Video game lessons learned the hard way

Dragon's dogma: Bandits are bad news.

Early game, I'm going around doing quests from the quest board, and I get a bunch of quests to escort NP Cs to some area nearby. Fair enough, I do all of them, but then the last one asks me to escort the NPC to the other side of a neighboring zone, a trek that ended up taking me an entire in-game day (left late night, arrived early morning the day after next). On the way, there are several groups of very strong bandits, in very large numbers.

Probably took me a dozen tries to get through a particular group (and then another dozen for a different group), not only because the bandits kept killing me, but also because escort targets are suicidal and insist on following your every step and so bandits end up targeting them, killing them easily.

And then I almost had a heart attack because I tried to manually reload and ended up several hours back in the game, and I thought I had been screwed by the autosave, but closing and restarting the game got me back where I was before the bandits.

There were other bad threats on the road (a golem I had no idea how to damage so I fled, a group of hobgoblins with two cyclops I killed by shooting them with a ballista), but nothing as difficult to handle as the bandits were.

Disney Emoji Blitz: The Rainbow Falls levels are glitched.

Disciples:

• Fear and respect Ghouls (unless you're The Empire and running Witch-Hunters). They're one of the few non-boss units in the game that have a Paralysis effect that doesn't end the turn after. They also have average Initiative, meaning they can and will paralyze you before your frontline can move, especially if you're playing Mountain Clans.
• Murphy's Law is in full effect. 80% chance to hit? Don't count on that. Three misses in a row? Not impossible.
• To my knowledge, attempting "Drega Zul" quest as The Undead Hordes is an exercise in futility, unless you trust AI enough to keep a plot-critical unit alive (don't do that): you both lose if she dies.

Soul Calibur VI: Under no circumstances should you power through Libra of Souls. It will destroy your hand and render you unable to play video games or do much of anything for quite some time.

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: No, Reiko, you baka, you can't just press X then mash Triangle and expect to get through your first Bullet Time Battle like that. That's a perfect way to get a Game Over. You need to alternate between the two buttons.

Puyo Puyo!! 20th Anniversary:

• Funny meme idea, Harpystacking in Quartet mode^note Harpystacking is a luckbased AI strat that certain characters use that just stack Puyos on the left and right side of the board. Quartet mode is a mode where sets of 4 Puyo, in a square shape, drop at once. So, imagine a board where 2x2 Puyo pieces line up either side of the board, which is 6 Puyos wide, leaving 2 columns to work with for making chains.. Not a good idea, attempting this for the first time with Ecolo as the opponent.

Civilization VI:

• Ranged units cannot capture a city center on their own. If you need to take a city for some reason, make sure and have at least one melee unit.
  • Giant Death Robots from the Future Era in the Gathering Storm Expansion can capture cities, but can only do so when the city center is at zero health. Otherwise they will act as range units. In addition, a city center heals every turn unless under siege. So, bring multiple GD Rs or other units with you when capturing cities late game.
• Kupe gives incredible freedom when played with, but there are three major issues with that freedom.
  1. If you don't cheat using mods to see the whole map at the start or save scum to find the best starting area for your first city, you might end up finding a not so useful location.
  2. Settlers are instantly taken out by anything, so if your first settler ends up near barbarians or moves into a area where a natural disaster spawns, you're toast and either have to reload a previous save or restart the map.
  3. Any maps where there is a lot of land and not enough ocean can make really bad starts for Kupe.
• Having Kupe in your map means that barbarians start with the ability to make Quadriremes. Which makes them absolute Demonic Spiders when attempting to explore/defend sea tiles in the Ancient or early Classical Era unless you are Kupe himself or Norway's Harold.
• Unique Units do not keep their unique abilities when upgraded. Sometimes it might be better to keep an upgraded UU even against enemies two tiers above the unit.
• Kupe's UU Swordsman replacement, the Toa, can repair tiles like a builder and cost no maintenance, so it would be useful to not upgrade them to a Musketman at least for the utility.
• Starting in Rise and Fall, unless your cities have loyalty issues, don't be afraid to go into a Dark or Normal age. Going into one of those ages can make it easier to get into a Golden age and get a Heroic Age if you get a Golden Age after a Dark one, which gives you even more significant bonuses. The only civ I would say that would rather go into and stay in a Golden Age for the whole game is Mali, who gets an additional Trade route slot when they go into one.

Edited by tclittle on May 29th 2019 at 10:43:40 AM

• Stellaris: Turn off the AI Empires before you figure out the mechanics, jackass.

Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy (any PL game, actually).

Before heading to a marked key destination, SAVE. You may think you can save when reaching the destination without contacting any character or object, but sometimes an important cutscene will play, leading to a series of events you have to finish before being abke to save. My 3DS ran out of energy before I could finish, and lost a LOT of progress from the first chapter.

Puyo Puyo!! 20th Anniversary:

• The Random option in story mode is predetermined, which can really only be discovered on emulator. I tried getting anything other than Active Rule in a battle once, and I just couldn't.
• Speaking of Active Rule, the timing for making chains is stricter than Fusion mode in Puyo Puyo Tetris. Also, the chain pop-in animations do kinda ruin it for me with Active Rule, since they cover up the board.

Persona Q2

Remember how in the first game, Naoto (and to a lesser extent, anyone other than Zan & Rei) was absolute murder against common enemies once she got Mahama, Mamudo, and Impure Reach (and ideally, a sub-Persona with the SP to fuel said attacks long term)?

Yeah, instant kill attacks got nerfed hard this time around, to the point where they're about as effective as they are in mainline SMT and Persona. You're better off going with an elemental spread and going for downs and All-Out Attacks instead.

Going into the new Borderlands 2 DLC with a level 20 character is a bad idea.

100% Orange Juice:

• Lady luck will thwart ya at the worst moment with a bad roll.
• Taking on a boss should be best done at 1 HP on the boss, especially if it's the store manager.
• Luck based card being used? It will backfire spectacularly some way, some how.
• Teleport panels do not like warping you to where ya need to go, and usually to worse spots.
• Setting traps on home panels is not a bad idea, but be ready to face the consequences if you spring your own trap.

CO-OP mode:

• 40 chapters is all ya get before the game goes livid and makes the entire field (bar warp panels) into boss encounter panels.
• Only the attacker class gets the first strike against bosses. The boss otherwise gets the first strike on ya!
• Early protector is not easy, given how it takes 2 HP to give your teammates a 2HP shield that lasts only for the battle.

Hollow Knight

• You can bounce on spikes, but you have to keep attacking downwards to maintain your bounce. Likewise, when bouncing on moving creatures you have to move with them manually.
• The Dashmaster charm lets you dash downwards in the air, essentially giving you a fastfall. This counts as your sole aerial dash and can not be used in conjunction with a horizontal dash.
• The Baldur Shell will, naturally, only block the attacks of enemies and minibosses/bosses ignore its protection entirely.
• Explosions deal two points (masks?) of damage, rather than one like everything else in the game.
• Don't be afraid to use Vengeful Spirit in boss fights! You're not gonna spend Soul on anything else anyways, at least not without charms to speed up how quickly you can use Focus.
• soul master sucks

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel:

• Status buffs are important. Don't be afraid to spend CP on buffing your party.
• If a party member's turn has a crit or sepith bonus, use that opportunity to use AoE crafts or arts to target multiple enemies at once, either to dwindle their numbers quickly or to gain more sepith for money or quartz crafting.
• If a party member's turn has a "No Arts" bonus, then use arts, as despite the misleading name, casts arts instantly without consuming MP.
• Use Emma's Crescent Shell for protection against strong enemy arts. It can mean a difference between victory and a Total Party Kill.
• Always use combat links. Nuff said.

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom:

• Skeletons are jerks.
• Using the frog tongue on (regular) mosquitoes: Good idea.
• Using the frog tongue on enemies capable of status effects: Bad idea.
• That ice Full Set Bonus? Really good idea.
• The shield that reflects light doesn't reflect anything else, so don't try using it in battle.

2048:

• So the cap is 1,048,576, huh?
• It took me months to reach that.

Edited by AmethystLeslie on Jun 19th 2019 at 1:38:23 PM

Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled: LEARN POWER SLIDE BOOSTING AND MASTER THE ART OF BOOST CHAINING OR SWITCH TO EASY. You suck at video games but power slide boosting and boost chaining will save your ass as long as you don't run into a wall or boost yourself into a Bottomless Pit like a dumbfuck.

Metroid Prime 2 on Hypermode:

• The reactors in the Dark Samus 1 fight are your friend. Do not hesitate to hide behind them.
  • However, she will destroy them if certain attacks hit, so don't get too attached. Also don't stand in the fire left behind.

• Remember to conserve ammo during the Amorbis fight, because you sure as hell aren't getting it back.

• It's actually a better idea to stand in the toxic death than get near their laser beam, because that shit takes off half an energy tank per hit and is not afraid to hit you multiple times in a row.

The map makers of Supreme Commander ought to be strangled and bodily thrown out the window for including the "destroy all enemy factories" secondary objective into the second UEF campaign mission.

Not because it's hard to do per se, but because of three factors:

• The enemy ACU suicidally charges at any of your units that enters its base.
• All your units auto-target the enemy ACU before anything else if their designated attack target isn't in range yet.
• Destroying the enemy ACU instantly ends the mission, but fails the optional objective if the factories are still standing despite the fact that the only manned enemy unit on the entire frakkin' planet just got killed and thus there's no one left to actually give those factories orders.

Thus, the difficulty here is in NOT completing the mission on accident because of your trigger-happy units' multiplayer-centric programming gunning down the final objective too quickly. Which just happened to me after a nearly two hour slog. Oh, and the game doesn't have autosave.

Metroid Prime 2 Hypermode (again):

• That Dark Phlogus in Torvus does not always work the way it should. Standing in the death water might actually be a better idea than jumping on it, since if you jump wrong it deals constant damage until you die and there's no way to escape.

• Dark Beam + Missile combo is god. Abuse it as much as you want.

• Use the double jump to avoid the Boost Guardian's main attack. The Morph Ball will not help.

Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled again: Papu Papu's boss race is nigh-impossible, but that doesn't mean you should give up. Also, you do not have the option to change difficulty in-game, so unless you want to start again, KEEP. PUSHING.

Enter the Gungeon: Defeating the boss of R&G Dept. will unlock the ability to leave by dropping off the platform. If you are flying, somehow, you will drop the moment the boss is done and miss out all the loot.

Edited by FergardStratoavis on Jun 24th 2019 at 10:26:06 AM

Ace Combat 4

• Many of the score attack missions are balanced around the assumption that the player will head to the return line to rearm at least once. Don't get caught in the mid-mission twist without enough missiles.

• Don't worry about how you spend your credits, you can sell back any aircraft or weapon for its full price without penalty. This applies to 5 and Zero as well.

Total War: Medieval 2, but applies to many strategy games:

Despite how much you might want to play defensively and build your resources to overwhelm enemies later, it's almost always better to just attack enemies early on to get an advantage they won't be able to beat.

Dragon Age: Inquisition but it applies to many other games too.

Always. And I mean always. Have a copy of your save files somewhere. At least the last two or so.

So, storytime. This happened over a year ago. I was playing, minding my own business, when I got stuck at a part in early-ish Trespasser. Try as I might, the enemies kept on killing my whole party (Cassandra [warrior/tank and melee], Varric [rogue/ranged], Dorian [offensive magic with I think one heal ability; usually I went with Solas as second mage but Solas is unavailable in Trespasser] and an elven mage Inquisitor [offensive and a bit of healing]). I talked to a gamer friend at work, and he convinced me to try to change up my tried true and tested party - Specifically, to switch Cassandra for the Iron Bull (as he's supposed to be a better tank).

So I went home, turned on the laptop, started the game... and the savefile was from way earlier. Instead of about 70 or 71 played hours, and the date from a few days ago... it was seven hours and a date from months before. I uninstalled the game in despair.

I've since bought the game at a sale in origins (previously, it was from a torrent) and I started another playthrough... but I have never had the power of mind to try and really commit to it, so I'm still way before the Orlais ball, miles before Trespasser.

Edited by akanesarumara on Jun 26th 2019 at 6:31:27 PM