Current Events > Which game series that I have limited exposure to should I play more?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Assassins Creed
I maybe played about 30 minutes of the very first game.

Castlevania
Played and beat the original. Played part 2 as a kid, but never made it too far. Played a good bit of Super Castlevania IV, but never beat it. Never played any of the Metroidvania games.

Devil May Cry
Never played any of them. Closest to it is playing as Dante, Vergil and Trish in MvC3.

Kirby
Played and beat Kirbys Dream Land (Gameboy) and Kirbys Adventure (NES). And played as Kirby in Smash.

Metal Gear Solid
Ive beaten Twin Snakes twice, but thats it.

Resident Evil
Played a few hours of the PS1 original when it first came out. Played and beat REMake as Chris and Jill back in 2022.

Sonic
I was a SNES kid growing up, so I didnt play a ton of Sonic. Ive basically only played Sonic 1 and Sonic 2. Liked them, but never beat them. Never played a game outside of the Genesis.

Tales of
Never played any of them, but heard good things.

Tomb Raider
Played maybe 30 minutes of the original on PSP as a PlayStation Classic.

Uncharted
Never played any of them.

Resident Evil

RE 2, 3, and 4 remakes plus RE 7 and 8 are all great.

A few of these series are really awesome and personal favorites of mine. I shall only make my case for one though. Assassin's Creed. I know this board hates Ubisoft mostly but I largely enjoy a ton of stuff they make even outside AC.

As for AC, you will have plenty of options of titles which to me is a good thing. People that dislike the series will use terms like "milked" but when you enjoy something I don't think it is such a bad thing to have a mainline title every year or two. To me this is a positive factor. I don't want to wait 5+ or on the extreme end 10+ years for games in my favorite series. I like getting a game every year or two. And if you don't like the setting you can skip a title and wait for the next one.

You get a lot of varied settings throughout the series. You have varied gameplay from the old style vs the new style which started with Origins. You get tweaking and changing of some gameplay features but overall you know what to expect.

I'm fairly easy to satisfy when it comes to graphics having started on Atari. I think most everything these days looks damn good so with that said I have continually been impressed with how good AC games tend to look and I love their effort to portray an accurate city with real landmarks that tend to go above and beyond.

I don't care what anyone says I think AC games are absolutely awesome and there have been some real gems in the series. It is definitely one of my favorite modern IP's where I define modern as being in the HD era consoles.

MGS for sure. Six quality games (the one I'm omitting is TPP), with three more if you do the original two and Rising.

Then Ass Creed. People crap on it, and rightly so, but if you haven't played any of them, you should definitely pick up 1 and 2 at a minimum. 3 and 4 are also good, but the first two are really where it's at. Note that I skipped all the side games. They're worth a play if you liked the others but they're not anything standoutish in terms of gameplay. Just make sure you stop after 4 and Rogue, because Unity was garbage.

Up next, Kirby. Lots of them are skippable, honestly. If you've played Adventure, you've played most of them tbh. But the ones that are must plays IMO are Superstar/SSU, Planet Robobot and Canvas Curse.

Tales... has good highlights. I've disliked more of these than I've liked. The pacing tends to be atrocious, so I eventually gave up on the series. Though I personally do recommend Abyss and Vesperia.

Uncharted is the vidja equivalent of MCU. It's all spectacle, but it's fun spectacle. I do recommend them, but only after all of the above.

The rest, I'm not really qualified to speak on. I might have played a few titles here and there but that's it.

MGS and AC.

Kirby

Tomb Raider especially the first 5 games.

Resident Evil most are good and worth playing except 0.

Play some RE4, either original or remake.

probably RE or Tomb Raider

Of the ones you listed, I vote Castlevania.

If it's a free-for-all and we can recommend anything, then maybe give the Trails series a try?

Expected this to be between MGS & RE. Thought Castlevania would get some votes. Did not think Kirby would get this type of representation, that surprises me.

kirby and the forgotten land is good if you have switch and can get it for like 40 bucks somewhere

Easily the GBA Castlevanias

I wanted to vote Tales, but since you specifically mentioned playing only Sonic 1 and 2, I'm obligated to vote Sonic instead. Sonic 3 & Knuckles is my ultimate nostalgia game, and it holds up *so well*. At least do yourself the favor of playing that~

The_Popo posted...

Expected this to be between MGS & RE. Thought Castlevania would get some votes. Did not think Kirby would get this type of representation, that surprises me.

MGS and RE are the two I would vote for.

Go for MGS if you want cheesy, story-heavy that will make you think. Or, go for RE if you want cheesy action full of suspense.

The great thing is, both series have loads of good entries that all have different strengths, so you'll be sorted for ages.

The Twin Snakes is known to have a slightly silly style compared to the rest, so the other games will feel like they take themselves a little more seriously. But only a little - it's still got the same feel.

RE also takes itself more seriously with the more recent games (VII onwards), but prior to that they all have the B-movie vibe which is all part of the charm.

I'd suggest playing either MGS2 or RE2 Remake, depending on how you feel.

Kirby, MGS, and Castlevania.

Castlevania is very easy to get into now. The collections go on sale often, and for pretty cheap too. Almost every single one of the games in those collections are great (maybe not the Gameboy one) and hold up.

Kirby is easy as well, since most of them are playable on Switch. I think the only major missing games are the DS and 3DS games.

MGS has that newish collection. I think the only major games not in it are 4 and 5? And 5 goes on sale for very cheap on Steam often. 4 is still in PS3 limbo though. They are all good games, unless you really hate weird stories. But the games are fun, especially going for pacifist plays.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is a must play.

Metal Gear got my vote. The subsistence version of 3 is about as close to perfect as a stealth action game can be. The rest of the main franchise is excellent sans V, which still has fantastic gameplay but drops the ball on narrative. 4 is a pain to play in the modern day since I don't think it's made it off of the PS3, but the rest are all very accessible. Special shoutout to 2 for being so disturbingly prescient given that it was made before 9/11 and the internet were really things.

Castlevania and RE get my next votes, but that's based a bit more on your personal tastes. A quick note about AC, the worst that I think could be said about the early ones is they're a little generic, but only because they very much served as a template for open world action games. They're generic in the same way as Half Life 2, often imitated.

The answer is always Resident Evil.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

They're fantastic games, but only if you're a fan of that genre to begin with. As OP said the closest they'd come was in a fighting game, I think that's a bit of a hard recc.

My problem with DMC is that it's just so effin hard.

MGSV is on Steam right now for eight bucks.

reincarnator07 posted...

They're fantastic games, but only if you're a fan of that genre to begin with. As OP said the closest they'd come was in a fighting game, I think that's a bit of a hard recc.

I didnt mean that I dislike games like that. Just that Id never played a DMC game, and the closest Id come to it was by using the characters in MVC3. Almost made a similar joke about how the most Kirby Ive played has been in Smash.

The_Popo posted...

I didnt mean that I dislike games like that. Just that Id never played a DMC game, and the closest Id come to it was by using the characters in MVC3. Almost made a similar joke about how the most Kirby Ive played has been in Smash.

So apparently I need this to not have a censor bypass...

It's more that it was less of a solid recommendation than some of the others on your list. If you like those sorts of games though, there's a good reason the franchise kinda started a subgenre.

Im just happy that 100 votes into this poll, Tomb Raider finally got a vote. And two, at that. Was starting to feel bad for it.

People were speaking fondly of it in the comments as a 1B or 1C recommendation, but it was never quite a 1A pick until just recently.

Shotgunnova posted...

MGSV is on Steam right now for eight bucks.

It's not like it's bad; it just needed a lot more time in the oven. Not only was the story straight-up incomplete, as I'm sure everyone has heard, but it was also terribly balanced. You're rewarded disproportionately for playing the boring way and punished disproportionately for playing the fun way.

If demon Snake had come with some sort of stat boost or something, the game would have been way more enjoyable.

Metal Gear Solid.

PeteyParker posted...

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is a must play.

If you're going to play one Castlevania game that you haven't tried before, TC, it should be SotN.

lot of great options.

i voted devil may cry. 1, 3, 4 and 5 are all great. obviously have to start with 1. castlevania was close as well and SotN should be the one to play and if you love it(which you probably will) then play the GBA and DS metroidvanias.

uncharted is a great series as well. but are better options out there. not surprised metal gear and RE got so many votes. should play MGS2 and if you want to stick with REmake than REmake 2 was great. RE8 got a lot of praise as well but haven't played that yet. 7 was pretty great though although i never got around to finishing it.

Disappointing after all these votes AC is tied in last place with a measly 3 votes, one of which was mine. I knew people here didn't really like Ubisoft's formula but damn, it seemed liked AC usually had a little more support.

archizzy posted...

Disappointing after all these votes AC is tied in last place with a measly 3 votes, one of which was mine. I knew people here didn't really like Ubisoft's formula but damn, it seemed liked AC usually had a little more support.

Id be curious how the scoring would be if I woulda just asked people to give their 1st, 2nd and 3rd choices, and assigned them 3 points, 2 points and 1 point, respectively. A lot of the comments give multiple opinions, and AC has been mentioned several times in the comments. Of course, Id get far less feedback if it were comments-only, as opposed to the poll.

archizzy posted...

Disappointing after all these votes AC is tied in last place with a measly 3 votes, one of which was mine. I knew people here didn't really like Ubisoft's formula but damn, it seemed liked AC usually had a little more support.

AC was my second pick. One of my favorite series ever. It can't compete with MGS, though.

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

It's not like it's bad; it just needed a lot more time in the oven. Not only was the story straight-up incomplete, as I'm sure everyone has heard, but it was also terribly balanced. You're rewarded disproportionately for playing the boring way and punished disproportionately for playing the fun way.

If demon Snake had come with some sort of stat boost or something, the game would have been way more enjoyable.

Well, I mostly mention it because the gameplay kicks ass and it's currently as low as it's been (on Steam) in a long time, but yeah, it definitely has flaws. The whole "penalized for playing how you want to play" stuff can just be offset by visiting the zoo, saving refugees (?), and just changing your playstyle to some kind of compromise. For instance, I like killing enemies, but eventually just switch to beanbag shotguns or something. All of the fun, none of the bloodstains.

Shotgunnova posted...

Well, I mostly mention it because the gameplay kicks ass and it's currently as low as it's been (on Steam) in a long time, but yeah, it definitely has flaws. The whole "penalized for playing how you want to play" stuff can just be offset by visiting the zoo, saving refugees (?), and just changing your playstyle to some kind of compromise. For instance, I like killing enemies, but eventually just switch to beanbag shotguns or something. All of the fun, none of the bloodstains.

Nope, because you still have to sneak up on tanks n stuff, unless you really want to destroy your own army. Or not build it on the first place, which as I see it is the same thing.

Plus, you're not going to get those damn S ranks if you make all that noise, and that includes the tranq shotguns and tranq smgs.

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

Nope, because you still have to sneak up on tanks n stuff, unless you really want to destroy your own army. Or not build it on the first place, which as I see it is the same thing.

Plus, you're not going to get those damn S ranks if you make all that noise, and that includes the tranq shotguns and tranq smgs.

Honestly the most important factor in most S ranks is haste, which is easier when you go in guns blazing.

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

Nope, because you still have to sneak up on tanks n stuff, unless you really want to destroy your own army. Or not build it on the first place, which as I see it is the same thing.

Plus, you're not going to get those damn S ranks if you make all that noise, and that includes the tranq shotguns and tranq smgs.

Tanks can be fultoned by the time you finish the first Afghanistan block, so there's no excuse not to tackle many of those missions (like one of my faves "Backup, Back Down") with a little lateral thinking. And if that doesn't work, just develop those kickass electromagnetic mines instead of using missiles.

As for shotguns, you do know 99% of the game isn't S-rankable missions, right? Just have some fun in free roam or side ops, blowing proverbial holes in the enemy ranks, then do the normal missions correctly once you have the capital to improve your arsenal. A lot of the weapons have suppressor-supporting variants, too.

reincarnator07 posted...

Honestly the most important factor in most S ranks is haste, which is easier when you go in guns blazing.

Really? I did them all by crawling and restarting the second somebody goes HUH because I thought that was the only way.

Well, except the ones where that's actually impossible. Well, good to know a decade too late I guess, lol.

Shotgunnova posted...

Tanks can be fultoned by the time you finish the first Afghanistan block, so there's no excuse not to tackle many of those missions (like one of my faves "Backup, Back Down") with a little lateral thinking. And if that doesn't work, just develop those kickass electromagnetic mines instead of using missiles.

As for shotguns, you do know 99% of the game isn't S-rankable missions, right? Just have some fun in free roam or side ops, blowing proverbial holes in the enemy ranks, then do the normal missions correctly once you have the capital to improve your arsenal. A lot of the weapons have suppressor-supporting variants, too.

That's great if you have all the time in the world I guess.

archizzy posted...

Disappointing after all these votes AC is tied in last place with a measly 3 votes, one of which was mine. I knew people here didn't really like Ubisoft's formula but damn, it seemed liked AC usually had a little more support.

I'll vote. I loved the first one. The setting mostly. I enjoy stuff about the Crusades.

Which is a time to give a good book series recommendation. Jack Whytes Templar series. First book covers the orgins.

I voted dmc, but felt re was a better choice for most people

MGS is pretty dead at this point, but maybe they will have bloober team remake 2 if the delta remaster is successful enough >_>

I do like AC, but the level scaling in odessey killed my fun, it was too aggressive, especially with gear upgrade costs balanced to drive people to the cash shop. too expensive to keep favorite gear combinations leveled, so you got weaker as you leveled up, pissed me off especially because making a decent armor build was kinda fun

I heard they toned it down for Viking ac, but I was still leery. Heard from a few people irl that they had a lot of fun with shadows though, and iirc it doesnt do that? I might try that one out.

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

Really? I did them all by crawling and restarting the second somebody goes HUH because I thought that was the only way.

Well, except the ones where that's actually impossible. Well, good to know a decade too late I guess, lol.

That's great if you have all the time in the world I guess.

Yep. Technically, it's the score that counts and you do get a big bonus for going quiet, nonlethal and stealthy (and all three!) but you also get a big bonus for doing the missions as fast as humanly possible.