Games you forgave and punished for their story.

[shrekfan246]

I might have missed something for the PONR section, but once the fog came in, you could still fly around the overworld with your ship, but I could never access any of the cities where I had a few sidequests that needed doing.

And yes, IX had the zombie mini-boss that could be insta-killed with a phoenix down.

Ah, well, at least I do remember some things correctly about the game.

I seem to recall (again, take it with a grain of salt because it has been years since I played the end of FFIX) that the fog you mention actually vanishes either after you enter Memoria or after you enter The Crystal World.

After reading the Final Fantasy Wiki to refresh my memory, it seems the Mist appears right before you enter Memoria. I don't remember the extent to which it prevents you from traveling, however, because one thing I do remember is moving in and out of Memoria to grab ultimate weapons and do Chocobo things. It may have prevented you from visiting major cities and small villages, though.

And re: The Ending. Apparently it was changed 7 times before they settled on one, I wonder if that's how Necron got shoe-horned in as the final boss when there had been absolutely zero references to his character earlier in the game?

"Q: It's been rumored that the ending to FFIX was changed at the very last moment, is this true?

Aoki: I think that the concept has remained the same, but we did change the ending seven times."
From http://psx.ign.com/articles/085/085276p1.html

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I forgive Red Dead Redemption. Rockstar's games always have absolutely horrendous controls. I believe Yahtzee put it best in saying that "on foot the game controls like you're driving a car." Still, I managed to muddle through the absolutely terrible controls because the characters and the story are brilliant.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I forgave the fact there is no story in Mount&Blade because the combat poo's all over every other medieval RPG.

But there is a story. It's the story of your rise to power. And it's AWESOME. Especially that part where you rode down all those Rhodoks to carry the day at the battle of Jelkala.

 

[Catie Caraco]

Lord of the Rings: The Third Age.

This game was bad, basically a cash in for the film franchise pasted over FFX gameplay... but it was so enjoyable somehow. The characters were Tolkien Archtypes with little of note about them but, again, somehow I found myself engaged in them. The "cutscenes" were all straight from the movie, and much of the NPC dialog was as well, to the point where it was nonsensicle.

And yet I loved it.

Until the curve ball.

I won't bother "spoiler"ing it because I doubt there's anyone here interested in playing it, but for the first 2/3rds of the game they establish a romantic interest between Berethor, the human main character and Idrial, a female elf. Then they introduce Morwen, a human female, and stuff starts to go bad. It isn't that bad until Idrial is kidnapped by Nazgul and rescued by Berethor, who tries to express his feelings for her and she goes "No, I'm going West, you belong with Morwen," when there's been NO ROMANTIC DEVELOPMENT between them except some jealousy on Idrial's part. This is after Idrial has kissed Berethor twice. They throw in some half-baked bit about Morwen and Berethor having been engaged and then he lost his memory and she had to flee Gondor for Rohan...it's all so lame. Then Morwen ALMOST gets killed by the Nazgul king but friggin' Aragorn pulls his "I'm the King of Man" magic out of his ass and saves her. I wanted to rip out my PS2 controller and chuck it out the window.

Ruined a game that I had been enjoying greatly inspite of it being fairly awful.

It sits on my shelf now, mocking me. I've since played it up to the introduction of Morwen, and then I had to stop.

 

[Lvl 64 Klutz]

I think there's one answer anyone who's played the series and enjoyed the story can agree on: The .Hack series... it makes for a mostly horrific and repetitive RPG, particularly the first series, but the story is well worth it.

 

[Mirror Cage]

Dead Island.

I had a blast with the gameplay. Getting a crit with a Pride-modded gun and watching a zombie ragdoll 30 feet away in about half a second is one of the many 'sight-to-behold' moments the game has to offer.

Unfortunately, the story feels like the writers wrote themselves into a corner:

Spoiler

- Kinda takes the drama out of Jin leaving her father when you've only known the characters for 3 minutes.
-The final boss is a bit laughable: "My wife has turned and I have been bit, all my plans are ruined. I had better inject myself with zombie paste and destroy these meddling kids as my last act..."
-How the hell does a scientist accidentally release all the zombies in containment when trying to open a cage? Is there some 'Release all the doors' button? And is it right next to the 'open the cage in the room with me' button?

Strangely, it all works pretty well if you have a sense of humor and a co-op partner with similar temperment. It gives off a nice B-movie vibe to me, especially when you remember that you're running around with a superheated flaming axe and with the aforementioned impact hammer electric gun.

 

[FreakSheet]

I forgave Just Cause 2 for its story for two reasons:

1) It was likely done on purpose to go with its "B" Action Movie feel,

2) You can grapple a soldier who looked at you funny, attach him to your car, and drag him along before dumping the car into some explosive barrels.

 

[stickmangrit]

Wind Waker.

well written purely character driven narrative in a Zelda game. Link had genuine personality and expressions other than constipated and surprised. numerous genuinely shocking plot twists. a genuine attempt to build continuity and add more depth to the overall mythos of the series. Ganondorf is nuanced, quasi-sympathetic, and far more threatening and effective as a villain than any other game he's been in.

and it was all of those things that kept me from snapping my WaveBird in half and chucking the GC out the window, no matter how f*$%ing much the f*^&ing search for the f*^&mothering Triforce Shards frustrated and infuriated me.

 

[Rylot]

I looked past Alpha Protocol's glitches simply for being able to immerse myself more in the character. Timed conversation responses, customizable weapons and armor, RPG elements, optional intel, all made the game for me.

I also immensly in joyed Fable 2. It had it's fair share of story problems but I just really enjoyed how the story was told. The time skips just worked for me. I also liked how you could customize your character with not only clothes and hair styles but the weapons you use and what you eat and how you behave in the world.

 

[-Seraph-]

Hmmm...I can't think of any games I have "punished" aside from just dropping them because they ceased to be enjoyable.

Well...I punished Final Fantasy 8 and 10 by pretending they never happened. Their shittyness knows no bounds, and for that I declare they were some sort of sick joke or terrorist ploy to make people kill themselves due to the utter mess that was their plots.

I forgave the Witcher 1s "so so" combat, slow first chapter, and laundry list second chapter. The story, character, choices and world were all excellent and it became one of my favorite RPGs of all time. Even the slow first chapter and combat wasn't so bad once the ball got rolling. Yea, the combat at the beginning is boring as you are low level and under developed, but shit gets awesome once you get into the higher tiers in each skill tree.

I begrudgingly forgave Persona 3 because I did enjoy the story...when it actually fucking HAPPENED. I'm sorry, but while this game had decent combat (pretty standard but enjoyable), the game has some of THE WORST story pacing I've seen in any game. Jesus fucking christ did you have to slog through a lot to get from plot point to plot point; and no the god damn high school sim crap doesn't count as that was mostly arbitrary meta gaming wrapped in a nice bow. The lazy ass cut and paste dungeon design did not help either, but I persisted. Terribly overrated game, but still a nice story when it was actually happening.

I forgave Deus Ex: Human Revolutions boss fights because the rest of the game was great. Aw hell I didn't even mind the bosses that much despite how clumsy they may have been implemented. And speaking of Deus Ex, I forgave the first games AWFUL gunplay for the same reasons as HR, the rest of the game was awesome. Now thankfully once I got that laser pointer in the first mission, attached it to my stealth pistol, I was ready to go and not suffer the combat too much. I'm sorry, but "RPG elements" on the actually gunplay is an awful idea that never works and is just arbitrary difficulty that hinders how players want to play.

I forgave Mass Effects redundant and overblown RPG elements and Mako sections(sorta), and awful inventory because the story wasn't bad. Despite how much shit I give Mass Effect for being an overrated pile of average, I'm still a sucker for sci fi so I stuck with it and the story was enjoyable enough to to finish it and give it a "A OK". Glad ME2 fixed a lot of the gameplay problems of the first, too bad the story suffered in some places though....ah well, middle of the trilogy I suppose.

I think I've rambled on enough for now...

 

[Flight]

I forgave Persona 3: FES for its horrible party controls because I absolutely loved its story. I still do, to the point where I bought the PSP remake.

 

[00slash00]

dreamfall. adding combat to, what should have been, a point and click adventure game was a poor decision. however, if you had played the first longest journey game, the story of this game was very satisfying even if playing it kind of felt like a chore at times.

the starcraft series. the games arent bad in any way but i just really dont enjoy real time strategy. the story however, was enough to make me play the games

 

[LilithSlave]

You seem to have snipped off the part where I say:

Which is interesting, because that's the very next sentence, and helps my argument juxtapose the "look" of an extremely cartoony game with the "feel" of an extremely dark fantasy game.

Because that's an entirely different rebuttal, I wanted to responds to the points I wanted to, and only the ones I needed for for it. Not address every single sentence possible just for the sake of it. That's how you get walls of text in raging internet arguments.

Those were two different points, or should have been. And there was no need for me to respond to both, much less every single point you made.

If you want me to respond to that though, Queen Brahne didn't kill people just for the sake of killing people. That's like saying Hitler killed people for the sake of killing people. She was an imperialist dictator, drunk with power who decided to conquer places with cruelty. There's nothing cartoony or unrealistic about what she did. The only thing cartoony about Queen Brahne is her appearance.

Furthermore a final boss doesn't have to be alluded to. Necron fits in very well with the existential themes constantly present in Final Fantasy IX. And it's a bit ridiculous to claim that Final Fantasy IX doesn't have any sort of plot. You could honestly claim that Memoria is just as random as Necron.

 

[Slowpool]

Dragon Age 2. I hated the decade long story (nothing EVER CHANGES except for a fucking statue), recycled environments, equipment system, limited spell versatility and altered darkspawn looks. I forgave it because of Isabella, Varric, Merrill and Hawke's voice actors.

 

[tehweave]

I might have missed something for the PONR section, but once the fog came in, you could still fly around the overworld with your ship, but I could never access any of the cities where I had a few sidequests that needed doing.

And yes, IX had the zombie mini-boss that could be insta-killed with a phoenix down.

Ah, well, at least I do remember some things correctly about the game.

I seem to recall (again, take it with a grain of salt because it has been years since I played the end of FFIX) that the fog you mention actually vanishes either after you enter Memoria or after you enter The Crystal World.

After reading the Final Fantasy Wiki to refresh my memory, it seems the Mist appears right before you enter Memoria. I don't remember the extent to which it prevents you from traveling, however, because one thing I do remember is moving in and out of Memoria to grab ultimate weapons and do Chocobo things. It may have prevented you from visiting major cities and small villages, though.

And re: The Ending. Apparently it was changed 7 times before they settled on one, I wonder if that's how Necron got shoe-horned in as the final boss when there had been absolutely zero references to his character earlier in the game?

"Q: It's been rumored that the ending to FFIX was changed at the very last moment, is this true?

Aoki: I think that the concept has remained the same, but we did change the ending seven times."
From http://psx.ign.com/articles/085/085276p1.html

Seven? Dang! I may also be nitpicking with the mist thing. I found a decent save point before the upside-down castle where I could powerlevel my guys and complete some sidequests.

Also, an addenum to my original list: The Upside-Down castle. You have to acquire all the starting weapons (from inside the place) because they now do massive amounts of damage, and your ultimate weapons do diddly squat. Also, you have to fight THREE tonberrys at once! THREE! It's hard enough against one!

 

[shrekfan246]

Seven? Dang! I may also be nitpicking with the mist thing. I found a decent save point before the upside-down castle where I could powerlevel my guys and complete some sidequests.

Also, an addenum to my original list: The Upside-Down castle. You have to acquire all the starting weapons (from inside the place) because they now do massive amounts of damage, and your ultimate weapons do diddly squat. Also, you have to fight THREE tonberrys at once! THREE! It's hard enough against one!


Doink.[/QUOTE]

I'm suddenly getting the urge to play the game once again because of this thread.

I loved that castle, too. It was an interesting change of pace, and I liked the unique mechanic that made your powerful weapons weak/weak weapons powerful. Granted, I wouldn't want that one particular mechanic to be lifted and used in every single game because it sure was confusing as hell the first time I played, but it's certainly good for setting a game apart from the rest of its genre.

Tonberrys can fuck right off, though.

 

[Austin Howe]

Forgave: Metal Gear Solid: The entire series, really. By which I mean, I love the story, I love the themes, I love most of the characters (including Raiden), but god damn was that some awkward dialogue and over-exposition. Delivery, not content, was the problem.

Punished: Final Fantasy X, because it ruined the 6-year streak of almost-perfect storytelling that the Final Fantasy franchise had pulled since the 1994 release of FFVI. Especially egregious, because at that point, scenario writer Kazushige Nojima had a spotless track record: a respectable story for Bahamut Lagoon, an idea-driven science-fiction epic in FFVII, and an intimate character portrait in FFVIII*. How the writing in FFX is so astoundingly awful boggles my fucking mind to this day.

*FFIX was made at the same time as FFVIII by another team led by Director Hiroyuki Itou. Since the game has no credited secnarist or script writer, I credit him with that awesome tale.