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[Galzria]

Going waaaay back, one of the Lands of Lore series proved to be too much for me. I remember getting pretty far, but reaching a point where I was simply overwhelmed by endlessly spawning spiders.

I don't know if I beat all of the Kings Quest series either, although I remember that I loved playing them.

[Galzria]

I also remember a game that I simply couldn't beat, because I couldn't master a sequence of keys that had to be hit at exactly the right moment.

I want to say that the game was Hero's Quest (renamed Quest for Glory). I know that I played HQ, I just don't recall if it's the one I'm thinking of above.

[Galzria]

I also remember a game that I simply couldn't beat, because I couldn't master a sequence of keys that had to be hit at exactly the right moment.

I want to say that the game was Hero's Quest (renamed Quest for Glory). I know that I played HQ, I just don't recall if it's the one I'm thinking of above.

Ah! Scratch that. HQ (QfG) I played the series and beat most of. The game I COULDN'T beat was Dragon's Lair.

[WalrusMcFishSr]

[Davio]

 Anyone remember the Goonies on NES?

Not only did it have nothing to do with the movie (no one eyed Willy or Super Sloth), it was impossible to figure out what you had to do.

I remember crossing a bridge with flying medusa style bats over and over again and using a hammer on a random wall in a random room.

That game was weird. I'm pretty sure they picked an already finished game and rebranded it, but I have no clue what they were going for.

I rented it from time to time but obviously never finished it.

And I never finished Sim City on SNES. Would that game go to a kill screen if you get to year 9999?

[sudgy]

And I never finished Sim City on SNES. Would that game go to a kill screen if you get to year 9999?

The point of the game is to build a megalopolis.

[Witherweaver]

Anyone remember the Goonies on NES?

Not only did it have nothing to do with the movie (no one eyed Willy or Super Sloth), it was impossible to figure out what you had to do.

I remember crossing a bridge with flying medusa style bats over and over again and using a hammer on a random wall in a random room.

That game was weird. I'm pretty sure they picked an already finished game and rebranded it, but I have no clue what they were going for.

I rented it from time to time but obviously never finished it.

And I never finished Sim City on SNES. Would that game go to a kill screen if you get to year 9999?

Ooooh.. what about Friday the 13th on NES?  I remember being unable to beat that.

And Sim City I'd always flatten out before Megalopolis, even though the entire land was developed and airports were downgraded so minimal pollution, no taxes, rails instead of roads, etc.

[sudgy]

And Sim City I'd always flatten out before Megalopolis, even though the entire land was developed and airports were downgraded so minimal pollution, no taxes, rails instead of roads, etc.

There's actually something in the instruction manual that shows how you can squeeze more stuff in (as zones are developing, you can demolish the outsides and build over them and no problems happen).  They explicitly say it's not cheating.

[Tables]

And Sim City I'd always flatten out before Megalopolis, even though the entire land was developed and airports were downgraded so minimal pollution, no taxes, rails instead of roads, etc.

There's actually something in the instruction manual that shows how you can squeeze more stuff in (as zones are developing, you can demolish the outsides and build over them and no problems happen).  They explicitly say it's not cheating.

Of course it isn't. It severely limits how much the demolished zone can develop, so it has a significant downside as well as an upside.

Also, Sim City can be speedrun. Megalopolis in about 40 minutes, I believe, by utilising a glitch to get infinite money (they don't explicitly say this isn't cheating).

Even funnier thing is that FE7 is one of the easier games in the series

Eh... on it's lowest difficulty, perhaps, but most FEs aren't too hard on Normal/whatever their easiest happens to be. Like, okay, they're somewhat tough to new players, but generally as long as you pay attention to what the enemy is packing and plan ahead a little you're going to be fine. On it's highest difficulty FE7 is fairly middling I'd say. Even of the English releases it's around the middle (harder than FE8 (Sacred Stones) and FE9 (Path of Radiance), much easier than FE13 (Awakening) and FE11 (Shadow Dragon), and... about equal, perhaps a little easier, than FE10 (Radiant Dawn).

Also on the topic of Fire Emblem games, since I saw a few people mention them on page 1, the reason Marcus is so good isn't that he starts strong and helps build your team - it's that he's consistently good throughout the entire game. FE7 enemies, even on it's hard modes, aren't very strong, they're just high in numbers, and Marcus still beats them easily even later in the game. Yes, he can't take on as many at once as perhaps a trained Kent or Sain, and is a little worse against the promoted enemies, but he still rips through enemies just fine. On the lower difficulties in fact, he can still smash through enemies easily on the final few chapters! (And even on the higher difficulties, you can still use him at base level, although he's obviously much less effective).

[pacovf]

Yes, he can't take on as many at once as perhaps a trained Kent or Sain, and is a little worse against the promoted enemies, but he still rips through enemies just fine.

See, the problem with this reasoning is that you are assuming that if you've got a guy that can deal with 5 guys by himself from the start, and another that can deal with 20 guys by himself after you've handicapped yourself for 2/3 of the game by redirecting xp to him, I am going to pick the first. I am the kind of guy that gives Hector an iron sword and nothing else once he promotes

[Tables]

Yes, he can't take on as many at once as perhaps a trained Kent or Sain, and is a little worse against the promoted enemies, but he still rips through enemies just fine.

See, the problem with this reasoning is that you are assuming that if you've got a guy that can deal with 5 guys by himself from the start, and another that can deal with 20 guys by himself after you've handicapped yourself for 2/3 of the game by redirecting xp to him, I am going to pick the first. I am the kind of guy that gives Hector an iron sword and nothing else once he promotes

So the problem with the reasoning is that you assume the player plays rationally?

Edit: Or perhaps a better way of saying it would be, assuming the player plays to minimise difficulty on themself. That's ultimately what good FE players aim to do - take the strategy which is easiest to execute and has the lowest risk of death. There was a dark period in FE history where it was considered that 'top' players were the ones who could get the lowest turn counts, but I think we've gotten over that phase now.

[pacovf]

Yes, he can't take on as many at once as perhaps a trained Kent or Sain, and is a little worse against the promoted enemies, but he still rips through enemies just fine.

See, the problem with this reasoning is that you are assuming that if you've got a guy that can deal with 5 guys by himself from the start, and another that can deal with 20 guys by himself after you've handicapped yourself for 2/3 of the game by redirecting xp to him, I am going to pick the first. I am the kind of guy that gives Hector an iron sword and nothing else once he promotes

So the problem with the reasoning is that you assume the player plays rationally?

Edit: Or perhaps a better way of saying it would be, assuming the player plays to minimise difficulty on themself. That's ultimately what good FE players aim to do - take the strategy which is easiest to execute and has the lowest risk of death. There was a dark period in FE history where it was considered that 'top' players were the ones who could get the lowest turn counts, but I think we've gotten over that phase now.

I was being tongue-in-cheek. FE is a strategy-RPG (emphasis mine), which means some unstable individuals like -huh- this friend of mine I know that is totes not me, will twist the objective into have-the-most-superpowered-team-by-the-time-you-reach-the-last-level, even if that means making the game considerably harder for themselves. There's a reason characters like Nino exist: the devs know some people enjoy powergaming, even when the cost is huge and the benefits marginal.

...I'm mostly using FE7 names because that's the first one I ever played, I know there are earlier examples of those archetypes.

EDIT: note though, in a game like FE, assuming the players will play rationally is not the best assumption. A lot of players will choose characters because they are cool, and leave others out because they are plain annoying (cf. Pokemon). That doesn't mean that you should let players do sub-optimal choices, but considering the amount of characters, the possibility of permadeath, and that you are bound to miss out on characters during your first playthrough, character choice can seem fairly random when out of context.

[Witherweaver]

And Sim City I'd always flatten out before Megalopolis, even though the entire land was developed and airports were downgraded so minimal pollution, no taxes, rails instead of roads, etc.

There's actually something in the instruction manual that shows how you can squeeze more stuff in (as zones are developing, you can demolish the outsides and build over them and no problems happen).  They explicitly say it's not cheating.

I did this.  And I destroyed most of Airport/Power Plants (only Nuclear) for less polution/space. (You can let a fire destroy most of it so only a couple squares remain.  I used the infinite money trick as well.  But I'd always level at at something like 350,000 or 400,000 people.. never hit Megalopolis.

[dondon151]

There was a dark period in FE history where it was considered that 'top' players were the ones who could get the lowest turn counts, but I think we've gotten over that phase now.

Isn't that still the case? I'd consider Chiki to be one of the best players in the FE community, and he has the LTC records on a few of the games. He's definitely smart enough to quantify risk if asked to. General Horace and PKL are very good, too.

EDIT: note though, in a game like FE, assuming the players will play rationally is not the best assumption. A lot of players will choose characters because they are cool, and leave others out because they are plain annoying (cf. Pokemon).

This is true, but if you want to talk about what units are "good" on a more objective basis (complete objectivity in this domain is impossible), then assuming an irrational player is shooting yourself in the foot.

[Tables]

EDIT: note though, in a game like FE, assuming the players will play rationally is not the best assumption. A lot of players will choose characters because they are cool, and leave others out because they are plain annoying (cf. Pokemon). That doesn't mean that you should let players do sub-optimal choices, but considering the amount of characters, the possibility of permadeath, and that you are bound to miss out on characters during your first playthrough, character choice can seem fairly random when out of context.

So, now, this is where we cross over from determining preference to determining better. A lot of people like certain characters - I almost always train Ross (in FE8) and often train Donnel (in FE13) because I enjoy using them. I do however acknowledge that I'm essentially handicapping myself by choosing to use those units, since they're generally poor characters gameplay wise. If we want to determine which of two characters is better, we need to look past that subjective bias and compare them as objectively as possible. It's rare that we can outright say one character is objectively better than another, but we can at least make statistical comparisons and judge that one persons advantages are better than another, and so on.

PPE: @Dondon - There's definitely overlap between players who are good at LTC and players who are good in general, but you're confusing correlation with causation here. Like, I don't think I've ever seen Vykan do any LTC stuff, but he's one of the best in the community. And not to toot my own horn, but ever since I actually tried to do it and realised how much RNG (manipulation or genuinely) there was in getting the best possible turn counts, I've disliked LTC, but I'm still highly respected.

[pacovf]

This is true, but if you want to talk about what units are "good" on a more objective basis (complete objectivity in this domain is impossible), then assuming an irrational player is shooting yourself in the foot.

So, now, this is where we cross over from determining preference to determining better. A lot of people like certain characters - I almost always train Ross (in FE8) and often train Donnel (in FE13) because I enjoy using them. I do however acknowledge that I'm essentially handicapping myself by choosing to use those units, since they're generally poor characters gameplay wise. If we want to determine which of two characters is better, we need to look past that subjective bias and compare them as objectively as possible. It's rare that we can outright say one character is objectively better than another, but we can at least make statistical comparisons and judge that one persons advantages are better than another, and so on.

Definitely! My point was mainly that the only objective we can 100% agree on is that a good character is one you can beat the game with. But that is a fairly weak condition, since the game is designed so that you can beat it with anyone: there is a lot of roleplaying involved (there's friggin' marriage!) and since you aren't expected to only be able to beat the game if you munchkin the hell out of it (I am going to spend two hours training my guys in the arena, hurhur), all characters must be at least viable (I am talking about the recent games, maybe it wasn't this way back in the old days).

So you have to add extra "artificial" conditions to define "good" characters. A low turn count, a reliably lower difficulty, or superpowering your team are, in my mind, all valid arguments to define "better" characters, but the ensuing rankings will be quite different.

[Tables]

Yeah, to some degree there's no obvious way of defining what makes a character better. I think that the most intuitive is who makes the game easiest, since that's what people aim to do in the game. If you feel that, say, LTC is the only valid way of comparing characters, that's simply a very closed minded view on comparing characters. That's the main issue I've always had.

[pacovf]

Sorry, I couldn't do this earlier because something was blocking memegenerator, but...

Surprised to see the number of SpaceChem responses. Did anyone else beat it?

Not trying to brag

[WalrusMcFishSr]

I can also beat all the Fire Emblem games. Simultaneously. While blindfolded and doing push-ups the whole time.

[Davio]

I could never beat the story mode of Super Smash Bros Wii (Brawl?).

That last boss was ridiculously hard for me. He had some attacks I could never dodge.

[pacovf]

I could never beat the story mode of Super Smash Bros Wii (Brawl?).

That last boss was ridiculously hard for me. He had some attacks I could never dodge.

I've managed to beat him on normal when soloing the boss rush, but I've never managed to beat him in 2p boss rush with my sister on anything higher than super easy. She's reasonably good, mind you, but the odds that we will both dodge his "Die NOW" attack are rather slim.

[enfynet]

Now that I think of it. I never beat all the Challenges in Perfect Dark's multiplayer vs the bots.

[Titandrake]

I haven't gotten 1st place on Mirror All Cups for MK:Double Dash now that I think about it. I used to play it with my brother, and he usually got 1st while I got 2nd or 3rd.