Starfield. I love some Bethesda games, and I don’t hate the game, it’s just not worth the price. It would be way more tolerable at $40. I got about 40-45 hours into it, and I don’t know if I’m ever going to complete it. I feel like I’ve seen everything the game offers and there doesn’t seem to be anything new coming along in terms of mechanics or story.
I got 40hours in and it was tolerable with the ship building but questing was uninspired loading screens suck and the progression tree was a massive turn off. You’d think they’d take a few cues from fallout nv
I’m not usually into base/ship building, but I’m glad it is there for those that are into it. I can’t imagine how poorly the game would have been received without it though. Skill tree is bullshit. Can’t modify weapons or armor because I’m not high enough level, even after 40 hours. I can’t modify a damn scope? WTH?
Yeah, glad I didn’t buy this. Thought it was hated on a bit too much though.
I enjoyed the combat more than most RPGs and some of the hand crafted environments were nice. Found the ship building quite fun too.
Same boat.
I don’t exactly hate the game, but the planet-hopping has segmented it too much and exploring a thousand empty terrains each with 3-4 generic caves/camps grows old quick. I don’t know if the main story would have picked up speed any time soon (I retrieved 3 or 4 of the thingies they collect), but I haven’t launched the game for a few weeks now.
Diablo IV. What a disappointment that turned out to be.
My wife and I were massive fans of D3, so buying D4 was a no-brainer. We liked the campaign, and we (begrudgingly) completed the first season. We didn’t finish the second season, and only played about 2 hours of the third season. Unless they do something drastic in future seasons I don’t see this becoming the hit for us that D3 was. They have time to make it better, but it will probably be shelved for a couple years for us.
That was my most recent regret of a buy.
For those of you who are enjoying Diablo 4, good on you. I sadly could not. There are too many things that I’ve been shown a better way on thanks to other arpgs that is rather spend time on than one which seems intent to have me spend significantly more time on for less. It felt awful to pick up entire inventories of loot and have absolutely none of it be worth while for my character. Literally hours of running from thing to thing to not hit a single upgrade.
Which other ones would you recommend? I’ve played a few (PoE, which wasn’t for me, Grim Dawn, which was more fun). I went back to D2 after getting bored with D4.
I’ve really enjoyed the depth and customization available in path of exile. It’s so strange to me that in diablo that equipment is either a good roll or completely useless and there’s no fixing it. In path of exile, I just need to find a decent base normal item (white rarity) and I can work it into something worthwhile.
If that’s not your cup of tea for whatever reason, I’ve heard good things about the last epoch, though I haven’t played myself.
As for path of exile… A lot of people assume you need as a beginner to follow some kind of guide or a step by step thing. I’ve found that as long as you don’t neglect defense in that massive skill tree, you’ll do just fine while doing your own thing. Doing that and keeping your various resistances up are the keys to success.
Have you checked out Last Epoch yet? Fantastic ARPG even for being in Early Access (which I don’t usually invest into), though the 1.0 release is at the end of this month.
I can’t recommend it enough!
You weren’t stoked about the gloves that give you +2% critical strike damage against pirates on alternating Tuesdays with skills whose names contain three or more vowels either, huh?
Same. A friend and I were excited to play together like we did in D3, but we barely managed to finish the campaign. It’s on the shelf for now unless/until we hear the team turned things around.
Interesting.
My partner and I played a lot of Diablo 3 and for the winter break, I bit the bullet and bought D4, feeling a bit uneasy as many people online were disappointed.
The obligation to be always online, coupled with the slow servers did not help to ease the uneasy feeling, but after playing for a while, I must say that besides for that online crap, the game feels much more like a rpg than D3.
The world is much more open, and you don’t have to just follow the main quest as there are many side quests spread around.
I get that many people play for the online seasons and to perfect their setup, and I can’t speak for this experience, but if you approach the game as a casual loot action rpg with a big world to dicover, to me it is a much better game than D3.
The mechanics and bosses are an upgrade from 3, but the scaling ruins everything that made the game an RPG. You don’t get more powerful when you level up because everything around you gets stronger.
I mean did nobody with any power at that company realize that it’s not satisfying for your spells to do less damage, or that your armor getting less effective every time you leveled up was a bad thing?
/rant
Baldurs Gate 3
There’s nothing wrong with the game, I just don’t find it fun to play. Somehow got 48 hours out of it, but never made it to the end of act one. The gameplay just wasn’t something I terribly enjoyed.
I don’t necessarily regret the purchase as supporting smaller, decent studios is a good plan, but it’s still a game I’m not going to get a lot of use out of
See. I need this kind of person to do game reviews. Not gushing. Not hating. Not analyzing from industry knowledge. Like a guy who says the game is “meh” and spends 15 minutes giving us the concise reasons that the game was not to his tastes.
BG3 fanboys will tell you all about its 96% positive rating, as if disliking the game makes you wrong. It has an audience and I’m sure they love it,but there’s plenty of people who didn’t like it and many more who skipped it entirely.
I’m sure there are as many idiotic fanboys of BG3 as there are of anything else, but a more reasonable perspective is “this is a very good example of a CRPG, so if you’ve never tried one, it makes a good place to start to see if you’d like the genre.” Reviews are never going to be able to predict whether you, personally, will enjoy the thing. They can only try to arm you with information to make your own decision.
Right there with you. I had like 25 hours in the game and realized I just spent most of that time save scumming a single battle over and over. I tried another 15 hours and it felt like that’s all I was doing. I felt I was under leveled, I rerolled a new character on the easiest difficulty but was still finding myself doing the same shit and battles weren’t getting easier.
I’m sure there’s a great game there, but I don’t have the time for it.
I never played any of those, or tabletop RPGs and it took me a long time to adjust to it.
I had to get out of the mindset of controlling a character, and more in the mindset of you’re on the phone and telling them roughly what to do.
Things are sometimes supposed to fail, and the point is to rescue a shit situation by the skin of your teeth, several deaths and in desperate need of a long rest. You can get the results you want with some save scumming (and in fairness you can save mid-cutscene to make that work), it’s just going to be mechanically more annoying than doing what they intend.
It’s super annoying that whoever you enter a conversation with is doing all the actions. I’d have preferred a team effort in those things. Like maybe Lizzy stepping in for an intimidation check, or Gale for some intellect. You don’t know what you need beforehand so if you’re trying to get specific results, you’ll be seeing the cutscene a lot.
Diablo 4.
I played like 10 hours, then realized it was really fucking boring. It felt soulless. Uninteresting.
The infinitely scaling enemies was the dumbest fucking shit Ive encountered in a LONG ass time.
Im lv1 and a shipwrecked mugger can kill me
time warp 30 hours of gameplay
Im lv50, Im dripping in rare loot, I just kicked a greater demons balls through the roof of his mouth oh and a shipwrecked mugger can still kill me.
The infinitely scaling enemies was the dumbest fucking shit Ive encountered in a LONG ass time.
Infinitely scaling enemies is sort of the point of the genre. Wherever you go at max level you’ll still find enemies that can drop shit you might want (though of course eventually you don’t want much loot that drops from most enemies). Once you have good gear and a good build a single minor mob shouldn’t be able to take you out unless you’re AFK. Unless you’re in like, a high NM level dungeon.
You’re never supposed to out-level stuff, basically, except certain boss fights. It’s just a constant dopamine drip. Pointless, sure, but so is plenty of stuff. Makes a great podcast companion, IMO.
The genre is about accumulating levels and gear to go out and find bigger challenges to get more level and gear, rinse and repeat. Not having 100% of the enemies you encounter match your exact level at all times wasn’t an issue, but it was nonetheless solved by having difficulty settings.
Having all of the enemies scale automatically makes your spells do less to enemies and it makes your armor less effective every time you level up.
I actually dozed off at my computer playing D4, something about the mindlessness of it just lulls me to sleep.
Elden Ring.
Waited all year until it was on sale as I thought it might not be my cup of tea, tried not to let my prejudice get the better of me but felt it was such a drag I had to put it down.
It was recommended to me as I like Zelda but it couldn’t be further from the things I like about it: innovation, fluid gameplay, freedom, puzzles, multiple ways to tackle enemies.
I don’t think it’s the difficulty as I play lots of roguelike and bullet hell games. My main gripe is the clunkiness of the combat to the point it’s unfair. Like you don’t really stand a chance through reactions alone, you have to learn the patterns and hitboxes of enemies so that you know in advance when to react.
Also I kept hearing how good the graphics are but I think they’re kinda average although the actual art style is quite nice.
Any suggestions on how I might enjoy it would be much appreciated as I haven’t got very far.
Whoever thought you might like Elden Ring because you like Zelda is not a true friend. There’s really not much similar with the gameplay loop.
You’re right that the gameplay is more about learning and recognizing patterns of enemies and adjusting to them so if that doesn’t appeal to you you’re probably not going to like it. With that being said though, your first soulslike is always the hardest and if you stick with it they are very rewarding to play once you know what to expect.
It sounds like you probably had the wrong expectations of what the game was going in. These games can be frustrating under the best of circumstances, but are very much “tough but fair.”
If you choose to give it another shot, look up a build. The weapon scaling system is a little obtuse and if you’re pumping levels ups into str and using a dex weapon you’ll do no damage. Whatever you do, put a lot of points into Vigor. Get it to 40 at least after you have the stats to equip your weapon to increase your health because defense is mostly cosmetic in these games. Other than that, you get i-frames on your roll and the game rewards aggressive play so learn to roll into attacks and not away if you’re not using a shield.
After I died for the 327th time within the first few hours of playing, I ditched it. Haven’t been back since. The gameplay is really cumbersome, blocking and dodging are hit or miss, and I’ve been jumping and rolling around all day like some unmedicated ADHD kid on speed trying to get one hit in that causes minimal damage, while every enemy counterattack goes near critical.
I’m not against a step learning curve or anything, but Elden Ring was a major frustration.
I mean this in a constructive way: you’re literally playing it wrong. Elden Ring is a Souls game, which (in terms of gameplay) is the complete opposite of a hack & slash button masher. There’s almost no animation cancelling, so once you press a button, you’re committed to the outcome and have to wait for it to finish. So if you miss a heavy swing with a giant 25 kg greataxe, you’ll be wide open for the enemies to smash you. The game requires self-control to make every input matter.
Once you acclimate though, I think the combat feels very good. It’s responsive (once you accept the fact that you can’t cancel actions), flexible, and the hitboxes are way more accurate than most games.
But don’t think you have to master it all at once. The enemies are tough, but you don’t have to fight fair. Sneak and backstab if you can, soften them up with arrows or ranged spells, debuff them with throwables, summon some spirit ash helpers, use the environment to land attacks from the high ground, stack up poison and bleed effects, use a shield to block-counter, use your weapon abilities to help break enemy poise, etc etc. You can create entire builds around any of these but of course there’s power in combinations.
I think it sounds to me like it just isn’t your thing. What you’re describing as a frustration is what I love about Elden Ring, you have to figure out every enemy and learn their patterns in order to succeed so every enemy is like it’s own little puzzle to solve. There’s no secret to avoid that part of the game besides maybe building INT and just avoiding fights which does not sound fun tbh
This. I think people who enjoy it see every enemy as a puzzle. Even developing your character is a bit of a puzzle, figuring out what stats suit the weapons you like and the play style you’re aiming for. Conversely, Zelda is incredibly simple and boring to me. Most of the fights are boop boss on the head 3 times, or throw their own bombs back at them 3 times. The only Zelda I enjoyed was the first one.
I don’t find Elden Ring puzzling, but maybe I haven’t played enough. From what I’ve seen so far it’s more trial and error and than figuring stuff out, which I find boring.
Skill trees in general I think are bit of a cop out in most action games, let alone having to decipher them. I’ll reach for 4X games like Stellaris or Civ if I want to sit and think about how stats affect outcomes.
Yeah boss battles are usually pretty easy in Zelda, as you say, 3 hits and done most of the time. They’re traditionally about getting the player to master the technique or item you’ve just unlocked. Have you tried running straight to Ganon if BotW or tackling The Depths in TotK though? I don’t think either of those tasks could be considered simple.
Surprised you only like the first one, the games are constantly innovating in terms of gameplay and design, but the first is a pretty standard affair. A lot of the time the simplicity is what enables the fun, fluid gameplay as with most games Nintendo put out.
If I want a challenge I’ll play online shooters or pretty much any roguelike where when I die I don’t come away feeling it was unfair. Tbh I think I just don’t enjoy modern action RPGs in general rather than it being a specific Elden Ring criticism. I find they try to cater to lots of mechanics that other games implement better but fully aware that’s an unpopular opinion.
clunkiness of the combat to the point it’s unfair. Like you don’t really stand a chance through reactions alone, you have to learn the patterns and hitboxes of enemies so that you know in advance when to react.
Nice to see it hasn’t changed since Dark Souls. Thought I might have been missing out.
Main point in enjoying soulslikes is the approach. Modern action RPGs are very fast paced, very direct in their approach “hit A - enemy dies - get dopamine”.
To make it work, slow down. Treat every enemy as a real threat, not filler between bosses. Pretending they are all real players and not bots might help. Keep your distance, bait out several attacks, see how they behave, carefully close in and make your move. Don’t get greedy on the offence and only attack when the enemy opens and then break the distance again.
Also as others mentioned, game makes you commit to any actions you take. When you attack the enemy, take responsibility of every button press. If you start mashing, the game punishes you fast and hard.
I don’t have the best reaction speeds, but I was able to steamroll most of the bosses under 10 tries, so the game is definitely not the “die until you memorize the moveset” type. If you play patiently and carefully build up your character it is definitely possible to tackle most threats on first sight.
Edit: Also, if you’re on PC I don’t mind giving you a hand sometime and playing together a little
Yeah think you’re right, I like fast-paced games where I can enter flow state quicker and I never was one for grinding up a skill tree in order to progress unless the grinding itself is fun/fluid.
I prefer actively attacking enemies with a bit of running away and dodging where required as opposed to patiently dodging waiting for an opening to attack.
Thanks for the offer, I would have taken you up on that, unfortunately I have it on Xbox, not PC.
I’m a diehard FromSotware fan but even I was a little let down by it. I got a lot more enjoyment from co-op and PvP so I ended up finishing the actual game after 300+ hours lmao
I’ve beat all the other Souls games so dying hundreds of times didn’t bother me… But for some reason I didn’t feel compelled at all to actually progress in the game
Like you don’t really stand a chance through reactions alone, you have to learn the patterns and hitboxes of enemies so that you know in advance when to react.
Yep, Elden Ring (and all soulslike games) are basically just guitar hero with a shitty interface. And way more grinding.
It’s not actually challenging just memorization. Elden Ring is basically like speedrunners being able to play Mario with their eyes closed.
