This is why I can basically only play old games or indies. Games shouldn’t feel like work or require me to pay tons of money. I play games to have fun, which I guess is a radical idea now.

Potentially worded a bit abrasively but…kinda yeah. They rely so heavily on fomo, gacha, and other skinner box tricks to keep you playing other than FUN. Just remember what happened to Titanfall 2: "ohhh it was SO FUN it just didn’t have the events and grinding and stuff I wanted >:( "

not just an online game problem for quite a few years now

The game is kind of a chore at first when you have to manually water your crops. Once you’re more established and have sprinklers you can really put a lot of the farming on autopilot.

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.

I can see why the time mechanic is there but I agree it can be a negative point to the game. You’re not the first person I see complaining about this.

I liked the game enough but needing to get a rare fish that can only be fished at certain season, certain time period and only when raining to complete quests was annoying, as was needing to get out of the dungeon while I was having a good run because of time. It would have been better if there were alternative means to get the fish, like buying from the fisherman, and the option to camp in the dungeon.

I actually feel like Harvest Moon was more chill and relaxing. Stardew Valley stressed me out because I felt like if I didn’t manage my time properly I was doing it wrong which felt weird given the game’s message about leaving the demanding stressful work life of the city behind.

I recently tried to play MH: World and bounced so hard. They really need to consider how to ease new players to the genre into the game. The first hour included so much exposition, paragraphs of text, and detailed menu tutorials before I really had any context for why anything is important. I know that the games have always been this way, but it felt lazy.

Out of curiosity, which one(s) did you try?

I love competitive MP, but I totally know what you mean. CS:GO is what I play with my friends and bottom fragging just stresses me out. Gimme old school Quake duals or duos, or 1v1 fighting games and I’m happy even when I’m losing.

The content and world in MMOs feels superficial. I much prefer a tightly constructed narrative with deep, meaningful character development. The Last Of Us is a great example of this.

This may just be old man nostalgia talking, but at least part of that spark feels like its gone because the genre became too popular and information flowed too freely.

One of the things I distinctly remember about older MMOs, especially Pre-WoW ones, is how so much information was basically just passed on from player to player. You’d join a guild, because the guild forums are where you could post maps and strategies and the like. But your guild forums were also mostly just private to you, so useful stuff could take a long time to leak out.

With the rise of wikis and big, well connected social communities, a lot of the exploration element of the games is just theme park rides and the mechanical experimentation gets analyzed to death in the first few days because of how collaborative everyone is instead of everyone being stuck in smaller groups with non-perfect info.

this is probably mine, too. i really, really wanted to like it… don’t know why it never clicked with me, but part of me suspects it’s the general aesthetic. i just feel like that whole “medieval” open world look is so overdone. maybe i’m expecting too much.

I actually like Skyrim, but I’m always really confused by the people who are like REALLY into it. I played it through for the story and did all the side quests that I cared about and then I was done. The gameplay just isn’t very engaging and the environments are only interesting for an hour or so each. Feels like an emptier oblivion.

I agree about Skyrim. The entire world feels dead, the npcs are lifeless. It’s really hard for me to feel the world and the story. The Witcher 3 came out only 4 years later and it’s several orders of magnitude better to me.

I agree wholeheartedly. I don’t feel like Bethesda has innovated with their RPGs in a single meaningful way since Oblivion. Every single game they make just feels buggy and samey, and the “systems” don’t make up for the synthetic quality. Games like Prey, Stalker, The Witcher, CP2077 or Elden Ring all take various approaches to the idea of open ended gameplay/questing/story/experience and they all do so many individual things better than Bethesda’s games. I’d rather play a game that gets a few things right with a narrower focus, than just doing a lot of everything “just okay.”

Here’s hoping Starfield does something genuinely refreshing.

Please give sekiro a try if you ever get a chance. It’s like dark souls but for people like us that want good fun gameplay instead of constant bs :D

Have you tried Nioh/Wolong? While I really like the Souls games for the exploration and world design I much prefer the faster and more complex combat of the Nioh games.

I’m with you on this one. I got moderately stuck at one point pretty early on in the game (I’m not sure, but I think my save was probably bugged). Anyway, I put the game down and never touched it again. Didn’t feel like I had lost anything at all.

I’ve had a hard time finishing the game because of #2. DE is such a weird blend of “the devs thought of everything” and “all conversations are railroaded into insanity”. What at first felt like a game allowing the player to explore and develop political views in an alternate universe is actually more of a hamfisted, cynical parody of all possible idealogies. I think the moment I got South Park vibes (not from the writing, but from the " everyone is stupid " vibe) is when I was doomed to never finish it. That said, I actually love so much about the game, I want to enjoy and finish it. I just find it so tiring.

I agree. People were raving about this game and it was just a complete miss with me.

For one thing it was marketed as an RPG but really it felt more like some kind of point and click adventure which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing but the writing style just didn’t click with me anyways. And, yeah, a lot of the choices in the game are just false anyways. After a few different starts experimenting with the different choices you just get railroaded into the same thing no matter what.

You should try world if you can. Rise has too much systems bloat in my opinion. World was my first monster hunter and I have over 200 hours and I am still not done. Rise added so much stuff with palicos and palamutes that I couldn’t be bothered to do. It tipped the scales just a bit too much towards systems bloat in my opinion. I haven’t played generations but from my understanding, it isn’t as modernised as the current iterations of monster hunter so that may be causing you some friction.

I loved the original trilogy of God of War, but the cinematic long drawn out pacing of the PS4 versions compared to the fast and concise nature of the older ones didn’t much hook me. Bayonetta felt like it embodied more of the original trilogy of God of War when it came to gameplay and presentation of the story not overstaying its welcome and being a brisk pace.

I’m in the same boat. I find it hard to describe why I felt bored because things are happening all the time, I guess maybe they just didn’t interest me? If it was just the cinematic boss fights I’m sure I would have stuck with it longer, but I stopped to solve every little puzzle and find every little letter and ultimately got bored enough to play something else and not look back.

Total agreement on all points.

I tried Sekiro, really gave it a solid go for a couple weeks, thought it was insanely difficult but I was getting the hang of it…

Then the tutorial basically ended. Fuck that game. The difficulty scale looks more like a cliff that turns over your head. No clue how anyone can enjoy that kind of thing. How is it enjoyable or relaxing to die 30, 40 times before beating a boss??

Any game made by From as in their Souls series or that includes Armored Core and Another Century’s Episode too?

I have the exact same opinion as you do. I really don’t understand the hype around zelda games.

For some context, what are some games you enjoy? Or, perhaps, do you think are underrated?

(As a Zelda fan who also enjoyed but did not complete Elden Ring)