I don’t think Hero of Kendrickstone was that bad. Actually I even liked it. But the sequel… Now that’s a whole other story, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed by it.
Edit: Wasn’t Hero of Kendrickstone the first game written by the author?
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I guess I got more annoyed than frustrated…
One time was with the lost heir: the fall of Daria. I felt it too “gamey”, and the stats where quite frustrating for me. But is about my personal taste.
The other time was with Samurai of Hyuga. Mostly again a personal thing because having Momoko trowing herself to my very straight female ronin had flashed into my head “written for male fantasy”. Plus my ronin was never even gentle with her, but had to be happy with it. It was annoyng. Plus having Hatch not even look at my ronin, when he basically run to every skirt around, was lame. I was frankly expecting since there was two characters with defined gender, that both would have been open to a romance, as brief as it could be. Instead only the female one was.
It screamed “this game is written with a straight male character in mind, open to straight female and gay guys with less work as possible”.
And I speak as someone who loves the serie.
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2xs
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Wasn’t SoH genderlocked to male, I could have sworn it was?
NVM, I just went and checked, well then I can certainly understand your frustration.
I was a bit bothered at first but I came to understand that SoH MC’s was somewhat predefined like Fallen Hero. The MC has their own past and some predefined characteristics. For someone who grown up on a survival of the fittest type of world and been exposed to the lowest of low. I have come to understand that my Ronin could be that way. At the very least, I could help shape her future and stop the advances if need be.
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Yeah, I’ve just go on with that too, but it still irked me a little in a “eyeroll” way. And probably if it didn’t happen so many times in my gaming life, I wouldn’t even have noticed.
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njl
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The most frustrating thing for me is when I try to keep my options open in romance because I don’t enough about any certain character to dedicate fully. However, by the time I make a decision, I don’t have enough time or opportunities to get my chosen RO route. So I have start the whole thing over again.
So it’s a combination between the no save game mechanic and the character writing I guess?
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It’s often a problem with character interaction just being barred by romance checks/paths and checkpoints for those being set too early ingame. I hate that too. I would like to see more from the ROs before choosing their paths, so I lately find myself quite often finishing games without taking any of the romance options. (restarting when you choose the wrong RO is even more shitty, and breaking up is rarely an option in games…it totally should be -_-) Many games have that problem…
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That’s actually been a bit of a consistent problem in Kendrickstone and Hallowford; balancing clarity and characterisation. There were a lot of cases when I opted for the latter when I really should have gone for the former, which often leads to players choosing one thing when they were expecting another.
Part of it probably has to do with my normal comfort zone being settings where context does a lot of the work for you, and part of it probably has to do with the fact that Kendrickstone was written more or less in the space of two and a half months (the reason mostly being the fact that I like having food and paying rent).
My third, after Sabres of Infinity and Mecha Ace, which are both a lot closer to what I’m more used to writing (as you could probably tell with a glance and their respective reviews).
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I think I’ve had a few small instances where I have had to re-read the choices a few times to make a guess and the meaning, I’ve had only one or two times i would say where I looked at the choices picked one and it did something and i would go “I guess maybe in a very lateral and vague sense that could mean that but seems stretching it’s meaning a bit”. I can’t quote wich games but it has happened though not frequently.
Edit: those kinda things are the only times I get a bit of wtf? Or minor annoyance but I generally move on and decide the next time I go back through I’ll take a closer look at that choice again to try to figure it out more.
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management, probably.
I quit Choice of Rebels because of it. I have no idea for how long this section of “choose what your men should do” goes, but it made me quit the game and never come back
And choices that make you instantly lose. The third book of Lost Heir did it (i learned it by looking into the code). There was an option to not answer the call of someone who holds your demonstone, and by doing so you doom the world to be conquested by demons (maybe not like this, I played it a year ago, but pretty close to it). Which maybe makes sense but oh god it made me angry at the game. I didn’t have any energy to replay it and get another ending
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I thought a little more and understood that the reasons why management in gamebooks makes me frustrated are:
- Because there’s always not enough information given to make decisions, in my opinion.
- Because there’s so little character interaction. And the main reason why I play is characters, not numbers
And these things could happen with any game: Heroes Rise isn’t about management of that kind, but it had the same problem with lack of info about what’s going on (as if poor writing and pushing of political agenda weren’t enough for the trilogy). The best example would probably be when the game (it was in second book) asked to choose between going left or right. And one of those paths could really screw the mc. But there was no info given on what will be waiting in each one. Situations like this were happening constantly.
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Yeah,like…constantly,when the stats management gets too tricky.Especially when I had to choose something I don’t like in order to boost certain stats that I need
Most frustrating COG: Diabolical. The ending would have been terrible anyway, what with all your friends being killed and you having to choose between achieving your goal or bringing back just one of them, but the fact that you can fail the final choice due to lacking certain stats (with it not necessarily being clear which stat combinations you need or how high they need to be), then being forced to play the whole game over again because it doesn’t have a checkpoint system, drove me up the wall.
Most frustrating HG: Life of a Wizard. I’ve only ever gotten one ending with that game, the one where I try to achieve some great goal like becoming a lich or an archdruid or taking over the world, fail, and then retire to obscurity. Never have I needed an achievement guide more.
One of the things that have always infuriated me is when an author punishes you, as the player, for failing to know something that they never tell you or teach you. Like using the wrong powers against a hero / villain character, or deciding how to manage your own little empire without knowing how to do so effectively. Evidently, these sorts of knowledge are meant to be possessed by the Protagonist, but we do not know about them. It’s so irritating, I just have to wonder if the author ever sat down for five minutes and thought about whether a player who does not possess their knowledge of the game is going to know how to play effectively.
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VoiD
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IMO the best games are ones that don’t rely on the stats to drive the story, but instead have the stats be a consequence of the story. Having too many stats is both confusing and pointless, and leads me to be more concerned with trying to get the “ideal” stat page rather than simply enjoying the story.
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