Gripe about What You're Playing 2: Bellyache-tric Boogaloo

Issun said:

Yep, my memories were correct. Gyorg is the most frustrating boss in the entire Zelda series.

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Oh, hey, I actually beat Gyorg for the first time recently. The boss pattern and strategy for defeating it seems fairly simple on paper, but it became seriously frustrating because of the trouble I was having moving around in the water and being unable to see where the boss was while doing so, due to what feels like limitations of the camera. And whenever it caught me, I had to sit through a long painful animation before I could do anything other than muttering expletives at the TV. At least it became marginally less frustrating once I figured out that I didn't need to switch back and forth between regular Link and Zora Link in order to shoot arrows and then swim in the water, since you can use Zora Link's long-range fin attack instead of arrows to stun Gyorg. But it was still a whole lot of "get one measly hit on the boss, and then run away in panic, praying that I luck out and get back on land before it catches me".

I wanted to love Omori, but it's just so unfun to play. So much stuff that looks like it could be fun or interesting side content but turns out at the very end to have been little more than a tedious waste of time (sometimes seemingly on purpose). Like an elaborate Rock Paper Scissors minigame that evidently requires you to win more and more matches that are 100% luck and from what I can tell looking up spoilers (after giving up on it in frustration) there's pretty much nothing worthwhile at the end. NPCs who T-A-L-K-L-I-K-E-T-H-I-S (or...like...this...) complete with pauses that are impossible to skip or hasten, areas off the beaten path that seem to exist only to punish you for exploring them, sections with loud repetitive sound effects that I personally found to be quite unpleasant. This may or may not be unique to the Switch version, but the interface is just sluggish enough that it compounds all the above annoyances.

Which is especially frustrating because underneath all that I can see a story that I would love to see through to the end. The writing is uneven but has moments where it shines - the reaction to Sunny wielding a knife during the first real world fight made me guffaw - and I like most of the game's aesthetic. There's just too much friction for me to stick with it. Indie rpg devs I'm begging you please make your games even just 10% more pleasant to actually play on a moment to moment basis

I completely forgot how insane the difficulty spikes in FF XIII are. Chapter 12 and 13 have such an increase in difficulty, it's absurd. The finale dungeon has monsters who can do over 4k damage to my whole party, if they are not buffed, which isn't that easy to do either. I just fought a boss battle against two monsters, which was hard but doable, but every regular fight is crazy hard. And it's, of course, set up so that dodging the monsters on the map is nearly impossible. Awesome.

I'm sure I have complained about this already, but having the last dungeon in an RPG being so often difficulty spikes is really annoying. Just let me get to the final boss.

And the second form of the final boss starts with some gravity attack, I guess, and then immediately attacked my group leader. Great idea, to let the whole party lose, if that specific person dies. Awesome, love to do the first battle again.

I started Jedi: Fallen Order and have two complaints so far. One big one is that all the rewards for exploration and such are cosmetic or the tiniest lore bits imaginable. It's just a ton of lightsaber part skins or like, one sentence about how "the villagers got relocated" and then elsewhere you find another secret that just tells you "the villager fought back." Rewarding exploration is one of the biggest things that grabs me about games like this, and the rewards in this game just aren't very rewarding.

Two, traversal is just not great. I finished one area, got my power back (also? pretty lame story contrivance) and then had to backtrack through the level. There were a few shortcuts opened up but it was still a pain in the ass (and there was one area where it was extremely poorly telegraphed how you were supposed to move).

Nor are the force powers that interesting (yet?). And I already cranked down the difficulty because I just wasn't enjoying combat that much, either. This game is trying hard to be Sekiro (some people call it souls-lilke but it's waaay more of a Sekiro clone) but Sekiro it ain't.

I wound up getting really into that game, but you're 100% right on the exploration rewards. The only worthwhile thing that you'll find are stim pack upgrades.

The force powers do get better, but I never really got into the combat in that game either.

Yeah, I finally just downgraded the difficulty to story mode because the combat was frankly not interesting enough to warrant the level of difficulty. Especially since there are so few enemy types, and so many encounters turn into "the same enemies you've been fighting, just more of them to make it harder on you."

At least I'm enjoying the Star Wars-ness so far, I think? I'm still going but I'm finding it harder to shake the feeling that I won't be finishing this one.

Lufia 2 just did a Cecil. We are up against the strongest enemy we have yet faced, one who demolished us last time we fought him. So what is the logical response? We send our mages away, because they are delicate women. Sure, they are allowed to play around, playing a fighter a bit. But when it gets actually dangerous, they should please stay away, because Maxim doesn't trust them, or whatever his stupid problem is. Dumbass.

Yeah, I have two characters who hit like a truck, but they are also slow as hell. I can flee, but only after being hit by nearly every enemy. My main healer is Maxim, whose healing powers are beyond pathetic (at least compared to Selan and Tia), and who is also slower than most monsters. I honestly don't understand how I'm supposed to heal, when Gades just throws his insane attacks at me. I mean, I did a few times, and back then the game seemed harder than now, but still. I miss my multi-hit spells, which really help against groups of three or four monsters. Selan and Tia are really good, and have nearly infinite MP.

Of all the things to steal from FF IV, you do this, Lufia 2? Really? I'm so disappointed in you.

FelixSH said:

Lufia 2 just did a Cecil. We are up against the strongest enemy we have yet faced, one who demolished us last time we fought him. So what is the logical response? We send our mages away, because they are delicate women. Sure, they are allowed to play around, playing a fighter a bit. But when it gets actually dangerous, they should please stay away, because Maxim doesn't trust them, or whatever his stupid problem is. Dumbass.

Yeah, I have two characters who hit like a truck, but they are also slow as hell. I can flee, but only after being hit by nearly every enemy. My main healer is Maxim, whose healing powers are beyond pathetic (at least compared to Selan and Tia), and who is also slower than most monsters. I honestly don't understand how I'm supposed to heal, when Gades just throws his insane attacks at me. I mean, I did a few times, and back then the game seemed harder than now, but still. I miss my multi-hit spells, which really help against groups of three or four monsters. Selan and Tia are really good, and have nearly infinite MP.

Of all the things to steal from FF IV, you do this, Lufia 2? Really? I'm so disappointed in you.

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I see you have hit the point I gave up on Lufia 2, lol. For these very reasons, might I add.

Selen was even introduced as being a one-woman army and Maxim winds up falling in love with her purely because of her ludicrous ability to beat down monsters.

Tia, I’ll grant you, lacks the narrative justification so if you ignore the entire video games worth of level grinding she’s had up to that point and her role as your primary healer and a really good support character, *okay, I guess*

Whoever wrote the stories for Throne and Primrose in the Octopath games (because it's obvious the same person wrote both) needs to be banned from writing. Have their writers license revoked. Some men will literally write convoluted-but-predictable plot twists bloated with pseudophilosophical, psychosexual psychodrama, instead of going to therapy

I think the Twinmold fight is the point where I give up on completing Majora's Mask (N64 version). The big problem for me is the fact that you have to defeat it before your magic meter runs out. Bigger Link can't Z-target or use any items, just run around and swing his sword, which means that ideally I should go slowly and carefully, to hit the boss without getting hurt myself. But since the magic meter is constantly running down, I'm forced to rush forward and swing almost at random in the general direction of the randomly appearing boss, hoping that I can get a few hits in on its weakpoint without getting hit myself. Of course, you can get some magic refills by breaking the stone formations, but there's just too few of them for me, and often I hit the stones unintentionally while doing the above-mentioned random swinging, leading to me suddenly having to shrink down and scramble towards the refill before it disappears. And when my magic finally runs out and I'm stuck as Smaller Link, I could in theory try hitting the boss with my bow, but that also seems to be exceedingly difficult, not to mention that I'll eventually run out of arrows.

I have managed to aquire two bottles, and the green potion refills I get from those help a little, but not enough. Getting more bottles would require me to finish some difficult and generally annoying minigames (I only got the second bottle after retrying the Goron race many many times) or long elaborate quests that I have to start all over if I screw up just once.

Increasing the size of my magic meter would require me to go on some really long searches for a bunch of Stray Fairies in dungeons that I have already completed and don't want to have to go through again.

I know that you can get a super-duper potion that gives you infinite magic, but that requires me first finishing the Defend the Farm from Flatwoods Monsters minigame, and then apparently another minigame, and if I fail either of them, I have to reset time and wait around until I get to just exactly the correct time of day to try again (there's not "choose which hour you want to go to" function in the N64 version).

I suppose I could collect more Heart Pieces, so that I might be able to stay alive a bit longer and do some more random flailing, but at this point I'm getting some serious "life's just too short" thoughts (which is actually still pretty rare for me when it comes to difficult video game bosses!).

I think that I'll give up on the game for now, and maybe in a year or so I'll try it from the beginning on an emulator instead, where I hopefully can use savestates and/or cheats to compensate for my apparent lack of skills in stressful and very precise kaiju battles.

Bonus complaint for the same game: The puzzle where you have to charge up a mirror with sunlight by holding your mirror shield at just the right angle for a long time, and then rush over and reflect that light at just the right angle one more time before it runs out, all while being attacked by infinitely respawning enemies, is some bullshit.

Majora's Mask's aesthetics, worldbuilding and characters are all A++, but the fact that a majority of the things that help smooth the way for more inexperienced players are gated behind some jank-ass minigames and collectathons are why I'm not a fan of it. I powered through using a guide back in the mid-aughts, and over the years I tried to replay it a couple of times and dropped it pretty quickly both times. I finally got through a second playthrough this year because the NSO port has save states, and there was a lot to love about it, but there is also so much getting in the way of that enjoyment that I'm not sure I'll ever try to finish it a third time.

You made it to Stone Tower Temple with just two bottles? So you had to have gained access to Great Bay Temple with less than four. That must have been painful. As janky as some of the minigames are, I personally would find it far worse to take multiple trips through Pinnacle Rock or the Pirates' Fortress.

If the magic refills that drop in the arena against Twinmold aren't sufficient, then getting access to Chateau Romani would indeed be the next best thing.

Yeah, getting through Pinnacle Rock and the Pirate's Fortress with two bottles was annoying, but it was mostly just going back and forth a bunch of times once I had figured out their layouts. Not as stressful and frustrating to me as having to beat the aliens or the beaver race. Even finishing the Goron race was testing my patience.

I think that if I can play the game with savestates, I can use it sparingly to try to finish the alien abduction minigame, and if I fail, I can just reload a savestate before then, instead of having to reset time and wait around a bunch to get back to the same point. And if I can beat the other milk-related challenge after that in a similar way, I should be good to go, with access to infinite magic.

Make no mistake, I do like the time travel mechanic in general, just not the part that is "whoops, you failed this part of the sidequest, guess you'll have to do it all over again!"

I really enjoyed Majora's Mask when I recently revisited it, but only because I knew enough that the time loop stuff never bit me like that. I was very well aware that my opinion would be very different had I run into issues with it.

Just to be sure, you know about the song that slows down time? That one makes the alien abduction minigame way more managable. It might make them slow enough, so that you can go around the hut on foot, if steering Epona is giving you trouble. Not trivial, but if you have trouble with regular speed, this might help you. I don't think it will help with the beavers, though.

My least favourite is probably the Goron race. God, that feels so annoyingly random.

FelixSH said:

Just to be sure, you know about the song that slows down time? That one makes the alien abduction minigame way more managable. It might make them slow enough, so that you can go around the hut on foot, if steering Epona is giving you trouble. Not trivial, but if you have trouble with regular speed, this might help you. I don't think it will help with the beavers, though.

My least favourite is probably the Goron race. God, that feels so annoyingly random.

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Okay, I tried slowing down time, and it worked! I beat the Flatwoods monsters in one try, and the escort mission after that was pretty easy, so now I have access to infinite magic (and an extra bottle!), and will hopefully not have any more trouble with the rest of the game or have to do it all over in an emulator. Thank you so much for the tip!

I don't even know the last time I played Majora's Mask without constantly slowing down time. It really could be the default speed...

FelixSH said:

I'm sure I have complained about this already, but having the last dungeon in an RPG being so often difficulty spikes is really annoying. Just let me get to the final boss.

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I would say its a cardinal sin of RPG design. If you want to have optional super dungeons and bosses (New Game + in most FF games) fine. But to prevent a player from finishing a game after spending long hours on it is not fine.

For this reason I will never touch Darkest Dungeon again and will not play any games other games from Red Hook. I spent like 80 hours on that game and hit a wall at the end. I wish I had the time back.

This system, that some games (like Hollow Knight) use, where you have to get back to the place you died without dying, is dumb. I just lost 10k geo, because the place was so far away, and the enemies so obnoxious. I guess others get something out of it, I find it completely pointless. I want to get back there anyway, why punish me even further? It's just geo (the currency), and at this point, it's not a big deal, but still, 10k is quite a lot.

Not too much of an issue (that the way back is so obnoxious is the bigger problem - it's in the beehive), but still, it feels like such a pointless mechanic, punishing for no reason.

Yeah, as someone who names Hollow Knight among my top 25 games of all time (at worst), I'd be okay with no game using that mechanic ever again (or requiring it, I guess, if some folks enjoy it).

Corpse runs bad. I declare this.

It was a major reason I gave up on HK, ngl

There has been… all of precisely one instance of a Corpse Run making me say “Oh that’s neat, this is improving my experience” And not it being a detriment

I think it can be pretty good at generating some tension. A little dread is a good thing, sometimes. I like it in the Souls games.

I have no problem with Souls fan liking corpse runs, but if they insist dragging that into other genres they are trying to make more Souls like I'm going to make a Souls game with an excessive supply of 1-up mushrooms just out of spite.

I rewatched GMTK's video on Hollow Knight a few days ago for a thing I'm working on, and Mark mentions the corpse run as one of the things that doesn't work in the game. Specifically he mentions how it prevents you from exploring new areas if you lose interest or feel unprepared for in the area where you died. It's a good point, and one that I also felt playing Hollow Knight. It made me want to dig a bit deeper into it since I really don't mind it so much in Souls games and I think it falls primarily on how punishing a corpse run is.

In Souls games, you eventually learn that losing your souls/blood/exp whatever isn't really a big deal, even a large amount of them. You'll always be able to get it back. This is really important for Elden Ring, where like Hollow Knight there are a lot of branching paths and other areas you can explore as opposed to the earlier Souls games which encourage you to finish the current area that you're exploring. Hollow Knight doesn't have a leveling system (nor should it), so instead you have to go back for your money and half your magic meter. It's really the latter that's the problem since magic is both amazing for offense and your main resource for healing.

If it had just been money, I don't think it would have been as big of a deal. Money is much less important in the latter half of the game and very easy to come by. It's so non-essential and wouldn't have the same psychological impact that losing souls does that honestly the best decision probably would have been to cut the mechanic altogether. Ultimately I think its less that corpse runs = bad* then that in Hollow Knight it feels like the mechanic is there because Team Cherry leaned a little too hard on the Dark Souls inspiration in this instance.

*EDIT: Just wanted to add the probably obvious addendum that this is meant more as a clarifying statement and less than an indictment of anyone's taste. There's also mechanics as well as whole genres that do not work for me even in their best form. Not liking corpse runs in general is fine, but also Hollow Knight's implementation isn't particularly great either, at least in my view.

I do agree that it's not a great fit for a number of games that use it. Shovel Knight's implementation just feels kind of pointless, for example.

There's a vaguely similar discussion to be had on the merits of the lives systems that classic Mega Man games use. From what I've seen elsewhere the MM style lives system is pretty commonly reviled as "outdated game design" these days. But I think that it has a positive effect on the Mega Man gameplay loop - it encourages the player to try one of the 7 other available stages rather than repeatedly bang their head against a boss that is giving them trouble.

I always see it as a bonus in Souls. Like, a lot of games make you reload the last save when you die. You don't get to keep anything that you collected. In Souls, you can double/triple/whatever the amount of souls that you collect from an area as long as you keep making some progress. And, there is almost always some way to spend those souls in a hub. Like, you can just buy a bunch of herbs or throwing knives or whatever, so you're not carrying around your life savings all the time.

So yeah, I think it's an issue of how it's implemented rather than an issue with the mechanic at a high level.