Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

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Honka Honka Burning Love said:
I would like it more if you didn't have to buy gambits and slots, and if it were a different game.

If it were "Bob's random RPG" with as many slots as you could set up and all the gambits unlocked and were just a sort of "RPG manager simulator" sort of game I would be less annoyed with it, but it still isn't Final Fantasy.
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Dragon Age 2 did it the best giving you more slots as you leveled up.
 
Musashi said:
Breath of the Wild is overrated and boring

Couldn't understand all the praise to its empty open-world

I'm not sorry
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I'm glad I'm not the only one who doesn't like Breath of the Wild

Combat feels tedious and pointless as you almost gain nothing from engaging enemies in the overworld.
I just don't like the voice acting no matter how limited it is. Older Zelda game characters are good because there is no voice acting. leaving the music and facial reactions to the player to interpret how the dialog is spoken.
The weapons wear and tear system gets old and repetitive after awhile.
Overall it felt like a boring game to me.
 
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SnowBall said:
I hate this aversion to “chosen one” plots that I have seen lately, especially from Millennials who sperg about “grounded realism” in the earlier entires of their beloved childhood series and complain about later installments being more fantasy based. Even if it's always been fantasy based (gen 1 and 2 Pokemon fans are annoying in this regard.) There is this obsession among 90’s kids with making your character a normal guy who isn’t special or the chosen one. Video games are a form of escapism, sometimes I want to be the chosen one and save the world from an evil emperor.
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I can understand feeling burnt out on certain kinds of stories, especially as the aforementioned "chosen one" is almost a crutch for Shonen stuff. The issue is they usually lean too far towards "moral ambiguity/shades of gray" stories, which sounds great and is when done well. Unfortunately it sometimes isn't and instead everyone is just an unlikable asshole.
 
I don't find Undertale interesting at all. Maybe it's the boring gameplay, or the boring story. Or it could be the annoying characters, I don't know. And the music is not that good either. I feel that it's trying so hard to be quirky, it became a mess. I have no idea why people think it's one of the best RPG or indie game ever.

It's inspiration, the Mother/Earthbound series is also not interesting at all by me. I've only played the third game for a bit, while I saw the gameplay of the others on YouTube, and they don't make me interested or engaged at all. The story is convoluted. The exploration is very basic. The combat is boring, with an addition of atrocious combat bgm. And like Undertale, most of the characters are annoying as fuck. The only thing this series has done right was the graphics. The pixel art is actually pretty nice and clean. I don't understand why people are so insistent for Mother 3 to be officially translated and released.
 
PoyoSato said:
I don't find Undertale interesting at all. Maybe it's the boring gameplay, or the boring story. Or it could be the annoying characters, I don't know. And the music is not that good either. I feel that it's trying so hard to be quirky, it became a mess. I have no idea why people think it's one of the best RPG or indie game ever.

It's inspiration, the Mother/Earthbound series is also not interesting at all by me. I've only played the third game for a bit, while I saw the gameplay of the others on YouTube, and they don't make me interested or engaged at all. The story is convoluted. The exploration is very basic. The combat is boring, with an addition of atrocious combat bgm. And like Undertale, most of the characters are annoying as fuck. The only thing this series has done right was the graphics. The pixel art is actually pretty nice and clean. I don't understand why people are so insistent for Mother 3 to be officially translated and released.
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I always got the impression that people who worship both Undertale and Earthbound have little to no exposure/ experience with RPGs, or videogames in general for than matter, both games are as basic as you can get and most people seem to like them mostly because "so quirky and cute UwU".
 
Neet Tokusatsu Hero said:
I always got the impression that people who worship both Undertale and Earthbound have little to no exposure/ experience with RPGs, or videogames in general for than matter, both games are as basic as you can get and most people seem to like them mostly because "so quirky and cute UwU".
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EarthBound's a funny case in that the game is outright satirizing the Dragon Quest series, but since Dragon Quest doesn't have nearly as large a cult following, none of the EarthBound worshippers pick up on it and focus more on the quirky and silly parts of the game.

I like EarthBound, but its magic has been lost when suddenly every indie RPG with a sense of humor nowadays has to be like it.
 
Duncan Hills Coffee said:
EarthBound's a funny case in that the game is outright satirizing the Dragon Quest series, but since Dragon Quest doesn't have nearly as large a cult following, none of the EarthBound worshippers pick up on it and focus more on the quirky and silly parts of the game.

I like EarthBound, but its magic has been lost when suddenly every indie RPG with a sense of humor nowadays has to be like it.
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Yeah I feel that. I still think they're heartfelt funny games with and fun if basic gameplay. They're great worlds to adventure through even if it's just rural and suburban America and not always a space ship or a dungeon., I's not just good as a satire. But fuck me it's getting harder to appreciate them nowadays.
 
SnowBall said:
I hate this aversion to “chosen one” plots that I have seen lately, especially from Millennials who sperg about “grounded realism” in the earlier entires of their beloved childhood series and complain about later installments being more fantasy based. Even if it's always been fantasy based (gen 1 and 2 Pokemon fans are annoying in this regard.) There is this obsession among 90’s kids with making your character a normal guy who isn’t special or the chosen one. Video games are a form of escapism, sometimes I want to be the chosen one and save the world from an evil emperor.
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It helps if that the “chosen one” is likable and flawed to some degree.

Tropes and subversions in of themselves aren’t bad, it’s just that most of the people who use them aren’t very good at writing.
 
I never really found Earthbound to be all that interesting. I do love the first Mother game. You can tell that Itoi is a writer foremost because most of the elements in the game work towards the themes. Of course a lot of that comes at the expense of gameplay. I understand perfectly why many people don't want to slog though it, but I just love all the details.
 
Duncan Hills Coffee said:
EarthBound's a funny case in that the game is outright satirizing the Dragon Quest series, but since Dragon Quest doesn't have nearly as large a cult following, none of the EarthBound worshippers pick up on it and focus more on the quirky and silly parts of the game.

I like EarthBound, but its magic has been lost when suddenly every indie RPG with a sense of humor nowadays has to be like it.
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Earthbound's biggest problem is that story-wise Itoi blew his load in Fourside, when you rescue Paula for the second time. After that the rest of the game becomes "go to this location, learn the next part of the song, grind, repeat" until you learn the whole song. And then fight Giygas shortly thereafter.

Problem number 2 is that it relies on the assumption that the player played the first game and knows all about Giygas. I could excuse this and just blame Nintendo for not releasing the first game if it was the exact same characters as before, but they're not. It wouldn't have killed Itoi to have someone tell Ness more about Giygas before the end of the game.

The other thing is that it's fanbase is pretty insufferable. They're so high on their farts that they think an average RPG is among the absolute (if not the) greatest games of all time because Ness is a boy with a baseball bat instead of a man with a sword, even though it becomes a fairly traditional fantasy game well before the end. Also the fact that not many people got it back then so they act like they're connoisseurs of some high-art game most plebs have never heard of, let alone played. Doubly so if they "played it before Smash made it cool."
 
SnowBall said:
I hate this aversion to “chosen one” plots that I have seen lately, especially from Millennials who sperg about “grounded realism” in the earlier entires of their beloved childhood series and complain about later installments being more fantasy based. Even if it's always been fantasy based (gen 1 and 2 Pokemon fans are annoying in this regard.) There is this obsession among 90’s kids with making your character a normal guy who isn’t special or the chosen one. Video games are a form of escapism, sometimes I want to be the chosen one and save the world from an evil emperor.
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I think it depends. Players have been promised, over and over, a deep game with a real system of choices and consequences that shape the very world. It never, ever works out that way, but it's been promised so many times that it's what people expect. They've heard the lie so often that they think that it's the norm, even though it's never actually been done correctly once, as far as I know. Thus, when they say they want "grounded realism" and to eschew the "chosen one" schtick, what they really mean is they want an impossible game that won't be able to exist until AI gets to the point where it can play dungeon master as well as any human. And even then, probably not.

Western RPGs fall for this a lot. In Dragon Age or Mass Effect or whatever, no matter how much of a fuckup you are, the universe will still point you toward victory, but it'll pretend that your choices have meaning and that you're just a rogue element in a chaotic system. I don't know why they bother, or why people keep falling for it.

Ultimately, the fact that your character has human intelligence and the freedom to move around as they wish rather than exist as an NPC makes them the chosen one no matter what game you're playing. Most game characters are actually very weak mechanically, but it's the human intelligence that makes them powerful. You can't get rid of that element and still have something you can call a "game".

Rome's rightful successor said:
I'm glad I'm not the only one who doesn't like Breath of the Wild

Combat feels tedious and pointless as you almost gain nothing from engaging enemies in the overworld.
I just don't like the voice acting no matter how limited it is. Older Zelda game characters are good because there is no voice acting. leaving the music and facial reactions to the player to interpret how the dialog is spoken.
The weapons wear and tear system gets old and repetitive after awhile.
Overall it felt like a boring game to me.
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BOTW is one of my favorite games of all time, but many of your criticisms are valid. The voice acting is stupid and I wish they hadn't added it. There is virtually never a reason to engage with enemies unless you need rupees or new weapons, which stops happening fairly early on. The weapon system is fine in normal mode, but in master mode where everything is a tedious damage sponge it's honestly just stupid.

However, you have to look at it through the correct lens. When do you ever get real rewards in a Zelda game for engaging random enemies? Basically never. Enemies are obstacles to get past, not loot pinatas like a lot of games. It's been that way since the first very game. Not counting Zelda 2 of course, but nobody counts Zelda 2. When is combat not repetitive? It's almost always the same maneuvers with the same weapons. When is the world not mostly empty?

It's really not much different from any other Zelda game, modern or retro, once you distill it down to its core elements. It's just a lot easier to identify how much of the game relies on you making it fun for yourself when you can go anywhere and do anything from almost the get-go. If you could climb any surface and glide past everything in Ocarina, it'd feel small and featureless too. The features are in voluntarily not skipping content. You can do the same thing in BOTW, you just have to make that decision rather than the game making it for you.

I will say that I wish there were more of those beast dungeons or whatever though. They're super cool, and the fact that there's only four of them kind of blows.
 
Neet Tokusatsu Hero said:
I always got the impression that people who worship both Undertale and Earthbound have little to no exposure/ experience with RPGs, or videogames in general for than matter, both games are as basic as you can get and most people seem to like them mostly because "so quirky and cute UwU".
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Those are some of my favorite games, because I like the structure of RPGs with lighthearted worldbuilding set in the modern day. Some other games along those lines are Citizens of Earth, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, and Mega Man Battle Network. And I guess the Fallout games, kinda sorta.

Earthbound and Undertale just have a lot of visual appeal to those who don't actually play video games. I think that's why they have such vocal fanbases, but you don't hear about the others I mentioned.

MysticMisty said:
Earthbound's biggest problem is that story-wise Itoi blew his load in Fourside, when you rescue Paula for the second time. After that the rest of the game becomes "go to this location, learn the next part of the song, grind, repeat" until you learn the whole song. And then fight Giygas shortly thereafter.

Problem number 2 is that it relies on the assumption that the player played the first game and knows all about Giygas. I could excuse this and just blame Nintendo for not releasing the first game if it was the exact same characters as before, but they're not. It wouldn't have killed Itoi to have someone tell Ness more about Giygas before the end of the game.

The other thing is that it's fanbase is pretty insufferable. They're so high on their farts that they think an average RPG is among the absolute (if not the) greatest games of all time because Ness is a boy with a baseball bat instead of a man with a sword, even though it becomes a fairly traditional fantasy game well before the end. Also the fact that not many people got it back then so they act like they're connoisseurs of some high-art game most plebs have never heard of, let alone played. Doubly so if they "played it before Smash made it cool."
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If Earthbound does one thing wrong, its how you name every character right at the start, but you don't even get Poo until fairly late into the game, and even then, he's literally whisked away for a big chunk of time just so he can learn a spell that's still not as good as PSI Rockin Omega.

And for what it's worth, there just weren't many RPGs at the time that took place in a modern setting, and the variety of enemies was a big appealing element. What if you were walking along, and that fire hydrant over there sprung to life and attacked you? What if you could just order a pizza and heal your entire team? Slimes and potions don't exist in real life, so Earthbound has an extra tangible sense to it that you just don't get from most RPGs.

No arguments about the fandom, though. They've been spending the last 15 years bellowing "LOCALIZE MOTHER 3 ALREADY!!!" even though a great fan translation, made by industry professionals, has been around for almost 13 years now. I guess the same kinda retards that won't just play the fan translation are the type to also never pirate anything (because they're retards), so they'd rather sit around and cuck themselves out of a game for over 10% and counting of their entire life.
 
Unassuming Local Guy said:
However, you have to look at it through the correct lens. When do you ever get real rewards in a Zelda game for engaging random enemies? Basically never. Enemies are obstacles to get past, not loot pinatas like a lot of games. It's been that way since the first very game. Not counting Zelda 2 of course, but nobody counts Zelda 2. When is combat not repetitive? It's almost always the same maneuvers with the same weapons. When is the world not mostly empty?
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Both the first two Zelda games can get pretty grindy at times. For the first one, it's because high-ticket items require you to chop up mobs for cash for 1-5 rupees at a time to buy, for example, a ring that costs 255. For the second, it's because that game has RPG mechanics.

Speaking of which, unpopular opinion: Zelda 2 is the best Zelda. The game is the perfect blend of platforming and sword-fighting for its era, the latter of which requires both fast reflexes and reading tells from the opponent.

As you said, in most Zelda games, combat mostly revolves around walking up to an enemy and pressing the attack button. Very rarely will strategy deviate from that pattern, unless it's a boss, in which case, the use of the dungeon item will be used to get it into a weakened state. If you try playing Zelda 2 with this mind-set, you will get your ass handed to you. Which, aside from being a side-scroller, is probably why most Zelda fans dislike it. It requires knowing that the shield is your most-useful ally, and properly applying it requires more skill than just facing the right direction or holding a button. You need to carefully watch your enemy's movements to know whether you should block high or low, or in the case of the Goriyas that throw boomerangs, behind you, and you need to think fast. New players who haven't learned that your shield is your most useful asset and how to read opponents like Goriyas and Iron Knuckles will inevitably be curb-stomped as early as the first dungeon, but the difficulty drops pretty fast once you master it.

And that's exactly why I love Zelda 2: because it's a game that can be skillfully mastered in a way the series hasn't replicated since. Sure, you can memorize other Zelda games, since those are mostly puzzle-based, and that is in itself a form of mastery, but Zelda 2 is an action game first-and-foremost. Is it perfect? No. One of the bosses is literally just "Cast Reflect, squat in the corner, and wait for the boss to kill itself," and the fight against Dark Link is complete bullshit without abusing the corner exploit. There's a string of "Nintendo Power Moments" towards the end of the game where you have to find New Kasuto, get the Magic Key, then play the flute to get the sixth palace to appear. Also, The Grand Palace is fucking enormous, filled with extremely hazardous enemies that are advisable to avoid than engage, and to top it all off, features plenty of red herring pathways that don't lead to the final encounter. But those are minor gripes in what I perceive to be an underrated gem of a game.
 
Book Thief said:
Both the first two Zelda games can get pretty grindy at times. For the first one, it's because high-ticket items require you to chop up mobs for cash for 1-5 rupees at a time to buy, for example, a ring that costs 255. For the second, it's because that game has RPG mechanics.

Speaking of which, unpopular opinion: Zelda 2 is the best Zelda. The game is the perfect blend of platforming and sword-fighting for its era, the latter of which requires both fast reflexes and reading tells from the opponent.

As you said, in most Zelda games, combat mostly revolves around walking up to an enemy and pressing the attack button. Very rarely will strategy deviate from that pattern, unless it's a boss, in which case, the use of the dungeon item will be used to get it into a weakened state. If you try playing Zelda 2 with this mind-set, you will get your ass handed to you. Which, aside from being a side-scroller, is probably why most Zelda fans dislike it. It requires knowing that the shield is your most-useful ally, and properly applying it requires more skill than just facing the right direction or holding a button. You need to carefully watch your enemy's movements to know whether you should block high or low, or in the case of the Goriyas that throw boomerangs, behind you, and you need to think fast. New players who haven't learned that your shield is your most useful asset and how to read opponents like Goriyas and Iron Knuckles will inevitably be curb-stomped as early as the first dungeon, but the difficulty drops pretty fast once you master it.

And that's exactly why I love Zelda 2: because it's a game that can be skillfully mastered in a way the series hasn't replicated since. Sure, you can memorize other Zelda games, since those are mostly puzzle-based, and that is in itself a form of mastery, but Zelda 2 is an action game first-and-foremost. Is it perfect? No. One of the bosses is literally just "Cast Reflect, squat in the corner, and wait for the boss to kill itself," and the fight against Dark Link is complete bullshit without abusing the corner exploit. There's a string of "Nintendo Power Moments" towards the end of the game where you have to find New Kasuto, get the Magic Key, then play the flute to get the sixth palace to appear. Also, The Grand Palace is fucking enormous, filled with extremely hazardous enemies that are advisable to avoid than engage, and to top it all off, features plenty of red herring pathways that don't lead to the final encounter. But those are minor gripes in what I perceive to be an underrated gem of a game.
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You're a hero for posting an actual unpopular opinion, complete with evidence and citations, instead of a bog-standard "sorry if the truth offends y'all but ____" take that polls at 30%+.

Personally, my favorite Metroid is Metroid 2. I do not especially care for Super Metroid. Zelda 2 is not a particularly well-appreciated game, but imagine if it made people so butthurt that it got remade in the same style as Link to the Past, not once but twice.
 
I don't care for action RPGs. They're definitely popular among modern producers (and audiences if their numbers are steering them correctly). "Finally", their fans say, "a game that requires skill instead of die rolls". As if previous RPGs didn't include any creativity or skill as part of their gameplay loops. At their most egregious, I think aRPGs have simply replaced INT checks with DEX checks. Think of the most unfun aRPG you've ever played and compare it to a really solid turn-based game of yesteryear. Was spending time working out your enemy's weaknesses and exploiting them in a miniature puzzle-solving session really that inferior to "hurr, I can press the sword swing button over and over and over and over and over and over again and dodge roll when the enemy slowly winds his arm up menacingly"?

I'm sure a lot of decent stuff has come out of the shift to aRPGs, but I don't see it as the refreshing absolute upgrade to the stinky old combat systems that their fans claim they are. Most of what I see is *rollrollrollrollrollroll swingswingswingswingswing roll swingswingswingswingswingswingswing*
 
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