Biggest flaws in your favorite games?

[Sean Hollyman]

What are the things that make your absolute favorite games that little bit less perfect, that's just holding them back? They can be the tiniest or most glaring flaws possible that you can think of!

-Silent Hill's combat can be smelly. I know it's a horror game so you're not supposed to be an unstoppable badass but it feels way too clunky at times. It's a good thing that literally everything else in the game more than makes up for it.

-Pokemon games sometimes have a severe problem in lacking certain good types depending on which starter you picked. Fire types in Sinnoh being the absolute worst offender.

-Combat in the 3d Fallout games is ASS. Operation Anchorage was a goddamn mistake. The fun of Fallout is exploring this horrific wasteland, scavenging supplies to survive and interacting with all the characters. What do you get when you take all of that out and you're basically left with a CoD mission with Fallout's shooting gameplay? Shit. You get shit.

-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...

-Metal Gear Rising is way too short and the level design is kind of bland. Plus it really could have used a boss rush mode.

-In Mass Effect you don't really get rewarded or much of a payoff for being neutral. You have to either be a massive dick or space gandhi to get the most out of it.

-MGS1's backtracking segment just really drags on.

-MGS3's original camera was ASS. Not the good kind of ass either, I mean like poop ass. Plus they really should have implemented crouch walking at this point.

-Final Fantasy 9's battles take about 4 years to load.

 

[Silvanus]

Flaws in my favourite games--

Majora's Mask: Too few dungeons.

Okami: tutorial is too damn long; bloody fishing.

Silent Hill 2: Minor issues with controls, I suppose, but otherwise just brilliant all-round.

Portal 2: Tonally inconsistent at times. Unfortunately connected to Half Life 3, which of course doesn't (yet) exist.

Guild Wars: Prophecies: Various issues with henchmen AI and balancing issues (particularly of monk enemies).

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Saga Frontier is blatantly unfinished and dramatically unbalanced.

Love me some T260-G

 

[jademunky]

Planescape: Torment has broken quests and even has a chance for you to break the main quest and render it unwinnable (dunno if the GOG version fixed that problem).

Also has stupid time-wasting trash mobs in the hive that respawn (which it wisely abandons in later parts of the game in favour of it's untouchable dialogue).

Also the original game (as a form of primitive DRM) had you constantly swapping between 4 discs all the time rather than allowing you to just install it all onto your hard drive.

Also the CD case was this awful cardboard bullshit that scratched the discs themselves.

 

[BrawlMan]

-Metal Gear Rising is way too short and the level design is kind of bland. Plus it really could have used a boss rush mode.

There is a Boss Rush mode in the PC version. I know that doesn't fix the issue in the console versions, but it is a plus if you got a decent running PC.

Devil May Cry 1 - The first person water sections suck. Luckily they are very brief. Oh, and secret missions can be a ***** to find sometimes if you are not familiar with the game or you haven't played in a long time.

DMC3 - Enemies getting way too much health on Dante Must Die mode. You practically need Rebellion and Beowulf to do the most damage as quickly as possible (Swordmaster is a must). Unless you're really good with royal guard. Also some of the backtracking can get annoying in the last third of the game. Yet, it is nowhere near as bad as the backtracking in DMC4.

Bayonetta 1 - The fucking QTEs! Failing certain ones counts as an insta kill. And odds are that 9 out of 10 times you're going to fail if you are a first-time player, because the timing for it is tricky and stupid.

Serious Sam The First Ecounter - the grand epicskill battles don't come soon enough. They really don't come in until the 5th or 6 minutes. The second encounter fixes this issue, but some stages go on for too long.

Doom (2016) - Platforming in the first-person shooter. It's not the worst example, but Doom didn't really need platformin segments.

Streets of Rage 2 - R. Bear. That is all.

Crash n sane trilogy - There is no slide mechanic for Crash 1. I know it was not in the original PlayStation 1 release, but if you're going to revamp the game's control scheme you might as well add in the slide.
And fuck the bridge level; both of them.

Contra 4 - A lack of a stage select. Keep in mind, this game came out in 2007. I know they were going for old school, but didn't have to go that far. Luckily I got to that point, where I can blaze through the game with little to no trouble, for the most part. It's still an odd design choice by WayForward.

Evil Within 2 - My only real problem with the game was that it could have used a few more enemy types. Compared to the first game where it had a lot more enemy variety. When you make it to about two-thirds into the game you have just seen about almost every enemy there is. They do throw in a couple of surprises, but by that point you're in the last hour or hour and a half in the game.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

My fav genre is Jrpgs and the biggest fault a Jrpg has is trying to appeal to non-jrpg fans. The ones which westernize their approach too much to the detriment of what makes Jrpgs unique end up with something that doesn't capture those western fans cause they're already biased against Jrpgs to begin with and also alienates the existing fans who like Jrpgs because of their Japaneseyness.

Another issue can be a mismatched ratio of gameplay to story. I am all for story in my Jrpgs so if a Jrpg tries to be too gameplay focused and without enough character development I just lose interest and I would rather just play a competitive game like a fighter instead at that point. The example that epitomizes this is Oreshika 2, the game had so much potential but it didn't do anything with the cool setup in favor of its gameplay.


As for my fav games, I dunno, their biggest fault is that they end? That you can only play em for the first time once? Something like that.

 

[Fijiman]

Iron Brigade really could have used some more levels, much better servers, and the ability to destroy your own towers and share scrap with other players would have been a god send a good number of times. That's all I can think of at two in the morning without playing some of my other favorite games in a long while.

 

[darkrage6]

GTAV-Rockstar reneging on their promise to add single-player DLC(their website used to say "single-player DLC coming soon") and being incredibly greedy with microtransactions in GTA Online.

 

[Hatachi]

Robot Alchemic Drive: Just about the entire game. It's voice acting is so bad it wraps back around to being amazing.

 

[Sean Hollyman]

-Metal Gear Rising is way too short and the level design is kind of bland. Plus it really could have used a boss rush mode.

There is a Boss Rush mode in the PC version. I know that doesn't fix the issue in the console versions, but it is a plus if you got a decent running PC.

Devil May Cry 1 - The first person water sections suck. Luckily they are very brief. Oh, and secret missions can be a ***** to find sometimes if you are not familiar with the game or you haven't played in a long time.

DMC3 - Enemies getting way too much health on Dante Must Die mode. You practically need Rebellion and Beowulf to do the most damage as quickly as possible (Swordmaster is a must). Unless you're really good with royal guard. Also some of the backtracking can get annoying in the last third of the game. Yet, it is nowhere near as bad as the backtracking in DMC4.

Bayonetta 1 - The fucking QTEs! Feeling certain ones counts as an insta kill. And odds are that 9 out of 10 times you're going to fail if you are a first-time player, because the timing for it is tricky and stupid.

Serious Sam The First Ecounter - the grand epicskill battles don't come soon enough. They really don't come in until the 5th or 6 minutes. The second encounter fixes this issue, but some stages go on for too long.

Doom (2016) - Platforming in the first-person shooter. It's not the worst example, but Doom didn't really need platformin segments.

Streets of Rage 2 - R. Bear. That is all.

Crash n sane trilogy - Tgere is no slide mechanic for Crash 1. I know it was not in the original PlayStation 1 release, but if you're going to revamp the game's control scheme you might as well add in the slide.
And fuck the bridge level; both of them.

Contra 4 - A lack of a stage select. Keep in mind, this game came out in 2007. I know they are going for old school, but didn't have to go that far. Luckily I got to that point, where I can blaze through the game with little to no trouble, for the most part. It's still an odd design choice by WayForward.

Evil Within 2 - My only real problem with the game was that it could have used a few more enemy types. Compared to the first game where it had a lot more enemy variety. When you make it to about two-thirds into the game you have just seen her out almost every enemy there is. They do throw in a couple of surprises, but by that point you're in the last hour or hour and a half in the game.

Isn't it less of a boss rush mode and more of a chapter select thing? From what I remember reading, anyway. I'm not sure why they added it in the PC version but neglected to put it in the consoles, it pisses me off because the bosses are the best part of MGR

GTAV-Rockstar reneging on their promise to add single-player DLC(their website used to say "single-player DLC coming soon") and being incredibly greedy with microtransactions in GTA Online.

That's one thing that's kinda putting me off RDR2, to be honest.

 

[Neverhoodian]

The Neverhood Chronicles

- Traversing the world could get tedious at times, what with Klayman's leisurely stroll of a movement speed. Hall of Records, anyone?

- Some of the in-game hints were a bit too cryptic, resulting in a few "where do I go/what do I do?" moments.

- Some of the mid-late game puzzles expect way too much from the player. One of the most infamous was its take on the "match two" memory game, which took place on a massive 6x8 board and reset every time you got one wrong. The only way I managed to get past it was laboriously drawing the whole thing out on paper.

Tie Fighter

- While not as hair-pullingly difficult as its predecessor X-Wing, the game still has a nasty predilection for sudden difficulty spikes out of nowhere. You thought it was frustrating clearing laser cannon minefields while flying a Rebel fighter? Try doing it in an unshielded Tie Interceptor with no warheads and the hull durability of a wet biscuit.

- It's difficult to explain, but there's a dead zone in every mission that "pushes" your fighter away from a certain axis. It's usually not that noticeable, but every once in a while there's a mission critical target or objective smack dab in the middle of it. Trying to keep your crosshair centered over it in such cases in an exercise in frustration.

- I realize secondary and bonus mission objectives are meant to be obtuse to some degree, but some of them are flat-out ridiculous in this regard. I often had to replay missions over and over again just to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do to complete them.

- The later campaigns started focusing too much on defecting or otherwise treasonous former Imperials, Zaarin in particular. If I wanted to shoot Imperial ships I'd play the other X-Wing games. It didn't help that their ships had the same red IFF coloring on sensors, resulting in a confusing clusterfuck during the best of times.

Morrowind (unmodded)

- Right, might as well get everyone's complaint out of the way; the combat sucks. No other way around it. I realize it was meant to simulate "dice rolls" governed by weapon proficiency, but the plethora of inevitable misses is always frustrating in the early game. While I have a laundry list of complaints about the direction future Elder Scrolls games took, they at least made combat more palatable by tying the weapon's damage to proficiency level, not accuracy.

- If you know where to go, what to buy/steal and have the right skills you can render the game laughably easy from the get-go.

- Bugs. Good Lord, the bugs. While not Daggerfall-levels of instability, it's still janky as hell. I remember being put off from the game for a few years because my save file got corrupted and I had neglected to keep my other saves up to date. Faced with the prospect of replaying weeks' worth of progress, I threw up my hands and quit in frustration.

- Two words: Cliff. Racers.

Spoiler: Warning: NSFW language

 

[Casual Shinji]

There's one or two cheap 'fuck you' moments that Resident Evil 4 springs on you. The biggest offender being the room with the hourglass treasure with the cage suspended over it. The problem is that even if you hug the walls and stay out of the cage's reach a cutscene will still put you in the middle of the room and trap you. This then is ofcourse followed by spawning in enemies in and around the cage, including a Garrador, with padlocks the size of dinner trays locking you in. If you go in there unprepared you have almost no chance of winning. Now, if you know it's going to happen and you have a grenade -- which I'm always sure to have for that very moment -- it's relatively easy, but it's still total bullshit.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

this is a little weird as I was thinking of making the same topic a couple of days ago but gave up on the plan for reasons or whatever. Am trying not to assume it's a newly formed superpower, its tricky you know, though further testing will be required, one can dream meanwhile

to add, I'd like to bring to the cutting table the ilk of Horizon Zero Dawn, Zelda Ocarina of time (not sure how many Zeldas do this, but I believe it's all of them!) and other titles, of which there are a few; where you spend the entire game getting to know the world and its' inhabitants, their troublesome plights against all those evils and terriblisms, getting to appreciate everything and everyone as you work tirelessly helping them and their home become a much pleasant and more bearable place to live. You fight and defeat the big old bad, perhaps dramatically, perhaps not, but generally there's a celebration and party after where you see all those people (or anthropomorphic monstrosities) having a wonderful time of eventual relief as their worries are somewhat reduced. The credits roll, finish, yay, time to go back in and see how everyb...

Wait...I've been here before. The...the big bad remains alive and the final mission is still incomplete?? But I fell the bastard, I saw it all just a second ago! Everyone was happy, even that one miserable sod that always frowns at my cat each morning. Now the clock has been rewound as if none of it happened and no-ones life improved?
Oh, what's this? A...picture of a trophy? The faintest of obligations? Bah! I dont want your cheap digital trinkets, game, I wanted to see these characters living happy lives unfettered by crazy dangers! I wanted to mingle incessantly with them all! It's like a flipped Memento situation where the entire game is Guy Pearce's character who can never remember the justice he attains, so continues to endlessly seek it regardless.

but other than that, yeah great game. Maybe there's a real-life allegory to be found in all this too

 

[Cold Shiny]

I guess Megaman X is my favorite game. It doesn't really have any flaws, but there is a slight pacing issue created by fighting all the bosses over again. Its not a huge deal when you know what you're doing, but when your playing the game on a snes when you're 8 years old, the realization that you have to fight every boss again is a little soul crushing.

 

[blue heartless]

The biggest flaw in MegaMan Legends is that the third installment was cancelled, despite Keiji Inafune stating he'd like to complete it.

 

[sXeth]

Ultima, hoo boy

1 - The WTFrandom spacefighter section
2 - Why is the game suddenly on Earth (and Mars, and etc)
3 - Let's kill the final buss by inputting punch cards?
4 - I'd have to replay it again, but I have a vague memory of some really obscure or possibly erroneous progression dialogue due to the text parsing
5 - Invisible time limits, some more bizarrely obscure clues buried in the text parsing, you can get to the end and fail because you missed an inobvious item.
6 - The treasure map sequence is literally longer then the entire rest of the game. And completely unrequired, funnily enough. Basically the main storyline will take you to a quest that takes up about the same amount of time as the rest of the game combined, or you could just accidentally stumble on the thing by exploring the world.
7 - Good god the combat system. Real time was not kind to this series at all
7 pt 2 - Same combat system. Also the last third of the game is a chopped up mess due to deadline issues.
(I wouldn't call the last two favorites, but for completions sake)
8 - The whole game is basically the last 3rd of 7.5. Excessively busy work in the magic system.
9 - Only like 3% of people could even run this when it came out, only to get a Duke Nukem Forever style mess (which is impressive considering they did that much rebooting in like, 1/4 the time).


Heroes of Might & MAgic 3 - Some glaring balance issues. And kind of lacklustre expansions. Armageddon's Blade has a decent main campaign, but the new faction was again, wonky balance. And the bonus campaigns in that expansion were mostly the hyper-difficulty stuff designed for speedrunners exploiting AIs and so on. The second expansion was just incredibly light, closer to a basic map pack.

 

[Callate]

Fallout 4 and Skyrim- yes, I get that you're patting yourself on the back for being masterful storytellers for forcing players into "best of bad options" storylines. But if you want players to feel like they have real agency, you need to consider a few more "F@$% this quest and the faction that dared give it to me" options, a'la the Dark Brotherhood. Only having the option to do or walk away from quests you find morally dubious or counter-productive to your earlier progress or actions is deeply unsatisfying.

(The same might be said of Far Cry 2, come to think of it...)

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

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.

 

[laggyteabag]

Halo 3

I love the game to bits, but the Battle Rifle was complete ass. I get what they were trying to go for, though.

If you have ever played Halo 2, the weapon was basically the complete package. It was great for short ranges, long ranges, and everything in between. This is because the weapon was hitscan, and had practically 0 spread.

In Halo 3, they decided to remedy that by adding a bunch of spread, and by making the weapon a projectile-based one. This made the weapon super inconsistent at longer ranges, and was almost entirely random. It should take 4 bursts to the head to kill someone, but now it could take up to 7, just because bullets would just fly everywhere. Add the fact that the enemy might be running around, and the fact that the servers were Peer2Peer only, and you just had a recipe for inconsistency.

Im not a competitive player, so it didn't fuss me all that much, but damnm was it frustrating.