If a game has a story, people will play the game just for the story.

Consider RPGs, for example; it is very common (too common, IMO) for RPGs to have stories that are more than just excuse plots. There are people who play RPGs for the story, despite not liking RPG growth systems and turn based combat. So, yes, people will play a game just for the story despite hating the game's core mechanics.

There are even RPGs that have awful gameplay, but which people seem to like anyway; see Ultima 7, for example. Notice how positive reviews of Ultima 7 don't praise the game's battle system? (I suspect that, if you ignore story, Planescape: Torment might actually be better than Ultima 7.)

The way I see it, playing an adventure game when you hate puzzles is no different than playing an RPG when you hate turn-based combat and leveling up.

I finished Singularity last night - and this game has no subtitles at all, for whatever reason.
The game is simple enough that you could probably get by without paying attention to any of the dialogue, still this is a bad decision. Even if you're native English speaker, or are proficient enough to understand the characters (voiced with Russian accent...), sometimes the background noises drown the spoken word. And, to add insult to injury, there is no Voice slider in the sound options, only music and sfx...

If you haven't already done so, please leave a review that mentions that; this is information that it is important to know *before* buying the game.

Can't see the game from Germany ;-) And setting everything up to hide my location is a bit much of a hassle right now.

By ignoring them. Neither is an issue for me, I'm not even sure if I've noticed those points.

I think I've usually geared for stat growth, anyways, because why wouldn't I. It's not a great system, granted, but it's par for the course, isn't it? In 7 you had materia growth, in 8 GF management, in 5 job acquisition afair. You're always growing something, anyways.
On your first point: my first FFs were 7 and 8. I don't like spending MP to begin with and magic in those two games is a bit lackluster from a powergaming standpoint imo. If I used a summon, it was for flavour and I was fine with the animation. Because if 8 taught me anything, it's that even in a world with guns and magic and stupid giant revolver swords, nothing beats a swift kick in the teeth. So I was already trained to ignore magic and summons by the time I got to 9.

On a related note, there's more to these games than combat and story. I mainly play games for the kind of excapism books and movies just can't supply. So setting is a huge selling point. Yes, I know the story after playing through a game once, but like a good vacation spot I can always return to an interesting setting without it loosing its magic. Just being in Dollet or Timber has a certain charme, wondering how life would be there, soaking in the atmosphere, that sort of thing. Hence the ranking and why I might even be convinced to put 8 up top at a push. 5 would likely rank higher purely in terms of combat, even though I'm not a massive fan of all characters being effectively the same, but I've already played Tactics and comming from that the job system in 5 doesn't really wow anymore. The problem with the game is everything else. I remember the job system, I remember that there's only four playable characters (which is a good thing) and I remember the name of one of them. That's it. So I sort of get why you would rank the game highly, but it just didn't offer what I was looking for (which, importantly, other entries in the series did).

Hence "largely". As graphic fidelity evolved, so did where I draw the line. It's different for text adventures and it's different for a game that deliberately choses not to graphically show something. For example, I also quite like Sunless Sea, a game that maybe could depict certain events visually, but choses not to and offers text instead.

However if my character walks into a bar and there's clearly a burning dude in the middle and then the game tells me that there's a burning dude in the middle, none of this applies. I've already noticed this. And maybe I'm in the minority, but shit like that instantly kills any form of immersion for me. Writing doesn't become good just because there's a lot of it and in my opinion that game had quite a few occurences of "less would have been more".

I'd rather have no failstates whatsoever.

If I play a storydriven game and see a game over screen, it means a few things. For starters, the story is over. The hero failed. From a narrative standpoint reloading a save is basically cheating. Ignoring that, going forward I now know that the game is at least difficult enough for me to die. So from that point on saving becomes a constant concern. I should be immersed in the experience, but there's a layer of obvious game design I have to mentally deal with for the rest of the game, basically taking me right out of the experience. And the tenser and high-stakes the narrative, the more this usually applies.

There's a mod for Fallout 3 where you can't die (bar some extreme occurences like getting completely torn apart by a rocket). The way this works is by constantly refreshing a single save slot every minute or so in the background and replacing the game over screen with loading that save, but on doing so severely wounding your character, removing half your inventory and scattering it across vendors, thus simulating the character being left for dead and robbed of their valuables. So my character can actually have setbacks in their story and it's the same I am experiencing as a player, instead of creating a disconnect between story and gameplay with every single game over screen.

Yeah, I think I have to agree here.

True, but at that point we're comparing like for like, instead of bemoaning the bad games of today while pointing at the undoubtedly great stuff of the past.

Curiously I feel similarly and with very few exceptions I prefer games not to have any voice over, at all - but I hate reading and love audiobooks. :>

Yeah, I'm going to agree with you on that one.

I wish more companies were like Beamdog. Their enhanced editions are great and more companies should follow in their footsteps. As long as they don't try to create anything of their own, they're fine.

You know in depth the subject i see, thanks for your time writing this much.

I currently have the PSP version of FF2 only, did you play it, like it...? I think it is based on the GBA port.

If i play 2 again i will take your advice boosting Evasion; still Persona 2 innocent sin to finish before i set up another game for my PSP; i am waiting Eternal Punishment english fan translation for soo long...

I notice your posts getting low rated for no apparent reason often and try to +1 them, sorry this happen... Some silly haters with scripts pollute the forum for years.

Those games, particularly 5, don't have the same sort of issue with stat growth.

In FF7, stat growth is somewhat random, but you don't need to rush through the games to get good stats, and there are farmable items to boost everything but HP and MP. (Why didn't they include the apples and soma drops from FF4?)

In FF8, there are permanent stat boost items, so no stats are permanently missable.

In FF5, your stats don't actually increase as you play through the game, and HP and MP don't depend on a character's history; given a character's identity, level, and *current* job, all the character's stats can be determined. (Well, equipment can modify it, there's HP/MP + abilities (which aren't worth it in FF5) and freelancer/mime getting benefits from mastered jobs, but those still only matter when they're in effect, and don't do anything permanent.)

Because you haven't yet found the gear that gives you the stat growth that you need.

(Or, of course, the game decided to steal your gear through an event, but I don't actually remember FF6 and FF9 doing that; in fact, FF6 is the second FF game in which you actually get to keep character's equipment when they leave.)

I see this as a balancing issue in these games. Resource management is an interesting challenge and requires more work than just using 0 MP attacks; therefore, anything that requires a resource should be stronger than anything that doesn't, or should fill useful niches that you can't fill without using MP (healing being a common one). I think FF5 handles this better for much of the game; there are long stretches where your best attacks are either magic, consumable items, or throwing money at the enemy (which is actually *too* powerful and easy to get), so to win battles quickly, you need to spend resources. (Also, I note that the final boss has multiple targets, so summon spells and throwing money are the best offensive options there.)

(One other thing that FF5 did that I like; bosses aren't completely immune to all status ailments! This is a nice breath of fresh air, particularly after FF3 and FF4.)

I don't know. I personally didn't downvoted it.

I haven't played any post-GBA versions, but of the versions I have played, the GBA version is the one I would recommend. The PSP version does appear to be almost identical gameplay-wise, except for the Arcane Labyrinth (which I have not experienced, so I can't say whether it's good or bad, but it is optional) and the fact that it's apparently easier to manipulate encounters on the GBA version.

There are two cosmetic issues I have with the PSP version from watching a speedrun:
1. I don't like the font for damage and healing.
2. The non-combat music restarts after every battle; hence, unless you deliberately waste time, you don't get to hear the entire music track, which is a shame because the music is wonderful in this game. (In GBA, the music continues where it left off, allowing you to hear the whole track playing normally; the music quality isn't quite as good (though still impressive for a GBA game), but at least you get to hear it all.)

(None of these are game-ruining, and they're not enough of a reason to choose a different version, but they are present. Also, at least opening the menu is practically instant, which is nice.)

Okay, but here's what I don't get: why is any of that an issue?

SC2 : Wings of Liberty is, story aside, a phenomenal game!
Not too sure how unpopular it is - certainly have seen lot of hate directed towards the game.

I thought reception to it was mixed.
Regarding SC2 my "unpopular" opinion would probably be: Heart of the Swarm is the best of the campaigns and comes closest to an updated version of the original Starcraft experience like it wanted it. Even the story, while not great, is okay (I liked how they brought back Stukov from Brood war).
Legacy of the void was just horrible however.

'Don't Like', 'Shouldn't have', 'won't allow, 'can't believe'...

Jesus Christ on a cracker, are you a social worker by chance? Holy Shit.

And they say gaming is a hobby. More like fucking after-school detention.