It’s a pet peeve of mine, I hate stealth sections. Waiting around just isn’t fun and most stealth sections are just that.
However, that was years ago. I haven’t encountered one in a long time since I mostly stopped playing AAA games - by now these games are an amalgamation of so many worse design decisions, I almost miss the time stealth sections were my biggest issue.
It’s quite easy, actually. I usually play everything years after release, however, if I’m really into a certain series, I’ll buy it right away. If I don’t care for the wait, I probably don’t care enough about whether or not a sequel is being made.
Of course that only works if you don’t get hyped easily. I play a lot of games, but usually only 1-2 per year are released within said year.
Despite loving the genre overall, I bounced off KoA multiple times. Maybe it’s time to give it yet another go. I just wasn’t in the mood for MMORPGs - which the IP should have become iirc -, I guess.
I’ve come around to really liking them. In short, they vastly improve dungeons in my opinion.
Most RPGs don’t manage to create interesting battles outside of boss fights. Heck, an increasing amount of RPGs fails to create any kind of challange. However, random encounter can add another layer to dungeons: resource management. You have to plan out how to tackle fights in order to get through the dungeons with your limited items/MP - do you sacrifice more HP or do you go for your strongest attacks? How much exploration can you get in? Do you need to be extra careful and plan for stronger rare encounters? Maybe even plan around lvl up healing.
Sadly, this layer is easily removed. Overworld encounters? Just dodge everything. Adjustable encounters? Grind just enough, go heal and disable encounters. Non-challanging fights? Just use basic attacks. Healing stations? No need to plan anymore. Ideally, the dungeons provides no healing at all - especially not before encountering the boss.
If you’re interested in a game with great dungeons, I’d recommend every single Etrian Odyssey.
I’m still waiting for a reason to get a PS5 at all, everything I’ve been interested still got released on PS4 too - except for one single game.
I really don’t care for better specs anymore, I probably couldn’t even tell PS4 and PS5 games apart without a side-by-side comparison. Not to mention, to see a difference at all I’d need a new TV on top of the console. Not gonna happen anytime soon.
RPGs, specifically turn-based or strategy ones. Action is sometimes fine too. I like stuff with complex battle mechanics and tons of customisation/planning - anything that gets the brain working is fun, really.
I don’t like FPS in general. I’ve only completed Borderlands 2 and Fallout: New Vegas. I don’t like the perspective and the gameplay often feels dull to me. I don’t feel stimulated by them.
I had a similar experience of first finishing the DLC and then going into God of War (2018). While not open world, it’s the same type of AAA soup you get from most big studios. There are so many baffling design decisions, I cannot fathom why people love the game so much - the constant barrage of stories and small talk is the most engaging thing in there.
The combat is utterly boring. Increasing the difficulty only results in spongy enemies. Their move sets are boring at best and annoying at worst. They are all but helpless if you just keep them at a distance and throw your axe.
Even worse, your godly powers are cutscene only. If you don’t want to make your game challanging, at least make a fun power fantasy and Kratos is perfect for that. He kills giant enemies, tears the very ground asunder and moves the heaviest objects imaginable. He even has super healing. None of which are tied to actual combat mechanics.
Upgrades are meaningless. Early on, you unlock a smith. I got my axe from 5 to 40 damage. Guess what? The very next enemy took the same amount of hits as the same type of enemy did before.
Traversing is mechanically boring. Climbing just means you gotta follow the yellow markings - press in the right direction or do the indicated button press. You literally cannot fall. Everything else is just walking from combat area to combat area.
The game throws an endless barrage of puzzles at you, none of which are engaging. They are so watered down, there’s barely much more thinking involved than in climbing.
Even worse, major upgrades are placed in “puzzle” chests. The puzzle? Well, just walk around and rotate your camera for several minutes until you’ve found all three runes.
The game basically just feels like a very long cutscene with a lot of padding so you can press some buttons. You can play it just fine, but they removed everything that could make any one system interesting in favor of having nothing in there a player could be stuck at. I like the characters, but I’m better served just watching a cutscene compilation for the second one.
Thanks for checking! I’ll keep an eye on it and may give it a try with the option enabled. I honestly never even checked whether or not Hades I has something like this, maybe I should do that do - I’m still a bit bothered I had to stop after only 4 successful runs.
Would love to play it, but the first one caused a major tendonitis flare up - I shouldn’t risk it. The Poseidon dash boon was just too good, but that always meant a full 30 minute run of just hammering one button.
You’re right, nothing stops them from becoming shitty. However, unlike public companies, a private company isn’t encouraged to prioritize short term profit over long term profit. Doing something blatantly stupid to bolster your short term profit only makes sense for your shareholders or if you want to extract as much money before jumping ship - neither should happen anytime soon with steam.
Your pain points from the developer side all seems valid, and they should absolutely be improved. They probably treat unknown indie devs like dirt because for every good game they get thousands of submissions with blatant lies in them. E.g. your typical asset flips. Of course, that’s no excuse, but at least I can kinda get where that could be coming from. Have you experienced the old system? I simply cannot tell whether they have truly become worse for indie devs or just traded some problems for others.
Regarding the sales, I have mixed feelings. Sales were a lot more exciting, that’s just true. However, because of flash sales, I mostly never bought anything but those, at least until the very end of the sale. While it is boring in comparison, as a consumer, I also quite enjoy the ability to only check the sale once, get what I want, and be done with it. Seems way more convenient.