I noticed that a few games is of the type that "you had to be there" to understand the greatness of. Gems of its time or games the live of the nostalgia.
But sure there have to be game that one thought was the best ever on a first playthrough, but when you revisit you find yourself trying to like it more than you actually do. Despite all the praise you give it, the game just is not that good.
Secret of Mana
The SNES was home to a particularly high number of Genre defining RPGs. As a European many of them was games I never got to play until a lot later. Final Fantasy IV (III), Chrono Trigger, Breath of fire and Earthbound was not released in Europe for the SNES. But we did get Secret of Mana.
Secret of Mana was such a great game. Instead of the turn based battles one fought enemies in real time, swinging a sword like in Zelda, beautiful colorful graphics, music to die for and even multiplayer! Oh boy! This game was a masterpiece. Me and my brother had a blast.
Now, when I revisit it the experience is another one. The movements of the characters are not as fluid, aiming the weapon is stale, knockbacks breaks flow of gameplay and using spells via the menu pauses the game. When playing multiplayer it is very annoying when the other player casts a spell making the whole game stop. Finding out what you can walk on and what is an obstacle is harder than I remember. Even the music seem like it lost a lot of the magic. And so I realised that I don't enjoy this game nearly as much as I want to.
Conker's Bad Fur Day
This odd M-rated game with toilet humor came out late in the N64 life. Only one game had been released on a Nintendo system with an M rating, Perfect Dark from the same studio a year earlier. It was crude, cute, silly and violent and I absolutely loved it. The cutscenes made me actually laugh out load and the game had freaking voice over. I defend this game a lot. It is one of the great.
On a revisit, sure it still have fun scenes, but sadly you have to play the game in between. The controls are fine for the most part, but the third person shooter sequences have not aged well at all. And the things you do in the other parts of the game, walking around and collecting things is just kind of boring. Granted I have not played the remake on Xbox that might have upgraded a lot, but as of now I'm probably more likely to recommend checking the cutscenes out on youtube and skip playing one of my favorite games of all time.
A lot of games I loved back then hold up for me many years after they released. Zelda aLttP, Eternal Darkness, RC Pro am II, Starcraft, Chrono Trigger and many many more. But some games does not feel as great as I remember them on a revisit.
Do you have experienced some of your favorite games in recent years and questioned if you still like them?
