God, this game sounds awful. It sounds like the demo might Un-sell the game to people.
It just looks so bizarre. The aesthetic makes me think of knock-off brands of Indian candy or something, it manages to look bland, exotic, and random all at once.
We're never going to not be genocidal Nazis in Age of Calamity, are we? Use your WMD to kill 20,000 foes! Now use its planet-scraper laser to destroy 20 villages! We have won another battle, despite the odds! What fucking odds are you looking at, you genocidal lunatics?
It's also so fucking bizarre how they did the "evil clones of the good guys" for like one mission, and since then, it's been nonstop fucking lynels and guardians. It's also super cool (or something) that some characters have attacks that just straight up stun every single enemy out of what they're doing while exposing their weakpoint gauge. Like, there's always some wacky mechanics in Warriors games that lead to weird results and some obviously overpowered characters, but they usually require more setup or execution than "use C6 to permanently stunlock."
God, this game sounds awful. It sounds like the demo might Un-sell the game to people.
It just looks so bizarre. The aesthetic makes me think of knock-off brands of Indian candy or something, it manages to look bland, exotic, and random all at once.
There's no sense of cohesion at all. There's grass and plants, next to techno-magical looking platforms, next to weird geometric spikey things, next to brick walls and floors. And not in a magical "anything can happen here" sort of way...it's in a "free Unity assets we cobbled together" sort of way.
And I know this game looks a lot better than Wii games did, but nevertheless it feels like it has a Wii game aesthetic. I see 3D modeling tricks that were old hat even in that generation, but stuck out then and stick out now because the rest of the design can't quite cover for them well enough.
I'm just baffled why it's being released in such a state. Did Yuji Naka run into a Squeenix deadline, or does he genuinely think the game's awesome as-is?
Ohhh. Maybe the sequel will trim out a lot of the fat the game had and I might enjoy it!
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Brainiac 8Don't call me Shirley...Registered Userregular
Ok, so Atalier Ryza. It's interesting, laid back, and fun. I'm like 4 or 5 hours into it and I feel like I'm still in the tutorial section of the game. Crazy.
Ok, so Atalier Ryza. It's interesting, laid back, and fun. I'm like 4 or 5 hours into it and I feel like I'm still in the tutorial section of the game. Crazy.
Could certainly be interesting. Legions aren't fully invincible iirc - you still take some damage if they get hit and they can get knocked around a bit? But there's potential for an interesting character there for sure even if they just stick to the sword legion (they won't though I'd bet). Final smash is obvious, too. (For maximum anime play the music)
Ok, so Atalier Ryza. It's interesting, laid back, and fun. I'm like 4 or 5 hours into it and I feel like I'm still in the tutorial section of the game. Crazy.
The tutorial for an Atelier game tends to be the entire game. Most of the crafting functions are unveiled gradually until the end and then it's like "ok, I hope you've been paying attention - now how do you use all of this to make the most busted-ass equipment in the game to kill these optional superbosses with?"
So guys, I'm struggling to finish Dragon Quest XI. I'm past the big halfway story beat and was hoping that I would get more invested in the story but...
The combat mechanics are dry as bones. Almost all fights I can just set to auto-battle and not even break a sweat. I did not at any point go out of my way to grind or otherwise overpower myself.
My last Dragon Quest was IX on DS and that one at least had a create a character and multiplayer that kept it fresh. Plus the premise was way more interesting.
After all the praise XI gets I can't help but feel I'm missing something.
The world feels like a generic pastiche of cultural stereotypes, your main character, who you cannot edit at all, is your bog-standard silent protagonist pre-destined messiah stereotype (except when we see him as a child in flashbacks, for some reason). The companions are also all bland stereotypes that were better done in older games
(You've got boring Locke from FFVI, unnecessarily obnoxious sassy little girl, no personality heal-bot girl, magical gay friend, master roshi, sexy badass who continuously gets forced to wear sexy clothes against her wishes (gross), lawful stupid paladin)
which feels like a huge step back from previous games in this very series, let alone other offerings in the genre.
I mean the story, so far as I can tell, is essentially the same as Final Fantasy VI which came out 25 years ago, but with less interesting characters, centered on a single, boring protagonist (as opposed to multiple protags in FFVI), more generic world-building, and a bog simple character progression system.
Sorry if this sounds bitchy but I'm a little frustrated at having talked myself into buying this game despite my initial reservations, only to find out, 30 hours later, that I was right all along to have waited so long to buy this. I feel like I'm riding on a paint-by-numbers RPG amusement park ride and hardly have any agency in what happens in the game at all. I'm pretty sure I'm more than halfway through the game and am now struggling with the sunk cost fallacy here. Can anyone fill me in on what I might be missing here?
Probably the only thing you're wrong about is 30 hours being halfway in. That game is gigantic.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing? When I start seeing the same enemies pop up but now they have red eyes, I start to think that I'm past the point where the devs gave a shit and are just recycling assets to pad out runtime. I'm supposed to believe there's still more than another 30 hours of this? That's... hardly a selling point.
Yeahhhh Dragon Quest isn't for you then. That's been the thing about the series for a long time. Every city is a literal stereotype of something. Enemy names are the same.
Probably the only thing you're wrong about is 30 hours being halfway in. That game is gigantic.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing? When I start seeing the same enemies pop up but now they have red eyes, I start to think that I'm past the point where the devs gave a shit and are just recycling assets to pad out runtime. I'm supposed to believe there's still more than another 30 hours of this? That's... hardly a selling point.
Try 90. Or more.
As far as your complaints -- well, that's Dragon Quest. Its appeal is largely rooted in charm for extremely retro JRPGs. It's not really going to change significantly past where you are, so maybe this is the point to bail out. (And I liked that game.)
Probably the only thing you're wrong about is 30 hours being halfway in. That game is gigantic.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing? When I start seeing the same enemies pop up but now they have red eyes, I start to think that I'm past the point where the devs gave a shit and are just recycling assets to pad out runtime. I'm supposed to believe there's still more than another 30 hours of this? That's... hardly a selling point.
Try 90. Or more.
As far as your complaints -- well, that's Dragon Quest. Its appeal is largely rooted in charm for extremely retro JRPGs. It's not really going to change significantly past where you are, so maybe this is the point to bail out. (And I liked that game.)
That's just it though, I guess what is want is to be sold on it! I am asking to be convinced!
I am an old-school JRPG fan! I played Dragon Warrior back in the day, I've played all the Final Fantasies except XV, I liked DQIX! I guess part of me is distressed that I cannot see the appeal where so many others can. I'm suffering an old-school JRPG fan existential crisis! I'm melting.... meeeeeeeltiiiiiing!!!
I was fortunate to have seen the advice to add the Draconian Quest modifiers "Reduced Experience from Easy Fights" and "All Enemies Are Super Strong" before starting Dragon Quest XI, due to the fairly easy base game difficulty. I definitely could not have beaten the game with just autobattling. But yeah, the game's pretty fluffy overall, as far as characters and scenarios go. Sometimes that kind of comfort food is nice to have in a game. I will admit that I did turn those limiters off at the end of Act 3 just to get it done, but that was well over 100 hours into the game and having most of the other challenges completed.
Probably the only thing you're wrong about is 30 hours being halfway in. That game is gigantic.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing? When I start seeing the same enemies pop up but now they have red eyes, I start to think that I'm past the point where the devs gave a shit and are just recycling assets to pad out runtime. I'm supposed to believe there's still more than another 30 hours of this? That's... hardly a selling point.
Try 90. Or more.
As far as your complaints -- well, that's Dragon Quest. Its appeal is largely rooted in charm for extremely retro JRPGs. It's not really going to change significantly past where you are, so maybe this is the point to bail out. (And I liked that game.)
That's just it though, I guess what is want is to be sold on it! I am asking to be convinced!
I am an old-school JRPG fan! I played Dragon Warrior back in the day, I've played all the Final Fantasies except XV, I liked DQIX! I guess part of me is distressed that I cannot see the appeal where so many others can. I'm suffering an old-school JRPG fan existential crisis! I'm melting.... meeeeeeeltiiiiiing!!!
I don't think you should be convinced if you are not already having fun. Your sunk costs are already gone, go find a game you like instead. Did you play Octopath Traveler? Maybe you'd like that one more. Or abandon old school RPGs and play something newer that's good, like Nier Automata or Wasteland 3.
Dragon Quest XI pissed me off in a lot of ways and I let the fucking world die after a couple late game sidequests where A.) It required you to spec a character into a specific build, pep up multiple characters, and then do it A SECOND FUCKING TIME in the same battle, and B.) straight up lied to you about which gimmick skill you needed to use against a boss. It had done a fucking lot to piss me off before that, especially that goddamned entire mermaid sequence and its sequel, the haunted painting backtracking double double bullshit. There are... a fucking lot of small things that I was forgiving to that point too that are part and parcel to DQ that I was willing to suffer through, but eventually it was just too much and... ugh. The level up jingle alone traumatizes me, especially when it fucking plays 3 times per level up for the hero, plus an additional time for every party member, but admittedly, that's more from my attempt to play DQ Heroes where it literally locked me in a loop of listening to its stupid fucking "Congratulations for accepting a quest!" jingle for 2 minutes straight.
E:
I'm an oldschool JRPG fan too, but they've been doing their damnedest to drive me off with the long-ass unskippable cutscenes, labyrinthian towns, and just god fucking awful crafting system after god fucking awful crafting system. I want to go out, adventure, fight monsters, collect treasures and shit. Not be trapped listening to a band of nitwits and spend fifteen minutes just trying to hunt out NPCs just to continue banal cutscenes. I miss puzzle dungeons and smooth, clean, simple interfaces. Fuck MMO aesthetic. Fuck open worlds. Fuck bloated garbage scripts that you won't let me quickly speedread through.
---
Age of Calamity is starting to approach the same feeling for me. As I'm running out of new things to see/do and the utterly shit interface is bloating beyond belief, all its little shitty design decisions are starting to catch up and take up more and more of my headspace. I actually failed Zelda's bow training mission today. Not because I didn't understand the stupid thing, or even got hit more than I think once, but because Age of Calamity completely fucked up the easiest and possibly most cathartic kind of missions, the "kill a zillion dudes" mission. Unlike HW where it spawns a zillion dudes, and more almost as fast as you can kill them, in AoC, if you're supposed to kill 1000 dudes, it's going to only spawn 1010 dudes. You know, to be fair and give you a buffer. Across the entire fucking map.
But wait, it's worse. It only spawns them every time you've killed 100, so there's only ever 110 on the map at a time. So you're going to be hunting around for the little pockets of helpless little shits that you left at 5% health the entire fucking time. And on that Zelda bow stage, there's a shitload of tiny little logs, fences, pond edges, and other shit that you get caught on and/or blocks your impossible-to-aim shots and explosions, not ot mention the miniboss enemies that spawn way the fuck off from the middle and never aggro, so you have to go run off to clear them just to get more shit to start spawning again. How do you fuck this up!? Probably the same way that you think a map interface with 5,000 icons is a good idea.
Hot take: all of the dragon quests are boring and unfun. Except for maybe IV, that one did a decent job of not overstaying its welcome.
More nuanced take: having received the first Dragon Warrior game as a birthday present as a young lad, I've grown up with the games. The first game wasn't even that great, not when Final Fantasy was sitting right there. They're all grindy as heck, usually hit all the same story beats, etc. I want to like them, but they just never end up being worth my time.
Dragon Quest XI pissed me off in a lot of ways and I let the fucking world die after a couple late game sidequests where A.) It required you to spec a character into a specific build, pep up multiple characters, and then do it A SECOND FUCKING TIME in the same battle, and B.) straight up lied to you about which gimmick skill you needed to use against a boss. It had done a fucking lot to piss me off before that, especially that goddamned entire mermaid sequence and its sequel, the haunted painting backtracking double double bullshit. There are... a fucking lot of small things that I was forgiving to that point too that are part and parcel to DQ that I was willing to suffer through, but eventually it was just too much and... ugh. The level up jingle alone traumatizes me, especially when it fucking plays 3 times per level up for the hero, plus an additional time for every party member, but admittedly, that's more from my attempt to play DQ Heroes where it literally locked me in a loop of listening to its stupid fucking "Congratulations for accepting a quest!" jingle for 2 minutes straight.
E:
I'm an oldschool JRPG fan too, but they've been doing their damnedest to drive me off with the long-ass unskippable cutscenes, labyrinthian towns, and just god fucking awful crafting system after god fucking awful crafting system. I want to go out, adventure, fight monsters, collect treasures and shit. Not be trapped listening to a band of nitwits and spend fifteen minutes just trying to hunt out NPCs just to continue banal cutscenes. I miss puzzle dungeons and smooth, clean, simple interfaces. Fuck MMO aesthetic. Fuck open worlds. Fuck bloated garbage scripts that you won't let me quickly speedread through.
---
Age of Calamity is starting to approach the same feeling for me. As I'm running out of new things to see/do and the utterly shit interface is bloating beyond belief, all its little shitty design decisions are starting to catch up and take up more and more of my headspace. I actually failed Zelda's bow training mission today. Not because I didn't understand the stupid thing, or even got hit more than I think once, but because Age of Calamity completely fucked up the easiest and possibly most cathartic kind of missions, the "kill a zillion dudes" mission. Unlike HW where it spawns a zillion dudes, and more almost as fast as you can kill them, in AoC, if you're supposed to kill 1000 dudes, it's going to only spawn 1010 dudes. You know, to be fair and give you a buffer. Across the entire fucking map.
But wait, it's worse. It only spawns them every time you've killed 100, so there's only ever 110 on the map at a time. So you're going to be hunting around for the little pockets of helpless little shits that you left at 5% health the entire fucking time. And on that Zelda bow stage, there's a shitload of tiny little logs, fences, pond edges, and other shit that you get caught on and/or blocks your impossible-to-aim shots and explosions, not ot mention the miniboss enemies that spawn way the fuck off from the middle and never aggro, so you have to go run off to clear them just to get more shit to start spawning again. How do you fuck this up!? Probably the same way that you think a map interface with 5,000 icons is a good idea.
Then drop it; it sounds like it long since lost its value.
+2
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Dr_KeenbeanDumb as a buttPlanet Express ShipRegistered Userregular
Dragon Quest games are kind of a love it or hate it thing.
In the West at least, in the East it's just a love it thing. Kind of like Monster Hunter I guess?
The trick with Zelda's bow training is that you're not supposed to use Zelda's cool unique ability the game strongly touts at you -- you're supposed to just build up your gauge and then hit A just like every single other character. (I tried both methods, and only the second one worked)
The trick with Zelda's bow training is that you're not supposed to use Zelda's cool unique ability the game strongly touts at you -- you're supposed to just build up your gauge and then hit A just like every single other character. (I tried both methods, and only the second one worked)
I figured out that her ZR thing was garbage in the first battle it gives the dumb bow to you. Her slate is broken good (although not as broken as the characters who don't have to charge up to get a free weakpoint smash). Unless one of the combos I haven't unlocked is similarly broken, the bow is just garbage. The real problem was just the design of that fucking mission though. Too few enemies spawned and they seemingly just plain never aggro'ed at all to come to you on top of the area being a pain in the dick to navigate. It didn't need to be like that. I've farmed one of those desert missions where you have to kill 900 mooks, and it seems to have the threshold set much higher, like 250 at a time and respawns at 200 killed in a big, wide open space. This mission was just absolute fucking misery.
As for giving up on it, the story was about how I'm very much approaching that point. I'm also very near the end of the game though, so will likely press through to the credits and then immediately throw in the towel. I've long since given up on any side mission that makes me use one of the crappier characters though, which is a bad step. I made it unlocking literally every weapon in HW:DE without hitting that point. I think a large part here though is also that there's just zero variety in the missions whatsoever. I don't miss the quiz crap, but none of the stuff like "intercept/escort messengers," the stronghold races, fight a bunch of other playables, etc. There's just... "go here and fight a miniboss. Over and over and over."
Could certainly be interesting. Legions aren't fully invincible iirc - you still take some damage if they get hit and they can get knocked around a bit? But there's potential for an interesting character there for sure even if they just stick to the sword legion (they won't though I'd bet). Final smash is obvious, too. (For maximum anime play the music)
Legions lose their gauge when hit, if its emptied you have to wait until it fully recharges before you can summon them again. They can also be knocked down or away from their target so you can either dismiss them or pull them back to you.
You don't take damage when a Legion is hit unless playing on the PT Ultimate difficulty.
Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
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Well yeah I'll bet everyone not Squeenix that was remotely interested in this game will be very happy to have saved their money.
God, this game sounds awful. It sounds like the demo might Un-sell the game to people.
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It just looks so bizarre. The aesthetic makes me think of knock-off brands of Indian candy or something, it manages to look bland, exotic, and random all at once.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
It's also so fucking bizarre how they did the "evil clones of the good guys" for like one mission, and since then, it's been nonstop fucking lynels and guardians. It's also super cool (or something) that some characters have attacks that just straight up stun every single enemy out of what they're doing while exposing their weakpoint gauge. Like, there's always some wacky mechanics in Warriors games that lead to weird results and some obviously overpowered characters, but they usually require more setup or execution than "use C6 to permanently stunlock."
There's no sense of cohesion at all. There's grass and plants, next to techno-magical looking platforms, next to weird geometric spikey things, next to brick walls and floors. And not in a magical "anything can happen here" sort of way...it's in a "free Unity assets we cobbled together" sort of way.
And I know this game looks a lot better than Wii games did, but nevertheless it feels like it has a Wii game aesthetic. I see 3D modeling tricks that were old hat even in that generation, but stuck out then and stick out now because the rest of the design can't quite cover for them well enough.
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Ohhh. Maybe the sequel will trim out a lot of the fat the game had and I might enjoy it!
Nintendo Network ID - Brainiac_8
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So, Akira Twins for Smash confirmed?
That made me think of this.
Could certainly be interesting. Legions aren't fully invincible iirc - you still take some damage if they get hit and they can get knocked around a bit? But there's potential for an interesting character there for sure even if they just stick to the sword legion (they won't though I'd bet). Final smash is obvious, too. (For maximum anime play the music)
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
The tutorial for an Atelier game tends to be the entire game. Most of the crafting functions are unveiled gradually until the end and then it's like "ok, I hope you've been paying attention - now how do you use all of this to make the most busted-ass equipment in the game to kill these optional superbosses with?"
The combat mechanics are dry as bones. Almost all fights I can just set to auto-battle and not even break a sweat. I did not at any point go out of my way to grind or otherwise overpower myself.
My last Dragon Quest was IX on DS and that one at least had a create a character and multiplayer that kept it fresh. Plus the premise was way more interesting.
After all the praise XI gets I can't help but feel I'm missing something.
The world feels like a generic pastiche of cultural stereotypes, your main character, who you cannot edit at all, is your bog-standard silent protagonist pre-destined messiah stereotype (except when we see him as a child in flashbacks, for some reason). The companions are also all bland stereotypes that were better done in older games
I mean the story, so far as I can tell, is essentially the same as Final Fantasy VI which came out 25 years ago, but with less interesting characters, centered on a single, boring protagonist (as opposed to multiple protags in FFVI), more generic world-building, and a bog simple character progression system.
Sorry if this sounds bitchy but I'm a little frustrated at having talked myself into buying this game despite my initial reservations, only to find out, 30 hours later, that I was right all along to have waited so long to buy this. I feel like I'm riding on a paint-by-numbers RPG amusement park ride and hardly have any agency in what happens in the game at all. I'm pretty sure I'm more than halfway through the game and am now struggling with the sunk cost fallacy here. Can anyone fill me in on what I might be missing here?
Yeah I never actually finished Act 3 myself. I completed 2 and I was happy with what I'd done and I put it down.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing? When I start seeing the same enemies pop up but now they have red eyes, I start to think that I'm past the point where the devs gave a shit and are just recycling assets to pad out runtime. I'm supposed to believe there's still more than another 30 hours of this? That's... hardly a selling point.
Try 90. Or more.
As far as your complaints -- well, that's Dragon Quest. Its appeal is largely rooted in charm for extremely retro JRPGs. It's not really going to change significantly past where you are, so maybe this is the point to bail out. (And I liked that game.)
That's just it though, I guess what is want is to be sold on it! I am asking to be convinced!
I am an old-school JRPG fan! I played Dragon Warrior back in the day, I've played all the Final Fantasies except XV, I liked DQIX! I guess part of me is distressed that I cannot see the appeal where so many others can. I'm suffering an old-school JRPG fan existential crisis! I'm melting.... meeeeeeeltiiiiiing!!!
I don't think you should be convinced if you are not already having fun. Your sunk costs are already gone, go find a game you like instead. Did you play Octopath Traveler? Maybe you'd like that one more. Or abandon old school RPGs and play something newer that's good, like Nier Automata or Wasteland 3.
E:
I'm an oldschool JRPG fan too, but they've been doing their damnedest to drive me off with the long-ass unskippable cutscenes, labyrinthian towns, and just god fucking awful crafting system after god fucking awful crafting system. I want to go out, adventure, fight monsters, collect treasures and shit. Not be trapped listening to a band of nitwits and spend fifteen minutes just trying to hunt out NPCs just to continue banal cutscenes. I miss puzzle dungeons and smooth, clean, simple interfaces. Fuck MMO aesthetic. Fuck open worlds. Fuck bloated garbage scripts that you won't let me quickly speedread through.
---
Age of Calamity is starting to approach the same feeling for me. As I'm running out of new things to see/do and the utterly shit interface is bloating beyond belief, all its little shitty design decisions are starting to catch up and take up more and more of my headspace. I actually failed Zelda's bow training mission today. Not because I didn't understand the stupid thing, or even got hit more than I think once, but because Age of Calamity completely fucked up the easiest and possibly most cathartic kind of missions, the "kill a zillion dudes" mission. Unlike HW where it spawns a zillion dudes, and more almost as fast as you can kill them, in AoC, if you're supposed to kill 1000 dudes, it's going to only spawn 1010 dudes. You know, to be fair and give you a buffer. Across the entire fucking map.
But wait, it's worse. It only spawns them every time you've killed 100, so there's only ever 110 on the map at a time. So you're going to be hunting around for the little pockets of helpless little shits that you left at 5% health the entire fucking time. And on that Zelda bow stage, there's a shitload of tiny little logs, fences, pond edges, and other shit that you get caught on and/or blocks your impossible-to-aim shots and explosions, not ot mention the miniboss enemies that spawn way the fuck off from the middle and never aggro, so you have to go run off to clear them just to get more shit to start spawning again. How do you fuck this up!? Probably the same way that you think a map interface with 5,000 icons is a good idea.
More nuanced take: having received the first Dragon Warrior game as a birthday present as a young lad, I've grown up with the games. The first game wasn't even that great, not when Final Fantasy was sitting right there. They're all grindy as heck, usually hit all the same story beats, etc. I want to like them, but they just never end up being worth my time.
Then drop it; it sounds like it long since lost its value.
In the West at least, in the East it's just a love it thing. Kind of like Monster Hunter I guess?
3DS: 1650-8480-6786
Switch: SW-0653-8208-4705
And yet I fuckin' love Monster Hunter. I must be broken. :P
Hmm. Depends. Favorite weapon?
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
GunLance
But I'll probably join the hordes and get on the Hunting Horn train for Rise.
Hmm, no, you seem to be fine.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
*phew* thanks doctor!
I love Dragon Quest. I have never been able to get into Monster Hunter in spite of trying pretty much every big game since the PS2 original.
3DS: 1650-8480-6786
Switch: SW-0653-8208-4705
I figured out that her ZR thing was garbage in the first battle it gives the dumb bow to you. Her slate is broken good (although not as broken as the characters who don't have to charge up to get a free weakpoint smash). Unless one of the combos I haven't unlocked is similarly broken, the bow is just garbage. The real problem was just the design of that fucking mission though. Too few enemies spawned and they seemingly just plain never aggro'ed at all to come to you on top of the area being a pain in the dick to navigate. It didn't need to be like that. I've farmed one of those desert missions where you have to kill 900 mooks, and it seems to have the threshold set much higher, like 250 at a time and respawns at 200 killed in a big, wide open space. This mission was just absolute fucking misery.
As for giving up on it, the story was about how I'm very much approaching that point. I'm also very near the end of the game though, so will likely press through to the credits and then immediately throw in the towel. I've long since given up on any side mission that makes me use one of the crappier characters though, which is a bad step. I made it unlocking literally every weapon in HW:DE without hitting that point. I think a large part here though is also that there's just zero variety in the missions whatsoever. I don't miss the quiz crap, but none of the stuff like "intercept/escort messengers," the stronghold races, fight a bunch of other playables, etc. There's just... "go here and fight a miniboss. Over and over and over."
You don't take damage when a Legion is hit unless playing on the PT Ultimate difficulty.