Gripe about What You're Playing 2: Bellyache-tric Boogaloo

[Zef]

I wish I could ban bosses where you just dodge patterns for a minute straight before getting one chance to attack and then dodging again for a minute straight. It’s very frustrating to have no influence over the pace of the fight.

That EXACT gripe with a particular boss sapped all my interest in continuing a recently beloved game:

Spoiler: The boss in question

Which is a shame because I was having a lot of fun with it until I hit this 40-minute battle, where I spent 35 minutes just dodging because the damn thing only dropped its shield for 2 or 3 seconds at a time.

 

[4-So]

I went back to Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. Finally got out of the prologue area. The game gets significantly better and opens up considerably once you make it to England. But it’s such a long, tiresome slog to get there first. There’s way too much padding in these last two AC games, I miss when you could beat them in a dozen or so hours, instead of having to dedicate 200+ to completing them. I could have beaten and platinum’d ACII: Brotherhood in the time it took to get to England.

Let me know how you feel about it after some time putzing around the countryside. I actually fell off the game after a few hours in England. There's only so much of "muddy and ugly" that I could handle before I got bored, and Eivor hasn't show anywhere near the charisma of Kassandra or even Bayek.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

Let me know how you feel about it after some time putzing around the countryside. I actually fell off the game after a few hours in England. There's only so much of "muddy and ugly" that I could handle before I got bored, and Eivor hasn't show anywhere near the charisma of Kassandra or even Bayek.

I'm 30 hours in now, and I've cleared two regions of England. So far, I'm actually digging the game a whole lot more. The opening is just really brutal and crushing with how boring it is, and how bleak and empty Norway is and how limited the game's mechanics are that early. The game really should have just started off with the England section, then gone back to Norway as flashbacks if they really felt that part of the story was important.

I'm not really finding England to be "muddy and ugly" so far. There's definitely ugly muddy medieval junk in the game for sure, but there's generally a pretty wide variety of stuff in the setting IMO. At the onset of the England phase of the game, you have basically two options of where to go. If you pick the option to the north, that region is definitely full of mud and yuck, because it's a particularly war-torn area that's also full of a bunch of poverty due to mismanagement/neglect from the King of Mercia. But even in that region, the forests are lush and green and full of vibrant color. Maybe having HDR enabled is helping me here, but the only thing I'm really finding ugly is some of the character models, which are generally ugly on purpose as a design choice (lotta people with busted medieval faces) but occasionally ugly on accident (there are points in cutscenes where characters faces just stop animating for a few lines of dialog with hilarious/awful results) but it is generally a very beautiful game. Especially just from an environmental perspective.

I'm coming to terms with the leveling system in the game. It's a step up from Odyssey if only because there's no enemy level rubberbanding, and the psudo-sphere grid gives players some level of freedom to cater to preferred playstyles, but I still wish they just went back to Origin's way of doing things which just worked.

The gear progression in this game is completely dogshit. It's not an impediment to me because of how I play these types of games where I compulsively complete every map objective and snag every treasure chest. But your ability to try out new weapons and keep them upgraded is very hampered if you're not doing that to the point where I can see it being hard for someone casually going through the story to keep up and feel good about it. One annoying thing is that there's no more Elder Scroll style stealing in the game. Which on the one hand, means no more getting in trouble because you pressed the wrong button. But there was one instance where I went and stole stuff, and a certain NPC I was now an enemy of theirs and I wish I'd known that before because making alliances with people is important in this game and now that person is dead and not an ally.

So far I'm liking this game a lot more than Odyssey. Big improvements on a lot of stuff, especially being able to assassinate anyone, even elites. (You just have to have a special ability unlocked, and then successfully complete a QTE timer) Eivor is not Cassandra or Bayek. But she's (I'm playing dual-gender, but the game hasn't forced me into male-Eivor yet) her own kind of fun so far. She's kind of a jackass, but in a fun way, where she's always getting piss drunk, or doing all kinds of drugs and waking up in strange places. I just completed a side quest where my solution to a pair of squabbling siblings was to just burn both of their houses down. If you want/need your characters to adhere to strict, modern, moral standards, Eivor might be a tough pill to swallow. (It's tough for me at times.) But if you can just embrace the role of being a Vikingr, there's a lot of fun to be had. I also highly suspect that they're going to take Eivor down a Vinland Saga/Thorfinn route because she's already questioning the wisdom of burning/looting everything, and being swayed by people who just wanna build cities/farm and do commerce.

Edit: Oh, one major improvement in the game is that you can teach horses how to swim, so that is probably the biggest quality-of-life improvement ever for this franchise.

 

[Ghost from Spelunker]

They made that game, it's called Battletoads & Double Dragon

And that Battletoads arcade game, which has even fewer vehicle stages!

 

[madhair60]

I wish I could ban bosses where you just dodge patterns for a minute straight before getting one chance to attack and then dodging again for a minute straight. It’s very frustrating to have no influence over the pace of the fight.

Yeah, 100% on board with this.

 

[frogbeastegg]

“Hmm, let’s pick up that Twilight Princess save which I accidentally abandoned 10 months ago. I think I was at the start of the second dungeon.”
[plays Goron dungeon]
”Hey - that was fine. I must have dropped the game right where it starts to suit me. Finally I can enjoy this, one of the last mainline Zeldas which I haven’t finished!”
[wolf Link again]
”Ah. Damn. Yep.”

Wolf Link: killing my attempts to play Twilight Princess since 2006.

 

[Issun]

I wish I could ban bosses where you just dodge patterns for a minute straight before getting one chance to attack and then dodging again for a minute straight. It’s very frustrating to have no influence over the pace of the fight.

This was my problem with Dark Souls III's endgame bosses. They were fast and aggressive, with rare attack windows, so it was clear the devs were trying to bring Bloodborne boss mechanics into DS. The thing is that, in Bloodborne, you have sidestepping, quick attack animations (even for big-ass swords) and the rally mechanic, so you can afford to try and squeeze an attack or two into extremely tight windows. DS 3 doesn't have that, so with the last few bosses you're stuck with this problem right here.

 

[MetManMas]

Played the free Switch trial of Overcooked 2 a bit. I can definitely see how this is a good co-op multiplayer game, but if you wanna do anything solo at all...ugh. I'm having trouble just wrapping my head around the multitasking necessary to make a basic plate of sushi in time.

I'm probably not sticking with this one long-term. I wouldn't mind playing with a few TTers who might be up for it while the trial's active, but I was unlikely to get a group of four together IRL even before the pandemic and I'm not really into depending on/hoping not to let down a group of randos when I wanna try to enjoy the game without scheduling around it.

 

[Kalir]

I really wanted to like Healer's Quest. And there's a lot to like about the gameplay end of things. Giving you a wide set of healing and buff abilities to carefully apply to your four auto-attacking teammates is an inspired concept, with lots of fights being puzzles for what spells to bring (such as stacking mana-boosting spells so your caster can activate the only fire damage you have to hurt the ent, or a fight that spikes your mana to the point of infinite while just having constant streams of pain). The upgrades are equally inspired, with spells being perfectly functional even at level 1, but with lots of utility to each spell, AND upgrades that link between different spell types (like the brief Invulnerable spell linking to your spike mana recovery Boon, letting it turn the team ever-so-briefly invincible when you use it).

But the writing is absolutely fucking insufferable.

The basic premise is that you're playing as a beleaguered healer in an adventuring party full of unappreciative damage-dealers of all flavors, which, sure, that could work. The overarching story of the game is to retrieve the N00b Sword, an artifact so OP that anyone who wielded it would be a threat to all (this is about as verbatim as I can be) before Don Chitor the munchkin hacker gets to it first. Not, uh... not exactly impressive, but I guess par for the course when it comes to "satire". And hey, I've suffered through cheesy writing for good gameplay before. Hell, I've suffered through cheesy writing for mediocre gameplay, I've played Sword of Mana to completion multiple times.

Y'all remember 8-bit Theatre? Specifically, you remember Black Mage, and how their two driving goals were "phenomenal arcane power to destroy those who slight me" and "shacking up with the thoroughly uninterested and revolted White Mage"?

Spoiler: Expanded details of the above

Your party consists of four characters: a knight, a barbarian, an archer, and a sorcerer. The sorcerer, Murky, refuses to join your team initially, on citation that it has no gorgeous (lit: big-boobs) women in it. You can play a female healer, of course, but the boob slider they offer during character customization does nothing except mock you, as does Murky when you point out that you are, in fact, a girl. He only joins after recruiting the archer, who is male, and the rest of the party claims that he isn't (right down to naming him Beauty, which persists for the rest of the game). Murky incessantly hits on Beauty until he up and says "y'know I'm a guy right" and suddenly becomes shocked and horrified.

It only goes downhill from there. Half the major NPCs in the game turn out to be just as much of sex pests as Murky, despite a noted lack of female NPCs. There are, to my recollection, only three of note with me having ended my playthrough just prior to the final area as far as I can tell: a dragon, a damsel in distress who beats the hell out of Murky, and a one-off encounter with a roving healer that meets Murky's criteria looking for a party, leading to a healer's duel which Murky attempts to sabotage to get her to join instead of you, and which she throws to avoid having to put up with him. Also there's no small amount of transphobic jokes past the Beauty/Murky recruitment.

At least I only paid four bucks!

 

[FelixSH]

A shame, the gameplay sounds really interesting.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

Wolf Link: killing my attempts to play Twilight Princess since 2006.

I was never fond of the Wolf-Link sections of that game, but IIRC they're only ever very short and largely inobtrusive.

 

[karzac]

I really like Control, but the game's got some real visual clarity problems. I'm constantly struggle to distinguish enemies and projectiles from the background and it makes the combat a lot harder than it should be.

 

[Becksworth]

“What could possibly be wrong with glowing red enemies in a glowing red room?”

I mean I like this game aesthetically, but come on. That seems like a serious dev oversight.

 

[4-So]

I really want to like Ys: Oath in Felghana but the inability to remap buttons is working a serious number. I assume there's some tomfoolery I could do with Steam settings perhaps but I'm too dumb to figure it out.

 

[Destil]

For some absurd reason I keep deleting my Dragon Quest VI save!? I don’t known what it is with that UI, but I keep going to load a save and delete it instead?

Think I lost like 4-5 hours this time, including lots of valuable “wander around and gain gold/levels while figuring out where to go.” At least I had a second save this time...

 

[Ludendorkk]

I really like Control, but the game's got some real visual clarity problems. I'm constantly struggle to distinguish enemies and projectiles from the background and it makes the combat a lot harder than it should be.

The enemy design is just extremely poor, there's like 5-6 enemies with almost the exact same silhouette despite having very different combat roles. It makes combat very frustrating often.

 

[karzac]

Yeah, I agree with that. It's too bad, because the rest of the game is brilliant.

 

[Adrenaline]

I thought the health bars made it easy to see where all the enemies were.

 

[karzac]

Only if you're close enough to see the health bar. And that helps with general direction, but not with precise aim, since most enemy silhouettes are much narrower that the health bar.

 

[zonetrope]

I think I reached a point where I would just chuck file cabinets and other pieces of scenery at enemies in literally every combat situation. I enjoyed that game, but the combat felt pretty unrefined compared with the story and atmosphere.

 

[ThricebornPhoenix]

I got to the very end of the tenth mission in Thief 2 only to be punished for attempted cleverness - rather than tromp over a marble floor with too much light for several seconds with five NPCs around, I took out two enemies from a distance by throwing a gas mine. Mines in Thief are tricky at best, but it seemed a reasonable solution.

Apparently, those enemies have a conversation that only triggers when you get very close, and one carries a key which you need to finish the stage - and only spawns during or immediately after their convo. Since I quicksaved after my sneaky plan succeeded, I had to replay the entire stage from the start.

I want my three hours back, taff it.

 

[Yimothy]

Absolutely not the game's fault, but I was playing Etrian Oddysey IV last night before bed and I got caught out in a fight with three F.O.E.s in which I eked out victory, made it to the next shortcut on the map with almost no hp/mp remaining, found a chest, and warped back to town to rest and save because I'd stayed up too late and was falling asleep.

Today I fire up the game and it looks like I didn't save. Argh! Actually, to an extent it is the game's fault, because the default option when you rest at the inn and it asks if you want to save is "No", which is never the option I want. But still mostly my own sleepiness to blame.

Edit: actually, the FOEs appear to still be dead. Maybe I turned off after it finished saving my game, but before it finished saving the map? In which case, well done EOIV for not corrupting my map file.

 

[Violentvixen]

Tried River City Girls on Gamepass and it's just gross. "Haha, this lady is muscular and large, let's talk about how no one will ever like her" "This guy is looking into the high school girl's locker room and possibly stalking/sexually assaulting someone, but he gives us quest details so it's okay!".

 

[Becksworth]

So I like Jedi: Fallen Order, but Cal has to be the most murderous Jedi I can think of. It’s like a Dark Souls-lite/Metroidvania isn’t the best vehicle for depicting Jedi.

I supposed the game being made by a AAA dev in love with its own graphics pipeline also impacts this. Can’t suspend disbelief when the lightsaber burns and dismemberments are so carefully detailed.

 

[Octopus Prime]

To be fair, every enemy respawns the very moment he reaches a healing spot, so... y’know...

It’s all fine.

 

[Felicia]

So I like Jedi: Fallen Order, but Cal has to be the most murderous Jedi I can think of. It’s like a Dark Souls-lite/Metroidvania isn’t the best vehicle for depicting Jedi.

I supposed the game being made by a AAA dev in love with its own graphics pipeline also impacts this. Can’t suspend disbelief when the lightsaber burns and dismemberments are so carefully detailed.

This is a problem with a lot of Star Wars games starring jedi, in my experience. Anakin killing a tribe of tusken was depicted as a terrible deed in the movies, but in The Old Republic, I've easilly beaten him in the sand-people-killing (not to mention people-in-general-killing) competition, while playing as a noble defender of the peace. And don't get me started on Kyle Katarn, the heroic jedi who will force-choke his enemies while laughing cheerfully.

I really wish there'd be an oldschool LucasArts-style adventure game starring a jedi. That would fit the concept perfectly.

 

[nataeryn]

the whole dark souls bit of Jedi: Fallen Order pretty much deflated my enjoyment of that game.

 

[madhair60]

Personally I absolutely adored Fallen Order, best Star Wars game I've ever played I think. The more games take inspiration from Dark Souls the more they're gonna grab me, but it's at the cost of some wider appeal.

 

[MetManMas]

This is a problem with a lot of Star Wars games starring jedi, in my experience. Anakin killing a tribe of tusken was depicted as a terrible deed in the movies, but in The Old Republic, I've easilly beaten him in the sand-people-killing (not to mention people-in-general-killing) competition, while playing as a noble defender of the peace. And don't get me started on Kyle Katarn, the heroic jedi who will force-choke his enemies while laughing cheerfully.

I really wish there'd be an oldschool LucasArts-style adventure game starring a jedi. That would fit the concept perfectly.

I'm sure it would never happen under Disney's watch, but I would love to see a Star Wars game that's a deconstruction of the usual gameplay loop.

I mean, anyone who would kill people and animals left and right would be firmly treading in Dark Side territory, so I would love to see a Jedi game with a bigger focus on trying not to chop up things with your lightsaber. Killing things in a video game is too easy, I want to see a game where you try not to resort to killing too much lest you become the next Darth Ersatz.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Personally I absolutely adored Fallen Order, best Star Wars game I've ever played I think. The more games take inspiration from Dark Souls the more they're gonna grab me, but it's at the cost of some wider appeal.

I'm coming at it from the opposite direction where the mass-appeal is taking the sting out of what I usually find annoying about SOuls games