“The first 50 hours of Final Fantasy 14 suck, but the expansions afterwards are worth it!”
“The game starts at max level!”
I can’t stand it. And it’s not like the game magically gets much better, it just feels pretty okay for someone who just wasted months of their time on the bad parts. Of course you’ll enjoy mediocre parts later on after suffering through that crap.
A game has to start being fun ten minutes after the tutorial tops. Why play it otherwise?
Not to be that guy, but once you get past the first 35 levels of story in FFXIV (which is a lot faster than 50 hours) it really picks up quick. Like a lot.
The story or the gameplay? Because all I wanted to do was play a fun MMO, get items and do dungeons with other people. Instead I did quests like hit 3 rocks with your basic ability. Great! Hit 3 more rocks with the same ability. Done? Now run between 4 NPCs and talk with each of them. Great, now kill 8 enemies over there. Run back, talk with 2 more NPCs. Run through the city and interact with 8 lamp posts, the interaction takes several seconds each, because why not? …
I really tried to power through this absolute bullshit, but after a few hours I simply gave up. It only got worse, not better.
Same. Even on the rare occasion where I’ll do a free to play MMORPG, I avoid PVP and otherwise dealing with other players as much as I can and of course eventually get sick of the grind and return to single player games
This is not true for D4 unless you’re trying to max level as fast as you can. I took my time and did most of the side quests, and I intend to go back and finish them all. The quests are interesting and engaging and voice acted all the way through.
D4 is quite a good leveling experience if you don’t play it zoom-zoom.
Ironically what got me into Diablo was my then-girlfriend now-spouse insisting that I go back to Diablo 1 with her and experience it for the story, and damn if that didn't hook me quick. Endgame D2 and D3 are great and all, but what makes something great even greater is having any sort of emotional connection to the story the game takes place in.
Also hot damn the ambiance of D1 is just something else.
Nah, Diablo 4 is much more fun when leveling from 1 to 70 or so. 70 - 100 is just doing the same things over and over with barely any rewards. It’s the other way around there, leveling is fun, endgame is dogshit.
Usually “game starts at max level” is used for MMOs like WoW. Where all the leveling is seen as annoying bullshit fetch quests and at max level you do dungeons and raids.
Conversely, too many good games get bad reviews because of lacking endgame. So go play the next thing in your overflowing backlog. Some games do what they came for, and that’s fine.
It’s like giving a bad movie review because the concession stand was closed when you left the cinema.
Ugh, ARR is horrible for that. It really is a good game after all that bullshit, but it doesn’t excuse the bullshit existing in the first place. Plus it’s so weird for Final Fantasy, a story driven RPG, to have so many low quality quests in the first place (both story and side quests). I can’t fault anyone not wanting to deal with that.
Best thing it has going for it is that the dungeons are really fun even when the story quests suck. But it’s been years since I’ve played and my knowledge may be stale. Someday I’ll go back, but no way I’ll start with a new character lol.
The story or the gameplay? Because all I wanted to do was play a fun MMO, get items and do dungeons with other people. Instead I did quests like hit 3 rocks with your basic ability. Great! Hit 3 more rocks with the same ability. Done? Now run between 4 NPCs and talk with each of them. Great, now kill 8 enemies over there. Run back, talk with 2 more NPCs. Run through the city and interact with 8 lamp posts, the interaction takes several seconds each, because why not? …
I really tried to power through this absolute bullshit, but after a few hours I simply gave up. It only got worse, not better.
As you say Heavensward, I still hear that there is a ton of dumb quests then. Like the story is right at a critical point and they send you off on hours of fetch quests before you can continue?
I honestly don’t care about the story that much in games. A good story is nice, if the gameplay is there. If the only thing that is actually good about the game is the story… I’ll just read a book instead.
The grind is kind of an MMO thing, it’s not for everyone. Personally I enjoyed the gameplay while chilling with a friend and listening to music on the background
Ehhh, Final Fantasy I’ll give a pass to on that sort of thing. They were telling good enough stories at least up till FF 10 that a two hour tutorial was ok, because the rest of the game was going to take you a minimum of 60 hours to complete. There are a few other RPGs that would get a similar pass. Baldur’s Gate would get the pass, but unless they changed something in 3 I expect less than a half hour tutorial in that game as well
That’s why I don’t play japanese rpgs despite liking them. You have to “play” for 10 to 15 hours before the game actually starts. And during this time it’s a whole lot of cinematic and dialogs with minimal gameplay. Sometimes it gets ridiculous. I can’t remember which game, but after few minutes of dialog you’d be walking for less than a minute to then have dialog again… I want to play and have fun damn it.
I can’t remember which game, but after few minutes of dialog you’d be walking for less than a minute to then have dialog again… I want to play and have fun damn it.
Sounds suspiciously like Final Fantasy 13. I swear that game was basically an 8 hour FMV that was broken up every 5 minutes for the first 8 hours of the game.
Yeah no I can’t do games like that. I don’t have as much time for ma vidja games as I used to or as much as I would like these days I can’t afford to wait 50 hours for enjoyment to start. If it takes that dn long for a game to be fun its just bad game design
The thing that stuck out to me was that some people don’t feel ready to decide whether or not they like something until they’ve totally completed the experience. They feel it isn’t fair to judge the partial product, so they’ll stick it out through the end, even if it’s terrible, just so they say without a doubt they did not like it.
I can understand the mentality, but sometimes you have to just jump ship.
But JoJo got good long before halfway through. For me it starts with Battle Tendency but for many it's good from Stardust Crusaders on. That leaves many more seasons and even more manga.
My advice for anyone getting into JoJo would probably be start with Stardust Crusaders, they explain why Dio is a big deal in the narrative and the mask isn't relevant anymore so none of it really matters.
You are right that the first season is a total drag and very skippable though.
I started reading Neal Stephenson’s book ‘Anathem.’ Threw it down after twenty pages, because it was just ridiculous. A few months later someone told me to stick with it, the plot really starts coming together around page 200.
Yes, I read it, and yes, it takes 200 pages to start making sense.
I always describe Stephenson this way; some college professors will just answer your question; some will tell you what page of the book to read; some will answer the question in Latin, making a pun. Stephenson loves his little enigmas.
This image is fucking with me because the way it’s drawn reminds me a lot of Family Guy, and Family Guy is one of those rare cases where this concept is inverted and the show starts going to shit after season 3.
It’s exactly what a sitcom is supposed to be. Light watching that’s generally funny. Also if you miss an episode or two here and there it’s easy enough to pick up what’s going on.
I love shows like that, after a long day of mentally draining work. I don’t want to think, I just want to drink a beer and zone out. Even though I’m still thinking about work lol
Honestly my biggest blunder of this was telling my boyfriend we watch Miraculous Ladybug and that it gets really good in season 5. I honestly lucked out that we both found it a riot from start to end, it’s now one of our favorite shows.
Yeah, but the thing with the old shows is you can just skip ahead. It was all made for an age where everything was self contained. The most you’d get was a two-part episode.
Now it’s all made for the Netflix binge generation, where every new episodes assumes you’ve seen all the previous ones. I mean, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, and it gave us great shows like The Wire and Breaking Bad, but it does mean they need to get their shit together immediately, and not have several seasons of shit before they find the story they actually wanted to tell.
Shit, if a show doesn’t interest me after 30 minutes I’m done with it. If the story only gets interesting after the forced exposition dump part of the script, then the script needed more work before they filmed it. In my opinion anyway.
This is season 1 of Parks and Recreation. It didn’t really start to get it’s footing until season 2. I’m glad I stuck with it, so many great characters!
Yeah, on rewatch I generally start at season 2. Same with The Office (US). Both shows are phenomenal, but they take a while to find their footing.
However, I’d certainly argue that even on first viewing, the first seasons can be skipped. You might miss a bit of backstory, but you’d be able to understand most things perfectly fine.
I think a lot of those kind of shows just need to get to know the characters better and see what works and what doesn’t in the first season and then improve on that when viewers also have a better understanding of that
I’m your worst nightmare. I refuse to get to s2 or s3 until I finish the dredge that is s1 because I’m of the belief that CR is only good because the people who watch it went through s1 first
Ooooh I respect that. You have a lot of patience xD I’m trying to finish 1 rn btw. Only watched a couple of episodes of 2 and 3 to check out and decided to leave it for later as well as you. To get a more full picture I guess…
Me with Bojack. I straight up tell most folks to skip the first 5 episodes and start with 1-6. The jump in quality the show does when it gets to “The Telescope” is staggering, it doesn’t feel like the same show.
Well, yeah, I get that, even if I don’t find those episodes bad myself, but I do think episode two, Bojack Hates the Troops, is a really good satirical episode that shouldn’t be missed.
Ok, yeah, my partner loves the Mc Neal Seal puns, and even when we were watching it he was like “season one is supposed to be the bad one? Jesus the show is good then”
I mention Bojack to pretty much everyone I care about. I am just worried there’s someone out there that could love the show as much as me and just doesn’t get the chance to.
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