Numen: Contest of Heroes is a game that sits at about 50% recommended on steam. I beat it years ago and really enjoyed myself, but I knew it was a unique fit for me. I only say “bad” so that we have common ground, but I value that experience.
What are “bad” games you enjoy?
Xenogears/xenosaga. I liked them. Xenogears had a bad disc 2. Xenosaga had a bad episode 2. Saga also went overboard with the needlessly sexualized robots. But it was fun, the story was interesting, and by episode 3 the graphics were really good. Music was good, characters were enjoyable.
All I remember liking from episode 2 through was jr charging a religious zealot screaming “you damn bitch” while firing at her. It was such a weird scene I was laughing my ass off. Oh and the American censorship had a scene where a little girl going through a breakdown scooping blood from her mother and trying to put it back in the corpse, except there’s no blood in the US version so WTF are we supposed to think is happening here? Ep 2 was horrible.
When I am in a bad boss fight design competition and my opponent is any XenoSaga game:
How dare you!
Xenogears is a flawed masterpiece. Even disc 2 wasn’t “bad” so much as they pushed about three discs of story into it as they were not given the time and resources to do it right. From what I read, It was supposed to be a seven game series/story, but they knew they were only given a shot for one game so they picked one of the better chapter in the middle and got a bit overly ambitious.
As far as Xenosaga is considered, I am really surprised you called out episode 2 as I consider that the best one. If any could be called out, it would be ep 3 because it was supposed to be a longer series and they have to change it up to have it make any sense whatsoever. I really enjoyed episode 2, though the censorship issues you mention were hilariously bad.
Gears was great but the pacing was uneven. The story didn’t flow and progress. It surged uncomfortably. And emeralda never got an omnigear, which I’m still pissed about.
Emeralda was my favorite character, though I preferred fighting with citan. Chu chu is a fucking meme and I hate her. My step brother would just drug her up and beat on shit with her for the lols but I still hated chu chu. Billy had a delightfully dark storyline that was clearly based on the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church.
Ep 3 was a different style but wasn’t bad. Ep 1 was a good storytelling and battle style but you could tell they were still finding their way. Ep 2 was just….ugh. The into with asher being deployed was gorgeous though.