Your Gaming Style

[NewJourneysFire]

I would like to introduce this topic with a little story, the type of game I'll be most referring to is RPGs, Action, and Adventure Games. I will mostly discuss how my gaming style has completely changed from what it used to be, and why.

Old Days:

Back when I was much younger, I would approach a game focused purely on improving my power. In most cases I would make sure my character reached his/her/their full potential before I continue on to the next area, and often feeling pure satisfaction at how powerful I was. I would remember beating bosses in RPG games with relative ease, and than use that to feel personal satisfaction of feeling like a pro, it's hard not to when you put alot of hard work spending hours in one location leveling up, and than watch your hard work pay off when you demolish the challenges ahead, and continue until you find another good spot to farm experience points. In Ocarina of Time I would never become adult Link until I had 10 1/2 hearts completed, all my upgrades, yadda yadda yadda.

In most cases, whenever I am faced with a game that provides limited amount of survival benefits I would stop playing and say that the creators surely didn't understand what makes a good game and that the limited healing items were a technical flaw I couldn't forgive. I counted out all survival horrors as bad games because of this reason, and strongly argued my case that they were not fun or worthy of playing. If I felt the game didn't provide the option to guarantee my survival, it wasn't a worthy game.

Today I see that play style as an anxiety to dying. It was like I had myself convinced that dying should not be part of the game, and if we see a game over screen more than 20 times in one play through, the game certainly had bad programming.


Today:

I guess my opinion changed somewhere. Perhaps after beating Ninja Gaiden Black on Master Ninja mode, and the three NES Ninja Gaidens, and Contras and Castlevania for NES and all that, the game over screen has burned an imprint in my mind.

Ever since tackling such difficult games I appreciate survival horror more, and actually believe Zelda spoils us with bottles.

My playstyle now can be described as a strategic survivalist who pushes forward fast. I don't take interest in doing speed runs in games, but I don't wait around for anything anymore. If I find secret upgrades, great!! But if I miss an upgrade, don't care.

In RPGs now I'm always pushing forward to more challenging areas and let the leveling up happen naturally as I just tackle the new area. I actually find bosses challenging and it feels the way it should be. I find myself using items I never used before! "You mean 'attack up' can actually be a useful item???" It can be if you wanna beat a tough boss on a lower level.

I try utilizing everything I have now that I no longer focus on upgrading to god like potentials before moving ahead. Also, I take more interest in learning obscene command coding mortal combat like attacks too when presented in a game, most notable examples is Alucard's magic spells in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, or Sabin's special moves in FFVI.

Gone are the days when I level up to lvl 20 in an area infested with lvl 6 monsters and feeling prowess in my immortality, in are the days with fast thinking tactical thinking utilizing only the items I stumbled upon.


What play style do you most prefer? Challenge oriented, power focus, strategist, speed run specialist, or simple play and quit when you get bored and seek new games just to try, or other approaches I haven't listed.

[CJC]

In an RPG style game, leveling outside of the expected scope of the game is a means of shifting the game-play difficulty away from strategy. They are designed in this manner: you can either play the game quickly and rely on learning its secrets to get through, or you can grind for a while and then play the game without any strategic consideration, as the power differential makes it meaningless.


It may be this way to widen the age range of the audience, because I too used to grind to make the game easier and now I play it as sequentially as possible. Not only does it cut down the play-time, it makes the game more engaging.

[NewJourneysFire]

I agree, I mean I don't think most RPGs were designed to ever let anybody cap their levels to the max, but people still do until even the final boss can die in 2 or 3 hits. I remembered as a child that there was something addictive about seeking godly potential, and only by using emulators was I ever able to reach the level cap in most final fantasy games.

Especially Final Fantasy 5, which is probably one of the hardest to cap.

But people still cap these things all the time, often grinding for years without speed boosting emulators. Than I ask myself, why on earth was I using speed boost emulators to achieve that same pointless level 99 or 100 or whatever?? I guess that's what's fascinating about RPGs.

The most insane I seen is Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. By the time you get to level 70, every enemy in the game only gives you 1 exp with over 70,000 exp needed to level up, therefore leveling up is almost unbearable, not to mention utterly unnecessary since everything is easy at this point. You can also seal the deal to your god like powers by equipping the duplicator to have an unlimited ammount power of sires (an item that kills everything on the screen) and ethers (item that recovers you to full health) which literally than makes you an indestructible nuclear weapon in a castle, and people STILL feel the need to cap their level to 99!!!! Haha!

[mrz84]

Same here with the RPGs thing. My bro does that in the first area of a game usually unless he thinks its better to wait a bit more though he usually doesn't wait.

Also, the level cap in SotN is just too time consuming to reach. I also have never obtained the Duplicator as I prefer to kill thinks with either equipped with two copies of the floating sword or with the Alucard Shield special (most of you know what I mean) unless I'm bored and decide to experiment with other weapons.

[NewJourneysFire]

After I abandoned the need to grind levels in SOTN and try other strategies, I found the use of magic spells so fun. It is shocking how pressing left, right, up, down, attack is much better than any weapon you collect at the beginning of the game. Lol It may look like a pathetic little cloud. But with it's power, low magic consumption, ease to perform, and enemy seeking ability really separates you from the pack in discovering what Alucard can actually do. I know this because when I was young, having to press so many buttons to make a single attack was simply uncalled for and I would never do it. Lol

[Brasel]

I used to power level, but that isn't necessarily what I do these days. I do try and find all secret items and such, but I don't really over level myself in RPGs until after the boss fight. I played Final Fantasy VII about a year ago, and for the first time, I beat both Emerald and Ruby Weapons, and managed to acquire all three master materia. I didn't cap my levels, but I really wanted to say that I'd finally beat those ultimate bosses that I never could beat when I was younger.

[CastChaos]

I like finding/reaching everything in a game, be it an item or a level. I stop and go for the final boss only if the 100% completion becomes far too tedious or hard, like finding all Lums in Rayman Revolution. I always try finding all, but some slip, because I simply don't have the strength to go back for 1-2 missed ones on a very deadly ride.

Long ago, I leveled up prematurely in RPGs, for example, I got all limit breaks in FFVII as soon as I got a character (except for the ultimate) and I always brought all starting GFs to max in FFVIII right at the beginning (except for first playing). Nowadays I'm much more impatient, I barely could gather the strength to bring all 3 girls to lvl 99 in FFX-2...