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Underground > Games & Gameplay >

The OBI Point; or, where giving up becomes the sane thing to do

  
  

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rising and revolving
13:15 / 16.03.06
And because I've sailed through the game up until this point, I simply don't have high enough stats to take him down. It's not a question of my battle strategy being unsuitable, it's just that my characters aren't yet at a high enough level to survive his attacks for long enough to do him any significant damage. That's a fault in design, as far as I'm concerned, and made worse by the fact that the only way around it - doing as many random battles as it takes to get them up to a high enough level - means hours of mind-numbing tedium because the battle system is so basic.

This has been my shelf moment with every japanese-style RPG I've ever played. All the Final Fantasy games I've tried to get into have done this at some point along the way.

Part of the trouble is the way I play - I like to get through stuff as quickly as possible, so I'm usually pushing the limits of how far ahead in the game it's possible to be at Level X.

There are some games that reward this - if you're killing monsters that are harder than your current level, you get substantial XP bonuses. However, most of the Jap-RPG's seem to offer a pretty linear XP scale and reasonably consistent amounts of XP for killing monsters. You'll level faster killing higher level mobs, but only a little. And not enough to deal with the great big bastard who is massively off the scale that's previously been set.

I hate grinding. Grinding *always* equals shelf moment for me.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
13:51 / 16.03.06
Yeah, it's a problem with the genre. Thing is, it doesn't have to be - I know rotational found Shin Megami Tensei to have a really steep difficulty curve, but I think that's more to do with the battle system in that game being so different to what we normally see in JPN RPGs. As long as you've spent the time getting to grips with how elemental attacks work in it (and it takes a few hours to really get yr head around, I appreciate), you can take on even the toughest bosses with relatively underpowered teams.

But DQVIII is all about the old schoolness of its design, and that harms it here. I think I know what you're saying about going through games quickly - avoiding sidequests, yeah? Thing is, this game doesn't even have sidequests - not ones that lead to increases in EXP, anyway.

The other thing it's just done is followed up that boss I was stuck on with another. No space to breath, no time to heal or regain MP, nothing. Just another fucking boss, this time even more powerful than the last (who I finally managed to beat by having the one character attack and my other three constantly spam buffing/healing - I've put 40 hours into this, so despite what I said last post I'm not all that keen on throwing in the towel now).

Reading through a few message boards and the like, it seems that I have somehow managed to arrive at this point a good few levels lower than is expected. It's times like this that the idea of adaptive difficulty levels really appeals.
 
 
rising and revolving
13:26 / 17.03.06
Steep difficulty curve I don't mind so much. Actively impossible unless I go grind for an age is more of a problem. I keep meaning to check SMT out - but I'm terrified by the implied commitment. One of the guys I work with has plowed well over 1,200 hours into Altus games.

That's nearly two months worth of 24 a day playing. With my current hour a day or so of gaming, that's a three year commitment. Even though I know I don't have to sign up for the big numbers, I still worry.

I think I know what you're saying about going through games quickly - avoiding sidequests, yeah?

Pretty much - I go straight line to the goals. As an example, there's a boss very early on in the forest in FFX. You're obviously supposed to level up a bit by doing the forest encounters before taking it on - it blocks progress to the rest of the game until you've beaten it. I just used all my potions/items and died and reloaded three times.

Which of course means I'm in the next section at way too low a level. The thing is, this generally isn't a problem until I reach the next boss because bosses always tend to be blocking difficulty spikes in the progress.

The other thing it's just done is followed up that boss I was stuck on with another.

That's where I threw the first Devil May Cry out the window. I have so little tolerance for this sort of crap these days. Was there at least a save point between?

It's times like this that the idea of adaptive difficulty levels really appeals.

True - but adaptive difficulty is *so* hard to get right. And when it goes wrong it's a nightmare.
 
 
rotational
07:16 / 18.03.06
Yeah, I guess apart from technical reasons, it's easy for adaptive difficulty to make you feel short changed. I can't think of a game I've played that has it, but I'd imagine that I'd spend the whole time worrying that my performance wasn't good enough because of the lack of definitive feedback (in the form of dying over and over again).

Those games like Onimusha that offer you an easy mode if you continually die just don't work for me either: I'm too proud to take the offer (and start actually enjoying the experience!)

Overnight I mulled over SMT and I vowed to return to it this weekend. I'm stuck (as ever) on a boss - well, a series of four of 'em. As Randy says, it's not so much about level grinding but careful planning and development of your team to use the elements right. Which is nice, but the sort-of puzzle solving required to use the elements well exposes another of my game-ending bugbears: I don't like puzzles when I have to solve them on the fly and under pressure. The point I'm at with SMT has me dying on the fourth boss, so I have no save-game safety net to allow me mistakes... But return I will (and I'll probably cane it on the first go).

On another note, I was spitting with game-induced rage last night on the last colossus in Shadow of the Colossus. Oh my lord, it was so frustrating... I can't give up, though. I just can't...

Though it wouldn't be the first time I've given up on the final boss - FF VII. It took a dull, distracted rainy Sunday two whole years later for me to finally finish it off.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
13:55 / 18.03.06
Well, let's see. Unreal I got bored by the time I got to the temple. When I'd got to what looked like a spaceship before it I'd thought "Great! Nearly finished!" Only to come out of it the other side and keep going.

Half Life The three-headed demon in the exhaust pipe. I'd nearly got the engine fired, I hit a button which turned on a fan above me, it cut me up several times and I lost interest.

Dune 2000/C&C Tiberian Sun Got somewhere between half way and three quarters before losing interest. With the latter it was that increasingly you were given two men and had to navigate them through large maps to your base before you could build it up and kick the shit out of your enemies.

Since then I've changed computer so if I wanted to play them again I'd have to start from scratch. Strangely I'm not feeling the urge.

I nearly felt I was at the OST point with Legends of the Jedi Knights or whatever it is that a friend lent me, with my first Sith knight in the Sith base. No matter what I tried he was pwning me, but then I tried changing the characters that fought with me (that little droid is a shit fighter) and we kicked his arse! Hurrah! Now we're fighting rhinos on the Jedi's home planet. OST averted for now. I suppose I just don't care about computer games enough to have to win them any more.
 
 
Mouse
17:11 / 18.03.06
On the topic of Final Fantasy games, both times I've tried FFIX I've thought "stuff this" at exactly the same point.

There's an "optional" minigame (a card game thing) throughout the game, presumably I imagine so that those who collect all the cards get some kind of fancy weapon as a reward. However, life is too short for that bollocks, so I didn't bother with it. Little did I know that about halfway through the game there's some bastard card game tournament that you have to win to progress.

I'm very bitter, because until that point it was my favourite FF game, and I still want to finish the bugger.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
10:09 / 19.03.06
rising: Was there at least a save point between?

No. The thing that provided it with a temporary reprieve from the 'to be finished' pile was that it handles death in much the same way as Pokemon - instead of Game Over, you get thrown back to the last church you saved at and lose half the money you were carrying. You also keep any EXP you'd earned between your last save and death, so in theory you can keep retrying and keep getting that little bit stronger. Again, I think that's possibly more evidence suggesting that I was meant to have struggled and died a few times previously.

(On Atlus-style RPGs, I wouldn't let that extended period of play put you off - the thing about them is that they often have a great deal of breadth, as well as depth, so completists can spend months of their lives playing them. My finished SMT save file came in some way under 30 hours, but that was with only one ending and an unfinished demon compendium, Atelier Iris has all the cooking mumbo jumbo to get lost in and the Nippon Ichi games doesn't really have endings - storyline endings, yeah, but no real limit on how far you can take their gameplay. They're basically titles that end when you finish playing them, not when the plot dictates.)

rotational: it's easy for adaptive difficulty to make you feel short changed. I can't think of a game I've played that has it, but I'd imagine that I'd spend the whole time worrying that my performance wasn't good enough because of the lack of definitive feedback (in the form of dying over and over again).

Yeah, and I've seen the suggestion elsewhere recently that adaptive difficulty removes the feeling that certain points in certain games are rites of passage, completion of which becomes a badge of honour. It could also damage the odd sense of camaraderie that some single-player games (accidentally) create - that thing of cheering somebody on on an internet forum who's having trouble with a particular boss, because you struggled there yourself and the memory of that means you want them to take the bastard down.

I think you could see the use of rank in shmups as being a form of adaptive difficulty - they get harder as you get better, they get easier the more you die. Possibly racers like Mario Kart, too - although that's hardly the best example, given how much stick the rubber band AI comes in for there.
 
 
Andria
10:42 / 19.03.06
Fallout.

God. That game is horrible for a RPG perfectionist like myself. My usual tactic when playing RPGs - no doubt influenced by playing way too many obscure SNES games on emulators and abusing save states - is to try to explore every corner of the game world, talk to everyone and do every side quest. This is not because I want to max my stats or get all the ultimate items, but because I don't want to miss any fun experiences in the game, and explore everything.

Now, try doing that in Fallout (or worse, Fallout 2!). It completely ruins the game, reduces it to save-try-reload-try-reload-try-save etc. You never get anywhere, and no matter how much you try, once you read a walkthrough you realise you still missed ninety or so percent of it. Hopeless, really. Having realised this, I try to play Fallout as if it was real life, never reloading a save or going back or anything (unless I absolutely have to). But still, I feel that I should: I must have missed something important, or I shouldn't have started that battle, and so on. When I think about it, playing Fallout is (almost) like living through your real life, only with a save/load option...

Such a brilliant, frustrating game. I must have given up on it more times than I could count.

Otherwise, boss fights are the most common game-stoppers for me. In Obscure I stopped playing just before the final boss, only because I saw no reason to go through all that annoying fighting (that, and I was a little bit scared). Fear is actually something that often gets me to stop playing games for a while - when I was younger it took me months to play Half-life, and my friend and I couldn't finish Doom III because both of us preferred watching someone else play it.
 
 
rotational
11:41 / 19.03.06
Well, I'm back at Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. I beat the boss Thor on the first go (though I admit I checked Gamefaqs to make sure I had the right balance of elemental defence/offence!). I was beginning to think uh-oh, I'm running out of juice when suddenly he dropped. Hoo ha.

Mousezilla: yeah, gave up on FF VIII right at the end too. E Randy said it right earlier in this thread:

I think what happens a lot of the time is that you're so into it for the majority of the game, loving the feeling of exploration and discovery, that when the last corner comes into sight your brain switches off - kind of, "well, that's it, nothing else to see now."

Dead on, I'd say. But why will I definitely persevere with Shadow of the Colossus and be quite content to simply drop a Final Fantasy at the end? I will finish SotC because I want to know what happens in the story. By the end of a Final Fantasy, I just don't care any more. I suppose that's pretty damning given much much the series is celebrated for story telling. Frankly, for me, the stories aren't very compelling. What drove me on through the main game of FF VII and VIII was the promise of spectacle, the lure of stat increases and new powers. Not the story.

SotC's expressive simplicity is far more compelling than FF's cliched rambling for sure. And SMT: Nocturne's sheer weirdness is serving well for me so far.
 
 
Mouse
15:16 / 19.03.06
Otherwise, boss fights are the most common game-stoppers for me.

Oh, definitely. Spend a whole game honing a certain way of playing, then have to ditch all that to learn whatever way you're meant to exploit a seemingly invincible enemy's weakness. Nihilanth in Half Life is a good example. Bouncing on strange bouncy organic pads to shoot into its brain when it opens its head up? What the hell?

Far better to just have a very hard section at the end where you simply need to use all the skils you've learned through the game flawlessly. The last mission in Rainbow Six games tends to be like this, and the last two levels in Far Cry (though there was a boss, but he wan't especially tough) are satisfyingly hard too.
 
  

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