Video game lessons learned the hard way

Monster Hunter 4: If a quest is marked with Danger, that means another monster is prowling in addition to the one you're tasked to fight. In Low Rank, that usually means a monster corresponding to the area. In High Rank, it's either that, Seregios, or in the worst case, fucking Deviljho.

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate

• If a monster is about to flee on an expedition, that doesn't mean it'll be gone as soon as you leave and come back. Go to the other room or, heck, even cart if you need to.
• Any minor hostile enemy is a huge nuisance if you need to carve or harvest.
• Be careful attempting to sheathe a Sword and Shield set, because if you're subconsciously holding R then down the drain goeth whatever item you had selected.
  • Or you become a sitting duck as you whip out... your BBQ Spit.

edited 30th Mar '15 12:32:15 PM by NesClassic

Team Fortress 2:

• Control thy temper NES... getting dominated is not the end of everything, nor is it humiliating, shameful, etc.
• The Rescue Ranger can repair other engineers' buildings, but not mini-sentries.
• Though the Rescue Ranger can repair teleporters, it only repairs the teleporter shot at.
• The Rescue Ranger's Alt Fire can help get that sentry out of an ubered couple's way, but make sure you don't get cornered and shot at, or that sentry will die.
• The Eureka Effect is nifty for a quick resupply, but try not to hit 1 when you meant to go to the exit.
• The Eureka Effect also upgrades buildings slower than other wrenches. If you got a friendly engineer, try asking them to help out with upgrading your sentry and other buildings.
• If you're scoped and notice you can't move, you better unscope and ready the kukri stat. Especially if the enemy's preparing a taunt kill to humiliate you.
• The Cleaner's Carbine is a good dead ringer checker. That spy genuinely died? That gun will glow. If he dead rings, the gun won't glow in crit mode.
• The Sydney Sleeper can coat enemy spies in Jarate, but not much incentive would be had to check spies that way.

Watch_Dogs: You know the rails that start southwest of Chicago? Go to them whenever you're having a hard time with enemies or cops chasing you. You can thank me later.

Rhythm Thief and the Emperor's Treasure

• Don't try for the full contact challenge unless you're very confident. Each time you fail, you have to sit through the same, snails pace dialogue before you can buy a new one.
• Your rank in a minigame is determined by what your rank was on your highest score. So, it's entirely possible to get a near perfect run with an E-rank, forcing you to make a perfect run to get an A-rank.
• In the Butler Battle, his final attack can send you plummeting from an A-rank to an E-rank if you don't dodge it.

Fire Emblem:

• Check your enemies' equipment before you send someone out to fight them, especially if they're a boss character. Remember, this game has both weapons that can reverse the Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors and Final Death.

edited 30th Mar '15 4:43:34 PM by Midna

Monster Hunter: You have to level your guild Quests before you can do the ones you actually want.

Here I am killing dozens of Velocidromes just so I can fight High Rank Shagaru Magala

Hand Of Fate :

• Lizardmen hit like trucks. Be extremely wary around them.
• Ratmen corpses stink so bad, they drain your health. As soon as you kill one, bail out.
• When Jacks, and later Queens and Kings, turn up as random encounters, they'll bring four friends with them. Always.
  • In fact, target the faces first. Especially if they can revive, summon or heal their soldiers.
• Those dead leaves on the floor ? Some asshole hid traps in them.
• The enemies aren't protected against traps. Use this to your advantage.
• When the computer asks you if you want to use the recommended decks, be wary. It will always pick the first cards of a given series, meaning you'll miss tokens if you don't replace them with the next in storyline.
• When the game tells you that you have gained a specific type of equipment, it will discard the cards in your equipment pile one by one until it finds a suitable card. I've haven't lived long enough to see what happens when you gain an equipment while your pile is empty, but this might get problematic.

Even more Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate

• Nailing Kecha Wacha with a Flash Bomb while he's in the vines or gliding most likely stuns him. Doing so while he's on the ground makes him throw a tantrum and become nigh unapproachable while he just stands there swinging his arms around.
• If you're packing Large Barrel Bombs, pack a Stone or Boomerang too. Kicking bombs is not a viable option for setting them off.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3D:

• Know your limits. Losing a battle against a Lv 9 Baby-Armu because you thought that having two party members will make this way easier isn't pretty.
• SAVE. OFTEN.

Bumping...

Open X-Com

• Alien Terror Missions may be bad, but even if you shoot down the terror ship, it's still terrifying to take down.
• If you see a Very Large UFO, it's definitely a battleship
• If said battleship's going at your base at top speed, better hope that skyranger's parked in base, and not returning.
• Tanks are good for missions, but don't be surprised if the laser tanks get scrapped quickly by plasma armaments.
• Snakemen do not have medics at all. Just more soldiers.
• For sectoids and floaters, you can easily dispatch most of them with lasers, but you may want to up the armament to plasma before the mutons arrive.
• Tailing a ship with a skyranger, although ridiculously foolhardy, can sometimes get you that landed UFO mission.

Modded section (Take with a grain o' salt):

• Men In Black terror missions are mean. Expect to get negative scores, and do your darned best to shoot their ships down.
• The Fighter ships will destroy your interceptors unless you use avalanche missiles or plasma beams to out-range it.
• Toxiguns are horrifying to unarmored units. Thankfully, it doesn't take much to make toxiguns and toxigun flasks if you want to use them.
• If you researched a medic and got a sectopod autopsy, consider yourself lucky to be able to get a jump-start on researching sectopod construction.
• Psionic line of fire also applies to mind probes.

Tempest 2000

• Everytime you start a new board, immediately try to get the jump powerup as soon as possible as it's probably the most useful powerup since it allows you to clear enemies on the web rim easier and makes fighting Mirrors and Demon Heads easier.
• Learning how the AI Droid works is essential to clearing some of the later boards. Basically, it goes from one half of the board to the other, targeting any enemies that happen to be on it's half at the time. Use this to your advantage to basically let the droid handle one side of the board while you go after the other (mind you this doesn't apply to the PS 1 version where the droid is nerfed into basically following you. You CAN do a similar tactic there, but it requires far more input on the players part to "guide" the droid into going around the web.)
• To kill dudes who are on the web rim, you're supposed to stand still and keep firing as they flip into your space. As long as your current firing, they'll be killed by the shots instead of killing you. You CAN do this while moving towards the enemies, but this is extremely hard to do and generally isn't worth the timing since you're probably managing other areas of the web.
• This one SHOULD be obvious, but use your smartbomb as much as you can, even if you aren't in dire need of using it. Too Awesome to Use isn't in effect here since you get one EVERY web so you need to get into the habit of using it, lest you forget you have it and end up dying in a situation where you could have avoided it if you had used said smartbomb.

Dragon's Crown: It's perfectly okay to tone down the difficulty if you're shooting for the Treasure Art quests...it'll save you a lot of frustration, especially on the "Defeat the boss of Path B alone" quests. Bring your best equipment, though!

Pikmin 3: All bosses are capable of killing numerous Pikmin instantly, even the first boss. Do not understimate them.

First try in Fire Emblem Awakening (or any Fire Emblem really...)

That weapon triangle is way more important than other strategy games

Check EVERY SINGLE WEAPON for ranged ones and better ones than yours

Beware of bonus damage always

Test your weak characters whenever you get weak maps

ALWAYS have the aforementioned characters kill-steal

But don't put too many of them on one map if any are near their level

Final Fantasy XIV:

• Don't do World of Darkness for your nexus lights. Bonus or no, it just IS. NOT. FUCKING. WORTH. THE PAIN.
  • This goes double if you're working on a healer relic.

(no, I didn't just finish a bad run where I was blamed for everyone's screwups, what ever gave you THAT idea?)

More Dragon's Crown: When you're ready to face the Ancient Dragon, don't waste your money at the temple. The goddess' prayers won't reach you. Just find some good anti-Draconic equipment, stock up on healing items, and be fully prepared to die.

edited 4th Apr '15 4:03:16 PM by WillyFourEyes

MassEffect2 : if your primary weapon is the the sniper rifle, aim carefully. You definitely can't afford to waste ammo thermal clips.

edited 4th Apr '15 4:34:36 PM by Aetol

Super Mario Galaxy or Galaxy 2: The spin jump is a nice thing to have, but it should'nt be used as a crutch. (Looking at you, Flip-Swap Galaxy.)

edited 4th Apr '15 6:04:25 PM by LinkToTheFuture

Fire Emblem: Awakening :ALWAYS watch your opponent's range, and make sure your weak characters are far away from them.

edited 4th Apr '15 6:08:27 PM by LinkToTheFuture

Also holds true for any other game in the series.

Awakening is the only game in the series I've played as of now.

You have my pity.

There is one case that's the exception, but I haven't played it, just heard of it.

About the only thing you'd really need to know in the other games is that (A) experience is limited and (B) the RNG can irreversibly screw a unit if it's feeling unfriendly.

. I'll get around to playing the others at some point. I've been loving Awakening though.