Linus Rage Quits

I have run into games that felt unfair, because the enemies I was fighting didnt have to obey the same basic combat rules I did. That is when A game stops being fun for me. If the only way to make it harder is for the enemies to "cheat" then it doesnt seem like good design to me.

I actually downloaded that game based on Linus’ recommendation and I also stopped because there was certain points where you can’t level anything up or improve anything about your character, you HAVE to fight a boss, but I sucked at the game and also the moves are RNG so it’s not like I could memorize attack patterns or anything. And there weren’t any guides at the time so I was just stuck and I just deleted it later lol

This is why I feel like From Software perfected difficult boss design with the souls series. They give you an extremely strong mechanic - the dodge - that makes you temporarily invincible and lets you avoid anything. Because of this you can beat any boss, at any level, depending on how skillfully you can make use of this mechanic. All character progression does is make the game easier, but beating the game is certainly possible regardless. Even though souls games are known for their difficult boss fights, every one of them is fair.

Oh man. Bosses getting two actions in a row is EXACTLY what makes the DS remake of FFIII so teeth grindingly hard. The fact that it can just choose to do two major spell AoE attacks and wipe most if not all of your party. Medusa in particular is an unforgiving nightmare, as well as the bloody rat in the temple when you're shrunk down. The Pixel Remaster is so much better in terms of balance.

gaming has been ravaged by the industry lol.

In Ni No Kuni, a light-hearted game I played with my partner that otherwise had inexcusably difficult gamey mechanics, there's a double-resurrection item whose casting animation time is literally longer than the Boss' attack cooldown. So using this item *ever* is just a trap to ruin your run. It's worse than useless, as soon as you cast it you're dead.

"Hard", in the context of a game boss, should mean that there's an element of skill, or planning, or context awareness. It should not mean that you have to suffer until you get lucky. I also dislike puzzle formats where the only way to solve it, rather than skill, is brute force time and repetition. At that point, I'm no longer playing the game. I'm working on a problem I have to solve to get back to playing the game.

Favorite final boss was xenogears. The final boss had 4 to 6 mini bosses around it that are all hard in their own right, and each will give the actual boss an ability, but you are basically not able to heal between the fights. It's also on a time limit that is very reasonable to finish the fight, but you cannot just stall out

Loved when Luke chimed in about FTL. What a wonderful game. Been playing for years. Still have a few ships left to beat the game with!
Regarding balancing, it has lots of viable ways to beat the game, but since the Advanced Edition, it's so likely you'll be able to get Flak I and Hacking, which makes it a little bit too easy.

It's possible that these kinds of "unfun" aspects could be due to the fact that JRPG mechanics are almost ubiquitous at this point.
For every amazing and balanced JRPG, there are several that just crank it up to 11 and assume players will already be familiar with how to deal with it.

I like the parallels between the difficulty of this boss, and building a computer for someone that can't troubleshoot on their own. One is possible to do with enough effort, while one is impossible to do without an unreasonable amount of effort.

Reminds me of a certain boss in octopath where it could summon 2 minions, deal aoe dmg, and stun a character for 3 turns.... All in one sequence of turns

I have played the whole game and I loved it! Yes, the bosses are hard and I usually don't like being stuck, but whenever a hard boss would come up and I would get angry at the game because of it, I'd read a strategy and watch a video of the boss. I don't think there's any shame in that and for me the strategazing and preparation was part of the fun. Plus you can see in the vid that the boss CAN be beaten and that's kinda motivating. With Rudy (the boss Linus is stuck on) you need Tan (or rather you have to use him), Valrika for AoE and Ez with Vacuum and buffs/heals. Get them your best armor and defense gems! Tan is your damage dealer and can heal a bit, use AoE for mobs and finish them with Valrika's Arrow Rain +2, Ez keeps Vacuum and Speed Up All (best buff in game and the reason why you allways want to have Ez in the party) and heals. Make sure to keep the mobs to a minimum and when Rudy uses the barrier, hit the rest with Valrika (Arrow Rain +2 hits 7x, so you need to hit the boss and mobs 3x to break it, which you should be able to with Speed Up before the mobs overwhelm you). Tan can help with healing here. If you manage to beat a lot of the the mobs before the barrier, then you can switch Ez for Leo for a turn and use Samidare +2 on the boss. Then there's the one-shot skill, you need to suffer through it - ress with one character and heal with another and you need a bit of luck. GL

Last time I rage quit was a game that had crashed for the third or fourth time, and I decided the game wasn't good enough to justify the inconvenience. Usually boredom is more of an incentive to quit a game than anger.

This is also where my limit is in terms of mobile games where the answer to the boss is either the wall of grind you have to do, or like just one strategy that is viable with the boss and you happened to have invested in a different way to play all together basically making the effort i put in trying to learn the nuances of this playstyle a moot point.
On PC/Console i can deal with it but mobile games, mobile, i only play them while I’m on the go and if this BS comes along id rather just save my anger for something else

Hahaha, Linus struggling with the Yiga Clan hideout in BotW, sooooo relatable.
Because this might be the only thing in the game, where the defs slightely f***ed up their own intention of "do things however you want". Because they had a clear path in mind you would go to their hideout, which would lead you to the main entrance, which is still quite a bit away from the marker on the map.
So I went a completely different route and basically approached from the other side, getting exactly to that marker on the map, which was sitting at the edge of a huge rock. I was possibly messing around there for an hour, before I gave up trying to find out, what the game wants from me.
Checking the net for what you are supposed to do gave me one of the biggest facepam moments of my life.
This issue switched this game from my personal 99% rating to 98%.

You know, part of the reason I think you get so many pixel art/old school indie RPGs is the fact they are comparatively easy to make. Like Chained Echos was put together by one dude. I don't wanna diminish the work he did or the value of the game because it's absolutely fantastic but it's still probably far easier to put together than say a competently built full 3d looter shooter.
Hell, we had RPG maker ages ago, and it worked pretty well for an over two decades old building game.

I know exactly the feeling Linus is talking about. So many games I've played with bosses just having BS game mechanics that just take the fun out of the game. I don't understand the design philosophy of hanging a looming "You just die cause I said so" mechanic over the player for no apparent reason other than "lol difficult."
If you want difficult, look at Dark Souls. It's hard and you die a lot, but it never feels unfair and you feel like you can actually beat it. But that RNG, you dead... that's really stupid.

We're squarely back into the idea of business model leads, and game design follows. It's no different than how it was back in the 80ies where games were designed wholly around the arcade and eating up as many quarters as possible.

I remember rage quitting Fallout 3 on PS3. I had reached a point in the game where I could acquire a set of power armor, but every time I took the armor, the game crashed. Without fail I tried to get this armor with variations in my approach and it crashed and crashed and crashed. "F**k this, I'm out"

I had the same experience with Bravely Default. I love the game and the art style, but what I can only assume is the first actual boss you have to fight with whatever you like, I was completely unprepared. I have no idea what I missed, but I assumed the boss was the end of the first part. Then, when I beat him, I realized I had to go further into the dungeon. Unfortunately, I had to use every consumable to win and I just kind of gave up at that point because I wad 4 hours into the first part of the first boss and I would have to start from before I even went into the dungeon.
I plan on going back to the game, but it's sad I had to stop so early into the game. I even bought the second game and haven't even touched it since I want to beat the first game before I play the second.

It would be a cool mechanic if the barrier was linked and you wanted a bigger number of minions so you could AOE down the barrier faster, so it became a minion management fight

It is possible. I had to map out the RNG patterns and eventually tried it like 7 times, and got passed the boss. Takes way too long for a casual JRPG tho

Usually one hit mechanics on RPGs are usually reaction triggered or triggered on patterns or really conditional (like lvl 5 death in some FF games which only affects characters with levels dividable by 5) or are telegrapged but i do not discard games where bosses are just way out of place.

It's an entirely different genre, but rhythm games also the sort of games that encourage playing for very long sessions and trying over and over again. Though, somehow I'm always extremely relaxed even while playing the most insane maps

I feel like everything is just like this now. I can't think of anything... At all... That I have been genuinely excited for, in years.

I think in this case it has been forgotten that all JRPGs are based from dragon quest. Also with the popular explosion of octopath traveler and bravery default has made the hour long boss normal which personally that's too long. But everything explained in this video is literally the experience of any dragon quest game I've played especially dq 7 for PlayStation.

I started playing Chained Echoed a few days ago, an RPG that came out December 2022 in the style of FF6 / Chrono Trigger with a story similar to FF Tactics. As someone who is always looking for a game that can capture the SNES JRPG magic I think this is a game Linus should play. It’s available on Steam and Switch, if you are a fan of old school RPGs or modern indie games inspired by them (Cross Code etc) it’s a must play

I like to figure things out to a point. When the fight isn't fun anymore I'd rather cheese like mad and move on in the story, which I think is the important part anyway.

This conversation reminds me of a philosophy I see a lot in minecraft modding. A lot of minecraft modders don't know the difference between making something harder and making something just grindier, which is really frustrating.

That's actually great timing. The Creator just a couple days ago, wants to bring this game Fantasian to PC and possibly make a sequel.

So much this with bleak faith that recently came out, you have a combo mechanic where you need to press the button again during the attack animation,, but because you actively need to remember and do that it just turns into a spam fest (on character not irl) on your side and the enemy ofcourse doesn't have to do that so they're just doing tactics

That innovative gaming mechanic that makes people play/pay more because of dificulty. Just linke in SNES and Arcade era. So new. 😅

LTT should make a floatplane exclusive game going through the office as a RPG.

Linus, while there might be a bit of predatory mobile-style monetization design going on, I distinctly remember several old JRPGs that behaved the same way, long before any of the modern predatory design systems were in place. It's one reason that I have tended to like the idea of JRPGs a lot more than actually playing them. Because they design with the grind in mind and I'd much rather enjoy the story instead of having to spend a whole bunch of time doing work before I'm strong enough to earn the next bit of story.

I ran into the same issue with Keplerth's last boss. Its just so unfair, I gave up.

The common term my friends and I use is "Increasing the difficulty level without increasing the skill level" and it's a game design choice that seems to be lost today in a looooot of games, big and small

One of the final fantasy tactics games has a death roulette that I found interesting. I believe tonberrys could use it and it would select a random character(friend or foe) on the field and kill them. Definitely the only time I could think of something like that being interesting.

Chrono Trigger has one boss that uses an almost 1-hit move
your characters at that point have 999 heath and the attack does 998 damage
while this is annoying it's well balanced because the boss loses a turn for using it so you get one turn to panic heal yourself
additionally while this boss is difficult she also has very little health and is a major glass canon
if you have a lot of high level characters with good spells you can kill her in a way that feels satisfying (before her second phase where she loses that ability)

The swap-in mechanic Linus describes has been moderately common in JRPGs for a while. Final Fantasy 13 had it I think and I know I've had it in others.

As I've gotten older, and my time to game has diminished due to work / family etc, I've really discovered that I just have so little patience to play games that have a mechanic that is just not enjoyable that I just drop it. This isn't like the 90's where you couldn't just pick up another game and move on... also if I can't save anywhere and quit, I'm just not playing.

FTL is one of my favorite games and I was part of the kickstarter. I really wish there was a part 2!!!!!!! I have the PC version and have played with the mods and its very cool but the iOS version is still my favorite one.

This title didn't age well
All jokes aside, looking forrward to seeing the channel back up and running!

sounds like old school ff to me; is there a reflect ability you can get that barrier enemy with before he casts? like using healing on undead

I remembered, in the time of dial-up internet, I went for a werebear druid in D2:LOD and (not really looking at game guides) would do 2-hour Diablo fights in Hell difficulty - that's a single fight. I found that to be truly fun. And then I'd go up Mt. Arreat and just get stuck fighting minions and just GG-quitting the character.

The fight Linus described reminds me of Nyx from persona 3. If he hates Fantasia's boss, Nyx would frustrate him beyond belief.

Had some similar problems with yakuza like a dragon. Where the boss can one hit everybody and randomly gets 2 turns in a row and if your main character gets knocked you're game over. Even grinding all of the dungeons and tournaments is not enough to get to a high enough level. cheap

This reminds me of Demi Fiend fight in Shin Megami Tensei fight as well as the same secret boss in Digital Devil Saga... If you didn't have a guide, you would be dead, either by bad RNG or just not focusing enough.

I've recently had my few times where I had to cool off from a game. P Ranking Pizza Tower is fun, but man, it's brutal.

Linus, you ever play Lost Odyssey on 360? It was made by some people behind FF7 and reminds me a bit of what you're saying. 1st boss wiped the floor with me until I ran around and leveled a couple times...but that didn't take more than an hour or so. The good old days when games were complete and tested.

The quest Linus mentioned in Zelda might've been the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 quest where you can get Rex's armor (the main character of that game) for Link and it looks...rather goofy on him considering Rex is like 15 years old and Link is 17 and way more built to be a soldier.

The only game I've ever ragequit was league of legends. And afterwards, I finally realized that I'd spent about three years of my life having zero fun with it - instead, I was just convincing myself that the game would finally become fun if I could just play more and get a little better at it. That was the motivation I needed to uninstall it forever lol

Funny enough the only JRPG I can finish consistently are the Neptunia games because of how easy and fast it is to grind and progress if you decide to do it. They're not good games but it's sad that they're the only ones that get it. I don't want to waste dozens of hour walking, fighting the same enemies and doing the same fetch quests. I can just start a dungeon, enjoy it until I don't and then just run for the boss to keep doing or take 5 minutes to grind levels like crazy.

The last time I ragequit and the only time I remember was when my commander ordered so many bad airsupport and finally napalmed my whole team when we where taking the point.

I rage quit an rpg too not long ago. I started playing rpgs after a friend introduced me to lunar way back then. I haven't stopped playing since. So I have a deep love for them and I like to grind. I picked up bravely default 2 thinking I will like it like the first game. Nope. I hated it from the start. The gameplay was fine for awhile until I reached a boss (a priest) that unfairly would kill my team in 2 moves when I got him to half health. He was a lower level than my team and he was still killing them. After a few tries I quit. Not only was the difficulty out of balance, I hated the story too. It wasn't worth my time. I switched it for dragon quest 11. That game is perfect. Play it if you haven't.

The trick is when you look up a strategy to get passed a boss or section if you aren't embarrassed about how easy it was then its probably a problematic title

If I rage quit I don't play games for 3+ months I have to cool down. I actually enjoy watching people play.

Linus should really give Chained Echoes a try. Great jrpg style game that has removed the bloat in the best ways possible

Yeah, that experience is pretty common with jrpgs. A lot of the Korean an Asian RPGs I played over the years expected you to grind 40 to 50 hours per boss.

I had a similar experience losing over and over to Seymour on Mt Gagazet in FFX about 20 years ago

I'm in my 4th decade of gaming, and FTL is my favorite game of all time. It is so well balanced and interesting and allows so many different strategies. It's over 10 years old and I still play it pretty regularly despite owning everything from an NES to a PS5 to a modern high end PC.

what i've heard from most QA testers about QA issues, it's not that these weren't found. It's likely that these issues were found by QA, and more disappointingly, QA wasn't listened to and these weren't fixed because of that.

"Suplex the boss" is mainly a meme, because in one FF-game (I forget which one), you suplex a train boss.

I've had this with JRPGs too. Some bosses have many phases and items and *you die* or the game crashes. tough Luck ? No, bad design

Sounds like a skill issue Linus. (I suffer from major skill issue)

Is there a silence spell? If you could prevent it from cast spells at all, then both barrier, and presumably summoning minions is out the window.

Ah, so it's one of those games, where the developer designed a fight, that is challenging for them, when they know all the mechanics and then saying "no, it's fine, here's how to beat it".

The most jarring flaw in any game is mechanics that clearly give the CPU an advantage. When it's clear the computer is always going to win, why keep trying to defeat it?

Sad to hear about Fantasian. I have a rule: Never by a console of you can't list 5 games you want to play. I've no reason to get an Apple TV anyway, but if I think about it as a console, that is the only game that I would want to play. Anything else is a game found on other platforms as well which have more compelling selections, or is PC which... Yeah, emulation and infinite possibilities. There are people who argue that a console can get better over time and you should hop on anyway. But if I have to search out new games to justify my purchase, or bank on more compelling games eventuality coming out, that's just more reason why I should wait on buying in, because console bundle deals will eventually come out which make buying in for a game I want to play a sound choice due to the value.

Love FTL. Great game design

I remember trying to play Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded and I pretty far as a kid but I just couldn’t get past this boss fight where you fight Cerberus phase 1 and then Hades phase 2. Ran my head at a wall for hours then I decided to Google it (lol) Google told my elementary self to go grind out levels in other areas of the game before trying the boss. I dropped the game still never finished that one. I was in elementary school.

The only game I ever rage quit was Recore... I got so angry at the tv once that my dog had a seizure! And I vowed never to play such a frustrating game again!

I've never ragequit a game, but I do quit a ton of games because of lost interest. Sometimes those games can be really awesome, but if they take too long to end then I'll want to switch to something else regardless. For example I got 50 hours into Elden Ring, and I didn't get bored of it, the game is crazy good, but the initial excitement had definitely died down and my brain was already looking for new experiences, so it got put on the "games I'll finish later when nothing new is coming out" list. That list is now like 20 games long.

I would be interested to hear your thoughts on Tunic. Very different genre and type of game, yet what I find interesting in this discussion here is its approach to puzzles.
I loved the game, but some of the puzzles are....very esoteric. I think that's the best way I can put it. Not bad but not necessarily brilliant - just....out there.

you just described my problem with escape rooms

Linus should try to play Chained Echoes. At least i think he will like it based on his descriptions.

Linus described a typical SMT boss lol

It's a shame about Fantasian, but now you have time to check out Chained Echoes! Just an absolute gem of a game

Crazy how we’ve gone full circle back to play to play arcade games

Forza Horizon has a similar issue with this with their AI. In the higher difficulty AI opponents don't have to adhere to the same physics as the player, I've seen the ai just drive away because they weren't braking into sharp corners

I recall some JRPGs back in the day that would punish you for trying to grind low level enemies, Earthbound immediately comes to mind, but that's specifically to encourage you to fight whatever boss is blocking your progression to move ahead to the next map. This game though just does NOT sound like fun with a boss like that.

Honestly if you're into Final Fantasy games I would suggest looking into the Xenoblade Chronicles franchise. All three of the numbered entries are now on Nintendo Switch, 1 originally being a Wii game, remastered for Switch, and 2 & 3 being released on it originally. The director & creator, Tetsuya Takahashi, had also directed the Xenogears, which was originally pitched to be what would have been Final Fantasy 7, but was deemed too dark. Like previously stated, he went on to make the Chronicles series as well, and they are in my opinion one of the best story driven RPGs I've ever played, with some of the coolest combat. The first game also easily takes the cake for the best English voice acting out of any video game I've ever played.

the game sounds so Shin Megami Tensei inspired, buffs and debuffs being so important and each party member having their own turn, doesn't sound like it has the mechanics of SMT that make these sort of situations fair tho, specifically the Press Turn system where each time you hit an enemy's weakness, you get an extra Press Turn, which allows you to recover from a bad situation and revive all your party members if you end up in a bad situation while still keeping up respectable, if reduced offense

FTL's so ridiculously addiictive, my god. I have abouut 400 hours, and got ~70% of the Steam Achievements without even trying too hard for them, but there's so much I have to explore still. More spaceships, more random events to discover, more tactics....and this isn't mentioning the mods!

That's a lot like most Roblox games' mechanics. For them, it's not a subscription service, but they want to make the game fun for the first 3-4 hours of gameplay, and then suddenly crank up the difficulty to where it's not fun anymore until you buy their incredibly overpriced in game purchases.

"You were supposed to look at the symbol in the bottom left hand corner on the bottom of the physical box"
But Baker straight up told you to look there before he died! It's so obvious! Yeah... I didn't get it either, but I did feel stupid after I looked it up

honestly the barries would be fine IF they either all broke at the same time or all broke when the barrier of the actual boss breaks

We all ragequit sometimes

You're gonna hate that they're considering bringing the title to PC, as well as the sequel.

Honestly, I'm about Linus' age, and oddly enough share a lot of PC/cultural background when it comes to hardware, PC's, and games. When I were younger, I loved JRPG's. And hearing Linus say: "FF6 was my favourite" makes me so happy, because it was mine as well. I preferred it over the Sony-FF's, and actually had a certain feeling of remorse towards sony/square because I stopped getting FF's for a while. Later on I simply didn't care anymore. X360 had come, and games like Lost Oddysey had me hooked. That being said though, that was around the time I was growing up, and JRPG's... well... started growing some "growing pains" for me as well. In FF6 era I was fine hitting a sudden difficulty spike suddenly. I'd just kill crabs for a couple of hours. The games were linear, and that's basically all I could do. Heck in the original pokémon I had killed so many zubats and gone back through that cave until I could continue. Re-starting Lost Oddysey, I would often have some pre-knowledge about some bosses/fights to 'cheese' them, and investing in certain characters/mixes/equipment bits later on (Golden Sun had a LOT of this with the djinn system) would make the game easier/less grindy -- but in retrospective. Aside the playtest bit (OBVIOUSLY), Linus probably hit one of those walls where either the 'early cheese' would have been a thing (hence: foreknowledge and being pidgeonholed in a meta), or: vastly overlevel it (kill crabs for 2-3 days). The thing is: this is a thing that I personally grew out of. It's probably why I think JRPG's aren't for me anymore. I haven't played fantasian, nor will I ever (sorry, not in an Apple ecosystem nor do I like Apple), and hearing that the grind part is stopped because the mobile bit... well... makes me feel like I don't miss out. Heck, I miss the FF5 era where the game could be so broken in a cheese where the hard bosses could suddenly be easy because using a phoenix down on an undead mob would oneshot it... but the next boss I'd still have to grind crabs for 8-9 hours before being able to do it. Why did I use to think that was fun? Are games just MORE fun now? Did my taste change? Did those old geezers building the game simply NOT change whereas I, their original audience did, DID change? Why do I miss killing the same crab over and over for 8 hours?

ff6 is hands down the best RPG ever made relative to its own time. And it still holds up today.

Linus just described a regular Persona 3 boss fight

I loved jrpgs growing up, but now I'm older and have less free time for gaming I can't deal with the grindy nature of them anymore.

Chained Echoes is a really good small production classic style JRPG with modern mechanics. It's really good and just gets better as you go.

It's like playing destiny 2 where you can only use your super with a long cool down but the enemy uses it every 5 f*cking seconds.

I feel like Linus would really get into the game “Chained Echoes”

seems like Linus would really enjoy Chained Echoes then. Probably the best modern take on the traditional JRPG formula.

Sounds a bit like a skill issue 😂

Nice of you to give props for Fantasian!

This is the type of thing that I experienced on most old final fantasy games. This was very similar to my experience in 3D remake FF3 and FF4. Bosses one hit too often. They have abilities that handicap your team. You have one character essentially relegated to medic and another one is damage and another is dying at all times. Spells meant to keep you alive do very little. You have to grind several levels to over level in order to be able to beat certain bosses. Even when I did several side quests I found myself being under leveled over and over again. I just don't like traditional style jrpgs anymore.