Games Ruined By One Thing

[Judge Dredd]

I remember playing that game and finding it absolutely boring and easy. You could use one or two units to finish every mission reliably due to upgraded and grinding.

It's one of the big problems with the VC games I've played. The AI is dumb as a shovel and will suicide charge assaults regularly so makes up for it with numbers. This would be fine, but the problem is the game encourages bum rushing with a few units due to the levels being graded on number of turns, not kills or losses or anything like that.

But the graphics, music, story, tone, all of that stuff is top notch. Mechanically they're sub par strategy games, but as a complete whole they're great.

Fallout 4 was ruined by the guns.

I didn't mind the guns. What bothered me about the guns was that you had all these cool upgrades but no reason to ever use them. But FO4 has many problems that crafting balance is low on the list.

The worst thing about the tank fights is the fact you can modify your snipers's weapon to make them destroy tanks which is incredibly silly.

It's kind of needed though. Lancers are useless due to being slow, inaccurate, and weak at their supposed role. It would make more sense to add explosives to engineers or something like that.

I enjoyed the game quite a lot tho might replayed it once but with no resets (if an unit dies then it dies)

Should be fairly easy to do. It's difficult for units to die in that game. In my VC4 playthrough, one unit died, and that was due to me not knowing that a scripted event would spawn a tank and a bunch of guys from nowhere. I had to restart that level anyway so the death wasn't permanent. If you don't care about grades, you can take it slow and not leave units separated.

 

[You gain Brouzouf]

Fallout 4 was ruined by the guns.

The gunplay was much improved, the armor system was neat, power armor was done perfect, I liked the settlement building, and I love the map/atmosphere. Downtown Boston is great, and the wet ocean aesthetic is great. Writing sucks but gameplay gets around that in most games.

It's talked to death, but the guns fucking blow. They sound bad, they feel bad, they look like shit, and they were obviously designed by people who did know what a gun was. All they had to do was take guns from the previous games, and make them sound punchier. Crafting and the removal of repair as a tool for limiting progression/ OP weapons ruined a lot of weapons, like the minigun. Fuck, the 10mm pistol might be the only gun in the game.

I did like how your builds were built around if you were doing semi-auto or full-auto weapons.

I never cared for the gunplay in Fallout 4. Imo it's ok for a game to have combat be abstracted dice rolls as long as it's fitting with the character building mechanics and pace of the game.
What really ruined Fallout 4 for me was all the normal shit people mention, but also that all the changes to the perks and how loot works just turns it into a subpar single player Borderlands. That was really not at all what I wanted from a Fallout game of all things.

Fucking Diablo Loot. I hated the diablo loot so goddamn much. Fiddling around, going to the blacksmith, propagating all the good shit from my favorite weapon and transferring it to another for like 10 extra points in the damage stat. The constant inventory management due to how much shit you just end up stocking on. Just let me kill shit and bob and weave everywhere, stop making me micromanage a goddamn armory... Nioh 2 I hear is a big improvement in general but still has diablo equipment, so just for that I never bothered with it. I do hope Wo Long learned the fucking lesson or at least mellowed out a bit. I do like the game mechanics but the busywork is a pain. And well as a freebie, the level design in Nioh 1 was pretty meh and the level recycles for side missions ended up becoming pretty tiresome for someone that tends to try and complete what they play. Oh, and the bullshit 2 high level bosses in the same room missions, though those were fully optional so won't give the game much shit for those.

I entirely dropped the game on PS4 because of the loot and I was actually near the end of the game without realizing it.
I didn't play it again until PC release and learned how to more quickly deal with the piles and piles of trash loot you get in each mission. It was way less frustrating than my first playthrough but that feeling of picking up weapons/armor and thinking "this is probably just something I'll have to deal with later" never went away.
I think it's worth putting up with since Nioh 1/2 are both great games but it was maybe the worst choice they could have made.

 

[Bridge to Nowhere]

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance's law system. Imagine having to check the laws every single time you get into a fight, because they constantly change, and make sure you don't break any of them. It's entirely possible to get laws that completely fuck you over ("No damaging monsters" in a fight with monsters, "No Attack command" early in the game when your non-mages don't have anything else, etc.), violating them gets you yellow cards that take pieces of equipment or some of the battle rewards, and you can also get red cards that banish one of your units from the battlefield for the rest of the fight and force you to go get them back from prison, unless it's the main character, in which case it's game over and back to your last save. If you think you can cleverly use this against the enemy, think again: all the enemies you'd actually want to send to prison have protection that prevent them from getting anything except yellow cards, which don't affect enemies since they only do stuff when the fight ends. No, you can't ever get this protection.

This is a major reason why I never bothered to finish this game. You can get cards that add or remove laws, but that's a whole other system that requires you progress in the game and trade for all the cards you actually want, and they're consumables as well.

 

[ShitLurker]

Star Ocean 3 has the twist of it's player characters being brought to a futuristic world where it's revealed they are fictional characters in a video game of that world. Everything the players did in Star 1, 2, 3 until that point and the games after set chronologically before 3? Nothing you did ever mattered (you do stop the final boss from erasing the program but the damage was done). So in other words Clause and Rena are nothing more than a bunch of code

Not only that, but the chronological order of games has SO3 as the furthest in the future; so not only did everything you do before that point in SO3 not matter, everything you do in games after SO3 doesn't matter either.

Christ, as if I didn't hate Star Ocean 2 enough already... What the hell were they thinking?

I entirely dropped the game on PS4 because of the loot and I was actually near the end of the game without realizing it.
I didn't play it again until PC release and learned how to more quickly deal with the piles and piles of trash loot you get in each mission. It was way less frustrating than my first playthrough but that feeling of picking up weapons/armor and thinking "this is probably just something I'll have to deal with later" never went away.
I think it's worth putting up with since Nioh 1/2 are both great games but it was maybe the worst choice they could have made.

I really hope Wo Long learned from this. The gameplay is Ace, but fucking hell that menu busywork probably added like a 5th of the playtime.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance's law system. Imagine having to check the laws every single time you get into a fight, because they constantly change, and make sure you don't break any of them. It's entirely possible to get laws that completely fuck you over ("No damaging monsters" in a fight with monsters, "No Attack command" early in the game when your non-mages don't have anything else, etc.), violating them gets you yellow cards that take pieces of equipment or some of the battle rewards, and you can also get red cards that banish one of your units from the battlefield for the rest of the fight and force you to go get them back from prison, unless it's the main character, in which case it's game over and back to your last save. If you think you can cleverly use this against the enemy, think again: all the enemies you'd actually want to send to prison have protection that prevent them from getting anything except yellow cards, which don't affect enemies since they only do stuff when the fight ends. No, you can't ever get this protection.

This is a major reason why I never bothered to finish this game. You can get cards that add or remove laws, but that's a whole other system that requires you progress in the game and trade for all the cards you actually want, and they're consumables as well.

Same, FFTactics is a favorite of mine, but Advance, between the story never really compelling me (going from medieval intrigue to autistic child is sad is a huge step down as far as I'm concerned) and the fucking judges really ruined everything.

 

[Cloaca Rimjob]

Countless ds titles that had the touchscreen gimmick for the sake of using the touchscreen, looking at the mario and zelda games in particular.

Sonic 3 & Knuckles: Ice Cap Zone puzzles (I suck, sure, but these don't fucking belong in a fucking 2D Sonic)

Is that the sliding platform you needto jump off at a certain point or it just keeps looping?

The spinning platform in carnival night was worse I thought, at no point does it give you any indication of what to do and it's the only instance in the game where it's used.

 

[gmax alcremie]

The SO3 Plot-twist didn't bother me - I was warned, but not spoiled, about it so I guess my expectations were tempered but it's not like the plot or characters are good anyway. It's my favorite jrpg of that time period because of the battle system, music, lack of random encounters, trophies, map completions, crafting... But tbh I can't even remember all the playable characters names and I put 100+ hours in. The gameplay was just so, so satisfying to me and it was very pretty.

Here's my low hanging fruit personal complaint : dragons in Skyrim. Fighting them annoyed me so much that after a few I restarted my game and just ignored the main quest so they wouldn't spawn and never ended up doing it.

 

[Gibs]

Non-multiplayer games with features that must be accessed through an online connection even though an online connection wouldn't be necessary.

 

[AIKA]

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance's law system. Imagine having to check the laws every single time you get into a fight, because they constantly change, and make sure you don't break any of them. It's entirely possible to get laws that completely fuck you over ("No damaging monsters" in a fight with monsters, "No Attack command" early in the game when your non-mages don't have anything else, etc.), violating them gets you yellow cards that take pieces of equipment or some of the battle rewards, and you can also get red cards that banish one of your units from the battlefield for the rest of the fight and force you to go get them back from prison, unless it's the main character, in which case it's game over and back to your last save. If you think you can cleverly use this against the enemy, think again: all the enemies you'd actually want to send to prison have protection that prevent them from getting anything except yellow cards, which don't affect enemies since they only do stuff when the fight ends. No, you can't ever get this protection.

This is a major reason why I never bothered to finish this game. You can get cards that add or remove laws, but that's a whole other system that requires you progress in the game and trade for all the cards you actually want, and they're consumables as well.

You can get this protection by acquiring Cid. He allows you to skip the Judges turn and so you can break the law as you please.

Sadly, he requires completing every side mission so you don't get to enjoy this during the main story progression.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Countless ds titles that had the touchscreen gimmick for the sake of using the touchscreen, looking at the mario and zelda games in particular.


Is that the sliding platform you needto jump off at a certain point or it just keeps looping?

The spinning platform in carnival night was worse I thought, at no point does it give you any indication of what to do and it's the only instance in the game where it's used.

Yeah, that's the one. I actually ragequit so I haven't even beaten the game yet. I'm sure I can watch a video to see exactly how and when to jump out of it, but it just really killed the flow.

I don't remember having an issue like that in Carnival Night Zone but I think I know what you're talking about, it's that 3Dish cylinder, right?

 

[Girl Named Sandoz]

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance's law system. Imagine having to check the laws every single time you get into a fight, because they constantly change, and make sure you don't break any of them. It's entirely possible to get laws that completely fuck you over ("No damaging monsters" in a fight with monsters, "No Attack command" early in the game when your non-mages don't have anything else, etc.), violating them gets you yellow cards that take pieces of equipment or some of the battle rewards, and you can also get red cards that banish one of your units from the battlefield for the rest of the fight and force you to go get them back from prison, unless it's the main character, in which case it's game over and back to your last save. If you think you can cleverly use this against the enemy, think again: all the enemies you'd actually want to send to prison have protection that prevent them from getting anything except yellow cards, which don't affect enemies since they only do stuff when the fight ends. No, you can't ever get this protection.

This is a major reason why I never bothered to finish this game. You can get cards that add or remove laws, but that's a whole other system that requires you progress in the game and trade for all the cards you actually want, and they're consumables as well.

there’s a patch for that

 

[Cloaca Rimjob]

I don't remember having an issue like that in Carnival Night Zone but I think I know what you're talking about, it's that 3Dish cylinder, right?

Yeah that's the one, it seems like a dead end but you needto press up and down to move the cylinder to give you an opening to progress. I gave up on it when I first played it.

 

[Sean_Igger]

Star Ocean 3 has the twist of it's player characters being brought to a futuristic world where it's revealed they are fictional characters in a video game of that world.

I hated this shit in SO3. The "It was all a dream" plot, in all forms of media, is meant to be poignant and thought-provoking but it never is.

 

[Dysnomia]

Star Ocean 3 has the twist of it's player characters being brought to a futuristic world where it's revealed they are fictional characters in a video game of that world. Everything the players did in Star 1, 2, 3 until that point and the games after set chronologically before 3? Nothing you did ever mattered (you do stop the final boss from erasing the program but the damage was done). So in other words Clause and Rena are nothing more than a bunch of code

So I never ate the rotten sashimi?

I have to wonder why such a dumb idea was allowed to be added to the plot. I've seen some really stupid sequel ideas. But that's gotta be one of the worst. At least with something like .hack the fact that it's a game within a game is known from the start and Kite and Haseo are real people offline. If you are going to pull that type of thing after three games have already passed (GBC game is side story, right?) then you are just ruining the whole thing.

Yeah that's the one, it seems like a dead end but you needto press up and down to move the cylinder to give you an opening to progress. I gave up on it when I first played it.

I gave up on that one and went back to Sonic & Knuckles for a few years. Back then the bouncy mushrooms and swingy poles seemed pretty high tech to me.

 

[Cloaca Rimjob]

I gave up on that one and went back to Sonic & Knuckles for a few years. Back then the bouncy mushrooms and swingy poles seemed pretty high tech to me.

You just made another bullshitty S3&K knuckles thing pop into my head. I couldnt get past flying battery zone because you come to a part where it's another dead end and you need to wait for the little bomb things shooting out the hatches to blow a hole in the ground. S3&K is one of my all time favourite games but damn! There was some questionable choices made with progressing through the levels. Playing Sonic 1 and 2 you arrive at a dead end and instantly go.... okay I need to go back the way.

 

[Dumpster dived waifu]

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance's law system. Imagine having to check the laws every single time you get into a fight, because they constantly change, and make sure you don't break any of them. It's entirely possible to get laws that completely fuck you over ("No damaging monsters" in a fight with monsters, "No Attack command" early in the game when your non-mages don't have anything else, etc.), violating them gets you yellow cards that take pieces of equipment or some of the battle rewards, and you can also get red cards that banish one of your units from the battlefield for the rest of the fight and force you to go get them back from prison, unless it's the main character, in which case it's game over and back to your last save. If you think you can cleverly use this against the enemy, think again: all the enemies you'd actually want to send to prison have protection that prevent them from getting anything except yellow cards, which don't affect enemies since they only do stuff when the fight ends. No, you can't ever get this protection.

This is a major reason why I never bothered to finish this game. You can get cards that add or remove laws, but that's a whole other system that requires you progress in the game and trade for all the cards you actually want, and they're consumables as well.

I genuinely never understood why they'd have the law system work against enemies, but not go all the way. If I place an enemy into a situation where they can do either nothing or break the law, I expect that if they break the law the judges remove them from combat the exact same way the petrify status ailment worked.

If you stock up on the cards that negate laws you hate, you can mostly ignore the laws from that point onwards, and enjoy making jihadist Bangaa Defenders to spread the love of Allah

 

[Nick Gars]

I'll probably get a lot of flak for this one, but...

Doom Eternal. I was so hyped for this game after 2016 was so damn good (even if it's a joke in terms of difficulty), but then once I played a couple hours of it, I couldn't stand it. Playing "rock-paper-scissors" with EVERY fucking enemy and having to constantly manage your ammo just isn't fun and it doesn't feel like Doom. In Doom 1, 2, Final, 64, ect, ammo management was very rarely a thing, some levels were really scarce, but it was few and far between. As long as you weren't deliberately wasting valuable ammo on weak shit, you're not going to run out very often at all.

Doom 3, while not feeling like a traditional Doom game, at least had a reason for ammo management because it had a more "survival horror" focus while the previous entries were "run and gun". Even then, I rarely had ammo management issues after getting halfway through the game

For a good idea of what I expected Eternal to be, look at Postal Brain Damaged. It's just as fast paced and chaotic, but it's not bogged down by these two shitty mechanics Eternal has.

 

[Calandrino]

Star Ocean 3 has the twist of it's player characters being brought to a futuristic world where it's revealed they are fictional characters in a video game of that world. Everything the players did in Star 1, 2, 3 until that point and the games after set chronologically before 3? Nothing you did ever mattered (you do stop the final boss from erasing the program but the damage was done). So in other words Clause and Rena are nothing more than a bunch of code

But...

they are fictional characters in a video game?

 

[Articles and Nudes]

The Ada/Sherry sections in Resident Evil 2, although more applicable to the remakes. Carlos' section in the third game remake definitely applies.

The first time these sections were tense, unknowable affairs where all my stashed resources were now useless. Afterwards they just become speed bumps where you wait for an NPC, or other scripted event.

The Evil Within 2 has a section like this where you just follow an NPC as she gives exposition. Gameplay grinds to a halt.

 

[You gain Brouzouf]

While I don't hate it, One Step From Eden fell short of my expectations pretty hard.
I'm a big fan of the Megaman Battle Network games so seeing a game actually make use of that combat system got me instantly interested.
Unfortunately it was a rogue like and was specifically trying to copy Slay the Spire in particular. So the only deck building you get to do is during a run, each hand you get is totally random and you can't even control the order in which your cards are placed in your hand, but the worst thing in my opinion is making the battlefield 4x8 rather than 3x6. The game just becomes so much harder to read and I find myself misjudging where diagonally moving moves will end up. Nearly doubling the size of the stage just made the game more confusing and I didn't really see the benefits of it.
Also bonus gripe but the character sprites are really ugly, I hate that style of pixel art.

Games not bad just not really what I wanted I guess. Still had some fun with it.

 

[Zaryiu2]

The SO3 Plot-twist didn't bother me - I was warned, but not spoiled, about it so I guess my expectations were tempered but it's not like the plot or characters are good anyway. It's my favorite jrpg of that time period because of the battle system, music, lack of random encounters, trophies, map completions, crafting... But tbh I can't even remember all the playable characters names and I put 100+ hours in. The gameplay was just so, so satisfying to me and it was very pretty.

Here's my low hanging fruit personal complaint : dragons in Skyrim. Fighting them annoyed me so much that after a few I restarted my game and just ignored the main quest so they wouldn't spawn and never ended up doing it.

The twist was worse if you played and liked the 2-3 before it

But...

they are fictional characters in a video game?

They are fictional characters in a video game set in a video game and the last fight is literally to stop the video game/save file the characters are from from being deleted. The game went meta