FFTA is great but a hidden gem, I don't think it counts. It's weird though because I have never met anyone who has played all lf FFT, FFTA, and FFTA2, but I know a lot of people who love either FFT or FFTA

I’ve just learned about it right now. I loved it but I thought that it was a skill issue, I’m not a great player overall.

I've been playing the early access for it a fair bit and I think it's gonna polish up really nicely

It's a good game. Just not as good as the first two, that's all. Many attributed it to the console release dumbing down the mechanics.

But, oh man, The Shalebridge Cradle is so awesome even if the rest of the games sucked so much as to be unplayable, that mission alone could redeem it.

At the time my parents were away on holiday or something. So I dragged my PC and awesome sound system upstairs and hooked them up to the big TV, ironically getting closer to the console experience. Darkening the whole room and getting immersed in the game was so awesome. And the Cradle scared the everliving shit out of me.

Good times.

Funnily enough, I really didn't like FFT. The only thing I could get behind was the story. However, I'm planning on giving the remaster another shot.

Same, as a kid i had no idea if the controversy to and was still waiting on a sequel for some time after. I thought it was a novel idea and it was my first proper foray into Norse mythology.

Xeen was what I thought of our first "proper" game. So many good memories. I played it like it's real time, spamming the attack button without any strategy.

Still play it every so often. And thanks to ScummVM I could play it on a toaster if I wanted to.

I've played them all! Although, I haven't finished all of them. I'm planning on fixing that with the FFT remaster, however, I had to drop the original release.

Personally, it goes FFTA > FFTA2 > FFT. I don't think I've ever met someone who likes FFTA2 the most.

It has literally been about 20 years since I played. I can't say I really remember which part you're talking about. I just remember about halfway/three-quarter into the game things get fucking weird.

I'm in the same block built boat as you. I always vehemently defend this game since finding out the general gaming public don't like it.

There were so many issues

• Final boss was lame and level leading to it was slow and tedious completely killing the momentum
• Camera system was wonky
• Rocket nozzle barely got any play
• Jet nozzle was too difficult to control to be useful outside of specific racing segments
• Pachinko machine physics were fucked
• The lily pad level was unfairly difficult
• There was no way to track which blue coins you found. Like even a grey coin marker for already collected coins would have been super helpful.
• The reward for getting blue coins was pathetic
• Yoshi was criminally underutilized. The whole juice mechanic was used like twice.

The whole thing just felt rushed. Like there was another third of the game that they didn’t get to make.

For me it was the original Modern Warfare 3. I played that campaign a lot as a kid, but didn't have internet back then so no multiplayer and no one to discuss the game with. The story is dumbed down compared to the first two games but it was pure fun and cinematic, every mission was memorable to me.

Like I didn't even know what the stock exchange was back then, I just thought it was awesome traveling through city ruins fighting invaders.

Also the survival mode was super fun too.

it was actually way ahead of its time, for a game. One small bug (the workaround for which was in the manual) ruined its reputation. But I genuinely think it was a good game.

Also written in 6 weeks by one guy. Freaking impressive

Dying Light 2. It was definitely different than the first game, but I enjoyed many of the changes. My buddies and I spent a lot of time just running around killing Volatiles, and having a blast while doing so. But apparently a lot of the changes were deeply unpopular with fans of the first game.

I hated the game at first too. But I actually gave it a replay a while back and ended up loving it. Ironically, my love of FFX was holding me back from enjoying XII. Once I replayed it with a more open mind, I thoroughly enjoyed it. There are certain things I dislike about it, sure. But that’s true for any Final Fantasy game.

I think replaying it when I was older also helped. I didn’t have the patience for the politicking when I played it the first time. And the game’s story is very political. So I think the added maturity meant I was able to appreciate the story more.

I played the first game and thought it was okay but not great. What were the changes? Maybe they'll suit me since I'm not so attached to the original.

The parkour handled slightly differently, and that angered a lot of the fans from the first game. They also drastically changed the way the grapple worked. The combat was also slightly different, (critics would say simplified) so it tended to be more straightforward.

The first game had you doing a lot of jumping and diving just to survive, whereas the second game gave you some more survival options to avoid getting trapped by mobs. You could absolutely still do the jumping and diving if you wanted, but it wasn’t as critical anymore.

It also had some big gameplay departures from 1 & 2. I'm not talking about being an FPS (although no longer having to worry about accuracy was pretty significant) but the fact that putting on different clothing magically made you more intelligent, and that it was a lot easier to do everything.
In FO3 you can pick all the locks, hack all the computers, pass all the conversation checks, and take on hordes of enemies all by yourself. In FO1+2 you had to pick the couple of things you were good at and not be able to do the other things until your next run.

And inversely, games like RuneScape that changed to be more casual, which pissed off all of the tryhard players.

There's a ROM hack that let's you swap characters with a button press rather than trek through the level to find a swap barrel and then trek back again, and do that again and again for coins, bananas, etc.

Small change that has a big impact on the replayability.

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4961/