We’ve all played them. Games that live long in the memory; games that dominate your every waking moment for weeks at a time and games that you’d replay over and over again if you had the time…
But what I want to know is this…Have you ever played a game that you loved, but had to work around the fact that one of the games core mechanics was just… kinda trash?
For context, I’m currently working through the excellent Bloodborne. I can see why it’s largely considered the best one of those games, and potentially one of the best games released in the last decade…at the same time I cannot abide the way the game handles healing and health vials.
What about you.
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It would be Mass Effect 1 for me. Fantastic story and setting, but by the time I got around to it the gameplay felt really clunky. But, I was so sucked into the characters and universe I pushed through with the help of some gameplay mods like increasing speed so running around wouldn’t be so painfully slow. It’s not the most fun to play, but it is still my favorite game in the Mass Effect trilogy. Just iconic with the music and setting and such a focused storyline. Sovereign’s scene is my most memorable scene in video games to this day.
I’m curious if you played the Legendary edition due to the changes in combat, or if you’re talking about OG Mass Effect.
It would be the OG Mass Effect. I haven’t had a chance to play through the legendary edition, so unaware of any combat changes to the first game.
Persona 4 Golden is one of the most influential games I’ve played in terms of the music, characters and story, and the time in my life during which I played it. However…
The dungeon crawling is just so rote and repetitive to me. The random generation in that game is just shit, boring hallway after boring hallway, I put it on easy and just struggled to remain engaged for those portions of the game, but I would still say it’s one of my favorite games of all time.
Persona is a series I enjoyed despite the gameplay and not because of it.
At first, I agreed with you about the blood vials in Bloodborne, but it’s actually a genius mechanic. Here’s why you should probably love the design of blood vials:
From a story perspective, it’s amazing. You’re running around killing all these horrific creatures, healing yourself with blood vials… Made from the same blood that turned all these people into monsters. It adds another level of cosmic/body horror when you realize the only thing saving you is also slowly killing you.
From a balance perspective, it’s amazing at slowing you down when you’re not good enough to continue just yet. Running out of blood vials and being forced to farm them actually forces you to learn the mechanics of the game. For example, you figure out a pretty good farming route where you get 6 vials before heading back to the bonfire, but you used 5 of the 6 you got. Next time you only use 4 so you can preserve those precious vials, next time 3, etc. You get better at not getting hit and using the mechanics to your advantage. It stalls your progression in the game until you take the time to learn. It’s actually game design GENIUS!
Once you get good enough at the game, blood vials start stacking up in your storage and you’ll quickly reach the maximum capacity, and the feeling you get seeing the number going up and up when at the start of the game you were struggling to keep the 20 vial max in your inventory is amazing! Some games show you that you’re getting better by increasing a number in your character sheet, Bloodborne shows you that you’re getting better by rewarding you with the security of knowing you’re never going to run out vials again because of your own hard work.
It’s also immensely rewarding to see how it wasn’t just the levels and stats that made you better, it was your learning. Get good at Bloodborne and then try starting a brand new game, and you’ll be amazed at how it’s actually quite easy now.
Not a specific game, but I’ve always hated it when the difficult slider in the options just increases the health and damage of enemies. It’s so disappointing and boring.
There is a mobile game called “Kingdom Adventure” that had a lot of mechanic’s I was looking for. It had town based RPG elements that let you send out adventurers to get resources and beat dungeons. Sounds like a great experience! However it’s a translated game that hardly had ANY explanations in game, or online. I had to take notes from a 7 year old reddit post comment that gave more info than anywhere else.
I really liked most of the game. The pixel art had good resolution and was cute. The monster mechanics added more flair to the game. The fog mechanics on the map were cool and made you think about whether you wanted to take a new area or “refog” the area to farm experience. There also was no calendar mechanic so you weren’t forced into a time cycle and could play at your pace. But after a while all the guessing about stats and mechanics felt like too much and when I got to the point where I could place a second town hall, I was too unsure of where to place it I just never did. My game is forever in limbo because I’m just tired of finding stuff out the hard way.
Amazing concept, but poor execution.
I spent 5 calendar years modding Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri to make my SMACX AI Growth mod. I solved many things, but one totally rubbish thing caused me more rage quits over the years than all other sources combined. Probe teams can take over cities for trivial amounts of credits, compared to the value of the city and the military units in it. The original game formula is completely overpowered and broken. My mod is .txt modding only, as anyone who bought the game could originally do. I was able to mitigate the problem but not solve it. It’s now down to goddamn irritating instead of absolutely infuriating. The only way to fix the mechanic short of making a totally new game from scratch, is binary modding the original game. People do that, and I have the technical skills to do it, but I studiously avoided any invitations to engage in binary modding. It took me 5 calendar years as it was to perfect my .txt mod to the degree it could be perfected. I’m done providing free stuff for the internet that way. Next gaming effort gets me a paycheck (I hope someday).
What’s wrong with Bloodbornes healing? It’s been a while since I played it, but it was just press-a-button-to-heal-a-set-amount wasn’t it? And you could only carry a set amount of healing vials on you, while any extras that were picked up are sent to storage that would auto-replenish when you went to the hunter’s dream, no?
At some point you’re out and have to farm them. I never found that a problem, but some people do.
