Post a pair of criminally underrated and overrated games from the same genre

[DDC]

I got the idea for this thread because I am working my way through Lords of the Fallen right now and I simply cannot believe the poor review scores this great game has received. Elden Ring, on the other hand, received rave reviews despite being the worst modern From Software game. I will compare and contrast the reception these two games received and would also be interested in discussing similar pairs from other genres.

Lords of the Fallen

LOTF sits at a paltry 61% positive score on Steam. Typically a score like that denotes a game with zero redeeming value because the industry is so saturated that it isn't worth the time to play. Imagine my surprise to find that LOTF is generally on par with and in many ways almost indistinguishable from the three primary Dark Souls games, and if any worse only marginally so. Graphically, it easily beats Elden Ring and the Souls games. The controls and general feel are almost identical but slightly more arcadey, which felt wrong for the first hour or two, but 50% in I love how it plays. The levels and bosses are quality and could be dropped into any Souls game and would not feel out of place. Stats, equipment, and gameplay systems are in many cases copied, even down to stats largely doing the same things and scaling the same way.

LOTF improves on the Souls games by linking secrets to the "Umbral Realm." You have a lantern that you can hold up at any time to peer into the Umbral Realm and reveal things like bridges made of gigantic spinal cords, treasures, walls that can be walked through, environmental puzzles to be solved, etc. You can phase into the Umbral Realm to interact with these things at the cost of being attacked by more monsters, and you will be hunted down by reapers if you stay for too long. On the whole, this is a much more engaging system than randomly attacking every wall until one disappears to find a "secret."

Needless to say, LOTF has a lot going for it, so what are the complaints? Most of them, I gather, boil down to "the mean enemy killed me." But in my experience, LOTF has been hard but balanced. The caveat is that it has little in the way of crutch weapons/items, and outleveling the bosses is much harder than it is in a Souls game, so the game forces you to engage with it and play properly (vs. cheesing it and notching the self-congratulatory accolade of beating a "hard" game). The other main complaint is that the enemy variety is too low. This has some merit in that there is a bit less variety than in From's games, but still far more variety than the typical third person action RPG. Lastly, the multi-target switching could be smoother and there is no denying this. In sum, LOTF should easily be sitting on a score in the mid 80%.


Elden Ring

Elden Ring, on the other hand, sits at 93% positive on Steam and was decorated with countless Game of the Year awards. Yet in many ways, Elden Ring is the worst From Software game. The decision to go open-world was disastrous in implementation because it resulted in a game that easily takes 100+ hours to fully explore, with most of that time spent on low quality, cut-and-paste content. And that low-quality content cannot even be skipped because Elden Ring does little to signal whether any of the numerous repetitive side-dungeons have a vital item, or useless crap.

The first segment of Elden Ring is fantastic because Limgrave is a well-designed continent and the side content is still new and fresh. Stormveil Castle has some of the best (if not THE best) design of a castle area out of all the From games. Margit is one of the best boss fight in the game. Then cracks appear in Liurnia because it is more of the same, just spread out more tediously, and the feeling of discovery starts to lack. By Caelid and Mountaintop of the Giants, no more fucks were given, and these later areas were designed with all the quality, care, and content density of a procedurally generated Starfield planet. The gameplay also takes a nosedive because everything is so wide open and the power level between weapons so different that tuning bosses and areas is impossible. With crutches like the Mimic Tear and pew-pew Sword of Night and Flame, there is little in the game that isn't a complete joke. Use gear more in line with the capabilities of classic Souls games though, and many of the encounters feel overtuned and unfair, rather than satisfying. So the player is left in the awkward position of self-regulating challenge by deciding which of the overpowered options to use or not use. This is terrible design, because the primary duty of the developer (creating a challenging and balanced experience) has been completely abdicated to the player.

Elden Ring gets sloppier and sloppier as it progresses. Many bosses were botched in terms of their own hitboxes and also the collision detection for their attacks. The level of precision is far below that of prior From games. And the Legacy Dungeons after Stormveil Castle, supposedly the "crown jewels" of the game, are nothing special and in many cases worse than the median Souls game level. On the whole, Elden Ring has a handful of great bosses and great areas combined with some mostly "mid" Souls content, chopped up and spread out over a bland open world. So much of Elden Ring's content (by volume) is low quality that the high reviews cannot be justified (and ironically, adding all of this slop is what gave Elden Ring "mass appeal" and got it the high sales and review scores). But I would argue that the tightly-designed, handcrafted areas were what made the Souls games great to begin with. The failure of the developers to use any restraint in culling the gameworld down to prove a tight, measured experience ruins Elden Ring for any NG+ playthroughs. In fact, I got more than enough Elden Ring the first time around and was ready for it to be done far before it ended.

[wndrbr]

LotF has a correct score, but for the wrong reasons.

It's a very derivative game, a clone in the full sense of the word. Devs, like the Chinese sweatshop workers, simply copied every facet of Souls games without even trying to put their own spin on things. Same combat, same animations, same attack types, same general enemy design, same attribute system, same UI, same art-style. Even the armor design is the same, and I'm not talking about generic knight plate/scale/chainmail- they even copied Bloodborne's most distinct armor set, the tricorn hat-totting hunter from "Le Pacte des Loups". And the only new thing they've came up with, the Umbral realm, imo actually makes the game feel worse. It's a bloody hassle to traverse levels and looks for stuff since half of the secrets and passageways are now hidden in a soulreaver dimension.

Both games should have a 6/10 score. One is giga-derivative and has no fresh ideas, the other is padded with trash content.

[DDC]

It shouldn't matter whether they call it "Dark Souls 4" or "Lords of the Fallen." The game should be entitled to be judged on its own merits. It isn't as if the industry is awash in good Souls Clones. Dark Souls 3 was 2016. The quality "Soulslike" games like Nioh, Sekiro, Remnant 2 all play very differently. We were long overdue for a good Souls clone even if it came under a different name.

Not liking the umbral realm is a valid issue where tastes could differ although taking it down to a 6 for that is harsh. It does add extra work for the player, but what cemented it as cool for me was getting further in the game to where stronger monsters are in Umbral, and seeing that they're always there stalking you and will try to attack just for peering through the mirror even if you don't phase in. That was just a neat, immersive detail. Adding time pressure to a Souls game is also new and can lead to some mad scrambles.

[Manny V]

overrated: helldivers

underrated: EDF

ye edf is weeby but it's more goofy and has that jank charm

helldivers is just normie slop going "look guys it's Starship Troopers!!! isn't that funnee?!?!"

[Val the Moofia Boss]

JRPG genre





Grossly overrated: Trails in the Sky: Second Chapter.

It is a direct sequel to FC, but introduces no new regions or towns to explore, and the region hasn't changed noticeably. Not even a snowing winter season to spruce up the aesthetics. So you are spending another 60 hours in the exact same setting you already thoroughly explored in the first 50 hour long game. Story wise, you spend the first half of the 60 hour long game meandering around accomplishing nothing, while the B-team of adventurers are off doing the actually important job of finding the bad guys' secret base. The villains cause earthquakes to split people's heads open, crush shopping malls, and massacre dozens of policemen for shits and giggles, and then you beat them up... and rather than execute them or arrest them, the heroes instead walk away, allowing the bad guys to wake up and leave and continue their mass murder spree in sequel games. The game spends a lot of time on the Joshua x Estelle romance but failed to get me to care about it. There are a handful of good scenes/moments, but the overall story feels lukewarm at best.

Gameplay wise, it is one of the weakest Trails games. Characters who use physical attacks like martial arts feel weak and unenjoyable to play, as their techniques require craft points, but you gain points at an abysmally slow rate and the techniques hit like wet noodles. Techniques are also limited in range. This cannot be overcome by building your characters; no amount of stacking strength quartz and equipment can make physical characters really good. Meanwhile, any character can easily spec into being a mage and cast massively damaging spells with huge AoE radiuses. So instead of watching your characters perform their own unique, personalized techniques, you instead watch them all cast them same spells of Aerial/White Gehenna/Death Scream over and over again. Lastly, the sidequests are utterly forgettable.

The game was enjoyable enough for me to play it a second time, but it does not deserve the "masterpiece" label that the JRPG community has assigned it.










Underrated: Final Fantasy XIII

Fantastic aesthetics. Is the best looking game of its console generation. Has a good soundtrack too by Masashi Hamazau, who did the other half of FF10's OST. Story is good enough, not my favorite but certainly better than many JRPGs I've played including Trails plots which are oh so lauded. I never understood the claim by Spoony that the plot was incomprehensible. I understood what was going on and did not have to read a codex or watch a Youtube lore video. My only complaint story wise is that the protagonist, Lightning, is never particularly likeable. At the beginning she is constantly running off and ditching the group, and then she abandons a hapless teenager to die only to come back for him to manipulate him into murdering her soon-to-be brother in law, who I found to be quite likeable and the most heroic character in the game. She eventually mellows out but never becomes endearing like prior FF protagonists.

Gameplay wise, the game has excellent combat. The character animations, spell effects, camera movements, and the dynamism of the paradigm shifts just makes it feel really fun. While the game does not have town or minigames and you ultimately just run forward to the next fight, I think this works in the game's favor by cutting out the fat and just letting you get into more battles. The only glaring weakness I can think of is that there is too much boring menuing involved when levelling up your characters and crafting weapons.

FF13 had the misfortune of being branded as a Final Fantasy title, which comes with expectations that the game did not meet. Ie, traditional fantasy aesthetics (as opposed to futuristic sci fi). Trekking across a vast wilderness (when 11 out of 13 chapters take place in linear urban or industrial environments). Visiting towns. Minigames. Etc. If FF13 had not been labelled as the next mainline Final Fantasy game like Xenogears (which was originally titled FF7 before they rebranded it), then it would have been better received and appraised for its own merits.

[DDC]

underrated: EDF

EDF is always what I think of as the perfect evolution of video games. You pick a level, you pick your class and weapons, you kill ****. No open worlds, no drawn out tutorials with some dudebro or british chick introducing you to every little feature, no gay ****, no repetitive sidequests, no hidden "collectibles," no "choices matter." Every game literally just adds more and more enemies, weapons, and destruction than the last while overhauling the classes. Great mix of action and tactics on the higher difficulty levels. EDF has fairly high fan scores (critics not so much), but one thing I think even the fans underrate is the dialogue. There are some amazing lines (especially in EDF 4) if you bother to listen. It was hilarious how they tried to AAA-ify the series with Iron Rain and it completely flopped, but luckily it did not kill the franchise because it is in my top 5 favorites.

Grossly overrated: Trails in the Sky: Second Chapter.

I've only played Trails of Cold Steel, but I would levy many of the same criticisms. Enough plot to carry a 25-hour JRPG at best stretched over 60-70 hours. Everyone squealing about "oooh the world-building" but the party members and story are not interesting or complex so I don't care that some NPC in some town is "fleshed out." Battle system, dungeon design, etc completely mundane. The story becomes entertaining in the last act, but not worth the slog to get there.

Underrated: Final Fantasy XIII

I wouldn't have expected FF13 to pop up on the underrated side, but **** it does look great in high resolution. The thing I could never get over is that it is literally comprised of a series of tubes from start to finish. Not just less than normal freedom, none at all. From what I remember, consulting the in-game library was needed to make sense of the story and the use of "l'Cie" and "fal'Cie" as key words was insufferable. But great setting, beautiful graphics, wish they had done more with it. Are those screens original textures and models or is that modded?

[madbringer]

Hot take, Daikatana is a much better game than ppl think (tho still generic n kinda ******) while Deus Ex is a vehicle for misdirection that drops "red pills" on you about conspiracies but it never mentions **** (Warren Spector is a ****, btw).

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Are those screens original textures and models or is that modded?

Modded. I followed the Steam mod guide, the main improvements being that it fixes Square Enix's shoddy PC port, replaces the field character models with the higher polygon cutscene models, and replaces the lower quality pre-rendered movie files with higher quality files. I also used reshade.

[KnightoftheWind]

JRPG genre





Grossly overrated: Trails in the Sky: Second Chapter.

It is a direct sequel to FC, but introduces no new regions or towns to explore, and the region hasn't changed noticeably. Not even a snowing winter season to spruce up the aesthetics. So you are spending another 60 hours in the exact same setting you already thoroughly explored in the first 50 hour long game. Story wise, you spend the first half of the 60 hour long game meandering around accomplishing nothing, while the B-team of adventurers are off doing the actually important job of finding the bad guys' secret base. The villains cause earthquakes to split people's heads open, crush shopping malls, and massacre dozens of policemen for shits and giggles, and then you beat them up... and rather than execute them or arrest them, the heroes instead walk away, allowing the bad guys to wake up and leave and continue their mass murder spree in sequel games. The game spends a lot of time on the Joshua x Estelle romance but failed to get me to care about it. There are a handful of good scenes/moments, but the overall story feels lukewarm at best.

Gameplay wise, it is one of the weakest Trails games. Characters who use physical attacks like martial arts feel weak and unenjoyable to play, as their techniques require craft points, but you gain points at an abysmally slow rate and the techniques hit like wet noodles. Techniques are also limited in range. This cannot be overcome by building your characters; no amount of stacking strength quartz and equipment can make physical characters really good. Meanwhile, any character can easily spec into being a mage and cast massively damaging spells with huge AoE radiuses. So instead of watching your characters perform their own unique, personalized techniques, you instead watch them all cast them same spells of Aerial/White Gehenna/Death Scream over and over again. Lastly, the sidequests are utterly forgettable.

The game was enjoyable enough for me to play it a second time, but it does not deserve the "masterpiece" label that the JRPG community has assigned it.










Underrated: Final Fantasy XIII

Fantastic aesthetics. Is the best looking game of its console generation. Has a good soundtrack too by Masashi Hamazau, who did the other half of FF10's OST. Story is good enough, not my favorite but certainly better than many JRPGs I've played including Trails plots which are oh so lauded. I never understood the claim by Spoony that the plot was incomprehensible. I understood what was going on and did not have to read a codex or watch a Youtube lore video. My only complaint story wise is that the protagonist, Lightning, is never particularly likeable. At the beginning she is constantly running off and ditching the group, and then she abandons a hapless teenager to die only to come back for him to manipulate him into murdering her soon-to-be brother in law, who I found to be quite likeable and the most heroic character in the game. She eventually mellows out but never becomes endearing like prior FF protagonists.

Gameplay wise, the game has excellent combat. The character animations, spell effects, camera movements, and the dynamism of the paradigm shifts just makes it feel really fun. While the game does not have town or minigames and you ultimately just run forward to the next fight, I think this works in the game's favor by cutting out the fat and just letting you get into more battles. The only glaring weakness I can think of is that there is too much boring menuing involved when levelling up your characters and crafting weapons.

FF13 had the misfortune of being branded as a Final Fantasy title, which comes with expectations that the game did not meet. Ie, traditional fantasy aesthetics (as opposed to futuristic sci fi). Trekking across a vast wilderness (when 11 out of 13 chapters take place in linear urban or industrial environments). Visiting towns. Minigames. Etc. If FF13 had not been labelled as the next mainline Final Fantasy game like Xenogears (which was originally titled FF7 before they rebranded it), then it would have been better received and appraised for its own merits.

FF13 has aged remarkably well visually, but it's gameplay is still just as terrible as it was on the day it came out. If it was a new IP, it would've been one that flopped. Square sank a ton of money into 13, and I'd wager it would've fared a LOT worse had it been branded as something else. It was a walking simulator, with enough cutscenes to make Hideo Kojima shake his head.

[bloodedhunter]

Overrated: The entire trails JRPG series. or Persona 5

Its yet again more Japanese high school cringe.

Trails series looks interesting at first but the forced classroom segments were what really took me out of it. The mecha scenes look cool, but the school isn’t an officer’s academy. Its a regular high school and the cast are supposedly all conscripts for the military. It’s anime. Don’t thunk about the plot too much.

Persona 5 could have had an interesting moral dilemma with the phantom thieves being in the wrong for once and explored the ramifications of literally overriding someone’s personal will but that would go against the whole robin hood thing they were going for. Nope. They are all saints. As usual.


Underrated: SMT: Strange Journey

An SMT game with actual demonstrated stakes to the plot from the beginning and actually shows why the demons/personas are so dangerous instead of it being a throwaway line like in the persona games where no one ever dies in shadow attacks.

Japanese high school is absent from this game and stays gone for its entirety. Instead the game is about forging unlikely alliances with various demons to survive as the protagonist descends into the depths of the antarctic death storm.

[1998]

Overrated: BG2
Underrated: BG1

[Cipher]

Overrated:

The Last of Us.

Yes, both of them. They are woke slop garbage. The 2nd one is just more overt about it.


Underrated:

Gravity Circuit. It is a proper Megaman spiritual successor. Looks and plays great and has very nice visuals and superb soundtrack. But, it got no attention because they didn't really had the budget to advertise the game as they should have, since it comes from a small indie studio.

If you are craving from some Megaman/Megaman X style action from a dev team that actually gets it, don't sleep on Gravity Circuit.