I particularly hate when skill trees force you to waste points getting completely worthless techniques and crap just to reach the stuff you actually need to upgrade. No, I will not be doing the contextual counter charge grab, fuck off.
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On the other hand, GOD HAND made an entire game out of skill tree tomfoolery and it was glorious.
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I think the āwhateverā option should show up more often in rpgs than it does. I think it would make a lot of ppl happy.
Incentive towards stat growth better exemplifies why the stats matter and even games like the aforementioned atlus ones dont make clear boundaries on that. Im always gonna play with an MC that is all 1 of the 2 offensive stats because there is no incentive to split them and defensive distribution can vary easily with skills and resistances.
I think if going all physical meant a trade for support skill effectiveness- it might diversify the choice some.
I despise that EV points are hidden in pokemon, but love the use cases for controlled distribution like with the tyrogue evo line. The three choices of evolution all excel at somethin, whether it is a specific move pool or versatile ability.
I think point distribution should lend to ideas like that more. I hate investing 3 extra point into the same stat to only get a marginally stronger version of a skill I already have and would much rather have the skill made available to me and it scales to my growth or usage mastery.
It stands to question why not just teach the technique early and then have it grow with the character without extra investment.
@kiki i struggle with the Tales games for this reason too
edit:
And not to bang on Rise of the ronin too much, but it is an action game that does every form of rpg system mentioned since Anaās post. How did they let that happen?
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Sometimes, optimizing the fun out of the game is also fun, for a particular kind of weirdo anyway.
I still have fond memories of a time I did an early powerleveling trick in Final Fantasy XII and then later was able to sneak into a late game dungeon via a glitchless but still definitely not intended sequence break to nab the strongest weapon in the game super early. There was effort needed into even being able to equip the damn thing, but after that I had fun both steamrolling things while also figuring out best to utilize such a busted weapon. I think I eventually had my whole strategy set up around Hasting and Berzerking Vaan, who was the one who had experimental leveling pathways foisted on to him, to just obliterate everything.
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Iām pretty sure I also did this exact thing. It involved like, a bunch of grinding in the railroad area? It was a whole project and pretty fun to do if Iām remembering the same thing you are.
We were talking about FF8 recently. If you jump through several hoops, you can get Squallās final weapon just after the beginning of the game. It involves a lot of triple triad and item transmutation. It did absolutely ruin the fun of the game though, because after I did that and fulfilled my little mission, I didnāt want to play anymore.
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There might have been railroad stuff in the setup, which I more or less donāt remember a thing about. What I do remember is that it involved getting Vaan really strong as early as possible, because as characters join the party, their level is set to whatever Vaanās level is, so the earlier you can get him leveled up, the less grinding you have to do overall. I didnāt do a ton of power leveling either, just enough to sneak into that dungeon to get the Zodiac Spear.
Also, what I remember clearest about the actual method of powerleveling was getting early access to 3 levels of Quickenings or Limit Breaks or whatever, so that you can kill a wolf guy mob, who is a super high level guy chilling out in a low level area, I suppose as some sort of MMORPG style inflection of there being a mini raid boss type thing that youāre meant to just avoid. Somehow using Quickenings youāre not really meant to have at that early level to kill that wolf guy, combined I think with some kind of method of multiplying XP, and that meant you could end up with a very strong Vaan early enough that once a few other party members join permanently theyāre also that strong too.
Could be we are talking about the same thing still, though. Again I donāt remember the area, or anything about the convoluted setup, beyond that it meant also cheesing some high level hunts even before anyone else is in the party. But it was definitely also a fun little project with lots of tryhard setup stuff. I want to do it again but I think I saw that getting the Zodiac Spear that early (you can still get it earlier but not quite as early) but potentially also that one powerlevleing trick was not possible in The Zodiac Age version, maybe due to how the leveling system was changed.
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I think we may reached the same goal but with a slightly different method. Mine definitely involved getting a silly multiplier and killing a big thing, but I think the things were different. Or at least, your description isnāt ringing any bells. Itās been like 10 years since Iāve touched the game, though.
I kinda want to play it again soon, now. Getting an overpowered team and setting up your gambits just right was really fun.
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The most fun I had with this game was the playthrough I did where I deliberately avoided leveling until like, Disc 3 or something (using whatever ability turns enemies into cards to avoid XP, I think?), so that I could junction a bunch of overpowered magic from draw points on the world map and then level with ridiculous growth rates
And of course, Iām sure many of us have the memory of doing things like unlocking Calculator before Dorter Trade City in Final Fantasy Tacticsā¦
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Easy mode is the canon way to play Yakuza 0-6
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maybe this isnt a contrarian opinion here but: dungeon crawling is fun. i dont need a gimmick or some alternate gameplay loop to break it up. i like crawling through dungeons. we need to stop validating jerks who ātolerateā dungeon crawling to āget to the good partsā
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I probably was one of the folks who used to ātolerateā the dungeon crawl in games where I was exposed to it. I was tainted by dungeon mechanics I didnāt personally enjoy (like Sphere puzzles in FFX), or does the Library from Halo 1 (the copy/pasted repetition) count as a dungeon? But games where I felt that the dungeon wasnāt an afterthought felt like peak adventure (and BrogueCE really opened my mind up to what they could be.)
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I donāt know if this is contrarian around these parts, but Iāve been trying to disentangle whether late 90s / early 2000s was actually peak gaming, or just my own personal peak nostalgia.
I think back and want to say that time felt like a Cambrian Explosion of concepts, ideas, and just throwing spaghetti at the wall of Gamestop to see what sticks. Every now and then I remember a random thing that was tried or created at that time, across consoles and PC, and handheld consoles were different which fostered fresh / new 2D games alongside the early 3D transition.
I think today the creative burst comes from across the indie devs, and so itās a new, different kind of explosion and feels too easy to miss (like Your contrarian video game opinions - #598 by onnuhhhh shared above, Iām all about Monkey Target all the time, and had NO idea this existed, and the devs had no idea they could come to my home in the middle of the night and demand payment and I would gladly comply).
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I think late 90/early 2000s was peak gaming in a lot of regards because a majority of games were doing what I wish games would do. The best example I can give was I recently wanted to play a racing game and Ridge 5 was included on PS+. When I booted I was forced to watch a cutscene of boring b-roll and someone waxing poetic about motorcycles. After several minutes I was put into a tutorial race that didnāt really teach me all that much for 30 seconds and then forced to watch another boring b-roll āI love motorcycles, they go vroom vroomā cutscene. This was followed by 15 screens about things on the main menu and I turned the game off.
Started up F-Zero GX and was in a race in 15 seconds.
Sometimes I just want to GAME and I donāt want to have to mash through my login bonus screen, news updates, and navigate a main menu that just has way too much shit in it.
All that aside, a lot of games from that era have not aged well and on the whole, when youāre actually PLAYING the game, video games are better now.
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Get hecked and heck me, amiright? Say what you will about the GBA Micro, but it came out when I had started working, and I could get a couple runs in of Tony Hawk Pro Skater during my sub-5 min bathroom breaks.
German coworker exclaimed that peeing while sitting down is more hygienic, and I exclaimed back to him that it was also good for my mind, emotions, and soul to enable me to do a couple laps of a time trial.
GBA emulation is my commute gaming of choice.
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My contrarian take is that peak video games was like 85-94
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2025 - ?
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Video games didnāt even start getting really good until like 2017 (this isnāt a contrarian opinion Iām just lying for fun)
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I think its less that a certain era in the past was peak, and more that around 2005 the medium is past its innovation stage and moved into iterative stagnation. Plus the fact that games/systems are always online has led to some stupid shit like ads and never ending updates.
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One thing I think happened is that video games were becoming quite popular and lucrative so many companies started just making games and putting them out there to see what stuck, as you put it. The more games out there means the higher chance for hidden gems or just really good games.
To me it sort of mirrored the Atari era. Anything and everything had a game being made at that time (such as the Kool-Aid Man game). Similarly in the early 2000s, the Wii had what we now call āshovelwareā becoming a bit of a problem on the console. Just low quality games being put out there hoping people would buy them up.
Unfortunately, with the extreme popularity of the Atari and not much else to compete with it, it led to the video game crash as the market was very oversaturated and people were generally annoyed by low quality being the norm. I think the Wii and video games as a whole survived the extreme rise in shovelware because there was more than just Wii, and there were very established companies being able to make games, market them, and people knew what was generally going to be good and what wasnāt.
Then after this period, the iPhone was released in 2007 and then games started monetizing everything and it led to the crap we are fed nowadays with microtransactions and needing to login and being fed ads even in the $70 sports or racing game we purchased. Smartphones were a mistake.
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uhhhh TIL, and here I was thinking Sneak King was innovative marketing
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