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What game do you feel is just short of great?

While not my favorite game, one that I play often and feel that it's very close to being great -- but just short -- is Middle Earth Shadow of War. It can be a lot of fun -- as I've played in spurts -- but also feels like it's a bit too big (too repetitive) and with a few too many systems under the hood.
Post edited May 07, 2021 by kai2
Gosh, that's a lot of my collection. How many steps removed does it need to be?

Still, first to mind is: Starbound.

Starbound is painful. It's a space exploration pixelart game⋮that was designed during the netbook boom.
And everything dearly suffers for it. It renders to SDL using raw CPU; no GPU aid. It uses the then popular "Client is Server" idea of player instances, & so many of its systems are half baked ideas. Countless ideas are great on paper, awful in execution.

Space Stations are expensive; lack for customization & are ugly, mechs are poorly implemented & balanced, Bounty Hunting is a glorified goose chase, randomly generated weapons are often a complete diceroll, the story suuuuuuucks & is illogical, the main missions are an insult, you can't even build your own ship without mods, there are planets you pointlessly can't land on, there's a fossil extraction minigame that can give you unwinnable boards, there's a tenant system that feels like they implemented it to ape on Animal Crossing (with none of the effort), a lot of the lore doesn't match the current canon, and the developers have been struggling to get an Xbox port made in a timespan that stretches back to when the Vita was relevant.

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Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Ye gods, this game could be a pantheon of greatness if the devs just implemented some blindingly obvious quality of life features to make the game not feel like such a chore. Instead of adding [SWEAR REDACTED] prom furniture. (Which isn't even much of a thing outside certain regions.)

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Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure
This one is a very nostalgic game for me; one of my childhood. And at the start, it's actually pretty fun. 4-5 levels in, and the kid gloves suddenly come off. And they just keep it ramping up. For two more episodes of 9 levels each. Granted, you have unlimited lives and can save anytime, but it's still rude.

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Epic Pinball
A couple of great tables, maybe an alright one and the rest are trash. Physics limitations understandable for the era, but given they had 12+ tables, and only a couple of them get it right, it leaves a lot to be desired. But the few tables that stick the landing are fine times.

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Populous 3D/The Beginning
The actual game, when you've got it running (curse you black box 90s 3D tech!) is great overall. But there are a couple of scenarios that throw a complete spanner into the works. Like the Cage. Or the one where you have to actually protect another tribe. And the handful of timer based missions.
Post edited May 07, 2021 by Darvond
I'd say Demonicon, which recently released on GOG, is a good example of that.

It is great in some ways, but it also has a few shortcomings that hold it back in other ways.

If only those devs had more time and money, I'm sure it could have been a true masterpiece.

And if it didn't flop when it was originally released, I'm sure it also could have become a great series of many games (which the non-ending "ending" of the game makes clear that that is what they were going for...they must not have expected the game to flop...which really it shouldn't have, because it's quite good overall, despite not being perfect).
Not sure it quite fits, but the first thing that came to my mind is Arcanum. Parts of that game are just brilliant and paralleled in few other games - the setting and the way its background lore is presented, also many of its quests; and at least in theory the character system is also very interesting and deep, with many possibilities. Unfortunately the game also features many pretty flawed elements. The combat is just terrible and unless you play as a mage and use the teleportation spell, travel must eventually turn into a pretty annoying experience. Still a very interesting game and I had quite a lot of fun with it, but it could have been much better.
HomeWorld 2

with a pause the game would have been the best !

Total War Rome 2

they've balanced the life out of it

Stellaris

just to short to be large
Post edited May 07, 2021 by Zimerius
FEAR and Max Payne : I feel that both would be great (or greater depending on your view) if they were only 70% as long as they are. Parts of both games just seem to drag on a bit too far.

Age of Wonders 1&2: Heroes become too powerful, to the point that it trivializes the latter half/third of any campaign. Towards the end I just my hero by his lonesome to the enemy city, with no worry that any army could stop me. By contrast, earlier levels where you have to fight tooth and nail to defend/expand your territory felt far more engrossing and exciting.

The original XCom: Disclaimer - I already think it's great, but it would be a whole lot greater if mind control wasn't as powerful. Once you get 1 or 2 powerful psi soldiers in your squad, the game becomes completely trivial.
At least you can play without psi-soldiers to counteract this somewhat.
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Darvond: ...
Still, first to mind is: Starbound.
...
That game really disappointed me even though it definitely had some great ideas. Perhaps it would've been better Terraria hadn't preceded it, since that's all I could think of for the most part while playing it: "I wish I was playing Terraria instead". Still, the majority of locations felt really empty / inconsequential.
low rated
Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song (PS2):
* Fighting too many battles will progress time too much, causing quests to close and fatestones to be lost.
* Enemies move in real-time outside of combat (in a game with turn-based combat)
* Map skills come in pairs many times, so the choice of 5 skills turns into around half that
* Some of the music, the random battle in particular, gives me headaches to listen to.
* There's one dungeon in particular that, after completing, you have to walk out of. Apparently, in the original Romancing SaGa, you could just press a button to warp out, but that's not possible in this version.
* Two types of magic are not available to the player, except on a character you can't take out of the small dungeon where they join (and there are fusion spells that require such spells that can't be obtained without hacking)

Aside from these issues, it's a great game.

Also, Dragon Quest 6:
* It takes too long to get access to the class system. (DQ7 has this same issue.)
* Scenes where you have to talk to everyone to continue.
* A mandatory sequence where you have to follow someone without being seen.
* No option for a female main character. (DQ5, 7, 8, and (from what I hear) 11 have this issue as well, despite DQ3 and DQ4 both providing the option.)
* The English translation patch for the SFC version is incomplete and buggy.
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kai2: What game do you feel is just short of great?

While not my favorite game, one that I play often and feel that it's very close to being great -- but just short -- is Middle Earth Shadow of War. It can be a lot of fun -- as I've played in spurts -- but also feels like it's a bit too big (too repetitive) and with a few too many systems under the hood.
Meh, shadow of Mordor was better, the sequel really didn’t add anything, and as you say, both were repetitive. The first you get half way through, and then have to repeat the whole thing in “new area”. The enemy system was quite good, and combat was good, but I couldn’t say either were verging on great.

I would say AC Black Sail is verging on great, held back back chests and collectibles on every stretch of land ala Ubisoft. Story is great as is ship combat.
Pyre is a truly original gem, great graphics, music, unique setting and characters, it's all really fantastic, but the gameplay itself is a bit too repetitive, and on the whole it's too easy. I prefer too easy to too difficult and frustrating, but still - there is a balance to be found, and Pyre falls a bit short. Still well worth playing though. It's this kind of originality and artistry I want to see more of in games.

Divinity: Original Sin has lovely graphics, great combat, overall great gameplay, lots of freedom and a classic RPG feel, but there's no denying the story is bland and forgettable. I had a whale of a time with the game, but already I could not really tell you what it was about other than two reincarnated chosen ones killing a big evil thing at the end.
Post edited May 07, 2021 by Breja
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing. It´s just one or two content patches away from perfection. The main problems are that there are no real unique items with unique appearance, and you can´t go back to previous chapters for looting. Well, actually it´s not necessary, since there are no area specific weapons or armor sets to find. But the developers could have patched that all in and the game would become a competitor to the big players like Titan Quest and Grim Dawn.
Final Fantasy 2. The game is really just a few balance and pacing tweaks away from being great.
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Breja: ...reincarnated chosen ones ....
Some guy needs to take that plot device and bury it an unknown location. Then the guy needs to be shot so that it can never be found again.
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Breja: ...reincarnated chosen ones ....
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Matewis: Some guy needs to take that plot device and bury it an unknown location. Then the guy needs to be shot so that it can never be found again.
It's tired as hell, but I don't really mind a cliche, as long as they do something interesting with it. The first Witcher, for example, relies heavily on the "amnesiac hero" cliche, but it still proceeds from that starting point to have a really good story. Or you can just spoof the trope, like Bard's Tale did (man, I love that game to death). The trope doesn't need to die, but it needs to work for a living is what I'm saying.
Post edited May 07, 2021 by Breja
Another game that I think fits is...

Greedfall
.

I very much enjoy Spiders' games... and I loved Greedfall...

... but...

... about 2/3's of the way through the game, the reuse of assets started to diminish my enjoyment -- that the cities (and especially castles) all looked rather alike started to pull me out of the game. I enjoyed the story and the combat, but the inability to fully realize the locales of the game definitely lowered my assessment of the experience from "great" to "pretty good."
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Breja: It's tired as hell, but I don't really mind a cliche, as long as they do something interesting with it. The first Witcher, for example, relies heavily on the "amnesiac hero" cliche, but it still proceeds from that starting point to have a really good story. Or you can just spoof the trope, like Bard's Tale did (man, I love that game to death). The trope doesn't need to die, but it needs to work for a living is what I'm saying.
I suppose so, though outside of spoofing I can't really think of an example of a game that did something interesting with it. Nothing from what I've played at least.
The worst instance of this I've come across is Elder Scrolls: Online, an MMO, in which you are the vestige or something like that, with some unique power/ability (can't quite recall) needed to save the land. So just you, and the thousands of other players bunny hopping around you xP