Post by nocturnal YL on Jul 13, 2020 9:23:21 GMT -5
I've been wondering how should I talk about this. At first I wanted to frame this as a discussion of my preferences of certain elements in games, but all those complaints have a central theme.
In short, I don't like it when games don't make it easy to replay parts of it or re-obtain missed elements.
Don't: Have permanent missables and auto-save at the same time
Offender: Luigi's Mansion 3
In Luigi's Mansion 3, there is a Toad escort mission in B2. Throughout the mission, there are gold that can only be obtained with the Toad, so after he was returned to the lab, the gold will just sit there for the remainder of the game, forever taunting you.
But it gets worse. In my playthrough, I did not notice the shortcut connecting the elevator entrance and the final room that can be unlocked with the Toad, so I backtracked all the way to the entrance the long way, ignoring the Toad desparately pointing Luigi back to the final room (I thought that was a design flaw of the game). The result: I am permanently deprived of the shortcut.
See 23:09 of the video above
Don't: Have too few save files for games with dependent sessions
Offenders: Paper Mario: Color Splash, Paper Mario: The Origami King
"Dependent session" here means actions in earlier sessions affecting the state of later sessions. For example, a defeated boss cannot be fought again easily. One way to work around it is to have a save file at specific milestones, making it easier to play just certain parts of the game again. These save files also make it easy to have multiple playthroughs without compromising the first playthrough's data.
The newest Paper Mario games only support one save file per user account, and relies on the player to create multiple accounts to have multiple playthroughs. There is no way to save the current progress to a separate file, and having multiple accounts makes navigating the game system menu more cumbersome if you're otherwise the sole user of the system.
Don't: Have things that are too easy to miss
Offender: Golden Sun: Dark Dawn
Unlike the first two games, Dark Dawn has a few points of no return. But there's also one missable element that's hard to notice: the encyclopedia.
Throughout the game, when terms related to certain concepts appear, they can be tapped on to have an explanation shown on the top screen. This is a form of collectible, and you can imagine how easy to miss some of them. In my playthrough, I ended up getting everything — all Djinn, all summons, and there's one single encyclopedia entry that ended up being the only thing I missed. How infuriating.
Don't: Collect statisics, especially when it's about how bad I am at playing games
Offenders: what feels llike half of the games I've played, including several entries of Super Mario (Galaxy 1 to 3D World), Mario Kart (Wii to 8), Super Smash Bros. (all), Fire Emblem (1 to 8), Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Wii U, and more
In short, it's none of your business how do I play games.
If I lose, don't tell me how many times did I lose. If I like to play certain modes more than others, don't write that down in the save file and make me get stressed over it. And don't show facts when I don't like said facts.
Let's say I never play Smash under Time rule. My Smash records says otherwise, because of that one time I forgot to set the rules before playing. Now I have a save file that doesn't reflect my playstyle (not that I want it to begin with) and there's no way to remove it without killing the whole save file.
It's a petty thing to worry about, but I feel quite annoyed over it.
Similar thing applies for death counts. Don't tell me how awful am I at playing Mario, and don't make me reset the whole game every single time I lose just to keep the death count at zero. And definitely don't save the fact that I've lost immediately after I do so, with no way to reset that statistic — which is what the GBA Fire Emblem games do.
Don't: Disable save file copying
Offenders: Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, any Wii game that uses Nintendo WFC
Alright, I can kind of understand the games with Nintendo WFC support; they probably want to prevent users from being able to amend online records easily. Pokémon games have the same limitations, and I guess they don't want players to be able to clone Pokémon.
I can't think of any good reason to impose this limitation on the Fire Emblem games. The reason I imagine is that they want to maintain the series' image of being difficult, which makes no sense to me.
Save file backup act as a final line of defence against poor implementation of save data management by the games, and should be a system-level feature that individual games should not be able to block.
In short, I don't like it when games don't make it easy to replay parts of it or re-obtain missed elements.
Don't: Have permanent missables and auto-save at the same time
Offender: Luigi's Mansion 3
In Luigi's Mansion 3, there is a Toad escort mission in B2. Throughout the mission, there are gold that can only be obtained with the Toad, so after he was returned to the lab, the gold will just sit there for the remainder of the game, forever taunting you.
But it gets worse. In my playthrough, I did not notice the shortcut connecting the elevator entrance and the final room that can be unlocked with the Toad, so I backtracked all the way to the entrance the long way, ignoring the Toad desparately pointing Luigi back to the final room (I thought that was a design flaw of the game). The result: I am permanently deprived of the shortcut.
See 23:09 of the video above
Don't: Have too few save files for games with dependent sessions
Offenders: Paper Mario: Color Splash, Paper Mario: The Origami King
"Dependent session" here means actions in earlier sessions affecting the state of later sessions. For example, a defeated boss cannot be fought again easily. One way to work around it is to have a save file at specific milestones, making it easier to play just certain parts of the game again. These save files also make it easy to have multiple playthroughs without compromising the first playthrough's data.
The newest Paper Mario games only support one save file per user account, and relies on the player to create multiple accounts to have multiple playthroughs. There is no way to save the current progress to a separate file, and having multiple accounts makes navigating the game system menu more cumbersome if you're otherwise the sole user of the system.
Don't: Have things that are too easy to miss
Offender: Golden Sun: Dark Dawn
Unlike the first two games, Dark Dawn has a few points of no return. But there's also one missable element that's hard to notice: the encyclopedia.
Throughout the game, when terms related to certain concepts appear, they can be tapped on to have an explanation shown on the top screen. This is a form of collectible, and you can imagine how easy to miss some of them. In my playthrough, I ended up getting everything — all Djinn, all summons, and there's one single encyclopedia entry that ended up being the only thing I missed. How infuriating.
Don't: Collect statisics, especially when it's about how bad I am at playing games
Offenders: what feels llike half of the games I've played, including several entries of Super Mario (Galaxy 1 to 3D World), Mario Kart (Wii to 8), Super Smash Bros. (all), Fire Emblem (1 to 8), Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Wii U, and more
In short, it's none of your business how do I play games.
If I lose, don't tell me how many times did I lose. If I like to play certain modes more than others, don't write that down in the save file and make me get stressed over it. And don't show facts when I don't like said facts.
Let's say I never play Smash under Time rule. My Smash records says otherwise, because of that one time I forgot to set the rules before playing. Now I have a save file that doesn't reflect my playstyle (not that I want it to begin with) and there's no way to remove it without killing the whole save file.
It's a petty thing to worry about, but I feel quite annoyed over it.
Similar thing applies for death counts. Don't tell me how awful am I at playing Mario, and don't make me reset the whole game every single time I lose just to keep the death count at zero. And definitely don't save the fact that I've lost immediately after I do so, with no way to reset that statistic — which is what the GBA Fire Emblem games do.
Don't: Disable save file copying
Offenders: Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, any Wii game that uses Nintendo WFC
Alright, I can kind of understand the games with Nintendo WFC support; they probably want to prevent users from being able to amend online records easily. Pokémon games have the same limitations, and I guess they don't want players to be able to clone Pokémon.
I can't think of any good reason to impose this limitation on the Fire Emblem games. The reason I imagine is that they want to maintain the series' image of being difficult, which makes no sense to me.
Save file backup act as a final line of defence against poor implementation of save data management by the games, and should be a system-level feature that individual games should not be able to block.
