Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra :: The one (or more) mechanic that ruined a game you loved.

[quote name="Mischief Maker"]Is there a game you were really into at first that got ruined after you figured out one or two badly designed mechanics? I'll start with a few of mine: Ruiner I really was loving this gorgeous anime cyberpunk belt scroller/shooter hybrid with <A HREF="http://zeq2.com/site/files/zwee_738.gif">zwee-fighting</A>, playing through the new game+ with a filled out skill tree and enjoying the smarter and better distributed enemies. Then I made the mistake of watching a video of someone clearing the arena stage and noticed they were leaning pretty heavily on "ghost hack," an ability that reprograms an enemy's cybernetics and turns them into a permanent ally. I hadn't used it much because I didn't like the puppy-head icon that denoted they were charmed. After seeing the video I went back to my game and started using Ghost Hack. It turned the game into a virtual cakewalk. I could effectively instakill three normal enemies at will, and then for several seconds afterward I had a posse of bullet-sponges that aggro'ed any and all enemies. And once my zombies were dead, it was quick and cheap to do it all over again. Majesty 2 Majesty 1 is one of my favorite management games of all time, but it looks and sounds fucking awful. Majesty 2, while aged, has all the animations and visible character changes I wanted in the first game along with one of the best fantasy soundtracks of all time, but they rewrote the rules and in several ways dumbed the game down. Still, it was a game I played for relaxation/podcasts anyway so I was willing to overlook the shallowness for the sake of the aesthetics. One problem I had with the game was how in harder levels it seemed like a total dice roll whether I'd survive the earlygame. The exact same strategy would carry me to victory one run, or result in my kingdom being squished another. Then I learned about character stats. In Majesty 1 characters had differing stats, but for every weakness they also had a corresponding strength. A warrior with low offensive value would also be an impenetrable tank. But in Majesty 2 it's just independent D&D attribute rolls and there is no balancing involved. You can have a thief with horrible stats from an unlucky dice roll who just dies over and over again, or you can have one with max stats who out-tanks a fighter, and the stat effects <I>multiply</I> as the character gains levels. Horrible design decision, an hour-long match decided in the first couple seconds by the RNG. Ys VIII: I've said it before, Ys to me is all about high-speed movement and combat where you don't slow down for the enemy. I was really enjoying the music, tropical island theme, and behind-the-back perspective of Ys VIII. But after hitting a difficulty brick wall with one boss after getting stuck in an inescapable save spot (another screw-up on the part of the designers), I watched a video of a pro doing the fight and they didn't move at all thanks to flash guard. They just stood still in front of the boss and used flash guard every time the boss attacked. It was the most boring and un-Ys thing I'd ever seen, clearly also the "right" way to play, and I couldn't go back after that.[/quote]