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Post by Ex on Feb 8, 2023 14:55:17 GMT -5
I forgot about Osman, I have given up on that one despite enjoying it. Because of THAT spot. Sarge knows what I'm talking about. - Listing the hardest games we've beaten (and I mean legitimately beaten) would be an interesting topic in and of itself. Not in a braggadocio sense, but rather to see what we're willing to put up with, and what kind of genres we each consider difficult. Like rhythm games destroy me but are probably easy for someone else. Meanwhile difficult SRPGs make me happy but for someone else might by kryptonite.
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Post by Sarge on Feb 8, 2023 15:16:10 GMT -5
You're dang right I do. I somehow finally slipped through, but almost gave up myself.
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Post by Moulinoski on Feb 8, 2023 22:09:06 GMT -5
I avoided answering this question because I’ve given up on games out of apathy towards them. I’ll play it for a bit and go “alright, I’m done for now thanks” and implicitly drop them. A good example of this is Castlevania III. It’s a super hard game and I’ve only managed to get a few stages in (I remember going through a forest). I didn’t stop playing because it was hard, but because I needed to do something else or something. I May have decided to stop because I got a game over, though. Yet, it may be that I didn’t bother continuing because I didn’t want to deal with the frustration?
Games have to toe a very fine line between fun and frustration. Note that it’s not about challenge, but fun. Challenge can be fun itself but not necessary. There are fun games that aren’t super challenging like most RPGs or Kirby games. To me, a lot of NES games are frustrating either because of outdated design practices (making a home console port of a quarter muncher) or technical reasons (anything overly complicated for the hardware).
Anyway… that’s enough of my soapbox. Let’s see…
I’ve wanted to like The Guardian Legend. I like the player character. I don’t like how cryptic it is and I don’t care much for the shooter parts (despite liking shooters, it wasn’t the NES’s forte).
Castlevania III as mentioned above. I always end up replaying the first few stages, get bored, and move on to something else like organizing my room or whatever.
Oh! DragonLance! For NES but apparently it’s also on other consoles. That game is so difficult to understand. I’ve begun to finally understand its mechanics (reading the manual would’ve helped me). Apparently the NES version is the worst version, though. On that note, any D&D game is basically a bad time for me. I don’t know why! On that note…
Anything from the Ultima series. Even Ultima III was borderline impossible without a guide and I only ever finished the NES version. These games aren’t hard, though. Rather they are obtuse. I want to like them. I like the NES Ultima III and I like Runes of Virtue but I have come to realize that I don’t really seem to like this series much after all. In this case, the Ultima series is difficult to *like* and this I have practically given up on it for the most part. Sort of. It keeps calling to me though.
Fire Emblem IV. I get really far but I eventually lose interest for one reason or another and it typically involves having to repeat turns trying to figure out what works. It’s another game I want to like but end up losing interest in it because I just forget to go back to it because it just makes me want to play Zelda or Earthbound.
Oh. The grand daddy of them all. My arch nemesis since childhood. Spider-Man and X-Men in Arcade’s Revenge. I used to play this all the time when I was a kid. I eventually figured out how to beat Spider-Man’s intro stage. Everything else? Forget it. This game is the pits. This game sucks. This game can go burn in the deepest trenches of the nether realm. This game… keeps working its way back into my collection and my consciousness and I boot it up from time to time. I hate this game but I love to punish myself, I guess. :/
I have more like this. I could just go on. Oh, here’s another one: any 2D Sonic game that isn’t Sonic Advance 2 (and even then, no chaos emeralds). I think you can see a pattern here. Despite growing up with them, I’m not great a platformers that aren’t Mario.
Edit: I just remembered Metroid Prime Hunters. That final boss… that final boss!! Ahhh!!! I don’t know why I never beat it but I do know it was stupidly difficult. Maybe I didn’t find enough upgrades. I don’t know. It could be. I liked the res to the game, though.
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Post by bonesnapdeez on Feb 9, 2023 11:06:41 GMT -5
My "theory" about ancient WRPGs is that they were designed to take months to complete. You were supposed to pick away at them slowly, meticulously mapping and devising proper party builds, and so on. It's completely divorced from typical modern game design. Also, in a lot of old WRPGs it could feel like you would play for hours and not make any progress, just kinda derp around the world or whatever. It's no surprise that MMORPGs were birthed from this genre.
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Post by Ex on Feb 9, 2023 11:43:44 GMT -5
My "theory" about ancient WRPGs is that they were designed to take months to complete. Yep. We had a lot more free time back then and a lot less games.
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Post by toei on Feb 9, 2023 13:35:34 GMT -5
bonesnapdeez I believe you're right. I literally remember reading reviews in old magazines saying things like "(insert WRPG) should keep you busy for months to come". We picked at Realmz for at least a couple years at a friend's place in elementary and never got all that far. You could absolutely spent an evening making 0 progress and more or less not mind. Find a random cave with a little bit of loot and no connection to the story, maybe, or some cool item.
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Post by nullPointer on Feb 10, 2023 11:26:52 GMT -5
My "theory" about ancient WRPGs is that they were designed to take months to complete. Yep. We had a lot more free time back then and a lot less games. Having beaten (and enjoyed!) The Elder Scrolls: Arena at the end of last year, this is spot on. These games didn't really 'respect your time' to coin a modern concept, but really ... I guess that was kind of the point. These were games that intended you to become fully immersed in their worlds; it's just that the baseline for 'enjoyable levels of immersion' has evolved far beyond (or more accurately built upon) what was conceived of at the time.
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Post by Ex on Feb 10, 2023 11:59:18 GMT -5
These were games they intended you to become immersed in I remember many PC and console games on their box art backs, would claim to be huge with massive content, and offer dozens or hundreds of hours of gameplay. For example, with Arena, notice the big content numbers it throws out and how large it says the world is: We still get huge RPGs today, but they are largely streamlined and guided. Meaning you won't be wandering huge land masses aimlessly. While that does save time and maintain attention better, perhaps it's not as immersive an approach.
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Post by Moulinoski on Feb 10, 2023 12:06:51 GMT -5
I think it requires a balance. Streamlining the critical path while adding tons of side stuff is, I think, a good way to go about it. You’re able to give the player a feeling of progress while also allowing them rewards for going off the critical path.
I see people complaining about how a game’s main campaign is easy. I wonder if these players are doing all of the side quests first and leaving the critical path for later? If you do that, it’s obvious to me that the critical path will suffer a hit in difficulty since you’re likely doing harder stuff than what the main story asks of you.
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Post by Ex on Feb 12, 2023 16:17:19 GMT -5
Going through my Xbox collection recently, I came across another game I liked but gave up on: Breakdown (original Xbox exclusive) 2004
This is actually a really unique game. It's a first person beat 'em up basically, predating Zeno Clash by a few years. Breakdown also uses storytelling techniques like you'd find in Half-Life, and had impressive graphics for its time. That said, this game is make yo mama cry hard. Or at least it was when I played it in 2007, for my skill set back then. Perhaps all these years later I could break Breakdown, hmm.
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