Games you love but which failed miserably

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Forsaken
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Solo game does not let me memorable souvenir, but I remember playing versus game on two screens with a friend. We used two wire to split video signal on two screen and we were hiding oponent point of view. Visually, it was really great for a playstation game, and you moved in a 3D multirooms environnement with a kind of spaceship with 3D control. Weapons and defensive option made of it a smart game.

Would make a very good online competitive versus game.
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Dishonored 2
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Breathtaking game design. You can play stealth, agressive. You can enter and exit a level, solve problem with multiple and consistend approaches. Atmosphere is not a copy-past of any other game.
 
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The Witcher 1. I still have my enhanced physical edition with soundtrack, maps and booklet describing all the elixirs, monsters and quests. I know that witcher wasnt very popular series in the west, but atleast here in Cze, it was quite famous. I remember reading all the books back in highschool, 15 years back. I was very happy, when they announce a game and I played the hell out of it.

Hellgate london. Even tho it was quite mediocre game, I liked the aesthetics and lore.

Heroes of Newerth. One of the three games (with Lol and Dota 2), that restarted the moba genre. The studio shot themselves into the leg, when in order to play the game, you had to pay monthly sub (later they cancelled this idea) . This game had the most unique skins of all moba games. When you were talking about skins, it wasnt just new outfit. They change the whole character. For example, you had a huntress character, that was shooting with a bow, but you could buy a skin, and suddently it was a dwarf that was shooting a gun, or a hobbit with slingshot. New effects, lines... There were skins, that changed depending of what part of a map you were currently in. Or legendary skins, that were changing, depending of what item you had in your inventory. I loved this so much. RIP
 
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Dues Ex: Mankind Divided

Despite two vital story missions can't be accessed from anywhere besides the main menu (as a result of being split off into DLC), and despite being the first of a two parter that will likely never be finished (because it was rushed out by Squeenix and flopped as a result), I loved it for the level design, its semi-open world, and gameplay features (like remote hacking) that would later be seen in Cyberpunk 2077.

I also love the ending theme.

 
Cyberpunk 2077

Good story, empty open world

Nothing to do after the end except to play a walking simulator or go on a mass shooting rampage, mowing down innocent people walking down the street
 
Forspoken.

+ absolute lovely battle system
+ fast pacing movement system
- dead openworld
- weak storytelling for a square enix game
 
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

Probably nostalgia more than anything. The game blends a bunch of stuff from Lovecraft stories; Innsmouth, Cthulhu and The Shadow out of Time to name a few. I first played it on an old girlfriend's Xbox (along with Silent Hill 4: The Room). It's quite janky and buggy, devolves into a shooter about halfway through, but features a really great sequence in the Innsmouth section that no game since has made me feel so tense.

 
Z by the Bitmap Brothers (1996)
It's a quirky sector & time based RTS that got lost in the success of C&c and SC shortly after.



Thief 2: The Metal Age (2000)
Such a great game and yet after they released it Looking Glass had to close its doors.

 
Three games come to mind that failed in one way or another...

1. Lightning Returns Final Fantasy XIII: It sold pretty poorly due to probably many reasons, from a release on the PS3 in 2014, dated graphics, low production value and just a general fatigue of the franchise and FFXIII as a whole. Still, in my opinion it has one of the best battle systems in the whole franchise, with some parts of it being used to this day in modern Final Fantasy titles.

2. Final Fantasy X-2. My very first Final Fantasy game that I actually finished and that I really sunk my soul into. It's freedom of customization in battle and replayability makes it one of my favorite games to this day. It didn't sell poorly, but it damaged the brand as a whole in the west as many couldn't accept the girly art style and female leading cast (and the simple fact that it ruined some of FFX's most emotional aspects). It didn't help either that the best parts of it's story are almost impossible to see if you don't use a guide.

3. Hogs of War: By now it has gathered a cult following and a remake is underway, but not only didn't it sell well enough short-term to sustain it's devs, it's planned sequel got cancelled and the IP went dormant for almost 20 years. I love the idea of 3D Worms with actual characters and true early 2000s humor, including racial stereotypes and really, really bad piggy puns.
 
Final Fantasy X-2. My very first Final Fantasy game that I actually finished and that I really sunk my soul into. It's freedom of customization in battle and replayability makes it one of my favorite games to this day. It didn't sell poorly, but it damaged the brand as a whole in the west as many couldn't accept the girly art style and female leading cast (and the simple fact that it ruined some of FFX's most emotional aspects). It didn't help either that the best parts of it's story are almost impossible to see if you don't use a guide.
I liked this one a lot, I think Tri-Ace had a hand in development. Loved the music and battle system. I do remember the Mass Effect N7 armor DLC for Serah and Noel really put some people off at the time.
If the trilogy were re-released for modern systems I would buy them again.
 
I liked this one a lot, I think Tri-Ace had a hand in development. Loved the music and battle system. I do remember the Mass Effect N7 armor DLC for Serah and Noel really put some people off at the time.
If the trilogy were re-released for modern systems I would buy them again.
Noel and Serah were in FFXIII-2, which could have been a fitting game for this topic as well, but it has aged pretty well, even though it's PC port is among the worst I have ever seen.
 
Noel and Serah were in FFXIII-2, which could have been a fitting game for this topic as well, but it has aged pretty well, even though it's PC port is among the worst I have ever seen.

Whoops, complete brain-fart on my part! Yes, I was thinking of XIII-2, not X-2.

I liked the music and battle system in that one too. Some of the optional bosses had huge HP pools, I remember taking ages to defeat Angra Mainyu.
 
Some of the optional bosses had huge HP pools, I remember taking ages to defeat Angra Mainyu.
Yes, Angra was brutal if you had to constantly recover from it's status ailments. It's really interesting to see how high the power ceiling goes in X-2, especially in the Remaster.

You can go from a level 99 group that struggles against Angra Mainyu for half an hour to taking less than a minute with a level 30 team.

There was an infinite amount of optimizations if you are willing to grind them out.
 
Star Wars Republic Commando. Ended with a cliffhanger pointing at a sequel, but never received one. And boy, did that game deserved it: it is to this day the most immersive and raw Star Wars experience, its atmosphere was unbeatable.

No lightsabers nor Force powers, but you never, ever lamented their absence. It was in some ways the best Star Wars game, and one of the very best games I've ever played. A one of a kind game.
 
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Three games come to mind that failed in one way or another...

1. Lightning Returns Final Fantasy XIII: It sold pretty poorly due to probably many reasons, from a release on the PS3 in 2014, dated graphics, low production value and just a general fatigue of the franchise and FFXIII as a whole. Still, in my opinion it has one of the best battle systems in the whole franchise, with some parts of it being used to this day in modern Final Fantasy titles.

i kinda loved the Lightning Triology, especially the „Pokémon“ system in 13-2. Spent hours over hours in the arena fighting Gilgamesh & Co just to recruit everyone and their moms :D

The only thing which bothers me was the ticking time in LR - it stressed the hell out of me because I love exploring but well „just 13 days to go“ to quote Lightnings signature sentence from the teaser trailer x__x
 
The only thing which bothers me was the ticking time in LR - it stressed the hell out of me because I love exploring but well „just 13 days to go“ to quote Lightnings signature sentence from the teaser trailer x__x
I felt that pressure early on, too. It was really stressing in the beginning, but once Chronostasis came into the mix and I had the sequence for it in my muscle memory, I became pretty comfortable with the game. My very first playthrough took well over 100 hours and afterwards I jumped right back in to start farming stats.

I think the intention was to let the player fail or rush their first playthrough and have them then taking their sweet time on New Game+, which was a clever way to use the game's own failstate to its benefit.

But I get why many were put off by this pressure, even if in truth it was superficial and not a real threat at all.
 
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