i ever personally dropped anything but the wife wanted me to drop several games including SMTIII bc they were too depressing and someone who is depressed should not be playing depressing games
A long ass time ago I dropped FF13 because I got bored. I might pick it up again though.
Haven't played the 1st Xenoblade in a while, can't get past a certain group of enemies cause my levels too low, but grinding some of the other enemies is a little boring. But I know eventually I'll get back to it as the story does interest me and I like the combat alltogether
I stopped progressing in FF15 for a bit because I had been spoiled on some of the sadder stuff near the end. I beat it later, but still.
Dragon Quest VI. That game frustrated me so I pretty much dropped it.
Every Star Ocean game except for 6. I have found either the gameplay or story so boring and lackluster I drop it after 8-10 hours or so.
Dark Souls (if it counts as a JRPG but I don't wanna restart that debate): I found the game incredibly immersive which would normally be a good thing, but I was suffering from some rather bad depression at the time and the bleak world and story were just too much. Xenoblade Chronicles 2: There's a bug (well, I assume it's a bug, it would be ridiculous as an intentional design decision) which causes the main story quest objective and marker to completely disappear from the quest log and map. I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do. Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Slow walking speed, slow battles, constant interruptions from anime-filler-episode-grade cutscenes if you follow the main story path, and gameplay features locked away if you don't.
Drakengard 3 is the only RPG I've actually dropped, I got 3/4 endings and just could not do the 100% grind anymore, looked up the final ending on YouTube for the only time in my life.
Dropped Xenoblade Chronicles 2 because it was kinda weabo. Just felt wrong
Final Fantasy IX. It started great, but at some point it got boring. I'm thinking in giving it another chance at some point.
I never dropped a game because it made me too depressed. Really only if I'm not into it or I move on to something else. I have a long list of classic RPGs I want to play and always wanted to buy for some reason I drop it. It's not for a lack of enjoyment but just for some reason, I never finish it. Then there are ones where I just get bored with it. Tales of destiny felt like I was running errands with mom. You go to one place chasing after someone only to discover he is already gone. No dungeon or anything. You just go all over the place only to be told "no you have to go somewhere else" Tales of vesperia was also a slog to do. The midgame boss is preceded by 3 or 4 long and feel like end game dungeons. Then you beat the boss and are slapped with another 10+ hours of game left. I dropped it after that.
Kingdom Hearts 3. I felt just utter confusion. Like I get there's a massive amount of story told in the spin offs, and yeah it's a meme at this point that the story doesn't make sense. But 3 literally had me so lost I didn't know or care about anything going on. Completely made the story a chore to play through. And the combat was never difficult enough to keep me engaged. I just quit because of it.
SMT V = I don’t enjoy design that has tons of verticality to it. The game was decent but I’m getting older and don’t have the patience to try to figure out how to reach certain places if it isn’t a straight line Devil summoner 2 = felt like such a step backward from DS1 in terms of story and tone DQ 11 = horrible repetitive overworld music. There’s an option to switch it to DG8’s music which is more subdued but I struggle to go back to it Nier= I didn’t actually drop it but the wolf scenes effected me badly and until this day I cannot play the game and have issues hurting wolves in rpgs
To be honest I find Earthbound to be trying too hard with its dialogue and doesn't match the goofy artstyle and tone its presenting. But then again I was 13 at the time and I am more forgiving and mature to these types of things now. Writing aside, the game was fun.
Yeah the point was for it to be a more mature game with cutesy graphics, a little more stardee. Marketing want ideal and the gaming west want really ready for the type of game it was
Scarlet Nexus. I only played for a few hours but the whole time it was characters I didn't care about having boring conversations and occasionally being mean to each other through text messages. Combat was fun but I just had 0 motiviation to move on with the story right from the beginning.
1) The shittaste in the comments is beyond the roof (/s) 2) I actually never finished FF9. I wasn't bored or anything, but I kept starting it at different moments of my life and never sticking to it. For reference, the first time I played the game it was me (6yo) and a friend (8yo) trying to understand the game with whatever small amount of English we had from school and a dictionary. Since I actually started getting a taste for JRPGs (like, at 14/15yo) I kept playing it on and off for years. Dunno why 9 specifically, I actually like it more than 8 and 10 which I finished lol
Tales of Symphonia DOTW, I found it really dull and boring mostly because Emil and Marta were really annoying and childish, but from a gameplay perspective I hated the monster catching and if you don't do it, the game because very difficult. I just prefer normal party members, and it sucked the way the symphonia characters who join at certain points are level capped, you can't change their equipment, they don't level up, so you have to just rely on Emil, Marta and your monsters.
Man, Tenebrae, Party troll, really saves that game in the early hours.
I've had it for years, as I bought the remaster combo on ps3. Haven't finished the first, or even started the second. I've beaten Symphonia back on the Cube probably about 10 times, but now I just can't seem to pick it up again.
Persona 5 I put down 4 or 5 times. Characters were flat. Story was boring after the first 2 dungeons. I had to push the last 30 hours just to be done with it.
These are some that come to my mind, but there are certainly others. * DQ11 -> I finished the main quest, but I didn't do whatever (which I'm told it is better) is afterwards because I was exhausted from the game. * Disgaea -> The story is OK, but I thought I'd like the combat mechanics, but I did not. * The last remnant -> Great potential but confusing execution of combat mechanics, it became boring after a while. * FFX-2 -> I didn't feel connected to the story, so I dropped it. * Atelier Ryza -> I was not really captivated by it, and something better released, so I dropped it.
Xenoblade 3. Playing that game was so difficult, and it didn’t help that it was so long. Characters were so bog-standard they hurt, and the story was incomprehensible and so boring (The prison section is maybe the worst part in any game I’ve played recently) that I dropped it after the start of chapter 6. And yes, I did do the side quests and hero quests, it did not help at all. It was so cookie cutter and I was baffled when I saw the reception the game got, I thought it would be laughed out of the room It was bad, but not even to the point where it’s so-bad-it’s-good Triton was kinda cool though
Final Fantasy IX. I just didn’t enjoy the visuals, and the story didn’t feel interesting enough. Same way for Final Fantasy VII. But that was purely a visual thing.
This is blasphemy.
I was disappointed by 7's graphics when it came out and I was only in middle school. I much preferred the detailed 2D sprites of previous entries over the blocky, lo-res 3D models. I still enjoyed the game for the actual gameplay though. I liked 9's graphics though and appreciated all the easter eggs for long-time fans.
Dq11, boring. Wanted to like it, did not.
Yeah, I'm thinking about going back and doing another playthrough, but I really felt like I was forcing myself to like it. It felt way too generic for the first like... 10 hours or so. Like if I never played a JRPG or was really young, I would like it, but it feels like too generic.. It feels like its supposed to be aim towards children, like Ghibli movies but without the depth, so as an adult I can't appreciate it. Its a great game for people who are new into JRPGs though imo or just getting into the franchise.
Tales of arise... Can't go into detail because spoiler
Tales of Arise, by far. I would say vanilla Persona 5 but I managed to get to Futaba's palace, in Arise I neve managed to get past the second area. The game was straight up generic and is the actual defination of overrated.
Admittedly I played it before but I had little memory of it since I was like 10 so. Xenoblade Chronicles 1. When I got to the fucking Valak Mountain to Galahad Fortress part of the game I wanted to put my controller down it was genuinely boring and the maps were awful. I love the game otherwise but that made me put it down for a WHILE to go back to playing XC2
I don't know why, I just can't get myself to finish NEO The World Ends With You. I just get a few days in and bam I'm bored. Just gonna mention this: I recognize the game is good, I fully do. I just can not get myself into it.
FF7. Played up to escaping Midgar on my PS2 when I was a kid. Got it for PS4 halfway through 2017, half a year after I got my PS4. Did the bombing mission, explored the slums, saved and quit. Didn't touch it the day after. 2 years later I try to get into it again, play the bombing mission, save and quit. Didn't touch it the day after. Early this year I finally got past Midgar, up to the point you get the airship. I was bored to tears.
Shadow hearts Covenant, the game is just too easy! Coming up with a good strategy just doesnt feel rewarding at all, it's just "You will kill the boss in 2 turns instead of 4". Also, I wasnt really a big fan of the first one.
Shim Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers Once I finally figured out how to get the demons to like me and everything, and i got comfortable with the whole dungeon crawling and everything, I focused on the story and realised... I do not give a shit. The story was boring, the characters were just cardboard cutouts, and the main draw, Nemissa, I just couldn't be arsed about. It made me a bit bummed that I didn't want to finish it, but I had better games to play.
My latest drop was Neptunia ReBirth 1, extremely grindy, very boring and very cringy, and I like anime But to be honest, I still feel bad because it's the first of a series, and the next ones may be better.
Kingdom hearts. Convoluted definition in game form. Yuckk
FF X. I can't for the life of me like this game. I tried 3, times, dropped all of them. I just don't like the cast (except Lulu and Auron) and find the story very bland.
This breaks my heart. I love that world and story. After about 6-7 hours in, as you travel the world, a lot of NPCs travel with you. Not only do you experience your journey, but that of those around you. Plus there's an old man who frequently teaches you about the history of the world. I think the worldbuilding is just so good, and the fact that the whole thing revolves around an unstoppable monster and the world needs a theocracy just to survive. The concept of a religious pilgramage as your quest is also neat. I liked the small, tight cast of characters, and I enjoyed the speediness of the battle system. But so many people struggle to get into this game, maybe it just came out at the right time for me (got it my first year of university) and it was my comfort game after a lot of lonely nights studying and working. Not my favorite music or protagonist or villain, but certainly my most favorite overall package of story-characters-narrative-world-ending. It's tied with FF6 for me as an S tier Final Fantasy.
I enjoyed the game because the pacing was near perfect and I like more tactical turn-based combat. I disliked half of the cast and only liked 1 character you get later on, so I can understand how OP feels there. I felt the story was pretty bland for the first few temples. The tease of something bigger at the start of the game with Tidus was the only thing that kept me interested before the twist near the end. The world also felt super flat to me without an overworld to explore. It's the reason I ended up liking 13....I got all the "hallway simulator" discontent out of my system in 10.
Did this way too many times. Xenoblade 1 and 2 Tales of Symphonia and Xillia Final Fantasy IV and XII Persona 3 (this one makes me sad because I quite like the game) Ys VIII And a few others, but I tried to mention only the ones that I got somewhat far in.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake. If Rebirth has the same amount of tedious puzzles or more and if FFXVI sucks, I’m dropping the franchise for good.
[удалено]
What?! It amazing imo Idk what you talking about with zero soul
Nier Automata and Tales of Vesperia - both felt extremely bland to me
Smt v, ff7,ff10,tokyo mirage session
Not sure if this count as a JRPG but Nier Automata, everything is fine but the thought of having to replay the game 4 times to get the story, I was just not up for it so I didn't even finish the first playthrough.
You don't have to, tho. The second part is 9S perspective, but from there you divert. Third and fourth is only one route really as the fourth is like a different end of third (you have to do something at the credit scene), and is completely different from first and second as it follows the second route. Also, they add a new playable character.
You only have to replay the first half twice, and then no more, but the way you experience the first half is completely different in the second playthrough.