oreshika, if you didn’t see my thread, has a really unconventional stat gain method. rather than leveling being the primary way of powering up, your characters mate with gods to have children who have a random-ish mix of their parents’ genes. so you might get what you want, and you might get them good in unexpected ways, or they might just be kind of garbage, and you get to love them anyway because you’re stuck with them!
the original ultima underworld gave you a lot of experience points just for exploring and filling out the map. it was several times what you’d get from combat, so you actually did better running around like an idiot than you would have if you tried playing normally.
ff5 (sfc) has a whole lot of weird, cool stuff. bosses frequently have an infinite MP flag which you can remove by using MP restoration items on them. the final boss could be skipped by killing the first phase with slip damage. the Old status would reduce a character’s level progressively over time and there was almost no cure for it, making it one of the most troublesome in the game for challenge runs etc.
Eight hours after obtaining the otherwise very mediocre Peach Magnus in the early game,
it hatches into the briefly passable Peach Boy Magnus, or Momotarō.
Seventy two hours after that, it transforms again into Wonder Momo, who is absolutely the best healing in the game (due to not requiring crafting recipies beyond hoarding peaches and not rotting like other food).
…
The fact that there are extremely few SMT fangames is kind of tragic, since outside of the long-ago pinnacle of Nocturne either the games hide in mystique and esoterica and exceedingly tedious dungeon crawling (outside of early game instant death abuse, difficulty almost always leans on bosses or figuring out fusion) or slowly rot in terms of mythological resonance while shifting writing styles (hey there, power of friendship defeats an eternal YHVH). Reading fans gush about very subtle global inspirations and browsing the wikia gets the most out of the rest of the series for those who don’t want to invest the time into it all, as the more SMT games one plays the more they blend together to their detriment. I may be jaded from having consumed so many of these sorts of explosive works, though. Devil Survivor 1 and the Raidou duology’s genre shifts are probably more penetrable, at least.
wizardry: tale of the forsaken and its sequel, busin0, have a friendship meter. the higher it is,t he more you can do combo attacks involving multiple party members per turn. it’s essentially an average of all party members’ individual friendship levels with the ‘protagonist’ character.
each character has two personality quirks. in tale of the forsaken, it is based on class/alignment so all lawful gnomes are the same, in busin0 it’s just random. they get happier faster if you do things they want to do, and unhappy if you do things they don’t want to do. for example, there’s characters that get annoyed if fights take too long, or if you just throw away items instead of selling/using them… but there’s also chars that get really happy if you fight stuff way over your level, or make good use of consumables, or whathaveyou. it’s actually pretty neat and makes you think about characters as more than just tools, even if it just changes your strategies just a little.
i keep meaning to do a live translation stream of busin0 but i have to schedule it so people would actually watch.
If you have a Pokerus-infected Pokemon in your party, it will infect every Pokemon in your party that hasn’t already caught it. After four days, the Pokemon will permanently have a little star on their status screen to show that they are now immune to it.
If you put it in a box, it’ll stay infected forever. But the second you take it out, the clock continues ticking on its 4 day time limit.
Pokerus stacks with Power Items, items that you have your Pokemon hold to double the amount of EVs they gain. If you combine Power Item, Pokerus, and chain Pokemon that yield high EV values, you can finish EV training in a few minu- god this is so boring, let me think about some other more interesting Pokethings:
Shiny Pokemon, or Pokemon with a special palette and a custom sparkling animation that always plays on entering a battle, have a 1/4096 chance of appearing. In the Diamond/Pearl generation, they added a mechanic where breeding two Pokemon from a game who’s language was different from yours increased this probability by 5 (and has been increased in every passing generation). This was revealed in a blog post by the series director, Junichi Masuda, and was dubbed the “Masuda Method” in English fandom. He didn’t know that fans named this mechanic after him until this year. Oops, his finding out was only written about this year anyway: Pokémon boss had no idea fans named a secret breeding mechanic after him | Eurogamer.net
In XY, there’s a Pokemon you could only evolve by closing your 3DS and then flipping it upside down upon level up. I have no idea what they’ll do when the rumored Switch version of Sun/Moon comes out.
Speaking of mechanics they’ll probably take out: in Diamond Pearl, there was a parrot Pokemon that had an attack that used the DS mic. You could teach it to shout whatever you said as its attack and the damage it dealt would be stronger if you shouted louder. This is probably a lie but it certainly felt stronger when my parrot would shout FUUUUCK in super shitty mono sound. Anyway, they never supported this feature again so the parrot is now useless.
Speaking of attacks, there’s a Pokemon attack called BEAT DOWN that does more damage the stronger the Pokemon are in your party. Its animation is a giant cartoon dust cloud as all your Pokemon jump in to get a few hits in, it’s fucking great.
In Pokemon Stadium (and probably Stadium 2 but I didn’t play it), your Pokemon was tinted differently depending on what name you gave it. It was the best subtle feature because it made your specific dude unique, and I have no idea why they haven’t brought this mechanic back even though it seems super easy to implement.
In Sun & Moon, there’s a new mechanic called SOS battles where when wild Pokemon are either: lower level than you, have half their health or less, you use a special item that spreads a dangerous pheromone, or you have a Pokemon that has the ability Intimidate, Pressure, or other mean sounding things - they will cry for help and sometimes summon a friend to come to their aid. They usually summon Pokemon of the same species or sometimes of a higher evolution, such as a Magikarp sometimes summoning a Gyarados or an Eevee sometimes summoning an Espeon or Umbreon.
There’s some unique situations to this; Corsola, a coral reef Pokemon, has a rare chance of summoning a Mareanie, a new Pokemon based on a sea anemone. Instead of assisting the Corsola that called it, Mareanie will almost always attack the Corsola. The ingame reasoning is because Mareanie eats wild Corsola, so it only jumped into battle to get an easy snack.
My friend learned this first-hand when he encountered a shiny Corsola and was trying to capture it until a hungry Mareanie jumped in and ruined his shiny dreams. It’s a pretty great mechanic.
easter-egg evolutions were always one of my favorite pokemon things–it contributed so much to the mystique those games had to me as a kid, even as someone who pretty much never played one
In XY, there was a postgame feature called Friend Safari where every friend on your Buddy List gave you access to their very own grassy field with 3 unique Pokemon that was generated by their Friend Code. It actually gave value to Nintendo’s awful Friend Code system and I remember people fought hard to become online friends with people who’s Friend Safari generated rare dudes.
Diamond Pearl had a giant subterranean cavernous map called THE UNDERGROUND that was connected to the game’s real life geography except at about 1/3rd-ish scale. Meaning, if you wanted to reach the upper right caverns of THE UNDERGROUND, you’d have to fly to a city in the upper right of the world and then enter THE UNDERGROUND from there. Each player’s UNDERGROUND was uniquely generated and you could visit your friend’s UNDERGROUND using Wifi or Local Wireless. Inside the Underground, you could mine for rare fossils and gems in an excavating minigame, meet NPCs you could trade items with, and setup a Secret Base that you could decorate with dolls and posters you bought/received ingame. BUT THE BEST PART: YOU COULD SET TRAPS IN THE UNDERGROUND!!! If your friend entered your Underground and was being a dick, mining all your good stuff, you could BOOBY TRAP THE HELL OUT OF THE PLACE, making him spin around, fly all the way across the map, or explode. IT WAS THE FUCKING BEST OMG I DIDn"T KNOW I WAS SO HYPE FOR THIS STUPID MECHANIC UNTIL NOW i’m getting such strong nostalgia omg i played the underground for months straight and i didn’t even remember this until just now oh wow
In Platinum’s post-postgame, the game’s champion Cynthia gave you your own personal villa! It came with its own Berry Fields and you could buy really fucking expensive furniture to decorate it! Also, everyday a Gym Leader/Elite Four member/Battle Tower leader/or other story important NPC would come by and visit and have a special conversation. Sometimes they’d come in groups just to enjoy the elegance of your new house! I remember really posh characters would only visit if you had the higher end expensive furniture, those snobs.
Platinum had a postgame Battle Cafe visited exclusively by Gym Leaders, the Elite Four, or your battle buddies (special NPCs who would battle together with you in parts of the story and in the postgame competition areas). Everyday the patrons would switch up and this was the only way you could rebattle the Gym Leaders/E4/your buds. They had pretty cool and chill conversations with you, and some guys were just there to enjoy the coffee and didn’t even wanna battle until certain days.
Really early-game, XY had this Elitist Battle Castle staffed by maids and butlers where you could rank up from Filthy Beggar Peon to King Baron Highness of On High by beating up a random selection of NPCs everyday (or every few hours?). Defeating enough of them would earn you the right to set a Decree, ranging from demanding weaker/stronger opponents, demanding richer opponents to award you more money, or to switch the NPCs in the castle for a new set of fodder to destroy. Beating higher and higher ranked NPCs would earn you a greater title and would switch up the set of castle patrons for stronger/nobler NPCs. Eventually, you could fill the Castle with Gym Leaders, the Elite Four, and sometimes the Champion! They all had snooty or ridiculous dialogue and it was fantastic and great, man I wasted so much time in there, man oh man it was so goooood!!!
OMG Pokemon is fantastic, why don’t people enjoy all these fun things in the game instead of worrying about IVs and perfect battlemon??
Shadow Hearts characters have a sanity meter, each time they take a turn they lose one sanity point. If they reach 0 they go berserk. This is largely irrelevent and basically never happens in game.
The interesting thing about this is that every game in the series has an alternate “sanity broken” track for every battle theme, and they are bonkers. That’s like 10 crazy tracks / game that you never get to hear
Black and White 2, in true AMERICAN fashion, gave you command of your own shopping mall! Customers would visit daily and it was your job to direct them to shops they liked to earn Mall Money that you could use to switch up the kind of shops you had, upgrade the shops, let you change the interior decor, change the BGM, and ultimately NAME THE MALL because YOU ARE MALL KING. Basically you could turn your mall into your private paradise for rare items, or for leveling up your dudes/making them friendlier/or any sort of nonsense. Doing other things ingame would increase your fame and thus increase your customer count such as: starring in fancier movies (YOU COULD FILM MOVIES IN BW1/2), having your Pokemon win bigger Dance Competitions (YOU COULD DRESS UP AND MAKE YOUR POKEMON DANCE IN COMPETITIONS!!), or becoming the Champion (yawn). Your customers would also fanboy/girl over you and give you gifts, it was so nice.
The Castle Plaza thing in Sun/Moon is a more multiplayer-focused variation of this feature! It’s also really badly localized and doesn’t make sense half the time.
In kinda similar mall-thinking, ORAS has one mega-mall city with a huge food court. Seating is really limited so you have to beat up randos and children for a chair to enjoy the food. If you beat up these hungry saps in the exact amount of turns it takes for your food to be ready, your food server will be so impressed at your coldbloodedness that they’ll award you a Nugget worth 100x what you paid for their meal. I don’t know how any of these restaurants can afford to stay in business if they’re handing out Nuggets everyday to bloodthirsty kids.
XY has a secret fashion caste system! You can only enter certain stores/restaurants if you’re dressed nicely enough or your outfit comes together properly. Dressing nicer also earns you discounts at shops and taxis will sometimes give you free rides because you’re so hot. it’s so ridiculous - some Mega Stones sell for literal millions initially but if you’ve got a hot enough outfit, they’ll sell it for 5 digits. It’s so amazing and stupid and fantastic!
I think it was in PKMN Black and White in which you could own a mall that you could level up, you could change stores and also visit your friend’s mall?
You could also edit the greeting that the vendors said to visitors, plus a bunch of other neat stuff.
I played it alongside with my ex, each with one ds (this is the best) and we edited the mall’s greeting to be “Shut up Alex” for when our friend Alex came to visit.
Later I unfriended him from Facebook for being racist.
The end
Like, yes, they could have just had the PKRS randomly infect other members of your current party after every battle. But, no, that was too easy. They specifically have it infect the pokemon physically next to it in the menu. To the best of my knowledge this is literally the only mechanic in the game that requires the game to check if a pokemon is next to another pokemon in the menu, and they took the time to implement it for a feature that it is possible an individual player will never encounter despite playing multiple games over decades.
Drag-on Dragoon 2 has the same weapon upgrade system as all of the DOD games: you get a level 1 weapon, level it up to level 4 by killing things, which increases its power. One such weapon is a colorful sword that, according to its description, was customized by a wealthy merchant to be flashy. As it levels up it becomes duller and weaker as the custom work breaks off. After slaying several thousand people/monsters, the sword becomes level 4 and becomes one of the most powerful weapons in the game, a blade with no ornamentation as it was the magnum opus of a master smith, purchased by the merchant who could not appreciate the craft of a sword made for combat.
That was one of… 3 good bits in Drag-on Dragoon 2.
There’s a similar mechanic in X/Y where you can visit various restaurants in the main hub city and try to beat the chef/waitstaff in as few turns as possible.
There is also a hidden “style” mechanic that only exists in said city and increases as you do certain things, like go to the aforementioned restaurants, or do part-time work at the ritzy uptown hotel, or make a TRAINER PR VIDEO which are the most incredible things
You have to increase your style in order to get into the most upscale fashion store and buy the cutest/coolest/most expensive outfits. You can also unlock new hairstyles for you (or your dog) and get discounts at certain stores. Pokemon rules for this kinda stuff, yeah.
in Romancing SaGa 2 you’re an emperor with an enormous castle, no money worries, an r&d department who make all of your gear & a chancellor who tells you where to find most of the quests. If the emperor dies, either by losing all his lp which can only be healed by an endgame item in limited supply OR you get a full party wipe, you choose a successor and the game resumes a year later with a new emperor who inherits the skills and levels of the previous. The game is balanced around you wiping a bunch and going through emperors.
If you complete several quests, or kill one of the main villains, there’ll be a 50-100 year time jump and you’ll pick another emperor just as if you died. As you get several hundred years into the game the world changes quite a bit, though of course it wouldn’t be a snes rpg if there weren’t a few npcs who stuck around for 800 years with the same line of dialogue. Endgame you’re switched to the ‘final’ emperor, a character you name before the game starts & finish off the final quests.
However!!! as this is a kawazu game and super open compared to like, all of its contemporaries, there are a bunch of obscure tricks that allow you to skip the final emperor & do the endgame stuff with whoever you want, and the ending even acknowledges you did this.
Final Fantasy XII has a bunch of weird stuff that is either only hinted at by NPCs (like how bow weapons become far less effective if it’s raining) or stuff that you pretty much only will discover with a strategy guide. The most infamous example of this is probably how to get the best weapon in the game, the Zodiac Spear. The process involves not opening a couple of very specific but seemingly ordinary treasure chests throughout the game. If you do then another completely ordinary treasure chest during the late-game will just contain it. No indication whatsoever of anything.
Another quirky thing are the Knots of Rust you find randomly throughout the game. All you can do with these is throw them at enemies to do random damage based on your own HP. Nothing really fancy. Each time you do however the damage dealt gets added to a hidden pool that is saved behind the curtain. Another significantly rarer item that you can find in the late-game is Dark Matter. Similarly to Knot of Rust you just throw it to deal damage to the enemy but the damage dealt is equal to this hidden pool of damage that you’ve been building up unknowingly by throwing the Knots of Rust, even breaking the 9999 damage limit if you’ve built up enough. This makes Dark Matter potentially one of the most damaging things in the game. After you’ve used a a Dark Matter the damage pool is reset back to 0 again and you have to build it up from scratch.
The in-game description for both these items with this incredible potential and unexpected synergy?: “Deals damage to foe.”
One more Pokemon thing:
In the the original Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald games there is a small island in the middle of one sea routes that only appears by the most minuscule of chances (less likely then seeing a shiny Pokémon unless you try to manipulate your chances). What determines its appearance is that every real-time day a hidden value is generated and if it precisely matches another hidden value stored within every Pokémon you own you will be able to see the island. Of course you’ll need to check yourself if it’s there or not because besides asking a specific NPC in the world about it the game gives no notification or anything if you’ve been matched this day.
Your reward for finding the place is being able to catch a Pokémon you can acquire in other ways and to get a single really rare berry.
Just remembered a neat Baten Kaitos mechanic: Sometimes using cards in battle in a certain order and combination would cause a new, related card to drop! Some of the funner ones:
Holy Grail + Japanese Rice Wine = Sacred Wine
.
Power Helmet + Uncooked Rice + Aqua Burst Lv 1 + Charcoal + Fire Burst Lv 1 = Extra Fluffy Rice
(You HAVE to use them in this order, by the way. The image that this forms in my head is incredible)
Description:
Attack - ATK 90 (Combo 1)
“Long ago, this legendary hero took on as many as 4 enemies at once - at times confronting them, and at other times fleeing. Some say he had an addiction to pellets, while others say he fought ghosts.”
in another thread @haley brought this up as an appealing basic element of FF1 that set it apart from other games at the time, of course this is just fundamental jrpg business, but it made me wonder if any games actually do anything interesting with their in-world economies
Are there games that have an economic system that isn’t entirely player-centric? Like, prices that are determined by factors other than how high your level is or how far along in the game you are? Specifically, are there rpgs where the location you found or purchased an item alters its resale value? Like, if you found a sword in a cave, it would not be considered very rare if you tried to hawk it in the town right near the cave where you found it, but if you traveled to a large city far away it would be regarded as an exotic artifact and fetch a higher price
