That's because you're playing it wrong. You see, at it's core Skyrim is actually a puzzle game you play on the Nexus Mods website. You spend 30+ hours carefully researching, building, and tweaking the perfect pack of mods, only to immediately run out of interest in playing Skyrim once you're finally done. The actual Skyrim installation only exists to check if you solved the puzzle correctly and it runs.

Skyrim came out 14 years ago.

I have the opposite opinion. I avoided it for years because of the hype (and not having proper hardware to run it).

Now I have almost 900 hours in it, and sometimes I jump in just to walk around and revisit some places.

Just get openmw and play a real elder scrolls game before Bethesda got got

I recently tried Fallout 4 based off of the same expectations. Probably didn't even make it a quarter of the way through the main story. I was having absolutely no fun. The thing that finally killed it for me was spending 5 minutes calculating which items needed to be sold at a shop and which I should keep, then getting blown up a block later, then respawning right before I did all that inventory management.

The new Doom games are all very different from each other. I liked what Doom 2016 was doing (even if it got repetitive) but really didn't enjoy Eternal because the constant juggling didn't sit with me. I haven't tried Dark Ages but it seems like it's doing something between 2016 and Eternal (not quite use what you want and not quite always juggle) while also adding its own dimension with the mix of melee and guns.

I would never recommend each Doom title based on the last title. But it doesn't mean I don't like what they're doing. I think it's brave to do its own thing instead of doing what is expected.

Yeah. I didn't really enjoy it, but I got into it and finished it. Once I realized that you're expected to die and respawn frequently, and you don't lose anything when you do, playing went a lot better.

I still don't get that decision, because Doom has never been like that. Even arcade games don't do that. It just felt trivially cheap at that point.

Yeah, I enjoyed a bit of 2016, but got bored a didn't finish it. I think Doom Eternal I had from Steam Family Sharing (or other source I didn't pay for) and just couldn't get into it. I hate both of them forcing the melee kill thing that takes you out of the action to watch a cutscene, but Eternal just didn't feel like it worked for some reason.

I think this is one of the reasons why Pathfinder 2e has been doing so well.

It's a middle ish ground and it feels good to progress.

My current issues with it are how underpowered the items are. So boring.

I haven't played any 3.5e proper, but I understand Pillars of Eternity 1 is largely based on it, and I've played a handful of the 2e games. I dig a lot of the changes in 5e. I wouldn't say the power is so flat that the differentiation only comes down to role play; I'd say a lot of it comes from the apples and oranges comparisons between classes, like things beyond to-hit roles. Your fighter has no AoE attacks like the wizard has but has Second Wind and Action Surge, for instance. The advantage to flattening the differences a bit more is that your character's role is less preordained ("you are playing class X, so you must be responsible for Y") and that you are less hamstrung by the absence of one particular role, which scales better to small parties.

3.5e being the best is an opinion I've heard for my entire life. I would say preferring 5e is a more unpopular opinion.

2024 is even worse. On top of that, they also stack extra abilities, and try to give everyone everything.

One of these days I should try Pathfinder

5e character progression does feel kind of bland.

I feel the 5e rules are poorly organized, too. Lots of interdependent rules scattered far from each other in the books, and sometimes buried in the middle of seemingly unrelated sections, so unless you've memorized multiple chapters, understanding how to resolve common situations sometimes requires stopping the game for 15-30 minutes while someone digs through the books to find all the relevant factors. Even when you do find the relevant info, it's often in ambiguous language describing what could have been made perfectly clear with a few keywords. The books are pretty, and the text might be nice to read for entertainment, but they're pretty bad the the job of being game manuals.

Does 3.5e use the d20 system? Does it have the advantage/disadvantage mechanic? I like those aspects of 5e; they're simple and they help keep games moving along.

Maybe I should give it a try. Or perhaps 4e, which I have read does a better job of clearly defining its gameplay mechanics.

Differentiation comes from role play, which is the least interesting part of the game for me.

Can you explain why you would play a TTRPG if you're not interested in role play? Seems like a battle sim like warhammer, or just a video game might be the thing you're looking for.

As a DM, the cooperative story telling IS the interesting part. D&D has never been an airtight game system, it's a bunch if hand waving to give just enough illusion of structure and randomness so you don't feel like you're just arbitrarily deciding everything yourselves. But at the end of the day, you are. The characters and story you're left with is the only thing of value.

I liked 4e the best.

I started TTRPGs with Pathfinder (1e). Some people talk about it like some impossible thing to play. It does have a lot more detail than 5e, but it isn't that bad. (I did play one character as a wrestler, who did grappling a lot, which is notoriously one of the most complex systems.)

5e sells itself as being simple, and it is in how little control it gives you. However, the rules are anything but simple. There's so many contradictions and stipulations every player has to memorize. It's a mess. For example, some spells can be used as bonus actions, but not if you've already cast a spell, except for some that can anyway. It's stupid.

Pathfinder 2e seems to make things so much simpler for everything, while still giving players freedom. Actions are just actions. If you've got the points you can use them for anything. Movement, attacks, spells, etc. Pretty much everything just is what it says.

There was a time when I could not have imagined liking those kinds of games. My partner got me Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition and I hated it. Hate may be too kind a word for how I felt. I’ve always loved metroidvanias and the style seemed right up my gothy, witchy alley, but I couldn’t get past the first basic zombie.

Then we watched a bunch of videos and realized that the game was designed to be played slowly and deliberately. There were no “junk” enemies and paying careful attention at all times was the game. When it clicked, it clicked, and now From Software games are my favorite.

Souls games didn't make sense to me until I saw Giant Bomb play through Demon's Souls. Mechanics that I didn't know were there were explained in plain English, and then I could better understand where I went wrong when I died.

All the souls games. I don’t get it

They're memorisation timesinks

My first attempt was Dark Souls 3. I went in expecting challenging but rewarding battles, and a mysterious world to explore. Unfortunately, I found myself bored within an hour every time I played, and gave up on it after maybe a dozen sessions.

I tried Elden Ring maybe a year or two later. I stuck with it for longer, but the experience was roughly the same. The combat felt tedious. The art and animation didn't appeal to my tastes. The world seemed big, but desolate. The controls somehow made me feel awkwardly disconnected from my character. Nothing about the game made me care about it at all. The biggest challenge was in keeping my eyelids open.

I wonder if I would find soulslikes more appealing if I had grown up on console games. They're clearly popular, but it seems they just aren't for me.

I've enjoyed a lot of Soulslikes, but none of the ones made by FromSoft. Their style of providing poor explanations of mechanisms just makes no sense to me, even if you want to give players those moments of self-driven discovery.

The game makers had no respect for players’ time.

I don't know that game, but the importance of respecting the player's time cannot be overstated.

I wish more game makers understood this and prioritized it accordingly.

I absolutely agree with you, I got to a point where I had solved the "main" puzzle, but was struggling to complete other puzzles (that I knew the solution to) simply due to room draws.

I wanted to love the game, but it held itself back on the RNG design. It can be so detrimental to the game that I wouldn't recommend it to most people.

I bought into the review hype, bought the game, then realized about two hours after the Steam refund window expired just how tedious this game felt to play.

I really wanted to like it, but it stopped being fun and started being so tedious that I uninstalled it.

Same. The game is fantastic but the RNG is only cool on paper and falls apart just a few hours into the game. The methods they give you to influence your luck are just not enough to do much at all.

It's really frustrating when you are trying to do something but you constantly have to do something else because that's what the game is giving you.

I cheated at the end and gave me infinite rerolls for rooms so I could create the layout I needed in that moment. Much better that way.

Check out Seance of Blake Manor, doesn't have the rng

A big part of the appeal of Hollow Knight and Hades are their respective art styles. They are both genuinely gorgeous games, and it really improves the experience. I would rather open up Hades again instead of, say, TBoI for exactly that reason, despite my thinking that TBoI is the better roguelike.

Admittedly I can't bring myself to enjoy Hollow Knight at all, but that's just an issue of me disliking metroidvanias.

I agree regarding Hollow Knight... It was fine. I don't really get the hype though, people would make you believe it's the best game ever made.

I'd go for CO:E33 too. Its a decent enough game but I don't understand the absolute hype it receives. Probably a 5/10 game for me.

All of the games you listed here were pretty under hyped IMO except for perhaps Silksong.

I understand this is all subjective, but I think you're leaning toward like indie gaming hipster material with this comment...and that's my opinion.

I played E33 for about 4 hours. The combat system is atrocious. It feels like I'm playing a turn based RPG but with elements of Dark Souls? The almost necessity of dodging in combat made me give the game up.

Very fair, I had a lot of fun with it as a casual game to relax with. Not so easy it's trivial, not so hard it needs a lot of thinking.

Man I LOVE drg. A good team on a call made this the most fun I've had playing in recent years. Unfortunately, the population is lower and one may have trouble finding new players. Veterans are usually happy to help, but you'd need a patient one.

For me, deep rock really shines when you're playing the higher hazard levels. Seeing a wall of the cave move because it's covered in enemies, and then hitting them with a fat boy gave me happy chemicals.

It's absolutely a generic open world game, bit that's not necessarily a bad thing. The formula is fun if it's done well, which I think it is for Horizon Zero Dawn. The combat style is also uncommon and provides a satisfying loop of stealth and bullet time mechanics.

I liked both games, but combat is ruined in the second. Literally just constant spamming of massive AOE attacks. All the nuance of the first is literally nuked from orbit.

Dude. I have tried like 3 times to get into the horizon series. Just can’t do it. It’s so generic, just pretty.

Took me awhile to get into it. I did eventually finish it. My criticism of the game was more that the dungeons aren’t really all that challenging and are mostly just places where the story advances. Not many puzzles or fights. You just do your fighting out in the open world. Also, eventually the fights are easy as you learn how to fight each type. Eventually you just avoid confrontations because they’re just time consuming.

I had a great time with that game with the difficulty turned up a few notches. It really makes you use the tools in your tool belt, plan ahead for weaknesses, and lay traps. Without that stuff, I likely would have found it to be a generic open world, too. The story will always be ridiculous, but even taking itself seriously, there's a payoff toward the end of the game where taking itself so seriously is still satisfying and makes sense, even with a world filled with absurd robot dinosaurs.

I don't think it was quite as generic at the time of release, but yeah I tend to agree

To me, the Souls combat does best in a tightly knit and highly curated environment. I really enjoyed Elden Ring but I do not think it was a step forward for the series. Open World worked to the detriment of the game IMO.

I (re)play Soulsborne for builds, and I think that's necessary to appreciate ER. Trying out all the spells and different weapons is most of the fun, the rest being trying them out on bosses.

It's definitely not the best in its genre, if only because they did away with the level design ethos that makes their other games so good.

Factorio's the awakening for a lot of people on certain ends on the spectrum. My AuDHD makes it crack for me. I will say though, while the tutorial teaches you some essentials, it just throws you into the deep end once you start a real game.

I only discovered all the tips and quality of life from videos online, and there are some troubles in the game you can solve on your own but good fucking luck (belt balancing).

Might not be your kinda game, but if you ever feel like giving it another chance, check out some vids online for beginner tips (: It's a game about stimulating the Eureka! part of our ooga booga caveman brains and it feels amazing.

I feel vindicated. I have the exact same feeling of factorio feeling too much like work, having to refactor everything because the requirements change is one of the more frustrating parts of software engineering imo, and the game feels tailored specifically to invoke that frustration.

I imagine that part gets better after the first hundred hours where you basically know what's coming. I don't have the patience to learn the tech tree though, given that I don't even enjoy the game.

I feel both of these strongly for the same reasons, also GoW had all the sluggishness of a Souls-like which immediately made it not fun to play.

I absolutely love Factorio. I even bought the DLC the moment it came out.

I'm also absolutely rubbish at the game. I've never managed to finish the game on my own, and usually struggle to get blue science producing at all, much less at the correct ratio.

I do have fun with trains though, so I'll often jump into friends' games and just optimize (replace) their train networks.

Agreed. New GOW was much better.

I picked it up and thought "this is so stupid," right before spending many hours playing it.

Try out Magic Survival, the (way better) game VS was copied of

I always think it's fascinating to see how the discourse around games evolves. It's always most telling when people stop talking about a game at all. Remember Starfield? No one even talks about Starfield anymore, not even about how bad it may or may not have been. Just kinda flopped a bit and passed from memory.

I had to search "Bethesda space game" just now to even remember its generic name ...

In a lot of cases, the people who enjoyed it will have already said what they wanted to say about it, and then the detractors can just yell out the loudest. There's a perception that BioShock Infinite was only praised because of release hype, and a lot of people look back at it unkindly for one reason or another, but I've seen a number of people experience it for the first time in just the past couple of years, unaware of any reputation it might have, and they loved it like we all did at launch.

Out of curiosity, who did you romance, and why?

I played through fhe whole series thinking the good part was about to happen since there was hype for the game.

I love the series, but I played the games when they came out. It's true that the level design of ML2 suffers from it being a cover shooter and ML1 is very dated now.

Which of the three titles did you hate most/represents your dislike best?

I do wish they'd done more with the buildings.

The structures being carbon-copy was lore, they're built in factories and dropped from ships.

But that doesn't mean they all need the same boxes in a row layout internally, some personality would have been great and pretty easy to implement.

You're playing a middle aged detective (though he looks older, or at least more worn down) who just woke up from an alcoholic coma after taking all the drugs, unable to remember anything about himself or the world he lives in, except for the fact that there might have been a woman, which was somehow both the best and the worst, and possibly some trivia about disco.

I don't think you're supposed to be able to remember or understand everything the game throws at you, at least on a first playthrough. That's what Kim is for.

Just go with the flow, and remember that in this game failure often leads to more enjoyable outcomes than success.

What are you making notes of? I never had this urge.

Also, in case you weren't aware, Steam has notes built in and it saves them for each individual game

I kept dying. And I couldn't figure out how anyone dies in a narrative game. I couldn't really figure out how to play the game and gave up after dying 2x in the same conversation.

I'm still so confused how one dies from conversation.

Instead I watched a video about the game.

I play a lot of games but nothing like this one. I wanted to like it but I'm too dumb to figure out the mechanics. And I even tried watching videos and found them convoluted and confusing.

Meh.

Loved the art style tho.

Why am i spending so much time wandering at the street level where everywhere just looks and feels the same.

What game are you fucking playing?
“Looks and feels he same”!?
What are you even going on about? Every neighborhood, every nook and cranny, looks and feels different and has it's own personality and story to tell!

Night City is the real protagonist of the game! I could spend hours upon hours just walking those streets, experiencing the city (and have), and I'm far from the only one...

And the voice acting of V (I played female) is so overreacted, it's one of the cringiest performances in gaming

I'm sorry, what? Cherami Leigh got a well deserved BAFTA nomination for that performance!
(Lost to Laura Bailey for her work as Abby on The Last of Us Part II.)

What, were you playing with your eyes closed while listening to something else..?

Agreed. I have bounced off this game a few times for similar reasons. For a game that is about a cyberpunk future, it felt so much like a gta clone. Having played the ttrpgs, I think I just have a different version of the world in my head, and the games version just feels off.

Yeah seriously, V gets so worked up over fucking everything and I just couldn't give a fuck. Calm the fuck down and take your Xanax, V. She's stressing me out over nothing.

Yeah ok im glad to hear someone say that about cyberpunk 2077. Its been only just ok, but I want to like it more, but I don't so far lol

After Jesse died my motivation to continue dropped off a cliff. All the other characters are so boring and uninteresting. I cringe everytime johnny silver hand shows up. Also the driving and gunplay feels really really bad. Its got skyrim-like clunkiness without the flexibility and interesting world to make it worth while.

I stopped playing it after the credits rolled only for someone to tell me there's a secret Act 3 if you do some really specific stuff. I don't really care for games that require guides, especially if they gate a bunch of content behind it, so I never came back to it.

However, I did enjoy the first two acts of Silksong much more than the first game. I was never a big fan of Hollow Knight and considered it among the worst of popular metroidvanias. But Silksong was pretty good outside of the fetch quests. Unlockable alternate move sets was probably my favorite bit

Dark Souls is a 14 year old game

Kinda the same, but I did like slay the spire. But balatro is leaps and bounds superior.

That’s funny, I love Slay the Spire, but I have mixed feeling about Balatro.

Balatro is addicting in that once I start playing I don’t want to stop, and yet after playing for a few hours I couldn’t say for sure I had fun at any point the whole time.

Playing Balatro feels like exploring the backrooms to me - just infinite bland nothingness.

I personally loved it the part where i was weak. Its lore accurate and it was like travelling back in time to the olden days.

It was great nostalgia rush to play a game where you could really die and it was not unusual to need and try same fight multiple times.

Now days i feel like most games are allmost impossible to loose. I dont want it from all the games, but its nice to have games like that available.

Helldivers 2 is hard game, but dying a lot is something the game mechanics are build around and you dont loose instantly and when you loose you just fire up a new game, it does not give me the same 2000's vibe i got from the space marine 2.

Also the reaction times are not that tight. Even my dad reflexes can manage those.

I played this with two friends. The progression system is just awful. So we got through the full campaign once and it was fine honestly. Then we were kind of hyped to try going through it again, it was all right definitely harder. And then the third time around we just gave up cuz it was clear that they're just wasn't that much game to play, and the enemy is just become bullet sponges and you either grind endlessly to try to level up and gain unknown amounts of power if its power at all.

Intermultiplayer sessions we did have a few epic moments won't lie. But the cost just wasn't worth it. And those thin offset the issues that we had.

I've never played a consoley Hitman nor tried a controller, but I loved the original hitman (silent assassin) and the original series sequels up till about Blood Money. I didnt enjoy Absolution, it's too choreographed unlike the originals where you could actually be creative and kill people in a variety of ways.

Then got pretty confused when I realised they reset the numbering with "Hitman" and "Hitman 2" (why do games do this?) and just gave up at that point and haven't tried them or anything newer

Huh what?

Deus Ex Human Revolution and Mankind Divided do a similar cyberpunk vibe to Cyberpunk 2077 but with better gameplay and plot IMO.

I really liked and the story. But after taking a year break and then playing the dlc phantom liberty. I kinda was over it. Just felt like work. Not really fun.

So idk. Maybe you just have to be in the right mood for it.

LOL I could have told you that before you spent the money.

Thankfully there's a lot of good games that really shine on high-end hardware. Like that Indiana Jones game and the Spider-Man games. Also you never have to worry about games being an unoptimized mess, when you can just brute force them with pure processing power.

You tried playing with mods though?

Do you have a general reason? Giving the name of the game doesn't do much when i don't know why you didn't like it.

I still enjoyed Elden Ring, but I agree completely. I prefer the metroidvania world design of earlier From Software games. The sense of progression is one of the best parts of those games, and Elden Ring’s open world robs the it of a lot of the magic of earlier titles, where discoveries were around every corner and in every nook and cranny. I never felt the same joy of exploration and hard won progress as I did in Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro.

Open world sure did mean lots of wandering and dying until you figured out where to go. Still worth it but too much wasted time.

thats the point of thoese games. more story than gameplay almost

I'm grinding through this one now. The graphics are great, and the game does feel like a modern doom, but the fun does seem to be lacking.

I'll finish it, but don't think I'd replay it.

I personally didn’t love the atmosphere of this game. Didn’t feel very doom like. The gameplay mechanics are also different, but I got used to them. The game is turning more and more into a rhythm game like DDR or Guitar hero where you need to do the right attack at the right time depending on what enemy you’re dealing with.

I love that game, spent hundreds of hours in it a while back, and don't remember fuck all about the story.

it's a shoot 'em up loot game, and it does a great job of it IMO

absolutely a brainded activity though. it and Bioshock are two different frames of mind when you're playing them

Did you play it solo or with people? I found the game to be fairly dull solo. It was better with people but the loot system still allowed a lot to be desired especially if you played with greedy people.

Oh really? I did have fun with the Outer Worlds. Nothing too amazing, but it was fun enough to keep me invested. Parvati was also a large reason for that, I loved her character.

I didn't think it was so bad I had to stop playing, but I did stop playing one night once it got late and just never started it again, nor had the desire.

It seemed fine enough, but it just didn't click with me I guess.

Well just fyi. The end missions are currently, still today, broke. So only one ending available that is regardless of whatever choices you made.

I loved the first one. I like this one but they made some bad changes.

But mostly they need to fix the mission bugs.

First one you could change the armor and weapons on the companions.

Also I really liked the vicar and Parvati. Vicar was like a snarky gay guy and I loved it. I will admit the other 3 were blah. But the new companions on OW2 are kinda bland.

I don't really like any of them. Niles and inza had potential but wasn't developed.

And I straight up dislike Tristan's personality. He's just awful.

Aza can be entertaining. If they made her more impulsive I think that could have been fun.
For instance if you take too long in negotiations and shes present. She just starts attacking people after some time limit.

Or randomly attacks strangers she doesn't like the look of.

They could have done something interesting with her.

But mostly they need to fix the damn quest bugs so I can finish the game.

Also there was a quest in ow1 where some sketchy dude asks you to do some sketchy thing. And you realize this during the quest. You can go back to him and get the reward. Or sucker punch him.

I wanted more of that in ow2. Didn't get it.

Yeah I'm a huge factorio player and I so badly wanted to like satisfactory but i can only describe the gameplay as cock and ball torture. For the first 6 hours you are getting kicked in the balls repeatedly by pointless tasks that drag you out of the automation loop. The game is not playable until you unlock the hydro power.

With friends it helped mask the pain.

Spoken like someone who never built a hypertube cannon to fling yourself beyond the boundaries of the map

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2X3wlvoShg

Graphics are great. Hardware requirements are low, but there are bugs that accumulate with more play time. Learning curve is infinite and permadeath is only option despite a bunch of claims to mod/patch it. PVP is broken, constant spawn camping and pay to play behavior. Microtransactions are a pain. Huge variety of mission types, yet it still ends up feeling like a bunch of fetch quests sometimes. Side quests are the way to go, the main campaign is not super rewarding

Yeah, mid characters except few...

The characters being gross? Im not sure ive heard that complainant, could you elaborate please

Same. I tried to just 'go with it' and ignore the flaws so that I could play multi-player with my SO. Act 2 was a slog. Act 3 is where we gave up completely. The only good part is that the whiny companions started dying on their own.

I had the same feeling, didnt really like the characters they were weird but after modding some custom ones in I enjoyed it a lot more. I did keep astrlas ans shadow heart then put my own two characters to fill the party.

I felt that way for the first couple of hours and then the parrying "clicked" with me. Also you get some items/skills that make parrying easier/stronger.

similar suggestion to BlackAngels: RimWorld?

sounds like you'd enjoy top-down gameplay more than 1st person, so might be something to try!

pro tip: try the base game first. the DLC are all good, but none are required!

edit: RimWorlds' mod scene is also just incredible (some would probably call it non-credible too XD); there's Project RimFactory if you want a more factorio-like playthrough! (although, fair warning, RimFactory is pretty damn OP, up to you how much you abuse it...)

They are all centered around being the person executing the task. Have you tried Dwarf Fortress or alike games?

Soulmask. Its been phenomenal even in EA, and its about to fully release before the end of the year. Once Human is also fantastic and its free.

Just finished it with all achievements (except final Takezo fight, yet) in about 50 hours. It was a little repetitive yes, but it didn’t bother me much. The setting, presentation and gameplay checks all the boxes for me so I kept going.

But I would’ve also been happy if it was shorter. That’s my general opinion on games these days.

Condescending in what way?

Ha, indeed I never even got into hollow knight and didn't even find it appealing. Big metroidvania player otherwise. Love dead cells.

Anyhow, I really like(d) expedition 33, played through on easy. Due to the qte stuff which I wish could be turned off entirely. It's also a question of accessibility imo.

Technically it's not really great and should perform way better on ps5 or pc.

But whatever, it was generally a good game.

Oh I think the reverse - it's a pretty game with a nice story but the gameplay itself made me want to quit the moment I won the main story.

For those unaware you can basically win by being really really good at Simon says (except you can't beat Simon that way)

turn-based game, but not turn-based battles.

What does this mean?

I can understand the blitzball distaste though, it was polarising even then.

Final Fantasy X is probably my favorite Final Fantasy of all time. Just don't play X-2, assume the story ends immediately.

The HD remaster has some "cheats" to smoothen your experience, if you ever want to give it another shot:

• No random battles
• Infinite gil
• All non key items
• invencibily (to make up for low levels)

This way you can enjoy the story and move quickly through the game.

If you don't enjoy turn based battles nor grinding I think this IP is just not for you. Definitely nothing before Final Fantasy 12. Maybe Final Fantasy 12 is ok, though I thought the story was on the weak side.

Wild, I had the opposite experience, I loved Prey (I also love the Dishonored games). What stuff did you end up not liking about Prey?