Okay let me start with two heavy hitters right from the get go and don’t forget these are only personal oppinions and I absolute understand if you like those games. Good for you!
Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Not a bad game per se, but I don’t get the hype behind it. Sure the dungeons are fun but the world is so lifeless, the story non existent, the combat pretty shallow, the tower climbing is very much like FarCry but for some reasons it’s okay here while Ubisoft gets the blame…like I said I dont get why the game is so beloved. Never finished it after the 20 hour mark and probably never will.
Red Dead Redemption 2 - Just like Zelda not a bad game, but imho highly overrated. Graphics and and atmosphere are amazing but the controls are clunky and overloaded, nearly everybody is an unlikable douchebag who I would love to shoot myself at the first opportunity (maybe except Jack and Abigail) but I have to root and care for them. The game is just so long and feels very stretched, you already know that you won’t get Dutch because it’s a prequel and for an open world game you often get handholded in your weapon selection or things you can do because you have to wait for them to be unlocked by the game. I’m now nearly done with the game, playing the epilogue at the moment and I would say the last chapters are more entertaining than the rest of the game, but I still can’t understand why this game was on so many game of the year lists and I really wanted to put the controller down a dozen times.
So there they are, two highly controversial oppinions by me and now I’m really curios what your takes are and how highly I get downvoted into oblivion 😂
Dark Souls 3 and only Dark Souls 3. I love Dark Souls 1 and 2, Elden Ring, Bloodborne is my favorite game, and Sekiro. But Dark Souls 3 is just so boring and unfun. Even the ingame world feels uninterested in this game, (because it kinda is over the whole age of fire thing.) Everything is gross and brown it just makes exploring kind of icky. DS1 had a good balance of gross and majestic locations and enemies. DS2 suffered from too few monsters and too many generic armored knights, and locations felt too clean and empty.
It feel like this game does not like you to diversify your build. Armor is basically cosmetic, and offers very slight damage protection. Poise sucks, and is basically removed, so making a tank build kind of sucks. Its so damn fast and doesn’t give you a ton of options like Elden Ring does. DS3 is certainly the most actiony of the action rpgs, and idk, I’d like more rpg. I remember watching a video about how playing these games at level 1 is the intended and best way to play. I can kind of see that, I think that discredits a lot of the rpg elements in these games. I always saw permadeath runs as the more fun way to play, especially in DS2, that game was like designed to be run as an arcade game.
The game also feels like it rides on nostalgia pretty hard. Anor Londo? Thats here. Andre? He’s here. Firelink Shrine? Thats here, too. Artorias? There’s a whole cult trying to cosplay as him. I actually think DS2 handled this sort of thing better, it being so far it the future from DS1 that most characters and places from 1 are only legend or ancient history. I think it gave 2 a sense of discovery, even if DS2 certainly has much less coherent lore lol.
There are good things in this game. The dlc is fantastic. Certain areas look downright stunning, often helped by the muted color palette. A lot of the bosses are fun when you use the correct play style for them. Pontiff Sullivan or Champion Gundyr is my favorite boss on my most recent playthrough, but I haven’t gotten to Gale, the Twin Princes or Midir yet.