Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal has this issue with adding party members super late into the game and not having enough time to interact and learn about them.
P5R remedies this issue for one character by expanding the endgame but then commits the same mistake with a couple other characters.
Which is really funny because >!Kasumi!< offers to join way earlier but because devs didn’t want to splice them into the anime cutscenes they get relegated to post main story jail.
Such a shame, don’t think most people would have minded if they just didn’t redo the anime cutscenes but let you use them earlier
Yeah, Haru gets introduced so late into P5. And after the starbase, she never even contributes meaningfully to the plot! Nor is her gardening ability particularly useful, since by that point you can typically just buy whatever consumables you need.
At least she gets more character development and fun moments in Strikers.
A lot of party based RPG's have this issue.
By the end game you generally have your playstyle and tactics pretty nailed down, so new party members end up just sitting back at base because you don't want to disrupt your established team.
Not to spoil anything important(well the game is nearly 10y old in the west) but Trails of Cold steel 1 introduces an entire new battle system... just for the final 2 fights of the game, in an 90h+ rpg. There is a sort of reason for that but still bold move. Oh and if you are playing on the highest difficulty? You better have mastered that system in the first fight or you gonna have a real bad time.
Also bots ahoy.
That reminds me of Transistor, where the game makes the combat infinitely more interesting for the final boss, and it had me wishing the entire latter half of the game had that level of complexity.
The final boss is a mirror match capable of doing the same abilities and techniques the player has been abusing all game - up to and including stopping time for their own planning phase. They're the only enemy in the whole game that behaves this way and it's a complete shock
It’s also there because the sequel game, Trails of Cold Steel 2, has way more of those types of fights so it’s basically just giving you an early look at them before it’s gives you more.
the series as a whole (haven’t played daybreaks yet) always structures its stories as duologies. the first game is usually very slow to set up the factions/setting with maybe 1-2 major events occurring at the end of the game and the second game is where a ton of story happens.
i got mixed feelings on it but it’s very unique at least.
To be fair, Trails is a very long-running series with massive ephasis on continuity throughout. You're fully expected to play at least a specific plot arc from start to finish, and Cold Steel is the longest of these at four games. The first one is a hundred hour long prologue.
Infamous second son. You have several cool elemental powers you use the entire game. Smoke, neon, and video. You acquire a 4th power, concrete, IN the final boss fight and the fight is literally just a tutorial for the new power, zero challenge whatsoever and then the game ends.
You can go back and use it later for cleaning up side content but like... Your final boss was literally a tutorial for an otherwise completely unused power. What the fuck?
It makes a lot more sense when you learn "Infamous: Second Son" had a rushed development cycle. So originally there really was probably a few more missions after the "final boss" in the final game but it was cut to meet development deadlines.
The way they handled flight in that game was perfection, at least for their goals. The whole game feels sorta dreamlike, and so does how you fly. Fucking love that game. Can't wait for the second.
Yeah, control makes you feel like a damn Jedi minus the light saber. I love the telekinetic ability where you use concrete as a shield and throw it out at enemies.
Had a buddy over this past weekend and was showing him Control. Blew his mind when I started ripping up stairs and walls. Even more so when he noticed that the damage didn't just disappear.
To be fair, the antagonist intentionally gives you her powers because she knows that Delsin will receive her memories which sort of fill in for the motivation monologue villains give, and she has witnessed that he is initially very weak when he first copies a power. If it weren't for the video guy giving you more ray shards, the battle would have been unwinnable.
The story implications were solid and satisfying, and i definitely liked the angle of her handing him concrete because she knew he'd be locked to it, and shes more competent. Mechanically it was hot dogshit though.
I feel like the best solution would’ve been to give her two boss fights, one earlier in the game where she tries to kill Delsin with the same method we see and he just barely survives with her power, and then the final showdown.
You still keep the narrative beats of her being a smart opponent using his power against him without locking the power to the literal tail end of the game.
Alas tis not to be.
To be fair, AC games generally have really good post-game sessions due to how much side content there is, so I don't think most people felt like the Rope Dart was useless.
Ya that may be more of a me thing. Once I complete the story I lose all interest in continuing. And at that point the story has become so depressing I just want to finish it.
What annoyed me is that iirc you could see the empty slot for the rope dart in your inventory from the very beginning. And it was a super popular item after 3. So going all game excited to see it and just never getting it was really disappointing
...the entirety of Final Fantasy 13, where you get your last tutorial after 20ish hours of gameplay, and can finally switch roles and level up how you want.
I really liked FFXIII but hot damn the first 10 hours were "hold forward to walk through the incredibly linear environment and press X to use your only move to attack when it's your turn"
Yeah they have a really creative and fun battle system. There are 6 classes (names are from memory) Commando (fighter) ravager (mage) sentinel (tank) healer, synergist (buff) and saboteur (debuff).
The fun part is each character can change classes mid battle. And by halfway through the game you won't be able to win many of the fights with a configuration you set at the beginning. All 3 of your characters change classes at the same time to about 6 class combos you set outside of battle. Each character is best at certain classes but all get 3 really quickly and gain more.
Turtling is pretty safe but you have to keep a lot of pressure on to build stagger you can't just wear em down so you keep the pulse of the battle and switch tactics often
I’ve just finished XIII and am most of the way through XIII-2 now, after trying and failing to get into it multiple times since it was originally released. I have to admit, once the battle system _finally_ opens up after the 20+ hour tutorial, it quickly became one of my favourite systems in the series. Some of the boss fights and even standard fights near the end of the game get super difficult and you really have to put a lot of thought into how to approach them.
The other thing I found interesting is that for some battles, half the difficulty comes before the battle even starts, just thinking about which class combinations you’ll need to use for that particular battle.
The story was decent, but maybe not my favourite in the series. I really like the setting though.
It also unironically has one of the best soundtracks in the franchise which is saying something considering nobuos legacy
But yeah..pulse is when it gets fun.. everything before that is a cutscene....
I barely even made it into the game before I put it down for good, and I was a huge FF fan. I bought a PS3 *specifically* to play it. The linear levels were so off-putting I just couldn't take it. There was no sense of exploration at all.
I absolutely hated that. There were parts where I had party members who I wanted to use, but the game wouldn't let me change my party until I think the second or third last chapter in the game. It really put me off replaying it or playing 13 part two.
Here's an old one;
In "Legend of Dragoon", your characters have something called 'Dragon Souls' that allow you to transform into an armored form with dragon wings that can use magic and fly (both normally impossible for humans)
Aboiut halfway through the game, you are forced to fight and slay an ancient dragon, one which is rampaging and mindless. When it is killed, a dragon soul is created, implying a new Dragoon.
It vanishes for the rest of the game, until right at the end where the main character gets it... JUST for the final fight. And it's loaded with abilities that are pretty much pointless against a single-target boss.
I always stopped playing at the ghost ship that kept raising defeated ghosts if you didn't beat them all within a minute of the fist one you killed.
It was a great mechanic, made the boss fight really tactical, but I was a kid and did not enjoy level grinding.
Even more recently when I went back to it, I knew it was coming and just stopped after seeing what happens after the fight.
Oh my god the ghost ship! I played it when I was little too, and I skipped every random encounter. Then I got to the ghost ship and literally could not make it through a single battle. AND it was at the start of a disc so I couldn’t go back. I gave up and restarted years later.
To this day I never skip random encounters lol
In Dead Island 2 you get skill cards that alter the way you play and can be swapped in and out of your active loadout as you please. Some are earned via level up, others are found as collectibles, others are quest rewards. They come in four types.
Ability cards give you new moves like a dropkick or ground slam.
Survivor cards help you stay alive. one heals after a dodge or block, another grants a speed boost after using a healing item.
Slayer cards help you kill zombies faster and more efficiently, one lets heavy attacks spread status effects to nearby zombies, another causes a thrown weapon strike to give you a cooldown boost to your curveballs (reusable throwing weapons like bombs and shuriken are infinite but on a cooldown).
The fourth type are Numen cards. These are extremely powerful buffs that you only get maybe four missions before the finale. For example one lets you extend your fury mode by getting kills. That can sometimes clear out a whole horde on it's own.
If you're like me and do all the side content you'll hit the level 30 cap before getting these.
I love the game but it's weird that you get these so late.
I'm seeing so many examples of games allowing you to be a badass for about 12 minutes... Do you know about these cards beforehand? Because knowing you're waiting for them might even be worse.
The slots they eventually go into are visible on the skill screen from the first tutorial about how skills work at all. It's not too bad though. The buffs are pretty noticeable but the game for the most part isn't THAT hard so it just turns a badass into a slightly BIGGER badass.
'Enter the Gungeon' has a 'Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!' combat mechanic that you'll only encounter after practicing the game for 50+ hours.
You have to play extremely well for 30-60 minutes each run to get there, and then you get one shot at it.
The only change I'd make to the above is that by the time you access this, it is almost guaranteed you can get there every run. "Playing well" is just called "playing" by the time you get to that gate.
Fantastic game that really rewards player skill!
Well, you get to use it a lot more in Half-Life 2 Episode One. The whole first half of the game almost is with that blue gravity gun
The Citadel portion is my favorite part of HL2 EP1. The rest of the game was okay, but not that good. The whole game kinda felt like a Half-Life 2 mod more than a canonical game, but it was still good. I really like how much the vibe of Aperture Science (especially in Portal 1) was influenced by the citadel.
Realising that the big metal consoles all over the place have previously been mocking you with their solidity and unmovingness, and unleashing vengeance!
Yeah it’s sick but makes combat trivial, I think the way they introduced it was fine. A cool power fantasy at the climax but nothing that ruins the gameplay balance.
I actually like that it shows up late, I like the "Okay you're about to finish up the game, have this incredibly powerful weapon" idea. It's similar to getting an all powerful shuriken lazer gauntlet in the last mission of Far Cry Blood Dragon. Tho yeah it could've been way more fun if it was used in the main campaign but it wouldn't be as challenging ig.
I mean you're halfway there as soon as you get the Russells.
There were a couple times when I actually tried to pull objects in real life when taking a break from the game.
The first Talos Principle has the "Blessed Messengers" that will give you a hint to help solve puzzles you're stuck on. They're introduced/explained relatively early in the game but you don't unlock the ability to actually call on them until you're very nearly done playing.
Add on to this the fact that they can only be used for one specific class of puzzles plus the fact that the hints they give are often either too vague or too obvious to be helpful and you end up with kind of a useless feature overall.
I think the point is that they want you to truly experience the world and explore it the first time around and not just pass it by in a flash, but when you've done most things and you just want to get around to clean up you should have an option to go faster to cut down on dead time passing through places you've already been through multiple times.
I get the motivation to give it so late. You may race by things and not enjoy them the same. Or reviewers could burn the game for having half the runtime. So there's a good reason. But it's a game. So maybe make it players choice and allow for an ADD-approved playthrough?
This sort of stuff is why I love modding. Ever since I've found out how to do it I've been able to tweak games to be so much more enjoyable.
For your reviewers point: the Master Cycle is the reward for the Champions' Ballad DLC, not part of the base game. So reviewers didn't have access to it at the time the game came out.
By the time I got the motorbike in BotW it was essentially the endgame.
I didn't even take it out, I went to beat Ganon straight after unlocking it. Was too used to riding Zelda's white horse descendant around.
Might and Magic 6 is an old school rpg with swords, shields, spells, etc. At the very end of the game you learn 'ancient weapons' which turn out to be laser guns very similar to star wars blasters.
Not quite a mechanic, like you're asking. But it was awkward blasting your way through the final futuristic dungeon instead of using the weapons and spells you built up all game.
Breath of Fire 3 had a high trch final area, but it was just the dungeon layout, and most of the random encounters were "Malfunctioning defense bot" or some such. Turns out the lost tech really was lost, you never got a ray gun. They did use it as an excuse to bring back boss monsters for a gauntlet run. I remember a giant unicorn man (think minotaur but a unicorn instead of a bull for the not-human parts) with an electric theme as an early boss. One room of the gauntlet had 3 color variations, electric, cold, and fire.
It was really well done, but I think that's because nobody picked up a laser weapon and just knew how to use it.
To be fair, Might & Magic 1 makes clear its an SF-in-fantasy's clothing world. Two of the games take place in a terrestrial biosphere dome on a gigantic starship.
M&M6 was a mild reboot of the series (tying in with the Heroes of Might & Magic strategy series) so the SF stuff was a surprise to the new generation of players.
Brütal Legend starts as a game about mowing demons down in your sweet ride and bashing them with your battle axe guitar. About 2/3 of the way through it turns into a top-down base control RTS in a pretty graceless way.
Dude! I loved the hell out of this game. And I liked the rts mechanics as well. But it's totally understandable how you'd drop it if RTS isn't your cup of coco.
Ever try Giants Citizen Kabuto? That changes genre... 5 or 6 times? Squad shooter to RTS to spellcasting witch to more different RTS to jetski racing to giant monster rampage!
The RTS was so clunky.
They had one really cool idea though. All the developers started with a trophy, and the way anyone else could get the trophy was to do the online PvP RTS against someone with the trophy.
So to 100% the game you had to know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy....
Eh not 2/3, more like 1/3. The first section of the game is about teaching you RTS mechanics and then gives you full RTS control for the last 2 or 3 battles of that section, but then you have the entirety of acts 2 and 3 as a full RTS.
They could have sped up the tutorial part a bit but I think it worked for the hybrid RTS/hack n slash they were going for
I liked Brutal Legend, but it really did pull the ol’ switcharoo on players. The demo was exclusively the hack and slash combat too, so if you bought the game purely off that (like I did) you were in for a hell of a shock.
Civ 5 is amazing but I absolutely hate the way ideologies are implemented in the late game. It almost ruins the experience in each playthrough. I wish it was optional or had a mod that reduced its impact.
The Civ series has always had a pacing problem. You spend 2/3 of your game time slowly making your way up half the tech tree, then 1/3 of your game time zooming through the other half of the developments and unit upgrades to the endgame.
I haven't played a lot of civilization but this sounds like my experience. You're barely scraping by and by the end you unlock a new tech every turn. I got tech so fast I couldn't even use the new units before they were obsolete
It does track with the whole “technology evolves exponentially” bit, but it sucks because the actual modern age we live in gets skipped over in like 30 turns before you hit the near-future stage and stagnate there. It’d be cool if we could hang in the modern times a bit longer before you upgrade your tech trees past the modern era.
I actually really liked ideologies. Sure it sucked when your long term ally chooses a different one than you... But that made it a little more dynamic for me.
It was a shame too, flying was awesome and a great qol addition that came in wayyyy too late.
I remember flying high above the mountains and a random owl started soaring with me, changing direction when I did and I thought to myself "this is majestic, why the fuck couldn't I enjoy this sooner?"
They really should have introduced it when you opened the middle third of the map, then had the bad guys setup some kind of AA on the western half of the map that had to be disabled piecemeal so you couldn't just fly everywhere on the first experience.
The game is full of mini dungeons that have very limited rewards. Adding one that opened up the map to aerial travel would have fit right in.
Could be a nice way of handling it in the next game maybe?
Not sure how they'll explain Aloy losing all her skills and gear again, but at least they could cover lack of flight like you mentioned, AA camps or something you have to clear to enable flight areas one section at a time. At least you could fly in areas you've "beat"/explored to some minimal extent
THIS ONE! This is one of the ones I couldn't immediately remember.
The game encourages you to climb. And it's not like climbing some of those "unclimbable" mountains can't actually be scaled.
This kind of repressed trauma is exactly why I asked! Thanks!
The Last Of Us 2 introduces chained infected and if you're stealthy enough you can free them and let them loose onto enemies.
It only gets used twice and then the game ends.
The PS5 update's rougelike can randomly spawn chained infected but due to the mechanics of said roguelike it's pointless to use them.
The infected sequences were reduced and less satisfying in part 2. In the first game they were like puzzles, and probably my favorite part of the game.
Jedi Survivor *kind of* does this; the new Stances and certain special abilities are locked behind story progress.
I did a lot of exploring in between story missions and now at the end I'm realizing that in Survivor, it's honestly better to go straight though the story til at the very least you have obtained >!Double Jump and Air Dash alongside Electric Shots on BD-1!< before any major exploration.
Unfortunately the Exploration Skills are basically the only things they take away in NG+, so if you wanted to explore the main hub at a certain time of day/night you're kind of stuck, like no full night exploration will ever be possible. Still an awesome game though, I'm loving fighting random Bounty Hunters!
For sure, it was a very fun game at the end of the day, and while I got frustrated once or twice by hitting a roadblock before obtaining those and the green wall upgrades, it was never egregious, it was my fault as I basically sought out those areas I couldn't access. Knowing 99% of the game now, they actually do a very good job of herding you towards objectives and accessible areas.
The game's map is also fantastic in this regard, I barely used custom markers because it gives you *so* much of the necessary info already; hitting an ability locked area was never like devastating because ~~Bonfires~~ Meditation Points are all very well placed and the map shows that there was an area you couldn't access.
The map becomes insanely good by the end too, >!the upgrades you can find for it that shows every single missed chest/item/flower makes clearing the game 100% much, much easier!<. Some of those Force Tears are absolutely bonkers though...
Sonic Frontiers with the Last Boss
In any difficult the last Boss is... A quick time event, underwhelming but not a Big deal, and thats its, Game completed
But on hard, the **SAME** last Boss now is Ikaruga clone, and when i say this i dont mean a Gameplay similar to Ikaruga or an Ikaruga like or some shit like that nonono, i mean A LITERAL Gameplay of ikaruga (polarity change and everything) and to say the fucking boss is a bullet sponge would be a massive understatement, like any other shootemup if you have the patience of a Saint and shoot It constantly without fail you beat It and thats It!
I hated the last boss so much before the update. The new one is alot like the other boss fights and fits in sooo much more with the rest of the game. The sudden bullet hell at the end was tedious and like you said the boss was a ginormous bullet sponge that took like 20 minutes to beat.
This isn't really the question, but I was reminded of the Shield Bash in Skyward Sword. It's introduced early, but it's hard to do with the motion controls and the game basically never requires you to use it. So for most players, it's easier to just never use it and fight enemies other ways.
Oh, except for *the final boss,* who is way harder without it. So to finish the game you've got an enemy that nearly requires you to use a skill you've never had reason to practice.
I was so confused the first time I played it because the wording on the description seems like it is supposed to work in all phazon, but it actually only works in one of the final boss's phases.
It also makes you invulnerable to phazon which gets you a few upgrades. It’s not really a ‘mechanic’ though. It’s more of just a cool set piece kind of thing.
It's a call back to Super Metroid where you get the Hyper Beam after you've beaten the last boss. The boss comes back for another round and then you are given the beam to smack her down.
Minsc joins the party way too late in Baldur's Gate 3.
The weaponised gravity gun is something you use for 5 minutes at the end of Half-Life 2 and 5 minutes at the start of Episode 1, then never again.
The outrageously fun Jackhammer (automatic multi-barrelled shotgun) shows up way too late in Far Cry 1.
Yeah. Only to find the game boundary limits.
Funny enough though, the very first mission in the game where it is teaching you the mechanics, you are supposed to follow the waypoints so it can successfully guide you through to the end of the mission before you fight the Slitherfang or whatever it was called.
Well, I saw that the end objective was on the 2nd floor, so I just climbed it and said to hell with the waypoints.
Imagine my surprise when the game decided that the only waypoint that it was going to show was the one it wanted me to go to. So I completed the entire first section of the game, without knowing where to go. I beat the Slitherfang, ended up in Meridian, but half the village was unrendered, because the game still thought I was in the intro mission, and it was wanting me to follow its waypoints.
If you are super bored one day, give it a try. It's in the part where there's a 2nd floor to a building that you can jump to, but the game wants you to walk around the building and go spy on some machines in the tall grass. Don't go anywhere near the tall grass, instead just jump to the 2nd floor of the building, and you'll see all kinds of weird shit.
**Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order**
Very late you pick up clawed gloves that allow for FASTER CLIMBING. Giving it to players earlier would have had limited impact on progression in the game, it would have just made the very slow climbing sections far less tedious.
That one ticked me off.
Edit: various typos
Starcraft 2's Heart of the Swarm expansion's ultralisk choice.
Like most rts campaigns, you unlock more powerful units as the game progresses. The last unit you unlock is the Ultralisk. It's a super durable frontline tank. It's meant to be hard to kill and provide protection for your weaker units. In Heart of the Swarm, some units get evolutions, that add a choice of two new features to the unit. For the ultralisk, you can get either a free respawn every two minutes or a strong anti-biological aura. The choice is already obvious. Giving your extremely hard to kill tank a second life is absurd. But even worse, by the time you are able to choose this evolution, their are only two missions left, both against Terran. You know what Terran doesn't have? Biological Melee. It's better then nothing, but if you got this strain and the ultralisk way earlier, then you could pick it. But at that stage of the game, it's completely worthless.
In V Rising, where you're a vampire, transforming into a bat and flying is introduced like 95% of the way through the game. Not only does it completely change the way you travel, but it gives you an entirely new perspective of the map and it looks amazing! But it's so late in the game you barely get to use it/appreciate the new scenery
I think I give V rising a pass here because access to areas and metals and such is designed to be done via foot travel. It's also still useful because in the very late game you probably want to be scouring the map for unit types with high % bloods to capture before the final couple bosses.
Strafing in Ratchet and Clank 1. It was introduced in the last level of the game but they realized this was such a core mechanic for an action shooter. It’s in every other game of the series ever since.
Doom 2016 gives a rune that fundamentally changes the physics of controlling doom guy in the air at about 60% of the way through the game. Basically allows you change his direction mid air without losing speed and makes you feel far more lethal.
I find it absolutely maddening and is one of the reasons I prefer Eternal. You get the rune the beginning of the second level
Fable 3. You become king/queen, but only halfway through the games story. I remember seeing the gameplay at e3 and was so excited at seeing if it would include in depth management of the kingdom.
In reality most of it was just simplified, and ended up just bringing down the rest of the gameplay. Personally I didn’t enjoy fable 3 as much as did with fable 2
You skipped the worse part. Once you are king or queen you then need to build your kingdom and make gold. Most of the time that requires progressing the timeline forward which is completely random and they don’t tell you how far it’s gonna skip or when you’re like one skip away from the end. It was done so poorly and that’s why we haven’t had a real fable game since.
It might not have been so bad if the final time skip didn't happen when there was **180 days** left before the invasion.
"*Oh if only we'd had more time! If only the King hadn't slipped into a coma for 6 months!*" - Yahtzee Croshaw.
In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, around halfway or so you get a whistle to summon your horse from anywhere-before this, you either had to find her or find a specific type of grass that you can use to summon her. But by the time you unlock it, you also have unlocked wolf-mode anytime you want and frankly I prefer the controls of Wolf Link to Epona.
i mean it was released in Mistlands right? Technically there's still 2 other biomes it can be used it, so its not that bad if it was released all at once.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was still introducing new battle mechanics right up until the end of my 90 hour play through.
It's been a while so I can't remember the exact mechanic but I remember thinking 'this has really opened the battle system up about 80 hours too late'.
The game in general is notorious for taking way too long to introduce the basics of it's complex battle system, it really doesn't start making sense until about 20 hours in.
Witcher 3 weapon enchanting. It comes along in the DLC and is so expensive it's simply impractical to even care about using it... imo.
Edit: Expensive in game. The DLC's are worth every penny.
I remember being a lil irritated that I couldn't use power armor in fallout 3 until the end of the main quest
Edit: I'm talking about base game, i played it when it first came out. So no access to Anchorage or any of that
You can totally get that early by playing the Anchorage dlc. The main quest gives you the training just in case you didn't ask Lyons after the attack in Project Purity.
Plus there’s a bug in the power armor you get at the end of Operation Anchorage that basically gives it unlimited durability.
I’d basically speed through to it and just rock that the rest of the game
Nah. The bug is specifically that it gives you the simulation version of the Power Armor, instead of the second version in the game files that has typical durability. The simulation version had near-unlimited durability since you don't get anything you can repair stuff with in the simulation.
Most Sonic games with a story based Super Sonic fight pretty much count. Super Sonic isn’t that different in some games, but it can still be very different.
I would say the worst offenders are Sonic Unleashed with the Gaia Colossus/Super Sonic combo, that one can be wonky and requires a ton of button mashing. And also Darkspine Sonic for the final boss in Sonic and the Secret Rings. So…. Much…. Wiimote shaking…. Oh and almost forgot Frontiers with its Ikaruga last boss, which is funny since it’s the only game to consistently use Super Sonic to the point where you should be used to him by the end.
In a way... Subnautica: Below Zero. And it's introduced literally at the very end. It's like barely even a mechanic, more like a gimmick... but it *could've* been a solid gameplay mechanic.
Right near the finale, the player is given some fancy antigravity tech (I'm being vague to dodge story spoilers). The tech is used just to activate a couple of triggers before a cutscene plays out. That's it, there's like 30 seconds where the player gets a sort of quasi hover rig thing.
An upgrade like this *could* have been given to the player way earlier in the game with little effort to incorporate. It *could* have made the extensive land sections of the game more interesting to explore, y'know, by opening up the Z-axis as if one were swimming in the air. Y'know, swimming in this swimming game.
Final fantasy XIII switching role during fights... That the fight gameplay, yes you choose actions but the real meat of the fight gameplay is having the right role at the right time. It takes about 7 HOURS before you can do that... I firmly believe that this is the real reason why people hate on FFXIII. After those 7 hours the game is SO much fun!
Onimusha Warlords did this, get the coolest weapon in the game literally as your going to fight the final boss, like right outside the room, one fight and the game is over. Still a great game but that bugged me.
Xenoblade 2 I felt like added new combat stuff up until the final fight.(this might be exaggeration as its been a while since I beat the game but thats definitely what it felt like)
Pretty accurate. Combat goes from almost completely unengaging to a complex rhythm based combat with a bunch of options. It just waits for you to almost finish the game before it shows you how good it can be.
RAGE 1, you finally get the minigun but you only use it for like 30 seconds whilst you run to soke corridors and pull a switch.. thats the end of the game
Diablo 4, horses. I get they wanted us to explore the map and level up during the campaign but that map was desolate and boring unfortunately so it wasn’t fun only getting the horse in act 4. Not to mention the horse wasn’t even introduced in a fun or interesting way. We’re just asked if we were ever given one, and everyone’s shocked when we say no. As if we weren’t all looking at the mount shop trying to figure out how to get a horse early.
In Shadow of Mordor you can't dominate Orcs until the second area of the game, meaning you spend roughly half or more of the game without access to the game's most interesting feature.
Also, in both Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age: Inquisition, you unlock a new mechanic at the very end of the game that somewhat changes the way you are able to play.
In Origins you are able to summon allies from the various factions you've recruited to help you in combat, allowing you some respite from carefully controlling every battle you've been up to at that point and giving yourself some extra breathing room, potentially at the risk of losing some men for later battles.
In Inquisition your "focus" meter starts charging automatically, allowing you (and actually requiring you,) to frequently cast your ultimate abilities to drain it so you aren't damaged by the overload of power.
There are very clear and well defined story reasons for these features to become present so late in the game and they don't fundamentally change your moment to moment gameplay, but they do allow you to rethink your strategy a bit. And then the game is over.
Laser Sliding in Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves
On the very last mission Sly essentially learns his fathers unique special technique which essentially lets you slide on lasers like they were grind rails.
It’s BADASS the ultimate display of thieving skill, for three whole games lasers have been the bane of Slys existence the one thing he has no real tool to deal with and now you can SLIDE on them awesome right?
Too bad it’s the last level of the game and is only really used for the final boss fight in a small arena…
In Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, you can get the Fierce Deity mask only after getting all of the other masks and beating all of the dungeons. The mask makes you extremely powerful but can only be used against bosses, which you would have mostly already beaten at this point. It also makes the final boss comically easy.
Came here to say this one, but wanted to scour previous responses. I feel like it is a reward for completing everything - gtting that mask was a CHORE.
If you could grind for it right away you’d miss out on the uniqueness of the boss battles. And then you can dominate replays.
The "Gil Up" materia is earned near the end of chapter 16 in FFVII Remake.
There are 18 chapters. There is literally nothing to buy in Chapter 18.
There is literally nothing useful to spend money on at that point in the game or subsequent playthroughs.
Get all the luxury hand jobs you want from Madam M, Gil becomes meaningless around halfway through your first playthrough.
It is absolutely pointless.
Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal has this issue with adding party members super late into the game and not having enough time to interact and learn about them. P5R remedies this issue for one character by expanding the endgame but then commits the same mistake with a couple other characters.
Persona 4 did the same thing
With Naoto? I haven’t played in a while but I think Golden helped with fixing this problem.
Which is really funny because >!Kasumi!< offers to join way earlier but because devs didn’t want to splice them into the anime cutscenes they get relegated to post main story jail. Such a shame, don’t think most people would have minded if they just didn’t redo the anime cutscenes but let you use them earlier
Joker offers Sumi to join; she refuses with actually interesting reasons
But after Sae's palace she offers to join, but the cat tells her no without any good reasons
Yeah, Haru gets introduced so late into P5. And after the starbase, she never even contributes meaningfully to the plot! Nor is her gardening ability particularly useful, since by that point you can typically just buy whatever consumables you need. At least she gets more character development and fun moments in Strikers.
A lot of party based RPG's have this issue. By the end game you generally have your playstyle and tactics pretty nailed down, so new party members end up just sitting back at base because you don't want to disrupt your established team.
Not to spoil anything important(well the game is nearly 10y old in the west) but Trails of Cold steel 1 introduces an entire new battle system... just for the final 2 fights of the game, in an 90h+ rpg. There is a sort of reason for that but still bold move. Oh and if you are playing on the highest difficulty? You better have mastered that system in the first fight or you gonna have a real bad time. Also bots ahoy.
That reminds me of Transistor, where the game makes the combat infinitely more interesting for the final boss, and it had me wishing the entire latter half of the game had that level of complexity.
Remind me please
The final boss is a mirror match capable of doing the same abilities and techniques the player has been abusing all game - up to and including stopping time for their own planning phase. They're the only enemy in the whole game that behaves this way and it's a complete shock
Its like a better take on dark link. Which was also super cool at the time.
I recently beat that game, so it was the first example that came to mind for me too. It was a fine game, but made a lot of odd choices.
It’s also there because the sequel game, Trails of Cold Steel 2, has way more of those types of fights so it’s basically just giving you an early look at them before it’s gives you more.
Can you go into detail? I don't mind spoilers hete, I'm curious.
>!Mecha battle. Still turn based.!<
And that's *introduced* for the end of the game? That's very ballsy.
the series as a whole (haven’t played daybreaks yet) always structures its stories as duologies. the first game is usually very slow to set up the factions/setting with maybe 1-2 major events occurring at the end of the game and the second game is where a ton of story happens. i got mixed feelings on it but it’s very unique at least.
To be fair, Trails is a very long-running series with massive ephasis on continuity throughout. You're fully expected to play at least a specific plot arc from start to finish, and Cold Steel is the longest of these at four games. The first one is a hundred hour long prologue.
Infamous second son. You have several cool elemental powers you use the entire game. Smoke, neon, and video. You acquire a 4th power, concrete, IN the final boss fight and the fight is literally just a tutorial for the new power, zero challenge whatsoever and then the game ends. You can go back and use it later for cleaning up side content but like... Your final boss was literally a tutorial for an otherwise completely unused power. What the fuck?
This rings a bell. I remember thinking " oh cool there must be loads more to this game then if in only getting a new power" nope. End.
It makes a lot more sense when you learn "Infamous: Second Son" had a rushed development cycle. So originally there really was probably a few more missions after the "final boss" in the final game but it was cut to meet development deadlines.
That sucks. I remember really enjoying it.
The game felt complete though, the studio did a tremenduous job. Then they were axed as usual.
I remember Paper being introduced in the paper trail quest, but that was a giant pain in the ass for nothing.
I was annoyed you never even learned that ability it was very unique and would’ve been a good reward for doing side quests.
And it was so amazing, too. Closest thing we've ever got to earthbending in a game.
Laughs in "Control"
The way they handled flight in that game was perfection, at least for their goals. The whole game feels sorta dreamlike, and so does how you fly. Fucking love that game. Can't wait for the second.
Yeah and it felt like every character you met was sketchy/ not trustworthy. The atmosphere of this game is truly unique.
Yeah, control makes you feel like a damn Jedi minus the light saber. I love the telekinetic ability where you use concrete as a shield and throw it out at enemies.
Had a buddy over this past weekend and was showing him Control. Blew his mind when I started ripping up stairs and walls. Even more so when he noticed that the damage didn't just disappear.
That's more like telekinesis
I'm fairly sure the Legend of Korra game had earthbending in it
It had, but it was very arcadey and didn't really have the same weight to it. In my opionon, most Avatar games never really got the bending.
That was game was like, 1/2 as long as it should have been. Tons of interesting setup and then it just stops.
To be fair, the antagonist intentionally gives you her powers because she knows that Delsin will receive her memories which sort of fill in for the motivation monologue villains give, and she has witnessed that he is initially very weak when he first copies a power. If it weren't for the video guy giving you more ray shards, the battle would have been unwinnable.
The story implications were solid and satisfying, and i definitely liked the angle of her handing him concrete because she knew he'd be locked to it, and shes more competent. Mechanically it was hot dogshit though.
I feel like the best solution would’ve been to give her two boss fights, one earlier in the game where she tries to kill Delsin with the same method we see and he just barely survives with her power, and then the final showdown. You still keep the narrative beats of her being a smart opponent using his power against him without locking the power to the literal tail end of the game. Alas tis not to be.
Assassins Creed Black Flag. At the end of the game (like one or two missions left) you get the rope dart which is a really cool weapon.
It's also a piece of kit from the last game. Don't know why it showed up so late
Because it turned out to be very very good in the last game
Rope darting a guard from a perch, hanging him as you descend. Badass
To be fair, AC games generally have really good post-game sessions due to how much side content there is, so I don't think most people felt like the Rope Dart was useless.
Ya that may be more of a me thing. Once I complete the story I lose all interest in continuing. And at that point the story has become so depressing I just want to finish it.
What annoyed me is that iirc you could see the empty slot for the rope dart in your inventory from the very beginning. And it was a super popular item after 3. So going all game excited to see it and just never getting it was really disappointing
...the entirety of Final Fantasy 13, where you get your last tutorial after 20ish hours of gameplay, and can finally switch roles and level up how you want.
I really liked FFXIII but hot damn the first 10 hours were "hold forward to walk through the incredibly linear environment and press X to use your only move to attack when it's your turn"
Wait, does that eventually end? I dropped off that game because of how linear it was.
Yeah they have a really creative and fun battle system. There are 6 classes (names are from memory) Commando (fighter) ravager (mage) sentinel (tank) healer, synergist (buff) and saboteur (debuff). The fun part is each character can change classes mid battle. And by halfway through the game you won't be able to win many of the fights with a configuration you set at the beginning. All 3 of your characters change classes at the same time to about 6 class combos you set outside of battle. Each character is best at certain classes but all get 3 really quickly and gain more. Turtling is pretty safe but you have to keep a lot of pressure on to build stagger you can't just wear em down so you keep the pulse of the battle and switch tactics often
Shoot, way to sell me on a decade+ old game!
I’ve just finished XIII and am most of the way through XIII-2 now, after trying and failing to get into it multiple times since it was originally released. I have to admit, once the battle system _finally_ opens up after the 20+ hour tutorial, it quickly became one of my favourite systems in the series. Some of the boss fights and even standard fights near the end of the game get super difficult and you really have to put a lot of thought into how to approach them. The other thing I found interesting is that for some battles, half the difficulty comes before the battle even starts, just thinking about which class combinations you’ll need to use for that particular battle. The story was decent, but maybe not my favourite in the series. I really like the setting though.
It also unironically has one of the best soundtracks in the franchise which is saying something considering nobuos legacy But yeah..pulse is when it gets fun.. everything before that is a cutscene....
I barely even made it into the game before I put it down for good, and I was a huge FF fan. I bought a PS3 *specifically* to play it. The linear levels were so off-putting I just couldn't take it. There was no sense of exploration at all.
The combat improves but the game remains as linear as ever.
I absolutely hated that. There were parts where I had party members who I wanted to use, but the game wouldn't let me change my party until I think the second or third last chapter in the game. It really put me off replaying it or playing 13 part two.
Part 2 was so different. I enjoyed it. Never played 3 though and not even sure how at this point
Final fantasy 13 is the only mainline not MMO FF I played that I didn't finish. It just felt off And somehow it got two sequels!
Here's an old one; In "Legend of Dragoon", your characters have something called 'Dragon Souls' that allow you to transform into an armored form with dragon wings that can use magic and fly (both normally impossible for humans) Aboiut halfway through the game, you are forced to fight and slay an ancient dragon, one which is rampaging and mindless. When it is killed, a dragon soul is created, implying a new Dragoon. It vanishes for the rest of the game, until right at the end where the main character gets it... JUST for the final fight. And it's loaded with abilities that are pretty much pointless against a single-target boss.
I always stopped playing at the ghost ship that kept raising defeated ghosts if you didn't beat them all within a minute of the fist one you killed. It was a great mechanic, made the boss fight really tactical, but I was a kid and did not enjoy level grinding. Even more recently when I went back to it, I knew it was coming and just stopped after seeing what happens after the fight.
Oh my god the ghost ship! I played it when I was little too, and I skipped every random encounter. Then I got to the ghost ship and literally could not make it through a single battle. AND it was at the start of a disc so I couldn’t go back. I gave up and restarted years later. To this day I never skip random encounters lol
In Dead Island 2 you get skill cards that alter the way you play and can be swapped in and out of your active loadout as you please. Some are earned via level up, others are found as collectibles, others are quest rewards. They come in four types. Ability cards give you new moves like a dropkick or ground slam. Survivor cards help you stay alive. one heals after a dodge or block, another grants a speed boost after using a healing item. Slayer cards help you kill zombies faster and more efficiently, one lets heavy attacks spread status effects to nearby zombies, another causes a thrown weapon strike to give you a cooldown boost to your curveballs (reusable throwing weapons like bombs and shuriken are infinite but on a cooldown). The fourth type are Numen cards. These are extremely powerful buffs that you only get maybe four missions before the finale. For example one lets you extend your fury mode by getting kills. That can sometimes clear out a whole horde on it's own. If you're like me and do all the side content you'll hit the level 30 cap before getting these. I love the game but it's weird that you get these so late.
I'm seeing so many examples of games allowing you to be a badass for about 12 minutes... Do you know about these cards beforehand? Because knowing you're waiting for them might even be worse.
The slots they eventually go into are visible on the skill screen from the first tutorial about how skills work at all. It's not too bad though. The buffs are pretty noticeable but the game for the most part isn't THAT hard so it just turns a badass into a slightly BIGGER badass.
'Enter the Gungeon' has a 'Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!' combat mechanic that you'll only encounter after practicing the game for 50+ hours. You have to play extremely well for 30-60 minutes each run to get there, and then you get one shot at it.
Just dropping in to say *fuck the Resourceful Rat*.
The only part I haven’t beaten. Fuck that guy.
Jeeeez! Feels more like a hidden quest at that point.
It is a hidden boss on a secret level that takes a while to figure out how to even get to.
The only change I'd make to the above is that by the time you access this, it is almost guaranteed you can get there every run. "Playing well" is just called "playing" by the time you get to that gate. Fantastic game that really rewards player skill!
It was also added very late in the games life and not intended as the standard or even an every run type of optional path in any sense.
Half life alyx, final chapter. Don't wanna spoil anything but you essentially become a jedi in the last 5 minutes of the game
See also HL2 and the bit in the Citadel at the end.
That bit was absolutely freaking wicked. The gravity gun owns.
Well, you get to use it a lot more in Half-Life 2 Episode One. The whole first half of the game almost is with that blue gravity gun The Citadel portion is my favorite part of HL2 EP1. The rest of the game was okay, but not that good. The whole game kinda felt like a Half-Life 2 mod more than a canonical game, but it was still good. I really like how much the vibe of Aperture Science (especially in Portal 1) was influenced by the citadel.
Realising that the big metal consoles all over the place have previously been mocking you with their solidity and unmovingness, and unleashing vengeance!
Yeah it’s sick but makes combat trivial, I think the way they introduced it was fine. A cool power fantasy at the climax but nothing that ruins the gameplay balance.
Yeah, it similar to the ending of of HL2, where you get the fun weapon to do a victory lap before you finish the game.
I actually like that it shows up late, I like the "Okay you're about to finish up the game, have this incredibly powerful weapon" idea. It's similar to getting an all powerful shuriken lazer gauntlet in the last mission of Far Cry Blood Dragon. Tho yeah it could've been way more fun if it was used in the main campaign but it wouldn't be as challenging ig.
I mean you're halfway there as soon as you get the Russells. There were a couple times when I actually tried to pull objects in real life when taking a break from the game.
The first Talos Principle has the "Blessed Messengers" that will give you a hint to help solve puzzles you're stuck on. They're introduced/explained relatively early in the game but you don't unlock the ability to actually call on them until you're very nearly done playing. Add on to this the fact that they can only be used for one specific class of puzzles plus the fact that the hints they give are often either too vague or too obvious to be helpful and you end up with kind of a useless feature overall.
fully agree, the second one‘s prometheus flames are far better
But they don't give you a hint, they just bypass the puzzle, which is really frustrating because... you're here for the puzzles.
Sword in mgs2
SO wish they gave it to you early in new game +. Pretty sure the only way to get it early is a mod for the original PC release from the early 2000s
They DID make Metal Gear Rising to make up for it though
The motorcycle in BOTW was freaking awesome but by the time you get it you’ve already explored everything
Yeah but you haven’t done wheelies off everything yet.
You make an excellent point.
The what?
Pretty sure it was only in the DLC
I think the point is that they want you to truly experience the world and explore it the first time around and not just pass it by in a flash, but when you've done most things and you just want to get around to clean up you should have an option to go faster to cut down on dead time passing through places you've already been through multiple times.
I get the motivation to give it so late. You may race by things and not enjoy them the same. Or reviewers could burn the game for having half the runtime. So there's a good reason. But it's a game. So maybe make it players choice and allow for an ADD-approved playthrough? This sort of stuff is why I love modding. Ever since I've found out how to do it I've been able to tweak games to be so much more enjoyable.
For your reviewers point: the Master Cycle is the reward for the Champions' Ballad DLC, not part of the base game. So reviewers didn't have access to it at the time the game came out.
By the time I got the motorbike in BotW it was essentially the endgame. I didn't even take it out, I went to beat Ganon straight after unlocking it. Was too used to riding Zelda's white horse descendant around.
Might and Magic 6 is an old school rpg with swords, shields, spells, etc. At the very end of the game you learn 'ancient weapons' which turn out to be laser guns very similar to star wars blasters. Not quite a mechanic, like you're asking. But it was awkward blasting your way through the final futuristic dungeon instead of using the weapons and spells you built up all game.
Breath of Fire 3 had a high trch final area, but it was just the dungeon layout, and most of the random encounters were "Malfunctioning defense bot" or some such. Turns out the lost tech really was lost, you never got a ray gun. They did use it as an excuse to bring back boss monsters for a gauntlet run. I remember a giant unicorn man (think minotaur but a unicorn instead of a bull for the not-human parts) with an electric theme as an early boss. One room of the gauntlet had 3 color variations, electric, cold, and fire. It was really well done, but I think that's because nobody picked up a laser weapon and just knew how to use it.
Ah yes. My favorite fantasy type, "Demons are actually aliens and this is a Sci fi game now."
To be fair, Might & Magic 1 makes clear its an SF-in-fantasy's clothing world. Two of the games take place in a terrestrial biosphere dome on a gigantic starship. M&M6 was a mild reboot of the series (tying in with the Heroes of Might & Magic strategy series) so the SF stuff was a surprise to the new generation of players.
Brütal Legend starts as a game about mowing demons down in your sweet ride and bashing them with your battle axe guitar. About 2/3 of the way through it turns into a top-down base control RTS in a pretty graceless way.
Dude! I loved the hell out of this game. And I liked the rts mechanics as well. But it's totally understandable how you'd drop it if RTS isn't your cup of coco.
Ever try Giants Citizen Kabuto? That changes genre... 5 or 6 times? Squad shooter to RTS to spellcasting witch to more different RTS to jetski racing to giant monster rampage!
TIIIIIMMMMMMYYYYYYYY!!!!!!! Edit: https://youtu.be/4Sh_VuxYqBY?si=c_x3W3ObxSGgpTut
We know, WE KNOW! He’s down there! …oh
Lol I typically do not like RTS games, but found Brutal Legend's RTS gameplay to be just simplified enough that I enjoyed it.
Same! I know why it had the issues that it did, but the pacing on that game was rough! Still loved it
My friend explained it as a stealth RTS. Not that there was a stealth mechanic, but that the RTS aspect was hidden from you at first.
The RTS was so clunky. They had one really cool idea though. All the developers started with a trophy, and the way anyone else could get the trophy was to do the online PvP RTS against someone with the trophy. So to 100% the game you had to know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy....
Those trophies were super common in games from that era lol
Eh not 2/3, more like 1/3. The first section of the game is about teaching you RTS mechanics and then gives you full RTS control for the last 2 or 3 battles of that section, but then you have the entirety of acts 2 and 3 as a full RTS. They could have sped up the tutorial part a bit but I think it worked for the hybrid RTS/hack n slash they were going for
I liked Brutal Legend, but it really did pull the ol’ switcharoo on players. The demo was exclusively the hack and slash combat too, so if you bought the game purely off that (like I did) you were in for a hell of a shock.
This is the one I was looking for. Loved that game, but it was so jarring when it went full RTS.
Civ 5 is amazing but I absolutely hate the way ideologies are implemented in the late game. It almost ruins the experience in each playthrough. I wish it was optional or had a mod that reduced its impact.
The Civ series has always had a pacing problem. You spend 2/3 of your game time slowly making your way up half the tech tree, then 1/3 of your game time zooming through the other half of the developments and unit upgrades to the endgame.
I haven't played a lot of civilization but this sounds like my experience. You're barely scraping by and by the end you unlock a new tech every turn. I got tech so fast I couldn't even use the new units before they were obsolete
Sounds very reflective of real life lol
It does track with the whole “technology evolves exponentially” bit, but it sucks because the actual modern age we live in gets skipped over in like 30 turns before you hit the near-future stage and stagnate there. It’d be cool if we could hang in the modern times a bit longer before you upgrade your tech trees past the modern era.
Ideology ruining something that could be a lot of fun? Props for realism
I actually really liked ideologies. Sure it sucked when your long term ally chooses a different one than you... But that made it a little more dynamic for me.
Horizon 2 and the flying mount. I'd done everything the painful climbing way before I unlocked it.
It was a shame too, flying was awesome and a great qol addition that came in wayyyy too late. I remember flying high above the mountains and a random owl started soaring with me, changing direction when I did and I thought to myself "this is majestic, why the fuck couldn't I enjoy this sooner?"
They really should have introduced it when you opened the middle third of the map, then had the bad guys setup some kind of AA on the western half of the map that had to be disabled piecemeal so you couldn't just fly everywhere on the first experience. The game is full of mini dungeons that have very limited rewards. Adding one that opened up the map to aerial travel would have fit right in.
Could be a nice way of handling it in the next game maybe? Not sure how they'll explain Aloy losing all her skills and gear again, but at least they could cover lack of flight like you mentioned, AA camps or something you have to clear to enable flight areas one section at a time. At least you could fly in areas you've "beat"/explored to some minimal extent
THIS ONE! This is one of the ones I couldn't immediately remember. The game encourages you to climb. And it's not like climbing some of those "unclimbable" mountains can't actually be scaled. This kind of repressed trauma is exactly why I asked! Thanks!
The Last Of Us 2 introduces chained infected and if you're stealthy enough you can free them and let them loose onto enemies. It only gets used twice and then the game ends. The PS5 update's rougelike can randomly spawn chained infected but due to the mechanics of said roguelike it's pointless to use them.
The infected sequences were reduced and less satisfying in part 2. In the first game they were like puzzles, and probably my favorite part of the game.
Jedi Survivor *kind of* does this; the new Stances and certain special abilities are locked behind story progress. I did a lot of exploring in between story missions and now at the end I'm realizing that in Survivor, it's honestly better to go straight though the story til at the very least you have obtained >!Double Jump and Air Dash alongside Electric Shots on BD-1!< before any major exploration. Unfortunately the Exploration Skills are basically the only things they take away in NG+, so if you wanted to explore the main hub at a certain time of day/night you're kind of stuck, like no full night exploration will ever be possible. Still an awesome game though, I'm loving fighting random Bounty Hunters!
It's a metroidvania essentially so they're meant to drip feed abilities and give you time between to backtrack and use them to explore previous areas.
For sure, it was a very fun game at the end of the day, and while I got frustrated once or twice by hitting a roadblock before obtaining those and the green wall upgrades, it was never egregious, it was my fault as I basically sought out those areas I couldn't access. Knowing 99% of the game now, they actually do a very good job of herding you towards objectives and accessible areas. The game's map is also fantastic in this regard, I barely used custom markers because it gives you *so* much of the necessary info already; hitting an ability locked area was never like devastating because ~~Bonfires~~ Meditation Points are all very well placed and the map shows that there was an area you couldn't access. The map becomes insanely good by the end too, >!the upgrades you can find for it that shows every single missed chest/item/flower makes clearing the game 100% much, much easier!<. Some of those Force Tears are absolutely bonkers though...
Thanks for the spoiler tag. Unlucky for me I'm the type of curious imbecile who ruins his own fun XD
Fun wasn't introduced into Diablo 4 until recently.
Wait what changed? Is it fun now?
Good buffs to Necro. Streamlined loot affixes. Lots of other bits. Levelling to 100 is much faster too.
The story took way too long to introduce the frikin horse. So many hours spent slogging through snow, sand, and mud on foot for no good reason.
Sonic Frontiers with the Last Boss In any difficult the last Boss is... A quick time event, underwhelming but not a Big deal, and thats its, Game completed But on hard, the **SAME** last Boss now is Ikaruga clone, and when i say this i dont mean a Gameplay similar to Ikaruga or an Ikaruga like or some shit like that nonono, i mean A LITERAL Gameplay of ikaruga (polarity change and everything) and to say the fucking boss is a bullet sponge would be a massive understatement, like any other shootemup if you have the patience of a Saint and shoot It constantly without fail you beat It and thats It!
I hated the last boss so much before the update. The new one is alot like the other boss fights and fits in sooo much more with the rest of the game. The sudden bullet hell at the end was tedious and like you said the boss was a ginormous bullet sponge that took like 20 minutes to beat.
This isn't really the question, but I was reminded of the Shield Bash in Skyward Sword. It's introduced early, but it's hard to do with the motion controls and the game basically never requires you to use it. So for most players, it's easier to just never use it and fight enemies other ways. Oh, except for *the final boss,* who is way harder without it. So to finish the game you've got an enemy that nearly requires you to use a skill you've never had reason to practice.
Also, stabbing fruit. AFAIK, it is never taught but is required in the later fire temple to cary the water fruit to the frog.
I played skyward sword and used the shield bash quite often
I spent the whole MGS2 asking when we'd get the cool sword. Honestly it played a bit clunky, but it was really fun once you get the hang of it
Blocking bullets was so badass
Metroid Prime, iirc, gives you the best suit that lets you fire Phazon beams and only lets you do it during the last boss fight
I was so confused the first time I played it because the wording on the description seems like it is supposed to work in all phazon, but it actually only works in one of the final boss's phases.
It also makes you invulnerable to phazon which gets you a few upgrades. It’s not really a ‘mechanic’ though. It’s more of just a cool set piece kind of thing.
It's a call back to Super Metroid where you get the Hyper Beam after you've beaten the last boss. The boss comes back for another round and then you are given the beam to smack her down.
Minsc joins the party way too late in Baldur's Gate 3. The weaponised gravity gun is something you use for 5 minutes at the end of Half-Life 2 and 5 minutes at the start of Episode 1, then never again. The outrageously fun Jackhammer (automatic multi-barrelled shotgun) shows up way too late in Far Cry 1.
In Horizon Forbidden West, you don't get the ability to command flying mounts until you are 90% done with the game.
Did you spend 15 minutes climbing the "unclimbable" mountain too?
Yeah. Only to find the game boundary limits. Funny enough though, the very first mission in the game where it is teaching you the mechanics, you are supposed to follow the waypoints so it can successfully guide you through to the end of the mission before you fight the Slitherfang or whatever it was called. Well, I saw that the end objective was on the 2nd floor, so I just climbed it and said to hell with the waypoints. Imagine my surprise when the game decided that the only waypoint that it was going to show was the one it wanted me to go to. So I completed the entire first section of the game, without knowing where to go. I beat the Slitherfang, ended up in Meridian, but half the village was unrendered, because the game still thought I was in the intro mission, and it was wanting me to follow its waypoints. If you are super bored one day, give it a try. It's in the part where there's a 2nd floor to a building that you can jump to, but the game wants you to walk around the building and go spy on some machines in the tall grass. Don't go anywhere near the tall grass, instead just jump to the 2nd floor of the building, and you'll see all kinds of weird shit.
You should enter this on speedruns.com as "time wasted climbing %". This is exactly up their ally
Being able to fly the Sunwing in Horizon Forbidden West. But I understand they want you to explore the world on foot as you progress
**Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order** Very late you pick up clawed gloves that allow for FASTER CLIMBING. Giving it to players earlier would have had limited impact on progression in the game, it would have just made the very slow climbing sections far less tedious. That one ticked me off. Edit: various typos
Starcraft 2's Heart of the Swarm expansion's ultralisk choice. Like most rts campaigns, you unlock more powerful units as the game progresses. The last unit you unlock is the Ultralisk. It's a super durable frontline tank. It's meant to be hard to kill and provide protection for your weaker units. In Heart of the Swarm, some units get evolutions, that add a choice of two new features to the unit. For the ultralisk, you can get either a free respawn every two minutes or a strong anti-biological aura. The choice is already obvious. Giving your extremely hard to kill tank a second life is absurd. But even worse, by the time you are able to choose this evolution, their are only two missions left, both against Terran. You know what Terran doesn't have? Biological Melee. It's better then nothing, but if you got this strain and the ultralisk way earlier, then you could pick it. But at that stage of the game, it's completely worthless.
In V Rising, where you're a vampire, transforming into a bat and flying is introduced like 95% of the way through the game. Not only does it completely change the way you travel, but it gives you an entirely new perspective of the map and it looks amazing! But it's so late in the game you barely get to use it/appreciate the new scenery
I think I give V rising a pass here because access to areas and metals and such is designed to be done via foot travel. It's also still useful because in the very late game you probably want to be scouring the map for unit types with high % bloods to capture before the final couple bosses.
I agree. Giving flight too early would ruin the experience, IMO. It's more of a quality of life thing for when you've done all the lead up to it.
Strafing in Ratchet and Clank 1. It was introduced in the last level of the game but they realized this was such a core mechanic for an action shooter. It’s in every other game of the series ever since.
Doom 2016 gives a rune that fundamentally changes the physics of controlling doom guy in the air at about 60% of the way through the game. Basically allows you change his direction mid air without losing speed and makes you feel far more lethal. I find it absolutely maddening and is one of the reasons I prefer Eternal. You get the rune the beginning of the second level
Fable 3. You become king/queen, but only halfway through the games story. I remember seeing the gameplay at e3 and was so excited at seeing if it would include in depth management of the kingdom. In reality most of it was just simplified, and ended up just bringing down the rest of the gameplay. Personally I didn’t enjoy fable 3 as much as did with fable 2
You skipped the worse part. Once you are king or queen you then need to build your kingdom and make gold. Most of the time that requires progressing the timeline forward which is completely random and they don’t tell you how far it’s gonna skip or when you’re like one skip away from the end. It was done so poorly and that’s why we haven’t had a real fable game since.
It might not have been so bad if the final time skip didn't happen when there was **180 days** left before the invasion. "*Oh if only we'd had more time! If only the King hadn't slipped into a coma for 6 months!*" - Yahtzee Croshaw.
In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, around halfway or so you get a whistle to summon your horse from anywhere-before this, you either had to find her or find a specific type of grass that you can use to summon her. But by the time you unlock it, you also have unlocked wolf-mode anytime you want and frankly I prefer the controls of Wolf Link to Epona.
Magic in Valheim.
i mean it was released in Mistlands right? Technically there's still 2 other biomes it can be used it, so its not that bad if it was released all at once.
6 biomes in is pretty late for such a big mechanic 🤷
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was still introducing new battle mechanics right up until the end of my 90 hour play through. It's been a while so I can't remember the exact mechanic but I remember thinking 'this has really opened the battle system up about 80 hours too late'. The game in general is notorious for taking way too long to introduce the basics of it's complex battle system, it really doesn't start making sense until about 20 hours in.
The entire RTS component of Brutal Legend
Witcher 3 weapon enchanting. It comes along in the DLC and is so expensive it's simply impractical to even care about using it... imo. Edit: Expensive in game. The DLC's are worth every penny.
How many bangable sorceresses does the DLC have?
I remember being a lil irritated that I couldn't use power armor in fallout 3 until the end of the main quest Edit: I'm talking about base game, i played it when it first came out. So no access to Anchorage or any of that
You can get power armor training as soon as you get to the citadel though, around halfway through the game
You can totally get that early by playing the Anchorage dlc. The main quest gives you the training just in case you didn't ask Lyons after the attack in Project Purity.
Plus there’s a bug in the power armor you get at the end of Operation Anchorage that basically gives it unlimited durability. I’d basically speed through to it and just rock that the rest of the game
Playing through right now and got the armor from anchorage, I thought it was a feature that it didn’t degrade…
Nah. The bug is specifically that it gives you the simulation version of the Power Armor, instead of the second version in the game files that has typical durability. The simulation version had near-unlimited durability since you don't get anything you can repair stuff with in the simulation.
Most Sonic games with a story based Super Sonic fight pretty much count. Super Sonic isn’t that different in some games, but it can still be very different. I would say the worst offenders are Sonic Unleashed with the Gaia Colossus/Super Sonic combo, that one can be wonky and requires a ton of button mashing. And also Darkspine Sonic for the final boss in Sonic and the Secret Rings. So…. Much…. Wiimote shaking…. Oh and almost forgot Frontiers with its Ikaruga last boss, which is funny since it’s the only game to consistently use Super Sonic to the point where you should be used to him by the end.
In a way... Subnautica: Below Zero. And it's introduced literally at the very end. It's like barely even a mechanic, more like a gimmick... but it *could've* been a solid gameplay mechanic. Right near the finale, the player is given some fancy antigravity tech (I'm being vague to dodge story spoilers). The tech is used just to activate a couple of triggers before a cutscene plays out. That's it, there's like 30 seconds where the player gets a sort of quasi hover rig thing. An upgrade like this *could* have been given to the player way earlier in the game with little effort to incorporate. It *could* have made the extensive land sections of the game more interesting to explore, y'know, by opening up the Z-axis as if one were swimming in the air. Y'know, swimming in this swimming game.
Force unleashed. Can't change your light saber color until most of the way through the game. I unlocked orange and got to use it for like 30 minutes.
Seems like such a tiny thing too to just include from the start. How is it hindering anyone if you would...
Final fantasy XIII switching role during fights... That the fight gameplay, yes you choose actions but the real meat of the fight gameplay is having the right role at the right time. It takes about 7 HOURS before you can do that... I firmly believe that this is the real reason why people hate on FFXIII. After those 7 hours the game is SO much fun!
Onimusha Warlords did this, get the coolest weapon in the game literally as your going to fight the final boss, like right outside the room, one fight and the game is over. Still a great game but that bugged me.
In Lightning Returns, you are only able to upgrade your weapons in New Game+.
Xenoblade 2 I felt like added new combat stuff up until the final fight.(this might be exaggeration as its been a while since I beat the game but thats definitely what it felt like)
The Torna DLC literally had a tutorial for the final boss battle, so it's not exaggeration for that one.
Pretty accurate. Combat goes from almost completely unengaging to a complex rhythm based combat with a bunch of options. It just waits for you to almost finish the game before it shows you how good it can be.
GTA 3 teaches you to shoot from car windows at THE END of the game. Last 10 missions tops.
Bucket in The Stanley Parable. It's basically the entire point of the game and hidden away near the ending.
RAGE 1, you finally get the minigun but you only use it for like 30 seconds whilst you run to soke corridors and pull a switch.. thats the end of the game
Diablo 4, horses. I get they wanted us to explore the map and level up during the campaign but that map was desolate and boring unfortunately so it wasn’t fun only getting the horse in act 4. Not to mention the horse wasn’t even introduced in a fun or interesting way. We’re just asked if we were ever given one, and everyone’s shocked when we say no. As if we weren’t all looking at the mount shop trying to figure out how to get a horse early.
In Shadow of Mordor you can't dominate Orcs until the second area of the game, meaning you spend roughly half or more of the game without access to the game's most interesting feature. Also, in both Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age: Inquisition, you unlock a new mechanic at the very end of the game that somewhat changes the way you are able to play. In Origins you are able to summon allies from the various factions you've recruited to help you in combat, allowing you some respite from carefully controlling every battle you've been up to at that point and giving yourself some extra breathing room, potentially at the risk of losing some men for later battles. In Inquisition your "focus" meter starts charging automatically, allowing you (and actually requiring you,) to frequently cast your ultimate abilities to drain it so you aren't damaged by the overload of power. There are very clear and well defined story reasons for these features to become present so late in the game and they don't fundamentally change your moment to moment gameplay, but they do allow you to rethink your strategy a bit. And then the game is over.
Is Watchmojo content fishing?
I have no affiliation with any media company. If they end up using my post I'll go ask them for a couple dollars though...
FF13, the fact that the battle system really doesn't open up until almost the end of the game.
Laser Sliding in Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves On the very last mission Sly essentially learns his fathers unique special technique which essentially lets you slide on lasers like they were grind rails. It’s BADASS the ultimate display of thieving skill, for three whole games lasers have been the bane of Slys existence the one thing he has no real tool to deal with and now you can SLIDE on them awesome right? Too bad it’s the last level of the game and is only really used for the final boss fight in a small arena…
Hogwarts Legacy and the unforgivable curses.
In Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, you can get the Fierce Deity mask only after getting all of the other masks and beating all of the dungeons. The mask makes you extremely powerful but can only be used against bosses, which you would have mostly already beaten at this point. It also makes the final boss comically easy.
Came here to say this one, but wanted to scour previous responses. I feel like it is a reward for completing everything - gtting that mask was a CHORE. If you could grind for it right away you’d miss out on the uniqueness of the boss battles. And then you can dominate replays.
Tyranny - Edicts. You get a whopping 10 minutes of gameplay between declaring your own Edict and credits rolling.
The "Gil Up" materia is earned near the end of chapter 16 in FFVII Remake. There are 18 chapters. There is literally nothing to buy in Chapter 18. There is literally nothing useful to spend money on at that point in the game or subsequent playthroughs. Get all the luxury hand jobs you want from Madam M, Gil becomes meaningless around halfway through your first playthrough. It is absolutely pointless.