Wait, I thought this game was a depiction of what we subject horses to, using a horror lens to drive home the point? I’ve never heard of something less sexy?
I used to be like you. Way back when, I would love to cheat currency into single player games with a little help from cheat engine. The biggest culprits were BTD5 and PvZ1/2, and it’d give me a kick just being able to go through and buy everything before using it all while feeling unstoppable
Since then, I’ve gone back and replayed the games without cheating, and I honestly regret using cheat engine. It felt way more rewarding getting everything at a more sustainable rate, like I really earned the item
You also talk about feeling like you earn the ability to cheat, but, looking back on my own experience, I can safely say that I was terrible at gauging whether or not I should use a hack. Turns out, when you have a shiny item in a shop that you could come back in a few hours for or get instantly now for free, more often than not we’ll choose the latter
It’s true that most of his romhacks are at the very least slightly harder than their original counterparts, but the one I’d still recommend is sacred gold/storm silver
My sense of difficulty is a bit skewed as I tend to mainly do hardcore nuzlockes, but I recently played through storm silver normally and it was a blast. The gym leaders needed a bit more thought when fighting as each of their pokemon were more powerful, but my ragtag group of 6 I ran with only ever failed once in the whole playthrough, and that was against the elite 4 (so somewhat expected)
Drayano made a series of rom hacks for pokemon that, to be frank, are better than the originals. Would highly recommend if you’re interested in adding a little spice to your next game
I thought the gameplay was pretty good, in a “turn your brain off and shoot guys with gradually increasing numbers” kind if way, and I absolutely adored whenever Handsome Jack showed up, but that’s pretty much it
I’ve heard from more than a few sources that the shooting on that game’s peak, but it’s just kind of generic. Outside of Jack, I thought the writing was honestly pretty lacklustre as well, even getting annoying in more than one instance (CATCH A RIIIIIDE FUCK OFF DIPSHIT). The cell-shaded artsyle is quite pretty, I will give it that
I think it’s really interesting to compare a game like elden ring to something else like BOTW
My first time playing through elden ring I had an amazing time, and thoroughly enjoyed the open world experience. I made sure to explore every crack in every wall, not necessarily for the rewards, but rather for the exploration itself because that exploration felt magnificent
However, I’ve now played through elden ring four times over the years, and I quickly realised I was only playing for the bosses, with the open world merely being a hindrance to my journey. This problem quickly compounds, as the first few hours of a save is usually you running around buck naked looking for your weapons, smithing stones, flasks, etc.
This is opposed to something like dark souls 3, where your journey to get the build you want usually means you can a 30 second detour from your main path.
Compare this with BOTW, which I’ve also played through a fair few times, and it’s easy to understand why these games are different. Unlike ER, I honestly thought of the bosses as more like hindrances to getting the powers, which would help me traverse the open world. To me, that traversal was the most enjoyable thing about the game
This might just be a tinfoil hat theory, but I think this is because of the difference in rewards between the two. Unlike ER, which most rewards being clearly defined and memorable, in BOTW the vast majority of rewards are either
a) spirit orbs from shrines
or
b) korok seeds
While the shrines themselves can be memorised, I’d say it’s practically impossible to remember the location of all these things, mainly because there’s no point - there are so many, you’ll run into your fair share anyway. There are exceptions of course, with weapons and shields and the like, but for the most part it holds true
I’m about 10 hours into silksong and it’s amazing, don’t get me wrong. But the majority of the boss fights seem… cheap?
Like, their difficulty doesn’t come from their various attacks, or their environment. Instead, it usually comes from the fact that they do double damage, or the fact that they spam the same two attacks over and over way too quickly, or the fact that they can do the same add summon three times in a row and make what was a controllable situation practically impossible
Now, I’ve 112% the OG hollow knight and beaten true radiance, so I’m not against difficult boss fights. In fact I relish the feeling of learning their moves and patterns after every single death
But when the moves are “ram into wall. Then ram into wall again” it becomes incredibly annoying
I played maybe ~5 hours of shenmue 3 and thought the core gameplay loop actually seemed pretty fun
The problem arises from all the bullshit they strung along it
Like how you have a set amount of energy you can use each day (which I like) combined with how you can spend that energy to run. This results in you being heavily incentivised to walk around at a snail’s pace for most of the early game at the very least
The game had so many design choices like this that were just baffling