Bad parts in great games.

[Bohandas]

In Fallout 3, which is otherwise a great game, there's a scripted scene in the DLC The Pitt where the player character randomly surrenders to the antagonists, regardless of how much you were kicking their butts a second before. That always bothered me.

[Durkoala]

The Epic Battle Fantasy series (a couple of indie turn based RPGs that very definitely start on the 3rd game, why do you ask) has delightful damage stacking abilities, elements mean something, and on the whole there are many options to fight stuff that is all delightfully effective instead of being forced into one or two options and being stuck there.

Cripes, the final areas have too many fights. They're amazing and cool, but at the same time you could halve the number of mandatory battles and aside from changing the Exp scaling, nothing would be lost. Temple of Godcat has a ridiculous amount of fights, Rapture has even more given the setup. They're lovely, lovely games...but playing them through more than once just gets tiring from that one area.

Glad to meet somebody else who knows EBF!

I'd also like to nominate the beginning sections of 5, where you have two party members but no equipment beyond what they're wearing, in a game that revolves around tailoring your equipment to each enemy. This goes on for far too long until around the time you meet Natalie, which is about one and a half areas later.

Also, to be fair, you really need all the Exp you can get in 4, as fighting everything in the game once still leaves you several levels lower than the final boss with several skills still unlearned. Having extra fights lying around is welcome in a way.

[Seppl]

Regarding choice, or rather the illusion thereof, in KOTOR: Is that really a bad part of the game? The game itself is about experiencing the story and making those choices while immersed in the story. You, the player, can tell that the choices are fake because you have played the game multiple times and know all the branching points of the script. But for your character the choices are real and matter, and the game is supposed to be about "what would my character do?" and not "what is the optimal gameplay choice to achieve ending X?".

[Velaryon]

In Fallout 3, which is otherwise a great game, there's a scripted scene in the DLC The Pitt where the player character randomly surrenders to the antagonists, regardless of how much you were kicking their butts a second before. That always bothered me.

Haven't played Fallout 3 myself, but that kind of thing is a personal pet peeve of mine in games. I hate when I win a fight only for the cutscene afterward to tell me I lost.

[Psyren]

As is usually the case, there's a trope for that.

Dragon Age: The Fade.

Oh god, the Fade...

Play on PC so you can get the "Skip the Fade" mod it even grabs all the stat boosts for you.

[Gnoman]

This was mentioned before, but Blighttown in the first Dark Souls game was torture. I don't actually mind the physical design of the level - rickety structures that you have to take great care fighting on as you slowly descend to the bottom is a neat idea. The poison marsh at the bottom, I can deal with. The toxic dart throwers? Too many of them, but at least they don't respawn.

That horrible green filter? I can't imagine who thought that was a good idea. It blurs details, makes it hard to spot enemies in the distance, and tanks the framerate (which was already the slightly low 30FPS) in the original console releases. There is nothing good about it.


The fact that Blighttown comes right after the most obnoxious boss (yes, I think Capra Demon is worse than Bed Of Chaos) in the game doesn't help.

[Vinyadan]

In Fallout 3, which is otherwise a great game, there's a scripted scene in the DLC The Pitt where the player character randomly surrenders to the antagonists, regardless of how much you were kicking their butts a second before. That always bothered me.

Vanilla FO3's ending. Damn, that was bad. Not for the ending per se, but the way in which the world had to bend over at the last second for it to be forced on the player.

[Kish]

[spoiler=Wallpost with a few spoilers]This is kinda coming from the perspective that the point of doing the right thing is "the state of being a good person" rather than "trying to make the world better" (absolutist vs consequentialist, if you prefer).

Need to stop you right there, I'm afraid. No, it's coming from the perspective that the light side of the Force is "the state of being someone who follows the Jedi code." It's consistent throughout the game, and mostly aligns with morality but that's still not actually what it's about:

Spoiler: KotOR

Show

even if you're dealing with a gleeful serial killer like Bendak Starkiller or Mandalorian raiders, choosing violence as a solution is Dark. It relates to Dark Side and Light Side powers because...that's what it is. You don't have an alignment in the D&D sense. You have which side of the Force you're closer to.

What annoyed me, was that the one time I played Dark Side, I had no option to uncork a speech on Mission about how my rule would make the galaxy better for everyone. That Vulkar lieutenant on Taris could totally snow her, but my options were limited to "kill her and Zaalbar" or "Force Persuade Zaalbar to kill her," because the game wanted no ambiguity that I'd chosen the evil ending.

Oh and as far as the outcasts go: I'm fairly certain that later media has clarified that they did in fact find the Promised Land, did in fact survive the bombing, and follow up with trying to make a very rough living on the blasted planet. But that's very much not the impression I got playing through the game.

Don't know what to tell you. I sure did, the very first time I played it, long before even KotOR 2 was a whisper.

[Cikomyr2]

The X-COM series - Cruise ships in X-COM 2 (The '95 one, not the recent one). Aliens will get stuck easily so you have to go room to room in a huge multi-level ship and check every closet and lavatory for that one alien you missed. Really.

I thought there still being cruise ships keeping endangering their passengers way after it came obvious that there were aliens attacking ships was really unrealistic. Nobody would keep cruise ships going in the face of death.

I changed my mind.

[Thragka]

Yeah, I got Dark Souls for the first time in January, really really loved it for the first few months, and now haven't touched it in about a month because I can't get up that ledge with those knights shooting giant arrows at me.

[Wraith]

Haven't played Fallout 3 myself, but that kind of thing is a personal pet peeve of mine in games. I hate when I win a fight only for the cutscene afterward to tell me I lost.

Mass Effect 3 was this, for me.

In principle I like the concept of an antagonist like Kai Leng - a dude heavily rebuilt, like Commander Shepard was, and sees himself as our rival, but every time we clash he gets beaten up and has to run off to get MORE upgrades in order to try and beat us. That's fine, it explains the escalation and gives the antagonist a reason to run off rather than us just kill him and forget about it.

In practice, the fights with him were arbitrary bullet-sponges. He soaks an utterly ludicrous amount of damage - way, way more than makes sense within the context of the mechanics of the universe - and is otherwise pulverised in seconds, because they're not difficult fights and the player is at a level where fighting a ninja while armed with a miniaturised tactical nuke is just comedic.

And yet, in the cut-scene thereafter, Kai Leng isn't even out of breath or his armour even dirty. I just ANNIHILATED the guy and everything within a 20ft radius, why doesn't it LOOK like it? He even throws an armoured gunship into one fight in order to distract you while he wanders around elsewhere - A Gunship!? I wrecked a gunship as a boss-fight in the previous game, 40 hours and 35 levels ago, why is my character treating this guy even remotely as a threat and why aren't the hundreds of bullets that I'm jackhammering into his face doing anything!?

[Gnoman]

Yeah, I got Dark Souls for the first time in January, really really loved it for the first few months, and now haven't touched it in about a month because I can't get up that ledge with those knights shooting giant arrows at me.

The trick that worked best for me is to just hoof it. They don't lead you very well, and if you're moving fast enough you can get to melee range after only one or two shots.

[KatsOfLoathing]

Crystal Peak in Hollow Knight. Lots of enemies that are either really annoying to kill or straight-up invincible without burning Soul, multiple instant-death platforming sections that punish bad timing in a way nothing else in the game (except maybe the White Palace) does, and the whole way the level is set up makes it really hard to navigate (Especially with all the conveyor belts preventing backtracking). The boss fight is also just kinda... there. It doesn't really add much to the game and doesn't have any cool lore attached to it like a lot of the game's bosses do.

I do dig the background music, though.

[Dienekes]

Is it cheap to say SC2 is a great game, except for just about all of the story.

[Sermil]

Oh, oh, oh, I have one: Persona 4: Golden and how it treats Hanako Ohtani.

P4G is set in a Japanese high school. Most of the characters are treated with nuance and sensitivity. They're not perfect and have some real flaws, but there's some sympathy from the game, from the authors towards those flaws.

And then there's Hanako. Hanako is one of your fellow students. And pretty much her defining trait is that she's overweight. Very overweight.

Worse, every time she's in a scene, you get the sense that the game is laughing at her, that the authors are laughing at her. "Oh, ha, ha, look at the fat girl who thinks she can get a date! She thinks she deserves love too! Isn't that funny?" "Oh, ha, ha, she sat on a moped and it broke! Hilarious!".

It would be annoying but kinda realistic if it was just the other students shunning her -- that's unpleasant but it's high school and I certainly saw things like that happen in real life. What really gets me is that game itself loses all sympathy and nuance towards her; it doesn't see her as a real human being, just a "fat girl".

Every time there was a scene with her in it, I just cringed until it was over.

(There's another scene that bothers a lot of people -- where your friend Yosuke is saying some pretty homophobic things to another friend Kanji, along the lines of "Oh, no, I have to sleep in the same tent on the camping trip!". I thought Yosuke was being a jerk but the scene didn't bother me as much because I've seen that sort of "performative gay panic" from so many other high school boys that it felt real. I do wish there was a dialogue option like "Oh, stop being an ass, Yosuke", though.)

[Rynjin]

Compare/contrast how another Japanese game treats a fat girl named Hanako: Yakuza 4. What a good character.

[danzibr]

Crystal Peak in Hollow Knight. Lots of enemies that are either really annoying to kill or straight-up invincible without burning Soul, multiple instant-death platforming sections that punish bad timing in a way nothing else in the game (except maybe the White Palace) does, and the whole way the level is set up makes it really hard to navigate (Especially with all the conveyor belts preventing backtracking). The boss fight is also just kinda... there. It doesn't really add much to the game and doesn't have any cool lore attached to it like a lot of the game's bosses do.

I do dig the background music, though.

Huh. I liked Crystal Peak. To each their own.

If there’s anything I didn’t like about Hollow Knight... I’d say the grim troupe. Feels like it didn’t match the atmosphere of the base game.

Is it cheap to say SC2 is a great game, except for just about all of the story.

wuuuuuuut Star Control 2 is great *because* of its story.

[Rodin]

The trick that worked best for me is to just hoof it. They don't lead you very well, and if you're moving fast enough you can get to melee range after only one or two shots.

The problem for me was always the knight that blocks your way. It requires you to be good at parrying, which I'm not. It also requires you to have a shield that is capable of parrying, or a weapon that is capable of attacking in between his attacks. Or kicking him, which is very finicky and often won't register.

I've played the various Souls games enough that it's rare for me to get walled on a non-boss portion of the game no matter what build I am. This particular bit still gives me trouble. Sometimes it goes well and I get through first try. Other times I wind up with a dozen attempts before I finally manage to force the second knight off the ledge.

[Thragka]

Regarding the Anor Londo knights: which is 'first' and which is 'second' for you? I've always been going for the one on the right first, since it's more clear on screen as you climb the final ramp. Maybe I should try going left first, though.

[Whoracle]

[snip] before I finally manage to force the second knight off the ledge.

Why the 2nd knight (the one on the left), though? You only have to deal with him if you want whatever item it is he's guarding. He can't hit you once you're near the other knight (un the right, blocking the path forward).

I mean, yes, the arrow knights suck mightily, but still...

[GloatingSwine]

The problem for me was always the knight that blocks your way. It requires you to be good at parrying, which I'm not. It also requires you to have a shield that is capable of parrying, or a weapon that is capable of attacking in between his attacks. Or kicking him, which is very finicky and often won't register.

I've played the various Souls games enough that it's rare for me to get walled on a non-boss portion of the game no matter what build I am. This particular bit still gives me trouble. Sometimes it goes well and I get through first try. Other times I wind up with a dozen attempts before I finally manage to force the second knight off the ledge.

Ah, you mean the True Final Boss of Dark Souls. (So called because if you're going for a platinum trophy he's the last thing you have to fight).

There's a very specific place you can stand on the ramp up to them that means you can shoot them but their shots hit the railing.

[Gnoman]

The problem for me was always the knight that blocks your way. It requires you to be good at parrying, which I'm not. It also requires you to have a shield that is capable of parrying, or a weapon that is capable of attacking in between his attacks. Or kicking him, which is very finicky and often won't register.

I've played the various Souls games enough that it's rare for me to get walled on a non-boss portion of the game no matter what build I am. This particular bit still gives me trouble. Sometimes it goes well and I get through first try. Other times I wind up with a dozen attempts before I finally manage to force the second knight off the ledge.

I've always found that if you dodge just right as you reach the ledge, the knight that blocks progress will switch to melee and charge off the edge at you. This frees you to kill the other one if you want the shiny, or simply proceed to the bonfire.

[Dienekes]

wuuuuuuut Star Control 2 is great *because* of its story.

My apologies. StarCraft 2. Most specifically Legacy of the Void.

[Keltest]

My apologies. StarCraft 2. Most specifically Legacy of the Void.

I will hear no blasphemy against Alarak. Crap on the epilogue all you want, but Legacy was great.

[Dienekes]

I will hear no blasphemy against Alarak. Crap on the epilogue all you want, but Legacy was great.

Alarack is an alright character that seems amazing because the only other vaguely interesting character died before Alarack showed up.

[Rodin]

Why the 2nd knight (the one on the left), though? You only have to deal with him if you want whatever item it is he's guarding. He can't hit you once you're near the other knight (un the right, blocking the path forward).

Brain fart on my part. I meant to write "the knight" but was thinking about the last time I had to do that section where I did the unorthodox strategy of going left and fighting the second knight first. It just happened to be easier for the particular build I was using (a Solaire cosplay) to remove that guy first and then take my time dispatching The Guardian Of Anor Londo.

My apologies. StarCraft 2. Most specifically Legacy of the Void.

I thought the story for Wings of Liberty was pretty good. It was a big step up over Brood War. Then came Heart of the Swarm where the story and gameplay were forgettable enough that I didn't even notice when Legacy of the Void came out.

[Aeson]

I thought the story for Wings of Liberty was pretty good. It was a big step up over Brood War.

Wings of Liberty has a serviceable story, perhaps even a decent one by video game standards, if taken in isolation, but it has significant issues when taken as a continuation of the story of the series it's part of - most notably, the Raynor-Kerrigan love plot enormously expands upon something that's barely if at all there in the original games and turns it into something that Raynor's still moping over four years later while brushing over Kerrigan's betrayals and the murder of Fenix during the Brood War.

There's also more minor issues, like how Hansen's colony is apparently fine if you oppose the Protoss purge of the planet but zerg-infested if you tell the Protoss you'll purge them yourself, or how there's not actually any urgency to any of the 'emergency' calls you receive asking for help for those people, or how helping a Dominion black ops agent take down one of your allies and then letting more Dominion black ops agents onto your ship is apparently supposed to be a reasonable decision when you're the Dominion's Public Enemy Number One.

[Dienekes]

Wings of Liberty has a serviceable story, perhaps even a decent one by video game standards, if taken in isolation, but it has significant issues when taken as a continuation of the story of the series it's part of - most notably, the Raynor-Kerrigan love plot enormously expands upon something that's barely if at all there in the original games and turns it into something that Raynor's still moping over four years later while brushing over Kerrigan's betrayals and the murder of Fenix during the Brood War.

There's also more minor issues, like how Hansen's colony is apparently fine if you oppose the Protoss purge of the planet but zerg-infested if you tell the Protoss you'll purge them yourself, or how there's not actually any urgency to any of the 'emergency' calls you receive asking for help for those people, or how helping a Dominion black ops agent take down one of your allies and then letting more Dominion black ops agents onto your ship is apparently supposed to be a reasonable decision when you're the Dominion's Public Enemy Number One.

Pretty much agree with Aeson here.

My issue is pretty much, that I loved the SC1-BW storyline because it had interesting characters but the focus was predominantly on the war and politics of the Koprulu Sector. Sure, Jim and Kerrigan had "a thing" but it was largely secondary to the overthrow of the Terran government and the rise of Mengsk. The overmind was an expansionist alien virus that wished to consume. And the Protoss were far more focused on surviving those aliens while dealing with their own internal racial divisions. And BW doubled down on that, the villains are the UED trying to expand into the sector themselves, which was then taken over by the true main villain as we got to play the rise of the Queen Bitch of the Universe.

Sure, the plot needed a handwave at a few points. It wasn't high art. But I was definitely invested in seeing these people vying for power.

The new series has two games that are almost completely focused around the Jim/Kerrigan romance, which I never cared for.
We get the Protoss game that sticks out like a sore thumb, that pretty much removes all the politicking to replace it with a generic evil overlord god thingamabob and a tedious end of the world prophecy. Which in turn stripped out all the character from the Protoss as a people. They're all just boring with the only exceptions being Alarack who is basically just campy, but at least it sounds like the voice actor is having fun. And Zeratul who honestly I'm not certain was actually an interesting character so much as I still liked him from the first games.

And then at the end of the Protoss' own game, they're not even allowed to be badass heroes. Hell, in the epilogue the "ultimate being" created doesn't even have any Protoss in them. It's just Kerrigan with xel'naga. Who apparently got turned from these creepy kinda evil forebearer race to some mystic enlightenment weirdos.

And then it ends going back to the Jim/Kerrigan romance. Stop. You already had two whole games to deal with this. No more.

I did not like it.

[Tvtyrant]

Pretty much agree with Aeson here.

My issue is pretty much, that I loved the SC1-BW storyline because it had interesting characters but the focus was predominantly on the war and politics of the Koprulu Sector. Sure, Jim and Kerrigan had "a thing" but it was largely secondary to the overthrow of the Terran government and the rise of Mengsk. The overmind was an expansionist alien virus that wished to consume. And the Protoss were far more focused on surviving those aliens while dealing with their own internal racial divisions. And BW doubled down on that, the villains are the UED trying to expand into the sector themselves, which was then taken over by the true main villain as we got to play the rise of the Queen Bitch of the Universe.

Sure, the plot needed a handwave at a few points. It wasn't high art. But I was definitely invested in seeing these people vying for power.

The new series has two games that are almost completely focused around the Jim/Kerrigan romance, which I never cared for.
We get the Protoss game that sticks out like a sore thumb, that pretty much removes all the politicking to replace it with a generic evil overlord god thingamabob and a tedious end of the world prophecy. Which in turn stripped out all the character from the Protoss as a people. They're all just boring with the only exceptions being Alarack who is basically just campy, but at least it sounds like the voice actor is having fun. And Zeratul who honestly I'm not certain was actually an interesting character so much as I still liked him from the first games.

And then at the end of the Protoss' own game, they're not even allowed to be badass heroes. Hell, in the epilogue the "ultimate being" created doesn't even have any Protoss in them. It's just Kerrigan with xel'naga. Who apparently got turned from these creepy kinda evil forebearer race to some mystic enlightenment weirdos.

And then it ends going back to the Jim/Kerrigan romance. Stop. You already had two whole games to deal with this. No more.

I did not like it.

I loved Heart of the Swarm tbh. I liked just ruthlessly accumulating power until you wipe out the heart of mankind in a massive war, the Raynor stuff felt like an aside.

[Sloanzilla]

Wait....who considers Nevewinter Nights 2 a great game?

I actually think it is underrated- Chapters 2 and 3 are fun! You just have to slog through Chapter 1.