Mechanics you found interesting in a game you didn't like

Or just any game that you're not a fan of, even if it's a great one. I'll have to go with Digimon World 2. It's a turn-based RPG. The game gets boring pretty easily for various reasons, most notably the load times, overly long attack sequences, the dungeon crawling is very slow, etc.. Heck, even actual fans of the game recommend to play it on an emulator with frame-skipping enabled, so you can play at 200+ FPS (funnily enough, the game is very playable at those speeds).

What I find interesting about it is some of the attack properties. Even though it's a turn-based game, you can interrupt a foe's attack with your own's, and some of them have different properties. If the interruption is successful, you can reduce the damage output that you were about to receive by a high amount. There's also counter attacks, if your monster gets hurt, the follow up attack will be stronger. If I recall correctly, some of these can turn from being a simple attack directed at one enemy to a powerful group-nuke. Another attack consisted on hitting an enemy (or a group, can't remember), and if you killed something with it, your monster would automatically do the same attack in the same turn for no additional MP cost, as long as it killed something.

Note: This topic isn't limited to just Action games, as you may have noticed.

I once floated this idea and was told not to do it as it can still cause unintended problems.

Oh, is that so? Didn't think of that when I made this, but I understand. Feel free to close it.

We discussed it in another topic. Forgot which. The issue is that you might find something bad/mediocre that someone else finds great.

I know what you're saying though. I've played a few games that have some fantastic ideas and mechanics but are dragged down by the flaws. Better to just make a topic separate topic per game and discuss your thoughts on the pros and cons of the games.

I can understand the idea of the topic, I think we can just easily reword it to "mechanics you found interesting in a game you didn't like" and it covers the same angle. Because yeah as Birdman notes, the idea here is more that every game can have its value.

That said, I think "Force Trick" from Force Unleashed 2 was a good one. It's a quick cast where you mentally persuade a foe to be your ally for a bit. There's a cap to how many you can do it to and it costs a lot of meter, but felt it was an interesting addition to a game that mostly stripped the interesting options from the previous title.

Just change the topic title to something like that. Maybe 'games where you only liked a certain mechanic'. That sounds better.

From there you can freely detail what you liked/disliked in a game. I still prefer individual topics in this case though.

One for me is Project Altered Beast. Love the beast forms and revisiting areas with new powers, but the lack of a proper dodge or some form of cancel ability really drags combat down. It was interesting to come up with workarounds but could be a chore. I've gone back to it a few times over the years.

Done.

I wouldn't even say I dislike Altered Beast. It just has some big flaws but I'd still play it again and deal with those flaws. Yeah, I've given a bad example now that I think about it. Someone should make another topic called 'things you dislike in games you like/love'.

^ Believe it or not, I thought of making only one of two topics, the one you mentioned was the other one, but I went for this one because I've already done it in 4 different GFAQs boards IIRC, so I wanted to try something different.

TMNT Mutants in Manhattan.

I liked a few things about this but disliked the game overall and will never go back to it.

The blocking is great. The turtle will go into its shell and you can move around. Enemy attacks can move you as well. You're completely invincible in this state but it's on a timer. If you go over time you pop out stunned.

Perfect parrying is done from blocking. Let go of the block button in time with the enemy's attack and the turtle will pop out and party, stunning the enemy.

It's a turtle themed block and parry which is cool but is also a great idea mechanically.

>GFAQs
Just a bunch of mechanically blind fools screaming at each other.

I can't think of anything else... Been thinking of the KH handhelds, but everything is done better in 1-2.

›mechanically blind

There are a select few users that had interesting thoughts about various games, might go back to my archived topic list to find them, and to see what thoughts I had back then.

But yeah, now that you mention it, I think the infamous RE4 guy said something ''nice'' about the game for the first time in years... he said that Krauser was a good character. That was it.

>select few
Any time I come across one, which is extremely rare, I also buy a lottery ticket.