Guilty Pleasure Gaming- Like a Confessional, but Nerdier

[Syless]

Ever play a game that you know is bad? Or one that you're embarrassed to tell other people about for whatever reasons? This is the place to get it off your chest!

I've got a bunch of entries, but to get started: Lately I've been playing a bunch of Dungeons & Dragons Online. It began in 2006, and it shows. It's old, and clunky, and poorly balanced. But it lets me make endless D&D 3.5e characters, so I'm addicted nonetheless, rarely getting past third level before alt-itis hits in.

 

[clarice]

Ah, probably the Disgaea series. I think they're good games. They capture the fun in fiddling with menus and optimizing your character. But they are bad as strategy games and the story, oh well.

Truth be told, i occasionally chuckle at a sardine joke.

Also, not exactly a game, but i'm a little ashamed of how many times i've played certain games. I might have played FFX close to ten times throughout the years. The guilty is strong whenever i feel like playing it again.

Edit: and ah, i think doing characters for D&D 3.5 is too complicated. D&D Online doesn't seem to appeal to me.

 

[Becksworth]

...I kind of want to buy Catherine: Full Body for the Switch. I liked the actual gameplay parts, and as awful as Vincent is at times, I find him and his relationship with Katherine relatable (well, maybe not the gaslighting her part at the end).

 

[Becksworth]

Also, VR Gaming. Just the whole bundle of overpriced gatekeeping hardware, crypto fascist developers, fucking Facebook being fucking Facebook, and shitty, shitty Ugandan Knuckles memes you have to deal with if you’re interested in VR.

 

[q 3]

I've been psyching myself up to make a thread about Pandemonium Adventure (freeware, PC/Mac) but here's a good place for it. Disclaimer: It is a porn game. In fact, a fetish porn game about people transforming into monster-girls. It includes nearly every fetish you could think of at one point or another. Those are undeniable facts. To be sure, less than like 5% of the game is actually NSFW but still it's a fact that the other 5% is there for onanistic purposes.

But. But on the other hand. It is also an incredible game. It is a competent JRPG with challenging but fair battles and a chapter system in the style of Dragon Quest IV - two chapters are complete and playable as more-or-less stand-alone stories, four others are planned and will be finished probably around 2030 at best. It has strong character writing and worldbuilding. It has interesting things to say about identity, memory, and redemption. It looks a heck of a lot like an early RPG Maker game but it's actually a custom engine which is weirdly impressive.

It is LGBTQ positive and politically conscious; one of the available chapters stars a transgender lesbian who starts a Marxist rebellion on a dystopian robot moon colony. She has a delightful romance with a snarky robot lady and a complicated partnership with an ex war criminal. I found her gender identity to be well told and incorporated into the story in a meaningful way without it being the story, if that makes sense.

Other trivia: The developers included their commercial game, String Tyrant, in the itch.to BLM bundle. Honestly I think the fetish aspects of their work aren't as good as the other parts and wish they would do something more mainstream but that's what they're into so more power to them. One of the kink scenes involves the main character turning into a pure energy being, traveling to the big bang, having sex with god (female), and giving birth to her own solar system, which is pretty metal.

 

[aturtledoesbite]

Most people would not give the Ar Tonelico series the time of day. And they would be wise to do that. Everything that you've heard about the game being innuendo after innuendo is 100% true.

...but, if you can get past that, you'll find an incredibly interesting pair of PS2 games. The plot itself is okay, but the world-building is, in my opinion, really cool. The gameplay itself is interesting and engaging (more so in the second game). The music, as you may have heard, is absolutely aces, and that's even including the songs that don't use the series's conlang. And, would you believe it or not... the games do pretty well with female agency and presenting them as compelling characters.

I started playing them because of the music, but there's more here to like than just that.

"turtle wasn't there a ps3 game in the series"
Yes; Ar Tonelico Qoga. Take the music, run screaming from the rest of it. It pretty much lacks all of the good points I stated above.

"what about the vita games"
what's a vita
But seriously, that would be Ciel Nosurge and Ar Nosurge; they're not directly connected to the other games, just part of the expanded universe, so to speak. They're alright. I haven't played Ciel Nosurge, but I understand it's more like a visual novel than a JRPG. Ar Nosurge is closer to a standard JRPG; it has a different feel than the Ar Tonelico games, but it does have neat things to say about player agency.

Anyway, yeah! I've been tossing around the idea of doing an LP for the first and second games for the past year-ish; maybe I'll actually do it at some point.