games most people dismiss but actually have cool depth

[Ikagura]

Also, dating simulators. The name is treated with such stigma that Tokimeki Memorial's translation was touted as "not just a dating sim!" when it is just a dating sim. The number raising is actually the reason why it's a dating sim and not a romance VN. While yes, there were a number of bad ones on Newgrounds back in the day, and cheeseburger dating sim Shira Oka was a game that existed, the genre is good!

Nowadays Dating Sim are almost always ironic/post-ironic...

 

[Hourai]

Nowadays Dating Sim are almost always ironic/post-ironic...

They are, and I hate it. People view the genre as a joke, and every year I feel the "you're releasing a dating sim for April fools day. In front of you is a copy of Tokimeki Memorial for the Super Famicom. You have 24 hours to obtain Shiori Fujisaki's ending" posts even more than the last.

The only good AFD VN is The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog. Because the joke is that they made it, not that it's in this silly fake genre.

I also dislike the bad reputation JRPGs have. The idea that you need to grind is something that stopped being a thing once the 1980s were over. Outside of bad games, you should never have to grind in a good JRPG. It's just that people see a wall and think "this is a JRPG, so grinding is the only way forward!" when 99% of the time it's just that they weren't thinking how to handle it properly.

 

[Ikagura]

They are, and I hate it. People view the genre as a joke, and every year I feel the "you're releasing a dating sim for April fools day. In front of you is a copy of Tokimeki Memorial for the Super Famicom. You have 24 hours to obtain Shiori Fujisaki's ending" posts even more than the last.

The only good AFD VN is The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, because the joke is that they made it, not that it's in this silly fake genre.

Date Everything is legitimately feeling like a joke that overstayed its welcome.

I'm not even playing DS in general but seeing only parodic games of a genre being made in the west to make fun of a Japan made video game is just jarring at some point.

The Sonic game is still nice because it's still a murder mystery under that visual novel.

 

[Hourai]

Date Everything is legitimately feeling like a joke that overstayed its welcome.

I'm not even playing DS in general but seeing only parodic games of a genre being made in the west to make fun of a Japan made video game is just jarring at some point.

It's xenophobia, combined with the fact that traditional, numbers-based DSes have been dead in their home country for a while, and VNs in Japan have outgrown that kind of thing for a while. While there are a number of them in the country itself are still standard dating VNs, most of the ones that get localized tend to be either nukige (18+ and built for sex, and thus get swept under the rug) or don't really focus on romance as a main element the same way western ones do. There's a difference between Japanese VNs and Original English Language VNs, and it's most visible in that area.

 

[Beepmoo]

Ooohhh, I've got a few but I'm gonna focus on one. Payday 2 and by extension the entire series. To put it mildly, the game has a lot of systems under the hood. For one, the shotguns don't work like how they work in other games. In most games, when you shoot a shotgun multiple pellets come out, and they each to a set amount of damage, lets say 25. If one pellet hits, it does 25 points of damage, if two hit it does 50 and so on. You want to increase accuracy on your shotgun to insure more pellets hit your target and do more damage. Not in Payday 2, it technically DOES have per pellet damage, but if a single pellet hits an enemy, it does max damage. It doesn't matter if 12 hit them or 2, you are only doing 50 damage to an enemy. What you want to do instead is decrease your accuracy as much as possible so you can hit as many enemies as possible with a single shot.
The game can also be shockingly slow. You have regenerating armor like in Halo, but if you are being shot at, your armor is not regening. This is a system called "supression" and it is very annoying, it was fine when the game was a slower paced game from 2013-2015 but after that the pace of the game increased heavily so you have to be constantly taking out enemies and knowing how to prioritize what enemies to shoot.
This is really only the tip of the iceberg with Payday 2's gameplay, I reccomend watching this video to know more. It's very deep, and the game doesn't tell you about any of this. It just straight up lies to you at points, actually.

Also, I'm seconding the visual novels and dating sims being misunderstood. shits really annoying, there's so many interesting stories going on in those genres and they constantly get labled as "date everything xD!!"

 

[UnboundByJunk]

Glad to see Warriors mentioned, those games get dismissed out of hand way too often unless Link is there to hold people's hand (I like Hyrule Warriors to be clear, it was just obvious people who normally hated Warriors games suddenly were interested).



I just started playing Pokemon Pinball Ruby and Sapphire because I know I don't fully get Pinball as a thing and wanted to change that so relieved to hear it as a good example.

For my contribution, Code Name S.T.E.A.M gets people parroting the same old talking point about long enemy turns, but in many maps those are important. The camera follows each unit third person shooter style when you control them, and when an enemy unit is moving it will always be locked on to the enemy, even when you can't directly see them.

So by paying attention to camera movements you can deduce the position of the enemy and its movements without needing to poke your head around the corner and get shot. Not to mention the tension of knowing those monsters are crawling around just out of your sight. It's not like Fire Emblem where you're just waiting and praying, you are actively gathering info. On wide open maps it can be a little tedious, but in any map where line of sight is regularly blocked it works great.

Obviously there's a lot of other strategy to the game, but most people didn't even bother playing it themselves to dismiss the other aspects of it, while the turn wait gets held as a black mark against it even after the fast forward button was added and messed with the game design to appease complaints.

Also not a full game, but in general I love both stage hazards and playing competitively and it makes me sad many place them on opposite ends of a binary. For example a player in my region memorized the timing of platform transitions on the Town & City stage in Smash Wii U and used that to pull off combos. Most people don't even know stuff like that is on a reliable timer and think it's just random.

I love Warriors cuz I can either turn my brain off or lock in with all of my being.

Man, Codename S.T.E.A.M. I always heard about it back when I had a 3DS, but I never really checked it out. But dang, the gameplay looks so sick. I've always yapped on to friends about how I wish there were more games like the Valkyria Chronicles series, and this is prolly the closest I've seen. I don't understand why I never checked it out.

Ye, Smash stage hazards are prolly some of the most interesting ways fighters use their stages tbh. Though I understand why pros play with it off/play on more neutral stages since some of them do favor certain characters. I honestly wish other types of fighting games would be as creative in how their stages worked.

 

[GamingWarthog]

On eroge, it's funny to me how apologetic Fate fans will be about the existence of sex scenes in the original version of Fate/Stay Night. You know the sex scenes which have been excluded from any rerelease it has had over the years. It has been possible to play FSN with no sex scenes for over a decade, for longer than there has only been a version with sex scenes.

Meanwhile big TV shows like Game of Thrones or random Netflix shows will throw around sex scenes as exposition and character introduction and can be discussed in polite company without apologizing for it.

 

[UnboundByJunk]

Eroge eroge eroge eroge eroge eroge E R O G E!

People dismiss it based entirely because of the erotic content in it, despite it being willing to delve into topics that non-eroge refuse to purposefully touch with a ten foot pole. While I won't deny that you won't get anything if you were to go to Steam and choose whatever best selling slop is on the front page, you can get so much good stuff if you know where to look.

Also, dating simulators. The name is treated with such stigma that Tokimeki Memorial's translation was touted as "not just a dating sim!" when it is just a dating sim. The number raising is actually the reason why it's a dating sim and not a romance VN. While yes, there were a number of bad ones on Newgrounds back in the day, and cheeseburger dating sim Shira Oka was a game that existed, the genre is good!

Also also, seconding Codename STEAM. Genuinely a great game, held back by how unmarketable the game is.

I can't say much about the genre, but ye, seeing new RPG Maker (EroPG Maker?) slop on Steam every few days does kinda make it easy to dismiss as shovelware cashgrabs.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 1:42 AM

Ooohhh, I've got a few but I'm gonna focus on one. Payday 2 and by extension the entire series. To put it mildly, the game has a lot of systems under the hood. For one, the shotguns don't work like how they work in other games. In most games, when you shoot a shotgun multiple pellets come out, and they each to a set amount of damage, lets say 25. If one pellet hits, it does 25 points of damage, if two hit it does 50 and so on. You want to increase accuracy on your shotgun to insure more pellets hit your target and do more damage. Not in Payday 2, it technically DOES have per pellet damage, but if a single pellet hits an enemy, it does max damage. It doesn't matter if 12 hit them or 2, you are only doing 50 damage to an enemy. What you want to do instead is decrease your accuracy as much as possible so you can hit as many enemies as possible with a single shot.
The game can also be shockingly slow. You have regenerating armor like in Halo, but if you are being shot at, your armor is not regening. This is a system called "supression" and it is very annoying, it was fine when the game was a slower paced game from 2013-2015 but after that the pace of the game increased heavily so you have to be constantly taking out enemies and knowing how to prioritize what enemies to shoot.
This is really only the tip of the iceberg with Payday 2's gameplay, I reccomend watching this video to know more. It's very deep, and the game doesn't tell you about any of this. It just straight up lies to you at points, actually.

Also, I'm seconding the visual novels and dating sims being misunderstood. shits really annoying, there's so many interesting stories going on in those genres and they constantly get labled as "date everything xD!!"

Dang, I owe you an apology Payday 2. I really wasn't familiar with your game. As someone who used to dislike FPS games during the peak years of Payday, I just dismissed it as the "shooter but you have the funny masks".

 

[Beepmoo]

I can't say much about the genre, but ye, seeing new RPG Maker (EroPG Maker?) slop on Steam every few days does kinda make it easy to dismiss as shovelware cashgrabs.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 1:42 AM

Dang, I owe you an apology Payday 2. I really wasn't familiar with your game. As someone who used to dislike FPS games during the peak years of Payday, I just dismissed it as the "shooter but you have the funny masks".

This is LITERALLY some of the most basic stuff too. Something that took me a bit to understand (this might have a fair bit with me being dumb) is that there is a skill tree that basically gives you upgrades, and then another thing called perk decks that act as your class or job or whatever its called in your rpg of choice. Some of these perk decks are fairly simple, such as Muscle which increases your health and gives you regen, and Armorer which increases your armor, but then there's something like Stoic where all of the armor is instead put into your health pool, and 75% your damage is delayed, instead being dealt over 12 seconds. You also have a hip flask that allows you to instantly heal the amount of damage you took. This isn't even the most complex one. It's an insane, wacky game with a million different things going at once. There is a reason why people who are "hardcore" about the game have a hud that looks like this.

Also, snipers and shotguns serve the same purpose in the games weapon sandbox.

 

[UnboundByJunk]

This is LITERALLY some of the most basic stuff too. Something that took me a bit to understand (this might have a fair bit with me being dumb) is that there is a skill tree that basically gives you upgrades, and then another thing called perk decks that act as your class or job or whatever its called in your rpg of choice. Some of these perk decks are fairly simple, such as Muscle which increases your health and gives you regen, and Armorer which increases your armor, but then there's something like Stoic where all of the armor is instead put into your health pool, and 75% your damage is delayed, instead being dealt over 12 seconds. You also have a hip flask that allows you to instantly heal the amount of damage you took. This isn't even the most complex one. It's an insane, wacky game with a million different things going at once. There is a reason why people who are "hardcore" about the game have a hud that looks like this. View attachment 59311

Also, snipers and shotguns serve the same purpose in the games weapon sandbox.

I've seen flight sims with less complicated huds than this.