Video game lessons learned the hard way

Pretty much every RPG Maker game:

- Treat every chest that isn't in its own little room or hallway as a potential Mimic.

- NEVER skimp on revive items.

- If you see a save point, use it.

- Running is sometimes the only sensible thing to do.

- If you can't kill the enemies all at once, focus your fire on the most dangerous one.

- Status Buffs make more difference than you'd think.

- Observe a enemy's pattern and strategize accordingly, even if it means dying a few times first.

- Most importantly, KEEP. YOUR. MOTHERFUCKING. HEALER. ALIVE.

Balatro: Boss Blinds that disable a certain suit will block you out of using your wild cards. Make sure you have enough high-scoring cards and discards to compensate.

Tomb Raider 1-2-3 Remastered: The games DO NOT have a reworked Checkpoint System... Well, any checkpoint system at all, for that matter. And Insant Death Traps are a thing. So save often!

Man'o War: Corsair (Warhammer Fantasy pirate games): - if a mission tells you to attack Nurgle, slaanesh, or Khorne ships, be prepared to lose half your crew

Edited by dArtagnanMusic on Feb 24th 2024 at 10:20:38 AM

Do NOT pull out a bomb arrow when you're traversing a volcano in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Had something similar happen to me in Tears of the Kingdom. Except it was the Depths of Eldin, and I had Fused a Bomb Flower to my shield before teleporting there. As soon as I finished materializing...

BOOM!

Edited by TheDarkMantis on Feb 24th 2024 at 6:48:55 PM

Fusing a Bomb Flower to an arrow in a volcanic area in Tot K ends about as well as pulling out a Bomb Arrow in Bot W did.

I'd say that "bombs and volcanic areas in both games don't mix", but the Remote Bombs in Bot W don't actually have any issues in volcano-type areas (shame they're also basically useless for dealing damage directly).

That's why the Zonai's Time Bombs come in handy in Tears, because they're not triggered by heat, only kinetic impact.

Doom II: The Revenants are immune to their own projectiles. This also means you cannot make them infight with each other.

Splatoon 3 Side Order: Practice with unfamiliar weapons before you do a run.

Library of Ruina:

• When equipping a character's page to another character, they do not swap. Instead, the first character's page is unequipped. You have to manually re-equip a page to that character.
• The game will fill in empty spaces in any deck with random bad pages.
• When two dice attack a lower speed slot die, the last one to attack will be the one that clashes.
• Bosses have a special skill that refills their Light and gives them new cards, so no cheesing by stonewalling them.
• It's unintuitive, but you need to let The Queen of Hatred mark a character and do at least some damage to them. Otherwise, she turns into a big monster and explodes everyone.
  • Her transformation progress is marked by the screen becoming pink from left to right. This is in a tooltip you see once.
• Speed die RNG is a cruel mistress.
• The Wedge Office reception is one floor only. If two or more librarians died during the first phase, welp, better restart.

Gin Rummy (Shockwave game via Flashpoint):

• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard.
• If you don't already have most of a meld with them, do not hold onto face cards. They're very likely to backfire and leave you holding massive amounts of deadwood.
• Drawing inside is as bad an idea here as it is in poker.
• If it's in the discard, it's not coming back.
• You discard before you knock.

Even characters I dislike may get Karma Houdini.

Neon Abyss:

• As it happens, you can access Wisdom and Violence rooms multiple times in a run, and in fact may need to in order to get the tokens needed to fight Ares and Athena. It's just that you can't gain Wisdom or Violence for a while after you access one of the rooms.
• Getting the token is one thing; to actually fight Ares or Athena, you need to get past Zeus that run.
• There's a hidden room on every level, not just the ones which you've unlocked the hints for. If a room seems to have three exits, try throwing a grenade at the wall where its fourth exit would be.

Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life: The gold milker can milk several animals at a time from a distance and the exclamation mark that now shows up on top of the cows and goat indicates that they are in range of the effect.

Edited by Nazetrime on Mar 3rd 2024 at 9:06:07 PM

Ghostbusters: The Video Game (Nintendo DS):

• The Ecto-1 controls like ass. That's something you'll just have to live with. If anything, make sure to invest in Pete's "Procrastinator" ability, so you have more time during each mission to drive the damn thing.
• For some missions, simply busting the ghosts isn't enough. Press Select to view a mission's objectives, so you know what you're actually supposed to be doing and what order to go about things to maximize slime collection.
• Location interiors are procedurally generated. When you restart a mission, expect not only the layout of the building to change, but with it the location of certain important items, too.
• Some upgrades, like armor and weapons, are equipped automatically. Others, like Recovery Coaxes and PKE meters, must be produced in the Production Lab and then equipped from the Office in order to be used during missions.
• I sure hope you enjoy the Ghostbusters theme song, because it is one of two, count 'em, TWO music tracks that you'll hear throughout the entire game!

Neon Abyss:

• You may eventually reach a point where you are seemingly invulnerable. You are not.
• The power-up that replaces all heart drops with shields is more powerful than it looks, because drops that would be shields anyway still happen. Essentially, twice as many shields drop as usual. This has nasty synergy with the many items that grow stronger based on your shields.
• For completionists, the base and DLC versions of each character count boss kills separately.
• Athena gives you flight for free at the start of the battle. Take full advantage of this, because this fight is as close to a Bullet Hell as the game gets. It's the last fight of the run - even if you have synergies that flying would disrupt, they won't matter after this.

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: Sometimes the game will wig out and not show a stat as being maxed while continuing to treat it as if it has been, refusing to raise it any further through vitamins or feathers or any kind of EV training. At that point you just gotta say "fuck it we ball" and do the raid anyway.

Quilts & Cats of Calico: There are no hint buttons, and once you start a puzzle, you can't exit to the overworld.

Magic Defense IS MEGA USEFUL on Final Fantasy X.

Balatro

If one of the skip blinds is to reroll the boss blind and said boss blind is debuffing all your cards, you take that skip blind. Had good jokers and that costed my run at 18 rounds.

Library of Ruina:

• Binah's Pillar cancels Great Split: Vertical's recycling dice effect. Also Onslaught's, I think.
• The gimmick of Gebura's floor is that you have Red-Mist Gebura and librarians without equipment. Put Mountain of Smiling Bodes' red page on Gebura, which kills all the other librarians and buffs her.
• Stacking E.G.O. pages that boost blunt and stagger damage on one nugget on Yesod's floor gets incredibly stupid with Solemn Lament.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: People online are jerks who can report you just for beating them fair-and-square.

Fortnite: Battle Royale technically zero builds but whatever

• Surviving, not being good at fighting, is how you win.
• Side note, following noise is a good way to jump players in a firefight and reap the rewards without taking any hits. If someone else also follows the noise...
• A lesson I've learned on both sides: when you have a Scout Specialist hired, their periodic scanning for chests and players is visible to everyone. This can give away the location of the player with the Scout, or let you know that you're screwed out of the hiding place you're in.
• Medkits heal until you're topped off or you drop the kit. They don't have a cap for healing like Shield Potions, so don't switch off early and waste 'em.
• You will love how good pistols feel. You'll hate being strapped for space and invariably picking better guns.
• Fall damage does not hurt your shields, it just breaks your healthbar directly.
• Generally speaking, while carrying healing items is nice you can forgo them if you're feeling plucky. A bold player can just take them off their eliminations for a moment before strapping back up, while a cowardly player shouldn't be taking damage in the first place.

Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's World Championship 2009: Stardust Accelerator: Slow and Steady Wins the Race. When I go too fast, I crash into walls and that hinders me. Only when I take speed off am I able to make real progress.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon:

• Han Joongi's suggestion to go to the Sotenbori Battle Arena before going to Omi HQ is not a suggestion. You need to be at least level 45 to stand a chance in the boss fight there. (ngl it's weird that the game gives an explicit level recommendation for the Liumang Warehouse, but not this one, which is far more difficult)
• In any non-mob fight, your first move as Ichiban must be applying Peerless Resolve.
• Don't be too disheartened if you feel like all you're doing with your healer (typically Saeko) is healing. Some fights are just that bad.
• Head Trauma is love. Head Trauma is life.
• Your opening nuke in most multi-target boss fights should be Divine Shot with Han, followed by Thumbtack Scatter with Eri. Tie those to shortcuts (in the pause menu): you want to apply those as fast as possible, and by the time you've scrolled down the skill menu, the enemies will have spread further and further away.
• If you haven't specced anyone into Ice (say, in the Hostess class) for the fight against Kiryu in Chapter 13, your best option is using Il Yu-Jin's Poundmates summon. Also, Poison Shot works too, so keep Han active.
• Also, use all your Poundmates when you're in trouble. First use is free for a reason.