Criticize games you enjoy

GabeZhul

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Mar 8, 2012
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Persona 4

First off, the dungeoneering is just painful after a while, and while the game does a good job at pacing the actual dungeons out, the later ones are a pain in the ass with their length, the backtracking and the realization that under the theme-specific coat of pain they are all just the same rectangular corridors and rooms without any variety.

Then there are the almost sadistic side-quests of Margaret and the Fox. The former is pretty much impossible to do on your own without a guide and the latter is just an enormous time-sink.

Finally, I would cite the harsh segregation between the main storyline and the social ranks and events, which also baffles me a little since it wouldn't have been that hard to program a few scene-variations around, say, one of the girls being the protagonist's lover at an "ecchi" situation to at least nominally tie the two aspects of the game together...

Skyrim

For starters, the game's biggest problem is how static it is. The PC's actions simply have no effect on the world, which is something that older games could get away with because of "technical limitations" and "changes happen in the background" because we know that the technology would allow changing towns and attitudes (as proven by mods) and we can actually see the everyday life of the world in front of our eyes, so there is no "background". This leaves the game in a 2narrative uncanny-valley", where the setting and the world is just alive enough to immerse you but not quite enough to keep you immersed for more than five minutes before a prick in Whiterun demeans you, his Thane, the Archmage and the leader of the Companions (among a number of other things), because you would never go to cloud city, now would you?

And... that's about it for Skyrim, the one big issue that cannot be fixed without thousands of hours of work and piles of money. For everything else, there are mods.
 

ArcadianDrew

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Sep 3, 2014
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Mass Effect
-The Mako: Either make it handle really well if you want the mountainous terrain, or flatten out the maps so I'm not bouncing around like Katie Price on a trampoline.
-Cover: What is the point in having cover if 90% of enemies are going to just rush you anyway. In real life it would obviously be suicide, but in a game with shields and health the enemy charging at you blasting your face away is a perfectly viable option.
-Romance: Stop trying to force me into a romance for the sake of it, can't it just happen naturally rather than after Shepard has spoken to them a few times.

Ocarina of Time
-The Water Temple: I have finished this game 30+ times, yet I can still manage to get lost in this damn place (tho maybe that says more about me than the game).
 

murrow

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Sep 3, 2014
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Well, that's an easy task. My favourite game is Star Wars: Kotor 2, a notoriously flawed title. Let's get to it, then:

1- The game was shipped incomplete.
Particularly jarring in the end misson, as key dialogue lines were removed. Canderous/Mandalore also suffered a lot, since his most important scene (when he explains that the Mandalorian Invasion was prompted by the Sith) was cut out. And let's not even mention the HK-50 factory.

2- Combat becomes trivial after a while.
The fact that enemies don't level past lv 20 worsens it. Battles eventually lose all sense of challenge. This is partly remedied by the fact you can use your skills to turn the environment against the enemies, which is lots of fun. (i.e. overloading terminals, opening gas vents). Which is why I always play Sentinel/Jedi Watchman

3- Light Side is underpowered.
I understand this is an issue with the Star Wars RPG system, and not with the game itself. But it bothers me all the same. Light side force powers are redundant when compared to the Dark Side ones. I don't mind DS getting the most DPS and CC, but LS could at least provide decent support. Or, at least, monopolize some key roles like healing. Eg. giving a huge boost to LS healing and making fallen Jedi unable to heal.

4- Evil characters are a**holes
I feel bad criticizing this game for this, as there are some many others that get if far worse (looking at you Fable). But I really don't get why people think evil = rude. What about manipulative villains? What about killers, dictators and psycopaths who are great at social skills, but commit atrocities when no one's looking? Why do I need to lose friends to get back at the Jedi council? Isn't letting a dying planet wither evil enough? Is this some sort of morality lesson?
 

Avalanche91

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Jan 8, 2009
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Too much water. 7.8/10

Sorry, serious face now.

Persona 4 had a difficult dialogue segment and if you gave the wrong answers you are given a bad ending. This locks you out of two dungeons. This happens nowhere else in the game.

Persona 4's True ending is almost impossible to achieve without someone pointing it out to you.

Persona 4's final plot twist doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
 

Ihateregistering1

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Mar 30, 2011
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RAGE: Rage is that weird game that I absolutely love and I play all the time, even though I could rattle on for an hour about all of its problems.
-The story is crap. We're constantly told about how awful and terrible the Authority is, even though the game never gives you any examples of how bad they are. In fact, they largely seem like the good guys considering they're trying to bring order to the psychotic wastelands.
-The ending is atrocious and comes so suddenly that you're just sort of dumbstruck.
-Levels are way too linear, with doors just randomly opening when you need to proceed for no real reason.
-As awesome as the graphics are, there's almost no environmental interactivity (ie. you can shoot busted up wood with a rocket launcher and it won't be destroyed).
-The RPG elements are really underwhelming, and you're silent protagonist has basically zero choice in the game.

Despite all that, I still love the game to death and play it all the time.

X-Com: Love the game, but everytime I play it, it always reminds me how limited a lot of your options are. For example:
-I'm armed with a Plasma Rifle and there are baddies on the other side of the wall. Why can't I just shoot the wall and then have my squadmates shoot the baddies? Lord knows the plasma fire will tear the wall down if I miss.
-Why can't I just train my guys in between missions, instead of just having them sit around twiddling their thumbs waiting for another attack?
-Why can't I launch multiple interceptors at a single big UFO, instead of just having to throw them at them piecemeal?
Buuuuuttt, still love the game.
 

Zydrate

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Apr 1, 2009
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Skyrim. Loved and played it to death, but the main campaign was a bit dull. Alduin was a fairly lackluster boss fight. On the right difficulties he hit hard but he was very stationary and I could usually chop him down in a single shout cycle (The one where you force him to land.) The expansion bosses were a lot more interesting and scripted.

The combat is largely uninteresting. I remember keeping up with the Dev blogs and during one of the videos he claimed "when you swing, it really feels like it connects". It really doesn't in practice. Enemies on stagger with the right perks and power attacks but otherwise enemies shrug everything off and hits mean nothing except for chopping their health down a little.

The factions were far too short and in some cases, easy. I felt like the Thieves Guild ended way too quickly. The Civil War was a massively missed opportunity. The siege missions were a lot of fun but there were only a couple of them. There should have been more open battles.
And almost none of the rewards were useable. Sometimes a unique model but by the time I ever beat them, I had something custom made, enchanted, or simply had a better piece from an explored dungeon beforehand. The Civil War quest rewards were completely backwards. I join the Stormcloaks and I get the Imperial General chestpiece. I join the Imperials and I get Ulfric's clothes... Overall I'd prefer to adorn the garb of the faction I joined to begin with.

I don't like what they did with the High Elves. Systematically turning an entire race into Nazis. And the ones who aren't, are in some way complete assholes. The two clothing shopkeepers in Solitude for example. Holy shit. WHY.

Good game, though.
 

Fractral

Tentacle God
Feb 28, 2012
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As mentioned several times, Persona 4's true ending is pretty hard to get unless someone points it out to you. I got it first time, but only because I looked up a guide after failing the dialogue choices for the normal ending, which is another bullshit point.

I love Final Fantasy IX but by god can the battle system get dull. I understand that they wanted to simplify it after FFVIII, but it's frustratingly slow and lacks customization options. That said, I like that each character has a set role and can't do the other characters stuff; it's something that annoyed me in FFVII when each character felt pretty much the same and it was just the materia and their limit breaks that distinguished what they were able to do.

Very few of the Pokemon games since 4th gen have had decent endgame content; ORAS are a definite offender with the copypasted battle chateau being the only real endgame stuff. What the hell happened to the Battle Frontier? Why hasn't the World Tournament come back yet?
 

sageoftruth

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Jan 29, 2010
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Yes, we've done this before, but I'll happily do it again.

Blazblue:
While the characters were great, the story was a complete mess.

While adding voice overs to all of the moves was great for giving everyone more character, it also made special attack spamming the most jarring experience ever.

As a spectator, while the mechanics made the game a blast to watch, it was really hard to know what was going on unless you had experience with both characters.

Freedom Planet:
Lilac needs to tone down the melodrama.

The voice of the king at the beginning was not very convincing

The story had some pacing issues, with occasional 12-minute cutscenes.

It was annoying when checkpoints were not placed right after certain boss battles.

Odin Sphere:
Too many copy-paste levels

Like with most Vanilla Ware games, the enemies and the combat got repetitive.

Didn't like the forced grinding at the end.

Super Mario RPG:
Way too easy if Peach was in my party (almost never needed to use any items).

Ninja Gaiden Sigma:
As expected, the female characters made me feel the urge to cover the screen whenever someone walked by.

Super steep learning curve

Once you learned to absorb essence, ultimate attacks became OP

God Hand:
Erm... The Yes Man Kablaam exploit was too effective?

Saints Row 4:
Taking away my powers during the story missions? What the Hell?

Too much darn stuff to collect.
 

Maphysto

Senior Member
Dec 11, 2010
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Dark Souls 2 felt very phoned-in and unmemorable; gone was the gorgeous, intricate level design, the cinematic boss fights, and the sense of mystery and wonder as you tried to piece together the story.

That last one in particular sticks in my craw. Dark Souls 1's story was a beautiful tragedy told purely through snippets of dialogue, the history of the items you find, and the levels themselves. You had to want to know the story to see it, and it made you pay that much more attention to the care and detail that went into it's design. The story was a mystery that had to be coaxed out of the game.

Dark Souls 2, on the other hand, couldn't fucking wait to tell you its story.

"HEY CURSED ONE! THIS PLACE IS CALLED DRANGLEIC BUT IT'S NOT THE FIRST KINGDOM HERE LOTS OF OTHERS USED TO BE HERE I BET YOU CAN'T GUESS WHAT THE NAME OF ONE OF THEM WAAAAAASSSS! (IT WAS ANOR LONDO BUT SSSSHHHHH ITS A SECRET!)" *winks for five minutes straight*

"HEY HEY YOU REMEMBER THAT ONE FIGHT WITH THE TWO GUYS THAT WAS REALLY HARD? WELL GUESS WHO'S BAAAAACK! YEAH I KNOW HE DIED IN THE FIRST ONE BUT THAT'S OKAY WE DON'T HAVE TO EXPLAIN WTF HE'S DOING HERE!"

"OOH OOH OOH AND ALL THOSE COOL WEAPONS AND ITEMS THAT ALL THE AWESOME DUDES IN THE FIRST ONE USED WELL HERE THEY ALL ARE! OH AND THE SUNBROS ARE BACK EVEN THOUGH SOLAIRE'S BEEN DEAD FOR LIKE FIVE THOUSAND YEARS PRAISE THE SUN AMIRITE GUYS!"

It smacks of a little kid trying to be just like his awesome big brother. Dark Souls 2 wants so bad to be able to hang out with the big kids and be cool, but it ruins it by trying too hard.

With all that said, though, DS2 was still a solid entry to the Souls series, and did a lot to improve the gameplay issues of it's predecessor. The Crown DLC's also did a lot to redeem the failings of the main story, and I look forward to seeing what changes the upcoming re-release brings.
 

happyninja42

Elite Member
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May 13, 2010
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Mister K said:
Guys, Final Fantasy X is my favourite game of all times. But seriously, how much WORSE could be the design of a main character, a.k.a. Tidus. I mean, he looks like a fashion designers nightmare.

Take a look at it:

Uneven shorts, short hoodie, armored gauntlet on clearly weak but fast character, etc., etc.

A few months ago, I found his early concept design on FF wikia. Here it is (hint: he is on the left side):
While Auron and Yuna in this picture look a lot worse than their final versions, Tidus looks amazing. Well, compared to the first picture at least. Who on FFX design team sniffed something bad and decided that the final variant is a good one?
The same person who decided that Seymour's hair style was a valid and good decision. :p Seriously, blue hair antlers, and you're worried about a guy wearing half a leiderhosen? xD

OT:

inFamous 1

The thugs in the first part of town. They were corrupted street thugs, armed with, at best, AK-47's (based on the weapon imagery in game), and they're freaking snipers with those damn things from 3 bajillion yards away. Seriously, I call bullshit on them being as accurate as they are in that game, given their background, and the actual hardware they had.

Batman: Arkham games : Fuck the Riddler puzzles. Seriously, those things can go die in a fire.

Assassin's Creed series: Screw all the gathering quests. I hate games that make me go easter egg hunting for no reason other than "Lul, Reasons!!" and some damn achievement. It breaks my immersion when my character is poking his nose into every nook and cranny to find pointless items. I keep picturing a family at the dinner table, wondering why the weird guy in the white hood is walking around their yard, and onto their roof over and over, trying to jump onto some ledge, and then wandering off.

Dishonored: I could do without the art style honestly. It was ok, but it didn't really grab me.

The original Thief series: Gosh! My best mate is mysteriously missing from his post! I wonder why? Oh well, I'm sure it's nothing! I'll just go back to standing here, occasionally saying Taffer! Dooo dee doooh, lah de dah!
 

KenAri

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Jan 13, 2013
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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.
 

Rayce Archer

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Jun 26, 2014
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The control in Shadow of Colossus is terrible, and constitutes 90% of the game's already meager difficulty. Ditto for the Souls games.

The AI in the Age of Empires games is really just shockingly bad.

Homeworld depends entirely on a bug (stealing ships at any health) to be playable; if salvage corvettes worked like they were supposed to it would be damn near impossible.

The Elder Scrolls franchise is made by programmers and designers with no concept of balance; they are all made with exploitative god-moding in mind and are only hard if you play honestly.
 

Teh Jammah

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Nov 13, 2010
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Persona 4's been brought up several times but not its predecessor? Well, allow me to remedy that.

1. The Party AI - aka 'Stupid Fucking Mitsuru' syndrome where despite your main character being on the verge of death the party healers might instead choose to cast Marin Karin (aka charm monster) and let your main character get weakness exploited to death (and instant game over because the party leader can't be revived). Or blindly attacking the final boss when it uses Moonlight Gown and killing themselves. And you can't turn it off 9unless you're playing the PSP version)

2. WHY WILL YOU NOT REMOVE STATUS EFFECTS FROM MY MC YOU STUPID PARTY AI!!!

3. Enemy Scanning Bosses - tells your AI party what atatcks to use. The player? Nope, you still have to guess/remember what works

4. Remember this point about 4?
GabeZhul said:
First off, the dungeoneering is just painful after a while, and while the game does a good job at pacing the actual dungeons out, the later ones are a pain in the ass with their length, the backtracking and the realization that under the theme-specific coat of pain they are all just the same rectangular corridors and rooms without any variety.
Tartarus is longer and has even less variety. The music is repetative and the version for each block changes only slightly, there's much less graphical variance... and they're longer (shortest block of Tartarus in P3 is 15 floors. Longest dungeon in P4 is 11 floors)

5. Want max s. link completion? You basically have to date every girl in the game and be a massive cheating douchebag, because in the vanilla original & FES there's no platonic friends option. One of the things I'm glad they changed about 4 and for the FeMC route in Portable (not finished a MC run of that so IDK if they changed it for him as well).

6. That noise you make when you run into a shadow you're overlevelled for. Most.Annoying. Sound. EVER.
 

Sigmund Av Volsung

Hella noided
Dec 11, 2009
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MarsAtlas said:
One of my favourite games, people either love it or hate it. Far Cry 2.

AI is bad, enemy progression is relatively non-existent, enemies need to either drop more ammo on death or fire their weapons more sparsely, enemy road checkpoints respawn too quickly, and while I'm opposed to the removal of malaria, I do agree that it needs tweaking.

The first Mass Effect game, my favourite in the trilogy. Combat is just plain fucking awful, period.

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.


Sigmund Av Volsung said:
4)The multiplayer is horrendous and shouldn't exist.
Single-player: great, Multiplayer: CoD 3rd Person Mode. It's pretty bad and it only exists there as padding for the investors, though it doesn't look like it detracted from the single player campaign. Nonetheless, it is a turd sitting on an otherwise excellent game.
I don't know if you know this, but the lead designer called it a "cancerous growth", that it "raped" the game mechanics, and that it was literally a checklist requirement.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.386549-Spec-Ops-Multiplayer-Is-a-Cancerous-Growth

I mean, we all assumed as much, as with most games, but we have confirmation as such in this case, which is rare.
Yeah, I read it a long time ago :p

As for the WP scene, I agree. The reason why it gets hyped is because it's easy to de-contextualise it and show it as "here's a bad thing you do in the game", because all the other moments require either investment or preliminary knowledge. I'd say it's the turning point in the game, since it foreshadows how everything from that point on will be going to shit, though the reveal that the 'soldiers are actually the villains' kind of does it as well.
 

TheRundownRabbit

Wicked Prolapse
Aug 27, 2009
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I can't make 5, so I'll give my beef on each 5 of my favorite games.

Borderlands 2: AI wasnt as smart as you said

Destiny: Story blows

.hack//G.U.: Main character is kind of a douche

Guilty Gear Xrd: Roster isn't as impressive as XX

Legend of Zelda OoT: ...fucking water temple man
 

Laser Priest

A Magpie Among Crows
Mar 24, 2011
2,013
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Fallout: New Vegas (which still remains the game I play the most, even this long after its release)

- The Bugs. It's almost impossible to find any review of the game that doesn't mention the ocean of bugs in this game. While many have been patched away, there are still many, many more and they can be game-breaking quite often. Oddly enough, I've installed the Tale of Two Wastelands mod, which pretty much mashes Fallout 3 and New Vegas into a single game (with the ability to travel between the main wasteland of each game and the quests, DLCs and all still fully intact) and somehow, it's generally a more stable experience.

- The Engine. Perhaps a more minor complaint, but the fact that the game has very few new gameplay additions over Fallout 3 (I have a single mod which adds more gameplay elements than the vanilla game did) is certainly an issue.

- The DLCs. I may be in a minority on this thing, but after how much I enjoyed the Fallout 3 DLCs, I was massively disappointed with New Vegas's DLCs. Dead Money did provide an oppressive environment, but it also gave annoying companions, discouraged exploration and more hand-waving than actual plot. Old World Blues provided some actual humor, but the humor gets old when you're expected to run through the same building, listening to the same jokes FIVE TIMES if you want actual completion. Lonesome Road provided probably one of the most genuinely apocalyptic-feeling environments I've seen in a game, but it also was extremely linear and gave us the human wall of text that is Ulysses. And Honest Hearts gave us nothing at all.
 

nyarlathotepsama

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Apr 11, 2012
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Then I shall!

Final Fantasy XI: The game is a masterpiece but I still have a series of criticisms. The characters aren't really built any differently than each other, by the end of the game I'm level 99 with every character (I enjoy grinding in RPGs, it is relaxing) but by about level 65 I start to notice that every character has the same damage output if given the same gear and that the over arching story about how magic is some kind of amazingly powerful force is just a plain lie since any character with a Genji glove and two good weapons deals the same damage as Ultima (the best spell)only it does it twice, earlier in the game. Furthermore on the same point a character equipped with the Offering and a Genji glove attacks like 8 times dealing maximum damage, this defeats a core element of the plot since it makes magic seem like a gentle breeze by comparison. Even with X-Magic (casting twice) the best spell only equals a character with the aforementioned Genji glove plus good weapon combo so why even seek out magic when a decent sword can kill anything just as fast!

Persona 1-2: I often find myself wondering why I even bother replaying these games since every run is identical. Same persona, same weapons, same armor. There is little variation because of the limited choices set down by storyline progression and the model of enemy placement. Sure you could use a wacky persona instead of a good one but the game is designed to punish this harshly with pretty darn difficult gameplay for a JRPG.

All Elder Scroll Titles: Why even have enemies if I pound through them so easily? Why leave out so much expensive stuff if I expect me not to take it? Why are merchants so poor? I can't even sell most items without instantly wiping out their gold supply and still getting ripped off like 7/10th value because their just out of money. It just making selling tedious because I have to wait around for days just to empty all the crap I picked up like some kind of anal retentive maid service. Why does everyone treat me like they aren't aware I'm whatever hero I am in this region? I just murdered a dragon in the middle of town and your still going to act like I'm just some random adventurer!?

Fallout New Vegas: If I snipe no one can ever, ever touch me period. Gambling isn't very interesting beyond ripping off the Casinos. The only way to have a real challenge in the game is to play a very non-efficient character focused on like medicine, barter and repair, or something similar.

All Civilization games: So the AI will just keep sending units to die against my defenses until they bankrupt themselves? Cool, just call me Stone Wall Nyarlathotep!

Every Pokemon game: So it is just Rock-Paper-Scissors combined with that game we used to play as kids in Japan where we captured bugs and made them fight to the death? Sign me up! I'm lazy, can read and hate living things!!! (Note: This criticism may not reflect the actual opinions of Nyarlathotepsama)