Things that annoy you in games you like

[Tamer Anode/Cathode]

No game is perfect. Even our favorites have some stage, or some character, or some kind of glitch or issue that just drags the whole experience down.

For me the game in question is Sonic CD, the problem being Wacky Workbench 1. The main gimmick of this level is a floor along the bottom of the stage which immediately launches you into the air on contact. Getting launched means having to climb back down from the upper part of the level before being able to progress. However, in addition to the platform mazes at the top, there are also electric coils in the background that flicker on and off, damaging you if contact is made while they're active. This means that mistakes in the lower parts of the stage take a long time to recover from, taking what should be a short stage and turning it into a lengthy slog.

[Cadmas]

Various Jprgs I've played that have a 100 floor bonus dungeons at the end of the game.

[Mr. Sacchi]

Hey Persona 3, it would certainly be nice if you told me about the existence of The Reaper ANYWHERE in the game aside from a small snippet on the instruction manual.

I kind of like not losing hours of progress due to a bonus boss showing up and murdering me while I'm still level 14.

I also like to be able to take my time and explore each floor without having a clock on my head that is not only random, it's also affected by things that are beyond my control, and I can't see.

With regards, Sacchi.

[MewMewHeart]

Dear Tales of Symphonia 2, I like you and all but... WHY THE FUCK MUST YOU THROW ME CONSTANTLY INTO BOSS BATTLE UNPREPARED AND WITHOUT WARNING HONESTLY EVEN in

Spoiler:

Celsius Cave's 3 boss battles and I can't even save or go to town to restock UNCOOL

~ Yours Truly MewMewHeart

[OverlordChirei]

*more notorious usage in fangames

[WHMZakeri]

So I'm playing Bowser's Inside Story again and here is a pop quiz:
So you want to start a new minigame. The game starts by putting you in the center of a screen and having falling particles next to rows of what appear to be targets. how would you introduce it?
A ) Let the Player do whatever and experiment
B ) Run through the controls and then ask if they want to practice
C ) Have the Helper butterfly character pop out and explain everything
D ) Have the helper butterfly character pop out and stare at the pieces of the minigame for 30 seconds before explaining everything and then also give her a forced hit animation that takes one heart away only to have another 10 second animation of her giving that heart back to you so you know not to touch the ones that look dangerous to touch.

[notverycreative]

Lack of button shortcuts or having to press too many buttons to do something. Star Ocean 4 is really bad about this.

[Spotty Len]

Tedious grinding. I have no problem with grinding when it's fun, but mashing one button just to get a 1/256 item or gain EXP is just stupid.

Tutorials are also annoying. Throw us into a unlosable battle and let people figure things out.

[Ionasal kkll Solciel]

Trophies/Achievements that require a ton of online matches to accomplish, especially if it's not that popular in the first place. I mean, I like Monster Monpiece, but I don't like it enough to grind battles with jerks that only use Lamia/Nekomata decks or boosters that immediately jump ship once the battle starts.

[commandercool]

Figjting games that mess with my character too much between installments. Both Blazblue and Persona 4 Arena did this with their last rotation of games (Lambda and Naoto respectively) and as a pretty casual player of fighting games it really turned me off to them. When everyone I play with just got buffs and I got a significant reworking I kind of feel like I'm set up for a lot of initial failure. I've had better luck learning completely new characters than old favorite characters with huge changes. And I know, old Lambda is back in the new Blazblue revision, but the last one threw me off enough that I'm no longer willing to pay full price for them.

[pasu]

The timing required in the robot game in Rhythm Heaven always felt off to me   :derp:

[Third Eye Lem]

The biggest problem I have with games in general is how a game "handles." There's two parts to this equation:

* Ability to remap controls. If I don't like how the default controls are laid out, I should be allowed to remap them. This isn't usually a problem in most of the games I play, but in games like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, I should be allowed to at least remap the Block button to the triggers instead of being forced to use a face button. :V

* Freedom of movement. I like characters who can move and attack at the same time, or at least not feel locked into place for too long when I need to get out of the way fast. Bayonetta does this well, and even Hyrule Warriors feels very fluid and swift with running around (getting around the battlefield is important, after all). Sadly, an example of how not to do movement well is in a game I had an interest in playing: Copy Kitty. It's pretty much touted as a Run and Gun, but the way the main character handles is counterproductive to that. You can't run left or right while shooting, and the only way to move while shooting is to jump. I'm sure if I practiced enough I'd get over this limitation, but it seems more of a hassle than it's worth. A shame, too: Copy Kitty is an interesting game and I'm sure I'd enjoy it more if the character wasn't so limited.

tl;dr Control makes or breaks a game for me.

[Raikaria]

Annoying and/or bland characters.

Example: Nowe - Drakenguard 2. The gameplay of that game is actually pretty good. You have to be on your toes ready to evade enemy attacks and the combat is pretty fluid; but you cannot cancel a swing in motion; and you die pretty fast.

The storyline and world are decent too.

But dear lord the main protagonist is a whiny; idealistic; naive kid raised by a dragon. Which is a massive climbdown from Caim; a mute; dragon-bound; badass; mass-murderer fighting in a war against a regime and a cult which killed his parents and abducted his sister [Later sacrificing her to try and end the world]; and brainwashed his best friend against him... while pairing him with said dragon who killed and ate his parents in front of him. Nowe is... an awful stereotype. It's like he walked out of a shounen manga... spiky hair and all, into some universe where such a person shouldn't even exist.

By the way the dragon who raised Nowe is the same dragon who ate Caim's parents [Inferred but not stated outright in the game; the biggest evidence being a line spoken if you let a boss battle drag on far longer than it needs to. Confirmed by Word of God.]. Which is a cool twist.

Another thing I strongly dislike; and this is mainly RPG's; is attempts to railroad you into doing certain things. I don't mean pushing you along with the plot. I mean things like in Pokemon X/Y they give you a Kanto starter with a Mega Stone basically saying 'Hey USE THIS it's better than your actual starter'. or they stick a Snorlax in your way for no apparent reason early enough in the game that there is almost no reason to not use the Snorlax if you can catch it because it's so much stronger than anything else for most of the game. Or the forced Pidgey first encounter.

[Tribow]

This goes for a lot of games.


HAVE FUN PLAYING THIS GAME!?
DLCDLCDLCDLCDLCDLCDLCDLCDLC!
NOW YOU FEEL LIKE YOUR EXPERIENCE IS COMPLETE SHIT UNLESS YOU THROW MONEY AT US!
HAVE FUN!  :3

[WHMZakeri]

So I'm playing what is probably the best Dynasty Warriors game ever made: Hyrule Warriors.
The thing is, I really enjoy the Warrior's style of gameplay. I do love it, but ... it feels to simple. I feel like it has the potential to grow more.
So often as I do when playing Warriors games, I think about ways to improve it, and for the first time I had a rather good idea.

Okay, you start at spawn points that are explicitly on opposite sides of the maps, and you can teleport to any keep you currently own. all of the fighters have some agency outside of the KO counter, and can push the line of war back and forth to their skill in fighting each other. The more ground they cover, the more advantageous they are. Sometimes, taking the fight directly to the point where it's needed most isn't always the best answer. sometimes going down a path you've taken and circling back to route the enemy in a pincer attack works better. You can even make it a sort of multiplayer game if you increase the rate of action. You can have team members working together the find ways to push the other team back and coordinating, or you can even have it be versus and having the players working strategically to paint the ground their own color. You could even-
...You know what I'm going back to Splatoon.

[MatsuriSakuragi]

Random battles in RPGs that take way too long. Doesn't matter which one. It annoys me no matter what.

[trancehime]

absurdly high encounter rates in jRPGs

i said absurdly high, as in, 1 encounter every 3 steps high.

[MatsuriSakuragi]

That too. Combine the two and you have a game I'll give up on no matter how good the story is.

[Raikaria]

absurdly high encounter rates in jRPGs

i said absurdly high, as in, 1 encounter every 3 steps high.

Need I say more about that example? Especially when in R/B/Y the minimum time between encounters was... three steps. [In speedrunning it's even called getting Threestepped]

Seriously sometimes speedruns in Gen 1 are simply decided by 'who gets threestepped by Zubats more in Mt.Moon?'.

[Reddyne]

I have a distinct memory of playing the original Dark Souls and longingly eyeing the Murakumo at one point. However, my strength stat was something like 12 levels below what it needed to be. Out of sheer curiosity, I spent a painfully long time grinding up strength until I could finally equip it, only to find that I thought the moveset sucked and abandoned it ASAP. I felt like I had been played in a way even worse that the game usually plays you.

The sequel had its issues but you could equip any weapon and know what it felt like from the get go. If you didn't meet the requirements, you'd get negative scaling, making using the weapon pointless. You could also reset your stats but the items to do so were relatively obscure and only available past a certain point so you couldn't just flippantly alter your stats. The game was so much more player friendly on a number of different levels and I wound up enjoying it a lot more regardless of how many 4chan-style opinions have been tossed around about it.

Tedious grinding. I have no problem with grinding when it's fun, but mashing one button just to get a 1/256 item or gain EXP is just stupid.

Tutorials are also annoying. Throw us into a unlosable battle and let people figure things out.

Speaking of which, when I restarted Dark Souls, it took me 2 hours of gameplay to make it to the cathedral and the bonfire above Andre. It then took me another 2 full hours to earn the Balder Side Sword. I had earned something like 20 other pieces of armor and the shield from those knights alone before the sword popped up.

[notverycreative]

Speaking of high random battle rates, Final Fantasy 4 is the poster child for this. You get Threestepped ALL THE TIME. Even in the remakes. It's completely insane. At least on PSP you have the autobattle option, but you still get ambushed and back-attacked way too often. Actually, that is another thing I hate. Games with a high ambush/back-attack rate that the player has no control over. Even with pre-existing encounters it's possible to get ambushed by touching the enemy from the front in some games. Or the hit detection's off and for some reason you clip through part of the enemy's model even though it looks solid so they sideswipe you despite visually it's a front-to-front thing.

[Giratina93]

Random Number Generator drops in MH. YES SHAGARU, I REALLY WANT YOUR MANTLE, SO QUIT GIVING ME YOUR GODDAMN PHOSGEMS AND GIVE ME A MANTLE ALREADY, YOU SACK OF.... AUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH!

[Esifex]

Am I just allowed to say 'Destiny's Story'? Also, Destiny makes rampant misuse of the RNG to determine drops.

Also, RNG in particular. My girlfriend and I play WoW quite a bit, but we've lost a lot of interest. Back in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, there was a type of currency that you could grind for and trade in for the exact piece of equipment you want.

Now, they've trashed that mechanic and introduced re-roll Seals, which gives you another shot at the loot a boss can drop. However, these Seals have a higher chance of just dropping gold, you can only get so many of them a week (usually far less than the amount of bosses in any one raid wing), and while they DO have a 'mercy' mechanic - the longer you go chain-looting gold, the higher your chances are at actually getting gear from one - you're still just as likely to either get something you've already looted off that boss or something that is a side-grade or downgrade, and not the item you actually want.

Randomness over player choice is frustrating as all hell.

[FinnKaenbyou]

Attacks in RPGs that turn your party against you. Confusion, charm, and so on. Why, yes, this 10-minute boss fight was going excellently up until you possessed my warrior and made him cut the cleric in half. Now, not so much.

Also, with SMT in particular - why does the protag getting KOd end the game instantly? And in a series with TWO different flavours of instant-kill spells? You can revive your other party members just fine, can't you. Honestly my favourite part of SMT4 was that they realised this was a silly idea and got rid of it.

[Jq1790]

Also, with SMT in particular - why does the protag getting KOd end the game instantly? And in a series with TWO different flavours of instant-kill spells? You can revive your other party members just fine, can't you. Honestly my favourite part of SMT4 was that they realised this was a silly idea and got rid of it.

To piggyback off of this with a similar idea...Why, when your "active" party falls do most games with reserve characters just give you a Game Over(or send you to town with money halved, whatever the game does for partywipes)?  The others are still THERE, so c'mon, jump in and do something!

This is one thing I adore the Golden Sun games for; in the second one(I forget if it was so in the third but I think so) if your frontline was wiped out...the rearguard ACTUALLY SWITCHED IN.

[WHMZakeri]

To piggyback off of this with a similar idea...Why, when your "active" party falls do most games with reserve characters just give you a Game Over(or send you to town with money halved, whatever the game does for partywipes)?  The others are still THERE, so c'mon, jump in and do something!

This is one thing I adore the Golden Sun games for; in the second one(I forget if it was so in the third but I think so) if your frontline was wiped out...the rearguard ACTUALLY SWITCHED IN.

I just justified it using FFVII's "ring the party up on the cellphone" logic that the reason is because the Inactive party isn't actually with them and the active team dies permanently, jeopardizing the rest of the plot.
don't ask me what happens in FFX or why downed party members can't be switched out. especially considering they can still get up long enough to clear the field for a summoning.

[Cadmas]

Main party LVL99 LVL99 LVL99
The rest LVL12 LVL22 LVL36 LVL21 LVL48

Every time

[nav']

Been playing Fire Emblem quite a bit lately and so far, the only thing I don't like about these games is same turn reinforcements. You can usually predict the general area where they pop up, but not always, and of course you never know what or when exactly is coming. So it's basically an annoying way of extending your play time by forcing you to restart the chapter, because you left your healer just in range of the dude with a Silver Lance who spawned and moved before you had a chance to react. It's not a good thing in a game where the main focus is on avoiding any causalties.

[notverycreative]

Also, with SMT in particular - why does the protag getting KOd end the game instantly?

There's usually an in-universe justification reason for this. Probably due to the natural of demon contracting. In the Persona games, at least in 3 and 4, it's different. You can get Serph/Sera/Seraph killed in Digital Devil Saga without a gameover; hell, you don't even need to USE them.

Main party LVL99 LVL99 LVL99
The rest LVL12 LVL22 LVL36 LVL21 LVL48

Leaked experience is only an issue if levelling up in a certain manner is something only the active party has access to, or if you don't have enough resources to do so. Otherwise, yeah, it's better than having to level everyone up individually. Like in FF6, I don't mind non-leaked exp because you only want to level with Espers eqiupped. But in Star Ocean 4 it's frustrating as shit especially because drop rates are GODAWFUL (and some items might be impossible to get) unless you have the character with the right "monster family" skill.

[Mr. Sacchi]

In the Persona games, at least in 3 and 4, it's different.

There's an explanation in P3, if the protag falls in battle

Spoiler:

Thanatos breaks free and begins The Fall immediately. This is valid even after Thanatos is already out of your body because by that point the protag is the only one that can stop The Fall (World Arcana, anyone?)

Persona 4 though? Nope, no explanation given.