Topic: Your Gaming Forte

I can rage quit like no one else. Seriously I'm boss at it, even when I'm winning I will rage quit!

I like JRPGs, Adventure games, Visual Novels.

Just a reminder that forte means what you're good at and not what you like. ;p

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/forte

Probably fast paced action games, Hack and slash, bullet hell. Triangle Strategy showed me once again that i am neither a good grinder nor a good strategist. I guess that makes me good at "setting games to very easy" too!

DDR!
Dark Souls!
Elden Ring (getting there!)
Ninja Gaiden games are my jam (NES versions) as well as anything Mega Man/MMX related. Though, I stop at MM6/MMX6, as those are the hottest of garbage.
Fairly good at old Mario games, decent at Super Metroid.
Good at casually speedrunning most games I play.

• Monster Hunter (but not other imitators)
• Donkey Kong Country (but not other 2D platformers)
• Quality 3D platformers (Mario Odyssey, Mario 3D World, Kirby Forgotten Land, etc)
• Metroid and Ori (but not most other metroidvanias)
• Zelda (but not imitators)
• Turn based tactics (Fire Emblem, Triangle Strategy, Mario Rabbids, etc)
• Quality JRPGs (Lost Odyssey, Xenoblade, The Last Story, Final Fantasy X/XII, Trails of Cold Steel, Persona 4 Golden, etc)
• Quality Monster Collectors (Pokémon Legends Arceus, Shin Megami Tensei V, etc)
• Bioware games and those similar (Mass Effect, Dragon Age, The Outer Worlds, etc)
• Quality FPS (Doom, Wolfenstein, Call of Duty- but they MUST have gyro aiming)
• Platinum Action Games (Bayonetta, Astral Chain, Nier, etc)
• Precision Skill-based Games (Trials Rising, Tony Hawk, etc)
• Mario Kart (but not other cart racers)
• Resident Evil (but not most other horror games)
• Quality Stealth (Splinter Cell Blacklist, Sniper Elite 4, etc- again, gyro is a MUST)

Of course, I play a lot more than just this subset of games listed. But I'd say these are the ones I have an affinity for more than others. There's a ton of one-off games I really enjoy but don't typically like the genre. Persona 4 Dancing is one of my favorite games, but I haven't really found other rhythm games I like as much. Gears of War 5 is also one of my favorites, even though I typically don't play many games of that genre.

Overall I'd say I'm pretty diverse with my interests- it just has to be the right game.

• Pokemon (if you know me, this is basically the one thing I can talk about until I keel over. Pokemon is something that I always think of both inside and outside the games).
• Mario (just really nice platforming and explorative elements. The colourful world plus creativity on display is astounding and the 2D ones especially make for great turn the brain off platforming. Mario's always got my back).
• Puzzle games (I'm the kind of guy who will storm through a 100 puzzle wordsearch book in the span of a week so any puzzle game more than meets my criteria for a fun time. Highlights for me include Pokemon Cafe Mix, Tetris and especially Mario's Picross, I have put 25+ hours into just that game alone)
• Ace Attorney (not something I ever expected to enjoy but after finally playing it last autumn, I've grown to really love the characters and storylines. The main thing though, and the main reason I don't really like other visual novels, is the engaging gameplay alongside it. Presenting evidence and profiles, picking through testimonies and, in the more recent entries, pitting witnesses against each other is all so fun and enthralling. Once again, a series I just can't shut up about)
• RPG's (I've already discussed Pokemon but any kind of turn based game will immediately hook me. I'm a massive fan of strategy, though I ironically have only played one 'strategy' game in Mario Rabbids, and these games scratch that itch far better than real time ones, at least for me. My favourites as of now are Pokemon as mentioned previously, Paper Mario and Miitopia.

I'll keep editing this list as I think of more games/genres I enjoy but as for right now, these are the ones I immediately think of. The minute this addendum goes away will be the final list!

I'm pretty much at my best when I play any of the Mario platformers, whether they're 2D or 3D. I've fully completed all of them in some form...including Lost Levels! I'm just as good at the Mario Kart games too. I've played all the games for years now, since I was a child. I'm generally pretty good at any platformer and racing game, though in literally any game I play, I may find myself messing up on occasion. I'm also pretty decent at Tetris, and I can handle some higher levels...though if the level's too high, I'm bound to screw up royally.

I think the best way to answer this is to judge myself on where I've landed competitively across various genres in online multiplayer. Shooters and fighting games? I'm super average, always near the bottom. I put hours into Overwatch competitive on PC to the point where I played almost nothing else for a couple of years. I was Bronze pretty much the whole time

On the other side of it but, Rayman Legends had a competitive mode where you'd compete for the best times on randomly generated levels. I played that a lot on the Wii U, I remember doing pretty well. And I think generally I'm pretty good at those sort of "momentum" platformers. Donkey Kong Country would be the other main one in that space.

I'd say Tetris would also be up there for me in terms of how good I've done in competitive online modes. Not sure what else I would put in this category, there's certainly a lot more genres I really enjoy playing like Racing games but.... not sure there are that many more that I'm actually pretty good at

For me that would be locational awareness and memorisation.
Just like in real life, I constantly have a strong sense of where I am and where I need to go. And when I've been somewhere once, I usually remember exactly how I got there and how to get back.

This comes in very handy when playing big open-world games like Xenoblade and Hollow Knight. The challenge of finding my way in such games is largely mitigated and when replaying them, it becomes a breeze running from point A to B. Even after years going by, not only do I remember the optimal path, I also remember where all the treasures are, the NPCs, quests, optional bosses,...

It's a neat ability to have and it comes in very handy in real life as well. No GPS for me.

@NeonPizza I hated the Zero games. They were obnoxiously difficult, and the story was super cringy. Beat the first two and abandoned that mini-series. As for 6-10, yeah I greatly disliked them. 7 just wasn’t fun for me. 8 was so obscure I never even saw it in local stores, and after watching gameplay recently I just never bothered. I tried and somewhat liked 9-10, but like the zero series, I found them to be obnoxiously difficult. I like hard games, but I like difficulty that feels balanced, rather than cheap.

I played MM and Bass to completion with both characters, but I kept wishing it had a less cartoony aesthetic. It’s decent, but not compelling enough for me to replay. I’ve been replaying MM 1-5 and MMX 1-5 for the past 20-ish years! Side note: I play the PATCHED MMX5, that gets rid of the constant nagging from Ayla.

This is me totally.

When I hear "forte," it usually implies something you're good at. Unfortunately, I'm rarely good at any game genre. I have the patience to grind in games that I love though, but I'd get bored easily if the games don't have anything else to keep me playing (like a good story). Hand-eye coordination and reaction skills though? Not so much, which is why I hate platform games (rhythm games too), and unfortunately, that composes of a lot of Nintendo titles.

I guess if we're talking about my interest though, I do play a lot of RPGs with multiple routes/endings. I'm practically obsessed with multiple-routes games like Detroit: Become Human, Fallout: New Vegas and the Mass Effect trilogy because they feel more interactive, with the story reacting differently depending on your values and personality. It keeps things more interesting. That's also one reason why I got into visual novel as well.

I also had a simulation binge a while back. Simulation games can offer this kind of fulfillment where you do a simulated job and you get awarded for it. It's like a real job without the stress (or the money). I played Two Point Hospital quite a bit, using a guide because I don't like to think too much playing simulation games. I also played lots of Game Dev Tycoon. That game was so good because it gave me the feeling of being a game developer choosing the famous game titles I want to develop throughout history like Half-Life and Halo. Oh, that game was so addictive. It's a shame we never got a sequel.

Other simulation games tend to bore me when they go into sandbox mode. The problem with sandbox is that you literally have to use your imagination to make it fun, but it feels kinda empty when there's no one to approve the things I've done or reward me for extra creativity, and the only person who could appreciate the beautifully sculpted zoo I created was myself. I mean, sure, you could share your zoo design from Planet Zoo online, but unless your "forte" is designing things, if my zoo looks mediocre and I get zero likes, then that will have a detrimental effect to my self-esteem instead and made me wonder why I bother. So yeah, not a fan of those sandbox games. But I digress.

@NeonPizza @Bloodninja

The beauty of megaman games is that we have so many experiences that we can share, but probably never will agree in ranking them haha. I have a huge love for the retro games of MM1-6 but I felt the series went into a dumpster place with both MM7 and MM8. Megaman X really took their best ideas (and development team) and left the original series without any good ones.

I agree that with MM9 they took it back to its roots and made a great game. In my personal opinion however, I feel MM10 provided an even better gameplay experience. Indeed, the atmosphere of MM10 is kinda melancholic (when compared to MM9), but the hard mode of MM10 is better developed than the one from MM9!! I do love hard games (I also like the tone of MM3) and since I have been playing the megaman series for a long time now, I do enjoy the fact of MM games pushing the challenge each time. MM10 hard mode had enemies with new attacks and their AI changed with it. MM9 hard mode? It just changed their HP values (nerfing megaman buster shot) and it was a pretty lazy option. I still love both games but I feel MM10 ranked higher in my personal ranking!

How do you guys feel about Megaman 11? That one was never mentioned haha

@Wisps MM11 is hot garbage. I like the original NES games much better. I don’t like playing games that have carnival levels for some arbitrary reason.

@BloodNinja
I have Megaman 11 PS4 and I have finished the game long time ago. I played in Newcomer difficulty since I knew the game design was really difficult so I need infinite lives to survive.
It was quite good in my opinion, thanks goodness for the Newcomer difficulty.

Odd indie games
RPG's
Lego games
Zelda

That's my forte in a nutshell.

@Mioaionios I've got something really similar! It's quite odd but it really comes in handy when npcs are like "hmm I bet you could find something like this somewhere..." and you just immediately know where to go.

For me it's also really any Zelda game, those kinds of puzzles are very fun for me and I'm quite good at them actually.

I enjoy JRPGs. Pokemon was the first ever JRPG that I got into from an early age, and ever since then I started to branch out. By far, my favorite JRPG of all time is NieR Replicant. The game has so many good characters, and such a great story.

I really like bullet hells, ENTER THE GUNGEON in particular I have 100% it on beast mode. I also like RPGs with action commands (think paper Mario).

@Kermit1
So, what kind of odd indie games you have forte on it ?