Skippable tutorials are great, but REPEATABLE tutorials are a godsend. Playing through Alien Isolation on hard mode and coming back after a break… It’s pretty unforgiving trying to pick up late-game hard mode when you don’t remember the buttons. So I’m always grateful when a game has a separate, repeatable, tutorial to get back into the swing of things.
I wish games had a „welcome back“ mode where you’re asked if you remember everything or if you need a refresher. I’m pretty sure I saw one game that did this but can’t remember.
Especially a pause menu that protects you from suffering harm from your opponents! If I pause the game to run to the bathroom, and come back to find I'd died because pausing didn't stop my enemies from attacking me, the game and I are going to have words.
In addition to bulk crafting, we should be allowed to bulk buy items! The latest Pokemon games, Scarlet and Violet, added an option in shops to bulk buy not just multiple of each item, but multiple items all at once, so you only need to mash through the "Are you sure?" dialogue once.
AVGN just showcased a game where you can buy bullets for your gun... one at a time, requiring you to "click" "take", then point to the bullet, then confirm the purchase. And then you have to load the gun... one bullet at a time.... Kind of the opposite of this video, really.
Final Fantasy XIV will sometimes give you a warning that says "Several cutscenes will play in sequence" and that you might wanna make sure you have time to watch them all. In the community, this has basically become synonymous with "some shit is about to go down, so buckle up" and inspires both dread an excitement.
Beat me to it lol. Gonna add that retainers make some crafting and gathering stuff easier. Crafters will _always_ need elemental shards and crystals, so it's nice to send my gathering retainers out to get them while I'm doing other things, instead of wasting my time gathering them myself - or buying them from the marketboard lol. It's not foolproof because they can only get a few at a time, and it takes an hour for them to bring the items back - but when you're not focusing on crafting? Can easily just have your retainers stock up on the crystals, or other items you know you're going to need. Currently have my combat retainers getting me meat and animal hides from dawntrail areas to get ready for that crafting grind lol.
The Saints Row series having the ability to "warp to shore" instead of tediously swimming back to land was respectful of Volition to add, especially in the second game when you're exploring the secret islands and you happen to lose/destroy your boat.
I've recently gotten around to playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider and I really appreciate that Lara says "this seems like the way out" if you start heading the wrong way at the beginning of a challenge dungeon. It's just a small time saver, but it's very appreciated.
In one of the games I worked on, I added triggers to the tutorials that would disable them if you do those things in the game before they ever appear, demonstrating to the game that you don't need them.
That's good. Or at least it's good for a lot of things that require complex interactions. I've seen it done stupidly, though, for one or two button combinations where the game goes, "OK, you already figured that out," and I'm like, "the hell I did! What did I just press?!"
@@gizmobrooch8577 That's not specifically relevant to this particular game, but disabling something within a game in response to doing it would be weird. It only disabled the tutorial pop-ups if it saw you do the thing.
I've seen games where the tutorial will still pop up on a checklist, already marked as complete. That way you can practice it more, or if you did it by accident you know how to do it again
Andys face for the "I don't think so" is some genuine wish fulfillment after what I figure must be thousands of do overs after all these years on camera lol.
7 ways Games DON'T respect your time! Battle Passes are my nomination. And they came about all because of "games as a service" mentality. Games are meant to be played for fun, not treated as a chore.
I would add gear score nonsense into that too. If it changes gameplay fine. But if I have to basically tick a box after every mission saying I would like my weapons and armour to level up to match the level of the next enemies, then that is just a waste of my time.
@@davidchristie6003 Oh, it's even worse when something needs to be at some arbitrary value for progression in some PVE thing you can only do alone. Doubly so when you're just not allowed to even try until you meet that.
Lord of the Rings: Shadow of War. Every single Orc captain gets an unskippable intro monologues that ruins any pace of the combat you are currently in, and you quickly realize after the 10th captain, most of the "unique" dialogue is pretty much the same. Aside from the story driven captains and that one bard orc that you can never capture, most of the orc captains are cookie cutter and boring. Yet the game makes you listen to each of their speeches and, if there are multiple captains, you have to listen to all of the speeches. I literally could just set my controller down for the 4v4 captain battles they added and go make some tea for how long it took to get past all the Orc captain monologues. Don't care if there was more after the main story concluded, didn't care to get the true ending if it meant more of those stupid orc captains.
Actually, the Skyrim exit points seem pretty realistic to me (most of the time). As I understand it, it's generally good practice when digging underground to make sure there's two points of entry/exit, in case of things collapsing. The most nonsensical part is how these can only be opened from one direction and how often the boss is sitting right next to it. But it is absolutely to the level designer's credit that the main contrivance feels like enemy placement and door unlocks, and not the architecture itself (I know the radiant questing system gets a lot of flak, for good reason, but if that's the cost of getting these generally well-designed levels/dungeons, seeing as game designers are not given unlimited time to fully develop stuff, then I'll take it).
doing squats in a corner Blair Witch-style is 10x more creepy than just the Blair Witch corner stand. That is visual story-telling if i've ever heard it...
@@lightsideofsin8969 but......did u visualize it it's like when a book describes a scene was there always a picture beside the paragraph you silly goose....see no picture of said silly goose but you can geuss what that might look like lmao.
@@Brasc To be fair, crafting is something in Animal Crossing that's only present in New Horizons. New Leaf and earlier entries in the series you got all your stuff from earning it, buying it, or being gifted it. And tools never broke in previous games, except the Axe, for obvious reasons. I will praise New Horizons though for allowing you to create Designs anywhere in the game, no need to rush to the Able Sisters every time you want to edit or create a new Design. I will also praise it for allowing you to place the Furniture you have anywhere, not just indoors. Unfortunately, with each new entry in the series, the dialog from villagers has gotten worse. The first game made your villagers rude to you, even when they didn't mean to. Giving you a reason to like or hate them by how they treated you. With each game, we got blander and blander villager dialog, to the point you now only keep villagers around for their looks, not for how they treat you. They are basically walking plushies now
For the end game warning bit, Tomb Raider (Reboot,... Second reboot) gave you a warning for the start of the final mission in all three games. I was very thankful for that.
Baldur's Gate 3. Yes, it's hundreds of hours long with an infinite amount of choices (all of which you want to try), but on the other hand it's refreshing to see a game that lets you save anywhere, anytime. So I can play for a bit and not worry about it getting in the way of doing anything else. I guess it's more respecting my schedule than my time, but it counts. Kind of.
I would say it generally respects your time as well, as very little of BG3 is filler content and "go kill 30 pigs" quests. Everything feels part of the world, there's no "generic" NPC except the ones you CAN'T talk to.
Manual saving is an absolute delight. A lot of older PC games (including the OG Baldur's Gate trilogy) had it to the point that Halo: CE actually caught me by surprise with its checkpoint system.
That feature got me into almost instant death scenarios in Skyrim. Made a fun challenge reloading and trying to fight/run your way out of certain death
Anyone who has pets or children or housemates or parents knows that pausing cutscenes is the feature we need in everything. The perfect way would be that pressing any button pauses the cutscene and shows you the button you have to press to skip it. Also all cutscenes should be created equal. Either let me skip all of them or none of them, not the weird mix that Legend of Zelda is doing recently where you try to skip a scene but it only dumps you into the next part of the same cutscene. When I skip, I want to be able to control my character again immediately.
I hate when you try to pause a cutscene and accidentally skip it, and then you try to reload a save and it just starts you after the cutscene anyway… so you have to pause and try to find the cutscene on TH-cam or something to see what happened… So irritating! Just let us pause! Do not make it auto skip with a single button! Ugggh
@@DanteYewToob ooooor put in an option that says "single button cutscene skip" with an on off switch, so first times can pause, and repeat players can skip
@@demonzabrakI feel like "hold B to skip" fixes that problem without needing extra options. I can't believe it's 2024 and we are STILL wishing for games to have logical cutscene pause and skip... This is why I feel like the gaming industry is just stagnant, refusing to learn even simple UX design lessons and instead constantly repeating the same errors endlessly... I wonder why I'm so bitchy/jaded about even "minor" UX design shortcomings when we still can't even pause/skip cutscenes consistently... ffs game devs... T.T
I would argue that Elden Ring's biggest system that respected your time was the Marika Statues. Not quite a Site of Grace, but it does mean that you rarely have to the massive runback that gets oh so tedious. When you spend more time trying to overcome a problem than running back to said problem, you improve a lot faster, and it doesn't break the pacing as much.
@@Paulafan5 Really goes to show how quickly we got used to stakes of Marika, and probably how sorely needed they were. In previous FromSoft games, the Placidusax runback would have seemed rather short.
The option for manual saving. Anywhere at any time. The most important function for me. Checkpoints are just the worst as an adult. Sometimes you have to stop playing unexpectedly because family, job, partner, whatever, and nothing annoys me more than having to play 40 minutes again because the devs don't respect my time. Yes, I know, save scumming, but if you don't want to save, don't do it, but respect the time of others who have to save unexpectedly because they have a life. Makes me really salty. xD
Save points were probably a necessity in older games (hardware/software limitations), but there's no excuse not to have manual saves in almost every game.
There are methods of allowing manual saving that prevents save-scrumming anyway, like forcing you to quit when you save and removing said save when you reload.
There was the original "The World Ends With You" for the Nintendo DS where to fully level up your gear you had to earn three kinds of points -- battle points, for regular in-game combat, Mingle points, which requires you to put your DS to sleep and walk around interacting with other players whose DSes were on but in sleep mode, and Shutdown points, where the game gives you more points the longer you've not played it. Mingle points were hardest to get unless you lived in Japan when the DS was big and took public transportation a lot.
Just another experimental way TWEWY made use of every aspect of the DS's capabilities and another reason it's my favorite game of all time. It is a shame mingle points are basically impossible to get these days thus making certain pins basically unusable.
@@yuujin8194 It counted connecting to any hotspot of the right type, I used to have a usb wifi dongle to let it connect to my pc. Since it can only register each different connection once a day I think it was, it wasn't super viable for leveling, but most of the pins that evolve from mingle only require the last bit to be that so that was a workaround as long as you planned relatively carefully. Don't know if you can find one of those used anymore though 😞 . Edit: Oh, and connecting to the Wii counted too if I recall correctly, same rule, only once a day.
In previous From Software games, falling off a ledge is a instant death. Sekiro Shadows Die Twice however makes it so if you fall off a ledge, it just places Wolf at the spot he was before he fell off.
Sekiro is much more acrobatic that dark souls, so it makes sense they dont want you to instantly die if you do a slight fuck up while trying to not fall into a pit so deep even the sun doesnt reach the bottom
I once saw someone describe Chained Echoes as "a JRPG that respects your time as an adult" and that's stuck with me. No random encounters, levelling is (mostly) milestone based so no grinding, heal to full after battles so no backtracking to healing points, and able to save any time outside of battle (no save points).
not going to lie i felt like those were all drawbacks while playing through the game. i do understand why people would like it but i feel like it takes away from the game. to each there own.
one game doing a great job at this is "the forgotten city"! it's a time loop game, so it could have became extremely repetitive, BUT each time you figure out how to slove one problem, you can ask an NPC to do it for you at the start of the loop so you can focus right away on solving an other issue !
Also, he gifts you a zipline handle he tinkered together so you can do his personal quest- nice quick way to get around, especially skipping from the starting point back to a more main area. They did a great job keeping a *time loop* game fresh on every loop! That game had several great bits of polish like that. Auto-following an npc, torches only lit when someone had actually been somewhere ahead of you...
Honestly Quick Resume on the new Xbox's. Don't worry about not having a save function. Just pause the game and come back later. Whatever you want to say about Xbox, this function is fantastic. Makes virtually every game suddenly playable in whatever chunk you want.
@@deadersurvival4716 it's not leaving it open though. You can turn the console off and it stays at the same point. You can turn it off at the wall, come back after a holiday and it's still at exactly the same point. It makes a huge difference. It's especially useful as I have a young son. If he wakes up on a night I know I can stop the game, even turn it off for the night, and I won't lose anything.
Yeah, not sure what you'd call it, but it's been my favourite feature of the Switch too. Regardless of what you're doing, even mid-unpausable cutscene, hit the Home button and it'll freeze there, can turn the console off, return a couple days later and it's right where you left it. Makes me wish Steam game had that option as a primarily PC gamer.
@@deadersurvival4716 It lets you pause multiple games like this simultaneously. And any of those paused games can be resumed within 3-4 seconds, even after the xbox was turned off.
I have 2 additional suggestions for ways to save time. 1, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines let's you shorten the tutorial to a few words or skip it completely just by picking the right dialogue. 2, The Outer Worlds lets you teleport while encumbered by simply picking the right perk.
I think one of my favorite examples of skippable tutorials is Radiata Stories. In the New Game Plus the main character Jack just interrupts people whenever they try to start one saying he already knows what to do.
Elden Ring shares that mechanic you mentioned for Skyrim dungeons. They'll have a little beacon thing. Although for Elden Ring, it's slightly more important since some dungeons feature drops that you can't climb out of.
Same for skyrim as well with the unescapable drops, although usually those have the entire dungeon being your journey out, rather than being a lever door. The cave seen in the game, attached to one of the Gauldur amulet caves IIRC, is a mix of the 2. One unescapable drop, and one lever door. Another item is the sightless pit, which is a massive slog of a dungeon, entered by falling down an unescapable hole (unless you fast travel out)
My favorite variation on that is probably the recent Tomb Raider games. Nearly all dungeons either have an exit right next to the entrance that you couldn’t reach on the way in, or a way to set up a rope line or similar. Unless of course the point of the dungeon was to get to the other side, in which case you just exit to the new area.
Also a little tip: you don't actually have to use those beacons, in the boss room you can just fast travel via the map as always after the boss is defeated.
I remember when RPGs would include a spell or scroll ( sometimes both ) called EXIT that would take you completely out of a Dungeon, even from the Boss Room.
One game that made backtracking super easy was Jedi Survivor. In that game, you unlock shortcuts as you progress through a new area. This not only makes runs back to rest points super simple, but also later returns to that area for side quests and collectible hunting much easier.
Anything was better than Fallen Order with its back tracking. Only missing one trophy because I need one fauna, and it's towards the end of a very annoying area. Was not backtracking back to it again because they couldn't have even a half decent fast travel on planets.
Thanks for keeping it real, Andy. Also, there were two features that I thought of for the list. The first is universal, but I think it fits... the ability to save at all. I can't imagine trying to go back through an entire game every time I died in God of War. The other was a feature in games like Kingdom Hearts that healed Sora and refilled his magic every time the game was saved. Most boss fights had a save right before them, which made them just a bit easier to get through and get onto the next part of the game.
Egad, I remember one experience with FF6 where I used the save point before a boss battle, but soon discovered I was dead out of MP and pretty much any healing items: I simply could not defeat Wrexsoul. And I don't think this specific dungeon had a healing spring (or equivalent) nearby. Had to resort to a new save file.... I am also reminded of the cave zone in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, where the checkpoint before the boss does not feature an opportunity to collect any Rings.
DA:I also warns you when you're about to start the ending sequence, and if you have dlc, it will tell you if you'll have more to do before the final dlc, which is the actual endgame and there's no more exploration available
Me: Wanting to play more time efficient games also me: Planning another BG3 playthrough (Edit: being able to save mid battle is the best time sensitive feature ever)
Sony Santa Monica said they struggled with whether they should have checkpointing during boss fights. They decided to add them to all bosses except The King and Gna in the end.
The thing about boss checkpointing is that if you checkpoint when you're very low on health, you might get stuck in a loop of dying, so you might have to give the player a bit of a health boost at that point, either on restart or just always at that part of the boss fight.
@@gdclemo Pokemon Legend Arceus did that for you. You were given a prompt to "restart at check point," or "start over completely," but always given full health when you fight. It was SUCH A NICE feature.
11:03 not to mention you can only get the camp fast travel if you have a lot of in game gold. The gold of which takes literal hours and hours of farming to achieve, or just $10
Having Yakuza/Like a Dragon (that famously love having 4-hour-long prologues and unending trash mobs) in a list of games that respect your time is peak comedy.
The game with the best crafting system ever/the most respect for your time I’ve ever seen is the My Time series (Portia/Sandrock). Every interface tells you how much you have, need, can make, how many of the base components you have (crafting for quests), etc, and as long as you have the item in storage ANYWHERE, it’ll auto-pull it for you for crafting and quest turn-ins. Also an auto-sort-to-storage mechanic for putting things away.
"Perhaps it's 11 pm and you just wanted to go to bed? Well tough luck! The game is in charge of your schedule now." Bold of you to assume the game wasn't already in charge of my schedule.
Dreamlight Valley not only does the bulk crafting thing, but as of an update that came out about six months ago, you don’t have to actually have crafting items in your personal inventory in order to use them. So long as you have them stored in anything that counts as inventory, like a chest placed in your house, you can craft stuff with it no matter where on the map the crafting station is placed.
Yep, the 'Universal Storage' is a great feature, specially for games where you are limited to a bunch of small storages boxes all around your base/campfire/HQ, and just need specific ones all the time.
Came here to look for this comment. As someone who plays a lot of survival games craft from containers is a godsend in games where there are thousands of types of items and I don't have to search for which chest contains what piece.
Pokemon Legends Arceus had boss checkpoints too, they required you to get to a certain point of the frenzy meter. Once you got there and lost you could restart or play from the checkpoint. (I literally spammed it for Arceus fight)
@@BeckyNosferatu Enamorus’ cone of vision doesn’t include above her. So you can just use Braviary and hit her from above. Tornadus has made me rage quit twice. Arceus I spammed the play from checkpoint with max health charms and it still took over 50 attempts. I don’t tend to play games that require understand autographing and quick movement.
I relate to the point about fast travel. The first AAA game I played was Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which like Fallout lets you fast travel to any fast travel point you've found from anywhere as long as you're not under attack. The next game I played was The Witcher 3, in which it was super annoying that I always had to travel to an--often far away--fast travel point to use fast travel. If you play those two games back to back, you realize that Odyssey is The Witcher 3 with all the annoying parts taken out.
OxBox: makes a video about games that respect my time Me: respecting my time by playing the video while doing dishes TH-cam: he can't touch the screen because his hands are all soapy! Play a 10-min long commercial! Better yet, 2 of them!
I definitely appreciated the shortcut to the exit in the cauldrons in Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West. I love those runs, but trying to find my way out would have killed me...or Aloy.
For point 2, I really like how Final Fantasy 14 warns the player that they're about to sit through tens of minutes of cutscenes with a "a long sequence of cutscenes will now play. Please set aside enough time to view them in their entirety" message
In stars and time respect your time in a few ways, as an rpg about time loops 1) lets you choose which floor to loop back to, and whether the doors are already unlocked 2) when you get equipment in the party, and then time loop back, your party will still have the equipment and you don’t have to find it again 3) fast forwarding through old dialogue, classic for visual novels, but a god send for a game about repeating the same two days
No inventory limit in RPGs. If players want to go to a shop every 5 minutes to sell their loot it's always an option, don't make it mandatory ! While we're at it, good inventory UI is surprisingly rare and that saves A LOT of time especially for party-based games.
FF14 is amazing for this. It does exactly what Andy says and warns you that "several cutscenes will play in sequence" and to "set aside enough time before proceeding". And the FromSoft devs aren't sadists, Miyazaki is a masochist. He's on record saying he ok's monsters based on how much they make him feel he wants to be killed by them.
unlike nihon falcom who randomly triggers the final chapter without me having any say in it and lock me out of everything like how cold steel one locked me out getting the last fish for the achievement
Even better when it mentions when the cutscenes are unskippable and you should cancel duty finder before proceeding. It saves time because you don't end up getting a penalty for not accepting DF after it pops.
Dragons Dogma: Dark Arisen also has an end game warning! It’s a lifesaver. Compare that whit Kingdom Come: Deliverance who don’t even have the decency to tell you which quest is ACTUALLY time sensitive (as every NPC will tell you that time is of its essence), you just have to assume that they all are, and then you are stuck in an endless loop, not sure when is a good time to take some time off of questing to do some much needed training, exploring or farming.
Agreed. I'd rather play the series entirely in Japanese, mostly because the dubs may be not be all superlative and/or because the other games aren't dubbed, so consistency by playing them all in their native language is wiser. Same goes for anime, with an example like Mushi-shi. First season's dub is really good, but I rather prefer to watch it all on Japanese simply because the second season never got dubbed, even by the same people.
I appreciate games that have cheat codes that let you unlock all of the content. Outrun 2, for example, allows me to unlock all of the missions, the bonus tracks, the cars, and even the straight port of the original Outrun arcade game via a series of codes. That's content that would have taken an obnoxious amount of time unlocking everything when I just want everything so I can just chill and enjoy what the game has to offer.
Why use cheat codes when you can just have a setting in a special profile menu. All the content with a flip of a switch, out of the main settings so you can't do it accidentally (but still obvious enough that you'll find it), and you can go back to unlocking everything normally without the hassle of unloading saves. Edit: The game I was thinking of was Across the Obelisk, but there are several games that feature it, like Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes.
The rewind mechanic is older than what you mentioned. It was used in The Last Express in 1997. that game also had an interesting feature. It is played in real time and many events progress even if you are not there, so the rewind is especially useful. But in one scene you are spectating a concert, you are sitting, and the concert is really long. You can look around, observe the other spectators, and you can just enjoy yourself and actually listen to it. However, if you don't touche the control for a while, your character falls asleep and wakes up at the end of the concert.
Oh that's so cool! I'd never heard of The Last Express and it looks awesome! I love when people leave comments like this, I've got a new (old) game to play now !
One other thing that I love about Yakuza/Like a Dragon series is ability to pause cutscenes. It's becoming more of a norm lately which is nice to see. Considering how long the cutscenes can get, ability to pause them to do your chores, or to handle some emergency business is really useful, as well as ability to skip them if you are playing for second time and you just want to get to the next point in the game (or if you don't care about the story). All in all, Yakuza series are full of only good vibes :)
3:56 X4 Foundations. Not only do you have no idea what's going on because it hates tutorials, but it's only a nippy 300 hours before you've got roughly a handle on how it works, and about 700 hours before you can confidently order your other trade ships around. This needs to be on a list that's the antithesis of this list.
I would add the auto-battle flash feature from Earthbound. It was really nice to just instantaneously receive the money and experience for a random encounter below your level without having to go through the actual battle.
I would like to mention Baldur’s Gate 3 simply for the fact that you can save and quick save anytime and anywhere. Instead of having to wait for a conversation/battle to be over, you can save just before you do anything so it’s not a lot of backtracking if you fail. Or if you wanna explore certain options, you can save right before you make a choice and see how it goes.
You know instead of Radagon and the Elden Beast, my first thought went to Malenia, who is not only harder but starts phase two with an instant kill AoE attack that probably killed 99% of players the first time they encountered it. Also, they finally changed the fast travel restriction in Fallout 76. You can fast travel from interiors and also when enemies are nearby... you just have to survive for 20 seconds without taking damage first.
Could be worse; could be Sister Friede in DS3, who has 3 phases. Third phase, she has a bunch of different elemental attacks so you can't gear up and resist all of them.
To be honest, Zenless Zone Zero has a really nice approach to busy players. All "daily" stuff can be done in less than 7-8 minutes, it always gives you a notification if you're about to trigger an event and they even implemented a skip button for people who either make an alt account or just don't read dialogues anyway (and then complain that they don't know what is happening).
One thing that I love about Naughty Dog games (as an example) is that whenever you die, you start over right then and there. No game over screens, no enemies taunting you, no reload times. It's a perfect way to keep you in the action without wasting your time and testing your patience. To be fair, sometimes, it's amusing when you enemies taunt you when you lose, but being unable to skip such game over cutscenes, and STILL having a loading screen to look forward to before restarting a level, area, boss fight or some other such challenge all over again can really be annoying and rage-inducing. Games like Uncharted and The Last of Us totally respect your time in this regard.
I'd like to nominate Bug Fables : the Everlasting Sapling as a game that respects your time. -There is ZERO permanently missable unique item in the entire game -Forgot to spy an enemy and don't have have time to re-fight it? You can buy the spy data from an NPC -Another NPC will also sell you recipes for the cooking system if you can't be bothered to figure them all out yourself -There's a medal that lets you skip combat encounters if the monsters are too weak to be worth fighting -Generally speaking, the devs went out of their way to make sure you can't screw yourself over/softlock yourself, saving you from having to start over again
As a dad I can only say: I don't want to lose a lot of progress when I have to quit right now. I don't want to lose a lot of progress when I have to quit right now. I don't want to lose a lot of progress when I have to quit right now. I don't want to lose a lot of progress when I have to quit right now. I don't want to lose a lot of progress when I have to quit right now. Save anywhere is of course the best, next best is save-on-exit, very frequent checkpoints are ok-ish. But then it gets annoying.
@5:00 I *hate* the opening level of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. And I know I'm going to get grief from Ellen for saying it. But that game would be markedly improved by giving the player the option of starting a new game, let them pick their name and appearance, dump them down the chute, then offer to skip to the room full of gnomes and equipment right before the first boss fight. There's an option to turn off the tutorial prompts, yes, but the game STILL expects you to do the actions it would prompt for (like opening your inventory or casting a spell), it just doesn't TELL YOU if you turn it off.
5: What sucks are the games with a mid-boss checkpoint which remembers your state, so if you BARELY survived the first stage, now you're at 5% health EVERY time you try the second stage. Yeah, I'm going to KEEP failing under those conditions, LOL! Then I'd rather restart the whole thing so I can get another chance to start the second stage in a stronger position.
Elden Ring's tutorial was so easily skipable, that most people did so without even realizing it and people thought Elden Ring didn't have one. They had to put a sign in letting you know where the tutorial was. Also there's an emote for clearing it.
For the same reason as Skyrim, Golden Sun. Dungeon/hostile instances either loop back on themselves, or are used to bridge areas of the overworld so you reach your destination instead of dead-ending. It even gives you a Retreat psynergy to warp you back to the entrance for the rare ones that don't.
Being able to command my party to just move somewhere so I don't have to consult the map and try not to get lost just to return somewhere I barely left has saved so much time in Baldur's Gate 3
Yakuza: Like a Dragon also had the "hey you might want to prep for this" message pop up not just for end game, but also for a section in the first third. It gave you a recommended level to be and to stock up because you'll be away from town for a while. Which is nice because considering where you end up, you could potentially find yourself in an unwinnable situation, or at least a really hard one if you didn't stock up.
This seems like an easy commenter edition video, for me, it's the "Sifu" shortcuts that cleverly fit in the world. In "Papers Please" you could chose any single day of your playthrough and start from there, loved that feature.
My favourite from Elden Ring is the Stakes of Marika. No more lengthy runs back to the boss past loads of enemies you've already killed, just respawn right next to the boss door. Even if it is a two phaser.
I love how a lot of the Main Story Quests in FFXIV from Heavensward onwards will make reference to side quests and job quests if you complete them beforehand. e.g. Estinien acknowledging you as a fellow Azure Dragoon, Alphinaud mentioning the end of the Binding Coils of Bahamut, certain characters already knowing you... It makes my completionist side very happy.
Roots of Pacha I like more than animal crossing because of the Stone age motif and the pixel art, but one of the best things about it is batch crafting. It is so dang convenient
Final Fantasy 16 actually had both mid-boss battle checkpoints, and warnings. Not just when about to trigger end game, but also when you were about to enter a section you couldn't leave once started.
People who come to my place must respect their time a lot. They rather jump out of a window than walk back to the front door. My apartment is not even that big…
How about indie icon Shovel Knight? In the final levels you have a boss-rush against all 8 enemy Knights back to back, but then you have to face The Enchantress. Defeat her, rescue Shield Knight, and _oh wait_ there's one more, ACTUAL, final boss to defeat before the credits roll. This is the _one_ moment in the game where it secretly gives you a checkpoint so you don't have to keep fighting The Enchantress every time. Normally, when you die you see a level progress chart with Shovel Knight being slid back to the previous checkpoint, but this _does not_ happen when fighting the Final Boss -- just pick yourself up and give it another go!
as a massive yakuza/LAD fan, im honestly not happy that gaiden is on this list. sure it might respect your time in that specific way that was mentioned, but the series is so addictive, and to even get to gaiden spoiler free, you would have to play hundreds if not thousands of hours of the previous yakuza games. while that in itself isnt a bad thing, if you plan on having a life it most certainly is because its genuinely impossible to put down.
From what I’ve heard, Nintendo adding fast travel warp pipes to the Thousand Year Door remake was huge in terms of QOL. And I never played the original but I can definitely get what people mean by that. Cozy Grove is another game with a good crafting system. If you have a lot of an item’s crafting material it gives you another button option to craft multiple of that item and then you can choose however many you want to craft instead of using up all your materials. Edit to add: on the topic of tutorials, hey GameFreak can you please add an option to skip the catching tutorial for people who know how to catch Pokemon? Thank you.
In Kingdom Come: Deliverance there is a quest in which you have to craft like 10 potions. So you stand at the station, grab one handful of ingredient one, switch over to the kettle, throw it in, grab another handful, switch to the kettle again, get a handful of ingredient two, etc. Then you increase the heat of the fire and wait another (10?) seconds and then fill the potion into a bottle. Only nine more to go. I think, sometimes you also have to grind the ingredients first. I love the game but that is a pain in the neck.
I'm actually playing Banjo-Kazooie for the first time ever at the moment. I did not skip the tutorial cause obviously its all new to me, but the fact it was an option blew my mind.
For as great a game as Hollow Knight is, the main reason I never finished it is because it has a bad tendency to make you navigate multiple rooms of small enemies to get back to boss fights you are almost certain to fail multiple times before you finally pass them. This was particularly annoying on the second Hornet fight, which is where I got tired of spending multiple minutes running through the same four rooms every time I needed to get back to the fight that I would inevitably fail at repeatedly. Most Metroidvanias at least have the courtesy to put a save room right next to the fight, so I don't know why Hollow Knight couldn't do the same.
It was either the PSP or Vita for me, but the ability to suspend/sleep a console mid-game, and then turn it back on again and get immediately into the game without spending 1-5 minutes of loading it back up each time, has been a really nice convenience of modern gaming. This is more on the console manufacturers than any particular game, but a nice little bonus none-the-less.
I really like the storage/crafting system in Palworld. When crafting, the ressources you need are pulled from containers inside your basearea. So you dont have to pick up everything manually, which will propably overencumber yourself and walking in a snail´s pace from the chest to the nearest crafting table.
I’ve been playing Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights recently, and one feature it has that I really appreciate is that it marks rooms as you go discover them. Once you have all of the items in a room, it will mark the room as Complete, letting you know that you won’t need to backtrack there later. I haven’t played a ton of metroidvania games, but it’s really convenient to have that. Hollow Knight was more than a little annoying to complete because I didn’t always know where I had to go back to in order to find stuff I needed later traversal items for. Blasphemous was a bit better in that regard, since it let you mark the map yourself, but I admittedly didn’t catch that feature until really late.
10:01 is that a pun on Journey to the West I see? Actually somewhat fitting for a segment about praising super flexible fast travel, when you think about it.
When it comes to crafting systems, I have to give props to Star Ocean The Second Story R, which went from having to craft one item at a time to being able to craft multiple at once, and it give you the success rate for each material that you use. Really handy for the replication skill. Best remake I've ever played.
Skippable tutorials are great, but REPEATABLE tutorials are a godsend. Playing through Alien Isolation on hard mode and coming back after a break… It’s pretty unforgiving trying to pick up late-game hard mode when you don’t remember the buttons.
So I’m always grateful when a game has a separate, repeatable, tutorial to get back into the swing of things.
good point
I wish games had a „welcome back“ mode where you’re asked if you remember everything or if you need a refresher. I’m pretty sure I saw one game that did this but can’t remember.
Yes, I agree. Metal Gear Rising Revengeance succeeds here. You can just jump back into the training room to relearn things like parry timing.
I don't know which video game was the first one to have a 'Pause' feature, but bless those developers.
First console to have it was The Fairchild Channel F.
How about the DS that let you put the system to sleep basically allowing you to pause any game at any time.
The recent game changer was the ability to pause the cutscene
And along came Dark Souls...
Especially a pause menu that protects you from suffering harm from your opponents! If I pause the game to run to the bathroom, and come back to find I'd died because pausing didn't stop my enemies from attacking me, the game and I are going to have words.
In addition to bulk crafting, we should be allowed to bulk buy items! The latest Pokemon games, Scarlet and Violet, added an option in shops to bulk buy not just multiple of each item, but multiple items all at once, so you only need to mash through the "Are you sure?" dialogue once.
Fast menuing is a must!
@@kingtancred it also let's you sell in bulk.
AVGN just showcased a game where you can buy bullets for your gun... one at a time, requiring you to "click" "take", then point to the bullet, then confirm the purchase. And then you have to load the gun... one bullet at a time.... Kind of the opposite of this video, really.
Final Fantasy XIV will sometimes give you a warning that says "Several cutscenes will play in sequence" and that you might wanna make sure you have time to watch them all. In the community, this has basically become synonymous with "some shit is about to go down, so buckle up" and inspires both dread an excitement.
I always get excited when that pops up
I tend to go "oh hell, here we go again" thanks to the PTSD the first warning of that type (The Bloody Banquet) gave me.
Beat me to it lol.
Gonna add that retainers make some crafting and gathering stuff easier. Crafters will _always_ need elemental shards and crystals, so it's nice to send my gathering retainers out to get them while I'm doing other things, instead of wasting my time gathering them myself - or buying them from the marketboard lol. It's not foolproof because they can only get a few at a time, and it takes an hour for them to bring the items back - but when you're not focusing on crafting? Can easily just have your retainers stock up on the crystals, or other items you know you're going to need.
Currently have my combat retainers getting me meat and animal hides from dawntrail areas to get ready for that crafting grind lol.
That's my cue to take a potty break and grab a snack, I'm about to settle in for a ride.
I think every final fantasy needs to come with that warning! XD
The Saints Row series having the ability to "warp to shore" instead of tediously swimming back to land was respectful of Volition to add, especially in the second game when you're exploring the secret islands and you happen to lose/destroy your boat.
I've recently gotten around to playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider and I really appreciate that Lara says "this seems like the way out" if you start heading the wrong way at the beginning of a challenge dungeon. It's just a small time saver, but it's very appreciated.
Timesaver for others but I would most likely continue going the wrong way to see what happens
In one of the games I worked on, I added triggers to the tutorials that would disable them if you do those things in the game before they ever appear, demonstrating to the game that you don't need them.
That's good. Or at least it's good for a lot of things that require complex interactions. I've seen it done stupidly, though, for one or two button combinations where the game goes, "OK, you already figured that out," and I'm like, "the hell I did! What did I just press?!"
does it disable death if you died in the tutorial?
@@gizmobrooch8577 That's not specifically relevant to this particular game, but disabling something within a game in response to doing it would be weird. It only disabled the tutorial pop-ups if it saw you do the thing.
@@Ryan_Thompson The tutorial prompts were generally a chain of prompts, and just doing the first piece didn't disable them, for that exact reason.
I've seen games where the tutorial will still pop up on a checklist, already marked as complete. That way you can practice it more, or if you did it by accident you know how to do it again
Andys face for the "I don't think so" is some genuine wish fulfillment after what I figure must be thousands of do overs after all these years on camera lol.
Some serious "I said what I said" vibes 🙂
I wonder how many takes it took to get it just right.
7 ways Games DON'T respect your time!
Battle Passes are my nomination. And they came about all because of "games as a service" mentality. Games are meant to be played for fun, not treated as a chore.
I would add gear score nonsense into that too. If it changes gameplay fine. But if I have to basically tick a box after every mission saying I would like my weapons and armour to level up to match the level of the next enemies, then that is just a waste of my time.
Every free to play game that sells you premium currency to speed up or bypass your crafting time.
A way they don't: I haaaate crafting in animal crossing NH! I gotta make 50 items, but can only do one at a time! Why 😭
@@davidchristie6003 Oh, it's even worse when something needs to be at some arbitrary value for progression in some PVE thing you can only do alone. Doubly so when you're just not allowed to even try until you meet that.
Lord of the Rings: Shadow of War.
Every single Orc captain gets an unskippable intro monologues that ruins any pace of the combat you are currently in, and you quickly realize after the 10th captain, most of the "unique" dialogue is pretty much the same. Aside from the story driven captains and that one bard orc that you can never capture, most of the orc captains are cookie cutter and boring. Yet the game makes you listen to each of their speeches and, if there are multiple captains, you have to listen to all of the speeches. I literally could just set my controller down for the 4v4 captain battles they added and go make some tea for how long it took to get past all the Orc captain monologues.
Don't care if there was more after the main story concluded, didn't care to get the true ending if it meant more of those stupid orc captains.
Actually, the Skyrim exit points seem pretty realistic to me (most of the time). As I understand it, it's generally good practice when digging underground to make sure there's two points of entry/exit, in case of things collapsing. The most nonsensical part is how these can only be opened from one direction and how often the boss is sitting right next to it. But it is absolutely to the level designer's credit that the main contrivance feels like enemy placement and door unlocks, and not the architecture itself (I know the radiant questing system gets a lot of flak, for good reason, but if that's the cost of getting these generally well-designed levels/dungeons, seeing as game designers are not given unlimited time to fully develop stuff, then I'll take it).
"Masters of the you reverse" is such a brilliant pun
doing squats in a corner Blair Witch-style is 10x more creepy than just the Blair Witch corner stand. That is visual story-telling if i've ever heard it...
And it wasn't even visual because we couldn't see it :D
The blair witch goes to crossfit now
It's just Blair Witch teabagging the ghosts of her victims. You can't see them but they are there on the ground.
Doing squats facing a wall is a legit way to learn good squat form.
@@lightsideofsin8969 but......did u visualize it it's like when a book describes a scene was there always a picture beside the paragraph you silly goose....see no picture of said silly goose but you can geuss what that might look like lmao.
Jane is gone for 5 minutes and we have butt clenching meta 😂
Yes, butt really strong glutes.
And trash talking Animal Crossing. Mike has to know she'll make him pay later, but he did it anyway.
@@Brasc To be fair, crafting is something in Animal Crossing that's only present in New Horizons. New Leaf and earlier entries in the series you got all your stuff from earning it, buying it, or being gifted it. And tools never broke in previous games, except the Axe, for obvious reasons. I will praise New Horizons though for allowing you to create Designs anywhere in the game, no need to rush to the Able Sisters every time you want to edit or create a new Design. I will also praise it for allowing you to place the Furniture you have anywhere, not just indoors. Unfortunately, with each new entry in the series, the dialog from villagers has gotten worse. The first game made your villagers rude to you, even when they didn't mean to. Giving you a reason to like or hate them by how they treated you. With each game, we got blander and blander villager dialog, to the point you now only keep villagers around for their looks, not for how they treat you. They are basically walking plushies now
Jane’s gone?!
@@Becka_Harper IS SHE!?
For the end game warning bit, Tomb Raider (Reboot,... Second reboot) gave you a warning for the start of the final mission in all three games. I was very thankful for that.
Baldur's Gate 3. Yes, it's hundreds of hours long with an infinite amount of choices (all of which you want to try), but on the other hand it's refreshing to see a game that lets you save anywhere, anytime. So I can play for a bit and not worry about it getting in the way of doing anything else. I guess it's more respecting my schedule than my time, but it counts. Kind of.
I would say it generally respects your time as well, as very little of BG3 is filler content and "go kill 30 pigs" quests. Everything feels part of the world, there's no "generic" NPC except the ones you CAN'T talk to.
Manual saving is an absolute delight. A lot of older PC games (including the OG Baldur's Gate trilogy) had it to the point that Halo: CE actually caught me by surprise with its checkpoint system.
That feature got me into almost instant death scenarios in Skyrim. Made a fun challenge reloading and trying to fight/run your way out of certain death
Anyone who has pets or children or housemates or parents knows that pausing cutscenes is the feature we need in everything. The perfect way would be that pressing any button pauses the cutscene and shows you the button you have to press to skip it. Also all cutscenes should be created equal. Either let me skip all of them or none of them, not the weird mix that Legend of Zelda is doing recently where you try to skip a scene but it only dumps you into the next part of the same cutscene. When I skip, I want to be able to control my character again immediately.
the Tales of series does that now and I cant understate how good of a feature this is
I hate when you try to pause a cutscene and accidentally skip it, and then you try to reload a save and it just starts you after the cutscene anyway… so you have to pause and try to find the cutscene on TH-cam or something to see what happened…
So irritating! Just let us pause! Do not make it auto skip with a single button! Ugggh
@@DanteYewToob ooooor put in an option that says "single button cutscene skip" with an on off switch, so first times can pause, and repeat players can skip
Though on that note, it's great that consoles nowadays has a global pause system (aka the home button)
@@demonzabrakI feel like "hold B to skip" fixes that problem without needing extra options. I can't believe it's 2024 and we are STILL wishing for games to have logical cutscene pause and skip... This is why I feel like the gaming industry is just stagnant, refusing to learn even simple UX design lessons and instead constantly repeating the same errors endlessly... I wonder why I'm so bitchy/jaded about even "minor" UX design shortcomings when we still can't even pause/skip cutscenes consistently... ffs game devs... T.T
I would argue that Elden Ring's biggest system that respected your time was the Marika Statues. Not quite a Site of Grace, but it does mean that you rarely have to the massive runback that gets oh so tedious. When you spend more time trying to overcome a problem than running back to said problem, you improve a lot faster, and it doesn't break the pacing as much.
Wish the Dragonlord Placidusax had a Marika Statue. It's not that the runback is that hard, it's just you have to do that runback every time.
@@Paulafan5 totally agree, that run back kills the flow of trying again quickly
@@Paulafan5 Really goes to show how quickly we got used to stakes of Marika, and probably how sorely needed they were. In previous FromSoft games, the Placidusax runback would have seemed rather short.
@@Darkprosper Yeah especially in Dark Souls 2. DS2 had some horrifically brutal boss runs.
The option for manual saving. Anywhere at any time. The most important function for me. Checkpoints are just the worst as an adult. Sometimes you have to stop playing unexpectedly because family, job, partner, whatever, and nothing annoys me more than having to play 40 minutes again because the devs don't respect my time. Yes, I know, save scumming, but if you don't want to save, don't do it, but respect the time of others who have to save unexpectedly because they have a life. Makes me really salty. xD
Save points were probably a necessity in older games (hardware/software limitations), but there's no excuse not to have manual saves in almost every game.
And a manual save that doesn't teleport you to, say, the START of the Dungeon. Lookin' at you, Zelda.
There are methods of allowing manual saving that prevents save-scrumming anyway, like forcing you to quit when you save and removing said save when you reload.
Exactly. I will often do a steam refund if I find out a game doesn't let me save when I want.
@@sinteleon this 100%. i'm not fond of saving anywhere at anytime, however i do believe having temp saves like this is the best for everyone.
There was the original "The World Ends With You" for the Nintendo DS where to fully level up your gear you had to earn three kinds of points -- battle points, for regular in-game combat, Mingle points, which requires you to put your DS to sleep and walk around interacting with other players whose DSes were on but in sleep mode, and Shutdown points, where the game gives you more points the longer you've not played it. Mingle points were hardest to get unless you lived in Japan when the DS was big and took public transportation a lot.
The type of experience gained on a pin also could affect how it evolved.
I missed this system! I like a game that rewards you for putting down the game and being sociable, the POINT of the story! So much fun!
Just another experimental way TWEWY made use of every aspect of the DS's capabilities and another reason it's my favorite game of all time. It is a shame mingle points are basically impossible to get these days thus making certain pins basically unusable.
@@yuujin8194 It counted connecting to any hotspot of the right type, I used to have a usb wifi dongle to let it connect to my pc. Since it can only register each different connection once a day I think it was, it wasn't super viable for leveling, but most of the pins that evolve from mingle only require the last bit to be that so that was a workaround as long as you planned relatively carefully. Don't know if you can find one of those used anymore though 😞 . Edit: Oh, and connecting to the Wii counted too if I recall correctly, same rule, only once a day.
@@yuujin8194 if I recall correctly, you could get mingle points playing Tin Pin Slammer (?) against NPCs.
In previous From Software games, falling off a ledge is a instant death. Sekiro Shadows Die Twice however makes it so if you fall off a ledge, it just places Wolf at the spot he was before he fell off.
Unless it's done during combat
Sekiro is much more acrobatic that dark souls, so it makes sense they dont want you to instantly die if you do a slight fuck up while trying to not fall into a pit so deep even the sun doesnt reach the bottom
Also, games that stop you from falling off a ledge unless you deliberately jump off have done wonders for my sanity.
Even in combat you’ll be taken right back to the ledge you were standing on, it just takes some of your health away.
@@frankgrimes7388 elden ring also has pop ups
I once saw someone describe Chained Echoes as "a JRPG that respects your time as an adult" and that's stuck with me.
No random encounters, levelling is (mostly) milestone based so no grinding, heal to full after battles so no backtracking to healing points, and able to save any time outside of battle (no save points).
You're not in the marketing department, but you might have just made a sale.
Oh chained echoes is so good
Yeah, but how many hours of cutscenes do you have to sit through before getting to more than 5 minutes of gameplay?
Isn't that the rpg where the rpg where the protagonist gets cucked?
not going to lie i felt like those were all drawbacks while playing through the game. i do understand why people would like it but i feel like it takes away from the game. to each there own.
one game doing a great job at this is "the forgotten city"!
it's a time loop game, so it could have became extremely repetitive, BUT each time you figure out how to slove one problem, you can ask an NPC to do it for you at the start of the loop so you can focus right away on solving an other issue !
Also, he gifts you a zipline handle he tinkered together so you can do his personal quest- nice quick way to get around, especially skipping from the starting point back to a more main area. They did a great job keeping a *time loop* game fresh on every loop!
That game had several great bits of polish like that. Auto-following an npc, torches only lit when someone had actually been somewhere ahead of you...
That was such a great game. Always enjoy seeing it mentioned in the wild.
‘Trusting your life to a horse with the pathfinding ability of a busted roomba.’ 😂
Honestly Quick Resume on the new Xbox's. Don't worry about not having a save function. Just pause the game and come back later. Whatever you want to say about Xbox, this function is fantastic. Makes virtually every game suddenly playable in whatever chunk you want.
Ah yes... "leaving it open" definitely an Xbox exclusive.
I really love this feature but some games with online features don't support it. Like when I played The Crew 2, the loading got really annoying.
@@deadersurvival4716 it's not leaving it open though. You can turn the console off and it stays at the same point. You can turn it off at the wall, come back after a holiday and it's still at exactly the same point. It makes a huge difference. It's especially useful as I have a young son. If he wakes up on a night I know I can stop the game, even turn it off for the night, and I won't lose anything.
Yeah, not sure what you'd call it, but it's been my favourite feature of the Switch too. Regardless of what you're doing, even mid-unpausable cutscene, hit the Home button and it'll freeze there, can turn the console off, return a couple days later and it's right where you left it. Makes me wish Steam game had that option as a primarily PC gamer.
@@deadersurvival4716 It lets you pause multiple games like this simultaneously. And any of those paused games can be resumed within 3-4 seconds, even after the xbox was turned off.
I have 2 additional suggestions for ways to save time. 1, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines let's you shorten the tutorial to a few words or skip it completely just by picking the right dialogue. 2, The Outer Worlds lets you teleport while encumbered by simply picking the right perk.
I think one of my favorite examples of skippable tutorials is Radiata Stories. In the New Game Plus the main character Jack just interrupts people whenever they try to start one saying he already knows what to do.
Elden Ring shares that mechanic you mentioned for Skyrim dungeons. They'll have a little beacon thing. Although for Elden Ring, it's slightly more important since some dungeons feature drops that you can't climb out of.
Same for skyrim as well with the unescapable drops, although usually those have the entire dungeon being your journey out, rather than being a lever door. The cave seen in the game, attached to one of the Gauldur amulet caves IIRC, is a mix of the 2. One unescapable drop, and one lever door. Another item is the sightless pit, which is a massive slog of a dungeon, entered by falling down an unescapable hole (unless you fast travel out)
My favorite variation on that is probably the recent Tomb Raider games. Nearly all dungeons either have an exit right next to the entrance that you couldn’t reach on the way in, or a way to set up a rope line or similar. Unless of course the point of the dungeon was to get to the other side, in which case you just exit to the new area.
Also a little tip: you don't actually have to use those beacons, in the boss room you can just fast travel via the map as always after the boss is defeated.
I remember when RPGs would include a spell or scroll ( sometimes both ) called EXIT that would take you completely out of a Dungeon, even from the Boss Room.
I’ve seen those
classic escape rope when hitting rock tunnel without flash
Persona 4 had that... I was wondering where it was in Persona 3 R lol
Dragon quest's good old evac spell
One game that made backtracking super easy was Jedi Survivor. In that game, you unlock shortcuts as you progress through a new area. This not only makes runs back to rest points super simple, but also later returns to that area for side quests and collectible hunting much easier.
I hated the amount of backtracking in Fallen Order. Good lord it was all SO bad...
As well as adding fast travel between rest spots on the same planet.
The way it did it was clever, but even so the game had way too much back tracking imo.
Anything was better than Fallen Order with its back tracking. Only missing one trophy because I need one fauna, and it's towards the end of a very annoying area. Was not backtracking back to it again because they couldn't have even a half decent fast travel on planets.
Thanks for keeping it real, Andy. Also, there were two features that I thought of for the list. The first is universal, but I think it fits... the ability to save at all. I can't imagine trying to go back through an entire game every time I died in God of War. The other was a feature in games like Kingdom Hearts that healed Sora and refilled his magic every time the game was saved. Most boss fights had a save right before them, which made them just a bit easier to get through and get onto the next part of the game.
Egad, I remember one experience with FF6 where I used the save point before a boss battle, but soon discovered I was dead out of MP and pretty much any healing items: I simply could not defeat Wrexsoul. And I don't think this specific dungeon had a healing spring (or equivalent) nearby. Had to resort to a new save file....
I am also reminded of the cave zone in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, where the checkpoint before the boss does not feature an opportunity to collect any Rings.
DA:I also warns you when you're about to start the ending sequence, and if you have dlc, it will tell you if you'll have more to do before the final dlc, which is the actual endgame and there's no more exploration available
Me: Wanting to play more time efficient games
also me: Planning another BG3 playthrough (Edit: being able to save mid battle is the best time sensitive feature ever)
Sony Santa Monica said they struggled with whether they should have checkpointing during boss fights. They decided to add them to all bosses except The King and Gna in the end.
The thing about boss checkpointing is that if you checkpoint when you're very low on health, you might get stuck in a loop of dying, so you might have to give the player a bit of a health boost at that point, either on restart or just always at that part of the boss fight.
@@gdclemo Pokemon Legend Arceus did that for you. You were given a prompt to "restart at check point," or "start over completely," but always given full health when you fight. It was SUCH A NICE feature.
@@BeckyNosferatu Metal Gear Rising:Revengeance does it too.
11:03 not to mention you can only get the camp fast travel if you have a lot of in game gold. The gold of which takes literal hours and hours of farming to achieve, or just $10
I love how many of the games in this list, praised for time-saving in one way, are also culprits against the other methods.
Having Yakuza/Like a Dragon (that famously love having 4-hour-long prologues and unending trash mobs) in a list of games that respect your time is peak comedy.
The game with the best crafting system ever/the most respect for your time I’ve ever seen is the My Time series (Portia/Sandrock). Every interface tells you how much you have, need, can make, how many of the base components you have (crafting for quests), etc, and as long as you have the item in storage ANYWHERE, it’ll auto-pull it for you for crafting and quest turn-ins. Also an auto-sort-to-storage mechanic for putting things away.
Seconded!
As soon as you mentioned the multi-phase boss fights, i imagined Ellen sitting behind the camera swearing at kingdom hearts
"Perhaps it's 11 pm and you just wanted to go to bed? Well tough luck! The game is in charge of your schedule now."
Bold of you to assume the game wasn't already in charge of my schedule.
Dreamlight Valley not only does the bulk crafting thing, but as of an update that came out about six months ago, you don’t have to actually have crafting items in your personal inventory in order to use them. So long as you have them stored in anything that counts as inventory, like a chest placed in your house, you can craft stuff with it no matter where on the map the crafting station is placed.
Yep, the 'Universal Storage' is a great feature, specially for games where you are limited to a bunch of small storages boxes all around your base/campfire/HQ, and just need specific ones all the time.
Playing it right now and compared to Animal Crossing, it’s such a delight.
Oh, I love games that do that! Makes it so much easier on the player when you don't have to be going through 500 chests.
@@junemageettv *Minecraft* cough cough lol
Came here to look for this comment. As someone who plays a lot of survival games craft from containers is a godsend in games where there are thousands of types of items and I don't have to search for which chest contains what piece.
Pokemon Legends Arceus had boss checkpoints too, they required you to get to a certain point of the frenzy meter. Once you got there and lost you could restart or play from the checkpoint. (I literally spammed it for Arceus fight)
God, Arceus was far harder than it needed to be. Also, the GODDAMN FEMALE GENIE. Nothing made me more mad than trying to get her.
@@BeckyNosferatu Enamorus’ cone of vision doesn’t include above her. So you can just use Braviary and hit her from above. Tornadus has made me rage quit twice.
Arceus I spammed the play from checkpoint with max health charms and it still took over 50 attempts. I don’t tend to play games that require understand autographing and quick movement.
I relate to the point about fast travel. The first AAA game I played was Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which like Fallout lets you fast travel to any fast travel point you've found from anywhere as long as you're not under attack. The next game I played was The Witcher 3, in which it was super annoying that I always had to travel to an--often far away--fast travel point to use fast travel. If you play those two games back to back, you realize that Odyssey is The Witcher 3 with all the annoying parts taken out.
OxBox: makes a video about games that respect my time
Me: respecting my time by playing the video while doing dishes
TH-cam: he can't touch the screen because his hands are all soapy! Play a 10-min long commercial! Better yet, 2 of them!
Simply uninstall the TH-cam app and watch it instead using a browser with built-in ad blocking. I will never go back.
I definitely appreciated the shortcut to the exit in the cauldrons in Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West. I love those runs, but trying to find my way out would have killed me...or Aloy.
For point 2, I really like how Final Fantasy 14 warns the player that they're about to sit through tens of minutes of cutscenes with a "a long sequence of cutscenes will now play. Please set aside enough time to view them in their entirety" message
In stars and time respect your time in a few ways, as an rpg about time loops
1) lets you choose which floor to loop back to, and whether the doors are already unlocked
2) when you get equipment in the party, and then time loop back, your party will still have the equipment and you don’t have to find it again
3) fast forwarding through old dialogue, classic for visual novels, but a god send for a game about repeating the same two days
I love the rewind feature and not only for driving games. Think prince of persia or all the games in switch virtual console
No inventory limit in RPGs. If players want to go to a shop every 5 minutes to sell their loot it's always an option, don't make it mandatory !
While we're at it, good inventory UI is surprisingly rare and that saves A LOT of time especially for party-based games.
FF14 is amazing for this. It does exactly what Andy says and warns you that "several cutscenes will play in sequence" and to "set aside enough time before proceeding".
And the FromSoft devs aren't sadists, Miyazaki is a masochist. He's on record saying he ok's monsters based on how much they make him feel he wants to be killed by them.
Ah yes the infamous ptsd popup from FFXIV...
unlike nihon falcom who randomly triggers the final chapter without me having any say in it
and lock me out of everything like how cold steel one locked me out getting the last fish for the achievement
Even better when it mentions when the cutscenes are unskippable and you should cancel duty finder before proceeding. It saves time because you don't end up getting a penalty for not accepting DF after it pops.
5:34 and the Oscar for playing Andy goes to... Calculon!
Instances when every player is my favorite:
Monty Python's Flying Circus
The Kids In The Hall
The Oxventure
Much deserved love!
Dragons Dogma: Dark Arisen also has an end game warning! It’s a lifesaver.
Compare that whit Kingdom Come: Deliverance who don’t even have the decency to tell you which quest is ACTUALLY time sensitive (as every NPC will tell you that time is of its essence), you just have to assume that they all are, and then you are stuck in an endless loop, not sure when is a good time to take some time off of questing to do some much needed training, exploring or farming.
Only tangentially related, but Yakuza in English is always an uncanny jumpscare.
Real Kyoudais play in japanese
Agreed. I'd rather play the series entirely in Japanese, mostly because the dubs may be not be all superlative and/or because the other games aren't dubbed, so consistency by playing them all in their native language is wiser.
Same goes for anime, with an example like Mushi-shi. First season's dub is really good, but I rather prefer to watch it all on Japanese simply because the second season never got dubbed, even by the same people.
I appreciate games that have cheat codes that let you unlock all of the content. Outrun 2, for example, allows me to unlock all of the missions, the bonus tracks, the cars, and even the straight port of the original Outrun arcade game via a series of codes. That's content that would have taken an obnoxious amount of time unlocking everything when I just want everything so I can just chill and enjoy what the game has to offer.
Why use cheat codes when you can just have a setting in a special profile menu.
All the content with a flip of a switch, out of the main settings so you can't do it accidentally (but still obvious enough that you'll find it), and you can go back to unlocking everything normally without the hassle of unloading saves.
Edit: The game I was thinking of was Across the Obelisk, but there are several games that feature it, like Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes.
And even if you're not gonna use them, why not give them witty names and references, as seen in Age of Empires?
The rewind mechanic is older than what you mentioned. It was used in The Last Express in 1997.
that game also had an interesting feature. It is played in real time and many events progress even if you are not there, so the rewind is especially useful. But in one scene you are spectating a concert, you are sitting, and the concert is really long. You can look around, observe the other spectators, and you can just enjoy yourself and actually listen to it. However, if you don't touche the control for a while, your character falls asleep and wakes up at the end of the concert.
Oh that's so cool! I'd never heard of The Last Express and it looks awesome! I love when people leave comments like this, I've got a new (old) game to play now !
One other thing that I love about Yakuza/Like a Dragon series is ability to pause cutscenes. It's becoming more of a norm lately which is nice to see. Considering how long the cutscenes can get, ability to pause them to do your chores, or to handle some emergency business is really useful, as well as ability to skip them if you are playing for second time and you just want to get to the next point in the game (or if you don't care about the story). All in all, Yakuza series are full of only good vibes :)
Alpha Romeo racing italiano's tiger effect rewind was such a cool feature! That roar at the end just caps off a fun mechanic!
"It's okay - Jane isn't here right now." But she WILL find out... 😂
Mike is counting on his race car being fast enough for her to give up chase. Andy wouldn't dare with how little exercise he's been doing
3:56 X4 Foundations. Not only do you have no idea what's going on because it hates tutorials, but it's only a nippy 300 hours before you've got roughly a handle on how it works, and about 700 hours before you can confidently order your other trade ships around. This needs to be on a list that's the antithesis of this list.
I would add the auto-battle flash feature from Earthbound. It was really nice to just instantaneously receive the money and experience for a random encounter below your level without having to go through the actual battle.
I would like to mention Baldur’s Gate 3 simply for the fact that you can save and quick save anytime and anywhere. Instead of having to wait for a conversation/battle to be over, you can save just before you do anything so it’s not a lot of backtracking if you fail. Or if you wanna explore certain options, you can save right before you make a choice and see how it goes.
I love how FFVII Remake simply asks you to go back to whoever gave you a quest after you've completed it
You know instead of Radagon and the Elden Beast, my first thought went to Malenia, who is not only harder but starts phase two with an instant kill AoE attack that probably killed 99% of players the first time they encountered it.
Also, they finally changed the fast travel restriction in Fallout 76. You can fast travel from interiors and also when enemies are nearby... you just have to survive for 20 seconds without taking damage first.
Could be worse; could be Sister Friede in DS3, who has 3 phases. Third phase, she has a bunch of different elemental attacks so you can't gear up and resist all of them.
To be honest, Zenless Zone Zero has a really nice approach to busy players. All "daily" stuff can be done in less than 7-8 minutes, it always gives you a notification if you're about to trigger an event and they even implemented a skip button for people who either make an alt account or just don't read dialogues anyway (and then complain that they don't know what is happening).
One thing that I love about Naughty Dog games (as an example) is that whenever you die, you start over right then and there. No game over screens, no enemies taunting you, no reload times. It's a perfect way to keep you in the action without wasting your time and testing your patience. To be fair, sometimes, it's amusing when you enemies taunt you when you lose, but being unable to skip such game over cutscenes, and STILL having a loading screen to look forward to before restarting a level, area, boss fight or some other such challenge all over again can really be annoying and rage-inducing. Games like Uncharted and The Last of Us totally respect your time in this regard.
I'd like to nominate Bug Fables : the Everlasting Sapling as a game that respects your time.
-There is ZERO permanently missable unique item in the entire game
-Forgot to spy an enemy and don't have have time to re-fight it? You can buy the spy data from an NPC
-Another NPC will also sell you recipes for the cooking system if you can't be bothered to figure them all out yourself
-There's a medal that lets you skip combat encounters if the monsters are too weak to be worth fighting
-Generally speaking, the devs went out of their way to make sure you can't screw yourself over/softlock yourself, saving you from having to start over again
As a dad I can only say:
I don't want to lose a lot of progress when I have to quit right now.
I don't want to lose a lot of progress when I have to quit right now.
I don't want to lose a lot of progress when I have to quit right now.
I don't want to lose a lot of progress when I have to quit right now.
I don't want to lose a lot of progress when I have to quit right now.
Save anywhere is of course the best, next best is save-on-exit, very frequent checkpoints are ok-ish. But then it gets annoying.
@5:00 I *hate* the opening level of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. And I know I'm going to get grief from Ellen for saying it. But that game would be markedly improved by giving the player the option of starting a new game, let them pick their name and appearance, dump them down the chute, then offer to skip to the room full of gnomes and equipment right before the first boss fight. There's an option to turn off the tutorial prompts, yes, but the game STILL expects you to do the actions it would prompt for (like opening your inventory or casting a spell), it just doesn't TELL YOU if you turn it off.
5: What sucks are the games with a mid-boss checkpoint which remembers your state, so if you BARELY survived the first stage, now you're at 5% health EVERY time you try the second stage. Yeah, I'm going to KEEP failing under those conditions, LOL! Then I'd rather restart the whole thing so I can get another chance to start the second stage in a stronger position.
Elden Ring's tutorial was so easily skipable, that most people did so without even realizing it and people thought Elden Ring didn't have one.
They had to put a sign in letting you know where the tutorial was.
Also there's an emote for clearing it.
For the same reason as Skyrim, Golden Sun. Dungeon/hostile instances either loop back on themselves, or are used to bridge areas of the overworld so you reach your destination instead of dead-ending. It even gives you a Retreat psynergy to warp you back to the entrance for the rare ones that don't.
Being able to command my party to just move somewhere so I don't have to consult the map and try not to get lost just to return somewhere I barely left has saved so much time in Baldur's Gate 3
Yakuza: Like a Dragon also had the "hey you might want to prep for this" message pop up not just for end game, but also for a section in the first third. It gave you a recommended level to be and to stock up because you'll be away from town for a while. Which is nice because considering where you end up, you could potentially find yourself in an unwinnable situation, or at least a really hard one if you didn't stock up.
This seems like an easy commenter edition video, for me, it's the "Sifu" shortcuts that cleverly fit in the world. In "Papers Please" you could chose any single day of your playthrough and start from there, loved that feature.
My favourite from Elden Ring is the Stakes of Marika. No more lengthy runs back to the boss past loads of enemies you've already killed, just respawn right next to the boss door. Even if it is a two phaser.
I love how a lot of the Main Story Quests in FFXIV from Heavensward onwards will make reference to side quests and job quests if you complete them beforehand. e.g. Estinien acknowledging you as a fellow Azure Dragoon, Alphinaud mentioning the end of the Binding Coils of Bahamut, certain characters already knowing you... It makes my completionist side very happy.
Roots of Pacha I like more than animal crossing because of the Stone age motif and the pixel art, but one of the best things about it is batch crafting. It is so dang convenient
Final Fantasy 16 actually had both mid-boss battle checkpoints, and warnings. Not just when about to trigger end game, but also when you were about to enter a section you couldn't leave once started.
Best tutorial for me is definitely Far Cry Blood Dragon.
Elden Ring with the soundtrack to banjo Kazooie really hits different 😂
People who come to my place must respect their time a lot. They rather jump out of a window than walk back to the front door. My apartment is not even that big…
"Yes that's correct officer. I didn't push him, he..err...jumped out of the window!"
That's what the chloroform and zip ties are for, duh!
How about indie icon Shovel Knight? In the final levels you have a boss-rush against all 8 enemy Knights back to back, but then you have to face The Enchantress. Defeat her, rescue Shield Knight, and _oh wait_ there's one more, ACTUAL, final boss to defeat before the credits roll. This is the _one_ moment in the game where it secretly gives you a checkpoint so you don't have to keep fighting The Enchantress every time. Normally, when you die you see a level progress chart with Shovel Knight being slid back to the previous checkpoint, but this _does not_ happen when fighting the Final Boss -- just pick yourself up and give it another go!
as a massive yakuza/LAD fan, im honestly not happy that gaiden is on this list. sure it might respect your time in that specific way that was mentioned, but the series is so addictive, and to even get to gaiden spoiler free, you would have to play hundreds if not thousands of hours of the previous yakuza games. while that in itself isnt a bad thing, if you plan on having a life it most certainly is because its genuinely impossible to put down.
From what I’ve heard, Nintendo adding fast travel warp pipes to the Thousand Year Door remake was huge in terms of QOL. And I never played the original but I can definitely get what people mean by that.
Cozy Grove is another game with a good crafting system. If you have a lot of an item’s crafting material it gives you another button option to craft multiple of that item and then you can choose however many you want to craft instead of using up all your materials.
Edit to add: on the topic of tutorials, hey GameFreak can you please add an option to skip the catching tutorial for people who know how to catch Pokemon? Thank you.
I keep forgetting that there are English voice overs for the Like A Dragon series and it always hits me like a truck
I did NOT expect to see Skyrim as the first entry in a video about games that respect my time.
*cough*Radiant quests*cough*
In Kingdom Come: Deliverance there is a quest in which you have to craft like 10 potions. So you stand at the station, grab one handful of ingredient one, switch over to the kettle, throw it in, grab another handful, switch to the kettle again, get a handful of ingredient two, etc. Then you increase the heat of the fire and wait another (10?) seconds and then fill the potion into a bottle. Only nine more to go. I think, sometimes you also have to grind the ingredients first. I love the game but that is a pain in the neck.
Hey, if Home Alone taught me anything (and it most certainly has) it's that Kevin's basement contains nothing but pain.
Was just about to go to sleep. I guess sleep can wait.
I'm also about to go to sleep but it's 12 noon And I have to sleep for night shift.
I'm actually playing Banjo-Kazooie for the first time ever at the moment. I did not skip the tutorial cause obviously its all new to me, but the fact it was an option blew my mind.
Unskippable cutscenes are a pain. Luckily they have become very rare by now.
This is (sometimes) because the cutscene was hiding load times, and they've gotten so fast on modern hardware that they don't need to make you wait!
For as great a game as Hollow Knight is, the main reason I never finished it is because it has a bad tendency to make you navigate multiple rooms of small enemies to get back to boss fights you are almost certain to fail multiple times before you finally pass them. This was particularly annoying on the second Hornet fight, which is where I got tired of spending multiple minutes running through the same four rooms every time I needed to get back to the fight that I would inevitably fail at repeatedly. Most Metroidvanias at least have the courtesy to put a save room right next to the fight, so I don't know why Hollow Knight couldn't do the same.
I would be more impressed by Skyrim's dungeon lever if we didn't have magic spells to escape from dungeons as early as Dragon Quest in 1986.
Wait, Andy did the racing game segment and not Mike? My world is shattered.
13:36, old terraria gameplay, Hurray!!! 🎉
It was either the PSP or Vita for me, but the ability to suspend/sleep a console mid-game, and then turn it back on again and get immediately into the game without spending 1-5 minutes of loading it back up each time, has been a really nice convenience of modern gaming. This is more on the console manufacturers than any particular game, but a nice little bonus none-the-less.
I really like the storage/crafting system in Palworld.
When crafting, the ressources you need are pulled from containers inside your basearea. So you dont have to pick up everything manually, which will propably overencumber yourself and walking in a snail´s pace from the chest to the nearest crafting table.
I’ve been playing Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights recently, and one feature it has that I really appreciate is that it marks rooms as you go discover them. Once you have all of the items in a room, it will mark the room as Complete, letting you know that you won’t need to backtrack there later.
I haven’t played a ton of metroidvania games, but it’s really convenient to have that. Hollow Knight was more than a little annoying to complete because I didn’t always know where I had to go back to in order to find stuff I needed later traversal items for. Blasphemous was a bit better in that regard, since it let you mark the map yourself, but I admittedly didn’t catch that feature until really late.
10:01 is that a pun on Journey to the West I see? Actually somewhat fitting for a segment about praising super flexible fast travel, when you think about it.
Thank you to your team for warning us about possible spoilers for the games!
When it comes to crafting systems, I have to give props to Star Ocean The Second Story R, which went from having to craft one item at a time to being able to craft multiple at once, and it give you the success rate for each material that you use. Really handy for the replication skill. Best remake I've ever played.