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What's a game that has great gameplay, but everything else sucks and ruins the game?

DryvBy

DryvBy

Member
Or just something that sucks the fun out of it.

The Last of Us 2 is fun to play but I didn't care to push through because of the lame story.

Mass Effect Andromeda is fun to play, but then the animations and story sucks. It just ruins the game.

Go ahead, GAF. Prove that you can't just have "good gameplay" and that's it.
 
Tales of Graces is the first game that comes to mind. Phenomenal combat - so good that Bandai's used much of it as a baseline for the series and introduced new twists each new game but they've all come up short. Graces is the best.

So much else about the game, on the other hand, is straight-up garbage. The story is bad, for a Tales game, particularly with a comically evil villain that the good guys can't see through, although a lot of the character writing in the main scenario is poor, to say the least (the epilogue chapter is much better as it leans into the tropes deliberately). Most of the cast with the exception of the lovable Pascal is too stiff most of the time.

The world building in the game can best be described as 'throw darts at a bunch of environments and a bunch of societal types and then assign them at random'. I remember level design being flat - this was the first game the world map had been ditched so every town had interconnecting areas and they were not all inspired.

Even the music is weaker - it's the same Sakuraba, Aoyama, and Tamura were all working on it - but it came out weaker than the last games'. Still some great tracks to be found but on the whole it was less impressive.
 
Cinematics the Thread. Like 90% of them are bloated with irrelevant stuff and way too much dialogue, forced walking sequences and other nonsense where you either don't need the controller at all or just the left stick. Right now I'm playing Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and my god there's so much talking. But I love the humor and the gameplay.
 
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Tetris, those shapes are so low res, no RT reflections and the music is pretty terrible.

This question is like the anti Psygnosis game.
 
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Deadcells falls into this for me. Gameplay is fantastic, maybe the best 2d platformer combat I have played.
Art design is bad, I don't think 90% of the enemies look cool or threatening, environments are ho-hum. The actual pixel/voxel graphics are not to my liking, I would rather have 2D games that look illustrated (Hollow Knight, Ori) then purposefully retro. Music is nothing special, story is bad, not a huge fan of how the progression or unlocks work. I mean I played the game for like 60 hours so not ruined I guess, but everything about the game besides the gameplay is a grade C or worse.

Slay the Spire same thing, altho I have played that a lot less, maybe only 12 hours. Card mechanics and deckbuilding are good, the way challenges ramp up seems fair and well balanced. But I don't like the art or the music or the non-existent story (yeah some people say you can read between the lines and research and there is a plot).
 
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Driv3r

All things considered, driving around the city in that game is quite fun, and some types of challenge are cool
Too bad the visuals look horrible at times (most of them)
And that the story is a mess
And any on foot gameplay is bad
>Which then the main campaign, which is bad, constantly forces you to be
And the bugs
And the braindead name people brainstormed in a room and decided putting on the cover
 
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I disagree with OP about Last of Us 2. The story is lackluster compared to 1s, I think it is still decent as far as game stories go. Regardless, even if the story is flat out awful, he wanted games where everything else sucks but the gameplay. The art design and animation and graphical fidelity of Last of Us 2 are top notch, like most games today still don't look as good as that game from 6 years ago. Music is pretty good, sound design is immaculate, motion capture and performances are good, user interface and quality of life and just overall polish on the game is outstanding.

OP should try going back and playing the single player rogue-like challenge mode No Return. Is basically just the gameplay and nothing else and is a lot of fun.
 
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No Rest for the Wicked. The gameplay was fun as heck but the character designs are just the ugliest I've seen in any game, ever. I keep it installed because I think I'll go back to it for the fun after an update but I never do because I can't bring myself to play again something just so fucking ugly
 
Recent Call of Dutys, absolut ultimate tier gunplay - but retarded executives doomed an entire franchise just to chase KPIs.
 
Hellblade 2, 10/10 gameplay. One handed friendly. Just holding the stick up gives you more experience than other slops with complicated controls.
 
AZRoboto said:
No Rest for the Wicked. The gameplay was fun as heck but the character designs are just the ugliest I've seen in any game, ever. I keep it installed because I think I'll go back to it for the fun after an update but I never do because I can't bring myself to play again something just so fucking ugly
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Have you ever heard of a game titled Marathon?
 
Gears of War and Doom games are really well made, but after not that long I'm like wtf am I doing, I'm not getting anything out of this, I can't roleplay as this character in these games with basically no story lol. That's just me, though. Would never look down on someone else for liking them.

Oh right and I feel the same way about Diablo 2.
 
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DryvBy said:
The Last of Us 2 is fun to play but I didn't care to push through because of the lame story.
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Agreed. A beautiful looking game, not just the environment but also the acting & motion capture. Good gameplay as well. But the story is like 'misery porn'. I mean, if i want to be depressed, i'll just live my real life. I play games to escape reality, to relax. The absolute miserable story, themes & tone of the Last of Us 2 feel antithetical to the very concept of gaming.

DryvBy said:
Mass Effect Andromeda is fun to play, but then the animations and story sucks. It just ruins the game.
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Agreed again. Andromeda has a pretty good gameplay loop. Great visuals as well. But yea, the terrible facial animations and the absolutely pedestrian story just do not help. There was no chatGPT at the time, otherwise i would have said the story feels like it was written by an LLM.

Buuuut, i'm not sure i 100% agree with the point you are trying to make. If anything, i think Andromeda is an example of a game i played to completion, and enjoyed, because of gameplay in spite of the bad Story. I think it depends on the genre/type of game as well. Mass Effect Andromeda was a large open world (open galaxy?) game with a lot of aspects to enjoy other than the story i.e the combat, the crew, the gear, the exploration of strange planets, the graphics, etc. So it is possible to ignore the narrative and focus on gameplay. But a game that is linear and heavily dependent on the story i.e the Last of Us 2 will suffer if the story is bad, no matter how good the gameplay is. I could not complete it, and i believe many other people are in that boat.
 
Skyward Sword. Gameplay is fun….At times.
But the incessant, constant handholding and interruptions are obnoxious. Game doesnt have yellow paint but good fucking god is Fi worse. Add to that disgusting painterly artstyle, generic enemies, boring bosses and story….Ass game. IDGAF what Zelda glazers say.
 
DryvBy said:
Or just something that sucks the fun out of it.

The Last of Us 2 is fun to play but I didn't care to push through because of the lame story.

Mass Effect Andromeda is fun to play, but then the animations and story sucks. It just ruins the game.

Go ahead, GAF. Prove that you can't just have "good gameplay" and that's it.
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For me it's The Wonderful 101. I've never seen a game completely squander a phenomenal combat system like TW101 did. The pacing is absolutely atrocious, constantly interrupting the core combat gameplay with arcade minigames, environmental puzzles and platforming and all of it is irredeemable dogshit. You want to get better at combat, learn all the intricacies and tricks but everytime you start entering a flow state it gets ruined because Kamiya really wants you to play his garbage Viewpoint clone. What a waste.
 
You can just have good gameplay (including level, enemy, encounter design, progression and stuff, not just the core controls) but if you're gonna put an awful story and other stuff in there you're gonna put people off, so if you can't make it good, keep it minimal and unobtrusive, not in your face...
 
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Usually Ubisoft games and some souls-likes. Recent example was Nioh 3. Amazing gameplay as expected, but holy fuck everything else was from garbage to average. Making its map bigger completely ruined it among its technical aspects.
 
The Last of Us 2. The way the story is told and paced is amateurish in comparison to the first game. The usage of gore to create "shock moments" is badly executed and makes the game feel like a cheap slasher movie, almost like a parody (I actually laughed at some scenes because it felt so trashy). It really made me question whether TLoU1 was some kind of fluke or if the development of TLoU2 was a fucking mess or something. The shooting, controls and encounter design (for the most part) are pretty good, though.
 
I tried Dragon Quest builders 2, I found the gameplay nice and quite addicting.

But then they make you listen to that one shitty ass theme the composer wrote 60 years ago again and click through thousands of dialog boxes with inane chatter.
 
Resident Evil 0. The gameplay is excellent and I like Billy and Rebecca but then everything else is a goddamn tire fire. It has the worst story of any resident evil game and that is no easy feat.
 
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Baemono said:
Bayonetta 3.

My favourite of the series, but what the hell was that story ?
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This game single-handedly killed my interest in the franchise (which seems to be what they wanted), retroactively killed my interest in the 2 games I liked and killed off the last of my hope in Platinum. I hate Bayonetta's design, I hate her personality, I hate the characters, I hate the story, I hate the trash ass performance and visuals on that shitty ass console. The music is inferior to the other games. The combat with Bayonetta at least (don't know or care if they patched Viola) was solid.

Never even gave that Cereza game a second glance because of what they did with Bayonetta 3.
 
ssringo said:
This game single-handedly killed my interest in the franchise (which seems to be what they wanted), retroactively killed my interest in the 2 games I liked and killed off the last of my hope in Platinum. I hate Bayonetta's design, I hate her personality, I hate the characters, I hate the story, I hate the trash ass performance and visuals on that shitty ass console. The music is inferior to the other games. The combat with Bayonetta at least (don't know or care if they patched Viola) was solid.

Never even gave that Cereza game a second glance because of what they did with Bayonetta 3.
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The beauty of GAF right there: a Shakespear-level of dedication when it comes to write about how much someone hates a game
 
mrMUR_96 said:
Marathon has legitimate areas to criticise but the art direction including character design is great imo.
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By the Sounds of it... Crimson Desert.

But in regards to what I've played, in recent memory is most likely Spider-Man 2. A game that starts so strong but just becomes abysmal by the end, but with Strong gameplay which is what makes it so disappointing and why i am not going near Wolverine until I know for sure it's actually a good game.

another example for me would be Neon White or something like Just Cause 4
 
StueyDuck said:
By the Sounds of it... Crimson Desert.
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In Crimson Desert, EVERYTHING is great but the story, which is not the focus of the game by any means, so it's impossible that the game is ruined by it. it's the opposite premise of the thread as per the thread title.

The cherry picking on this one is crazy.

TLOU 2 is not a good example either. Everything is top tier but the writing. However, that game has a very strong narrative focus which put off many people.

My personal example would be Ninja Gaiden 4. Excellent gameplay, but shit or mediocre in every other aspect. Awful art direction, forgetable music, uninspired level design, etc.
 
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Anthem

The suit mechanics/combat was stellar...everything else, though, was an absolute catastrophe.
 
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DryvBy said:
Or just something that sucks the fun out of it.

The Last of Us 2 is fun to play but I didn't care to push through because of the lame story.

Mass Effect Andromeda is fun to play, but then the animations and story sucks. It just ruins the game.

Go ahead, GAF. Prove that you can't just have "good gameplay" and that's it.
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For me tlou2, amazing graphics/animations/gameplay but terrible characters/story and woke/feminism virus everywhere made me not buy/play it even by 2026, my trusty ps4 is still connected to the tv :P
 
Angry_Megalodon said:
In Crimson Desert, EVERYTHING is great but the story, which is not the focus of the game by any means, so it's impossible that the game is ruined by it. So, it's the opposite premise of the thread as per the thread title.

The cherry picking on this one is crazy.

TLOU 2 is not a good example either. Everything is top tier but the writing. However, that game has a very strong narrative focus.
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I dunno, the questing sounds terrible, the open world sounds like a nice painting but pointless BotW style, I think there's a fair bit more to criticize then just the story, lots of MMO-lite grinding for example.

The gameplay is where most people land on being good, though.
 
Recent final fantasys with their real time combat everything else about them sucks. Should've just made them condensed 3rd person action games like devil may cry.
 
I enjoyed the gameplay, but hated the grinding and the weapon customization in Front Mission Remake.
 
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