I want to love it.

[RanD00M]

Both KoTOR games. Combat just does not do it for me.
Dragon Age: Origins. Same as above but worse. The half cut full-time/turn-based just makes me irate.
Divinity 2: Ergo Draconis. Maybe it's one of those games where only certain builds are viable, and as much as I have enjoyed it so far, playing as an archer is going downhill fast.

 

[gorfias]

Grim Dawn, by contrast, is very similar to Diablo (and is primarily made by people who did Titan Quest), so enemies will be back every time you reload the game and they'll all have a maximum level based on which area of the game they're in and which difficulty you're playing on. Kingdoms of Amalur, meanwhile, is very MMO-styled, so it also has respawning enemies which have specific level ranges (they might need a reload to respawn as well, or you just being far enough away from the area, I can't remember perfectly anymore).

Most JRPGs that I know do have specific level ranges for enemies, too. Xenoblade Chronicles, Persona, Final Fantasy, Pokemon, Tales of, Drakengard, Resonance of Fate, Fire Emblem, etc.

And then there are games which have level scaling but don't make it too noticeable usually because you're not revisiting old locations very much, like Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Honestly, the only games I can really think of that have had an egregious level of obvious scaling would be Bethesda's RPGs.

Great response, thank you! I will be giving Grim Dawn a shot ASAP. I just watched the trailer at steam and it looks terrific, even better than Torchlight 2.

I got lost in a maze in Kingdom of Amalur. I'll have to give that another shot. I'm too cheap to buy Xenoblade yet but may get to it. Drakengard and Resonance of Fate I do not know. Reviewing.

 

[retsupurae yahtsee]

Shiny's games, like Earthworm Jim, Giants: Citizen Kabuto and Messiah: They are hilarious and creative, but the gameplay is always terrible, very tedious and repetitive.
Ori and the Blind Forest: Creative and charming, but the horribly inconsistent framerate, unsatisfying combat and encouragement of dealing with whiny brats that are not even your own brats drag down the game.
Batman: Arkham X: Stylish, nice open world, the riddles are fun--but it uses the shitty combat system of Assassin's Creed, so I either have absolutely no control over anything or spam counterattacks constantly and win 99% of the time.
Startropics: I love Nintendo, and this game does have some charm but the awful controls and level design spoil it.
Albion: A very imaginative, stylish and charming game, unlike most C.R.P.G.s--it would have to be completely unplayable, with utterly unmanageable navigation, combat and interface for me to hate it.

 

[SmallHatLogan]

Metal Gear Solid. From everything I've heard about the batshit insane plot it seems like something I'd really dig, but the dialogue is just unbearable. Every time you meet a new character you have to sit around for ten minutes while they tell you their life story, not to mention Snake always prompting them to continue by repeating the last thing they said as a question which makes him sound like a total moron. Detailed characters are a good thing but you have to make the player care about them before taking that big backstory exposition dump.

It boggles my mind that people think this is good storytelling.

 

[Dalisclock]

Metal Gear Solid. From everything I've heard about the batshit insane plot it seems like something I'd really dig, but the dialogue is just unbearable. Every time you meet a new character you have to sit around for ten minutes while they tell you their life story, not to mention Snake always prompting them to continue by repeating the last thing they said as a question which makes him sound like a total moron. Detailed characters are a good thing but you have to make the player care about them before taking that big backstory exposition dump.

It boggles my mind that people think this is good storytelling.

I'm not sure anyone really thinks the MGS story-line/dialogue is good, but rather that it's entertainingly bad. Especially with the whole James Bond-ish thing the series has going(like James Bond back during the 1980's when it got ridiculous).

I've only played MGS and have a decent knowledge of the others, but I recently got the MGS HD collection so eventually I'm gonna do a play-through of the entire series in order.

 

[Captain Marvelous_v1legacy]

I got lost in a maze in Kingdom of Amalur. I'll have to give that another shot. I'm too cheap to buy Xenoblade yet but may get to it. Drakengard and Resonance of Fate I do not know. Reviewing.

Is there a maze in Amalur?

OT: Witcher 3. So much so that I'm going to give it another shot. I really just couldn't get into the combat, for some reason. I've got to wait until my cousin gives it back though. He seems to like the game, so I'm in no rush to take it from him.

Paragon. I've played a few rounds of the game. I've only enjoyed playing alongside and against AI. Why? Because whenever I play with other players, a few members of my team, 2 or more, just up and leave. It's irritating because the character I want to play as, Murdock, is the first one that's picked and is always, always the first to disconnect. I have yet to play against other players, but the way the game is right now, I really don't want to. It's already furstrating enough going into a match against the AI 3 or 2 on 5. It's a shame, because I like the design of a lot of the characters and it's the second Moba I've ever played. (Third if you count the two matches of Smite I played.)

 

[gorfias]

I got lost in a maze in Kingdom of Amalur. I'll have to give that another shot. I'm too cheap to buy Xenoblade yet but may get to it. Drakengard and Resonance of Fate I do not know. Reviewing.

Is there a maze in Amalur?

OT: Witcher 3. So much so that I'm going to give it another shot.

Yeah, I'm in a series of caves with giant tulips kicking the stuffing out of me.

Witcher 3: if I can get my kids away from my XB1, I'll go further into that one.

 

[Denamic]

but lost interest after having to grind

What?
You don't have to grind at all. Just running straight from A to B will get you more than you need to beat the game. Unless you want to do the optional shit, because that stuff will kill you. Fast.

 

[Ryallen]

I'm just gonna say this because I hate myself: Overwatch. And the answer is about as stupid as it gets. I think that the story is utter nonsense. The lore and the backstory of all these characters clashes with so many of the things going on in the game that it hurts me to read up on any of it. I still do, but Jesus. Blizzard has stumbled onto what could be a really complex and interesting position for the players to be in, since the Omnics have basically proven to be nuclear bombs in their destructive nature. And no one seems to care that the Omnics could just as easily take the world over? I mean, Overwatch barely held the line and even then, the humans lost all of Australia in the process, displacing millions of people from their homes, and I'm expected to be on the side of the Omincs? In Half Life 2, the situation was exactly the same, except we were on the other side and it worked out really well.

 

[CrimsonBlaze]

For me, it's Mugen Souls.

I'm not a fan of anything that Compile Heart has put out, but after hearing that NIS was the publisher and that the art style and tone was very reminiscent of other NIS titles (the Disgaea series notably), I felt like at least giving it a try.

To its credit, its not a bad title; the premise is very reminiscent of what you could find in many Disgaea titles. You want to rule the universe and have everyone as your indenture servants. I also liked the art style, also reminiscent of Disgaea series, as well as the tone and dialogue.

The game play, which is what you would find in most Compile Heart titles, was actually pleasantly fun. I wish that you could easily chain attacks like you would in Disgaea titles, but the battle mechanics were fine as is.

Where this game dropped the ball is its various types of fanservice. Found in story moments, during combat, in the customization options, and "bathing" mini-games, I just wasn't comfortable with the need to shove what could have been something optional be a main focus of the game. Similar to how obscure RPG titles have some dating or pleasure fanservice mini-games/features, I just didn't think that this should have been a big focus of the game.

The frame rate was also unforgivable; for a PS3 title, there is no reason that it should fall to single digit frames just by running around in the overworld.

This sucks, because to me, without these two glaring issues, this would have been a fun, enjoyable title.

 

[Fijiman]

I really wish I could play the Witcher games for the expansive story and pretty combat, but Geralt looks too much like my dad. Not exactly like him, but enough that it is uncomfortable for me to play.

Same for me except it's the gameplay that gets me. I tried playing the Witcher 2 when it was free on Xbox, but I just could not get a hang of the controls for the game. I don't know whether it's because they were dumping too much info on me too fast for my brain to lock onto it or what, but after playing through the tutorial about three times I still couldn't do it.

Also, Overwatch and Battleborn. Both games look really interesting to me and I would love to play them, but I was stupid and didn't take part in the open beta for either of them and because niether one has a free trial version I can play I can't even determine if I would enjoy them or not.

EDIT: Almost forgot The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing. I find the game fun enough on its own, however, the thing that absolutely kills it for me is that the developer ported it to the Xbox One with a massive, progress-killing bug in it that's impossible to get around once it happens if you aren't playing on PC. Basically, during one of the story missions you're supposed to collect four items, but one of the enemies that is carrying said items has a tendency to not spawn for a couple of pretty bullshit reasons. The only three known ways to get around this are to either use console commands, which are not availible to Xbox players; join a friend's game and play though that mission, which can't be done if you don't have any friends who play the game or the bug happened on their end as well; or start a new game and hope it doesn't happen again, and because of the amount of time it takes to even get to that point in the game makes this the worst option of the three. Oh, and while on the subject of stupid crap with this game, the fact that you can receive item drops that you can't even use because they're for the two DLC character classes. Why would you makes these items drop when I don't even have the DLC installed? It just makes me want to buy the DLC even less.

 

[DeliveryGodNoah_v1legacy]

I completely agree with Dishonored.

It's a fine game. But I find it's lack of engagement entirely too boring, it's setting underused, and it's overall gameplay lacking.

Stealth is fine. But you can't give me all these powers and then discourage me killing people with them. Pretty much the exclusive power I would use is the blink ability, which just made gameplay repetitive.

My personal choice would be Divinity: Original Sin. But oh my god is this game an absolute chore.

How did anyone think this was fun? How?!

I get that it's kinda open ended and you can do what you want and you sort of have to figure some things out for yourself, but my girlfriend (who is more into RPG's than I am) and I tried playing it, and she just kept telling me how bored she was, and I agreed.

Our first handful of hours just felt like we were just running around the first town back and forth completely lost of what was going on narrative wise. The game literally makes me want to fall asleep.

However, we both actually really like the combat system. All we really wanted to do was explore and fight, but I guess we kept getting caught up in the main quest?

I don't know. It feels like the game doesn't try hard enough to engage you.

 

[Trunkage]

Wasteland 2. Because Mass Effect 3 made my choices feel like they mattered more than Wasteland 2 (i.e. ME3 is terrible at making choices matter but its still better.)

 

[Evonisia]

I tried to love "Dark Souls", and I do still try every few months to give it another go. But it just never grips me to keep going. Maybe it's the world; once you get past the Undead Burg/Parish it gets visually more exotic and interesting but more tiresome and dreary to actually explore. It's a rough game with tonnes of little annoyances, but even then all I feel playing the game is apathy.

Given just how vividly I later latched onto "Bloodborne" and "Dark Souls III" I'm always just left wanting to love their father.

 

[Silverbeard]

Skyrim and to a lesser extent all Elder Scrolls game fill this niche for me. I want to love the game and I see all the Youtube playthroughs and mod spotlights and so on but any time I feel like actually buying the game, a voice in my head tells me what I'm getting into: A country's worth of content that barely engages my character and has a main plot that, by all accounts I've heard, is bland and serves as little more than an introduction into the world that the game then expects you to muck about in. Which is fine, I suppose, but I like a good story in my video games.

My personal choice would be Divinity: Original Sin. But oh my god is this game an absolute chore.

How did anyone think this was fun? How?!

I get that it's kinda open ended and you can do what you want and you sort of have to figure some things out for yourself, but my girlfriend (who is more into RPG's than I am) and I tried playing it, and she just kept telling me how bored she was, and I agreed.

Our first handful of hours just felt like we were just running around the first town back and forth completely lost of what was going on narrative wise. The game literally makes me want to fall asleep.

However, we both actually really like the combat system. All we really wanted to do was explore and fight, but I guess we kept getting caught up in the main quest?

I don't know. It feels like the game doesn't try hard enough to engage you.

This is probably the fairest criticism of Original Sin that I've seen. It's probably my favorite RPG of all time but by my hairy armpits is it a slog! The devs earnestly did everything they could to remove any restrictions on the player and ultimately robbed themselves of any hope of guiding the players along.
Maybe it helps if one accepts that the main story is not really why we're playing the game? The first time I chatted up an NPC with one of my characters while the other snuck behind him and rifled through his pockets made me giggle for the sheer audacity of it. No game has made me giggle. Ever.