Devil May Cry 4: Boss Handicaps

Today I had to suffer the shame of killing a boss while it was handicapped for the second time in my time playing Devil May Cry 4. What really bugs me though is that I am not convinced that I needed the handicap. I am pretty sure that I could have won that fight at its full difficulty if I had been given the chance. Unfortunately, the game made the choice for me. This particular incident makes for a good example of why I don't like auto-adjusting difficulty that doesn't ask for the player's consent.

Mission 9 of Devil May Cry 4 is one of my least favorite stages in the game, mostly due to its introduction of the Alto Angelos, and it is much worse on Son of Sparda difficulty than I expected. I am ashamed to say that I needed to use a few items to live through the second battle, where an Alto Angelo unit was reinforced by a whole flock of Gladiuses. I subsequently had to continue after dying to a laser beam trap on the climb up towards the boss. After all of that trouble, I was pretty determined to beat the boss, even if I had to continue a bunch of times, since I did not want to have to climb my way up that stage again.

Unfortunately, I died to the boss, Agnus Angelo, three times before I finally beat him. However, I noticed something strange on my third attempt: Agnus summoned a group of three Gladiuses to fight me instead of the two Basilisks he had summoned during my first two attempts. When Angus summoned the Gladiuses again on my fourth and final attempt, I became certain that the Enemy Handicap had kicked in. I received confirmation of that fact when I beat the stage and was hit with the associated score penalty. While part of me was just relieved that the stage was behind, I was also honestly frustrated. I felt like the game had denied me the chance of having a fair shot at beating Agnus at his full power.

Since this is currently my second time through the game, I have fought Agnus Angelo several times already, albeit on a lower difficulty mode. The main reason I was dying was because I was being reckless and taking too many hits while I was on the offensive, and I still needed to get used to identifying his moments of vulnerability again. I am pretty sure that I could have beaten him at his full power with enough practice fighting against him at that level. If I was given the choice, I would have kept on fighting him at that power level until I beat him. But the game didn't give me a choice in the matter.

I don't think the idea of giving the payer an advantage if he keeps losing is a bad idea in of itself, but I don't think it is fair to the player if the game adjusts the difficulty without the player's consent. I would have preferred it if the game gave me a pop-up window that had explicitly asked my if I was willing to take a penalty to my score in exchange for weakening the boss. That way, I could have kept trying against the boss at full power as long as I liked, and still have the option of an easier fight when I finally reached the point where my patience runs out. Since different people have different tolerances for frustration, there is no way a single fixed number of deaths before the handicap kicks in will please everyone.

Armored Core For Answer: Hard Mode

While trying to reach 100% completion of the Normal Mode missions in For Answer, I have completely hit a wall in my attempts to actually complete mission 42, what I think is the final mission of the last plot branch of the game. There are so many things I could say about how poorly this mission is designed, how this last plot branch is itself horrible, and how basically unfun it is to get stuck in a game designed to be played through multiple times without any choice but to proceed forward through an impossible challenge, even if there are still things undone on other plot branches, but doing so would probably only make me more angry, so I won't. Instead, I have devoted myself to playing through the game's missions on Hard Mode using the Free Play option (which is a nice option they made available), and I have been pretty happy with the experience.

I will start off by echoing the sentiments my brother expressed in his recent article: it is much better for the higher difficulty levels of a game to provide new challenges, rather than to be a rehash of the normal difficulty level. This is especially true for any game in which you have to unlock higher difficulty levels and the player is expected to play through the game multiple times, such as the Devil May Cry series or Armored Core For Answer. Trying to change the difficulty by altering the math that controls damage values and similar properties is often a bad idea, simply because it can easily imbalance some of the game, often making things more frustrating for the player rather than adding to the feelings of excitement and sense of overcoming impossible odds that are incredibly important for higher difficulty settings. However, adding new challenges to overcome on top of the old ones does add to that sense, and also keeps things fresh. The Hard Mode missions of Armored Core For Answer take the approach of adding new challenges rather than altering the old ones, and it has rekindled my interest in playing through the many missions I have cleared several times already.

One thing I particularly like about the alterations made to the For Answer Hard Mode missions is that they are unpredictable and logical at the same time. In some missions the enemy is reinforced with additional troops, and in others you simply don't get the reinforcements that you typically do. In some missions they add new hazardous environmental conditions, and in others you have to deal with new, severe technical issues with equipment vital to the given mission. The game actually tries to create a sense that the Normal mission is the version in which things go off without a hitch, and the Hard mission is where unforeseeable problems interfere with the mission parameters (listening to your operator get much more angry with the people hiring you to do these missions and even explode into short tirades about poor intel really changes the mood of the missions, and can be pretty funny, too). The fact that Hard Mode makes you fight even more Arm Forts and NEXTs than Normal Mode is another nice touch, since those kinds of enemies are the most imposing and fun to fight type of enemy in the game.

Still, I wish there was a bit more consistency in how big of a change was made in the jump in difficulty. For some missions, the change is hardly noticeable, such as the addition of a few Normals to a NEXT battle or the removal of some reinforcements that didn't help much anyways. This goes as far as few missions in which I am not even sure what they changed (they probably just added some additional enemies). In other cases, the change completely alters the nature of the mission, such as the inclusion of a pair of NEXTs into a mission that was just a straight-up battle against MTs and Normals. The last example is practically the equivalent of adding a totally new mission into the game, that happens to occur when you are already depleted from a protracted battle. I would be a bit happier if more of the missions took the middle road and avoided either extreme. Adding on a complication that matches the existing challenge, like the sudden arrival of a third NEXT into what is normally a battle against two NEXTs, works much better in my opinion.

Devil May Cry 4: Son of Sparda difficulty

A couple days ago, I started the Son of Sparda difficulty mode in Devil May Cry 4. I haven't played it for very long, but it has already surprised me. Relatively early in Mission 2, I encountered a group of Assaults, a fairly vicious enemy that was only introduced in Mission 8 on Devil Hunter (Normal) mode. In Mission 3, I encountered a pack of Basilisks, which was the very last regular enemy to be introduced in Devil Hunter mode. As a result, the early missions have felt very different than they did on my first go through of the game. I think this is a great idea, since it has given me fresh and new challenges that I haven't seen before in the game. It is a much better method of differentiating difficulty levels than just tweaking the enemies' AI or stats.

The original Devil May Cry did something similar. If you go through the game on Easy Automatic mode (like I first did), several of the strongest types of regular enemy, including Frosts and Fetishes, do not appear at all. Since I didn't encounter them on my first go-through of Devil May Cry, I was pretty surprised to encounter brand new enemies on Normal mode. I think it was a pretty interesting idea. It gave someone who already beat the game once something to look forward to on a second go-through. In a series like Devil May Cry, where the player is expected to defeat lower difficulty modes before moving on to the higher ones, keeping the experience new is important. Otherwise, the game can get frustrating and dull when moving on to higher difficulty modes.

Goldeneye for the N64 did something kinda similar: it added new mission objectives on higher difficulty settings. For example, on the lowest difficulty setting, the player can clear a certain mission just by fighting his way through to an exit point. On a higher difficulty setting, the player is required to steal some files and destroy some alarms before making his way to the exit point. It made missions play out in a completely different manner, and put the player through more demanding situations.

I vastly prefer this kind of approach to creating different difficulty settings. Not only does it make playing the same game feel different depending on what difficulty the game is set to, it works as a very obvious indicator that the player has moved on to a genuinely more difficult challenge. If anything, I would have liked to have seen the game developers for Devil May Cry 4 hold some enemies or bosses in reserve until Son of Sparda mode.

As a side note, I like the naming scheme for the Devil May Cry 4 difficulty modes. They are just fun.

Devil May Cry 4: Continues and Gold Orbs

I got Devil May Cry 4 for Christmas, and I have already cleared through the end of Chapter 9 already. Despite some early worries about the game's difficulty, Devil May Cry 4 has proven itself just as exciting and intense as it's predecessors. In fact, the designers at Capcom have made some noticeable improvements to the game that make the game's difficulty not nearly as big of a pain as in Devil May Cry 3, by bringing back an improvement made in Devil May Cry 3's Special Edition.

In the original version of Devil May Cry 3, as well as in the first Devil May Cry, the player needed to use up rare and expensive items called Yellow Orbs in order to continue from a checkpoint. This was always the thing that frustrated the most in Devil May Cry 3. The bosses in Devil May Cry 3 were almost always located at the end of long and difficult stages. At the same time, every major boss in DMC3 was very dangerous and difficult in its own right. For example, I originally died to Virgil four or five times, which means that I had to trudge through his stage five or six times in a row. Now then, I am someone who enjoys difficulty, but having to replay the same stage all of the way through multiple times is more annoying than fun. I have always felt that tough challenges are always more fun if you have the chance to try it again immediately after you fail.

The Gold Orb system, which was added as an option in Devil May Cry 3 Special Edition and returned in Devil May Cry 4, gives the player the ability to continue from a checkpoint as many times as he likes. It really came in handy for me when I challenged Bael, the boss of Chapter 4 in DMC4. I probably fought Bael around seven times before I finally managed to crush him for good. If that fight was in DMC3, I would have had to trudge through the entire stage over again after dying. Instead, I got to fight him seven or so times in a row without interruption. Not only did it take less time with less frustration, but it let me focus on experimenting and fine-tuning my strategy. In Devil May Cry 3, I usually just gave up after a point and ended up using items to help me beat a boss and just avoid the frustration; but in Devil May Cry 4, I was free to enjoy the challenge of the fight itself more.

At the same time though, Devil May Cry 4 still rewards those players who get through a stage without dying. After my seven consecutive fights against Bael, my score for Chapter 4 was absolutely terrible: I only got a D rank. Compared to my typical A and B ranks, that D is a blight on my record. So to improve my overall score, I will probably go back and challange Bael again, this time armed with knowledge gained from my earlier hard-fought victory. So, the challenge of beating a stage without dying still exists in Devil May Cry 4, but it is no longer a requirement for progressing through the game. I think that this is how it should be.

The Fear of Over-leveling

Strangely enough, one of the things I am afraid of most when playing RPGs is becoming over-leveled. This can have odd effects on my playing habits; for example, I often try to avoid normal battles when back-tracking through areas I have already cleared, just to avoid gaining unnecessary experience points. However, this fear of over-leveling comes directly from my love for a challenging experience. In many RPGs, in order to maintain a consistently high degree of challenge, the player has to keep his levels as low as possible, which I think can be a big headache.

In an RPG, the difficulty of an encounter is dependent on the relative levels of the PCs and the monsters. If the heroes have higher levels than the enemies, the battle will be comparatively easy, and if the heroes have lower levels than the enemies, than the battle will be comparatively hard. Now then, if the player finds an opponent to be too difficult to defeat, it is usually possible to gain a few more levels by fighting random enemies, which will make it easier to overcome the hard opponent. But if the player finds that a particular challenge is too easy, it is usually impossible to lose levels and make it easier short of starting the game over from the beginning. So once a player has over-leveled, it is hard to go back.

It can be surprisingly easy to become over-leveled as well. Nowadays, many RPGs are designed such that it is possible to beat the game without level grinding, even if the player goes straight towards his next destination constantly. At the same time, RPGs are usually full of side-roads and optional areas to explore, backtracking through old areas to do, and side-quests to undertake. However, exploring optional areas and taking on sidequests exposes the player to more random battles, which means more experience points and levels. So, if the game is designed to be beatable even if the player doesn't go on sidequests, then a player who does take on sidequests will find his characters to be over-leveled. Furthermore, since many RPGs don't give the player very many clues (or deceptive clues) about what level range is appropriate for specific areas, a player may not even realize they are becoming over-leveled until it is too late.

There are few different ways to avoid this problem. First off, the game designers can design the game such that the player has to normally level grind in order to clear the game's main challenges, as was the case in many older RPGs. Unfortunately, level grinding is itself a problem to be avoided, since it is simply not fun most of the time. A second option is to let players who want a greater challenge actually give up levels. This has been done in a few games: late in Wild ARMs IV and V it becomes possible to give up levels in exchange for rare items and equipment, and in Disgaea games it is possible to reduce characters back to level one in order to gain better stat growths. This can work, particularly if it become available early in the game and required level ranges are well advertised, though I have yet to see a perfect execution. Finally, one can design a game so the PCs level growth is strongly tied to plot progression. For example, in Chrono Cross, the stats of the characters are strongly linked to how many bosses the player has beaten. This is one of my favorite solutions, since it eliminates the problems of over-leveling and level grinding at the same time.

I guess the biggest contributing problem is that RPGs don't have difficulty settings often enough. If character level is the one and only factor determining game difficulty, then it makes the problem of over-leveling that much more prominent.

Entry Level RPGs

Some years ago, I was trying to figure out a good game to have my parents sit down and play so that they could learn more about my favorite hobby. Since RPGs were my favorite kind of video-game, I tried to think of a really good RPG to introduce my parents to the genre with. Unfortunately, I couldn't think of a really good introductory RPG that could be easily picked up by someone unfamiliar with the genre. At the time, the biggest RPGs that were available were Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy 8, which were good games, but had fairly complex game systems. While I considered introducing my parents to RPGs through some of my older SNES era RPGs, my SNES was stuffed away in storage at the time, and SNES games couldn't show off the technically abilities of games of the time. Because of this indecision, I didn't get around to teaching my parents how to play RPGs. However, the incident did make me start thinking about what makes a good entry level game.

The game that introduced me to the RPG genre and got me hooked on it was Final Fantasy II for the SNES (FF IV by the Japanese numbers). In retrospect, it was a great introductory RPG. First off, Final Fantasy II was a very simple game, since there was no complex character customization. Instead, characters only gained preset abilities as they leveled up. Combat was as simple as using the Fight or Magic command to defeat enemies. Now then, the American Final Fantasy II was a stripped down version of the original Final Fantasy IV with reduced difficulty, but I think that actually made the game a better entry level RPG. I remember having a lot of trouble with certain bosses (most notably Rubicant) when I first played Final Fantasy II, while these days I can beat those bosses easily, even on the original harder difficulty setting. The easier difficulty setting was a lot more forgiving for a rookie like me who accidentally de-equipped his main character's sword before ever getting into a fight. In particular, I found the early game strategy guide built into the game's manual to be very useful in my younger days.

These days though, there is a strong tendency for RPGs and other videogames to be made with experienced players in mind. Games have much more complicated gameplay these days, particularly when it comes to character customization and combat. Final Fantasy X's Sphere Grid is a much more complicated game system than most earlier RPG systems, with a much greater ability for the player to gimp his own characters. Most games have a lot more limited tutorial support for new players as well. The very useful "Beginner's House", where the player can talk to a concentrated group of NPCs to learn about basic game mechanics, from the early Final Fantasy games was discontinued in the series after FF VII. I haven't seen a full early game tutorial included in the game manual since Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete (and the practice was becoming rare even in the SNES days).

Even today, I have trouble thinking of a really good introductory RPG. While Dragon Quest VIII is almost as simple and straightforward as an SNES RPG, it is also really difficult in the early part of the game, and has enough customization that I gimped my characters on my first attempt at it. Final Fantasy XII has the complexity of the Gambit system, the added problem of having to deal with real-time monster encounters, and a reliance on lots of sidequests and level grinding. And the further one goes from the big name RPGs, the more likely one is to encounter niche RPGs that differentiate themselves through increased complexity aimed at genre veterans.

Today, remakes of old games are the only place someone is likely to find a really good entry level RPG. And even then, the upcoming DS remake of Final Fantasy 4 has been advertised as having increased character customization and increased difficulty compared to the original version. While those factors do appeal to me at my current dedication to the RPG genre, I can't help but wonder if it will still be as good of an entry level game anymore. With the recent expansion of the videogame market to tons of brand new gamers, entry level RPGs are really needed now.

Dragon Quest 8, part 5

Okay, I have to take back some of my previous statement about Dragon Quest 8 getting easier. I just fought through what has to be the hardest boss fight I have experienced in a few years. As was befitting a major boss fight at a game turning point, the battle against Dhoulmagus was a long, brutal battle. I guess all of the advantages that come with progressing in a game, like what I talked about last time, don't mean much when going up against a really well-designed boss.

The developers were able to make the fight against Dhoulmagus hard because they understood the concept of economy of actions. I am borrowing the term from some of the talk coming out of the development of 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons. Essentially, economy of actions refers to how the number of actions a character or monster can make has a huge effect on its power. Even a monster with lots of hit points and powerful attacks will be fairly easy if it can only act once in a round, since it will be up against three, four, or five characters, each with their own action. That's about 4 actions to one. So, in order to make a boss fight against a major villain interesting, it is necessary to even up the number of actions between the two sides.

Dhoulmagus was such a big threat because of two key reasons: he evened up the odds by creating two clones of himself on the first turn, and he was capable of acting twice every round. So, he had four actions of his own every turn to match my four actions. If he had only acted once every round, my character's defense and healing would have easily been able to keep up with his damage output. Furthermore, the Doppelgangers forced me to spread out my damage more and use less powerful all-enemy attacks. As it was, I spent the entire two-part battle struggling to keep my characters alive. For the first time in the entire game I had to resurrect fallen comrades mid-battle.

Another thing that made the battle particularly hard was Dhoulmagus's use of all-character attacks, particularly in the second battle. Even though he had only two actions in the second half of the battle, Dhoulmagus was able to nearly exhaust my healing resources because of his constant use of strong all-character attacks. However, this only was a serious threat because I did not have full-party healing spells, and instead had to constantly alternate between healing individual characters using both of my healers. If I had full-party healing spells, Dhoulmagus's full-party attacks would not have been nearly as big of a threat. I guess this goes to show how powerful team healing spells are.

However, Dhoulmagus also proved to be difficult thanks to his wide array of action-denying attacks. In the first phase of the battle, he used single-character sleep spells to great effect, while in the second phase, he used an all-character one-round stun attack. In addition, he used an attack which nullified my entire teams buff spells and tension (an effect where a character uses a turn increasing their attack power). This forced my characters to waste more rounds restoring buff spells and rendered the turns I spent raising tension worthless.

In other words, the developers of DQ8 were able to make the Dhoulmagus fight very difficult by significantly increasing his number of actions, giving Dhoulmagus allies to soak up attacks, and giving Dhoulmagus the ability to deny or cancel out the actions of the characters. These are all tried and true methods of improving the difficulty of a major boss battle. Many of the earlier boss battles of the game used these same tools to lesser degrees in order to make them more challenging as well.

Beyond just what made the battle hard, the battle against Dhoulmagus was fun, thanks to the showmenship that went into the fight. First off, it felt a lot like the final battle of a game (particularly since Dhoulmagus has been the main villain so far). After Dhoulmagus's first form was defeated, he underwent the stereotypical transformation into a more powerful, more monstrous form. While it is an old trope, it still works, particularly since the first form felt like a full boss battle by itself. The backgrounds of both fights were also unique and very flashy. On top of that, Dhoulmagus was given a very large number of attacks and actions in both battles. In the first battle, Dhoulmagus used a basic melee attack, the "wind sickle" spell, the "thin air" spell, a full-party thorn attack, a multi-hit attack with thrown debris, a sleep attack, his debuff spell, and a full team heal spell, while still making time to laugh at the party. This is quite a few more attacks than is typical in a boss fight, and it adds to the spectacle of the fight considerably.

I am now really looking forward to the real final boss of the game, whatever that is.

Side note: I really hate how dead characters don't get experience in most RPGs. Jessica died mere moments before the final blow was struck against Dhoulmagus, and missed out on 12000 experience points. This is particularly a problem in DQ8, where boss battles give huge xp gains, but have a high chance of killing off a character or two. This causes really bothersome level discrepancies that are hard to close.

Dragon Quest 8, part 4

I am really surprised how easy of a time I have been having in Dragon Quest 8 right now. While there has been a recent sudden increase in the power of the monsters I am fighting in the last dungeon I went through, I had no trouble clearing the dungeon at all. This is particularly surprising considering how hard the early part of the game was. However, I guess that it reflects a general tendency of RPGs to become easier as the game progresses.

In the early stages of Dragon Quest 8, particularly before I recruited the full party, I was running into stretches of serious difficulty on a regular basis. For example, this go-through of the game stalled after I had my team wiped out by the second boss of the game multiple times. While I managed to defeat the game's third boss on my first try, I lost two out of my three characters in the attempt. I even lost a character to a rare monster I encountered while exploring around the overworld soon after the third boss battle. During those early parts of the game, I also found that I could only handle four or five consecutive battles in a new region of the overworld before I ran out of disposable resources.

Now though, I can run through brand new dungeons and overworld regions without much fear. I can even encounter enemies somewhat earlier than I am meant to and still have a fair chance of victory. I haven't even lost a party member since my run in with the rare monster I described above. The game just doesn't feel as hard anymore.

The reason the game isn't as difficult is due to the vastly increased options I now have over those early days. Thanks to higher levels, my characters have a lot more options when it comes to healing and defensive spells. Whereas early in the game, I only had one healer with limited MP (the main hero), few healing items, and no way to resurrect dead characters, I now have two healers (one of whom can regenerate his MP), a resurrection spell, and the ability to mass-produce healing items using the game's alchemy system. Furthermore, three of my four characters have special moves that can potentially prevent enemies from attacking. The addition of all of these things has made my team of heroes nearly impossible to kill in a game that I had pegged as extremely lethal when I first started playing it.

While this trend towards the game becoming easier as the player progresses is a fairly common element of RPGs due to this effect caused by increasing player options, I still don't like seeing the difficulty of a game change. The beginning of a game should not be the hardest part, since undue frustration might put off a new player. It also creates false expectations in the player about what the play experience of the game is going to be like. On the other hand, introducing more complexity and options to the player as he becomes familiar with the game isn't necessarily a bad idea, particularly since new character options, items, and abilities are all a kind of reward. So I am not really sure what can be done to tweak Dragon Quest 8's difficulty curve. Maybe I will get some ideas after playing it some more.

SRW:OG2 Battle Mastery

As I mentioned in my last post, the Battle Mastery system of the Super Robot Wars games deserves some recognition, so I will write a bit more about it today.

In the Super Robot Wars Original Generation games, every battle has an optional victory condition called the Battle Mastery condition. This condition has no bearing on the battle itself, but every Battle Mastery you acquire adds to the difficulty of the game; if you get no Battle Masteries, you will be on the Easy difficulty, but if you get many you will be on Hard difficulty, where you will earn less money and experience while fighting stronger foes. Other than the difficulty setting, fulfilling Battle Mastery conditions has a few more effects: some Battle Mastery objectives are tied to unlocking hidden items and units, and, more importantly, you can only play the final mission of the game and fight the true final boss if you have completed a sufficiently large number of Battle Mastery conditions (in SRW:OG2, most sources say that you can only miss three out of 41 and still reach the final mission).

I think the way this system controls difficulty is brilliantly elegant. If a player is inclined to take on optional challenges (in other words, the kind of person who likes to play videogames for the challenge), then the game becomes more difficult to match. On the other hand, a person who just wants to play through the game for the story is not compelled to take on the challenge of the Battle Masteries and is allowed to play through on an easier route. What is more, the difficulty level scales gradually, so to a certain degree the player can adjust the difficult to a comfortable level by simply earning Battle Masteries where he can and ignoring the ones he can't. It is a system which is fair to all kinds of players and controls the difficulty without an awkward difficulty selection choice (well, there is one, but that is only for unlockable extremely hard and extremely easy versions, which also scale). I can't state enough how much I like the concept of this system.

Praise aside, there is one problem I do have with the Battle Mastery system as it is seen in SRW:OG and OG2. The main reward for having a lot of Battle Masteries is being able to see the true final battle, a dramatic and fun finale that is an important conclusion to the plot. If you do not have enough Battle Masteries, there is a sudden and unsatisfying interruption in the flow of events that leads to a hasty ending. What is more, the true final battle of OG1 (which I missed originally) is assumed as the real series of events in the following game, which can result in confusion for people playing the sequel who did not see it (like me). Forcing a player who wants to see the dramatic finale to play through the most difficult route through the game is a flawed concept, in my opinion. It is just a better experience for the player if he can see the whole game as it is meant to be seen, regardless of difficulty.

Despite that one objection, I do like the idea of having rewards for players who are willing to take on a challenge. Certainly, it would be a good idea to link hidden units and items to the Battle Mastery system. At least, I would prefer to do that than use the esoteric conditions so often seen in the SRW series. Another possibility would be to tie Battle Masteries to unlockable game modes, minigames, glossaries (SRW:OG2 could really use a character/mech glossary), or other similar things.

I should also discuss the actual conditions used in the battles... As a whole, almost any condition for earning a Battle Mastery works well, so long as it is more difficult than just completing the normal mission while still remaining possible. I prefer Battle Mastery conditions that can be cleared in the early stage of a mission, rather than ones which enforce a time-limit on a whole battle (mostly because the latter make it hard to build up weaker characters), but that is just a preference. The only Battle Masteries that I think are poorly designed are the ones that must be achieved through relying on luck or the AI moving right rather than player preparation and strategy (such as OG2's Mission 16 or Mission 20 on the Aviano route). The latter, which tend to be things like protecting weak allies or killing enemies timeframe that is so limited that you must rely on the enemies moving in a specific manner, are simply frustrating and are not a good measure of the player's skill level, so they are not fun and not a good way to determine challenge level.

Anyways, I think the Battle Mastery system is a good concept that could easily be implemented in other games. Games have been offering optional challenges linked at least since Goldeneye for the N64, and many other games (like the Devil May Cry series) rate the player based on ability. A system like the one in Super Robot Wars would fit games like those very well.

Difficulty in Recruiting Characters

This topic is pretty closely related to my brother's last post concerning the ways you can differentiate characters in a large cast. There is a major factor regarding that I want to mention: making the act of recruiting a character itself distinct is one of the most important things for making a character memorable. Often, in a game in which you can recruit a large number of optional characters, optional characters will not have any importance to the plot and will have few story elements based on them. In games like that, the only story sequences where a designer has room to make a character memorable is the scene in which you recruit the character.

A good example of this principle at work is seen in the Suikoden series of RPGs. It is a good example for two reasons. The first reason is that, in playing through those games, I have recruited hundreds of characters, but only a fraction of those characters actually stick out in my mind. The second reason is that there is a wide variety of different ways you use to recruit characters in those games, ranging from characters who can be recruited simply by talking to them, to characters who require extremely complex and long sidequests in order to be convinced to join. As a whole, I believe that characters who are harder to recruit are much more memorable and interesting.

A good example of this principle in action is seen in the character of Jeane in the Suikoden series. In Suikoden 1, you can recruit her simply by talking to her and asking her to join. In Suikoden 2, Jeane appears again, is recruited the same way, fulfills the same important role in your team, and I did not even recognize her as a recurring character until I played Suikoden 1 again. However, by Suikoden 5 she is one of the only two characters to have appeared in all five games (even though one is set over a hundred years apart from the rest), and recruiting her involves diving down into an forgotten ancient ruin of a lost civilization in order to "retrieve something she left behind". A character who was easily forgettable in the first few games is transformed into one of the most mysterious and interesting characters of the Suikoden series, simply by moving the unusual aspects of her character into the phase when you trying to recruit her, rather than leaving it wrapped up in hidden scenes and hard-to-acquire information.

Another good example is the set of gamblers who appear in the Suikoden games. Almost every gambler in that series requires that you defeat them in their preferred game of chance before they will join. All of these characters are completely forgettable, and are so uninteresting that I don't even feel like looking up their names. In a variant of this, the character Linfa from Suikoden 5 is a gambler who makes a similar challenge, cheats you out of your money in order to pay off her debts to a suspicious individual, and then challenges you to a game several more times in several more places while showing contradicting goals and motivations, before eventually being forced into joining your group by the suspicious individual. As a result, Linfa is given a chance to be portrayed as a character with her own story, rather than just a random gambler whose only character trait is a love of gambling.

As a whole, I consider Suikoden 5 to have one of the best casts of optional characters in any of the Suikoden games, and that is in large part due to the unusually high difficulty of recruiting characters in that game. There are some potential allies who have very involved and fun sidequests in that game, many of which reveal interesting things about the main plot. In contrast, I can hardly remember any characters at all from Suikoden 4, a game where the majority of characters are recruited simply be talking to them, and of those characters I remember I can't think of many distinct traits.

Anyways, these musings should not be interpreted as a statement that recruitment difficulty and complexity is the only factor in determining how memorable a character will be. Things like concept, character design, novelty, and mechanical usefulness are extremely important, after all. However, a lot of those traits will never be shown off properly unless the player is given the time to actually pay attention and learn about those things, and one of the best opportunities is when that character is being recruited.

When you give in and check a FAQ

Sooner or later, you give in and look up something about the game you are playing on GameFAQs. Preferably, I do so after I have already beaten the game on my own efforts. After all, FAQs are usually the den of the worst kind of spoilers for a game. However, every once in a while, a gameplay element comes by that demands that I look it up. In my case, it is often involved with collect x  number of items quests or puzzles that are too hard for me to solve on my own. I don't think there is any shame on a player's part for having to look something up (though I hate the spoilers). However, I would not want to design a game where the vast majority of players need to look something up on GameFAQs.

A player reaches for a strategy guide or FAQ when the fun-factor of a challenge is overcome by frustration. This can happen most frequently when a collection quest becomes monotonous, or when a puzzle or challenge becomes so difficult that the player stops having fun trying to figure it out on their own. As with most things having to do with fun-factor, personal tolerances can vary wildly between individual players. However, there are general concepts that are worth looking at.

100% completion of collection quests has to be one of the biggest causes for looking up a FAQ. There is a reason that Zelda and Pokémon games have permanent spots on the top ten FAQs list on GameFAQs. The problem with completion quests is that sooner or later, you have scoured every place you can think of, and are inevitably missing 2 or 3 of the items you need. In any collection quest where you are asking someone to look for more than a handful of something, you can expect that no matter how easy it is to find the objects, someone might just miss one and assume that they thoroughly swept the area.

There are two ways to control how much someone needs to consult a FAQ for a collection quest. First off, a developer can limit frustration by requiring the player to collect less than 100% of the items. This doesn't stop the problem completely, but it does put off the problem of needing to track down the couple you missed until later, usually the post-game period. Of course, there should be an additional reward for 100% completion, to avoid the player feeling like their effort was fruitless. However, this approach doesn't work for all kinds of collection. The second way is to limit the benefit of a FAQ by giving the player hints of some kind in the game. A pair of examples of this are in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. In that game, you can purchase clues to the general location of heart pieces from the fortune teller. This makes tracking down elusive heart pieces much less tedious. However, I thought its explicit hints might have made the quest too easy overall. I actually prefer the implicit hints found in the golden bug hunt. The implicit hints for the golden bug quest came from their pattern: the bugs came in pairs that were always found in the same general area, and were scattered somewhat evenly across the game world. A pattern like this can work just as effectively as a blunt hint with the added bonus of being fun for the players as they uncover the pattern. The trick is to make the pattern consistent and logical enough to figure out and be extrapolated.

Making it so that puzzles don't send players scrambling for a strategy guide is a trickier problem to balance. If you make the puzzle too easy or the hints too obvious, then the puzzle doesn't challenge the player, which means the player probably is bored. However, if the puzzle is too hard, then it sends players straight to GameFAQs. Figuring out how to put a puzzle in the butter zone is tricky. However, the key often involves a gradual stepping up of difficult of puzzles. Start with simple puzzles that teach the concepts to the player, and then move up to increasingly complex variations. If the player is familiar with all of the basic elements of a puzzle from past experiences, then they are more likely to be going to be able to solve it on their own.

Hmm, I should probably talk more about some of these topics in later posts.

More Difficulty Problems

This should be the end of my trilogy of blog posts regarding difficulty in videogames. I have recently been playing Devil May Cry 3 again. It is a lot of fun, but it is very, very hard. Right now, I am stuck trying to defeat the Doppelganger on Normal Mode. I already went through the entire game in Easy mode, and have built up my health to about 80% of max and built up every weapon. Doppelganger is still extremely tough. I swear that it is impossible to beat Normal mode without building up first in Easy mode. It is no wonder that Normal difficulty became the Hard difficulty setting in the Devil May Cry 3 Special Edition rerelease.

To me, this is a good example of an inherent problem of difficulty settings: they are not very consistent between different games. Some games, like Kingdom Hearts 2, are extremely easy on their lower difficulty settings. Other games, like Devil May Cry 3, can be very difficult and nerve wracking on their lower difficulty settings. It is not even consistent within games of the same series. For example, I considered Metroid Prime 1 and 2 to be a satisfying challenge on Normal Difficulty. I was never able to beat the Elite Pirate in Metroid Prime 1 on Hard difficulty. With this experience, I chose Normal difficulty when I played Metroid Prime 3. However, I only died twice in the entire game, and both times were caused when I made silly mistakes in Corrupted Hypermode caused by pirate EMP grenades, rather than from normal life drain. I even survived a stupid suicide trip through a lava waterfall to collect a power-up somewhat out of sequence. Normal mode in Prime 3 was noticeably easier than Normal mode in 1 and 2.

It would be best if games could create some kind of unified standard for how hard the standard Easy, Normal, Hard, and Maniac difficulty settings should be. Unfortunately, creating some kind of industry standard may be completely impractical, if not impossible. In any case, developers may need to turn to other solutions.

One thing Devil May Cry 3 does is offer a switch from Normal Mode to Easy Mode if the player dies too much. This is a reasonable solution that is being used by many other games, but I don't think it is perfect. When DMC3 first made the offer, after I had lost several times to the first boss, I declined. Being offered a switch to a lower difficulty setting hurt my pride. By the time the offer was made, I had easily cleared the first two stages of the game, and had little problems getting to the first boss. As an experienced gamer, I have long since learned that persistence s the key to getting through tough boss battles (something that is particularly true in DMC3). I figured that I could beat the boss with some persistence. I was wrong.

This highlights part of the problem in asking players to select a difficulty setting: it is hard to judge how hard a setting really is until you have played the game for a while. Most videogames start with the kid gloves on, and slowly stack on the challenge as the game progresses. This is true no matter what difficulty setting is selected. This means that first impressions of a setting's real difficulty can be wrong. This is compounded by the inability of the player to easily change difficulty setting. Some games like DMC3 let the player switch to an easier setting if they lose often, but few games let the player trade up in difficulty. For example, I was fairly deep in Kingdom Hearts 2 when I really decided that the game was to easy for my tastes, but in order to make the game harder, I had to start the game over again from the beginning, and lose hours of progress. So, I trudged onward through the game, and regretted my early choice of difficulty setting.

Allowing the player to more fluidly change difficulty setting within one play-through of the game may help these problems. I believe Odin Sphere had such an option. While the current system is invaluable, improvements still need to be made.

Alternative Difficulty Scaling

Games have included variable difficulty settings as a standard feature for years now. Most of the time, this scaling difficulty curve follows a simple pattern: as the difficulty setting increases, the enemies do more damage, take more hits to kill, come in larger numbers, and fight smarter/more aggressively. This is a pretty tried and true method of scaling a game's difficulty for different modes. However, this way of scaling difficulty has a few flaws, as well as a few alternatives.

The most significant problem of the traditional method of difficulty scaling is that it is completely opaque to the player until he or she actually chooses a difficulty setting and plays with it for a while. You can't really quantify the differences easily, and can't describe the differences to the player without revealing a lot of information about the inner workings of the game system.

However, there alternative means of varying difficulty than just manipulating damage and enemies. In my last blog post, I described how the inclusion of permanent loss in the Fire Emblem and Megaman series affected game difficulty. Since it has a noticeable effect on game difficulty, it means that it can be manipulated in order to adjust game difficulty and perhaps form the basis for various difficulty settings. For example, the possibility of permanent character death is what makes the Fire Emblem series so difficulty. It is not inconceivable to imagine adding a new "Easy" difficulty setting to a Fire Emblem game where characters simply don't die permanently or have a finite number of extra lives. This would certainly make the game somewhat easier, by allowing the player more leeway to make mistakes. And this is just one example of how it is possible to adjust game difficulty by modifying various different gameplay systems.

In fact, two recent Fire Emblem games did use nontraditional means of adjusting difficulty. In FE: Path of Radiance, the Easy and Normal difficulty settings did not have Fog of War on any maps, while hard mode did have it on specific maps. In FE: Radiant Dawn. Easy and Normal modes allow the player to make a mid-battle save, while the player can only suspend their game on Hard mode. Another example is from Megaman Zero. In that game, a basic feature of the game is that the player can build up weapons by using them and unlock new techniques, such as the charge slash. However, on Hard mode, the player cannot build up weapons, and is stuck using basic techniques. Coupled with bosses who have moves they do not possess in Normal mode, and the game becomes much more difficult.

The advantage of using techniques like this is that they are obvious to the player. These differences can be explicitly spelled out to the player in the manual and can have an obvious effect on difficulty. They also allow the developer to allow the player to control how "hardcore" a game is in ways that cannot be done with traditional scaling of enemy power.

Permanent Loss

One of the most distinguishing features of the Fire Emblem games has always been the fact that when one of your characters is defeated in battle, that character dies, and is gone for good. Permanent death of a character is something that most videogames try to avoid, and for good reason. Making it possible for the player to permanently loose something by making a mistake radically increases the difficulty of the game. In Fire Emblem for example, if you actually let characters die once a mission, you would eventually be stuck trying to beat the game with only one character.

One good illustration of this concept is in the Megaman X series. In Megaman X5, rescuable civilians first appeared as an optional objective. Rescuing these civilians gave X an extra life and partially restored his health. A few specific civilians even forked over valuable equipable parts. Not a bad addition in of itself. However, in Megaman X6 and Megaman X7, this system led to problems. In X6, these civilians could be permanently killed if a specific enemy called a Nightmare touched them. In X7, these civilians could be killed if any shot, enemy, or hazardous terrain touched them.

Now, I should mention that dying isn't really a big deal in most Megaman games. Even if you run out of lives and get kicked back to the stage select screen, you still have everything you have collected up to that point in the game. It isn't uncommon in the series to enter a stage, go find a power-up, and then kill yourself off so that you can go to another stage. There isn't any permanent penalty for dying. In X6 and X7, the civilians became a possible permanent penalty that you have to constantly worry about. Since civilians could drop power-ups (one of which was necessary in X6), the death of a civilian could mean that the player could become weaker in the long run. Not to mention having a list full of MIA and Dead just feels bad. And since all progress is kept if you die, the only course of action if you lose a civilian is to reset the game from your last save file. In other words, losing a civilian becomes a more severe losing condition than the death of the main character.

This wasn't so bad in Megaman X6, since the only enemy that could permanently kill a civilian is obvious, and fairly slow-moving. However, it really became a pain in X7, where civilians could be killed just off-screen before you see them in some missions depending on how fast you move. It prevented the typical strategy of casually exploring a stage to get a feel for it, and instead demanded perfection from the very get-go. Because of this, even more than the sluggish controls, Megaman X7 is the only game in the series I did not beat.

Permanent loss took on another form in Megaman Zero, which conspired to make it the single hardest of all of the Megaman games. In Megaman Zero, extra lives did not replenish after a game over. Instead, you start with a finite number that does not grow much. Furthermore, it is sometimes possible to fail a mission by dying. In addition, dying seriously hurt the player's post-stage ranking. Therefore, the game demands that the player clear every stage without dying. When I went through the game, I ended up resetting every time I died.

Because of this effect, game developers should be very cautious about adding in the possibility of permanent loss. It can have a dramatic effect of difficulty, and can make a game more frustrating than fun if the loss comes seeming randomly.