At first I thought maybe I hadn't died in Hollow Knight yet because that didn't sound familiar, but upon thinking about it, I definitely have. I guess it just didn't bother me. I have a pretty good mind for maps and directions which helps me in games like that. I keep wanting to go back to play more Hollow Knight but never have the time, and the Japanese is way too difficult for me to enjoy the story, so I have to play in English, which is a self-prohibition for me at the moment. I love the design choices, though, like the map. That's a game that speaks to me on many levels.
We were just talking about Shadow of War earlier, and Shadow of Mordor frustrated me. We've talked about this before, but I felt it was too easy, and that's it's own kind of frustration. Like I've played a lot of games I loved from an art/design standpoint and thought they were legitimately good, but they were just too easy and that took all the wind out of my sails. I don't need every game to be a huge challenge (I love Okami, which is very easy and was designed to be so), but when it comes to combat and stuff I often find that impossible to get past in a game that focuses on it so heavily. I heard they added difficulty levels to Shadow of War and got all excited, but opinions were so down on it for so long I never bit. Kinda hoping that after getting rid of the microtransaction BS and fixing things up a bit it'll be something I can play when I get home.
OG Witcher definitely hasn't aged well. I have a tremendous fondness for it, but going back was tough.
Back on the topic of frustration, I realized playing Rimworld lately that I often get frustrated with builder-type games. I really love them in principle, but I tend to love the first half of a game a lot more than the second. After a point it often gets difficult to get a handle on things and keep them functioning, or just to build in a way that's efficient and sensible. I tend to get frustrated when I start losing the ability to have the control I want over things (which is not the fault of those games, but a failing of my own OCD needs, I guess). I used to feel that way about the old Sim City games too. And Civilization endgames have always been my least favorite part. I generally quit a game of Civ halfway through.
So yeah, I guess that has nothing to do with those games being frustrating and everything to do with the way I approach them. I sometimes struggle with JRPGs that way too. I'll be all on fire in the beginning and then once I learn the systems pretty deeply and start getting a handle on the combat, they start to lose their spark unless the story and world are really good.
Oh, you know, I find Minecraft to be quite frustrating. There's a part of me that wants to like it, but ultimately after I spend like 10 hours in a game I start getting fed up with the rote mechanics. And having to look up crafting recipes every five minutes because it doesn't really have a good progression for that to help you look ahead. It only ever tells you what you can do RIGHT NOW, which doesn't help me know where to go from there.
