[Video Games] What are you playing? (Omikron Edition)

I don't know if I realized this at the time, but yeah I do think this is a trend that is not unique to XB, at least for me. Again maybe I'm broken, though I've seen other people call it out.

My general issue is that a lot of these games usually have pretty good pacing. Maybe something like:

10-30 minutes of story -> 30-60 minutes dungeon/puzzles/boss -> 10-30 minutes of story -> 30-60 minutes of dungeon/puzzles/boss -> etc

Depending on the game, you can throw in a town section with its gameplay loop, plus sidequests (which are usually shorter versions of this same loop). This usually works pretty well in most games...and I like it. It keeps it all fresh and flowing well.

But some games, especially JRPGs, decide they want to change that flow near the end of the game. Here's a 45 minutes expository cutscene that explains everything about why you have been playing this game for 80+ hours. Well...ALMOST everything. The final mystery still lies ahead, and maybe someone you care about is being held hostage or the world is in chaos...or something else...not good...and you need to fix it ASAP (but not really, there's no timer).

To finish the game, you must climb to the top of this 10 floor tower where every floor is nearly identical. You must defeat a mini-boss at each floor, which has a unique gameplay mechanic that is derived from the 3 puzzles that make up every floor. Oh and the regular enemies have lots of status ailment spells and can even one-shot you at times (but you can't easily one-shot them). At the top of the tower, you must defeat the final boss in each of its 8 forms.

*THEN* you will get the final bit of story to conclude your journey. Yay, hope you liked it.

Nah, I'll just Youtube it.

I'm exaggerating, but it seems like so many games do a form of this, and that usually kills things for me. Honestly this was probably the case in some of my favorite games from childhood too, but without Youtube (and without a huge backlog of excellent games), I probably decided to slog forwards through it all anyway. So even if I do think the games are to blame (and I'll blindly swear that my favorite games didn't do this even if they did), I understand why this design hasn't gone away.

I've been following a lot of Tim Cain on Youtube recently, and while he makes very different games (including some that don't even fully click with me), I'm reminded of him saying that if he had to pick one thing that people will complain about for a game of his, ideally it would be something like "there's not enough content." At least that means they enjoyed what you did put in the game, and that's preferable to a boring game (or a game that becomes boring).

I too didn't play XBX, and I think I might have even skipped all the DLCs except the XB3 one (only because it tried to tie everything together). But otherwise I agree with much of this. Also agree in general with @Duncan McDonuts. I think if I had to rank the games, it would be closer to your list, but honestly they're all lumped together in my head, and I'm not opposed to swapping them around in any order. They basically all ended up being games I enjoyed quite a bit even if I finished them at least somewhat disappointed. I'll gladly play XB4 or whatever they cook up next (unless it is really weird or not what I'm expecting....like a battle royale shooter). I think I might have initially been more excited by XB3 because of the initial scenario (which I thought was a great concept, IMO better than XB1 and XB2), but I think XB1 did a better job with its concept (and other things).

I was about to do another rant about the earlier Xeno games vs these recent ones, but I now realize I already did that earlier in the thread haha.


...and I am so uninterested in the new FF7 stuff, which seemingly puts me in the minority again (another "is it me or is the game" thing). Oh well, I'm glad some people are getting a lot of enjoyment out of that project.

Yes I did, though only super briefly just to get an idea for the type of game it was. I didn't really pay much attention when I bought it, just bought it due to your recommendation and Steam reviews. I ended up dropping it for something else at the time, but simply because I wasn't in the mood for that style of game at the time. I will get around to it at some point though (pretty sure I have it installed on my desktop). This should obviously not be taken as any sort of slight against the game as I've done this with a number of games which I later ended up loving dearly.


I do want to play Unicorn Overlord. I was hoping they'd port it to PC, but it seems that dream is dead. One of the Resonant Arc guys (think I shared their videos earlier) had it as his GOTY I believe, and I find my gaming opinions generally align with his like 90% of the time (similar to you and some others). That reminds me of the localization controversy with the game. Not sure if that really made it outside of niche social media circles, but that did result in Alexander O. Smith doing like 5+ hours of podcasting with those guys, which was amazing for me.


And yes, 13 Sentinels is great. I think I probably said something about it in this thread...somewhere. From what I recall, yeah the gameplay battles were not fleshed out like they should have been, though maybe there's an argument that they did allow for the game to remain fresh in between major story moments. I was probably grouchy about something, but yeah folks should definitely play it if they can.

 

Atlus RPGs are a fantastic example of this kind of feeling. I played P3:FES within a year of its release I think? And I played P4 at launch. Generally loved both games, and the latter (at the time) was near the top of my best games of all time. But I know people with similar gaming interests who have tried to play either game, and they just cannot get into them. And I kinda get why. I haven't replayed any of them (or the P3 remake), but I'd be curious to see how that went for me.

You mention checklist, and yes that seems very core to all these games (the life sim/social link stuff). Even Metaphor, which I originally thought was going to be a complete departure...but it basically ended up being Persona in a fantasy setting. I think they did massively improve the formula in a lot of ways. But the core mechanics are still there...and I don't like them. I don't know if I ever did, though at least it was a bit fresh with those first games. I might have just ignored it because I liked the other parts so much.

Of course there are other issues too. Atlus loves to make you wait for hours before you can even really play the game. I hope you like fighting the same looking enemies with the same AI and skills from 10-15 years ago (OK Metaphor kinda broke that). Etc.

Coincidentally, those early Persona/SMT games got me so much into Atlus that I ended up buying Demon's Souls when it launched...simply because Atlus was involved (though just as a publisher in NA). And that's another franchise that I once dearly loved (and I guess I still do), but I don't have much interest in their future games without a major departure in core mechanics. I'm sure the games technically are better than anything they did previously, but yeah I think my tastes have changed.

That's great. I'm sure a lot of games add that stuff because it helps with the bottom line, but I think a lot of the time (most?), it doesn't really help make a better product.

I kinda hinted at this, but I rarely play DLC for games. Especially brand new DLC. I also rarely, if ever, will replay a game (at least a narrative-based game). I care little about New Game Plus in most cases. I certainly don't find myself eager to replay some 80 hour game if that's the case. I think Metaphor has some secret boss, probably with a secret true ending, but that requires a 2nd playthrough. Nope, I'll go to Youtube.

Agreed. I'll continue to check it out, though probably just on Youtube. I know people love the gameplay mechanics, and technically...yeah I guess it is really good. But yeah as you pointed out, I think those segments break up the pacing of the game (among other things). So it just becomes a chore. I mean they basically tripled the length of the original game (or so I assume), so of course the pacing is screwed up. They can add little story and content pieces, but these are things added after the fact to something that wasn't planned that way. So it doesn't work (at least not for me).

I can appreciate the amount of talent and resources going into the project. I also think the people involved care and even understand much about the source material, especially the characters (though I don't like some decisions made with characters and the narrative). So there's lot of genuinely great stuff. But expectations were high for me, and they're not meeting them at all. :/

Haha yeah I only knew about it because the Resonant Arc folks talked about it. Apparently there was something similar with Eiyuden Chronicle and maybe some others. Basically boils down to a bunch of people mad that games aren't being translated literally, not realizing that localization is much more than that.

The Resonant Arc folks actually reached out to Zakogdo (I think the main person pushing this?), and they ended up having a fairly constructive back and forth IIRC. I think Alex O Smith was involved in that too.

Again I didn't care about the Internet debate, but it was great getting some insights on how all of that works. It was cool hearing Alex talk about the "I love you" vs "Thank you" decision for FFX for example. Then I was horrified about how they had to handle voiced dialogue in that game in general (e.g., they had to produce English that matched the same number of frames as the Japanese IIRC).

And it was all thanks to Unicorn Overlord.

 

I like the games others have suggested.

But it just so happened that I came across this indie game that sorta matches what you're talking about:


I'm pretty sure I saw it was released on XB1...and possibly on Xbox Game Pass...or was?

To be clear...I have *NOT* played this game. I haven't even purchased it...yet. It might be a horrible, buggy mess that is completely unplayable and/or boring.

But that video really appealed to me I think. I'm not sure how I missed it given it has been out for a long time. But a TES style game that mostly focuses on exploration, quests, and no combat sounds really good to me.

If anyone has played it, let me know your thoughts on it.

 

I haven't followed this new batch of woke criticism with the new game, but I do recall some of the original criticism from the first game. There probably was some overreaction (especially relative to things in the game vs things outside of the game), but I do seem to recall Daniel Vávra just...being an ass I think. Repeatedly. If he had a different attitude, it probably wouldn't have blown up so much. I found an old forum thread from Alex Battaglia (of Digital Foundry fame), and he seemed pretty disillusioned with it all after following Vávra closely (and Alex backed the game on Kickstarter). I never really dug into it, but if Alex was bothered by Vávra's behavior (among others), there's probably something to it. Now that I think about it, I'll have to see if he talked about the sequel.

Having said all of that, it is up to each individual on how to handle this. I was generally aware of these issues, yet I still bought the game (though on sale). It didn't click with me at the time, but that's like all these other games I mention, and I'll probably find time to play it again before I check out the sequel. Of course I played and loved Cyberpunk which had similar-ish issues (and I think Alex played/enjoyed it too).

Hideo Kojima puts some super sexist/misogynistic/homophobic/etc stuff in his games (and I'm not sure how reflective he is about it), and of course I still enjoy his games. Actually that probably applies to a lot of older game directors (especially Japanese ones). And yeah these games are the products of more than one person. Perhaps the game director is a douche, but that doesn't mean you can't appreciate the hard work of others from these teams (and the good intentions of these others might outweigh whatever potential bad might have come from a shitty game director). The game director could be worshipping Hitler on Twitter, but as long as that's not in the game (and there's good messages in the game), it's fine to like the game. Also fine to not like the game.

 

OK if this is the day for rants, let me rant about this:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-01-10/why-so-many-video-games-cost-so-much-to-make
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-16/sony-cancels-two-more-playstation-projects

The gist of these articles is that games aren't expensive (and delayed) because of graphics. The real problems is that upper management in the industry is really freaking stupid (OK my words).

And in completely unrelated news, it turns out Sony wanted Bluepoint (those guys that make amazing remakes of singleplayer games) to make a God of War....LIVE SERVICE GAME. BECAUSE THEY NEEDED TO LAUNCH A LIVE SERVICE GAME FOR EVERY IP THEY OWN! Bend Studios was also working on a live service game.

This is after the Concord disaster, the disaster of trying to get Naughty Dog to make a live service game, and of course disasters from other companies (Rocksteady Studios).

Yeah most people shouldn't really care about this, but it does annoy me as someone who really likes this industry. I suppose it is no surprise that indie games have been shining in recent years.