Features you hate in franchises that you love

[Clippy]

Mortal Kombat and its fatality inputs. For the love of all that is unholy do they need to be that complicated? I especially lose my mind when I see UP as part of the input string. UP is for jumping, don't expect me to intuit that I'm supposed to hold block so that my character doesn't move away from the spot they're supposed to be (which is vague in and of itself most of the time) in order to slice Baraka in half.

 

[RageBurner]

LOL! I would often travel to wherever they were just to kill their entire parties XD

Ah, one after my own heart!

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

Mortal Kombat and its fatality inputs. For the love of all that is unholy do they need to be that complicated? I especially lose my mind when I see UP as part of the input string. UP is for jumping, don't expect me to intuit that I'm supposed to hold block so that my character doesn't move away from the spot they're supposed to be (which is vague in and of itself most of the time) in order to slice Baraka in half.

?

It was beyond BS.

I remember someone making a mod for Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 that basically let you pull off any Fatality (and Babality) you wanted by spamming low punch near your opponent. What a beautiful thing XD

 

[RageBurner]

Mortal Kombat and its fatality inputs. For the love of all that is unholy do they need to be that complicated? I especially lose my mind when I see UP as part of the input string. UP is for jumping, don't expect me to intuit that I'm supposed to hold block so that my character doesn't move away from the spot they're supposed to be (which is vague in and of itself most of the time) in order to slice Baraka in half.

To be honest pretty much any input involving "up" in a fighting game is problematic.

 

[Clippy]

To be honest pretty much any input involving "up" in a fighting game is problematic.

Don't get me started on the full circle Zangief or Ryu Hayabusa grabs.

 

[ouyrtuy]

Dynasty Warriors Origin really disappointed me. It focuses on a single playable character, whereas the franchise is usually known for having many playable characters. I still don't know whether to buy it anytime soon or not.

 

[RageBurner]

Dynasty Warriors Origin really disappointed me. It focuses on a single playable character, whereas the franchise is usually known for having many playable characters. I still don't know whether to buy it anytime soon or not.

Yeah this seems to run counter to one of the series' appeals, very strange. Maybe they'll add more as DLC packs?

 

[tenkai star]

Required party members in suikoden. Part of the appeal is that you have an entire army to pick from for a 6 member party, but a good portion of that 6 will always be story required characters. In the final dungeon of suikoden 1, you have 2 short range party members forced on you. That leaves one front row spot for the many many short range characters you get. This was somewhat improved in the sequel with the caravan, but not entirely.

 

[RageBurner]

Required party members in suikoden. Part of the appeal is that you have an entire army to pick from for a 6 member party, but a good portion of that 6 will always be story required characters. In the final dungeon of suikoden 1, you have 2 short range party members forced on you. That leaves one front row spot for the many many short range characters you get. This was somewhat improved in the sequel with the caravan, but not entirely.

Are mandatory party members still a thing in subsequent games beyond the second?

 

[Gin]

the human+ of armored core. When it is usable it is very good, but in games where it cannot be used or the op intensify it is horrible. the AI literally cheats

 

[tenkai star]

Are mandatory party members still a thing in subsequent games beyond the second?

Yeah but you have complete control over your party at the endgames. I wish it was earlier, but at least it’s not like S1

 

[E0N]

Pokemon - To get all pokemon you have to trade. Also evolution tied to trading. Really hate this mechanic.

SMT/Persona - Nothing makes sense and totally random.

Also, 2 things I strongly hate (more like loathe tbh) that are not tied to a franchise but to a whole genre: Grinding and missable stuffs in JRPGs. I use exp multipliers to bypass grinding and it cuts down the time to half (as listed in howlongtobeat) and I do pretty much everything. And I'm not gonna replay a 50/60 hour linear game just to get some fancy items. I hope these 2 annoyances will go away someday.

EDIT: Forgot to mention Ace Attorney series: Some of the cases drags on for way too long. Even if everyone knows who the culprit is the game will drag on by throwing random bullshits on you.

 

[Yousef]

True, for a core mechanic, it's not well realized. Soul Hackers adds personalites which deepens things a bit, but ends up being another thing to memorize.

There’s some esoteric logic to why this mechanic is ok. I need an smt hypernerd to explain to me because I’ll probably trust them if they’re a no-lifer like me.

 

[RageBurner]

There’s some esoteric logic to why this mechanic is ok. I need an smt hypernerd to explain to me because I’ll probably trust them if they’re a no-lifer like me.

LOL well, I wrote a pretty extensive guide myself based on my own research, though it touches more on the alignment system than demon negotiation.

 

[Yousef]

LOL well, I wrote a pretty extensive guide myself based on my own research, though it touches more on the alignment system than demon negotiation.

I would absolutely love to read it. I’m probably autistic enough to appreciate it and your stuff is always good, struggler best bud.

 

[Leifang]

Mortal Kombat and its fatality inputs. For the love of all that is unholy do they need to be that complicated? I especially lose my mind when I see UP as part of the input string. UP is for jumping, don't expect me to intuit that I'm supposed to hold block so that my character doesn't move away from the spot they're supposed to be (which is vague in and of itself most of the time) in order to slice Baraka in half.

IF they had on-screen notation or bezels they wouldn't be half as bad. Like two times half-circle forward and button isn't super complicated, but good luck remembering, timing it and having correct range.

UP usually presumes (hold block), but I agree it's the dumbest. Still, MK fatality inputs are at least optional, other 2D fighters have ridiculous inputs just to do super moves, which makes it kinda unfair.

 

[miguk]

To be honest pretty much any input involving "up" in a fighting game is problematic.

Street Fighter moves — ①: ↓ ↘ →↗ + K; ②: ↙↘↙↗ + K (both only work on the ground)
SNK moves — ①: ↙→↓←↘ + AB; ②: →↘↓ ↙← + BCD, A, A, B, B, C, C, D, D, ↓ ↙← + CD
Mortal Kombat moves — ←←←← HP ↑↓↑ →+LP ↑+LK (must be done very close)

There's no escaping the game devs' mindlessly loyality to legacy movesets.

 

[RageBurner]

Street Fighter moves — ①: ↓ ↘ →↗ + K; ②: ↙↘↙↗ + K (both only work on the ground)
SNK moves — ①: ↙→↓←↘ + AB; ②: →↘↓ ↙← + BCD, A, A, B, B, C, C, D, D, ↓ ↙← + CD
Mortal Kombat moves — ←←←← HP ↑↓↑ →+LP ↑+LK (must be done very close)

There's no escaping the game devs' mindlessly loyality to legacy movesets.

Starting with Street Fighter 5, Capcom seems to be de-emphasizing pure execution, and that's honestly a good thing. Pure move execution has nothing to do with the whole Yomi spirit that permeates fighting games.

 

[faceless0man]

Re4 Leon survived a whole zombie Apocalypse and is a police and ace of his team .


But he cant shoot and walk at the same time .

 

[Stookymalarkey]

Re4 Leon survived a whole zombie Apocalypse and is a police and ace of his team .


But he cant shoot and walk at the same time .

It's CounterStrike rules. If you move even a tiny bit, it makes your aim so inaccurate you can miss at point blank range.

 

[RageBurner]

It's CounterStrike rules. If you move even a tiny bit, it makes your aim so inaccurate you can miss at point blank range.

I guess severe astigmatism is a requirement to enroll in special counter terrorism squads.

 

[Leifang]

Street Fighter moves — ①: ↓ ↘ →↗ + K; ②: ↙↘↙↗ + K (both only work on the ground)
SNK moves — ①: ↙→↓←↘ + AB; ②: ←↘↓ ↙← + BCD, A, A, B, B, C, C, D, D, ↓ ↙← + CD
Mortal Kombat moves — ←←←← HP ↑↓↑ →+LP ↑+LK (must be done very close)

There's no escaping the game devs' mindlessly loyality to legacy movesets.

To Netherealm's credit, at some point, Mortal Kombat ABSOLUTELY done away with most of the more esoteric controls in fights. Most inputs are now half-circles or back-forward and one button.

Sonya's Leg grab was:
↓+LP+LK+BLK

Sub-Zero's slide was:
←+LP+LK+BLK

In 3D games, they are just:
←, →, K*

*replace K with LK, HK or BLK depending on the game, but it's one button now, instead of two face buttons and a shoulder one pressed at the same time now.

They also removed most hold down moves, like Mileena's Sai throw, Liu Kang's bicycle kicks or Jax's ground pound... didn't Street Fighter also change charging moves for Chun Li's spins and half of Guile's moveset?

Fatalities were also simplified, looked up Reiko, in MK4 he had:
→, ↓, →, BLK+HK+LK+LP

I looked up and in MK1 (awkward name for Mortal Kombat 12), it's:
↓, ↓, ↓, HP

In fact, for several games now, most fatalities are just three directions (never diagonals) and one button. Just look at MK2 Sub-Zero fatalities to compare how awkward they were.

 

[Ian Naxieas]

Fire Emblem - I'm not sure if this would be considered a feature or not, but the way stats level up in the whole series. It's a bit less obnoxious in the newer games, as you practically trip over stat raising items, but it's a problem in the older games. Yeah, you could get lucky and roll a monster, or a good character could turn out worthless, even the main character! You get a steady supply of new characters to mitigate this a little bit, but you can't grind in the earlier games, so you have a very finite supply of EXP that could get wasted on characters that just got unlucky. That's happened to me more than a couple times.

I don't have anything against random stats, Suikoden, Final Fantasy Tactics and Chrono Cross are the three examples I can think of off the top of my head. But in those cases, characters will still end up roughly the same. I've heard some people say it makes every playthrough different and I guess? But when you play on harder difficulties where one stat point is enough to make a character double and be a good character or be basically useless. It has never stopped me from playing, but I hate it. x)

Bloodborne - I've brought this up elsewhere, but the Blood Gems can fuck right off. The idea is great, but the execution is not. You can usually get enough decent gems to make one or two weapons okay by playing through the game normally and with the DLC, but you might not even get that lucky. Sure you can switch gems around for different weapons and stuff, but I like having a selection of weapons on me that I can switch to on the fly. And the difference between a decently gemmed weapon and one without is significant. So you have to grind in the Chalice Dungeons to get a chance to get a good gem. I've done the grind on my main character, but it wasn't worth it. x) Dark Souls 3 did weapon customization the best.

Pokemon - EVs, Natures, IVs and Personality can all go to hell. Some Pokemon can be hard enough to catch as is, let alone catching one that happens to have the right combinations of stuff. That or you can breed for the same thing. I guess it's a big thing for PvP players or people who just like numbers going up. Thankfully (?) the games are easy enough nowadays that you can beat them without ever worrying about it.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance + A2 - No it's not the Law system, I could take it or leave it. It's how you learn abilities. The concept is just fine, it never bothered me in FFIX, though it's not my favorite way to learn abilities. It's just balls in the Advance games. Boy it's great when I unlock a class and don't have any way to give them abilities! Or you're just stuck with one or two abilities for who knows how long. You still need AP to learn the abilites too! Marked One, what the hell?! I beat the original FFTA way back when, but FFTA2 always ends up boring and annoying me because of this and thus I've never finished it. Anyway, it's a shame because both Advance games are quality stuff, even though they can't touch the original FFT. >.>

Resident Evil: 0 - Not much to say on this one. Item dropping just super duper sucks compared to item boxes. It gets to be an absolute nightmare if you want to collect your items in one area, or annoying as fuck if you leave them and backtrack to get them when needed. The game has other flaws, but this is the big killer for me. It's the only mainline RE I've not beaten, so I'll suffer through it eventually.

Front Mission Series - Ah FM, my beloved. It's not a perfect series, but it's super damned good. One thing has always gotten on my nerves, however. The way to gain money outside of the story missions. It comes in two flavors, the battle simulators and the arena. The battle simulators give you barely anything and you have to manually play a whole battle. Hopefully you didn't need too much for that new wanzer part or upgrade!

But the real problem is the arena. It's like playing a shitty version of Salty Bet except you're betting money that you actually need for shit in the game. If you fight weaker opponents, you'll get peanuts. If you fight stronger opponents, you might get lucky but chances are you'll be stomped. The worst part of all is the AI in 5. It's rare that I get super mad at games, but the arena in 5 has done it on more than one occasion. Your AI pilot just makes such stupid and baffling decisions. I've lost so many battles because they decide to spend each turn running from the super damaged enemy, which causes them to get blasted every turn. I don't usually use save states, but it's practically required before every arena battle.

Another feature I hate is the Survival Sim in 5. I started writing out what it was in detail but I'd be going on for another paragraph or two. In short, it's the only way to gain lots of unique parts for your wanzers as well as the only way to grind RP (RP also sucks because you get so little of it normally that you might as well not bother unless you grind for it). It's a neat idea, but all the fun is sucked out of it. Ick.

Finally, I agree with the above points of the demon negotiation in SMT and forced party members in Suikoden blowing chunks. Why do I let myself ramble this much? Jesus Christ. x)

 

[UrielSol]

Yes, love, hate! we have to be strongly opinionated, it's all about passion! brrrr!

Anyway, now that that is out of my system, what I'd like to discuss is what the title alludes to. We all have franchises we hold close to our chests due to a variety of reasons, but time and time again something happens to 'em that creates an unpleasant experience somehow or ends up working against the style and feel you enjoy and are used to.

I'll start then:

View attachment 12537

Moster Hunter World was something of a revelation to most: it was the first time the series reached the global arena and it was met with an explosive amount of success, making it instantly recognizable and strongly associated with Capcom, whereas until that point it was much more of a niche experience that one either loved or knew nothing about (I am on the former camp).

As is usual with this series, after a new game lands, an expanded version comes along, sometimes 2, 3 years later or so that introduces more content and a whole new tier of difficulty level, making for essentially the complete experience.

In Monster Hunter World's case, that took the form of Monster Hunter World: Iceborne, bringing with it new areas, monsters, and mechanics.

Crucially, it's a mechanical change that I want to focus on, here, one that is highly divisive among hunters, the Clutch Claw. It's an accessory (that is mandatory, mind you) that you fire at a monster to grapple onto it and attack its body to temporarily weaken parts of it.

On paper, that makes perfect sense, but it created a myriad of knock on effects, throwing off balance established by the base version of the game completely and all but requiring the use of this mechanic by late game to make any real progress, not to mention it completely breaks the normal flow of the combat.

Not everyone minds the claw. Some are okay with it, some love it, some detest it. I detest it.

So much so that the only reason why I even play MH World, despite how great and important it was and still is, is because there is a mod that rebalances the whole game in a way the gimmick is no longer necessary to make the game viable.

Anyway, that's me, that's my passion, brrr!

Ha I come to write the exact same thing f--- that claw Jesus, is so boring to use, well I use lance so is very clunky to me, even if I can pull somewhat consistent claw counters , i hate it with a passion, ICE really really save to end game for me, where are u? I'm trying to survive against rajang

 

[RageBurner]

Fire Emblem - I'm not sure if this would be considered a feature or not, but the way stats level up in the whole series. It's a bit less obnoxious in the newer games, as you practically trip over stat raising items, but it's a problem in the older games. Yeah, you could get lucky and roll a monster, or a good character could turn out worthless, even the main character! You get a steady supply of new characters to mitigate this a little bit, but you can't grind in the earlier games, so you have a very finite supply of EXP that could get wasted on characters that just got unlucky. That's happened to me more than a couple times.

I don't have anything against random stats, Suikoden, Final Fantasy Tactics and Chrono Cross are the three examples I can think of off the top of my head. But in those cases, characters will still end up roughly the same. I've heard some people say it makes every playthrough different and I guess? But when you play on harder difficulties where one stat point is enough to make a character double and be a good character or be basically useless. It has never stopped me from playing, but I hate it. x)

Bloodborne - I've brought this up elsewhere, but the Blood Gems can fuck right off. The idea is great, but the execution is not. You can usually get enough decent gems to make one or two weapons okay by playing through the game normally and with the DLC, but you might not even get that lucky. Sure you can switch gems around for different weapons and stuff, but I like having a selection of weapons on me that I can switch to on the fly. And the difference between a decently gemmed weapon and one without is significant. So you have to grind in the Chalice Dungeons to get a chance to get a good gem. I've done the grind on my main character, but it wasn't worth it. x) Dark Souls 3 did weapon customization the best.

Pokemon - EVs, Natures, IVs and Personality can all go to hell. Some Pokemon can be hard enough to catch as is, let alone catching one that happens to have the right combinations of stuff. That or you can breed for the same thing. I guess it's a big thing for PvP players or people who just like numbers going up. Thankfully (?) the games are easy enough nowadays that you can beat them without ever worrying about it.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance + A2 - No it's not the Law system, I could take it or leave it. It's how you learn abilities. The concept is just fine, it never bothered me in FFIX, though it's not my favorite way to learn abilities. It's just balls in the Advance games. Boy it's great when I unlock a class and don't have any way to give them abilities! Or you're just stuck with one or two abilities for who knows how long. You still need AP to learn the abilites too! Marked One, what the hell?! I beat the original FFTA way back when, but FFTA2 always ends up boring and annoying me because of this and thus I've never finished it. Anyway, it's a shame because both Advance games are quality stuff, even though they can't touch the original FFT. >.>

Resident Evil: 0 - Not much to say on this one. Item dropping just super duper sucks compared to item boxes. It gets to be an absolute nightmare if you want to collect your items in one area, or annoying as fuck if you leave them and backtrack to get them when needed. The game has other flaws, but this is the big killer for me. It's the only mainline RE I've not beaten, so I'll suffer through it eventually.

Front Mission Series - Ah FM, my beloved. It's not a perfect series, but it's super damned good. One thing has always gotten on my nerves, however. The way to gain money outside of the story missions. It comes in two flavors, the battle simulators and the arena. The battle simulators give you barely anything and you have to manually play a whole battle. Hopefully you didn't need too much for that new wanzer part or upgrade!

But the real problem is the arena. It's like playing a shitty version of Salty Bet except you're betting money that you actually need for shit in the game. If you fight weaker opponents, you'll get peanuts. If you fight stronger opponents, you might get lucky but chances are you'll be stomped. The worst part of all is the AI in 5. It's rare that I get super mad at games, but the arena in 5 has done it on more than one occasion. Your AI pilot just makes such stupid and baffling decisions. I've lost so many battles because they decide to spend each turn running from the super damaged enemy, which causes them to get blasted every turn. I don't usually use save states, but it's practically required before every arena battle.

Another feature I hate is the Survival Sim in 5. I started writing out what it was in detail but I'd be going on for another paragraph or two. In short, it's the only way to gain lots of unique parts for your wanzers as well as the only way to grind RP (RP also sucks because you get so little of it normally that you might as well not bother unless you grind for it). It's a neat idea, but all the fun is sucked out of it. Ick.

Finally, I agree with the above points of the demon negotiation in SMT and forced party members in Suikoden blowing chunks. Why do I let myself ramble this much? Jesus Christ. x)

Yeah, FE stat growths are somewhat assinine in the design, but like you said it used to be much worse in the past.

I dislike EVs/IVs and all that jazz too. I always thought how funny the dissonance was between the anime and the game, how one completely invalidates the message of the other. The anime tells you Pokémon are wonderful friends that will share a lifetime with you, the games posit that Pokémon are fighting machines that need to be selected, bred and trained for perfection.

I do take issue with the law system in FFTA even though it is integral to the design. A2 fixes it, but then adds the stupid bazaar system of unlocks, so it's a zero sum, as far as I'm concerned.

I recently saw a friend play through RE0 and honestly everything about it feels like a bit of a mess, almost like a fanfic that Capcom decided to sell.

I love FM too but you're right, there's absolutely no good way to grind. I kind of wish you had something like Shining Force's Egress.