So I got a bug in my butt to install Mortal Kombat 11 last night and was doing the story mode which is basically like a movie with intermittent fights and it occurred to me that I love Mortal Kombat but just the characters, the worldbuilding, and the lore. I’ve never been big on fighting games and as I age, I am finding it harder and harder to pull off special combos quick enough to even do much other than slapping buttons and hoping for the best.
My favorite MK game was one of the ones on PS2 where the story mode was basically God of War gameplay turning it from a fighter into an action adventure game.
If Midway were to make a Mortal Kombat title that was like Dark Souls but set on Outworld or something, that would definitely be my jam.
Another would be Warhammer 40k. I am not at all interested in the PnP gameplay nor a lot of the video games. But I love the lore and the game Rogue Trader is fucking dope, playing more like a traditional CRPG in that setting and not an RTS or straight up shooter.
Do y’a have any games like that? Where you like everything about them except the actual gameplay?
This doesn’t apply to a specific franchise, but I sometimes think about how fun it would be for game franchises with a lot of characters to have games designed around replaying them with the different characters. Some examples would be:
A game with every Final Fantasy character that plays like Vampire Survivors. Each character would have their own sets of equipment and attacks they can obtain.
A game that is basically Sonic and the Black Knight be re-imagined to be more like either Monster Hunter or Kingdom Hearts. Each character could either have their own sets of equipment or have access to most of the equipment but use them differently.
A Touhou game that’s some form of an RPG, whether it be turn-based, action, or something similar to FF12. I know that there already are some RPGs featuring these characters but (on top of mostly being adult games for some reason) they all only have a few of the characters and they are very short and the RPG elements are usually quite limited.
Also, not really a specific franchise and it’s technically the same genre but I’d like to see more fighting games play like Dissidia Final Fantasy. I want to play more fighting games but Dissidia is the one of the only fighting games that I’ve ever been good at.
I’d love to see Doom as an Assassin’s Creed style game, where instead of it being wall to wall high-intensity violence there is a slower-pace open world story and every once in a while you’re dropped into a kind of death match arena to face a boss, but you can also run into them in the wild and have to scramble to take them out before they get ya.
You might like Strife
Someone remade Portal as a browser-based side scroller, and I fucking loved that game.
I played through Horizon: Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, and with how hard every NPC was flirting with Aloy, I wondered “Why isn’t this a post-apocalyptic dating sim?”
In Divinity: Original Sin II, there’s a game-breaking mechanic where you can plant tea plants in pots, grow new tea plants, harvest them, and then use the buffs from drinking tea to get infinite moves during fights. I actually got into the whole management of the tea farm, and I don’t want to totally throw out the RPG combat, but I might like it if farming and then using your crops to win fights was an entire game unto itself, rather than just a broken exploit.
I played through Horizon: Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, and with how hard every NPC was flirting with Aloy, I wondered “Why isn’t this a post-apocalyptic dating sim?”
I mean, Aloy is super cool, badass and hot as fuck, if you’re single, the only reason not to flirt with her would be fear.
I thought that with how things ended in HFW, the next game ought to be an RTS.
EVE online
I loved the lore, the feel of danger in low/nullsec. But I just don’t have time for a second job.
X4 doesn’t have quite as good lore imo, but for me it really scratches my eve itch without having to go back to that mmo. I think it’s the interconnected economy of the sandbox.
I wasn’t familiar so I looked it up. I absolutely love the visuals of X4, I might give it a go some day
If you pick it up, know that it has a huge modding scene that makes an already great game even better. I can recommend a few basic QoL mods if you want, though the 9.0 update is coming soon and will probably break most of them for a while.
Also, the base game has some arbitrary mechanics meant purely to punish the player so veterans can’t steamroll the NPC factions too quickly, at the expense of making the new player experience harder. There’s a list of these mechanics (and links to mods that reduce/remove them) here.
Everytime I read about some insane awesome event in Eve I think, “I should totally play that.” Then I get bummed for a moment that I won’t be able to. Then I remember what you said, it’s a second job, and I smile and get on with my life.
Maybe I’d just like to be an Eve battlefield reporter.
Diablo, I want it to be an MMORPG. The story and setting of those games is awesome, but I’ve never been big on the play style.
Wish Blizzard would just layer Diablo story/art onto the WoW gameplay.
That’s what Diablo 4 essentially is
Warcraft
I love the lore and story, especially Warcraft 3, but a story-driven RTS makes no sense to me. I like both separately, but not mixed together. Probably same thing with Starcraft, but I’ve never tried it.
Probably same thing with Starcraft, but I’ve never tried it.
Oof. Yes. I recall Starcraft II’s tutorial requiring what felt like South Korean world champion commands-per-minute play to get through maybe the third level of the tutorial.
Probably all gacha games, like Genshin Impact or FGO. There’s a lot about those games I like, but the fact that they’re gacha actively gets in the way. If they were just regular games, most of the problems, which boil down to maximising play time like tedious grinding or filler in the main quests, would disappear.
Yeah, same here honestly
Turns out: Pokemon.
I tend to only play a Pokemon game every decade or so because the formula has been basically the same since the original: you catch pokemans and then cock fight them. And I just only have so much bandwidth for that.
But over here in Pokopia I’m building habitats for them and we are all hanging out, and it’s awesome. Yes, I will build you a little house, Bulbasaur.
World of Warcraft, but predominantly as a persistent single-player world where you can invite players in (ala. Diablo 2).
I love the world building of Azeroth (even the bow out-dated, throw-away, pop-culture additions); just wish I could play and experience it all at my pace - family life currently precludes me from being able to invest sufficient time to play an MMO.
just wish I could play and experience it all at my pace - family life currently precludes me from being able to invest sufficient time to play an MMO.
Wayfinder does this pretty well. There’s some rough edges from where they pivoted in the design, but I got it on sale for less than a single month of WoW, and have been playing through it at my own pace ever since.
I just wish No Mans Sky had some point.
Sometimes I feel similarly about Elite: Dangerous. Disclaimer: I haven’t played NMS because E:D gets all my spacetime tokens and I’m fine with that. “Community goals” (high payout limited time events) get me to play because it gives me purpose for a week. For the most part though, I like coming to it for an hour or two when I want to take a break from story-laden games. Hunt pirates for an hour, fly out of inhabited space and explore for an hour (well, an hour out, an hour there per session, an hour back next time), or just chill with music and asteroid mining.
So I do wish there was a plot at times, but I do appreciate it for mixing up the routine with simple cruising
The point is to learn 3+ alien languages word by word
The point is to get super high and hang out on toxic planets for the trippy colors.
Based and “I hope this place has ancient bones…”-pilled
I just wish they’d dedicate one or two of their major updates to integrating all the random features they added into a cohesive whole. Right now there are dozens of systems that are almost all pointless shallow grinds as well as completely isolated from every other system. It’d give the game some real depth if these mechanics interacted with each other in any way.
That, and fix their damn inventory system. It’s been a decade and multiple overhauls and basic crafting and inventory management is still unpleasant and tedious.
The point is to spend hours travelling across the universe looking for an Earth-like planet, with green grass, blue skies and relatively safe temperatures, instead of just going outside in real life.
Dead by Daylight.
The idea evolved out of turning horror games into multiplayer. As balance adjustments were made over time, the horror element was depleted and most of it is based around pathing between obstacles as a slower character, against one very powerful melee-based character.
It’s certainly fun and bearable in its current form, but: The objectives based around “escaping the killer” tend to result in lopsided results (eg, one player that hid and escaped feeling proud, while a very good chaser gets few points since they died). The game is not accessible to players intimidated by horror, and some effects even trigger certain phobias or bodily resistances (eg, The Plague causes some empathetic vomiting issues to some people) Plus, some players taking the killer role sometimes associate a bit too much ego to their result (they do badly in matches, and blame the game, stating “I’m Michael Myers, dropping bits of wood and puny flashlights shouldn’t phase me”)
I really love the idea of asymmetrical games like DBD but the community always ruins it. Evolve was absutely incredible in the first few weeks before players optimized all the tension out (and before the backlash over what is now laughably tame monetization).
Does wishing that Final Fantasy would return to its roots and be a turn-based JRPG again count?
I want a top down Mana game again. I liked the Trials remake and Visions, but I miss the original style.
Similarly, what about wishing for another linear and stoey-focused 3D Zelda?
When I played Trails in the Sky, I felt a lot of my FF7 nostalgia coming back. It got a remake which has been very faithful to the original; while you start combat with some dodges/swings in the overworld, most fights inevitably come back to turn-based.
“I like FF7 but I wish instead of a JRPG, it was a generic ARPG” said an SE exec at some point, apparently.
Crisis core worked surprisingly well!.
I’m one of these weird people that actually prefer it as an ARPG.
I just wish it was a good one.
did you give bravely default a shot?
This might be too pointed a memory, but I remember trying a demo for that game, and somehow having the basic attacks involve cat-like repetitive swatting from the chibi characters put me way off.
I also want to feel really intrigued and connected with a story to play a JRPG. “Generic lore” doesn’t do it for me.
Yup, and I’d even say that the best FF is the one that SE was too afraid to put the FF name on. I just wish it wasn’t relegated to being a lower budget B-list project, imagine if SE put the same kinds of full AAA resources behind this that they put on the FF7 ‘remake’.
If you want something echoing back to the og, I found the 4 heros of light very fun. I replay it once every few years or so. Also, it is the scaffolding that bravely default was built with
yeah i remember bd’s nemesis battle theme coming from 4hol
I wish something would happen with Lost Odyssey, i loved that game.
That’s what I was here to post.
Hades and Hades 2. I am someone who is a huge fan of visual novels and the games already have a fantastic dynamic between characters and amazing writing.
i just hate that I have to play a game genre im not good at to get more of a story I’m extremely invested in. and characters I’m attached to.
Though the genre kinda makes the story!
At least it has god mode. I’ve basically accepted I play most games on the lowest difficulty possible.
Starcraft. RTS is not for me; I played the campaigns with cheats on so I could see the story unfold.
Then again, that was back when I was still willing to give money to ActiBlizzard. Not so since Blitzchung.
We almost had an OTS shooter set in StarCraft’s universe… I wonder what life would have been like if Ghost actually came out in 2005. 🤔
I’ve seen this image so often, but just now it occurred to me: Living the best life in the year 3000 and cars still park on the sidewalk.
Nun uh, they park OVER the sidewalk.
Starcraft 2 is super fun as a randomizer in the RTS format, but I do want to see more done with that IP. The problem is, like you, I will never give Blizzard a single penny ever again.
Yup. I love the lore and atmosphere, fun in archipelago for randomizing, i like the campaign and co-op modes a lot. But since I won’t give blizzard any money it’s nice that they just gave up on the IP for whatever reason
StarCraft, League of Legends, Warhammer 40K (shoutout to Darktide the goat), Rainbow 6 Siege, list continues…
Warhammer 40k comes in all flavors! You can try shooters like Boltgun (boomer shooter FPS), Space Marine (TPS with some hack and slash) and Space Hulk: Deathwing (FPS), among others.
For tactical stuff, there’s Battlefleet Gothic: Armada (RTT with space ships) Mechanicus (turn-based tactics) and Dawn of War (the last one was meh).
Fun stuff like Shootas, Blood and Teef (platformer) and Rogue Trader (RPG) are also out there. And lots of these are getting sequels pretty damn soon!
