Unpopular Opinions - Games Everyone Loves, But You Don't

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So, I was hanging out in the ROs You Hate thread, and I noticed quite a few people seemed to have some bottled up feelings about certain games that they couldn’t seem to put anywhere else. And since I couldn’t find any other topic similar to this one, I just made my own so people could vent.

The question I have is pretty straightforward: What are some games - published or WIPs - that everyone seems to love and praise, but that you didn’t actually end up liking when you played them yourself? And why didn’t you like them?

(I made this topic mostly with CoG games in mind, but feel free to talk about non-CoG games if you want to too.)

Personally, I’d have to pick Guenevere (sorry, y’all :pensive:). Now, it could just be me being picky and too demanding, but I see a lot of people praise the impact of choices and how the characters interact with the MC based on her actions. And while yes, the length of the series is impressive, I do feel like it falls flat to me in other aspects. Idk, while some choices were extensive and varied, others just seemed very basic and limited to me, and I was never really able to immerse myself in the story because of how it and the characters were written.
I’m also not really a fan of how the Guenevere/Lancelot stuff was written?
Spoilers: Now, I’m no expert in Arthurian legends, so I don’t know if this is how it goes in the myths too but, from what I understood (which could be wrong - as an aspec person, I have misunderstood romantic signs and gestures before) the game implies there’s some otherwordly magical reason why Gwen and Lancelot are attracted to each other. And I feel like that’s such a cop-out, because imo the Guenevere/Lancelot romance would be so much more tragic without any outside interference. Like, if it was just two people who naturally liked each other but who couldn’t be together because of circumstance.

Another game I was kind of ‘meh’ about was I, The Forgotten One. I love the story concept, and I really enjoyed the writing too, but a lot of the time it felt like the author had a very clear and linear narrative in mind when making the game, and the player couldn’t really deviate from that.
For context: I wanted to play my MC as someone who’s been through war and been affected by it, but who also wanted to have a normal life and indulge in some of the ‘girlier’ and more mundane things she couldn’t enjoy before, like dresses, dancing, etc… But it always felt like the game was kind of dismissive of those options when you picked them: the MC would act confused at their own thoughts, or they would reluctantly put on the dress ‘because they have to’. And then, as soon as the scene was over, the narration would go back to what it was before and act like nothing happened.
And I understand that some railroading is inevitable, and that trauma and ingrained paranoia and hyper-vigilance don’t just magically go away with a few positive experiences (trust me, I know), but I can’t really bring myself to enjoy a game when the narration doesn’t seem to be acknowledging my choices or preferences.

Whew, that ended up being longer than I expected! Anyways, I’m curious to hear what y’all think.
And please try to keep it friendly; stating your preferences and trying to explain them is fine, but tearing down others for having different tastes or opinions is not.

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I am the monarch of unpopular opinions as, with the exceptions of Community College Hero and Heroes Rise/Hero Project games, pretty much all of the most popular, most highly-rated ChoiceScript games are not my cup of tea. :sweat_smile:

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All of the vampire story well maybe except wayhaven the rest is just too confusing for me to understand and overall the vampire theme just isn’t my cup of tea

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I, The Forgotten One. I don’t like the concept itself - heir who has been relegated to the rank of a soldier and must serve the king and then their siblings? Ugh. No. I hate when MC is soldier or knight and usually avoid games with this (except The Operative and Defiled Hearts).

Besides, I’m tired of playing the hated, traumatized. characters (I’m depressed enough in my own life)… Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I still like to play games with dark, difficult themes but in this particular game everything felt so much painful and gloomy for me.

Another thing: Realistic low-fantasy medieval world without magic I can stand medieval games only if they have magic and they are not very realistic :woman_shrugging:

Another popular game I gave up is
Kingdoms and Empires. Here the problem was with choice options. I don’t know if anything has changed since I played, but I remember that you could choose MC’s personality in the beginning, for a few chapters, and then all the options that didn’t match MC personality were greyed out. I hate something like this! Where’s the fun when for rest of the story I would only have one or two available options?

I also don’t like survival games about zombies in some apocalyptic world. I haven’t found any that I would enjoy yet.

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Wayhaven it’s always the one that comes to mind, partially, because I don’t like romance games in general, partially, because I think the characters are flat stereotypes, and partially because I don’t really think the plot is very consistent. for reference, I like the romance in I, the forgotten one better than any of the way Haven stuff.

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I loathe pretty much EVERYTHING about Soul Stone War, including the game’s message, to the point it’s the one CoG series I bought the first game but not the sequels.

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The sword of Ravenia Was another one I really didn’t like at all. The writing wasn’t my thing, the characters were unlikable, the pacing was abysmal, the stats were almost completely useless, and all of that put together, yeah, I’ll pass.

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That would work in the case of a Guenevere who is attracted to men and also happens to be attracted to Lancelot but doesn’t account for all the Gueneveres who aren’t. As such, I don’t really see it as a cop-out but as a necessary evil to include the Guen/Lancelot element within Arthurian legend without robbing players of the choice on how to navigate that particular relationship.

I don’t know Wayhaven well enough to judge the characters and their development but I would say that this is a problem (or feature?) of most romance-focused games. You can romance the stoic one, the flirty one, or the snarky one. Considering that the author has a dating sim background, I don’t find it surprising that she leaned into familiar tropes here because they do work for the intended audience.

That said, my answer to this thread topic would also be Wayhaven because, even as a fan of romance games, it just didn’t manage to intrigue me with its story and ROs.

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I’m very much not a fan of romance games, but even pushing that aside, on its own merits, I still think WH falls flat, the drama with a is an example of what I mean. It’s getting stretched out for something like six books and yeah, I get it, slow burn, but there’s a difference between slow burn and stretching it out to the point where it’s basically a running joke.

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I don’t like (most) medieval fantasy games. They’ve all blended together in my head whenever I read one.

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Which ones would you count as medieval fantasy though? There’s the more epic fantasy type of things. Like a mage reborn, shepherds, of haven, that sort of thing, then you have the more low fantasy stuff that’s focused more on politics and warfare, things, like I, the forgotten one

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I don’t know if this counts as “game that everyone loves” but I have seen many people who love it, I don’t like infinity games (sabres of infinity and guns of infinity)

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Fallen Hero. I couldn’t even finish the demo because the game was making me feel depressed and the concept of pretending to be someone else, and everyone loving that other BODY and persona, but not you… and the cotinuous hatred MC has toward themselves… I had to stop reading becase I knew I would end up feeling like shit. I really tried to finish the demo completely because it was everyone’s favorite game, but towards the end I just had to stop because it felt like I was torturing myself unecessarily.

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A Kiss From Death.

I like smut as much as the next person, but that one lacks any sense, the timeline skips are brutal and incoherent, there is immersion in the story but it lacks flow, the pacing is adequate which may account for its respectable wordcount. But yeah, by the time i reached the middle, i felt very disinterested in the story, the narration was good, but the story itself felt confusing, the smut came off as a selling advertisement to draw moths in to a flame more than anything. But the overall plot and the narration, as I’ve mentioned was good. I liked that. The most important roadblocks for me that made me quit the IF was the timeskips, the lack of coherence in them and the haphazard nature of the story progression.

For a WIP, I’d say Golden.

The plot and everything else is nice. The immersion impeccable. However the entire story progression seems inconsequential. Partaking in activities and/or investigating all seems like a “*false_choice” in CS. The flow and pacing aggravates that and overall the entire chunks of text just comes off as choosing a choice just for the sake of choosing. They seem consequential and important but in reality it doesn’t yield much result or the various activities we partake in, they don’t seem too important to the plot.

However, it’s still in the WIP stage, this is a premature observation. I expect it to be a banger since it’s still supposed to be in its younger phase.

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Choice of the Vampire. People don’t talk too much about it nowadays, at least that I can see. But when I joined the forum it would always pop up here and there. I found the story confusing and/or boring, pacing dragged, the prose didn’t interest me and the author tried to replicate characters’ accent in writing (which is generally a big no-no) but it just made it harder to read (English is not my first language). Overall I was disappointed. Never understood why people liked it so much.

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I think I’m just tired of swords and magic and armor or whatever in general.

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Vampire is one of those games I occasionally go back to because for its faults, it’s a fascinating trip down. The historical aspect of the southern United States through the 1800s and history is a thing that fascinates me. I also liked the tone of the story, melancholic, somber, That sort of thing

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I honestly don’t like games that are too reliant on personality stats, as they often make your character behave like they have Alzheimer or something. Pendragon comes to mind when I think about it. Just be nice to someone, and your character will somehow forget how to fight in a future seen. Other than that, personality stats also forces a play pattern. With consistent stats, the reader can explore all options freely. Hero or villain, Kiss of death, War for the west and the archangel job are some of my favourites because, while the reader will eventually be railroaded into the narratives or whatever, they can at least explore freely while keeping their stats at the same time.

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Hero or villain is not a game I don’t actually get, now that you bring it up. The mechanics are some of the best I’ve ever seen so credit to the author, for pulling off something so complicated, but that doesn’t extend to the characters or the writing in general. The dialogue feels stilted And the quality of the writing jumps all over the place. Throw in the weird pacing and you get something that, while interesting, is something that’s hard to stay glued to. And that’s not even counting the sequel, which took the flaws of the first game, stretched them out , and made them even worse, and is the reason the series is one of my least favorites

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Precisely what I didn’t like. :joy:

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