I don't think you and I have the same idea of empty... I'm fine with there not being a lot of content that suddenly opens up at the end game, but Twilight Princess just felt like there wasn't really much to do the entire game.

It's not a sequel but a relaunch. The number "4" was removed soon after first teaser appeared. Some say it's a decent game in its own way, haven't played it yet though the game is sitting there in my Steam library, yuck!
From what I've seen on YouTube it might be even better than abysmal Thief: Deadly Shadows. As a fan of Thief 1, partial fan of Thief 2 (too much vaporware robots and metal plates) I can assure you that Thief 3 is a worst sequel. Thief [4] on the other hand has nothing to do with sequels by itself.
Thanks for the info, will definitely check this out! ;)

I never particularly liked the online PvP that goes on. I much prefer split screen gaming for things like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter.

It was really disheartening to see them have Q3 be completely online without any sort of SP at all. From what I gather they brought that back later on, but at that point, I didn't really bother to check out what they were doing.

And most of the genre went to hell after Half-Life and Halo anyways, so I mostly just stick to the classics.

Some less blatant examples:

Etrian Odyssey 2: Etrian Odyssey 1 was a good game. The balance wasn't perfect (Immunize, I'm looking at you) and the ultimate superboss had the unfair Necrosis attack, but the game was still reasonable, and defensive strategies were just as viable as offensive ones. (Also, the Alchemist was underpowered late game.) Then came the sequel, which was significantly worse balance wise. Defensive strategies no longer work well, and boss fights are way too short. They got rid of Immunize, but added a whole bunch of game-breaking skills in its place. (Revenge, I'm looking at you.) They made the Troubadour weaker (taking away their fun-to-use but not overpowered Healing skill), and they made bosses punish you for daring to get the full use out of one. This frustrated me to the point of having a Revenge Hexer that I brought out when a boss fight wasn't being fair. Also, having the weapon be more important than the character's AGI for determining turn order was not a good decision: My Dark Hunter should not (ordinarily) be faster than my Survivalist, especially since the Survivalist's main strength is supposed to be speed.

Bard's Tale 2: Balance falls down the drain in this game. Enemy spells never work after the start of the game, and enemies have too many hit points later on to be killed by damage. The only good attackers late game are Stoneblade using Warriors and Paladins and Stone Touch casting spellcasters. (The Hunter's AC isn't good enough late game.) Also, I hear that in some versions (Commodore 64), it becomes impossible for physical attacks to hit late game.

Bard's Tale 3 (DOS): A rather buggy mess of a port. Most notably, enemy attacks don't cause status ailments and enemy dragons don't get their breath attacks, but there are other bugs too (like encountering sharks (that are supposed to be able to instant kill you) outside of the water). Note that this issue isn't a problem for the 8-bit (Apple 2 and Commodore 64) versions of the game, which functioned (more or less) as they should. I hope the remaster is more like those 8-bet versions in terms of not having bugs.

Though it isn't a terrible game, Syberia II. There is a certain amount to enjoy about the game. The art is fun, and many of the puzzles are very well thought-out. The big problems with S II, though, are plot and characterization.

Syberia I was really sensitive to those aspects of the game. It was about a flawed heroine who overcomes her issues. Kate Walker goes on a journey, both literally and metaphorically. The game ends with her taking a huge step in her personal development. In Syberia II, however, Kate is your typical ass-kicking hero. And while it's nice to see her take charge, it would be nice for her to express an occasional doubt about her abilities or her quest or something to make her somewhere near as three-dimensional as she was in Syberia I.

The plot of Syberia I also offered several mysteries. Kate was introduced to a new world and has to solve puzzles that reveal Hans Vorlberg's life story. In Syberia II, it is a given that Kate will achieve her objective by the end of the game. Game play consists of solving puzzles that will allow her and her companions to achieve that objective. There is little learned along the way, and aside from one character death, almost nothing of significance happens until the very end of the game. Also, a lot of obstacles that Kate has to get past seem to be wedged into the plot simply as a way to force the player to solve more puzzles. While I can appreciate that the S II game makers took to heart the criticism that they had received about Syberia I not containing challenging enough puzzles, S I proved that the same people were capable of writing that provided logical, real-world reasons for puzzles to exist and to need solving. S II, on the other hand, wedged in a subplot about evil monks just to keep Kate and co. from reaching their destination and to keep the player solving puzzles.

#1 had good flow, but #2 was kind of crappy.

Presumably someone's already made a similar joke, but I'm too lazy to check.


MMX was quite enjoyable in my opinion.

The complaints I've seen about it largely boil down to:
1) UPlay DRM - and Ubisoft has stopped supporting the game
2) expansion wasn't properly balanced
3) not as grand as 6-8
4) complaints that the game was a throwback to grid-based / turn-based play

1-3 are true, though comparing to MM 6-8 isn't really a fair bar. Like saying every album your favorite band has done since their best album sucks by comparison.

Most of the complaints in #4 seem to be from people who never liked grid-based games in the first place.

MM 1-5 were quite big games as well. Actually word "Grand" is almost synonymous with MM worlds. Personally, I enjoy grid-based games, but MM X doesn't stand anywhere near close to any of MM I-V. It is short and tunnel'ish with no exploration skills, little variety and slow character progress. They also changed the names for all the classes, all the stats, there are barely any links to older MM worlds. For example, game doesn't have to be full 3D to feature character dolls like in MM VI-VIII (sure, MM IX didn't have that too but it was because game was rushed). This game might look good to those who never played grid-based games, but to those spoiled by MM I-V, this game has no place in MM series.

Optimization. MM games are synonymous with "optimized smooth engines", written on low level languages/Assembler. MM X? Those minimum requirements, you gotta be kidding... 512 RAM should be tops for this game. 4 GB+? 128 MB video card should be much more than sufficient. 512+? It isn't like the game runs at minimum specs very good either. It is spit in the face to games like MM VI, where there could be 100 monsters on screen, and game wouldn't slow down on PC with 32 MB RAM and few megs dedicated to video memory.

To sum those points, people got early unoptimized beta of game with 2 DRMs on top of it, which has nothing in common with game series it pretend to be part of. Imo, fits worst sequel definition.

Past a certain point in SII, the puzzles take a turn twoards pixel hunt moon logic. I think the story however suffered from a case of "lost in translation". As the emotional reactions, at least from the Kate's friends back home never seems in line or warrented given Kate's situation. Its as if the emotional development hindered on its own idiot plot.

I love the first one to death, despite the shortcomings of its story (which is still decent tbh). The second really took a nose dive after the cabin and bear part, both story wise and puzzle wise. Once I got to the ice cave I just had enough and was not enjoying myself and had little reason to see Kate's story through because it hadn't developed any further than where we were at the last game.

Freemium games are never worth it. Except TF2.

And Outlaws.

True, but there are a few. Too bad Red Dead Redemption is not on PC and Westerado is not on GOG, looks pretty interesting.

- Alundra2: It was terrible. The first Alundra was better than most Zelda games. I wish I could play it again but I don´t have my PS anymore.

- Deus Ex invisible war: The original is one of the best games ever. It is very hard to make a worthy sequel.

- I disliked Breath of fire 5. It is so much different from the earlier games. I finished 1-4, but not 5. Maybe it would have been better not to call it breath of fire. I dislike the concept of doing the same content many times again.

- Zelda Majoras mask: Ocarina of time was one of the best games ever. I disliked that you have to live the same day many times again in majoras mask. (I have finished ocarina but not majora)

- Final fantasy 7,8,10 are my favourite parts of the series. FF6 had to many chars. After doing an interesting dungeon you had to run around for some time to level up the other chars. This was so boring that I never finished it. FF9 was a good game but it looked to cute for my eyes. After FF10 the series went down. Well, FF2 is also terrible because the best way to get stronger is to attack yourself. Thats a junk system. I like cyberpunk more than the typical fantasy setting.

- Oblivion is much worse than morrowind. I finished MW but I quit O. The reason was level scaling. After beating tons of demons I had epic battles with rats and goblins.

i haven't actually played thief 4 either although i've had the ps4 version sitting unwrapped on my bedroom shelf since january. can't bring myself to play it.

i love all the first 3 however. i have no beef with thief deadly shadows at all. great game.

WRONG! Attacking your party members will cause you to gain HP, which is actually not a good thing, as many enemies late game wield the equivalent of Blood Swords against you. This will do more damage to you if you have higher HP, which is a problem because healing spells won't keep up (except for Elixirs and level 16 Raise, which it is not realistic to have). Furthermore, this also results in the enemies recovering more HP when they attack you.

What you want to do, instead, is focus on evasion. Give everyone a shield and don't bother with armor. (Especially don't bother with heavy armor like Genji Armor; it's worse than useless.) This way, the enemys' attacks will not hit as much, resulting in them draining a much smaller portion of your HP with their Blood Sword equivalents. Also, having high evasion has other benefits; you will frequently surprise your enemies, you will act before the enemies once the surprise round is done, and any attempts to run away will succeed 99% of the time (unless running from that particular encounter is impossible). On the other hand, if you have 0 evasion, you will be constantly ambushed, enemies will attack before you in the round after the surprise round, and forget about running away.

But then raising HP will be an issue with high evasion...

All in all, optimal "leveling" of characters in FF 2 was quite counter-intuitive.