Acquired Taste

[Reincarnatedwolfgod]

what games that you like would you call an acquired taste?
gothic 2 gold was first gothic game I ever played.
I would say gothic 2 gold(with night of the raven) is one if my favorite games and an acquired taste. the combat is very brutal in the beginning with a unique combat system that takes time to learn and get use to. on top of that when the play character is inexperienced at fighting at the beginning of the game you feel it due to having to deal with clunky combat. When you are experienced at fight stat wise can feel a great difference compared to the starting combat due combat feeling smoother. that gives a great feel of progression and you will eventually feel like a badass. Even when feeling like a badass and there always exists serious threats that can kill if your are too carless. This game does not offer instant any gratification unless you use cheats.

I played first gothic game after playingthough a good majority of gothic 2. That took to getting use to as well since unlike gothic 2 it's controls where designed for just using the keyboard. even after beating gothic 1 I still have problems with properly timing parry/block attack from human enemies. I don't find that to be hard to time in gothic 2. Overall I like Gothic 2 more then gothic 1 due it having better gameplay, but Gothic 1 is pretty good rpg.

I would say both Gothic and Gothic 2 gold are niche games.

Spoiler: enemy patterns I mastered or sort of mastered

part of getting better in this game is figuring learning how the combat system learn the rhythm or patt of how the certain enemys. at the most optimal level of learning it you can interrupting their attacks and fight them with out getting scratch

My experience with killing minecrawler and minecrawler warriors has resulted in both games has resulted in me learning their pattern enough to kill them in a one on one fight at low levels when they can kill me in 2-3 attacks. I am not confident enough fighting them at a state when they can one shot me at this point.

the most recent enemy sort learned the pattern if is swamp golems. I still have tendency to screw up my timing and of hitting them and I killed the last existing swamp golem until I get to chapter 4 or 5 so I will have master the timing at a later date. the few times I managed to get the rhythm of of hitting them at all right times to cancel out all there attacks and to not take any damage was greatly satisfying.

I got the pattern of wolves down pretty well too, since not a single wolf has killed in a one on one fight during my second playthough. at this point they never will kill me one on one since I am past the point where they are considered a notable threat.

I could kill a troll at level one using a wooded branch but its just far to time consuming to do that.

 

[srm79]

I love Codemasters' Formula 1 20xx series, and loved their spiritual predecessor (Psygnosis' excellent Formula 1 series) so much that the reason I bought my first PlayStation in 1996 was mainly to play the original Formula 1. Sure there had been F1 games before, but usually pure arcade efforts that were entirely generic or used a specific license (Ayrton Senna's Monaco GP & Monaco GP2 for example) or were eye-wateringly complex PC efforts (still unlicensed though) that needed a decent PC to play.

Then came Formula 1. It had fucking amazing (it was 1996!) 3D polygon graphics, used all the same stat overlays that the BBC used, had all the teams and drivers from the 1995 F1 season (including mid-season driver lineup changes - never been done since!), proper pitstops and strategy, was actually quite tough, and while never trying to be an outright sim, always did an excellent job of making the cars feel like we think they would feel based on what we see on TV. And MURRAY FUCKING WALKER.

It never pretended to be anything it wasn't, but has always been a good, solid, challenging and above all FUN racing game. The trouble is that so few people seem to like this series as well. But then again, I'm a lifelong fan of F1 and realise that's why I get such a kick out of playing the games. It's probably a bit "dry" for a lot of people. It certainly doesn't give you much in the way of help or a tutorial about how to set up a racing car and how to handle it properly. It assumes a fairly deep knowledge of the subject on the part of the player and it must be incredibly frustrating to get destroyed every time because your car decided to eat the tyres up quickly and you can't figure out why, or to always lose a shedload of time at a certain section of a track because you've never been shown how to set a car up to attack kerbs aggressively, and every time you try you lose control. The engineer will offer you a "quick setup", but these are universally rubbish for anything other than 5 lap races on easy mode. Also, the game is at its best when you play full length Grands Prix. It's the only race distance at which all the subtleties of Formula 1 racing come into play - fuel management and tyre management mostly - and tyre strategy can win or lose a race. To do every session plus the race can be 3-4 hours in total. You can save mid-session but it's still a big ask for most folks.

I've loved the F1 series (old and new) for nearly 20 years, and I enjoy it as much now as I did back then. I've owned every edition up to 2013, and the only reason I've skipped 2014 is because I wanted other games this year for the PS4 instead, and with 2015 coming to PS4 earlier than usual next season (I predict April-May) I decided just to carry on with 2013 for now.

The real shame is that the co-operative mode is really good. 2 players drive for the same team and attempt to win the Constructors Championship. But trying to find someone who has the time to play a race or two a week for 19 races in total is bloody harder than trying to find someone for a kickabout in FIFA with...

 

[The Wykydtron]

I guess most Visual Novels are kind of acquired tastes considering how many people refuse to even try them because they aren't "gamey" enough. I quite like them though, it's like reading a book but actually making choices (and if it's a Type Moon VN, getting bad endings.) I'm one of those people who thinks that the increased amount of VNs released on Steam over the last year or two is great. Increased from zero compared to relatively recently. I think it was Long Live the Queen that proved that they can sell?

I suppose even among people who like VNs I would say Umineko/Higurashi No Naku Kuro Ni are more acquired than most others. You have zero input to the plot, it is legit a book (A book with amazing voice acting if you can get over the language barrier and even so, Beatrice's crazy witch cackles are universal in quality.) The point is since it's a mystery, you're supposed to think about it while reading. I figured out a solution to the tightest closed room in the first arc which i'm quite proud of.

Basic premise: island mansion stuck in a storm for two days, 18 people, heated arguments over inheritance money between all of the siblings, standard murder mystery level murders happen but the culprit may or may not be the witch of the island, the suspected 19th person. The introduction first arc ends with Battler challenging the witch Beatrice over the non-existence of magic with the mansion murders looped by her magic with more and more complex "this could only have been done with magic" scenarios which he has to explain away via non magic methods. Yes I know the fact that he was revived from death by, and drinks tea with that witch sounds ludicrous when he's repeating "no such thing as magic!" Battler is just that stubborn. His resistance to magic ends up being revealed as Endless Nine (999999999 etc) for the best example.

It brings in some good mystery devices like Devil's Proof, Schrodinger's Cat, whatshisface's Raven as the counter to Devil's Proof and the concept of playing to not lose rather than playing to win.

I watched the Higurashi anime back in the day because it is at least on par with the VN but Umineko's anime adaptation is awful compared to the source material, if this sounds interesting to you please only turn to the anime if you really can't find the VN somewhere.

 

[baddude1337]

There are several multiplayer games than I play singleplayer against bots, which I much prefer. Battlefield 2 with Project Reality and Forgotten Hope are the main ones. Not really sure if that counts as an acquired taste or not, but probably not the norm getting a mainly multiplayer game and playing the singleplayer (Which both mods support with dozens of maps).

Rally games seem to have become pretty niche. I have played a bit of Richard Burns rally with a huge mod for it but it only seems to want to work some of the time.