My Least Favorite Games of 2018

With every bit of good comes some bad, and games are no exception. For every good game that releases, there is at least one bad game released as well (that's probably an understatement, though...). However, despite the statistics, I generally don't come across many truly bad games in my own time. I mostly just play disappointing or underwhelming games. In contrast to the Arbitrary Awards, this list will be focusing on five games, new or old, that I didn't enjoy. Remember: this is not a list of strictly bad games, just ones that I didn't like.

Octopath Traveler.

You could say that I "just don't get it" or that it's not my kind of game, but keep in mind, I really enjoyed the demos for Bravely Default and Etrian Odyssey (I have yet to play the full games, but still...) and I love Child of Light and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. It's not that I'm not an RPG person at all, it's that I found Octopath Traveler to be an unpleasant and uninteresting RPG. It's too basic for its own good, and what actual "gimmicks" it has to sell itself with are hardly new or distinct features. It's lousy "HD 2D" graphics are not an innovation, and its "Boost" mechanic is just a worse "Brave" feature from the Bravely games - which is pretty comical considering that game and Octopath are made by the same company; makes me wonder why they didn't simply make another Bravely game instead of Octopath.

Yes, I realize that the game also has a weakness mechanic where enemies will be stunned for a turn if you "break" them by using a weapon or spell element that they're weak to. You know what other games have that mechanic? Every other RPG in existence. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but seriously, that's a very common mechanic - regardless of whether or not other games give you a one-turn stun and temporary defense decrease on the broken enemy.

Octopath Traveler isn't necessarily a bad game, but it's very much an uninteresting one. Nothing it does is unique or interesting; if you've played an RPG before, you've played Octopath. I will admit, though, the game has one unique aspect that other RPGs don't do, which is the ability to pick a starting protagonist and gain the rest of the party in any order. Unfortunately, that's the only bit of a compliment I can give it, as even this falls flat on its face. All this really does is change what the early segment of the game is like, what cutscenes you see first, and what order your party members join you in. It doesn't impact the story or character interactions at all. The game is just eight cliche and predicable stories in one game with no sort of meaningful interconnection.

You want an RPG with a good story and plentiful character interactions? Play Xenoblade Chronicles. You want a game with traditional JRPG gameplay with a fresh coat of paint? Play Bravely Default. You want to play an RPG with a beautiful art style? Play Child of Light. Don't play Octopath Traveler; it's not worth your time or money.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

You know what game you can say I don't "get?" Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. I held absolutely no excitement for this game when it was announce and didn't gain any interest after playing it. I don't get excited for cross-overs, so that aspect didn't hook me like it does others, and I didn't care much about any of the new characters unveiled, so there was no "Oh man, now I get to play as X in Smash" element like there was for many people when characters such as Ridley and King K. Rool were announced.

Smash Ultimate has no new modes of its own (Spirits mode is not new, it's just a fancy Event mode). Stadium modes such as Break the Targets are Classic mode exclusive. Only two of the new fighters are that interesting mechanically - Incineroar and Inkling. Most of the new clone fighters are too similar to their original counterparts - having only minor hitbox and hurtbox adjustments. Some of the changes to previous fighters tick me off. Some of the Final Smashes that desperately needed changing were left as-is. Trophies and custom movesets are both completely gone. Can you see why I think this game is a step backwards yet?

Don't get me wrong though, I'm not calling this game bad. It's just not exciting to me. If you're one of those people who love it because it has King K. Rool or Simon Belmont or whatever, that's great, but that's not me. Perhaps I'm simply comparing Smash Ultimate too much too Smash 4, which gave us such mechanically diverse and homage-heavy fighters as Shulk, Cloud, and Bayonetta, and new modes that at least tried to be compelling such as Smash Run and Trophy Rush?

Xenoblade Chronicles X.

I wanted to like X. I really did. I enjoyed Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles 2, regardless of what flaws they had. I have a friend who loves this game, so I wanted to love it too. Sadly, I think this is one of the worst first party Nintendo games on the Wii U. It's such a mess of bizarre design decisions and outright bad game design elements that I just can't enjoy it.

Battle mechanics are the dullest they've ever been in the series, with little to nothing distinguishing each character's combat styles from one another. Party members don't formally join you and sit ready at a moment's notice as the do in other games, and instead meander around the game's hub city whenever they're not in your active party. Story progress is gated behind arbitrary requirements such as map completion and side questions - which completely defeats the purpose of them being side quests. Haphazard overworld design that makes exploring unpleasant and tedious, which making getting map completion for the aforementioned arbitrary story requirement a huge chore.

Honestly, Xenoblade Chronicles X is the worst RPG I've ever played, and I've played Paper Mario: Sticker Star. With the other RPGs I dislike, I can at least say that their mechanics have some semblance of logic to them, even if they still aren't pleasant. Octopath Traveler may be sharing a list with this game, but at least Octopath's mechanics make sense. I would try to keep playing X to see if it ever gets better, but I've heard it actually gets worse as you progress because it starts removing what few pleasant aspects it to begin with, so I'm not even going to bother.

Dead Cells.

I liked Dead Cells at first, but it quickly overstayed its welcome. It's good for a bit of visceral fun, but after a while, it gets old. This is mainly due to how needlessly slow progression is and bosses being nothing more than wars of attrition that last way too long, but also thanks to how rogue some other elements of the game are.

The game controls buttery - both in the sense that it's "buttery smooth" and "slippery." It's smooth, but too smooth, as it seemingly likes to try to predict where I'm trying to go and take me there whether I actually want to go there or not. It feels great sometimes but is needlessly frustrating the rest of the time. Climbing anything like a chain or a vine completely kills the game's flow, and the mid-air jump is practically redundant as the initial jump is so terrible that you need the second jump 93% of the time.

Timed doors exist that block off areas if you're too slow to reach them, which is an odd design decision; they make me want to rush to get them, but I could probably find just as much - if not more - stuff by taking my time and searching diligently. The game is oddly split between wanting you to rush to clear things as fast as you can, yet also to go slowly and take your time looking for secrets, inspect environmental details, and to deal with enemy encounters methodically so that you don't recklessly lose precious health.

People praised Dead Cells left and right when the game initially released, but I really never saw why. It's an alright game, sure, but it's far from worthy of the praise it gets. I've heard Dead Cells called "brilliant," but to me, that implies it has unique and interesting ideas, which it simply doesn't. Honestly, I deleted the game the moment my Switch needed more download space.

Dark Souls III.

The same day I purchased Xenoblade Chronicles X I also picked up a copy of Dark Souls III. Dark Souls is a series I've tried to get into but never really clicked with. I used to hate the idea of a game that's known for being incredibly difficult, as I usually prefer fun over challenge, but Dark Souls always looked interesting and I've heard nothing but good things about the series. While Dark Souls III isn't my first Soulslike or even my first Dark Souls game, I was looking forward to playing it and seeing what it was like. Having played Dark Souls II and Bloodborne, I was hoping it would fix some of the key issues I have with those two games.

Sadly, Dark Souls III falls in all the same holes that the other games in the series do. Enemies do unreasonable amounts of damage for any kind of attack landed on the player, regardless of how much defense the player earns, making the defense stat feel completely pointless and level-ups feel much less valuable - especially considering how few and far between they can be and the fact that your money and experience points are the same currency. Environments are needlessly over-cluttered, making maneuvering around opponents difficult. In addition, enemies often have far-reaching weapons and little reeling time between attacks, making it easy to get push into a corner, between some static sets of clutter, or off of a ledge. Bosses, much like the ones in Dead Cells, are overly long wars of attrition where your attacks only do fractions of fraction of the boss's health while the boss can kill you in three hits. What's worse, Dark Souls likes to make its bosses huge, meaning that hitboxes on limbs and other such parts move around too much to reasonably maneuver around and the camera is constantly up your player character's butt.

I want to get into Dark Souls, I really do. I like the idea of a medieval-themed game in which you must learn your opponents in order to defeat them, and I enjoy playing games like Necropolis and Monster Hunter that manage to pull off the "learn your opponents" concept well, but Dark Souls games just aren't as well designed as I'd like them to be - or as people claim they are - so I find it just as impossible to enjoy as it is to finish. Dark Souls III is obviously not an exception to this, so that's why it earned its place on this list.

Image Sources:

Octopath Traveler, via Nintendo's official website: https://octopathtraveler.nintendo.com/buy/

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, via Nintendo's official website: https://smashbros.nintendo.com/buy/

Xenoblade Chronicles X, via unofficial Xenoblade wiki: http://xenoblade.wikia.com/wiki/Xenoblade_Chronicles_X

Dead Cells, via developer's official site: https://motion-twin.com/presskit/81

Dark Souls III, via unofficial Dark Souls wiki: http://darksouls.wikia.com/wiki/Dark_Souls_III