idk how else to word this but you know when you really like a games music/characters but when you play the game you’re really meh on it? that’s kinda what i mean.
like i love the idea of dragon quest, the music, the characters, but playing dragon quest doesn’t scratch the itch i wish it did. but i really wanna stock up on merch! love the character designs and the fuzzy feelings it gives me, oddly lol
for a long time that was also ocarina of time for me, but 15 or so years later i played the 3ds version and wow! great game! hopefully DQ comes around for me like that too
I have a particular affection for The Quest of Ki despite not playing it, not wanting to play it, and never intending to play it. I just find it to be such a neat historical artifact and that everybody saw it and nobody really copied it ever.
I used to feel a version of this way about a lot of games that I felt like I couldn’t get into because of bouncing off due to difficulty (like shooters or Dark Souls style games) or length (like a lot of suuuuuper long legacy JRPGs and such) but anymore I just blatantly and shamelessly cheat with infinite lives or invincibility or max levels or whatever so I can skip out on all the friction and timesinks and just experience the art, vibes and story
I think to directly answer more on the “like the characters but not the games”, I’ll have to say Kirby games. I love that cute little guy but I get nothing out of the actual games, even when cheating
Those big, long, open-world traditional roguelikes :(
They sound so cool to me, but I get so bored when I play them; I think it’s a personality thing. I still wanna try Caves of Qud, but then I’ll be mad at myself if I don’t like it lol
i’m def at a point like this with the DQ series where i literally just wanna vibe with some fun characters and monsters while skipping the actual RPG part of it haha also kind of agree on kirby, the early titles are ok to me but i really enjoyed triple deluxe on 3ds! the characters are A+
damn i love pop’n music (every aspect of it), but yeah, it is very difficult! rhythm games can easily fit into this category with their difficulty spikes
This, and in a similar vein: Dwarf Fortress, Kenshi and other sandboxy roguelike-evolutions that people have infinite fun with.
There are people that basically just play Dwarf Fortress and use it to make up stories in their head about what goes on in their forts. I wish I was one of those people but DF in particular was always just a little bit too inaccessible for me to enjoy. I tried several times at this point.
Seconding Dwarf Fortress. Heard so many great things and like the idea. I’ve played a few ascii roguelikes and so I thought I’d manage ok. It’s just always a but tough to get into.
On the flip side, Civilization! Easy to get hyped up in the early game. Before even the midway point it feels like a big slog of mistakes I already made and getting asked questions to fill 1 of 4 victory bars over and over again.
I feel like this makes me a real outlier, but I’m absolutely this way with hollow knight. I found the ~vibes~ instantly enchanting: the character designs, the music, the little chirps and chortles. It’s beautiful. I just became exhausted with trying to find my way around & the slow (to me) acquisition of movement techniques that would make it more bearable. I try semi-regularly to brute-force my way through, and it’s one of those games that feels like a moral failing not to be 100% on board with lmao but I just can’t do it!!
I smile every time I walk past the window in my town that has little hollow knight figurines posed in the window though :)
Basically all Sonic games. I’ve tried plenty of them and mostly end up frustrated and bored! This maybe extends out to the 2D platformer genre in general honestly.
The Sonic Adventure games are the outlier there, they’re so immaculately aesthetic that I feel like I just melt into them.
For me, it’s got to be Tyranny, Obsidian’s isometric revival-era cRPG released in between Pillars of Eternity and Pillars of Eternity II
In theory, this is the cRPG for me. Due some quirk or another, I most often play evil characters (or at least anti-hero types) for the first run of a new cRPG. For understandable reasons, these paths are often relatively lighter on content than the assumed good or heroic route, so a game that is built from the ground up with the idea of the player character being part of “the bad guys” sounds great
But the combat feels rather strange, and as often happens, Obsidian’s writing and I just do not click. This is one that I’ll probably try every few years or so to see if something finally clicks, but for now it’s just a game that I can’t bring myself to touch
Seconding Sonic, Dwarf Fortress and Civ. There are a lot actually. Entire genres.
Fighting games, I’ve enjoyed them in the past but I don’t have the context, skill or patience to get good at them anymore.
Most RPGs, western and japanese. I like the idea of really getting into a world like that, but their length and level of superficial complication is kind of insulting, I feel like media that takes that much time and mental space should give you something more substantial than mild amusement.
Text-based games and visual novels. I’ve enjoyed a few, and it feels like a format with infinite potential, but it’s hard to know if you’ll be into a particular one without playing it; you can’t judge that much by screenshots, so I end up not playing them.
Metal Gear Solid games. I think I’ve played most of them at some point, never for long. Just bored. Same with Death Stranding actually.
Katamari, Half Life. I appreciate them as a thing, wasn’t really grabbed by the experience of playing them.
For me it’s most strategy games, whenever I try to invest in one at some point I just check out and start making dumb decisions.
Edit: A great one I just thought of is EVE Online, I remember reading a ton of long anecdotes and thinkpieces about that back in the day. The idea of this enormous, systemic space game that sounded incredibly expansive and real when described by its players. I’ve always thought it sounds super cool, but haven’t considered playing it for even a second. I’m not even sure I know what it looks like.
This is a little untrue, but fighting games.
I usually put them down when I get to the actual meat of the game; typically around the 40-60 hour mark. Once progression requires very regular practice and play I typically dip.
I do love fighting games, and play them fairly often. But I’ve never had the patience to get any real proficiency in the genre.
The depth of decision making and expression happening every minute, especially in combination with your four buddies, is maybe unparalleled in the medium. It’s fun! But I also rarely find myself wanting or able to go into a room by myself for an hour to play it more than three or four times a year. Maybe someday I’ll be in a retirement home with some other Dota guys and we’ll have a weekly game night or something, who knows.
I have trouble sticking with post-medieval, pre-Alpha Centauri strategy games.
Europa Universalis IV was still good, as it starts early enough and is just fuzzy enough with its economics and military mechanics that the experience doesn’t drag
Victoria III is a game I deeply appreciate for trying to model 19th century economics and social movements as they influence politics. But the building and trade mechanics make my eyes glaze over
Hearts of Iron IV adds a lot of granularity to war and wartime economics. I appreciate it simulating fronts, air battles, and naval support. But, again, I’d prefer more of that either be abstracted (CK/EU4/Civ style) or hyperdefined (Rome Total War style). The logistical middle doesn’t do it for me
Empire Total War, Steel Division, WARNO fall into similar gaps. I can enjoy a good Command and Conquer, but not a modern-setting game any more precise in how it conducts war
Writing all that out, I think I have two responses to these games. The first is that it adds complexity in the wrong place, in the sense that I am less interested in playing out military complexity (kriegspiel) or logistical/economic complexity on a modern scale. The second may be a problem of vividness, that issues like war and slavery too close to now raise questions that are interesting to think about but hard to play. I am not sure why modern history in a strategy game feels more vivid to me than in, say, a spy shooter. Maybe it is because a simulation allows for more player choice, including deliberately choosing atrocities for economic or military benefit, in a way that fails to calculate the human or moral costs with sufficient gravity? I need narrative to ground those costs, maybe, whereas I feel more comfortable self-narrating when the content hits less close to home? I don’t know.
For me, this is definitely the Animal Well/Fez type “find the secrets” platformers.
I love the idea of Animal Well especially, and I adore discovery in things like Action-adventure games, RPGs, and Metroidvanias. But I just can’t get into this one. Maybe I need a bit more platforming/combat action between the exploration. Maybe it’s because the running and jumping does not feel good. But then if it felt like Super Meat Boy or Celeste or something, I’d want more platforming challenges to take advantage! The visual style and ideas of Animal Well are so appealing, but the actual experience of playing it made me feel restless.
