Let’s hear about some games you maybe were told were not worth your time, or had bad reviews but you managed to love regardless.
I’ll go first. I’m not embarrased to admit that I played the shit out of Elder Scrolls Blades (the easily forgettable Skyrim-esque mobile game). I had to wait for it to release on Switch which had the benifit of the shitty timers being gone by then.
Once I started to think of it as a kind of advanced ‘Swords and Sandles’ type game I was hooked.
Elex had some really rough reviews, and didn’t exactly have me chomping at the bit to try it. A while back I noticed it was included in my PS+ subscription, so I gave it a shot out of curiosity.
It’s actually pretty great. The beginning of the game is really hard (tip - get a companion ASAP, as they are substantially better than you at first), which is kind of refreshing to be honest to have a game where you’re told ‘you have lost your power and are weak’ and you actually are. But as you level up and get used to the systems, you gradually become an absolute monster on the battlefield. There’s nothing more satisfying in a game than returning to a monster that once killed you if it even looked at you, and being able to beat the crap out of it now.
I also felt it did “post apocalyptic world’ very well. Where most games of the type take the approach of making a world that looks like the world was destroyed a month before you set off on your adventure, Elex takes a different approach of showing a mixed world of areas that are well on their way to recovery, and areas where the land itself is so damaged it’s unlikely to ever recover, and a few places in between. It works, at least it did for me.
The game is not perfect by any means, there is a level of jank that can be both charming and annoying, but it’s a very solid adventure that at least dares to try to be different than the top games in its genre. Definitely worth a try for fans of RPGs, open world games, or adventure games.