What games do you feel you play "wrong" and which do you play "right"?

General
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They say there’s no “wrong” way to play a game. If the writer lets you do it it us “right” however take a game like Wayhaven. You CAN play it Acearo but the author has a specific warning asking you not to. So Playing it Acearo could be considered a wrong way. Another example would be the Heroes Rise series where you can murder the President but in the later games your character is considered a bastion of heroism with no dark undertones. Being a killer is the “wrong” way. Conversely there are ways when playing a game choices you make that you can almost feel tbe Author themself would have made if playing the game. Where if they did a let’s play of their game you’d see the exact route you’d have chosen. That could be construed as the “right” way.

Anyway I feel i play pretty much every game wrong except for the Nothing left to Burn WIP.

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I don’t think there is exactly “wrong” and “right” way to play. A matter of perspective in my opinion. I look at it as in…canon story and non-canon endings.

I mean when i started with Equia, i had no intention of offering evil or bad routes. Yet later due to feedback and demand i decided to put that in as it was requested. But i did state on multiple occasions that that’s not a canon story, nor canon ending.

It was more of a…bonus content for those who want to go down that path. But to cut it short, i don’t think there’s right and wrong games.

Just that certain endings are official and others are not. :man_shrugging: But each to his own i guess.

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I don’t know of any games that I have played ‘wrong’. I would think most CoG/HG/HC games are written so that there is no objectively correct choice.

Having said that, one exception I know of is ‘The Last Wizard’. One achievement stipulates that the player have no friends when friends are needed. This I would consider a ‘poor’ choice. There is zero benefit to having a bad relationship with any of the characters. And you can maintain positive relationships with all of them relatively easily. So not doing so would be against your own best interests.

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Gilded Rains. The game says “You can pursue a relationship with Rochester, but it’s for the best if you don’t. Why would you even want to?”

Look, I’m always looking for a forbidden romance - even more with a cool, manipulative character who’s the rival of MC. Now, not just the plot was apparently against the relationship, but the game as well? No, that was too much temptation. I rebelled, of course. I tried to play the “wrong” way.

For the first time, I code dived. Insanely. The game is pretty hard, but I put my best effort into it - my willingness to “contradict” the game allied with the power of a potential angst romance was more than enough to keep me going.

However, I never stand a chance.

I was delusional. I thought I was not really playing wrong. I thought the game wanted me to do so - but it was saying “no, don’t go for it” just for the sake of appearances, y’know?

It was not the case.

The “wrong” was indeed wrong. It was a sincere advice that one the game gave to me.

I was fooled expecting the rules of “this fictional universe will bows to your MC because they’re the protagonist”, however, they never were applied. The game tried to tell me – don’t expect it, this is the wrong way to play. I didn’t listen. And paid for that.

If you play Gilded Rains, listen to the game. Play the right way.

Also, this topic remembers me of The Stanley Parable. It’s a metagame about this. I recommend it if you somehow never checked it! One of the best games I’ve ever played!

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Reminds me of romancing Ennis in The Fog knows your name.

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Kill everybody in Tin Star. It’s one of those rare games that lets you do it, but you end up cutting out big chunks of the plot if you do so.

But it is more fun to go rogue and win a 1v3 at the end, before going on to sack the town.

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I was going to say GUILDED RAILS as well…I restarted that game multiple times because I couldnt get ANYONE to love me. I finally just gave up, frustrated. I dont think that has ever happened to me before.

I like how I play/ the choices I made for HEART OF THE HOUSE. That one seems to have negative outcome if you choose poorly?

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My energy with Gilded Rails given none of the characters were interesting enough to marry and dad kept insisting we had to marry:

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Personally, there isn’t a wrong way to play a game if you can succeed. My best example of this is The Last of Us. The immediately obvious choice is that you should play the game stealthily, which I normally do. However, even on the hardest difficulty, you can go full Rambo with a bit of strategy and practice. Certainly the developers intended for players to stay quiet most of the time, but it’s not like you’ll always die if you decide to be a gunslinger.

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Oh, me too! Like I think I heard someone say they had to restart the game because Dev died, but this has not happened to me even once. It seems that whatever I do, even in playthroughs where I basically pay no mind to him, my MC ends up saving him. If it weren’t for that one comment I wouldn’t even know the negative outcome was possible.

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Oh Dev died on my first run. Took me a while to keep him alive.

But to be fair, I even suck at playing my own game, had Herald save my life once after messing up and started cursing myself because I had forgotten that option even existed so…

I think I played Heroes Rise wrong, because romancing Jury is not meant to be. I thought it would be like Preston in Tin Star, a side choice but a valid one. But oh boy was I wrong.

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I like to end Heroes Rise by combining Infini powers with Black Magic, wrecking the entire universe and making a shiny new reality to play around in. Bastion of heroism? Nope, no thank you.

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Yeah, that was my favorite ending too.

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I would say Zombie Exodus has a very distinct “wrong” ending.

The game has a very big emphasis on not killing or wronging living humans because doing so decreases your humanity stat.

However, if you don’t kill Tom during part 3, even if you’re in a relationship with him, you still get, the “bad” ending where it’s revealed you were a zombie all along and everyone in the story is just scientists studying you that you’ve fabricated into this elaborate story.

In my opinion, however, it always feels like the “true” ending, even if it’s referred to as the bad one. It was just so innovative for its time during the zombie apocalypse theme’s hay day. Iconic.

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WHAT?! I KNEW IT! …andwhostom… time to replay again… oh I remember because i saw people talking about bad endings make them so sad so i did my best to avoid it. :rofl:

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I don’t know if there’s a right way to play one of these games tbh so, I’m gonna tell you which of my playthroughs (and obviously, the games) I had the most fun playing them:

  1. Being an undercover FBI agent on breach is risky risky risky, but the angst it brings when you romance Gabriel is worth it. Choosing between your duty vs your feelings and also feeling like a fraud the whole time is awesome! I played as a criminal too but I think it’s not as entertaining :c.
  2. Creme de la Creme offers the opportunity to be a manipulative beach and I so liked it. MC was so nice to everyone, but she also knew how to treat her enemies and destroy them while everyone still thinks she’s the good guy. She also ended up with the Prince and, even though she started pursuing him just for monetary interest, she actually ended up loving him for real.

There’s other games I wanted to talk about but this comment is too long already lol.

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Heh I’m pretty sure Blaise is the “Wrong” romance too.

Who would want to romance someone who bullied them?

My MC:

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For me, i had that experience with “The Eagle’s Heir” where i feel like the “wrong” choice is not having the brothers reconcile and having Franz as the new Emperor.

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Woah…this post just really piqued my interest for Gilded Rails lol. Does it do any twisting of genre conventions? Usually when a story or game says stuff such as ‘Don’t go after this fellow, it’s best for all involved, this guy is bad news’, it’s a truth universally acknowledged as a wink-wink-nudge-nudge ‘this person is actually the True Route’ sort of deal. So to have the game be the type where the reader feels the need to code-dive on the first try but still ultimately frustrate the player into realizing that actually, it was a path that was always ‘impossible’, sounds very interesting.

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I wouldn’t say that Gilded Rails twists the genre conventions because - simply put, romance is not a focus of it. In my opinion, if you play it expecting any romantic sort of, uh, stuff, you’re making my mistake - playing the wrong way, wasting the good points of the game - and will be disappointed. Maybe these are just my traumatized feelings, though.

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