Biggest bullshit in a video game

[Frosty Fetus]

That's pretty damn off-putting. The body proportions aren't stubby enough to achieve the PS1 cutesy Final Fantasy aesthetic, but they still have the grotesque giant heads.

The heads aren't that big. Than again I might just be biased since I'm a huge fan of dada/surrealism. So that may affect my views.

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

The heads aren't that big.

An adult human is 7.5-8 heads tall. Those character are like two heads tall.

 

[Frosty Fetus]

An adult human is 7.5-8 heads tall. Those character are like two heads tall.

The game is made by Asians and their pretty short

 

[std::string]

Wasn't Vivian always a troon in the original game's Japanese dialogue though? By that standard, that would make a relocalization of that particular instance a more accurate translation.

I hunted down the original Japanese text to check. Vivian uses female pronouns to refer to himself and says that he has the body of a boy but the heart of a girl. Also describes himself as one of the three shadow sisters.

The vibe I'm getting is that the main takeaway for the audience was intended to be that he's abused by his sisters because he's weaker than them and he wants to be strong like them. This is about as deep as it gets. It's a Nintendo game, not Proust.

 

[Big Brown Schlub]

Not really mechanics related but there are so many settings which are criminally underutilized, sometimes there's only like 6 good games with that setting and the rest are piece of shit shovelware. Some examples include cowboys/Wild West and especially pirates. At least the Wild West setting has some excellent games like Red Dead, the pirate setting is so fucking buckbroken that one of the best games with it is a fucking AssCreed game. Also organized crime/mafia is a setting that is just screaming for good tycoon/management games but every single one I played was either a complete piece of shit or meh at best.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

GTA Online: Time Trial 22 (Down Chiliad)
A challenge in which the player, from a standing start on the peak of Mt. Chiliad, is supposed to reach a checkpoint downhill at the end of a mountain range within, I think 54 seconds.
Take a bike? Every single landing has a chance of the player falling off the bike or straight up dying on impact. If the player falls off, good luck surviving the ragdolling. In either case, good luck picking up the bike again, it might have slid a couple hundred meters away. And good luck walking downhill without tripping and ragdolling to death again.
Oh, you took a bike and didn't fall off? Well, every single landing redirects you like a pachinko machine because you're going down a mountain.
Oh, you drive slower and cautiously to plan your landings better? Well, good fucking luck, it doesn't work that way.
Oh, you attempt some safer lines? Well, fuck you, every single rock, bush, and piece of vegetation is seemingly placed perfectly to make you crash and fall off your bike. Seriously, the geometry on this path alone is insane. If it isn't the curvature of the path itself, a random steeper mini-recess in the rock to throw you off the bike completely, the rocks and vegetation are placed exactly to make traversing this path as difficult and painful as possible.
Take a car to avoid the bike shenanigans? Congratulations, the rocks and vegetation are still there, not to mention that, if you land on a slope, you have no choice but to either spin out or slide down the mountain. At least you survive and are in the car so you can hold the respawn key to get back to the peak of the mountain.

Whoever designed this particular challenge must be a complete sadist

I mean, look at this shit, the amount of luck you need

 

[Pissmaster]

The heads aren't that big. Than again I might just be biased since I'm a huge fan of dada/surrealism. So that may affect my views.

The rest of the environment looks great, but the characters look like someone scaled down their bodies but left their heads alone to intentionally make them look silly. Reminds me of DK Mode in Goldeneye:

 

[Friendly Primarina]

The rest of the environment looks great, but the characters look like someone scaled down their bodies but left their heads alone to intentionally make them look silly. Reminds me of DK Mode in Goldeneye:
View attachment 6076512

The most most insulting thing that game could do is when Dr. Doak isn't in the labs upstairs, but he is one of the guard heads. It's like a slap round the face.

 

[NerdShamer]

The combat system in Final Fantasy 8 is something that an autist would enjoy

 

[Frosty Fetus]

The combat system in Final Fantasy 8 is something that an autist would enjoy

Whats so bad about the combat?

 

[NerdShamer]

Whats so bad about the combat?

So basically, it involves an LOT of micromanaging as soon as you enter your first dungeon. So, first off: The only things that you can do is your basic attack or flee via an semi-obscure command. If you want to do anything else, you need to equip an "Guardian Force" or something to fill out the rest of your commands. But you can only pick 3 of them out of the abilities that they've offered.

So far they are:

• Magic: Instead of just using MP like most other RPGs, you basically using an limited quantity of spells. For the most part, it works well, if you're hitting someone's weaknesses; but since you'll eventually run out, you'll have to...
• Draw (Magic):Basically, you're "stealing" magic from your opposition, which is awarded to you in a random number of uses. Each species of enemy has an different list of spells that you can take from, so there's bound to be some form of scarcity going on.
• Item: Self-explanatory. I'm told that this should be ignored because you should have enough uses for your healing magic. But you never really know.
• Card: Has an chance of turning an monster into an card for the obligatory card game.
• GF (Summons Guardian Force): Basically, it's an extremely powerful attack, that needs to be invested with via grinding.

Now, moving onto the guardians, here's where the min-maxing comes in. You have to sit through an few dozen fights to unlock their useful fringe benefits and simply leveling up your team doesn't really makes that big of an difference, early on. They needed to be equipped to one of your active team of three if want them to get better.

And as for the actual fighting, you're essentially on the clock because your opponents will eventually get an free attack or two in as your going through the menus.

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

And as for the actual fighting, you're essentially on the clock because your opponents will eventually get an free attack or two in as your going through the menus.

That's how FF games were from FF4 onward. It is stupid, but pretty expected from the series.

The dumbest thing about Final Fantasy 8 is the fact that you link magic spells to your stats and the more powerful the magic and the more you have in stock, the better the stat boost. So the smart way to play is to never use magic, ever.

It's like having a gun, but the ammunition is so valuable that you can't justify ever shooting it.

 

[NerdShamer]

The dumbest thing about Final Fantasy 8 is the fact that you link magic spells to your stats and the more powerful the magic and the more you have in stock, the better the stat boost. So the smart way to play is to never use magic, ever.

Wow, I genuinely didn't know this.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Something I noticed more and more in games is having tons of horrifically complicated status buffs/debuffs that effects span several paragraphs and are unique to a single character/class. Usually those are completely ineffectual unless you base an entire build on them. It's just bad design.

Also true for most current year media, overwhelming amount of particle effects that cover everything.

 

[NerdShamer]

Something I noticed more and more in games is having tons of horrifically complicated status buffs/debuffs that effects span several paragraphs and are unique to a single character/class. Usually those are completely ineffectual unless you base an entire build on them. It's just bad design

I thought that was mainly exclusive to MOBAs and shit like Rogue Trader?

 

[AnOminous]

Some examples include cowboys/Wild West and especially pirates. At least the Wild West setting has some excellent games like Red Dead, the pirate setting is so fucking buckbroken that one of the best games with it is a fucking AssCreed game.

Best pirate game was the Sid Meier pirate game from the '80s.

Something I noticed more and more in games is having tons of horrifically complicated status buffs/debuffs that effects span several paragraphs and are unique to a single character/class. Usually those are completely ineffectual unless you base an entire build on them. It's just bad design.

Buffs and debuffs that actually take a turn to use are usually utter bullshit. Great, so you've just spent a turn so that maybe next round it will have an effect (if you don't whiff). This is especially the case when the buff doesn't even go off. So you're gambling on getting lucky not once, but twice in a row, multiplying the chance you just spent two turns to do NOTHING AT ALL.

So you basically blow a turn (meaning some enemy has a chance to attack for free) in the HOPE that MAYBE next round, you will have a slightly more beneficial outcome. How often is it that just killing some son of a bitch this round and then one next round isn't preferable?

It's like having a gun, but the ammunition is so valuable that you can't justify ever shooting it.

Reminds me of Chris Rock's joke about how they shouldn't outlaw guns, they should just have a thousand dollar a bullet tax. "I'd pop a cap in yo ass. . .if I could AFFORD it!"

 

[NerdShamer]

Buffs and debuffs that actually take a turn to use are usually utter bullshit. Great, so you've just spent a turn so that maybe next round it will have an effect (if you don't whiff). This is especially the case when the buff doesn't even go off. So you're gambling on getting lucky not once, but twice in a row, multiplying the chance you just spent two turns to do NOTHING AT ALL.

So you basically blow a turn (meaning some enemy has a chance to attack for free) in the HOPE that MAYBE next round, you will have a slightly more beneficial outcome. How often is it that just killing some son of a bitch this round and then one next round isn't preferable?

The worst that I've seen this happen in Bravely Default 2, where you had the ability to poison someone with an hilariously low activation rate. And even after finding the ability that guarantees the success of this move, it turns out that the poison damage is so low that I was better off just using offensive magic.

 

[Gamepads]

Now, moving onto the guardians, here's where the min-maxing comes in. You have to sit through an few dozen fights to unlock their useful fringe benefits and simply leveling up your team doesn't really makes that big of an difference, early on. They needed to be equipped to one of your active team of three if want them to get better.

And as for the actual fighting, you're essentially on the clock because your opponents will eventually get an free attack or two in as your going through the menus.

That's not the only weird thing about the game. Leveling is actually detrimental as enemies do scale up based on level.

How far is the whole min-maxing thing taken? Turning enemies into cards, refining those into items and spells and so forth. Level GFs using a temporary party member while the rest are lying dead when you get the opportunity. Otherwise, avoid gaining XP by carding shit, running away, or if you really have to, inflict the stone status and take the XP hit. What XP hit? Excluding bosses who don't even give XP, you get XP from doing damage, including even if you run away or petrified afterwards. Oh, and the level up requirement is always 1000 XP.

Everything about VIII is unorthodox, and it's completely incidental that IX was going back to the roots as it was being developed in parallel, and not a response to its predecessor.

 

[std::string]

It's like having a gun, but the ammunition is so valuable that you can't justify ever shooting it.

You can keep extra copies on other characters and just transfer them over as you use yours.

Really though you can play through FF8 normally and nothing weird happens. Draw new spells when you run across them, don't go out of your way to grind. You don't have to min-max. The only thing that trips people up is that you can't level grind to beat a boss because you're actually just shooting yourself in the foot with every new level you gain.

 

[AnOminous]

The worst that I've seen this happen in Bravely Default 2, where you had the ability to poison someone with an hilariously low activation rate. And even after finding the ability that guarantees the success of this move, it turns out that the poison damage is so low that I was better off just using offensive magic.

This is why these are always dumb. Shall I just smash you over the head with a club? Or should I cast some faggot spell that maybe gives me 20% more damage when I try to smash you over the head next round?

The proper answer is almost always, I'm just going to smash your faggot ass head with my club THIS round.