Games you love at first, but then come to loathe in the last act

[Dissensus]

@divedivedive

But I still really wish the boss battle with Saren could have been avoided if you had convinced him to shoot himself. Doing that and then getting the fight anyway seemed lame.

I wish this was the case too. I remember thinking at the time how cool it was that a AAA game allowed you to talk the bad guy into killing himself instead of having the generic final boss fight, but then no, he turns into a zombie or whatever and you’re stuck dealing with him and the game’s clunky combat anyway, making all those dialogue choices irrelevant.

[Durns]

Stories Untold. Interesting mechanics, mysterious and compelling storyline. But then, in the second half of the final section, you are required to make a single incredibly stupid decision (to drunk drive) to progress.The lack of choice when confronted with such a moment completely broke my suspension of disbelief, and took me from interested and sympathetic to simply thinking screw this guy, I have no interest in completing this game and following through on his terrible decision.

I stared at the screen for a minute, torn between the completionist instinct and the abhorrence I felt for the next step. Then force-closed the game, uninstalled, and made up a head-canon ending that I could live with.

[ImaTarget]

For years I was trying to find a mod that removes Panzerkleins from SS2.

[Granath]

@wumpus

Now all four factions have their flaws. The Institute is techno-racist. The Brotherhood is techno-fascist. The Minutemen are a bunch of pussies. The Railroad are a bunch of deluded-idealists, thinking synthetics are more important than humans, not just that they are equal. But none of them deserves to be wipe off the map.

And then the last act asks me to kill at least two out of four factions, i.e. commit mass murder. There is no negotiation, no compromise, nothing. So I decided to never “finished” the game and do the final quests.

I think that’s the whole point: there are no clear winners here, just difficult choices.

I would not characterize illogical and short-sighted options as difficult. Just dumb.

[TheWombat]

@wumpus

I think that’s the whole point: there are no clear winners here, just difficult choices.

Yeah, that was the intent, I’m sure. But they aren’t really choices. The real choice is how to deal with these organizations, and that’s taken from you and replaced with a binary, support them or destroy them. That is the choice you should have been able to make, from a menu of many other options of less absolute consequence.

Of course I realize it’s not likely in a game like this, which is hard enough to create and populate and make work, but I definitely do find the options given the player here very circumscribed, and not in a way that makes me think along philosophical lines, unless throwing your keyboard through the monitor is a philosophy.

[RichVR]

@ImaTarget

For years I was trying to find a mod that removes Panzerkleins from SS2.

I was the one guy that liked them. But the final boss fight sucked.

[Tman]

I’m adding They Are Billions to the list. Absolutely amazing & great game until the final wave. Some may rejoice in the final wave, but after 40 hours of trying various options (@50% - I beat it at 22%), I’m done with it. Others may relish in banging their head against the RNG wall, but I have better things to do with my time.

But it’s in EA, so hopefully they will tune it, although I’m not hopeful as the devs are on record for saying they didn’t implement a save system on purpose because they want permadeath.

So it goes on the list!