Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[BScCollateral]

This whole discussion about the romantization of criminals in Yakuza and Saints Row is basically Eric Hobsbawm's book on Primitive Rebels, read it if you have the chance.

Thanks very much for the suggestion. It is a fascinating thing to think about, and personally I suspect it is rooted in Organized Crime as a replacement for the failures of government. It's like the opening scene in Godfather, and you can even see it in the Zatoichi series.

 

[Matt Damon]

Final Fantasy IX is the worst of the PS1 era of FF

As far as I've ever seen, the love for Final Fantasy IX hinges solely on "it's got a medieval-ish setting again!" and even that gets largely thrown away toward the end.

The story and characters are unremarkable, standard Squaresoft weeb fare from that period. Each character is so heavily railroaded by his predetermined class that there's no possibility of customization or doing anything interesting. Learning skills from equipment is a chore and seems intentionally designed to prevent interesting combinations/synergies of skills. Trance is easily the worst limit break implementation of any of the FF games I've played.

VII and VIII were far from perfect, but at least their weird unbalanced systems were fun to screw around with and see what ridiculous things could be achieved. IX is just a bland slog.

 

[Road Work Ahead]

As far as I've ever seen, the love for Final Fantasy IX hinges solely on "it's got a medieval-ish setting again!" and even that gets largely thrown away toward the end.

The story and characters are unremarkable, standard Squaresoft weeb fare from that period. Each character is so heavily railroaded by his predetermined class that there's no possibility of customization or doing anything interesting. Learning skills from equipment is a chore and seems intentionally designed to prevent interesting combinations/synergies of skills. Trance is easily the worst limit break implementation of any of the FF games I've played.

VII and VIII were far from perfect, but at least their weird unbalanced systems were fun to screw around with and see what ridiculous things could be achieved. IX is just a bland slog.

Not only all that, but the act of actually playing the game is unpleasant due to how fucking slow it all moves.

 

[Matt Damon]

Not only all that, but the act of actually playing the game is unpleasant due to how fucking slow it all moves.

Just another example of how the "Active Time Battle" system in FF games was designed to make them more exciting and faster-paced, but invariably made them far slower and added a ton of pointless waiting compared to a plain old turn-based system.

They kept trying to make that shit work for a decade and it was only ever a detriment.

 

[Marissa Moira]

They kept trying to make that shit work for a decade and it was only ever a detriment.

I'm going to say that they finally got it right with FF7R, it's battle system achieved what ATB tried to do for decades by taking turn based combat and having a midpoint between that and action combat.

There's about 4-5 boss battles on that game alone that are pretty intense as compared to the likes of FF12 where you had HP sponges and they had to include a speed up button for the remaster so shit wouldn't take hours to down like Yiazmat.

 

[Friendly Primarina]

Pokémon games - in particular Gold/Silver/Crystal - would have been better off having a ~48 minute day/night cycle á la Skyrim as opposed to the actual real world time/d.o.w..

 

[Matt Damon]

I'm going to say that they finally got it right with FF7R, it's battle system achieved what ATB tried to do for decades by taking turn based combat and having a midpoint between that and action combat.

There's about 4-5 boss battles on that game alone that are pretty intense as compared to the likes of FF12 where you had HP sponges and they had to include a speed up button for the remaster so shit wouldn't take hours to down like Yiazmat.

Fair enough - the last one I played was FFX, which felt both faster and more strategically satisfying with a clearly defined turn system, so I can't speak on the later games.

But I'm glad to hear ATB finally came into its own after 30 years of attempts.

 

[BrokenWokenBespoken]

The devs at Treyarch and Infinity ward are secretly communist fetishists given how they made the South American antagonists the most successful villains to date in COD since IRL South America got their teeth kicked in by Cold War America Juntas while the CEO of United Fruit and Coca Cola was doing blow in a secure yacht watching the screams of peasant farmers being shot up and thrown out of helicopters

 

[Marissa Moira]

The devs at Treyarch and Infinity ward are secretly communist fetishists given how they made the South American antagonists the most successful villains to date in COD since IRL South America got their teeth kicked in by Cold War America Juntas while the CEO of United Fruit and Coca Cola was doing blow in a secure yacht watching the screams of peasant farmers being shot up and thrown out of helicopters

It's more like nobody wants to criticize Muslims.

Throughout the whole iraq war and Afghanistan rather than doing stuff that mirrored current year back then, they still opted for RUSSIA WAS BEHIND IT ALL ALONG

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

The Trails in the Sky games would be one of the best JRPGs ever if they didn't waste so much time with useless dialogue

Also having any kind of visual shot that isn't wide panning shot would be an improvement.

Speaking of Trails games and other games made by the same devs, the idea of having a ton of side characters with their inner plots is only enjoyable to autists who will consistently talk to every npc and keep track on events. Having "hidden" quests locked behind talking to everyone is particularly shit game design. You want to make hidden quests, give the player a hint that a hidden quest is possible in a certain area.

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

This whole discussion about the romantization of criminals in Yakuza and Saints Row is basically Eric Hobsbawm's book on Primitive Rebels, read it if you have the chance. the pattern it studies is very interesting.

They romanticize cowboys and mafia too.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Also having any kind of visual shot that isn't wide panning shot would be an improvement.

Speaking of Trails games and other games made by the same devs, the idea of having a ton of side characters with their inner plots is only enjoyable to autists who will consistently talk to every npc and keep track on events. Having "hidden" quests locked behind talking to everyone is particularly shit game design. You want to make hidden quests, give the player a hint that a hidden quest is possible in a certain area.

They finally added a chest counter in 4 after every other game having a couple hundred chests before it. Supposedly Kuro is better about this stuff.

However Ys 9 had such an easy quest and collectable system to follow. It was a breeze to follow through with just what was given to you for markers.

 

[The Ugly One]

Dude it's literally no different than how people romanticize pirates.

People just find the bad boy with the heart of gold archtype appealing. It's similar to anti-heroes.

Let's not forget that ships and swords and gold and cannons and parrots and secret island hideouts are also just really fuckin' cool.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Let's not forget that ships and swords and gold and cannons and parrots and secret island hideouts are also just really fuckin' cool.

Yes

 

[Cloaca Rimjob]

SNK should have kept the king of fighters series as a crossover game for their IPs. For KOF 94 They could have replaced the Japan team with a world heroes team. The USA team with an aggressors of dark combat team and the England team with a 3 count bout team. All these games were out around this time

We could have had metal slug, savage reign, samurai shodown and last blade teams down the line. The last three arent chronologically accurate but then again, the art of fighting team wasn't either.

They've made too many shitty characters, should have had only the final boss as an original character.

 

[Heavy Duty Boots]

Yes

Now that we're getting into Tales of Berseria Stuff...
It was the best Tales of game since Vesperia, and the best one before that one was Abyss
Also, Eizen is the coolest character of the Tales of series. Period.

 

[The Ugly One]

Now that we're getting into Tales of Berseria Stuff...
It was the best Tales of game since Vesperia, and the best one before that one was Abyss
Also, Eizen is the coolest character of the Tales of series. Period.

Tales of Berseria was too boring for me to finish. The combat system played itself, and the story was uninteresting, at least it found no way to be interesting by the time I quit. I made it to the prison in the above video, but I don't remember how much further I tolerated this snoozefest.

 

[Jimmy Olsen]

So many PC games are TOO DAMNED BIG.

I get that huge file sizes exist for a reason. Plenty of people want games with beautiful graphics, sprawling landscapes, advanced AI and multiple storylines, and that's fine. If I had faster internet, I'd want those games too.

But not everyone has fast internet, and with the death of disc drives, many of these games are simply impossible to download over slower internet. Yet nobody seems to be tapping into the market of smaller games for people with shit connections. When I want to play fancier games, I'll buy them for a console, since I don't need to download anything. For my PC, I want stuff that doesn't take weeks to get onto my system.


I've started emulating DOS to play old abandonware DOS games. Sure they're really primitive, but at least I can download them.

 

[Heavy Duty Boots]

So many PC games are TOO DAMNED BIG.

I get that huge file sizes exist for a reason. Plenty of people want games with beautiful graphics, sprawling landscapes, advanced AI and multiple storylines, and that's fine. If I had faster internet, I'd want those games too.

But not everyone has fast internet, and with the death of disc drives, many of these games are simply impossible to download over slower internet. Yet nobody seems to be tapping into the market of smaller games for people with shit connections. When I want to play fancier games, I'll buy them for a console, since I don't need to download anything. For my PC, I want stuff that doesn't take weeks to get onto my system.


I've started emulating DOS to play old abandonware DOS games. Sure they're really primitive, but at least I can download them.

Found the 'Strayan
There are a lot of great indie games under 500 mb out there, don't be discouraged
Also, I don't know what you're talking about in regards to consoles, since last gen most games have huge 50 GB day one patches you have to download even if you have the disk.
Now, the digital revolution and it's consequences have been a disaster for gaming
Bring back finished games you can play when out of the box

 

[Super Hans]

So many PC games are TOO DAMNED BIG.

I get that huge file sizes exist for a reason. Plenty of people want games with beautiful graphics, sprawling landscapes, advanced AI and multiple storylines, and that's fine. If I had faster internet, I'd want those games too.

But not everyone has fast internet, and with the death of disc drives, many of these games are simply impossible to download over slower internet. Yet nobody seems to be tapping into the market of smaller games for people with shit connections. When I want to play fancier games, I'll buy them for a console, since I don't need to download anything. For my PC, I want stuff that doesn't take weeks to get onto my system.


I've started emulating DOS to play old abandonware DOS games. Sure they're really primitive, but at least I can download them.

My problem isn't with the size of games themselves. Games like Assassin's Creed and Red Dead are fucking huge worlds, which regardless whether they use the space well or not, it makes sense that they breeze past 100 gigs. But what in the good God damn makes Call of Duty 20XX justify being consistently at the top of install size lists? The graphics aren't particularly good, neither is the sound, and the environments are small.

And I'd like to point out Witcher 3 doesn't even hit 40 gigs, even with the DLC and a high res mod.