9/10, BUT STILL TERRIBLE? ABOUT GAME-KILLING FEATURES

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Dissidia is a perfect example. It could have been one of the greatest action games. The battle system is sex. Not to mention an unprecedented stroke of originality on Square Enix's part. (it was a completely new type of game) But SE couldn't leave well enough alone, they had to diarrhea dump rpg mechanics and baggage for the player to wade through on it until it was beyond redemption.

I once wrote a list of all the things SE did to ruin Dissidia, which made me not very popular:

-Breakable accessories (why do these even exist?)
-bonus icon days (how about, I play the game and not worry about what freakin day of the week it is)
-Chocobo play plans (SIGH)
-As a result of the above two things, leveling is completely out of whack. I finish the game with all 10 characters, but I have Bartz at level 13 while another is at level 26. That's double!! Also, if you play for too long, the chocobo play plan resets. So you're punished for.. no reason basically.
-If you don't attain all the summonstones during a character's story, I have to play their entire story over again for another chance at getting them.
-Blue gates. (optional, non-story gates which don't achieve anything when finished and don't even keep track of whether you've finished them! So I guess they're waste-your-time gates.)
-Dumping a huge variety of booster accessories onto the player right in the first few hours of the game, but not giving the player a single base accessory to use them with. So in other words the player is spammed with items that do nothing.
-orange accessories which don't do anything other accessories don't already do. (e.g. Luck +1, Damage +3%, etc)
- a billion different trade components, and for some reason each one is a wearable accessory that increases luck. (Which is counter intuitive since the game should be focusing on promoting the use of booster accessories)
-as a result, you can rest assured knowing you will never have the right items needed to trade for the item you want, and even when you do, it's completely ambiguous as to whether the trade is actually worth it instead of potentially using that same trade component for an even better item down the line
- AP/KP chance conditions (win the match in 90 seconds, etc. Wow, so original! Whatever happened to just "win the fight"? If it aint broke, dont fix it)
- Rosetta stone increases only 1 accessory slot and only for that character. In other words, you will need a shit ton of rosetta stones, and the only way to get them is to replay stories you've already beaten over and over. Welcome to hell.
- chain skills which literally do nothing but select enemies to fight, which you can do anyway without the use of chain skills. (But it doesn't count as a "chain" unless you use a chain skill.) (And counting as a "chain" means nothing, but the game arbitrarily gives you more KP if you do it this way, because "please use our shitty mechanic, thanks")
- KP lines. (your KP bonuses are lower or higher depending on your level compared to the KP Line # of the gate you're in) WHO CARES??
- Equipping summon stones is an ordeal in of itself. You must select 1 to equip and 5 to reserves. (why not just equip 6 reserves?? Isn't the equipped summon basically just reserve #1?) Furthermore, you must repeat this process for every single character you decide to play. (you can't just use the same setup across all characters, even if you're traveling in a party) If you ask me though, the way it should have worked is: a) the game randomly chooses your summons, b) whenever a summonstone runs out, you equip a new summonstone right then and there, while the victory music is still playing. c) You can equip multiple summons at the same time. d) a combination of the above.
- The Duel Coliseum, which was a servicable mode in the first Dissidia, was butched in DIssidia 012 by being turned into a tower/dungeon game, of some sort, complete with items you cannot keep unless you build a tent. (wtf?) Also, you cannot equip anything in Duel Coliseum anymore, making this mode not very good for leveling your characters, which is the ONE thing this mode was good for in the original Dissidia.


p.s. it's kinda weird that this thread isn't in the videogames section?
I dropped one game for the most stupid reason (That was like 8-6 years ago and still haven't replayed the game)

I was playing Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, pretty cool game, I was looking on the internet what was the next step in the game (I no longer check FAQs, unless I'm really stuck or already finished the game) and saw that I had to fight Death next, my 12 year old self thought: "what!?, Death is always the second to last battle in the Castlevania games, that means this game is really short" and I dropped the game...

Since that day I never touched C:AoS, even thought I already know that there's more to the game, that is one of the best Castlevania games and that is one of the best games on the GBA...
The funny thing is, Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow, I had to look up how to fight the last boss. Both games have a sort of puzzle to unlocking the final boss, especially Aria. (Nowadays however I would never look up a guide for any reason, even though I had done so for most of my favorite games. Simply because I hadn't implemented such a rule at the time.)

I could give like 100 reasons why I despise Order of Ecclesia, but I don't consider it a 9/10 game, so I guess it doesn't count.
There are many games which I generally dislike, but when I try to like it, I am blocked by one or several reasons. So in effect it is a game-killing feature.

One game that comes close is Ace Combat 5, simply because it's an Ace Combat game and I liked the other four others I have played. (4, Zero, X, and Joint Assault) So in that sense Ace Combat 5 is a 9/10 on paper simply for being part of one of my favorite series of all time, but it's packed to the brim with "game killing features" on a level that it actually astounds me that the other Ace Combat games have miraculously avoided most of these issues.

- the buttons don't work unless you press them really hard. I honestly have no idea how or why they did this but the pressure sensitive buttons on the PS2 must somehow be involved. In other words the makers of Ace Combat 5 had to have deliberately programmed deadzones into the buttons, which would suggest that they criminally insane.
- the dialogue is terribly corny even by Ace Combat standards. One mission actually has wingmen effectively praising how atmospheric the environment is.
- terrible writing. "Razgriz" is a made up myth expositioned to you simply to make the game more epic/symbolic. It's like if your squadron was named the Spoon squadron and the game proceeds to tell you that in the Ace Combat universe, the word Spoon means heavenly protector.
- dialogue system: You must answer yes or no to things your wingmen say by using the dpad. Weirding thing ever.
- your superior officer flips a coin to decide what mission you must undertake, but this would imply that the choice is random, but it isn't.
- you run out of missiles easily, and unlike AC4 you cannot resupply
- the machine gun has been nerfed. It's possible to stream a line of bullets through an enemy but one bullet goes under and the next bullet goes over, because the rate of fire is too slow. It's not a machine gun anymore, it feels more like you're spitting fireballs from Super Mario.
- The garage is totally FUBARED. To buy, sell, or choose a plane for a mission, you have to exit and re-enter the garage to switch from doing to the other. One mission actually limits you to a handful of aircraft so when you're finally ready to deploy on the mission you find you have the wrong plane and you're forced you to redo everything.
- almost no glitches in the other Ace Combat games, but I kept experiencing glitches in AC5
- Terrible mission design, some even boxing you into small combat zones making it impossible to pursue mission targets until the enemy turns around
- A mission that forces you to literally fly as close to the ground as humanly possibly, but the level is filled with trees and flying into a tree simply causes you to fly through it, thereby breaking immersion
- Your wingmen fly extremely close to you and clip through your plane constantly (such as every time you turn left or right) while other times they collide with your and cause you to fail the mission
- Your wingmen are blotted out by huge "W" symbols making them impossible to see or gauge distance between you and them, and in one mission you fail for not being close enough, which in turn increases the likelyhood you will fly into them and crash.
- At the end of the above mission, after exiting the last cave, the enemy threat has subsided, and the characters are literally breathing sighs of relief for successfully escaping, you can still fail for not being close enough (and forced to redo the entire mission over) even though the mission was 2 seconds away from completion.
- The final mission forces you to run out of time in order to proceed, even though running out of time usually ends in mission failure.


I also have this problem with hardware too. For instance the slim Vita with its yellow screen. I actually listed my Vita on ebay the same week I got it and purchased an OLED Vita instead, even though the slim was better in every other way. I heard about the screen being different but it was much worse than I had imagined. People defend the screen, or sugarcoat it, I've even seen a New 3DS XL vs. Slim Vita article say the colors on the screen are "realistic", it astounds me the level of insanity in people. Do you go around adjusting the color settings on each TV and monitor you game on, increasing the yellow until every person on screen looks just barely looks like an alien, and proceed to call it an "improvement"? Because if you don't then why would the logic be any different for a Vita screen.
author=El_WaKa
I dropped one game for the most stupid reason (That was like 8-6 years ago and still haven't replayed the game)

I was playing Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, pretty cool game, I was looking on the internet what was the next step in the game (I no longer check FAQs, unless I'm really stuck or already finished the game) and saw that I had to fight Death next, my 12 year old self thought: "what!?, Death is always the second to last battle in the Castlevania games, that means this game is really short" and I dropped the game...

Since that day I never touched C:AoS, even thought I already know that there's more to the game, that is one of the best Castlevania games and that is one of the best games on the GBA...


I 100%ed that one. Though I need to admit I had to tool-assist for one soul as, though I knew how to get it, the timing for it was insanely tight.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=Feldschlacht IV
author=piano
What the fuck? In Chrono Cross, I fought the boss at the beach, got the end credits and was sent straight to the title screen. I got no ending. My first and only play through. Are you telling me that I had to do something special to get an ending, because that's some fucking bullshit!
Yes, you have to properly utilize the Chrono Cross Element you obtain near the end. It's kinda obtuse on what you have to do, but the hints are there. The final boss is structured in a way that you can attempt it over and over again with almost no risk whatsover.

damn u mad as hell tho calm down

I mean, it's like Chrono Trigger, there are actually ten different endings depending on when and how you beat the game. If you beat it at Odessa Beach after the entire story is over without using the Chrono Cross, you get the Bad Ending(tm).

Games that have a Bad Ending(tm) and a Good Ending(tm) are your game-killing feature I guess, then, piano? That's something that most people seem to really enjoy.
halibabica
RMN's Official Reviewmonger
16873
I think piano's justified in being mad that the bad ending is a complete lack of any closure.
BizarreMonkey
I'll never change. "Me" is better than your opinion, dummy!
1625
A bad ending =/= no ending at all.

At least a bad ending has a good chance of making you feel like shit.

Or ditch a series entirely, see ME3.

God. I haven't even seen it, just that it's infamously lame.
Kingdom Hearts II. I was incredibly mad at that game for years and I'm still not entirely over it.

First of all, I found the introductory area to be interminably long. It's not like it was all exposition and no gameplay, but I still felt like I was waiting far too long for the game to get started. It didn't have the relaxed, exploratory feel that Destiny Islands had in the first game, but maybe that was the weight of my expectation causing that.

That's not the real problem I had with the game, just an introductory gripe. No, my real problem was the way the game pitted me against several hours' worth of final boss content without a save point when I was trying to finish it on a weeknight.

It just kept dragging on, and then it cheesed me to death with a really stupid timed section. It had already employed obnoxious mid-battle game over timers earlier in the game, as anyone who's played it will attest, but to do it after several hours of story and fighting with no chance to save, simultaneously introducing a new mechanic, and then allowing the boss to stunlock me so I couldn't win? Rage. Absolute rage. I haven't touched the game since.

So that's what killed the game for me. Pacing and general cheap boss bullshit that has a complete disregard for the player's time.

It also just wasn't as good as the first game, generally. Every new mechanic and story element it introduced just felt like it overcomplicated what had previously been a winning formula. Like, not that I object to them building upon a formula, but it felt like it was starting in an obnoxious direction in its attempts to one-up itself.
Solitayre
Circumstance penalty for being the bard.
18257
Man I have the complete opposite opinion. KH1 felt clunky, gimmicky, and redundant. KH2 felt way more streamlined and refined and was an improvement in pretty much every regard. (except the writing, which continued to make no sense, but you're not playing these games for the writing.)

I know this is a four month old thread but I don't care.
My big thing about KH2 was that the combat felt automatic compared to KH1. Press square a lot, and the game does all the work for you. Also they took out the majority of the exploration and that made me kind of mad; flat areas with a few blatant treasure chests doesn't feel fun or rewarding.

I'm also going to throw my unpopular opinion in, and say that the plot twist at the end of Star Ocean 3 ruined the whole game for me, if not the whole series.


Served me fine in KH2 Proud Mode. Add your favorite liquor for helping understand the story because whatever your drunk ass invents whole cloth is way better than the chickenscratch that they actually wrote.

(I'll forever hate KH for being such a dissapointment. Anything but horrible abridged versions of Disney movies, Sora and Rikku's unresolved sexual tension, and pure strain shit for everything original. What a waste of a concept.)
author=Solitayre
I know this is a four month old thread but I don't care.
I appreciate your leniency, but also, I am so sorry. It's been a while since I last visited, and I forgot I was checking back a couple of pages.

I'm sure if I were to take another look I could see your point about KH2 being a significant improvement, but I suppose I just found the first so charming and complete that most of the changes 2 felt unnecessary and equated to a reduction in the overall experience for me. Except the forms. Those were great. But I am sometimes very picky for very illogical reasons.

That's not to say I didn't thoroughly enjoy it between the frustrating beginning and the frustrating end (Atlantica being the exception), but it didn't gel as much for me. Now I want to replay them and find out why.

I did have a pretty good time with Birth By Sleep when I played one third of that recently, but I wasn't expecting all that much to begin with and I wouldn't put it on par with the first two in terms of overall experience.


author=GreatRedSpirit
Served me fine in KH2 Proud Mode. Add your favorite liquor for helping understand the story because whatever your drunk ass invents whole cloth is way better than the chickenscratch that they actually wrote.

(I'll forever hate KH for being such a dissapointment. Anything but horrible abridged versions of Disney movies, Sora and Rikku's unresolved sexual tension, and pure strain shit for everything original. What a waste of a concept.)

Thank you; I'm sure this will... help?

Aside from the novelty and nostalgia, the dumbed down Disney aspects didn't really do all that much for me (neither did the dumbed down FF elements, actually) but I just found it such a bizarre, appealing package overall. I'd call it a guilty pleasure, but I'm not altogether sure that I don't actually consider it a really good series, despite its flaws.

The story, though, has just become a horrible, resolution-witholding mess.
Solitayre
Circumstance penalty for being the bard.
18257
author=Leapfrog
Atlantica


I never went here, and I don't regret it.
Don't mind me, I'm just mocking KH2's awful combat!
For Sephiroth, you actually have to press Square at the right moment to block his melee combo. Since he hits you multiple times, your last chance won't kick in against it. Still, most of the above still applies (and pretty much the rest of the game).
The Legend of Zelda : Skyward Fetchquest

Plenty of games use the "go here, get that, bring it back" scheme, but for me, Skyward Sword's felt wrong. The game was overloaded with these kind of objectives. The backtracking combined with the collect-o-thon fetch quests killed it for me. I did finish it, but I'll never play through it again.
Kingdom Hearts 2 becomes a whole lot better if you don't think of it as an Action RPG and more as a 40 hour Acid Trip.
I played Final Fantasy Tactics to death. Couldn't get enough of that game. When I finished it, I was actually rather disappointed as it seemed too short of a game for me (I wanted moar).

And then I get my hands on Tactics Advance. My mind wanted to vomit because it didn't FEEL like what I got out of the original Tactics - It felt like this dummied down child friendly version. I wanted my gritty ass dark Tactics story, dammit. I even think the graphics gave me a sort of 'feel' that didn't fit.
author=Cecil_Beoulve
I played Final Fantasy Tactics to death. Couldn't get enough of that game. When I finished it, I was actually rather disappointed as it seemed too short of a game for me (I wanted moar).

And then I get my hands on Tactics Advance. My mind wanted to vomit because it didn't FEEL like what I got out of the original Tactics - It felt like this dummied down child friendly version. I wanted my gritty ass dark Tactics story, dammit. I even think the graphics gave me a sort of 'feel' that didn't fit.


I had a similar reaction. I didn't mind that it was graphically cutesy, but the plot itself was pretty vapid and too focused on the petty and self-absorbed protagonists. The premise had potential, but it felt largely squandered.

The mechanics bothered me more, though. Initially I loved the idea of multiple races in addition to classes, but the way it was implemented felt very cumbersome and restrictive to me. You didn't have the options you had in FFT, and skill progression was gated behind equipment, which was gated behind plot progress, which doesn't work so well in a game that's more about side missions and team building than story progress. It's worth saying, however, that I did end up enjoying the game.

Then along came Tactics A2 where you not only had to get equipment to unlock skills, you needed to find the crafting materials to unlock weapons - and then purchase them! The original FFT had some problems with being able to outpace equipment - getting Dragoons well before having access to their spears, for instance - but at least I never spent several hours with a character who had one spell and simply couldn't learn any more, like my Nu Mou in A2.

And then came War of the Lions with its horrendous slowdown and its try hard retranslation, and I think FFT officially died for me. Especially considering their attempts to bridge the games together with their "Ivalice Alliance" stuff when the original FFT clearly has a completely different setting.

Long live FFT, the true king.
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