What's a show/movie/game that's really well-written and well-beloved that you really don't enjoy?
For me, 2 things come to mind; Berserk & the Long Walk
Berserk may sound controversial, but I just didn't have a good time watching the 90's anime. I felt angry while watching it. I just didn't like the characters for how dickish they were (especially Guts & Casica) and the setting was too miserable for me. And some of you may go, "but the comic is 10x better" (I know it's manga, I'm just calling a comic to piss of people) I also just don't like dark fantasy in general, since they're edgy, pretentious, and worst of all... they're ugly. There's a reason why I never played the Dark Souls games, outside of the difficulty
The Long Walk movie is really well made movie with amazing acting. But man was it a miserable movie to go through. Seeing all those kids getting shot by soldiers for being slower was painful to watch.
Side note: there's a lot of critically acclaimed stuff I like (Cowboy Bebop & the Dark Knight). It's just that entertainment is so subjective that it's not mutually exclusive to writing.
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Breaking Bad. Well, the episodes I watched.
Every character sucks unrepentantly and I can't watch it. Same issue with Boardwalk Empire, there are zero good and likeable characters in the entire show, everybody is awful.
Fair. I loved breaking bad mostly because of how well it balanced crime and personal life of Walter white. But he's a horrible person, so are most characters, cause it's a crime thriller. It's just I could overlook that part cause story kept me engaged enough.
I think I just watched two or three episodes and just wanted them to catch one small break but it was just downward spiral which kind of made me lose interest. If they don't have any success then what's that point of them losing.
I'm sure it changes later but I didn't have it in me. I understand that it's a masterful series.
There are some successes, but they almost always immediately become overshadowed by some new, larger problem. While I personally enjoyed how obstacles were overcome, it is exhausting to watch a constant downward spiral.
Great characters and some interesting plotlines, but the whole thing revolving around drugs and their distribution has been a great put off. I found Better Call Saul more enjoyable for that same reason.
Yup. That show sits in an odd place for me where it's genuinely interesting but it's too intense.
Game of Thrones. There needs to be something positive, even just a sliver.
Same. GoT always struck me as scripted misery porn
Very apt description
Lord of the rings. I watched the whole trilogy of movies, and I tried to read the Hobbit. They're all so boring, I don't get the appeal.
The Hobbit book isn't great. The Lord of the rings books are great. They're just written differently.
I'm glad I saw them in theaters. I'm glad they contributed what they did. They're cool every many years. But holy fuck those are long movies. And people always want to watch the super extended directors cut versions that are like 4 hours each. One time we watched the first one after eating brownies. What a horrible mistake. That felt like literal days. I couldn't believe how slow time was passing, and then when we were done, it was only the first movie.
The Witcher games. Everyone tells me how great they are and I have tried playing them, but it just feels like a chore and it never hooks me.
Yeah, I didn’t like the gameplay.
Watching quest highlights on YouTube is a good way to enjoy it, though.
TW2's combat and overall gameplay I could stomach and even enjoy, but for some reason I could never do the same with TW3 (and RDD too, they just felt so slow). Which is a pity cause it looks like a great game if I could just get over its, well, gameplay. 🙃
Liked Witcher 3, but absolutely hated Gwent that most people seem to love. What do you mean players use their own cards? How could this be even remotely balanced? I ended up simply running out of cards three times I tried to play.
(The sentiment applies to IRL card-hoarding games)
Not a huge fan of Gwent myself, but that's basically the point of the game. The path to victory is using your cards carefully, and to collect more from around the world to have good ones so you need to play fewer to win a round.
Also, I found that the best way to win is to intentionally lose a round while making the opponent waste as many cards as possible on that.
While each one of those games climbed mountains mechanically, they started in daggerfall and ended in Morrowind, with less charm.
Dr. Who
All of them. I have tried.
I love Dr who, but I don't ever recommend it because it's a very... specific taste...
Tweed. The campy British, passionate and dramatic but goofy and grinning with unabashed British culture. I found no easier way to describe the taste and style than just calling it tweed.
It’s kind of silly.
I watched some. A lot? I don’t regret it, but I came away with the feeling I got dropping Supernatural: I’m not nearly done, yet I watched too much already.
If you watched through peter capaldi's entire run and didn't like it, you're free from ever needing to try it again. Some of those episodes were masterpiece magnum opuses, built, layer by layer, as towering behemoths of interwoven , humanistic cultural lore. You cannot watch them. You just earn them. Much of doctor who is like that, especially as it gets super fucking good. I'm talking probably some of the best television that exists, maybe one in the top three tv things that exist.
And if you couldn't get there, that's okay. People have different tastes, different experiences, different enjoyments.
With doctor who, though, it's really easy to hate if you don't understand it or tolerate the British cheese.
I'm curious what you'd put as your top tv things (shows, eps, stories, whatever), and also why you didn't like doctor who.
I might’ve gotten unlucky and been fed a series of episodes that were intensely related to characters developments.
More than once the Doctor was put in a spot that seemed to require an ingenious solution, and instead he banks on reputation or contacts to asspull himself from Daleks or whoever else it is that time.
Good input. Yes doctor who is very divisive, either you like it or not.
However it's always pronounced doctor. Never Dr. Fight me, lol.
I could not get into Andor despite really wanting to.
Any specific reason? I'm curious about it as I enjoyed it enormously
I found it slow and simply rather uninteresting. I just couldn't engage with any of the characters.
I did not like Baldur's Gate 3. I have tried multiple times now and I just don't like it.
I feel that if I had more insights regarding dnd and it's spells and classes I would have a better time.
Same. Tried a few times and but the tough fights took so long I’d start getting impatient, especially when I kept losing and had to keep redoing them. People really love that game so feels like I’m missing out but I just couldn’t get into it.
Game of Thrones
Tried multiple times, couldn't get into it.
Don't remember the exact seasons but I think the first couple were a little slow/off. It picks up.
About Berserk, the comic is 10x more miserable, the show literally adapted the happiest part of the story
I tried very hard, but I did not enjoy The Outer Wilds.
For those who don't know, it is a first person exploration game over ~12 planets within a small solar system. There is a core game loop that lasts about 20 minutes wherein you can fly your ship anywhere and explore until the cycle ends.
The thing I really disliked was that you only got ~10-15 minutes of exploration before you had to restart the cycle back at home and go back to where you started. There was also a plethora of environmental hazards that were instant death, all while you had oxygen and fuel to manage. Dying would also reset the cycle so it wasn't uncommon to spend 5+ minutes getting somewhere only to die and restart a few times. It just made me frustrated.
I did complete it with the help of mods that let me teleport to the key locations. People really liked the story but it really didn't hit for me. I feel like I was born with the cilantro gene for this game because I really didn't like it.
Loved Outer Wilds, but yeah, some clever "time dilation" could be applied while exploring inside of planets or particularly complex segments or close to a goal. So many times I had to go into Ash Twin to try to finish a puzzle before the sand rises. It does help that translator pauses time though, and options let you pause conversations too.
The puzzles were the best part for me, and are undeniably good. I did do a deep dive into the settings too when I started to get frustrated and those options were key.
Opening: “Oh no, a disaster. Everyone I care about could die. I wonder how I can prevent it.”
::: spoiler Ending “Oh, I’m sorry, the disaster is unpreventable. But you can get to be the person who hits the reset button to bring about an empty world full of nothing! Hey. Did you know Starfield is about to come out??111” :::
I know!
They made an episode about that btw. The Gang Desperately Tries to Win an Award.
the later ones were total cringe. season 13+ are exactly what they joked about in the earlier seasons. thier alarming Hollywood face transformation(mar-a-lago equivalent, but hollywood style). i dont think the later seasons were well written, like the earlier seasons(the cast were the main contributors in the earlier seasons) but they gave up after 11-12. Kaitlin turning into a a karen, and ROB getting on roids and getting buff, and all the subsequent drama of him trying to sugar coat it. Rob macs, change his name recently. and his very questionable partnership with ryan reynolds, and a retired football star.
The Godfather. It insists upon itself.
Just watched it for the first time recently and while I thought it was good it had the problem a lot of male writers/directors have of writing really flat female characters. All of the women only existed for the men to have feelings about or to motivate the men by their death/suffering. Just kinda ruined the movie for me.
David Duchovney had a TV show called Californication that a lot of my friends liked and thought was funny. I didn't like it because, unlike Bojack, the "antics" of the main character was the punchline and I just thought it was very sad.
It is sad, the show ends with him going to prison as a sex offender.
The best parts of that show were the seasonal guests like Rob Lowe and Callum Keith Rennie.
The Office
Back when it was still Twitter, I posted "when does the office get funny? I've watched about 6 episodes across 3 seasons and haven't LOLed once, I just keep wondering why this show is popular"
I never got hooked on Breaking Bad. I liked it looking back but at the time I had to make myself watch it where as with actually good series I need to stop myself from binging multiple episodes a day.
Yeah I binged the first season, said "this is the best show I've ever seen but I get it and now I'm sad" and never watched again. Same deal with Better Call Saul, actually.
The Florida Project. It's a great film, but I wanted to strangle a lot of the people in the movie because they're so perfectly and realistically obnoxious. Especially the six year old. They're all great actors and I never want to see the movie ever again. Still glad I saw it once. Kinda like how I'll never rewatch The Wire, I just felt gross after.
Succession
Mulholland Drive
Kill Bill
A few months ago I bought Slay The Spire. I do love roguelikes, I do enjoy card games. I even like roguelike deck builders (balatro is fantastic).
But after a few months I can say for certain, I hate Slay The Spire. I would like it more if it was fun.
Assassin's creed. I was okayish game, till I downloaded Hades, and I completely forgot it even existed on my pc.
The first one in the series? Yeah, it’s cool for being one of the first open world games but it gets very repetitive. I quit partway through and tried AC2, and that was a big leap forward in gameplay, story, and missions. I recommend giving it a try if you liked anything about the first.
I remember loving the first game when it released. When the second came out I knew there would never be a reason to go back to the first lol. The unskippable cutscenes makes it feel like an interactive movie. It felt groundbreaking at the time though
I tried the first one (likely years after it was released) but didn't enjoy it at all
Titanic.
That's the movie where they show his disgusting face all the time, but I can't stand his ugly frontside that totally ruins this otherwise good movie.
I couldn't watch Berserk because of all the sexual violence. We are not the same.
Monty python
Final Fantasy. There's too much 😭
They aren't contiguous. If you actually want to try, preview their soundtracks and visual styles and pick based on what you like the most and just play that one.
1-5 are old af, 6 is old but the pinnacle of them, 7 8 and 9 were on newer hardware, 10 was on even newer hardware and is widely considered the last good one. 11 was an mmo, 12 was bland as fuck, 13 was less bland but the whole game was a hallway going one direction, 13 has a few spinoff/sequels, 14 is an mmo, 15 was 12 but newer and worse, and 16 is trying to be partially dark souls and is kinda boring.
Honestly, if you can put up with ps1 music and graphics, pick from 7, 8, and 9. Or just play 10 from the ps2.
And if you can't decide and only can put up with playing one, just play 7. Apparently it was the very first AAA game ever. Which is weird to think about.
FF9 will always have a place in my heart. I played it on the PS1 as a kid, on an emulator for PC as a teenager and the Steam version + Moguri Mod as an adult
Thanks for the breakdown, and suggestions. If i ever do pick it up it'll probably be 7, like you said.
My pleasure.
the latest on seemed to be connected to machine god in ff13, bhunivelze, his own creations(LINDZEI goddess) were loosely responsible for the lore of the later FF games.
supernatural i never watched it when it first came out, like only like during the end of the pandemic i was binging on the clips. S1-S5 were the best, since its by kripke. but 6-15 were just cringey because its also gay/fiction by the fans.
ISAIP after season 12, were wierd and off putting, with mac roid use and him trying to defend it for some reason as a secret knowledge only he knows,(its not a secret people in hollywood are taking peds to make them look buff), and stretching his face to look younger.
1season and 2 were a really god monster of the week hunting show. Downhill from there but still watchable
kripke was the showrunner from 1-5, not that surprising. but season 6-15 was dabbs and the other guy, and they just wrote fanfiction/gay, whatever the audience were fetishizing about the cast. 6,8,11 were decent though, but the rest were just filler, and trying to shoehorn the "jack" character in the show was very telling, having an archnephilim/nephilim was interesting plot though. the show was heavily criticize how they marginalized "pagan" gods though.
Star trek ~ it just didn't hook me for some reason
nutrek is the most terrible of trek, im too young for TOS, which i could never the hang of. kurtzman practically ruined the franchise+ paramount executives. i dont find SNW good either, something just doesnt fit right with the actors, writing, and acting.
Same here.
I hate Dark Souls 3. It was just so boring to me.
I enjoyed the exploration: you can't just run through the game since death is around every corner, which made it exiting and rarely that frustrating.
But most Bosses where just so boring. You learn them once, and your reward is that you can actually play the good part of the game again. If I look at something like Monster Hunter, learning the Monster gives you a faster clear time, which makes farming easier and is satisfying that way. Learning a boss in DS reminded me when I was about to quit geometry dash - I just feel my time has been wasted.
There are a lot of cool builds! And you will probably only play one each playthrough, because leveling unlocks a playstyle, but levels get VERY expensive (and I don't think you can undo levels), so at some point you stop experimenting and just go with what you where already playing the last 20h.
These points made it hard for me to focus on the amazing parts of the game. The atmosphere, the combat and, as mentioned, exploration.
"If you hate it so much, why bother playing through it?": after beating abyss watchers, I said to my DS Friend that I don't like this game. He said "Get Good" so I did. It's still just not a fun game (for me)
Misommar was meh. Yes, it had a new and unusual aesthetic for a horror movie, but that's about it. Cults prey on the weak and traumatized, we get it. I don't remember there being much of a plot, just weirdness and violence for sake of weirdness and violence.
But then the bigger issue is all the ignorant people who start associating flower crowns and Nordic (and even Slavic) traditions with "just like Midsommar!!". Same happened with Kazakhstan (" very naice!") and Eastern Europe (after "Hostel")
For me that was enough. I think it's fine for a movie to focus on doing one thing really well. Midsommar was memorable precisely because of it's novel aesthetic, and the world created around it.
After years of hearing about How I Met Your Mother and seeing memes and clips everywhere I finally decided to give it a go. I'm not sure I even lasted more than one episode. It's been a while but I remember it not as something that didn't click with me, but a comedy I immediately disliked
An Officer And A Gentleman. Two-hour infomercial for trad.
It's A Wonderful Life. I'm just over it.
Nier Automata. The writing is so incredibly self-defeating.
::: spoiler Entire game, all endings The opening lines of the game, paraphrased, are “Gee, I’m really tired of being brought back to life to fight an infinite war against machines. I wanna kill the guy who invented this cycle.”
Then, the core of the story centers on the tragedy of death, especially of the two immortal main characters dying a few times (once right in the intro). To punctuate how little the writer is reading his own script, the ending is about resurgently bringing the protagonists back to life AGAIN (in an empty world where everything they cared about, aside from each other, is destroyed). ::: There is, obviously, more to it than that, but character writing is what drives a story for me, and N:A seemed to be just about thrashing 2B/9S around through external events.
Could never get into Seinfeld or Fraiser.
I recently got into Curb Your Enthusiasm and it made me realize just how bad Seinfeld is. Not the show, but the guy. He's a terrible actor. The character isn't too bad, but next to the rest of the cast he stands out like a sore thumb. It's funny the show is named after him, because I think it would be better without him in it.
He's a pedophile too, just all around undeserved reputation.
and zionist, that loves to call people woke for not liking his jokes. it was pretty cringe when spoke at his daughthers graduation ceremony at dartmouth.
especially what seinfeld is for a while. his co-stars were definitely the better actors.
Ohhh, I get it about Berserk, although the "triumph" of will and goodness despite the Hellreaiser styled tragedy seen in the OG anime was enough for me to love it. Kinda traumatizing though, NGL.
From what I've heard, Breaking Bad. I've talked about it before but I cannot follow a protagonist I dislike intensely, which in this case is due to his weakness, amorality, selfishness and sociopathy. Bro, either go to a real country and get treatment or just die, it's alright, no need to become a drug kingpin and have bodies on you unless you want to use your last moments on Earth to spread mayhem and lock that Hell ending for yourself. Even in the first few episodes I was just tired of this weak, pathetic man, and I couldn't stomach it. However, my wife and many other people have said nothing but good things about the show so I understand there's probably something to it, maybe the drama is interesting, maybe it's really well acted, maybe the sets are beautiful, idk, I didn't watch much.
If a likeable main character is a requirement then it's no surprise Breaking Bad doesn't appeal to you, and that's fair.
I must point out one thing though.
You seem to assume Breaking Bad is loved by many people in spite of its flawed main character, but I'd argue that's one of the main reasons for its success. Shows that do an interesting exploration of a "villain" are not that common and, even rarer than that, Breaking Bad pulls off the rare stunt of having the main character of a multi-season series evolve and change dramatically over time.
So yeah, I get that disliking Walter White being a turn off for you, but for many that character and his story is precisely why they love the series.
Very fair and informative. Thank you for your post. 👍
i could not stand the sgu 1st season it was so boring, doomed the whole franchise. only a few episodes in the second half the season were interesting.