Biggest flaws in your favorite games?

[EscapistAccount]

The Witcher 3: This is only a problem when you've been playing it for a while and it's like your third playthrough but all of the loot weapons and armour are absolutely pointless until you get up very high. Some stuff like Aerondight is worth using but most of the Cidaran gambeson stuff and so on is manifestly worse than the witcher gear to the extent that at no point do you feel like using it. This is fine in an early game since it means that you scrape around for stuff til you can afford your witcher gear, but the addition of the Temerian gear along with the viper swords to White Orchard means that if you know what you're doing you basically never need anything you pick up and it may as well convert directly to crowns.

On the same tangent, having three currencies is cool but since only one spends and since the game doesn't make a big deal of currency changing it means that by level 15 Geralt probably has way more money than you think he does. The first time I played The Witcher 3 I ended up grinding bandits for money it turned out I didn't need.

EDIT: It's cool that there are level caps for missions to keep content around, but quests ought to level up to your level if they're story quests. Having scrub quests drop 1XP if you save them for later is cool but if you're like me and do Toussaint before the Isle of Winds the rest of the game is absurdly easy. The power disparity is to the extent that I'd rather not bother my friends and just pay two dozen Toussaint bandits to come defend Kaer Morhen with me and after Toussaint plus runewright nothing else in the game can touch you.

 

[Trunkage]

Mass Effect: wonderful story, characters, visuals and overall Sci-fi setting etc mated the most appalling fucking shooting system I have ever seen in a game of its age. I know its an RPG, but you have put guns in as the primary weapon and it isn't turn-based like X-Com ergo you have made a shooter: make your shooting controls less shit please.

Mass Effect 2: Better combat, best overall cast of characters, much improved visuals without sacrificing the unique look paired with the worst and most stripped down RPG elements of the series proper. Plus, the ongoing Cerberus apologetic tone can just die in a fire: I played ME to its bones - you're fucking terrorists and had the options been there, I'd have had Jacob and Miranda arrested as soon as we docked at the Citadel.

Mass Effect 3: Best combat in the series, best variety of weapons, most flexible weapon systems and greatest set-pieces in the series with what can only be described, even with the EC, the stupidest and most infuriating resolution to the overall story ever. With the ME3HEM installed, my major complaints are that the first couple of hours (about up until you recruit Garrus) are very railroady and it has a fairly lackluster character roster compared to ME2.

ME 1: So many reused environments. The stupidity of killing the villain on the ground crippling the Reaper (combined with the fact that THIS NEVER CAME UP AGAIN. what an easy way to defeat the Reapers.)

ME2: Time waster. The idea of making a super awesome team to do a suicide mission is great. It shouldn't be the whole game. Also, how is one's loyalty to a commander supposed to improve your survivability? The final boss

ME3: The hardest battle, by the longest margin, in the whole series was the fight with Keith David at the start, still on Earth. Kai Lung. The key to defeat the Reapers was on Mars - that's some lazy work there, archaeologist. If your going to try to make Cerberus sympatric, don't go back

Also, Witcher 3. Stop punishing exploration. Have interesting landmarks instead of bland countryside. Skelliege. All of it. What a way to ruin a game. Yennefer is a bona fide monster and she's supposed to be your love interest? At least make her crime understandable.

Sunless Sea: the insane way they flag things. the flag become inventory items. How much down time there is between ports

Divinity OS2: So many broken quests. So many crashes to desktop. The way monsters are placed around the map make me want Divinity to introduce Oblivion style monster scaling - it deletes sense of exploration, drags down the combat and story and makes you retread so much of the map over and over

 

[Yoshi178]

that i won't get to play it for the first time ever again. :'(

 

[Poetic Nova]

I could give you long winded diatribes about the many flaws within my long list of favorite games, but I'll just stick to the most glaring flaw of one of my all-time favorites:

Spoiler: Half-Life 2: Episode 2

That we STILL don't have a fucking followup to the game, a sequel in the series, nor even just a fucking wrap-up of the cliffhanger.

:'(

This is honestly a HUGE reason why I stick to Half Life 1 and its expansions.
Mentioning this means I have to reinstal them again too!

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Alien Isolation: Can't really think of anything...

Bland story that had three too many endings? Great game otherwise.

 

[Xprimentyl]

-Dark Souls takes a significant dip in quality after getting the Lordvessel. I can't stand Lost Izalith. It's like they blew their load on Anor Londo then tried to make do with the little bits of dried cum for the rest of the game. Also, reskinned bosses. 3 Asylum Demon variations? Come on...

Jim Sterling would be proud! XD

But agreed; as much as I do love Dark Souls, it does take an appreciable dip in quality after Anor Londo. Lost Izalith is largely a protracted and empty walk between a bonfire and a cheap, gimmicky boss, a significant low point directly counter to everything Dark Souls offers up to that point. Then Tomb of the Giants and New Londo are just chores and stingily short and empty, the darkness being the only real challenge in each after you learn the danger-free route in Tomb and draining the water in New Londo. Duke?s Archives is more fleshed out and lucrative, but Seath, a fucking DRAGON, ends up being not only the biggest pushover of all the Lord Soul holders, but nearly the biggest pushover of the GAME.

Another complaint I level at Dark Souls are some poorly implemented options/mechanics, particularly Crystal and Raw weapons; neither upgrade is a viable path given the superior options in the others. Why waste resources on a weapon that?s irreparable or one that?s worse in the long run than the Normal upgrade path with its default scaling? I like for a game to incentivize me (or at least entice me) to exercise all of its variety, particularly one like a Souls game that begs to be replayed in various ways; I?ve never once felt the urge to go Crystal or Raw outside of the one weapon I made in each just for the achievements. It seems like the resources to incorporate clearly lesser options could have been better spent elsewhere.

Also the inventory management is horrid, but that was fixed in later games.

Still, in sum total, Souls delivers despite petering out at the end.

 

[Trunkage]

-Dark Souls takes a significant dip in quality after getting the Lordvessel. I can't stand Lost Izalith. It's like they blew their load on Anor Londo then tried to make do with the little bits of dried cum for the rest of the game. Also, reskinned bosses. 3 Asylum Demon variations? Come on...

Jim Sterling would be proud! XD

But agreed; as much as I do love Dark Souls, it does take an appreciable dip in quality after Anor Londo. Lost Izalith is largely a protracted and empty walk between a bonfire and a cheap, gimmicky boss, a significant low point directly counter to everything Dark Souls offers up to that point. Then Tomb of the Giants and New Londo are just chores and stingily short and empty, the darkness being the only real challenge in each after you learn the danger-free route in Tomb and draining the water in New Londo. Duke?s Archives is more fleshed out and lucrative, but Seath, a fucking DRAGON, ends up being not only the biggest pushover of all the Lord Soul holders, but nearly the biggest pushover of the GAME.

Another complaint I level at Dark Souls are some poorly implemented options/mechanics, particularly Crystal and Raw weapons; neither upgrade is a viable path given the superior options in the others. Why waste resources on a weapon that?s irreparable or one that?s worse in the long run than the Normal upgrade path with its default scaling? I like for a game to incentivize me (or at least entice me) to exercise all of its variety, particularly one like a Souls game that begs to be replayed in various ways; I?ve never once felt the urge to go Crystal or Raw outside of the one weapon I made in each just for the achievements. It seems like the resources to incorporate clearly lesser options could have been better spent elsewhere.

Also the inventory management is horrid, but that was fixed in later games.

Still, in sum total, Souls delivers despite petering out at the end.

To continue bagging on the back half - they are generally linear compared to the earlier sections. You don't feel the sense of progression when you find short cuts. While Firelink had three possible option of starting directions, it is quite clear by the choice in levelled enemies that the only way to go was Undead Burg. The Lord Vessel needs to have four separate ways that are relatively equal. Bed of Choas. I actual got to one of those yellow walls that drop when you get the Lord Vessel on my first playthrough. I had no idea why it was there.

Also, Lost Izalith can jump in a lake for trying to burn my eyes out.

It was great that the game didn't tell you everyone. It would have been better if the game told you something. I didn't research the game beforehand and didn't know you could upgrade equipment til well after Anor Londo. Or know that you could kindle bonfires. In fact, I tell everyone I suggest this to, to make sure they have some sort of Sherpa so it doesn't become a chore

 

[Xprimentyl]

-Dark Souls takes a significant dip in quality after getting the Lordvessel. I can't stand Lost Izalith. It's like they blew their load on Anor Londo then tried to make do with the little bits of dried cum for the rest of the game. Also, reskinned bosses. 3 Asylum Demon variations? Come on...

Jim Sterling would be proud! XD

But agreed; as much as I do love Dark Souls, it does take an appreciable dip in quality after Anor Londo. Lost Izalith is largely a protracted and empty walk between a bonfire and a cheap, gimmicky boss, a significant low point directly counter to everything Dark Souls offers up to that point. Then Tomb of the Giants and New Londo are just chores and stingily short and empty, the darkness being the only real challenge in each after you learn the danger-free route in Tomb and draining the water in New Londo. Duke?s Archives is more fleshed out and lucrative, but Seath, a fucking DRAGON, ends up being not only the biggest pushover of all the Lord Soul holders, but nearly the biggest pushover of the GAME.

Another complaint I level at Dark Souls are some poorly implemented options/mechanics, particularly Crystal and Raw weapons; neither upgrade is a viable path given the superior options in the others. Why waste resources on a weapon that?s irreparable or one that?s worse in the long run than the Normal upgrade path with its default scaling? I like for a game to incentivize me (or at least entice me) to exercise all of its variety, particularly one like a Souls game that begs to be replayed in various ways; I?ve never once felt the urge to go Crystal or Raw outside of the one weapon I made in each just for the achievements. It seems like the resources to incorporate clearly lesser options could have been better spent elsewhere.

Also the inventory management is horrid, but that was fixed in later games.

Still, in sum total, Souls delivers despite petering out at the end.

To continue bagging on the back half - they are generally linear compared to the earlier sections. You don't feel the sense of progression when you find short cuts. While Firelink had three possible option of starting directions, it is quite clear by the choice in levelled enemies that the only way to go was Undead Burg. The Lord Vessel needs to have four separate ways that are relatively equal. Bed of Choas. I actual got to one of those yellow walls that drop when you get the Lord Vessel on my first playthrough. I had no idea why it was there.

Also, Lost Izalith can jump in a lake for trying to burn my eyes out.

It was great that the game didn't tell you everyone. It would have been better if the game told you something. I didn't research the game beforehand and didn't know you could upgrade equipment til well after Anor Londo. Or know that you could kindle bonfires. In fact, I tell everyone I suggest this to, to make sure they have some sort of Sherpa so it doesn't become a chore

Good points, but I?ve always attributed the linearity of the latter half to the fact that after acquiring the Lord Vessel, the path of the Chosen Undead is much clearer; between Frampt outright saying ?collect the 4 Lord Souls? and a brief cut scene showing the yellow fog doors opening up, it?s the first time the game every really points to your next destinations. It?s a cop out, I know?

(Un)fortunately, I did have the benefit at least some exposure to the game prior to playing after watching a few speed runs and walkthroughs, so I wasn?t entirely lost, but yes, while much of Dark Souls? lore and story is implicit, it really could have benefitted from a bit more overt explanation of its integral base mechanics. Even after learning how to upgrade weapons, it wasn?t clear what I was doing. I dug around in the blacksmith?s menu forever until I found my +5 weapon was on a different page and needed to be ?ascended? to +6 because that?s obviously drastically different from ?modifying,? right? And the details behind the branching upgrade paths, e.g.: Fire to Chaos, Divine to Occult, Magic to Enchanted, I?m still, even after completing NG+6, not entirely clear on the benefit of one over the other. This could easily have been fixed with blacksmith dialogue expositing how each upgrade affects the weapons usefulness. And I still don?t know exactly how Pyromancy scales; the wiki only muddies the waters even further.

 

[Vigormortis]

This is honestly a HUGE reason why I stick to Half Life 1 and its expansions.
Mentioning this means I have to reinstal them again too!

You mean you don't have them perpetually installed?

Heretic!

 

[meiam]

Dark Souls 1: The Bed of Chaos.
The Souls series after 1 whole: The weird hatred for shield players. Also, invincibility frames on dodges are bullshit. Dodging should be whether you're there when the attack connects. Simple as.

Amen to that. Hate how a couple of boss the best strategy to avoid some attack is to literally roll trough there weapon during the attack animation, c'mon.

Remove I-frame, ton down tracking (giant monster should not be able to spin around like a ballerina when swigging giant axe/hammer) and reduce stamina regen.

 

[maninahat]

Visual Novels interfaces. A few of my favourite games are visual novels, but the vast majority I hate because they've taken on a standardised, utterly terrible form of interface design. Pro tip; if your game is based entirely around getting the audience to read text, don't display the text one sentence at a time. If you insist that your game is a primarily visual, don't make the visuals consist of just one character sprite standing in front of a hazy background for 10 minutes, taking up the whole screen.

There is this amazing invention called a comic book, which sometimes show entire paragraphs of text when they want you to read, and yet can also provide a variety of dynamic pictures if they want you to look at something! And you don't even have to base your reading speed around a text scroller or carpal-tunnel induced clicking, because they know how to lay text and pictures out on a page! Visual novel designers should actually read them and figure out how much potential the visual novel format has for inventiveness.

 

[Kotaro]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Persona 4's atrocious pacing yet. I adore that game so much, but dear god is it glacial.

 

[Crystal Pepsi]

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 - The freaking Campaign on Veteran won't give you a second to rest.

Battlefield: Bad Company - The sucky controls, spawn killers on Multiplayer and Teamkillers. (not saying its bad, its a good game)

Splinter Cell: Double Agent - Not that many checkpoints, i got sick going back to the beginning on the first level.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 - The freaking Campaign on Veteran won't give you a second to rest.

Ha! Well, it IS the highest difficulty! But agreed, I beat CoD4: MW and CoD: MW2 both on Veteran, and it was NOT fun; very stressful. The only reason I did it was to win a dick measuring contest with my buddy; we challenged each other to get all the achievements. I was ready to give up about halfway through CoD4, but since he pressed on, I stuck it out against my better judgement. He then went for CoD: WoW, and I started it with him, but fucked off after the first couple of levels; I wasn?t enjoying the game as it was; on the highest difficulty, it simply wasn?t worth the strain on my sanity.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

Metal Gear Solid 5 - Any mission that had The Skulls in it. Fuck those overpowered, poorly designed creeps.

 

[Dudemaker]

I'm new to this site so...Hi!
This seems like a good place to start posting.
I'm currently replaying through Borderlands 2. While there's a lot i do like about the game (the humour, visual design, reward factor) i get frustrated every time i hit lvl 50 with my character and the exp gain suddenly drops to miniscule amounts, then the only way to continue levelling is to go onto the harder modes.
I don't mind a challenge but i'm the kind of player who wants to enjoy a game, not just about make it through by the skin of my teeth and die every 10 mins. The harder modes on B2 are SO much harder. The message at the end of the regular mode kind of bugs me too: "...where the REAL game begins." What have i just spent 30+ hours playing? The pretend game?
I also love Minecraft, i mean... i love it! But i'm playing on ps3 and the limitations on certain objects (like paintings or signs) bugs me. I do understand it's a memory based issue, but there you go.

 

[Rangaman]

-Dark Souls: horribly optimized, some late game areas are just awful.

-Majora's Mask: A bit too small, ending feels rushed and anticlimactic

-Castlevania SotN: Getting the best ending is tedious, soundtrack in the second castle could use some variety

-Super Mario Galaxy: The fucking camera. And I have to use the Wiimote

-Fallout NV: Or as it's also known, Fallout: Sometimes it works

-Bloodborne: Thanks to Sony, this game will be perma-locked at 30FPS. Also Yahar'gul can go fuck itself.

-GTA III Trilogy: Occasionally, a physics whatever happens mid-mission and I have to stop myself from breaking things in the real world

 

[Sean Hollyman]

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 - The freaking Campaign on Veteran won't give you a second to rest.

Ha! Well, it IS the highest difficulty! But agreed, I beat CoD4: MW and CoD: MW2 both on Veteran, and it was NOT fun; very stressful. The only reason I did it was to win a dick measuring contest with my buddy; we challenged each other to get all the achievements. I was ready to give up about halfway through CoD4, but since he pressed on, I stuck it out against my better judgement. He then went for CoD: WoW, and I started it with him, but fucked off after the first couple of levels; I wasn?t enjoying the game as it was; on the highest difficulty, it simply wasn?t worth the strain on my sanity.

'Loose Ends' used to give me nightmares on Veteran. Especially because I reached a bad spawn on the hill at the end and kept dying.

World at War, on the other hand... JESUS CHRIST. GRENADES. IT'S RAINING GRENADES. How I platinumed that game, I'll never know. Maybe I have nerves of steel.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 - The freaking Campaign on Veteran won't give you a second to rest.

Ha! Well, it IS the highest difficulty! But agreed, I beat CoD4: MW and CoD: MW2 both on Veteran, and it was NOT fun; very stressful. The only reason I did it was to win a dick measuring contest with my buddy; we challenged each other to get all the achievements. I was ready to give up about halfway through CoD4, but since he pressed on, I stuck it out against my better judgement. He then went for CoD: WoW, and I started it with him, but fucked off after the first couple of levels; I wasn?t enjoying the game as it was; on the highest difficulty, it simply wasn?t worth the strain on my sanity.

'Loose Ends' used to give me nightmares on Veteran. Especially because I reached a bad spawn on the hill at the end and kept dying.

World at War, on the other hand... JESUS CHRIST. GRENADES. IT'S RAINING GRENADES. How I platinumed that game, I'll never know. Maybe I have nerves of steel.

It?s been years since I played those games, so I don?t recall ?Loose Ends? specifically; the missions from all three games sorta blend together in a cancerous frustration tumor on my brain stem, but I DO recall grenades being the reason I died 99.9999999% of the time. If I had a dollar for every time I was hunkered down with a grenade indicator at 12, 3, 6 AND 9 o?clock, it would have paid twice over for the therapy I needed after putting myself through all that mental trauma.

Truthishly, one mission DOES stick out (i.e.: protrude from afore mentioned tumor like an exposed, infected nerve ending): the final minutes of All Ghillied Up where you have to await evac at the Ferris wheel THEN sprint to the helicopter. I think after try number 25-ish, I might have started crying; I know for a fact I was slobbering because I was gnashing my teeth so hard I?d worked my spit into a thick, white foam. I think the only way I got past it was the game finally throwing me a bone; I was a few steps away from the chopper, my screen was completely bled out, couldn?t see shit, and I was still taking bullets, but I didn?t die for some reason; mission accomplished (somehow.) I didn?t care to ask why; I was too busy stress vomiting.

 

[CaitSeith]

I love Final Fantasy XV. Although it has several flaws, most associated with bad open-world games: Checkbox side-quests, incentive to explore being at odds with the urgency in the narrative (meet with the princess or else the world ends? Nah! Let's travel the countryside, go fishing, hunt some beasts for money, race with chocobos and camp outdoors for days!), plot-holes, etc... (no towers, thank god!)

Spoiler: But I think this is its biggest flaw...