Say, dip your wii in water and get access to the Dr. Jones channel.
Getting money from their bloodied corpses ain’t exactly descent too. But it’s funny controlling characters with high and mighty scripts (or paladins) and [STRIKE]looting[/STRIKE] treasure hunting as if you are Locke.
I’d also love a decent auto-combat feature that doesn’t waste 20% of your MP casting Armageddon on bunnies, especially in games with level-grinding or high battle rates.
I want to be pleasantly surprised.
I agree with 2D. When things are done in 2D you can pretty much see all the relevant infomation in one shot. With 3D you’ve got to fight with the camera hoping that you don’t suddenly develop motion sickness, or worse yet you get an awkard fixed camera angle, like being over zoomed out, zoomed in onto some part of the character, or seeing where you’re coming from but not where you’re going, ect.
Getting rewarded for exploring. I like getting meaningful rewards for looking around and exploring. The best example of this would be from LoZ:aLttP which had much of its items and tools scattered across the overworld map. Nowadays you’d be lucky to find a side-quest that offered more than a cash reward or a useless potion.
Smaller numbers for stats. The exact oppisite of games like Disgeia, games like Fire Emblem, Paper Mario, or FFT with generally low stats where one point of difference can make a difference, and numbers capping at 30/50/99 are what I like. Having such low numbers also means that stat boosting items which are generally left unused become much more valuable though still unused. (come on. admit it)
Leveling Magics and Techniques. You get out what you put into it. SoM is the best example of this. Also I share the same opinion between Small Stat #s and Spell & Technique Levels.
Divergent Paths. I really enjoy having divergent paths through the game even if its limited to both A and B need to be completed but you can go about it in any order.
See Cloud Run. Run Cloud Run. Every game should allow you to run or have an even better alternitive that you can access at some point in the game by now.
Character Specific Classes. Where one character can get his or her own set of classes and abilities that the others can’t and vise versa. There are, unfortunately, no examples that accurately demonstrate what I’m really looking for. The closest known examples are SoM2’s class system, however, I would’ve liked to have played through more than one path per game. DQ8’s skill point system, however, I would’ve at least liked to have been able to receive enough skill points to try other opitions rather then taking the opitimal path. And FFTA’s Races do unfortunately suffer due to a lack of balance, the difficulty of earning AP, and the fact that most of the games abilities require a weapon or some other piece of equipment some of which are rare, difficult to come by, and even randomly acciured to begin with.
I could go on.
Well, one thing I liked about Lunar is being able to pre-program the Auto-Battle so when you hit it, the characters do what you specified in advance. Not like Lunar had a large variety of abilities in the first place, but still.
Jots down Lunar for the summer playlist
You can do something similar with the Phantasy Star games, though they’re called macros. Very very useful for setting up combo moves.
Oh, one thing I forgot. There needs to be more games that have a built in fast-forward button in them. Like, in a New Game+ in Chrono Cross, you could play the game in fast-motion, which cut down the redundant battling considerably. In fact, do any other games have a feature like this?
And also, speaking of quirky things like Dr. Jones’ letter… I’ve heard that in one of the X-Men game for the Genesis, there’s a puzzle where you have to “reset a computer” or something, and the only way to solve it is to actually reset your console. I wonder how many people were able to figure that out on their own?
And auto-mapping is a must for any game where it’s remotely possible to get lost.
Now that reminded me of Die by the Sword, a game where the mouse controlled your sword and the resulting decapitations. It had a combo editor, which I never used because it wasn’t worth it for the easy combos and I always seemed to make 5+ minute combos, which I never bothered to use. Killer Instinct scarred my young soul, what can I say.
Hiryuu, VBA, the GBA emulator, has a fast forward button which serves well. Especially when playing old rpgs where people move/speak slowly. Which reminds me, settings for text speed please! Or show it immediately on screen.
Most emulators have a function like that… I was just wondering if any other games had that built into the game itself.
Okay, now I’m imagining a game that travels in fast-motion to the tune of Yakety Sax.
One of the Pokemon Stadium games had a feature that let you play the GB Pokemon games in double or triple speed.