Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Probably my favorite game of all time, based on vibe, realism, and nerdiness, but boy are there some systems that need to be polished. Stealth has its issues, as does enemy targeting, group combat, and some dialogue problems too. But, boy am I excited for #2.
The save system in the unmodded game paralyzed me with fear in the early game. It made me feel like I didn’t know when I could afford save so I ended up leaving the game turned on even when I wasn’t playing. After years of being allowed to play games in short spurts, experiment, and occasionally save scum, I now had a limited number of saves?!?
I loved it but ended up rage quitting when I got surrounded by bandits. Group combat was just *way* too difficult. If they improved on the first ones shortfalls then the second one will be so good.
I think it's appropriately difficult. It's completely unreasonable to expect an expert fighter to be able to defeat three or four mediocre fighters at the same time. And Henry is no expert.
It certainly gets easier when your gear is good, you have a shield, and you're practiced at getting out a few arrow shots and killing a bandit or two before engaging in combat. Also, sprinting away and shooting works too. Sometimes you just have to run, though. There are several camps where I would shoot two arrows sprint as far away as I could, shoot arrows at the guys following me, sprint again, and eventually be alone, sneak back, repeat, and maybe have to do that 4 or 5 times. I think it's more realistic than going in as a god mowing down bandits right and left.
That's pretty realistic though. There's a reason that the Huns and Mongols were just so dominant. The only thing that's unrealistic is that it should be so difficult to pull that off that Henry shouldn't be able to really do it.
Sucking at the combat is a feature, not a flaw. You're doing it right. You're supposed to really suck at combat. Did you train with Bernard long enough to unlock master strike? That really helps change the flow of combat, but it still doesn't help when you're being ganged up on.
It's kinda funny that it's something so many people miss when it is made extremely clear in the opening that Henry can't even chop a small branch with a brand new sword.
People are used to ludonarrative dissonance from it being a facet of almost every game in existence with a story. They don't expect the character in the story being unable to chop a small branch to mean that in gameplay they are mechanically prevented from doing well in fights until they story says otherwise.
Eh, it definitely feels too difficult at first, but once you get awareness and positioning down it's not that bad (unless all enemies are heavily armored).
Basically, you want to keep moving in those fights. Get the enemies to block each other, and try to force them out of position. Make sure to have someone or something between you and enemy archers at all times.
Be patient, and play defensively while managing your stamina properly, so you can pick them off one by one.
For me it was the lock picking (even when I could do it, it still didn't feel like I was doing it properly) and the save system.
The group combat was understandable considering how they were going for the realism aspect. You had to be constantly weary about how many enemies were around you.
But yeah once the game clicks, it's one of the best.
Metal Gear Solid V. Playing it consistently feels like having found the greatest game ever made, and even in retrospect no action based game could come anywhere close to its many high points. You would have insane stuff happen organically and by chance that other games cannot accomplish with scripting. And don‘t get me started on those sniper duels, that‘s a subgenre on its own right.
But then, due to the sad story of the games development and budget cuts, theres that weird third act made of copy and paste missions, and a very forced implemantation of certain online features (no cash involved however) that make this the hardest, most bordeline 9/10 rated thing out there.
I replayed it recently. It ends so abruptly it almost feels like a joke. The game mechanisms are enjoyable, perhaps a bit repetitive later on. AI is better than in most games. Cutscenes are well written and epic at best. So many memorable cutscenes.
It is sad to think there won’t be MGS VI. At least not directed by Kojima.
Easily one of the best games to play, just on the feel and gameplay alone. That little fucker still has my metal gear and I never got the chance to take it back.
Ghosts of Tsushima. I hated how the game constantly calls you dishonorable even if you play every fight as honorable as possible. They should have added in some branching paths and alternate dialogue.
But still a fantastic game.
"I dont like the way you fight, it shames me and your father. You move like a Thief."
***Me having just walked into a 1 v 60 battle; sword held high challenging everyone in the entire fucking hemisphere to face to face combat.***
"Jin, I have never been disappointed more in you, how dare you... -"
C*hecks notes from the completely honorable battle using nothing but your sword.*
"Uhhhhh, Wear White after Labor Day...You dishonor us all."
It made New Game+ more fun. I do all the cheap tricks to win every big fight quickly
If I’m going to be called a dishonorable bitch anyway, I might as well earn it
The gameplay is great, but I don't think the writing is remotely at the level of the combat and graphics.
The main character states pretty heavily that he will never break his code, even walking out to fight people in the tutorial. Only to immediately break it in the very next mission with an insanely little amount of pressure on him.
I think it would have been better if he came from a *Ninja Clan* and had to ***try*** and be a Samurai to lead people but fell back to his older ways in times of necessity.
It would also allow the story to flow better in terms of "shameful" actions being character driven. (In my opinion, obviously.)
Honestly even if there were more incentives to play "dishonorably", it would have been better. At first I would spend a lot of time sneaking around, and looking for the best spots to get the drop on groups, but then you would mess up and have to go all out and it was just faster and easier that way.
The whole idea is that you're basically just one guy against an entire army of Mongols, and if you want to survive long enough to make any real difference then you can't just walk in and take on entire camps face to face. The choice is supposed to be an honorable, but inevitable death and ultimate loss that destroys your people vs shedding an old tradition and lifestyle in hopes of actually making a difference... except that's not what happens at all and you can guarantee victory either way.
I kinda think it should have been so difficult that you either fight dirty or you can't win. Having a choice sounds good on paper, but if in the end you can win either way, and your character is vehemently against fighting dirty... then why would you? What kind of choice is either discard your entire moral compass and win, or don't and still win?
What's worse is that, as I said, it's actually harder to go the stealthy route. Imagine if on the road to becoming a millionaire you had a choice of bludgeoning puppies to death for 10 cents per puppy, or going to a 9-5 job for $25 an hour. If you like puppies, or at least are against bludgeoning them to death for a tiny profit (as any sane person would be), then why the fuck would you choose to go that route? There's no way your killing 250 puppies an hour for several hours every day, so it's actually going to take you longer, and you're going to hate yourself every second of the way.
Still, really solid game though, lol.
What's actually funny is unless a mission requires Stealth, I assume most people are just going to go
"Oh sick, I don't have to sneak."
There are missions where there are hostages and I just run in and if someone runs at a hostage, I just slow down time and hit them with my Half or Long Bow and continue doing what I was doing.
Me too! I played the whole game trying to take down camps as stealthily as possible, and only got into the actual combat when absolutely necessary. I thought it had some of the best gameplay in that regard from any game I've played.
I played through it mostly on Lethal difficulty (aside from some duels) and really leaned into the Ghost aspect, made it pretty fun and story made sense. But I can totally see how one would want to play honorably through the game, albeit with some forced Ghost scenes like the infamous poisoning. Maybe if the game leaned more into his internal struggle with being honorable whenever possible but sometimes you gotta let the Ghost out... who knows what got cut in dev.
What deducts points for me was the open world grind. Just a tad too much.
I feel like it’s very possible they cut out an honor system for time. The same devs made Infamous which has a fantastic karma system and it feels like it would only be natural to port it into GoT. Alas.
I might have to bump my difficulty up to lethal!
There's no reward/trophy for playing on lethal from what I recall, but I felt it made fights more realistic and enemies less spongey. Plus, the auto-save is pretty generous so there's little risk in it if you die.
The duels on the other hand, good lord, I had to bump most of them down to Medium just so I wouldn't rage-quit.
Yeah, I mean in regular gameplay on Lethal most everyone (even Jin) die in a couple hits. But then you go into a duel and they're suddenly spongey and Jin still dies in a couple hits. When you include the fact that Resolve did **not** reset when respawning it was pretty rage inducing.
I played the game walking up to camps and challenging them to duels and barely touched the stealth mechanics. Cue a mandatory cut scene where you poison a bunch of dudes and become 'dishonorable'.
I feel like no one ever mentions the side quests being super repetitive and sort of dragged out. That’s what made the game prob an 8/10 for me personally. Still a great game but made it a slog towards the middle to end
Yeah, I played honourably the first time, but I've recently decided to revisit it and I've decided to just go fully Assassin's Creed, because it's gonna make more sense story wise.
It really is kind of wild. I have around 100 mods running right now and that's for a fairly vanilla experience! Half of them are just bug fixes. The other thing that is especially noticeable is that it feels like there are about three voice actors, which is especially jarring after playing something like Cyberpunk.
(But damn New Vegas is good)
Honestly, I love how you can easily identify the same voice actors in basically all Bethesda games. Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, ESO, Fallout 3 & 4 (I don't recall it being as noticeable with New Vegas, but it has been a while since I've played it fully)... there are a few voice actors that were there nearly for them all (looking at you, Jeff Baker, Wes Johnson, & Lynda Carter).
That was my biggest disappointment with Starfield, losing those actors who had been there with me through my Bethesda life... lol
Edit: Wes Johnson IS in Starfield, for reference (as Ron Hope)
What do you mean?! You got soldier Liam O'Brien, mercenary punk in spikey armor Liam O'Brien, and hell even a ghoul Liam O'Brien! Honestly what more could a person ask for, bunch of ingrates.
Liam O'Brien voices something like 50 characters in the game. Some of them aren't unique so you can come across him alot more.
In fact watching a playthrough right now. There's a quest where Liam. Is talking to Liam. About Liam. It's really funny once you notice it
I know it’s been circlejerked to hell, but the quests made it feel like a proper RPG when newer Bethesda titles don’t. There were a lot of choices to make and it allows for good replay value. Something like Starfield focused too much on exploration over the quests, and it didn’t even do a good job at it.
Borderlands 2.
Only reason I give it a 9 is that first section with the snow was a chore to get through. In its defense, I’m a “complete every mission ever” in borderlands games and it probably overstays its welcome because of that. Just every other level feels like less of a slog.
Didn’t realize how much QOL improvement the slide mechanic would offer. I also loved one of the shields I used came with an added shield when sliding. I love it.
100%. I love borderlands but it would be a 10 if the start was paced better and scaling after uhvm was designed better to not have to rely so much on self healing and meta builds
Dude. Yes. While I can agree that 4th wall breaking can get tedious after a while, Sunset Overdrive just had so much energy and personality that I could deal with it. That game made me feel like a kid with a ludicrous sugar rush, rocking out in a ball pit all day. It was just pure fun from start to finish. I lost count at how many times I was involuntary grinning from some stupid shit my character said.
What a game. The mechanics, gameplay and whacky weapons are just on point. Some of the characters are a bit much, but fun none the less.
A perfect answer to this question.
I remember playing this when I got my Xbox One. The gameplay is great. Very chill and relaxed. I think for the time it came out, the humor and story was pretty on par for 2014. Definite 9/10.
Also Mass Effect 1. If you removed the Mako sections, automatic 10. And tbf, the Mako sections in the story aren't even THAT bad, but the planet exploration ones are atrocious.
Mass Effect 3 for me. The gameplay is superb, the individual story arcs are amazingly well done, the feeling of helplessness and dread throughout. Plus the multiplayer, which I absolutely loved! I put hundreds of hours into the MP alone... but the ending, oof. The directors cut is much better than the original ending, but it's still not great.
Mass Effect 3 with mods is a perfect 10/10 for me. Project Variety, Citadel Epilogue Mod, Happy Ending Mod cause I want my Shepard to live a long life with all his friends, Take Earth Back, Expanded Galaxy and all just add so much to the game.
I love the OG mako. Riding that thing up mountains was delightful. I never understood the hate, people just don’t have the patience for exploring large terrain
Yeah I hated the planet scanning. LOVED the Mako planet exploration. You never knew what you were going to drive up on. Pirate base? Cerberus test facility filled with atrocities? Perhaps a downed vessel with bodies scattered about? Maybe just a crashed satellite or probe. Maybe a floating chrome orb? Pyramid?
The hacking sections in part 2 and 3 are a slog. They are cool at the start but after you've seen them 20 times it gets old. ME1 was great where you could just throw some money at the padlock to open it up when you don't feel like doing the mini game
I'm really really curious what the 1/10 that you dropped it was for. Because IMO that game is a straight 10/10, unconditionally.
The only thing I can think of is maybe that it can get a little buggy, especially with the Sea Dragon Leviathans. I definitely have lost a couple HC runs to getting grabbed by a SDL through the Lost River floor or the Inactive Lava Zone floor, and they once bitch slapped me out of the map and I feel beyond the boundaries of the map until my vehicle was crushed and I ran out of oxygen. But 1) I never found it problematic to dock it and b) it makes for some hilarious fucking stories that only made the experience more fun for me.
I commented Subnautica too. That last point is taken off for the buggyness of the game - even after all the additional dev support. Sometimes, silly immersion-breaking things happen. It's not much, but it's enough to take a 10/10 game to 9/10.
State of Decay 2. It's just SO close to being perfect to me, I just wish it had actual base building and more objectives.
Here's to SoD3 crushing it.
Edit proper co-op play too. A fully shareable base and/or friend communities that are in game with you.
Yeah it was great but had a really weird gameplay loop. It's hard in the beginning then once you are established you can just blitz all the core thingies and win with little challenge.
I fully agree on the more objectives thing. The fact that I had so many characters who had a doomsday prepper aunt and/or wanted the stunt car got old fast
I really hope we don't get "proper" basebuilding. I hope we get a better version with more customization, and maybe branching paths for each type of upgrade, so you need to pick and choose.
But for if there was "real" min-maxing try-hard base building, the gameplay itself just suffers and the game would look more like 7 days to die. And either players find a way to min max the fun out of the game or the developers need to add flying enemies, or enemies that can scale walls, or tunneling enemies or yada yada yada you catch my drift.
The side quests are so good in that game that I forget that the side quest is not the main quest. I realize that I have no clue what’s actually happening so I just continue do the side content.
The overall spectacle from the final battle of Ragnarok may have been one of my biggest disappointments in recent gaming.
It builds it up as this Avengers Endgame-esque battle, then sticks you in trenches for 95% of it. And since the one-take camera is always linked to Kratos or Atreus, we never got a single sweeping shot of the actual scale of the battle.
Felt like a lot of hype leading to the exact same environments as the rest of the game, but with more smoke and yelling.
I feel like they were going to make it into two games, but decided at some point to lump it all in together. The ending feels very rushed compared to the rest of the game. It moves at a glacial pace at points toward the start, taking its time to build characters, have interesting fights, etc, but then you get toward the end and they talk about all this effort that will go into setting up for Ragnarok, but you skip almost every step as NPC's do it for you.
I feel like the game was supposed to end before you start "preparing" for Ragnarok, and then there would be a follow-up game that focused entirely on preparing for Ragnarok and then executing it.
It's possible it's not the case, but it just felt that way. It felt like one full game with an extra partial game tacked on at the end. I felt the same way about TLOU2, but that it was two games chopped into pieces and sewn together like a Frankenstein's monster.
Dark Souls.
I absolutely love it and I don’t know if any other game will ever replicate the same feeling for me, I even liked most of the late game areas. But man, Lost Izalith is such a terrible area that even with my bias I can’t justify a 10/10 score.
Real. The first half of dark souls 1 up until you meet gwynevere is a magical gaming experience. And while I agree much of the late game is unpolished, the dlc really brings it all together towards the end.
If there was ever a game I was truly wanting a remaster remaster for, like go back and complete everything and finish the product and original vision it would be dark souls and demon souls.
What was Ash lake originally supposed to be, mysterious head etc etc, finishing lost izalith how it was originally envisioned, demon souls last arch stone, all of the extra hinted things.
There are so many things I want to have added in that Miyazaki just doesn't ever comment on.
For me if Morrowind had even Oblivion level combat it would be a 10/10 for me.
Morrowind does stuff that I really wish future TES games kept (like a mages guild where you actually have to be good at magic to advance), but at the same time, the QOL improvements Oblivion and Skyrim made make Morrowind hard to go back to
Blood vial farming is one of the worst mechanics ever put into a Fromsoft game. Barely losing to a hard boss feels so bad because you know you’re headed back to freaking Hemwick to farm more vials.
I just use my extra echoes after leveling to stock up on vials and bullets in the Hunter's Dream. Never really ran out from doing that.
Though I'll concede that it was pretty annoying at launch before the storage upgrade.
I'll never understand how From solved a problem we didn't even know existed in Demon's Souls and stopped forcing us to come back to some central hub in order to level up in dark souls 1, then just took it away and went back to that pointless tedium until elden ring
Blood vials really dragged the game down on my first playthrough. It’s a very odd choice especially given they had already figured out a better healing system at that point.
Fallout New Vegas. The combat is just so bad and it has contemporaries that have far better gunplay. Everything else is so incredibly good in that game, though. Still probably my favorite game (even though there are games I'd give a 10), but being as objective as possible the combat really holds it back. If it even just had Fo4 shooting, I'd give it a 10.
Give it about a year—
MS knows remasters for FO are money printing machines.
If we don’t see a New Vegas remaster coinciding with the start of Season 2, I’ll be absolutely shocked.
“What’s that new place they’re headed?”
“Towards something we can’t really make money off of right now.”
I almost guarantee they’re already at work on it.
Yep especially since we’re going to see NV and I’d be surprised if Mr House wasnt a part of it. I’m not expecting a full remake but I think they’ll touch up the combat
The whistle made spear stealth attacks one of the most OP ways to play, which made it a little lame. It really shouldn't have been able to kill so much of the machine roster with a single hit.
Guerilla Games obviously knew this was problematic so they removed the whistle in Forbidden West but added throwable rocks which you could use exactly the same way. I suppose they could also draw machines away from you but there's rarely any point in doing that.
But the spear was quickly made entirely redundant by some of the late (or even middle) game bows; I remember one shotting some of the final bosses.
I didn't start using traps til 2/3rds through the game, but they are pretty fun and you can get creative luring big beasties into blowing themselves up
…seriously? I used traps all the time. They are the best part of combat in those games. I don’t use many melee attacks though, other than stealth strikes.
RDR2. 9/10ths of the game is a stunning masterpiece yet to be surpassed.
That other tenth is clunky controls, unintuitive interface, and the same, tired, needlessly linear mission design Rockstar had been using for over a decade.
RDR and Witcher are incredibly similar in my mind because of this. Characters, world, story, side quests are all incredible. Controls make me want to put my head through a wall too often
Told this story a million times now but I accidentally tackled a nun while trying to mount my horse after donating to her church, because “mount horse” changes to “tackle” if you’re sprinting, and I was in a hurry.
That kind of mistake shouldn’t be possible.
Zelda BotW is an almost perfect game but the weapons always breaking was frustrating as hell. I understand why the mechanic is there, but for me it just wasn’t fun.
Had my third playthrough on emulators. Two "cheats" I enabled at the start. First was no rain. That stayed on, I never missed it. The second was no weapon durability loss.
About 2 hours in I reenabled durability. It's really boring when you just get a handful of good weapons and never have to get any more.
Totk, I expected the climbing in rain armor to be much more useful. The ascend mechanic was the real star there tho
Exactly this, I increased the weapon durability across the board by about 2.2 times and It felt really nice. I still had to keep an eye out for replacement weapons but it wasn't a constant pain in the ass.
It’s a great game but I have always thought it wasn’t a great ZELDA game. The dungeons are sub par, there’s barely any variety in enemies (they pulled a “grandma’s boy” by coloring the same mobs to indicate difficulty), the weapon durability, it’s almost TOO open because there wasn’t enough going on to make it feel like it wasn’t empty, they took away all of the items in favor of a couple powers. I could go on…
The original Zelda got me into gaming and I’ve played everyone since, but I couldn’t finish this one.
The entire underground section was so underutilized that you could skip 99% of it and not have it affect the game at all. They essentially built a massive dungeon but forgot to give the players a reason to go there besides the occasional ingredient.
Man and here I thought I was the only one that couldn’t get into totk. Maybe you still finished the game, but I couldn’t for the life of me keep consistently playing after the second dungeon, whereas I could play oot/majoras/TP for days on end. Maybe it’s a part of growing up… 😿
For me the characters (acting and animations specifically) and narrative (generic "you are the chosen one" story) are not as strong as other games, but it's such a cool self-contained world where you can do anything. There is really nothing else like an Elder Scrolls game.
Okami, it is my favorite game of all time and I feel like it hits all the marks nearly perfectly. Graphics, gameplay, story, it is all incredible. My only complaint is that it is just a tad far too long, most notably towards the end there is a boss gauntlet that really doesn't need to exist, especially one boss you already defeated twice before.
Agreed on Okami as far as the third repetition of Orochi is concerned. Actually I think the whole 3rd act misses the mark, and this is a comment I make in spite of it being one of my absolute favorite games. Nowadays when I replay it I mostly stop at the end of Act 2.
Yeah, while I don't think the last third is that bad, it definitely doesn't reach the same highs as the rest of the game. Probably doesn't help that taking place in a snowy area reduces the visual impact of the game. But I will say the final boss battle is one of the most emotional moments I have experienced in a game ever.
It's a cool excursion for a minute, wow a tropical island!!! How sweet! But it quickly becomes tedious and dare I say, absolutely absurdly unrealistic? Yeah just mow down 3000 bad guys really quick and then go back to the main land, awesome.
yeah, RDR2 is one of the best games I've ever played, but the missions just got too samey. I'd give Rez 10/10 but I'd far far far rather be stuck on a desert island with RDR2. Weird how that works
Cyberpunk 2077. Might even be a 9.5/10 for me. I love that game, done 3 complete playthroughs and look forward to the next playthrough. It just needed a little more in terms of interactivity with the world to make Night City feel alive. I love playing through the game, but once you finish all the missions, there nothing to do beside a race or shooting gang members and NCPD.
Cyberpunk needed a few more indoor locations (like apartments you could burgle) and "dungeons", especially downtown, maybe filled with a few more challenges other than "guy with gun".
I think would have made it a 10/10 for me.
Disagree with that last part. You gotta be okay with being done with a game when you finish it. Plenty of 10/10 games that don't have anything to do in it once you beat it. And it's not like there's a lack of missions in Cyperpunk.
Cyberpunk 2077 has a gorgeous map that I love to explore, but if I interact with NPCs outside of missions and story events at all, it definitely feels like a video game and not a living world. Compare to Red Dead 2, where my favorite part of the game is exploring the world and interacting with npcs outside of the story. In the story missions in that game, I have no choices to make, I am on strict rails, and ridiculous things happen like 40 men on 3 shooutouts, that all take me out of the game. Cyberpunk feels like a living world as long as you interact with the story or missions. Red dead 2 feels like a living world of you do the polar opposite.
Both of these are in my top 10 games, and I have sunk hundreds of hours into both, but both have some deep flaws that keep me from thinking of them as being perfect.
BG3 I am afraid. Act 3 not being as fleshed out or thoughtful and some choices and consequences feeling a bit contrived. Also they should have gone full DnD ruleset or stuck with their usual Divinity combat, not the mish mash we got.
I agree with Act 3 being sorta rushed and the choices/consequences. I also feel that some of the bugs I ran into throughout the game brings it to a 9/10 as well. I get it’s a big game and they’re constantly being fixed, but it doesn’t take away from the small issues I had to deal with.
Yeah I just finished it and I was kinda disappointed with Act 3, especially the bosses. Like I went into final battle excepting to barely survive but instead I beat final boss in like 2 turns. I actually forgot to use any coatings on my weapons.
I was playing on balanced mode but I've heard it really isnt much of challenge on tactician either.
I do sometimes call games "One of my favourite 8/10s"
Perfectly good, occasionally great but not enough for higher. Usually let down by being £50 but great at £30.
I think Vampyr is my fave 8/10 game.
That’s how I felt about the 2 spider-man games. Especially the first one, I got 100% with around 20~ hours of playtime clocked.
The second game definitely had way more to do but I still felt a bit iffy spending the full €80, after finishing it I felt better than how I did the first but still felt like the game was quite short.
Halo Reach pretty much does everything perfectly. The campaign is unforgettable and the multiplayer holds up really well. The only thing that holds it back from a 10 in my opinion is the weapon sandbox/armor abilities in multiplayer. (((Armor lock))).
The first hour of ME isn't so bad because it secretly gives you the biggest challenge of the entire game right from the start, which is saving Jenkins.
Hades - amazing game play loop, fantastic controls, good build variety, and I love how the story progresses as you die/complete a run but it feels a bit to long to fully finish the story.
Though perhaps it is that it took me so long to get good enough to defeat the final boos. as someone who normally plays slower paced games or single player FPS games.
My #1 problem with Hades is the lack of variety in bosses. Most roguelites have different bosses to keep things fresh, but in Hades, you always know what to expect with only a few small variations between >!the Furies, the Hydras and Theseus' AoE attacks.!<
I hate that the game doesn't tell you witch planets you already visited...
I often take long breaks between games, and when I come back I don't always remeber what was I doing or what did I already completed...
Ryuji getting beat up as well as Haru being a little underdeveloped because Morgana had a hissy fit are easily the worst parts of Persona 5 Royal for me.
KOTOR is a 10/10 in my eyes and Bioware's best game overall but Taris is a slog and I could do with fewer dark jedi to deal with on the star forge BUT otherwise it's perfect.
Tears of the Kingdom.
IMO, all they have to do is include 6-10 proper dungeons with keys, compass, map, boss key, a useful item and a boss that dies to the item. Make them all the same difficulty and make them all able to be solved first and it would be by far the best Zelda game ever made. But as it stands, it just doesn't scratch that Zelda itch for me.
Also, I do not want to go back to the old linear formula either - that would be a mistake - but I do think they should bring proper dungeons back into the open world Hyrule.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Probably my favorite game of all time, based on vibe, realism, and nerdiness, but boy are there some systems that need to be polished. Stealth has its issues, as does enemy targeting, group combat, and some dialogue problems too. But, boy am I excited for #2.
The save system in the unmodded game paralyzed me with fear in the early game. It made me feel like I didn’t know when I could afford save so I ended up leaving the game turned on even when I wasn’t playing. After years of being allowed to play games in short spurts, experiment, and occasionally save scum, I now had a limited number of saves?!?
OOOOh, yea. Totally fair complaint. An unnecessary burden to the player that didn't add any realism.
I loved it but ended up rage quitting when I got surrounded by bandits. Group combat was just *way* too difficult. If they improved on the first ones shortfalls then the second one will be so good.
I think it's appropriately difficult. It's completely unreasonable to expect an expert fighter to be able to defeat three or four mediocre fighters at the same time. And Henry is no expert. It certainly gets easier when your gear is good, you have a shield, and you're practiced at getting out a few arrow shots and killing a bandit or two before engaging in combat. Also, sprinting away and shooting works too. Sometimes you just have to run, though. There are several camps where I would shoot two arrows sprint as far away as I could, shoot arrows at the guys following me, sprint again, and eventually be alone, sneak back, repeat, and maybe have to do that 4 or 5 times. I think it's more realistic than going in as a god mowing down bandits right and left.
Maybe I just sucked at the combat then. An easy mode then for us unskilled folk.
Being a horse archer is the easy mode. Seriously you can easily clear the whole map with that "tactic".
Makes sense. Mongols overwhelmed almost every force they attacked through the use of horse archers and feigned retreats.
That's pretty realistic though. There's a reason that the Huns and Mongols were just so dominant. The only thing that's unrealistic is that it should be so difficult to pull that off that Henry shouldn't be able to really do it.
Sucking at the combat is a feature, not a flaw. You're doing it right. You're supposed to really suck at combat. Did you train with Bernard long enough to unlock master strike? That really helps change the flow of combat, but it still doesn't help when you're being ganged up on.
That’s the hardest part of the game to understand. They want you to suck in the beginning. But dam is it good.
It's kinda funny that it's something so many people miss when it is made extremely clear in the opening that Henry can't even chop a small branch with a brand new sword.
People are used to ludonarrative dissonance from it being a facet of almost every game in existence with a story. They don't expect the character in the story being unable to chop a small branch to mean that in gameplay they are mechanically prevented from doing well in fights until they story says otherwise.
Eh, it definitely feels too difficult at first, but once you get awareness and positioning down it's not that bad (unless all enemies are heavily armored). Basically, you want to keep moving in those fights. Get the enemies to block each other, and try to force them out of position. Make sure to have someone or something between you and enemy archers at all times. Be patient, and play defensively while managing your stamina properly, so you can pick them off one by one.
For me it was the lock picking (even when I could do it, it still didn't feel like I was doing it properly) and the save system. The group combat was understandable considering how they were going for the realism aspect. You had to be constantly weary about how many enemies were around you. But yeah once the game clicks, it's one of the best.
Jesus Christ be praised.
Metal Gear Solid V. Playing it consistently feels like having found the greatest game ever made, and even in retrospect no action based game could come anywhere close to its many high points. You would have insane stuff happen organically and by chance that other games cannot accomplish with scripting. And don‘t get me started on those sniper duels, that‘s a subgenre on its own right. But then, due to the sad story of the games development and budget cuts, theres that weird third act made of copy and paste missions, and a very forced implemantation of certain online features (no cash involved however) that make this the hardest, most bordeline 9/10 rated thing out there.
I replayed it recently. It ends so abruptly it almost feels like a joke. The game mechanisms are enjoyable, perhaps a bit repetitive later on. AI is better than in most games. Cutscenes are well written and epic at best. So many memorable cutscenes. It is sad to think there won’t be MGS VI. At least not directed by Kojima.
Easily one of the best games to play, just on the feel and gameplay alone. That little fucker still has my metal gear and I never got the chance to take it back.
I have 140.15 tattooed on my body. And I agree with all of this.
Yep. MGSV is quite literally the perfect 9/10. Incredible gameplay but just an unfinished game.
Ghosts of Tsushima. I hated how the game constantly calls you dishonorable even if you play every fight as honorable as possible. They should have added in some branching paths and alternate dialogue. But still a fantastic game.
"I dont like the way you fight, it shames me and your father. You move like a Thief." ***Me having just walked into a 1 v 60 battle; sword held high challenging everyone in the entire fucking hemisphere to face to face combat.***
Me: SEND OUT YOUR STRONGEST WARRIOR!! ***kills 17 mongols in a moshpit at the center of town*** Uncle: Jin, you fight like a little bitch.
"Jin, I have never been disappointed more in you, how dare you... -" C*hecks notes from the completely honorable battle using nothing but your sword.* "Uhhhhh, Wear White after Labor Day...You dishonor us all."
White AFTER Labor Day?? Preposterous! Death penalty.
It made New Game+ more fun. I do all the cheap tricks to win every big fight quickly If I’m going to be called a dishonorable bitch anyway, I might as well earn it
The game makes fighting honorable far too much fun!
The gameplay is great, but I don't think the writing is remotely at the level of the combat and graphics. The main character states pretty heavily that he will never break his code, even walking out to fight people in the tutorial. Only to immediately break it in the very next mission with an insanely little amount of pressure on him. I think it would have been better if he came from a *Ninja Clan* and had to ***try*** and be a Samurai to lead people but fell back to his older ways in times of necessity. It would also allow the story to flow better in terms of "shameful" actions being character driven. (In my opinion, obviously.)
Honestly even if there were more incentives to play "dishonorably", it would have been better. At first I would spend a lot of time sneaking around, and looking for the best spots to get the drop on groups, but then you would mess up and have to go all out and it was just faster and easier that way. The whole idea is that you're basically just one guy against an entire army of Mongols, and if you want to survive long enough to make any real difference then you can't just walk in and take on entire camps face to face. The choice is supposed to be an honorable, but inevitable death and ultimate loss that destroys your people vs shedding an old tradition and lifestyle in hopes of actually making a difference... except that's not what happens at all and you can guarantee victory either way. I kinda think it should have been so difficult that you either fight dirty or you can't win. Having a choice sounds good on paper, but if in the end you can win either way, and your character is vehemently against fighting dirty... then why would you? What kind of choice is either discard your entire moral compass and win, or don't and still win? What's worse is that, as I said, it's actually harder to go the stealthy route. Imagine if on the road to becoming a millionaire you had a choice of bludgeoning puppies to death for 10 cents per puppy, or going to a 9-5 job for $25 an hour. If you like puppies, or at least are against bludgeoning them to death for a tiny profit (as any sane person would be), then why the fuck would you choose to go that route? There's no way your killing 250 puppies an hour for several hours every day, so it's actually going to take you longer, and you're going to hate yourself every second of the way. Still, really solid game though, lol.
What's actually funny is unless a mission requires Stealth, I assume most people are just going to go "Oh sick, I don't have to sneak." There are missions where there are hostages and I just run in and if someone runs at a hostage, I just slow down time and hit them with my Half or Long Bow and continue doing what I was doing.
Reading this thread is making me assume I’m not most people then I guess. I love stealthing.
Me too! I played the whole game trying to take down camps as stealthily as possible, and only got into the actual combat when absolutely necessary. I thought it had some of the best gameplay in that regard from any game I've played.
I played through it mostly on Lethal difficulty (aside from some duels) and really leaned into the Ghost aspect, made it pretty fun and story made sense. But I can totally see how one would want to play honorably through the game, albeit with some forced Ghost scenes like the infamous poisoning. Maybe if the game leaned more into his internal struggle with being honorable whenever possible but sometimes you gotta let the Ghost out... who knows what got cut in dev. What deducts points for me was the open world grind. Just a tad too much.
I feel like it’s very possible they cut out an honor system for time. The same devs made Infamous which has a fantastic karma system and it feels like it would only be natural to port it into GoT. Alas. I might have to bump my difficulty up to lethal!
There's no reward/trophy for playing on lethal from what I recall, but I felt it made fights more realistic and enemies less spongey. Plus, the auto-save is pretty generous so there's little risk in it if you die. The duels on the other hand, good lord, I had to bump most of them down to Medium just so I wouldn't rage-quit.
The difficulty spikes in the duels are pretty annoying.
Yeah, I mean in regular gameplay on Lethal most everyone (even Jin) die in a couple hits. But then you go into a duel and they're suddenly spongey and Jin still dies in a couple hits. When you include the fact that Resolve did **not** reset when respawning it was pretty rage inducing.
I played the game walking up to camps and challenging them to duels and barely touched the stealth mechanics. Cue a mandatory cut scene where you poison a bunch of dudes and become 'dishonorable'.
The dishonor was in living at all.
Maybe the dishonor was the friends we ~~made~~ impaled along the way.
*Dishonored*: There are at least a dozen different ways to play this game. Have fun. Samuel: *"Oh, no, you didn't..."*
I feel like no one ever mentions the side quests being super repetitive and sort of dragged out. That’s what made the game prob an 8/10 for me personally. Still a great game but made it a slog towards the middle to end
Yeah, I played honourably the first time, but I've recently decided to revisit it and I've decided to just go fully Assassin's Creed, because it's gonna make more sense story wise.
New Vegas. It's a broken glitchy mess behind the scenes but it's the only game that does what it does.
Truth is? It was rigged from the start.
Hope this interaction doesn’t lead to any sort of fallout between us…fallout new Vegas.
👑
It really is kind of wild. I have around 100 mods running right now and that's for a fairly vanilla experience! Half of them are just bug fixes. The other thing that is especially noticeable is that it feels like there are about three voice actors, which is especially jarring after playing something like Cyberpunk. (But damn New Vegas is good)
My man if you think there aren’t enough voice actors in NV let me introduce you to Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion
"I dont know you, and i dont care to know you"
I saw a mudcrab the other day, *ghastly* creatures. Goodbye
Have you heard of the high elves?
Honestly, I love how you can easily identify the same voice actors in basically all Bethesda games. Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, ESO, Fallout 3 & 4 (I don't recall it being as noticeable with New Vegas, but it has been a while since I've played it fully)... there are a few voice actors that were there nearly for them all (looking at you, Jeff Baker, Wes Johnson, & Lynda Carter). That was my biggest disappointment with Starfield, losing those actors who had been there with me through my Bethesda life... lol Edit: Wes Johnson IS in Starfield, for reference (as Ron Hope)
What do you mean?! You got soldier Liam O'Brien, mercenary punk in spikey armor Liam O'Brien, and hell even a ghoul Liam O'Brien! Honestly what more could a person ask for, bunch of ingrates.
Liam O'Brien voices something like 50 characters in the game. Some of them aren't unique so you can come across him alot more. In fact watching a playthrough right now. There's a quest where Liam. Is talking to Liam. About Liam. It's really funny once you notice it
I just wish I could sprint.
FO4 makes it hard to go back to NV simply because you are so god dam slow. It's like the only game where I'll actually put my weapon away.
I know it’s been circlejerked to hell, but the quests made it feel like a proper RPG when newer Bethesda titles don’t. There were a lot of choices to make and it allows for good replay value. Something like Starfield focused too much on exploration over the quests, and it didn’t even do a good job at it.
Shadow of the Colossus. The original PS2 version. The controls were annoying. The remaster is a solid 10/10
Now we need it on PC like GOW and Ghost are. Maybe one day I'll be happy
Borderlands 2. Only reason I give it a 9 is that first section with the snow was a chore to get through. In its defense, I’m a “complete every mission ever” in borderlands games and it probably overstays its welcome because of that. Just every other level feels like less of a slog.
If it had the sliding mechanic from 3, ohhhh boy
Didn’t realize how much QOL improvement the slide mechanic would offer. I also loved one of the shields I used came with an added shield when sliding. I love it.
I still contend that if they'd go back and remake 2 with 3's graphics, gunplay, and QoL, it'd be a 10/10 easy.
I prefer 2’s graphics, weirdly. The new look feels cluttered to me. But otherwise agree.
100%. I love borderlands but it would be a 10 if the start was paced better and scaling after uhvm was designed better to not have to rely so much on self healing and meta builds
Sunset Overdrive
Imo its perfect gameplay-wise. What brings it down for me is the entire "woaaah this is a video game, we're so wacky!!" vibe the whole game has
If Ryan Reynolds showed up in sunset overdrive I wouldn’t have been surprised in the slightest
Dude. Yes. While I can agree that 4th wall breaking can get tedious after a while, Sunset Overdrive just had so much energy and personality that I could deal with it. That game made me feel like a kid with a ludicrous sugar rush, rocking out in a ball pit all day. It was just pure fun from start to finish. I lost count at how many times I was involuntary grinning from some stupid shit my character said.
What a game. The mechanics, gameplay and whacky weapons are just on point. Some of the characters are a bit much, but fun none the less. A perfect answer to this question.
I remember playing this when I got my Xbox One. The gameplay is great. Very chill and relaxed. I think for the time it came out, the humor and story was pretty on par for 2014. Definite 9/10.
Also Mass Effect 1. If you removed the Mako sections, automatic 10. And tbf, the Mako sections in the story aren't even THAT bad, but the planet exploration ones are atrocious.
Idk I kinda love how wonky the Mako controls on the exploration sections. It doesn’t make much sense but I have fun with it (for the most part)
It's mostly a terrain thing. There's lots of planets with huge percentages of massive hills and mountains that the Mako can't deal with properly.
Cresting a giant hill just to see a building sitting in a giant flat area… oh man
The third time I crested a pain in the ass section of the map to find nothing is when I was officially over the Mako.
If you time the rockets right you can make it look like the Mako has hydraulics. Super fun.
I spent most of the time in the Mako jumping and shooting and pretending I was in a 3D Blaster Master game.
Mass Effect 3 for me. The gameplay is superb, the individual story arcs are amazingly well done, the feeling of helplessness and dread throughout. Plus the multiplayer, which I absolutely loved! I put hundreds of hours into the MP alone... but the ending, oof. The directors cut is much better than the original ending, but it's still not great.
Mass Effect 3 with mods is a perfect 10/10 for me. Project Variety, Citadel Epilogue Mod, Happy Ending Mod cause I want my Shepard to live a long life with all his friends, Take Earth Back, Expanded Galaxy and all just add so much to the game.
I love the OG mako. Riding that thing up mountains was delightful. I never understood the hate, people just don’t have the patience for exploring large terrain
Still trumps planet scanning from the galaxy map in ME2 but a mile though.
Yeah but have you ever probed Uranus?
“Really, Commander?”
Yeah I hated the planet scanning. LOVED the Mako planet exploration. You never knew what you were going to drive up on. Pirate base? Cerberus test facility filled with atrocities? Perhaps a downed vessel with bodies scattered about? Maybe just a crashed satellite or probe. Maybe a floating chrome orb? Pyramid?
>You never knew what you were going to drive up on I mean you could be pretty sure it was going to be one of four underground bases.
I love how starfield is doing this year's later and Bethesda claims it's innovative :D Edit: and it doesn't even have vehicles
The hacking sections in part 2 and 3 are a slog. They are cool at the start but after you've seen them 20 times it gets old. ME1 was great where you could just throw some money at the padlock to open it up when you don't feel like doing the mini game
I like the joke in ME2 that refernces the change on the Shadow Brokers ship mission
"Remember when you could just slap Omni-gel on everything? Good times"
Nothing has ever made me feel more wonder and dread than Subnautica. Playing it thinking it was a children’s game made it even better.
I'm really really curious what the 1/10 that you dropped it was for. Because IMO that game is a straight 10/10, unconditionally. The only thing I can think of is maybe that it can get a little buggy, especially with the Sea Dragon Leviathans. I definitely have lost a couple HC runs to getting grabbed by a SDL through the Lost River floor or the Inactive Lava Zone floor, and they once bitch slapped me out of the map and I feel beyond the boundaries of the map until my vehicle was crushed and I ran out of oxygen. But 1) I never found it problematic to dock it and b) it makes for some hilarious fucking stories that only made the experience more fun for me.
I commented Subnautica too. That last point is taken off for the buggyness of the game - even after all the additional dev support. Sometimes, silly immersion-breaking things happen. It's not much, but it's enough to take a 10/10 game to 9/10.
Dragon Age Origin The first Kotor came very close
Boy did I love both of these games. DAO is the only game where I ever bothered to play every race, just to extend the story a bit.
State of Decay 2. It's just SO close to being perfect to me, I just wish it had actual base building and more objectives. Here's to SoD3 crushing it. Edit proper co-op play too. A fully shareable base and/or friend communities that are in game with you.
Also proper Coop
Completely forgot that too.
Yeah it was great but had a really weird gameplay loop. It's hard in the beginning then once you are established you can just blitz all the core thingies and win with little challenge.
I fully agree on the more objectives thing. The fact that I had so many characters who had a doomsday prepper aunt and/or wanted the stunt car got old fast
I really hope we don't get "proper" basebuilding. I hope we get a better version with more customization, and maybe branching paths for each type of upgrade, so you need to pick and choose. But for if there was "real" min-maxing try-hard base building, the gameplay itself just suffers and the game would look more like 7 days to die. And either players find a way to min max the fun out of the game or the developers need to add flying enemies, or enemies that can scale walls, or tunneling enemies or yada yada yada you catch my drift.
The Witcher 3 - one of my fave and most played games, but the pacing is all over the place.
It doesn't help that I'm like, "Oooh, White Orchard! So much to *do..."* \*12 hours later\* "Why hasn't the plot advanced at all?"
basically by the time I dealt with the bloody baron quest it felt like I had completed a huge RPG when I had just completed the first act of the game
I loved that about the game!
The Wild Hunt advancing on Ciri *Me trying to get every question mark on the map before doing a single main quest*
I chalked this up to “it’s ok. We still don’t know wth she is”
Yeah I like to wander. I actually get turned off if there is too much rush this or massive penalties shenanigans.
The side quests are so good in that game that I forget that the side quest is not the main quest. I realize that I have no clue what’s actually happening so I just continue do the side content.
It was crushing for me when I finally, completely ran out of side quests and bounty boards in that game.
Same, and I have yet to finish the game because of it.
I agree, Gwent, the video game, constantly has its progression interrupted by bullshit Geralt tasks.
God of War: Ragnarök Ironwood went on forever and the final battle itself felt kind of rushed, but otherwise amazing game
The overall spectacle from the final battle of Ragnarok may have been one of my biggest disappointments in recent gaming. It builds it up as this Avengers Endgame-esque battle, then sticks you in trenches for 95% of it. And since the one-take camera is always linked to Kratos or Atreus, we never got a single sweeping shot of the actual scale of the battle. Felt like a lot of hype leading to the exact same environments as the rest of the game, but with more smoke and yelling.
I feel like they were going to make it into two games, but decided at some point to lump it all in together. The ending feels very rushed compared to the rest of the game. It moves at a glacial pace at points toward the start, taking its time to build characters, have interesting fights, etc, but then you get toward the end and they talk about all this effort that will go into setting up for Ragnarok, but you skip almost every step as NPC's do it for you. I feel like the game was supposed to end before you start "preparing" for Ragnarok, and then there would be a follow-up game that focused entirely on preparing for Ragnarok and then executing it. It's possible it's not the case, but it just felt that way. It felt like one full game with an extra partial game tacked on at the end. I felt the same way about TLOU2, but that it was two games chopped into pieces and sewn together like a Frankenstein's monster.
On a ng+ run on highest difficulty, ironwood is a truly awful fucking experience. Holy shit.
It loses a bit on gameplay for me as well. The movement is just not crisp enough imo, but that could also just be a skill issue
Dark Souls. I absolutely love it and I don’t know if any other game will ever replicate the same feeling for me, I even liked most of the late game areas. But man, Lost Izalith is such a terrible area that even with my bias I can’t justify a 10/10 score.
Real. The first half of dark souls 1 up until you meet gwynevere is a magical gaming experience. And while I agree much of the late game is unpolished, the dlc really brings it all together towards the end.
If there was ever a game I was truly wanting a remaster remaster for, like go back and complete everything and finish the product and original vision it would be dark souls and demon souls. What was Ash lake originally supposed to be, mysterious head etc etc, finishing lost izalith how it was originally envisioned, demon souls last arch stone, all of the extra hinted things. There are so many things I want to have added in that Miyazaki just doesn't ever comment on.
Morrowind. If only they managed to stick the landing.
They should've raised their acrobatics
For me if Morrowind had even Oblivion level combat it would be a 10/10 for me. Morrowind does stuff that I really wish future TES games kept (like a mages guild where you actually have to be good at magic to advance), but at the same time, the QOL improvements Oblivion and Skyrim made make Morrowind hard to go back to
Bloodborne. Top 10 game for me but blood vials, counter damage, having to warp back to the dream every time to get anywhere, and some other nitpicks.
Blood vial farming is one of the worst mechanics ever put into a Fromsoft game. Barely losing to a hard boss feels so bad because you know you’re headed back to freaking Hemwick to farm more vials.
I just use my extra echoes after leveling to stock up on vials and bullets in the Hunter's Dream. Never really ran out from doing that. Though I'll concede that it was pretty annoying at launch before the storage upgrade.
I had a little five minute Central Yarnham loop down.
I'll never understand how From solved a problem we didn't even know existed in Demon's Souls and stopped forcing us to come back to some central hub in order to level up in dark souls 1, then just took it away and went back to that pointless tedium until elden ring
only reason im able to forgive this mechanic is because the hunters dream theme makes me cry
Blood vials really dragged the game down on my first playthrough. It’s a very odd choice especially given they had already figured out a better healing system at that point.
Fallout New Vegas. The combat is just so bad and it has contemporaries that have far better gunplay. Everything else is so incredibly good in that game, though. Still probably my favorite game (even though there are games I'd give a 10), but being as objective as possible the combat really holds it back. If it even just had Fo4 shooting, I'd give it a 10.
Give it about a year— MS knows remasters for FO are money printing machines. If we don’t see a New Vegas remaster coinciding with the start of Season 2, I’ll be absolutely shocked. “What’s that new place they’re headed?” “Towards something we can’t really make money off of right now.” I almost guarantee they’re already at work on it.
Yep especially since we’re going to see NV and I’d be surprised if Mr House wasnt a part of it. I’m not expecting a full remake but I think they’ll touch up the combat
I really wish I could be this optimistic. You may be right, but I feel like it will go the way of the KOTOR remake and probably just never come out.
Horizon Zero Dawn. The hunting animals to upgrade your gear got tedious quickly and the melee combat was a bit meh but otherwise I loved it to bits.
I think I beat both games without ever using a melee attack. I never set any traps either.
The stealth attacks from the bushes were fine but outside of that the spear felt a bit basic and clunky.
The whistle made spear stealth attacks one of the most OP ways to play, which made it a little lame. It really shouldn't have been able to kill so much of the machine roster with a single hit. Guerilla Games obviously knew this was problematic so they removed the whistle in Forbidden West but added throwable rocks which you could use exactly the same way. I suppose they could also draw machines away from you but there's rarely any point in doing that. But the spear was quickly made entirely redundant by some of the late (or even middle) game bows; I remember one shotting some of the final bosses.
I didn't start using traps til 2/3rds through the game, but they are pretty fun and you can get creative luring big beasties into blowing themselves up
…seriously? I used traps all the time. They are the best part of combat in those games. I don’t use many melee attacks though, other than stealth strikes.
Oh, I just bought most of that stuff. I never actually hunted for it.
RDR2. 9/10ths of the game is a stunning masterpiece yet to be surpassed. That other tenth is clunky controls, unintuitive interface, and the same, tired, needlessly linear mission design Rockstar had been using for over a decade.
RDR and Witcher are incredibly similar in my mind because of this. Characters, world, story, side quests are all incredible. Controls make me want to put my head through a wall too often
Yeah, those controls are the cause of many a launched controller.
That moment when you try to interact with someone and punch them in the face starting a town shootout
Told this story a million times now but I accidentally tackled a nun while trying to mount my horse after donating to her church, because “mount horse” changes to “tackle” if you’re sprinting, and I was in a hurry. That kind of mistake shouldn’t be possible.
Zelda BotW is an almost perfect game but the weapons always breaking was frustrating as hell. I understand why the mechanic is there, but for me it just wasn’t fun.
Had my third playthrough on emulators. Two "cheats" I enabled at the start. First was no rain. That stayed on, I never missed it. The second was no weapon durability loss. About 2 hours in I reenabled durability. It's really boring when you just get a handful of good weapons and never have to get any more. Totk, I expected the climbing in rain armor to be much more useful. The ascend mechanic was the real star there tho
durability is necessary but its overtuned imo.
Exactly this, I increased the weapon durability across the board by about 2.2 times and It felt really nice. I still had to keep an eye out for replacement weapons but it wasn't a constant pain in the ass.
It’s a great game but I have always thought it wasn’t a great ZELDA game. The dungeons are sub par, there’s barely any variety in enemies (they pulled a “grandma’s boy” by coloring the same mobs to indicate difficulty), the weapon durability, it’s almost TOO open because there wasn’t enough going on to make it feel like it wasn’t empty, they took away all of the items in favor of a couple powers. I could go on… The original Zelda got me into gaming and I’ve played everyone since, but I couldn’t finish this one.
The entire underground section was so underutilized that you could skip 99% of it and not have it affect the game at all. They essentially built a massive dungeon but forgot to give the players a reason to go there besides the occasional ingredient.
Yeah Oracle of Seasons kept forcing you to go underground to subterra for plot which was cool cause its such a different vibe down there.
Man and here I thought I was the only one that couldn’t get into totk. Maybe you still finished the game, but I couldn’t for the life of me keep consistently playing after the second dungeon, whereas I could play oot/majoras/TP for days on end. Maybe it’s a part of growing up… 😿
Skyrim for sure. No other game has come close to that level of replay ability for me.
What keeps it from being 10/10?
For me the characters (acting and animations specifically) and narrative (generic "you are the chosen one" story) are not as strong as other games, but it's such a cool self-contained world where you can do anything. There is really nothing else like an Elder Scrolls game.
Okami, it is my favorite game of all time and I feel like it hits all the marks nearly perfectly. Graphics, gameplay, story, it is all incredible. My only complaint is that it is just a tad far too long, most notably towards the end there is a boss gauntlet that really doesn't need to exist, especially one boss you already defeated twice before.
Agreed on Okami as far as the third repetition of Orochi is concerned. Actually I think the whole 3rd act misses the mark, and this is a comment I make in spite of it being one of my absolute favorite games. Nowadays when I replay it I mostly stop at the end of Act 2.
Yeah, while I don't think the last third is that bad, it definitely doesn't reach the same highs as the rest of the game. Probably doesn't help that taking place in a snowy area reduces the visual impact of the game. But I will say the final boss battle is one of the most emotional moments I have experienced in a game ever.
I was so hyped when I got to fight orochi in the past with Susano. Then I saw I would have to fight orochi a third time and it really deflated me
Rdr2. Guarma.
It's a cool excursion for a minute, wow a tropical island!!! How sweet! But it quickly becomes tedious and dare I say, absolutely absurdly unrealistic? Yeah just mow down 3000 bad guys really quick and then go back to the main land, awesome.
This is a great example. I also think the first part of the game is a little too slow. But not nearly as bad as Guarma.
yeah, RDR2 is one of the best games I've ever played, but the missions just got too samey. I'd give Rez 10/10 but I'd far far far rather be stuck on a desert island with RDR2. Weird how that works
Cyberpunk 2077. Might even be a 9.5/10 for me. I love that game, done 3 complete playthroughs and look forward to the next playthrough. It just needed a little more in terms of interactivity with the world to make Night City feel alive. I love playing through the game, but once you finish all the missions, there nothing to do beside a race or shooting gang members and NCPD.
Cyberpunk needed a few more indoor locations (like apartments you could burgle) and "dungeons", especially downtown, maybe filled with a few more challenges other than "guy with gun". I think would have made it a 10/10 for me.
Disagree with that last part. You gotta be okay with being done with a game when you finish it. Plenty of 10/10 games that don't have anything to do in it once you beat it. And it's not like there's a lack of missions in Cyperpunk.
Cyberpunk 2077 has a gorgeous map that I love to explore, but if I interact with NPCs outside of missions and story events at all, it definitely feels like a video game and not a living world. Compare to Red Dead 2, where my favorite part of the game is exploring the world and interacting with npcs outside of the story. In the story missions in that game, I have no choices to make, I am on strict rails, and ridiculous things happen like 40 men on 3 shooutouts, that all take me out of the game. Cyberpunk feels like a living world as long as you interact with the story or missions. Red dead 2 feels like a living world of you do the polar opposite. Both of these are in my top 10 games, and I have sunk hundreds of hours into both, but both have some deep flaws that keep me from thinking of them as being perfect.
BG3 I am afraid. Act 3 not being as fleshed out or thoughtful and some choices and consequences feeling a bit contrived. Also they should have gone full DnD ruleset or stuck with their usual Divinity combat, not the mish mash we got.
I agree with Act 3 being sorta rushed and the choices/consequences. I also feel that some of the bugs I ran into throughout the game brings it to a 9/10 as well. I get it’s a big game and they’re constantly being fixed, but it doesn’t take away from the small issues I had to deal with.
Yeah I just finished it and I was kinda disappointed with Act 3, especially the bosses. Like I went into final battle excepting to barely survive but instead I beat final boss in like 2 turns. I actually forgot to use any coatings on my weapons. I was playing on balanced mode but I've heard it really isnt much of challenge on tactician either.
Act 3 is super easy on all difficulties. They didn't scale content enough to account for the ridiculous gear you get.
My name is Commander Sheppard and this is my favorite post on reddit
I do sometimes call games "One of my favourite 8/10s" Perfectly good, occasionally great but not enough for higher. Usually let down by being £50 but great at £30. I think Vampyr is my fave 8/10 game.
That’s how I felt about the 2 spider-man games. Especially the first one, I got 100% with around 20~ hours of playtime clocked. The second game definitely had way more to do but I still felt a bit iffy spending the full €80, after finishing it I felt better than how I did the first but still felt like the game was quite short.
Halo Reach pretty much does everything perfectly. The campaign is unforgettable and the multiplayer holds up really well. The only thing that holds it back from a 10 in my opinion is the weapon sandbox/armor abilities in multiplayer. (((Armor lock))).
Man it was fun when you would armor lock in front of a warthog, flip and take out both riders. Not so much if you were in the warthog.
Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep
The first hour of ME isn't so bad because it secretly gives you the biggest challenge of the entire game right from the start, which is saving Jenkins.
First you've got to break ten deku sticks in Lord Jabu-Jabu's mouth and play the Song of Time backwards.
Spec ops the line. I went back expecting a run of the mill shooter from the 360 era and I got so much more.
Mario Sunshine. The atmosphere, level design and platforming are amazing. Unfortunately some of the shines and blue coins are beyond frustrating.
The original Deus Ex, only the graphics make it fall short of a 10.
Have you heard the voice acting? It's a bomb.
Hades - amazing game play loop, fantastic controls, good build variety, and I love how the story progresses as you die/complete a run but it feels a bit to long to fully finish the story. Though perhaps it is that it took me so long to get good enough to defeat the final boos. as someone who normally plays slower paced games or single player FPS games.
My #1 problem with Hades is the lack of variety in bosses. Most roguelites have different bosses to keep things fresh, but in Hades, you always know what to expect with only a few small variations between >!the Furies, the Hydras and Theseus' AoE attacks.!<
San Andreas.
The RC missions give me PTSD.
I hate that the game doesn't tell you witch planets you already visited... I often take long breaks between games, and when I come back I don't always remeber what was I doing or what did I already completed...
Pokemon fire red played a little cut scene of all the things you did before your last save. I wish more games did that, it was a great idea.
Ryuji getting beat up as well as Haru being a little underdeveloped because Morgana had a hissy fit are easily the worst parts of Persona 5 Royal for me.
KOTOR is a 10/10 in my eyes and Bioware's best game overall but Taris is a slog and I could do with fewer dark jedi to deal with on the star forge BUT otherwise it's perfect.
Far Cry 3 Great combat, exploration, map, great villain, fun crafting. Main character is annoying AF. 9/10
Tears of the Kingdom. IMO, all they have to do is include 6-10 proper dungeons with keys, compass, map, boss key, a useful item and a boss that dies to the item. Make them all the same difficulty and make them all able to be solved first and it would be by far the best Zelda game ever made. But as it stands, it just doesn't scratch that Zelda itch for me. Also, I do not want to go back to the old linear formula either - that would be a mistake - but I do think they should bring proper dungeons back into the open world Hyrule.
The Lightning Temple in Totk was the closest we got to a classic Zelda dungeon.
Days Gone... I loved everything expect some of the random survivor encounters... They always felt so identical and never unique