I guess I never really considered that. I would argue that it is a bad story, told well - but I cannot argue your point.
Worst Games in Great Franchises
- Thread starter CriticalGaming
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Going waaaaay back, Witchaven 2. There was no 3. Way back in the 1990s, I foolishly thought sequels to games only got better. I loved the 1st Witchaven and I saw 2 in a a bargain bin at Staples and grabbed it. What a buggy disaster. Shame on anyone for even selling this disaster. I would click the up key to move forward and my guy would fly to the end of the hallway. Even if cheats are available, I did not bother to even make it to the 2nd level of this drek.
I have some respect for it and I understand there was an extremely difficult dev cycle. Still, the people who love DS2 over the others seem to fall into two camps: people who love the build variety (power stancing) and griefers. I don't care much about the former but I understand it, but the latter can fuck right off. Enjoy your DS2 griefers playground because I'm never playing the game again
I'd say out of Vanillware's Action-RPG Brawler hybrid games, Muramasa: The Demon Blade is the worst. The game is not bad, but there are lot of things I don't like. Repetitive backtracking with samey enviorments, the lack of a jump button in the Wii version, and the story was not grabbing too much. It did not help, there was no dub of this game. That is more of a personal thing, but there still should have been an option. Odin's Sphere is not perfect, but remaster gave the combat a much needed overhaul. I am surprised Vanillaware has not re-released Princess Crown again. The game that got them started. That is a missing piece of history that is begging for another release. You can only get this game on a Japanese Sega Saturn, or import a PSP copy. The game is good and would work great on PS4/5, Switch, and Steam.
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I'd have also liked to see them give Grim Grimoire another take, or at least another RTS style game like that. It wasn't balanced great, but I liked the game and concept.
Muramasa felt like it was missing something to make it really be amazing, I agree. The two stories not having any connection felt weird and they end on rather sour notes. Gameplay wise I liked all the swords and such but it felt like it needed more enemy and level variety.
There are multiple endings in Muramasa for both characters. I did not bother to finish the game all the way to know. I watched them on YouTube a few months after quitting the game. I picked Momohime, because I thought she would have the most interesting storyline. Then I found out she's just your standard Japanese princess type character, who does not actually fight, and that she is possessed by an male asshole that can. This would not be a problem, but Vanilla touted and advertised "We have this bad ass action girl!", when in reality, Momohime can't even be described as a Faux-Action Girl when you stop and think about it. I have nothing against the character, and I actually do like her design, but come the fuck on Vanillaware! You've could have been more open about it. Or better yet, drop the whole possessed character entirely, and just be a princess on the run from a frame up.
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Yeah I knew about there being alternate endings but, here's where the gameplay part comes in again, the amount of stuff you needed to do to get to them was too much and I lost interest before I could get them. Just didn't feel worth it.
As for Momohime, I was ok with the possession aspect at the start but what I expected, or at least hoped, to happen was that over the course of her story she'd gain the ability to fight through some kind of osmosis from being possessed and fight as herself eventually. That would have been a cool character arc of her going from helpless and scared to being competent and brave. And there was really no need to advertise having a bad ass action girl when Vanillaware makes a lot of fighting female protagonists. The game before this was Odin Sphere and 3/5ths of the characters were women that fought for themselves, they had nothing to be ashamed of or anything.
Exactly.
Yep. Too bad it was wasted. Either your option or my option could have worked.
That's what bothered me back then and now. I knew Odin's Sphere existed (I did not play the game until its release on PS4) and aware that most playable characters are female. I thought it was odd they would go heavy in to the advertising of "Bad Ass Action Girl", yet Momo never really does anything significant, nor has much of an arc, and is not a fighter. I don't know why they tried to mislead their audience like that, nor was any of it necessary, Vanillaware was not doing anything significant.
I do feel ME2 was the weakest game in the trilogy, but I also feel compelled to defend it here. There are two points on which I find the game is ill-understood.
First, the genre and mechanical shock. ME1 was a love letter to '70s/80s sci-fi that put its pulp fiction DNA in the spotlight. You don't get out of the intro cutscene without having that shoved in your face with all the subtlety of a rocket-propelled sledgehammer. ME2 was a love letter to late '80s/'90s action/sci-fi, and was about as subtle about it as ME1 its older sci-fi roots.
And paralleling that, ME1 was a slower-paced third-person shooter/CRPG hybrid (with all the clumsiness, micromanagement, and dogshit game balance of a CRPG) with a more strongly philosophical bent in its dialog. ME2 was a third-person cover shooter with the barest of frameworks to even call it an RPG in the first place, with a dialog focused more on which flavor of action hero one-liners you prefer Shepard to say. I'm not knocking either, both games' mechanics fit the themes they wanted.
Second, for better or worse, ME2 is The Dirty Dozen in space. It's no wonder the game is nothing but recruitment, loyalty, and Collector missions; the game is specifically about building a team to R&D up countermeasures against the Collectors, locating their base, and assaulting it. That means it's the most character-driven game in the trilogy, and the narrative and thematic framework is built upon the companion NPC's, their interactions, and what Shepard (and by extension, the player) think of them.
Was it pitch-perfect? of course not. If anything, BW pulled too many punches and played companion interactions too conservatively for a game that had such supposed high stakes.
I don't even find the "it was a 2010 game, BW didn't have the resources/time/whatever to program dynamic companion interactions" argument compelling; BW managed it just fine in DA:O, which released the year before ME2. And, DA:O was a game in which companions would go so far as to leave, refuse to participate in quests, or outright betray the party at select points if players made certain choices.
After playing and finishing Bayonetta 3, I still say B1 is the "worst" in the franchise in terms of QTEs, gimmick levels, and bonus content. While Bayonetta 3 is the "worst" in the franchise only by story and not as good visuals. What is with the forced walking sections that show up, by the way?! Bayonetta 3 is still an awesome game with amazing combat and bonus content.
Deus Ex: Invisible War
Though not a bad game per se, playing it feels like a letdown somehow (at least for me)
I'm also gonna throw a quick shoutout to Dark Souls 2, and say that it's a mess of ideas and only the DLC areas are worth revisiting; but I'll always be indebted to it thanks to that awesome trailer with Locomotive Breath... It got me into Jethro Tull, which quickly became one of my fav bands of all time!
Though not a bad game per se, playing it feels like a letdown somehow (at least for me)
I'm also gonna throw a quick shoutout to Dark Souls 2, and say that it's a mess of ideas and only the DLC areas are worth revisiting; but I'll always be indebted to it thanks to that awesome trailer with Locomotive Breath... It got me into Jethro Tull, which quickly became one of my fav bands of all time!
Invisible War is the obvious choice, but the real one is Deus Ex: The Fall.
Invisible War is what you get when a Deus Ex game is hamstrung by the limitations of consoles. Now imagine a Deus Ex game with the constraints of mobile.
I suppose you could ask what kind of deus you can get out of what type of machina.
Still waiting for them to release SOMETHING. ANYTHING. On Steam.I thought with Atlus jumping in and dropping Persona on Steam, it'd just be a matter of time but so far they show no signs of budging.
I do agree that Muramasa definitely felt super repetitive compared to Odin Sphere. Even the PS2 version of Odin Sphere, which is the only one I played - did have rather varied gameplay since the different protagonists do play rather differently. Muramasa kinda just had long sword and short sword. There was the enhanced Vita version which added more characters and stuff but I never tried that.
Yeh. It doesn't work, at all, but I sort of admire the dev's gumption at attempting to translate Deus Ex, even the streamlined version of Human Revolution, to mobile. It was released in the tail end of the period when they still tried stuff like that, rather than design moneypinching skinner boxes. Saddest part is the story is actually pretty good, and unfortunately ends on a cliffhanger that'll never get resolved, much like the main series actually.
IDK, even in its time the original original was just a bargain bin rip off of Doom in a sea of them (literally we'd just call it an asset flip nowadays and consign into the bowels of Steam somewhere)