2024 is almost over and by now. Do you have any games released this year that let you down? Either didn't click or just thought was bad?

I have 3 games that didn't click but I did finish 1 of them.

Cygni All Guns Blazing.

I'm a shmup fan, so I was excited about this. The visuals looked great, and it looked exciting. Then I got it, and it's... meh. I won't get into all the issues, but in short, it's just not well designed at all. Not to mention, the OST does not fit.

Dragon's Dogma II.

I loved the first one and looked forward to this for years. The lead-up looked so promising that they had a chance to add in all they could not with the first plus more. Sadly, when playing the game, it felt like one step forward and three steps back, not to mention the poor performance on consoles. It received some patches but it still had severe problems making it unplayable to me. I wasn't enjoying it anyway.

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth.

This game is the best of the three and not a bad game at all. I finished it but with an *. I love the franchise but what I feared about going much larger world came true. It just drags. The pacing gets thrown off. Didn't help there is some awful VA in this game and it's the weakest story in a while. I much prefer the smaller more detailed world of Kamarocho. Not saying needs to be there again but the size was perfect. I got so tired of the game halfway through. I completed FF7 Rebirth, Granblue Fantasy, and a Gears game then came back to Infinite Wealth to finish it and I only did it to see Kiryu's story, not Ichibans.

So what is yours and why? Not just a drive-by.

Idk if I'd call it a dud but Metaphor Refantazio. I still give the game an 8/10 but the first half of the game was so strong that it had a 10/10 written all over it but it really hurt itself in dungeon design and fored content that wasn't very interesting with no way to skip time and a difficulty pacing issue that persists right up til the last boss, easy, hard, easy .... super hard with no warning and out of nowhere. It drags things out that's perhaps what disappointed me the most. Still a great game though, it's not a dud just needed to be refined and they should know when to cut the fat cause padding for length is worse than padding for scope on my book.

Playing Stellar Blade and I'm like 7 hours in, again I wouldn't say dud but it's not living up to the gameplay I watched online at release. Perhaps this will change as I invest in the skill trees and this ship will turn itself around. It doesn't feel as refined, fast and fluid to play as it looks and ends up somewhere between souls and Devil May Cry which isn't a bad thing it just feels AA and while AA games can still reach a 10 for me I'm not seeing that possibility with this game so far. Hopefully things will change. 

I wanna buy Dragons Dogma 2 because of how emergent the gameplay seems and it's on sale now but yeah, I'm not expecting a winner or masterpiece so my expectations are very tempered.

Wu Kong is the game I have the most interest in from this year, if that turns out to even be slightly bland then it'll be a dud for me. Really the only one that I have high expectations of enough for it being simply good would be enough for it to be a dud for me and I can't see Astrobot disappointing at all when I get around to it.

I hate to say it but probably FF VII Rebirth. Not a dud, but...I dunno. I didn't enjoy it much with all the minigames. Everything felt like work instead of like fun. I had totally planned to platinum it, like I do almost any FF game, but I couldn't make myself do it. I might go back in and try, especially since I got a pro and its supposed to make a big difference, but I hope I can just do combat/exploration and not tedious and unfun side content.

Played a bit of Echoes Of Wisdom and am not quite feeling it so far. I will try some more, but not off to a great start.

Also the RetroRealms Halloween and Ash VS Evil Dead was disappointing. Both games are the same. Just a basic action platformer.

Mario & Luigi: Brothership…so far. Haven’t played more than a couple of hours, tho game doesn’t feel like a traditional M&L.

Dragon's Dogma 2. It felt just too low-budget for some reason. Like the game was a beta for the first half of the actual thing.

Homeworld 3 was by far my biggest letdown. 20 years in the making and was such a revolutionary series only to have its long awaited follow up be a soap opera for kids rather than the continuation of this grand epic sci fi story. Unoptimized as hell too along with other things I disliked, but such a major disappointment.

Echoes of Wisdom. Just not well designed. Started off good and there are some great concepts, but overall I would say it is meh. A few things I didn't like:

1) too many echoes, 90% of which are worthless, wouldn't be so bad except it is tedious scrolling through 90 echoes to find that one you need. Needs a filter or sort button.

2) battle system is awful, the more I think about it the more I don't like it. Zelda just sits there and watches some of the dumbest AI I have seen fight on her behalf.

3) dungeons just are not exciting. Very generic and bland, lack character.  Feels more like mess around to get something to work than an actual puzzle.

4) perform, well fps is hot garbage.  Constant dips into the low 20 fps, feels like a n64 game.  

Easily one of the worse zelda games I've played. Which is a shame because playing as zelda was long over due.  Nerfing zelda was thoughtless.

6/10

I wouldn't call it a dud, since it's still a descent game (6/10), but Echoes of Wisdom certainly falls into letdowns for me - I expected much, much more from the first original 2D Zelda in so long, along with first one starring Zelda.