Press B 242: Chard's Bottom 5

[00:00:00] You've heard the best from him, now hear the worst from him. Chardmunks Bottom 5, today on...

[00:00:26] Welcome everybody to another episode of Press B To Cancel, your favorite retro game podcast. This week we actually mean it. If you didn't tell, we... Well, wait till I get to my list. Maybe wait. Just wait. I was about to go on and say that we recorded a bunch of stuff for the holiday break, but this episode will not air during the holidays. This comes after. It's been a week. At least we're consistent. That's true, right? We're starting off...

[00:00:56] Well, maybe starting off. We're definitely taking 2025 in a consistent direction as we go forward with the podcast. This week we got some housekeeping to do. We've done... Look, we've done for various hosts on Press B, we've done a top five episode for each of us, and we've also done a bottom five, except for Sinister and Chard, because they joined a few years ago. So we want to kind of tidy that up and get that loose end tied off. And we're going to do that today with Chard's bottom five.

[00:01:22] To provide some moral support and hold that broom, it's going to be Sinister with me. Sinister, how are you doing this week? I'm doing well. How are you? Not awake enough for this episode, but that's okay. And of course, the episode, your name's in the title for this week. Chard, how are you doing this week? I'm doing okay. I'm ready to... I'm ready who's going to hold down my arms and legs while the other one beats me with said broom.

[00:01:47] Just beat you or shove it where it doesn't belong. Breath of the Wild is not going to be on your list, Chard. Really? It might have been. Yeah. All right. So... Sorry, I'm just... I'll... for the audio listeners, I'm going to throw out the end of the episode. If you're watching us on YouTube, I'm sorry, but Chard went off on a wild, wild tangent before we hit record button on some games that didn't make the cut. So I'm curious to see what is on his bottom five games.

[00:02:13] So for those who don't know, when we say bottom five, it's the opposite of a top five, right? Everybody has their personal list of favorite games. Everybody has a list of games that they don't like or are disappointed in or... ...veotally hate. So we leave it up to each host to kind of define what the bottom five means to them. So, Chard, I want you to explain when I say bottom five of Chard Monk, what does that mean to you before we get into the games?

[00:02:40] So lately, I've been able to play a lot of games that I've enjoyed playing. Previously, when I was doing a lot more retro at the time, I was just kind of rolling the dice and trying to bum rush through a bunch of stuff. Now that's not to say that this list on here are games that I've streamed or games that I've played recently or what have you. There's a game on here that I fucking adored many, many, many years ago to the point of where my roommate and I set up two TVs in the living room

[00:03:07] and would play this together every single frickin' night, night after night after night. And then they did stuff to it, to the whatever, and it is very much on my list. The proverbial finger. Basically, some of them are current, some of them are not so current. But these are games that just didn't make the cut for me in any way, shape or form.

[00:03:32] These are games that if you've been to any of my Twitch streams that you've heard me rage or vent or blow up about. I just, these things about these games, I just, I don't understand the hype. And I'm not a fan of really any of them. I've tried, they've either put me to sleep or just put me in such an angry stupor that I just, I turned off my entire PC because I was tired of playing them. Okay. So these, so these five are maybe redeemable at some point.

[00:04:02] Don't get me wrong. But as of right now, there's at least three or four on here that are completely non redeemable. They are, they are forever trash and I will never think anything different. So three or four are tactics. I got it. Yes. No, no. And we're not going to hear a balloon fight as any of these five, right? That was, that was the deal we made before we started going with recording. I got, I got the check circus. Charlie and balloon fight did not make the cuts. Thank you. Okay.

[00:04:32] They were six and seven. They just bounced right off. Yeah. They were up there, but they, they slid. They slid. It's like billboard. Nobody cares after the top five anyway. So it's fine if they're not there. All right. Well, let's start with your, your number five pick, I guess. What's your bottom number five? So the game that I was mentioning before about Lord optic and I were once roommates in Seattle for a while, and we would. Bring our big screen TVs out into the living room. We would put them side by side.

[00:04:59] We would sit down with our X boxes and we'd fire this bad boy up and we would play destiny, destiny, destiny, destiny all day, every day, every single day. We do raids. We do the glass vaults. We do all that shit. We played the hell out of destiny one. I absolutely adored that game to the point to where optic also applied for a job at bungee because it's up here and he was one interview away from nailing that. So really? That's like how much we were fucking into this shit.

[00:05:27] Um, then destiny to hit shelves. I pre-ordered the big version. I paid $109 for this fucking game. It came out. I sat down. I turned it on. I had all the fucking spare shit. I was ready to go because you know what? For the last like eight, nine months of my life was nothing but destiny. My wife knew more about destiny than she ever cared to know about destiny. How could you go wrong with a second destiny? They said it was basically going to be the same thing.

[00:05:55] This game made me hate everything bungee has ever produced. And I know, I know that there's been updates. I know that it's free to play now, except for the DLCs. I know. I know. I know. I know that they've gone back and they've changed everything. And now it's more like the old one, but you know what? You should have just fucking done that to begin with. So destiny to easily top five number five on my list. Worst game I've ever played. Most disappointing game I've ever played and was spurned.

[00:06:22] This game spurned me so bad that I stopped playing any of those styles. I was so mad. So destiny to up there. Now I've, I've played it since, since it became free. Uh, actually when they, when they made it free, uh, I, I played it. Now I want to pick a bone here with, uh, with games that have done this. Like I get that after a certain time period, after a certain run,

[00:06:48] making your game free is, is a way to get fresh blood. But at the same time, it's a little bit of a fuck you to everybody that spent $109. Yeah. On a game. Right. And I get it. I get it. Like they're not going to make any more money off of this unless they make it free and then start selling, you know, the additional packs or whatever. Right. Cosmetics. I played it when it was free.

[00:07:17] And I'll be honest with you. I played destiny one and I enjoyed it. I didn't love it as much as you did, but I enjoyed destiny one. I felt like this game was just confusing from the drop. Mm-hmm. Like you, you get dropped in, you've got your little, you know, dude that talks to you, whatever you're running along, you think it's one game and then you end up in a little like area and all of a sudden your quests are weird. I was like, okay. Okay.

[00:07:46] And I mean, basically I just treated it as well, I'll go to where the quest marker is and I'll just shoot shit. And so, yeah, I played it for a while and then I was like, and I've played this game uninstall ice. I street fighter six did I've beaten that game to be fair. Yeah. I'm sure that I probably would not have been as enthralled by this game had I'd not played it with friends.

[00:08:12] I mean, playing it with lore optic, he and I knew we, you know, I've told you guys in the past that when optic and I go and visit our fam, our, you know, respected families and they have game night, he and I are not allowed to be on a team. They will not let us be on a team because we, we know each other's signals and moves and all this other shit. And it's almost not fair that he and I, we just, we murder everybody we play against.

[00:08:39] So this was just another example of like, this is fun because he and I are playing this together and we have our own code and shit that we're doing stuff. And when they put jumping puzzles in a first person shooter, that should have been my first sign. Because there's one thing I hate more than anything is jumping puzzles. And when you put it in first person mode, you hate the world. I don't know what your problem is, why you need jumping puzzles. And if third person fine, I can see around me like Aloy or Jedi fallen order or something. Fine.

[00:09:09] Not when I tell, not when I don't have full one 60 view around my character. That's, that's ridiculous. So, well, and the, and the jumping puzzles honestly felt like filler. Yeah. Yeah. You're, you're like, I've got my, I've got my weapon. Like it's, it's, it's, it's almost a looter shooter. Almost right. You're upgrading your weapons. You're doing this. And then all of a sudden you're like, I got to go do a jumping puzzle. Great.

[00:09:35] You know, a lot of the raids had a lot of jumping puzzles you had to do. And I really liked the raid setup because it was very much that online. One person had to do one thing. Another person had to do another thing. And when you do the thing correctly, then everybody can converge on the target and attack it. And I really thought that was a really cool system that they were doing. And they still do that. I'm sure they do that in the new one, but just, I, you know, when I don't know, maybe,

[00:10:02] I guess I know how the people that bought cyberpunk that expected to be a full game came out, but I knew better. So I was cool with it, but I expected that thing to be ready to go hot off the press for as much money as I did. As I dropped on that thing and it did not. And the fact that it's free now and I don't have the DLC and I spent more than half the people that are fucking playing the game right now. That pisses me the fuck off. So that's need to get out of here. So it's fun. I'm with you on destiny too.

[00:10:31] I mean, I don't hate it, but I never played the first game. I did. I've tried it a couple times. I tried it when I first came out. I think I bought it. Yeah, I bought it. Actually, I did. And I wonder if I refunded it. Probably not. I don't think it was on Steam originally, but I did. I have a copy somewhere where I did buy it and I did play it. I bought it because I think I just finished trying Anthem. I'd gone the long way to get early access to Anthem on origin, stupid launcher and got so upset at Anthem.

[00:11:01] I'm like, I have to play a game. I need this online co-op shooting fix. I need this right. I want something that is maybe not an MMO, but is MMO adjacent enough where it hits that itch. And I wanted this kind of style of game so bad. So Anthem didn't work for me. So I'm like, you know, destiny to a guy try destiny too. And just I just bounced immediately. I found the combat was too slow. The movement was just plodding. I felt like I wasn't going anywhere fast.

[00:11:30] The classes are different enough that I thought was cool. The music and graphics are fine. The lore is great in destiny. I've gone through the wiki Wikipedia's on destiny one and two just to find out what the hell the traveler is. That shit's cool. But when you're playing the story, the story is cool, but the gameplay itself, I found way too slow. So in a lot of ways, it reminds me too much of halo, which makes sense because who made halo originally? So it's the same idea there. There's their style of gameplay is just too slow of a shooter for me.

[00:11:59] I didn't I didn't drive with it. Controller was controller gameplay was great, though. I give him kudos for that, but I found it too slow enough that when I went back, basically went back to Warframe. And the first time I got really heavily into Warframe was because I got so disappointed in destiny to just the slope, the slope base and what it was trying to do. I'm like, fuck Warframe does all of this and it's also free. So I'll just play Warframe. Right.

[00:12:23] Sinister, you make an absolutely killer point about you buy the game at release and they decide to change the business model up several years later. That is a big FU to the player. Well, they try and make good on it, though. Right. They try to do things that might have made good. But I mean, it's not going to be the same thing. At the same time, I mean, I do understand the impetus behind it. Right. I understand. Hey, basically sales have dried up. Right. And so we need to we need to draw in new blood. Right.

[00:12:52] I mean, I what's the what's the soccer car game? Oh, my God. Oh, no, no. Soccer. Soccer. Car game. Car game. Car. C-A-R. Rocket League. Thank you. I have just to let you know how disappointed I was with with spoiler with with Rocket League.

[00:13:16] I bought Rocket League and I loved Rocket League and I have hundreds of hours in Rocket League and I can't even remember the name anymore. Like just to get out of my idea. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, I'd go through my library to be like, oh, fuck, I remember playing that game and being totally pissed about. Yeah. But but seriously, Rocket League, I bought it. And then like years later, when I was in the middle of being, you know, a player, they made it free.

[00:13:45] And then they ruined it with all of the stupid, kitschy bullshit that they add on to free games. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm with you. You know, the other thing that pissed me off at Destiny 2, they get rid of content. I hate that. Yeah. Like this. Right. The Gala horn was like the most sought after fucking weapon in Destiny one. And when I got the Gala horn, it was like it was marriage.

[00:14:10] It was essentially as close to getting my wife to say yes to me as it could be getting the Gala horn. Like that's how big a deal. He's still waiting. He's still waiting. Still waiting. No way. I freaking love the Gala horn. It was such a great rocket launcher. It was fun. I don't care if everybody had it was still Gala horn is destiny. That's like that's destiny. And they completely removed it out of destiny to not even like, you know what, maybe we should bring it back. I was like, no shit idiots. Maybe you should have it in the game.

[00:14:39] Well, and I think Jake's talking about like actual storyline content. Well, quests are being removed. And that that kills me too, because to me, don't call it don't call it a sold game. Call it a living game. And then I'll steer fucking clear because I know for a fact that I am never going to want to play it because I want to play all the content. Right. And they've removed it. Right. I'm a stupid completionist. I shouldn't be, but I am.

[00:15:09] Right. And, and yeah. So all of a sudden, like, oh yeah, you're playing with people and they're like, oh, this quest, it was so great. You can't do it anymore. Yeah. It's just ass, especially if you're new to the franchise and you want to go back and check it out. It's stupid. So like, this is a game that there was so much hype for destiny to like Bungie was saying that they had a bunch of journalists come over to show previews and they're touting it as this is our 10 year plan for Bungie. It's destiny.

[00:15:37] They didn't say destiny to as destiny, the platform for 10 years. This is a game that broke the company. Right. I mean, the only thing they've announced since then is a marathon, which is the first marathon marathon is a first person shooter, a legendary first person shooter on Mac. If you're a Mac gamer and they're making an extraction shooter. Fucking what? And then like Sony bought them and you think, okay, Sony money plus Bungie win, win.

[00:16:05] Sony laid off a bunch of staff last year. They're basically gutting the company. We may not even get a destiny. I think they said they're cutting off or they're changing the format of expansions to be less like milestone expansions and some other kind of model. So the change of the business model again, from the sounds of it, we may not even get a destiny three. Like that's how bad this game has done for Bungie. And it's wild. Cause Bungie was one of the PC. Destiny two, right? Destiny one was fucking amazing.

[00:16:34] And they were like, they're basically like, Microsoft. Bungie was like, Microsoft. Fuck you. We're going on our own. And they went out and did their own thing and they made destiny. And everybody's like, fuck. Halo, dude, we got destiny, man. This game is bad-ass. And I was one of those people. I was like, this is way better than, than the Halo stuff. This is going to be fantastic. And it's got DLCs and live updates, season passes, all the shit. This thing is going to go on for fucking ever. And then like a year later, they're like, nah, we're going to make two.

[00:17:01] And funny enough, a Microsoft, a Microsoft owned company now has that product. It's called world of Warcraft. Right. Right. Like that is a game. That is a game that I was beta testing when I met my wife. Yeah. Right. Just to let you know how long that thing's been going on. Right. Well, I'm glad we can all feel the sour taste in our mouths. Destiny two. Destiny two. Good pick. Good pick. Good pick. Okay.

[00:17:30] Well, we can't all be angry. We're going to get a little worse from here. Right. It's okay. Well, it's going to get a little worse from here on. It's going to be 11. It's going to be 11 for all the hate. Yeah. All right. So for those who are watching the YouTube episode, unfortunately, our recording software borked in a way I've not seen it ever do before. So we're switching over to a discord call because thankfully we have that as an option. So we're going to pick right up where we, we cut the break charge. You're just giving us your number four of your bottom four.

[00:17:59] Let's get back into that. Number four. Yes. So number four of the bottom five of my list has to be Mega Man seven. Mega Man seven is a, is a very much hated game in my house. I, I cannot get behind it. It's when they, they made the sprites bigger. It was, I think it was on the super Nintendo at one point, maybe it's just a bad game. It's not good. It takes, I mean, it was so bad.

[00:18:29] You have to think of it this way, guys. This game was so poorly received in my house. And I feel like the world that when they did the legacy collection and they did Mega Man's nine and 10, they went back to the original artwork formula that we all know from Mega Man one through six. So, and, and, and Mega Man, everybody loves Mega Man. I love Mega Man. I'm wearing the Mega Man shirt.

[00:18:57] I love Mega Man, but Mega Man seven. Mega Man seven. I know it introduced trouble and base. Fucking cool, whatever. It's so bad. And it's just the boss fights are like impossible. You get a soccer ball as a weapon. And that's one of Wiley's weaknesses. Fucking real soccer ball. Yeah. That was, that was not eight. No. Okay. I might've been eight. Might've. It's. I remember a soccer ball. Hold on. I've been hitting the head with a soccer ball.

[00:19:25] It's one of my, my weaknesses too. Well, I'm just going to point that out. When you have a soft head, maybe you and Wiley have a soft head. I don't know what to tell you, but my, my point is, is that I, I, I specifically remember being in a fight with, with base towards, I think it was towards the end. It might actually, it might've been the boss fight and their expectation of you to basically not take any hits and take out the mini boss that takes you into the Wiley fight was asinine. It was fucking stupid.

[00:19:55] Um, and I know probably with practice, you could get better at it, but it just, it felt so too much. It just felt like too much, too much. And I, I just didn't care for it. And I, and I gritted my teeth and I tried to finish that game. I got all the way to Wiley and I gave up. I walked away from that game. Cannot stand it. Um, sorry for the Mega Man seven fans out there. I know there's a few out there that I'm actually pretty good friends with. I can't say, I don't know what you see in this game. Guys don't see it.

[00:20:23] So it sits, it rests very comfortably at the top four of my bottom list. Cause it's, oh, it's a bad game, bad game. Yeah. For me, like I, I liked Mega Man two. I mean, the NES ones anyway, or maybe the first four, but after the fourth one, I kind of fell off. It was, it was, I, I kind of got sick of it. I'll be honest with you. And then when they, when I first saw that, you know, Mega Man seven was on SNES, I figured I'd give it a go, but something there you're right. Does not translate well to the SNES.

[00:20:52] I don't know what they did differently, but they just doesn't feel the same. I think I much prefer what they did with Mega Man X, or if you're going to a new platform completely radically changed the physics and the design of Mega Man works better because it's its own, it's its own thing. Now it's a different franchise. It feels different and that's okay. I'm with you. I don't think seven is a great game. Yeah. I was going to say, I was going to say the SNES introduced Mega Man X.

[00:21:17] So you've got the gem that is Mega Man X and then they produce, you know, this, I don't have a lot of experience with seven cause I didn't play most of the, you know, the main series. Right. Yeah. And X is fast. Like it's, it's a faster game. The story is really strong. Right. X is a great super Nintendo Mega Man. And it should have just been left at that. I'm like, I'm trying to understand that maybe they were like Capcom's like, well, let's try our hand in this. Yes. We have the power to make something look better and we'll run better on this, all this stuff,

[00:21:46] but it felt clunky. It felt slow. The boss fights were pain in the ass, like more so than usual. Like they weren't, they weren't fun. And I didn't, I don't feel like at any point I would have gotten good enough to beat like Mega Man seven to a point where I'm like, Hey, it's part of the list. Five is easy mode. Six was all right. And then seven just tanks it for me. And I did not play anything until I touched nine and 10 a little bit later and a little bit of eight, but I said seven.

[00:22:13] I specifically remember just, you get the cool brush thing, get the rush, like, you know, rush strength and the rush jet and all this other cool stuff that goes with that. But good gravy. That game needs to, that just needs to not be a thing. So very, uh, very disappointed with, uh, with Mega Man seven. So you sit comfortably at number four. All right. I was just looking to see if soccer ball was seven or eight. Cause I remember, I remember seeing that soccer ball and thinking, Oh, that's a neat gimmick, but what the hell? That's weird.

[00:22:43] Okay. Yeah. It's seven. Is it seven? I can't, I can't confirm. There's, I don't know who, if there is a fandom for final, for a final phase seven, for Mega Man seven. I know a few people that are big fans of Mega Man seven. Okay. Yeah. I just, I love Mega Man. I say that I do, but something about the 16th generation four just never hit with me. And I mean, again, I'm not a big fan of X. Not to say that's bad. I would never say it's bad. I have people with pitchforks outside my door if I did that. But, uh, yeah, I'm with you.

[00:23:12] That's a good, that's a solid four for sure. Okay. Look at that. Number two, two already in and you don't hate me yet. Yeah. And as long as discord doesn't break on us, I think we can safely do number three. So we're going to have to switch platforms for every single day. God, don't, don't jinx me. Google me, anybody zoom. Dare we go to zoom next? Is that what we got to do? Whatever. Hey, whatever needs a camera and a mic. I'm there. I got you. Slack. Slack is coming up. Slack is coming up. Jesus. Yeah. Teams, Microsoft teams. Let's go.

[00:23:42] I'm just going to record on OBS. I'm going to record on OBS. I'm going to fucking teams. Uh, you know, you need a green screen to have that background. Anyways, it looks like garbage, but that's at the point. Anyway, speaking of garbage, let's go to our number three pick. Um, we're going to start seeing a trend now. So from the next three games that I pick now, there has to be an understanding. I'm changing something for you guys, because you're right about this. Okay.

[00:24:07] There has to be an understanding that during the, the kind of the budding existence of my streamed them into retro. I did a year of final fantasy. I played one through 15 back to back to back except for obviously except for 11. I played 14 later on, but that is neither here nor there. So within that, I have found games that I truly adore and fucking games that are really bad. They're really bad, but we played them. I played through them. I beat them.

[00:24:37] I beat every single one of them. No matter how bad they were, we stuck out our guns. And then I just complained about it a lot when we were done. So the next set of games are all going to be from that franchise, but they're going to be smattered in a certain order for you guys. All right. So without further ado, top three games that charred does not care for. They're going to be outside my house with pitchforks and a torch. Final fantasy tactics can go to hell.

[00:25:06] That game is a mess. I do not care for it. I don't know why people like it. It is convoluted. It's probably got a great story, but you know what? I can't, can't, can't, can't fucking listen to the story because I'm so busy watching all of my fucking soldiers that I've put time and money and fucking energy into fucking permadi. Stupid, stupid. If you want to play, if listen, my, my idea of a good tactical RPG is shining force too.

[00:25:36] That's a fun one. Cause you have, you connect with characters. You like them. You got fucking Peter. He's flying around, blowing shit up. He's cool as hell. But when he dies, I can resume. Or if he dies, we just start over. I don't lose these people that I spent all my time into. And you know what? It's the viewers that ruined this for me. It's the goddamn viewers. Cause everybody wants to tell me the way that this game should work. And I'll tell you how, what?

[00:26:06] The game doesn't work at all. It's a bad game. It's not a good game. I don't like tactical games and I certainly do not like Final Fantasy tactics. Okay. It is too long. That's too convoluted. And it's dumb. It's dumb. You don't like notable characters such as a gracious who or Alma Ballouv or a Balthier? Or a... Balthier? Balthier is from Final Fantasy 11. Or no, he's... Everybody's favorite charred, Mustadio Bernassia.

[00:26:36] Yeah, I know Mustadio Bernassia. Or a notable character, Cloud Strife is in this game. Did you know that? Cloud Strife is in the Final Fantasy. Watch Tony and Opel Singer. Yeah. Mustadio Bernassia. He's a good dude. Okay. I'm going to give you... It's too much. But the story is not the greatest. I think it leans too heavily in the the and thou bullshit, but it's not the only Final Fantasy game that does that. For sure. Right? Isn't 12 like that? Where it's like the whole like Game of Thrones-esque style medieval thing? You know why 12 is like that?

[00:27:06] Because it's in the same fucking universe as Tactics. It's in Evil-East. It's in the same place. So pretty much anything that takes place in Evil-East can get fucking bad as far as that makes sense. I'm going to say though, I found the combat fantastic. I like Tactics games. I also like Shining Force 2 like you. I love this one here. And in fact, a lot of the reasons why I like it is because of Shining Force 2. Because Shining Force 2 is a Tactics games where you had spells and had the grid and the movement. I love it.

[00:27:35] And Tactics is basically that. But there's elevation added to the mix. And it has, again, one of my favorite mechanics in RPGs, the job system. I love the job system. And it's because of Tactics, honestly. And there's just so many hidden things in this game. So many, there's hidden jobs you can unlock as you go through. There's hidden dungeons. Again, Cloud Strife is in it. Whether you like Cloud or not, the fact that they put him in there as a hidden character, pretty freaking cool. There's a lot to like in this game. It is freaking cool. And the job system is badass. It's one of my favorite systems in all Final Fantasy games.

[00:28:05] Final Fantasy V did the job system the best out of all of them, if you want my arguable opinion. But, you know what? Doesn't happen. Butts slash Barts, if he dies, I get to use him again, no matter whether he's a dragoon or a fucking white mage. Doesn't matter. I can put all my time, I can grind all these things out. But when I fucking lose all that time and energy, I want nothing to do with it. Because it just pisses me off.

[00:28:32] It's like Sinistar with hockey stiff difficulties, where you're just like, I'm shutting the fuck down. I don't. I have no desire to keep going on this. I spent way too much time on this. And now you're gonna make me start over from the fucking beginning? Absolutely not. That's not fun to me. That's no fun at all. That's like saying, I love my computer setup. I finally have my computer set up in a way that I'm happy with it. Now I'm gonna take a bat to it. And start over from the fresh. It's silly. I don't understand. The challenge is there. If you're into the challenge, fucking totally cool.

[00:29:02] I love Sorrow Souls games. I love a good challenge. But only when it fucking makes sense. And to me, permadeath, unless it's like Pokemon, even then, doesn't make sense to me. Go for it. What do you got, Sinistar? I was gonna say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna join the fest here. Cause you know, we might as well have, you know, people hate this podcast. Why not? Uh, I watched you play a whole bunch of that on your stream and I'm not gonna, well, but

[00:29:31] I, and I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna open up the, you know, behind the veil a little bit here, chart. I went and took naps while you were doing battles. I wish I could have, huh? Okay. Oh God. Oh guys. So slow. So slow. So. For our listeners who enjoy Final Fantasy Tactics, I'm going to like to take the opportunity to announce my new solo podcast where we like Final Fantasy Tactics still. And we don't really like games.

[00:29:59] We talk about, uh, we talk about baking and, but we like Final Fantasy Tactics. So come and hang out with us where it won't be bad mouth. It's a safe space for Tactics fans. I know. I'm going to give you. We. Permadeath is ass. I 100% agree with you, but I think, and I'll tell you what I used to do and it sucks is I would reload the pass save and I would do the battle over again, which is not great. Gameplays. Like it's not a good experience for an hour long battle.

[00:30:26] You lose one fucking guy and you roll back and that's, I'm with you. I'm with you. So what you're saying is press B to save scum is the new podcast starring sick Jake. I know. And I know, listen, I know we joke with, with GP about him picking this as a hidden gem and all that other shit. And I know he loves this game, but that's the other thing. It's like, this game is so fucking, it's so consuming.

[00:30:52] Like the fights literally are hours long. And, and then there's another a hundred hour story that goes along with a four hour fight. Like, listen guys, I'm getting, I'm getting up there in my age. Right. And I, I used to, when I started, I was doing eight hour streams, no problems. But you know what? It's really difficult to get to four nowadays. And four hours is a fucking battle in tactics by itself.

[00:31:21] That's like the first, that's the opening scene. It's just too much. Like it doesn't need to be so much. You might as well invite your friends over. I'm wearing a shadow run shirt right now. You might as well invite your friends over to play a TTRPG. Right. Because at least you'll be able to hang out with your friends while you're doing a four hour battle. I would enjoy final fantasy tactics on a tabletop board game. That would be fun. Yeah. I'm with you. That would be cool. But this it's for one person.

[00:31:50] It's just a, it's a, it's a big bite to chew. I will say that I think tactics advance on the GBA is probably a much better tactics game for folks who are interested in fanfine tactics. Um, but I still like one game, but yeah, I played the both and I, and I thought that that one was, it was listen, it's dumbed down. It really is simplified. It makes it a lot easier.

[00:32:11] So it's more enjoyable because I don't feel like I have to have a fucking encyclopedia book with me on what everything, not only what the characters are saying, but what they're doing on top of that. You know, the calculator class. I have, I have to nitpick here for a second because you are captain book. When you play held in ring. I am, but I enjoy all the ring. So I enjoyed all the ring and it's not a TTR. It's not a, it's not a tactical RPG, which you guys both all know.

[00:32:40] I'm not a fan of tactical RPGs. Yeah, but I don't know. I tried. I tried. I tried so hard to be like, everybody loves this game. I just need to give it a whirl. And we played it for a couple hours. And I, I think I did two days of it and went, I, this is dumb. I'm not, this is not fun. I don't know. I don't, I don't get the enjoyment people are getting out of this. So, well, all right. At the end of the day, I don't gatekeep. If you enjoy tactics, enjoy the hell out of tactics. Oh yeah.

[00:33:09] I also don't, I also don't gatekeep. If char didn't like it and it went into the graveyard, that's fine. You know? Yeah, no, it's your, it's your, I'm going to shit on it every time. It's brought up, but you can enjoy it. And I won't think any less or more of you as a person. You can enjoy your, you can enjoy your shitty games. Yeah. Bro, I play some shit that people are like, why do you like that? Like, fuck, don't play cyborg justice and come and tell me that that's a good game.

[00:33:38] It's not, but I fucking love that game. So perfect example. Yeah. But anyways, so the final fantasy tactics comfortably sitting at number three. Yeah. If it's, I mean, we were wondering if that would be on the list. We, we, we thought it would be. And yeah, it makes sense for you for sure. The other game I had, it was a toss up, but I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it more than, than that did. I made it further in that one until I was just too bored to finish it.

[00:34:07] So it's a good game. It just did not hold my interest enough, but it's not a bad game to be put on a list. Whilst tactics makes me want to literally chew on tinfoil rather than play it. So, example. So, all right. So I'm sure everybody's eagerly waiting to hear what our top two games are that Chardmonk absolutely despises. Listen, one is not going to be a surprise to fucking anybody.

[00:34:37] If anybody knows who I am, no one's going to be shocked. So I'll rip into that one pretty well. Two, probably people are going to know. They're not going to be surprised when I say either of these two games, they're going to know. So, without further ado, in proper order, Final Fantasy 7 Remake is number two on my list of worst games ever fucking created. Because Square thinks I'm an idiot.

[00:35:02] And they think that just because they can beautify some music and some graphics that I am willing to buy three other games that I already have a complete edition of. And they almost did. But Jake and I got together. Jake and I sat down and said, you know what? We're going to do this together. We're going to get through this shit together. We're going to figure out what the fuck the big deal is about this. And Jake, you hated this game almost as much as I did, didn't you? I did. Yeah, in every conceivable way.

[00:35:32] I don't understand. I don't understand why this thing exists. It looks great. It has the music I love. It's fine. The story is whatever. But I love the original. I thought that was a fantastic RPG when I was a kid. And I thought I would really love a remake. But the decision to split it into three goddamn games is baffling to me. I don't like it. I don't like how it was. How many hours did we spend getting through a remake? Was it like 30 hours? I think each of us. Let's. Let's. There's around there.

[00:36:02] Let's go to our steam log. And I will let you know. Because. How long it took me. To get through Final Fantasy seven remake. Because it's the original Final Fantasy seven. Midgar was like 10 hours tops. I think for the original section. Midgar is like the opening to the original. But this. They took the opening of the original. I made it its own fucking game. And it was mind numbing toward the end. So I think I was around 30 hours. I made it. 30.5 hours. That is not including the amount of time.

[00:36:32] I spent on the PlayStation 4 version. Right. That I first bought it on. When it first came out. Thinking. This is totally up my alley. Wow. Was I wrong? Yeah. It's one of those games where it should on paper. We both should have loved this game. For sure. Because like you like the original. When you do your, your Final Fantasy. I think you like this one, right? Seven. I've, I've related seven. So seven has always been kind of middle ground for me. It's a good game. I like it. I like what it did to the series. I always say it's like the Beatles, right?

[00:37:00] The Beatles did great, great things for rock and roll music. Not everybody likes the Beatles, but you got to appreciate what it did for that style of music. Final Fantasy seven did the same exact thing. It, it, it brought Final Fantasy into the popular spotlight for everybody. It's very popular amongst a lot of folk. It's good. I mean, it obviously it doesn't translate well today because the polygons and shit, you know, but it's still a good story. It's still a good game. We all hate cloud, but the story flows.

[00:37:30] Well, like the story goes where it's supposed to go. There's no fluff. There's no filler. You don't have to listen to Jesse talk all incessantly. Oh, or the characters. Nope. No, she's not. She's terrible. You don't need, you don't need voices on characters that don't matter. They don't matter. When you leave Midgar, they don't fucking matter anymore. They don't matter. We're thrusting. We're thrusting angrily because they don't matter that. Why?

[00:37:59] Why do I have Charlie Sheen running around with me with a head fucking Rambo headband on? What is that about? What is this game? Doesn't make any sense. None of these characters matter when we leave Midgar. When we're out fighting fucking Midgar Solomon and we're seeing Sephiroth stab the snake with the fucking giant sword and the pike. Who's not there? Anybody from Avalanche. Anyone. Nobody. Except for fucking Barrett. Whoop-dee-doo. Okay. Okay.

[00:38:25] I was going to bring up Barrett because I'll be honest with you. So first off, really quick, I want to chime in on this. Final Fantasy 7, the original is the only Final Fantasy game I have ever completed. It is the only one. And when they announced the remake, I was like, okay, I do have some interest. It's the only, it's the only Final Fantasy RPG I've ever finished. Luckily I have learned not to pre order games.

[00:38:54] Thanks to a number of games. Thanks to Destiny 2. Thanks to Destiny 2. Yeah. I still haven't learned. No, Batman Arkham City taught me a lesson. It taught me a lesson. Anyway. Um, so I didn't pre order this and then I watched a little bit of it and I watched people stream it and then I realized, oh, this is an incomplete game. This isn't Final Fantasy 7. This is Final Fantasy 7. One third. Right.

[00:39:24] Right. And so we're lucky. Yeah. And so I, I'm like, I just noped the fuck out. I'm like, cause I hate that shit. Lord of the Rings. The three movies are fucking beautiful. The three movies are beautiful. And then fucking whatever wing nut, whoever it is decided that the new line cinema was like, Hey, we need another cash cow. Yeah. Let's make the Hobbit into three movies.

[00:39:51] The shortest book of all of them. Let's make it into three movies. And what happened? It was a slog. Right. I mean, boring as fuck. Yeah. That's the problem. It's not bad. It's boring. Right. Like if they condensed it, right. It's kill bill one and two. If they talked at a normal pace, kill bill would have been one movie. Right. And so, and then, and then, yeah, I see Barrett.

[00:40:18] I'm watching a streamer and I see Barrett and Barrett's voice comes out and I'm like, Oh shit. They charge our binks to bear right up in Mr. T. Yeah. They charge our binks to right up. Yeah. First, the first time you hear a Barrett's voice actor, you're like, am I allowed to listen to this? He's going to get me canceled by listening to this, this performance. Does that, does nobody else feel like this is maybe a little bit stereotypical? Does this not feel bad? Yeah.

[00:40:47] But the whole voice cast. Yeah. Go ahead. I was going to say, I can't even say the phrase that I want to say in Barrett's voice. No. Because it would be, it would be a hate crime. And like, I'm not, I don't want to shit on the voice actors themselves. Cause they're all fantastic. They're all professionals and they are all great actors. But when the game awards just finished the other month and they did the nominations for best actor, uh, eras, eras is, uh, eras, eras, whatever she was up for the, uh, one

[00:41:17] of the nominations for the award. I think she might've actually won for a final fantasy rebirth. And I, I cringe so hard when I heard that the voice actor, the kid, the character that was going to be nominated. I'm like, no, cause errors in fantasy remake is awful. I can't stand that character. The actor is fantastic. Don't, don't anybody say that I'm shitting the actor. I love the actors in this game a hundred percent, but the character dialogue, the way it's written, it is cringy as fuck.

[00:41:45] It's so beyond cringe and I cannot stand it. And if it's not being on, we're shitting on anything, it's the writing. It's not the people. Oh yeah. It's the fucking writing. Well, and somebody, somebody told that voice actor for Barrett to do that voice. Somebody told them to do that. Yeah. He's like, really? Yeah. And there it's a great character. Like in the original fantastic character with Marlene and his, is he has, he finds the eventually the finds out the one who betrayed him down the road, the whole gun arm thing.

[00:42:15] It's really rad, but I, every time I had to deal with him, there's the one scene and remake, sorry, I'm going to derail the chart for a second. There's a one scene where you have to pull lever the same goddamn time as Barrett or as Tifa. And every time you fuck it up, Barrett gives you one liners. And I screwed it up so many times. He started to repeat the same one liners of how I was fucking up and how I was failing Avalanche. And I wanted to throw my controller. I was, I was taking videos and sending them to, to charge during this time. And I'm like, why am I playing this game? But you know what the worst part is chart about this game?

[00:42:46] Rebirth comes out on PC on the end of January. And for a brief minute, I'm like, yeah, I gotta, we both did it. Yeah. How many times did I tell you guys that I was like, I'm going to get on PS five and you're like, don't, don't do it. I'm like, I'm going to, I gotta do it. I gotta, I gotta see, I gotta know. And I didn't gotta know. I'm over it. I'm over it. I gotta know where the story doesn't go. Oh, the FOMO. Oh, the FOMO.

[00:43:10] And everything I've heard about Rebirth is that it's worse in terms of like the story going nowhere because it's the middle chapter. It's, it's, you know, it's not going to have a satisfying ending no matter what they do. And I know, I know GP likes remake a lot. And we talked a bit about, about this with him before. And he's kind of said, well, they're doing, they're doing a bit of a different spin on it with like a multiverse type of thing. And I, I appreciate that. I do, but I don't feel it hits until the last 10 minutes of that game.

[00:43:37] And I don't think it's going to matter to me much in Rebirth, but I will still probably pick it up when it's hopefully on sale. But man. You know, you're going to buy it. You know, you're going to buy it with me. No, I'm not. We're going to spend the summer playing FOMO and REBIRTH and then we're going to shit all over for the rest of the year. You know, you're going to buy it. You can't tell me you're not going to. I'm doing it for the podcast. It's like me not buying Dragon. I'm doing it for me. Y'all, y'all are sitting on your wallets and your wallets are in your pants going.

[00:44:06] I don't have my wallet here. I take it away from me. So I can't buy anything. It's on lockdown right now. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like like Jake said, it's Kingdom Hearts, right? It's Kingdom Hearts mechanics. It's beautiful. The music is spectacular. It's Uematsu just fucking flowing. And that's where it kept getting me because I was like, well, at least the music pretty. This whole story is pissing me off, but the music is gorgeous.

[00:44:33] And I just was like, these people think I'm fucking stupid because all they got to do is add some cellos and a fucking flute to something. And I'm like, oh, that's better. That's already better. So I don't know, man. I, I wanted to like it and I tried and I tried and I beat it. And when I was done, I was like, well, there's 30 and a half hours. I'll never fucking get back. Fantastic.

[00:44:57] Because it didn't end like even when they thought that maybe this was going to be a one and done, which they never did. But it kind of felt like maybe, you know, they were just going to do their multiverse spin on it and we were going to live our fucking lives after that. Thank you, Marvel. But it just like it ended. And even there was there was no satisfaction at all at the end of this game. The boss fight at the end was fucking stupid. And I even went, that's it.

[00:45:26] That's the that's the big bad at the end of the game. I can't even remember it, Jake. I just remember it being weird. I can't remember what we did for no goddamn reason. So many stages colors. That's all I remember. Was it was it was a Final Fantasy 14 where you like had to move to certain positions? No, no. It was cool. I like it. Yeah, same. Like they should have taken 14's ideas and done that for the final boss is what they should have done easily.

[00:45:54] They do it in fucking path of exile works great. That's just me. It's you know, you know, what sucks too is I beat that game and I'm like, I have the integrated edition like you do. Yeah, which for those that don't know comes up with the DLC where you play as Yuffie. I liked Yuffie. I spun up the DLC and I noped out within 20 minutes. I'm like, nope, I'm not going back to Midgard. Nope. She's cool.

[00:46:18] But no, I'm not doing any of this, especially when I found out and I was so pissed off when I found out everything you do in remake does not carry over to rebirth. Right. Nothing. Literally nothing you do matters in remake nothing. Nothing. Yeah, infuriating. None of your material your items your upgrades your stuff. Nothing. There's not even a code. You can copy over no decisions. You make nothing you do in remake. You could skip remake and just play rebirth. If that's what you know it.

[00:46:47] If you just want to see Tifa and Aries in a fucking bikini with her tits out on the beach, then you can go buy rebirth at full price right now. And Steve or get stellar blade because at least the story is good. Hey, at least at least fucking Bard's Tale. Goddamn two in 1986. You could import characters from wizardry. Yeah, and Bard's Tale one like what game in the age in the last 40 years.

[00:47:15] Yeah, I mean we could go on. I mean we could go on where these games combined into the next one and the shit that you decided to do carry over. So one of the reasons I like those games was because decisions made sense. Now a game that is literally its own game in the fucking 1997 is now being broken up to three and they're like, I don't need to go together. Like that's not asking for much. Just let me carry them in material with me. They'll forget when they go to fucking Del Sol.

[00:47:45] They'll forget all about that shit when they go to Honda Del Sol or whatever the fucking goddamn island they go to. That's a car by the way. But anyway, yeah, I'm with you. I hate this game. I hate it, but I'm going to play the I'm going to play Rebirth and so are you. You know, we are. It's just a matter of time whether we wait whether we buy it on release day, which I hope we don't do or we wait for our fucking sell. Yeah, I know. I know Sinistar for the audio listener. Sinistar is making the money symbol.

[00:48:14] We're tossing away at the strip club. That is Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. You know, we're going to. But hey, you got out of Chinese New Year, sir. So you just go your jets. All right. You they bridge it for that. Yeah, that's a bad one. Yeah, that's a good one. Yep. All right. So I'm for four right now. Mr. I can't. Your list is going to suck. No, no, no. He didn't. He likes tactics. I like tactics. You're wrong there. I think you're crazy.

[00:48:41] I understand why you don't like it, though, and I don't hate you for it, but I understand why you don't like it. I think it's a genre. You just don't like tactics games. I don't know why you like shine force 2 and you hate on tactics, though. That's always be weird. Yeah, and it's a second thing. I don't know. Anyways, it doesn't make sense because I should buy all rights and purposes. I should fucking hate shiny force 2. Well, also remember you said this earlier as an adult. You've your time is more valuable as a kid when shining force 2 came out.

[00:49:11] Yeah, you were probably like I got all the time in the world. Yeah, I just sit and you know, I'm very much cognizant of how much time I have left. Yeah, yeah. My life. We only have so many hours to play Final Fantasy games left. I can't do a 205 hour fucking RPG right now. I just can't. Octopath Traveler what? Yeah. You guys let me know how that one goes. All right. Well, we got number one. What's your number one? Anyway.

[00:49:39] So what if I just spout out Breath of the Wild here and just blow everybody's fucking mind? I just fucking crush Jake's poor soul and half of the listeners here press me to cancel. Don't worry. It is not Breath of the Wild, but please listen to the end of the audio and you'll you'll get that connection.

[00:49:58] But anyways, so this this fucking game, this game, this game is by far the bar that is the lowest of low for me that all games, most games are better than this game will ever become. This game is terrible. If they did a fucking remake of this game, I would I would buy it just so I could burn it in a trash fire. I fucking hate everything about this game. The story is stupid. The characters are dumb. The mechanics are fucking dumb.

[00:50:27] Everything about this game is fucking stupid. It's stupid. It's stupid. It's stupid. And no one will ever change my mind. I don't care who you are who comes to me and gives me some kind of fucking synopsis as to why Squall is the way he fucking is. He's a dumb goddamn character. He's stupid. He's wasted and he's a pointless fucking character. Final Fantasy eight is the worst goddamn game that has ever been created by any fucking gaming company ever made out there. I don't care. I'd rather play Destiny 2. I would rather fucking play Final Fantasy Tactics.

[00:50:56] I would rather play Final Fantasy fucking retrograde remake, retrofitted, fucking whatever the fuck comes out next. I don't care. I would rather play any of those than ever, ever see Squall and his shit ass goddamn company of idiots roll with him ever again. Final Fantasy eight is terrible. It is terrible. I have a theory that the only reason people like Final Fantasy eight is because it's the first Final Fantasy they ever fucking played. So they didn't know any better. And that's not your fault. It's okay.

[00:51:25] It's okay to be in the dark. It's fine. But understand that it's not okay to like Final Fantasy eight. It's not. I don't know why you would. The story is terrible. Draw system for magic that uses to boost your fucking abilities. Get that shit out of there. What about this wonderful story? Oh, we're these people that are part of a militant group. We're a fucking militia going out to kill a fucking dark witch. But oh, wait. Well, we were all friends in an orphanage and totally forgot.

[00:51:54] You just fucking forgot. What's the fuck? That's the climax. Oh, we forgot. That's I forget my keys every day, guys. Wait, wait. That's not a climax. That's awful. I haven't watched through Final Fantasy eight because of how much you hate this game. I haven't. But like literally the twist is collective amnesia. Yes. Yes. And your teacher was the witch.

[00:52:21] Your teacher is the chick you're going to kill in the first half of the game. So when you become part of seed, which is the militant group. Yes. Seed. Great name for a group. Yes. All of the fucking schools are called gardens because you're a seed in it. It's stupid. So they get these things called guardian forces or GFs and not girlfriends guardian forces. So when you refer to a GF, you're not talking about girlfriend.

[00:52:51] Talk about your guardian force. There's a lot of finger quoting here because it's this fucking stupid. What the guardian forces do to you when you use them in battle and training is help take your memories away. So you forget about your fucking past. And then there's this whole thing with Laguna. Everybody loves Laguna where his timeline starts fucking what the fuck. It's like a third. It's like they could have made a Laguna DLC and made more sense than yes, we're just going to shove this fucking asshole in the middle of it. He's comic relief.

[00:53:21] Then he turns out to be the super important guy, but he seems completely useless throughout like most of the playthrough of the game. And there's and then he falls in love with Renona like that. There's no like chemistry. There's no like. Hey, you can see something here. I can see something here. He's just like, no, I just love her. All of a sudden. I hate sand. Oh, man. It gets in all the place. It gets all in whatever the line is. I hate saying that's Kafka.

[00:53:50] It works. But no, no, no. I'm quoting Phantom, not Phantom Menace, but yeah, the third because he talks about getting sand in his boots when he's walking. No, no. I'm talking like one of the worst ever, like, you know, romance stories in a movie ever. That's that's this right. That's this. Yeah. He just all of a sudden he's like, I'm totally in love with this chick.

[00:54:15] And he goes out and risks his life to save her floating out in space, which that whole cut scene made me fucking go absolutely crazy. He goes out. She has no air left in her oxygen suit because they're in space. She's dead. Essentially, he goes out there. Somehow she's revived and can breathe with no air in her suit. And oh, what else shows up? Ragnarok, the ship just drops out of the fucking sky.

[00:54:44] Nobody saw that coming. This dude is literally floating out in the middle of fucking space, guys. Space. There's nothing out there. He's not going out there going, hey, there's Ragnarok. All right, cool. We'll be able to. You don't see it. But then it shows up like it was parked across the street. You're like, what the fuck? Where did this thing come from? There's nothing out here.

[00:55:05] It doesn't make that there's so much deus es machina thrown in this fucking game that it's ridiculous because they were just like, we have to figure out how to force this goddamn story forward. So we're just going to throw everything, every act of God that we can at these people just to get them out of these situations because none of it made any sense to me at all. It was awful. This game is so bad.

[00:55:32] I continually blank out and forget about several of those moments like you mentioned, like the orphanage bit. I keep getting shocked and upset all over again. Whenever it comes up, I'm like, right, that's where the story went. Fuck those guys. Or the space sequence was infuriating. And it plays that lame song eyes on me, which I hate that song. I think it's a lame song. Just add a note. Yeah, eyes on me. And like we called every song on that game. Hey, it's eyes on me. It's so bad.

[00:56:01] Like I'll give it is due in two areas. Just just to one. It does the same trick that five and seven does where they started incorporating FMV in the backgrounds of certain key scenes. Yeah, there's an eight. There's a there's a there's a garden. Yes, garden garden seed garden battle where the two gardens are locked in combat and there's back and forth between the two. That whole sequence was admittedly cool as shit. There's a part where you're hanging off of one of these flying enemies and you're punching the dude.

[00:56:29] And in the background, they have an FMV video of the garden battles. That stuff is cool. The opening cinematic is cool as shit where a squall fights. Oh, yeah. Like the trailer for a fate and you pop that shit in and you've got a feed else. Whatever the song is that Uematsu wrote for that. And they're fucking battling it out him and see for just go into town. And you're like, holy shit, dude, this is epic. This is like Star Wars level fucking epicness. The music is beautiful.

[00:56:59] The cinematography is fantastic. And then you forget who your friends are. I like that. Literally, that's the game. I like the Jake keeps forgetting the bad parts. Like this is selective memory. The video game. It is. He's got a guardian force for Final Fantasy eight. You know why though? It's because I do want to like I don't want to hate Final Fantasy games. I want to like the franchise. It part of me is like I should do what Char did and play the entire franchise, but I don't have a thousand hours to do that.

[00:57:28] But also there's a lot of bad moments in these games, but eight, especially when I bought it at the time, I appreciated the value of playing a long ass game. But now to go through it and the payoff and the story is, is there, they're friends all along. It's so bad. And Cypher or Sepher, whatever his fucking name is, his whole thing where they try and frame as, oh, he just wants to be a night for, for the beautiful queen arc.

[00:57:55] It is so again, cringy dialogue, cringy writing. I begin to wonder was Final Fantasy seven writing ever good. But then I remember six was great. I love six. Six still holds up to me now. Even four is okay, but seven and then eight. I don't know where the hell they, what they did with the dialogue, but it does not hold up. Um, the only other thing I like in this game, the music and parts is great, but eight has, uh, the card game, which I name. I can't remember now. I've slightly forgotten.

[00:58:25] I love triple triad enough that when it came to Final Fantasy 14, I resubbed to Final Fantasy 14 just to go to the golden saucer and play freaking triple triad. I love that game so much more than anything else in, in, in Final Fantasy eight. And it's, I would play triple triad on my phone. Like, yeah. And it's funny. It's like, it's like a Final Fantasy balladro. It's, it's fun. Yeah. I, I don't like card games in most games, but I enjoyed playing triple.

[00:58:52] Like once I figured it out and learn the systems, then it was fun. But beyond that, it's like a shitty fucking game with a cool mini game smashed in there. Yeah. So I, I don't know. And, and you can't say like everything went downhill because I know your feelings about Final Fantasy 10. They do not agree with mine at all. Nine's writing is spectacular. Nine, nine had a great fucking story with great fucking characters in a, it's had a weird boss fight at the end. That was the only thing that was strange. So seven, I think is strong.

[00:59:22] Eight is very, very weak. Nine was like, okay, back to normal. And then, you know, eight and so on and so forth. So 13 almost got on this list too, but I kept it off because, because reasons. But nine, nine is one of those games. I wish I played. I, I, I almost picked nine as my Sisyphean game for this year. I was very close, but again, it was a time thing. I didn't really want to commit to a JRPG because I know how long they can get, but I will play nine at some point. So I've heard nothing but good things.

[00:59:50] But nobody ever hates nine. Nobody, eight, 10, 11, 12, or not 11, 12, 13. People have things to say about those ones, but nobody ever hates nine. Right. I, and it's funny cause it's like eight made me not play nine for years. Cause I bought them both. Yeah. And I played eight with, this is so bad. I am not going forward. And I had gotten the PlayStation two and I had already played 10. So I knew 10 was, 10 was good for me, but I was like, I won't play nine because eight is so shitty.

[01:00:21] I just won't do it. Nine is the best PS one version. And final fantasy that was ever made hands down. And that's going up against seven. So seven's good, but it's, I don't think it's any nine and you got choke of a hot and cold. I mean, come on, that's a killer mini game though. But yeah. So final fantasy eight, that's not a shocker to anybody who knows me or hung out with me or has had any kind of lengthy conversation with me about video games. That game is terrible. I hate it.

[01:00:47] And there's not a game in this planet that I have played in the last 42 years. I've fucking been alive in seven to eight years. I've streamed on Twitch that has ever taken that crown. And I don't think anything ever will. I have to play some real fucking bad, real fucking bad. And the problem is, is like the first one through seven final fantasies, not all of them were magical. They were all consistent at least to be like, okay, I don't think two and three are great, but they're fun.

[01:01:16] I had enjoyed playing them to the point of where I'm going to play the pixel remasters at some point. But you know what? I will never do again, ever play final fantasy hate ever. Unless I'm doing something charitable and I need to punish myself for it. That will be the only reason. I'm pretty sure. I'm trying to get the badge for it. And I won't fight. I will not turn it on ever again. I'm pretty sure at this point you'll find absolutely every other punishment besides final fantasy eight to run for a charity.

[01:01:42] I will stick a George Foreman grill underneath my desk and stick my foot on it instead of play that goddamn game. With it closed, I will be Michael Scott and I will George at the foot of my bed and I will stick my foot on it getting out of bed and it will close on me. And I'll have to get Dwight to come and rescue me. George Foreman foot grill level badness. That's awful. Awful. That's going the wheel of pain next year. It should be.

[01:02:12] That should be on there. So you said found I won't spend too much time on it, but you mentioned found as a team was an honorable mention of games you don't like. What about was there any other honorable mentions for this list? You're trying to goat me into getting people to not like the show, Jake. I would never do that. They already hate you for your take on tactics. You did this to yourself. That's fair. I have a big issue with a dragon's quest 11. It just it bored the hell out of me. It's a slow game.

[01:02:42] It's boring. It's super slow. And I have to say, I have to say that it's probably my age and me recognizing that I don't have time to spend on these kinds of games very much anymore. So it's it's not bad. It's just it's very slow and it bored me to tears and I was just done. I had to walk away from it. You'll hear a whole rant about this particular game, but I'm putting breath of the wild on there as an honorable mention for me because by all intents and purposes, you would think it's a dark souls. These s legend of Zelda.

[01:03:12] How could I hate that? That's on you. Yeah, we're thinking that mechanics like weapons breaking and no way to fucking get my ass from point A to point B a little quicker than it does. At least you got epoch and fucking link to the past. You got shit. You got your feet. You got left and right. You got thunder and light. You can fly. You can glide. I can float. I can fly down. I can't go anywhere else. It's it's dumb. I tried very hard to like it.

[01:03:42] I played it for several hours and I just I was like, I can't handle this anymore. I'm so over this fucking game. Maybe I'll come back to it and I'll change my tune. But I just liked it so much that I won't even play tears of the kingdom. Because I'll be honest. I'll be honest with you. When a game introduces a mechanic like weapon breaking, honestly, that drives me away. And part of it is part of it, part of it. Yeah.

[01:04:09] Part of it is for me is, is that time sink, right? Okay. Sure. I have to do the time sink to go find the awesome weapons. Oh, fuck me. Now I have to go do the time sink to go get the parts to repair weapons. Or I have to do the time sink to go get a different weapon because this one's just dead forever. I mean, it's just, I don't know. So I mean, I get, I get, I get. And going through five different weapons that keep fucking breaking on me on the first wing,

[01:04:38] because apparently there's a percentage that you have to make sure it doesn't break on. I was like, I don't want to use anything. I can't fight because I can't use any weapons because I don't want to use any of them. These are all cool weapons. I get all of a sudden, all of a sudden you're like, I don't know that I want to use my fists or my feet anymore because they may break too. Thank you. That's true realism and realism when you get your fists break in Zelda. And the first thing about the dungeons was getting new stuff.

[01:05:05] And it just felt like all the other dungeons was like, you're not getting, like once you're done getting the cool, you know, the cool switch module fucking spells and stuff that you can move stuff and push stuff around and whatnot. Once you're done with that, like there's nothing else to go in there for except for like more life or Deku seed or some bullshit. I just was like, this is rinse, rinse, lather, rinse, repeat. And I don't, I'm tired of washing my hair. I don't want to wash my hair anymore.

[01:05:33] I'm tired of breath of the wild is I think it's the, it's the link links adventure problem that on the NES, the sequel had where that game would, would, it would have been better received. Had it been called anything else had it been any other main character. I think your breath of the wild was released as a spinoff with a new protagonist fucking put tingle in there. I don't care. I think it would have been more, more well received because you have to get fans of the franchise and I'm one of them. You had to tell them, Hey, the items don't matter anymore.

[01:06:02] Don't worry about what you pick up. It's going to break. It really doesn't matter. You can play with anything. You can beat things with a stick, a pot lid. If you need to, once you get around that, you start to like the game more. And that's a hard, that's a hard wall for people to climb over. It does. Okay. I love, I love looter shooters. I love looter shooters because I'm getting the bigger, better, badder, faster gun. Right?

[01:06:28] Like, I mean, it's not this whole, like, well, fuck that one. And I'm done with it. I'll just go beat somebody with a pot lid. Right. You get some cool shit. You get some cool weapons that you use three times. And then even you get the master sword and then it's, it fucking breaks. It's the fucking master sword, dude. Don't call it. Don't call it the master sword. It comes back after five minutes. But yeah, again, I'm going to say it's like five minute timer and it re-energizes the master sword. It comes back. It's dealing with what it does.

[01:06:58] Come on. But I'm telling you, it's, it again, it's, it's the same thing. It's, it's the, it's not a looter shooter. It's purely an exploration and puzzle game. It's not a Zelda game. It's an exploration game and a puzzle game. I think the shrines are awesome. There's 120 to 120 of them in the game, largely optional. And they're basically puzzles. Each one is individual and I love them. I do wish there were proper dungeons in that game. And that's why me and Wolf in our episode talk about tears, the kingdom.

[01:07:24] I think I said several times to me, tears of the kingdom is pretty much a replacement of breath of the wild because it has classic dungeons plus shrines plus other stuff in that game. So I think you might like tears of the kingdom more. If anything, there's vehicles in it, or you make your own vehicles. Um, although I will say shield surfing and breath of the wild, pretty rad.

[01:07:44] I did a lot of that once you figure out how to do it, but they don't really tell you how, um, I, I understand what people don't like the wild, but you have to get over the weapons. They don't matter. And that is a hard thing to tell a fan of Zelda. Your items don't matter. Shit. All you need to know is you can spawn infinite bombs with the power. You can magnetize things and the game kind of like encourage you to do random physics, physics stuff to kill enemies.

[01:08:10] And that's the fun part is the, the emerging gameplay as stuff just happens around you. And that's why like watching a speed run of this where they, where they freeze time, whack a boulder a bunch of times and jump on it and let time unfreeze. And you go flying across the map to the final castle. It's the stuff like that happens all the time in game and it's pretty fun, but it's not a Zelda game. And it's weird. I loved, I love the puzzles in the shrines. I really did. Like, I absolutely loved that feature. Right.

[01:08:39] But that's more Zelda E. Well, but the, but I'll be honest with you. The first time I ran into like an ice area and I started fucking freezing and like all of a sudden I'm trying to, I'm like, man, I'm done. Like I'll admit trying to like arrow bodkins or whatever the hell those fuckers are. Like, I got so tired of that shit. Ah, anyway, I thought that the, the environmental thing was kind of neat. Like the too hot and the too cold. I thought that was kind of cool aspect.

[01:09:09] And that was one of the things that I was like, okay, I like invent or environmental shit that happens to you when you do stuff. I think that's a neat, a cool thing, but don't, I mean you it's, it's so an un Zelda Zelda that I am a diehard that cannot get past that. I really can't. I beautiful game place. Fucking great. A lot of fun to play up to a point until I'm just like all the stuff that I, it's the same thing with tactics.

[01:09:36] All the things that I have worked for and I have earned are now gone because I used them. Not because of what it, because I fucking used it. At least in dark souls, I can rebuild my weapons. Like I can put shit into them. And even when they break, break, I can still fucking repair them. They don't just smash on a rock. And I'm like, well, I guess I got this stick.

[01:09:59] You just compared the death of your party members and tactics with the breaking of your swords and Zelda. Look, look, they're just tools to be used and discarded. Have you read the lore on the weapons? Those are people, my friend. Those are people. Well, no, that blocks, but that's different. All right. I hate Breath of the Wild. That's fine. All right. So Breath of the Wild, Dragon's Quest. I hate it. Oh, okay. And I'm with them. I'm with them on Dragon's Quest 11.

[01:10:29] I fucking loved, I fucking loved Dragon Quest 8. I adored Dragon Quest 8. I played the hell out of that. We were trying to find every fucking chest, the whole thing. And then yeah, Dragon Quest 11. I'm like, oh, it's beautiful. I've got the fucking, you know, slimes. I've got the, all of the great named enemies. Yeah. I love Dragon Quest's naming of enemies because it's clever as shit. Right.

[01:10:57] And then I'm just like, uh, it's a hallway simulator. It's just a hallway simulator. Right? Like, yeah. It is a JRPG in the purest sense. And like, I love the original Dragon Warrior back in the day when it was Dragon Warrior here, not Quest. Um, I love the art style is amazing. Right? They have Toriyama did all the character designs like he always has for that series. And they're just beautiful. Like you said, music is decent.

[01:11:25] I love how it has the retro eight bit sound effects for things when you, I think it was leveling up sound. Anyway, I love all that shit, but the story just, I've, I fell asleep more times than I want to admit. This is even after I got a fucking CPAP, but I'm still falling asleep playing this game. It was, it was bad. And I think it just, again, it's just, it is a hardcore JRPG for those fans of that genre. And I just don't think I'm a fan of the genre anymore. And that's all it is. Like charred doesn't like tactics games.

[01:11:52] I just think it takes a hell of a lot for me to want to play a JRPG again. It really does. So, and that's fine. I'm there with you. And so we're going to see how Octopath Traveler goes. Just the JRPG. I'll remind you that I have fucking, I've already started playing through half of that and got pissed off and stopped playing it. So I'm going to give it another shot. Yeah. I'm not end up on my top 10 bottom. I've started, I've started one of the characters. We'll see how this goes.

[01:12:22] No, I, I actually always wanted to play it. I, I, we talked in our MPs for those that, uh, for those listening, uh, Wolf, uh, Wolf and I both played the demo quite a bit. When I got my switch right off the, right off the bat, I was like, I don't want to spend money, but I want to try stuff out. And I tried the Octopath Traveler demo. And it's the main reason it was on my, on my wish list is cause I love the demo. So I'm, I'm hopeful. I'm not shitting on it.

[01:12:50] I'm making a joke about time, but I'm going to see if I can make the time. Yeah. We're busy people, man. I'm shitting on a nine to five. Yeah. We have houses and wives. I'm shitting on adult time. That's what I'm shitting on. Right. Right. It's hard to, to balance everything when you're, you know, paying a mortgage and raising children. Yeah. Yeah. It's a hundred hour RPG is a big ask of me. Like I thought about picking it up again. Like maybe I'll give it a shot, but I'm like, no, there's, there's so many games I would rather play right now.

[01:13:21] It's not that one. I would play sea of stars before I play, I think. Oh, fucking good. I know. I know. Um, all right. One more time. Can you just give a five, run down your list real quickly for the listeners for your, your top five or your bottom five. I can't, if I can remember which ones are, um, cause they're not what I wrote on here. Uh, destiny two is number five. Destiny two is number five. Uh, mega man seven was number four. Um, final fantasy tactics was number three.

[01:13:51] Final fantasy seven remake was number two and the crowning shit crown goes to final fantasy eight for number one spot. It's all list. It's all list. Even if I don't agree with some of your honorable mentions, it's a solid list. Um, see, see the honorable mentions are okay to not agree with because even then I'm still very much on the fence on whether they should have made it or not.

[01:14:13] Um, but definitely those, those five stand the test of time and have constantly disappointed me every time I fucking look back at them. I always go. All right. When I think of those games. Well, uh, so for those of just quickly run up, wrap up for those who've enjoyed listening to charred hate on several games, because people always love it when people, you should on games. And then there are a few people who are fans of these games who, who sent us nasty grams, but that's, that's fair. That's fair.

[01:14:42] Uh, if you want to hear more about press B to cancel, you can check us out on YouTube, press B to cancel, or you can listen to our audio episodes anywhere. You listen to audio podcasts, including Amazon music, Spotify, I heart radio, Apple, of course, anywhere else. Uh, you can also find us at press B cancel.com or press B.org. We're also a member of the super pod network of podcasts of gaming podcasts, much like ours. You can find a master list of all his podcasts over at super pod network.com.

[01:15:09] Uh, as well, uh, folks, since I work and folks find you. Uh, so I'm mainly doing the DJ stuff, uh, under my alt account, DJ spin a star. That's one word, no underscores DJ spin a star. Uh, and, uh, otherwise I have, um, installed and uninstalled, um, uh, cyberpunk. So I've beaten it. Well done. Congratulations. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Well done. Now you gotta reinstall for the DLC. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah.

[01:15:39] I, I, I haven't finished Phantom Liberty. Come on, come on. Come on. That's, that's an install away. Um, for myself, you can find, you can find me mostly here at press B. I also have a new solo podcast coming out called I'm sorry, video games, where we fucking like tactics on my show. Just throwing that out there, uh, link to my YouTube channel to be discussed later. Uh, chart. How about you? Where can folks find your fine, fine face and your fine take on games? Wow.

[01:16:07] Uh, you can find me bitching about final fantasy eight over at, uh, www.twitch.tv forward slash chart monk. You can also find me here on YouTube on my own channel under the name chart monk. You can also find me here with these fine gentlemen talking about games. We both love and hate all the time, uh, every Friday, uh, as much as we can possibly put together. Um, also I want to shout out that this bottom five is not a new thing actually for those

[01:16:35] who are new to the podcast or haven't listened the entirety. Jake has a bottom five wolf GP. They even pulse has a bottom five. I'm not mistaken. Everybody's got a bottom five. Sinistar is the last one that needs to be done. So go back and listen to everybody else's stuff and check those out too. So we can get those, uh, get those numbers up because these guys have been around longer than Sinistar and I've been a part of this team and all the shit's been good. It's why we wanted to be a part of it for so long. So yeah, yep.

[01:17:04] No, it's been a great list and I'm looking forward to doing one with Sinistar in the very near future. And I think at some point we need to redo the rest of the team's episodes in video form because the ones we have are audio and they were early. They were, they were way back. I'm, I'm just going to warn you, uh, balloon fight and circus. Charlie will be on my list. You know, you clearly have not played many video games, sir. If you think balloon fight is a bottom five game, but that's okay.

[01:17:33] All right, folks, that's an episode. That's a whole 3.5 liters of milk. This has been press be to cancel. We'll see you next week. None of this makes any sense.

[01:18:28] Breath of the wild is on your bottom five. I don't know why people love that game. I don't get it. Honorable mention. Worst game out there is breath of the wild. No, what the hell's wrong with you? What the hell's wrong with me? What the hell's wrong with me? You get fucking weapons that break. Fuck you. And then you get the met and you get the master sword that runs out of charge. Fuck the fuck that. No, it's stupid. That's dumb. It's dumb. It's dumb. You know what? All right.

[01:18:58] This is going to hide the bag of milk on the video. I was going to hide the bag of milk, but it's going right fucking back up there. This entire episode. I don't care. I took it off, but I still don't like it. I still don't like my people like it. It's fine not to like it. And yeah, this is right. This is going to end of the episode now because I haven't started the video yet, but I'm recording the audio. Good. It's fine not to like breath of the wild. I get the criticisms and I even don't like the weapon breaking. But to say it's like bottom five for you. One of the worst games you play.

[01:19:27] Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Captain, Captain, maybe not call it worst games ever and call it games. You were disappointed in is saying that it can't be on the list now. All right. Fine. Fine. Wow. Five disappointing games. I get it. That's fine. Holy shit. Still. Still. Still. I just don't get it. I tried. I played it.

[01:19:51] I would play it on on my fucking on the cruise and I just got so fucking tired of running literally fucking everywhere with no way to get there quicker. And then all my shit breaking. I had like my entire package of shit was full of weapons because I'd swing it once and it fucking break. And I'm like, what the fuck is the point? I get cool shit. I don't want to use it because it's going to break and I can't find it. Yeah. But the exploration is so good. You can go anywhere.

[01:20:20] It's like the Skyrim of Zelda. You can go anywhere, find all this cool shit. The armor sets are really awesome. There's dozens of armor sets in the game that are really interesting. They have abilities. You can do it in Elder Ring. You can cook. I mean, then I'll be Elder Ring. Keep going. Jesus. A better game. Elder Ring. Okay. We got that. You get to save Zelda. I don't give a fuck. I give a shit. You can't. You can't do that. I haven't saved Zelda for fucking nine games, man.

[01:20:50] I'm over it. Get your shit together, woman. So hard in Breath of the Wild. She doesn't give two shits about Link like at all. No. Crazy. I wish I liked it more. It's not even on my list. I'll probably swap out my number two since we're recording this, but I don't know. Well, it's pretty. It's pretty high up there. I'm going to piss off some people, but I just can't get into it. Okay. Let me drink more water and then we'll go. Who's hosting this one? Jake? Are you hosting this one? Yeah. I'll host it.

[01:21:18] And then you're giving moral support and we're mostly going to hear Char give his bad takes on games he doesn't like. That's what we're going to do. Bad takes? Circus Charlie all day long. Yeah, Circus Charlie is definitely creeping up the list. Just saying. Yeah, they can't all be Circus Charlie though. You got five to do. I'm sure there's five Circus Charlie's variants and I don't like the arcade, the NES, the fucking Neo Geo. I don't fucking know. He's got balloon fight.

[01:21:47] You don't even know the platforms of Circus Charlie. There was only on like three things. It was on C64. Oh, no, it's more than three things. C64, MX, MSX, NES, of course. And then it was based on the arcade game. I think there might have been one more. Is that five? Not on Neo Geo. All he needs is balloon fight and he's got five. Is that five? I should throw Bard's Tale in there just to piss off the whole day. Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus. No one else is a lame game. That's me if you piss off. Fucking Bard's Tale. Shit.

[01:22:16] Have you ever played that game? No, you haven't. But you know why I haven't played it? Because it's bad. Just start dropping like you hate Oingo Boingo just to piss off Wolfman. Oh, yeah. Just go off-brand. You know what else sucks? All roguelikes. Any roguelike. It's just terrible. And Master Blaster. There's no point. If I wanted to rinse, wash, repeat, I'd do my laundry.