Genres you just dont enjoy like you used to

[marurun]

I think you have to look at traditional JRPGs like resource games. Money to buy equipment and items. Experience to “buy” better stats and spells as you level up. And for each dungeon or castle or forest you fight through, you are watching your HP and MP, and using a limited item stock to replenish them. So those random battles are less about combat strategy in the traditional sense, but more about how to most efficiently dispose of the enemies without dipping too far into your various resource pools.

[Ack]

I fell out of love with JRPGs back in the mid-2000s and got back into them around 2013 or so, but I tend to stay with older titles. Part of what got me out of the genre was the perceived time sink, as well as the general decline of the genre that seemed to be happening at the time. Now I mostly just play ones from the 1990s, and having beaten most of the ones that interest me, I don't go back much. That said, I have focused a lot more on WRPGs for PC that I missed out on, so it's just been a transition, not a complete drop.

RTS games are another genre I don't return to much, though this is because I used to play them pretty often with a guy who was too good at them. After a while, I learned a lot but just got tired. Maybe the right one will get me to go back, but I have yet to find it.

Fighting games...these got me into collecting. A decade ago, I sought out all the fighters on the SNES. And now...well, I've played through pretty much all of them, and since I don't play much in the way of modern console games, I have fallen away from these. Just how it goes, I guess.

[Tanooki]

I like that idea maru put forward. Thinking back upon it well into the start of the 90s I've kind of always played those Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior games, and others of that type ever since like that. I do like the stories, and I don't buy them all so I don't have the high level of JRPG burnout, but they in the end really are resource management games with a story. Do you burn a little or a lot of MP, do you buy refills of that (which are always expensive compared to health), or do you just level up a bunch near the opening of a dungeon inside (or out) so you can just fairly well club the hell out of stuff on the way down to the boss to save the best skills and magics for that to survive? It's a give and take reward system how you approach, some will not do this and just cut it thin and go for it, others will take hours and rank up things before hand which I tend to do.

I haven't had to yet sit and waste time ranking up stuff for Vesperia on Switch yet, but if I do, I hope it isn't a drain as the story there actually isn't your normal JRPG fare and kind of more entertaining because of it.


And maybe I'm alone? RTS games. Is it me or did kind of Starcraft break them? I used to be all about them, but now I'm overly choosy. Starcraft was built with multiplayer in mind, but also very narrow path scripted stages for single player too. In the past you could go slow, or go fast, build a huge base and army, or make kill squads and just get creative. I could do that with Dune, C&C, Warcraft 1 and 2, various others. SC though, and those staple franchises since, you can't, you're dead if you do it. Maybe they're made just to sell strategy guides and multiplayer fun for fans, but you can't do that anymore, crazy picky designs or something sucking creativity out. After SC came out, the only one I found that didn't do that in the main stream was Age of Empires 2/Gold so I played the hell out of that one for months/years really. I didn't leave RTS, but RTS left me by going way different.

[Nemoide]

I thought of another genre I used to love but haven't played in a looong time: first-person areal/space-combat games (is there a better name for them?) Things like Terminal Velocity, Descent, and Freespace. I used to LOVE those games, but I can't remember the last time I actually played one.

[Arenegeth]

I thought of another genre I used to love but haven't played in a looong time: first-person areal/space-combat games (is there a better name for them?) Things like Terminal Velocity, Descent, and Freespace. I used to LOVE those games, but I can't remember the last time I actually played one.

Well to be fair, it may be because they don't really make them anymore.

I mean there's the recently released Overload that's basically like a Descent spiritual successor, and a few similar indie games like that released in recent years.

But the genre, or sub-genre as it were, is not nearly as popular as it used to be.

Same thing with RTS really, MOBA has really taken over the genre competitively, and developers don't want to make single player focused campaigns anymore because they can't sell them to you as a 'service' and monetize the hell out of them with microtransactions.

The few single player focused, not strictly turned based strategy games out there these days are far more involved than the typical C&C fare (something like Stellaris), and closer to simulation games than pure old-school RTS fun.

Even point and click adventures, which new ones are made all the time, unless you are specifically following the scene, you probably wouldn't know about 90% of them since very few of them get decent budgets or any mainstream spotlight.

I guess my point is, some genres we may not play as much anymore, not because we don't enjoy them necessarily, but because they are simply not as prevalent as they once were.

[Gunstar Green]

Overload is a wonderful spiritual successor to Descent. I feel like it's gone a little overlooked.

[isiolia]

Main one that comes to mind for me is fighting games. Going back to Street Fighter II on the SNES - it was probably the tipping point for my brothers and I to pool our money and buy the system, and one of the first games we got for it. We picked up every iteration of the game on that system, and plenty of others. Other consoles always had their fighting games along, whether oddball stuff like Eternal Champions (we even had an Activator), or early titles like MK3 and Battle Arena Toshinden on PS1.

In college, my stuff was out in the living room, and I tended to pick up the latest fighters because we'd fire them up and pass controllers around for hours on end. I continued to pick up games when I knew people would be in town to hang out, but we stopped really making a point to play them. So, I still play them some, but there's not really the same motivation to keep up with releases or anything. I don't really care to play online either.

[marurun]

For fighting games there's been a lot of stratification going on. The die-hards want the game to become more and more technical and unforgiving. Further, the on-line scene has actually complicated things rather than made them easier. You want to play on-line and you're not dedicated? You'll probably be paired with someone who will crush you. I think Dragonball FighterZ is one of the first fighters in years that does a good job being accessible to new folks. Smash is the other game that manages the same.

[isiolia]

I can see that, though I'm personally just not inclined to play most things online. Turns things that I might really enjoy, if playing just with people I know, into stressful social anxiety type situations. I mostly just mentioned it there since - objectively - an empty living room doesn't exactly translate into nobody to play against these days, were that the sole concern.

I mean, I'm also a lot less inclined to grab fighting games with the DLC schemes many of them use now. Which may make sense for active players, but are not attractive for people that want to just toss a complete, updated game in a few times a year.

[BoneSnapDeez]

For me it's just a time issue.

Some may remember, but when I joined this forum I was playing a fairly balanced mixture of retro games and modern (PS3 RPGs, for instance). These days I'm much busier and a big meaty JRPG is just too daunting. I live solely in the "pop it in and play" retro realm.