But the goal is still that no one dies and no one gets injured at any difficulty. I want the enemy to feel like a threat but there's not even a game where the player faction gets crushed in Act I or Act II and has to rebuild/recruit even in games where the player faction is villagers going up against monsters/demons/an army.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles was always a shitty game even on the Gamecube.
The last good mainline Final Fantasy was IX.
Resident Evil 4 doesn't need a fucking remake, if those rumors are true.
Persona 5 could be awesome but it's style of writing throws me off. It's got that anime quality to it where things feel like they've been translated rather than naturally put together. It could be THE shit but I probably will never know due to that hurdle.
Indie game opinion pertaining to "unpopular in certain communities":
every time I see a game with the words fascism, racism, capitalism, nazi, communist, democrat(ic), socialism, or privilige, I close the window. An overemphasis on queerness, femaleness, or mental health issues get a similar reaction in spite of me falling into all 3 categories. But you can't tell developers their game is too overbaring political - the heavy handedness makes it good! And we should have MORE games like it!
I kinda agree, especially Castlevania 3 I just don't really like the mechanics of that game. But the sadly overlooked Castlevania Remake for the Japan only Sharp X68000 is superb, just a tier below the best game of the classic style Rondo of Blood.
Castlevania 1 for the NES deserves its acclaim because it got the ball rolling, but it's just outdated compared to what came after.
I think the entire majority analysis over No More Heroes is among some of the most pretentious "deep analysis" over a video game. Especially Desperate Struggle, where it's often told that the real aesop to the game is "revenge is bad mmmmk". If Desperate Struggle was really meant to be about how revenge is bad, Travis would have been portrayed as a complete assclown, from beginning to end, and it would have been a complete deconstructive shitshow. The entire game, you're given hints that Pizza Batt isn't so squeaky clean as it likes to portray itself as, and the main villain is a bald, dickless coward who hides up on his corporate penthouse like a bitch behind legal redtape, can't do anything unless he resorts to steroids, and turns into a literal visual depiction of corporate waste of imagination as a cushy and kitsch parade float.
The people who follow that there's a super deep symbolism to No More Heroes are as dazed as the shithead mooks that Travis faces, before they end up with a concussion and broken spine so bad that they'll need to feed on shit through a straw in Hell.
I don't like Bravely Default very much. I don't like the characters, the dialogue is atrocious as is the voice acting (though you can turn that off, and it's somewhat more bearable not having to hear the words spoken aloud), and the story was done better in Final Fantasy V. The combat is okay and the whole Brave/Default thing is kinda cool, but it doesn't hold my attention for very long and it's not as interesting as the games it takes inspiration from.
I dunno, so many people hyped it up as an amazing JRPG, but I came away from it feeling extremely underwhelmed.
Yeah, Imma disagree with you on that. Nintendo games tend to be far more optimistic and happy than the games of other studios. That's something I think should be treasured.
I don't like Bravely Default very much. I don't like the characters, the dialogue is atrocious as is the voice acting (though you can turn that off, and it's somewhat more bearable not having to hear the words spoken aloud), and the story was done better in Final Fantasy V. The combat is okay and the whole Brave/Default thing is kinda cool, but it doesn't hold my attention for very long and it's not as interesting as the games it takes inspiration from.
I dunno, so many people hyped it up as an amazing JRPG, but I came away from it feeling extremely underwhelmed.
For me, what particularly bugged me was how pretty much all the Asterisk bosses, despite some of them actually having backstories and development, get devalued quite a bit due to them being the way you unlock new classes. As soon as I realized they become pretty much non-entities in the story after you beat them, it was really hard for me to get fully invested in the story and world.
At least with FFV, the way you get classes in that game had some, for lack of a better word "magical" aspect to it, as you got them from the Crystals themselves. Having the classes you unlock take the form of bosses, while not necessarily a bad idea, only ended up making the characters attatched to them feel very artificial.
In fact, the whole game looking back felt very artificial in nature. Especially when it came to the story and how certain things were set up. The game barely hides the fact that
Airy was gonna betray you. As soon as you get to the "second world" every time you load up a new game, the game's subtitle changes to "Airy Lies". Airy keeps making suspicious sounding statements throughout and the characters even mention something's up with her. But in order for you to get the true ending, you have to just do exactly as she says, and when she finally reveals herself, the characters are shocked at the revelation. What the fuck. The ending where you go against what she tells you is a bit more satisfying in this sense as the characters actually seem like they're being smart. But nope, that's not how you get the true ending.
And all the QOL stuff such as being able to turn off encounters and all that serve to make it even harder to get invested in the game. Yes, random encounters can be annoying, but they serve a very practical purpose to the gameplay and the game's world. For me, all the QOL stuff only serves to devalue the time and effort spent into the game's world and its mechanics.
It's kind of a shame, as I do like the game's music and the depth of the combat system.
I didn't like Octopath Traveller very much. It looks really nice, but the combat system is repetitive because every enemy has the same gimmick and you pretty much have to approach fights in the same way each time as a result - there's just not much variety in the combat tactics you can employ, which is one of the selling points of JRPGs to me. Some of the characters are interesting, but most of them get on your nerves fairly quickly, particularly the woman who speakes in ye olde Englishe all the time (then you go and meet her family/tribe and THEY ALL TALK LIKE THAT AARGH).
And all the QOL stuff such as being able to turn off encounters and all that serve to make it even harder to get invested in the game. Yes, random encounters can be annoying, but they serve a very practical purpose to the gameplay and the game's world. For me, all the QOL stuff only serves to devalue the time and effort spent into the game's world and its mechanics.
That reminds me of something else I hate about those options.
When I play JRPGs, I grind and I grind hard, especially when I finally get access to the overworld. The default random encounter option makes random encounters on the overworld somewhat infrequent which in turn makes grinding a chore. I can increase the random encounter rate to make them more frequent so that I can grind at a better pace, but I believe I shouldn't have to in the first place. Switching the random encounter rate myself feels cheap and I'd much rather have the game have a set random encounter rate because at least there I have to conform to the game's rules and not the other way around (though I'd also prefer the random encounter rate to be high enough to where I can feasibly grind).
I'm tired of these safe lukewarm takes people. You want an unpopular opinion? I like Oblivion, its a good game. Not without problems but for the time it was really impressive and still fun to revisit today.
I don't know why but almost immediately it became popular for contrarian nerds to hate on it and it still gets shit on to this day. The way people go on about it you would think its the worst thing since Superman 64.
