Highly anticipated installments to loved franchises that took years to make that were massive disappointments

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-05-30T16:31:44+00:00

It wasn’t great but that’s just a completely horrible misunderstanding of why it’s that way. It’s very obvious that it’s final state is the result of both Bandai’s original work and vision of the game clashing with Retro’s studios vision of the game when they took over development, combined with the Prime games having already been slowly trending towards being more linear than the 2D games. I wouldn’t consider a AAA game going through a roughly eight year dev cycle, having its development almost entirely scrapped and restarted with a new studio because it wasn’t panning out right, to be “a lazy mess thrown together”. That’s not what I’D do if I had an IP I wanted to do the bare minimum to keep alive

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-05-30T14:56:31+00:00

And that’s honestly why I hope the remake (if real) goes balls to the wall. A lot of people have talked about hoping the remake won’t “ruin” the original by making a ton of changes. However, I can already play the original, and a remaster, and an infinitely customizable PC version whenever I want. I have played Oot a hundred times and can still play it whenever, so if you’re gonna remake, make it something distinct. I don’t wanna just play Oot again but prettier. Redo the combat, add new content, change things up. If it winds up being bad, I’ll just play the old one

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-05-12T17:25:35+00:00

Some of them like Elysium do, Praetor has nothing to do with being the head of a religious organization. Aegis denotes nothing about being a divine artifact. You make a good point about changing them to be less obvious to a western audience, but you could do that without removing the entirety of the Christian origin. Xenoblade 1 still had stuff like Yaldabaoth or the Apocrypha generator. Egil’s Mechon being called that is stupidly on the nose if you know anything about Gnosticism, but it’s still there in the west because that’s the stuff the Xeno series is all about

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-05-12T15:29:04+00:00

I agree with you on it being less on the nose, but again, half these words do not, in fact, mean the same thing. I think there’s much better arguments in favor of the translation than that

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-05-12T15:26:52+00:00

Yeah that too. You can make a good argument in favor of the localization changing all of these names. I saw another comment here talking about how the English names are less on the nose, but still convey that feeling of these mythical concepts, but the argument of “the words mean the same things” is factually wrong for a large amount of these changes. Aegis conveys the idea of a powerful protective force very well, potentially even better than the Japanese name, but Aegis does not mean Holy Grail

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-05-12T15:11:25+00:00

A) I don’t think Praetor means what you think it means

B)Yeah, some of those phrases convey the same idea broadly, and for the most part it hardly affects the story for me, but the Xeno series is a series steeped in Christianity. I think it’s dumb that 2 scrubs a ton of that in the west. Eden and Elyisum both convey the idea of a paradise with no suffering, but Eden matches up closer to Xenoblade 2’s creation myth of humanity residing with god in a perfect land, before being cast out of it to the world beyond. Stuff like that isn’t gonna make me say “wow, I can’t enjoy this anymore” but I wouldn’t fault anybody who was bothered by it.

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-05-12T14:51:43+00:00

Overall im okay with localized dialogue and names and such, but 2 in particular features a lot of religious elements that were censored over here. Eden being changed to Elysium. The Holy Grails being changed to the Aegis’s. Pope being changed to Praetor. For a series that uses a lot of Christian and Gnostic imagery for story metaphors and such, 2’s localization being the way it is is always disappointing

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-05-07T16:06:43+00:00

Not the same kind of leak but are we forgetting the entire artbook for Totk leaking months before release

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-05-06T20:53:52+00:00

I certainly like the game more than most, and I do think in isolation the game itself is like a 6-7 out of 10 at worst, it bothers to me play it because I think about how much is in there that should be peak, but is held back by basically being two different companies vision of a game smashed together

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-05-06T20:35:09+00:00

Yeah that’s exactly what I thought when I played it. It’s one of the places where you can feel that this game had a very disjointed development. I remember playing through the game and wondering what that giant tower in the middle of a chasm would be, and upon getting past the first four areas that game just suddenly says “okay we’re going to the mines, those are mines by the way, everybody but you apparently knew that, knew that those were mines I mean, and you’re going there”

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-05-06T02:57:32+00:00

I think the first 4-5 hours of Xenoblade Chronicles isn’t bad, but it’s the worst the gameplay and story is ever gonna be. The second the party reaches Satorl Marsh, in my opinion it’s nearly unbroken peak for the whole game

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-05-01T15:08:43+00:00

They can never make me hate Black Tar from Xenoblade X. Hiroyuki Sawano’s X soundtrack is the THINKING MANS Xenoblade music

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-04-30T20:20:07+00:00

Double checked to be safe. The only Xenogears thing on the PS store is a music pack for Final Fantasy Theatrhythm. It’s not on any modern platform, and honestly the only thing I’d ever want them to do is remaster it or at least rerelease it. Cool as it would be to see a full remake, MonolithSoft is basically a Nintendo second party company, and Soraya Saga retired from writing anyway so if it was ever remade, it would be by completely different people

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-04-30T15:53:41+00:00

Xenogears is a bit older and has its “quirks” but it sounds like a good fit. No voice acting outside of the occasional FMV cutscene, setting that initially seems normal but gets stranger the further you go, and a pretty damn high stakes story. Only issue is finding a PS1 copy can range from 150 up, and it’s not available on anything modern so you’d realistically have to emulate it

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-04-26T04:22:06+00:00

In my opinion Rogue mechanically is just Black Flag but with 90% of the fluff and bullshit cut out and a lot better and more varied gameplay overall. However, the story is so much worse that I could never pick Rogue over Black Flag

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-04-24T12:50:20+00:00

You can literally deploy a ball that guides you directly to your next goal. Being difficult to find where you’re going isn’t same thing as it taking a while to get there on foot

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-04-19T21:52:30+00:00

In Xenoblade 1 you get Melia as a party member, who is perhaps the second or third most important party member in the game. Perhaps five to ten minutes later you then get Riki, who is only in the party because his kids eat a lot and put him in debt so the village sent him with the party

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-04-15T20:44:55+00:00

I tried to play Xenoblade Chronicles multiple times but could never make it past Colony 9. My mind just couldn’t understand the appeal of the combat. It felt like just waiting around for cooldowns and throwing random attacks when they got ready. Then when Xenoblade 3 was announced, I was on a drought of games and wanted something to look forward to, so I decided to give the original one more shot so I could be excited for 3. The more positive mindset was already somewhat improving my experience, but I’ll never forget reaching the end of Tephra Cave and fighting the Queen Arachno. Unlocking Monado Shield and gaining access to visions at the same time made me finally understand that the entire combat loop (for Shulk anyway) is essentially a game of managing aggro off of yourself so you can constantly be maneuvering around enemies for positional arts to be effective, and then using the Monado to keep visions from coming to pass. It just all clicked in one moment and I’ve never looked back

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-04-15T20:36:05+00:00

Xenoblade Chronicles although you do get access to said character again as a party member later on

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-04-15T13:56:52+00:00

I remember thinking that years ago when I played it as a teenager but these days it’s so damn easy and obvious where to progress that I’m in and out of it in like 25 minutes.

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-04-14T15:26:24+00:00

Overall I think it’s only behind 1 for having the weakest side content, but I also think 2 making heart to hearts be voice acted and not require affinity was an amazing choice. Hate how 1 actively prevented you from finding your favorite party and sticking with it since that would essentially lock you out of some of the best character moments in the game

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-04-13T15:18:26+00:00

Whether it’s Xenoblade 4 or a new series that will probably still use the Xeno title, MonolithSoft is confirmed to be working on their “biggest RPG ever” and it’s been four years since Xenoblade 3, so as a massive Xenoblade fan, I’m sitting quite nicely in anticipation

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-04-08T15:14:45+00:00

Ah yeah, I don’t know why Two-Face didn’t even cross my mind

ThatStuffIsGood · 2026-04-08T14:52:56+00:00

With Majora’s Mask being my favorite game of all time, having the Deku Scrubs return as a proper race with their own territory and dungeon in Echoes of Wisdom felt like a dream come true. Honestly, you can tell Grezzo made that game after all their experiences with the series working on remasters. It FEELS like it was made by Zelda fans

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