Persona 5 original was my first game in the series, and it made me HATE the idea of a boss that introduces not only entirely new mechanics, but never tells you ANY of them before it let's the boss wipe the floor with you! Trying to beat the Twins is one of the hardest things i have ever done in a turnbased RPG, because they break literally every rule the game has established to that point, making them next to impossible to beat on your first attempt, since nothing you have learned to that point is really useful agaist them... To start, they can just end the fight immediatly if you don't do a set amount of damage within a set amount of turns, and they can't be knocked down, crit or suffer things like poison or shock. They also alternate cycles of the most powerful attacks in the game, changing what set they use when they hit certain HP thresholds. On top of that, they have max stats of 99 in everything, meaning they are likely faster, tougher and hit harder than anything you can do, and since only Joker can switch to avoid getting hit on a weakness, which is almost certainly a deathsentence, your party of 3 plus Joker can never really be at an advantage... And to top it all off, if you don't beat both of them on the same turn, they will just get healed to full, and you are back to where you started on one of them! And with their high stats, it's more than likely that you miss one or both of them with multi-target attacks, making it a game of chance to get that final hit on both of them in...

That black and white game you talk about in the end looks like nightmare... And really too bad for the Zelda game, didn't played it yet and this looks so confusing to scroll forever.

Major props for putting Laser Love in the Sayonara Wild Hearts section. Favourite song in the game

How does adding exit button, or just simply start/select for menu add complexity 🫤

Im a simple person, I see octopath traveler in the first 30 seconds, i like

Warcraft 3 has a day-nighg cycle where most units have reduced sight at night. Most neutral enemes will be sleeping, and your units wont auto-attack them if you don't command them to do so. Also the night elf playable race can see better at night then in day, can become invisible at night, and have a special store item that makes night whendver you want. Some story missions are also locked to day, or night.

I know that I'm 4 years late, but calling Pokémon's Level Up system "Vanilla" is... well... technically true, but do you REALLY want something more complicated? Imagine introducing a new, more complicated leveling system for Pokémon... then imagine having to factor that in for over 1,000 Pokémon... And that doesn't even count the fact that Team Building is kind of its own Level up system. Since, over the course of the game, you'll be catching stronger Pokémon to replace older, weaker ones. Do you really want to tackle on something like a more complicated level up system, such as a skill tree, on top of that? For 1,025 Pokémon? Because I say no thank you!

good thing someone is spreading the word about chants of sennaar. that game changed my brain chemistry permanently, and i wish so badly that i could erase my memories about it just so that i could experience playing it for first time again.

Eulmore's theme song is so pretty

As corny as it sounds. I would like love interest rivals. One thing I don't feel like I'm seeing too often unless it's pokémon, are relationship building with your rival. Are my two characters developing here in both gameplay and story.

Im late to the party, but what is wrong with linear. i like linear

"But you cannot remove complexity forever" case in point: Ballan Wonderworld.

Lorelei personally drove me crazy, and it definitely ruined the game for me. I'm convinced struggling with the UI added at least an hour to my playthrough, and that's not considering the couple of puzzles I initially failed because the confusing UI made me think I inputted the correct thing. Looking at what the devs were saying (and their absolute lack of response, not that interviews pushed them on this) made it even worse. They pretend it's for accessibility but nope, it's just self indulgence. They decided to make a game with one button, and they forced this decision instead of building a game around it. And using a dozen input to get out of a few menus instead of literally 3 press on another button doesn't make the game more accessible, it makes it way more complicated to navigate. If they cared about being approachable to non-gamer audiences, they would have had freaking mouse control, because that's actually something people know how to use, and the game would have worked perfectly just with one mouse (and its two buttons). Even Cocoon, which was marketed as a one button game lets you use B to go back when you're in menus, because doing otherwise would be insane.

Man everyone is using the Metaphor in town or Akademia theme lol Also i don't think it's possible to drown in pennies. The weight of all the pennies would be difficult to get yourself in a drowning situation

*sees the premise of Chants of Sennar* aaaaaaaand added that to the wishlist

Metaphor is a masterpiece in UI Design

Final Fantasy XIII pissed me off with how anti grindy it was. I couldn’t finish it. The battles were mostly pretty fun, but the bosses were too strict on how the game wanted you to beat them. And it punished you for trying to spend CP on new jobs or whatever the paradigm things were called. Everything was way too expensive when the game finally opened up (way too late)

Octopath hot garbage as always

Your Good example was of art direction but your Bad example was of interface design. You didn't say anything about the interface design of Metaphor, or the graphics in Zelda. Then Loreli had nothing to do with graphic design. I think I don't get these videos, I thought it would be the best and worst of video game graphic design.

outside of Metaphor’s beautiful menu, I found the ui and battle transitions to be very busy. I wish it took less from P5 and actually tried to do its own thing.

I'm something of an economic nerd in pretty much every game I play, so I have fun with things like, shops with limited-refreshing supply. I need arrows in BotW, I gotta go to THAT shop, I gotta go there every couple days so they can restock. Same with Persona 5, the good SP drinks are in specific vending machines which refresh, so it becomes part of the weekly cycle to visit those because oh, it's Thursday. A fun one which is, unsurprisingly, ridiculous: Dwarf Fortress. Certain times of year, different groups send a barter wagon, you better be ready. Their perceived value changes depending on which group you trade with, tempered by having a dwarf with good skills to properly ascertain the value, and even a kingdom's temperament, for instance do NOT offer live animals to the elves. They refuse to trade with you. Funny enough, I decided to rebuild my trade depot outside my bunker and deleted the existing one while a caravan was still there: it dropped all the items that caravan had, so I pulled off an accidental heist of epic proportions. Your junk is MINE. The high-up dwarf kingdom sends a barter envoy each year to ascertain your wealth, and even asks you if you want particular items in stock for next year, then tells you which items will be in high demand for inflated selling prices next year. So a year rolls around and you get a ton of cloth options, and if you've stocked up on anvils to sell you'll come out way ahead. There's no indication or reminder of this so you better remember which items they wanted the most. Like most things in Dwarf Fortress, it's absurdly complicated and that's what makes it unique and fun to play around with.

One of the odder takes on super moves is in the JRPG Chained Echoes. It’s a standard metered super move, but what makes it unique is that the meter starts every boss battle filled. It seemed like a weird choice at first-why allow a player to begin a battle with a powerful attack? But then I realized it was done to allow us to enjoy super moves in more battle situations. Since most bosses can be affected by any debuffs and status ailments, it’s the most advantageous to kick off the battle with the ones that debuff the boss the most. However, in battles against regular enemies, you’re more likely to use high damage attacks to clear the board. So already, you’re using different super moves depending on whether you’re facing a boss or not. However, since you know you start every boss battle with a full meter, that gives you freedom to use your super moves during regular battles when you fill it up rather than save it for boss battles. While this system does remove a little bit of strategy as to when to use a super, it does allow you to use more of them, which is definitely a good thing considering the large cast of characters, each with a unique super.

No spoilers... except for some of the translations in Chants

Played Chants of Senaar a few months ago and I really enjoyed the game. Wanna play another game like it

What is the music at the very end? I had to replay it a couple of times...☺

Okay but mantis lords are better than oro and mato

I dropped Lorelei after dying from the dude and didn't save and had to go so far back. Poor design choice but thank god for pirating

That Mario and Luigi made me laugh ^^

also i understand Aounuma's intention with the Echoes menu, but at the very least you could have split the Echoes into categories & have those get arranged by Least to Most used

"An intricate meal should not be hindered by a complicated fork" ok but that doesn't mean you need to give me a single chopstick

sorry but metaphor does not have good graphic design. the UI elements absolutely are distracting and disruptive. I can't see eye to eye with you on this one at all

I think there's no part of Metaphor Refantazio that's unique, creative, or inspired. I know I'm alone in this opinion. But thinking critically of it alongside, say, P5 and the remake of P3, or even just the original P4, Refantazio is just an unimaginative Japanese take on game of thrones, from the story, the world, the characters, the world design. The only thing unique are the enemies and even then, it's really only about half the enemies and of that half, they still fall flat compared to what you run up against in the persona series. Sure, this isn't a persona game. But it's clear they wanted to take persona and make it medieval. So in spirit, it IS a persona game. And it's a poor man's knockoff of persona, to boot.

Ooofffff Lorelei and the Laser Eyes sounds too clunky to play tbh

when you're controlling a game, if you have to think "what will this button do if I press it right now?" then you haven't removed complexity, you've added it

there's a very good reason why games gave up on the 'contextual action button' quite early in 3D game development...

L&tLE is a great game with a baffling control scheme. I also want to point out that not even the directional navigation is safe: some of the directional controls are top-down RPG-style (up moves you upstage, left moves you stage left), some of the controls are FPS-style (up moves you forward, left turns you counterclockwise). These match with two different camera layouts, fixed camera and over-the-shoulder respectively... except when they don't, and you have to use FPS controls with fixed camera. The design of the game creates scenarios where you will have to use all three one after another, and I found it impaired my ability to walk in game, because I kept giving valid inputs for the wrong mode and walking into walls and tables. Also in fairness Chants of Sennaar does have an unskippable slide puzzle.

thankfully jak 3 fixed the dark jak problem, both by having it be more versatile with a long range attack, making dark eco drops more plentiful and by having a new form light jak which is more focused on the healing side of things

For my game I didnt feel like fast travel would be a good idea, most of your time is spent in the city but at the same time traveling across the whole thing is tiring. Solution - bus stops, select the location you want to travel to and the map will indicate the closet bus stop to the player, at all stops a bus is already there so just hop on, watch the quick loading screen (loading the new chunck) and BOOM youre at the bus stop you needed to get to

I did NOT expect to hear Starless Skyline in this video but I'm all for it

yer baby

metaphor ReFantazio blew me away. These people truly do know how to make a game that is fun and beautiful at the same time

Metaphor is kindof like Jojo steel ball run

You can speed up scrolling through the _Echoes of Wisdom_ "quick" select by holding R, but not by enough to not make it a problem. (Also increases your chance of scrolling right past the thing you were looking for and having to scroll back.) As is, "[t]he UI is terrible" is the one statement from what I consider the worst EoW user review on Metacritic (at least after the initial review bomb was cleaned up) that I actually agree with.

Echoes of Wisdom is literally just a worse version than Scribblenauts. Easily the most overrated zelda game in the franchise

I remember already disliking BotW's menus before TotK expanded the issue but that links back to my general distaste for weapon durability in zelda games

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes actually did the same weird design choice that Balan Wonderworld did: setting every button on the controller as primary action, including the B button which should've been the standard "back" button for generations

I didn't like Metaphor's UI. While it looks visually interesting, I don't find it very intuitive to use. ESPECIALLY the equip menu, there's plenty of room to show me who has what equipped.

Please please dont have constant flickering, animating UI around text. That is bad design! It makes things so hard to read, especially for those with visual impairments, ADHD, etc.

raise your hand if you're here after the goty nominee announcement

maybe if you give an example. how you fix a bad design. and how you come up with it too. 😊