Honestly, Ultima died on 8. They turned Ultima into a platformer...
Nah, Ultima 8 had it strengths. The gameplay was pretty bad, but world design, story and some of the magic systems were solid. Most importantly it was still consistent with the earlier games, while Ultima 9 had:
Avatar starting on Earth without any titan powers
Blackthorne reappearing as evil without any explanation
Brainwashing shrines of virtues
Terrible dialogue "What's a Paladin?"
Avatar having been stripped of his evil side magically
The last item especially contradicts against everything that came before. And sadly, storywise Ultima 9 would have worked best if you had picked the evil ending of Ultima 7...
There is something going on under the hood in Ultima 8. Unfortunately uncovering it requires slogging through some of the worst gameplay in the history of the PC. Even walking is atrocious.
I ignored all media and ads for Inquisition when it came out. It was still a gigantic disappointment.
Sequels are always a different animal because they have to live up to its predecessor.
Imo Inquisition was a special case since it was aiming to be a multiplayer release at some point. Bioware had someone serious miscommunication with its fanbase at that point, not to mention all the executive meddling.
Bioware was changing and not for better. At least not for the core audience.
I ignored all media and ads for Inquisition when it came out. It was still a gigantic disappointment.
Sequels are always a different animal because they have to live up to its predecessor.
Imo Inquisition was a special case since it was aiming to be a multiplayer release at some point. Bioware had someone serious miscommunication with its fanbase at that point, not to mention all the executive meddling.
Bioware was changing and not for better. At least notfor the core audience.
I have been introduced to the Legend of Heroes series by someone on this forum and while they had some serious flaws, I kept enjoying the games since them. The Cold Steel arc proved to be more and more difficult to stomach after each new title, and now that I played 4 I know for sure that for me the series end here.
A huge disappointment, though slightly different perhaps than the OP, was that Red Dead Redemption was never released to PC (and now its successor). There's way to few great wild west games out there and that looked like a true gem, one I would have loved to play.
i think the most disappointing game i have ever played was baldur's gate dark alliance (...)oi
I got disappointed once i tested ultima ports on snes
Only to mention few changes(text retired from ultima wikia)
Several pictures and texts from the intro were removed.
There is no character creation, the player only enters a name. There is also no option for a female Avatar. The conversations use a tree-system, meaning that the player actually has to learn about a topic, before they can ask the person about it.
There are no character portraits.
Also all NPC dialogue had to be streamlined and shortened in order to fit the game into the module. This was used for censorship as well (see below). Since the game is fullscreen, thus logically no mouse support, the control scheme is much more complicated with several sub-menus.
The world is less detailed and less interactive. EG: Can't sit in chairs. Paintings don't elaborate on details when looked at.
Doors automatically open by running into them (which means no more closing doors on enemies and locking them in).
Can't move objects in the game world (eg: can't move chairs around). Since you can't move in-game objects, they made it so you can pretty much walk over anything and everything that normally blocked your path (eg: can walk over chests, boxes, barrels, etc). Likewise, you can't attack or destroy those items anymore either (since no reason to now). Interacting with most game-world objects is done using a universal "look" command (looking at a potion asks if you want to take it, looking at a chest auto-opens it and asks if you want to take the loot, looking at hiding places will reveal things hidden unerneath and ask if you want to take them, etc).
The following spells are missing: Steal Trap Summon Daemon Turn to Slime Eclipse
Buildings and the overworld are all separate maps, so you can no longer look in windows to see biulding interiors. The maximum party size is reduced to six instead of eight.
Dead party members turn into white clouds that follow along like party members until resurrected. Can't leave behind corpse or remove party member until resurrected.
Oil is now utilized like a grenade. You cannot ready it as a weapon. Instead, you go into inventory, select it for use, then select a place on the map to throw it. When it lands, it has a one-time 3x3 blast damage instead of lighting a single 1x1 tile on fire for a period of time.
The monetary system has been significantly "JRPG'ed"...
The cost of everything is about 10x more. (eg: Magic Armor costs 3800. Most spells cost thousands of gold each. Reagents cost 10-50 gold each. Crossbow bolts cost 10 gold each. And so on.)
Killing enemies auto-disposes of corpse (see censorship below), and may leave behind a single chest that contains a single item (gold, weapon, armor), as opposed to the hordes or items typically found on enemies in the original game.
Selling items still go for the typical amount, though. (EG: selling a leather helm gets you 2 gold).
So, all of that combined with the single-item-in-chest loot you get from monsters has turned the SNES port into a signifiant grind-fest, typical of most SNES RPG's of the time.
Dropping items from inventory removes them permanantly instead of dropping them on the ground. However, you're not allowed to drop certain items .. like keys. So, inventory management can have more overhead, as you don't want to lose things by dropping them, and can't drop other things you don't care about.
Combat can get initiated with an "Attack" command, but you can not manually stop combat anymore. You must eliminate all enemies nearby, or head through a moongate.
Attack AI is dumbed-down, with both friendly and enemy characters shooting weapons and casting spells into walls instead of stepping out from behind them to target properly. Sherry the Mouse is no longer a potential companion. Now she's an inventory item. Once used, you can control her until you pick her up again.
Music transitions every time you switch screens (eg: in and out of inventory, in and out of buildings), which can become very aggravating as it starts to sound like a jukebox stuck playing small music snippets before fast forwarding to the next song.
Karma (KR) is directly shown in inventory screen as a number you can track instead of being a hidden value.
Stealing counts against Karma, but has no other repercussions (Owners don't attack you, Guards don't show up.)
Certain areas seem to have had item counts toned down (presumably to preserve space). EG: ant mound dead body storage seems to have significantly less bodies and items lying around (since most aren't ineractable anyways, this makes sense.)
The list is very long. I don't know any in Baldu's Gate like game available on consoles. I don't wanna start an pc VS console war, each platform is better for certain genres. I will not recommend an pc for someone who likes nintendo like platformers. Consoles lacks certain genres and pc lacks others.
D2 fans being disappointed about D3 is an amusing example for me, because I felt the same about D2 coming from D1 and to this day I don't fully understand the D2 hype.
I usually play sorcerer and I don't like the D2 character development process, where you have to limit yourself to a small number of active skills. Before synergy you even had to save your skill points if you wanted to build a good character, instead of being able to put them in your current main attack spell when you levelled up. Having to save skill points to built an effective character is very bad design in my opinion. The super specialization also meshed badly with the heavy immunities on the higher difficulty levels.
Increasing the power of your sorcerer by finding spell books and studying them felt much more natural to me than the increased dependance on good gear in D2.
In addition, D1 felt darker with characters like Wirt, the Skeleton King, Lazarus and the Butcher.
I am not saying D2 is objectively worse than D1. It is certainly better in terms of long-run motivation, with collecting sets and gems. In Diablo I there is nothing really new to find on the higher difficulty levels once you have learned each spell. But for the first few playthroughs: D1 > D2, and when I started playing D2 as a D1 veteran, I was certainly disappointed.
Not trying to start an diablo discussion again, but despite liking d2 mainly cuz i loved necromancer class, i agree with your critique. In nutshell, d2 have more longevity but lost some rpg elements who a lot of people liked. In nutshell an caster become more powerful by studing spellbooks on d1, by investing skill points and finding +skill level gear on d2 and by finding bigger and sharper axe on d3.
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AS for heretic 2 that i've mentioned before i got disappointed not cuz the game is bad. Is just not "doom with magic" that i was expecting... Anyway, maybe i will try Amid Evil and i hope that will be good,not an memorable game as heretic, but an interesting first person shooter with magic.
@SorcererV1ct0r well back in the day, at best a snes cartridge could only hold 8 MB of space, so i have no idea how big ultima was, but trying to get a PC game down into a console game was very challenging, same case for Doom on snes, i believe doom 1 just by itself is 21 MB and yet they had to fit it on maybe even on a 4MB cartridge ( it wasn't until late in snes' life did they have the HUGE 8 MB cartridge haha )
also starcraft for n64, im pretty sure starcraft and it's expansion were around 1.3 GB or so together on PC and yet an N64 cartridge at best could only hold 64 MB so it was quite challenging again to compress 1.3 GB game into a 64 MB cartridge
so back in the day if a game came out for PC before console, the PC version was far superior since the PC version never needs to be compacted down, now adays it doesn't matter because either pc or console has ample room for their game sizes
Speaking of disappointments, though a decent game, I was rather disappointed in the original Dungeon Keeper. I was expecting it to make a better job of putting you in charge of a dungeon that is more like a classical RPG, but you tended to fight mostly against other Keepers and were able to always put your entire army in the spot where you were attacked or use the command spells to send your entire army to attack the enemy dungeon heart.
If I were to design a Dungeon Keeper game I would make adventurers your main source of income and require the player to balance hero fear and greed, so you still attract enough adventurers without being overrun.
Another example for a completely different reason is The Movies from Lionhead. Here I am really disappointed the idea (which was really brilliant) never took of. If that game would have had the level of modding support that some modern games have, it could really have beens something... and it would really deserve a more modern successor with more low-level control of the actors. Here, the disappointment was in the general reception of the game, not the game itself.
Switching the focus to strategy games: Master of Orion 3 was a real disappointment, but not much needs to be said here. I think the first game in the series was the best part, though I preferred the additional features of MoO II back in the day. When I play them now I really admire the tight and elegant design of MoO I much more.
Finally, a more controversial option: Civ V. Atmosphere was ok, but it just failed as a strategy game compared to Civ IV. Lots of little options which affected the game in extremely small ways without it turning into a coherent game. Not to mention the failure that was the AI or the entire mess of the small 4-5 city empire being optimal...
Unfortunately it seems Civ VI is going in the same direction, with the next expansion offering super-specialized Civilizations (I prefer the blank slate of history model for Civ) & weird low-level managing of details that should be abstracted away. Controlling individual rock bands? Really? OTH if they fix the chopping >> everything else production model with the new resource consumption model it might still be an overall improvement.
@SorcererV1ct0r well back in the day, at best a snes cartridge could only hold 8 MB of space, so i have no idea how big ultima was, but trying to get a PC game down into a console game was very challenging, same case for Doom on snes, i believe doom 1 just by itself is 21 MB and yet they had to fit it on maybe even on a 4MB cartridge ( it wasn't until late in snes' life did they have the HUGE 8 MB cartridge haha )
also starcraft for n64, im pretty sure starcraft and it's expansion were around 1.3 GB or so together on PC and yet an N64 cartridge at best could only hold 64 MB so it was quite challenging again to compress 1.3 GB game into a 64 MB cartridge
so back in the day if a game came out for PC before console, the PC version was far superior since the PC version never needs to be compacted down, now adays it doesn't matter because either pc or console has ample room for their game sizes
Modern games on consoles still have a big limitation.
The lack of mouse and keyboard means that the games can't handle many different easy accessible keys. Do an flight simulator with a controller is impossible IMO. Or how to port an NWN like action bar with F1-F12 keybindings, SHFT F1-12 and CTRL F1-F12 totalizing 36 items/spells/etc in a quick accessible way? I really loved Dragon's Dogma, but having in max 6 active skills is clearly a limitation made with a controller in mind.
Other problem is that If you look to FPS made for consoles, they have too much focus on CQB fighting with SMG like CoD for example. BF have a bigger gamebase on PC but cod have on consoles exactly because of it... Just like even the most hardcore aRPG like Dark Souls have "locking" targeting for spells. Controllers are awful to aim. I honestly like much more "aiming" than locking into a target. Is much more immersive AND engaging. Also i don't like to play on melee on video games.
@SorcererV1ct0r Sounds more like it has to do with your level of comfort with different control styles than any measure of quality. I actaully can't control an FPS with a mouse/keyboard. I'm far more accurate with a controller. Also, Joystick > keyboard for any flight game.
@SorcererV1ct0r Sounds more like it has to do with your level of comfort with different control styles than any measure of quality. I actaully can't control an FPS with a mouse/keyboard. I'm far more accurate with a controller. Also, Joystick > keyboard for any flight game.
That depends. For example, in rapid manuvers, yes, for "boom and zoom" at a great range, M&K is better. Unless the joystick is a flight stick, i tried to get an flight stick but i an 6' 1" tall(1,84m) with broad shoulders and very large hands. Most flight sticks that i found are very small for my hand. I really wanna find an good flight stick to play simulator mode on WT. For this mode
That's good to know. Too bad, though. I'm on Trails in the Sky 2. I'll probably end it at 3.
The Crossbell games are still good and worth playing, especially Zero. Ao is not bad but it has a distinct M. Night Shyamalan touch with nonsensical twists for the sake of "gotcha" the player and it's also the origin of a lot of Cold Steel problems (like the obsession with DBZ power levels). No idea how good the fan translations are though - I've played them in Japanese.
I never heard about "Crossbell games" googled a little and don't saw any link to purchase...
Anyway, some time ago i "hated" those "jrpgs", made threads with arguments but realized that i was wrong; my problem with then is not that they are bad or not true rpgs. They are good, they are just not for me since i hate play on melee and most of then forces me to play on melee.
The first RPG of my life was M&M VII for blood and honor. Once i saw a friend saying amazing things about FF VII i decided to try and... Got disappointed, not saying that the game is bad, i just don't like be forced to play on melee. The same applies to "western" games who forces you to play on melee such as Shadow of Mordor. Coming from a game who allow you to choose between human, dwarf, elf and even goblin, choose 9 classes that get different promotions and archive Lichdoom(dark side) to be forced to play with a teenager with an piece of metal was a huge disappointment. I an not saying that the game is bad. Only that by my PC experience was expecting something that i can't get in this SUBgenre...
Magic on M&M was done right. Invisibility, fly, reanimate, town portal, enchant item, etc, etc, etc; magic on this game is much more than "different colors of fireballs"... When you wanna trow Dragon's Breath, or something similar, you think on how much "damage" it will dealt, enemy resistances, if it is on a range that can hurt(or even OHK) your own party, etc.
Talking about disappointment, one thing that i disliked and was a disappointment on M&M is on end game, once you get something who can make everything except top tier magic at very high level obsolete. Archers? Fighters? They will deal much less "DPS" than the (spoiler below), only an high level dark magician with certain expensive skills like Sharpmetal at CQB or Dragon's Breath can outDPS this, magic still can be useful since town portal, fly, day of protection, shared life, etc are still useful but it rends over 95% of weapons and spells in the game obsolete and make very hard enemies like titans into a cakewalk.
@SorcererV1ct0r , I'm also a huge M&M fan, and they were also my first rpg's. You just made me remember my biggest ever gaming disappointment. It was M&M IX. Before even considering all the bugs, I became bitterly disappointed within my first hour in. All the things that made M&M fun were gone - paper dolls, multiple races and classes, and free exploration of the world. Boy, that was really awful. It was the first time I had felt so completely cheated by a trusted game franchise.
I think blasters in M&M VI and VII were meant to be an endgame easter egg that you get just as the game has its "surprise" transition from swords and sorcery to sci-fi. It is a trademark of the franchise to do that. It was also meant to give you a chance in heck against eradicating exterminator droids in the last couple of dungeons. I don't think the devs were thinking about players finding the exploit to break the game with them. (Haste + blaster + holding down the attack key and breaking the reaction animations of sprites, effectively freezing them motionless while they get obliterated.)
@SorcererV1ct0r , I'm also a huge M&M fan, and they were also my first rpg's. You just made me remember my biggest ever gaming disappointment. It was M&M IX. Before even considering all the bugs, I became bitterly disappointed within my first hour in. All the things that made M&M fun were gone - paper dolls, multiple races and classes, and free exploration of the world. Boy, that was really awful. It was the first time I had felt so completely cheated by a trusted game franchise.
I think blasters in M&M VI and VII were meant to be an endgame easter egg that you get just as the game has its "surprise" transition from swords and sorcery to sci-fi. It is a trademark of the franchise to do that. It was also meant to give you a chance in heck against eradicating exterminator droids in the last couple of dungeons. I don't think the devs were thinking about players finding the exploit to break the game with them. (Haste + blaster + holding down the attack key and breaking the reaction animations of sprites, effectively freezing them motionless while they get obliterated.)
With my Dark Magic lv 30(see my screenshot on the first page), i can OHK even titans(Sharpmetal) on M&M VI. On M&M VII since you need to choose between light or dark magic, if you choosed dark magic reach lv 20 for eg in dark magic and find an item who increases your dark magic power is not hard. So, assuming that your total level is 25, at grand maestry of dark magic
Shrapmetal: Costs 30 spell points. Fires a blast of hot jagged metal in front of caster that damages any creatures that get in its way. Five metal fragments do damage equal to 6 plus 1-6 per skill point.
Expert: Five metal fragments are fired. Master: Faster recovery rate. Seven fragments are fired. Grandmaster: Fastest recovery rate. Nine fragments are fired.
9 Fragments, each one dealing 6 + 1~6 * 25(Dark Magic Level) in other words 6 + 25~150 per fragment or 31~156. This * 5 at expert level means 155~780 damage and on grand master level, can deal 1404. An Red Dragon have 1300 hp if i remember correctly. An assassin droid have 1080. For eradication i believe that grand mastery protection from magic can prevent it.
Well, given the topic, it's more about genuine disappointment, i.e. you had expectations and the game failed to live up to them. This strikes Ninja Gaiden 3 from contention, because though it is a loathsome game and a disgusting follow up to the best action game of all time (and it's... okay sequel) I knew it was going to be that from the moment the first showed it.
Nah its a game that isn't really bad but was by far and away the biggest let down I ever had.
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.
Ocarina of Time was a game I loved dearly, so dearly. Majora's Mask was at least an interesting experiment and I didn't like it as much but I recognised it for what it was and I still liked it.
I just didn't like Wind Waker. It was finding out that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and Cthulhu weren't real.
I forgot about one particularly disappointing title to include here. Trine 3. I was really enjoying first two games, but 3 was very, very disappointing for me.
I remember when I was a kid and Ocarina of Time was just released, gaming magazines in my country were all rating it with ???? on the grounds it was so perfect it couldn't be reviewed and all. So of course being a fan of A Link to the Past I annoyed my parents until they bought me a N64...
Ultimately this convinced me to never buy a gaming magazine ever again except for an issue of Playstation magazine which had a full walkthrough for Final Fantasy IX b/c of the Chocobo Hot & Cold minigame.
What I'm trying to say here is that OoT was really disappointing.
Every time that i see an RPG, i expect that the RPG mechanics makes sense for his in game lore. If the mechanics doesn't make any sense, i can't immerse myself into the game.
This ruined Tyranny. Sure, have an amazing lore and an unique lore, but i honestly hate cooldown. Unless there are a valid justification for why i should use the same skill again aka "an healing spirit who needs to be reformed after being destroyed", cooldown are only a poor way to balance things. On D3 command golem skill have a 45 sec cooldown(can't see any reason). I din't liked Tyranny thanks not only to the long cooldowns but thanks to the insanely high damage resistance of enemies. I like kill and die quick. It makes fight more tense and immersive IMO. Oblivion was ruined for me thanks to that. On high level you will need tons of hits to kill enemies. Even with max STR and max weapon skill...
PS : I an not saying that Tyranny is bad. Is a good game. I just din't liked and got disappointed thanks to his mechanics.
Skill scaling with weapon on d3/torchlight/da:i/etc is silly too. Imagine in a movie/book. If there are an evil wizard like Saruman raising an undead army, he is defeated, retreat, pick an bigger and sharper axe and by no reason, his army becomes much stronger. It will be heavily criticized, break the immersion and become an meme. I wonder if the suspension of disbelief is bigger with games than with movies...
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One very action focused game who have mechanics that make sense is Dark Souls. Sure, there are some broken mechanics and exploits like for eg
Most gear requirement and gear scaling makes sense except heavy bows requiring much more DEX and scaling poorly with STR. Longbows require ton of strength IRL
Big pole-arms on CQB can "stuck" on walls
Enemy resistances/immunities makes sense
The combat animations are far more realistic than other games
No cooldowns, the game limits powerful spells like Crystal soul spear by limiting casts/rest
Gear have pros and cons, for example Tin Crystallization Catalyst is insanely powerful but cuts your casts/rest by half
The armor/weapon design makes a lot of sense
The combat too is much more realistic, much less overswing than other action games
Leveling makes you stronger but not god-like
(...)
Here a interesting video about armor/weapons on DS
An interesting comment about the video from InfernoPlus 4 years ago That "silly nonsense" with the spinning around in a circle with a halberd is in the game for dealing with groups of enemies when you are getting overwhelmed or surrounded.
I'd also like to point out that most of the "ridiculous" weapons like the Abyss Greatsword front flip smash attack require what would be super human strength in real life. If you consider that it takes 16 str and 10 dex to wield a Claymore in 1 hand. Anything that takes over 20 str is basically like a super human in real life.
I remember when I was a kid and Ocarina of Time was just released, gaming magazines in my country were all rating it with ???? on the grounds it was so perfect it couldn't be reviewed and all. So of course being a fan of A Link to the Past I annoyed my parents until they bought me a N64...
Ultimately this convinced me to never buy a gaming magazine ever again except for an issue of Playstation magazine which had a full walkthrough for Final Fantasy IX b/c of the Chocobo Hot & Cold minigame.
What I'm trying to say here is that OoT was really disappointing.
I don't think Ocarina of Time is the be all/end all best game of all-time (I think A Link to the Past, Majora's Mask, Wind Waker and Breath of the Wild are better) but I can hardly fathom how one could be disappointed in it at the time it came out. Moreover, no mainline Zelda game has been anything less than an 8/10 in my book. The series has the best quality control in the history of the industry. I just wish they'd port the whole damn franchise to the Switch already.
Well, since we are talking a bit about Zelda, I honestly find the series to be quite the mixed bag. The original game was fantastic for its time, Zelda II was annoying. Link to the Past was great. I didn't care for Links Awakening nor the vast majority of the portable games. Ocarina of Time was basically my be all/end all game for years, thats no longer the case now (now it's probably Doom), but as a key title in the development of 3D action adventure games it was a big deal. I don't think any of the others that followed were really on the same tier. Nintendo themselves are a disappointment to me since the Wii, I really think they lost their mojo and are just a shadow of their former selves. I can point to the simple fact Smash Bros., which is just a party game and a meta crossover game which is the same shit every time, is like their best selling biggest release every generation now. That's horrible, and yes even if you like Smash Bros you should acknowledge this. The problem isn't that Nintendo make Smash Bros, it's how much they've ceased making anything else worthwhile.
I like that the Switch is pretty modest in terms of hardware and Nintendo don't participate in the economic insanity that their competition does, but they don't make games that make their systems worth buying any more.
And no, Breath of the Wild is the Zelda they should have made 6 years ago, when open world was a novelty and not overexposed and tired long before it actually was made. Nintendo used to push innovation, not chase other people's table scraps. Otherwise its barely better than Skyward Sword and fuck that game.
So you know what, I looked again at the title, its "biggest gaming disappointment" not "Most disappointing games" so I feel comfortable with changing that to Nintendo falling down a pit creatively and not climbing back out.
Anyway, i recently tested Dark Souls 2 and got disappointed. No, the game is not bad is just not good as the first one. Din't liked the changes on stamina system and the inconsistency with hitbox. Also the world design is not that good(not saying that is bad). If DS 1 is 9.5/10, DS 2 is a 8/10. Is not a bad game, but can be much better, And i never found DS1 hard tbh. Ornstein and Smough, probably the most famous DS "hard" boss, just took few Soul Spears and homing soulmass. I killed both in few minutes on my second try. Only Capra demon and Bed of Chaos are hard on DS1(used an exploit against Capra)
I remember when I was a kid and Ocarina of Time was just released, gaming magazines in my country were all rating it with ???? on the grounds it was so perfect it couldn't be reviewed and all. So of course being a fan of A Link to the Past I annoyed my parents until they bought me a N64...
Ultimately this convinced me to never buy a gaming magazine ever again except for an issue of Playstation magazine which had a full walkthrough for Final Fantasy IX b/c of the Chocobo Hot & Cold minigame.
What I'm trying to say here is that OoT was really disappointing.
I don't think Ocarina of Time is the be all/end all best game of all-time (I think A Link to the Past, Majora's Mask, Wind Waker and Breath of the Wild are better) but I can hardly fathom how one could be disappointed in it at the time it came out. Moreover, no mainline Zelda game has been anything less than an 8/10 in my book. The series has the best quality control in the history of the industry. I just wish they'd port the whole damn franchise to the Switch already.
I’d hands down buy a switch for that.
Nintendo is now for kids. With very few exceptions their best selling titles amount to something a 6 year old can pick up and play. Nintendo is following the McDonalds model and hooking people to the brand as young as possible. They get to release thr same types of games every year because their player base hasn’t experienced that game yet. Let’s go Pikachu/Eevee is a good example of that. Pokémon fans are going to buy the title no matter what because of brand loyalty, they just need to sell that loyalty to a new generation.
I remember Zelda games being listed under RPG and Adventure back in the day in periodicals but I don't think that's accurate by today's standards. I think Zelda games are just Zelda games. Or maybe "third person action/adventure games with exploration and role playing elements"
Further mudding the waters is the fact that Zelda games can be pretty different from one another. For instance the very first Zelda on the NES was something of a sandbox game and Breath of the Wild is pretty much an homage to that first title. Zelda 2 has more "RPG elements" than any other Zelda, including levels and experience points but it took also aspects from platformers, of all things.
Generally speaking I think it may preferable to judge them on an individual basis.
Comments
Bioware was changing and not for better. At least not for the core audience.
I have been introduced to the Legend of Heroes series by someone on this forum and while they had some serious flaws, I kept enjoying the games since them. The Cold Steel arc proved to be more and more difficult to stomach after each new title, and now that I played 4 I know for sure that for me the series end here.
Only to mention few changes(text retired from ultima wikia)
The conversations use a tree-system, meaning that the player actually has to learn about a topic, before they can ask the person about it.
Since the game is fullscreen, thus logically no mouse support, the control scheme is much more complicated with several sub-menus.
EG: Can't sit in chairs. Paintings don't elaborate on details when looked at.
Interacting with most game-world objects is done using a universal "look" command (looking at a potion asks if you want to take it, looking at a chest auto-opens it and asks if you want to take the loot, looking at hiding places will reveal things hidden unerneath and ask if you want to take them, etc).
Steal
Trap
Summon Daemon
Turn to Slime
Eclipse
The maximum party size is reduced to six instead of eight.
Sherry the Mouse is no longer a potential companion. Now she's an inventory item. Once used, you can control her until you pick her up again.
source http://ultima.wikia.com/wiki/SNES-Port_of_Ultima_VI
The list is very long. I don't know any in Baldu's Gate like game available on consoles. I don't wanna start an pc VS console war, each platform is better for certain genres. I will not recommend an pc for someone who likes nintendo like platformers. Consoles lacks certain genres and pc lacks others. Not trying to start an diablo discussion again, but despite liking d2 mainly cuz i loved necromancer class, i agree with your critique. In nutshell, d2 have more longevity but lost some rpg elements who a lot of people liked. In nutshell an caster become more powerful by studing spellbooks on d1, by investing skill points and finding +skill level gear on d2 and by finding bigger and sharper axe on d3.
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AS for heretic 2 that i've mentioned before i got disappointed not cuz the game is bad. Is just not "doom with magic" that i was expecting... Anyway, maybe i will try Amid Evil and i hope that will be good,not an memorable game as heretic, but an interesting first person shooter with magic.
also starcraft for n64, im pretty sure starcraft and it's expansion were around 1.3 GB or so together on PC and yet an N64 cartridge at best could only hold 64 MB so it was quite challenging again to compress 1.3 GB game into a 64 MB cartridge
so back in the day if a game came out for PC before console, the PC version was far superior since the PC version never needs to be compacted down, now adays it doesn't matter because either pc or console has ample room for their game sizes
If I were to design a Dungeon Keeper game I would make adventurers your main source of income and require the player to balance hero fear and greed, so you still attract enough adventurers without being overrun.
Another example for a completely different reason is The Movies from Lionhead. Here I am really disappointed the idea (which was really brilliant) never took of. If that game would have had the level of modding support that some modern games have, it could really have beens something... and it would really deserve a more modern successor with more low-level control of the actors. Here, the disappointment was in the general reception of the game, not the game itself.
Switching the focus to strategy games: Master of Orion 3 was a real disappointment, but not much needs to be said here. I think the first game in the series was the best part, though I preferred the additional features of MoO II back in the day. When I play them now I really admire the tight and elegant design of MoO I much more.
Finally, a more controversial option: Civ V. Atmosphere was ok, but it just failed as a strategy game compared to Civ IV. Lots of little options which affected the game in extremely small ways without it turning into a coherent game. Not to mention the failure that was the AI or the entire mess of the small 4-5 city empire being optimal...
Unfortunately it seems Civ VI is going in the same direction, with the next expansion offering super-specialized Civilizations (I prefer the blank slate of history model for Civ) & weird low-level managing of details that should be abstracted away. Controlling individual rock bands? Really? OTH if they fix the chopping >> everything else production model with the new resource consumption model it might still be an overall improvement.
The lack of mouse and keyboard means that the games can't handle many different easy accessible keys. Do an flight simulator with a controller is impossible IMO. Or how to port an NWN like action bar with F1-F12 keybindings, SHFT F1-12 and CTRL F1-F12 totalizing 36 items/spells/etc in a quick accessible way? I really loved Dragon's Dogma, but having in max 6 active skills is clearly a limitation made with a controller in mind.
Other problem is that If you look to FPS made for consoles, they have too much focus on CQB fighting with SMG like CoD for example. BF have a bigger gamebase on PC but cod have on consoles exactly because of it... Just like even the most hardcore aRPG like Dark Souls have "locking" targeting for spells. Controllers are awful to aim. I honestly like much more "aiming" than locking into a target. Is much more immersive AND engaging. Also i don't like to play on melee on video games.
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I don't like jRPG but any fan here have an opinion about it? got Dissapointed? Final Fantasy VII Remake's Battles Aren't Turn Based http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2017/03/no_final_fantasy_vii_remakes_battles_arent_turn_based
This montage was made with M&K in arcade mode
And in FPS games, most sniper montages are with M&K
I honestly don't like touch screen too. I an disappointed that i can't find a cellphone with a mechanic keyboard...
Anyway, some time ago i "hated" those "jrpgs", made threads with arguments but realized that i was wrong; my problem with then is not that they are bad or not true rpgs. They are good, they are just not for me since i hate play on melee and most of then forces me to play on melee.
The first RPG of my life was M&M VII for blood and honor. Once i saw a friend saying amazing things about FF VII i decided to try and... Got disappointed, not saying that the game is bad, i just don't like be forced to play on melee. The same applies to "western" games who forces you to play on melee such as Shadow of Mordor. Coming from a game who allow you to choose between human, dwarf, elf and even goblin, choose 9 classes that get different promotions and archive Lichdoom(dark side) to be forced to play with a teenager with an piece of metal was a huge disappointment. I an not saying that the game is bad. Only that by my PC experience was expecting something that i can't get in this SUBgenre...
Magic on M&M was done right. Invisibility, fly, reanimate, town portal, enchant item, etc, etc, etc; magic on this game is much more than "different colors of fireballs"... When you wanna trow Dragon's Breath, or something similar, you think on how much "damage" it will dealt, enemy resistances, if it is on a range that can hurt(or even OHK) your own party, etc.
Talking about disappointment, one thing that i disliked and was a disappointment on M&M is on end game, once you get something who can make everything except top tier magic at very high level obsolete. Archers? Fighters? They will deal much less "DPS" than the (spoiler below), only an high level dark magician with certain expensive skills like Sharpmetal at CQB or Dragon's Breath can outDPS this, magic still can be useful since town portal, fly, day of protection, shared life, etc are still useful but it rends over 95% of weapons and spells in the game obsolete and make very hard enemies like titans into a cakewalk.
At least M&M VIII doesn't have it but is too easy.
Shrapmetal: Costs 30 spell points. Fires a blast of hot jagged metal in front of caster that damages any creatures that get in its way. Five metal fragments do damage equal to 6 plus 1-6 per skill point.
Expert: Five metal fragments are fired.
Master: Faster recovery rate. Seven fragments are fired.
Grandmaster: Fastest recovery rate. Nine fragments are fired.
http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/pc/mm7/magicmirror.shtml#mm19
9 Fragments, each one dealing 6 + 1~6 * 25(Dark Magic Level) in other words 6 + 25~150 per fragment or 31~156. This * 5 at expert level means 155~780 damage and on grand master level, can deal 1404. An Red Dragon have 1300 hp if i remember correctly. An assassin droid have 1080. For eradication i believe that grand mastery protection from magic can prevent it.
Nah its a game that isn't really bad but was by far and away the biggest let down I ever had.
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.
Ocarina of Time was a game I loved dearly, so dearly. Majora's Mask was at least an interesting experiment and I didn't like it as much but I recognised it for what it was and I still liked it.
I just didn't like Wind Waker. It was finding out that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and Cthulhu weren't real.
Its a wound that will never heal.
Mainly because it was not freaking finished...
Ultimately this convinced me to never buy a gaming magazine ever again except for an issue of Playstation magazine which had a full walkthrough for Final Fantasy IX b/c of the Chocobo Hot & Cold minigame.
What I'm trying to say here is that OoT was really disappointing.
This ruined Tyranny. Sure, have an amazing lore and an unique lore, but i honestly hate cooldown. Unless there are a valid justification for why i should use the same skill again aka "an healing spirit who needs to be reformed after being destroyed", cooldown are only a poor way to balance things. On D3 command golem skill have a 45 sec cooldown(can't see any reason). I din't liked Tyranny thanks not only to the long cooldowns but thanks to the insanely high damage resistance of enemies. I like kill and die quick. It makes fight more tense and immersive IMO. Oblivion was ruined for me thanks to that. On high level you will need tons of hits to kill enemies. Even with max STR and max weapon skill...
PS : I an not saying that Tyranny is bad. Is a good game. I just din't liked and got disappointed thanks to his mechanics.
Skill scaling with weapon on d3/torchlight/da:i/etc is silly too. Imagine in a movie/book. If there are an evil wizard like Saruman raising an undead army, he is defeated, retreat, pick an bigger and sharper axe and by no reason, his army becomes much stronger. It will be heavily criticized, break the immersion and become an meme. I wonder if the suspension of disbelief is bigger with games than with movies...
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One very action focused game who have mechanics that make sense is Dark Souls. Sure, there are some broken mechanics and exploits like for eg
But in general, game mechanics on DS are amazing.
- Most gear requirement and gear scaling makes sense except heavy bows requiring much more DEX and scaling poorly with STR. Longbows require ton of strength IRL
- Big pole-arms on CQB can "stuck" on walls
- Enemy resistances/immunities makes sense
- The combat animations are far more realistic than other games
- No cooldowns, the game limits powerful spells like Crystal soul spear by limiting casts/rest
- Gear have pros and cons, for example Tin Crystallization Catalyst is insanely powerful but cuts your casts/rest by half
- The armor/weapon design makes a lot of sense
- The combat too is much more realistic, much less overswing than other action games
- Leveling makes you stronger but not god-like
- (...)
Here a interesting video about armor/weapons on DSAn interesting comment about the video from InfernoPlus 4 years ago
That "silly nonsense" with the spinning around in a circle with a halberd is in the game for dealing with groups of enemies when you are getting overwhelmed or surrounded.
I'd also like to point out that most of the "ridiculous" weapons like the Abyss Greatsword front flip smash attack require what would be super human strength in real life. If you consider that it takes 16 str and 10 dex to wield a Claymore in 1 hand. Anything that takes over 20 str is basically like a super human in real life.
Just my 2 cents. It's a game after all.
I like that the Switch is pretty modest in terms of hardware and Nintendo don't participate in the economic insanity that their competition does, but they don't make games that make their systems worth buying any more.
And no, Breath of the Wild is the Zelda they should have made 6 years ago, when open world was a novelty and not overexposed and tired long before it actually was made. Nintendo used to push innovation, not chase other people's table scraps. Otherwise its barely better than Skyward Sword and fuck that game.
So you know what, I looked again at the title, its "biggest gaming disappointment" not "Most disappointing games" so I feel comfortable with changing that to Nintendo falling down a pit creatively and not climbing back out.
Anyway, i recently tested Dark Souls 2 and got disappointed. No, the game is not bad is just not good as the first one. Din't liked the changes on stamina system and the inconsistency with hitbox. Also the world design is not that good(not saying that is bad). If DS 1 is 9.5/10, DS 2 is a 8/10. Is not a bad game, but can be much better, And i never found DS1 hard tbh. Ornstein and Smough, probably the most famous DS "hard" boss, just took few Soul Spears and homing soulmass. I killed both in few minutes on my second try. Only Capra demon and Bed of Chaos are hard on DS1(used an exploit against Capra)
Nintendo is now for kids. With very few exceptions their best selling titles amount to something a 6 year old can pick up and play. Nintendo is following the McDonalds model and hooking people to the brand as young as possible. They get to release thr same types of games every year because their player base hasn’t experienced that game yet. Let’s go Pikachu/Eevee is a good example of that. Pokémon fans are going to buy the title no matter what because of brand loyalty, they just need to sell that loyalty to a new generation.
Zelda 2 has more "RPG elements" than any other Zelda, including levels and experience points but it took also aspects from platformers, of all things.
Generally speaking I think it may preferable to judge them on an individual basis.