Difficult games "saved" if played on emulation

[_oBSOLEte_]

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The game where you need to beat the alien queen on level 3 with the starter pistol... The infinite pea shooter. Because there's not enough ammo for the other guns... XD

Magnificent game, heavily scripted, shit pant scary. Utterly broken balance tho.

 

[nobitakun]

when I was a kid the 16bit era just started but I remember beating most of the games with patience and practice, something I don't have now. It's not only old games, it's also new ones. If technology would allow it, I would use fast forward and savestates for new games when I find them difficult enough to waste any time practicing. In this case I feel relieved 95% of the games I play are PS1 era or older :)

 

[Xdqwerty]

Most nes games

 

[TentaclesMod]

For all their acclaim, the Donkey Kong Country games are much better with emulation. They are already hard, but saving in the original requires using banana coins... and the price increases if you try to save too many times in the same world.

Symphony of the night is also enhanced by save states because the whole process of reloading whenever you die is pretty annoying.

Just use some self-imposed limits like save-stating only at actual checkpoints/save points or if you are going to quit playing for today.

 

[opeb]

Parappa the Rapper
I'm not sure what it was about my emulation setup but it was functionally unplayable with how laggy the inputs were so I used rewind every single round until it got me through. Led to a lot of hilarity hearing the mashed lyrics or the characters in reverse since I was streaming it for a friend at the time. Hopefully things won't be so bad when I try out the other games lol

 

[nobitakun]

For all their acclaim, the Donkey Kong Country games are much better with emulation. They are already hard, but saving in the original requires using banana coins... and the price increases if you try to save too many times in the same world.

Symphony of the night is also enhanced by save states because the whole process of reloading whenever you die is pretty annoying.

Just use some self-imposed limits like save-stating only at actual checkpoints/save points or if you are going to quit playing for today.

I agree, most of the time, limitations are a pain in the ass, but I really liked the way Resident Evil does it. I think it's the only game with saving limitations that I consider better than not having limitations at all. Maybe I'm too old school, I always despised and will despise the autosave functions of modern games :(

 

[Kremiso]

Only time I use savestates was for casino games in Dragon Quest or other like games. I have beat a few hard games before, but after long long long long long time practicing and learning how to not die.

oh yes the casino, i also used a lot savestates there
---

i like to read many are using emulation to customize a personal "better" difficulty level that ofc wasn't included from the developers

really a good bunch of titles gains a lot in play and replay value

 

[Ikagura]

When a game has multiple endings it helps a lot too.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

I think final fantasy games in general would have been less fun to play without emulators , one random encounter and BAM everything you done is gone.

Also if it wasn't for emulator saves i wouldn't have fought psycho mantis for 2 hours straight and damaged him to half health without using the player 2 solution.

 

[Fray Guillermo]

I'm not talking about difficulty of games, but you can really see how older games where designed in a time in which people didn't have access to the immense libraries we have today so each game had to be squeezed, and also stuff like Quality of Life and such was still in a development and discovery process.

A lot of people shit on save states and fast-forward, thinking it's some kind of insult to the "purity" of those games, but in my opinion they are just tools to make up for the design shortcomings of that era. I recently beat King's Field IV and Shadow Tower: Abyss using save-states, because save points are quite far away and death means back to the title screen. I know I could've still beaten the game without savestates, but repeating some sections many times would've been more boring than challenging (because they're really not hard games, also). It's not like in their Souls games, where the game constantly auto-saves and even if you have to repeat sections, at least you already have the loot you picked up and such.

 

[Raziya The Seeker]

Honestly a lot of RPGs, especially if you have to sit through a long ass cutscene before you retry.

Me and Final Fantasy Tactics be like:

And yeah, Digimon World 3 is a lot more tolerable with fast-forwarding, too. Especially with mandatory grinding. Much as I tried to play Aero the Acro-Bat "legit", save states seriously helped as well.

 

[Your_Homie_Gale]

There are a few games I've played that I could only beat with save states or the rewind feature. First up is pretty self-explanatory: Ghosts N Goblins and its sequel Super Ghouls N Ghosts. Those games are really difficult and frustrating, yet some of the most addicting games I've played. I've always loved challenging games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, but these 2 are absolutely cruel with the enemy placement, awkward platforming, and unforgiving level design. How anybody is able to beat these without emulation tools is beyond my skill level, but I definitely have to respect those who can beat them.

Second, Ninja Gaiden NES. I actually enjoy this game I played it way back in 2012 on a crappy NES phone emulator before switching to my WIN XP laptop. I didn't think the game was too hard but by stage 4 I thought it was almost impossible to beat the levels. I must have loaded my save state on that one jump in stage 4 like 15 times before I realized how to get over it.

Third, Conker's Bad Fur Day. This one seems a bit weird, but trust me, the second half of the game suffers a lot from unforgiving check points, and awkward controls that can screw you up. For instance, the D-Day chapter because of the constant flying bullets and explosions making you lose like 3 health instead of the usual 1. Then the dracula chapter has that the zombies attacking you in the beginning when you're getting used to the controls or the awkward flying segment that is so easy to screw up. Or how about the pre-historic chapter as you're surfing on lava which is also easy to screw up. It's a great game, but I don't think I would have ever finished it on original hardware.

Fourth, Shin Megami Tensei 1 and Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei. SMT 1 and Kyuuyaku love to hit you with high encounter rates and tons of enemies early game as you're getting used to the mechanics. Got to love that Shinjuku Mall and Ginza Mall are full of enemies that love hitting you with status ailments that either prevent your comp from being used, or how later on a mandatory boss fight hits you with death spells when you most likely don't have tetraja. I think Kyuuyaku isn't as cheap as SMT 1 given that it is a remake, but it keeps the brutal encounter rate. Thankfully by mid game they're not as hard and I only began using save states at the start of dungeons, but the first few hours can easily turn off newcomers. Not to mention SMT 1 is really easy to cheese with bullets and zio spells. Doesn't help that the save points are all spread out since you can't just save through the menu like in Final Fantasy.

 

[TentaclesMod]

I agree, most of the time, limitations are a pain in the ass, but I really liked the way Resident Evil does it. I think it's the only game with saving limitations that I consider better than not having limitations at all. Maybe I'm too old school, I always despised and will despise the autosave functions of modern games :(

I can agree with save limitations depending on the game, however I think EVERY game that doesn't allow saving everywhere should have a "save & quit" function, you know, those that create a save state that can only be loaded once, like in fire emblem.

I don't blame old devs for not figuring this out, but modern devs got no excuse.

But yeah, in Resident Evil the limited saving has a clear purpose, is to create tension, force you to take risks and push forward despite mistakes. In DKC it only makes you repeat levels you already beat because you died too much in one that comes after. And Symphony of the Night simply has an annoyingly long process by kicking you to the title screen, so save stating in save rooms and loading if you die is pretty much the intended experienced but not annoying. Like, if you play Aria of Sorrow or Order of Ecclessia you don't need save states because the process is much faster.

 

[WokiBakoki]

Shinobido: Way of The Ninja on PS2. Little known cute Sekiro before Sekiro type deal. It's not bad, but it feels like it was designed to be played with save states because being caught is overly punishing. You might be able to fight off whoever catches you, but the fact you were caught changes things... There'll be reports of an intruder in the area and people will know who did it which can effect the story and security going forward. Sounds cool, and it is. But it's wayyy too easy to be spotted.

Still, if you're craving Sekiro flavour like I was when I found it, absolutely give it a go. The stealth mechanics are almost 1:1 like Sekiro. Hiding place to place, and scoring various types of deathblows when close to an enemy. Also you can clearly tell it was dubbed by... Basically whoever didn't mind doing it in the studio at the time. So it's pretty funny.

 

[TentaclesMod]

Shinobido: Way of The Ninja on PS2. Little known cute Sekiro before Sekiro type deal. It's not bad, but it feels like it was designed to be played with save states because being caught is overly punishing. You might be able to fight off whoever catches you, but the fact you were caught changes things... There'll be reports of an intruder in the area and people will know who did it which can effect the story and security going forward. Sounds cool, and it is. But it's wayyy too easy to be spotted.

Still, if you're craving Sekiro flavour like I was when I found it, absolutely give it a go. The stealth mechanics are almost 1:1 like Sekiro. Hiding place to place, and scoring various types of deathblows when close to an enemy. Also you can clearly tell it was dubbed by... Basically whoever didn't mind doing it in the studio at the time. So it's pretty funny.

I think the intention with shinobido was to make you press forward despite failing because you can fail and still continue... but is punishing enough that honestly it doesn't work too well. I also HATE how there's a bunch of enemies hidden in inaccessible areas that only come out to kick your ass if a visible enemy discovers you.

 

[Amakuchi]

Never beat syphon filter as a kid, and definitely remember making use of save states for quick "retries" when I finally beat it recently >_< Am I just a casual, or does anyone else think this was hard There was a lot of unfair trial and error, imo and I kept getting lost >_<

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I could never get past the Park level because 10 year old me was not good at finding the bombs on time lol.

 

[WesternYokai]

Not exactly "saved", but I finished Drill Dozer yesterday in just one sit thanks to save states. I already played it a ton of times, so it helped too, but the game gets a bit harder in the end and I don't know if I could finish so fast without emulation tools like this.

 

[GamingWarthog]

The Mysterious Murasame Castle's relentless onslaught of enemies can be very annoying with how you barely get a moment to breathe, but with save states it's more manageable, not to mention the classic 'I am not doing this entire level all over again for another attempt at the boss' instinct. Felt very difficult even with save states.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

Some games are actually PLAYABLE for the first time because of emulation.

A lot of them shipped with broken mechanics or tremendously bad cases of "developer difficulty" which made them impossible to enjoy. Now you can control them in their entirety.

 

[CG4R12I4N]

I don't think I'll ever finish most NES and arcade retro games without the use of emulator savestates. Games pre 90s tend to have really horrible controls on top of astoundingly difficult level designs and AI.

 

[Graw]

I like them for jrpgs because they have a ton of time wasting nonsense added. I don't see why I should need to repeat a bunch of a dungeon and watch a cut scene over and over again just because I died to a boss. It's nothing but a waste of time that adds nothing to the experience. In general I tend to only use them when not using them just results in repeating the same thing over and over again with no real benefit. If the in game save system is generally respectful of the player's time, I'll use it and not bother with save states. Sometimes I use both the in game save and save states but load the save state just because it's faster when I go back into the game. I don't really use them for ps2 or GameCube games because it seems to fuck with the games sometimes just because of the way saving works on those systems.