That was bauldurs gate 3 for me. I started a co-op game with my husband and neither of us made it farther than about two hours in. It just didn’t click with me.
Same. I wanted to like it.
I’ve found those games to be better in single player. Running around with your friends is like herding cats when I just wanna enjoy the story.
I feel infinitely sorry for both you and your husband for never being able to enjoy one of the best games of all time.
Gotta be honest, I had the same experience as op. I could write paragraphs on how much I desperately wanted to like the game Vs how disappointed I was in it. It really made me sad.
BG3 can be fun to play and all, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. BG3 wasn’t even the best game of 2023.
Subjectively for me, it was. The only two games in 2023 that were in the contest were the RE4 remake and TotK, but BG3 is probably the game I played significantly more.
Objectively, it is the best game of 2023 if we consider how many awards the game won and how well it sold.
For me Alan Wake 2 was the best game of 2023.
In the same boat as OP. I love gaming, I love well made Fantasy media, but I absolutely hate High Fantasy and the entire D&D universe / franchise. No Baldur’s Gate games for me.
I must suck or it must be hard, but I restarted like 3 times before it clicked.
Me with Satisfactory. I realized all the factory lines need to feed into something I get to use, and not just to.make number go up. I haven’t played it since I found out 98% of the shit you make literally has no purpose but to be sent up the space elevator for points. Project Ozone 3 probably set me up to hate that.
You would probably click quite a bit more with Factorio then.
Actually, I wonder if that is why Satisfactory wasn’t clicking for me. Since I kept making stuff to feed into the big box.
I have wanted to play that one but can’t catch it on sale. Satisfactory just felt like a game based on every peg going into the square hole.
Factorio never goes on sale, fwiw :/
Factorio will not go on sale and never has. The devs have always been committed to offering the game at a reasonable fixed price. They did increase the price in modest small increments during early access as they got closer to 1.0. After 1.0, the price has not changed.
The price is completely justified if you like factory automation games. You can easily get 40 to 100 hours from the game. But if you want to really dig into it you’ll be in for >200 (none of it is a grind). If you decide to install mods you could easily bump thst playtime out to 1000+ (again, all of it is enjoyable if you like these games).
The price did increase after 1.0 in order to catch up with inflation (I think)
Yeah its not really about the price being unfair and more about me not being a drunken pirate on Steam all the time sorry
First hit is free (there’s a demo available).
Damn. I just finished my first play through yesterday and I had a blast. Sunk 250 hours to get credits. Top 10 game for me.
My only complaint was the combat system. I turned it off around 40 hours in when I realized the combat is pretty shallow and was detrimental to my experience. I like that the game allows you to turn off combat so easily although I wish it was off by default.
I havent played in a long time but Satisfactory is one of the worst games I’ve ever played. On paper it’s everything I love but the gameplay is so agonizing. Fuck the chainsaw and cutting down stupid trees for wood and having to run belts across half the map and all the animals getting in the way. I do like the buildings how they look how it feels to walk through the factory. I like the ratios but hate that there are different recipes that get unlocked/locked.
Really? The different recipes seem like a pretty cool addition to me. Does it work out differently in practice? (I haven’t played much Satisfactory)
No it sucks because of you want to build something you have to do all the calculations. But because there are different recipes you have to weigh that up and at the time you’re choosing the recipes you don’t know what will be built down the line.
I’m sure the community has optimized to the point where all the recipe choices are set in stone but still from a blind playthrough it feels bad.
Me with dark souls series.
But I don’t know if it’s because of the games themselves or by the toxic community that makes everything a “skill issue” and blames you for not being good enough to play them instead of helping a player find a way to enjoy them.
Dark Souls is just clunky controls + sequence memorization, presented as ‘difficulty’. And yeah, operating the clunk effectively is difficult, but it’s a low hanging and very unsatisfying flavor of difficulty.
I could make Pokemon Yellow difficult by requiring you to operate the controls through a dish sponge, but that wouldn’t make it fun.
Unpopular opinion apparently, but I wholeheartedly agree with you on Dark Souls.
Yeah, I noticed this too. It’s an unpopular opinion to think that dark souls is not hard but just frustratingly clunky in order to make it appear hard.
It’s just not satisfying. Reminds me of certain old games that were made artificially hard by dumb mechanics only to make them last longer.
I’ve played hard games that were satisfying to beat, then I tried several dark souls games (included elden ring and a myriad of soulslikes) and found them obnoxiously clunky and unfun.
They feel like playing the old Dragon’s Lair arcade game. Duck, swing, move left on cue etc.
Same. It’s especially frustrating when people get hyper specific about genres. Specifically, claiming that black myth wukong is not a souls like because reasons, so I bought it and suffered through the first two chapters before giving it up. I don’t care what monkey minutia makes it not a souls like, it has punishing bosses and no difficulty settings.
I don’t play souls likes that have no difficulty settings. I’m nearing 50 and my reaction times are not what they used to be. Sometimes I just need to tone it down to be able to enjoy a game.
I always found funny when the soulslike tryharders get pissy about difficulty settings and hyper specific about bullshit. To me, those people seem like they are trying so hard to gatekeep in order to keep the genre a niche that only them can enjoy. As if they were afraid that the genre became too “casual”. It’s kinda pathethic when a community (be it soulslike or any other one full of tryharders) wants to keep something in a certain way so nobody else can enjoy it. As if they were afraid that “impure” people could rob them their fun or something.
Point: The series and genre has evolved
Conclusion: The first of the series was not as good as it could have been.
There have been many games since that provided an interesting evolution on the formula. Sometimes, just by throwing away needlessly obtuse bits of the original. And only by traveling back do we see: Yeah, it broke a lot of molds. But some of those molds existed for a good reason.
Stopping people from pausing, giving the most obtuse explanations, putting near-invincible enemies so near your starting point - generally not good design steps even when building up something challenging for players.
And worse: Every critique of it had to be filtered through “git gud”. Yes, its push for high difficulty was a good thing for gaming advancement. But people tried to excuse EVERY issue the game had through that filter. A dad that wants to pause the game to care for his crying baby does not need to “git gud”.
Have you Demon’s Souls? I tried DS1 but Demon’s Souls is just great.
Arc Raiders. By no means a bad game, it’s just that the gameplay doesn’t really click with me, possibly because some early missions rely on a lot of stealth and the loot system can be daunting at the first go around. One friend of mine really likes it, almost as much as we both like Left 4 Dead 2.
I might find some appeal if I give AR another chance, but I don’t see that happening right away.
Game is dead now, the devs introduced aggression based matchmaking because lots of us were sick of pointless pvp, that initially made it better, then sweats figured out how to game the matchmaking and get peaceful lobbies and just kill everyone. Haven’t made it through a run in weeks so I just stopped playing, after more than 100 hours. If you like the sweatiest Rust players, ARC is awesome.
You can only game it once, then you get put back in the shit for a while. Only had one game where a team was aggressive in a PVE lobby. They cleaned up because nobody shot back.
This 100%. I bought it as soon as it came out because all of the testing done was PvE, so I assumed it was a PvE cooperative extraction game. I uninstalled after like 20 hours because of the PvP. Then I started playing again when they fixed matchmaking, and after about another 80 hours, I quit again after I kept getting ganked in “friendly” lobbies. My g/f still plays it and is constantly trying to talk it up, and I refuse to touch it until there is an option for PvE, and to turn PvP play off.
Do you ever shoot players or loot players? I am not seeing very much PvP in PvE lobbies.
I killed 1 player. It was at the water treatment extraction point on damn battlegrounds. Everyone said they were friendly. Elevator pops up, and one guy takes out his guns and starts shooting. I managed to be in a spot where I had good cover and a line of sight to his head. I knew I was in a better position. I told him to stop shooting or I would shoot back. He didn’t stop shooting. I popped off my trusty anvil and he went down after a single shot to the head. My pack was full, so I didn’t bother knocking him out or trying to loot him. Aside from that, I did occasionally find raiders that were already dead, but they were always already looted too.
A lot of players are done playing PVE only and want to PvP to keep playing. This has drastically reduced the pool of peaceful lobbies. Any aggro rating above a 0 will put you into a PvP lobby now. So if you want PVE only, you don’t get to shoot back or loot raiders without your next 10 games being PvP. When you go in a mob a care bear lobby, your next 20 games are PvP. In the rare occasion that someone attacked me in a PVE lobby, they wipe out everyone, I mean everyone. Not one of us shoot back. They usually find the players working together to hunt arc and kill them all in one spot. In a duo game, a team killed 10+ all in one spot, without any resistance. On the flip side when I play a PvP game, I would hate going into a lobby where nobody shot back. That is not fun at all. The people mobbing peaceful lobbies are griefers at their core and not actual PvPers.
Sorry, but there are many players that WANT PvE. Most of them have given up and moved on because the devs didn’t listen to their feedback.
This is also my issue with the matchmaking system. Because when I defend myself I’m more likely to land in a PvP lobby. So what, my only choice is just let them kill me, or be thrown into PvP matches I already don’t want to play in. No, I’m cool with not playing. The Devs could have implemented PvE mode to fix this, but they didn’t. Eventually the griefers will drive everyone else away, and the game can die. Worst $40 I ever spent.
I did not care for GTA V.
I’m the same. I loved GTA4 but I just found the characters in 5 too unlikeable. I also hate when games get you to switch between a number of characters as it just sort of ruins my immersion
Take me back to cousin Roman calling me asking if I want to go bowling
It insists upon itself
Red Dead
I’m with you on this one.
- elden ring: not having fun coz I basically followed the walkthrough due to its difficulty
- Baldur’s Gate 3: too many choices and decisions to be made so couldn’t play more than few hours each time and eventually burned out
Elden Ring yes, I’ve never in all my years experienced such a mismatch between how amazing everyone said a game was and the actual experience of trying to play it. It’s not even about the difficulty, it just feels like I got thrown directly into the 20th hour of the game without any idea of what anything is or how it works or what I’m supposed to do
Playing BG3 a few hours at a time is fine, if your normal gaming sessions last for a day or longer please consult a medical professional
For games I love, I play like 4hrs+ in one session. 12hrs+ do happen but very rarely.
BG3 also, if you’re into d&d it’s probably amazing. But the learning curve is insane. Just so much niche stuff a non d&der would never think of.
I have never player a TTRPG before playing BG3 (so no DnD background) but I still had lots of fun, though it was kind of annoying seeing people criticise the game for being too easy, while it felt very hard to me.
It’s only easy if you cheese it (or have it set to easy) I think. Ignore those people.
The 5e rules certainly make it a lot easier than most CRPGs, but if you’re a newcomer to CRPGs I can still see it being difficult.
Even with beginner’s guide and tips from YouTube, it was just too much. Each level up unlocks whole new stuff which requires ton of reading and understanding and remembering characteristics of each party so that so that I can increase their relationship score (forgot the exact term)
Maybe I’ll revisit when I have more brain capacity or have some first hand DnD experience
I dont like your opinions and so I dont like you as a person /s
Had me until the last part 😂
Yep.
GTAV, Undertale, Elden Ring, and Myst.
ER definitely should have been like…30% shorter so much shit repeating
Oh look, another horse!
This is most modern games for me. If I can’t get a handle on all the mechanics I’ll need to know to beat the game in the first 20 minutes or so, I’m not interested. I’ll just play Super Mario World again.
This is pretty close to the same for me, except it’s more like, just let me play the damn game a bit and see if it’s worth learning more shit. I was finally going to play Ori and the Blind Forest but they throw a 30+ minute depression fest at you to start, where I thought I was getting a vibrant, fluid platforming game.
Me with Binding of Isaac, Hades and Vampire Survivors On paper, I should enjoy them a lot, yet I like some pretty similar games a ton more. Those 3 each do something I really dislike to the point of not playing and feeling like I’m missing out. Every year I give them another shot and never manage to stick around for more than 1 session.
Amazing games I’m sure, just not for me :/
My friend once suggested to play The Binding of Isaac. I have checked gameplay and though “what a crap game. Soot tears to dig through poles of poop. How funny…”
The I was watching one streamer and he began to play that game. I got the idea of how it plays and this time tried myself this time.
It is weird. Weird as heck. Controls are simple and it is basically bullet hell type of a game. But when you understand how items are working with each other, you begin to appreciate work put in this game and how deep it can actually go. The beauty of this game is in how items work with each other. Really unique game.
I don’t think anyone likes Binding of Isaac at first glance. It has a disgusting theme, it’s slow paced, the combat is a bit awkward at the start, and you won’t understand anything at first…
But it’s an acquired taste. I stuck with it and watched a few videos that explain how it works, and it’s a very rewarding game. Ended up playing 400+ hours.
Any game where the main focus is ‘story’ or being ‘cinematic’. I just wanna play a game. If I want a good story, I’ll read a book. If I want a cinematic experience, I’ll watch a movie. Games trying to be anything other than games reeks of cultural cringe to me. Stop interrupting my fun with your non-interactive bullshit, games!
Haha, that’s the exact opposite of me playing games. Ahhhh fucking endless grinding and fights, I hate it, I just want to know what happens next in the story ffs. This means I don’t play story driven games anymore and just end up watching a playthrough videos, basically only sandboxes and puzzles have gameplay I actually enjoy. It’s fun how people can be so different!
This was why I loved TLOU 2. It blends both things perfectly. The gameplay was amazing. I look forward to the next fight to test shit out… But also, I really want to see what happens in the story.
Yeah, I don’t really go for the endless grind either. I gravitate more towards platformers and metroidvanias and so on. I’m currently replaying Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet.
Just don’t play those games then. No need to find abullshit justification as to why this is evil, you just don’t like it.
I don’t. Who said anything about it being evil? I never claimed it was anything other than personal taste. No need to be so snarky.
ETA: Occasionally one slips through my filter. I bought Sanabi because it looked like it has interesting mechanics, but my god does it interrupt the flow with excessive slow-walking/cut scene exposition too much. I don’t even mind if they keep it brief, but they went on way too long in that game. I enjoyed it a lot more after I started spamming the skip button.
Fallout series, just never clicked with me.
Have you tried new vegas (genuine question, as it is the only fallout game I like). If you don’t like it at first try with a melee build, that made it click for me
Most AAA games. When a game is overhyped even before it’s published, you can be sure it’ll be pretty but boring and repetitive AF. I always wait at least 6 months to a year after a game is out to see whether it lived up to expectations.
I disagree with Dark Souls haters (old gamer here, I need the challenge, else I’m bored out of my mind and do something else), but I’ll agree with them on how toxic the community is. Most male gamers are toxic cunts, especially the online ones who grew playing competitive games. Competitive game culture is a temple of toxicity.
Downvote for sexism
Stardew Valley
I generally love crafting survival games, but I find Minecraft boring. I still play it from time to time, because my daughter loves it. But, it’s not something I play on my own.
You gotta try the mod packs
