What's a popular game series that you just can't understand the hype for?

Soulslikes. I am so fucking sick of hearing about them. Elden Ring and it's jank ass UI did not deserve GOTY.

I don't have much against any particular game since I can see something that someone would enjoy.

However there are sone things that I actually don't understand how someone would enjoy;

Always Online: all of your time, money, and love could just vanish underneath you

P2W / P2S: Ah yes, let me make the gameplay loop doing a 9-5

Gacha: Gambling is 80% of the gameplay but somehow they make it unfun

Live Service: By itself not bad. However it enables games to be released completely broken.

I would add games that have no final ending, which are are endless time sucks.

For me its Metroid, and really the whole Metroidvania genre. I can never tell when a challenge is supposed to be possible, or if I'm supposed to come back later, and and up wasting hours trying to do something only for it to be trivial later. I don't find this at all rewarding.

That said Tunic was a fantastic game, and I love the concept of the 'Metroid-Brainia', purely because of the concept that every challenge is theoretically possible from the start, you just need to learn how to do it.

Hero Shooters, specifically Overwatch and R6 Seige. Really any sort of MOBA too. I dont really get the point of having unique characters with loads of lore and an underlying story if you aren't going to get to experience any of it in gameplay. TF2 gets away with it because the classes arent really characters, they are more like an archetype of that class and the story is just supplemental stuff.

Sports games.

FIFA and Madden NFL

Apart from the endless EA, Ubisoft and similar AAA copy/paste titles I never understood the hype around MOBA games.

I don't get it. Its not real time strategy, but not an ARPG either, you dont create a character, instead have an insane pool of unique characters with a few abilities each. Its just feels like someone wrote down some random game mechanics and choose 5 at random.

All levels are basically the same with mild variations and the whole gameplay loop boils down to optimised fast clicking on abilities and to get strong asap.

Its super boring for me and couldn't spend more than a couple hours with the games from the genre. Same goes for watching other people play.

Its just a cherry on top to have the biggest tournaments and cash prices, while the top players are celebrated as superstars. Also somehow the biggest MOBA communities are infamous for toxicity.

Definitely not my cup of tea.

MOBA started as RTS mods for people who liked micro and didn't like resource management. Add hypermonetization of everything for 20 years and here we are. I don't get it, either, but to each his own.
- I liked the old WC3 mods because of RPG-like level progression. Gave a little hit of dopamine to see a build come together and steamroll the other side. This was well before there was a competitive scene.
  The genre got hyper-monetized, and I noped out of that shit.
MOBAs are shit, but they struck a chord with people who are bad at games but want to feel good.
They survive based off of MMR and obscuring people's true ability. If most people playing MOBAs could see how bad they were, they would lose interest over night.
Everything you wrote is true, and I gotta respect that you've at least given mobas a try. It's not your cup of tea and that's alright.
One thing that you didn't mention is the team work. While there are toxic people out there, mobas tend to be games that a group of friends can play together for free. You are correct that the abilities can feel limiting - along that vein finding ways to chain spells together with your team mates was one of the most fun ways to get creative.
This is what makes watching pros play a lot of fun. There are people out there constantly experimenting with mixing items and spells to create hilarious strategies to gain an edge. There are all kinds of spells that can come off as overly subtle and dumb sounding, but you pair it up with something else and all of a sudden you have a wombo combo.
Mobas came out of War Craft 3, so any of the millions of people with a blizzard rts background will have skills that will transfer. The single hero format means you can focus all your attention in one place instead of keeping track of your army and your economy at all times. Starting with an established and automated base means that the game isn't on a knife's edge like RTSs. There's a lot of stability and simplicity here over RTSs.
The games tend to be simple in concept to understand but very difficult to master. I had a lot of fun picking a handful of heroes and learning how to best use them. They all have their own quirks and limitations that may not be obvious at first. Conversely, it was rewarding to learn how to shut down heroes that had stomped me in the past.
It is very difficult to get established in these games. It can feel like one of those tv shows that you have to get to the third season before things get better. And I can completely understand people wanting games that don't start off as rough. The high skill cap can keep people coming back for years though.
I hope this helps 😊

Souls like. There are literally situations you cannot win on the first try, like when you walk through a door and something stabs you from behind because it was leaned against a wall out of sight.

Also just don’t enjoy fighting gigantic things with ambiguous hitboxes.

Exactly, when a game on purpose disrespects your time and forces you to repeat things for no reason.
Some call it a difficulty curve, I don't call it anything, just uninstall it.
I know I'm biting bait but I rarely got jumped by the "guy around the corner" traps because I looked before walking in. Counter intuitively, running in will also often avoid the worst of it.
I remember people complaining about the floor traps in the first game and I was like "you mean the raised tiles that are a different color? Yeah I was careful around those". Player messages also help.
It's okay the game isn't for you - but "literally can't win on the first try" is hyperbole.
Definitely avoid monster hunter if ambiguous hit boxes aren't your thing.

Most games I just didn't like and felt it wasn't fair to call them out, but gambling addiction pushing games like FIFA are high on the list, especially since the annual releases seem to be somewhat identical.

I also don’t really like the sentiment of judging types of games in general; we like different things and that’s good.
But, gacha games can fuck right off. Manipulative, exploitative, addiction seeking nonsense. I’m not even commenting on gameplay or anything so it’s not a specific one… it’s the whole core concept of making a digital slot machine for children that I find offensive.

FIFA and other sport team manager; Farming Simulator; Call of Duty; Fortnite and other battle royals (its just not my game mode.

Yeah, those games are lame as fuck.
Call of Duty was once good, but they chose to milk it to oblivion and now nobody cares.

I’m going to get absolutely roasted for this, but Elden Ring. I put about 10 hours in trying to like it, but it just made me angry and miserable. And it was kinda boring.

I also don’t care for Souls games, but I think ‘angry and miserable’ is the intended experience.
- I'm a fan of the Soulsborne games but gave up on Elden Ring because I wasn't a fan of the empty open world gameplay.
Souls games in general for me, but especially Bloodborne. My girlfriend at the time loved the game so much she had multiple tattoos. She was so happy to guide me through Bloodborne and tried to explain lore, but there's so very little actual plot that anything I learned just fell out of my head. I couldn't tell you anything about what happened despite finishing the game and DLC. I don't get it.
I really tried, maybe 20-30 hours, but didn't enjoy it much.
Playing as a spellcaster was maybe a mistake.
I recognize it's a quality game though. I might try again with a melee character. Maybe modded?
- I might try again with a melee character.
  Maybe. The sorcery/incantation/various melee is less of a distinction than many make of it. A lot of it ends up feeling the same: you dodge, wait for the opening, hit your 'attack.' If the 'learn to be a badass by learning patience and boss attacks' isn't your thing though, you might never find yourself liking it.
  The best elden ring experience is elden ring seamless coop. It makes the game 100000000x better. If you want to play with someone, hit me up. I just got elden ring working again on linux (it had a freezing problem until I reinstalled the OS, probably the nvidia drivers borking out), and am loving it.
- Dex/arcane bleed builds. Beautiful.
- I can recommend a dual Strength/faith build. I did that my first playthrough and it was a lot of fun. I think the Incantations was much funner to play with than the Sorceries. They have far more variety in them. Plus there is a cure Scarlet Rot Incantation that I got a lot of mileage out of to make certain parts less oppressive.

Gacha.

For most anything else, I can simply chalk it up as a difference in tastes when I don't like the gameplay, or art style, or whatever. Even those shitty horror games for babies I despise are perhaps fun if you dive into the lore at the right age, who knows. I certainly have obsessed for less than mediocre games.

But no one likes gacha, or at least should like it. It's gambling marketed to kids, preying on the people without impulse control. No "you can spend 2 hours of your life every day on this and save up 2$ in currency" is changing that, in fact that is even worse.

And yet they give hoyoverse a pass for their series, because everything around it is so high quality. Open your fucking eyes! Games are not supposed to punish you for not playing!

But of course, no accusation without confession, I am quite fond of the yugioh simulator, and used to defend it the same way. I try to resolve this double standard by doing what I feel they should do: Never gush about it, only mention it in shame, and always warn people to not pick it up.

Gacha has gotten out of hand. I played one for a year or two a long time ago and don't regret it, but it was far more generous than anything today. It used to be a fun genre to download a game and play for a day or two with all the free stuff, but even that hasn't been true for a while with all the dark patterns they use in these games now.
Which is why limbus will always be the best game in the gacha genre, it rewards you beautifully for barely playing the game and ensures you can get almost everything for free if u work for it
- I can't even make the most explicit Gacha hating post without you guys saying how yours is the one, the special one that's good.
  I hate the concept. They are designed to obfuscate how much money and time you spend on them with different currencies that don't feel like real money. They are dark pattern after dark pattern, trying to get you to look at the shop every time you boot up, and entice you with limited offers every chance they get. And this all is then defended by well meaning people like you and me with "Well, you can play for free if you grind hard".
  And when I look up if the different in-game currency thing applies to this game, I find out I have heard of Limbus company as the Korean one that got a "radical feminist" artist fired because a swimsuit didn't reveal enough skin for the fanbase's liking.
  You misunderstood my comment. Fuck off with your recommendation.

Hollow Knight.

There's a couple of things the devs could have done to make things way more tolerable, like not putting the fucking shades in the middle of platforming challenges and giving health bars to bosses so you can tell when you should go somewhere else instead of face-tanking them for 3 hours.

But god forbid anyone says anything even remotely disparaging against the game, as they're quickly mobbed by fanboys and told to "git gud" because they treat masochistic games like HK as some perverse dick-measuring contest.

And unfortunately I can't away from hearing about it with everyone sperging out over the upcoming sequel.

i spent a couple of dozen hours with hollow knight as a fan of the metroidvania genre, but after a while the barriers to continuing were just too many. after a while, any traversal basically requires combat, and the grindy combat just slows the game to a crawl. add to that the corpse run mechanic, and at that point it's just not worth it.
- Since you like Metroidvanias, have you tried Ori and the Blind Forest? Personally I found it to be tuned very well for difficulty. I ended up beating it without realizing there was a triple-jump ability you could find.
  Unfortunately the sequel, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, wasn't as good in my opinion. They ended up pulling a few mechanics from Hollow Knight, which detracted from the uniqueness of the first game.
Imma just lump all souls like into this category tbh.
- Pretty much. They need a different genre name, like "masochist" or "try-hard". A lot of these games are significantly more punishing than the original Dark Souls ever was
Just looks like more indie-crap to me.
I'd wager a lot of the hollow knight fanboys haven't played anything classic like Megaman.
- why would you wager that?
Yeah, I tried giving it a shot twice, but both times after 5-6 hours I just came to the conclusion that the game wasn't respecting my time, and was punishing me for exploring.
The worst part is that its popularity lead to other games copying it, meaning half of metroidvanias released after it have the same issues. I started to just filter out any game that had corpse runs as it was a good indicator of how much I'd hate it.
- the game wasn't respecting my time
  Hit the nail on the head. That’s why I stopped too. And I don’t even mind difficult games; Sekiro is an all-time favorite of mine. But Sekiro is compact, dense, no filler. Hollow Knight felt empty and sparse and traversal was a chore.
- the conclusion that the game wasn't respecting my time
  That's exactly why I quit too. You're smarter than me, since I spent over 30 hours on it before quitting.

Balatro. There’s just no motivation to keep playing. It’s just uninteresting. Love me some Slay the Spire, though.

Same. I tried Balatro as something for my tablet.
The 'permanent' voucher upgrades aren't actually permanent at all, and I lost interest after that. There's no meta advancement beyond unlocks, which is not for me.

The Total War series should theoretically be right up my alley, since I'm a history nerd and I put a LOT of time into Paradox games (EU4, CK2, HOI4, Stellaris, and Surviving Mars are all high on my hours played chart).

But for whatever reason, I've just never clicked with the Total War versions of the same thing. For old school, I played Empire and Medeival. For new school, I dipped into Atilla because it was on a sale. I figured old mechanics/new mechanics, maybe one will work better than the other. But while I did somewhat enjoy Empire, the Total War series in general just has never grabbed me.

I have the same issue with the Assassin's Creed series. History Nerd...should be right up my street. But just have never clicked with me despite trying multiple games. THOSE however are much more clearer to me as to why. It's the cut and paste gameplay loop that Ubisoft has in ALL of their series.

Unlock an area, do random missions based on a number system for difficulty, interspersed with main plot missions. Move to another area, repeat. Some missions encourage you to team up with other people and go online. Others can be bypassed by micro-transactions. They literally haven't changed their core loop in years, whether that's Assassins Creed, Watchdogs, Shadow of War/Mordor, The Division, Far Cry....the list goes on and on.

I tried Warhammer total war thinking I would love it. But the game was just... Not funny to me. I felt like the game was trying to make itself funny too hard. Like I was never able to breathe. Game would be literally spamming armies out of nowhere so I cannot stay a single turn idle, it was always giving me another mission, a new thing to do. Too overwhelming.
I suppose it's specifically engineered with some other public in mind, but certainly it doesn't seems to be me.

Zelda and Pokémon. They bore me. I love the Pokémon tv show tho

Call of Duty. Yeah I liked the original modern warfare games but not enough to like the hype.

The original call of duty and battlefield games were revolutionary. If memory serves me correctly, they built off the success of Band of Brothers TV Show and gave a gritty representation of WWII in a first person shooter. Battlefield 1942's multiplayer was absolutely top notch too with its vehicles.
They deserved their credit back then, but have been milked beyond belief. They are the new FIFA series where each game brings nothing new, but still costs $80...
- I really enjoyed COD: world at war. I don't think I cared for any after that.

It seems like all of the answers are "I personally didn't enjoy this game therefore I can not conceive of anyone else enjoying it."

I find that interesting.

How else would you interpret OP's question?
- Something that is popular (or sells well) despite having no apparent appeal to anyone the commenter can think of.
  I don't enjoy Bloodborne. I think I can figure out why there is a lot of hype for it.

All of the Monster Hunter games. The gameplay is awful and the story drags on. I thought it was just that I picked the first one, but after trying the others it feels like a $5 game series.

And trying to play with your friends? Fuck you, do 30 minutes of boring solo stuff before we even think about letting you have fun.
- And did you want to just connect and go? Fuck you get online and search up a guide how to do coop missions with your friends

No Man's Sky: I've tried playing it and just end up getting bored. Every once in a while I'll go back and check it out again, feeling like I somehow didn't give it a fair shake, but remain underwhelmed.

Maybe next time...

This was the game that made me realize I prefer story over infinite sandbox games.
Even after it started getting praise due to all the updates, it just felt... empty every time I went back.
- I really like sandbox games, but this one just didn't grab me (at least not yet).
Something about the way you fly in that game isn't satisfying.
- It was better in the beginning I think… they gave you more control now but honestly it feels less satisfying
You might like Star Citizen when it comes out.
- Star Citizen
  when it comes out
  Good one.
People KEEP saying that they “fixed” that game but every time I try it it’s still a pretty generic survival game in space. I don’t see how it’s even close to what they promised.
- It's really not even a survival game.

Assassin’s Creed

I think when I tried it originally I wasn’t into the controls and how they felt. I’m more forgiving these days so I wonder if I’d enjoy the series now? I love a good story.

Black Flag was the 1st I played and the only one I enjoyed. Tried others and they were just 'meh'.
(Why is a decent pirate/sailing game so hard to make? - almost 15 years later and still nothing seems to come close to what Black Flag offers)
If you're in it for the story, stay far away.
Ubisoft fired the creator of Assassin's Creed way back after the 2nd (and best) one released. After that, they've just been milking it and only useful idiots haven't caught on yet.
I still recommend replaying the old ones. They were hit-or-miss depending on the person even back when they released, but I was one of they people that got hit hard.
The first one is one of the few games that actually has something to say for those paying attention.
- That’s what I was wondering is should I play certain games and then skip others? I have a PS5, is it possible to play first at all?

Any games that have gatcha mechanics.

Mass Effect and KotOR

Both have absolutely terrible gameplay. Fans tell me the story makes it worth it but if I want a good story I can read a book.

Lowkey objectively false.
ME1 is playable if you pick a gun focused class. The caster classes are brutal to play. 2 is a bit better for casters, but ammo and cover mechanics get annoying. 3 is pretty good but has the weakest story and the space exploration is the most annoying.
Ah man I loved ME1. Heard the later ones were more gun-focused and decided to not check them out.
Yeah. I'm finding that literally the only Bioware game that I've enjoyed is Dragon Age: Origins.
I really enjoy it, though.
I'm curious what you thought was terrible about KOTOR's gameplay. It was pretty much D20 star wars (I can't remember if d20 was the ffg or the other company's) with the computer rolling the dice, and D20 games are pretty neat.
- The "make the decisions and then spend five minutes watching them play out" thing was the main frustration with that one. Maybe it feels intuitive and natural for someone who grew up with tabletop RPGs, but for someone more used to roguelikes and JRPGS it felt like the feedback loop was too long.
Mass Effect 1's gameplay is clanky, but 2 is much better.
ME3 is fantastic. Andromeda's campaign is somehow even better feeling, and IMO Me3Coop is absolute peak FPS.
...KOTOR is indeed bad to play, heh. SWTOR is even worse.
- I feel 2 leant too hard into the "generic cover shooter" trope pretty hard and although I love all of them, I think the gameplay of 3 really got the best mechanically, though it was also the lightest on the RPG mechanics and was weaker in that regard.
  Story wise, they all do their respective jobs as a trilogy excellently. 1 introduced the world and the main players well and setups a good "big bad" to defeat. 2 is a good transition to the darker tone and fleshes out a lot of the galaxy and in 3 you have the cataclysmic final showdown.
  The worst thing about ME is the continuing EAness of the whole publication.
Yeah, the first ME you need to really just get in the right mind-frame that it’s old and the controls are clunky. I loved 2 and haven’t played 3.
- The controls are clunky, but that's not the main issue. It's the gameplay loop itself.

Final fantasy, FIFA, GTA, CoD, Modern warfare and Persona are the ones that spring to mind for me.

I was going to suggest CoD as well ... the whole series is mostly a carbon copy of the previous version. Let alone the gameplay is "run for 30 seconds, die, respawn and repeat.
- COD games are fun but not interesting, and they're pretty interchangeable.
Final Fantasy is about atmosphere and presentation above all else.
Their production values are some of the highest in the industry.
It's a shame so much of it was used on turn-based game, but they've since pivoted to action combat and now we can get a balance.
Not Persona, no! It's basically Pokémon + dating sim, what's not to love (besides the usually slow af start)? 😭

Sonic.

I've been trying to like them when they were published, but no. It's not really much fun.

It has some ups and downs for me. It's premised on speed and momentum and crazy loops. The first zone of the first game does a lot to establish that. It then promptly throws it all away in the second zone with a water level that puts in stops everywhere.
Second game figured out the formula.
To reopen the 16-bit playground wars, looking back at the merits of just the games, I'm surprised this was ever considered competition for Super Mario World. Sonic is fine, but Mario World is a masterpiece of design.
- It has some ups and downs for me
  Most platformers do!

Pretty much any AAA game. It's like going to the cinema to watch a movie, just the commercials beforehand never stop

Most Bethesda games.

The quality is just so low, the issues so glaring, I can't. It's like reading a fine book riddled with so many typos you give up after 2 pages because you're so distracted.

Okay, to be fair, maybe the latest Skyrim iteration is better! I haven't tried. Wouldn't bet on it, though.

Mods are really the only thing keeping those games afloat. Modders end up doing half the work just to make the games halfway decent.
They're really quantity > quality.
Back in the day when people might not have had enough games to keep them occupied, Bethesda games were always there providing massive bang for buck.
It's different being an adult and having access to way more digital entertainment. Now we don't feel as compelled to stretch our enjoyment as much as possible.
- I'm sorry but I play games longer than Bethesda even exists and the quality was always shit imo.
  It's fine to be a subjective thing though.

Everything with round based battle mechanics.

Pokemon. I had a blast playing Emerald, but starting leaf green directly after, I lost all interest in the series. It just felt like being punished to have to start from 0 again and maybe Emerald is just a better game. I'd like to give it a try... if you'd let me play it on my phone or pc, Nintendo! old woman yells at cloud

Indirectly pokemon go for me lol, played it a bit but meh
By the 4th gen, things started to get stale. I think most of the love was gone by that point.
Instead of going forward, I recommend looking back. Try playing Pokemon Crystal on an emulator. I started recently and it's eye-opening how enjoyable it is.
- Stale? Yes. But I would recommend bw/bw2, hgss, pla, and usum before crystal
You might try the custom made roms. I personally loved the fire red version that someone modded to make it so you couldn't just grind out levels to win. The gym bosses used strategies and had tms that countered the easy type bonuses.

Borderlands, I always found the art style a bit off-putting.

Borderlands is a lot of wasted potential.
I blame the crack-addled, reddit-tier presentation more than anything else.
It's like watching a standup comedian who is secretly begging for their audience to laugh.
its mindless shoot shit get loot fun. if that aint your bag you just wont get much out of it. handsome jack is hilarious though
- The first time I played Borderlands 1, I didn’t understand what it was going for and I didn’t like it. I picked it up years later and blasted through the entire series. It was a riot! I’m older, so all of the stupid references are fucking hilarious to me like the ninja turtles, Star Wars, Frankenstein, Godzilla, Lord of the Rings, Moby Dick, etc.

Animal Crossing.

The thought of it disgusts me. Don't know exactly why.

Fascinating. Do you feel the same way about Stardew Valley, My Time At Portia, Palia etc?
- As someone who put a lot of hours into both, I don't see the comparison between Stardew and Animal Crossing.
  Not meant to be an aggro response. I just think the depth of each game is wildly different.
- I know nothing about Stardew Valley aside from its name, and I've never heard of the other two. I can't say I have an opinion about them
Same, but mostly as a joke. To me, i like to joke that it's a perfect "non-game."
I can still recognize why others like it, though.

I really wanted to like Baldur's Gate 3. I didn't play the prior games in the series, but I know a bunch of people who brim with excitement about it.

I've not really been involved in DnD in any form. I played the original Warcraft RTS as a kid, I've read everything from Tolkien, and I love some of the Elder Scrolls games, but that's about it. I'd always got the impression that a lot of it was a bit hammy and amateur on the writing side, but I assumed BG3 would buck the trend.

...I just didn't vibe with it at all. I found the combat exasperating, I didn't mesh with the character motivations, and I failed to really get immersed. Maybe I really needed more backstory than a couple of lore lessons over beers.

It's obviously a great game, but it was such a miss for me, and I wish that weren't the case.

I'd watch a story recap for the first game, then play all of them after that up until black flag. Origins/odyssey/valhalla are good if you are into massive open worlds that can get pretty repetitive and have about a billion side quests and stealth doesn't matter nearly as much unless specifically required for some rare quests. I love them, but the Ezio trilogy was peak AC imho.

All of them! GTA.... I know 1 game series

I liked GTA 2. 3D ruined everything.
Hmm, I really liked most of the GTA series.
So much fun driving around and shooting stuff up. Great humor as well.
Even better with nice graphics and lighting effects.
Just wow, GTA but you are actually in a 3D city.
Vice City had a great vibe and colorful world.
S.A. huge world (felt like it at the time) and a great radio soundtrack. So much to see and do.
Depressing, slow and mostly a chore.. Didn't like this one.
Alive, funny and beatiful open world. Really great if you skip multiplayer and the later milking of the franchise.
We'll see...
The Lazlo character was also great on the radio show.. He was kind of the voice of reason until they completely ruined him with an apprarance as sleazebag on GTA V.
- Vice City had a great vibe and colorful world.
  Vice city is my personal favorite, maybe just because of the helicopter, but the feeling of its setting was sick. The whole mobster schtick really worked, while the later games all felt sort of forced with their criminality.
  SA and its multiplayer mods were so freaking cool, though.

idk about popular series but as an rpg enjoyer i got around 15 hours into clair obscur and bounced off.

Don't hear that take very often. Almost everyone is too busy glazing it. I feel that way about Sea of Stars.
What didn't work for you in Clair Obscur?
- the act 1 finale twist was painfully telegraphed and i just wasn't feeling the new guy in act 2.
  what got me to drop the game though was doing one of those extremely vertical platforming challenges and falling off on the very last jump. twice in a row. i know there's only cosmetics for finishing it but the platforming was so aggressively shitty that the prospect of having to do any more of it was enough to just move on.

Darksiders. Shit is ass.

Really? Which one(s) did you play?
The first 2 are actually great games, and we're especially fortunate to even have the 2nd one considering it's insane budget.
I haven't played 3, but it looked like it tried to do things differently and that didn't work.
- 3 felt so completely different. 2 was my favorite, and I grew to like 3. I can completely understand someone trying to play the original and not liking it. It feels horribly dated now. I also couldn't really get through the fourth.
I don't know that it's that bad, but yeah, I couldn't get into it either.
Agreed. I got about halfway through the first one before I quit
- Do you like God of War and/or The Legend of Zelda?

All first person shooters. I grew up with original wolfenstien, doom, rise of the triad, unreal tournament, quake... Modding each was pretty popular.

Now all fps feel like mods of those games.

UT2k4 was awesome.

I think I'm past being mystified by there being a market for stupid, terrible games. I used to find it confusing but the answer for so many confusing things in life is just 'idiots exist.'

Persona

I don't dislike the series, per se, I literally just find the number of games with similar titles confusing. I have no idea what's what.

I think I would have loved Persona if it wasn't a turn-based RPG. I like the artstyle, and I like visual novel games. I just really can't be bothered with turn-based RPGs.
Perhaps I should just watch the anime adaptation.
- It would be glorious if the next Persona game had action-combat.

Horizon series. Retried multiple times on horizon zero dawn, probably got close to 15 hours and just didn't care for the story. Gameplay was what kept me playing but after a while, I didn't feel compelled to continue if I had no interest in anything else that was happening. Heard Forbidden West is better but I couldn't care less

It looks good, but I honestly don't care for it because of the protagonist.
I'm old school.
You have to treat Horizon like a mystery and you’re a detective. I had a hard time getting into it and then I started to try and give a shit about why the world is the way it is and really listening to the logs I found. I finally got very invested and beat both games and loved them.
It won’t be for everybody though. I definitely wouldn’t play Forbidden West without knowing the first game’s story.

Expedition is the most prominent: I really fail to see anything good in that game. I stopped playing after the 3-4th enemy on the island, so I might miss the plot, but the game did everything to halt me from being interested in that plot if there is one.

How so? I havent played yet but have been considering it
- Just try a torrent version before buying. Rather unusual game. Many people love it. I really dislike it. Make your own opinion before paying money.