Modern CoD games and Battlefront games. I love a good fps (gosh I must have clocked some 4-6 thousand hours across multiple accounts on just tf2 by now), but I never could like the high movement, perk card/modded weapon based games. If the base kit is literally unable to beat someone who has played for 40 hours, is that actually good for playerbase growth? I mean, I know why they do it. AV/B literally patented bad matchmaking with premium skins being the real mmr at one point (That would be US20160005270A1 for those curious and/or playing along at home). It doesn’t make me understand why CoD still sells super well, it is so far from my cup of tea I might mistake it for coffee.
My ideal shooter still has to be, like, CSGO circa operation Breakout. Methodical but brisk. I enjoyed the game and rode the struggle bus to MG-II iirc, some top 7% of competitive. I eventually recovered and touched grass and found new hobbies Now I stick to tf2, something unserious enough that I can just have fun with it. Items aren’t upgrades, the game is just goober coded.
I mained Cammy. I liked how fast she was and I particularly enjoyed that a rapid light punch combo could get through Drive Impact super armour which really threw people off at my low level.
This is funny because my unserious just have fun game right now is… CS2. I haven’t touched competitive in years, just do quick rounds of deathmatch or arms race on between work. As a bonus, the gun skins I get finance 90% of my steam purchases right now.
A game that recently took me forever to understand (and that I am still learning new nuances about every time I play) is OmiyaSoft’s Culdcept on PS2. If you’re not familiar with it, the general tagline people use is “Magic the Gathering meets Monopoly” - and I’m normally not a fan of discussing games in terms of only other games, but that is honestly the best possible description for it.
It has very consistent rules (and a really detailed in-game wiki-styled instruction manual, pretty novel to see on the PS2) but the UI takes a bit of study to understand. I find myself making plans that won’t work because there’s some resource I forgot I needed or the CPU changed the board state in some way I didn’t really catch. Still, it’s a ton of fun, and has a great digital TCG feel to it.
I rented Final Fantasy VII from blockbuster to see what all the hype was about, played about 20 minutes, declared it to be irredeemably awful and stopped playing.
I was 12, I don’t think I had ever played a turn based game or an RPG before. I came back to it about 10 years later and picked it up digitally on the PSP and played a pretty good chunk of it. I still, to this day, struggle with JRPG combat, so I never finished it, but I still have a fondness and nostalgia for it despite the rocky overall experience.
Ya know what I still find hard to understand? Junctioning in Final Fantasy VIII. I know that if I took the time to read a guide that explains it all, I’d get it. But it doesn’t need to be that goddamn complicated
i will say pathologic 1 is a lot easier if you’ve played the second one. i would suggest anyone interested in the series to start with 2 and work backward
dude i finally tried original ff7 like a year or two ago and it was so ridiculous. like “motorcycle minigame” “stealth minigame” “war strategy minigame” when i finally got to the actual literal Administering CPR Minigame i tapped out hahaha
As a kid, I just did NOT understand how RPGs worked, so any time I hit a fight I couldn’t win, I just got frustrated and gave up. I bounced off of stuff I otherwise loved like Legend of Legaia, Suikoden, FFT, and Thousand Arms. I beat Breath of Fire 3 with the help of a GameShark, and I beat FFVII by getting a save file from a neighbor boy, but that meant I defeated Sephiroth with characters named stuff like “Gayboi” and “Biznitch”. I think the only ones I ever beat legit were the two Lunars on the PS1.
Now as an adult, the game I desperately wish I could wrap my head around is HEXCRAFT: Harlequin Fair. It’s a very cryptic ImSim that tasks you with collecting tarot cards, most of which are actively circulating among the game’s NPCs which you’ll likely have to fight for, and the combat is very unforgiving. Plus, its got permadeath, so learning from trial and error is incredibly punishing. I find all the dev’s work fascinating though, so I find myself jumping back in to try and figure it out every couple months or so.
Pretty much any MOBA (League of Legends, Dota etc.) confused me for so long because it seemed like so much to manage and learn about. The abilities + the lanes + all the timers + map layout and top of that there’s like 100+ items you can buy in a shop, just so much to think about. Deadlock was probably the closest I’ve gotten to finally being able to keep track of everything, it helps that it’s a third person shooter instead of click-to-move which I really struggle with personally.
The more you play them, the easier they get. Did you ever try Smite or Pokemon Unite? They simplify things to a degree, but they still require your full attention and careful thinking when it comes to building and playing your character.
Smite, particularly in Conquest mode, allows a lot of flexibility in how each character can be built, and that’s why it’s usually my go-to MOBA. I feel like others in the genre lock each character to a specific role with no flexibility, and that just sucks.
MOBAs rock because 100 hours in is where you START to understand what’s happening and it never gets any easier (complimentary). (i’ve played dota 2 for multiple thousands of hours, greatest game ever made, do not play it.)
Now I stick to tf2, something unserious enough that I can just have fun with it. Items aren’t upgrades, the game is just goober coded.
