So, do you feel that Japanese gaming is back?

[Steamflogger Boss]

Victor Vran (Mixing action and RPG almost always works to the detriment of one or both genres, but VV is the one game I've played that's greater than the sum of its constituent genres)
King Arthur (A really classy Total War meets text adventure game that nails the feel of Boorman's film. Stay away from the sequel, tho.)
Eador: Masters of the Broken World (Gameplay-wise the best fantasy 4X EVAR)

Eador and Victor Vran are great.

King Arthur looks interesting.

[Marc]

Right, you're going to have to explain how games like Prey or Dishonored 2 or Wolfenstein: The New Order or Fortnite are "sterilized and homogenized"

Kinda funny how all those games just so happen to be first person. And involve guns. Funny coincidence, that.

It's almost like you yourself listed more genuine genre variety among those jp cliches, compared to the spectrum of first person action/adventure in those four titles.

Anyway, I have no interest in those game, cept maybe Prey because System Shock is cool. And I think I'd rather stick with System Shock.

Those three games have literally nothing in common, other than their viewpoint.

Lets be honest, both JPN and Western gaming has always had their fair share of shit. Always have, always will. If you'd have asked, I'd have said I'm playing pretty much JPN only at the moment, then I realised that 90% of the indies I like are predominantly Western so go figure. I have literally zero interest in COD/Halo/Assassins/Fifa etc but I'm sure if you're into that sort of thing, some of them are enjoyable. I actually bought Titanfall 2 because I heard the campaign was decent, and traded it after some three hours.

Oh wait, Forza Horizon 4 - looking forward to that.

[kitten]

depends entirely on what you mean by "japanese gaming"

do you mean arcade-minded and hyper-focused action games with ideal pacing, length, and emphasis on honed play? no. that is dead. that is very long dead. sometimes something will look like it.

do you mean stuff that sells well? i guess it's back. maybe it never left? i know for certain that i don't care.

there are a few mentioned games in the OP that i like but they're very far divorced from what i consider traditional japanese gaming. maybe the new dragon quest is still an honest-to-god jrpg, though.

[neorichieb1971]

I cannot tell the difference between East and West anymore. I used to think Japanese games were really colorful and had surreal heads or scenery. But nowadays everything is realistic no matter where its from.

I won't buy a nextgen console next time around. I only have less than 10 games for the PS4. I'm certainly not buying a console that is just going to give "more of the same". Graphics don't do nothing for me since PS2/Dreamcast/Gamecube. I might buy a switch though, it continues to make my head turn and although I haven't bought one, I keep thinking I need one.

[Steamflogger Boss]

I cannot tell the difference between East and West anymore. I used to think Japanese games were really colorful and had surreal heads or scenery. But nowadays everything is realistic no matter where its from.

I won't buy a nextgen console next time around. I only have less than 10 games for the PS4. I'm certainly not buying a console that is just going to give "more of the same". Graphics don't do nothing for me since PS2/Dreamcast/Gamecube. I might buy a switch though, it continues to make my head turn and although I haven't bought one, I keep thinking I need one.

Switch is awesome. I get that many people will just pirate but it has lots of good old shmups at a reasonable price digitally.

These days almost everything makes it to PC, PS4 and XBone are basically just locked PCs. One of the main reasons I bought a PS4 was the Yakuza franchise and that's now almost entirely pointless because they are doing PC ports. Playing them sooner is the only benefit with PS4. At least with the Switch, it's got awesome Nintendo exclusives. Plus the portable factor is nice.

[Ed Oscuro]

A contrarian opinion on the future of "Japanese gaming:"

Monster Hunter World's development was influenced by insistent Capcom divisions outside Japan to be "more global." Whatever that means, it seems fair to say this is the best-received iteration of the series to date. The fear in Capcom Japan was that changes to appeal to a broad market would jeopardize core Japanese sales; a reasonable worry given past happenings. At the same time, I can't help but be reminded of the increasingly discredited Hollywood mantra "dumb it down for the masses" finally starting to face serious opposition. The easy takeaway here is that such concerns about "appeal" (code for dumbing down?) are overblown.

At the same time, the future of gridiron football in the US looks rather shaky with the concerns about safety. Even the present of the sport is offputting, as the President of the United States, certain former business partners, certain team owners, and political groups have conspired to create a political situation that the sport's commissioner has not handled deftly. The appeal of football was often that it was a "truly American thing," but these days being American apparently includes being huffy and distraught about things that probably could be easily ignored. While some people will get extra yardage out of the ID politics aspect of football, for everybody else it is becoming a depressing reminder of strife in the country.

[Squire Grooktook]

Right, you're going to have to explain how games like Prey or Dishonored 2 or Wolfenstein: The New Order or Fortnite are "sterilized and homogenized"

Kinda funny how all those games just so happen to be first person. And involve guns. Funny coincidence, that.

It's almost like you yourself listed more genuine genre variety among those jp cliches, compared to the spectrum of first person action/adventure in those four titles.

Anyway, I have no interest in those game, cept maybe Prey because System Shock is cool. And I think I'd rather stick with System Shock.

Those three games have literally nothing in common, other than their viewpoint.

...and being boring!

[Obscura]

Those three games have literally nothing in common, other than their viewpoint.

...and being boring!

You've already stated that you haven't played Prey, and thus can't accurately speak to it being boring. How many of Dishonored (1 or 2, I'll be generous), Wolf TNO, and Fortnite have you played? Also zero?

[Squire Grooktook]

Those three games have literally nothing in common, other than their viewpoint.

...and being boring!

You've already stated that you haven't played Prey, and thus can't accurately speak to it being boring. How many of Dishonored (1 or 2, I'll be generous), Wolf TNO, and Fortnite have you played? Also zero?

If I could play less than zero, I would.

[kitten]

gonna go to bat for squire here and say those games are boring while having played them (a marginal amount of dishonored, prey to its ending on hard mode as well as most of its optional content, and wolfenstein: TNO on death incarnate to a platinum trophy). they are homogenized. they are samey.

if you're not invested in the cinematic narrative of any of the three (and imho the narratives are worthless), they're all definite glides toward a singularity point of combination stealth/action/collecting that features almost nothing interesting or meaningful to distinguish it from its ilk. there is almost no meaning in their mechanical expression except as a vehicle to deeply similar and deeply repetitive player empowerment.

[qmish]

I don't play dishonoured for stealth, I play it for all those fun kills you can do many ways

Thief 1-2 is for stealth (reboot sux..)

[Obscura]

I play Dishonored 1 for stealth and Dishonored 2 for zany kills. DH1 stealth is great, on par with T1 and better than T2. Height = shadows, but as a mechanical conceit, height ends up working better...

Kitten, if you're calling Prey of all things "player empowerment", then you're casting the terms so widely that it loses all meanings. Yeah, the game that encourages you to just run away from more dangerous enemies unless you do a particular thing that locks you into a worse ending sure is empowerment!

[Squire Grooktook]

Thanks Kitten <3


I am technically a western game developer (in my basement), so any distaste I show for western games is obviously a generalization. In general, they make genres that do not appeal to me in the slightest, but there are exceptions, obviously. Furi was my game of the year 2016, and while it's very technically a French-Japanese collaboration, it definitely counts. I wouldn't call it indie either since the production was clearly above "five college students working part time".

The western AAA market though...I have not bought a game that qualifies since 2007, and nothing I see on the horizon remotely tempts me.

As far as I've seen, there is certainly no room in those productions - with the eye-popping amount of money being blown on each title - for someone to say "Hey, let's make a love-it-or-hate-it game that only a small niche will truly cherish!". That kind of risk/taking and passion towards a singular, refined subject matter (which comprises almost all my favorite games) is utterly anathema when you have to pay a small island population worth of developers and marketers. Most of my thoughts on the matter echo Vanguard's.

Keep in mind there is a spectrum here. Something like Dishonored or Prey seem to express more then whatever Ubisoft is shitting out weekly, even if they aren't totally free from those chains and they still aren't to my taste.

Anyway, Indie games and the Japanese certainly have their own creative and production problems which can be cheaply mocked. No one is debating that. But as I said, at that level of production, such a statement as the above is less likely to meet with thunderous laughter (followed by "your fired"). So there's at least potential.

[Obscura]

As far as I've seen, there is certainly no room in those productions - with the eye-popping amount of money being blown on each title - for someone to say "Hey, let's make a love-it-or-hate-it game that only a small niche will truly cherish!". That kind of risk/taking and passion towards a singular, refined subject matter (which comprises almost all my favorite games) is utterly anathema when you pay have to pay a small island population worth of developers and marketers.

Except that's exactly what Alien: Isolation, Dishonored 1 and 2, Prey, XCOM Enemy Unknown, Stellaris, and Elex, just to name a few, are.

That's not to say that all of the above are good games (one of them -- I won't tell you which, you'll have to google it -- I consider literally the worst videogame I've ever played), but this whole "lol western AAA is nothing more than middle-of-the-road pablum for proles!" shtick is a very poor job at covering for the fact that you can't afford a machine that can run any western AAA.

Hey, speaking of AAA, let's see how Japanese AAA is doing for originality. Every Japanes AAA game from my Steam list:
Bayonetta
Dark Souls 1-3
Devil May Cry 4
Dragon's Dogma
TEW 1&2
God Eater 1&2
Jet Set Radio
Killer is Dead
REMake
Resi 7
Tales of Berseria
Tales of Zesteria
Vanquish

Literally every single one other than Jet Set Radio (which is ancient history now, but was AAA at the time of its release, so I've included it) and Vanquish was either a sequel or a rip-off of an already popular franchise. Every single one other than Resi 7 and JSR is a third-person action game with RPG elements (Resi 7 is a first-person action game, JSR is a third person action game, but doesn't have RPG elements). Man, those Japanese developers sure are oozing creativity next to those Western developers who just have no ideas and no soul!

(Yes, I'm aware that Vanquish is the sequel to P.N. 03 in all but name, but I'm being generous here.)

[Squire Grooktook]

None of those are AAA. Like, seriously, a good chunk of those you listed are not even close production wise...which shows in how much genre variety and diversity there is between them (despite many being sequels or successors). Call me a weeb (I don't watch anime though <_<) but that list gets me x10 more excited just thinking about 'em then anything western you've yet mentioned ('cept maybe Alien Isolation, which I might concede as an exception. Own it but haven't played it yet though, looks fun but a bit slow), difference in taste I suppose.

Nothing Japanese is on par with true "AAA" levels of money. Ubisoft / Microsoft / Blizzard are something else entirely. Even relative titans of their own market like Capcom are still niche in comparison and struggle to make similar figures with their biggest franchises.

shtick is a very poor job at covering for the fact that you can't afford a machine that can run any western AAA.

I have a PS4.

[Obscura]

A bunch of third-person action games is diversity, but a stealth game, a real-time RPG, a turn-based tactical game, and a pure FPS are all shades of the same thing. Right.

It's OK to like Japanese games more, you don't have to try to pretend they're more diverse to justify that.

Also, if you have a PS4 and haven't played Prey, you're making poor life decisions. I don't exaggerate when I say it's possibly the best videogame ever made. It shits on System Shock 2 from an unbelievable height (and I've long held System Shock 2 in my top 5).

[Squire Grooktook]

A bunch of first person action games is diversity, but a roller-blade graffitti simulator, a dark fantasy character action rpg, and a power-sliding score driven third person shooter are all the same thing. Right.

It's OK to like Western games more, you don't have to try to pretend they're more diverse to justify that.

[Obscura]

Stellaris, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and Elex aren't first person. Two of them aren't action games.

This is the trouble you get into when you try to talk about games you're unfamiliar with.

[Squire Grooktook]

That original bunch of 4 games you mentioned were though

I'm always half on the verge of non-seriousness on forums these days.

A quick look up of Stellaris, and Elex's developers show they aren't AAA either.

Seriously, a company with 30 employee's is AAA? Do you know how many people work at Ubisoft or Bungie or Blizzard?

[Obscura]

And very few of those 13,742 employees are working on any game at any given time. Furthermore, Elex or Stellaris are both going to have many more than their number of employees in their credits, since companies of that size lean more heavily on outside contractors.

To put it into perspective, Prey was done entirely by Arkane's Austin studio, which has about 50-60 people working there.

[Squire Grooktook]

Until I see some hard numbers showing its production budget/scope/marketing was comparable to Assissin's Creed / Halo / Destiny / Grand Theft Auto / Cod / etc., Ellex is not AAA.

There is actually a level in-between "indie" and "multi-million dollar production which need to hit sales in the millions world wide to get their money back", which is where a good chunk of the games you've mentioned belong (and all of the JP titles, pretty much). Not being close to the latter is why a good number of people in the first page of this thread declared Japanese gaming still "niche" even though you have companies like Capcom still selling millions world wide.

[Obscura]

Dishonored 2 and Prey are definitely not in that "in-between" level, and both were developed with staffs of under 100 people (DH 2 was done by Arkane France, so roughly 90-100 people). ZeniMax fucking panicked over Dishonored 2 sales, and it was the best selling game for weeks when it launched.

[BryanM]

If you actually look at franchise sales in total, it's not really as dire as E3 always makes it seem to be. Mario Kart is on the same level as Madden. The Sims beats the vast majority of first person murder simulators.

It's kind of a given an island of ~100 million people can't beat a continent with more than thrice that.

The #1 media franchise in the world, Pokémon, even beats out that 70's fad, Star Wars.

I still have to wonder to myself, as I've begun to play the online version of its TCG again after a ~5 year long hiatus... why and how is the character art unique to the client so very low quality? It's not as horribad as that... unique art in the GBA Duel Masters game, but it's low quality stuff. I dunno why they couldn't get the rights to some stock character cells from the animated series at the very least.

[Steamflogger Boss]

I see things heated up.

Anyway, Indie games and the Japanese certainly have their own creative and production problems which can be cheaply mocked. No one is debating that. But as I said, at that level of production, such a statement as the above is less likely to meet with thunderous laughter (followed by "your fired"). So there's at least potential.

Okay, I think we are mostly on the same page here then, despite having different tastes. I don't think either side is particularly more diverse though. If we are talking only AAA on both sides.

None of those are AAA. Like, seriously, a good chunk of those you listed are not even close production wise...which shows in how much genre variety and diversity there is between them (despite many being sequels or successors). Call me a weeb (I don't watch anime though <_<) but that list gets me x10 more excited just thinking about 'em then anything western you've yet mentioned ('cept maybe Alien Isolation, which I might concede as an exception. Own it but haven't played it yet though, looks fun but a bit slow), difference in taste I suppose.

Nothing Japanese is on par with true "AAA" levels of money. Ubisoft / Microsoft / Blizzard are something else entirely. Even relative titans of their own market like Capcom are still niche in comparison and struggle to make similar figures with their biggest franchises.

We are all helpless weebs here.

Anyway, the money in Japanese gaming is generally smaller so you have to move the scale for Japanese AAA. It definitely exists imo but to a lesser extent. Japanese companies of course don't have quite the same pressures to generate as large of sales, so a bit less problems but... Japan gets into the same kind of ruts creating games and anime with a number generator to clone what is selling. I'd say it's a bit worse in anime, but it's not like I'm looking at every Japanese game coming out, whereas I still look at the entire season list with anime so it might just be that it looks worse to me because I have all the data there.

If you actually look at franchise sales in total, it's not really as dire as E3 always makes it seem to be. Mario Kart is on the same level as Madden. The Sims beats the vast majority of first person murder simulators.

It's kind of a given an island of ~100 million people can't beat a continent with more than thrice that.

The #1 media franchise in the world, Pokémon, even beats out that 70's fad, Star Wars.

I still have to wonder to myself, as I've begun to play the online version of its TCG again after a ~5 year long hiatus... why and how is the character art unique to the client so very low quality? It's not as horribad as that... unique art in the GBA Duel Masters game, but it's low quality stuff. I dunno why they couldn't get the rights to some stock character cells from the animated series at the very least.

Oh god, the fucking Pokemon TCG. *shivers*

Mario Kart being on par with Madden warms my heart.

[Vanguard]

So I would tend to agree with some of your points. I watched Witcher literally turn more into the standard gameplay mush by 3. I still played through it but ehh.

That said, Japan isn't much better if at all. They have been churning out the same stuff for years too. Have you seen the cookie cutter stuff that is coming out of Japan lately?

Also RPGs are tedious by nature, I wouldn't say anything western is any more tedious than the slogfest that is JRPGs. And I mean, I've cleared Dragon Quest IV through IX and many many other JRPGs over the years so this is coming from someone who generally enjoys the genre.

Acting like Japan is some pillar of creative light in comparison is odd.

But again I like plenty of stuff coming from Japan and the west. Yakuza is one of my favorite franchises and it's the same game every time but with a different story and some mini-game variation. So I guess I just don't think the lack of innovation is a huge deal from either side. *shrug*

I won't claim that the average Japanese game is good and I don't know if the average Japanese game is even better than the average western game. What matters is that 95% of Japanese games are garbage while 99.9% of western games are garbage. The discussion has turned a bit towards which side is more innovative, so I'll just say now that I value quality above innovation (though I'm willing to argue Japan wins there too). New gimmicks are well and good, but building a better Castlevania would be far more praiseworthy.

On the topic of RPGs, older WRPGs were dangerous and complex and inventive, they were miles ahead of the contemporary Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games. Ultima 4 did things with choices and morality that modern developers like Bioware only pretend to do. Dungeon crawlers like Wizardry and Dragon Wars were full of peril and consequence. NetHack is the most complex and feature-rich game ever made. I don't necessarily like all of these games, but there's no denying that there was some serious ambition and innovation in those times.

To see how far WPRGs have fallen, compare how much respect the System Shock games had for their players with how little the Bioshock series does. Likewise for Morrowind versus Skyrim.

The only modern big(ish) budget RPGs I can play anymore are all Japanese, stuff like the Souls, Ys, and Etrian Odyssey series. (Speaking of the Souls series, it's been brought up a few times to suggest a lack of innovation in Japanese games, but I can't think of any big budget title from the last decade that can compete with Demon's Souls for innovation.) Quality western RPGs still come out every now and again, but they're all indie games like Brogue or Mount & Blade: Warband.

[Steamflogger Boss]

I strongly disagree with 99.9% of Western games being garbage but there is no point in arguing that number because it's about taste/opinions and those aren't going to change. I think it's a total bullshit number but if you hate Western games then so be it. It kinda sounds like a cop out on my end but what is the point?

So onto RPGs then. Admittedly, I didn't really care for Bioshock or Skyrim. If we call the cut-off for newer WRPGs when Bioshock came out I have certainly enjoyed many since then. The Witcher, Pillars of Eternity, Torchlight II, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, Divinity: Original Sin II etc... Most sequels and games before in those series are solid too. You are probably looking for different things in games, since Etrian Odyssey is a series that bores me to tears. I fell asleep playing one of them many years ago and this is not me trying to be sarcastic or hyperbolic. Plenty of Japanese stuff I do like though including Souls and Ys. DQXI actually looks pretty promising too.

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

...and being boring!

gonna go to bat for squire here and say those games are boring while having played them (a marginal amount of dishonored, prey to its ending on hard mode as well as most of its optional content, and wolfenstein: TNO on death incarnate to a platinum trophy). they are homogenized. they are samey.

That's actually kind of disappointing to hear - I had heard a few good things about Prey (mostly avoided discussion on it though) and found myself excited for it thanks to comparisons to the first Deus Ex and System Shock 2, two of my favorite games. Do either of you have an opinion on how it compares to those games or are they not your thing either?

I'm definitely more into the kinds of games Japan puts out, though this isn't to say I think most Japanese games are worthy of my attention or that the west can't put out gems too. I definitely think almost all of the best games of the last few generations have been Japanese (exceptions would be things like Serious Sam 3 and Doom; I also expect to speak very highly of Hitman from what I was able to play of it but didn't have the chance to spend the time I wanted on it). There aren't many big games coming from the West either that seem especially exciting; Japan at least has Devil May Cry 5, Sekiro, Resident Evil 2, and a few more. In this sense I don't think I would say Japan ever actually left. They aren't making the same types of games they were in the 80s and 90s, and not everything they produce is worth looking into, but they've never stopped putting out high-quality games if you know where to look. Even during the supposed Japanese drought of the PS3 + 360 gen, they were making plenty of games I'd place among the best in their genres.

[Obscura]

To see how far WPRGs have fallen, compare how much respect the System Shock games had for their players with how little the Bioshock series does. Likewise for Morrowind versus Skyrim.

The only modern big(ish) budget RPGs I can play anymore are all Japanese, stuff like the Souls, Ys, and Etrian Odyssey series. (Speaking of the Souls series, it's been brought up a few times to suggest a lack of innovation in Japanese games, but I can't think of any big budget title from the last decade that can compete with Demon's Souls for innovation.)

You're just not looking. Prey is more complex and less linear than System Shock 1 or 2 ever were. Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2 have combat systems more complex than any of the old tactical SSI games. Elex is miles more complex and ambitious than Morrowind could ever dream of (wrong Elder Scrolls game btw, the complex one was Daggerfall, Morrowind is basically Skyrim but executed in a bad and clunky way which fools tasteless kids into thinking it's complex when it's really just more pablum). Even your modern indie choices are bad and nowhere near the cream of the crop, try Geneforge 1-4, Knights of the Chalice, or Prelude to Darkness, or Teudogar, or especially Underrail.

What the hell is innovative about Demon's Souls? It's Ultima Underworld 2 in third person, lol.

@Sir Ilpalazzo -- ignore Kitten and Grooktook (one of whom hasn't even played Prey but calls it boring anyways, the other of whom apparently has inexplicably awful taste); Prey is amazing, and if you like SS2, you'll love Prey. It's SS2 with better world design (recontextualizing the world map and elevator as actual physical spaces was fucking amazing, and its use of Metroid-inspired looping area connections as opposed to UU-style hub/elevator setups gives it a better sense of place than the Shocks ever had), and it forces you to actually play your character archetype instead of every character being a variant of "shooty guy" where some variants shoot blue, red, or pink stuff.

[kitten]

Kitten, if you're calling Prey of all things "player empowerment", then you're casting the terms so widely that it loses all meanings. Yeah, the game that encourages you to just run away from more dangerous enemies unless you do a particular thing that locks you into a worse ending sure is empowerment!

lol i got the best ending and killed almost everything in the game that i saw moving on hard mode. y'all fans of these games always talking about theory and consequence like this but the reality is a game you can always bludgeon your way through like the biggest dingus in the universe. the game also actively rewards you for killing everything in almost every conceivable encounter and situation and i have no idea what on earth you're on about.

i also don't know how you can consider a game with a built-in savestating button and where "murder everything" is the most potent strategy anything more than facile player empowerment. nearly every ability in the game is either "kill thing" or "make it easier to kill thing" and almost all of the extremely binary decisions in the game are whether you do that and receive a reward or do not and get an ending admonishing you for being a sociopath and not helping enough people. dishonored at least has kind of fun abilities and realizes it's a playground, prey feels as stupid as bioshock about believing it has something to say about the ethical quandary of whether or not you shoot yourself full of Makes-Me-Good-At-Killing-Juice.

this is without going into the game's utterly dire manipulation of your cultivated, neurotic kleptomania that has been slowly instilled by every one of its ilk for the last twenty years. why am i spending any amount of this time in the game grabbing shit out of a trash can? why am i rewarded for spending hours doing so? god. fuck. like with deus ex: human revolution and bioshock before it, no matter your string of decisions, you end the game an unstoppable juggernaut whose decision between stealth, shooting, and ability-then-shooting is not a matter of which is more difficult, more risky, or provides a better reward but whatever your godlike whim deems more entertaining. even "pure" shooters like wolfenstein: tno have developed symptoms like skill trees, stealth-as-an-option, picking every goddamn thing in the environment up manually, ethical decisions with real consequences, etc., etc.

please, please, please, for the love of everything in the world worth spending a second doing, would everyone collectively never make this statement again -

Also, if you have a ___ and haven't played ___, you're making poor life decisions.

this game was a couple of hours of curious interest if it would be what every outlet was saying it was and then many more spent in grueling self-flagellation as i forced myself to the end of yet another homogenized, modern trash heap. forget me entirely for a second and listen to grook saying he does not like modern or western design and does this really still sound like something you'd recommend, much less something you're going to tell him he's making "poor life decisions" for not playing? forgetting the notion of good or bad taste and the quality of the game, why is this something you're assuming would be up any ps4 owner's alley?

That's actually kind of disappointing to hear - I had heard a few good things about Prey (mostly avoided discussion on it though) and found myself excited for it thanks to comparisons to the first Deus Ex and System Shock 2, two of my favorite games. Do either of you have an opinion on how it compares to those games or are they not your thing either?

maybe! i think it's very heavily going to matter more if you liked recent stuff like human revolution and bioshock (both garbage, imho) than either of those two (which i consider really clunky but at least respect their ambition from a certain distance). the shooting and ability variety are both poor and you spend an obscene amount of time grinding down hundreds upon hundreds (not hyperbole) of collectible doo-dads into doo-dad points to turn them into ammo or whatever. i'd rather find a shotgun shell in the dumpster than make one by taking junk out of every drawer and garbage can in the room, waiting for it to dispense out of a machine, and then plugging it into another machine.

if you somehow consider steps like that "immersive" and not "psychotic torture engineered by the actual devil," i think you'll get past one of my greatest impediments to enjoyment but quite possibly get stuck up on how little decisions actually matter, how binary results are, and how little personalization your playthrough has (as you are fallout 3 levels of "i can do everything" after a certain point - wouldn't want to miss any content on your one-and-only playthrough).

[Vanguard]

Elex is miles more complex and ambitious than Morrowind could ever dream of (wrong Elder Scrolls game btw, the complex one was Daggerfall, Morrowind is basically Skyrim but executed in a bad and clunky way which fools tasteless kids into thinking it's complex when it's really just more pablum).

Daggerfall is a painfully simple game. There was a genuine passion and effort behind it, but it didn't result in anything particularly good. The only two things to do are to break into shops and explore huge copy-pasted dungeons. After you've done both of those once you might as well call it quits, you've seen it all.

About 90% of Morrowind is unquestionably bad, but stuff like the extremely unique setting, interestingly breakable mechanics of alchemy, spellmaking, and enchanting, cool unique items sprinkled throughout the game world, and a few good quests mean it might be worth checking out in spite of its myriad problems. Oblivion and Skyrim cut out every single positive thing about it, and while Skyrim made positive progress on fixing some of the negative aspects, it's also devoid of anything that could make it worth playing. (Oblivion managed to remove everything good without alleviating any of the bad. It introduced lots of new problems of its own as well. It's the worst game ever made. Doesn't help that it was also the vanguard of releasing an incomplete game and selling the rest as DLC.)

But my original point was not that Morrowind possessed any particular level of complexity, but that it respects the player. Skyrim does not trust you with the ability to drop essential items, it thinks you will lose them, and that you shouldn't be able to do that. It doesn't trust you to be able to choose which NPCs to kill off because you might miss out on a quest, it doesn't think you should be able to make that decision for yourself. Nor does it think you should be able to back out of a quest, no matter how sensible it might be to do so. For all of its flaws, Morrowind trusts you to make these decisions for yourself.

Even your modern indie choices are bad and nowhere near the cream of the crop, try Geneforge 1-4, Knights of the Chalice, or Prelude to Darkness, or Teudogar, or especially Underrail.

Brogue shits on your Ultima and Fallout clones, and the originals too! Not sure what makes you think those games are better than Warband either since they're too different for any meaningful comparison. There's nothing that does Warband better than Warband.

What the hell is innovative about Demon's Souls? It's Ultima Underworld 2 in third person, lol.

The summoning system? World tendency? Body and soul forms? The combat system also has its own distinct identity even if it isn't fundamentally unique like those other features.

Edit: How could I have forgotten? Bloodstains and soul recovery.