I love Super Mario RPG but when you get to the Moleville part of the map, it feels like the game hits a stalling grind. Like it is to me, the dragging part of the game. Because you got to deal with the annoying enemies and bosses there. I don’t like dealing with Booster. I don’t like Booster’s Tower.
Moleville is just okay but I don’t like reaching this part of the game. At least things pick up afterwards.
Skyrim - intro, but I just use alternate start these days to skip it
Hitman WoA - Colorado
Elden Ring - Godskin Duo, Fire Giant
Dark Souls - most of the game after O&S
Dark Souls III - Irithyll Dungeon
Sekiro - Chained Ogre, Blazing Bull
I used to get to the Shalebridge Cradle in Thief 3 and start a new run. Not because of difficulty, but because young me was scared shitless.
I love Don’t Starve [Together], but I hate fighting bosses.
License challenges on any Gran Turismo.
From the Depths: setting up the AI behavior on ships/other craft and then tweaking it to move how I want it to, and also, tweaking firing restrictions on turrets because sometimes the failsafes aren’t quite enough to prevent accidentally shooting one’s own ship. Mainly because these are things one usually does at the end of the process of building a ship, when it already looks and feels “done”.
Lost Izalith and the Bed of Chaos in Dark Souls.
Everything before acquiring the Lordvessel is some of the tightest and best game design ever seen. The whole late game has problems, but Lost Izalith is by far the worst and most noticeably rushed.
My Kingdom to know a world where DS1 finished cooking
Roguelikes are a love hate relationship.
Try shattered Pixel Dungeon (f-Droid suggested).
Valheim: I dislike the Mistlands quite a bit. The swamp is kind of a slowdown but it becomes workable once you get established, but the Mistlands I always dread because its a combination of funky mechanics that all merge together poorly. You got poor visibility in a game about exploring (and its critical to find dungeons/giant bones here), lots of lakes/pools in a game without real swimming combat mechanics, annoying enemies likes ticks and the bomber things, and they made the terrain extremely jagged and steep.
Its not the worst thing ever but if I start a new game/server, I’ll usually stop around the Mistlands.
I’ve played Valheim a lot - its one of my favorites. IMO the game kinda “jumps the shark” when you hit the Mistlands. The first few biomes are great and exciting, the meadows are serene home-building paradise, the black forest gets you into some danger, the ocean feels like a real venture into the unknown, the swamps are the spooky scary outing, the plains are the first really tougher enemies, the mountains are a good progression in gear and beautiful… a lot of fun and great homesteading, you get into farming, all of that.
Then the mistlands are mostly annoying. You have to leave your existing base, just walking is a pain, you can’t see shit, and the resource gathering, equipment, and overall vibe get a bit abstract and fantasy-oriented. Though on the first run, the atmosphere of the mist was kinda cool, and I also thought those wandering Overlord things were a cool aspect, it loses its luster on a repeat play through in a way the others don’t.
After that all the biomes seem more and more like another place to get a new round of ever more fantastical resources and kill the next boss. I still enjoy them, but I really love starting a new server with some friends and starting a new world for those first biomes.
Unmodded, the Mistlands are SO frustrating! I do find that even a mod that makes swimming suck less can be a real game-changer. The actual zone is beautiful though.
I second the Mistlands being the least enjoyable part of Valheim.
On top of the things already mentioned the terrain has a lit of elevation changes which makes fighting on a slope more of an issue and it can be easy to fall off a cliff before you make the slow falling cloak.
The whole Meat Circus last chapter of the first Psychonauts game drove me mental, but especially this part:
Yeah, such a delightful and whimsical game, and then Bam! From software gets contracted to do the end. Even with the invincibility code it’s nightmarish because of the platforming and weird checkpoints.
Factorio is awesome, but all of my planning falls apart around the time I unlock red circuits
Not exactly an unpopular opinion, but Xen and the final boss of Half-Life are a wholly unpleasant mess of muddy textures and crappy platforming.
The last episode of Quake also sucks.
Almost always, the intro/tutorial mission. Especially in some RPGs the whole “the game doesn’t get good until 30 hours in” is unacceptable.
This is why dark souls is one of my favorite franchises. Most of them have you fighting stuff in minutes. If you wanna do the zweihander, you’re basically set in 30 minutes.
Elden Ring suffers a bit by being so big, there’s a lot more chores to do to get started.
Elden Ring replays are soooooo much better with mods. Not only are there mods to make Torrent like 2x faster, some mods just lets you skip the tedium of running around the map collecting golden seeds or rebalances the DLC so it doesn’t use scadutree fragments.
Shoutout to The Convergence mod which adds a whole load of content and quality-of-life.
Chapter 1 of RDR2.
I was told that with FFXIV. "No, no, you need the first two expansions and dump money in and spend hours grinding before it gets good.’
No thanks.
but you don’t, theres a free trial that gives you all but the last 2 expansions, hundreds of hours of free play time doing whatever you want
what is “grinding” in a game where nothing is required?
you cannot “grind” ff14 there is nothing to grind
and if you are doing something like achievement farming it is willingly and not a forced grind
Fallout 4 the pre war opening and DIMA’s memories in Far Harbour. Unlike others i don’t dread Kellog’s memories i find it goes by quickly if you just run through without listening.
Dimas memories is one of the most annoying, tedious things I’ve ever experienced in a game I liked. That and the RC airplane in GTA San Andreas.
Driving the Mako in ME1
My favourite game is minecraft and if I had to pick the least enjoyable bit it’d honestly be doing anything in the nether.
The nether is great for all the stuff you get from it, but actually being there is just hours of building cobblestone bridges while you try to find anything of value, and gathering cobblestone to build bridges with… and then occasionally you get exploded and all your stuff burns in lava.
Totally agree. I do like how much progress was made to make the nether a lot more explorable than in the early days. Because people who did not play minecraft in the early nether days forget that there was nothing but soulsand, netherrack, lava and quartz. That was it.
And the entire area was barren. Couldn’t find anything useful except maybe chests in the fortresses and nether brick.
And while there is a lot more now there to do, there still needs to be more done. Like, give us a few more reasons to travel there. Like more unique items or crafting materials exclusive there.
