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Not entirely, however, I feel as though proper resource management got less common over time. While the ideas are still present in modern games, they tend to be easy enough that most resources can just be horded. Most people don’t even use consumables nowadays. Games are seemingly balanced around ignoring entire systems.
From my point of view, you’ve got it wrong, but so do many developers. A good JRPG is all about resource management. Your HP, MP, items, money and the balance between these and your EXP and equipment. Combat is simply a drain on your resources up until the final boss, which should require more strategy. This needs something akin to a dungeon without constant healing and money being a thight resource. Once you’re in a dungeon, you should either be prepped or doomed.
You mostly see this done in dungeon crawlers, think any Etrian Odyssey game for example. Persona 5 goes for the same thing, as do most Shin Megami Tensei games.
Most modern games, however, are overly lenient with either money or healing. Often times, combat is easy enough to not even drain your resources. That’s when endless grinding becomes an option. Once you’ve destroyed this balance, you need something else to keep attention and that’s where I think your observation comes in.
Level scaling is never fun and never will be, I think. There is no progression if your fights with early enemies are just as hard as they were 50h ago.
You could probably design around that by providing in-depth build options such that optimized builds outscale other entities of the same level. Later game enemies themselves would be optimized better and better. But that’s really hard and I’ve never seen it done. Why even provide a dynamic build for each enemy with each level if you could just have a normal non-scaling progression?
These systems often lead to me avoiding combat altogether. While not exactly a crpg, Oblivion was more fun to me without ever leveling up (which was optional, but made fights kinda pointless).
As for me, it used to be 50/50 back when I studied. However, ever since I’ve entered the workforce I mostly stopped watching videos.
I need to constantly learn new things, tackle new problems and optimize stuff. I usually go for the highest difficulties too. In theory, my job provides these tasks for me, however, I get a lot of satisfaction from trying and failing things over and over until I’ve figured them out myself. I can’t usually do this professionally, as most problems have already been solved and I’m just learning how others did it. The same as playing with a guide or watching a video on a game. It just doesn’t scratch the itch.
Yeah, I somewhat agree. Collecting full sets in the game is kinda fun, just because opening card packs is inherently fun. But I play the game precisely because this isn’t worth any money to me.
Having cards that are only obtainable with money ruins this. It’s kinda killing my interest in anything else they do since I can’t complete the promo set anyway.
The worst part is, they would make millions without it. People already pay for regular packs, just to collect their digital cards faster. Heck, the increased attention to the actual card game alone probably already offset the developing costs.
Do you mean quick time events (QTEs)? The game has at least one cutscene I remember where you’re prompted to activate an ability to change the outcome, however, I think that’s it. The games usually doesn’t have them.
Although, it does commit an entirely different sin in terms of unskippable cutscenes: There are several ‘immersive’ cutscenes with you suddenly walking at a snail’s pace or climbing slowly around while the cutscene plays out.
I went into detail here. In short, nothing was actually engaging. Combat, puzzles and traversal all felt shallow.
Some games I replay a lot, but always on a fresh save. I think I’ve finished Dark Souls about 10 times without ever touching NG+.
Notable exceptions are:
- Nier Automata, although you kind of have to if you want the whole game and it still brought down the experience for me.
- Chrono Trigger, for the quick kill on Lavos. I did not play much of the NG+.
It’s a pet peeve of mine, I hate stealth sections. Waiting around just isn’t fun and most stealth sections are just that.
However, that was years ago. I haven’t encountered one in a long time since I mostly stopped playing AAA games - by now these games are an amalgamation of so many worse design decisions, I almost miss the time stealth sections were my biggest issue.
It’s quite easy, actually. I usually play everything years after release, however, if I’m really into a certain series, I’ll buy it right away. If I don’t care for the wait, I probably don’t care enough about whether or not a sequel is being made.
Of course that only works if you don’t get hyped easily. I play a lot of games, but usually only 1-2 per year are released within said year.
I’ve come around to really liking them. In short, they vastly improve dungeons in my opinion.
Most RPGs don’t manage to create interesting battles outside of boss fights. Heck, an increasing amount of RPGs fails to create any kind of challange. However, random encounter can add another layer to dungeons: resource management. You have to plan out how to tackle fights in order to get through the dungeons with your limited items/MP - do you sacrifice more HP or do you go for your strongest attacks? How much exploration can you get in? Do you need to be extra careful and plan for stronger rare encounters? Maybe even plan around lvl up healing.
Sadly, this layer is easily removed. Overworld encounters? Just dodge everything. Adjustable encounters? Grind just enough, go heal and disable encounters. Non-challanging fights? Just use basic attacks. Healing stations? No need to plan anymore. Ideally, the dungeons provides no healing at all - especially not before encountering the boss.
If you’re interested in a game with great dungeons, I’d recommend every single Etrian Odyssey.
I’m still waiting for a reason to get a PS5 at all, everything I’ve been interested still got released on PS4 too - except for one single game.
I really don’t care for better specs anymore, I probably couldn’t even tell PS4 and PS5 games apart without a side-by-side comparison. Not to mention, to see a difference at all I’d need a new TV on top of the console. Not gonna happen anytime soon.
RPGs, specifically turn-based or strategy ones. Action is sometimes fine too. I like stuff with complex battle mechanics and tons of customisation/planning - anything that gets the brain working is fun, really.
I don’t like FPS in general. I’ve only completed Borderlands 2 and Fallout: New Vegas. I don’t like the perspective and the gameplay often feels dull to me. I don’t feel stimulated by them.
I had a similar experience of first finishing the DLC and then going into God of War (2018). While not open world, it’s the same type of AAA soup you get from most big studios. There are so many baffling design decisions, I cannot fathom why people love the game so much - the constant barrage of stories and small talk is the most engaging thing in there.
The combat is utterly boring. Increasing the difficulty only results in spongy enemies. Their move sets are boring at best and annoying at worst. They are all but helpless if you just keep them at a distance and throw your axe.
Even worse, your godly powers are cutscene only. If you don’t want to make your game challanging, at least make a fun power fantasy and Kratos is perfect for that. He kills giant enemies, tears the very ground asunder and moves the heaviest objects imaginable. He even has super healing. None of which are tied to actual combat mechanics.
Upgrades are meaningless. Early on, you unlock a smith. I got my axe from 5 to 40 damage. Guess what? The very next enemy took the same amount of hits as the same type of enemy did before.
Traversing is mechanically boring. Climbing just means you gotta follow the yellow markings - press in the right direction or do the indicated button press. You literally cannot fall. Everything else is just walking from combat area to combat area.
The game throws an endless barrage of puzzles at you, none of which are engaging. They are so watered down, there’s barely much more thinking involved than in climbing.
Even worse, major upgrades are placed in “puzzle” chests. The puzzle? Well, just walk around and rotate your camera for several minutes until you’ve found all three runes.
The game basically just feels like a very long cutscene with a lot of padding so you can press some buttons. You can play it just fine, but they removed everything that could make any one system interesting in favor of having nothing in there a player could be stuck at. I like the characters, but I’m better served just watching a cutscene compilation for the second one.
Just finished the Elden Ring DLC, which was overall still fun but felt overtuned at times. While I didn’t use any summons throughout the base game and initially tried to keep it that way, some bosses simply weren’t fun to learn anymore.
Afterwards I dove into my backlog and started God of War 2018. I had pretty high expectations, given how beloved it is. Honestly, it’s fine at best - the combat is boring and the overall design can be summarized as AAA slob. Maybe it does get better, I’m not very far yet.
Same game and roughly same amount of time. Just started the main quest in Novigrad.
Got both DLCs for like 3 bucks, which was nice.