Hey everyone. I'm fully aware this will probably earn me a lot of downvotes from hardcore fans of these games and that's fine. I'm hoping people can disagree without taking it personally.

This isn't ragebait. It's just a short explanation of why these games didn't work for me.

The games are ranked from best to worst.

1. Final Fantasy VII Remake

Overall, I liked the game. The graphics are beautiful, the soundtrack is incredible and the gameplay is ok. But the real highlight is the characters. They are extremely well written and I got attached to them almost immediately.

My biggest issue is that the game feels massively stretched out for no good reason. I never played the original FF7, but I know this game only covers a small portion of it, yet it somehow lasts around 50 hours. I definitely felt that.

The game is packed with filler that constantly kills the pacing and even made me drop it several times before finishing it. Everything that actually moves the story forward could probably have been told in around 10 hours.

I also found the plot armor hard to ignore, especially when it benefits the villains. We defeat them over and over, yet we never capture, interrogate or kill them. We simply let them walk away every single time, despite them being responsible for mass murder, torture and human experimentation. It made the story feel less believable because I always knew nothing meaningful was going to happen to them.

2. Cyberpunk 2077

I played the latest version with Phantom Liberty.

I think it's a great game, but a very bad RPG.

The biggest reason is how it was marketed. It's often presented as one of the most immersive RPGs ever made, where your choices drastically shape the story. False.

The game gives you lots of dialogue options, but in most cases they don't actually matter. They might change a line or two in the moment, but rarely have meaningful long-term consequences.

Relationships don't really evolve based on your behavior and there's very little sense of building something over time with the characters.

In many cases, everything comes down to one or two key choices near the end of a questline instead of a progression naturally shaped by your decisions. You can even enable the command console and see that many relationships are essentially stored as simple boolean values: true or false.

The romance system disappointed me for the same reason.

There are very few romance options, some are locked behind gender (I played male V, so Panam was basically the only major option) and the outcome depends almost entirely on one or two dialogue choices near the end instead of an actual relationship arc.

After completing the romance, I could only invite her to my apartment and repeat the exact same three dialogue lines over and over.

If the game hadn't been marketed the way it was, I probably would've enjoyed it much more. Because underneath those expectations, it's genuinely a good game. It's visually stunning, the combat is fun and I still spent around 100 hours playing it.

But I just can't personally consider it a masterpiece, especially as an RPG.

3. God of War (2018)

If this had been a three hour movie, I think it would've been incredible.

The acting, voice performances and characters are all excellent.

But as a 30 hour game, I expected a much more engaging story than simply following a father and son walking from place to place while fighting random enemies.

There were almost no twists that kept me excited to see what would happen next and very little gameplay variety throughout the adventure.

My expectations were extremely high, so I ended up feeling disappointed.

4. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Everything I criticized about Remake is here... except it's ten times worse.

This time, the main story barely feels like it exists. The game is full of repetitive minigames and useless open world activities.

The characters are still fantastic, the soundtrack is amazing and visually the game is very good.

But almost everything else completely lost me.

Every activity followed the same formula, there was almost no sense of discovery and the rewards rarely felt worth the time invested.

Unlike Remake, where I felt there was a great story constantly interrupted by filler, Rebirth made me feel like I was spending dozens of hours doing everything except progressing the story.

I dropped it after about 50 hours and I'm honestly not sure if I'll ever go back.

5. NieR: Automata

This is probably the game that confused me the most because I genuinely don't understand the overwhelming praise it receives.

The world felt empty and uninteresting to explore.

Most side quests were repetitive fetch quests.

Enemy variety was very limited, many bosses felt too similar, the graphics and engine felt dated and I found the combat surprisingly underwhelming.

The characters hadn't really made me care about them yet and the story felt very predictable.

Route A was already very boring.

Then Route B was the exact same game from another perspective.

I've seen countless fans say things like: "Just wait until Ending C.", "The real game starts later.", "You have to finish every route."

But that's exactly what confuses me.

How can a game be considered a masterpiece if it takes 15-20 hours before it actually becomes good?

So that's my list.

I'm sure plenty of people will strongly disagree and that's completely fine. Everyone enjoys different things.

I'm not trying to convince anyone these games are bad. These are simply five critically acclaimed games that, for different reasons, didn't live up to the expectations I had going into them.

First of all: I dont want this to become a keyboard warrior discussion between pc gaming and console gaming. Every person likes what he or she likes. It's all good.

I am just wondering of more people are experiencing what i am experiencing. I am a 38 year old gamer. Been gaming my entire life. I used to be mostly focused on pc for most of my adult life. I currently own a gaming pc with a 5070ti, so pretty capable. I also own all current gen consoles.

I live together with my girlfriend and our 5 month old son. I have a office job where i specialize in the legal aspects of real estate.

The last couple of years i find myself gravitating more and more to console because of the convience. I know PC offers a objectively better experience when it comes to fidelity and framerate but it lacks in convenience. I tried the whole steam big picture mode on the tv thing, but nothing beats just picking up a controller and pressing 1 button to play a game.

I wonder if this is more wide spread and if so, what is your experience?

I’m looking for something I can just chill and get completely immersed in. It doesn’t have to be your favorite game of all time—just one that’s especially fun to play while you’re high.

Some obscure ones in there that age me. I wanted to add more fun screens of them hanging out but I can only post one image at a time, apparently

Doesn’t have to be the focus, just something you do quite often

Ex:
The Yakuza series
I was a Teenage Exocolonist
Most visual novels
Planescape: Torment
Disco Elysium
BG3
Most CRPGS
The Stanley Parable kinda? You don’t talk but your every action is in a sense continuing a conversation.
Shadows of Doubt (only procedural story game I absolutely love)
The Pathologic series

Im leaving Playstation, whats the best pre-built gaming PC for $2k US dollars? I dont want to learn how to make a PC. Thank you

So real question: what made Expedition 33 "Amazing" to you guys? I'm not gonna say it's bad. It clearly took a lot of work and polish, especially by a smaller than average team. The unique combat mechanics for each character was a great idea and there's nothing particularly wrong with it. But I gotta say: I just don't see it.

The enemy designs are so bland they're like robots made out of stone, the world isn't interesting to explore, the menu system is just bad, there are cutscenes like every three or four fights which kills my momentum, and while I love the premise of the plot I genuinely got less and less intrigued the more things went on as the characters just kept wallowing in despair. What am I missing?!

For reference: I love the bleak oppressive atmosphere of FromSoftware games, but those at least had SOME level of self-aware silliness to them. I enjoy interactive turn based games like Paper Mario and the South Park games. And I like rpgs to the point I got the Platinum in BG3 and Metaphor: Refantazio this year alone. So why am I struggling to enjoy playing this on my first playthrough when everything is newly presented? Help me see what you guys see.

Thanks for reading.

Too many remakes are being pumped out, it makes the industry look bankrupt on ideas or too scared to do something different and would rather rely on fame or nostalgia to sell copies. Most of the remakes are changing up aspects of what made the originals memorable to boot. Communities seem mostly positive on them because most of the people feeling positive about them are people playing these games for the first time, though of course not entirely.

There are still new games being pumped out by the same companies fully investing into remakes but most of the new entries have evolved into different genres so if people want an experience akin to older games, most of what they have to look forward to are remakes after remakes after more remakes.

I would much rather see new games being made in the spirit of the originals instead of remakes, with a similar scope and budget and not be delegated to being a lower budget side project. This is just conjecture but I think remakes are a ticking timebomb and eventually gaming communities will get tired of them as a whole. What I fear is that when this happens, the industry wont conclude that older styles but new games are needed, but rather older styles have lost all appeal and abandon them entirely leaving small studios with new IPs to pick up the slack which isn't the worst, but it isn't the same as a new entry of an older genre and IP.

TL;DR - Remakes are fulfilling a place in the market for older styles of games instead of just making newer games in the pre-existing IPs that capture the older style. If you prefer older styles of pre-existing IPs, all you have to look forward to are indie titles that may or may not be what you want or just more remakes that may or may not capture the identity of the original.

Edit: A lot of people are missing the point I'm making and responding with details I address in the post. Indie games rarely match or outpace the games they were inspired by and even when they do, there is no replacing Metroid, Final Fantasy, etc. so saying just play indie games is dismissive and missing the point.

I’m a sucker for a phone game but it’s so infuriating having to pay to advance or watch a ton of ads. I miss buying a game and playing it without having to spend anymore on it.

I loved playing Harvest Moon, Sims The Urbz and cooking Mama

Title

With the recent news about Fallout being given to obsidian by Xbox , it infuriates me so much that cause of Bethesda’s ( Todd’s ) greed, nobody could make any Fallout game.

You think there were studios wanting to make new isometric fallout game, or new FPS fallout? 💯!!
The fact that Howard had a note on his table, after he purchased Fallout ip, “ Fallout is mine” tells a lot about him, and his character. Owning something is more important than doing something with it.

He reminds me of gollum and the ring.

Games are not just entertainment, they do save people lives, help with addictions, loneliness , help make friends . And Fallout is loved for its unique atmosphere, lore , style.

Knowing that we could have more amazing games in the universe hurts me, for real . But it is what it is.

I have a couple of examples:

Hell Let Loose: Hopefully I'll never actually need this one: In the game, if you hear a gunshot and you're still standing, you have a split second to react before the next one. The game forces you to learn situational awareness, instinctively process directionality from sound and visual context and cover mechanics. These are concepts that an "average european" like me, not at war, doesn't typically think about on a daily basis.

Civilization III: If you zoom out enough, whole-timeline view of "civilization" gave me a strange kind of insight (even if still inexact) into how real societies work. At that scale, history stops looking like a series of unique events and starts looking like patterns repeating, the masses behaving somewhat predictably, expansion, resource competition, empires extending and collapsing. It's made me see real-world news and history through that "zoomed out" lens ever since, contemplating what I would have done if X or Y, rather than "it is what it is"

I always love that moment in a game where you unlock something and can immediately tell it’s going to change the rest of the experience.
For me, nothing tops getting the Blades of Chaos in God of War. It’s such an incredible story moment, but they’re also just ridiculously fun to use. Combat instantly felt faster, more versatile, and I remember thinking, “Yeah… these are never coming off.”
Another one for me is the Super Shotgun in DOOM Eternal. The second I got it, the whole game just clicked. Flying around the arena with the Meat Hook made me feel like I’d finally become the Doom Slayer the game wanted me to be.
What’s the first weapon or ability that comes to mind for you?

🧐

I just booted up my PS5 and saw that a bunch of games on my wishlist are on sale. However I don't think I should buy any of them because of the whole "Sony cancelling discs" thing. I don't know what to do. One one hand these are great deals for these games that I can only get on PSN. But on the other hand if I do buy them I feel like I'm part of the problem giving Sony my money for digital games with everyone and their mother is doing the "no disc no buy" thing. Any advice (that's actually helpful)?

Don't mind the end.