"Unpopular Gaming Opinions"

[o.pwuaioc]

Action-RPGs and Ogre Battle 64 are the only good RPGs. I might have nostalgia for some of the old stuff, but RPGs are generally the equivalent of YA lit. If I wanted a story, I'd read a real author.

[drauch]

With the amount of roguelikes seemingly released daily nowadays, I could completely understand how anyone could have a negative opinion of them. Two were released as I typed this.

[copy-paster]

Action-RPGs are the only good RPGs. If I wanted a story, I'd read a real author.

Word. It's always weird to me how people always praise the story those oldschool turn-based JRPGs with fantasy/middle ages setting, despite the story follows the preset structure/has been done to death with all the cliches and stuff, it's always the same down to the "twists".

[Blinge]

get a room, nerds

[Vanguard]

Action-RPGs and Ogre Battle 64 are the only good RPGs. I might have nostalgia for some of the old stuff, but RPGs are generally the equivalent of YA lit. If I wanted a story, I'd read a real author.

Action RPGs are hardly the only gameplay-focused RPGs.

[Air Master Burst]

I always kinda liked the more tactical stuff like Front Mission and Shining Force

FFT/Disgaea type stuff is ok too I guess but I could never handle the grind.

[XoPachi]

With the amount of roguelikes seemingly released daily nowadays, I could completely understand how anyone could have a negative opinion of them. Two were released as I typed this.

You have no idea how sick to death I am of this fucking genre and similar procedurally generated crap. I can only stomach Monolith and GunFire Reborn. I'm over the rest of this genre forever.

[Blinge]

gunfire reborn is aggressively unfun

[Sima Tuna]

I tried project warlock 1 and thought it was shit.

[Air Master Burst]

Project Warlock looks and handles great but the enemy and level designs are incredibly uninspired. Still, it's just the one dude who made it, so hopefully he can afford to hire someone who understands that stuff for the sequel.

I think Dead Cells is just about the only action roguelike I enjoy, although there are some solid deckbuilders and turn-based ones floating around.

[WelshMegalodon]

Action-RPGs and Ogre Battle 64 are the only good RPGs. I might have nostalgia for some of the old stuff, but RPGs are generally the equivalent of YA lit. If I wanted a story, I'd read a real author.

You're assuming everyone plays RPGs for the story, which couldn't be farther from the truth. Even if we're only talking about JRPGs.

Putting together game-breaking builds in Final Fantasy is fun and hasn't stopped being fun.

[o.pwuaioc]

Action-RPGs and Ogre Battle 64 are the only good RPGs. I might have nostalgia for some of the old stuff, but RPGs are generally the equivalent of YA lit. If I wanted a story, I'd read a real author.

You're assuming everyone plays RPGs for the story, which couldn't be farther from the truth.

I don't assume everyone does, but it's a refrain I hear over and over again. But at least with turn-based classic JRPG mechanics, I couldn't be more bored with a gameplay style than that.

[WelshMegalodon]

Even turn-based menu combat can be engaging if the stakes are high and your tools are varied. I'm admittedly just going off Sumez's recommendation here, but have you tried Dragon Quest XI with Super Strong Enemies?

Word. It's always weird to me how people always praise the story

They praise the story because they played the game at the age of 10. Nintendo Hard is a thing for the very same reason.

In a roguelike, the biggest difference between a weak player and a strong player is what "the tools necessary to succeed" are. A novice can find Excalibur and still lose, while an expert can be saddled with a cursed -3 sword of suckitude and still win.

So would you say roguelikes are similar to fighting games in that respect?

[XoPachi]

You're assuming everyone plays RPGs for the story, which couldn't be farther from the truth. Even if we're only talking about JRPGs.

Not claiming this of anyone here, but it's crazy how many people I've run into who find this an unfathomable way to play them. JRPG's especially I don't even give their writing a chance anymore.
I've played a lot of JRPG's and never once have I enjoyed the plots or characters.

So now I just skip as much of everything I can to get to the game. And if it's a *fun* game I'll keep playing it. I play RPG's to get rich, figure out brutal end game bosses, make fun builds, and if the world layout is good enough, explore it. It's amazing how much game a lot of people skip over when talking about RPG's like they're just books.
"Oh you're skipping the point of the game not listening to the story! That's like 80% of the reason to play it!"
Funny, my DQ 11 file reads 130 hours and I sure replayed FF7R well over 6 times. Think I got some pretty good mileage for games where I have NO clue what's going on.

[Blinge]

i bet you couldn't finish a single book that's beyond hunger games tier young adult fiction

[Air Master Burst]

The only RPGs I play for "story" would be stuff like Fallout, where I can run around and see how drastically my actions can change the setting.

I mean, I did play FF6 and Phantasy Star for story back in the day, but I was a literal child, so...

[Volteccer_Jack]

In a roguelike, the biggest difference between a weak player and a strong player is what "the tools necessary to succeed" are. A novice can find Excalibur and still lose, while an expert can be saddled with a cursed -3 sword of suckitude and still win.

So would you say roguelikes are similar to fighting games in that respect?

I think you can draw the comparison across most genres. A skilled player will have a better understanding of the fundamentals of the game and quickly adapt to new tools, like an expert fighting game player picking random character select and still easily beating a beginner. The thing that differentiates roguelikes is that your set of tools changes mid-game in unpredictable ways, putting greater emphasis on that flexibility as the player is forced to continuously adapt to constantly changing circumstances.

[BIL]

In a roguelike, the biggest difference between a weak player and a strong player is what "the tools necessary to succeed" are. A novice can find Excalibur and still lose, while an expert can be saddled with a cursed -3 sword of suckitude and still win.

So would you say roguelikes are similar to fighting games in that respect?

I think you can draw the comparison across most genres. A skilled player will have a better understanding of the fundamentals of the game and quickly adapt to new tools, like an expert fighting game player picking random character select and still easily beating a beginner. The thing that differentiates roguelikes is that your set of tools changes mid-game in unpredictable ways, putting greater emphasis on that flexibility as the player is forced to continuously adapt to constantly changing circumstances.

Definitely. For my money, a well-balanced volatility is one of the finest assets a game can possess.

[Sima Tuna]

The thing about roguelikes, strategy games and rpgs is that there's no execution barrier, unlike in fighting games.

Fighting games, shmups, beat em ups... These games have an execution barrier. Even if you know what to do, the question is if you can actually do it while playing. Even something basic like the infinite in Final Fight, or the backjump. Can you execute those moves perfectly while in the middle of a real run?

With roguelikes and turn based games, there's really no execution barrier. Sure, there are some speedrunners who do sub-pixel shenanigans to get better times, but that's not even remotely required to beat the games or be good at them. With a shmup, you might need to be able to consistently execute some very tight micro dodging just to squeeze out a clear. Or you might need to nail your infinite combos in a beat em up if you want to have a chance of locking down the hardest boss encounters for your clear.

My source for this is I've played a shitload of rpgs, strategy games and roguelikes. Way more hours than I have of arcade genres. The difference between a bad player and a good player in a strategy game? It's knowledge. Knowledge and then maybe a little bit of risk mitigation, since RNG is always a factor. How you manage that risk and when you decide to push the RNG is often a telltale sign of your skill. But you're never going to ask yourself "damn, do I have the execution ability to throw out that Undo Grass when I'm about to die in Shiren the Wanderer?!?" With turn-based games, you have as much time as you need to make decisions. Even in ATB systems, if they have a pause button then the ATB may as well not exist. You can always take your time to think, and the execution is as simple as scrolling and clicking. If you remember to take things slow and to consider your options, and you have the knowledge base available, you can play very well without any execution ability whatsoever.

The volatility of roguelikes breaks down after x number of runs. You begin to see how each choice branches off and what the likely ways are you can get fucked over by the game. But it really depends if we're talking about traditional roguelikes or if you mean roguelite action games. Roguelite action games do have an execution barrier.

[Lethe]

The volatility of roguelikes breaks down after x number of runs

Funnily enough so do real-time games because it's all pattern recognition and humans are much better at that than at memorizing slabs of data. The joy of turn-based games is having the option to play fast, which is why I'll resent any roguelike without a run key, or any RPG with dumb long animations/transitions. I'm sure I could shitclear Angband every time if I made every run take 50 hours but that's boring, let's try to do it in 5.

The mechanical-tactile experience is the essential stuff of "action"; execution is a powerful facet of that largely for its ability to create identity and definition. That doesn't mean it's the only factor.

[Volteccer_Jack]

The volatility of roguelikes breaks down after x number of runs. You begin to see how each choice branches off and what the likely ways are you can get fucked over by the game.

Seeing "the likely ways you can get fucked over" isn't the end but the beginning of the development of a player's skill in a roguelike. Until you know all the most common threats you're barely even playing the game. The most interesting decisions in roguelikes always involve the variable of known potential threats. Do you weaken yourself against threats Y and Z, just to improve your odds against threat X, when for all you know threat X might never even appear? Often that's the correct decision, but you can't even begin to judge when it is or isn't unless you are aware of the nature of threats X and Y. Simple knowledge is a small part of the game, the meat of a roguelike is in making judgement calls based on incomplete information; consistently successful play is more intuited than calculated.

Whether the volatility of a roguelike breaks down is largely dependent on the individual game, and I'd list it as one of the criteria by which to judge the quality of a roguelike. The top Slay the Spire players have thousands of hours logged, playing the game as essentially a full-time job for years on end, and you can still see a high degree of volatility when you watch them play. On the other hand a weaker game like Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup dries up very quickly once you wrap your head around what it takes to win in that game. I don't recommend playing DCSS.

Action 'roguelites' run the risk of falling into the worst of both worlds, lacking both the precarious balance of a good roguelike and the handcrafted scenarios of a good action game, leaving a bland forgettable paste of a game. IMO a procedurally generated action game is only worthwhile as long as its roguelike aspects are strong; otherwise it's just a normal action game with lazy repetitive level design, and if I wanted one of those I would play the GBA Castlevania titles (zing).

[Air Master Burst]

The top Slay the Spire players have thousands of hours logged, playing the game as essentially a full-time job for years on end, and you can still see a high degree of volatility when you watch them play.

This seems insane to me because it's not even that complex of a deckbuilder, but then again I've been playing tabletop card games of equal or greater complexity for decades. Like, you just build an engine. That's it! You don't even do anything cool with it! I knocked out about 70 hours and beat pretty much everything there was to beat at the time, but after playing stuff like Netrunner or Fights In Tight Spaces (or even Metal Gear Acid) it just seems a little uninspired.

Then again, Netrunner is literally the single best game ever made in any medium, so perhaps that's not a fair comparison.

[XoPachi]

I just don't like Psikyo STG's. :{

[Volteccer_Jack]

What seems insane to me is calling StS uninspired and in the same breath praising one of its many knock-offs. Slay the Spire was so influential it birthed a whole subgenre, while Fights in Tight Spaces is a mediocre Slay the Spire copycat stapled to a mediocre Into the Breach copycat.

It's not complexity that makes Slay the Spire stand out, almost the opposite, it's the absence of unnecessary complexity. Every enemy poses a very distinct threat, and every card and relic has a very distinct function, so that every choice is meaningful. Any card that makes you stronger against one enemy invariably puts you at greater risk against another enemy. It's that careful balance that gives the game longevity. The majority of StS-likes, at least of those I've played, suffer from bloated design, needless fluff and redundancy, which leads to a dumbing-down of most decisions and a lot more one-size-fits-all solutions to problems. As a result, they're much much easier than Slay the Spire, and often quickly degenerate into flowchart play. I include FiTS in that category. I won my first ever run of FiTS, and much to my disappointment none of the difficulty options do much of anything beside remove the undo button, which I didn't need to begin with so lmao. Even the hardest difficulty, Purist, only necessitates the use of movement cards as part of the deck. You can reliably build the same sort of deck on every run and be very confident that it will solve all your problems. The final mission puts up a small fight, but too little too late. I was bored by the game a few runs in. By contrast even the best Slay the Spire players, with 6000+ hours spent playing the game, can only manage about a 75% winrate when attempting the highest difficulty TLB, and regularly find themselves using bizarre decks in order to succeed.

I liked Metal Gear Acid quite a bit, much more than FiTS, but it's a very different game, and it has its own issues. You have total control over the contents of your deck, your hand is retained between turns and dead cards can be spent on movement, so no single card or draw can ever have much importance unless it is something OP like Ingram+. The card game aspect of MGA is honestly pretty simple and perfunctory, it's mostly a turn-based MGS game with a thin veneer of cards over top.

[Air Master Burst]

I never said Slay the Spire was uninspired, I just don't understand how someone can still enjoy building the same engines that many times. I guess it's lack of competition, because most of the other digital deckbuilders I've tried actually are pretty uninspired.

Fights in Tight Spaces at least gives me something engaging to do with the engines I'm building, and forces me to think in ways I really haven't before. Beating it on your first run is impressive, but if you mean that as some sort of indictment, keep in mind I crushed my first StS run. Not all of the preset decks are created equal and a couple are fairly difficult to win with. There's also a draft mode which makes things much more interesting. The only thing holding FiTS back is how long it takes to unlock the full card pool.

Don't get it twisted, by digital standards StS is a top-tier deckbuilder! But it doesn't really offer much I haven't already done a bunch on tabletop with stuff like Dominion, Ascension, Mystic Vale, the Arkham Horror LCG... and those are just the really big names with tons of expansions each that I've actually played, there are tons of deeper niche titles.

StS is definitely cheaper than tabletop deckbuilders, but it's just not on the same level as the best of them.

ETA: and yes I realize my standards for card games might be kind of absurd, I'm a total Netrunner snob who finds MTG a bit too simple to really engage me much (granted I quit around Invasion so maybe it got better)

[Blinge]

repost, but..

[XoPachi]

Days of Ruin absolutely butchered the aesthetic appeal of Advance Wars. Completely regressive, bland, and tired art style. Cant even remember the characters.
None of that interesting use of shapes where characters have these bold silhouettes and look swiftly drawn as if in one stroke.

And my cute scrunchy tanks are gone.

[Mischief Maker]

Days of Ruin absolutely butchered the aesthetic appeal of Advance Wars. Completely regressive, bland, and tired art style. Cant even remember the characters.
None of that interesting use of shapes where characters have these bold silhouettes and look swiftly drawn as if in one stroke.

And my cute scrunchy tanks are gone.

This is an unpopular opinion???

[XoPachi]

This is an unpopular opinion???

I feel like I've always seen people praise it's new style as a "maturation" of the series and "much needed change of pace".

[HELLEPHANT]

I don't like iframe dodges, they homogenize the way you avoid enemy's attacks more often than not. They're fine on special moves and such but not as your main evasive maneuver!

This mostly applies to 2d games, where they seem to be cropping up a lot more recently. I'm more willing to accept them in 3d action games especially when they're less forgiving (ie: Dark Souls games)