In Baldur's Gate 3, you can tell that Act 1 was fine tuned and built up through years of community feedback and the long open beta, and you can tell that they tried to do something just as big and dense with Act 3. Act 2 though is incredibly linear, and whoever decided you need to walk around with everyone in the light of one lantern for half of it clearly didn't playtest that bit in co-op. Removes the entire co-operative exploration element that they encourage in Act 1, you either have to tag along while one player opens every chest, cupboard and bookcase, or ignore everything and maybe double back when you're blessed.

I'm taking this straight from Yahtzee, but any game that lets you stockpile health items and then use them at no time cost. I had that issue with Breath of the Wild, with Shantae, Skyrim, and a handful of other games. It ruined the balance, trivialized skill and made winning fights just a matter of having enough healing items in your inventory. In turns-based RPGs, you need to expend a turn to use them, and in actions games, you often need to leave yourself vulnerable for a few seconds in order to use them. If you can farm healing items, and just pause the action, pop into a menu, and heal to your heart's content, the game's engagement drops like lead and the action becomes mindless. Honestly, watching this video made me think of replaying Breath of the Wild, but then I remembered that mechanic and changed my mind. So many fights in that game and Tears of the Kingdom would have been far more memorable if healing items weren't so OP.

15:50 Was that a QC reference Yahtz? But seriously, the entropic decay of long running media is something I find fascinating. It's a microcosm of culture and the human experience on the macroscale. Don Hertzfeldt explores this in some of his work. In a Simpson's couch gag of all things.

Criticizing the games I like most I find is easiest, because when I tend to have put the most time into them through replays I also can pinpoint all of their shortcomings. I adore Kingdom Hearts II for having one of the best combat systems in an action RPG to this day, but it also forgoes criticisms the first game had about level design and platforming by getting rid of them altogether so every world is basically just a collection of empty battle arenas. In general it was more action than RPG. Sonic Unleashed is my favourite game in that series, but if you asked me if I recommend it I would have a laundry list of objectively bad mechanical shortcomings that far outweigh the things I actually like about it.

BG3 suffered from not properly labeling junk items. There are so many gems, ingots, and other similar items where the flavour text mentions crafting or otherwise hints at some future use, but they are actually just junk items.

My favourite game is NieR:Automata. And the worst thing about it is how some deranged part of its fanbase only seems to praise it for the main characters'... Assets... To the point where Stellar Blade seems like an adequate replacement for them when it still hasn't shown any of the qualities that made Automata such a masterpiece of writing and video game storytelling. Edit: Just to be super clear because I know there are people out there frothing at the mouth the moment you dare not sing praises of Stellar Blade... The game looks decent ! It might even be good. But saying it's the new NieR:Automata just because it's an action game with a sexy android protagonist is doing a massive disservice to NieR's achievements.

You know the fact that you guys are advertising ground branch, says a lot and makes me smile.. The fact that ground branch is advertising on the other hand when it's been a development as long as it has, and had the balls to say pre-alpha still.. oh boy that's a whole other thing. But good on you anyways :-)

50:40 Finding a really nice stick in the woods transcends gender.

We really went from "everything is about Dark Souls" to "everything is about Persona". And Dark Souls.

Bloodborne’s chalice dungeons only down side is that the dev time could have been spent elsewhere. But they are so unobtrusive, if you don’t want to engage with them then they have no impact on your enjoyment of the game whatsoever. And as it happens, I find them to be a useful way to stock up on bloodviles. Since the extra bloodechoes you get from delving in the dungeons would unbalance the main game, I spend everything I get on the shops

7th gen games having forced turret sections no matter what genre the game was.

Man guys the water temple is hard because it forces you to adapt extrapolative kinesthetic awareness. I.e.Water is higher here so what was that other room i cant get to like again? You might not notice but people who dont play video games often dont have this skill. They cant see an opaque shape and imagine its insides and stuff but gamers have it rammed down our throats. Even think about seeing treasure you cant reach in dark souls. Youll keep that glowy blob in your brain for hours thinking 'the side path would be behind me now for that treasure right?'

On the topic of fights in games where you're supposed to lose, these people need to watch more wrestling. You don't make the hero lose clean, or make them lose because they're stupid. You make it look like the hero is going to win, and like they have the villain beat, and then cutscene, interference or trickery of some kind, and you lose in the cutscene because the villain broke the rules of the game in some way. Like a fight where the villain only has a few set attacks, and then in the cutscene they know they're beat so they pull something out thats unblockable. Or you're in a fighting game and you're winning one vs one, but then when you win somebody else comes in and the two of them beat you. You won, the game just didn't accept defeat. Rather than trying to make you lose in the game, and you spending hours of time and loads of resources trying to win a fight you were never supposed to,

Marty: "I don't like silent protagonists." Me, thinking about Marty's favorite games: "Uh, what?"

I thought of a solution to the problem of fights you're supposed to lose when you can use consumables. Just have a box you can loot afterwards that "coincidentally" has the same items you consumed.

I'm unfamiliar with this Podcast perhaps someone can enlighten me; is every episode so blisteringly fast-paced and high energy?

Mass Effect 2 - I've played it through so many times, but it's got some glaring issues: 1. Aside from companion quests and their trust quests, there's only about 5 story missions. 2. Weapon variety is pretty low, especially if you don't have the DLC (which I don't). I felt like you might change your load out only once or twice throughout the whole game. 3. Scanning/probing/mining

Remnant 2 is great but I can fully admit the main story isn’t super great. The character episodes on each world are interesting though, and the gameplay loop is fun, so I keep playing 😂

I hate the rain in Botw and totk. I know it is just another obstacle in the game but it doesn't change the fact it is a random annoyance.

In Witcher 3, it was the Ubisoft-esque scattering of icons across the map. That seemed to be the norm at the time, well before the release of Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring. The game was revolutionary in many other ways and I still appreciate that, but it’s a shame that the scattering of icons and a GPS quest tracker took all the exploring out of this open world.

Undertale is a tough one to find something bad in for me. Yeah, "the fandom" works, but that's a cheap answer. Everything has toxic fans.

Ya'll should watch Tarnished Archeology vids. Just really great videos learning about real world history and elden ring at the same time.

In Elden Ring, isn't everything after Farum Azula just like, 1% of the game, assuming you're talking about story only?

Half Life 2: Look, we have physics!!

Gothic 1: No new sidequests after Chapter 1 Gothic 2: The dragons

Much like Portal, my favorite game Star Fox 64 was meme’d to death by the fanbase in the mid ‘00s with everyone spamming asinine “DO A BARREL ROLL” comments on message forums (myself included) and it still makes me cringe to this day.

The Alien Isolation bit in Phantom Liberty. As someone that loathed Alien Isolation (and hide from the monster games in general) that bit was just awful.

Suikoden series, you absolutely need a guide to get the best endings.

Hades is one of a few games of 100%'d and I've sunk so many hours into it, but I think the end game section is a bit weak, i.e. the "invite all of the gods to a big party" thing. It honestly felt anticlimactic given all of the work you put into completing the minimum 10 runs and however more it takes to max out your relationships with the Olympian gods. I feel like an opportunity was missed there since the big issue was telling Demeter what happened to Persephone because she would've gone berserk. Would've been cool if you do a few more funs and the final FINAL boss is a pissed off Demeter IMO

I've seen some shit takes before, but 'To The Moon has no substance' is one I am just amazed anyone with a functioning pre-frontal cortex can have.

I love when people complain about movement in Valve games. Especially when they subscribe to the "git gud dark souls isnt hard" philosophy. The movement in valve games is good enough to spin off community servers for Bunny hopping, Surfing and KZ, but people who never "got gud" just say its bad.

Wtf, the library in halo was the best stage. Who the fuck hates the library!

2:53 This is why I get shouted at by very boring people on Twitter because of Final Fantasy XVI.

On the fan base thing. 40k man the memes get tiresome. Occasionally, they're funny, but man... not everytime

Bethesda Rpgs, what i dislike is they are buggy as hell and it would be nice to have a strong focus on lore consistency between titles.

I feel like the graphics of the consuming shadow are a major part of its charm Anyways my favourite game is Fire Emblem 10 what i hate most about it is the unit balance. Mages are fucking dogshit 1:23:52 i remember a best character ever poll gamefaqs ran one year where the finalists were fucking Gordon Freeman and Link

You know it's really annoying that Yahtzee claims to be afraid of conflict, yet he constantly antagonises his colleagues... Even Frost is aware of the Irony with his "oh are you?" Response.

Meh. I really enjoyed bloodborne. From the blood vials to the menses. My lady is playing persona 5 right now. I kinda don't get the hype.

One Love! Always forward, never ever backward!! ☀☀☀ 💚💛❤ 🙏🏿🙏🙏🏼

Bold choice for folks dependent upon their fanbase for an income to compare fan bases to Al Queda or ISIS. Not that I disagree. ;p