Sacred 3. It was a soulless cash grab that had nothing to do with the previous game, which is one of my absolute favourite ARPG's.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero.

In a lot of respects it’s a good game, its fans even love it as a part of this big ongoing series. But it repeated a few tropes and trends that really started to get to me; wherein so many villains are introduced in a Dragonball style of escalating power rather than character definition.

The first two games introduced one supremely powerful hero, but invented mature and elaborate reasons as to why he couldn’t save the world alone - why evil or influential forces need cooperation of everyone to defeat, not a single showy swordsman. Then, later games try to impress you by showing villains that could easily beat this hero; without character definition to make such claims worth it.

They also really sold into the anime gender tropes - where every woman makes shy/teasing comments about the male lead, most girls are lesbian only for the sake of sexual harassment rather than true connection, etc.

For me, it was Skyrim. It was one of the first games I bought with my own money and certainly the first where I followed the news before the release. I did not know that Todd Howard was a notorious liar and that ruined the game for me. Like, the game itself was probably fine. It was an upgrade in some ways and a downgrade in various other ways. But having been promised that it would be so much better than Oblivion and Morrowind, when it was simply not, that just robbed me of the fun I could have had with it.

I see op choose the circle jerk today. Excellent choice, Excellent pallet 🤣.

Renegade III: The Final Chapter.

Renegade on the ZX Spectrum was good, the sequel Target: Renegade was one of my favourite games for years, but the third game was a cynical cash grab, badly executed, barely playable.

Beloved is a REALLY strong word.

But, Mortal Kombat 11. I had always enjoyed the MK games (it helped that my sister owned the N64 so I only played maybe a grand total of two hours of the wannabe Tekken ones...). And the timeloop reboot had reinvigorated the series and I was a much more accomplished fighting game player and actually understood how to push through projectile spam.

Then they randomly recast Sonya Blade with (sandy hook truther and terf) rhonda rousey and it was just... ugh. Even ignoring she is a hateful and evil shitbag... she is just a REALLY bad actress. Could never bring myself to grab 11 and by the time "1" came out I had also realized that I actively disliked the x-ray attacks and finishers since they were just boringly gorey time sinks.

And honorable mention to Splinter Cell Double Agent. But apparently the OG xbox/wii u (?) version of that was actually good and it was just 360/PC that was a steaming pile of shit. And Conviction was a very different game but also I still think about the aftermath of the EMP every so often.

Metro Exodus. Opening up the map was a mistake. The linear levels were fine, that gives you tight pacing and you always know what's next. The confined underground spaces were part of the soul of that series. I only played maybe 8 hours of Exodus and can't be bothered to play more.

It was not rubbish, but what Xrd did to my main character, Zato, irreparably damaged my relationship with any future Guilty Gear game, and Strive just finished off whatever hope I had left.

And to be clear: I'm not talking about power level here—fuck that. I'm only talking about how much fun I had with the character, and still do in Guilty Gear Plus R.

Resident Evil 2 Remake left me very disappointed. The moment-to-moment gameplay is good, great even! But the complete lack of soundtrack (despite the original game having a lot of iconic tracks), two thirds of the story being cut, and the characters just acting as imbeciles for half the screentime was upsetting. Worst offender was Leon leaving a man to die inside his cell because "I have to speak with the chief first". Like, what? You don't even know if the chief is alive, and even if he was, you don't know where he is, and you don't have the certainty that you can get back in one piece to free the poor guy from jail. You really want to leave him like that at the mercy of whatever monster lurks inside?

Don't get me started on 3 Remake.