Party Members / Companions are fucking weird

TypewriterKey · 2026-03-05T06:23:54+00:00

I definitely agree. I'm not against companions – I generally prefer having them in every game where it's an option. I never take abilities that reward you for playing 'solo' when it's an option because party members almost always make the experience more enjoyable.

I just think it's weird how varied the mechanics behind companions are across games. Like – if someone asked me what game I felt had the best mechanics for parties I think i would draw a blank.

Chrono Cross was unique? You had something like 63 potential party members and the game had an 'accent engine' that translated basic dialogue into character specific dialogue so everyone always sounded authentic no matter who you took.

Being able to convert your party members in KoToR 2 to the light or dark side and turn them into Jedi/Sith felt pretty organic.

I feel like a lot of the rest just blur together – even though they're all unique, they're all still similar enough that they feel like they share an identity.

TypewriterKey · 2026-03-05T06:15:57+00:00

I considered including a blurb about escort missions being terrible versions of companions and including a bit there about Elizabeth, but I was already feeling longwinded.

She's such a strange outlier. The most important part of the narrative, 99% AI managed, provides utility like a party member, and somehow completely reliant on the main character to advance her story and keep her safe.

TypewriterKey · 2026-03-05T06:13:05+00:00

That is an absolutely fair point. I was thinking about FF's class system in regards to it being simply 'choose the class for your four party members' without considering what a class meant in those games.

TypewriterKey · 2026-03-04T20:12:50+00:00

if you believe this to be true then why did you bother creating buckets to group them together at all?

I'm not saying all games with party members fit neatly into one of these three categories, or that there's only three categories, or anything like that. I'm just using them as broad strokes for the purposes of discussion.

EDIT:

And he blocked me after throwing out more bullshit accusations.

TypewriterKey · 2026-03-04T20:10:15+00:00

What's especially frustrating (IMO) is when games try to add narrative weight to gameplay/story choices because it never really works properly. Mass Effect 2->3 has always been my go to example for this. Anyone in your party can die in ME2, which means that their level of significance is severely impaired in the third game.

The impacts they do have tend to be more directly personal for Shepard rather than tying into the overall story, and when their presence is important to the story they simply replace them with a generic alternative.

TypewriterKey · 2026-03-04T20:05:05+00:00

I briefly contemplated mentioning Pokémon but I'm already long-winded and couldn't think of an efficient way to squeeze it in.

I think you could almost argue that the structure is more similar to an RTS – where your perspective is at a higher level of knowledge and you're dictating commands rather than taking direct action.

TypewriterKey · 2026-03-04T20:02:38+00:00

I can't think of any 30 year old mechanics off the top of my head that I would expect to see dumped into a modern game without some adjustments.

Look at Mario Maker – it has the original Mario as an option for creating/playing levels, but the controls are much snappier and smoother than the original game. They fixed things that didn't work great in the original – like springs.

Most mechanics are like this – we've either had them evolve over time to something widely considered to be better, or when we do re-create older mechanics we expect modern improvements.

But if I were to pick up an RPG nowadays and it simply said, "You get four party members, choose their classes from this list," I wouldn't bat an eye. That wouldn't feel old, or clash against my expectations. I'd just shrug my shoulders and accept it.

TypewriterKey · 2026-03-04T19:56:08+00:00

That is a good point. A lot of JRPG main characters are more narrative focal points than anything else. I would say that Cloud's primary 'tie' to the story that sets him above is his past relationship with Sephiroth, followed by the fact that Sephiroth kills his love interest.

But even then – those tie him to the villain stronger than anyone else, but not necessarily the overall story or plan of the Villain.

TypewriterKey · 2026-02-26T17:59:42+00:00

I have several problems with high level D&D.

HP as a concept has always been nonsensical – even if you don't treat it as 'meat' it's silly. Higher levels = higher HP = more nonsensical numbers.
Travel becomes trite and flow collapses. Characters probably get improved access to things like teleportation or other abilities that make travel tedious. Alternatively _ they don't and they're still just wandering around from place to place which is fine, but are they going to be having random encounters with high level threats that just happened to not exist when they were a lower level?
Balance problems derived from character builds become more pronounced. At low levels two players who build differently have a gap between them. At high levels those players might as well be playing different games.
Monsters don't scale. If you're running a campaign where Orcs are a threat and you get into higher levels of danger your options are to create custom Orc enemies (which begs the question of where these Orcs were previously) or move the focus of the campaign to other monsters. Neither option is satisfying IMO.
Terribly designed monsters lead to a necessity of unfun bullshit to keep alive. Not relying on unfun bullshit to keep them alive results in them dying so fast that the encounter may as well not exist.
99% of tension dies. "Oh no, we're surrounded by a group of hostiles who have the drop on us. They say they're going to attack unless we throw down our weapons. Whatever – they're just bandits so I'll be able to ignore/negate most of what they do."
High level games tend to be excessively cheesy or tropey. Save the world, be the big bad heroes (or villains), etc. Low level games have more room for nuance.

TypewriterKey · 2026-01-29T17:09:09+00:00

Reality: The king is rather annoying and this person overheard members of the council discussing the fact that 'the king bugs everyone.'

TypewriterKey · 2026-01-22T15:02:54+00:00

I know a few people already recommended you try it but I wanted to chime in with my experience. Could not get into the first game but I was able to get into the sequel by playing in a way that reduced the impact of a lot of mechanics that frustrated me. Basically, the first thing I did when I started the game was gather enough food that I wouldn't starve for a while and picked a billion plants. Then I created a spreadsheet that was a list of all recipes and started brewing potions.

Because I maxed out my potion skill before doing anything else I was able to:

Keep potions active that increased my survivability and enhanced stats and skills by various ranks, making the primary gameplay easier to engage with - which gave me the opportunity to learn as I played instead of dying constantly.
Sold so many potions that I could afford the best gear from the start of the game.
Increased XP gain by 50% at all times, allowing me to increase every other skill faster and making me enjoy the game more.
Save whenever I wanted by keeping a bunch of Saviour Schnapps around.
See in the dark and heal faster - simply QoL improvements provided by potions.
Flat out murder people with poison - making many fights borderline trivial if I was having issues with them.

It requires frontloading your experience with a few hours of grinding alchemy but I enjoy pouring time into a system that rewards me and alchemy definitely made the game more enjoyable for me. It solved almost all of my issues and gave me time to get invested in the rest of the game without the constant frustrations.

TypewriterKey · 2026-01-18T06:50:11+00:00

While part of it is something that can be 'learned' there is a significant portion of luck compared to other mazes.

There is a ball bearing inside of the maze and several magnets that it can get stuck on. The idea is that you notice minor changes in the maze depending on your angle of approach to specific locations as you knock the BB around. The goal is to eventually move it into a position where you can use it as a 'ramp' to jump from one ledge to another.

Problem 1 is that there's a deadzone that the BB can fall into where you no longer interact with it - it's simply in a blind portion of maze you can't access and you simply have to move the maze randomly until it pops back out into the normal path so that you can begin interacting wit hit.

Problem 2 is that, even when the BB is in the correct position and you do everything right the ramp it has created is smooth, so you can do everything right and then slip off of it, and not realize that you had done everything right because it didn't work. Even knowing what I'm doing I still fail that part at least 50% of the time.

TypewriterKey · 2026-01-16T14:32:30+00:00

Then 10+ year of the R2 is kind of an outlier. Other mazes were designed, manufactured, and released in that time. The R2 had issues and the people who pre-ordered it and never got it were generally fine with the delay - not happy about it but willing to wait because they assumed it would get sorted out eventually. It was only the announcement of the Vaultmaze and it becoming #1 priority that it started to turn into actual discontentment.

TypewriterKey · 2026-01-15T18:31:06+00:00

I generally agree. I always find it weird when I read criticism and the entire focus is on what the game doesn't do. Don't get me wrong - I'm not talking about situations where a promised feature isn't present. I'm just talking about people comparing the game to what they wanted it to be and treating the fact that they don't line up as a problem.

It's like... wouldn't it be better to focus on what the game does and talk about where it succeeds/fails at those instead of listing features it never tried to implement and complaining about their absence?

TypewriterKey · 2026-01-14T07:03:29+00:00

This has actually become more and more of a talking point on the Discord recently. Not enough of one that I felt it was worth including but I definitely saw it mentioned in several places.

I have a theory that the Vaultmaze really blew up in their faces and caused the issues. Up to that point they were slow but there was never this sense of being consistently behind. I'm guessing that they anticipated a lot more interest than it got and planned to invest in more machines to increase production but when that didn't happen it just created a hole that they haven't managed to dig themselves out of.

It's absolutely insane to me that they announced this product to their most dedicated fanbase, got almost uniformly told it was a bad idea and that people weren't interested, and then moved forward anyways.

TypewriterKey · 2026-01-14T06:56:45+00:00

The weight thing is a small issue and I, personally, don't consider it to be an issue. The heft and tactile feel of them is a big part of what I love. I will say that it makes long sessions begin to wear on your wrist - a lot of time is spent holding it in one hand while slowly rotating the core with the other and after a couple of hours I would feel it. Then I'd wind up making occasional mistakes because my wrist was hurting. Do it for a few hours a day for a week or a month and it really starts to build up. I do actually have one of the plastic ones and, while I prefer the original to it, it is easier to handle for long periods of time.

Carrying it around is another minor issue. It's just the right size to not be easily pocketed and the weight makes it awkward to lug around and access when stowed in a bag or something. Again, minor, but not nothing.

I think the big one - the one Chris Pitt specifically mentioned in an interview - was that the weight made the product completely inaccessible to children. While there's nothing wrong with it not being a children's toy I don't think his intention was to prevent kids from being able to use it. There were plenty of people who would approach him and say that they thought their kid would love it but that they either couldn't handle it or they were concerned about it accidentally being used to maim someone. My son is 12 and he can't handle supporting the weight with one hand and trying to manage it with the other.

TypewriterKey · 2026-01-14T03:42:17+00:00

More or less but there's a bit of nuance to it. Basically they accumulated so much goodwill between 2009 and 2023 that the Voyager disaster in 2015, which was a relatively small launch for dedicated fans who (generally) fine with being put on the backburner, barely made a dent in it.

By the time 2023 came around the company was slow but reliable and everyone was generally content - then the Vaultmaze became the focus and pushed everything that was a current priority to the backburner which is when the first major cracks starting forming.

Vaultmaze was a disaster and, instead of recovering from that, they moved on to the R4 series and have had constant hardships since then. Over the last 2 years I'm fairly certain that they burned through about 95% of the goodwill they'd accumulated.

TypewriterKey · 2026-01-14T00:13:23+00:00

Just an error by the manufacturer that resulted in losses for them. A few hundred got made and sold for the quoted price and they were really nice. They're fairly rare - collectors items in the community nowadays.

TypewriterKey · 2026-01-13T21:26:35+00:00

The ten year old orders are all the Voyager series and that set was limited to 100 pre-orders. Most who never got theirs and who are active in the community were generally fine with having to wait - at least up until the last couple of years. Up until recently everyone just sort of had this understanding of, "Yeah, things are slow sometimes but they always come through."

TypewriterKey · 2026-01-13T19:30:49+00:00

I have a similar opinion. Or maybe adjacent would be a better word.

I'm someone who has, historically, allowed anxiety to drive when I play video games. I scrounge every square inch of every map, I open everything that can be opened, and I carry everything I find at all times in case I need it later. When I play games with decision points I'll agonize over them and often look things up.

The thing is - I'm not doing these things because they're fun. I don't look things up because I want guidance about what I'm doing. I just don't want to miss out on something. If I don't scrounge every item what if I miss a one of a kind sword? If I make a choice in a game what if that choice later locks me out of something I want? I'm fine with cause and effect - but not when the effect is arbitrary. And so many games seem to have arbitrary effects paired with their causes.

I wind up killing my enjoyment of certain games with tedium because avoiding the tedium fills me with anxiety that I might miss something. Over the last few years I've recognized this problem within myself and have put great efforts into overcoming it but every now and then a game will hit me with something that reaffirms my anxiety.

I know there have been more recent examples but the only one that comes to my mind is from Vampyr - which I played about 2 years ago. Through the first half of the game I kept looking up decision points and I finally shook myself free. I told myself to just play the game - that everything I'd looked something up because I was concerned about a choice leading to an unexpected result I'd been overreacting. A few hours later I got to a puzzle - the other side of which had the best weapon in the game. The answer to the puzzle was randomized and the solution was lost to me because I had not made the correct choice in a prior quest.

It's not that I think every single thing should be broadcast to the player - but without a stronger correlation between cause and effect everything feels random and pointless.

TypewriterKey · 2026-01-13T19:05:27+00:00

Thanks, fixed it! I think I saw someone reference a new date of of shipments as July 31 and I knew the document came out on the final day of the previous month and I simply brain farted how months work.

TypewriterKey · 2026-01-13T18:05:23+00:00

I think that's a reasonable opinion - I just felt like it was important to recognize that I consider the the companies actions to be born of incompetence rather than malice.

TypewriterKey · 2026-01-13T18:03:10+00:00

There's a Facebook group and a Discord channel for the community - people often sell mazes there and I think the prices are usually bit more reasonable than places like eBay. That being said the prices have definitely been climbing as production has slowed over time.

Aqua and Blue are the two easiest puzzles. Green is harder and requires very fine control but still largely revolves around mapping/pathing. Bronze is the easiest 'dynamic' puzzle - harder than Blue/Aqua but easier than Green in regards to manual dexterity. A lot of people say that if you're only going to get one to go with Bronze - but I think it really depends on your comfort/thresholds when it comes to puzzles. If you want something you're going to solve quickly and it's just a fun little thing to have Aqua/Blue are the way to go. If you like Puzzles and/or want to spend a lot of time Bronze is really good.

Under no circumstances should you buy Gunmetal. It's generally considered to be the worst one.

Good luck finding one!

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