Lets talk about Video Games that are Disappointing, but not outright terrible.

[ShadeStrider]

There are plenty of games that didn't really live up to the hype they set up. These games have been scattered across history. But a lot of them seem to be mostly in the 2000s (Probably because game franchises were establishing themselves in the 1980s and 1990s. Let's discuss some of them.

 

Resident Evil 6- this game... It strayed too far from being a horror game and was pretty much all action and no horror. Resident Evil 4 at least had a Balance between the two. Resident Evil 5 was less balanced, but It still had its moments. Not terrible, but not great either. Resident Evil 7 was well received because it brought Resident Evil back to its roots.

 

Fire Emblem Fates- Nothing really wrong with the gameplay. Its the really rushed Storyline that got me. Awakenings wasn't a masterpiece, but it was decent. This one wasn't.

 

Xenoblade Chronicles X- Again, the Story. Why is it so bland? Why do so many of the "emotional moments" fall flat? Why is the Nopon companion so annoying. I don't really like this cast of characters. (Get ready: Terrible Storytelling is gonna get some mileage in this post. It doesn't automatically make a game bad, but coming off of a lot of franchises known for compelling or even bare decent narratives, of course, people are gonna be disappointed when a story is Lackluster.

 

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity - Why did they cut out almost all Non-Gen 5 mons? For me, part of the charm of the Mystery Dungeon games was playing through the Story with different Starters. In this game, the number of Starters is only 5. This even hurts the Dungeons a lot, since Enemy Variety is limited. The Narrative is honestly the weakest of the 4 Mystery Dungeon games (although Hydreigon was a good character). Super Mystery Dungeon was better.

 

Devil May Cry 2 - The core gameplay isn't bad, but the way it's used isn't very well thought out. The open Areas make running and shooting an overpowered option, taking a lot of difficulties away from the game, and Hitting enemies with a Sword is less satisfying than Devil May Cry 1. Fighting enemies was a lot more fun in Devil May Cry 1 and 3. The bland environments don't help much.

 

The one that might get me crucified: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: The Core gameplay is great. It's so Well developed. CQC is at its best in this game. And the amount of freedom you get when taking on levels makes replaying missions feel fun. I can see why this game got its critical acclaim. But the problem is... well A lot of problems actually. The "Boss" Fights are lackluster, especially considering its predecessors. Remember Psycho Mantis? Remember The End? Remember Liquid Ocelot? Remember Jetstream Sam? If you want good Boss Fights, then you are better

off going back to the previous games. The Story, while not offensive enough to make the game feel like a negative experience, Is extremely underwhelming. The whole game's plot feels unconnected. It brings up questions that are never answered, The main villain (Skullface) is extremely weak as a villain. And the Open World feels unnecessary. I can say that I had fun with it, but even Rising, while not being a stealth game and having Raiden go through that Character Regression, still felt more like a Metal Gear game than Phantom Pain.

That being said, for the conditions that this game was being developed in, it actually turned out great. It's miraculous that we actually got a competent game.

 

Final Fantasy XV: The combat isn't that fun at all. I do find the world a bit more interesting than Phantom Pain's. But again, the story turned out incredibly lackluster, mostly because the darn plot wasn't focused enough. At least MGSV had characters that I knew beforehand, which made some of the scenes feel a lot more fun (even if a lot of the characters were OOC). This introduced new ones that, while some of their banter was pretty funny, I didn't really feel the need to care as much). Final Fantasy XIII's plot was better, even if you didn't like the Hallways or Lightning. It isn't saying much, but that's how I feel. (I don't mind if the FFVII Remake uses this combat. Even if the combat turns out to be as interesting as FFXV (that is to say, not that interesting), The Story has the potential to be interesting enough for me to care, since... Its Final Fantasy VII. That game's narrative is one of the greatest gaming narratives ever created, of course I'd want to see it with Advent Children-style CG cutscenes.)

 

 

There are plenty more. I probably ain't done yet. That being said, do feel free to discuss games that you feel disappointed immensely, even if they aren't terrible.

 

 

[Godot]

Breath of the Wild.  Big epic open world, tries to do away with most conventional Zelda Elements.  Landed up feeling hallow, empty and very unzelda in the worst way possible.

 

Most if not all Mortal Kombat and Injustice games.  Some of the best selling fighting games out there due to it's love for the casual audience and abundance of single player content.  Despite all of that, the actual fighting game themselves are pretty terrible.  The models and backgrounds are pretty, but the actual in game animations for attacks are terrible.

dmc (the Devil May Cry Reboot) Does a lot of things that are like OH GOD WHY? and literally insults it's audiences intentionally.  Casual fans say "it's still devil may cry and underrated".  Hardcore fans are bothered by the streamlining and how not devil may cry the game feels.

 

Dragon Ball FighterZ  Holy fucking shit does this game look pretty as hell and have great attention to detail.  But holy shit is the fighting game elements shallow and kinda messy.

 

Xenoblade Chronicles (all 3 of them)  Get huge praise and sound super promising.  Land up being super boring and do a lot of things that seriously bother me on a personal level.  Lots of potential, lots of it wasted on bad japanese trends and cliches.

 

All of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon.  They always screw SOMETHING up that annoys me a ton.  They are usually 50% great and 50% UG I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY SCREWED IT UP!

 

World of Final Fantasy.  Sounds promising as hell, but was hella cringy and a bit of a mess.

 

A lot of non-Bayonetta platinum games games.  A prime example that combat and gameplay can be fun, but the game itself can be ruined by the core game being shitty as hell.

[The darn 4th chaos emerald]

I agree with you on Fates. Not terrible, but man was it disappointing, especially since I loved the crap out of Awakening and it seemed like (and honestly still kinda is) Awakening 2.0

 

Etrian Odyssey Nexus isn't too fun to me. I can't say its bad, but it could just be that the formula got kinda stale for me.

 

Let's go Eevee. I've played through gen 1 Fire Red a hundred billion times as a kid. Nothing really new or captivating here. But gen 1 is still good so I can't call it bad.

 

Disgaea 4. Ugh, there are STILL so many problems that have plagued Disgaea since the first one that are STILL in 4. I can't say it's bad, but after playing through the other games I can forgive the older ones for the technical issues cause they came out quite a while ago, but by the time 4 rolled around these problems should have been gone. Also, no Fight Mistress. They took my waifu out :'<

[wcv]

Another vote for Breath of the Wild. The underlying ideas are fine. Except weapon durability. Fuck weapon durability, but the execution of everything was just bad.

[Commander]

Kingdom Hearts 3 - I mean it's still a good game, but the bulk of the game is wondering around on big maps with heartless with an absurd amount of health at points. Surprised random ones with 4 health bars didn't spawn.

 

Legend of Dragoon - I liked the idea, but oh dear god the decisions behind this one. Only kept going because the 20% was really good...and I'd honestly be down for a remake. It really, really needs it and probably would then turn into a decent game.

 

Zero Time Dilemma - The only positive I have is that it at least answered all the questions being set up and also some really big headaches.

 

Kirby's Epic Yarn - It was a little fun, but it really gets boring very quickly especially since it's really, really easy

 

Super Paper Mario - Ironically the best part about the game is the side stuff and not the core experience. Story was good. Only 1 I 100%.

 

Fire Emblem Fates - Honestly, I have to put all 3. I know a lot of people defend and say conquest is good, but breaking it all down it just is not something I'd be excited for to see again. The weapons system is janky, the gimmicks can get hella annoying causing restarts on things you have to plan 3 turns in advance, and the other two paths were just boring.

 

Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon - I personally play these for the story which these one had I'd honestly argue the worst one. The recruit system is fun...for the times you get to use it. It sucks so much that you are forced to continue on in the game after doing two or so before being able to do it again. Changing that little thing probably would've changed my opinion of the game as once you beat the final boss it's just kind of like whatever for me. I'm neutral towards GTI which is the funny thing. There's other reasons but that's the main complaint I had.

 

Tales of Symphonia - Don't get me wrong here, I still enjoyed the game. It's just that this one gets treated like it's a pinnacle RPG and personally I think it's a upper middle of the pack when it comes to tales games. Vesperia and Abyss I'd easily rank above it with a large margin.

 

Xenosaga I - Despite really liking the series, I think 3 is the only one I could replay. 2 is okay, but 1 is a snooze fest until Crispin Freeman steals the show. Some of the decisions in this game will drive you insane such as 1 battle theme for every fight. I mean every fight. It also takes 5 hours to really get the plot rolling in this game.

 

Earthbound - I just do not get the hype around this game and I got it for free from the nintendo rewards. Nothing really stood out to me which made me really even want to get into the game.

 

11 hours ago, G'doots said:

Xenoblade Chronicles (all 3 of them)  Get huge praise and sound super promising.  Land up being super boring and do a lot of things that seriously bother me on a personal level.  Lots of potential, lots of it wasted on bad japanese trends and cliches.

Xenoblade Chronicles is a good RPG that came out during a drought of really noteworthy jRPGs. The first one had the best gameplay to date of the Xeno games, but you are far, far from the first person to complain about the story in them. When I played it, there wasn't too much of a fanbase so I didn't really have any bias on it.

 

I'm like the one guy who really, really liked X, but I understand the reaction. Of the Xenoblade series this is the closest to a true Xeno title imo as it has all the elements there. They just didn't build up the characters or really have the 10 hours worth of clipscenes a Xeno title is known for. There's a lot of subtle Xenosaga references, but Xenoblade 2 has really only 2 not so subtle ones I know of. We'd have to sit down and talk about this though. If you can find a cheap copy of the last story, I'd recommend trying that one. It's kind of Xenoblade's opposite.

[Chase]

Hmm...how to attempt to defend Fates but stay on topic-.....oh, I know

 

Fire Emblem: Awakening

 

Why THIS Fire Emblem for me? Because I got into Fire Emblem with Fire Emblem Fates - and I imagine many people above had at least played Awakening first. Meaning, I had to compare Awakening to Fates, where most do the opposite.

 

The games I came into the series with draw much of their inspiration from this game - and I think many of the times those games tried to do what this one did right, it felt shoehorned or rushed. Having children, having a wide swathe of supports between characters that would reasonably meet for the first time while in the army they are currently in - all of THOSE experiences are definitively more enjoyable in Awakening...well, maybe not the supports, but that's the most subjective point here.

 

Where Fates decides to go a different path from Awakening, it makes Awakening suffer from a retrospective view. When your first experience with Pair Up is that both you AND your enemy can use it, and then Awakening decides that's only something you can do - it feels madly overpowered in the earlier game. The only thing a magic user with Nosferatu has to worry about on the enemy phase is their weapon breaking - because Nos-tanks can single handedly break Awakening if the Second Seals didn't do that already. Map design was significantly less compelling than Conquest, a bit less than Revelation (although less painstakingly gimmicky in that route), and comparable at best to Birthright.

 

It might have all been drops in the bucket compared to a small lake of Fates' issues - if Awakening's story was definitively better throughout. The Valm arc in the middle didn't feel all that significant and was a significant lull aside from giving Chrom the exalt role and Robin chances to go beserk in front of Lucina - none of which needed us to go on a campaign for. While the first and final acts of Awakening are definitely better than Fates - its not a completely ironclad story either - and for me, it was more easy to criticize than a trio of games that were introduced before it.

 

[Godot]

Fire emblem has just been pretty awful recently.  They are pandering away to much to the anime fans and not the good kind.  Yeah, there is a lot of money there, but there aren’t any great games there.

 

Disgaea on the other hand is a series I wish I could enjoy more.  I enjoy the first dozen hours of it, then it gets grindy and the shenanigans bleed into the gameplay and it feels less and less like a strategy rpg, which what usually draws me to the series.

 

Now that I think about it more, these two come from my same complaints.  Strategy RPGs have been sucking nowadays.  They used to be one of my favorite genres.

[ShadeStrider]

I'm surprised nobody has Crucified me for saying Final Fantasy XV.

 

 

I probably would have been Crucified for saying MGSV, but then again, most of this board knows Solid Snake as "That Guy who was in Smash Bros." Hardly anyone here has actually played a Metal Gear game, I guess.

 

Anyways: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword:

 

Disappointing dungeons, The Controls are frustrating, and the Atmosphere isn't substantial like in Majora's Mask or Twilight Princess. It's the weakest 3D Zelda.

[Hect]

From what I've played recently, only Octopath Traveller comes to mind. I'm not going to go in-depth since my complaints are subjective, but overall it felt to me more like a tech demo than an actual finished game. It's a gorgeous snoozefest.

[ShadeStrider]

23 minutes ago, Hect said:

From what I've played recently, only Octopath Traveller comes to mind. I'm not going to go in-depth since my complaints are subjective, but overall it felt to me more like a tech demo than an actual finished game. It's a gorgeous snoozefest.

I didn’t really expect much. But the Combat was satisfying, and about 3/4ths of the Stories were interesting, even if the format they are told in results in them being horribly disjointed.

[Yahen]

Mortal Kombat X sort of disappointed me, but it wasn't outright THAT bad. Guess i was overhyped.

[5hift]

Agree that Metal Gear Solid V was disappointing but only in the story department.

 

Thank goodness the gameplay was actually fun otherwise this game would've flopped.