Celia Wagar's CritPoints

What do you think of pokemon games? I imagine you don’t enjoy them but I’d like to hear your thoughts

I’ve played, Red, Yellow, Gold, Silver, Crystal, Ruby, Emerald, Diamond, Platinum, Soul Silver, and White. I beat all of them except for White, where on victory road I realized I was so tired of playing Pokemon, and quit.

Pokemon Red was the first game I ever owned, though not the first one I ever played.
Of all the RPGs I’ve played, Pokemon is perhaps one of if not the most complex. You’re given a huge number of different characters you can capture, they all have different types, they all have different moves that themselves are of different types. Some of these moves are strong or weak against other types of pokemon, the moves get a boost if they’re of the same type as the pokemon using them. The Pokemon have 6 different stats that affect their moves, which are increased both through their level and EVs which are distributed by the pokemon they beat. Pokemon all have different abilities that occasionally affect combat. Pokemon can hold items that affect combat.

Downside, none of that shit matters for clearing the game. You don’t need to know the intricacies of the system, at best you need to memorize the elemental table. Most of beating the game is just grinding and picking pokemon that are super effective against enemies without letting enemies have anything super effective on them. Most enemies, especially in the newer games which are easier than the old ones, don’t carry 6 pokemon and tend to pick entirely the same type for their team. They also quit doing the end-game content like battle frontier or battle subway with tougher challenges that play to the competitive meta.

On the upshot, the multiplayer can tend to be rather complex, with team composition being rather tricky with all the crazy variables you gotta keep in mind. Down-side, EV training used to be bullshit (I heard it got better), and a lot of the battle system comes down to dumb luck. Chances of missing, chances of inflicting status conditions, chances of critical hit. Even though you can use a simulator these days to skip all the tedious pokemon training, competitive play is still pretty much a wash. I’m sure there’s more to it that I’m skimming over because honestly I never got involved in it, but it sounds like a pain to me. There is probably a fair amount of depth to it, but I don’t want to get involved enough in it to find out. In that regard it is probably the most successful RPG in the multiplayer department, and in comparison to most other JRPGs, it also succeeds in pure complexity/differentiation between game states, because even ones like Shin Megami Tensei have a ton of redundant spells that are just stronger elemental damage, where Pokemon made almost all of its moves unique from one another and a massive amount have additional effects. Shin Megami Tensei games succeed on the single-player level because they stress the strategic parts of their system a lot more and aren’t afraid of stacking the deck against the player, though I think they would fail if they ever had a multiplayer component.

Yeah I’ve always felt that they could really bring pokemon to the next level by adding a higher difficulty campaign that stresses the strategic part of the game. I was honestly expecting you to bash the game.

Hahaha, I love how they were asked about adding a hard mode by a fan at one interview, and the guy was just like, “What? But then nobody would be able to finish the game.”

You know I’m harsh on RPGs and kind of a hard-ass and cynic in general, but you also know I’m gonna tell the truth as I see it, and try my best to tell the whole story without distorting anything.

What did you mean by “Pokemon (lots of configurable parts, every monster you encounter is made from commonly accessible parts)”? From: https://critpoints.wordpress.com/2016/08/10/games-for-learning-about-depth

Every Pokemon has 6 stats, HP, Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense. They have a level. They have EVs and IVs. A Nature. They have 1 or 2 elemental types. They have 1 of 1 to 3 abilities. They have a gender. They have a happiness level. They have 4 moves, each of which has an attack power, an accuracy level, a certain number of PP, an attack type, an elemental type, and sometimes an additional effect. These moves can be one of a pool of moves that they either learn at specific levels or can learn from a TM or HM.

These are all the things that can possibly affect the outcome of a battle in even the smallest way.

Beyond that, and unlike most other RPGs, every single enemy you will encounter for the rest of the game follows the above rules. There is no enemy in the entire game that you cannot possess and make an identical copy of.

In Shin Megami Tensei, a lot of wandering encounters follow those rules, but then the bosses don’t, and of course there aren’t nearly as many configurable attributes as above. In Final Fantasy, you can forget it.

Beyond having so many different attributes, isn’t Pokemon shallow because encounters are just about optimization, it’s just that there’s a lot of knowledge involved in it due to so many parts? I think you’ve said this yourself? so is it a good depth example in that it shows how *not* to do it?

I’ve covered pokemon before. Yes, the direct act of interaction during a battle is kind of shallow. It’s mostly about deckbuilding. The standard campaign doesn’t force you to get good. However it’s still an example you can learn from, because few other RPGs do the same thing pokemon does. Few other RPGs have characters that are that complicated.

Is MGS5 any good?

I’m enjoying it so far. Seems to have a ton of stealth tools to fuck around with. Missing maybe a couple that were in MGS3, like you can’t keep animals in your inventory anymore, or food. Doesn’t seem to have the porno mag anymore. The controls feel really nice, but the Dive move sucks when it could be awesome. I wish that you could press or hold space to make the dive into a roll back up into standing or crouching position, and that the dive could go over obstacles. In MGS3 you could roll over low bearing obstacles, like a railing, or through a window. The jump command is also a bit weird, working like a zelda jump, except there’s also a button press too. It seems like the complete product, tons of missions, tons of people to kidnap, you can analyze their skill rank before you kidnap them, you can shuffle people around in mother base to open up different upgrades. They recycle some buildings within the same area though, I’ve run into the same prison building in Afghanistan like 3 times. They have a really clear differentiation between the benefits of lethal and nonlethal play. If you play lethal, then the guy will never come back to haunt you, but he’s dead, which is a waste of resources. Nonlethal tends to be quieter up front, so you’re not calling in an alert, but you have to deal with enemies waking up later on, and your resources are more limited, so you need to aim well. You can run super fast and never get tired, which rocks. If there’s a sandstorm going on, or rain, then you can even do it really close to enemies. The cardboard box was expanded excellently, and rain will destroy your box. A lot of the technology doesn’t match up with the time period, and seems really inconsistent with the later games, but I’m honestly happy they did this, because its given us one of the most expansive toolkits in any stealth game. And HOLY CRAP my first encounter with the new metal gear was crazy.

I once hit a guy with a tranq in his chest, causing him and a buddy to come after me on the rooftop, as they were climbing up the ladder, the guy I hit passed out, and fell, knocking out the guy below him, so they were both unconscious. There’s some stylish stealth potential possible, and a ton of ground to do it across.

In another part I had two guards really close to one another in a tiny room, I knew that if I tried to take them out, at least one would see me, and no matter how many magazines I threw, they wouldn’t budge. So I threw a smoke grenade at the door to cover myself, then tossed a stun grenade inside the room, stunning them so I could knock them out, and it totally worked.

Other major criticism is that many things require real time to build, like base platforms which can take 1-2 hours to complete, and later upgrades start taking 18 minutes, maybe longer as I get further in. There isn’t a way to pay to make it go faster, I don’t know why this feature is there. Also the timer only counts ingame time, so you can’t quit and come back later.

Is MGS5 have as many options gameplay wise as the thief series? Are the levels as wide open?

It has way more, it’s from the series that had MGS3 after all. Thief 2 has like, Blackjack, Sword, Broadhead Arrow, Water Arrow, Fire Arrow, Moss arrow, Gas Arrow, Noisemaker Arrow, Rope Arrow, Vine Arrow, scouting orb, Flash Bomb, Explosive Mine, Flash Mine, Gas Mine, Explosive Charge, Frogbeast Egg. You can also jump to make a loud noise, or throw environmental items.

The Phantom Pain has, just to focus on stealth oriented items, The tranq gun (which will vary how long it takes to knock someone out based on where you hit), tranq sniper rifle, the cardboard box (which you can now pop out of to toss items or shoot, also stand up or crawl in), unlimited supply of bullet magazines for tossing as a distraction, C4 which can be remote detonated as a distraction, smoke, which gives visual cover and stuns people, stun grenades which actually stun people, sleeping gas grenades/mines, decoys that are remote activated (enemies will start to use these themselves), the stun arm which allows you to electrically shock targets, your various choices of camouflage as usual, stealth action camo, you can do melee attacks to take people down, knock your bionic arm to make noise drawing people, or grab them and drag them around before interrogating them, then knocking them out, you can hold enemies up much like in older games, even CQC them to take their weapon and hold them up, and of course the fulton recovery system for cleaning up bodies. There’s even a squirt gun you can unlock, which is uniquely useful for silently shorting out electronics equipment and putting out fire based lights.

There’s a lot of options and a lot of ways to use them. Missing a few of the older options like the porno mag, but it’s whatever. Also cool is that if you overuse certain types of approaches, the enemy will begin to deploy countermeasures, like putting helmets on the soldiers you headshot, gas masks if you use smoke, higher grade body armor, deploy decoys in their base, night vision goggles and flashlights if you attack at night a lot, and of course more powerful lethal weapons.

The levels are all part of a huge interconnected world, so for many areas you can infiltrate from a lot of angles. There are cliffs and walls and other terrain features limiting you in some ways, and the areas used for story related missions are frequently on the edges of the map where they can make it more linear using the cliff faces, they’re still a lot larger and more open than prior MGS games, with more enemies. Pretty sure more so than Thief games too.

Thoughts on the older castlevania games?

I’ve played Castlevania 1 and 3. I beat CV1, and I’m stuck on this river/waterfall part in CV3. What I’ve gotta say is, there is no game I’ve played that requires quite as much intense focus as CV3. The game is constantly throwing things at you as you go, and requiring you to commit extremely hard to every button press you make. You need to jump at exactly the right points, you need to jump at exactly the right angle, at the right times, or you will fall to your death. You need to whip exactly when enemies are at the right range. You need the right powerups, need to use them at the right times and absolutely not whip a candle and just grab whatever comes out, because you might replace your level 2 bottle with a level 1 cross, which sucks.

Classic Castlevania finds its depth through level arrangements that force you into enemies in ways that synergize with their movement and attack patterns, giving you slight chances to overcome them. It has enemies work together in ways that are tricky to deal with, often exposing you in the attempt to fight off one. It’s almost always throwing multiple things at you. Like in the early levels of Castlevania 3 you get medusa heads and platforms which flip if jumped on. You get stairs you need to walk down onto skeletons throwing bones up at you (stairs which lock your movement much like a ladder you cannot jump off of). Sure, you only get 3 jump paths, but the level layouts stress the difference between those 3 much more than most games with more flexible jump arcs. The distance of the jump is tuned to require you to walk partway off of blocks as you make the jump, then they’ll throw in a ghost following you around to make the jump even harder or more stressful. Many of the bosses and enemies are simple, but because you spend so long on each attack, it’s a strong commitment in order to deal damage. It’s a question of whether you can get that hit in or it’s unsafe. Because of the restrictions on movement, enemies frequently came at you from places that were difficult to hit, such as above your head or from below you, or in the case of medusa heads, both. One arrangement has an enemy on a platform one block lower than you, requiring you to find a space in its back and forth movement and sword thrusts to move down in order to attack it, but then they stick crumbling blocks at the point you need to drop down. The whole game loves to be an asshole in this way.

It is VERY MUCH like a 2d form of Dark Souls, and I don’t do the Dark Souls comparisons lightly, the games feature very similar characteristics, strong commitment to actions, aggressive level designs and enemy placements. Later games in the Castlevania series even got a nonlinear structure like Dark Souls, but unfortunately their level design had grown thin, and the concept of commitment wasn’t held with as much regard anymore. I feel like Order of Ecclesia was the game that finally got the whole newschool and old school castlevania formula together in one game

What do you think of Chivalry: Medieval Warfare?

It’s a proof of concept. That melee combat works and can be interesting or even unique in the first person.

I first heard of it when trailers were made for the standalone version demonstrating how swords are actually tracked in the engine, and how facing direction affected where the sword was.

A few years ago I picked it up for myself in a sale and was lucky enough to get a huge group of people to play with me, including Allosaurus Rex, Ryan Perez, Devi Ever, Mark Ceb, and some other people from GYP.

At first I didn’t really get what the fundamentals were, I was just swinging and more often than not I got butchered. The sword swings are all slow. You have 3 types, one that slashes across (most area coverage and active time), one overhead (most damage, weird hit angle), and one thrust (most range, least active time and area coverage). You can cancel a swing as a feint before it becomes active. Blocking with a weapon is time specific, but the swings are so slow you can usually time it fairly well. Shields let you block as long as you want, but they block your vision. Kicking pushes people around, and deals a ton of stamina damage and no recoil on shield. Almost all actions require stamina.

The obvious things I picked up were to either swing first to catch them before they caught you, or to wait their swing out and hit them while they were recovering. Or of course block and catch them during the stun inflicted on them. Kick acts sort of as a poor man’s throw option, much like Dark Souls, as do stamina limits in general. So to succeed, I found I needed to read when they were going to swing, and do it first,

Beyond that, I found feinting would fuck up people’s attempts to guard, so I would start a swing, feint, they’d time their guard for when I’d swing, but when the guard let up, I was coming in with another attack. People in shields couldn’t see what I was doing, and they would block in similar patterns. Of course the counter to someone feinting is just to swing at them, because you get a massive time advantage.

At other times, I would swing deliberately early, but in a position where they couldn’t punish it, just barely missing them, so that when they did try to punish, I would be able to punish them for trying.

Another trick is turning myself so I’d hit opponents with my sword sooner, then turning the camera the opposite way the sword was going to keep it pointed at them as long as possible, making the active time effectively longer. You could even slash around people’s guards, over their head, at their feet, etc. Turning helped hit people sooner for a bigger advantage on pre-empting their swings. Turning could give thrusts a wider area of coverage, and help overhanded swings hit over people’s blocks.

The different weapons swing at different speeds, so you’d need to swing sooner to beat out a faster weapon, or could afford to swing later if yours was faster. Archers with knives could get in close and fuck your shit up by continuing to interrupt your attacks if you weren’t careful.

Overall, it’s not the most complex system, but it’s unique.