Hot takes

[dropsmegamega]

I would've been happy if an RPG like Mass Effect didn't throw this colossal piece of shit at me:
View attachment 27534

idk about that one because I never played Mass Effect, but some of the most fun parts of Baldur's Gate and NWN are the bosses. What's the point of wasting all these hours building awesome characters if you can't test then against formidable foes?

 

[HexGramarye]

Boss fights are often the worst part of any game. They are like, the anti thesis of it's own design principles. Just to make something deliberately bloated and challenging.

You know what? I agree. Why does every RPG have to have boss fights with a final boss at the end? Back in the day, the Ultima series didn't really emphasize boss fights at all. The early games had just one boss fight at the end, and Exodus and IV didn't have bosses at all. I'm playing Atelier Marie right now, and you don't have to do any fighting (bosses or otherwise) to get most of the good endings, or the canon ending. And I love all those games.

Now, I am a person who loves boss fights myself, unless they're poorly designed of course. But yeah, maybe it's a formulaic cliche that there needs to be a boss at the end of every dungeon. Do you ever see a save point and immediately think, "better save, there's clearly a boss in a second," and doesn't that kill the suspense? So maybe RPG stories would be more creative and original if developers didn't feel shackled by those conventions.

 

[miguk miguk]

Trolling? Nope, I'm serious.



I can enjoy them even if I don't follow the story, what really matters is to have fun while playing and if doing so time passes without noticing it.

So you don't care why anything is happening, you don't care where you have to go to continue (which gets revealed in the story), you don't care about characters outside of their function, and you don't care if something about the gameplay changes or needs to be understood within the logic of the story? How can you even get through the game comfortably with that little understanding of its internal logic?

If you say story is the main appeal of these games for a lot of people, wouldn't they like jrpgs more if they were just visual novels or anime, removing most of the gameplay?
I mean, they already put a lot of features to speed up the "game" part and get to the story faster in these games (like fast-fowarding in battles, instant retry, turning off encounters etc etc...)

No, people who play RPGs aren't looking for a book. Nobody joins D&D sessions just for the story. But they still want the story, because the mathematics on there own are just dull. Again, an RPG without any story elements is basically just a spreadsheet of math and RNG. But that math is actually entertaining when it has a story to go with it.

The speed features were added because some parts of RPGs (the grind, most notably) can get a bit slow and need rebalancing. That isn't skipping gameplay; it's keeping it from getting overbearing.

I don't really know what to say, at this point.
I mean, what if the story is great and entertaining but the gameplay sucks like, let's say, Superman 64?
THAT'S the point, but if the gameplay is fun but the story sucks, for me nothing change.

Games with great story and bad gameplay are in the vast minority. (You didn't even give a real example of one.)

Yes, for me It's as John Carmack said:
"Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important"
I can appreciate it if is there and it's good, as long as it doesn't interfere too much with the "game" part of this game I'm playing.

Carmack sucks at understanding games that aren't FPS. He's stuck in an outdated mindset of what games can do and how they can be designed. If all games were made based on his view of how it works, the gaming landscape would be dull as a brick.

Oh, and since you're a fighting game fan, I'd like to point out that there was a huge outrage from the fighting game community over Capcom's "characters are just functions" argument to justify Marvel vs Capcom Infinite's garbage roster. Even fighting game fans, who don't get too invested in story, still care about it more than you'd think.

 

[MasterEn]

So you don't care why anything is happening, you don't care where you have to go to continue (which gets revealed in the story), you don't care about characters outside of their function, and you don't care if something about the gameplay changes or needs to be understood within the logic of the story? How can you even get through the game comfortably with that little understanding of its internal logic?


No, people who play RPGs aren't looking for a book. Nobody joins D&D sessions just for the story. But they still want the story, because the mathematics on there own are just dull. Again, an RPG without any story elements is basically just a spreadsheet of math and RNG. But that math is actually entertaining when it has a story to go with it.

The speed features were added because some parts of RPGs (the grind, most notably) can get a bit slow and need rebalancing. That isn't skipping gameplay; it's keeping it from getting overbearing.


Games with great story and bad gameplay are in the vast minority. (You didn't even give a real example of one.)


Carmack sucks at understanding games that aren't FPS. He's stuck in an outdated mindset of what games can do and how they can be designed. If all games were made based on his view of how it works, the gaming landscape would be dull as a brick.

Oh, and since you're a fighting game fan, I'd like to point out that there was a huge outrage from the fighting game community over Capcom's "characters are just functions" argument to justify Marvel vs Capcom Infinite's garbage roster. Even fighting game fans, who don't get too invested in story, still care about it more than you'd think.

i don't think they are truly taking this seriously.
i took a break to do a couple of tasks around the house, and i spent my time thinking about: "are there any games where the story isn't necessary, but it adds to the gameplay experience in some way. a game where the gameplay loop is far more interesting than any characters, lore or story.
i found a few; two of which i just recently started playing again.
Mega man X: command mission, dragon warrior/quest monsters 2, pokemon, digimon world 1 and 2 are a few examples; out of a good couple of thousand ones. that's all i could come up with.

 

[Egg (McMuffin) Man]

You mean Doom (2016), right?
View attachment 27490

The original and 64, as those are the ones I've played.

If you're talking about the original game under DosBox maybe it's not the ideal way to play it.

But DSDA Doom or any sourceport makes it much, much more bearable

I have the Switch version.

 

[moonbits]

What about boss rush games?

My favorite series is Monster Hunter so that answers your question.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

My favorite series is Monster Hunter so that answers your question.

Okay... And one of my favourite boss rush related game is... just look at my profile pic.

 

[moonbits]

Okay... And one of my favourite boss rush related game is... just look at my profile pic.

space chicken gunstar heroes

 

[Jeanfranc]

Oh, and since you're a fighting game fan, I'd like to point out that there was a huge outrage from the fighting game community over Capcom's "characters are just functions" argument to justify Marvel vs Capcom Infinite's garbage roster. Even fighting game fans, who don't get too invested in story, still care about it more than you'd think.

That has nothing to do with "story" though, that's just Infinite having less characters than the prior games and they Capcom poorly justifing it . Also, as bad and basic as it actually is, it has a lot more story than MVC2 (because it actually has a story mode with dialogues)

An actual good example of a fighter that could be criticized for having less story is Guilty Gear Strive: there are no (real) arcade cutscenes and less story content than both Sign, Revelator.
Not only it's a shitty mechanically dumb-downed game that's as shallow as puddle, they even cheaped out on the Story.

Post automatically merged: Feb 18, 2025

Games with great story and bad gameplay are in the vast minority. (You didn't even give a real example of one.)

My favorite series is Monster Hunter so that answers your question.

What's your favorite? I really like FU and DOS

 

[miguk miguk]

That has nothing to do with "story" though, that's just Infinite having less characters than the prior games and they Capcom poorly justifing it . Also, as bad and basic as it actually is, it has a lot more story than MVC2 (because it actually has a story mode with dialogues)

An actual good example of a fighter that could be criticized for having less story is Guilty Gear Strive: there are no (real) arcade cutscenes and less story content than both Sign, Revelator.
Not only it's a shitty mechanically dumb-downed game that's as shallow as puddle, they even cheaped out on the Story.

The story mode for MvCI was awful. Not even mediocre as to be expected from a fighting game, nor even blurst enough to laugh at. Just amateur-level writing from people who don't even get that having every character from one world introduce one character from the other world to everyone else every single time someone appears makes no sense whatsoever. Half the dialogue was just introductions for people who are acknowledging at that moment that they've met already.

And yes, the "functions" thing had everything to do with the story. Disney didn't want the X-Men and FF in the game so they could hurt 20th Century Fox by not giving them promotion. (They did the same when they canceled the comics just prior.) They were literally cutting out story for cynical reasons.

And GG Strive is an example of bad story, bad game. Doesn't do anything to disprove my point.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

We got a heated battle here damn lock and load people cuz we are diving into game design , what matters more gameplay or story , and if boss fights are best part of the game or not on today episode of retrogametalk im your host panda and lets get straight into this.

 

[Jeanfranc]

And GG Strive is an example of bad story, bad game. Doesn't do anything to disprove my point.

Wasn't really trying to disprove anything there pal, I just wanted to shit on Strive

 

[Tonberry]

I like attractive characters as much as the next person, but I think insisting on having every character in a game be conventionally hot/beautiful/sexy is often boring and safe.

My favorite series is probably Final Fantasy, but I've always found it kind of boring how the main party usually just consists of "a gang of lean, beautiful humans". I hate how the Scions in FFXIV are almost all white-haired and only the hot "normal" races. It becomes homogenous and dull.

Xenoblade 2 is probably the worst offender of this in recent memory.

I love the characters in Baldur's Gate 3, but I think it's boring there too how they feel so superficially samey because of this, until you get to know them of course. For the first, like, at least 40-ish hours of the game you have the hot vampire elf, the hot girl elf, the hot white guy, the hot black guy, the hot frog chick and the hot demon chick, and they're almost all the same height and physique. Then when you're finally able to get your first new companion, I've run into people on more than one occasion who complain that he looks ugly because he looks "too wrinkly" or "too old".

Again, I'm not against those kinds of character designs at all, I just think it's boring when designers rely on it too much, regardless of gender, and it's more fun when character designs are more varied because it makes them and the entire party stand out more immediately, and almost always in a good way.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

I like attractive characters as much as the next person, but I think insisting on having every character in a game be conventionally hot/beautiful/sexy is often boring and safe.

My favorite series is probably Final Fantasy, but I've always found it kind of boring how the main party usually just consists of "a gang of lean, beautiful humans". I hate how the Scions in FFXIV are almost all white-haired and only the hot "normal" races. It becomes homogenous and dull.

Xenoblade 2 is probably the worst offender of this in recent memory.

I love the characters in Baldur's Gate 3, but I think it's boring there too how they feel so superficially samey because of this, until you get to know them of course. For the first, like, at least 40-ish hours of the game you have the hot vampire elf, the hot girl elf, the hot white guy, the hot black guy, the hot frog chick and the hot demon chick, and they're almost all the same height and physique. Then when you're finally able to get your first new companion, I've run into people on more than one occasion who complain that he looks ugly because he looks "too wrinkly" or "too old".

Again, I'm not against those kinds of character designs at all, I just think it's boring when designers rely on it too much, regardless of gender, and it's more fun when character designs are more varied because it makes them and the entire party stand out more immediately, and almost always in a good way.

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Barret looks handsome what are you saying? You should've put Cait Sith or Steiner from IX lol.

 

[Elwiwi]

Barret looks handsome what are you saying? You should've put Cait Sith or Steiner from IX lol.

Not my man Steiner ???

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

Not my man Steiner ???

I think it's because of his black undereyes and pear shaped head that doesn't help but the art style of IX is cartoony enough while FFVII had Barret looks a bit proportionated weirdly compared to the fairly realistic environments.

 

[Tonberry]

Barret looks handsome what are you saying? You should've put Cait Sith or Steiner from IX lol.

I’m not saying he’s ugly, I’m saying he’s atypical to how humans usually look in Final Fantasy, and that’s a good thing because it makes both him and the cast stand out.

Cait Sith is a cute mascot-type character and so isn’t part of my point, and Steiner looks like a normal man in his setting. Amarant however, doesn’t, he’s a weird blue guy but is still supposedly a human.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

I think Japanese games in general tend to lean more onto the cute and anime artstyle making most if not all characters digestible to look at usually they look ok even the most ugly of characters looks fine compared to other games from others parts of the world like American games tend to go more towards realistic and sometimes ugly and hideous artstyle and characters that are beautiful in their own way.

Look at the picture above of grom hellscream from WarCraft usually western games lean more into the badass and cool looking stuff rather than the cutsie and sometimes even childish artstyle that Japanese games lean into , now don't take my words out of context the Japanese can make absolutely badass art

As much as I like to dunk on FF2 for being bad game I gotta say the artwork for characters is top tier the picture above of firion is badass.

Now why im saying that Japanese games have different artstyle from American I mean what does the region have to do with the artstyle? And how handsome characters look? Clearly artists responsible for the game art direction grow up in a society that consumes certain types of media that has certain types of artstyle the artist is inspired by these and grows up to have an artstyle effected by media they consume Japanese usually grew up on anime more than Americans who grew up on rock for example (chris metzen and sam wise the one who drew that awesome art of grom are clearly metal heads) I can't type the artist name of FF games but he was inspired by manga and comics this is visible in his drawings for FF games so yeah its dependant on the artist what he sees as "beautiful" and other factors that play a role in the final art direction of the game.

That's why characters in Japanese RPGs look more clean and appealing than whatever monstrosities blizzard creates when it makes diablo games.

 

[Tonberry]

I think Japanese games in general tend to lean more onto the cute and anime artstyle making most if not all characters digestible to look at usually they look ok even the most ugly of characters looks fine compared to other games from others parts of the world like American games tend to go more towards realistic and sometimes ugly and hideous artstyle and characters that are beautiful in their own way.

View attachment 28365


Look at the picture above of grom hellscream from WarCraft usually western games lean more into the badass and cool looking stuff rather than the cutsie and sometimes even childish artstyle that Japanese games lean into , now don't take my words out of context the Japanese can make absolutely badass art

View attachment 28367

As much as I like to dunk on FF2 for being bad game I gotta say the artwork for characters is top tier the picture above of firion is badass.

Now why im saying that Japanese games have different artstyle from American I mean what does the region have to do with the artstyle? And how handsome characters look? Clearly artists responsible for the game art direction grow up in a society that consumes certain types of media that has certain types of artstyle the artist is inspired by these and grows up to have an artstyle effected by media they consume Japanese usually grew up on anime more than Americans who grew up on rock for example (chris metzen and sam wise the one who drew that awesome art of grom are clearly metal heads) I can't type the artist name of FF games but he was inspired by manga and comics this is visible in his drawings for FF games so yeah its dependant on the artist what he sees as "beautiful" and other factors that play a role in the final art direction of the game.

That's why characters in Japanese RPGs look more clean and appealing than whatever monstrosities blizzard creates when it makes diablo games.

I love Samwise’s art so much.

 

[ciro64]

Yoshi Story > Yoshi Island ;D

 

[Xdqwerty Xdqwerty]

gen 1 is the worst Pokémon gen

 

[hazys]

In terms of gameplay, sure. In terms of Pokémon designs, I dunno... Gens 8 and 9 are worse imo

 

[Xdqwerty Xdqwerty]

In terms of gameplay, sure. In terms of Pokémon designs, I dunno... Gens 8 and 9 are worse imo

Gameplay-wise ofc

 

[miguk miguk]

gen 1 is the worst Pokémon gen

It's important to note that good visual design goes a long way. Gen 1 had some of the most iconic designs to the point that a lot of later ones felt like copies by comparison. And people are going to remain loyal to the more likeable designs from more orginal games if the gameplay stagnates with later ones (as the common complaint goes).

It kind of reminds me of how the player base for Cube 2: Sauerbraten never really got that big despite the game being a totally free CS/Unreal Tourny clone. Sure, it was a fun game, but it was just downright ugly, and the devs never made any effort to make likeable characters, leaving players with 4 ugly generic ones to choose from.

 

[Michael Frank]

Welp, It's all in the title ya see. Share some downright horrid takes and opinions.
I'll start...Errm...Uhhhh...
Marvel VS Capcom 2 is one of the most overrated Capcom fighting games; let alone for the genre.
While the mechanics can be enjoyable, I personally just don't enjoy the flashy, over the top sky launching combos of the VS series in general. And although the slight brokenness of the game is fun for most, I personally find it more tedious than anything.
View attachment 8352

Ah yes, select Magneto, Storm and add one of your favorites to auto win, the game, damn and i main Guile and Cap and people used to call me cheater.

Mega Man 5 is one of the worst Mega Man games to ever exist and Mega Man 6 is better than it in every single way.

Here, I said it.

I liked 4 better, yeah you have a point.

god of war ps4 sucks, the story is nonexistent, characters are at best mediocre and at worst annoying, that bearded bald guy is Kratus in name only, characters and settings are tonally inconsistent, gameplay is janky and stiff, camera placement is horrible, every puzzle is a pushover, difficulty is super artificial due to the change in genre, and I didn't like any of the boss fights
I can talk about how much I hate this game for 10 hours because I am so disappointed

Oh believe, i knew it from the start and back then people called me crazy, look at them now, i was right.

Believe it or not, I don’t care for Undertale.

It´s meme fuel more than an actual game by this point.

There hasn't been a good Legend of Zelda game in 20 years and the last good one wasn't even made by Nintendo.

Ah yes Minish Cap, the thinking man´s Zelda, truly the last good one made by other company.

i think this is because modern gamers(not just journalists) hate any sort of difficulty and want games to literally just play themselves

I mean, it´s not wrong, see, you put a zoomer to play an old street fighter and he will complain to hell and back, put him in sf6 and he will enjoy spamming the rush move over and over again.

View attachment 8381

I can´t go on without my buddy superfly...

Hottest take I have, apparently - Castlevania 64 and Legacy of darkness weren't that bad, critics are just mean :'(

It was always like this, remember ign and God Hand.

9 is quite possibly my favorite final fantasy.

It´s better than 7 and for me it stands in the same pinnacle as 6, but mankind and shill are not ready for that conversation.

Hmm? this is a hot take? from where I'm standing it's objective fact, haha.

Post automatically merged: Jan 4, 2025

And here's a few of my hot takes:

- PS2 Castlevanias are good.

- Crossover fighting games like MVC2 and 3 are all flash and no substance.

- Sonic 3 is better than Sonic 2 despite the latter being more famous.

- Streets of Rage is better than Final Fight.

- Top Gear/Racer 1 is the only good one.

- The Megadrive/Genesis fightpad is much better than the SNES controller.

- Mainline SMT is better than Persona. (I'm getting flamed for this but I'll never change my mind).

- The 3D push during the 5th console generation was a mistake.

- Very few 3D Mario games are actually fun.

- 3D Sonic games never got it right, some just fail slightly less hard.

- Without Rare, the N64 would be nowhere as beloved as it ended up becoming.

- Character action games like Bayonetta are formulaic and boring, and lease their life on wow factor, protagonist charisma or both.

Ok, now these are takes that i can stand for, good taste.

I think Japanese games in general tend to lean more onto the cute and anime artstyle making most if not all characters digestible to look at usually they look ok even the most ugly of characters looks fine compared to other games from others parts of the world like American games tend to go more towards realistic and sometimes ugly and hideous artstyle and characters that are beautiful in their own way.


View attachment 28360


Look at the picture above of grom hellscream from WarCraft usually western games lean more into the badass and cool looking stuff rather than the cutsie and sometimes even childish artstyle that Japanese games lean into , now don't take my words out of context the Japanese can make absolutely badass art

View attachment 28367

As much as I like to dunk on FF2 for being bad game I gotta say the artwork for characters is top tier the picture above of firion is badass.

Now why im saying that Japanese games have different artstyle from American I mean what does the region have to do with the artstyle? And how handsome characters look? Clearly artists responsible for the game art direction grow up in a society that consumes certain types of media that has certain types of artstyle the artist is inspired by these and grows up to have an artstyle effected by media they consume Japanese usually grew up on anime more than Americans who grew up on rock for example (chris metzen and sam wise the one who drew that awesome art of grom are clearly metal heads) I can't type the artist name of FF games but he was inspired by manga and comics this is visible in his drawings for FF games so yeah its dependant on the artist what he sees as "beautiful" and other factors that play a role in the final art direction of the game.

That's why characters in Japanese RPGs look more clean and appealing than whatever monstrosities blizzard creates when it makes diablo games.

They have been influenced by modern tastes, compare old japanese animation with the new ones that come nowadays.