r/videogames • u/IdleMan69 • 20h ago
Discussion / Question Plague Tale: most unfun games I've ever played
both Innocence & Requiem, for similar & also different reasons. Resonance is excluded from this as I haven't played it yet.
Gameplay: Innocence suffered from extreme linearity & lack of freedom, which made its gameplay an unfun chore at times. This was partially remedied in Requiem by the larger levels & more options to tackle enemies, though it's still not saying much because the the first game set the bar very low. Requiem's gameplay is still lackluster by today's standard with its weak AI, repetitive limited gameplay loop & the not-so-responsive controls.
Difficulty: Both games are ridiculously easy 95% of the times, but in the other 5% they suddenly become unforgiving if you don't do certain things in a very specific sequence. This is often worsened by the questionable placement of autosaves, forcing you to go through scripted dialogues or waiting scenes etc. every single time you fail.
Story: the core of the story is basically Last of Us but with a more interesting concept; the mysterious plague. Sadly both games fail to make anything interesting out of it or answer any important questions by the end, like the origins & the "How" of the plague.
Characters: Amicia & Hugo are basically Joel & Ellie, the protector & the child, journeying through the country, hoping for a cure. but they don't have even a fraction of the maturity of the writing of Last of Us.
Emotions: TLoU did so much with so little, emotional scenes were few but always moving & memorable, characters rarely cried but when they did, you'd feel it & remember it. in Plague Tale, however, the characters are constantly yelling at your face their emotions of fear & sadness & yet it still fails to get any emotion out of me because the characters were never interesting in the first place.
Dialogue: Amicia's incessant monolgues about her fears & worries, her & Lucas constantly panicking whenever they're together, & Hugo always complaining about being scared or things being his fault... it's too much & too annoying. I became hopeful every time an adult character joined their company, hoping they might make things a little more mature & bearable, but they just continued in the same path of weak childish lines as the children.
a personal subjective complaint of mine is Hugo's voice, it's so screechy & annoying, it's honestly like nails on a chalkboard.
All of this got way more annoying in Requiem because for some reason they got rid of their authentic french accents for british, & made them talk x10 times more, as if they were scared of having a moment of silence in their game. There is so much pointless banter & lame jokes that honestly made me consider muting the dialogue audio at times.
Graphics: the only strength of Plague Tale games, incredible graphics with impressive performance. There were so many scenes in Requiem when there were hundreds of thousands of rats in the screen, with decent quality & moving fast too, & yet there was never any framerate drop, it was pretty impressive.
Overall I found these games very boring & tiring to play, rarely finding myself actually having fun in them. I'm never touching them again, though I might try Resonance at some point since it doesn't have Hugo & Amicia, which alone is a big upside lol. 3/10 do Not recommend.
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u/Dramatic_Bass7773 20h ago
brother, prepare to be downvoted, apparently I just said I don't like the combat in the game once, especially the last boss fight in innocence and people downvoted me to hell.
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u/IdleMan69 20h ago
They do seem overrated to me, for some reason. Part of the reason I started playing them in the first place was all the praise I'd heard about them, but I didn't see any of it myself 🤷♂️
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u/xenocea 20h ago
I enjoyed both games for what they are having completed it. Great story, excellent music, tightly structured, and the linearity actually works in it's favor. It's fine if you don't like them. It's not for everybody.
Resonance you may like. It's much more fluid and action oriented with the combats, and the sense of pace is quicker. In some ways it's more of a refined Assassins Creed without the open world.
I haven't finished it yet, but enjoying what I played so far.
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u/PirateCompetitive931 5h ago
Movie games. "Narrative" experiences lol. They should just make movies
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u/M4rshmall0wMan 20h ago
Agree with most your points. I found it okay, though the story was getting kinda grating. It was way too maudlin, and even years later Hugo shouting "Amicia!" is still permanently etched into my brain.
I played Last of Us a year later and realized that Plague Tale ripped off most of its gameplay design from that game. I had no desire to return.
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u/sludgezone 20h ago
I tried the first and thought the graphics were great and that was about it. Same shit as Hellblade, The Order 1886, Ryse, playable movies and barely any gameplay.
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u/Somasonic 19h ago
Yep these are story first games. I thought they were both amazing but I can see why they’re not for everyone.
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u/Spicy_Hobknob 20h ago
I'm almost convinced these type of narrative driven games are for people who don't have the attention span to sit down and watch a movie.
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u/mudratdetector89 20h ago
It's longer than a movie and interactive. What are you even talking about.
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u/Spicy_Hobknob 20h ago
They don't require much of your attention to actually play because of how linear and shallow they are, and they often slow down the gameplay with forced walking sections, requiring even less attention while you play them. It's such carrot-on-a-stick design. The Last of Us is a chore to replay because all of its cheap tricks no longer work.
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u/JusaPikachu 20h ago edited 16h ago
I really enjoyed Innocence for what it was but I could feel so many limitations with its scale & budget while playing the game, especially when it came to the simplicity of combat. The characters were solid though & the concepts of how the rats shaped the world were great.
Requiem was a near masterpiece for me however. I fucking adored it. The combat & gameplay were up to par, even if not masterful in & of itself it was creative & good, while the scale of everything was pretty breathtaking & I felt that the game was able to fully realize the idea of the series.
My favorite aspect of both games, that was perfected in Requiem, was giving us picturesque utopias & then decimating them in ways that we got to experience as the player. Watching a beautiful countryside or an idyllic island devolve & disintegrate into chaos & ruin was truly sublime & something that endeared me to both games forever. No game has done something like that nearly as well. & those damn rats as both a setting & a gameplay system was special.