True Gaming

It would be Mass Effect 1 for me. Fantastic story and setting, but by the time I got around to it the gameplay felt really clunky. But, I was so sucked into the characters and universe I pushed through with the help of some gameplay mods like increasing speed so running around wouldn't be so painfully slow. It's not the most fun to play, but it is still my favorite game in the Mass Effect trilogy. Just iconic with the music and setting and such a focused storyline. Sovereign's scene is my most memorable scene in video games to this day.

Not a specific game, but I've always hated it when the difficult slider in the options just increases the health and damage of enemies. It's so disappointing and boring.

At first, I agreed with you about the blood vials in Bloodborne, but it's actually a genius mechanic. Here's why you should probably love the design of blood vials:

From a story perspective, it's amazing. You're running around killing all these horrific creatures, healing yourself with blood vials... Made from the same blood that turned all these people into monsters. It adds another level of cosmic/body horror when you realize the only thing saving you is also slowly killing you.

From a balance perspective, it's amazing at slowing you down when you're not good enough to continue just yet. Running out of blood vials and being forced to farm them actually forces you to learn the mechanics of the game. For example, you figure out a pretty good farming route where you get 6 vials before heading back to the bonfire, but you used 5 of the 6 you got. Next time you only use 4 so you can preserve those precious vials, next time 3, etc. You get better at not getting hit and using the mechanics to your advantage. It stalls your progression in the game until you take the time to learn. It's actually game design GENIUS!

Once you get good enough at the game, blood vials start stacking up in your storage and you'll quickly reach the maximum capacity, and the feeling you get seeing the number going up and up when at the start of the game you were struggling to keep the 20 vial max in your inventory is amazing! Some games show you that you're getting better by increasing a number in your character sheet, Bloodborne shows you that you're getting better by rewarding you with the security of knowing you're never going to run out vials again because of your own hard work.

It's also immensely rewarding to see how it wasn't just the levels and stats that made you better, it was your learning. Get good at Bloodborne and then try starting a brand new game, and you'll be amazed at how it's actually quite easy now.

I spent 5 calendar years modding Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri to make my SMACX AI Growth mod. I solved many things, but one totally rubbish thing caused me more rage quits over the years than all other sources combined. Probe teams can take over cities for trivial amounts of credits, compared to the value of the city and the military units in it. The original game formula is completely overpowered and broken. My mod is .txt modding only, as anyone who bought the game could originally do. I was able to mitigate the problem but not solve it. It's now down to goddamn irritating instead of absolutely infuriating. The only way to fix the mechanic short of making a totally new game from scratch, is binary modding the original game. People do that, and I have the technical skills to do it, but I studiously avoided any invitations to engage in binary modding. It took me 5 calendar years as it was to perfect my .txt mod to the degree it could be perfected. I'm done providing free stuff for the internet that way. Next gaming effort gets me a paycheck (I hope someday).

Persona 4 Golden is one of the most influential games I've played in terms of the music, characters and story, and the time in my life during which I played it. However...

The dungeon crawling is just so rote and repetitive to me. The random generation in that game is just shit, boring hallway after boring hallway, I put it on easy and just struggled to remain engaged for those portions of the game, but I would still say it's one of my favorite games of all time.

What’s wrong with Bloodbornes healing? It’s been a while since I played it, but it was just press-a-button-to-heal-a-set-amount wasn’t it? And you could only carry a set amount of healing vials on you, while any extras that were picked up are sent to storage that would auto-replenish when you went to the hunter’s dream, no?