Don’t know about CRPGs in particular, one way or the other. But in general I agree with you op.
If you level up, and it means your stats go up and all your enemies level up and stay at the same balance with you, it’s pointless. It still affords a moment of happiness ‘cool I levelled up’, but in a much less satisfying way.
The point of level up early in RPG video games was, to my knowledge, so that any one with time and patience could beat a game regardless of skill. The idea of level scaling is almost the exact opposite, to remove the advantage of levelling. They cancel out and both player level and enemy level should be removed if that’s happening.
That’s assuming a 1:1 unversal scaling though, which is rarely the case. In the details it can be tuned to something worthwhile - which enemies scale, how much they scale, etc.
Still, my thought is when games want level scaling, they should consider why. If you want players not to overpower enemies via stats, maybe get rid of the stats (or don’t change them on lvl up). Levels can still augment your player with new spells, unique abilities, or more options. Or maybe more carefully consider the placement of enemies and what their default level and stats are set at. Or maybe consider a lower level cap, or a lower range of stat values.
The possibilities are wide open, but level scaling done poorly can make level ups feel like a punishment.
I think the place they are getting the bit about patience from is specifically dragon quest. Where the devs intentionally positioned it in opposition to other games of the time that required you to get good so to speak.
I read an interview a few years ago, I think with Yuji Horii about the design in dragon quest being set up specifically so that by sinking time in you would eventually overpower everything and progress, even if you never improved at the game mechanics. I couldn’t easily find it again when I looked to link it but maybe I will be able to later today.
Yep, that is indeed what I was thinking of (though I don’t have a link handy either).
Didn’t mean to imply that’s where experience levels were invented. The clarification is appreciated though.
And even thought I was alluding to that DQ comment, I’m sure it wasn’t the first game to adapt experience levels, and across the board making things easier wasn’t always the impetus.
I have a lot of games which were enjoyable 100% of the time, but none which I played for over 100 hours. I’d be absolutely exhausted if I was in “oh neat haha wow!” mode for that long, personally, my dopamine receptors would be fucking fried.
Good luck with your search, and below I have some which fit your criteria outside of the 100 hour requirement.
ListA Short Hike Beacon Pines Heart of the Woods Citizen Sleeper
I would also add the following to your list (also outside the 100 hour req, but still 100% enjoyable):
Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip
Outer Wilds
Outer Wilds may be obvious to anyone who has played it, but it would be a shame to leave it unmentioned as it is my favorite game of all time and seemingly universally loved. And Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip is just stupidly entertaining - impossible to stop once you start playing.
I didn’t receive notifications for these—thank you for the suggestions. There have been complaints about the newer edition of Outer Worlds. Which version is fine to just get and start playing, if I decide to get it?
Of course! And it’s actually Outer Wilds I’m referring to; I haven’t played Outer Worlds yet so I can’t comment on it. They have very similar names unfortunately so it’s easy to mix them up.
I 100% Tunic in 15 hours. I expected it to be longer and harder, considering it’s not even in a real language and you have to translate it to solve most of the puzzles.
Great randomizer out there for it. And it’s Archipelago compatible so you can mix it in with other randomizers alone or with friends, in case you want more!
I play Hardspace Shipbreaker when I want to relax.
You are a worker in a spacedock and dismantle ships with a cutting and grappling tool and divide the components into resource bins. It has a chill soundtrack and it’s fun to float around with thrusters and figure out how to separate the different parts.
I started this game but got bored a couple hours in and I can’t really explain why. In theory it felt like a game I should really like but maybe something about the pacing? Do you think it takes a while to get really good and maybe I should try putting more time in or is the way it is at the start pretty much the same the whole way through?
This is really hard to answer, because I think it highly depends what kind of player you are.
I don’t play optimally. Yes, it’s fun to haul yourself around with the grappler at breakneck speeds and stop just in time not to get squished, but I’m not that good at it. I also don’t limit myself to the most valuable parts and move on to another ship, but collect the last metal frame. I would make more money in less time, but don’t like the idea.
Overall the game stays the same with a few mechanics that get added (explosive charges and something that screws with your salvage and has to be solved first). The system in the ships get more complicated and you need to solve several steps before you can “solve” a problem.
Yeah, that’s how I like to play in general as well, yet… I guess maybe the core gameplay just isn’t for me. I might give it another go and see how it is after getting more upgrades though. Thanks for the response!
it gets more complex and fiddly, and your upgrades make you faster and more nimble, but the fundamentals are the same through to the end. did you get to the bigger reactors and cutting coolant lines? because if so you’ve seen more than half of the game and it’s fair to say it didn’t grab you.
also a thought; did you play with or without the time limit? because i feel like the timer helped me stay motivated.
I don’t think I had the timer, I don’t actually remember there being a choice for one. I think I’ll give it another go until I get a few more upgrades, in retrospect I might not have gotten very far at all, I have no recollection of coolant lines. Thanks!
Depends on your willingness to pay. Balatro, Slay the Spire, Dead Cells are all really good but cost around 10 bucks each but are among the best mobile games you could want, all offering different styles of gameplay
Plenty. It’s just that it’s not often used because it’s more computationally expensive.
Usually it’s just collision hulls for hitboxes instead of per-face collision. But even if your sword passes right through the enemy, it’s still doing collision detection to identify that it’s passing through the enemy. It’s just that animations are rarely complex enough to account for all the possible ways you could hit an enemy.
It’s a little janky, and the blocky aesthetic may or may not be your thing, but it handles the idea of detective work better than any other game I’ve ever played. It’s not just “Walk around in detective vision until you assemble enough clues for the character to tell you the solution.” You have to actually think about things, examine the evidence, assemble a theory of the crime. Which is doubly impressive given that every crime is procedurally generated.
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