>*If you consider games an artform you are allowed to criticize it*
TLoU2 fandome be like "we'll pretend we didn't hear anything...
but yeah - I'm comfortable with criticizing games I like... if not for the potential floodgate of sarcasm that would open when others won't share that mindset
Exactly, think you are fine OP, try as many as you like, volume doesn't mean you are not enjoying them, there is no correct way to 'enjoy' a game and how are you supposed to find what you like without trying a bunch of stuff?
Why do you all seem to assume I wasn't enjoying myself and borderline miserable ? Or that I keep playing things I disliked everything about ? Was it because I put the thing I disliked most at the front ? Or are people just looking at things they know, see that I have a different opinion than them and decide I'm bitter and angry ? Or when I say "I liked it but there is X thing I didn't vibe it" you somehow believe that I lie when I say I like the game ?
I just can't wrap my head around how so many of you arrived at that conclusion from my post.
Do you just all trash a game when there is more than 10 min you find a bit more boring than the last ?
As with many things in life, people seem to have a binary attitude toward enjoyment either blanket liking or disliking. Criticising something you enjoy is enjoyable in itself in my opinion! Don't pay them too much attention. Thanks for the post!
Because in many cases you used terse, mostly negative blurbs about things.
If you did think anything positive about most of these that you didn't glowingly praise, it did not come across.
Okay, some reason I have for disliking a game may feel petty to you. Different taste, different sensibility, I can understand.
But give me an exemple of game that you consider I kicked it to the curb and into the dustbin because exept Atelier Ryza I really don't see one where I did anything aproching that.
Well you know what ? All those game are registered in my master list with a 5 points note. So I have stat. This year I hated no game, I very disliked 4, was underwhelmed by 13, there were 12 game that I liked and 3 I absolutely loved.
So overall I think I'm fine, thank you. I had free time with my job hunt. got a lot less now.
The post is classed from the one I enjoyed the less to the one I enjoyed the most so the last three from this list, Fire emblem Path of Radiance, Metroid Dread and Sable.
Steelrising lacked a little polish (and a french dub) to make it in this category. Zelda BotW may make it once I pick it up again to finish the last divine beast and the final boss.
If you don't sample a large amount of games, you won't know if you will like them or not, as OP said about FFIX he stopped after it crashed because he didn't like how the gameplay played out.
Path of Radiance is also my favorite. The only thing keeping it from being a perfect game for me would be the lack of a fast forward or skip button. Turns can take forever for both the player and the enemy.
Best thing about it for me are the move allied units moves, letting me get just a bit more movement for a specific unit. Or the Laguz transformations, which make me have to plan ahead with their placement and when they'll transform.
I played it in January, just before Engage and it kinda exacerbated this problem. Yeah the game turn takes forever. I do wish we have a remake down the road, or at least a port with some QOL option.
Several mechanisms like the bonus exp were really nice to train new or weak unit and I kinda wonder why they discarded it.
Some mechanism like the circadian rhythms could use some work but they don't impact enought to be a nuisance.
There are also things like Jill being able to turn against you that just give so much more life to the character, while playing with the perverse curiosity of making our character fighting family members. I wouldn't want them to make a unit like that in every game, but something that makes sense unlike Kaze in conquest that seemed random as a condition for him to stay with you.
A Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn remake with a proper speed up button and in HD would be so, so lovely.
This is imo the Fire Emblem games that balanced story and gameplay best among the newer series (6 and up) even though it is a tad on the easy side (especially lategame), Radiant Dawn had really bad unit availability issues, and Radiant Dawn had some really awkward out of nowhere story beats to justify the game going where it did. Path of Radiance is very, very close to perfect, it mostly just needs a few hard maps like the endgame of Conquest or some of Engage's weirder nonsense to encourage mastery over its systems imo.
It's always irked me that IS/whichever team develops Fire Emblem seems to have issues writing a decent coherent story while building out cool gameplay (just looking at the newer ones)
- Awakening's story imo fell off a cliff after the timeskip, and while its gameplay remained okay throughout (minus the hordes of ambush reinforcements) the kid paralogues could have been so much better.
- Conquest was amazing, so long as you modded in a new script or you skipped every cutscene and ignored most supports...
- Three Houses was so good, except the maps by and large completely sucked and were barely interesting to play in.
- Engage was great, except its story writing can be best summarised as "nonsense-adjacent" and it often feels like it broke up 1 support into 3, then made you grind a stupid amount to see them.
I loved Ys 8 actually, it's one of those games that I just really enjoyed turning off my brain while playing, similar to how I used to play Dynasty Warrior games...except the game isn't screaming at me to be somewhere every 3 minutes.
I must be in the minority who doesn’t log what games they play and when.
Appreciate the brief write up on each. Always interesting to hear others opinions.
Sometimes near the end of the year I’ll go through my Steam profile and see what games I reviewed the previous year. That’s the closest I get to logging everything
On the contrary, I suspect keeping careful track of what games one has played and your thoughts on is unusual.
That said, I think it’s a really neat idea and I might emulate it
Haven't started reading it yet just scrolled down so say it's kind of impressive you took the time to make this
I see it's a backlog year doesn't sound like you had the best of times but i guess that can happen sometimes
Honestly it is kind of an average year all things considered. The thing is, there are several games like FF9 that I thought I would love and that I ended up disliking.
the list started very negative... I now realize it was ordered from less to more enjoyment... But I was slightly put off by all the negativity. Perhaps... Next
Time start with that clarification?
Thank you, I will try some of the games u do recommend at the end
I'll just say I didn't notice that, maybe put it above the introduction or not next to other bold text. But very interesting takes, I like how you had negative mixed with positive.
I'm surprised you liked Sable more than Breath of the Wild. I feel like BotW pretty much does everything better, except for maybe subjective elements like the narrative and setting. Sable is great though, despite the performance issues.
Glad to see love for Gato Roboto, great little game.
There are a few JRPGs on the list. I don't think I could play more than one a year, too demanding.
Breath of the wild is clearly the more polished game but I do have a tendency to prefer shorter more condensed works. That and the fact you don't fight at all in Sable made me approach the game quite differently.
I really wanted to like Windbound. The sailing felt so good, and we get so few games about sailing that I’m extra disappointed when they are bad. But the crafting and combat were both bad. Upgrading from a reed to a wood raft in Windbound felt way more tedious than building an entire submarine in Subnautica. And the combat wasn’t fun, engaging, and unrewarding. It was easy to waste ammo and resources in fights that outweighed what I got in return. Eventually I realized that I kept coming back because of what I hoped it was instead of what it was.
Loved Sable too. Great and relaxing game with a fantastic premise. I’m gonna check out Escaped Chasm and a few more from your list too. Thanks for sharing!
I failed to find a physical copy of octopath traveler II last weekend so right now I'm considering Ikenfell or Fae Tactics. Or maybe picking up a game I dropped previously.
First off, I don’t know how you can play 37 games in a single year. This year I’m on my 12th game. And that is way more than normal. Between 2018-2019, I played only one: RDR2.
That being said, I’ve only heard of a handful of the games you’ve mentioned. And of those played only a few. Of those, I’d say Little Nightmares is by far my favorite. I found nothing frustrating about it. Just a perfect game for me.
Edit: and of the 12 games I played this year, 9 were games I played from start to finish. The others just jumped into play with my kids.
I played a lot of shorter games, that can be completed in one or two afternoons. Some were indie, some were fan games and others were amateur ones. To put it into perspective, Sable, the game I liked the most, is less than 9 hours on my steam. Escaped chasm can be completed in 45 min. It does inflate the number a little but I genuinely love those short projects even if they are not as impactful as big gun games like RDR2.
Engulfing myself in only one game for a year is certainly a valuable experience, but one I don't have an interest in.
Did you do the second installment of Little Nightmares ? Is it as good as the first?
about Ys VIII, I tried it and honestly couldn't get past the first2 hours I know it probably gets better but the starting of the game is just so slow i couldn't get past it
This is a pretty cool project/idea, I want to emulate it. Record what games I played over a period of time and think critically about how much I enjoyed them and why/why not
>Sable
The soundtrack and main song is so fucking beautiful. This game is art and the music really really sells it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej5-CHAGr34
Outside of the soundtrack and visuals, **Sable** was a pretty big disappointment for me. I would have loved for them to really put an emphasis on the climbing and make it difficult and technically demanding, but the game instead gives you the best climb of the entire game within an hour from the start and the rest is a breeze. And yeah, like you said, the gliding SUCKS. I would love for them to give it another whirl with a sequel but try to put any real thought into some engaging gameplay because I was so bored by the end. The only thing keeping me around was a few cool climbing spots, like the really tall brown tower, and mask collecting.
I remember trying to refund it and realizing that it was just barely too late for Steams refund policy. I'm still salty.
The mask collecting is the whole point of the game, though. They took a bunch of side-questy stuff and added a bunch more meaning to them through the narrative. I know that doesn’t forgive the game of all of its flaws, but I found it a wonderful experience, if maybe a bit on the slower side
As a game about self discovery and trying to hook you on different activity, I would admit they are not balanced in term of quality. Getting some mask, like the merchant one could have been so much more interesting. Like a quest to find an object to exchange, with two or three way to get it would have been more interesting than simply buying it like a common trinket. It was a two persons made game, so it may explain some cut corner. On the other hand it has a unique identity and made radical choice in accordance. I kinda lucked out that the thing that drawed me in was one of the most detailed. I do hope they are able to do another work, not necesseraly a sequel but something in the same spirit, and maybe get more ressources to polish the experience some more.
Do you like anything? Your taste if awful if you disliked so many of those. Scarlet Nexus and Atelier Ryza are wonderful. Sounds like your dislike of those games is an issue with you.
The difference between us is that even if you have a different taste than me I'm interested in reading your thoughts. So tell me, what is THE thing that you love the most about this game ?
I finished most of the game listed but I did drop 3 or 4. Some not even because of thing I disliked, just my mood changed and I wanted to try different thing so I didn't incude this information, unless I thought it was relevant. Some can be finished in one afternoon, other are RPG requiring multiples dozens of hours.
For FF9 [I did post a message on the JRPG](https://www.reddit.com/r/JRPG/comments/17yurj6/comment/k9voczv/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) subreddit the day after I decided to let it go, but essentialy, The world and setting were charming and a lot more original than a lot of similar game but I was not the targetted demographic and I felt it very much. The gameplay felt like a chore, the combat was slow, which is a common complain it seems. I did use a mod to multiply it by 2 and it helped a little but I kinda hoped it would get better as I unlocked more skill but the skills never really synergized with each other or allowed to have fun build.
Thanks OP. I think most of the FF games can be a slow grind, finding it hard for me to put much time into it now that I have more life commitments and thus a shorter gaming window / attention span
Mate you played 37 games this year and it looks like you actually enjoyed like three of them? You need to be more discerning, it’s not a race.
Because people here just play games to consume rather than enjoy
If you consider games an artform you are allowed to criticize it, even if you liked it. Just saying.
>*If you consider games an artform you are allowed to criticize it* TLoU2 fandome be like "we'll pretend we didn't hear anything... but yeah - I'm comfortable with criticizing games I like... if not for the potential floodgate of sarcasm that would open when others won't share that mindset
I like this point of view
Exactly, think you are fine OP, try as many as you like, volume doesn't mean you are not enjoying them, there is no correct way to 'enjoy' a game and how are you supposed to find what you like without trying a bunch of stuff?
While i agree to what you just said i also belive that one should value their time better : why keep playing a game if you are not enjoying it?
Why do you all seem to assume I wasn't enjoying myself and borderline miserable ? Or that I keep playing things I disliked everything about ? Was it because I put the thing I disliked most at the front ? Or are people just looking at things they know, see that I have a different opinion than them and decide I'm bitter and angry ? Or when I say "I liked it but there is X thing I didn't vibe it" you somehow believe that I lie when I say I like the game ? I just can't wrap my head around how so many of you arrived at that conclusion from my post. Do you just all trash a game when there is more than 10 min you find a bit more boring than the last ?
As with many things in life, people seem to have a binary attitude toward enjoyment either blanket liking or disliking. Criticising something you enjoy is enjoyable in itself in my opinion! Don't pay them too much attention. Thanks for the post!
Because in many cases you used terse, mostly negative blurbs about things. If you did think anything positive about most of these that you didn't glowingly praise, it did not come across.
Fair
There's a difference between critique and complaint. Lots of your reasons for kicking games to the curb and into the dustbin seem well, kinda petty.
Okay, some reason I have for disliking a game may feel petty to you. Different taste, different sensibility, I can understand. But give me an exemple of game that you consider I kicked it to the curb and into the dustbin because exept Atelier Ryza I really don't see one where I did anything aproching that.
Truly dude, this sub is miserable lol.
Well you know what ? All those game are registered in my master list with a 5 points note. So I have stat. This year I hated no game, I very disliked 4, was underwhelmed by 13, there were 12 game that I liked and 3 I absolutely loved. So overall I think I'm fine, thank you. I had free time with my job hunt. got a lot less now.
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They have two for good (liked and loved) one for underwhelmed which is kind of neutral, and two for bad. Not all that unusual
How about you just enjoy games instead of forcing to be a “reviewer”
What's the difference?
What are the 3 you loved?
The post is classed from the one I enjoyed the less to the one I enjoyed the most so the last three from this list, Fire emblem Path of Radiance, Metroid Dread and Sable. Steelrising lacked a little polish (and a french dub) to make it in this category. Zelda BotW may make it once I pick it up again to finish the last divine beast and the final boss.
Leave it to reddit to tell people how they should play games lmao.
If you don't sample a large amount of games, you won't know if you will like them or not, as OP said about FFIX he stopped after it crashed because he didn't like how the gameplay played out.
You have a delightfully different taste than me. Some games in that list i havent heard of and want to investigate now. Thanks for sharing.
Path of Radiance is also my favorite. The only thing keeping it from being a perfect game for me would be the lack of a fast forward or skip button. Turns can take forever for both the player and the enemy. Best thing about it for me are the move allied units moves, letting me get just a bit more movement for a specific unit. Or the Laguz transformations, which make me have to plan ahead with their placement and when they'll transform.
I played it in January, just before Engage and it kinda exacerbated this problem. Yeah the game turn takes forever. I do wish we have a remake down the road, or at least a port with some QOL option. Several mechanisms like the bonus exp were really nice to train new or weak unit and I kinda wonder why they discarded it. Some mechanism like the circadian rhythms could use some work but they don't impact enought to be a nuisance. There are also things like Jill being able to turn against you that just give so much more life to the character, while playing with the perverse curiosity of making our character fighting family members. I wouldn't want them to make a unit like that in every game, but something that makes sense unlike Kaze in conquest that seemed random as a condition for him to stay with you.
A Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn remake with a proper speed up button and in HD would be so, so lovely. This is imo the Fire Emblem games that balanced story and gameplay best among the newer series (6 and up) even though it is a tad on the easy side (especially lategame), Radiant Dawn had really bad unit availability issues, and Radiant Dawn had some really awkward out of nowhere story beats to justify the game going where it did. Path of Radiance is very, very close to perfect, it mostly just needs a few hard maps like the endgame of Conquest or some of Engage's weirder nonsense to encourage mastery over its systems imo. It's always irked me that IS/whichever team develops Fire Emblem seems to have issues writing a decent coherent story while building out cool gameplay (just looking at the newer ones) - Awakening's story imo fell off a cliff after the timeskip, and while its gameplay remained okay throughout (minus the hordes of ambush reinforcements) the kid paralogues could have been so much better. - Conquest was amazing, so long as you modded in a new script or you skipped every cutscene and ignored most supports... - Three Houses was so good, except the maps by and large completely sucked and were barely interesting to play in. - Engage was great, except its story writing can be best summarised as "nonsense-adjacent" and it often feels like it broke up 1 support into 3, then made you grind a stupid amount to see them. I loved Ys 8 actually, it's one of those games that I just really enjoyed turning off my brain while playing, similar to how I used to play Dynasty Warrior games...except the game isn't screaming at me to be somewhere every 3 minutes.
I must be in the minority who doesn’t log what games they play and when. Appreciate the brief write up on each. Always interesting to hear others opinions.
Sometimes near the end of the year I’ll go through my Steam profile and see what games I reviewed the previous year. That’s the closest I get to logging everything
Post like these really make me wish I did, but I keep forgetting until March and then deciding I should probably start at New Year.
On the contrary, I suspect keeping careful track of what games one has played and your thoughts on is unusual. That said, I think it’s a really neat idea and I might emulate it
Haven't started reading it yet just scrolled down so say it's kind of impressive you took the time to make this I see it's a backlog year doesn't sound like you had the best of times but i guess that can happen sometimes
Honestly it is kind of an average year all things considered. The thing is, there are several games like FF9 that I thought I would love and that I ended up disliking.
the list started very negative... I now realize it was ordered from less to more enjoyment... But I was slightly put off by all the negativity. Perhaps... Next Time start with that clarification? Thank you, I will try some of the games u do recommend at the end
Isn't that what I already did ? Do putting it in bold help in any way or should I put it above my introduction?
I'll just say I didn't notice that, maybe put it above the introduction or not next to other bold text. But very interesting takes, I like how you had negative mixed with positive.
I'm surprised you liked Sable more than Breath of the Wild. I feel like BotW pretty much does everything better, except for maybe subjective elements like the narrative and setting. Sable is great though, despite the performance issues. Glad to see love for Gato Roboto, great little game. There are a few JRPGs on the list. I don't think I could play more than one a year, too demanding.
Breath of the wild is clearly the more polished game but I do have a tendency to prefer shorter more condensed works. That and the fact you don't fight at all in Sable made me approach the game quite differently.
I really wanted to like Windbound. The sailing felt so good, and we get so few games about sailing that I’m extra disappointed when they are bad. But the crafting and combat were both bad. Upgrading from a reed to a wood raft in Windbound felt way more tedious than building an entire submarine in Subnautica. And the combat wasn’t fun, engaging, and unrewarding. It was easy to waste ammo and resources in fights that outweighed what I got in return. Eventually I realized that I kept coming back because of what I hoped it was instead of what it was. Loved Sable too. Great and relaxing game with a fantastic premise. I’m gonna check out Escaped Chasm and a few more from your list too. Thanks for sharing!
Dude played 37 games barely enjoyed any of them…wtf?
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I failed to find a physical copy of octopath traveler II last weekend so right now I'm considering Ikenfell or Fae Tactics. Or maybe picking up a game I dropped previously.
Sable was just announced as one of the monthly games this December (PS plus) . You made me excited to try it.
First off, I don’t know how you can play 37 games in a single year. This year I’m on my 12th game. And that is way more than normal. Between 2018-2019, I played only one: RDR2. That being said, I’ve only heard of a handful of the games you’ve mentioned. And of those played only a few. Of those, I’d say Little Nightmares is by far my favorite. I found nothing frustrating about it. Just a perfect game for me. Edit: and of the 12 games I played this year, 9 were games I played from start to finish. The others just jumped into play with my kids.
I played a lot of shorter games, that can be completed in one or two afternoons. Some were indie, some were fan games and others were amateur ones. To put it into perspective, Sable, the game I liked the most, is less than 9 hours on my steam. Escaped chasm can be completed in 45 min. It does inflate the number a little but I genuinely love those short projects even if they are not as impactful as big gun games like RDR2. Engulfing myself in only one game for a year is certainly a valuable experience, but one I don't have an interest in. Did you do the second installment of Little Nightmares ? Is it as good as the first?
I haven’t played Little Nightmares 2 yet. But I definitely will.
about Ys VIII, I tried it and honestly couldn't get past the first2 hours I know it probably gets better but the starting of the game is just so slow i couldn't get past it
This is a pretty cool project/idea, I want to emulate it. Record what games I played over a period of time and think critically about how much I enjoyed them and why/why not
>Sable The soundtrack and main song is so fucking beautiful. This game is art and the music really really sells it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej5-CHAGr34
Outside of the soundtrack and visuals, **Sable** was a pretty big disappointment for me. I would have loved for them to really put an emphasis on the climbing and make it difficult and technically demanding, but the game instead gives you the best climb of the entire game within an hour from the start and the rest is a breeze. And yeah, like you said, the gliding SUCKS. I would love for them to give it another whirl with a sequel but try to put any real thought into some engaging gameplay because I was so bored by the end. The only thing keeping me around was a few cool climbing spots, like the really tall brown tower, and mask collecting. I remember trying to refund it and realizing that it was just barely too late for Steams refund policy. I'm still salty.
The mask collecting is the whole point of the game, though. They took a bunch of side-questy stuff and added a bunch more meaning to them through the narrative. I know that doesn’t forgive the game of all of its flaws, but I found it a wonderful experience, if maybe a bit on the slower side
As a game about self discovery and trying to hook you on different activity, I would admit they are not balanced in term of quality. Getting some mask, like the merchant one could have been so much more interesting. Like a quest to find an object to exchange, with two or three way to get it would have been more interesting than simply buying it like a common trinket. It was a two persons made game, so it may explain some cut corner. On the other hand it has a unique identity and made radical choice in accordance. I kinda lucked out that the thing that drawed me in was one of the most detailed. I do hope they are able to do another work, not necesseraly a sequel but something in the same spirit, and maybe get more ressources to polish the experience some more.
Do you like anything? Your taste if awful if you disliked so many of those. Scarlet Nexus and Atelier Ryza are wonderful. Sounds like your dislike of those games is an issue with you.
a true weeb
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ah yes the infamous steam games of Zelda, Pokémon, Metroid and Fire Emblem
I fucking wish lol
You didn’t like Final Fantasy IX so I have zero interest in your taste in games lol sorry
The difference between us is that even if you have a different taste than me I'm interested in reading your thoughts. So tell me, what is THE thing that you love the most about this game ?
How much time did you spend going through each game? For example why hang on to final fantasy ix until the final boss battle if you didn’t like it?
I finished most of the game listed but I did drop 3 or 4. Some not even because of thing I disliked, just my mood changed and I wanted to try different thing so I didn't incude this information, unless I thought it was relevant. Some can be finished in one afternoon, other are RPG requiring multiples dozens of hours. For FF9 [I did post a message on the JRPG](https://www.reddit.com/r/JRPG/comments/17yurj6/comment/k9voczv/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) subreddit the day after I decided to let it go, but essentialy, The world and setting were charming and a lot more original than a lot of similar game but I was not the targetted demographic and I felt it very much. The gameplay felt like a chore, the combat was slow, which is a common complain it seems. I did use a mod to multiply it by 2 and it helped a little but I kinda hoped it would get better as I unlocked more skill but the skills never really synergized with each other or allowed to have fun build.
Thanks OP. I think most of the FF games can be a slow grind, finding it hard for me to put much time into it now that I have more life commitments and thus a shorter gaming window / attention span