- Joined
- Apr 22, 2025
- Messages
- 2,076
They started with Rise of the Ronin, and I honestly didn't care because they can experiment all they want if they make new IPs, but then they started churning out sequels for their existing IPs like NIOH and Wo Long and making them open worlds and I can confidently tell you that they've done nothing but make these games worse.
The collectathon like checklist exploration they had in their level-based games was already bad enough in my view, what with you missing one or two things in a level and having to backtrack through all of it just to find it (and you had to do this if you wanted to play optimally, which you needed to do because these games are hard). Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty was especially horrendous here, since on every NG+ you had to find this shit all over again. But with their open worlds, this problem has just been exasperated.
Worst of all, the enemy density is down and you're spending more time exploring than fighting. I don't know who the hell buys these maso-core action games for the sake of exploring the levels, but I certainly don't and I don't think many people do either. The size of the open world also makes NG+ playthroughs, one of the hallmarks of TN action games, a genuine slog. Levels were short and punchy, you could go in and out and grind out the best gear. But in the new games you have to run all around this open world, which has lost all novelty after the first playthrough, so if you don't want to get burnt out, you have to beeline it to the boss. This is a problem Elden Ring suffered from as well.
Open worlds really add nothing at all to the genre and are not fun for fans of action games. Their only purpose is to dilute the formula so that normies can play through these games and stick it to the elitists.
And they fuck up the performance as well. May the creators of open worlds be struck by lightning, and may they die one thousand deaths.
The collectathon like checklist exploration they had in their level-based games was already bad enough in my view, what with you missing one or two things in a level and having to backtrack through all of it just to find it (and you had to do this if you wanted to play optimally, which you needed to do because these games are hard). Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty was especially horrendous here, since on every NG+ you had to find this shit all over again. But with their open worlds, this problem has just been exasperated.
Worst of all, the enemy density is down and you're spending more time exploring than fighting. I don't know who the hell buys these maso-core action games for the sake of exploring the levels, but I certainly don't and I don't think many people do either. The size of the open world also makes NG+ playthroughs, one of the hallmarks of TN action games, a genuine slog. Levels were short and punchy, you could go in and out and grind out the best gear. But in the new games you have to run all around this open world, which has lost all novelty after the first playthrough, so if you don't want to get burnt out, you have to beeline it to the boss. This is a problem Elden Ring suffered from as well.
Open worlds really add nothing at all to the genre and are not fun for fans of action games. Their only purpose is to dilute the formula so that normies can play through these games and stick it to the elitists.
And they fuck up the performance as well. May the creators of open worlds be struck by lightning, and may they die one thousand deaths.
