WUT? When? Where?

Look. One more time for extra clarity. My point about unpleasant content in a game is this - Your complaint about a piece of such content is valid if:
a. This piece of content is mandatory for beating the game and no one has warned you that you'll have to face this content to beat the game.
b. This piece of content is nominally optional, but you still can't safely avoid it (like in Dragon Age you are just being nice to a character but your answer suddenly triggers a sex scene).
c. This piece of content is unanimously bad - that is there is no reasonable amount of people who would enjoy this content.

Your complaint about a piece of unpleasant content is invalid if there is a group of people who like this content and:
a. The description of the game warns you that such content is present.
b. You can safely avoid the content and play the game like it isn't there (maybe you turn off it in the settings or something).

Again, my assertion is that this principle should be applied to ANY type of content. Regardless if it's a mini-game, side quest, visual effect, cut-scene, etc. Do you agree with me, or like dtgreene think that some groups of people with specific tastes are more important than others?

And both cases should be treated the same way. Otherwise, you DO have a double standard, like years ago.

Let's get back to the original topic.

Here is one other problem I have with mini-games: In some games (standard in RPGs, for example), as the game progresses, you get more powerful, and you also get new tricks. It is generally fun to use those new tricks. What *isn't* fun, however, is when the game puts you in a situation where you can't use any of those tricks, and mini-games are an example of that.

Take Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and in particular the second stealth sequence. You might have, say, 12 hearts at that point, which means I should be able to take a beating from enemies. The problem is that the hearts offer absolutely no protection to those invisible instant death bullets that the Gerudo guards are constantly shooting at you; being hit by one of them forces you to start the entire sequence over, like if you died.

(In the meantime, the first sequence comes before the player can fully enjoy the game, and can prevent the player from enjoying it as a result. The one in Wind Waker is worse, as at least OoT lets you play one dungeon without having to deal with an obnoxious stealth section.)

Your point a is almost always violated.

And i think you've created a false option. I believe that in game content should never be locked exclusively behind a minigame, regardless of tastes. Except in cases like mario party, we generally don't buy a game for it's minigames. As for things outside of minigames, it becomes reasonable to ask if a reasonable person, based on what is on the store page or most reviews, come to the conclusion that such content is present in the game? This goes beyond a matter of taste.

Take Polly in huniepop for example. There was much outrage about it before the game was even finished, because the fanbase was used to an exclusively female cast (whether straight or lesbian), and there as a proposition of a trans-woman (that is to say, a biological male) in the game, which, of course, certain people were not happy with (not out of dislike for trans, but purely because it as not to their sexual preference and what they had come to expect from the series). The dev, however, has made solution for the situation that seems to appeal to all but political advocates.

Then there's Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. At what point does one buying the game assume they're going to have a sex scene (audio only for the most part) and enter a strip club? The game was rated M for sexual content, but nto AO. This game, in particular, flirted with the line, and something like this would normally have been advertised as a feature.

The Witcher, however, is hard to buy without very quickly discovering it's reputation for nudity and sex scenes (aafik, the sex scenes are all optional, too). No one is surprised by this content. Plus, doesn't ESRB actually state there's nudity in it?

That said, none of these are really "return worthy," but they are most certainly worth criticism (save The Witcher).
Dear Lord, i forgot about the fortress. Yeah, that was almost wind waker level painful. The worst part is that, in total minigame fashion, you don't know what the threshholds are (in this case, how far they can see).

It may in general be that Triple Triad was one of the few good parts of FF8, so it's even-more fondly received. One could conceivably see TT as the main game and the rest of it as the mini-game, since the rest of it was poor. It was very experimental in too many different ways at once. FF8 is a lot like FF2[nes] in that way.

I think that might've been what got to me last time i tried it. I remember saying to myself "whatin the world is this information dump for? What's with all these changes?"

One other difference: FF2 did spawn its own spin-off series; the SaGa series, which continued with the same sorts of experimental mechanics. FF8, on the other hand, did not.

Which effectively means that player can't be rewarded for winning minigames. Sorry, but that's BS. It's totally okay to reward players in minigames with some unique content as long as they can play without that content if they don't like (can't win) the mini-game.

Why would you assume that an M-rated game about vampires doesn't feature sexually explicit content?

Fun fact - in Witcher 2 you get permanent buff (I think magic resistance) if refusing to have one of sex scenes. ;)

I like the Insectron Championships in Rogue Galaxy, since the battles play like a turn-based tactical RPG. However, to acquire better Insectors, you have to catch and breed them, and that can be tedious.

Another mini-game from Rogue Galaxy I like was the Factory (I'm likely to be the minority). In most game I'm aware of, crafting only consists of slapping components together once you gather them all. Here, you have to design an assembly line to process the raw materials before combining them into the final product. It's a puzzle of sorts since you need to ensure the timing for processing and assembling is right, while working with limited space.

Can we keep this culture war stuff out of the thread please, especially when it's not even about mini-games. Thanks.

Well, for me, that's one more point in favor of FF8, since usually I prefer single titles to series.

Currency, XP (in the case of RPGs), etc are not "exclusive" to a minigame, generally, and would make adequate rewards. Moreover, weapons and equipment that can be purchased later and/or at a really high price also would not violate this suggestion, and could be used to reward a player. You're not thinking this through. 'Cause Count Dracula sucks blood not... I mean, he could be gay and they just didn't write that, but still. I mean vampires are the main theme of Castlevania, yet I have yet to see a sex scene in Castlevania (well, if we forget Kojima's spins when you meet the succubus things are a little risque there). I expect blood to some degree, violence, but not sex. I know in more recent culture they've tried to make them "sexy," but this is not necessarily so, and the most explicit anyone gets in TES 3-5 about sex and vampires is Serana mentioning Molag Bal "did horrible things." Which is odd and actually kinda funny given the reputation the witcher has.
This isn't culture war, this is just him virtue signalling. You can tell by the fact it's not all that relevant to the point he's trying to make.
Wiat, 2 lead to the SaGa?

Then again, different SaGa games have completely different mechanics, and even SaGa 1 is quite different from FF2. (In FF2, your actions determine stat growth; in SaGa 1, that is not the case at all, as the game handles that completely differently (but still without levels and XP).)

Yes, Akitoshi Kawazu was the lead director of FF2, and he then went on to start the SaGa series, which is Square's more experimental series. In particular, one common thread is the lack of XP (except in original SaGa 3, which Kawazu was not involved with), and the growth of stats or weapon/magic levels would appear as the SaGa games progressed. (SaGa 2, Romancing SaGa 1 ,and SaGa Frontier 1 increase stats through uses, Romancing SaGa 2/3 and SaGa Frontier 2 have weapon/spell levels, and the SaGa 3 remake (which Kawazu *was* involved with) has both.)

(Apparently, he was also invovled with Legend of Mana, which I've heard has some unconventional game design in it as well.)

One source:
https://saga.fandom.com/wiki/Akitoshi_Kawazu

Back on topic, definitely thought of Arcomage when I saw the thread title, really enjoyed that one... If not for long, because I abandoned the game not that much into it. (Maybe someday...)

And yes, also thought of the FF8 one, though I had forgotten the name. Likely the one good gameplay element of that game.

As for the issue of vampires and sex, well, as I mentioned in another recent thread, classic vampires used to be just monsters to be exterminated, but modern vampires are basically superlative romance heroes, so right now I'd say nearly everyone would expect sex in any sort of vampire content. Yes, that wasn't quite yet a thing when Bloodlines was released, Twilight hitting and really starting that trend the following year, but vampires had nevertheless long ceased to be those classical monsters, you had Anne Rice and, well, World of Darkness itself, with very varied, well-developed, complex vampires that tend to experience (un)life at a more intense level than mortals, which may include a sexual aspect (or at least a highly sensual one, in Rice's case, since under normal circumstances hers, er, can't).

... Even more off-topic, how many know there was a WoD-based TV series in '96?

IMO, increasing stats through uses is still XP under a different name (and acquisition condition), but it's still interesting to see this. I had no idea. Now i know that if i want to see more of 2, when i get around to it, i'll enjoy the SaGa series similarly.


Depends on how deep you've gotten into vampires. I was familiar with "buffy" and the like, but this was, firstly, not overt sex scenes (just sexualization which is similar, yet separate) and secondly this hypersexualization was not omnipresent. Once again, I go back to The Elder Scrolls, which is something gamers on the whole would have been more familiar with and would have likely seen similarly, given the gameplay styles. Moreover, i also have to go back to Castlevania, as well. Seeing as the game was from the early 2000s, one would not hold it to the Twilight standard, either.

And then we have 10 foot dommy mommy, aka "big titty mommy milkers," aka "that weird vampire thing from the most recent resident evil game" that supposedly caught the devs off guard with the internet's overall attraction to her. Now you really have me curious. I'm not familiar with this. How bad is it compared to the lore?

Except that, very often, stat increases aren't due to an accumulated pool, but are rather the result of random numbers rolled at the end of combat (or, in SaGa 3 remake's case, during the battle). (Interestingly enough, Oubliette, which predates Wizardry, had level-ups work this way; whenever a character kills or is killed, there is a chance that the character will qualify for a level up.)

Also, SaGa 1 doesn't use this system at all:
* Humans can only increase their stats by the use of special consumable items, which can be bought in the store. (Note that, later on, you get money so quickly that it takes longer to buy and use the items than it takes to get the money in the first place.)
* Espers (Mutants in the English Final Fantasy Legend release) gain stats solely based off a (rather poor) random number generator. This RNG is not seeded (it uses uninitialized memory), can change chaotically during the intro when you start a new game (*not* when you reload your save!), and is only otherwise used for after battle stat gains and possibly out-of-battle consumables (like healing or Human stat increase items).
* Monsters can eat meat. Every monster enemy has a chance of dropping meat when defeated, and when a monster eats the meat, the game consults a table to determine what form the monster transforms into; said form dictates the monster's stats and abilities, so they change completely when eating meat.

Anyway, if you enjoy the gameplay of FF2, you would liiely enjoy much of the SaGa series. Just don't expect the games to be conventional, or to hold your hand. In fact, the Romancing SaGa games are open world, and in SaGa Frontier, as Lute you can go to the final dungeon right away (but can't leave, which is a bit of a problem if you're not strong enough to beat the final boss). (SaGa Frontier 2 is more linearly, but even then it does the unconventional thing of allowing you to play events out of order.)