Misguided developers with great potential

[kupomogli]

There are more than a few developers that have a lot of potential, but they might keep making games from the same genre or consistently release games with good ideas but heavily flawed exectuion. I wanted to talk about some of these developers so thought I'd make a thread.

NIS

So NIS is the very reason for this thread. I recently saw a new trailer for The Witch and the Hundred Knight Revival Edition on PS4, a game I'm interested in getting, but the trailer was just weaaboo garbage and showed very little gameplay. I mean such poor advertising. They could honestly interest fans of Diablo style games if they were to focus on nothing but gameplay elements instead of focusing on the witches' tits. I mean they've already got that fanbase interested in the game so putting some more effort into the game would actually interest others. Now I haven't played this game, so the point of this thread isn't because of this game, but I thought of it because of this game.

TPRGs are NIS' bread and butter, but it's not their forte. NIS' concept of games doesn't fit the strategy genre in the least because the strategy in games like Disgaea are more of common sense and grinding than anything resembling actual strategy and it's the reason that NIS has the same niche fanbase they've had since the launch of the original Disgaea which is when they first got well known, or atleast as well known as they'll ever be. There are games that NIS has made though that are really well done for their style of development.

The first is ZHP The Unlosing Ranger vs Dark Death Evil Man. Being on the PSP and being the style of graphics it is, it's sold really poorly, but this game is one of their best games and the genre works really well with their development style. The game is a rogue like that's well developed and it's brutally difficult. You'll get different skills through your weapons, you scale your base, upgrade your stats through modifiers, etc. Very good game and this is the type of game that fits best with how NIS develops games.

Prinny and Prinny 2. Same as ZHP, this game is for the niche of the niche only because the graphical style doesn't interest anyone else despite being such great games as Prinny 1 and 2 are some of the best platformers of last gen. They're similar in style to classic Castlevania of old with slower pacing, but every action you took was pretty much set in stone.

Level 5

Level 5 is a really hit or miss company. They always have great concepts but the execution is poor. Poor AI destroyed any possibility of Ni No Kuni having good combat, but the storyline is also extremely boring and while it's got a large beautiful world, other than the storyline, any quests are just extremely boring fetch quests. Fantasy Life is like a mix of Monster Hunter and Animal Crossing, and while it has a large world, great crafting system, it's got a somewhat enjoyable yet flawed combat system and crafting takes way too much of your time over everything else. Rogue Galaxy is like a downgraded Dark Cloud, imo, battle system tries to be deep but it feels more downgraded, no longer having the Zelda 64 like mechanics and is heavily based on grinding and upgrading weapons to make progress. I've not played the Yokai Watch, but it seems it's Pokemon with no control over any of your allies actions.

White Knight Chronicles has the same issue in terms of ally AI, but the story is a bit better. White Knight Chronicles is a great game because of how the combat system plays out though, as it play similar to Phantasy Star Online if you were playing as a force, but attacks are turned based. It's got a great combat system and the online aspect when you're playing with other people is amazing, like an MMO that doesn't suck(the best thing about all these MMO lite games.)

The Dark Cloud series and White Knight Chronicles series imo are there best games. The other games have great potential, but they're aspects in the game that keep them from reaching what they could have been and make them either much worse than they would have been, or just bad games altogether.

These are examples I'd use. Any companies you guys aren't really a fan of that you think they could make some great games based on past releases you've seen from them?