Topic: Games you recently DROPPED

@Ralizah I feel like you made this post to p*** me off specifically. I'm impressed.

I mostly respectively strongly disagree (not on Pokemon, that remake offends me with its lack of any justification to exist), but I'm genuinely fascinated at the idea that Xenoblade 2 is charming to anyone who isn't a 13 year old weeb in 2004 (half-serious).

@kkslider5552000 I guess our taste in games isn't compatible.

The XC2 cast had a ton of chemistry, and I immediately connected more with the plot than Shulk's poorly-paced revenge quest in the first game. Other than the grindiness associated with unlocking and developing rare blades and the way side-quest progression is often gated behind field skill requirements, almost everything about XC2 is just so much better than in the original.

You might want to look into the Torna prequel, considering it's largely devoid of the fanservice and weird bits of humor and also streamlines the way blades are handled, making sidequests much more enjoyable as a result.

Anyway, the Pokemon gen 4 remake doesn't lack a justification to exist. Not everyone owned the game when it first came out, or wants to break out some ancient handheld in order to play it. I'd still opt for this version over the DS one. I just don't think it's a very good game, is all. I could even put up with the presentation if it was good fun, but that generation did nothing for me. Not at the time, and not in 2022.

I think the last game that I dropped was Indivisible. I don't exactly hate the game, nor do I think it's a bad one. It just really is not gripping me like I was hoping. I initially bought it because I thought the art style was nice and the combat looked interesting.

However, it ended up being one of those games where I feel like I've been playing it for an hour when in reality only 15 minutes passed. This doesn't happen frequently but when it does it's normally a red flag for me. I made it about 7-8 hours into the game which appears to be about halfway and I haven't really gone back to it. Part of me wants to go back to it and finish it but I'm just lacking the motivation to do so.

Pokemon Legends Arceus. I played it, had some fun, but I never feel the need to catch them all. I'm glad I had the experience of playing it but would never keep at it or replay it. So I traded it in towards RF5.

Both games are poorly paced at points tbh. I think a big reason 1's worked better for me is that the villains felt like they were invested and so I was invested when they showed up, whereas in 2 they were just...there most of the time(and not just because of the weirdly underwhelming performances). I've already forgotten much of what the villains were about, despite playing it less than a year ago, while I remember even the jokey first Mechon villain more distinctly.

Actually I just thought of this, in a way it felt at times like the heroes were the more over the top characters in 2 and the villains were in 1. Weird.

Regardless, in both games, a lot of the reasons the characters felt like they had chemistry was because of the in-battle dialogue moreso than just the actual lines in the story. The cast in both games would've been notably worse without the in-battle dialogue, quite frankly.

oh yeah, none of my issues were a deal breaker to buying Torna, especially knowing it won't take an eternity to beat. Xenoblade 2 is a game of high highs and sometimes fascinatingly low lows.

@Ralizah I chuckled internally seeing you list Xenoblade Chronicles in this thread. I've observed, over the years, that ever since we had a meeting of minds about that game, your attitude towards it had seemed to have softened and had me gradually start questioning if we'd ever been on the same page about it in the first place.

The funny thing being that, while you now seem to have reverted to the perspective from years back, I've been playing the Switch version recently and have warmed to it significantly. I've taken some lessons learned during my first go at it on Wii, taking a fairly comprehensive approach to the side quests, as well as upgrading party gear pretty regularly & installing gems in all available slots, which has really improved my experience in reducing the frequency of difficult encounters, and it's made me realise how much of the landscape I'd missed on Wii. There's so many areas I'd barely seen, marching straight through to the next story marker, and playing with the first-person camera view, taking in all the environmental features, has been really enjoyable.

It's made me realise how closely related the environments in XC and BotW are, due to Monolith Soft's involvement, and I find myself regularly wishing I could put my LABO goggles on and play XC in VR like I can with BotW.

I think they've possibly streamlined the UI a bit for the Switch version, which might help explain my improved opinion of it too, but I need to boot up the Wii version to compare as it's been a while.

I've ended up having all the other Xenoblade games in my collection, so I figured I may as well complete the set with the XC:DE, and I'm really glad I did.

@kkslider5552000 That's interesting. I liked Malos, Jin, and the Torna crew in XC2. I thought they felt like a fairly constant presence in the plot, and I enjoyed their backstories overall, whereas XC1 suffers from a lack of compelling villain characters until later in the game, IMO. Large swaths of the first act just felt like the plot was spinning its wheels, which wasn't really an issue I had with XC2.

In-battle dialog, as in... the ceaseless prattle the characters scream during combat? Because I could actually do without all of that (although I admit to finding the over-the-top battle narration voice in XC2 to be extremely funny). XC2 has a lot of scenes where they show the characters just... interacting. Sometimes it's in service of jokey anime humor, yes, but the end result for me was feeling like these people mostly enjoyed being around one-another. I also felt like the secondary characters in XC2 generally felt like they had a bit more agency to them.

It also doesn't help that XC1 gatekeeps a lot of the character-building cutscenes behind inane affinity requirements, which generally kept me from seeing a lot of the optional cutscenes in that game, as I'm not about to grind for hours just so two characters can build up their affinity together. XC2 ditching that mechanic was a godsend, and I hope to high heaven it doesn't return in the third game.

On Torna, I actually really liked how it was paced. There weren't sections of the game that felt like a slog, as was the case with the mainline games. It makes me wish Monolith Soft would invest in making shorter JRPGs. 30 - 50 hours is a perfect length for a game.

@gcunit Xenoblade Chronicles isn't a bad game. Just one I have extremely mixed feelings about. I probably also tend to exaggerate its flaws a bit in service of defending the sequel. I hope my feelings about it improve when I eventually play the DE, as seems to have happened with you.

My issue with the environments is that they're needlessly huge. BotW is an open world game that's filled with secrets, and sometimes even getting from A to B in the open world is a sort of puzzle in and of itself. XC1, on the other hand, is just so needlessly empty. You run around, collect orbs, and fight enemies. And, I understand it's a linear, story-based JRPGs, but the environments felt like they were designed with a completely different sort of game in mind. XC2 obviously didn't completely kick this issue, but the contextual loot collection points and more complex environment geography meant the moment-to-moment of it was more engaging.

I was gonna play it this year, but with XC3 dropping soon, I think I'll wait.

I dropped The World ends with you again and this time probably for the last time, although it annoys me so much to have bought a title physical and not play it but oh well. The Gameplay just annoys me and doesn't grip me at all.
Also dropped Darkwood cause i guess i am just not as good with Horror kinda games as i thought i would be.

I am really sad and a bit surprised that so many people dropped FFIX in here, it was one of my favorite games and the characters had great chemistry in my opinion. There was great Character Development for most of the characters except the later ones and the villain had a bit more human story to him as well. It's the Final Fantasy with the biggest score by Nobuo Uematsu i think and just goes a bit of a different overall feelings than the previous ones.
Maybe my eyes are really clouded by nostalgia though, and the combat is definitely slow, although that, at least, is finished on the switch

@Ralizah Aye, it's by no means perfect, and the Affinity system is still beyond my grasp (about 90% of the affinity heart-to-heart points I've passed have been inaccessible to me so far, despite my more comprehensive approach, but I seem to be enjoying the story and characters more second time around, now I'm familiar with it all, and the realisation of the true scale of the environment (for a Wii game) has just put it in a new light for me.

@SoManyHaveDied

I played Lego City Undercover & Lego Jurassic Park for 3DS the graphics were great but wasn't super impressed with the gameplay. What's kind of funny is seeing both on the Nintendo switch eShop for maybe $6. Not bothering to rebuy the games just to have the switch versions of the same 2 games. Personally I thought the Lego series used to be really good back on the game boy color. It's lost it's charm over the years at least for me~ 🤷‍♀️✌️

Happy Gaming! (^~^)

@Solaine Oh good, I'm not the only one here who hates the gameplay in TWEWY. I actually own Neo as well, but now I'm dreading my playthrough a bit.

Nostalgia probably does have a bit to do with the love a lot of people seem to feel for FF9. I feel like that's true of a lot of older games, tbh. On my side, FF7 was my first major JRPG, and I love it to bits to this day, but seeing several people bounce off it pretty hard who had never played it previously made me realize its rougher edges probably stick out more to people who aren't wrapped in the warm blanket of childhood memories when that music kicks in when you first boot the game up. Even the hideous overworld character models are charming to me.

@Barbiegurl777 I didn't even realize there were lego games on the GBC, tbh. The More You Know.

@gcunit Definitely. It's the world's most impressive PS2 Wii game in terms of scope, for sure. And 3DS as well, frankly, even if it's a hilariously inappropriate game to play on that tiny 240p screen.

I don't really drop the game, just take a break and come back a bit later so I don't get burned out, I love elden ring, but Its hard trying to play that, and dead cells, or stardew, so I have to pick, and I might pick elden.

That's true enough about the plot in 1, but I didn't feel the early parts of the stories were notably worse than nearly any other beloved JRPG. Having a less than amazing first act is basically the norm for JRPGs tbh.

I think the problem is mostly just the acting and the ability to sell me on their personalities for 2's villains. Like it feels like I got the 2nd draft version of this (especially based on Torna originally being planned to happen in the main game), with actors giving their first takes. It could be awesome and they have their moments but as a whole, they're just kinda ok. Like the main moments that stand out from the villains are what they do to the heroes and others more than who they are (end of chapter 5 I remember being a real highlight).

And yeah basically no one liked the requirements to get heart to hearts in Xenoblade 1. They weren't even voice acted. I tend to hate inconsistent use of voice acting, huge point for Xenoblade 2 for that alone.

I somewhat dropped Tales of Arise recently. It's not that I wasn't having any fun with it, but I need a bit of a break from it. The game itself is intentionally made to be a grindy mess, where you have a limited amount of money, and a limited amount of heals at all times. It's all because the developers of the game itself are trying to make people buy the packs of Gald on the shops, as well as the cosmetics (Which grant titles and abilities), and the SP system is a pain to manage, given that Orange gels are expensive. More expensive than buying Life Bottles. It's a shame too, since the game has fun combat otherwise, and the story is interesting. It's just that they make it intentionally grindy, even in Story mode, in order to sell this stuff.

Also, The only reason I prefer Xenoblade 1 over 2 is because it takes it's story seriously, and doesn't have the weird bits of fan service or weird tonal shifts that 2 had, as well as the fact that you can always move around freely during combat without having to worry about not being able to auto-attack, unlike 2, where you mostly just have to stand there, and your character moves so slow when you try to position for a better attack.

I dropped Zelda links awakening, not because I don’t like it, but because I had to look up how to get past something and it turned out to be so easy I wish I worked it out myself. (It was those enemies you have to hit in the back to drop a dungeon key). Now I feel like I cheated!
It’s a dumb reason to drop a game, I know

@Cunir i didnt like that game tho i played it to completion. which is odd cause i liked it on the 3ds eshop just fine

I usually finish games once I start them. I think the last one I dropped was Mega Man X because the final boss was too hard, but that was over a year ago.

@Barbiegurl777 I don't know about Jurassic World but I think Lego City Undercover on 3DS is essentially a different game to the home console versions, and the 3DS version is generally considered to be worse as far as I know. I've only played it on Wii U but I thought it was really good on there.

I have to drop a lot of these Switch games for certain reasons.

Already got better replacement on PS4
1. Overcooked 1
2. Overcooked 2
3. Portal Knights

No longer have interest to play the games
4. Mario 3D All Stars
5. Little Dragon's Cafe
6. Youtubers Life OMG

The discussion on here reminded me that I did drop Xenoblade Chronicles for a couple of years probably, but eventually went back and beat it. And I have also dropped XCX after a battle I just couldn't win. I have tried to go back to it but it's really hard to get back into that game after being away for so long. I haven't played 2 yet because I want to beat X first, so I will likely never get to it (or 3, now).

I dropped X because of a really obnoxious late game sidequest. I don't like the game's logic of "giant enemies, but especially these giant enemies in particular for no apparent reason, are way better than other enemies at a higher level". Also it was Christmas, I'd played the game for much of that year, I had had BOTW for more than half a year. It was time to move on.