I bounced off a lot of them, but managed to get decent in Tekken 8. Finding a good controller definitely helps, I was pretty bad at pad (PS4, XSX), but once I got a leverless with WASD layout (Haute42), I could finally focus on learning stuff and playing instead of getting angry at constant misinputs. It differs from person to person though, I have a friend who bought one and his brain fried at having to press two directional buttons at once to do diagonals (which felt completely normal and obvious to me), so you might need to experiment.
Starting when the game launches is the best too, because there'll be a lot of new players to play against. The longer you delay your purchase, the more competent the player base will be, even in the lower ranks. This is obviously bad if you're starting from scratch.
Literally all you have to do, to be better than 90% of all people in the community is put the time and effort in to learn mechanics and lab your combos.
Fighting games are really weird when it comes to the skill curve, they remind me of learning how to play an instrument.
I think there’s also a big disconnect between ranked and real life. You can look at your rank and feel depressed because you’re statistically middle of the road but then go to a local and smoke a good chunk of the people there.
Fighting games are hard and it’s about improving rather than winning!
> Fighting games are hard and it’s about improving rather than winning!
When I was still playing competitively, I always found that nothing helped me improve as much as simply recording my matches and watching them back a day or so later.
A thing I can only recommend for pretty much every genre of multiplayer, tbh. The biggest steps forward tend to happen when you remove your greatest weakpoints.
Every game type has its own skill curve, learning how to play an instrument is fine, I believe most people can do it proficiently, but how many are creating their own music, that's what separates I guess the last percent.
>, that's what separates I guess the last percent
That's not at all true. Creating and performing in music are two completely different skills/expertises, both with a huge 'base' of people and an extremely high skill cap resulting in an extremely skilled top percent.
Nothing has been more infuriating to me than trying to learn how to play Mortal Kombat or Tekken. At least when I learned to play guitar I had an excuse, I was bad at it because I'm almost tone deaf. I don't why it's impossible for me to learn a traditional fighting game but it is.
A couple of people have mentioned Street Fighter 6, but to elaborate a bit on that:
Street Fighter 6 is quite possibly the most new-player friendly fighting game in a decade. Capcom went above and beyond in adding convenience features for new players, including a simplified control scheme that lets you do special moves "smash style" with direction+single button, and a fleshed out single player open world story mode that introduces game concepts gradually.
This is all in addition to the best training mode that the SF series has ever seen, and combo trials that actually show you practical things, once you're comfortable enough with the basics of playing the game.
This isn't your fault. The Fighting game genre has failed to 'gamify' fighting game mechanics, at least in single-player and PVE content that organically teaches players how to play a game just by playing it. Like if other genres treated their single player experiences like fighting games do, FPS campaigns would just be a series of matches against bots. If it were Mortal Kombat there'd be 3 cutscenes in between those bot matches lol.
But to give you an idea of what I mean or what that would look like in a fighting game....Like start off the game with nothing but neutral attacks and *force* the player to use those things only. Design the AI to specifically test your neutral skills in a series of escalating challenges, broken up by normal story and exploration and other game stuff that you find in other games, so the player has time to absorb what they've just learned before being given more info. That's just the first hour of the game. Then you can introduce directional moves like sweeps etc. Rinse and repeat with blocking, special moves and finally combos.
Like this kind of thing would probably drive fighting game veterans nuts but it's desperately needed. There are very few games where you start off with a characters complete toolset. OG God of War you had your light attack, heavy attack and like 1 combo available to you at the start. You played the game to unlock new combos and abilities as you the player got to grips with how the tools you had worked before you were given more. But with fighting games it's like starting at max level in a MMO with a full hotbar and no in game tooltips and you just have to figure it out all yourself.
You also have to design AI and challenges that test certain skills and are meant to be beaten and not play like a human. I think this is the biggest one that's missing. An Elite in Halo is intelligent and challenging opponent, but it doesn't try to act like a live human opponent. It's a vehicle for gameplay loops...I could go on but I think you get the point.
the main issue with most fighting games is that their skill floor is so high that it's difficult to reach to start with. Like not everyone can just pick up Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat or Tekken because they're extremely difficult to learn any combos. The only fighting game Ibe come to enjoy is Brawlhalla and kind of Smash Bros. Smash Bros skill floor is pretty low but Brawlhalla's is just as low and is more balanced.
Me too. I've tried to be good at dragon ball fighterZ and mortal kombat, but in tense situations, my finfmgers like to forget what the buttons do even though I've been gaming for almost 30 years straight. Also any sort of plan I made, instantly forgotten
Kenshi. I’ve heard amazing stories from those who have played it, but holy crap is it a bit cumbersome to play. It’s just too clunky for me to get into :(
Same here, I really tried but I just don't know what to do or where to go. I just end up being killed by some bandits. Maybe I'll give it another try but it's rough
Bandits rarely kill characters in Kenshi, so it's possible you started somewhere unusually dangerous. In any case, the Kenshi community is a friendly bunch if you want to ask for tips.
Before my current fallout addiction, I tried kenshi again because I’m always on the hunt for a multi hundred hour game (especially if it’s cyclical like mmos or chill like euro truck sim)
I started as a free person and ran into that same ehhhhh ness.
But then I read about the prisoner start. Damn that was a unique gameplay experience.
I felt so cool finally getting out after suffering many beatings, after getting to that survival hut in the north and just chilling until my hair grew out was overall a very epic experience…..for ME.
I find kenshi is very much a tale of personal stories, until you have THAT first experience, I think it’ll be hard to get into.
I will say though, I wish there was more living off the land / camping / foraging. You can only mine stuff? That blows.
It’s all a bit janky but if you’re at a loss for something to play, I highly recommend giving the prisoner start a go.
I bought it and just returned it. It is a great game when someone that knows what they're doing is playing. When I play, I struggle with camera control so much I get frustrated and so I got a refund. Sad about it
I'm too shit to play Kenshi without mods, so I sucked it up and did that. Even still, it's like Tolstoy: there's a TON of good stuff there, but it's often hard to get past the fact that there is in fact an actual ton of it there to be got through.
I wanted to like Pathfinder wrath of the righteous. I loved crpgs like baldurs gate, dragon age, and kotor but for some reason I just can't get into it.
I don’t know what exactly it is about Owlcat’s games, but they are the exact kind of game I normally love but I just can’t get into them.
The real time with pause combat, for one, just doesn’t feel great in Kingmaker or Wrath. There didn’t seem to be a way to automate companions, so it was a ton of pausing and microing. Not to mention constantly applying buffs before a fight.
So I thought I would like their Rogue Trader game. Crpg, turn based combat, and Warhammer? Match made in heaven. But something just isn’t clicking.
I’ve played a significant amount of crpgs, so I don’t think it’s the complexity of the systems. More like all the nonsense added on top, like kingdom and crusade management, or stopping every 30 seconds to rest.
> The real time with pause combat, for one, just doesn’t feel great in Kingmaker or Wrath. There didn’t seem to be a way to automate companions, so it was a ton of pausing and microing. Not to mention constantly applying buffs before a fight.
There is a turn based mode. Also there is a buffing mod to make that less click intensive. And then there is Bag of Tricks which can basically tune the entire game to your liking.
I thought the writing and narrative, although better than Kingmaker, were nowhere near as good as other CRPGs.
It's a great game if you are into micromanaging in combat and creating very in depth builds, but the story is not that great imho.
The writing is not too bad. It's not the best I've seen but it is also not as bad as the writing in the divinity games. The issue is the pacing is a little bit off in my opinion.
Especially at the end of Kingmaker you had a lot of "keep you busy" fights even though you just want to finish the story and see the climax. But every 5 steps you get enemies with annoying crowd control skills thrown at you.
Yeah I tried to get into it, but the combat just wasn't my jam. I preferred Children of Morta, very similar gameplay styles but I think the pacing was just a bit slower and more allowed me to control the pacing.
its pretty fun to play but the first runs without mirror upgrades, weapons, trinkers and rerolls are a little boring, once you start unlocking things it gets way better
Luckily with hades you see instantly what you get, there's no change whatsoever to the mechanics of the gameplay by unlocking anything else, if you don't enjoy the pov, the movement etc. you probably won't
This is great because steam allows refunds for up to 2 hours, so it's literally free to try (afaik they will refund to card too, not just steam wallet but dont quote me if something's changed)
This is my answer too. I love everything about the games except for the combat. I just never really found any of the weapons that felt good to use.
Edit: Please stop recommending weapons. I have tried all of them in multiple games already.
I am exactly the opposite. I fucking hated the game becauss I tried it for the very first time in 3DS (Camera was controlled via L/R or the touch screen). And the starting weapon was a Greatsword, it was sooooooooooooo slow, and I was thinking why tf is this weapon so slow yet so weak??
Then I played the demo of the MHG Ultimate in switch, enjoyed it, bought the full game on release, spent more than 300hours on it. I now play World/Iceborne and Rise/Sunbreak, and I use all the slowest weapons in the game (Gunlance, Lance, HBG, Hammer and Horn).
It's way more fun with friends tho, I'll be bored if I didn't have anyone to play with.
I mean you really just need to max science then production on every single city and you'll eventually snowball.
The high difficulties like Emperor or above you do need to do all that optimal shit and exploit flaws in the AI, but ain't nobody got time for that.
I tried to get into rdr2 like three times before i finally told myself that i was going to play the game for at least 20-25 hours. Today, imo, it’s the best story game I’ve ever played. Not my favorite but the best.
Yeah my first run was 2 hours. Got busy and didn’t feel like going back to it.
Finally found about 5 hours over 2 days to try it (a rarity these days) and it also ended up being the best story game ever played.
It's not hyperbole when I say it took like 10 hours for the game to click and me to start liking it. I don't expect anyone to put in that kind of time on something they aren't that into unless it's literally all you got.
I’m going to try.
I can say the same about Death Stranding and I’ll always be glad I stuck with it because it turned out to be one of my favorite gaming experiences.
Yes! That happened to me! I got bored two times with death stranding, I'm the third go I decided to go at least a few hours and then I started to like, by the end I love it. Same with red dead redemption 2.
The world is so great, but the game is actively sabotaged by incredibly stupid design and gameplay decisions. Couldn't finish the first game because of the controls. Couldn't finish this one because of the controls. It was way overboard with the "realism" and prevented all fun. It's like they didn't put any effort into adapting the controls for the PC port and felt like an emulation of that godawful console controller. It's crazy because those same devs also did Max Payne 3 which has among the top TPS controls along with Metal Gear Solid V. I tried, I really tried to like that game, because in theory it's the perfect game, but I couldn't get through 2 or 3 chapters.
I have played Max Payne 3 recently and had the same awakened perspective about it as I did playing fallout 3 where I was like "this is just gta5 but actually controllable and responsive and good" similar to when I realized fallout 3 is just oblivion with guns. IDK why younger me didn't make that association with either game, but it felt clairvoyant. I don't know how they nailed MP3 so well but fumbled GTA5 and RDR2's movement/interaction. MP3 is seriously just "Rockstar gunplay but good"
Man that's the opposite of how i felt about Dutch's speeches. The acting was IMO a masterclass. He sounded like some sort of lost Bridges brother (Jeff, Beau, other one i can't remember).
To each their own.
And when you listen to them intently, you quickly realize he is nonstop saying the same stuff with slightly different words and full of pathos. Once I realized that I was like "is that intended like kinda 4th wall break or should we ask why the characters are so naive and ignorant still following Dutch".
After a few hours I also lost all connection and empathy for Arthur cause he is such a dumb character. Even without a proper education (which makes kinda sense for a criminal low-life in these times) Arthur doesn't seem like an imbecile so why does he act nonstop like one?
It got old, but it seemed Arthur is an imbecile but very trusted and trusting so it gave Dutch more power. I think everyone was following Arthur, but Dutch had the extra brain cell so he did the plannin'
and then you make enough on your own you could run away west and become a professional gambler or start your own gold mining venture or oil (but you're definitely too dumb to follow the real money; black gold) but you're also still an imbecile with some heart so you don't ditch the worthless moochers and don't have the brain cells to rub together to lead a pack of even dumber idiots so Dutch leads
Same, I hate that first snow bit as well, but it's been years and so every time I try to comeback I'm just completely lost and clueless so have to restart 😂
Same thing happened to me. I don't know if this will be helpful, but on my third attempt I forced my way through and once I got to about hour seven or so the game really really opens up. It's still my favorite game of all time to this day. The writing and story are so good. It made me cry more than once. And that's to say nothing of the gameplay mechanics and sidequest challenges you can do in the menu. I think completing all the challenges was my favorite thing to do in the game.
RDR2 starts out so fricken slow and introduces the fun stuff so slowly through story missions that you're like "isn't there anything else to do" until then there's SO MUCH to do and it's like "fuck it i just want to finish".
The game is a masterpiece. But i almost bounced off it both times i played through in the first act because:
1. The snow level sucks.
2. It feels like you're attacking an army with the O'Driscolls. How does that gang have like 300 people? (theres a youtuber who parodied that)
3. The main character moves with inertia so it doesn't have that snappy video game feeling where you can stop and turn on a dime. You have to get used to it unfortunately.
My advice is to use Deadeye on like every shot. Get it close, hit the deadeye button, BLAM to the face, turn off Deadeye. It'll make it easier to get through the slog.
It took me hours to get into it and I've created a giant empire that kicks ass. ...but the only issue now is the enormous amount of micro-management every thing!!! gaah!
I have a few hundred hours in it, there is an astounding game there. The problem is I feel like it's a game you should watch a few videos on to learn, but they have changed the entire game so much over it's lifespan that many great videos are at this point functionally useless for learning how to play it.
This, there are some good tutorials videos out there.
Also recommended to turn down inhabitable planets to the lowest amount to reduce micromanagement (it affects all players so it doesn't cripple you in the end).
Stellaris is such a fun game once you get the gist of it though. Micromanagement can get rough and overwhelming when it ruins the pace of the game for some people. If youre learning, id recommend playing as small of a map as possible on an easier difficulty, and play a tall empire specializing in materialism and tech.
It is overwhelming at first, but in the end, the game gives the player a lot of creative choice to role-play your empire because of that mechanistic complexity.
Im in the same position as you are, but with Hearts of Iron 4; i have no idea whats going on, even though i have a lot of hours in Stellaris haha.
Elite dangerous. I've tried it soo many times and I'm trying it again, but no matter how many tutorials I've watched, I always end up having some dumb shit happen to me when I'm trying to do a simple mission amd I usually end up dying. Same way with star citizen. They both make me feel like an old man who doesn't understand technology
Factorio !
I love the idea and how the game came to be, but I feel overwhelmed with all that stuff going on so I quit early on. Tried a few times too but couldn't reach the point where I felt I knew what I was doing and was confident moving forward in the game.
I also found it very difficult to continue to play it.
Problem is, you start to build and shape everything around the resources you find. But just as you have everything set up (at least for the time being) one resource runs out and now you have to figure out where to get that from some place else.
In the late game, I realize you can have like flying robots who an disassemble/reassemble even complicated structures in seconds at will but I feel that even getting there is really really cumbersome.
Also, because resources are constantly running out, I feel like there is never a "pause" of some kind. You know? Like a time where you could leave your factory running while figuring out what to do next. It is like the game is always pushing you what do do next. And if you dont do it right away, everything will eventually break and then you can spend many hours to figure out what to fix first.
> Also, because resources are constantly running out, I feel like there is never a "pause" of some kind. You know? Like a time where you could leave your factory running while figuring out what to do next. It is like the game is always pushing you what do do next. And if you dont do it right away, everything will eventually break and then you can spend many hours to figure out what to fix first.
This is one of the reasons I liked Satisfactory more than Factorio. Resource nodes are infinite; put a miner down and it will continue to produce at that rate forever. There's no "Oh god I constantly need to be finding new resources and rebuild everything around it" pressure.
I definitely get this. Witcher 3 was a game where I gave up very early about 4 times (maybe more) but then one time it just worked and I then adored it. Clearly a huge amount of work went into that game.
I'd recommend starting from Witcher 1. I couldn't get into Witcher 3 first time, quit in the first region. Then a few years later decided to start from the first game and absolutely loved it, finished all 3 games (+Thronebreaker).
First game has very clunky and unique combat, but if you persist you will get used to it quickly. The game has one of the best atmospheres i've ever experienced in 20 years of gaming and a great story.
It's still my favorite Witcher game to this day.
yup, I tried Witcher 2 couple times before 3 came out and didn't get into it, then gave Witcher 3 various shots probably even getting like 10 hours in and it just wouldn't click.
Please tell me about starsector. I've been trying to learn x4 today and elite dangerous recently. Looking for my perfect space sim. Both of them, amd star citizen are close, but all fail in different areas for me.
From what I understand:
Starsector starts you out first as a Space Supply/Demand Resource trading Survival (fuel management) game, where you can explore the Top-Down 2D landscape with your fleet. It's only later on that you can nab a planet and start your own independant outpost, then trading hub, and eventually Fledgeling Empire with their own formidable military fleet.
On a Technical level, Starsector hits the Explore, Exploit, Expand, Exterminate exes that the 4X(Civ-like) genre is known for. Though, the starting hours definitely feel more akin to the classical space trading games of yore.
Honestly, I found the colony management underwhelming. It takes a massive amount of time and credits, so by that point you have a pretty powerful fleet. And once its running, you just idle while it prints credits.
Roaming with your fleet is where most of the gameplay is at.
I only recently clicked with starsector. I found X4 much easier to understand, youtube guides helped me startup in X4. Once you get your own station you can more or less do what you want, which is basically the starting point and I think 2/3h in. The problem with X4 is the dumb AI, which is a real let down more often than not, because if it works, its really something. I had a few dozen trade ships doing their thing automatically and just sat outside my space station watching them come in and make me money. Which I took to build my personal battle fleet :)
This one for me. I tried it again, recently, after several years, put seven hours into it and stopped because I was just getting more and more frustrated as time went on. I think I'm bouncing off it for the same reason I don't like metroidvanias: I don't like games that constantly make you backtrack. With Outer Wilds, I'd get a nice 'aha!' moment that was immediately tempered by the knowledge I'd need to go somewhere I'd already been several times, that it would not be fun to travel to that place, and that this new place would just make me do more of the same.
Having thrown in the towel and spoilered myself, I can appreciate that this is all a really quite elegant way for the gameplay to support/mirror the narrative, but it genuinely was not an experience I enjoyed.
Prey.
It got a great atmosphere, a great premise. Decent RPG elements but the combat is just not fun for me. Tried playing again a few times with lowered expectation but the frigging combat always drag me down.
Prey has mediocre combat so if you're trying to play it like a normal shooter you'll be disappointed. The gameplay always give you a lot of options to solve any problem and when I started experimenting with the mechanics more is when I came to love it. Prey is totally fine with you doing stupid shit like carrying around six turrets to kill all the enemies for you.
I found it fun with leverage, just throw stuff at the enemies. And high wrench damage with the bullet time skill. But then again I loved the Dishonored games and Prey lends itself to the same kind of gameplay.
Love CRPGS. have hundreds of hours in DOS2 and BG3. I cant get myself to play Disco Elysium for more than an hour even though its fully voice acted and seems to have a really cool setting/story.
I didn't have an answer when I clicked the thread, but I think this is it for me. I played a couple hours shortly after it came out, then never went back to it. Restarted a couple months ago, played an hour, never went back. It just won't click for some reason.
To be fair, Disco Elysium is more of a point-and-click adventure game with RPG elements than a CRPG, so it's not that crazy that it's not clicking with you.
Disco Elysium should not be categorized as a CRPG (even though it technically is one) simply because it creates false expectations.
Playing BG3 or Pillars of Eternity doesn't garantee you'll like it.
Now if you enjoy Felvidek, Who is Lila, Soma, Slay the princess, Night in the Woods, Spec Ops the line, Pathologic and other games like that with a lot of meta narrative and psychological hidden plots then it would be a safer bet for you.
Happens. From that I gather you are more the combat/build/gameplay kind of guy. I did start out really loving games like Bg1/Bg2 but in the years, I transitioned to that kind of preference, too.
But somehow, Disco was the only game that made me stop and read games again. The writing and depth of the story is on a level that comes around only once or twice every 20 years. The last game that had writing as good as this was Planescape: Torment.
This is me. 500 hours in each DOS2 and BG3, but I just can't get into Disco... I've been tempted to buy it on Switch or Steam Deck to have it portable, but it just doesn't seem to matter. It's just not clicking for me, even though I've wanted it to. Thank you for validating my experience!
I'm the exact opposite: I can't get into the combat of DOS2 but I've beaten Disco Elysium 3 times with different builds. I grew up on Sierra adventure games though so I have that sixth sense for the crazy logic those games use
Disco Elysium is just unfortunate. The prose itself is fantastic and very well written, but everything else just isn't that interesting.
Its definitely good, but not "best game ever" good
It's very boring playing PZ alone, but with a friend it's a blast imo. You can create goals together such as raiding specific places, setting up safehouses or farmyards, collecting a fleet of vehicles, etc.
If you want someone to play with you could DM me, I've set up a custom server in the past with additional weapons, vehicles, QoL mods, etc. and know of some good custom settings to make the game much better.
An example of an important in-game setting is to disable zombie respawns. This way you can slowly clear out a neighbourhood and actually feel like you are making progress, and build up a safehouse. I think zombies can still wander/roam so it's not always 100% safe which is cool too.
Timing sleep cycles with other players is kind of a pain, but it's also sort of necessary because playing at night is brutal in PZ lol.
Same, same, now that emulation has gotten better since I originally tried it, I'm tempting to give it another shot with a mod, hell could even do it on Switch since I picked up a modded one of those but I dunno, feel like the time for that game has passed and the only Zelda game I've played through is Between Worlds so no big attachment to the series.
I *strongly* recommend you try it again. I'm playing it modded on PC and in addition to looking really, really nice at the much higher resolutions, the mods totally change it. Losing weapon durability takes all of the slog out of the game, IMO, and it becomes much more of a goof-off simulator (as it should've been).
I don't mind weapon durability, but there's a balance to be struck. Most devs unfortunately just haven't figured it out yet.
BotW/TotK combat is both too easy and I avoid it whenever possible. Seems more often than not like a waste of resources.
Played BOTW thinking: Man, this weapon durability mechanic is awful. I'll just fulfill the requirements for the Master Sword and then I should hopefully be done and away with it. No way they make the Blade of Evil's Bane break. That would be like breaking a major rule for magical swords!
Hooray! I got the sword!
And then...oh...great... :|
I played it on PC using ruyjinx emulator and my first mod was the durability one.
I haven't seen this mechanic in any game being implemented well. It always sucks.
Similar to consumables. I hate consumables always.
Disco Elysium.
I just couldn't get into it, despite its high praise, so refunded within the 2 hour window. This was a few years ago.
I've picked it up in the current Steam sale, since it's basically free. So willing to give it another go. maybe I just wasn't in the mood for all the text!
If I can give you a suggestion - you’re playing a guy who’s a complete fuck up, don’t be afraid to lean into that. The game is the story of how this useless guy solves the case
The Metro games (2033, Last Light, Exodus)
I’ve tried each of them but can never make it past the first hour before I’m bored as hell. They start agonizingly slow and constantly rob the controls from you with quick-time events. Sucks because the graphics are insanely good, and I understand the slow vibe they’re going for that *should* fit the vibe of a post-apocalyptic world. But it’s just too slow and uninteresting to me. Maybe they’ll click for me at some point though.
I loved 2033 and replay once a year or so, but I've tried Last Light 3 different times and never got more than 2 hours in. Idk what exactly the issue is* but it does not grab me at all, and I don't want to play Exodus while skipping a whole game.
\*part of it is definitely the increase in arachnid enemies. I have a huge fear of bugs (especially spiders) and a spider *crawling across my gas mask* is too much.
Dwarf Fortress. I love how insanely deep (pun intended) it is mechanics wise but I can't seem to bring myself to invest the time necessary to learn. For now I've settled with continuing to watch Kruggsmash videos.
No Man's Sky was quite a surprise for me. I generally love survival/crafting and it kind of reminds me of Subnautica which is great but still I played for about an hour and couldn't really get into it.
its literally my favorite game but by far its biggest weakness is how hard it is to get into, it seriously takes the "figure it out yourself" notion way too far. it wouldnt be nearly as bad if they just added the already existing tutorial thats on consoles to the pc version, i have no idea why they havent.
For people like me and some of my friends who played since the 1.0 wasnt a problem
Game was straight forward. Get ore, get stronger kill boss.
Nowadays even me with 500+ hours need to have the wiki to do stuffs. Imagine for the regular folk? Without a friend guiding you probably painfully slow. You will collect ore and gear but you dont know the mov speed meta. Will take a while till you farm a herms boots, hooks and wings if you arent active looking for it.
It really picks up once you get some decent gear and have slain a couple bosses. Early game you're super slow and everything takes forever but as soon as you get some mid-tier tools and movement items it gets better. The mid to late-game is absolutely incredible as well and is where the game shines, but the early game does get better.
I never really enjoyed the lategame of Terraria all that much.
Setting up boss arenas with bridges and lantern / heal trap activations is tedious as fk and really poor design imo, as they are basically mandatory for the insanely hard bosses the game throws at you where even a group of players will still struggle unless they are godlike skilled players.
Early/mid game is my favorite by FAR.
I rarely end up past the first boss.
Really makes me wish Starbound got the same developer love. It's basically the love child of Terraria and No Man's Sky, but unlike both of them the devs basically just shoehorned a 'story' into it to get to a 1.0 release and called it quits.
Baldurs Gate 3.
The controls and the attitude of some of the early conversation where egos are clashing annoyed me.
Gameplay was slow also, still I know its an awesome game, but its not for me.
Also TLOU2
Just a depressing mood and very little gameplay depth.
To be fair if a group of unknown people were forced to work together in real life because some horrific disease was affecting them, I feel a lot of arguments and clashing of egos is inevitable. Oh wait...
I really want the same enjoyment and feeling of wonder that virtually everyone else felt playing Baldur's Gate 3. I just can't get past the first 4 to 5 hours. I've tried it twice, I'm going to give it another go towards the end of the year. To be fair, I have not played the first two.
> I have not played the first two.
No need; BG3's story is unrelated to the previous games. It really feels like it was called Baldur's Gate 3 just for easy marketing and brand recognition.
Elden Ring. I like most parts, it’s fun but just not *incredible*. I think there’s too little story or the exposition doesn’t grip me the way say Alan Wake 2 or Red Dead Redemption 2 does.
Elden ring is in top 5 games for me but what you're saying isnts wrong.
Game has 0 story to present and 0 exposition. Its ~~story~~lore is incredible but you only get to see it through environmental storytelling and that's not for everyone.
Very valid reason to not like it but it has other shortcomings as well.
Oh, there *plenty* of story. Just get your toothpick and scrape it out from the cracks and crevices, slowly, over the course of a 60 hr play through…then still not understand and go to YouTube for a two hour brief explainer.
I'd say plenty of "lore", not so much story.
FromSoft game's story have always been cryptic and convoluted as fk.
I imagine a single episode of a Dark Souls tv series could do better exposition than all of the Dark Souls, Demon Souls and Elden Rings games combined.
No mans sky.
I love space, I love sandboxes. There's multiple vehicle types including mechs, you can build bases, route electricity, reshape entire worlds and explore forever.
But I just don't like it.
Also the flight controls just feel ugly.
It's too procedurally generated. Infinite possibility but nothing that stands out. It all blends into uniform noise.
The expeditions are fun, since they inject a bit of structure into the game, but the base game still lacks purpose.
>but the base game still lacks purpose.
See that's the thing, I sunk thousands of hours into elite dangerous, a game with just as little purpose and less variety and loved it...right up until after Odyssey and then I was just bored of grinding.
But yeah nms just didn't gel for me and it really bugs me because I really wish I liked it
Anything from Hideo Kojima.
I can respect MGS1 from a technical level. It's impressive what Kojima and his team did with the PS1 hardware.
But I can't stand any of the others. The gameplay just isn't that great in any Kojima directed game, and Kojima himself is just a very bad writer. Death Stranding is the ultimate example of a game with a very cool concept being absolutely ruined by it's poor writing. Kojima desperately needs an editor or someone to reign in his crazy ideas, or at least cut down the amount of exposition dump cutscenes from 8 hours to 4 hours
MGSV is so satisfying to play but I have no clue what the story is but if it came out not as a metal gear game and just as game 1 in a new series it would still be excellent to play
Battlefield games. Man are they hard especially some of the older titles. It’s like the players there don’t know how to miss shots and know every corner of the map. Bf1 is my favorite of the series
I want to still love and get good at them since these are some of the only multiplayer fps games where you don’t need a competent team to have fun, it’s more solo orientated ironic enough, carrying your own weight can be satisfying. And also not having to deal with the toxicity like all these other competitive shooters. There is cod as well but those games don’t feel too satisfying.
Tbh my best performances in FPS games have been with friends as I’m always trying my best intuitively to keep up and carry them lol, it feels awesome when you feel like you’re truly pivotal to the enjoyment and excitement you see them gain when you directly clutch and I feel it motivates me to try harder then when I’m solo and don’t give a fuck if I die a gajillion times
CK3 in a way. I have maybe 100 hours in it over how many years it’s been out, but I always play has as the southern most whatever in Ireland. I have untied the UK but just get bored with it.
I still know next to nothing about the game. Just enough to play but not enough to really know. I just don’t have the patience and time to really learn it.
5E is fine, but part of me really wishes they'd go back and make another good 3rd edition game. NWN with the PRC showed just how good a fully fleshed out 3rd edition game could be
> part of me really wishes they'd go back and make another good 3rd edition game.
If you haven't tried, the entire Pathfinder system is based on 3rd edition, i.e. Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous feel a *lot* like that.
Sekiro, I just know it feels amazing if you're deflecting and parrying the boss left and right but I really can't bring myself to play a game where it's always a 1v1/x amount of enemies AND difficult to boot. And I've beat all the other FromSoft games, its not that i suck, i guess I just like co-oping hard stuff together with people cause it's more fun to take on a big army as a small one
I have a big problem with games these days where I just say "I don't really care what happens next" This was my problem with Oxygen not included. I just didn't care about getting the next tech or whatever. I didn't see a real goal to any of it.
Dragon's Dogma 1, I keep dropping it after the first few hours because of the constant traveling with nothing but a handful of bandits every so often
Though I always hear praise of the game and I want to get through it at least once to see what the fus is about
Any fighting game. Tekken, Street Fighter, Guilty Gear. I suck at them and dont want to put it the time to learn a whole bunch of combos. Platform fighters are currently filling in, MVS and Nick All Stars.
Bloodborne and Elden Ring. I really want to be good at those games, but I'm just not. I love the worlds they take place in.
I ADORED Armored Core 6, so there's at least one FromSoft game I enjoy (beat it twice!). I know they're not quite the same. But the punishing and trolling nature of the others just turn me off the whole thing.
Also Divinity Original Sin II and Warhammer: Rogue Trader. I would love to be able to lose myself in a game like one of those (particularly RT since I'm more of a sci-fi guy) but they are not at all intuitive.
Just bought Baldur's Gate 3 to give it a shot though so we'll see. Plan on coming back to ER too at some point.
if you own Elden Ring on PC, and its sitting there as a reminder of money wasted, feel free to mod it to enable a level of enjoyment for you. very easy to do
I was in the same boat as you, and another redditor suggested the easy mode mod. I love the world and setting of elden Ring, but I could not get into the repetitive memorization fights. Don't let the name fool you, it's still a bit challenging. But it makes the game much more fun to play for casual gamer. Just something to think about.
If you want a good build for the entirety of Elden Ring, try either the Greatsword, Rusted Anchor or Great Stars weapons and find and equip the Ash of War called Lion’s Claw. This is honestly the most foolproof build and lets you kind of focus on the game.
You can get them really early on too. Rusted Anchor is probably easiest to get early on and it’s my personal favorite.
First thought is Escape from Tarkov. It is not that I don't like it, it is that the insane complexity and depth of the game is so much that I just don't want to put that much time into it, it is one of those occasions where I would love to have that machine in the Matrix movie and be like "now I know how to play Tarkov" in 3 seconds.
Yakuza 5 - loved 0 to Kiwami 2, but 3 and 4 were less brilliant. Got tired of the grindiness of 5 and now not sure if and when I'll pick it up again :(
Hollow Knight.
Ori and the will of the wisps is one of my all time favorite games but hollow Knight just hasn't grabbed me. I'm a few areas deep in the game.
Hollow knight. I tried it multiple times but i just got lost and or frustrated after being repeatedly killed by the same enemy. For context, I LOVED both Ori games.
Dave the Diver. I get how good it is objectively. I would recommend it to anyone. I have completed it. But i honestly couldn’t wait for it to be over and i didn’t give it a single thought once it was over.
Dwarf fortress because I love Rimworld but in DF there is no visuals or audio feedback of what is happening, to enjoy the game you need to read the logs and that's not fun for me more so because English is not my native language
Witcher 3. I want to like this game so much. After reading the reviews I was kinda surprised how much love the game has. I could not get into the story and it was a shame because of how well received the story is. Game mechanics and animations just didn’t draw me in either. It will always be in my library just in case I give it another go in the future
if you dont like the side content, just dont do it, its all kinda filler tbh. the main campaign is fantastic especially in the second half. also if you feel like it you can turn up the difficulty to make things more interesting, ultra hard is genuinely a great challenging experience imo
I wanted to like it soo much, but it just felt like they stripped away a lot of the actual rpg elements and even removed choices when it came to like, armor. I also didn't like the gritty dirty esthetic that it, and now eso have. Not gritty as in dark either, gritty ad in it looks like everything you touch in that game would have a rough texture to it
I just want to be good at fighting games man
I bounced off a lot of them, but managed to get decent in Tekken 8. Finding a good controller definitely helps, I was pretty bad at pad (PS4, XSX), but once I got a leverless with WASD layout (Haute42), I could finally focus on learning stuff and playing instead of getting angry at constant misinputs. It differs from person to person though, I have a friend who bought one and his brain fried at having to press two directional buttons at once to do diagonals (which felt completely normal and obvious to me), so you might need to experiment. Starting when the game launches is the best too, because there'll be a lot of new players to play against. The longer you delay your purchase, the more competent the player base will be, even in the lower ranks. This is obviously bad if you're starting from scratch.
Literally all you have to do, to be better than 90% of all people in the community is put the time and effort in to learn mechanics and lab your combos. Fighting games are really weird when it comes to the skill curve, they remind me of learning how to play an instrument.
I think there’s also a big disconnect between ranked and real life. You can look at your rank and feel depressed because you’re statistically middle of the road but then go to a local and smoke a good chunk of the people there. Fighting games are hard and it’s about improving rather than winning!
> Fighting games are hard and it’s about improving rather than winning! When I was still playing competitively, I always found that nothing helped me improve as much as simply recording my matches and watching them back a day or so later. A thing I can only recommend for pretty much every genre of multiplayer, tbh. The biggest steps forward tend to happen when you remove your greatest weakpoints.
Every game type has its own skill curve, learning how to play an instrument is fine, I believe most people can do it proficiently, but how many are creating their own music, that's what separates I guess the last percent.
>, that's what separates I guess the last percent That's not at all true. Creating and performing in music are two completely different skills/expertises, both with a huge 'base' of people and an extremely high skill cap resulting in an extremely skilled top percent.
Nothing has been more infuriating to me than trying to learn how to play Mortal Kombat or Tekken. At least when I learned to play guitar I had an excuse, I was bad at it because I'm almost tone deaf. I don't why it's impossible for me to learn a traditional fighting game but it is.
A couple of people have mentioned Street Fighter 6, but to elaborate a bit on that: Street Fighter 6 is quite possibly the most new-player friendly fighting game in a decade. Capcom went above and beyond in adding convenience features for new players, including a simplified control scheme that lets you do special moves "smash style" with direction+single button, and a fleshed out single player open world story mode that introduces game concepts gradually. This is all in addition to the best training mode that the SF series has ever seen, and combo trials that actually show you practical things, once you're comfortable enough with the basics of playing the game.
This isn't your fault. The Fighting game genre has failed to 'gamify' fighting game mechanics, at least in single-player and PVE content that organically teaches players how to play a game just by playing it. Like if other genres treated their single player experiences like fighting games do, FPS campaigns would just be a series of matches against bots. If it were Mortal Kombat there'd be 3 cutscenes in between those bot matches lol. But to give you an idea of what I mean or what that would look like in a fighting game....Like start off the game with nothing but neutral attacks and *force* the player to use those things only. Design the AI to specifically test your neutral skills in a series of escalating challenges, broken up by normal story and exploration and other game stuff that you find in other games, so the player has time to absorb what they've just learned before being given more info. That's just the first hour of the game. Then you can introduce directional moves like sweeps etc. Rinse and repeat with blocking, special moves and finally combos. Like this kind of thing would probably drive fighting game veterans nuts but it's desperately needed. There are very few games where you start off with a characters complete toolset. OG God of War you had your light attack, heavy attack and like 1 combo available to you at the start. You played the game to unlock new combos and abilities as you the player got to grips with how the tools you had worked before you were given more. But with fighting games it's like starting at max level in a MMO with a full hotbar and no in game tooltips and you just have to figure it out all yourself. You also have to design AI and challenges that test certain skills and are meant to be beaten and not play like a human. I think this is the biggest one that's missing. An Elite in Halo is intelligent and challenging opponent, but it doesn't try to act like a live human opponent. It's a vehicle for gameplay loops...I could go on but I think you get the point.
Pick up street fighter 6. DM me I’ll play with you
the main issue with most fighting games is that their skill floor is so high that it's difficult to reach to start with. Like not everyone can just pick up Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat or Tekken because they're extremely difficult to learn any combos. The only fighting game Ibe come to enjoy is Brawlhalla and kind of Smash Bros. Smash Bros skill floor is pretty low but Brawlhalla's is just as low and is more balanced.
Me too. I've tried to be good at dragon ball fighterZ and mortal kombat, but in tense situations, my finfmgers like to forget what the buttons do even though I've been gaming for almost 30 years straight. Also any sort of plan I made, instantly forgotten
Kenshi. I’ve heard amazing stories from those who have played it, but holy crap is it a bit cumbersome to play. It’s just too clunky for me to get into :(
Same here, I really tried but I just don't know what to do or where to go. I just end up being killed by some bandits. Maybe I'll give it another try but it's rough
Bandits rarely kill characters in Kenshi, so it's possible you started somewhere unusually dangerous. In any case, the Kenshi community is a friendly bunch if you want to ask for tips.
Before my current fallout addiction, I tried kenshi again because I’m always on the hunt for a multi hundred hour game (especially if it’s cyclical like mmos or chill like euro truck sim) I started as a free person and ran into that same ehhhhh ness. But then I read about the prisoner start. Damn that was a unique gameplay experience. I felt so cool finally getting out after suffering many beatings, after getting to that survival hut in the north and just chilling until my hair grew out was overall a very epic experience…..for ME. I find kenshi is very much a tale of personal stories, until you have THAT first experience, I think it’ll be hard to get into. I will say though, I wish there was more living off the land / camping / foraging. You can only mine stuff? That blows. It’s all a bit janky but if you’re at a loss for something to play, I highly recommend giving the prisoner start a go.
I bought it and just returned it. It is a great game when someone that knows what they're doing is playing. When I play, I struggle with camera control so much I get frustrated and so I got a refund. Sad about it
I'm too shit to play Kenshi without mods, so I sucked it up and did that. Even still, it's like Tolstoy: there's a TON of good stuff there, but it's often hard to get past the fact that there is in fact an actual ton of it there to be got through.
I wanted to like Pathfinder wrath of the righteous. I loved crpgs like baldurs gate, dragon age, and kotor but for some reason I just can't get into it.
I don’t know what exactly it is about Owlcat’s games, but they are the exact kind of game I normally love but I just can’t get into them. The real time with pause combat, for one, just doesn’t feel great in Kingmaker or Wrath. There didn’t seem to be a way to automate companions, so it was a ton of pausing and microing. Not to mention constantly applying buffs before a fight. So I thought I would like their Rogue Trader game. Crpg, turn based combat, and Warhammer? Match made in heaven. But something just isn’t clicking. I’ve played a significant amount of crpgs, so I don’t think it’s the complexity of the systems. More like all the nonsense added on top, like kingdom and crusade management, or stopping every 30 seconds to rest.
They added turn based which makes it way more enjoyable.
Switching to this made the game payable for me too
On release it didn't have it and it wad absolutely miserabke to play.
> The real time with pause combat, for one, just doesn’t feel great in Kingmaker or Wrath. There didn’t seem to be a way to automate companions, so it was a ton of pausing and microing. Not to mention constantly applying buffs before a fight. There is a turn based mode. Also there is a buffing mod to make that less click intensive. And then there is Bag of Tricks which can basically tune the entire game to your liking.
The city and warfare management killed that game for me. As soon as that stuff became a main component I fell off hard.
Yep. Same thing happened to me. Pretty fast refund.
I thought the writing and narrative, although better than Kingmaker, were nowhere near as good as other CRPGs. It's a great game if you are into micromanaging in combat and creating very in depth builds, but the story is not that great imho.
The writing is not too bad. It's not the best I've seen but it is also not as bad as the writing in the divinity games. The issue is the pacing is a little bit off in my opinion. Especially at the end of Kingmaker you had a lot of "keep you busy" fights even though you just want to finish the story and see the climax. But every 5 steps you get enemies with annoying crowd control skills thrown at you.
Hades, just didn’t click with me but I feel like I haven’t given it a fair chance with how much people praise it
Yeah I tried to get into it, but the combat just wasn't my jam. I preferred Children of Morta, very similar gameplay styles but I think the pacing was just a bit slower and more allowed me to control the pacing.
I literally had the opposite experience in the last 24 hours that's so funny 🤣
its pretty fun to play but the first runs without mirror upgrades, weapons, trinkers and rerolls are a little boring, once you start unlocking things it gets way better
I wish they’d do a sequel, but I get wanting to do other things. Such a great game.
It's so nuts how different people really have different weapons they vibe with in Hades.
Hades was the same for me until I pushed through the first few hours recently, then I was hooked. The early hours are really repetitive
Luckily with hades you see instantly what you get, there's no change whatsoever to the mechanics of the gameplay by unlocking anything else, if you don't enjoy the pov, the movement etc. you probably won't This is great because steam allows refunds for up to 2 hours, so it's literally free to try (afaik they will refund to card too, not just steam wallet but dont quote me if something's changed)
Monster hunter.
This is my answer too. I love everything about the games except for the combat. I just never really found any of the weapons that felt good to use. Edit: Please stop recommending weapons. I have tried all of them in multiple games already.
I am exactly the opposite. I fucking hated the game becauss I tried it for the very first time in 3DS (Camera was controlled via L/R or the touch screen). And the starting weapon was a Greatsword, it was sooooooooooooo slow, and I was thinking why tf is this weapon so slow yet so weak?? Then I played the demo of the MHG Ultimate in switch, enjoyed it, bought the full game on release, spent more than 300hours on it. I now play World/Iceborne and Rise/Sunbreak, and I use all the slowest weapons in the game (Gunlance, Lance, HBG, Hammer and Horn). It's way more fun with friends tho, I'll be bored if I didn't have anyone to play with.
Civ VI. I enjoy playing it, but when I look up guides on how to play "optimally", so many of the game mechanics just seem unnecessarily convoluted.
I played it for 70 hours and never won a game
I mean you really just need to max science then production on every single city and you'll eventually snowball. The high difficulties like Emperor or above you do need to do all that optimal shit and exploit flaws in the AI, but ain't nobody got time for that.
I’m about to give Red Dead Redemption 2 a third go. I’ve never made it more than an hour in.
I think I got 2 or 3 hours in before I stopped. It's not a bad game but for whatever reason it doesn't hold my attention like the first game did.
The first game, or the first first game 🗿
Red Dead Revolver is the Demon Souls of that series.
I tried to get into rdr2 like three times before i finally told myself that i was going to play the game for at least 20-25 hours. Today, imo, it’s the best story game I’ve ever played. Not my favorite but the best.
Yeah my first run was 2 hours. Got busy and didn’t feel like going back to it. Finally found about 5 hours over 2 days to try it (a rarity these days) and it also ended up being the best story game ever played.
It's not hyperbole when I say it took like 10 hours for the game to click and me to start liking it. I don't expect anyone to put in that kind of time on something they aren't that into unless it's literally all you got.
I’m going to try. I can say the same about Death Stranding and I’ll always be glad I stuck with it because it turned out to be one of my favorite gaming experiences.
Yes! That happened to me! I got bored two times with death stranding, I'm the third go I decided to go at least a few hours and then I started to like, by the end I love it. Same with red dead redemption 2.
The world is so great, but the game is actively sabotaged by incredibly stupid design and gameplay decisions. Couldn't finish the first game because of the controls. Couldn't finish this one because of the controls. It was way overboard with the "realism" and prevented all fun. It's like they didn't put any effort into adapting the controls for the PC port and felt like an emulation of that godawful console controller. It's crazy because those same devs also did Max Payne 3 which has among the top TPS controls along with Metal Gear Solid V. I tried, I really tried to like that game, because in theory it's the perfect game, but I couldn't get through 2 or 3 chapters.
I have played Max Payne 3 recently and had the same awakened perspective about it as I did playing fallout 3 where I was like "this is just gta5 but actually controllable and responsive and good" similar to when I realized fallout 3 is just oblivion with guns. IDK why younger me didn't make that association with either game, but it felt clairvoyant. I don't know how they nailed MP3 so well but fumbled GTA5 and RDR2's movement/interaction. MP3 is seriously just "Rockstar gunplay but good"
Try playing it with a controller. Once you get used to slowness of the controls, the game has an incredible story.
I couldn't get through RDR2 either. I couldn't stand listening to Dutch's speeches. It felt like nails on a chalkboard.
Man that's the opposite of how i felt about Dutch's speeches. The acting was IMO a masterclass. He sounded like some sort of lost Bridges brother (Jeff, Beau, other one i can't remember). To each their own.
They are good. They are so believable that I couldn't stand listening to this guy's bullshit.
Just one more big score Ardur and we can go to Tahiti one more little score
And when you listen to them intently, you quickly realize he is nonstop saying the same stuff with slightly different words and full of pathos. Once I realized that I was like "is that intended like kinda 4th wall break or should we ask why the characters are so naive and ignorant still following Dutch". After a few hours I also lost all connection and empathy for Arthur cause he is such a dumb character. Even without a proper education (which makes kinda sense for a criminal low-life in these times) Arthur doesn't seem like an imbecile so why does he act nonstop like one?
It got old, but it seemed Arthur is an imbecile but very trusted and trusting so it gave Dutch more power. I think everyone was following Arthur, but Dutch had the extra brain cell so he did the plannin' and then you make enough on your own you could run away west and become a professional gambler or start your own gold mining venture or oil (but you're definitely too dumb to follow the real money; black gold) but you're also still an imbecile with some heart so you don't ditch the worthless moochers and don't have the brain cells to rub together to lead a pack of even dumber idiots so Dutch leads
Same, I hate that first snow bit as well, but it's been years and so every time I try to comeback I'm just completely lost and clueless so have to restart 😂
I quit at ~30 hours. There's soooooo many keybinds for inane stuff and the gameplay is soooo slow. Story is great but it's going at a snail's pace.
Same thing happened to me. I don't know if this will be helpful, but on my third attempt I forced my way through and once I got to about hour seven or so the game really really opens up. It's still my favorite game of all time to this day. The writing and story are so good. It made me cry more than once. And that's to say nothing of the gameplay mechanics and sidequest challenges you can do in the menu. I think completing all the challenges was my favorite thing to do in the game.
RDR2 starts out so fricken slow and introduces the fun stuff so slowly through story missions that you're like "isn't there anything else to do" until then there's SO MUCH to do and it's like "fuck it i just want to finish". The game is a masterpiece. But i almost bounced off it both times i played through in the first act because: 1. The snow level sucks. 2. It feels like you're attacking an army with the O'Driscolls. How does that gang have like 300 people? (theres a youtuber who parodied that) 3. The main character moves with inertia so it doesn't have that snappy video game feeling where you can stop and turn on a dime. You have to get used to it unfortunately. My advice is to use Deadeye on like every shot. Get it close, hit the deadeye button, BLAM to the face, turn off Deadeye. It'll make it easier to get through the slog.
Stellaris. I just don’t have any ideas what to do.
It took me hours to get into it and I've created a giant empire that kicks ass. ...but the only issue now is the enormous amount of micro-management every thing!!! gaah!
I have a few hundred hours in it, there is an astounding game there. The problem is I feel like it's a game you should watch a few videos on to learn, but they have changed the entire game so much over it's lifespan that many great videos are at this point functionally useless for learning how to play it.
This, there are some good tutorials videos out there. Also recommended to turn down inhabitable planets to the lowest amount to reduce micromanagement (it affects all players so it doesn't cripple you in the end).
Stellaris is such a fun game once you get the gist of it though. Micromanagement can get rough and overwhelming when it ruins the pace of the game for some people. If youre learning, id recommend playing as small of a map as possible on an easier difficulty, and play a tall empire specializing in materialism and tech. It is overwhelming at first, but in the end, the game gives the player a lot of creative choice to role-play your empire because of that mechanistic complexity. Im in the same position as you are, but with Hearts of Iron 4; i have no idea whats going on, even though i have a lot of hours in Stellaris haha.
Elite dangerous. I've tried it soo many times and I'm trying it again, but no matter how many tutorials I've watched, I always end up having some dumb shit happen to me when I'm trying to do a simple mission amd I usually end up dying. Same way with star citizen. They both make me feel like an old man who doesn't understand technology
I have over 300 hours in elite and I still feel like I'm clueless and half the mechanics.
Factorio ! I love the idea and how the game came to be, but I feel overwhelmed with all that stuff going on so I quit early on. Tried a few times too but couldn't reach the point where I felt I knew what I was doing and was confident moving forward in the game.
I also found it very difficult to continue to play it. Problem is, you start to build and shape everything around the resources you find. But just as you have everything set up (at least for the time being) one resource runs out and now you have to figure out where to get that from some place else. In the late game, I realize you can have like flying robots who an disassemble/reassemble even complicated structures in seconds at will but I feel that even getting there is really really cumbersome. Also, because resources are constantly running out, I feel like there is never a "pause" of some kind. You know? Like a time where you could leave your factory running while figuring out what to do next. It is like the game is always pushing you what do do next. And if you dont do it right away, everything will eventually break and then you can spend many hours to figure out what to fix first.
> Also, because resources are constantly running out, I feel like there is never a "pause" of some kind. You know? Like a time where you could leave your factory running while figuring out what to do next. It is like the game is always pushing you what do do next. And if you dont do it right away, everything will eventually break and then you can spend many hours to figure out what to fix first. This is one of the reasons I liked Satisfactory more than Factorio. Resource nodes are infinite; put a miner down and it will continue to produce at that rate forever. There's no "Oh god I constantly need to be finding new resources and rebuild everything around it" pressure.
The witcher 3. I want to like it so much and have tried so many times, I just don’t.
I definitely get this. Witcher 3 was a game where I gave up very early about 4 times (maybe more) but then one time it just worked and I then adored it. Clearly a huge amount of work went into that game.
I'd recommend starting from Witcher 1. I couldn't get into Witcher 3 first time, quit in the first region. Then a few years later decided to start from the first game and absolutely loved it, finished all 3 games (+Thronebreaker). First game has very clunky and unique combat, but if you persist you will get used to it quickly. The game has one of the best atmospheres i've ever experienced in 20 years of gaming and a great story. It's still my favorite Witcher game to this day.
yup, I tried Witcher 2 couple times before 3 came out and didn't get into it, then gave Witcher 3 various shots probably even getting like 10 hours in and it just wouldn't click.
Story is amazing, gameplay is meh at best. If you aren't into the story it's very hard to slog through that long of a game.
X4, I dont know if i want to try and learn it, But I enjoyed learning Starsector so maybe
Please tell me about starsector. I've been trying to learn x4 today and elite dangerous recently. Looking for my perfect space sim. Both of them, amd star citizen are close, but all fail in different areas for me.
maybe *he* can help. [hey hey people](https://youtu.be/acqpulP1hLo?si=XNRmltjWg8yp4Swd)
The only video people should watch for starsecror
From what I understand: Starsector starts you out first as a Space Supply/Demand Resource trading Survival (fuel management) game, where you can explore the Top-Down 2D landscape with your fleet. It's only later on that you can nab a planet and start your own independant outpost, then trading hub, and eventually Fledgeling Empire with their own formidable military fleet. On a Technical level, Starsector hits the Explore, Exploit, Expand, Exterminate exes that the 4X(Civ-like) genre is known for. Though, the starting hours definitely feel more akin to the classical space trading games of yore.
Youre half right, You can start with a colony or just explore the universe doing missions bounties etc, Its like Bannerlord in that aspect
Honestly, I found the colony management underwhelming. It takes a massive amount of time and credits, so by that point you have a pretty powerful fleet. And once its running, you just idle while it prints credits. Roaming with your fleet is where most of the gameplay is at.
I only recently clicked with starsector. I found X4 much easier to understand, youtube guides helped me startup in X4. Once you get your own station you can more or less do what you want, which is basically the starting point and I think 2/3h in. The problem with X4 is the dumb AI, which is a real let down more often than not, because if it works, its really something. I had a few dozen trade ships doing their thing automatically and just sat outside my space station watching them come in and make me money. Which I took to build my personal battle fleet :)
Outer wilds Think I've started it like 4 times now and can never get into it but know its meant to be one of the best :(
Same. It took me a while to get into it. I finished and liked it, but I cannot understand the praise.
This one for me. I tried it again, recently, after several years, put seven hours into it and stopped because I was just getting more and more frustrated as time went on. I think I'm bouncing off it for the same reason I don't like metroidvanias: I don't like games that constantly make you backtrack. With Outer Wilds, I'd get a nice 'aha!' moment that was immediately tempered by the knowledge I'd need to go somewhere I'd already been several times, that it would not be fun to travel to that place, and that this new place would just make me do more of the same. Having thrown in the towel and spoilered myself, I can appreciate that this is all a really quite elegant way for the gameplay to support/mirror the narrative, but it genuinely was not an experience I enjoyed.
Prey. It got a great atmosphere, a great premise. Decent RPG elements but the combat is just not fun for me. Tried playing again a few times with lowered expectation but the frigging combat always drag me down.
Prey has mediocre combat so if you're trying to play it like a normal shooter you'll be disappointed. The gameplay always give you a lot of options to solve any problem and when I started experimenting with the mechanics more is when I came to love it. Prey is totally fine with you doing stupid shit like carrying around six turrets to kill all the enemies for you.
Wait how do you carry more than 1 turret? Do you literally walk back and forth 6 times the whole way?
Yes I would walk back and forth six times lol.
I found it fun with leverage, just throw stuff at the enemies. And high wrench damage with the bullet time skill. But then again I loved the Dishonored games and Prey lends itself to the same kind of gameplay.
Too much running back and forth with loading screens between sections did it for me.
This problem is mostly resolved on newer machines/consoles. Load times are much faster these days
Love CRPGS. have hundreds of hours in DOS2 and BG3. I cant get myself to play Disco Elysium for more than an hour even though its fully voice acted and seems to have a really cool setting/story.
I didn't have an answer when I clicked the thread, but I think this is it for me. I played a couple hours shortly after it came out, then never went back to it. Restarted a couple months ago, played an hour, never went back. It just won't click for some reason.
To be fair, Disco Elysium is more of a point-and-click adventure game with RPG elements than a CRPG, so it's not that crazy that it's not clicking with you.
Disco Elysium should not be categorized as a CRPG (even though it technically is one) simply because it creates false expectations. Playing BG3 or Pillars of Eternity doesn't garantee you'll like it. Now if you enjoy Felvidek, Who is Lila, Soma, Slay the princess, Night in the Woods, Spec Ops the line, Pathologic and other games like that with a lot of meta narrative and psychological hidden plots then it would be a safer bet for you.
100% agree. Disco Elysium and Baldur’s Gate 3 are both CRPGs in the way that 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars are both Sci Fi
Good analogy
Happens. From that I gather you are more the combat/build/gameplay kind of guy. I did start out really loving games like Bg1/Bg2 but in the years, I transitioned to that kind of preference, too. But somehow, Disco was the only game that made me stop and read games again. The writing and depth of the story is on a level that comes around only once or twice every 20 years. The last game that had writing as good as this was Planescape: Torment.
This is me. 500 hours in each DOS2 and BG3, but I just can't get into Disco... I've been tempted to buy it on Switch or Steam Deck to have it portable, but it just doesn't seem to matter. It's just not clicking for me, even though I've wanted it to. Thank you for validating my experience!
I'm the exact opposite: I can't get into the combat of DOS2 but I've beaten Disco Elysium 3 times with different builds. I grew up on Sierra adventure games though so I have that sixth sense for the crazy logic those games use
Disco Elysium is just unfortunate. The prose itself is fantastic and very well written, but everything else just isn't that interesting. Its definitely good, but not "best game ever" good
Same man, gave it two tries. But if there was a DE novel, I'd be all over it.
Project Zomboid. Love the concept and thought I’d love it until I actually played it only to be bored. I still want to learn to play it tho.
It's very boring playing PZ alone, but with a friend it's a blast imo. You can create goals together such as raiding specific places, setting up safehouses or farmyards, collecting a fleet of vehicles, etc. If you want someone to play with you could DM me, I've set up a custom server in the past with additional weapons, vehicles, QoL mods, etc. and know of some good custom settings to make the game much better. An example of an important in-game setting is to disable zombie respawns. This way you can slowly clear out a neighbourhood and actually feel like you are making progress, and build up a safehouse. I think zombies can still wander/roam so it's not always 100% safe which is cool too. Timing sleep cycles with other players is kind of a pain, but it's also sort of necessary because playing at night is brutal in PZ lol.
I know it's not on PC but Breath of the Wild. I hate weapon durability so much
Same, same, now that emulation has gotten better since I originally tried it, I'm tempting to give it another shot with a mod, hell could even do it on Switch since I picked up a modded one of those but I dunno, feel like the time for that game has passed and the only Zelda game I've played through is Between Worlds so no big attachment to the series.
I *strongly* recommend you try it again. I'm playing it modded on PC and in addition to looking really, really nice at the much higher resolutions, the mods totally change it. Losing weapon durability takes all of the slog out of the game, IMO, and it becomes much more of a goof-off simulator (as it should've been).
I don't mind weapon durability, but there's a balance to be struck. Most devs unfortunately just haven't figured it out yet. BotW/TotK combat is both too easy and I avoid it whenever possible. Seems more often than not like a waste of resources.
Played BOTW thinking: Man, this weapon durability mechanic is awful. I'll just fulfill the requirements for the Master Sword and then I should hopefully be done and away with it. No way they make the Blade of Evil's Bane break. That would be like breaking a major rule for magical swords! Hooray! I got the sword! And then...oh...great... :|
I played it on PC using ruyjinx emulator and my first mod was the durability one. I haven't seen this mechanic in any game being implemented well. It always sucks. Similar to consumables. I hate consumables always.
I mean... ahem... it kinda is on pc. *wink* and you can even even turn off weapon durability... *wink*
Disco Elysium. I just couldn't get into it, despite its high praise, so refunded within the 2 hour window. This was a few years ago. I've picked it up in the current Steam sale, since it's basically free. So willing to give it another go. maybe I just wasn't in the mood for all the text!
If I can give you a suggestion - you’re playing a guy who’s a complete fuck up, don’t be afraid to lean into that. The game is the story of how this useless guy solves the case
starfield but i gave up on that
Same, had such high hopes but it was too canned and repetitive.
Happens with No Man sky for me i just find it boring.
The Metro games (2033, Last Light, Exodus) I’ve tried each of them but can never make it past the first hour before I’m bored as hell. They start agonizingly slow and constantly rob the controls from you with quick-time events. Sucks because the graphics are insanely good, and I understand the slow vibe they’re going for that *should* fit the vibe of a post-apocalyptic world. But it’s just too slow and uninteresting to me. Maybe they’ll click for me at some point though.
I loved 2033 and replay once a year or so, but I've tried Last Light 3 different times and never got more than 2 hours in. Idk what exactly the issue is* but it does not grab me at all, and I don't want to play Exodus while skipping a whole game. \*part of it is definitely the increase in arachnid enemies. I have a huge fear of bugs (especially spiders) and a spider *crawling across my gas mask* is too much.
I really wish Rimworld clicked for me the way it does for some people
Same here.. also i am too stupid for it
I know how you feel, I’m upset that I can’t have as much fun in that game as other people do. It’s just a little too hands-off for me to really enjoy.
Dwarf Fortress. I love how insanely deep (pun intended) it is mechanics wise but I can't seem to bring myself to invest the time necessary to learn. For now I've settled with continuing to watch Kruggsmash videos. No Man's Sky was quite a surprise for me. I generally love survival/crafting and it kind of reminds me of Subnautica which is great but still I played for about an hour and couldn't really get into it.
Terraria. I just can't sit in it for more than 10 minutes
its literally my favorite game but by far its biggest weakness is how hard it is to get into, it seriously takes the "figure it out yourself" notion way too far. it wouldnt be nearly as bad if they just added the already existing tutorial thats on consoles to the pc version, i have no idea why they havent.
For people like me and some of my friends who played since the 1.0 wasnt a problem Game was straight forward. Get ore, get stronger kill boss. Nowadays even me with 500+ hours need to have the wiki to do stuffs. Imagine for the regular folk? Without a friend guiding you probably painfully slow. You will collect ore and gear but you dont know the mov speed meta. Will take a while till you farm a herms boots, hooks and wings if you arent active looking for it.
It really picks up once you get some decent gear and have slain a couple bosses. Early game you're super slow and everything takes forever but as soon as you get some mid-tier tools and movement items it gets better. The mid to late-game is absolutely incredible as well and is where the game shines, but the early game does get better.
I never really enjoyed the lategame of Terraria all that much. Setting up boss arenas with bridges and lantern / heal trap activations is tedious as fk and really poor design imo, as they are basically mandatory for the insanely hard bosses the game throws at you where even a group of players will still struggle unless they are godlike skilled players. Early/mid game is my favorite by FAR.
I rarely end up past the first boss. Really makes me wish Starbound got the same developer love. It's basically the love child of Terraria and No Man's Sky, but unlike both of them the devs basically just shoehorned a 'story' into it to get to a 1.0 release and called it quits.
Bioshock. For some reason, it didn't click with me. I am so annoyed. I absolutely want to love the game.
Baldurs Gate 3. The controls and the attitude of some of the early conversation where egos are clashing annoyed me. Gameplay was slow also, still I know its an awesome game, but its not for me. Also TLOU2 Just a depressing mood and very little gameplay depth.
To be fair if a group of unknown people were forced to work together in real life because some horrific disease was affecting them, I feel a lot of arguments and clashing of egos is inevitable. Oh wait...
The only reason I'm getting through BG3 is because I'm playing with a couple buddies
I really want the same enjoyment and feeling of wonder that virtually everyone else felt playing Baldur's Gate 3. I just can't get past the first 4 to 5 hours. I've tried it twice, I'm going to give it another go towards the end of the year. To be fair, I have not played the first two.
> I have not played the first two. No need; BG3's story is unrelated to the previous games. It really feels like it was called Baldur's Gate 3 just for easy marketing and brand recognition.
Elden Ring. I like most parts, it’s fun but just not *incredible*. I think there’s too little story or the exposition doesn’t grip me the way say Alan Wake 2 or Red Dead Redemption 2 does.
Elden ring is in top 5 games for me but what you're saying isnts wrong. Game has 0 story to present and 0 exposition. Its ~~story~~lore is incredible but you only get to see it through environmental storytelling and that's not for everyone. Very valid reason to not like it but it has other shortcomings as well.
Oh, there *plenty* of story. Just get your toothpick and scrape it out from the cracks and crevices, slowly, over the course of a 60 hr play through…then still not understand and go to YouTube for a two hour brief explainer.
I'd say plenty of "lore", not so much story. FromSoft game's story have always been cryptic and convoluted as fk. I imagine a single episode of a Dark Souls tv series could do better exposition than all of the Dark Souls, Demon Souls and Elden Rings games combined.
Starfield. It just ain't it.
Cyberpunk... after a couple of years, still trying.
No mans sky. I love space, I love sandboxes. There's multiple vehicle types including mechs, you can build bases, route electricity, reshape entire worlds and explore forever. But I just don't like it. Also the flight controls just feel ugly.
It's too procedurally generated. Infinite possibility but nothing that stands out. It all blends into uniform noise. The expeditions are fun, since they inject a bit of structure into the game, but the base game still lacks purpose.
>but the base game still lacks purpose. See that's the thing, I sunk thousands of hours into elite dangerous, a game with just as little purpose and less variety and loved it...right up until after Odyssey and then I was just bored of grinding. But yeah nms just didn't gel for me and it really bugs me because I really wish I liked it
Death Stranding
I gave it a shot but it just seemed so damn tedious.
Baldurs Gate 3
Anything from Hideo Kojima. I can respect MGS1 from a technical level. It's impressive what Kojima and his team did with the PS1 hardware. But I can't stand any of the others. The gameplay just isn't that great in any Kojima directed game, and Kojima himself is just a very bad writer. Death Stranding is the ultimate example of a game with a very cool concept being absolutely ruined by it's poor writing. Kojima desperately needs an editor or someone to reign in his crazy ideas, or at least cut down the amount of exposition dump cutscenes from 8 hours to 4 hours
MGSV is so satisfying to play but I have no clue what the story is but if it came out not as a metal gear game and just as game 1 in a new series it would still be excellent to play
Battlefield games. Man are they hard especially some of the older titles. It’s like the players there don’t know how to miss shots and know every corner of the map. Bf1 is my favorite of the series I want to still love and get good at them since these are some of the only multiplayer fps games where you don’t need a competent team to have fun, it’s more solo orientated ironic enough, carrying your own weight can be satisfying. And also not having to deal with the toxicity like all these other competitive shooters. There is cod as well but those games don’t feel too satisfying.
Tbh my best performances in FPS games have been with friends as I’m always trying my best intuitively to keep up and carry them lol, it feels awesome when you feel like you’re truly pivotal to the enjoyment and excitement you see them gain when you directly clutch and I feel it motivates me to try harder then when I’m solo and don’t give a fuck if I die a gajillion times
CK3 in a way. I have maybe 100 hours in it over how many years it’s been out, but I always play has as the southern most whatever in Ireland. I have untied the UK but just get bored with it. I still know next to nothing about the game. Just enough to play but not enough to really know. I just don’t have the patience and time to really learn it.
Baldurs gate 3 , i just cant do turn based games , only other turn based game ive played is honkai starrail
I loved Dragon Age Origins. I love Kotor. I love Boulders Gate 1 and 2. I want to love Baulders Gate 3 but…..I can’t stand the combat.
5e combat is just garbage, especially if you know more than 5e.
5E is fine, but part of me really wishes they'd go back and make another good 3rd edition game. NWN with the PRC showed just how good a fully fleshed out 3rd edition game could be
> part of me really wishes they'd go back and make another good 3rd edition game. If you haven't tried, the entire Pathfinder system is based on 3rd edition, i.e. Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous feel a *lot* like that.
Sekiro, I just know it feels amazing if you're deflecting and parrying the boss left and right but I really can't bring myself to play a game where it's always a 1v1/x amount of enemies AND difficult to boot. And I've beat all the other FromSoft games, its not that i suck, i guess I just like co-oping hard stuff together with people cause it's more fun to take on a big army as a small one
Oxygen Not Included. Looks like you need an engineering degree to get past the basics.
I have a big problem with games these days where I just say "I don't really care what happens next" This was my problem with Oxygen not included. I just didn't care about getting the next tech or whatever. I didn't see a real goal to any of it.
Dragon's Dogma 1, I keep dropping it after the first few hours because of the constant traveling with nothing but a handful of bandits every so often Though I always hear praise of the game and I want to get through it at least once to see what the fus is about
The Witcher 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2, especially Witcher 3. Already spent 72 hours in the Game and never really made it out of the First Area.
Elden ring :/
The newer hitman games are my answer they're fun to watch and look cool and I just don't ever have the patience in them to do anything well
RDR2. I’ve tried multiple times to play it and I’m aware at how beautifully made the game is, but I just can’t stay interested.
Any fighting game. Tekken, Street Fighter, Guilty Gear. I suck at them and dont want to put it the time to learn a whole bunch of combos. Platform fighters are currently filling in, MVS and Nick All Stars.
Bloodborne and Elden Ring. I really want to be good at those games, but I'm just not. I love the worlds they take place in. I ADORED Armored Core 6, so there's at least one FromSoft game I enjoy (beat it twice!). I know they're not quite the same. But the punishing and trolling nature of the others just turn me off the whole thing. Also Divinity Original Sin II and Warhammer: Rogue Trader. I would love to be able to lose myself in a game like one of those (particularly RT since I'm more of a sci-fi guy) but they are not at all intuitive. Just bought Baldur's Gate 3 to give it a shot though so we'll see. Plan on coming back to ER too at some point.
if you own Elden Ring on PC, and its sitting there as a reminder of money wasted, feel free to mod it to enable a level of enjoyment for you. very easy to do
I try to play games like that as intended, but that's honestly a great idea! I may see what kinda mods might help me out. Thanks for the suggestion!
I was in the same boat as you, and another redditor suggested the easy mode mod. I love the world and setting of elden Ring, but I could not get into the repetitive memorization fights. Don't let the name fool you, it's still a bit challenging. But it makes the game much more fun to play for casual gamer. Just something to think about.
If you want a good build for the entirety of Elden Ring, try either the Greatsword, Rusted Anchor or Great Stars weapons and find and equip the Ash of War called Lion’s Claw. This is honestly the most foolproof build and lets you kind of focus on the game. You can get them really early on too. Rusted Anchor is probably easiest to get early on and it’s my personal favorite.
Pathfinder games.
Fear & Hunger. Still haven't gotten an ending yet after 200 hrs in.
PoE, but now I'm just waiting for PoE 2.
The Witness
First thought is Escape from Tarkov. It is not that I don't like it, it is that the insane complexity and depth of the game is so much that I just don't want to put that much time into it, it is one of those occasions where I would love to have that machine in the Matrix movie and be like "now I know how to play Tarkov" in 3 seconds.
Yakuza 5 - loved 0 to Kiwami 2, but 3 and 4 were less brilliant. Got tired of the grindiness of 5 and now not sure if and when I'll pick it up again :(
Hollow Knight. Ori and the will of the wisps is one of my all time favorite games but hollow Knight just hasn't grabbed me. I'm a few areas deep in the game.
MGS 3
Hollow knight. I tried it multiple times but i just got lost and or frustrated after being repeatedly killed by the same enemy. For context, I LOVED both Ori games.
Subnautica
project zomboid
Baldurs gate 3 I can’t get over the controls, have tried so damn hard to get into it but I just can’t.
Elder Scrolls Online and Guild Wars 2. I've tried them one to many times at this point.
Dave the Diver. I get how good it is objectively. I would recommend it to anyone. I have completed it. But i honestly couldn’t wait for it to be over and i didn’t give it a single thought once it was over.
Dwarf fortress because I love Rimworld but in DF there is no visuals or audio feedback of what is happening, to enjoy the game you need to read the logs and that's not fun for me more so because English is not my native language
Witcher 3. I want to like this game so much. After reading the reviews I was kinda surprised how much love the game has. I could not get into the story and it was a shame because of how well received the story is. Game mechanics and animations just didn’t draw me in either. It will always be in my library just in case I give it another go in the future
Horizon Zero Dawn. The story is soooooo slow..
Horizon Zero Dawn. I was enjoying the story but the side quests are just so dull. I put it down and have been meaning to get back to it for months.
I put horizon down for a few months when I played it too. For me coming back to it and where I was in the game it really clicked when I got back to it
if you dont like the side content, just dont do it, its all kinda filler tbh. the main campaign is fantastic especially in the second half. also if you feel like it you can turn up the difficulty to make things more interesting, ultra hard is genuinely a great challenging experience imo
The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim Story in particular, the only saving grace for me is mods. On the other hand, I love the Fallout series.
I wanted to like it soo much, but it just felt like they stripped away a lot of the actual rpg elements and even removed choices when it came to like, armor. I also didn't like the gritty dirty esthetic that it, and now eso have. Not gritty as in dark either, gritty ad in it looks like everything you touch in that game would have a rough texture to it
Dota 2