Red Dead Redemption 2. Everyone goes on about how awesome it is, but I just found the story and gameplay really slow and dull.
this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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RDR2 suffers heavily from the same problem as GTAV's single player mode: it's a movie posing as a video game and both aspects suffer for it.
RDR2 would have been great if it was just the part where you wander around tracking critters and collecting flowers and playing cowboy dress-up, but the game really doesn't want you to do that. Not to belabor the point, but between how unpredictable the connection between "interact with item/character X" and "start mission with character Y" can be and the game's tendency to fail missions the second you go off-script, RDR2 often felt like it was directed by someone who actively resented the concept of player agency.
There‘s this great video essay that basically agrees with you. Rockstar want to create these cinematic narrative experiences but that does not mash well with their concept of an open world.
I‘m with you. I don‘t get why so many people praise the story and the gameplay.
The mission design is very disappointing. You have this beautiful open world with so many systems that you can interact with. It can be fun to just start some shit and watch the chaos unfold. But the second you start a mission, everything is scripted and like on rails. You have no real freedom whatsoever in how you want approach a mission. The missions are also not challenging in the least (apart from some jank here and there). It‘s mostly just one turkey shoot after another.
Story spoilers
The story is not all that great. It‘s just not believable that anyone sane would stick so long with a gang leader who does not make a single good decision and clearly goes more and more off the deep end. It is also too long and overstays its welcome by tens of hours. Especially the whole Guarma chapter is hot garbage and would not have been missed at all if it weren‘t there.
I made it through to the end. I had to see for myself where they are going with the story. But I was kind of glad when it was over.
I wish another studio could license the world that Rockstar have created and make a game that is actually good. But that is never going to happen.
I LOVE RPGs and open world games. Love the Fallouts (all of them except 76), elder scrolls, dragon age, old baldurs gates, etc. Basically every game that's apparently indicative of liking the Witcher 3. But holy hell, I've played it 4x and can only get 10 hours or so into it before I have to turn it off. I have no idea why honestly, because every thing about it screams that I'll love it.
I had the same issue with every Witcher game... I had to start each of them a few times, to get totally hooked on it on the 3rd try usually, no idea why.
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Breath of the wild. As an avod Zelda fun I really really tried to like it but just can't do it.
Yeah me too. I don't know if the new one is any better but BotW just wasn't very fun, but I'm also not the biggest fan of these sorts of super "empty" explory games.
I'll probably get roasted for this but.. Pokemon. It just seems like endless copy/paste and might be one of the laziest game franchises I've ever seen. I've really tried to get into them. I was there when the Pokemon cartoon started, I saw it rise to the phenomenon it is today, but damn if it isn't the most boring grindfest ever.
That's a very common complaint for the last, hell I don't even know, 20 games or whatever.
True, I'm not saying anything I haven't heard before. It's just crazy that people keep buying it thinking "Maybe this one will match the memories I had when I was 10." I guess nostalgia is a powerful drug. Even more powerful than I thought.. just looked up the Pokemon franchises worth and it's estimated at 74 billion. Now I know how boomers feel cause I just don't get it.
Yeah I don't get it either. I don't even get the nostalgia aspect, there are just so many new Pokémon that I feel they completely drown out the ones I grew up with, the first like 250 iirc, I have no desire whatsoever to play the new games.
But I suppose it's still very popular with kids all around the world as well so there's that.
Elden ring. It looks like an amazing game but it just doesn't work for me. I feel like it's the combat? Somehow it feels "clunky" to me. It's odd I can't put my finger on it, but I don't like the movement which obviously affects combat.
I was also gonna say Elden Ring, have you played other souls games?. The combat in elden ring felt pretty decent compared to other souls games, very fast paced and actually alot smoother than any other because of the jumping mechanics. I love the dark souls games but elden ring killed itself for me with its open world, just didn't feel fun exploring, and the only places that i enjoyed going through were the few legacy dungeons that were designed like the older games. Repeated bosses, useless gathering and crafting skills, the regular dungeons had the same 4 designs and were too short to be fun and too repetitive in design. Oh and i forgot the quests, screw elden rings questlines tbh they suck, too cryptic in an open world with no guidance
Alot of people really like this game and i dont get it.
Yep! Played 2 of the dark souls games. I kinda enjoyed them but I didn't finish either. Still felt better than Elden Ring somehow.
Also when I played elden ring the mapping was all controller based and I was playing on pc. That was weird. Had to dig through the Internet to find how to change it to KB/Mouse mapping.
For a game of that price I'd expect it to:
- Being default on KB/M for PC users. That's usually the case for so games anyway.
- Having that sort of plug and play that detects whatever you're using. Controller input? Alright, controller mappings show on screen. Oh, you pressed a keyboard key? Okay, KB/M mappings then.
No wonder you don't like the feel of the combat. It's just not something that really works without a controller, nothing you can really do about it, besides using a controller.
That could be it. I do have a controller I should give that a go... I usually prefer to play these harder games with kb/m though.
Sometimes specific input method simply work better, there's a reason most shooters on consoles have heaps of aim assist, those are inherently easier to play with a mouse, and those souls games with a controller.
The Souls games.
I can see the appeal of the story and stuff, but they're just impossible for me to get into cause of their difficulty
Here's the thing I never got: most Souls-like aren't actually that difficult, they're just tedious. And I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because people don't seem to notice and/or care.
I don't mind doing a boss encounter 20 times to get the move set down. I like the feeling of beating a boss by actually becoming better. But why the hell do I need to run trough a dozen enemies before I get back to him? It's like a damn unskippable cutscene where I need to mash the same buttons over and over again! And people rightfully get mad at those, but put it in a souls-like dress and people love it.
I'm a 40 year old dad, I really don't have the time to waste doing stuff I already mastered 20 times over. Just give me a damn quick save that disables during combat. It doesn't make anything easier, it's just less tedium.
Right? I so agree. Further, I feel like a lot of games are just as hard... but they give you a little wiggle room so that you can learn how to fight while you're fighting, and you get this pleasing feeling of being smart and overcoming something difficult just the same, and you can get into the flow of it and let the music sink into you and feel fucking awesome even if it's hard and you do end up dying multiple times.
But with souls games, one (1) tiny mistake and bam, you're dead, and now you have to sit through this long-ass loading screen. That doesn't feel like more difficulty to me; that feels like the type of bullshit that is like getting sniped from across the map by an NPC you can't see. It just interrupts the flow of the fight, and the player's immersion, repeatedly, when it doesn't need to imo. And without difficulty settings, it screws over people who have hand pain or stiffness for any of a number of reasons, or people who have shitty cheap knockoff controllers, or people who have minimal hardware and maybe the game stutters just enough sometimes to make them die, and so on.
And the 'community', at least the one on reddit, is insufferable (in aggregate! I don't automatically think you're an ass because you like souls games, I promise. I'm just tired of people trying to use their like souls games as some of kind of proof that they're better than other people, and of their complaining about difficulty settings and other accessibility measures.)
But yeah. Something like Hyper Light Drifter, that respawns you right by the fight immediately after you die, or something like Celeste where again you respawn right at the same level immediately after you die, is fine. But souls' games death screen is too long on its own, let alone combined with all the stupid backtracking.
You don't die in one hit to most things unless you run with very low health and armor. That's a solvable problem.
And while sometimes bonfires can be a bit far apart, especially in the earlier games, people also seem to forget that you can literally just run past enemies. That said, I think it's part of the journey and the struggle. Dark Souls is basically a rythm game in a way and that takes experience. Basically, you don't need to kill everything but it's good exercise.
Also there has always been an "easy mode", cheesy build and multiplayer. If you think the game is too hard, play different.
Totally agree on Persona 5. Maybe it's just because I don't particularly care about anime, but I just couldn't get into it. It just feels like hours and hours of boring anime filler episodes.
I'm also not a big fan of turn based combat, so that didn't help.
I would have loved that game if it didn't assume that the player was a complete idiot who had to get the same information ten times in a row in 30 minutes of generic dialogue, just to play 30 minutes of boring tutorials and then another 30 minutes of pointless dialogue.
It's a long game that doesn't need to be. I like the "social sim" aspect of it, and even if I'm not into turn based combat it felt really good, but I just can't stand hours of pointless dialogue and neverending tutorials. I mean, I'm 20/30 hours into the game and you really need to spend this much time introducing mechanics that are just evolutions of preexisting mechanics?
But this is a problem I have with every JRPG. They all seem cool before playing them, but when I do they feel to me like extremely bloated games. I'd love a nice straightforward 20 hours JRPG
These were my impressions as well. I forced myself to finish the first palace(?) but it just felt so tedious. And when after like 15 hours they introduce yet another facet of gameplay and throw another tutorial at you it really does interrupt and sense of immersion for me. Only being able to do like 3 or 4 things a day felt kind of silly as well. I wanted to explore some of the characters more but having to go to sleep and sit through some random stuff in between anything actually interesting was just exhausting.
A Way Out - go anywhere and ask for a good co-op game and this will be recommended to you. It took me and my girlfriend about 3 hours to beat it. It didn't feel like a game as much as an interactive movie and it has zero replayability value.
Also, I don't want to share spoilers but the ending is... bad? The twist leaves you feeling bummed :(
I played it with the idea of it being a cheesy 80s Action Movie and it works for me.
Have you tried It takes two? It's the same developer but a way better Co-op-game.
stares with disagreement
Lol it's cool, we don't all have to agree. I'm curious, what are some games you do like?
all fine but here u got a few: advance wars 1 and 2 SOTN the ace attorney trilogy Rhythm Tengoku for the gba links awakening The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces dawn of war 1
Ace Attorney games are goated
Horizon Zero Dawn/Forbidden West. Game is so empty and has an open world for having an open world’s sake. Couldn’t stand it for longer than 3 hours.
Uncharted 1. A lot of people told me that I have to play the uncharted games, they’re groundbreaking. I can understand that the early games were ahead of their time when they released, but they aged badly. The physics, the story, the gameplay - everything feels just like trash.
If you don’t have any nostalgic memories of the game and you play it for the first time today, you’ll think it sucks.
I liked the bits that felt like I was playing crash bandicoot and hated everything with guns.
Anything with multiplayer.
I guess I'll take the hit for this one. Dark Souls.
The combat can be really fun and I had a great time fighting the bosses but the slow, careful crawl between boss fights is just so dull to me that it's not worth it.
I agree on that one, but for a slightly different reason. For me it was the camera. For whatever reason I had the feeling I fought the camera more than I fought the enemies. And that kills the fun for me.
For me Skyrim, The Witcher 3, botw and all souls games.
Skyrim never clicked, it just felt buggy and empty and punishing. Trying to climb that mountain just so a yeti can beat you up? Great, here is your save spot form 15 min earlyer, please try again. I know that's why it's fun for so many, I just hated it.
The Witcher 3 was too... much dialogue. Most of the time I can play 1-3 hours every couple of days. And in the Witcher you walk 15min through beautiful but otherwise empty forest, killing 1-15 something, walk back and talk like another 15min with the guy who gave you the quest. It's really deep worldbuilding, but when you don't have a lot of time it's more "damn, what happend last?" 5min walking "ah, that happened" takes new quest, so much talking..."ah damn, my hour is gone, so I finish the quest another time." PC off.
Botw cause the world felt empty and everything broke in an instant and I'm the player ending with 50 healing potions, 10 big scrolls and so on cause MaYbE I'll need it another time. Doesn't match with botw. TotK is so much better handling this, cause you can craft any good item in an instant.
And Souls Games are just a broken mess. They're not hard by default, they're hard cause of all the buggy and mushy controls. It never feels crisp, it's just a big blob and maybe your character rolls or maybe it feels like an invisible wall, who knows. Games like Jedi Fallen Order in hard mode or Hollow Knight were so much more fun, cause the controls were crisp and everytime I lost, it was because of me. I did wrong and not some squishi spaghetti code.
It's funny, your description of Souls games echoes how I feel about 3rd person action games that aren't made by FromSoft. To me, Dark Souls 1 felt like the crisp combat I had been wanting but never getting from stuff like God of War or the older Monster Hunter games. Bloodborne refined it somewhat, and to this day, that style of 3rd person combat is my favorite.
Crazy how perceptions of a game's controls are so individual. Our difference really illustrates to me how hard it is to nail a game's "feel."
It definitely is! I have a lot of friends who love the souls games and tried to convince me to give it a try over and over again. And one of them speaks about the controls like you do. It was an interesting evening figuring out how different our views of other games were. That's why I love the variety of games. You can never have a game everybody likes or even feels the same for everyone. And that's also why I love threads like these, cause even though it seems like everyone likes X or Y, every game will be disliked by someone.
Honestly, Stardew Valley for me. I've tried it a couple times and it just didn't work for me. I wanted to like it, and I like the idea of it, but in practice, I hated the time management aspect and not being able to just run around and do as much as I wanted in a day (I haven't played on PC with mods; I know there's at least one or two that let you change that). I also hated the fishing. 🙃
As someone who loves stardew (I have 1000+ hours in it) I can see what you mean. I hope you'll find mods you like, but maybe it's just better to try other games like sun haven? Never played it myself but I read it eliminates exactly this time managing thing stardew has. And yeah, the fishing is hard. I heard "The fishing in Stardew is the souls-like in farming Minigames" a lot and I think it's true.
Terraria - I just don't understand what you're meant to do or why it's interesting.
I actually really like TOTK though, it's a big improvement over BOTW with a slightly more alive world and the vehicle creation stuff is fun.
I thought I couldn't contribute because most games I buy I really do enjoy. Maybe not finish, but there has been enjoyment. Except Terraria. It's hyped like crazy, but I can't find out why. Nothing makes sense to me and I don't get what needs to be done. And I did like Minecraft quite a bit
For me it's the GTA games since San Andreas and Red Dead Redemption 2.
I still try GTA V and RDR2 once in a while as I love the worlds in those games. But they always feel grindy really fast and just don't manage to hold my attention. A shame, as RDR2 looks gorgeous and I love the western setting, but the gameplay just doesn't connect with me.
Also doesn't help that each time I want to try picking GTA V or RDR2 up again I end up starting from scratch as I have no idea what the control scheme was. Another thing that just doesn't resonate with me I guess. Perhaps it's better with a controller, but as an avid mouse & keyboard guy all my attempts to use one ended with utter frustration.
For me, GTA has always been like "I can play the story and get a car as a reward, or I can just steal a car". So I always start to steal my way up, until the cops become too powerful. Then it turns into a senseless shootout and once I'm dead, the game is done for me.
It's fun for an hour or so, and that's that then.
I totally agree with BotW. So many people seem to love it, but it's just lots of empty land, boring/non-existent characters/story. It's just empty and there are no real pointers where to go.
Also, Zelda without dungeons doesn't feel right at all, and the shrines aren't a suitable replacement.
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Kingdom Hearts: I played the first for some time and watched some videos of the series, but I don't get the appeal. The character design is strange, the story does not hit me on an emotional level and the Disney characters... Just no.
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Final Fantasy: Played 7 and X and just like Kingdom Hearts, it just did not hit me on any level. It is strange, because I love JRPGs like the Legend of Heroes series.
I wouldn't say I hate Witcher 3 but it didn't engage me at all because of the "everything sucks" aura it gives. There's nothing really nice to look forward to or that makes the fight against the Big Bad worth it. However, now that I'm writing this, maybe that was intended and I should get back to the game with the mentality of a jaded mercenary only doing it for money, as I believe the Witchers are supposed to be.
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