Are there games that you tried but just couldn’t get into because they feel outdated? Games that, in theory, you would enjoy, but don’t because the controls, graphics, writing, or mechanics just don’t feel good anymore. Games that, compared to today, just don’t hold up to your standards.
I recently tried playing Heroes of Might and Magic III, and I realized that a lot of the invisible language used through game design from that era, I do not understand. There are many things that the game didn’t explain, and I assume they were just understood by players. Not only that, but I imagine there was a lot of crossover between video games and board games back then, so maybe that language was used as well. I ended up downloading a manual and putting it on my second screen and I get it and played it, but it just wasn’t for me.
I also dropped Mirror’s Edge, but this time it was because of the graphics. It looks and feels great, but the graphics give me a headache. There is way too much bloom, and for some reason, there are some parts that look like the imaginary lens has been covered in Vaseline. This didn’t bother me before, but my eyes are not used to it anymore.
There are also games like the first two Tony Hawk Pro Skater games that I can’t fully get into because they’re missing mechanics from the later games. The levels and controls feel great, but they don’t feel complete without those mechanics. It keeps me from enjoying the games as much as the others.
Baldur’s Gate 3 was good, but I can’t play 1 or 2. They definitely don’t feel the same.
For newer games, I can actually play the older Zelda games, but I can’t stand the latest games. Not a big fan of the gameplay with weapons breaking and how much they pushed the open world thing. I very much prefer smaller maps with more story.
There is a lot to read. And it is probably not appreciatable on a phone. (Tablet may be fine)
They are a totally different ruleset and while it is 2d and all the story is definitely deep. Many hours…
Specifically AD&D 2nd Edition. Back in the days of THAC0. To give an idea of how different it is from 3e and later editions, classes were restricted by race, there were two different ways to be multiclass (one for humans, one for everyone else and they work very differently), and lower AC is better - instead of rolling d20+attack bonus and comparing it to target AC you roll d20 - target AC and compare it to the attackers THAC0, which is the number they need to roll To Hit AC 0. AC could be negative as well, meaning that THAC0 wasn’t necessarily the highest number you might have to roll to hit. Thief skills use percentile rolls. Saving throws were weird, both in mechanics and categories.
So, for example, a second level fighter might have a THAC0 of 19 and +2 to hit from his high strength, and the thug he’s fighting might have an AC of 8 from his leather armor. So he has to roll 19-8=11 to hit, and would get a +2 on that roll, and so needs a 9 on the die.
I tried playing Icewind Dale on my phone after enjoying Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2 on my PC. Don’t bother. The touch UI just cannot keep up in any remotely tactical situation, at least not for my tactics-heavy wizard playstyle with milking every turn as much as I could.
To add to what everyone else is saying, the combat isn’t the same in that it’s not turn based like you’re thinking. Fights involve everyone getting into a fracas at once and swinging, the game expecting the player to regularly pause to give specific commands. Also, in BG1 you start at level one which feels reeeeeally weak so fights will be quite difficult until you’re about level 3-4.
That said, I had a lot of fun with the game after I got used to it. Writing is the main star of the show and it’s quite good.
Oh! I tried playing Neverwinter Nights recently and… I bounced. I want to try again soon because people really love that game (and its modding scene!), and I love D&D (having only played 5e, however), but it’s not appealing to me as much as I wish it did.
I played the crap out of Neverwinter Nights back in the day, but I picked up the remastered or whatever version on steam and just can’t handle the controls anymore. Hooray for BG3 to scratch the same itch with improved controls!
I really enjoyed the original Neverwinter Nights, went back and played it relatively-recently (despite the fact that the main storyline, pre-DLC, is pretty bland).
But I tried playing the newer Neverwinter Nights 2 and it just did not draw me in at all.
For what it’s worth, the story to the main campaign of NWN2 is pretty tropey and bland. However, you should give Mask of the Betrayer a shot if you don’t mind main campaign spoilers and think story could keep you invested over gameplay. I never finished it, but the story was quite fresh and unique. It’s wildly well reviewed, to the point that while you have to deal with the Epic level rules, its still worth playing a bit just for the weirdness involved.
BG3 is the best version of DnD on a computer in my opinion. Great characters including enemies, so much flavor, and it moves right along with tooltips galore to let you know aht is going on. While there is a lot of gratuitous romance available, you can easily turn everyone down if it isn’t your jam. You can do pretty much anything and “screwing up” just tends to lead to more options!
I love talking to the goblins! Make friends before wiping them out!
Being DnD there is a lot of fiddly bits and the devs love exploding barrels, but to be honest they kind of add to the charm.
Yeah, I don’t know how unpopular the opinion is, but the original Witcher didn’t strike me as a particularly good game. It was a… fine… I guess game, but with mature elements and tone that other games in the genre lacked. I slogged through it in preparation of playing Witcher 3.
I bought a bundle with all the 3 witcher games and tried both 1 and 2. I could jot even get through the tutorial in 1 and could jot beat the first boss of 2. Each game controls completely differently from one another.
That Kayran fight is one of the most unfortunate things about Witcher 2. It’s far too difficult a fight for a first boss, and almost all of that chapter is a drag to boot. The game is so much better after that point.
My favorite moment in that game is a serious case of understatement in dialogue prompt. You have an option to help one of two diametrically opposed people and if you choose “Help person A” you draw your sword on person B. If you choose “Help person B” you immediately throat punch person A.
I remember playing the first game and getting stuck on the tutorial because I was mashing the left click button trying to swing my sword only to have Geralt hip thrust at the enemies.
But once you figure out how to swing the sword, the game’s actually pretty fun. One thing I particularly liked is that there’s an investigative storyline where you actually have to go and investigate and figure out the answer with the clues provided, and you can fail. I went into it thinking it would be like most modern games where you only get obviously correct or incorrect dialog options and angered everyone in the process.
People didn’t like its mechanics even back when it launched. Personally, it’s still somehow my favorite even tho objectively it’s less fun to play and less polished than the other two. Something about its story and the atmosphere makes it more unique and genuine.
The typical advice for people looking to get into the Witcher games is to watch a cutscene compilation of the first game, then start with the second. Don’t bother with too many side quests in the second; Just make it through the story so you know the broad strokes and major decisions. Then take that save to the Witcher 3, and just play that one from now on.
Because going backwards is so incredibly difficult; Each game adds a ton of quality of life improvements, so going back to older games feels horribly sluggish and clunky.
FONV and Skyrim. Even with mods, FONV looks like microwaved dog shit. Im mot even a huge graphics nut but at a point it becomes too distracting and FONV goes far beyond that. Skyrim’s sluggish movements keep me completely disengaged, although the graphics don’t throw me off quite as much, it feels so outdated that the immersion is ruined right from the very start.
Have you tried FO3? It came before NV and might draw you in more because the locations in it are far more iconic. I like it a bit better in some ways as well.
Character movement. All the animations, running, walking, and turning in 3rd person are about the worst they could be. 1st person isn’t much better but at least you can’t see anything but the arms. My take is that the animations just didn’t match the quality of everything else.
It’s like taking a beautiful road trip all the way down the Pacific Coast Highway from the Redwoods to sunny SoCal but doing to in a old ass rustbucket with no power steering, the breaks are shot and making that noise and it always smells like gas inside but the windows won’t roll down. What’s outside the window is pretty great tho.
I’d love to give Skyrim another go with my PC as I’ve only ever played it on console. I have FONV on PC with all the best rated popular quality of life mods and it’s still horrendously ugly. I’ve seen others mod skyrim and it looks beautiful.
Yeah, I can agree with that. Horse speed is pretty lackluster. I think part of that is valid, and part of that is how fast the character normally moves (since they move a lot faster than a real human would)
I’m playing through Knights of the Old Republic right now. The only thing that makes the graphics tolerable is playing on my switch. The screen is small enough to minimize the bad graphics and jank. But if I was playing it on a TV or computer screen I wouldn’t be able to continue. It hasn’t aged well at all.
You’ll have to sail the high seas since it requires THUG2 which isn’t for sale anymore but THUGPRO is a mod that will let you play classic Tony hawk levels with all the mechanics from later games.
Persona 1 and 2. As a Persona fan I see some people saying how great they are, and the story does seem interesting, but I can’t deal with that map movement, battle system and endless random battles.
Really, any RPG with random battles is a little harder to get into compared to overworld monsters you can avoid or target at your own pace.
Same. I used to play some fantasy RPG with random battles. Me, being like 9, realized that you can escape, and if you fail you can try again. Well, I started skipping all battles, and somehow ended up in a boss fight that was level like 25, and I was about 12. I didn’t have any earlier save, and I couldn’t go back.
Sounds like Final Fantasy X, but it really depends on how old you are. It has a Flee skill which allows you to instantly escape nearly any battle. Lots of new/young players abused it because they thought “hey, less battling.” But then they were horribly underpowered for the bosses.
And yes, it features a pilgrimage as a main plot point.
If you’re interested, the PC remaster has some nice added features. You can up the speed to 4x, enable auto-attacks, enable a “boost” mode that gives you a full heal every turn, etc… And if you install the Untitled Project X mod, you can enable exp gains for characters on your bench, so you don’t even need to swap out characters for them to receive exp. It takes a relatively grindy game, and turns it into one where you don’t need to grind at all. Giving exp to benched members means you spend less time on each battle, and you don’t end up with any characters who are underpowered because you never use them.
I remember I struggled with my first play through because I rarely used Wakka or Rikku. And those are two out of three characters who can fight underwater. Near the end of the game, there’s an underwater boss fight that was basically a brick wall for me. All because those two characters weren’t leveled up enough.
Good tip, but it was definitely mot FFX. I remember starting in a village, on a sort of peninsula, being sent out on a pilgrimage for whatever reason, going north. It was definitely not 3D graphics.
EDIT: After a lot of searching, it was probably “Legend of Heroes 2: Prophecy if the Moonlight Witch”, but I am not too sure. It’s the closest I could match from my memory. It is almost 20 years ago lol.
At this stage, I am loath to go back to any game where the UI takes up half the screen. RTS games especially just used so much screen real estate back in the day, that couldn’t be scaled or hidden to get any back. Like playing your game through a letterbox surrounded by stickers.
I hate playing StarCraft because the UI is gigantic and you can’t zoom out far enough on the map. I’ve got massive, high-res monitors, but the game treats me like it’s still 640x480.
And really, more strategy/sim games need to support multi-monitor setups. Supreme Commander spoiled me, and more games should follow their example.
Sup Com FA was a pretty elegant UI, yeah. Very unobtrusive but combined with the split screens, multi screens and all the hotkeys it was so versatile. Probably a bitch to create though and not used by most players at the time.
Start craft specifically, but I believe most RTS games in general, limited the visible map area to make sure all players in a multiplayer games were on equall footing. They didn’t want people with larger monitors or more powerful computers to have an advantage by being able to see more terrain and units than those with lower resolutions. Lack of zoom is usually down to network optimization where bandwidth was significantly limited in the dial-up days.
Yeah absolutely. I think with a lot of these older games that are considered to be the GOATs of their respective genres you’ll run into the same problem: They were so good, that the mechanics/ideas become the minimum requirement for all games thereafter. So, if you played the game on day 1, it was an innovative masterpiece the likes of which you’d never seen before. If you play it 10-15 years later after having played modern games in the same genre, it feels like the same old shit except without the 10-15 years of improvements.
For me personally, the game I’ll get crucified for not enjoying is Half Life 2. I played through the entire game. It was ok. I was pretty bored for most of it though. Shooters aren’t generally my thing for one, but even that aside the game was very milquetoast to me. I did a lot of reading up on the history of HL2 afterwards because I was astonished that I didn’t enjoy such a legendary game and I think I came to the conclusion that some new mechanics such as the cover system and story-driven nature of HL2 were what made it such a hit in 2004. But 15 years later those mechanics weren’t new and exciting to me and the story is decent but a far cry from amazing.
The other game that stands out to me is Assassin’s Creed 1. I couldn’t make it more than a few hours into that game. Just so boring and repetitive, the combat was boring, the collectables were boring, most mechanics didn’t actually seem to matter…I just hated the game lol. I do think it’s another example of later entries in the series/other games doing the same thing but better so going back to the OG just felt like a slog. But I really hated AC1 hahaha.
A big part of HL2 was also the physics. No game did that before to the same extent, so it was novel and cool. The gravity gun was super unique and all the physics puzzles were new and cool.
I tried replaying it a few years back and had the same experience as you. Every physics puzzle felt boring and just stopped the flow of the game. The gravity gun is still fairly unique, but it has lost a lot of its charm. It’s just not the same experience as it was around the time it released.
Half Life 2 was mostly noted for the extreme technical advancements. Take a look at what a gaming pc looked like when it came out. It shouldn’t have been allowed to be so advanced.
Half Life 1 was the one with the gameplay advancements. I played both on release, and both times felt like I’ve just entered another multi-verse.
Far Cry 1 managed that, too.
None of them hold up today. They are still as great as they were back then, but the feeling is all gone. I’ve recently finished all of them again, just to check.
I can see the skeleton of an amazing game. For 1996 and no reference its absolutely amazing achievement. But the controls suck, gameplay is stiff and I hated climbing that damn waterfall and the combat was terrible.
I appreciate what’s there but I’d need to cheat, or use save states to play any further than the second cut scene.
Def agree on half-life 2. I even played HL1 before to prep, and weirdly enough enjoyed that more than I enjoyed HL2. Guess it’s hard to understand the hype when you weren’t there when it came out.
Half-Life 2 has suffered the fate of Seinfeld - the work was so monumental in its field that it revolutionized everything coming after it. Many of those iterations accomplished certain things better. Going back you think: what’s the big deal? Basically every game has physics, ragdoll enemies, novel gimmick weapons, and an action-packed cinematic feel.
AC1 had those same criticisms back then too. I played it back then and hate finished it and wasn’t going to check out the rest of the series but then the ending reveal hooked me. And AC2 addressed lot of the complaints.
Reminds of me of when I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey and was confused because I had heard great things about the soundtrack, but it was just a bunch of songs I had heard before.
About halfway through the movie I realized that it was an original soundtrack and it was so influential that it became a cliche. 2001: A Space Odyssey was a cliche, not because it followed a saturated trend, but because it itself was copied by everyone else.
AC1’s concept and maybe even story has held up, but you’re right that the later entries feel miles better.
Reminds of me of when I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey
Exactly this. The same applies to many of the Great Films or the Great Games. They were amazing for their ground-breaking and their trend setting.
But now, decades later, everyone learned from it and improved on their work. We take the new things for granted, so the originals looks boring and dated.
shin megami tensei III nocturne. the lack of useful information in combat compared to what’s available in other smt/persona games i have played is frustrating (strange journey, smtv, p4, pq, p5)!
Going from Persona to the mainline SMT games is rough. Persona is basically a much easier version of SMT, but is also much more popular. So lots of Persona players enjoyed the game, wanted more, and looked into SMT. But then they’re dismayed to find out how goddamned difficult the main games can be.
Nocturne fans are a lot like Morrowind fans; They hate the modern gameplay mechanics and yearn for the “good ol days” when JRPGs were hard as nails and hid even the basic mechanics from you. But you can also become overpowered as hell you play the game the “right” way. And for Nocturne fans, being good at the difficult game is a point of pride.
If you can accept the fact that they’re grindfests that are built like old school JRPGs, then you’ll probably have a decent time. But they can absolutely be obtuse and brutal if you’re just expecting more Persona.
If you’re looking for something in between, try Persona 3. It’s getting remade soon so I can’t speak on that, but the PlayStation version (P3 FES) is fantastic. It takes longer than other Persona games to get started, (seriously, the story takes several hours to get off the ground,) but it’s a lot like the later Persona games, while only being marginally more difficult.
If you hate the lack of party controls, (you can only issue general commands to party members in FES) then maybe you’ll want to check out P3 Portable instead. It adds direct commands (and the option of a female main character) to the game. It has a slightly different UI, (the daytime gameplay is more like an interactive comic,) which turned a lot of players away. But the story remains the same (with a few exceptions if you pick the FeMC) and the addition of direct commands is a great modernization.
I torture myself cause I always start series from the beginning. Megami tensei 1 and 2 were an absolute slog, shim megami tensei isn’t much better. Really all these early ones I just need to have gamefaqs up on my phone the whole time cause I’ll have no idea where I’m going. Shin megami tenseis not AS bad. I generally can find where I’m going, but if I take any sort of break to play another game I come back lost.
Solo, absolutely agree. Coop over the internet, probably not worth it.
Hear me out, though…
A couple weeks ago an old highschool buddy and I ordered a pizza, and then played Halo coop on a bigscreen for 3 hours. It was the best night I’ve had in a while.
Halo and Halo 2 are all about the in-person coop experience.
I used to say at the time that Halo 1 was by far the most amazing shooter… on consoles.
The characters are slow and sluggish, the maps are mostly empty, the vehicles are cool but just as sluggish, the weapon selection is pretty lacking even compared to games a decade older.
But for consoles, it was amazing, because all they had were shooters made for PC, and that didn’t work at all for controllers, at least not for casual players. Halo was basically the first shooter seriously created to be played with a controller and still offer depth. It also launched basically completely unopposed.
It releases in the same year as Red Faction, Tribes 2, HalfLife blueshift, Ghost Recon and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Quake 3 Team Arena and Counterstrike came out the year before. The PC market was drowning in amazing FPS games. But on console, nah, it was just Halo.
FFVII. The pc port was ass, controls were a pain on keyboard and there wasn’t great controller support. The graphics were really tough to ignore, and the combat felt like fighting the control scheme more than anything. I’ve played and liked many other titles in the series, but I couldn’t manage this one by the time I got to it. The experience was also so bad I have no interest in the remake/remaster.
Morrowind. Played it a ton on Xbox, but I can’t get back into it on pc anymore. Even with mods to alleviate the graphics and draw distance, the game is so dated. Building a character can be very punishing in the early game, and easily break able in the late game. Many weapon skills are garbage because they lack enough support in items. Movement speed was tied to a skill, jumping is significantly faster, but also a skill. The leveling process is arcane and not adequately explained in game. The journal is awful, so you better remember what quests you are doing. Item storage was a pain because crates had weight limits, and merchants had pitiful amounts of gold to sell items.
I started a new play through of Morrowind after lasting playing it in the 2000s. I used OpenMW on my Steam Deck, it plays really well.
It was really refreshing how more immersive it is as you have to read the journal and use the map to figure out where to go for quests. I really enjoy not having a quest marker guiding you.
Morrowind. Played it a ton on Xbox, but I can’t get back into it on pc anymore. Even with mods to alleviate the graphics and draw distance, the game is so dated.
I played through it for the first time a few years ago, using the open-source OpenMW engine. It definitely isn’t graphically-competitive with modern games, but I was still able to enjoy it.
Building a character can be very punishing in the early game, and easily break able in the late game.
I feel like a lot of people enjoyed the game because they could break it in the late game.
Many weapon skills are garbage because they lack enough support in items.
Yeah, though I don’t think that any Elder Scrolls or Fallout game has really had a truly balanced skill tree, though.
The journal is awful, so you better remember what quests you are doing.
Yeah, I have to say that automated quest tracking and note-taking is definitely something that I like about modern RPGs. Sometimes it starts to feel too much like “go to waypoint, do thing, repeat”, but I remember manually mapping dungeons with teleporters on graph paper in the D&D Gold Box games, and it was just arduous.
I get that. FF VII is probably my favourite game. But, I grew up with it. I think that plays a huge roll. If I discovered it for the first time now, I’d probably feel the same way you do.
Don’t skip the remake, though. I hate that there’s differences from the original, but I view it as a retelling from a different perspective regarding the story. The gameplay kicks ass. I’d recommend it to anyone who likes the style of game.
I’m actually playing FF7 for the first time on a handheld emulator. I’ve previously tried to play FF4 and FF6 (several times) but couldn’t really get too far in before giving up. I’m nearly 8 hours into FF7 now and, while it’s definitely a bit dated in terms of controls (and obviously graphics), I’m having a much better time with it and as it stands, can see finishing it if it keeps going like it is. I just made it to the open world.
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Baldur’s Gate 3 was good, but I can’t play 1 or 2. They definitely don’t feel the same.
For newer games, I can actually play the older Zelda games, but I can’t stand the latest games. Not a big fan of the gameplay with weapons breaking and how much they pushed the open world thing. I very much prefer smaller maps with more story.
What’s so different about the first two Baldur’s Gate games? I was thinking about getting the first one on my phone
There is a lot to read. And it is probably not appreciatable on a phone. (Tablet may be fine) They are a totally different ruleset and while it is 2d and all the story is definitely deep. Many hours…
Specifically AD&D 2nd Edition. Back in the days of THAC0. To give an idea of how different it is from 3e and later editions, classes were restricted by race, there were two different ways to be multiclass (one for humans, one for everyone else and they work very differently), and lower AC is better - instead of rolling d20+attack bonus and comparing it to target AC you roll d20 - target AC and compare it to the attackers THAC0, which is the number they need to roll To Hit AC 0. AC could be negative as well, meaning that THAC0 wasn’t necessarily the highest number you might have to roll to hit. Thief skills use percentile rolls. Saving throws were weird, both in mechanics and categories.
So, for example, a second level fighter might have a THAC0 of 19 and +2 to hit from his high strength, and the thug he’s fighting might have an AC of 8 from his leather armor. So he has to roll 19-8=11 to hit, and would get a +2 on that roll, and so needs a 9 on the die.
I tried playing Icewind Dale on my phone after enjoying Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2 on my PC. Don’t bother. The touch UI just cannot keep up in any remotely tactical situation, at least not for my tactics-heavy wizard playstyle with milking every turn as much as I could.
To add to what everyone else is saying, the combat isn’t the same in that it’s not turn based like you’re thinking. Fights involve everyone getting into a fracas at once and swinging, the game expecting the player to regularly pause to give specific commands. Also, in BG1 you start at level one which feels reeeeeally weak so fights will be quite difficult until you’re about level 3-4.
That said, I had a lot of fun with the game after I got used to it. Writing is the main star of the show and it’s quite good.
Oh! I tried playing Neverwinter Nights recently and… I bounced. I want to try again soon because people really love that game (and its modding scene!), and I love D&D (having only played 5e, however), but it’s not appealing to me as much as I wish it did.
I played the crap out of Neverwinter Nights back in the day, but I picked up the remastered or whatever version on steam and just can’t handle the controls anymore. Hooray for BG3 to scratch the same itch with improved controls!
I really enjoyed the original Neverwinter Nights, went back and played it relatively-recently (despite the fact that the main storyline, pre-DLC, is pretty bland).
But I tried playing the newer Neverwinter Nights 2 and it just did not draw me in at all.
Still haven’t tried BG3.
For what it’s worth, the story to the main campaign of NWN2 is pretty tropey and bland. However, you should give Mask of the Betrayer a shot if you don’t mind main campaign spoilers and think story could keep you invested over gameplay. I never finished it, but the story was quite fresh and unique. It’s wildly well reviewed, to the point that while you have to deal with the Epic level rules, its still worth playing a bit just for the weirdness involved.
BG3 is the best version of DnD on a computer in my opinion. Great characters including enemies, so much flavor, and it moves right along with tooltips galore to let you know aht is going on. While there is a lot of gratuitous romance available, you can easily turn everyone down if it isn’t your jam. You can do pretty much anything and “screwing up” just tends to lead to more options!
I love talking to the goblins! Make friends before wiping them out!
Being DnD there is a lot of fiddly bits and the devs love exploding barrels, but to be honest they kind of add to the charm.
Starfield
Came here to say this. That’s and old game with lipstick. Poorly applied lipstick.
Damn! Burn
When Witcher 3 was winning all those awards, I wanted to give the original game a go.
Don’t. I imagine it’s nothing like Witcher 3. It aged terribly poorly.
Yeah, I don’t know how unpopular the opinion is, but the original Witcher didn’t strike me as a particularly good game. It was a… fine… I guess game, but with mature elements and tone that other games in the genre lacked. I slogged through it in preparation of playing Witcher 3.
I bought a bundle with all the 3 witcher games and tried both 1 and 2. I could jot even get through the tutorial in 1 and could jot beat the first boss of 2. Each game controls completely differently from one another.
I really liked Witcher 2 though. It’s a good game.
Yea, I don’t know. I disagree with the others. They’re definitely not modern games, but I think they’re both still quite good games individually.
That Kayran fight is one of the most unfortunate things about Witcher 2. It’s far too difficult a fight for a first boss, and almost all of that chapter is a drag to boot. The game is so much better after that point.
My favorite moment in that game is a serious case of understatement in dialogue prompt. You have an option to help one of two diametrically opposed people and if you choose “Help person A” you draw your sword on person B. If you choose “Help person B” you immediately throat punch person A.
Similar to how “push dijkstra aside” leads to Geralt breaking his ankle in a really violent matter.
Yeah, Witcher 2 felt like something completely new when I started it up right after finishing the first game.
I imagine going from 2 to 3 will feel the same.
Not so much to be honest. The 3rd one is just way more open world and the combat is so much smoother and more responsive.
I remember playing the first game and getting stuck on the tutorial because I was mashing the left click button trying to swing my sword only to have Geralt hip thrust at the enemies.
But once you figure out how to swing the sword, the game’s actually pretty fun. One thing I particularly liked is that there’s an investigative storyline where you actually have to go and investigate and figure out the answer with the clues provided, and you can fail. I went into it thinking it would be like most modern games where you only get obviously correct or incorrect dialog options and angered everyone in the process.
It did have some positive traits, but the gameplay just didn’t do it for me at all.
I did make it through the whole game, so I feel like I can hold that opinion, haha
People didn’t like its mechanics even back when it launched. Personally, it’s still somehow my favorite even tho objectively it’s less fun to play and less polished than the other two. Something about its story and the atmosphere makes it more unique and genuine.
It does have a great story!
The typical advice for people looking to get into the Witcher games is to watch a cutscene compilation of the first game, then start with the second. Don’t bother with too many side quests in the second; Just make it through the story so you know the broad strokes and major decisions. Then take that save to the Witcher 3, and just play that one from now on.
Because going backwards is so incredibly difficult; Each game adds a ton of quality of life improvements, so going back to older games feels horribly sluggish and clunky.
Yeah, I actually enjoyed the plot. But the gameplay kept getting in the way of that…lol
FONV and Skyrim. Even with mods, FONV looks like microwaved dog shit. Im mot even a huge graphics nut but at a point it becomes too distracting and FONV goes far beyond that. Skyrim’s sluggish movements keep me completely disengaged, although the graphics don’t throw me off quite as much, it feels so outdated that the immersion is ruined right from the very start.
Have you tried FO3? It came before NV and might draw you in more because the locations in it are far more iconic. I like it a bit better in some ways as well.
What’s sluggish-movement about Skyrim? You mean the character movements, or something else?
The high-running-speed in Skyrim compared to even some modern AAA’s has always been an upside to me.
Character movement. All the animations, running, walking, and turning in 3rd person are about the worst they could be. 1st person isn’t much better but at least you can’t see anything but the arms. My take is that the animations just didn’t match the quality of everything else.
It’s like taking a beautiful road trip all the way down the Pacific Coast Highway from the Redwoods to sunny SoCal but doing to in a old ass rustbucket with no power steering, the breaks are shot and making that noise and it always smells like gas inside but the windows won’t roll down. What’s outside the window is pretty great tho.
Luckily, there are plenty of mods to help with that whilst keeping the experience authentic.
Wish more games supported modders to this extent.
I’d love to give Skyrim another go with my PC as I’ve only ever played it on console. I have FONV on PC with all the best rated popular quality of life mods and it’s still horrendously ugly. I’ve seen others mod skyrim and it looks beautiful.
The horse speed on the other hand is awful. There’s a mod called “faster horses” though that addresses it.
Yeah, I can agree with that. Horse speed is pretty lackluster. I think part of that is valid, and part of that is how fast the character normally moves (since they move a lot faster than a real human would)
Zork I guess. Or IDK.
For me it was Ocarina of Time. Ugly, and very clumsy. And I play tons of retro games. Early 3D stuff can be rough.
There are specific things about OoT that irritate me, but I can generally still get some enjoyment.
Did you try Ship of Harkinian? It has a lot of improvements that make it easier to play nowadays.
https://www.shipofharkinian.com/
Oh thank you. I’ll check it out. I always wanted to get into the Zelda franchise and I love the lore of Ocarina/Majoras Mask
I’m playing through Knights of the Old Republic right now. The only thing that makes the graphics tolerable is playing on my switch. The screen is small enough to minimize the bad graphics and jank. But if I was playing it on a TV or computer screen I wouldn’t be able to continue. It hasn’t aged well at all.
Well, if you do want to play on pc, KOTOR is an amazing game, and if you can’t get past the old graphics, there are upscaling mods https://www.nexusmods.com/kotor/mods/1302?tab=files
I hate the texts I that game. They’re either too small to see from a normal distance or you can mod them bigger and then they don’t fit in the ui
You’ll have to sail the high seas since it requires THUG2 which isn’t for sale anymore but THUGPRO is a mod that will let you play classic Tony hawk levels with all the mechanics from later games.
Persona 1 and 2. As a Persona fan I see some people saying how great they are, and the story does seem interesting, but I can’t deal with that map movement, battle system and endless random battles.
Really, any RPG with random battles is a little harder to get into compared to overworld monsters you can avoid or target at your own pace.
Even as a kid growing up with that stuff I hated the random battles.
Same. I used to play some fantasy RPG with random battles. Me, being like 9, realized that you can escape, and if you fail you can try again. Well, I started skipping all battles, and somehow ended up in a boss fight that was level like 25, and I was about 12. I didn’t have any earlier save, and I couldn’t go back.
It was some game about going on a pilgrimage.
Sounds like Final Fantasy X, but it really depends on how old you are. It has a Flee skill which allows you to instantly escape nearly any battle. Lots of new/young players abused it because they thought “hey, less battling.” But then they were horribly underpowered for the bosses.
And yes, it features a pilgrimage as a main plot point.
If you’re interested, the PC remaster has some nice added features. You can up the speed to 4x, enable auto-attacks, enable a “boost” mode that gives you a full heal every turn, etc… And if you install the Untitled Project X mod, you can enable exp gains for characters on your bench, so you don’t even need to swap out characters for them to receive exp. It takes a relatively grindy game, and turns it into one where you don’t need to grind at all. Giving exp to benched members means you spend less time on each battle, and you don’t end up with any characters who are underpowered because you never use them.
I remember I struggled with my first play through because I rarely used Wakka or Rikku. And those are two out of three characters who can fight underwater. Near the end of the game, there’s an underwater boss fight that was basically a brick wall for me. All because those two characters weren’t leveled up enough.
Good tip, but it was definitely mot FFX. I remember starting in a village, on a sort of peninsula, being sent out on a pilgrimage for whatever reason, going north. It was definitely not 3D graphics.
EDIT: After a lot of searching, it was probably “Legend of Heroes 2: Prophecy if the Moonlight Witch”, but I am not too sure. It’s the closest I could match from my memory. It is almost 20 years ago lol.
EDIT2: It is definitely it.
At this stage, I am loath to go back to any game where the UI takes up half the screen. RTS games especially just used so much screen real estate back in the day, that couldn’t be scaled or hidden to get any back. Like playing your game through a letterbox surrounded by stickers.
I hate playing StarCraft because the UI is gigantic and you can’t zoom out far enough on the map. I’ve got massive, high-res monitors, but the game treats me like it’s still 640x480.
And really, more strategy/sim games need to support multi-monitor setups. Supreme Commander spoiled me, and more games should follow their example.
Sup Com FA was a pretty elegant UI, yeah. Very unobtrusive but combined with the split screens, multi screens and all the hotkeys it was so versatile. Probably a bitch to create though and not used by most players at the time.
Start craft specifically, but I believe most RTS games in general, limited the visible map area to make sure all players in a multiplayer games were on equall footing. They didn’t want people with larger monitors or more powerful computers to have an advantage by being able to see more terrain and units than those with lower resolutions. Lack of zoom is usually down to network optimization where bandwidth was significantly limited in the dial-up days.
On multiplayer - fine. I played single-player and it was annoying as hell.
Life
Not to be confused with John Conway’s the game of life. That one is fine, a classic.
I dunno man, Conway’s Game of Life has a quite boring endgame, I must say.
Yes, but absolutely no grind.
Yeah absolutely. I think with a lot of these older games that are considered to be the GOATs of their respective genres you’ll run into the same problem: They were so good, that the mechanics/ideas become the minimum requirement for all games thereafter. So, if you played the game on day 1, it was an innovative masterpiece the likes of which you’d never seen before. If you play it 10-15 years later after having played modern games in the same genre, it feels like the same old shit except without the 10-15 years of improvements.
For me personally, the game I’ll get crucified for not enjoying is Half Life 2. I played through the entire game. It was ok. I was pretty bored for most of it though. Shooters aren’t generally my thing for one, but even that aside the game was very milquetoast to me. I did a lot of reading up on the history of HL2 afterwards because I was astonished that I didn’t enjoy such a legendary game and I think I came to the conclusion that some new mechanics such as the cover system and story-driven nature of HL2 were what made it such a hit in 2004. But 15 years later those mechanics weren’t new and exciting to me and the story is decent but a far cry from amazing.
The other game that stands out to me is Assassin’s Creed 1. I couldn’t make it more than a few hours into that game. Just so boring and repetitive, the combat was boring, the collectables were boring, most mechanics didn’t actually seem to matter…I just hated the game lol. I do think it’s another example of later entries in the series/other games doing the same thing but better so going back to the OG just felt like a slog. But I really hated AC1 hahaha.
A big part of HL2 was also the physics. No game did that before to the same extent, so it was novel and cool. The gravity gun was super unique and all the physics puzzles were new and cool.
I tried replaying it a few years back and had the same experience as you. Every physics puzzle felt boring and just stopped the flow of the game. The gravity gun is still fairly unique, but it has lost a lot of its charm. It’s just not the same experience as it was around the time it released.
I liked that gravity gun was op but you need to find things to throw before you can use it
AC1 is the foundation of basically every ubisoft game since, but I can totally see how it’s unplayable if you didn’t play it first.
Half Life 2 was mostly noted for the extreme technical advancements. Take a look at what a gaming pc looked like when it came out. It shouldn’t have been allowed to be so advanced.
Half Life 1 was the one with the gameplay advancements. I played both on release, and both times felt like I’ve just entered another multi-verse.
Far Cry 1 managed that, too.
None of them hold up today. They are still as great as they were back then, but the feeling is all gone. I’ve recently finished all of them again, just to check.
Recently had this with PS1 Tomb Raider.
I can see the skeleton of an amazing game. For 1996 and no reference its absolutely amazing achievement. But the controls suck, gameplay is stiff and I hated climbing that damn waterfall and the combat was terrible.
I appreciate what’s there but I’d need to cheat, or use save states to play any further than the second cut scene.
For half life, try playing it in VR. completely new experience
I second this!
Do you mean Alyx? I actually do own that, but haven’t got around playing it yet.
Oh no the original half life 2. There is a VR mod for it that gives 6DOF with motion controls
Def agree on half-life 2. I even played HL1 before to prep, and weirdly enough enjoyed that more than I enjoyed HL2. Guess it’s hard to understand the hype when you weren’t there when it came out.
Half-Life 2 has suffered the fate of Seinfeld - the work was so monumental in its field that it revolutionized everything coming after it. Many of those iterations accomplished certain things better. Going back you think: what’s the big deal? Basically every game has physics, ragdoll enemies, novel gimmick weapons, and an action-packed cinematic feel.
AC1 had those same criticisms back then too. I played it back then and hate finished it and wasn’t going to check out the rest of the series but then the ending reveal hooked me. And AC2 addressed lot of the complaints.
Reminds of me of when I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey and was confused because I had heard great things about the soundtrack, but it was just a bunch of songs I had heard before.
About halfway through the movie I realized that it was an original soundtrack and it was so influential that it became a cliche. 2001: A Space Odyssey was a cliche, not because it followed a saturated trend, but because it itself was copied by everyone else.
AC1’s concept and maybe even story has held up, but you’re right that the later entries feel miles better.
Exactly this. The same applies to many of the Great Films or the Great Games. They were amazing for their ground-breaking and their trend setting.
But now, decades later, everyone learned from it and improved on their work. We take the new things for granted, so the originals looks boring and dated.
Ezio or bust.
shin megami tensei III nocturne. the lack of useful information in combat compared to what’s available in other smt/persona games i have played is frustrating (strange journey, smtv, p4, pq, p5)!
Going from Persona to the mainline SMT games is rough. Persona is basically a much easier version of SMT, but is also much more popular. So lots of Persona players enjoyed the game, wanted more, and looked into SMT. But then they’re dismayed to find out how goddamned difficult the main games can be.
Nocturne fans are a lot like Morrowind fans; They hate the modern gameplay mechanics and yearn for the “good ol days” when JRPGs were hard as nails and hid even the basic mechanics from you. But you can also become overpowered as hell you play the game the “right” way. And for Nocturne fans, being good at the difficult game is a point of pride.
If you can accept the fact that they’re grindfests that are built like old school JRPGs, then you’ll probably have a decent time. But they can absolutely be obtuse and brutal if you’re just expecting more Persona.
If you’re looking for something in between, try Persona 3. It’s getting remade soon so I can’t speak on that, but the PlayStation version (P3 FES) is fantastic. It takes longer than other Persona games to get started, (seriously, the story takes several hours to get off the ground,) but it’s a lot like the later Persona games, while only being marginally more difficult.
If you hate the lack of party controls, (you can only issue general commands to party members in FES) then maybe you’ll want to check out P3 Portable instead. It adds direct commands (and the option of a female main character) to the game. It has a slightly different UI, (the daytime gameplay is more like an interactive comic,) which turned a lot of players away. But the story remains the same (with a few exceptions if you pick the FeMC) and the addition of direct commands is a great modernization.
i get the feeling you didn’t really read what i wrote. but i will assume you were speaking generally and enthusiastically.
I read it. You specifically didn’t list Persona 3 while simultaneously saying you wanted more SMT games to check out.
I torture myself cause I always start series from the beginning. Megami tensei 1 and 2 were an absolute slog, shim megami tensei isn’t much better. Really all these early ones I just need to have gamefaqs up on my phone the whole time cause I’ll have no idea where I’m going. Shin megami tenseis not AS bad. I generally can find where I’m going, but if I take any sort of break to play another game I come back lost.
Halo, even the remaster. The world’s feel empty and vehicles make me long for the Mako
I’ve since been told it’s just one of those “you had to be there” things. Was really hard to admit the hype cycle sometimes has value
Personally I kinda like that feeling of an empty world sometimes. One of my favorite places in any game is the mall in GTA Vice City.
I can’t explain why though lol
Halo 1 requires nostalgia now to really get through. 2 and 3 were vast improvements.
Disagree.
I would have to say the dual wielding introduced in Halo 2 in addition to streamlining of the controls made the sequels way better.
Halo 1 is a great game on its own but all the subsequent improvements made the later iterations just so much more playable.
Solo, absolutely agree. Coop over the internet, probably not worth it.
Hear me out, though…
A couple weeks ago an old highschool buddy and I ordered a pizza, and then played Halo coop on a bigscreen for 3 hours. It was the best night I’ve had in a while.
Halo and Halo 2 are all about the in-person coop experience.
I used to say at the time that Halo 1 was by far the most amazing shooter… on consoles.
The characters are slow and sluggish, the maps are mostly empty, the vehicles are cool but just as sluggish, the weapon selection is pretty lacking even compared to games a decade older.
But for consoles, it was amazing, because all they had were shooters made for PC, and that didn’t work at all for controllers, at least not for casual players. Halo was basically the first shooter seriously created to be played with a controller and still offer depth. It also launched basically completely unopposed.
It releases in the same year as Red Faction, Tribes 2, HalfLife blueshift, Ghost Recon and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Quake 3 Team Arena and Counterstrike came out the year before. The PC market was drowning in amazing FPS games. But on console, nah, it was just Halo.
Probably going to get some hate for these.
FFVII. The pc port was ass, controls were a pain on keyboard and there wasn’t great controller support. The graphics were really tough to ignore, and the combat felt like fighting the control scheme more than anything. I’ve played and liked many other titles in the series, but I couldn’t manage this one by the time I got to it. The experience was also so bad I have no interest in the remake/remaster.
Morrowind. Played it a ton on Xbox, but I can’t get back into it on pc anymore. Even with mods to alleviate the graphics and draw distance, the game is so dated. Building a character can be very punishing in the early game, and easily break able in the late game. Many weapon skills are garbage because they lack enough support in items. Movement speed was tied to a skill, jumping is significantly faster, but also a skill. The leveling process is arcane and not adequately explained in game. The journal is awful, so you better remember what quests you are doing. Item storage was a pain because crates had weight limits, and merchants had pitiful amounts of gold to sell items.
Have you tried Tifa’s Bootleg? There are mods that can drastically improve the graphics
Modded FF7 on PC ruined PS1 FF7 for me. Wonderful stuff. 7th Heaven is such a joy.
I started a new play through of Morrowind after lasting playing it in the 2000s. I used OpenMW on my Steam Deck, it plays really well.
It was really refreshing how more immersive it is as you have to read the journal and use the map to figure out where to go for quests. I really enjoy not having a quest marker guiding you.
I played through it for the first time a few years ago, using the open-source OpenMW engine. It definitely isn’t graphically-competitive with modern games, but I was still able to enjoy it.
Here’s a current image:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQUYr7JhNXg
I feel like a lot of people enjoyed the game because they could break it in the late game.
Yeah, though I don’t think that any Elder Scrolls or Fallout game has really had a truly balanced skill tree, though.
Yeah, I have to say that automated quest tracking and note-taking is definitely something that I like about modern RPGs. Sometimes it starts to feel too much like “go to waypoint, do thing, repeat”, but I remember manually mapping dungeons with teleporters on graph paper in the D&D Gold Box games, and it was just arduous.
I get that. FF VII is probably my favourite game. But, I grew up with it. I think that plays a huge roll. If I discovered it for the first time now, I’d probably feel the same way you do.
Don’t skip the remake, though. I hate that there’s differences from the original, but I view it as a retelling from a different perspective regarding the story. The gameplay kicks ass. I’d recommend it to anyone who likes the style of game.
I’m actually playing FF7 for the first time on a handheld emulator. I’ve previously tried to play FF4 and FF6 (several times) but couldn’t really get too far in before giving up. I’m nearly 8 hours into FF7 now and, while it’s definitely a bit dated in terms of controls (and obviously graphics), I’m having a much better time with it and as it stands, can see finishing it if it keeps going like it is. I just made it to the open world.
It’s a classic for a reason. But I can absolutely see why someone would have a hard time playing it.