Topic: Loved & Hated Game Tropes

I thought this would be a fun idea for a thread and couldn't find any threads like it in the few quick searches that I did. Basically, this thread is about discussing your loved and hated tropes found in some of the games you play. These tropes can entail story, characters, lore, aesthetics, and more. Try to give an explanation and some examples of your trope (if one of your examples is a spoiler, make sure to use the spoiler tag).

I look forward to seeing what you all have to say!

Loved Trope: Post-Apocalypses That Are Filled With Life

Oftentimes, the post-apocalypse is depicted as being extremely inhospitable to life. Some games have challenged this narrative, however, and have created serene or thriving worlds in the ruins of civilization.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land - The setting for this wonderful game is quite overtly the ruins of a human civilization. Despite this setting, the game is incredibly vibrant, and flora pervades much of the dilapidated urban environments. The New World is one of my favorite game settings because of how it manages to show such a bright perspective to what would normally be a bleak environment.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - While much of the game has a quite sorrowful undertone due to Link's failure to defeat Ganon 100 years prior causing Hyrule to crumble, the wilds of the dying kingdom have an unmistakable serenity to them. Forests and fields are lush and wildlife go about their lives in these beautiful environments. This made BOTW a joy to explore.

Hollow Knight - Much like Breath of the Wild's Hyrule, Hallownest has a great deal of life in it, even as the subterranean kingdom gasps its last breath. Exploring Greenpath for the first time was nothing short of magical. That region flawlessly executed nature in a land where civilization has fallen away, and its not alone: Queen's Gardens, Fungal Wastes, and more do an excellent job of showing the beauty of nature reclaiming ruin.

Loved: Mid-game story twists. I love a game story where halfway through the entire thing starts to get turned on its head, even when its something as silly as...the shadow Mario reveal in Mario Sunshine. Zelda is secretly a master of this. Obviously more story driven games love this too, that goes without saying, but its neat even outside of those.

Bullet time: Slowing down the game as an ability is almost always cool, I think it speaks for itself. Also it often feels like an in-game cheat ability unless the game is ultra hard without it.

Ruin Everything Before the Reset: This has become my favorite thing in any game that has stealth and/or pacifist runs. Let's just kill everyone for lolz before I reset back to the last save. Just some catharsis and curiosity of what will happen, but I can reset, so its fine.

The game's not over yet!: Speaks for itself, the game is clearly set up to end, and then it does not. This doesn't always work, but when it does its often a wonderful surprise that makes the game feel more epic and cool and surprising and worth the money spent. With some crossover to games that are stuffed with content, particularly ones that have a large variety of game modes to choose from.

Endearing and silly gameplay dialogue: Sometimes the best story is the small bits of dialogue you hear in gameplay over the actual story. Star Fox 64 works entirely based on this and half of the appeal of Xenoblade Chronicles' characters is winning battles and hearing what they say during and after a battle. I promise I know non-Nintendo examples of video game tropes! (honestly this is a huge reason Booker and Elizabeth work so well in Bioshock Infinite)

Hated: Wasting my time and dragging things out: At least in terms of games I actually play, maybe my most disliked thing is the entire concept of having no interest in like...pacing...or respecting people's time, just crossing the line into time wasting nonsense. Xenoblade 2 is a game with tons of high points to praise extensively, but among other issues, it goes so, so far with wasting your time that it has changed how I think about and to an extent play games. Especially being stuck in menus for so much of it, it will always be my go to example of this. But I just hate when this happens even in relatively minor examples of it. Pikmin 4 did several things to avoid being my favorite Pikmin, and the biggest one is it absolutely would've been a better experience if the main game had 10-15% less game in the main game.

Related to that, over-relying on the core game being bloated when there's a perfect alternative for "people who want more content for the sake of it that isn't in the core game for people who like tolerable pacing for a video game". You didn't need to make Arkham Knight bloated, when the Arkham games have challenges outside of the campaign if you want that.

Love Tropes: False Religion / Belief

Final Fantasy X storyline with the tradition of sacrificing the summoner to become Final Aeon to defeat the Sin yet Sin just only reborn by taking over Final Aeon body and the cycle of Sin keep going, the hypocrisy of Yu Yevon teaching that against machina yet inside Bevelle Temple, they found machina.
I love this False Religion theme that actually opened my mind with reality here, the religion that we knew have something related with FF X plot, the false religion and living in lie.

Hated Tropes : Damsel in Distress

I'm already tired to see this plot especially in Mario games which Peach being powerless and being kidnapped by Bowser for no reason (Except on Super Princess Peach NDS, she kicked the Bowser butt).
Nothing wrong for being strong woman like Mulan or Lightning FF XIII.

Loved: The Gimmick Level
I am a HUGE fan of a fun gimmick level, especially if it comes in the middle of the adventure and I get to look forward to it in a replay. The Call of Duty games do it for me a lot; the tank-driving levels in CoD1, the bomber crew level in World at War, and my new favorite - the convoy parkour level in New Modern Warfare 2. It's got the same feeling as going on a field trip, you're gonna do something different and it's probably going to be very entertaining!

Hated: The Forced Tutorial
Not just unskippable, but also so idiot-proof that I wonder if I'm too old to be part of the game's intended audience. The whole screen is faded out except for the button you need to click/tap, and it also gets an arrow pointing to it for good measure. You can't do anything until you click that button and go through the very intentional series of actions the game wants you to do. No exploration of mechanics or inputs until the game lets you. And in the off-chance it does, the developers didn't realize it and OOPS you've broken the tutorial, start over! I'm here to play the game, guys. Please let me.

@UpsideDownRowlet I wonder if you'd enjoy the My Time At games, My Time At Portia and My Time At Sandrock. They're cozy life-sim games that take place many years after a tech-based apocalypse, but things have largely bounced back to idyllic cottage-core life. There's a third game on the way, too - My Time at Evershine. It looks like it's gonna be great!

@SeafTheFissh Thanks for the game recommendations, but I'm sadly not all that interested in cozy games.

Also, I completely agree with what you said about gimmick levels. They're a fantastic way to break up gameplay in longer titles. A good recent example came with the Magical Mystery Boards in Deltarune Chapter 3, which suddenly shifted the turn-based RPG into a strange NES-style cross between top-down Zelda and Mario Party to surprisingly strong results.