This was a fairly easy entry to make for Volcan's Gaming Discussion. I am, unfortunately, the type of guy with whom negative feelings tend to linger, and pretty much every game on this list left a very bad taste in my mouth. I have ordered the entries of this by the ones I dislike the least - a few bad feelings but not games I'd steer others away from, to titles I just outright think were criminally bad, like 'should have been refunded just for how much this game sucked' bad.

I'm going to offend multiple people with this list, of that I am sure... But these are my top ten disliked games.


Number 1:
Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord

A bit of backstory for this entry. I spent most of my teenage years playing Mount & Blade: Warband; it was my favourite game of all time for a long time, long before I discovered XCOM. Taking place in a medieval, fictional realm called Calradia, you take on the role of a freelance adventurer, becoming a thief, a mercenary, a lord, or even a king – or, all of the above. The possibilities were all there.
So, imagine my delight when I heard a sequel was coming! After enjoying the expansion game ‘Viking Conquest’, this was the first game I was ever truly hyped for. Followed by the bitter disappointment, when I found that this game is only a slightly more polished version of its predecessor. All the same possibilities as were in the previous are here, true, but with barely any difference to the original. I purchased the game while it was still early access – already a horrible mistake.
Even as update after update came out, erasing my save files every time and forcing me to start over, I didn’t find anything that really set this game apart from the original. There were new features, like the ability to craft your own weapons – though only for yourself and your companions, but not your army, and you couldn’t forge your own armour. There were also skill trees for each skill you can use, giving some variety of choice to what you choose to master and overall, how to structure your armies, with the addition of a class such as Skirmisher.
The new features are there, but you don’t really get to do anything with them that you couldn’t do in the previous game. Or, maybe I wasn’t able to find them. I don’t know. Either way this, along with the dishonourable mention and several others on this list, are what cemented my firm stance to never… Ever buy an Early Access game on Steam ever again.

Dishonourable Mention:
Baldur’s Gate 3: Shortly before hearing about this game, I had just finished playing through Divinity: Original Sin 2 with  SilverWingCid and it was a fun RPG adventure game at the time, so imagine my delight when I heard the same makers of Divinity, Larian Studios, were bringing back Baldur’s Gate! And then they f***** it up by releasing an unfinished, barely playable game at full price. I can’t even begin to express how crushed I was that I’d let myself get hyped up, for this!
The reason I didn’t put this one on the entry was because I’m hoping it will still make a comeback, eventually, but I’m never going to forget this blatant, scummy ploy of getting their money’s worth for a game they might not ever finish, as at the time of this list it’s still in Early Access. We’ll get to more about Early Access later.


Number 2:
Phasmophobia

Alright, let’s start by chasing the elephant out of the room with this. I actually really loved this game’s concept when I first tried it out. I was iffy at first, but being able to investigate hauntings to identify the spirits and trying to survive when they get antsy, is actually quite brilliant! Something I’d never seen done before.
You identify the ghosts by looking for things like ghostly handprints on walls, chilly air, electromagnetic readings, etc. The types of things you find in the haunted house helps you identify the spirits. This relies a bit on pattern recognition, and when the ghost starts hunting things can get pretty intense! So I say good things about this game despite it being on this list.
But as we mentioned in the previous entry and will come up more on this list, f*** Early Access games, and this was another one. Many times, the game bugs out and the ghosts don’t do anything that help you identify them, and with the most recent updates before I stopped playing, they added more spirit types, without fixing this issue. On top of that, it’s extremely repetitive; it’s the same thing, every round you launch, and I just got really bored with it. Plus, I had trouble enjoying the game if I played in the daytime; there’s a reason most people only watch scary movies at night, as it helps set the mood, so even when I did play the game it went largely untouched because… Well, I work nights; there was just no time for it and I didn't enjoy it if I played in the daylight. Call me picky, but like I said, scary movies and games are better played when it's dark.
Also, as mentioned in the previous list, I kinda have a weird relationship with horror games. I enjoy watching people play them more than I enjoy them myself. See Alien: Isolation.

Honourable Mention:
Note: Not dishonourable, because I considered this game for this entry for the same reasons, but ultimately didn’t choose it because Phasmophobia was just worse overall.

Deep Rock Galactic: On the surface, a pretty interesting-looking game. You take on the role of some space-faring dwarves mining the inside of a bug-infested asteroid for precious minerals. Not a bad game concept but little more than just a novelty in the long run as I found it got repetitive really fast. Was fun for a bit, so it’s one I would not steer others away from; I know plenty of people who get more enjoyment out of it to this day. Just that my enjoyment of it was pretty short.


Number 3:
Sea of Thieves

This is going to be a long entry, so strap in. I originally had this one at Number 9, but I realized I was being unfair, because I don’t think this game is bad. The problem is me, and how I feel about games like this as a concept
Let’s start this off by making one thing clear. I despise multiplayer-only games on principle, especially player-vs-player ones that encourage people to be toxic assholes, ruining it for others, just for the sake of it – others who might be there to unwind from a stressful day. So why did I play this one? Well. Aside from the hope that this might be the exception, I was trying to expand my library of games I could enjoy alongside my friends, but ‘enjoy’ is the last thing I’d associate with this, and it really is a shame because this game has so much potential.
This was one of the few other games I know of besides Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag to give you a taste of being a high seas adventurer; a Pirate, as it were. So much potential, and they f***** it up by not giving the option to host private servers where you don’t need to constantly worry about being hunted down and attacked by other players – even Grand Theft Auto Online did this right! The game also decides for you what size of ship you get to sail in, taking that choice away from you, and the ships were far from balanced and required you to manage multiple stations yourself; you needed people to take the helm, man the cannons, watch for trouble, trim the sails and to repair any damage the ship sustained in battle, while also making sure it didn’t flood from said damage. All in all, there is a lot to do, not enough hands to do it, and everything is critical, meaning you’re putting your life in the hands of someone who just might not be up to the task.
The bigger the ship the more there was to keep track of, which by itself was taxing; the Sloop could only hold up to two players but there was enough work for four, but four players default to the Galleon which is so big it should have a crew of eight at minimum, probably even as many as twelve.
Probably the biggest thing that pissed me off was getting attacked in port – there was no safe haven anywhere. For one example, my friends and I had just come back from a very profitable venture, ready to sell off our haul. These other players sailed up and attacked us, setting our ship’s deck on fire and killing us over and over and over again. They didn’t even try to take our loot; they burned our ship and killed us and, far as I’m aware as I had rage-quit by this time; might have even left the loot there and moved on to go screw over someone else. Prime example of doing something just to be an asshole, and not even the only example I could give.
That constant fear of being attacked was always there, and while I know some people might find that enticing or adding to the excitement, I don’t. I play video games to de-stress about what people around me are doing, not to immerse myself in it, especially where I might become a target of those plots; I was enough of a target in school, thank you very much!
(Sorry, off topic).
I dealt with more than enough annoying players in Grand Theft Auto Online. At least with GTAO, you didn’t have all your effort stolen away from you when another player killed you, and that game had the smart idea of having the option for private servers to avoid those players. See the previous list for more about this one.

Honourable Mentions

Fortnite/PUBG/Apex Legends: All for the same reason as Sea of Thieves, but on a lower scale; these games are designed to be competitive, and yeah, some people are going to be annoying in a competitive game – that’s the nature of it. So, I suppose I’m just not competitive, not to mention I am exceedingly unlucky, and when it comes to finding weapons and items in these games, that is pretty much curtains from the get-go. These are why I only mention the games but don’t put them as an entry nor do I put them as dishonourable; they are not the problem, I am.
Barotrauma: Again, not a bad idea of a game; a 2D submarine exploration game taking you to one of the moons of Jupiter – a moon consisting almost entirely of water and performing deep sea missions in a hostile alien environment. Brilliant, truly, but offset by what is, to me, a clunky design and another game that depends on teamwork just like the entry for this spot. Let me just clarify, I’m not against team games like this existing, but I am not a great team player – I don’t trust easily, and a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. So, between my finding this game’s design clunky and my introverted nature, this just was not for me.

Number 4:
Star Fox Zero

Sadly the last entry we’ve had of this franchise, and it did not end on a high note. Star Fox Zero was released on the Wii-U; as much of a problem as Gex being released on the 3DO of all consoles. The Wii-U was not one of Nintendo’s best-received consoles, and this game didn’t help with that, as it was designed with the intent to be played on both your TV screen as well as the gamepad screen you used as a controller… At the same time. At first, I didn’t find this a problem as I was able to go through the entire game without using the gamepad for anything, other than maybe airlifting stuff on that one level with the Gyrocopter. But that was it.
Then I got to the final boss; once again with Andross making a comeback… And it forces you to use the gamepad screen, to see the hazards you fly into while trying to find an opening with which to attack him. Considering I had gone through most of the game without utilizing this combination, I was completely unprepared! I did eventually still manage to win but not without dying a lot first.
Sad thing is, as I mentioned, this is the last we’ve seen of Star Fox, other than three of their characters being playable in Smash Bros. and Andross and Krystal continuing to exist as Assist Trophies. I hope this is not the end of the franchise, to go the way of F-Zero and live on only so long as Smash Bros. continues. There’s still a lot of potential they could explore with the world setting.
And yes! I know the Star Fox team appears in the Wii-U version of Starlink: Battle for Atlas as well… But I really couldn’t grasp that game’s controls worth a damn, and they were only an easter egg so I don’t count it as an official release myself.

Number 5:
Undertale

Yeah, yeah; get it out of your systems. “You hate Undertale; you have no soul!” or whatever else people say now. Yeah, maybe I don’t, but I do have standards that this game failed to meet
Okay, I don’t hate Undertale – that’s why it’s not lower on this list. The concept of it is fairly interesting, of never truly being able to erase your past decisions no matter how many times you play it, at least as far as I understood it. But… This game just… Bored me. So no, I don’t hate it, but it just really was not that fun, nor did I really find the characters in it very interesting, so I couldn’t finish it.
Short entry here but, I don’t find a lot to say about this game, probably because I didn’t get all that far. I’ve heard it talked about to death by multiple people but I feel that it’s just a simple bullet hell with an interesting setup and good character depth, but if the game is not fun to play, well that’s all she wrote.

Number 6:
Octopath Traveller
You know a game is boring when you literally fall asleep playing it, which with this one, I did, multiple times. I have mixed opinions about JRPG’s as it is but I have played ones I’ve liked; Super Mario RPG a prime example (get to that on the next list) and of course, Pokémon is kind of one itself.
The concept of Octopath Traveller is to play through the stories of eight heroes, each with their own directions and paths to follow. Problem is… You need all of them to progress through the game, and you have to play through their stories… Start. To. Finish. Every part of them. You can’t just pick the ones you like and move on – it has to be all of them, and they’re all just… so MEH!
They have so little interaction with each other, it’s like they aren’t even aware of each other’s presence most of the time! I’ll admit, by the time I got to the eighth hero and tried to continue, I couldn’t even remember the story of the character I chose to start with and was just groaning and unable to even keep playing, and kept falling asleep when I tried to play after work. I have since traded in this game at Gamestop, along with the one in the mentions.
This was one of the worst purchases I made on my Nintendo Switch; props to those who like it but, there was no freaking way I was going to do that repetitive process over and over, of playing through each character’s story one after the other, least of all for the characters I didn’t like, and take away from the ones I did.

Dishonourable mention:
Trials of Mana: Growing up I got to play ‘Secret of Mana’ a few times and I thought it was engaging, though I never did manage to finish it. This one I did, and for the same reason as I put Octopath Traveller on this list… It just felt lifeless. This one had 3D character models instead of sprites, though; there was no reason whatsoever for the characters to have so little interaction as they did. Unlike many of the games on this list though, I did manage to play through this one once, but I couldn’t bring myself to give it a second playthrough after.

Number 7:
Soul Calibur IV

Yeah, here we get into the games I wholly dislike and not only disappointed me. This was, to me, the worst of the Soul Calibur games I ever played; coming off Soul Calibur III, which I mentioned as one of my loved games, I had high expectations for this game. Especially with the character creation.
It took those hopes… And executed them via Firing Squad. At the front we’ve got terrible character stories, all being exactly the same as the other – so alike these front-line troops could be clones except that every single one has been painted with the stupidest makeup just to give the illusion they aren’t all exactly the same. At the flanks, we’ve got the atrocious character customization that introduces stats to the armour pieces and makes only the stupidest-looking pieces give the stats you want.
Finally, the captain of this firing squad, your tormentor who will encourage them to miss on purpose just to cause you more pain, is the inability to select fighting styles except for those of the vanilla characters, ensuring your custom character will never feel like more than a cheap knockoff, and make you suffer through seeing that vanilla character’s mannerisms through their fighting style, mannerisms you would not give your character.
Seriously, my favourite weapon from history, by far, is the Halberd, and making Volcan with the fighting style of Seong Mina - the only character in the game that uses a polearm of any kind was just… Uncomfortable.

I’m not going into detail about that!

Number 8:
Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric

Now we get into a game that I think most people can universally agree is crap.
What can I even say about this one, besides that it’s a pile of garbage? My friend  Korban and I had this game during his time living with me, and we gave it a shot on co-op mode. What I expected myself was a game similar to Sonic Heroes, playing as a team through the usual, linear Sonic the Hedgehog level designs, racing toward the goal and utilizing each character’s skills to clear the level… The latter it kind of did… But it did nothing else right.
Besides being glitchy and dull, the characters were atrocious; making Knuckles into a complete dumbass was already bad enough, but Lyric himself was a terrible villain and Sonic, Amy and especially Tails were all ruined from how I’d come to know them. And yes, that does apply to the Sonic Boom cartoon too; like it if you do, no judging. But I couldn’t even finish the first season of it, it was so stupid.
But I digress. Perhaps a bigger crime in Rise of Lyric, even the music sucked! Even with the bad Sonic games in the past, the music was always good -even Sonic ’06 did that right! But Rise of Lyric couldn’t even pull that off, introducing us to a forgettable, dull soundtrack. I can remember almost every song from Sonic Adventure 2 from the first level to the final boss (referring to the Biolizard; Final Hazard is also the title theme which is impossible to forget) but I cannot name a single song from Rise of Lyric without looking them up. That alone is a disservice to this already struggling franchise.

Number 9:
Battlefield 2

Alright, getting into one of the first, First Person Shooter games I ever played. Let’s see if I can talk about it it without having a f****** grenade land on my head. Or four. Or twenty!
That’s all players did on this game was lob grenades everywhere. Not that there were many players to speak of – by the time I got into this game it was already on its last legs, as by this time Battlefield 3 (also crap) had already come out and most players had navigated to that, save for a few holdouts whose only strategy was just, as I mentioned, lobbing grenades!
It wasn’t even that fun to play on singleplayer or closed server either, because the AI in this game was just… Easy. Even on hard mode I really had no trouble with it, and barely finished most games because I got so bored.
Not much more to say about this dead game, so, moving on.

Dishonourable Mentions:

Call of Duty: Yeah, for a while I got into this series too, and actually liked it more than Battlefield, which is why it only gets a mention. But it’s still lands on this list in general because… They’re all the same game! Hastily developed and released with only mild discernible features from the last one. I also still blame Activision’s merger with Blizzard for intoxicating them and causing them to devolve in the cesspool of a company they are now. F*** Activision.


Number 10:
Starforge

Oh ho, thought I was done slamming Early Access games, eh? Well, my absolute hatred for that concept goes back to this freaking hell-spawned, money-stealing mess pretending to be a computer game. Probably the only title on this whole list I truly hate right down to its rotten core, and that is because the developers made this game and released on Early Access, just so people would buy it… And then never finish it; just take their money and run.
I can’t even say much about the game itself because it was so sparse! It had nothing going for it, and yet I bought it, not realizing this and it’s now a permanent fixture in my Steam Library, hanging like a bad painting on my wall - a painting that some cruel prankster bolted to said wall so thoroughly I can’t be rid of it unless I tear the whole house down. It still appears in my Steam Library, with no way to be rid of it; covering it up (leaving it uninstalled) doesn’t change the fact that it’s there ready to show itself the moment I look at my admittedly oversaturated list of uninstalled games to see if anything catches my fancy to play again, with this one always just waiting for me to notice it still sitting there as a reminderme that I got conned.
To make matters worse, this apparently wasn’t the only time the developers did this, releasing another Early Access game that now I can’t remember the name of, but with the exact same problem; they made it only slightly playable, and then vanished with the money of players who, not onto their scheme yet, purchased it. This isn’t even me just badmouthing the developers; they actually did this. It’s a fact. The fact that Steam even allows this exploitative behavior to this day by allowing Early Access games to still be produced at a price means that someone is going to find a way to do this again, to keep exploiting people for a quick buck!
This, combined with the number one and two entries on this list, are why I feel Early Access as a concept should be banned; if you are going to make a product, take responsibility for it, especially if you have made money off of it. And I say this… Because I am guilty of this too; not intentionally, but it happened nonetheless

For those who don’t know, I am an aspiring author, and I have released a book… One that I am ashamed to say was not in fact, finished, when I released it… I felt like hot garbage for this, and to this day would go back and correct this mistake if I could, but the past can’t be undone. So yeah, I took the crime of Starforge's developers quite personally as a creator myself.
That was a mistake I made, a mistake I can never erase, but the developers of Starforge? They did this on purpose, and that’s not only an affront to video game development, but to everyone else who puts hard work into creating something memorable for others to enjoy… You may not always do it right, as I didn’t with my first book, but it’s your intentions behind it that defines you as a creator.


Next list and the final for Volcan's Gaming Discussion: Top 10 Nostalgic games!