Criticize games you enjoy

[sageoftruth]

Devil May Cry 3
The Gunslinger style was pretty useless

They went a little too far in trying to make Dante look cool

Lots of attacks were too interchangeable.

Enemies made of sand make very un-fun punching bags.


Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner 2
Very looooong dialogue

Negotiating with devils often felt less like choosing the best answer and more like rolling a dice. I'm certain I saw the same kind of devil respond differently to the same answer.

 

[Poetic Nova]

Well, I'll mainly focus on Carmageddon 1 & 2, since some of the problems occur in both games.

What's in both games:
Opponents that have either absurdly high armor or offence. Do you drive around with max APO (armor/power/offence)? Well tough luck, here's an opponent that wrecks you anyway (biggest offenders are Heinz Faust's King Merc in C1, Mother Trucker's Semi Mk1 in Splat Pack and the Abba Cab in C2.

C1/Splat pack: Oh god, the awfull annoying wailing of the sirens from the police units. It gets annoying stupidly fast.

Splat pack: Its obvious which cars are from the main game: they don't reflect the skybox in the windows like the new vehicles do. That and 2 vehicles are bugged; both crash the game unless you change some values, then one spawns normally but the other dissappears of the map (Bugutti and The Sled respectively).

C2: Lacking map design, 'specially the 3 desert stages. They are so bumpy that getting enough room to knock an opponents teeth out isa tough task. This game also shouldn't have shipped without a rank system, the rank system in C1 and Splat Pack made sure you got atleast a certain amounts of credits to gain ranks to unlock new races. Instead we got badly designed missions in 2.

 

[Blitsie]

Welp, I'm in the last dungeon of Wind Waker and I'm sad, I don't want the game to end! Definitely one hell of an amazing game overall.

But the Wind Temple and its counterpart was horrible, just horrible.

I mean, a psuedo-escort mission in a freaking dungeon? That's like walking into a sewer level, finding out its filled with terrible jumping puzzles and your character's legs just got broken upon entry. The Wind Temple especially had me grinding the living hell out of my teeth, doing the command gesture with the wind waker was fun the first three times, not so much the next one hundred times as it had me commanding the character every five freaking seconds at one point.

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

Rainbow Six: Vegas 2
The game is identical to the previous game. The only changes are slightly clearer graphics, a few more weapons, extended magazines and much less interesting maps. The enemies are really friggin' dumb, basically brain-dead. They will not hesitate to run out in your line of fire even when they just witnessed their mates being blown to bits right in front of them. If a grenade is thrown at them, they will stare at it and back away slowly. I have never seen them escape one even on the hardest difficulty. How does the game attempt to compensate? By making them able to knock a flea off a your back at 4,000 paces even when they aren't aiming at you!

The game is incapable of rendering more than 6 enemies at a time, so the game becomes hide-and-seek once you've killed the 6-man-strong conga line. They all spout the same 6 lines as well and will react to grenades with yells even when I'm just hitting their long-dead corpse. This gets very confusing when you keep hearing sounds of death even when you clearly haven't hit anyone.

When I think about this game, I think "blocky." Everything in this game is blocky. The graphics, the guns, the movement, etc. All very rigid and square. You move very slowly and have a very, VERY short sprint distance. The visuals are all very reddish brown for some reason. Most games are brown, Battlefield 3 is very blue, this game is noticeably red in all environments.

One of the game's touted features is the ability to screw on suppressors while in the midst of combat. Problem is the enemies won't react any differently (they won't be aware but they will still charge your position, furthering my theory that they are idiot savants or moronically clairvoyant) so it's all for aesthetics unless you take into account they make your gun's performance worse.

The antagonist's motivations make absolutely no sense. They once messed up a mission, the effects of which are basically nonexistent yet they want payback on their superiors? For context, they get shot while disarming a bomb right before being ambushed by a large force (for the game). This causes him to shout at you for supposedly setting him up for failure. Problems are that 1) The enemies are very easily dispatched and you can reach him yourself after 2) he seems no worse for wear than the multiple times your squadmates will be shot and can be revived in seconds and 3) There is a prompt for you to revive him, reinforcing the notion that he received no worse punishment than your teammates will dozens of times throughout the rest of the game. It is known that he is the enemy from the last game but this game thinks that it's such a reveal that they have to hold off on it for a long time, though I admit both games are happening simultaneously. Basically, the story is short, pointless, nonsensical and goes nowhere.

Out of the dozens of guns at your disposal, there are a few really good ones that will cause you to overlook everything else unless you really want to challenge yourself. There are even a few guns that are outright useless as they require you empty a full magazine and a bit into an enemy in order to kill them.

It is fun, though.

Just Cause 2
Big world, but very shallow. Why can't I land a plane? Why does the story and mission structure suck so hard?

FarCry 3
Best described as Just Cause 2 through the lens of Call of Duty, I actually liked the story. I know what they were trying to go for with Vaas and Hoyt, but unfortunately Vaas is simply far more interesting than anyone else in the game much to the detriment of the game's intent. Biggest complaint here is the framerate. It always feels that I'm watching a slideshow.

Alien Isolation
I can take the crappy animations of the game and the weird audio issues with speech, so that wasn't an issue with me.

My biggest complaint comes from the creature itself. It doesn't behave like the creature from the first movie, but rather a combination of the depictions in Aliens and Alien 3. It lacks any subtlety that made the first creature scary. It would wait forever in the shadows for someone to come to close to it, then it would strike while revelling in your terror. It would be forever out of sight, the possibility of attack being the primary event in the film.

In the game, it's very content to loudly announce its presence and stand bolt upright in the middle of a brightly lit room. It's also pretty dumb. On nightmare difficulty, I've been able to evade it even when it must have seen me right in front of it. On the same coin, though, it appears that hiding in lockers is futile because it will immediately go to it and peek inside it. I've followed the button prompts but they don't seem to work. It comes across as the developers hiding how dumb it is by giving it supernatural abilities, though these abilities wouldn't have been out of place if it had been as smart as in the film.

It's a shame that it always stays in your vicinity and attacks others only when you're around. I'd enjoy true unpredictability in the environment. Though it would be difficult, imagine if there was an algorithm running in the background that would make it wander the entire station, attacking anyone willy-nilly. You'd never know who you'd encounter in the next room because they could be hiding, elsewhere or dead.

The motion tracker is way too generous and the environment doesn't really allow for tension with this. The screen implies that you have a fairly narrow cone in front of you covering maybe 30 degrees. The game also states that you will not know its position vertically, so it might just be in the vents. In practice, though, you have a full 360 degree 3-level proximity detection cylinder around you that detects it even when it's not moving. This seems like a missed opportunity. I think it should only work for the displayed area on the screen and not to the side or behind. The game could also render the levels above and below you so you genuinely wouldn't know if it were in front of you (tying into the above idea of a truly organic environment). It also should not be able to detect it when it is not moving.

As a separate issue, it seem weird to me that you can spin around as fast as possible and not make a sound. As an added game mechanic, make turning attract it (could be a bit arbitrary but bear with me). That way if it were behind you, you would have to carefully consider turning around. Imagine not being able to see how far it is from you but you know it's right behind you. You just have to turn and look but you can't because that would mean a death sentence. Scary shit.

Splinter Cell 1 and 2
Good GOD the checkpoint system is annoying!

 

[Someone Depressing]

Final Fantasy X is the epitome of this for me. I don't hate the game, but I enjoy it.. for all the wrong reasons. It's both one of my favourite games, but also one of my most hated.

1: The character design, Tidus and Lulu in particular. The former wears shorts with different-length pant legs and a midriff-baring wife-beater thing with a hoodie over it. The latter wears a dress made of belts.. That's not even getting into the fact that Wakka's hair is stupid as all hell, maybe even the worst, and that Tidus looks like Meg Ryan.

2: Yuna is not the protagonist. This is an issue in and of itself. Fuck Tidus. I do not care about Tidus. I do not care about his story and his little bitchy ass character development arc. Those 5 minutes in which you play as Yuna instead of Meg Ryan over there were the best 5 minutes in the game for me.

3: The Sphere Grid was a good idea, brought down horribly by the fact that it just doesn't work out all that well. It should have been secondary to main character development, and forcing the player to use a gimmicky, unreliable, confusing system to level up their characters was not fair or a good design decision. Whoever made it should be forced to drink gutter water for the rest of their life.

4: Happy fireworks. The laughing scene. Even if these moments, and many many more, were intentionally badly and poorly handled... that doesn't make it any less badly and poorly handled.. HAHAHA, HAHAHA, HAHAHAHAHA, HYAHYAHAHYAHYAHA, HYAHYAHAHAGFIEHGFEHGEBGBEGFB

5: Riku, in general, is just ridiculously disturbing. Really tasteful, Square, making the resident kid hero 15-year-old girl (and that's only by the end of the game!) the local fanservice girl. While not entirely related, the hot spring scene in X-2 cemented her as my least favourite female Final Fantasy character, simply due to the fact that she's walking loli-bait. Not cool.

Also, Dark Souls. This game.

1: With some colourful sequence-breaking, perhaps even by accident, you can turn this otherwise difficult, unforgiving game into a glorified catwalk. I've seen runs where by Blighttown, players have ridiculously powerful weapons and have used the Master Key to skip most of the bosses, making bosses like Spider-Booby Lady (now canon) powerless in your overleveled wake. A game should not be this broken, especially not from the very start.

2: The characters are boring. They mostly just exist to show the player how broken and desolate Lordran is, and that's... all they do. You find some of them in various locations having gone Hollow and are forced to kill them, but aside from that, they... don't do much. They sometimes do a thing, but not many things. Sometimes, they sell you stuff. But aside from that, eh? Do you honestly care?

3: Some bosses are sort of shitty. Some of mini-bosses (no, not the mini-mini-bosses) like the Taurus Demon and Hellkite Dragon sort of suck. For good fights, there are the Vagina Vomit of Death Dragon, the beloved Ceaseless Discharge, and the aforementioned Spider-Booby Lady, and Priscilla. Except I hate Priscilla because she will never become my waifu desu desu, so fuck Priscilla.

But aside from those big-game bosses, and a few others, the rest of the bosses are just shitty. The AI is disappointing, and outright doesn't work, in some cases, leading to many hilarious incidents of formidable bosses and intimidating NPCs alike doing things like backflipping off cliff faces and turning in circles forever.

4: The Upgrade System. A few paths don't seem to have been finished at all, the Raw path being the most glaring, and Magic or Divine over 5 are just useless. They're only worth it for unlocking Enchanted and Occult.

5: The controls stack, like the older Quest For Glory games. This means that you might roll or attack with a lunging weapon when you don't want to, and then get murdered by some fat asshole because the controls are awful.

 

[The Random Critic]

3. ELDER SCROLLS/FALLOUT 3/NEW VEGAS

All these games suffer from similar diseases. Ugly textures, mannequin-like NPCs with stilted dialogue, bugs galore, a total lack of urgency or pacing in the narrative (most of which are irredeemably shoddy), and open worlds that react poorly or not at all to your activities. The play balancing tends to be horrendous as well, they're amongst the most shallow and ass-backwards RPG systems on the market.

urgh... I can't recall things well enough for the case of Elder Scroll and Fallout 3... (I'm pretty sure there are a few moments of re-activity here and there)

But the world is very very reactive in New vegas, it's directly in front your face too.

Things I do not like in New Vegas are 1. The game feels very incomplete, there are alot of well known cut content 2. DT is a pretty terrible system in a sandbox engine with no missing mechanics 3. It's fallout 1/2 trapped in the body of a fallout 3 engine. (Can be a good or bad thing, depends on your opinion)

 

[Scow2]

I can complain a lot about The Elder Scrolls - the game feels more like an engine than a game due to clunky controls and obvious game objects. But it's the only game series where I can consistently play as a naked demon-killing catgirl.


Saints Row series... No cat ears or cat tail accessories anywhere. And Saints Row 4 promised me "Independence Day Meets Metal Wolf Chaos Starring the 3rd St. Saints", and I was all excited to take D.C. by storm as President to save it from aliens while blowing half of it up and taking over the other half and becoming a superhero. Instead... I got the previous game's city in the Matrix. And then they blow up the world and make me the leader of 'everything' (Which means 'nothing'), meaning I will never get my "Independence Day Meets Metal Wolf Chaos Starring the 3rd St. Saints" game

 

[Evonisia]

Team Fortress 2 has one of the most toxic communities of shitbags there ever were, where money=expertise, and flashy effects=worth as a human being.

Plus, the Mini sentry is balls.

That mini-sentry is the bane of my Scout existence on more open maps, but against other classes it's balls.

Hey Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, you know it would be much more practical to have the Wii mote shake count as valid if it goes in any direction, right? Don't put in directions which are damn near impossible to pull off leading to frustrating deaths? No? Well you should.

 

[USIncorp]

Counter Strike. GO most recently.

-For a shooting game, the RNG in this game is crazy. If anyone thought the 'Flinch into a lucky headshot' in Call of Duty was a dealbreaker, don't touch CS. Guns like the AK have accuracy reticles in the centre-screen that literally lie to you. It's possible to aim in such a way that the enemy isn't even near the reticle but the bullets will connect with them.

Also, while moving your accuracy is drastically reduced, which is supposed to award people for slow and careful movement, all realistic-like. But the amount of times enemies run around gung-ho, fire one single shot from their AK and get a headshot from about 20m is absolutely stupid. Essentially, no matter how well you play, RNG will bone you 1/4 times, and that's it; you're dead for the whole round.

-Dust 2 is another problem. There's a sightline from one spawn directly into the other. Spawn with a sniper, kill 2 people. Those people got to play for literally under 2 seconds and they're out for the round. Very bad map design, but for some reason it's the community favourite.

-Lack of gun variety. There's a 'loadout' screen that lets you swap guns in and out, but there are only 1-2 guns that can actually be swapped; you're stuck with the rest of them. Small maps, very few flanking routes and a tiny gun roster means that the matches start to feel very similar, very quickly. Good thing you can only win 2 matches every 21 hours, then, right? I kid you not, after you win 2 matches the ranked lobbies (and trust me, you want to play ranked; in Unranked, the enemy players can literally screenwatch you), you're put onto a 21 hour cooldown before you can play again.


It's a fun game; I've always liked shooters, but CS has a lot of flaws for a game that's been out for so long. Instead of adding new content they seem to just re-make the same game every few years with a little graphical upgrade and resell it.

Sorry, but as a big CS fan, I have to respond to some of this criticism.

Your first criticism is a simple lack of understanding of the game mechanics. While all guns do have a small amount of random bullet spread, all guns have a predictable and regular pattern of where your bullets go when you hold down mouse 1. For example, to take the AK, standing still and firing at a wall will result in the bullet decals drawing a sort of T shaped pattern on the wall. Every time you do this, the AK will replicate the same pattern, except when moving. To respond to the moving-and-shooting criticism, if you again try firing at the wall while moving, your bullets go everywhere, completely unpredictable. If you get killed a lot from people that do this, then you are probably playing at the lower ranks, because it is incredibly easy to punish anyone trying to spray and pray you. Simply stand still, don't panic and go for the accurate shots. Moving and shooting only works at the point blank ranges.

De_dust2 has its issues but the mid area is not one of them. The doors give so much information to the terrorists, which helps prevent the map from being CT-sided. AWP battles between multiple people only occurs in public games and casual game modes. In competitive play (which is the way the game is meant to be played) you have at most one person, if any, trying to go for those kills. I'd go into more detail, but this guy-> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWs4znwyL5U can explain why dust2 is the best map far better than I.

The loadout screen only constitutes a small amount of guns for a reason. The other guns are all in there for a reason, and are balanced around the games economy (strong weapons cost more in-game money, and vice versa). Also, the cooldown for winning two matches in a row is only for unranked players, and, judging from your post, I can tell that you're not a very skilled player in-game (I don't mean that as derision). CS is and always has been the Dark Souls of online FPS games. If you can, try playing with 4 friends and using a voice chat service like teamspeak. You'll get a much better sense of how the game is meant to be played.

This all is not to say that CS:GO doesn't have flaws, i'll even list my own:
Server quality at the moment in NA is poor, with low quality servers being overtaxed to accommodate a recent influx of new players. This means that large amounts of lag are present even when playing in your region.
Smoke grenades are too powerful, making CT's too powerful, and making the CT's the more favored side, and forcing the T's t have a hard time doing anything.
VAC, I feel, should have more frequent ban-waves, as there is a current problem with cheaters at the higher ranks of matchmaking.

 

[Rahkshi500]

The .hack games. I love their story and characters and the whole idea of an MMORPG(and by extension the internet) falling apart. But dear lord the gameplay; it's always the same. And I'm not talking about it not innovating enough or trying something different, or that they changed some things while still keeping the spirit. No, I mean, the gameplay is literally the exact same with each sequel!

Spec Ops: The Line. One of my favourite games ever, but goddamn that WP is really hamfisted. They oversold it. There's a lot more impactful segments than that in the game, and honestly the game just does what it does best when you're playing the rather, rather than in any sort of cutscene.

I definitely agree with this, though for different reasons: I hate that game with a passion.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

My favorite game of all time ever is Chrono Trigger, and I really had to think about some negatives specifically for this thread. So...

It's pretty easy, even on someone's first play-through. I simply don't die when I fire it up annually.

Crono is meant to be a blank slate and everything, but I remember it being so bizarre that so many people were willing to die for him and

Spoiler: Because people still need to experience this game

were distraught when he got caught in a time loop and "died"

when he communicated with shoulder shrugs and shit. I was so glad that Cloud talked in FF7, even if he "..." a lot. The relationship with his mom never really mattered like Lucca and her father for example, even though I understand the story really emphasized the idea of creating a new family out of the friends you experience things with.

Most of the techs that any given character receives will become obsolete and useless as you gain new techs.

The translation is tainted by a rushed translator (who truly did a great job considering the circumstances), and Nintendo enforcing stupid censorship on topics like religion and alcohol (Pour a soda on my tombstone? The fuck?).

Phoning it in here, but Chrono Cross is not what it should have been and Blue Dragon was a horrible return by the brainchildren of Chrono Trigger.

Seriously people, play this fucking game if you have even a passing interest in JRPGs from any era, I had to think for like half an hour to come up with this list.

My second favorite game of all time ever is Dark Souls 1, and people in this thread have covered those issues pretty well. If I loved Dark Souls less for its teetering on broken and unfinished charm and more for some kind of near-perfection it could have had with another year of development, it might switch places with CT. Maybe.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

Speaking as someone who is just getting into Dark Souls, I feel I should add my criticisms to the pile.

- It does an abysmal job of explaining core mechanics and stats. Refusing to hold your hand is one thing, but making your stat system a convoluted maze and not telling you how it works is quite another. And the upgrading system ... It was already mentioned in this thread, but I had to consult the wiki and use a fucking chart to understand how the later paths work. I hate having to consult walk-throughs/wikis, it makes me feel like I'm cheating or spoiling the game. But I didn't feel nearly as bad as I knew I would if I had reached the end of the game and realised I had wasted all my time and resources. In fact, a lot of the important mechanics are either glossed over or left as an exercise to the audience, which some may like, but I personally consider bad design.
- It has way too much trial and error gameplay. Yes yes, I know. "Lol, dis game so hard. Amirit?" But I consider trial and error gameplay to be rather gimmicky. While it is funny to watch new players step out onto the bridge and get roasted, I still consider it bad game design to just kill the player without warning and for no reason other than to teach them there's a threat to avoid. Knowing to watch out for certain traps because you stumbled into them and died is not skill, it's knowledge.

Overall, I'm beginning to understand what people say about the game having a learning curve that makes it rather insipid in the beginning, but great fun once you have figured out most of it. Right now I'm at the point in which I have learned enough about the game that it has become satisfying, rather than obtuse, and so I am enjoying it a lot. Yet, I would not even think of arguing with anyone who picked up the game and threw it back down again for being a frustrating mess to beginners.
<color=white>Queue replies to this post from people telling me how easily they learned everything on their first go.

 

[Hades]

Overall I respect the hell out of Shogun II But it does have some very obvious flaws.

The campaign is amazing for the first 16 provinces but the realm divide mechanic that follows is just the dumbest, most gamebreaking concept ever to grace a total war game. I tend to stop soon after I trigger realm divide.

I loved cavalry units in total war games, everyone did. They were a bit to overpowered in medieval so I can't really blame the creators for nerfing them but they seem to have been overcompensating. Cavalry units are almost worthless in this game. Even if you attack archers in the flank you still end up losing half your unit.

Why do all mayor factions die out in the first ten turns? Rather then fighting big names like the Oda, Mori and Tokugawa I always end up with complete nobody's dominating the map.

 

[Hades]

Overall I respect the hell out of Shogun II But it does have some very obvious flaws.

The campaign is amazing for the first 16 provinces but the realm divide mechanic that follows is just the dumbest, most gamebreaking concept ever to grace a total war game. I tend to stop soon after I trigger realm divide.

I loved cavalry units in total war games, everyone did. They were a bit to overpowered in medieval so I can't really blame the creators for nerfing them but they seem to have been overcompensating. Cavalry units are almost worthless in this game. Even if you attack archers in the flank you still end up losing half your unit.

Why do all mayor factions die out in the first ten turns? Rather then fighting big names like the Oda, Mori and Tokugawa I always end up with complete nobody's dominating the map.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

A lot of good games (especially Indies) fall down when it comes to tutorials. Case in point: I've got about 80 hours in Terraria and I only just discovered that holding shift auto-switches you to having a light source equipped. It's also one of those games where you need to have the Wiki up on a monitor at all times, because without it there is zero chance of you figuring out how to craft certain items, summon certain bosses, or cause certain events. At least Dark Souls explained the controls and gave you some hint at an objective.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

- It has way too much trial and error gameplay. Yes yes, I know. "Lol, dis game so hard. Amirit?" But I consider trial and error gameplay to be rather gimmicky. While it is funny to watch new players step out onto the bridge and get roasted, I still consider it bad game design to just kill the player without warning and for no reason other than to teach them there's a threat to avoid. Knowing to watch out for certain traps because you stumbled into them and died is not skill, it's knowledge.

I disagree with this criticism, but I can understand why you have it.

The vast majority of the traps in this game are foreshadowed in some way and you have to pay attention to the environment to see it. Sometimes you only realize that a trap was heavily foreshadowed after it already triggers though.

Take for example the Hellkite Drake that you mentioned that roasts you on the bridge. You see the dragon earlier in the undead burg when it momentarily lands in front of you and then takes off again (before the bonfire), and when you get to the bridge in question you can see scorch marks all over it. You know that there's a dragon in the area and you see that the bridge has been burned, but most people don't put two and two together (I didn't) and then get frustrated when they get killed by the dragon, especially after having just beaten their first non-tutorial boss.

Most of the traps in the game can be avoided, you just need to pay attention.

There are a couple of places in the game that are pretty bullshit though and cause unwarranted death, but they aren't really "traps" per say, and they're in the later part of the game which is a lot less polished than the beginning.

 

[Ultress]

Persona 3

While I don't have to much of a problem with he A.I as it's pretty easy to manipulate, I still tend to take over healing duties which is still a problem in it's own right.

Tarturus can be insanely boring to traipse through due to samey environments and sometimes tedious encounters. Though this is offset by letting you go at your own pace and having the school segments to break it up.

However the Answer exacerbates that problem with a lack of any thing to do but the overtly tedious dungeon crawling combined with enemies having evasion skills for their corresponding weakness. Story wise the Answer is excellent but getting through it is an exercise in tedium and annoyance.

Also a problem less with this game and SMT as a whole, getting your ass handed to you through no fault of your own due to an enemy getting a critical hit or back stabbing you.

Digital Devil Saga, mostly first game bitching, DDS2 fixes most of them.

Atrocious dungeon design and high encounter rates make dungeons a slog to get through.

Telling us the main cast has "changed" usually via Gale. There are better ways to show this than outright just saying it. Show us a bit more of how they are before Sera shows up to make it more believable that they have this sudden influx of emotions and passion.

Tales of the Abyss

Field Of Fonons is a rather annoying way to have arte changes happen, I kinda of wished they had changed that for the remake to make it more in line with the newer games of just equipping skills.

The PS2 versions horrid load times on the world map,the 3DS version is almost worth it just for the better load times.

The third act starting off as a series of go here then here etc. events that are boring compared to what happened in the last act.

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

I'm gonna go with Persona 4 for this one. One of the greatest JRPGs of all time, and probably the last great game for the PS2. However, I do have several gripes with it:

1) The story is too upbeat. I mean, the stakes aren't what they were in Persona 3 until the very end, but something P3 did extremely well was strike a balance between the upbeat and lighthearted moments of the later Persona series with the unrelenting, grim darkness of the universe Persona takes place in. Persona 3 was a lot more thought-provoking and had more player punches than P4.

2) The characters are annoying. Don't like Rise, don't like Teddy, don't like Yosuke. I only really liked Naoto out of all of the characters, and the others were varying degrees of tolerable. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: A story is only as good as its characters, and Atlus took a step backwards here. Hopefully the mascot character in Persona 5 is another animal that doesn't speak.

3) There's a metric ton of new content in the Golden version of the game, with much of it being rather important to the plot. This wouldn't be so bad, except for the fact that P4G is a Vita exclusive...and also the only really good game on the system. I'm definitely not going to shell out for a Vita simply so I can experience the whole story, but I really feel like I'm missing out on a fair chunk of story. Wish they'd hurry up and port it.

4) The protagonist needs a personality. Yu Narukami only really gets a personality in the Arena series; in the base game, he has very few recorded lines and almost no dialog of his own. I've never been a fan of silent protagonists, and Atlus is fully capable of creating good characters; I see no reason they can't pull a Bioware and give dialog and personality to the dude I'm playing as.