The Cardinal Sins of Game Design

[Wolf Kanno]

Creating a game around a specific gameplay mechanic, but then clumsily throwing in another gameplay mechanic to make it appeal to a larger audience. I'm looking at you Mirror's Edge, you have a great FP platforming experience and the challenge is just trying to get the right rhythm to keep going continuously. Then you decided we had to have some unskippable forced combat sequences, except you poorly designed it and it really runs counter to the game's story and characters, for what? So Little Bobby Boy can get an FPS fix? smurf you.

I agree with the general sentiment, but I disagree mostly with using Mirror's Edge as your example. Only because there are very few combat sequences which aren't avoidable if you really want to just run, and even less which involve being in combat for more than 10-20 seconds at a time. It does get quite bad towards the end, but I actually found that almost a welcome change of pace as combat is introduced quite gradually in the game. The only part that really annoyed me was the fight with the masked runner on the ship. That was absolutely an unwelcome pain in the ass.

I disagree that it wasn't a deal breaker. The combat system is just awful in this game and while I can appreciate trying to find effective ways to not engage the enemy and escape as being fun, the actual sequences where you are forced to stand your ground and fight are just so frsutrating, with awful controls, with your character being incredibly ineffective in a fightcause most guards can pistol whip you once and have you almost dead, and some of the most awkward counter timing controls I've ever encountered in a game, it's like they purposely made them troutty cause they didn't want you to win. These segments are so atrocious I stopped playing the game, especially since as I said, even from a story perspective, it's out of character for the MC to be fighting directly and using guns to gun down people. It is the most glaring fault in an otherwise, good game. You have no idea how much I hate these sequences.

This is for JRPGs specifically, though Final Fantasy/Squenix are easily the sole offenders on the market. Building gameplay around the post game. I am sick and tired of having the main storyline quest be incredible easy and downright tedious just because all the best equipment and abilities are designed to be used for all the super hardcore bosses that unlock around the time the final dungeon opens up. It makes the story part feel like a chore, it also makes it feel super linear cause often there is nothing to do until the end of the game, and the main storyline is usually ridiculously easy cause the leveling system is designed for those end game creatures and I can still get access to those infinity +1 swords before I ever run into the ultimate monsters. It doesn't help that the post-game is also mainly a giant grindfest to face off against stronger monsters and nothing more. FFX and FFXIII are easily the biggest offenders.

The funny thing is this would be super easily fixed with a few triggers thrown in to strengthen the last boss/dungeon based on what post game you had accomplished. FF7 even had shades of this by giving Sephiroth more HP the more characters you have at level 99 or if you used KotR earlier on Jenova. This is so easy to do.

I mostly agree, though I feel it would only solve part of the problem. I'm also talking about just having fun side-quests and stuff that don't unlock until the end game. If you don't like FFX and XIII's plot, you are so screwed until you get to the end part of the game and the game finally remembers its suppose to have more content. I'm actually surprised cause playing through Xenoblade Chronicles right now, I've had a whole wealth of side-quests available from the moment I could control the character. The entire opening part of the game from a story perspective could be finished in less than an hour before it finally told you to leave the starting town and explore the world, yet I've clocked in over 11 hours because I've had tons of side-quests to do, and the starting area is pretty huge with tons of secret places and rare monsters to fight. This is incredibly refreshing for a JRPG where most other titles would basically throws you into a roller coaster ride of the plot until the very end.