[General Discussion] Terrible taste in games? Guilty secrets and you

To this day I still don't understand why everyone hates on Valkyrie Profile 2. Maybe it's because I played it before getting beyond chapter 3 in VP1 (though I had a friend who's replayed VP1 a dozen times fill me in as I went along), but I thought it was a fantastic game. The combat was fun, the story was interesting, and the final boss was hilariously insane. What more could I want? Even its low points were amusing, like Hrist's Clark Kent style disguise. "Hey guys, I don't have a helmet. Totally not an evil valkyrie."

I'm also a complete fanboy for the .Hack franchise. I get why those games aren't very popular, though. Both series are flawed in plenty of ways, some fairly serious like the terrible level balance in GU where you slaughter anything 2 levels lower and can barely touch anything a few levels higher. Most people aren't willing to keep buying games in that episodic fashion, and that's reasonable. They're probably my guiltiest pleasure simply because I know most people would probably dislike them, and for good reason, yet I love playing them and have fond memories of drooling over the trailers for each game. I'm hopeful they'll put out another series soon, maybe through something like XBLA where Penny Arcade Adventures has already shown how feasible an episodic RPG can be with digital distribution.

As for games I dislike, the Metal Gear Solid series springs to mind. I played the beginning of the first MGS back when it first came out, and I hated it. Last year I picked up MGS3: Subsistence for $10 to give it another shot, and recognized that it was a good game, but I sucked horribly and still wasn't having any fun playing it.

Also, while I admittedly haven't played very much of it, what I did play of Halo seemed extremely mediocre. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't anything worth caring about either.


Rockgamer needs to own up and add Super Mario World to his post.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Hyde

I'm a sucker for the Harvest Moon series. Also, I have a soft spot for the .hack series.

Propped for having awesome taste.

Not sure why I didn't think of the Harvest Moon series, as that's one that will get some really odd glares most of the time when I mention liking it. There's really no good way to explain to the typical person why a farming sim with dating elements is so freaking addictive. Rune Factory is easier since there's combat, but if the other person hasn't played an HM game it's impossible to explain the joy of harvesting tomatoes and bringing your sheep out to graze each morning.

Not to derail the thread further, but I wanted to say that I liked both Mega Man 5 and 6. 6 and 8 are undoubtedly the weakest entries in the series, but 8 is the only one that I would call bad. Centaur Man and Blizzard Man were great in 6. I always loved Blizzard Man's ridiculous look.

How ya doing, buddy?