The first two, MOO 3 and Elemental: War of Magic, are the first games that I remember following development in the gaming press and on forums and reading development diaries for. I preordered Elemental and bought MOO 3 on release day. Both were huge dissapointments and are responsible for my policy of never preordering or buying on release, especially for 4X or complex strategy games or RPGs.
The third is Undertale. I can see why so many people liked it, but it never clicked for me.
Drox Operative is a game that I install every once in a while, play for an hour or so, and then uninstall. I have no idea what people find interesting about it. It just doesn’t grab me at all, though the concept sounds great on paper. See also: The Last Federation.
I also don’t like any of the Paradox “grand strategy” games (like EU, Stellaris, etc.). Heresy, I know, but I get so, so bored playing them. And as with Drox Operative, these are games that I feel should be in my wheelhouse, but clearly aren’t. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
The Last Federation doesn’t even deserve to be in the same paragraph with Drox Operative. How dare you sir. PISTOLS AT DAWN I SAY. I DEMAND SATISFACTION.
If my experience with the Dishonored 1 DLC was anything to go by, that’s probably why I petered out with it! I felt like I was going over the same familiar motions.
Exactly my sentiment too.
There’s a raft of very popular games I just never found particularly interesting. Morrowind, Skyrim, Torchlight, Breath of the Wild and Pillars of Eternity are the ones that come to mind. I hoped to get more out of Pillows of Eternity but I just did not care one bit about the lore or characters, and the combat was like herding cats even with only a few other dudes.
The Elder Scrolls games I found even more dull, with mushy combat, a clunky mess of a UI and dungeons that were repetitive slogs with bugger all to discover in most of them. It’s really bad when you don’t want to to talk to NPCs because they’re all boring.
Torchlight felt like a treadmill of nonsense with piles of loot to sift through and lots of time spent in menus looking at stats and how best to level your character. At least with Borderlands the dialogue was funny and the shooting felt good (but the rest left me cold). The loot chase is not for me.
Breath of the Wild had so much promise with its beautiful open world and emergent systems but after each session I struggled to remember much of what I’d done because I found it so repetitive with the korok seeds, shrines and menu faff cooking, sorting gear and healing up. The main story and side quests weren’t exactly driving forces either.
(It sounds like I’m just not a fan of RPGs but I loved Planescape: Torment, Anachronox and Demon’s Souls. (I wanted to talk to every NPC in Torment and Anachronox). The first two thirds of Vampire: Bloodlines were brilliant (great NPCs again). I even enjoyed what I played of the Fallouts too. I’m hoping to play Age of Decadence at some point.)
I’d probably throw Civ V into the boring basket as well. I’m just not wild about the real world setting and alternative history thing; give me Endless Legend or Age of Wonders 3 any day.
You can use WASD in Drox Operative too, it’s just hiding in the settings. I had problems enjoying the game until I changed the controls to that, and it became a lot better then.
Oh…everything? The fact that the computer is convincingly playing a 4X game around me? The varied quests? The way empires behave toward each other. The multiple ways to win and lose. The varied toys to play with. The ease of co-op. This game is so good, I have to avoid playing it because NOTHING ELSE WILL GET DONE if I do.
You can play it with a controller, which makes it more akin to this. It’s the only way I play it, really.
It crossed my mind but I didn’t find it boring so much as overwhelming and unwieldy with its myriad units and their many varied counters. Blobbing seemed like the only realistic option.
The automation of that game was something else though. Arcen did all sorts of cool things to reduce micro that made it even more difficult to go back to traditional RTS.
I saw the comments above about this game and, having never heard of it, it made me curious. I saw that Steam has the first two for PC and Disgaea 2 has a demo that covers the first 3 chapters so I downloaded it and started playing yesterday.
I’m around level 5 and I feel like I’m trying to learn Sanskrit without benefit of any books on the subject. Wow, the game sure has a lot of obtuse and weird mechanics to learn. Apparently dwarf tossing is a real thing in this game. Anyway, despite the learning curve, I like the combat and all the varied stuff you can do and am strangely fascinated by it all. I’m not going to pay $20 for it but if it’s on the Steam Summer sale, I’ll probably pick it up.
Yay another convert! Disgaea 5 has friendlier interface but I think playing an earlier title is a good idea. They keep adding more and more mechanics through the series, some of which supercede older ones in utility.
Well, I don’t have a console so not much choice there for me. They have the first two games for PC on Steam but not the rest of them. It appears Disgaea 5 will be released on Steam for PC later this summer though. But not 3 or 4 oddly enough.
Disgaea 1 is much better than 2. 2 has some nice refinements to the gameplay, but the story in 1 is light years better, charming in that anime kind of way without being cloying or obnoxious. And I say that as someone who has long since grown out of his anime phase.
Gunpoint. On paper, it sounded awesome, but It just didn’t click with me. After several attempts to continue the story I had to accept that it just wasn’t working for me and shelved it.
