2 of my favorites of all time. Final Fantasy VIII and Morrowind.
Final Fantasy VIII, to my knowledge, never once tells you that enemy levels scale. This wouldn’t be a problem if you never grinded fights (for exp, AP, items, etc). I think the intention was that you would never need to grind so you never would (the game is actually super easy). But people do grind, and you can level up very quickly if you want to.
Morrowind just drops you into the world, for better or worse. There are some prompts to familiarize you to menus. But that’s it. Most of the basic functions are self explainable. Except fatigue. Fatigue affects everything you do. And you won’t realize that it’s the reason whatever you’re trying to do isn’t working. Most players get frustrated and quit because they can’t hit anything with their weapon, not realizing it’s because their stamina bar is drained.
Morrowind was on another level compared to modern open world games. Map markers? Nah, fuck you. You get old world directions like “follow the road south east out of town and take a left at the fork then turn right at the crazy broken Dwarven machine and you should find the dungeon my brother went exploring”.
Then the main story quest giver tells me to “come back after two moons have passed” to continue… I thought that meant two MONTHS. Left the dude at level like 3 or 4 and came back a walking God of death because I nearly completed all guilds side quests in 2 months… Learned years later he just wanted me to wait 2 fucking days.
Can't believe it's not in here yet, but Monster Hunter. I find the eventual understanding of the gameplay loop to not actually be as complex as I thought it'd be, but getting a good overview of all what you want to do and use isn't really possible even in the latest entries, just specific information about specific mechanics.
I couldn’t get into MHW at all, and I lay the blame on the awful tutorial, which is less a tutorial and more interrupting you as you try to get to grips with the controls, with dozens of full screen pages of text.
Oh yes, legendarily awful. And again, I don't find it that impenetrable in the end, the delivery of the info is just so bad. If anybody wants to get into MH I'd love to help because I absolutely love the series now, but it took concentrated effort to teach myself without anyone to guide me.
Fallout 2. That Game has the Opposite of a Tutorial. It does Not explain anything and throws you immediately into a Dungeon where you are supposed to solve it with specific skills. Can be really annoying If you have the wrong skills. It was literally tacked onto the Game because the Publisher demanded it. Love the Game, but the Temple of Trials ist one of the worst Things in the entire Series.
That aspect of the game actually ended multiple playthroughs for me where I just could not stomach it. I rolled the character, I got set up to play, I got halfway through the Temple of Trials, and I said no actually I want to do something else. 👎
So many I can’t even narrow down a specific one. Many new titles have tutorials that go over generic bullshit like how to move and aim and then don’t tell you how to do anything that’s actually unique to the game itself. I hate that shit.
Really hate having a tutorial objective of “put the goober in the jibjab” but then it doesn’t explain what the fuck either of those things are, and it’s not obvious by just looking at the situation.
Oh, The Ascent did this. Tells you to hack something early on; does not tell you how this is achieved. Everything up to that point was walk up to thing and press A/X. To hack you have to HOLD A/X. But it doesn’t say that. I had to look it up online. Which is stupid.
Dark Souls also. But… It’s hard to be mad at that one, since being vague is literally purposeful game design with those. 🤷🏻♂️
Factorio. I’m playing a space ex and Krastorio modded run with the science costs increased by 10x. It’s slowing down the progression a lot which is forcing me to design things smartly instead of getting by with jank. I’m about 71 hours in and I’m getting crashes which is devastating because I really don’t want to restart.
Cliff Empire. I’m still on the tutorial technically, I think. There was one part where I had to produce 250 extra power (250 kW I think?), and even though I had used up all the available space pretty effectively, I never got above ~120. So, I went ahead and started building a nuclear reactor… which only got me to ~170. I eventually passed that step somehow. I think it was because there were more people? Anyway, after that I clicked through all the steps I passed (about 20 of them) before I was producing anything close to 250 ‘power’ and I’m pretty sure I missed something; because my reactor caught on fire and exploded. Turns out the fire fighting drones never got water, because apparently I have to set it’s delivery priority manually… ¯_(ツ)_/¯
So I rage quit, and here I am complaining about it. Beautiful game though.
I bought it for PS5 today and realized after I bought it that it isn’t even out yet for that platform. So unless I can get a refund tomorrow, I guess I can’t try it out for 2 more weeks.
I quit my xcom2-lwotc run. I guess I didn’t play optimized enough. Enemies keep getting stronger and stronger and my science is too slow to keep up. It got to the point where I could only finish missions with massive save-scumming and now I benched it. In my next attempt I’m gonna be quicker about everything and build up multiple teams right from the start but for now …
For xcom2 you need to immediately research the upgraded weapons as soon as you begin your campaign. It feels counter intuitive because it takes so long but it really puts you into the correct pace. I don’t remember when it best to upgrade them again or armor but that’s the best start. Also aggressively use grenades because they’re guaranteed hits.
For BG3, be sad there is no overwatch, sorry, I mean readied action like in D&D.
In the end game of Tears of the Kingdom. The systems for collection are really obtuse. I’m pretty sure I have all of the Shrines, but still missing a couple of hearts. Also have to look around for quest starters by teleporting all over
I’m also in the end game part, trying to max out my hearts before putting the game away. I’ve been using Mapgenie.io to help me figure out what Shrines I don’t have. While I love the exploration and the sensor+ helps point you in the right direction, I just want to wrap this one up soon to get to other games in my backlog.
Hahaha, my computer would catch on fire if I tried running Bauldur’s Gate 3.
Hell, Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Platinum Edition lags a little whenever I ride a coaster and the camera starts facing all the guests in the best park I have ever designed.
Happened last night and is probably gonna happen again when I eventually boot it up again to work some more on the park. Thankfully it doesn’t whenever I build my absolute monstrosities in the coaster designer mode.
bin.pol.social
Najstarsze