Flawed games that could have been great?

[Bradtemple87]

Final Fantasy XIII. I liked the story... once I got through the 30 hour prologue. Sometimes GETTING TO THE POINT is the best option.

Castlevania II: SImon's Quest. Too much cryptic b.s. and if the actual fight against Dracula in Castlevania was any indication, friggin' game wasnt even done yet.

FF13 had one of the best presentations out there, but I agree that it felt soft in delivery. If 13 had the edge of 12, it would have been a completely different game.

[brainofjtd]

Yeah I loved Star Wars: A New Ho- I mean Final Fantasy XII.

[Gamerforlife]

Final Fantasy XIII. I liked the story... once I got through the 30 hour prologue. Sometimes GETTING TO THE POINT is the best option.

Castlevania II: SImon's Quest. Too much cryptic b.s. and if the actual fight against Dracula in Castlevania was any indication, friggin' game wasnt even done yet.

FF13 had one of the best presentations out there, but I agree that it felt soft in delivery. If 13 had the edge of 12, it would have been a completely different game.

Yeah, the graphics were GORGEOUS and I liked the soundtrack and loved the combat system, but the story.....good god, what happened there?

[brainofjtd]

They spent all of their money on environments and texture rendering then went "Wait. Shit, we forgot to give them an antagonist."

[Specineff]

I myself found the combat system to be what turned me away from the game. "Hold X to Win" doesn't hold my interest after enjoying the battle systems of Panzer Dragoon Saga, Xenosaga 1 and 3, Legend of Dragoon, Grandia and even FFX.

Maybe after investing some more time with the game, but the damage was already done by the tenth hour of play.

[BurningDoom]

King's Field 1, 2 for PSX, & King's Field: The Ancient City for PS2. Personally, I'm completely in love with the games. But there's no denying it's flaws, biggest of all being the slow frame-rate. PSX was understandable, as 1 & 2 were early games on the machine. But the PS2 game has no excuse for this flaw. They should have fixed the framerate issue on The Ancient City.

More detail in character's faces would have been nice too, as well as some voice-overs and a little more movie-scenes.

[Gamerforlife]

I myself found the combat system to be what turned me away from the game. "Hold X to Win" doesn't hold my interest after enjoying the battle systems of Panzer Dragoon Saga, Xenosaga 1 and 3, Legend of Dragoon, Grandia and even FFX.

Maybe after investing some more time with the game, but the damage was already done by the tenth hour of play.

Are we still talking about FFXIII? That doesn't describe its combat system at all. Hold x to win won't get you far. Combat is actually the one thing the FF series hasn't dissapointed me in for quite some time. Even FFX2, which I hate a lot of things in, had a combat system I liked. I think FFXIII actually built on FFX2's system. I also liked the way combat worked in FFXII, even came to appreciate the amount of strategy the gambit system provided, while still requiring manual intervention in some of the harder fights

[ZeroAX]

Are we still talking about FFXIII? That doesn't describe its combat system at all. Hold x to win won't get you far. Combat is actually the one thing the FF series hasn't dissapointed me in for quite some time. Even FFX2, which I hate a lot of things in, had a combat system I liked. I think FFXIII actually built on FFX2's system. I also liked the way combat worked in FFXII, even came to appreciate the amount of strategy the gambit system provided, while still requiring manual intervention in some of the harder fights

Yes, I was actually amazed by how many fans insist that manually selecting attack 10.000 times in a row is actually more strategic by deciding which role each party member will fill, and when to switch to another combination of classes.

[Jerkface Killah]

I may get some heat for this one, but Red Dead Redemption and it's save system. Before everyone freaks out, let me explain. I play video games in the morning before work for about 45 minutes. I was really excited to play RDR because of it's awards. I had been playing for a half hour and had to leave for work. Unfortunately, I was in the middle of an escort mission and couldn't set up a campfire to save. I had to turn off the console and lose my progress. It's like that 30 minutes never happened. I guess what it boils down to is that I need games that allow me to save at any time. Otherwise, I was loving the game!

[pakopako]

Nightshade (NES)
Give me the *** ability to save and/or use a password SONY!

Wicked-awesome point-and-click on the NES that was very large and very smartly written. The frustrating portions were the combat sequences, which were more complex than say Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, but were equally harrying. Having no save feature (and limited continues at that) meant that you were re-playing LARGE portions of this game from scratch.

Well, Beam Software, SONY, whatever. One fuzzy memory I have was reading an interview by the programmers of ShadowRun on the SNES and they complained how a limited budget back in their NES days forced them to create Nightshade with no battery save as well as, for some strange reason, no room to code a password feature.