I guess I should have some stance on this. I played Nier Automata, and the combat was horrendous to me. I still think there must have been some core mechanic that was unclear to me, but even on brief review, I didn’t see anything.
I dropped the difficulty down to nothing so I could quickly force through all the story content and see “what’s so amazing about this game”. And the story did nothing. It had me burst out laughing in mockery at the times players were supposed to be crying.
That could just be a quirk of that game’s story in particular. I do think some scenes I’ve enjoyed out of long JRPGs were only notable because I’d invested time and effort in them, so I think a lot is lost if the player isn’t interacting with the premise at all. It’s why I’d prefer forms of difficulty adjustment, removing just one form of challenge, over total removal of the entire gameplay system. Unfortunately, I think a lot of action games handle that poorly, in a very lazy way that doesn’t appreciate what challenges players.
Personally I enjoyed Nier Automata’s story, but I think that’s mostly because I enjoy camp/anime trash. I can definitely see why it wouldn’t be appealing if you went in looking for a more well put together story. That said, I don’t really remember the gameplay well enough to have an opinion on it.
To the point about being more granular with the difficulty settings: I’d definitely like that if it were done well. There are some types of gameplay I really enjoy and some which I don’t and depending on how intrusive the parts I don’t like are, I either put up with it or it’s enough to make me abandon the game. For me, while I like games that make me think and make decisions like RPGs, card games, strategy games, etc, I get really overwhelmed by too much complexity. I like games which enable me to make deep decisions using relatively simple interactions. So there are almost certainly some games I’d play if I could flip a switch that hid/automated all of the stuff like making complicated character builds and just let me do the parts I like. The game that actually prompted this thread was Expedition 33. I really wanted to play it because of all the good reviews it got and I enjoyed the combat, story, setting, etc. But I just got exhausted by having to mess around with the character builds. I supose I could have just looked up some builds online and who knows? Maybe I’ll go back to it some day and do that, but it would have been nice if there were a difficulty option that just said “Choose my skills/passives.” That way I could still engage with the combat at a level that was challenging for me without getting overwhelmed by the build stuff.
I can’t comment on Nier, as I’ve never played it. But I did notice the reverse situation— after beating Final Fantasy X, I replayed it with a “no sphere grid” game… and suddenly found a lot of these scenes far more impactful. What used to be a “meh, another stupid boss fight, whatever, no big deal…” suddenly became impactful fights to the death that carried emotional weight for me. So I think you have something there in your hypothesis.
Cyberpunk 2077, you have to save two of the most incompetent cops that exist. For such a dark and depressing universe, whenever there are hints of humor those always get me.
In Borderlands 4, there’s a side quest to cure someone of being a psycho. You need to get a handful of macguffins and plug them into this elaborate machine. There’s a lot of whirring and build-up, and then the machine essentially zaps the psycho and makes him explode. “He’s cured!” It got me, lol.
Or the side quest of the rocket that didn’t blow up and you do all of this grabbing parts, set up, fight Order forces and you finally get to launch the missile which developed a bond with humans but didn’t want to be a dud. They end up being fireworks instead of an actual missile.
TitleThere is a big twist about Monica calling you by your actual name. The name you gave when setting up your computer. That’s how I realised I made a typo in my name. So this big impactful moment fell flat on its face
Weirdly - Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Despite whole game’s emotional atmosphere being pretty heavy, I think it had very good humor moments in it, I actually laughed out loud few times. Maybe a part of it is that it took me by surprise but I appreciate wittiness of these lighter moments.
But I know the feel - games that expand their emotional range often get the best reactions because moving to an extreme of seriousness, sadness, or even humor, can shock the player.
!When Verso tries to recruit Monoco to go to old Lumière, Monoco is like “No thanks, after last time I made a promise to never follow you again”, to which Verso responds “There’ll be lots of fights…”, and Monoco is like “I’ll follow you anywhere!”. The delivery is a lot better obviously.!<
Exactly the scene that came to my mind when responding to this thread, delivery was perfect - especially that you don’t know the dynamic at that point yet. Didn’t play with french voice over but they did a stellar job with english one. They also must’ve had a lot of fun recording these scenes.
Small suggestion though - I’m not sure if I wouldn’t hide this behind a spoiler, you never know which detail might affect someone’s experience.
I really want to try it, also because I am studying French and it has full voice over. Problem is, I never managed to play JRPGs, so I am afraid I would be throwing money away.
Dead Cells had one for me, in the boss fight against the Giant. Spoiler.
SpoilerThe giant is a very melancholic, dignified old servant who’s feeling betrayed and disappointed in the player (long story, happens before the game, you don’t remember it and you’re only just piecing together what happened). When he dies, he starts slowly sinking in lava with a very sad expression, with a speech about how “You were an example to us all”, lamenting about what happened, etc… And just before being completely immerged, with just his hand still reaching out of lava… “You…” “…are an ass!” And he flips you off. Perfect delivery.
There were actually good, written gags in that game, too. Plus the general “Indy found himself in a place where needed to improvise and punch some Nazis” sort of gameplay that the game did so well. I can’t even recall a single bug from my playthrough.
I was a big fan of Uncharted 2 and 3, but Uncharted 4 stopped giving me control of the action and started making it barely interactive or just a cut-scene, and I found The Great Circle to be an excellent counter to that, personally. Even if you saw a T-pose, it doesn’t seem right to call it a typical Bethesda thing. There’s a big difference between Bethesda, the developer of Elder Scrolls, and Machine Games, the developer of Wolfenstein and Indiana Jones; they don’t even use the same engine between them.
Really enjoyed the short demo of Steam page was really funny. It may sound weird but it’s a mixture of Stanley parable (also fucking amazing) and counter strike 1.6 culture.
Witcher 3, which I played like 3 months ago. There was this one goofy quest where you had to save a mage by getting a magic book with a weird name that you could abbreviate to GOG. You needed a spell from it to disable the mage’s tower defence and regulatory management system (something along those lines), or DRM for short.
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