Do You Have Any Unpopular Gaming Opinions?

[Tanooki]

I liked the 3DS/Steam Lords of Shadow title that mixes up the elements of CV3, SOTN style, and a light hint of God of War with the growing HP/MP meters out of sometimes hidden (or not) boxes. I don't think it gets a fair shake just as much as people dumping on Castlevania Dracula X for SNES which is a great game too. SOTN I think is a good but well overrated game as it's like thrown around still as some benchmark against games like it since which seems unfair as it wasn't perfect at all.

[Xeogred]

I beat a boss in Lord of Shadow, then a chest spawned but I wanted to explore the area. Jumped over a little fence and that immediately triggered an invisible wall to be put up there so I could not jump up through this little gate to get that boss drop.

Never played it again and never will.

[Segata]

First LoS is an awesome game. Everything after...not so much.

[chuckster]

Mass Effect and Dragon Age just aren't very good. Moreover, Bioware hasn't made a truly great game since the oXbox days.

It's the settings that kill it for me. The ME universe especially gets so much praise, but both it and DA seem like the authors looked at all these great Sci-Fi/Fantasy universes and cut out all the bits they thought were cool, and left all the uniqueness and soul on the cutting room floor.

I know Bioware wanted to make games free of other licenses to make more money have more creative control of their games, but when you end up with a setting that reads like the homebrew campaign setting for a first-time dungeon master, you may have been better off going with an established franchise, large or small.

I've played the ME trilogy and DA1, 2, and Inquisition. don't get me wrong, some bits were good. Most of the party members had some good backstories and personal missions, but the quality of the characters makes the bland, generic settings stand out even more to me.

[Gunstar Green]

I'm the opposite on those games. I really like the settings, characters and stories but I can't get into the gameplay.

[ElkinFencer10]

Mass Effect and Dragon Age just aren't very good. Moreover, Bioware hasn't made a truly great game since the oXbox days.

It's the settings that kill it for me. The ME universe especially gets so much praise, but both it and DA seem like the authors looked at all these great Sci-Fi/Fantasy universes and cut out all the bits they thought were cool, and left all the uniqueness and soul on the cutting room floor.

I know Bioware wanted to make games free of other licenses to make more money have more creative control of their games, but when you end up with a setting that reads like the homebrew campaign setting for a first-time dungeon master, you may have been better off going with an established franchise, large or small.

I've played the ME trilogy and DA1, 2, and Inquisition. don't get me wrong, some bits were good. Most of the party members had some good backstories and personal missions, but the quality of the characters makes the bland, generic settings stand out even more to me.

I gotta disagree with you, man. I certainly understand why you might feel that way, but I absolutely LOVE Dragon Age and Mass Effect, especially Mass Effect. Andromeda was a step back for Mass Effect, I felt, but I thought Inquisition was the best of the three Dragon Age games.

[marurun]

I think the Mass Effect setting, at least in the first game, feels quite interesting. Sure, it knocks off Star Wars in a lot of places, and it could have originated as an alpha build of a new Star Wars project, but I think they did a lot of neat world-building in Mass Effect. Which they then tore down and mangled in subsequent games. Seems odd that as actual shooting gameplay improved the world and plot all went to hell.

[Tanooki]

Hmm got to basically agree with chuck there.

I've dabbled and found ME2(full bundle) to keep me quite entertained and it played well, but beyond that it just wasn't very interesting, didn't play so well, and I got bored. Dragon Age I picked up the big Origins release that GoG got when it came out and I probably put 5-10 hours on it and I got bored to tears. It didn't handle well like (now comparing it to on Switch) Skyrim, was far less interesting, excessively slow and boring and not very rewarding to me at all. Both games ultimately felt like I was just going through the motions and being confused why people suck up so hard core to Bioware. I think they did the old SW KOTOR games, and those were truly great from all I've learned about them, but it seems they continue to just fall short of once held greatness living off a name at least to me. I see others not agreeing with chuck there, but I do. I just can not spend good money, even on good discount on anymore of their post Star Wars stuff.

[Sarge]

I like Mass Effect a lot. I haven't gotten around to Andromeda, but the original trilogy was totally worth playing. I actually preferred the RPG-style combat in the first game to the cover-shooting that it became, but I was also really surprised at how solid the engine felt given BioWare's penchant for technical jank.

Dragon Age is a little trickier to diagnose. I liked the first game a lot, but it wasn't as good as KOTOR. Granted, I was playing on console, so it felt a bit different than the PC version. It's also apparently a bit easier because it's more difficult to command your party effectively on console. That last battle really taxed my ability to keep up, so I basically took control of Wynne and kept up the healing. (It also doesn't help that I made choices that drove off Morrigan before the final battle.)

The second game was solid enough, although the asset reuse was pretty egregious. It played much more like an action-RPG, and treated as such was quite enjoyable. I played a dual-wielding thief class.

I think Inquisition probably is the best of the lot. It stakes out a middle ground between the first and second game, and gives you tons to do. Unfortunately, a lot of that "tons to do" consists of fetch quest stuff. The shard hunting was particularly egregious... but it can also be safely ignored. Recognizing you don't have to do everything in a game is sometimes key to enjoyment. (In BioWare's older quest structure, you could do all the quests, and I did, but the structural changes here make it a complete time sink.)

[Gunstar Green]

I think they did the old SW KOTOR games, and those were truly great from all I've learned about them, but it seems they continue to just fall short of once held greatness living off a name at least to me. I see others not agreeing with chuck there, but I do. I just can not spend good money, even on good discount on anymore of their post Star Wars stuff.

Bioware's fanbase goes back further than that with their D&D licensed games, Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights.

I think Inquisition probably is the best of the lot. It stakes out a middle ground between the first and second game, and gives you tons to do. Unfortunately, a lot of that "tons to do" consists of fetch quest stuff. The shard hunting was particularly egregious... but it can also be safely ignored. Recognizing you don't have to do everything in a game is sometimes key to enjoyment. (In BioWare's older quest structure, you could do all the quests, and I did, but the structural changes here make it a complete time sink.)

I started enjoying western RPGs more when I realized this. Playing a role and deciding what my character would or wouldn't waste their time on instead of being a "content locust" trying to completionist everything really personalizes the adventure and keeps you from spending hours doing things you don't want to be doing.