I’m of the mindset that it can never be too big, as long as it has some life to it. I don’t mind games taking a long time to finish. And I don’t mind if the grind is in the traveling. It’s cathartic in a way.
I don’t mind size so long as there’s meaningful activity.
For example, Just Cause 2 is huge with a massive variety of biomes but I enjoy hijacking military jets and blowing shit up on repeat and general traversal.
Infamous 2 and Second Son have very neat and small maps that are action packed and fun to traverse.
Hot take, but the open world nature of Elden Ring drove me crazy. Coming from a series grounded by its tightly knit and highly curated environments, I never understood why Elden Ring is so unanimously considered the “peak” of the series.
I enjoyed my time with it, but I couldn’t help but wonder what the game could have been without the open world inclusion. So for me it’s not necessarily “how big is too big”, but whether or not the gameplay necessitates an open world.
Agreed the level designs in dark souls coupled with the exploration made them s tier an adventure. Elden rings was ok but with all the traveling I felt more like a tourist.
I’m with you on it, because my completionist tendencies saw me trekking between one too many copy-and-pasted side dungeons in the 50 hours I gave Elden Ring before I couldn’t take it any more and never came back to finish the game.
It’s not like the moment-to-moment combat is any less fun than the games that came before it, but since the game lets me indulge in my worst tendency of finishing every optional thing before progressing things it just felt like a meaningless checklist slog.
It’s definitely a “me” problem, but it’s just one reason why I tend to prefer a more focused experience than a sprawling open world.
The copy-paste dungeons were a big issue for me. And the amount of reused enemies and bosses. There is definitely a way to “optimally” play the game for the best experience. But I’d say that goes against the nature of what an open world is supposed to represent.
I got sick about dystopian chaotic worlds that don’t work - where the hero’s journey is about saving the world from some impending ruin, or about preventing a starving dystopian city from being blown up.
In Trails, the conversations you have with NPCs remind you that while you’re on the trail of some bandits or suspicious people, other people are not evacuating, sheltering in fear, etc; they’re living their lives, keeping up to date on modern trends, making travel plans to other countries.
So, so many worlds just don’t have space for characters to have those thoughts. It’s always fear around impending disasters, or how to respond to a fight, or grim poetry about how much the world has fallen into darkness.
It especially hurts that some people live so much of their lives in these fictional worlds that they start to believe people would be like that when they go outside. Worlds like the one in Trails, even if they spend a lot of time being boringly polite, are a nice call back to reality.
Still grinding World of Warcraft: Legion Remix. Less raiding this week, I’m only clearing each raid twice a day, instead of three times, but did a couple more Mythic+ dungeons to knock out achievements.
The next phase will start in a few days, along with “new” quests, but more importantly another raid to farm every day. At that point, I’ll probably only be running the raids on the highest difficulty, and skip all the others.
Can't wait for a new generation to rediscover the exciting fun of having to survive Kil'Jaeden's balls and whatever that darkness phase is even supposed to be, despite the boss technically hitting 1 HP in 5 seconds.
I basically skipped Legion back in the day, because of how ass the Legendary system was on launch, and never went back, so I never really did any of the raids.
I guess you mean getting knocked around by some orbs, which might instantly kill you because you fall off the platform? Stuff like that is basically the only thing that could be an issue.
From what I read in different comments, the final raid, Antorus, is supposed to have another boss, that could be a problem, Eonar.
Blizzard has actually changed one boss so far (Il’gynoth, where you have to use some blobs to blow up this big eye), although that was probably more because people deal too much damage and would regularly blow up the blobs on accident, the second they spawn, which was just annoying and extended the fight needlessly. Maybe they’ll do more changes, since you can clear these raids daily for the time of the event.
I always wanted to read a book on the first Bioshock game. I couldn’t really get into the gameplay so I never got far into it or the sequels, but I love the premise idea a lot.
Anachronox always stood out to me, really underrated game. I’m not sure about particulars since it’s been so many years, but the combination of the graphics style, the script and the humor in it, the characters and the design of the world all fell together really well, along with the great sound design and music. It felt authentic.
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