Bethesda open-world RPGs.

Art direction is always ugly. Mods are required to make them even remotely fun to play. Newer titles always seem to have far fewer features than their predecessors - at least fewer features that are interesting and clever. And I've found their handling of 'choices' and 'branching' storypaths to be largely uninteresting, if not generic binary paths.

I totally understand why those who can only buy a couple of games a year would gravitate towards something with that much content - or those who simply like feeling like they're in a gigantic world. But I find arguments that their choices in these games really capture real 'role-playing' to be largely disingenous.

Sure, they have more 'role-playing' than JRPGs, generally speaking... but it's still just a handle of of 'either/or' binary choices that either open up one quest line or another that ulitmately result in a largely meaningless conclusion to those arcs. The closest thing to anything meaningful is when it results in you being a vampire/werewolf/whatever with some minor new ability/behavior... and, in my opinion, often result in some annoying hinderence than an actual benefit. Either way, story-wise, it ultimately comes down to "Killed this NPC > No longer have to deal with them" or "Did not kill this NPC > sent to kill something else instead > No longer have to deal with them."

Honestly, if modders didn't prop up Bethesda games, I don't think they'd be nearly as possible as they are. I just don't think the writing is actually compelling enough.

But, of course, I still end up buying most of them with the hope that it will 'click' with me... I play 10-15 hours and realize it's generally a dumber version of the last game in the series they released. Fall-Out 4 was especially limited on what I thought worked in FO3+NV - with the uninteresting addition of base building.