Games you hate, yet everyone else cherishes.

starting out in an MMO that is already there for quite a time is really hard. it's always better IMO, to play right when it's still new...


PS: and you should enjoy it instead of striving hard to level up so fast, because it gets really boring once you reach end-game...

Well, what I like (or liked) about Guild Wars 2 was that it didn't really matter what level you were, 'cause there were always plenty of things to do.  It's a game that even rewarded exploration (much to my delight, since that's why I usually love RPG games) with some decent loot.  Their "Living Story" changes about each month, so if you still want story content, it's always there.  Not that "Living Story" is always fun...  But, it's there.  I also like that you don't even need up to Rare Quality items to beat the game, you can do just as well with the third tier of weapons and armor.  The only reason to gear up higher is because of two reasons:  1.  Some of the Exotic and Ascended gear looks absolutely amazing or has neat effects.  2.  You want to do Dungeons or WvW (which have rewards of usually Exotic Gear).  The longer I played the game, the more stuff I kept finding to do.  I started doing Jump Puzzles and World Bosses (the bosses recently got a buff, so they're much harder to take down... and most of them don't really have patterns for some of their attacks...).  I started doing Map Exploration and Event Completions.  I started searching out some of the "Secret" content in the world that is only hinted at through Achievements.  I started looking for secret areas in the game that were tricky to get to because most players don't do all the Events to unlock the sections.  I started dabbling in PvP and WvW.  I even started collecting dye colors for my character, in case I got the urge to recolor my outfits!  I also started looking up different armors so I could look more imposing as a Ranger.  Finally, I even embarked upon my quest to obtain a Legendary Weapon, which is usually a massively significant money investment or a massively significant time investment.

It seems there's always something to do in that game and reaching level 80 is just the beginning.

It's just that an MMO that gets a ton of praise from a lot of my friends like Final Fantasy 14 just doesn't have much in terms of "end game" content and most of the players in that game can only be found in the "end game" content sections or in cities doing their crafting.  I can't help but wonder how fun that actually is, being limited to only a couple things to do and very few exploration and secrets.

some people do find it fun, else no one would be playing that anyways...

Skyrim, LoL, Dota, WoW, CoD, Bioshock. I hate alot of the mainstream games....

I half expect to get banned for this but...

Final Fantasy VII

I've tried so many times to get into this game, but I just can't do it. I can't connect to any of the characters, and I think the battle system is just a clunkier version of the one found in FFVI. I'll admit I haven't played it all the way through, so if the battles do get any better, then fair enough. For me, characters are everything in an RPG.. I even think good characters can save a bad story, but bad characters can ruin a good story. That's exactly what VII is to me; a great story that stars bad characters.

I'm not just saying this to be a dick. I love Final Fantasy; VI, IX and XIV are some of the best games I've played. I just can't get on with the one everyone loves. Sorry guys.

Flame shield equipped.

I used to love FFVII. Then I played better games (gameplay wise), and I can't get into it anymore. Even with nostalgia glasses equipped. It simply isn't a very good game by any modern standards, IMHO. But I don't hate it.

I find that personally, FFVII holds up in every way but graphical when being replayed now. Those polygons. (Also, the translation is a little... vague and wonky and unfortunately obscures tons of the details of the story/characters).

Wow, don't get me started. I know im gonna get a lot of hate for this, but I hate minecraft with a passion. Im a bit of a graphics whore, but id be willing to look past that ugly block look. Anyways, I feel there are far better game you can express your creativity in, and the fact that like everyone loves this pisses me off. And I hate the fact that there are DOZENS of clones of it.

I hate most shooting games, unless they are zombie themed, and actually have some king of plot.

Final fantasy annoys me. The story is usually great, some have their problems, but they're usually good. But I HATE the battle system. Something about it really irks me. And they've made so many, it's ridiculous.

I have two game companies I hate as well. I hate EA games, they've literally started ruining the sims series, which used to be one of my favorite series ever. And I was so pissed when I saw the amount of content the sims 3 came with. They wanted to me to pay extra for hairstyles and clothes, I just gave up and *may* have torrented them. Ugh.

Lastly, I might get some hate for this too, but square enix. Their obsession with final fantasy would be forgivable, but they've purchased the rights to at least 4 games I LOVED, and never did anything with them. So in other words, they killed them. Tactics ogre, anyone?

Why does it piss you off that people like a game that you don't? I'm sorry to say this, but I think that's a pretty crappy attitude to have. I don't like most Final Fantasies but I understand that other people do, and more power to them. I wish I could like it as much as they do.

Seriously, I think your point needs some context. There are far more important issues in the world that piss people off than a difference of opinion.

I've never really understood the praise Final Fantasy 7 gets.  I can admit it's a game I never finished.  However, it's a game I have tried to play at least a dozen times.  Most of the time (even when it was released), the graphics are the reason I didn't spend much time with it.  You see, I had just come off of playing and finishing both Final Fantasy 4 and Final Fantasy 6.  I was blown away by the graphics in those games.  So, when I moved on to 7, I was very much disappointed.  I seriously yelled at my friend for enjoying a game on a superior system with graphics that would make NES games look like masterpieces.  His response, of course, was to point out the FMV's and the environments looked good.  I have to admit, to this day, they still hold up pretty well.  They're not fantastic, but they're pretty good.  The only caveat to them being "pretty good" is that FMV is usually "pre-rendered" or what-have-you and so runs far more smoothly as well as has more detail.  It's not rendered with the game engine at all, it's just a video file.  The environments also look amazing, with the caveat of them being nothing more than "interactive paintings" (what I mean by that is there are very few if any actual objects in the game, just set "walking paths" on a picture to give the illusion of walking in the world).  Yes, I realize that's quite harsh and most people won't agree with me (I've had this argument on numerous occasions).

My most recent playthrough of the game was a couple years ago in which I had decided I was going to try to force myself to play it despite the graphics.  So, I booted up the game, got about five minutes into the game and started immediately having problems.  I was playing a bland "do not give two craps about others" character who had been hired to commit acts of terrorism.  My first thought was "Isn't this about the worst way to approach your plot?  Destroying massive energy plants without knowing if they'll cause nuclear fallout or other really terrible things, making people lose their jobs in what is already a very poverty stricken society, and making your 'bad guys' actually look like victims".  Nevermind that these energy plants that are extracting the life force of the planet (or something close to that, it was never really made clear) are sitting atop an open hole to the center of the planet.  Could these massive explosions maybe damage the "life force" of the planet in some way?  Barret doesn't seem to think so, so I guess nobody else in the game will bother to question it either.  So, we blow up the power plant and Barret tells us to lay low for a while (which equates to basically two hours of gametime as we move through a few cutscenes) and then we'll hop a train to go blow up the next one.  I met Aeris and thought she could have been an interesting character if I had stuck with the game.  A girl who sells flowers in a city where plants don't seem to exist?  She does this even though almost nobody ever buys them or cares that she's selling them (which is odd in the first place, and quite interesting if it had ever been explored).  I buy a flower from her and move on.

After some cutscenes that don't really explain anything other than some sexual tension our nearly mute and angsty protagonist has...  Well, we're off to do... something.  We need to stop at some kind of high class brothel to get a key or something, I can't remember.  So, the best idea my team comes up with to seduce the guy with it is to dress up Cloud like a woman.  Nevermind at this point we have at least one other woman in our party who could probably play a woman more convincingly than a guy who looks like a muscle-builder with cold dead eyes.  But hey, hijinks ensue!  I have to admit, this part was actually pretty hilarious and fun despite the nonsensical nature of it.  I got a laugh out of the game here at the results.  Then we were off to...  Some really long ladder thing "to the surface" or something.  I got to the ladder, go to the hatch at the top and then was told I needed to find batteries to open it.

At that point, I quit playing.  Why?  I have no desire to do a "fetch quest" so early in the game with characters I know nothing about who are fighting an enemy I know nothing about, in a world I know nothing about.  Mind you, I'm sitting at something like five hours into the game at this point.  The game failed to impress me in that 5 hour period so I put it down and never went back.

I did, however, watch many of the movies and play a couple of the spin-off games.  Let me tell you, they don't make the characters or plot any clearer to me than I had gotten out of that 5 hours and the spoilers I'd received from players who had beaten the game.

So, it may be complete blasphemy to hate on the game, but those were my impressions of it and why I never cared to actually try to finish it.  I mean...  I played further into Final Fantasy 13 than I've played into Final Fantasy 7.  I've played further into FF12 (which I didn't understand a lick of the plot and had to go find people who beat the game to explain to me what had been going on for the 44 hours I had put into the game) than I played FF7.  I played further into Final Fantasy 8 than I've played 7 (I hated the draw system of FF8 so much, so I quit playing, but the plot had seemed semi-interesting to start out with).

Honestly, I just don't understand the rabid fanboyism for such a game that has such glaring flaws.  But, I guess if others can find reasons to enjoy it, more power to them.  Heck, if they ever remake FF7, I'll probably go out and buy it just to give the game ANOTHER shot to impress me.

That's not the main reason I hate it, I hate it because its boring imo, and there are far better games out there. I wouldn't be pissed off that other people like it normally, but its gotten to the point where some of my friends will not shut up about minecraft, and often insist on playing it when we hang out. It just irks me.

I'm with you there. I find Minecraft to be pretty boring. Playing solo at least. I've played with some friends on the Tekkit mod and we had an absolute blast. In your case, maybe you could suggest playing something else? There must be something out there you all enjoy playing; me and my friends always rely on Wario Ware and Tekken Tag 2. :)

While I'm posting, I'd actually like peoples' opinions on Final Fantasy V. It's smack in the middle of two of the best (IV and VI). I've heard very little about it and would be interested to see if people dig it or not.

FF7's graphics are great and so cute, so is the game. It's an over the top teenage dude's wish fulfillment fantasy it's not high art, and it's certainly not perfect, but it's good at what it does and that's all it needs to be for me to enjoy it. The context of its release and the gaming market at the time contribute to it's popularity, no game's popularity is purely on how "objectively" great its gameplay and graphics are, and it's a story-heavy RPG which gave the playstation something to flaunt that it's competitor, the N64, couldn't do. It, and lots of the playstation's library, could sweep up the kids who were growing up and out of SNES games, and represented what "next gen" meant at the time. Given this context how could it not be super-popular pretty much.

The problem is though, at the time of its release, I was one of those "growing up kids" who was growing out of the SNES graphics.  My friend picked up FF7 and I wanted to play it (I didn't and still don't own a Playstation 1).  It really wasn't what I was expecting as a "next gen game".  It was somewhat lackluster to me the first time I looked at it.  Gameplay in it really wasn't much better, and the story was virtually non-existent.  See, I was used to "storyline driven experiences".  I played Chrono Trigger, Illusion of Gaia, Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, Breath of Fire, Final Fantasy 2 (four) and Final Fantasy 3 (six).  I was absolutely hooked on storylines at the point in time FF7 came out.  I didn't even care how bad a game might actually be, as I was discovering games were a great medium to tell a story in.

For me, FF7 just doesn't deliver on any front.  I can admit that the cutscenes and locations are absolutely gorgeous.  They are still kind of stunning to this day (my, they hold up well!).  It's just that, the rest of the graphics are pretty subpar in comparison and the characters/story seemed to be somewhat lackluster as well.  I guess it just wasn't what I was expecting and it kind of jaded me on the whole experience.

I still have no clue what the storyline is even about though.  A few people have tried to explain it to me, but it still doesn't make much sense.  It is what it is, I guess.

There is absolutely no debate in regards to how FFVII gained its popularity. It damn deserves it considering it made the JRPG a mainstay in the West. There's plenty to be thankful for its legacy, but also some stuff we could do without. It essentially kickstarted the JRPG trope of "nothing happens for x hours." I have to agree with Tai; at the time, I was still accustomed to my Megadrive and my cousin's SNES, and the sprite-based visuals were so much more appealing to look at.

It's clearly a great game for its time, but there have been way better games since then.

The graphics in FF7 are good. Well, I think they're good. They convey emotion well, are hella cute, and contrast with the environment. What better to set a game where one of the major themes is a planet where the planet rejects and is hurt by human life, than by making the humans look like they're not meant to be there in the first place? Sonic the Hedgehog tried to do kind of the same thing as well, with it's checkerboard hills and putting regular animals up next to a blue hedgehog. >_>

question: how is sonic like cloud? the answer is the ty thing I just wrote and will stand by.

Final Fantasy 7's gameplay problems are many, but at the time they were far less problematic than they are now. But the flaws make it hard to enjoy for me. For example, hit detection on scenery; you don't slide along walls you hit, but stop dead on. Combined with 8 directional movement, and scenery that goes in every imaginable angle in addition to the third dimension, you get some really awkward "move, hit wall, move, hit wall, move" guesswork movement going on. I know this was one of the first forays into prerendered games of its kind, and all that is fine, but it made the game hard to play back then too. It wasn't very elegantly solved. Later games fixed this.

Then there is the interface. The interface of the game seriously lacks responsiveness, especially in battle. It's mostly due to a very low framerate in battles, which in turn is a result of how early in the PS1's life this game came out from Square, but it makes navigating menus very clunky. When you'd previously played SNES RPG's, you were used to much better responsiveness in menus.

There's also a lot of other small annoyances that add up; many NPC's require you to look straight at them to initiate conversation, which isn't always easy due to the 8 dir movement and the placement of objects and entities at weird angless and places on the map. It basically went for 8 dir movement in a free-form landscape; it wasn't a good idea.

For its time, FF7 was good, and of course it's still a good game. But it doesn't hold up very well today, neither in terms of graphics nor gameplay. The only part that does hold up pretty well is the story, and the materia mechanics. Everything else was bettered in 8 and 9, making them vastly more playable games.

But I reiterate: I don't hate FF7. I just don't enjoy playing it anymore.

FFIV.


I can't. I've tried. I LOVE Final Fantasy as a franchise. VII and IX are two of my all-time favorite games, and VI is tied with ALttP for my favorite SNES title. But IV...People tell me how wonderful the characters are, how good the story is...But guys, come on. Everyone dies before you get a chance to even get properly attached to them. EVERYONE freaking dies. It's like, "Anyone can die in this game, and to prove that, we're going to needlessly kill off two adorable children for Plot Reasons even though there is a much more powerful wizard in the party because F*** YOU ANYONE CAN DIE IN THIS GAME AREN'T WE EDGY MWAHAHA."


Then we get to the Moon Boy revelation and I just can't anymore. I can't. I'm sorry game, your melodrama is too much and your plot twists are too ridiculous. Your core characters (Cecil, Rosa, and Kain) have an interesting dynamic going on and I do enjoy a good love triangle, but DAMMIT YOU RUINED IT WITH MOON BOY. HOW IN ALL THE SEVEN HELLS AM I SUPPOSED TO TAKE THAT SERIOUSLY? HOW???


Majora's Freaking Mask had a giant leering moon descending from the heavens on the whim of a scarecrow kid, and they managed to make me take THAT seriously. So it's not like ridiculous plots can't be handled well. And yet. You can't even manage a simple adoption angst/love triangle/crazy long-lost-brother story. Why???


EDIT: I mean really, VII has just as bad a case of Spaghetti Plot and SUDDEN REVALATIONS as IV does. AND YET I TOOK IT SERIOUSLY BECAUSE THERE WAS NOTHING FLYING OUT OF LEFT FIELD IN GLITTER-COVERED DRAG (They saved Kuja for IX) WHERE THE REST OF THE GAME HAD BEEN HAMLET-LEVEL STRAIGHTFACEDNESS.

... Actually the worst part of IV Is finding out that out of all those characters that "died" only one of them actually did. It made it all a bit cheap.

...I never actually got that far. (I'm guessing Tellah's the only one who stayed dead.)


What the hell, game? What the bleeding, snot-flinging hell were you trying to do? Oy vey, what a mess...