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Likes VS Strength
8 years ago
General
Ok, I've been writing a lot recently, but this has been on my mind, so let's get to it.
There's a lot of RPGs where the player can (or even has to) recruit various characters into his team. They are diverse both in terms of personality, and also fighting style, and that can sometimes clash.
By that I mean that there might be a character that you LOVE, but he/she is so weak, or.... at least super complicated to play, to where you just cannot put them on your team. Or how about the reverse? There's a character that you hate so much, but he/she is so incredibly strong, that you have to use him/her.
I've had both occur to me a bunch of times in the past:
-Guile from Chrono Cross- awesome magician, but he had so few spell slots, that I had to ditch him in the long run
-Yukiko vs Teddie in Persona 5. I vastly prefer Yukiko, but Teddie had a bunch of support spells, so I went with him.... as a matter of fact, I'd preferably drop both to get Naoto into my party, but... I needed a healer, so.. there you go
-Kimahri Ronso, a character almost made for me, but I had to focus on leveling 3 characters, and settled on Tidus, Auron and Yuna, because of their Overdrives.... WHICH WAS A BIG MISTAKE, given how useless Overdrives are again Dark Aeons, but.... there you go, I wasted my chance to use this amazing guy throughout most of the game
And the reverse case is here:
-I really did not like Irvine in FF8, but his Limit Break was amazing, so I used him anyway
-(it's not a RPG, but whatever) TeruTeru from Danganronpa 2 is such an... icky character. A fat perverted chef, BUT if you spend time with him, you'll get a very useful ability, and so, I still ended up hanging out with him....
-Black Pearl from Legeng of Mana... Man, I prefer Elazul, both as a character, as a compagnion, I prefer his fighting style, BUT... when you just touch Black Pearl, you're able to use your special attacks right away, so...... *sigh*
That's just some examples, and it's clearly not something I always do. There are exceptions, but I felt like discussing the topic of... when we do cast away our bias in favor of being stronger/better etc.
There's a lot of RPGs where the player can (or even has to) recruit various characters into his team. They are diverse both in terms of personality, and also fighting style, and that can sometimes clash.
By that I mean that there might be a character that you LOVE, but he/she is so weak, or.... at least super complicated to play, to where you just cannot put them on your team. Or how about the reverse? There's a character that you hate so much, but he/she is so incredibly strong, that you have to use him/her.
I've had both occur to me a bunch of times in the past:
-Guile from Chrono Cross- awesome magician, but he had so few spell slots, that I had to ditch him in the long run
-Yukiko vs Teddie in Persona 5. I vastly prefer Yukiko, but Teddie had a bunch of support spells, so I went with him.... as a matter of fact, I'd preferably drop both to get Naoto into my party, but... I needed a healer, so.. there you go
-Kimahri Ronso, a character almost made for me, but I had to focus on leveling 3 characters, and settled on Tidus, Auron and Yuna, because of their Overdrives.... WHICH WAS A BIG MISTAKE, given how useless Overdrives are again Dark Aeons, but.... there you go, I wasted my chance to use this amazing guy throughout most of the game
And the reverse case is here:
-I really did not like Irvine in FF8, but his Limit Break was amazing, so I used him anyway
-(it's not a RPG, but whatever) TeruTeru from Danganronpa 2 is such an... icky character. A fat perverted chef, BUT if you spend time with him, you'll get a very useful ability, and so, I still ended up hanging out with him....
-Black Pearl from Legeng of Mana... Man, I prefer Elazul, both as a character, as a compagnion, I prefer his fighting style, BUT... when you just touch Black Pearl, you're able to use your special attacks right away, so...... *sigh*
That's just some examples, and it's clearly not something I always do. There are exceptions, but I felt like discussing the topic of... when we do cast away our bias in favor of being stronger/better etc.
But how about characters who show up way too late in the game to be actually useful? "Wow you're so awesome! I wish I could have had you in my party sooner and not near the end of the fucking game." Ever had one of those?
I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT THOSE!!!!
Yes, some characters appear way late, and that can be so weird. The character can be so strong, that when you know he/she is coming, you're just waiting and waiting.... but if it is someone weak, like ... in FF2 (not the US FF2) , there were 4 characters, and one of them was only to join the team at the end of the game, and...... the game was so hard, that it was basically impossible to reach the point where he joined the team, and not have him be sooooo much weaker than the rest!
Naturally it's sort of dumb to just give you the entire team at the start, and not let you get to know them one by one, but having you wait is also problematic.
Persona 4 had Naoto, an interesting character, who sadly joins the team right before the big finale of the game starts, so ... there's no time to get a feel. There were so many times that characters shared moments together, while Naoto ... clearly was in the back in terms of that.
A recent game that was sadly guilty of this was the Mario Rabbids crossover game which was a surprisingly awesome and way better game than most everybody, myself included, expected it to be. Mario and the Rabbids doing a simplified version of X-Com? That was certainly a combination I never thought I would see but it works.
Unfortunately for the game Yoshi a character who practically everyone loves doesn't join your party until halfway through the final level. And by that point you have probably chosen your ideal character set and it's way to late to really get any use out of him.
What you mention reminds me of Shin Megami Tensei 3, even if it not exactly the same:
https://youtu.be/8VEu8uOGqaM?t=2m25s
You take some unusual routes. You follow the course set by a killer, which.... only seems like something you'd do on your nth playthrough, and then almost before the end in the final dungeon, you get... Samael. He .... is an okay demon, and I like him, but.... you could recruit/fuse him yourself anyway, and the version of him you get is the pure vannilla default one. No boosted stats, no new spells, it's just... normal. Your reward for following down this path is to get a party member which you could have gotten yourself anyway, with nothing extra.
I still feel justified for squeezing in that nostalgia critic clip afterwards to vent my frustration over the lackluster reward hehehe!