#gameplay analysis

As in, it’s the in-universe justification for the game’s platforming.

For example, just look at Oleander’s Basic Braining from both a gameplay and narrative perspective: Gameplay-wise, it’s the opening tutorial level that introduces the basic controls and all the platforming mechanics that will define the rest of the game, and because of that the level is pretty easy and forgiving to the player.

Now where this gets interesting is when we consider that it’s pretty clear that for the rest of the campers, Basic Braining is basically a horrifying death with most not even being able to finish.

So it’s basically implied that the level being so easy represents that for Raz, it WAS easy. Specifically BECAUSE of all his acrobatics experience. While all the other kids were struggling with ridiculously long ladders, net walls, rope-swings, multiple trapezes, dodging machine-gun fire or just getting blown up by random landmines, Raz the trained-before-he-could-walk acrobat was absolutely blitzing through all of that. He got through it so fast Raz almost stumbled onto the big bad’s evil plan simply because Oleander never thought he’d get through the course so fast!

And the fun thing is that this unspoken emphasis on Raz’s acrobatics skill permeates through the entire rest of the game, and even explains a few metanarrative elements! Like you know how it’s implied that Raz pics up new psychic abilities and skills ridiculously fast for a kid his age while at camp?

Well, aside from his natural talent and drive to learn, from a gameplay perspective we can assume at least part of it is Raz picking up a bunch of those Psi cards, Challenge Markers and Scavenger Hunt items scattered around the camp. Most of which just so happen to be squirreled away in some VERY hard-to-reach places. At least, hard to reach for anyone without years of acrobatics training.

And that’s not even touching on what happens when Raz picks up Levitation. Like for the other kids, levitation is just a fun gimmick to zip around rolling on a glowing ball. But as we see with Raz, he’s practically FLYING.

Is it any wonder Ranger Cruller is surprised when Raz gets half the scavenger hunt done in an afternoon? And is pretty sure nobody has ever done the whole thing when Raz finally finishes the hunt?*

And I think this all plays very nicely into the narrative thru-line that runs across both the first and second games: That for all the baggage that may come from them, Raz’s connection to his family is still an important part of his life. Particularly with how this plays into the end of the first game with Raz reconciling with his father, and into the second game with both reconciling and dealing with several of his broader family issues.

That regardless of what he learns as a psychonaut, the lessons Raz learned from his family will always be of help to him.

I can see why cassual fans would love totk, wven have it as one of their top three zeldas, because the game is GOOD

But the reason why i and a lot of more in-depth fans dont really like the game is because of the story. Despite totk wanting to be a more story-focused game, the way they executed the storytelling was the worst aspect of the game. A lot of fans were excited about how this game could develop the zelda timeline more, but what ended up happening was a boring retelling ocarina of time and an explicit retconning of the entire zelda timeline, a single game deleting over 40 years of history.

Like, you understand right?

The memories were handled terribly as well, while botw memories didnt have to be found in order these ones had to be. I made a much more in depth as to why the memories in totk dont work ages ago on my rambles masterlist which explains why the story like this didnt work and completely ruined my experience of the game, in an effort to not spoil myself i had to phuedo-spoil myself as well as only play on guided rail lines.

And the story doesnt even continue well from botw! No one recognises link, the sheika tech is nowhere to be seen nor are even mentioned by people like purah and robbie! The calamity isnt mentioned anywhere apart for a brief second in the school sidequests

And even though the zonai is the main thing in the game, and what every youtube theorist obsessed over in botw (i was never interested in them and didnt really care) but these zonai dont even have the same architecture as the ruind we see in botw! The ruins look completely different and any lore we got for the zonai doesnt fit in with the botw zonai ruins. The botw and totk zonai mighht as well be completelyt different races! (I also made a post a ling time ago about the zonai)

Totk destroys and deletes the previous game's and series' stories while also failing to execute a story of it's own in any sort of engaging way.

Totk, while being such a fun game that i enjoyed the actual gameplay part of, and the way they handled dungeons and such were a lot vetter than botw, but it is trying to be an in depth story game while trying to be an even more sandbox game than botw, whichh ends up with it being lacking in both aspects and being a faceless game, with new characters we dont care about who are there to deliver shallow sidequest stories more often so a singular story doesnt feel developed at all, it trying to be a transformative game but just being really shallow and faceless.

I definetly feel like how the story was tackled really really poorly and just knocked down the rest of the game with it

The story is just kinda objectively handled terribly

There isn't even much environmental storytelling, it just reuses the same map as botw (something that never happened before) and fails to use it for it's own development. There is no way where the story effects the world other than the blantant sky islands and caves but that is not the definition fo environmental storytelling, thats just usig the story to make the world a bit different. What "environmental storytellin" there is, is only dotted sparingly around the world with an explicit sign or headstone or someone to tell you "this lore tidbit happened to [important figure] here" there is no care for the past that us players have and the world isnt even used to peaque that interest and we have no reason to care even about the bigger figures. In botw, the stoey had a clear effect on the world, from bits of rubble and abandonned wagons you could piece togeþher your own story about the nobodies that lived in the world, as well as the bigger more important people. We could see how things happened as well as see how this is actually a developed world with character who were there living their lives and not just there to fill space and deliver sidequests. Zelda thrives off of it's environmental storytelling, and while i do love a grand narrative adventure (skyward sword is litterally my favourite game), totk exists in a world which asks for nuance and doesnt deliver any of it. Sksw's grand anrrative works because it was handled well, told a good and engaging story, while also being in a world that is kade to deliver that, totk has none of that

And while i admit that i personally dont like the new mechanics, its not for me and i ended up just playing botw inside of totk and my personal opinions about the mechanics doesnt make the game objectively worse (unlike how some people talk about skyward sword and spirit tracks), and i had a blast actually playing the gameplay and ignoring the story, and the world feels so much fuller wiith things to do, i think that botw had a much more in depth story, and there was just as much content in the overworld but handled a lot more subtly rather than totk's attitude which seems to be "botw was so succesful so we need to make this seem better by making everything sparkle and the content to be even more in your face and easier to find," disregarding the genious triangle map situation and just making everything shine and massive that i just dont like the athetics of the game as much.

And that's why i think that cassual fans like totk as one of their favourites just because of the gameplay and the in your face story

Ive always said ever since i first played totk years ago:

Tears of the Kingdom is an amazing game, but a terrible sequel

Mentioned posts:

A week ago, I did a keen analysis on how Three Houses manages difficulty for every one of its four routes which I’ve been slowly improving thanks to the feedback I’ve received on it (many thanks to those who helped btw!). From all the notes I’ve gathered, something very interesting stood out about how the game handles challenges with each path, which reminded me of a certain possibility I raised in yet another previous post surrounding Black Eagles’ development and the hidden intentions lurking within.

And you know what? I think it’s time I make it into an actual theorem because it’s really bugging me out that much. After all the stuff I’ve seen about 3H’s gameplay and how it handles challenges per route, I am convinced that “fixing” Crimson Flower isn’t as straightforward as people make it up to be.

Before getting into why gameplay evidence of all things has convinced me of such, I wanna cover all my bases first just in case someone (and somehow, ‘cause a part of me finds it unlikely) has no clue what I’ll be talking about.

So… Here's context:

Why “Fix” the Odd One?

…Also known as Crimson Flower.

Three Houses has four routes overall. From those, Crimson Flower is the only one which has 18 story chapters while the others get 22 (or 21, in Silver Snow case). Saying this made people mad back when the game was new would honestly be an understatement given there’s a youtube video called “Edelgard deserved better” done sometime after its launch which has over 250k views as of this post.

Incidentally, the idea of “fixing” CF is far from new, and the go-to direction most attempts I’ve seen, do it by crafting a small 4 chapter arc after the main plot (so it can reach the 22 Chapter quota Dimitri and Claude’s routes follow, which the idea inherently assumes it was the original goal of the route), eventually leading Edelgard and co. fighting “those who slither in the dark” in their headquarters, something which is mentioned it will happen a few times during the route, but as a very distant… thing, due to Edelgard’s n°1 enemy being not them in the main plot. This gets to the point that an S-Support and even a few solo endings touch upon it in a way that might or might not be mean spirited from the devs’ POV???.

Anyways, now that’s out of the way, it’s time to jump into the actual meat of the theorem:

No House Stands Equal - Three Houses' Difficulty from a Design Perspective

The key findings of my exhaustive attempt at analyzing 3H’s difficulty (which you can check by clicking on the title above) is that Three Houses, from a gameplay perspective, handles difficulty by messing with factors like:

Average Enemy Level between Chapters (+ their Suggested Level, which is directly related to the AEL).

Available resources, and the timing in which new ones are unlocked and/or lost.

When the game stops using Intermediate Classes for enemies (in a more conventional Fire Emblem context, this would be like saying “when the game stops throwing Unpromoted Enemies at you).

And more.

Thus, at a macro/superficial level and, according to the info at hand, Three Houses does the following:

The Average Enemy Level almost always increases by 2 per Chapter, regardless of the chosen difficulty.

The Armory/Vendor/Battalion Guild stock is updated 3 times; first in Ch. 3, then in Ch. 8, and last in Ch. 14.

Part 1 ends in Ch. 12 with a Suggested Level of 23.

Your chosen House Leader gets their unique battalion in Chapter 13.

The most number of bosses you’re forced to take down to clear main story missions is 4 in Ch. 16 once (3 if you play carefully), and then 2 for other maps that do this.

The game stops throwing Intermediate Class enemies around Ch. 18~ for main story maps (17 for Silver Snow, 16 for Azure Moon, and 18 for Verdant Wind, for those curious).

Your chosen House Leader’s paralogue is unlocked around the second half of Part 2 (Ch. 19 for Dimitri, and Ch. 17 for Claude).

The difference in enemy levels between the successive Enbarr invasion missions is always 1.

And finally, the route ends in Ch. 22 (or 21 if you’re in Silver Snow) with a final Suggested Level of 42.

This pattern is followed religiously in all the routes which happen to share a lot of content up until Chapter 17 (or 16, in Silver Snow’s case) due to story reasons, yet despite this, there’s still many quirks exclusive to certain routes which make one experience different from the other.

Silver Snow, for example, is meant to be really hard according to the devs, and as the spreadsheet reveals, it does this by handicapping the heck out of the player (very squishy starting cast with no Relics besides Byleth’s; one deployment slot less, far less resources; losing your House Leader + N°2 midway through the game; etc). Due to this, Azure Moon and Verdant Wind by design are more beginner friendly by simply having none of that (AKA more balanced casts that stays with you; more Hero Relics; more resources, etc), while still deviating in other areas. Azure Moon for one, gets the most resources between all routes to play with, still gets their exclusive units handicapped in other ways, and in the late game, it has a “turret & mage infestation problem”, for a lack of a proper term. Conversely, Verdant Wind gets just a pretty decent amount of tools, has no actual handicaps for their cast, and their late game isn’t so overly specific in enemy variety as Azure Moon’s.

Fairly straightforward stuff so far. But as you might have noticed, I haven’t mentioned Crimson Flower once, and that's for a reason.

Crimson Flower, by design, is not built like the other three routes.

♫ One of these is not like the others ♫

To explain what makes CF challenging, I need to go back again into into how 3H manages its difficulty, because unlike the other three paths, this one follows its own set of rules:

The Armory/Vendor/Battalion Guild stock is updated one third and last time in Ch. 12.

Part 1 ends in Ch. 12 with a Suggested Level of 25.

Edelgard & Hubert get their unique battalions in Chapter 12 (is Hubert a lord too…?).

The most number of bosses you’re forced to take down to clear story missions is 4 in Ch. 15 once (3 if you play carefully), and then 5 for both Ch. 16 and Ch. 17.

The game stops throwing Intermediate Class enemies in Ch. 14 for main story missions.

Edelgard’s paralogue is unlocked in Ch. 15, midway through Part 2.

The difference in enemy levels between successive story missions goes as follows:

Ch. 11 to Ch. 12: 4 in Normal & Hard, and 3 in Maddening.

Ch. 17 to Ch. 18: 2 in Normal & Hard, and 3 in Maddening.

And finally, the game ends in Ch. 18 with a final Suggested Level of 37.

And this isn’t even considering how every story mission from Ch. 12 onwards is exclusive to it for story reasons, or even factoring the other tweaks exclusive to CF, such as: having one Chapter less to receive funds and recruit students/teachers; having 2 units that join in Part 2 with innate access to Mastermind; its second half of the game being full of enemy pegasi/wyvern riders; its last chapters having a high number of monsters with anti-magic barriers, and with weapons used in no other route; and more stuff which I won’t cover here for brevity’s sake.

Dedue's Monster form is legit the strongest Giant Demonic Beast in the game in both raw stats and weapon.

Everything mentioned so far about Edelgard’s route highlights that, compared to the other three paths: it scales up the difficulty earlier; makes its resources available earlier as well; and raises the challenge of its last two chapters considerably. Incidentally, this in turn explains why the path is a viable option to obtain the “Yellow Title Screen” after finishing it on Maddening difficulty despite having fewer Chapters; it's because its difficulty was optimized to work with that specific length in mind.

Here is where the crux at hand lies. Why “fixing” Crimson Flower isn’t just adding more chapters to it and calling it a day.

Edelgard’s route, structure-wise, does not feel it was meant to be as long as the other three paths.

This is important because, as well-intentioned the idea of “fixing” the route is, adding more chapters over what’s already there would completely throw off its balancing and potentially and unintentionally make it the hardest route of the four by numbers alone (and this is is still accounting that you would have to fight even more bosses later on…).

To illustrate what exactly I mean by this-

I'm going to propose 2 experiments.

First, let’s imagine an hypothetical scenario where KT and Intelligent Systems listen to the fan uproar over Crimson Flower’s shortness and add more chapters to it. The catch? There won’t be any other changes done to the base game. As a result, CF’s unique scaling stays due to the assumption it's presence is unrelated to its short length, meaning:

There's still 4/3 levels of difference between Chapter 11 and 12, for Normal & Hard/Maddening).

The level scaling remains consistent with no alterations unlike the other routes, up until the Last Chapter in Maddening Difficulty where the Average Enemy Level increases by 3.

This is how the route’ Suggested Levels' would look like for its chapters, compared to Dimitri and Claude’s stories, as well the Church's.

Now everyone's finally- Wait a second...

(Click here if you wanna check it on the spreadsheet)

(Note: Suggested Level is the value shown when you're about to start a mission. In-game, it's used as an indicator of the map's difficulty and the level the game expects you to be in order to beat it.)

From my understanding, the whole point of the idea of “fixing” CF comes from the desire of making it a proper equal to Azure Moon and Verdant Wind, not unlike how in Warriors: Three Hopes, Scarlet Blaze, Azure Gleam and Golden Wildfire are equal in length and difficulty scaling (at least by the time the game ends). From the get go, we can see how this experiment has failed, because now Crimson Flower has the highest average enemy levels for its late game. To properly “fix” Crimson Flower in this instance, we would need to either redo its difficulty scaling from scratch to make it match the other routes, or just simply give it one Chapter less like Silver Snow, in which case, it still fails the experiment's purpose.

As a result, we now move to our Second Experiment: We will make Edelgard’s route unfinished. To do this, we will assume CF was meant to always have 22 Chapters, and as logic dictates, it's unique difficulty scaling would serve no purpose, meaning that, as far difficulty parameters go, there's now a 1 level difference for enemies between Chapters whose missions are played back to back, impacting now both Ch.11 to Ch. 12, and Ch.17 to Ch. 18.

Here’s how the Suggested Levels' would look like in this case:

(Scaling it for Maddening wasn't easy...).

(Click here if you wanna check it on the spreadsheet)

These numbers look far more harmonious, yeah? Not only that, in this one you can clearly tell by the sequence the numbers follow that something is very off with Edelgard’s path- Not only it's somehow easier in Normal and Hard, something which is meant to come after Ch. 18 clearly isn’t there. Will it come around later as free DLC, as the rumors say? The evidence says it’s likely, though we dunno if it will happen yet.

This isn’t our reality though, and I have a big hunch on why it was never on the cards in our case. Both interviews which speak about the route’s development always coincide on one vital area:

–On top of that, [Black Eagles] also had a hidden story branch. Yokota: We kept it hidden, but the idea to have a story branch was there since the creation of the Black Eagle route. –Did you have plans to implement a story branch for the other houses? Yokota: No. We only decided it for the Black Eagle house and to keep it a secret.

——————————————————————————————————

Kusakihara: [...] Walking with Edelgard in “Crimson Flower”, or rather known as the, “Supreme Ruler Route” is something we honestly meant to be much more difficult to enter. Yokota: I’m really sorry to you, Kusakihara-san too, but I was also someone who battled with Koei Tecmo on it. The exploration event split was initially too difficult and there were no hints at all.[...] Kusakihara: Compared to what I envisioned, it’s about 3 times easier to enter, but that’s fine, I think.

From all four routes, CF was the only one which was meant to be a secret.

Picture this: you’re developing a video game with four routes that happens to love recycling its own content a lot, and you even have solid in-universe reasons for it too! And yet, you decide to hide one of the four just because. The reasoning here isn’t important. What is, however, is its secrecy. You want people to play the game, and have some of them stumble across it by accident and be surprised. Under this train of logic, I ask the following question:

Would it work to its benefit, if it was very similar to the other three routes regardless?

The answer to this question would be probably not. From then on, it becomes important to have that one route be different. Not follow the same rules the others do. Otherwise, what is the point of having it be a secret?

Edelgard’s route, as the theorem, proposes is the odd one out on purpose. Its identity stems from how it was conceived as the route which would be super hard to access, before the plan changed because Silver Snow was received poorly by KT’s testing team + devs. And because it’s the odd one out, trying to make it fit a very different mold isn’t gonna be an easy job, to the point you have to wonder if it would be best to just redo the whole thing from scratch instead.

And it’s not super surprising, really, there was no secret trick; it’s just that each of them knew where they would be best, they knew it from round one, and they responded to each other’s call-outs to avoid getting surprised.

The map for this game was an odd one. It was sort of diagonal; to their left, each team had a water tower which they could rush up to find a harming potion and a nice spot to snipe from. The sides had low corridors and staircases which provided slower access, and the wool was on a tall, open, and relatively inaccessible platform at the center.

Philza was their wool rusher (and if Philza Minecraft is your wool guy, you’ve got a pretty good team, I must say). He took the jump boost pot, which was necessary for the odd setup on this map, where the wool was on a high platform, accessible only from a few points if you didn’t have jump boost. He initially tried to get onto the platform quickly and guard it, but realized that that left him an open target. Instead, he frequently waited for the other team’s wool rusher and then jumped up from below to hit them, taking advantage of the low ground and the platform’s cover to avoid getting hit in turn.

Tommy was more or less a distraction; he rushed the obvious route and he got control of the harming pot meant for his team (and sometimes the other team’s, if they left it, which is incredibly bad tactics; those things do massive damage, and even if you aren’t confident using it, you need to pick it up so your enemy can’t). He was good with the pot; multiple times he got an excellent combo, throwing the harming pot with deadly accuracy before rushing in to get a crit. (I’m suspecting this is a skywars skill; I don’t think he’s done much plain pot pvp, but skywars gives you lots of splash potions, which are very important if you use them wisely.) He kept attention on himself and off of Sneegsnag and Sapnap, letting them do their jobs more efficiently.

Sapnap was extremely impressive (and damn, I’ve never really watched him, but he is, indeed, good; his tracking and his spatial awareness are phenomenal). He had a very particular tactic: he rushed the side opposite his team’s designated vantage point, ducking under the cover of the overhang then using his smooth, confident parkour to get over some bush-like objects and behind the enemy’s lines. This put him in position to either veer center and take out someone who thought they could stay back and snipe, or go up the enemy’s water tower and just sort of appear behind them, ambushing them while they were focused on Tommy. (Side note, I think this tactic was actually part of his team’s abysmal performance in All Stars. On the All Stars map, the side corridor wasn’t good cover, it was a wide-open shooting gallery that left him vulnerable to snipers and far away from the wool, and he struggled to find anyone to fight when he attempted a similar tactic. But it worked wonders on this map.)

While all this was going on, Sneegsnag took the extra arrows and stayed right where he started, shooting down anyone who showed their face in his sight lines. He also used this vantage point to give his team call outs, helping prevent them from getting surprised or rushed. He quickly realized he could use the predictability of the enemy’s rush to their water tower to get a hit in at the start of the round, and he handily kept the enemy teams pinned down, preventing them from going anywhere until Tommy and Sapnap were on them. Even if he didn’t get a kill, every shot was a chance for one of his teammates to go into combat with a health advantage. He was also able to use his position to support Philza at the center, and I want to commend his steady nerves, because I don’t know how many people could stay on that balcony and trust their shooting to get the enemy off the wool instead of attempting the long and tricky parkour around to the wool platform, which could easily have been disastrous.

Bedman in Xrd:

Has four quartercircle forward specials

These specials leave behind an icon in the place they were used

By using the equivalent quartercircle back these attacks could be repeated from the icon point 

The icons could be destroyed and you could only have one of the two projectile attacks and their repeats out at once anyways 

Has a very short range super and a really bad super

Bedman in Strive:

Has three different quartercircle forward specials 

After one of these attacks is used, a different automatic follow up attack happens a fixed period of time later, independant of bedman's movement 

Quartercircle back inputs can be used to speed up or delay the automatic attack 

Has a super that buffs Bedman and his followup attacks and a short range? super

It seems like Bedman’s going to be a lot stronger in Strive now that his follow up attacks can’t be completely negated by smacking a little icon, and he has a good install super instead of. The sheep one. I’m going to miss the bed slam attack and it’s a bit of a shame to lose the boomerang and teleporting properties of his old projectiles, but it seems like he’ll be just as(?) versatile with the followups, even if it’s in a different way. 

Very recently, I completed my first ever playthrough of Mass Effect 1 - a well renown, beloved game that has nevertheless received quite harsh criticisms for its gameplay. The somewhat rough-around the edges shooter gameplay, the confusing inventory system and frustrating Mako controls were the most common complaints, some of which BioWare addressed in the recent Legendary Edition remake of ME1.

Still, after some extensive research, I decided to buy the old trilogy version anyway (call me oldschool if you like, but I'm a bigger fan of some of the OG light effects) - and imagine my surprise when despite having signed up for a somewhat more tedious gameplay experience, I came to actually enjoy it. In fact, I think ME1 does a lot of things right that other RPGs do wrong - to this day, I might add. For analysis purposes, I will be using the game NieR: Automata (© SquareEnix/Platinum Games, 2017) as a comparison, mainly because I played these two games back to back.

The level system

One thing I absolutely loathe about modern RPGs is how you can essentially break the game by overleveling yourself - not by conscious grinding, but by simply knowing what you're doing. While the level of some enemies in Nier Automata - especially during Route A - may seem daunting at first, all of this can be completely bypassed with the help of one little trinket: the EXP+ chip. While the effect may not be immediate, you will eventually reach the point where you surpass everything the game throws at you in terms of strength - by nothing more than understanding and making use of the game's mechanics. Nier Automata tried to remedy that by introducing a level scaling system, and while this worked out fine in Route B, it appears the developers were too lazy to properly implement it during the endgame: In Route C, all of the enemies are stuck at level 50 (60 for some bosses), so they really were no match for me at level 95. At some point, I got tired of all enemies keeling over if I so much as blew in their general direction, which was one of the reasons why Route C just felt so lackluster to me.

Because of this, I decided to play Mass Effect 1 on Veteran difficulty from the start, just so I don't accidentally make the game too easy for me again (despite having never played a shooter before, lol). However, little did I know there was no need to worry, because somewhat miraculously, Mass Effect 1 manages to avoid any kind of level exploit entirely: The reason for that is that unlike in many other RPGs (including Nier Automata), leveling up doesn't give you an inherent boost to your attack/defense - instead, you have to allot points to specific skills to improve your base values. However, while a little bonus to your stats certainly helps, it's the combat skills that you should focus on: To gain the upper hand in battle, you have to make use of abilities such as temporary damage immunity, overloading the enemies' shields or making them more vulnerable to your attacks. Although this means that you will be spamming abilities pretty much non-stop, you don't have to worry about robbing yourself of any challenge, as the game will keep you on your toes from the first battle right until the final boss. Also, since the level cap is set at 50, you can't simply max out all of your skills, which acts as a nice counterbalance and compels you to distribute your points wisely. (Imagine if the level cap in Nier Automata would've been 50 - perhaps that would've made the endgame actually challenging.)

Another thing I really appreciate is that the equipment you find is always appropriate to your current level. This is because once you start a mission, land on a planet or enter a facility, the equipment you can loot is randomly generated on the spot (you can see this if you revisit a place you went to before but didn't loot: the items will always match the level you were at during your first visit). This not only prevents you from potentially finding an OP weapon early on which you can solo the whole game with, but also the awkward situation of stumbling into "low-level" sidequest when you can no longer use the items you get from them. Also, since the enemies' strength relies just as much on equipment as your own, you always fight on pretty even ground, which means you will neither run into an overpowered squad too strong for you nor an underleveled group which goes down faster than a cardboard wall. Now, that's a way to implement proper level scaling.

The game economy

Another problem that many games suffer from is that you get tons of money, but have next to no opportunity to actually spend it on anything. In the first half of Nier Automata, the "Half-wit Inventor" quest may give a motivation to invest your money into something, but once you accumulated the 180,000 G, pretty much all you need money for is buying and upgrading your weapons, and finding the materials to do the latter is generally more of an issue. The one really cost-intensive thing you need currency for is fusing chips, but since the max chip level is 6 and your capacity is limited anyway, you will arrive at the point where you neither can nor want to upgrade your chips any further. As one might guess, this resulted in me amassing huge amounts of money (in no small part due to my extensive fishing trips), but since there was nothing that I could spend it on, the numbers didn't do much besides looking good.

Mass Effect, on the other hand, possesses a very effective game economy which gives you ample opportunities to make use of the money you earned - if you're focused on optimization, that is. Even though you will find plenty of equipment lying around, it's worth checking the shops from time to time, since they sometimes offer items slightly above your current level. Of course, the prices are accordingly high, and I often had to use almost all the money I made by mining minerals, looting chests/safes, etc.

I will say though that ME1 lacks any unique weapons - ultimately, there are 1-3 "high-end" items for each equipment category (often with marginal differences in stats), while all the other inferior products can simply be disregarded. This means that you usually want to pick the best weapons and armor possible and pimp them with mods as much as you can, while the rest of the stuff is there just for selling. However, even though this may be a bit of a chore, it actually benefits the game economy as a whole: Right before the final mission, I bought a high-end armor for Wrex and two level 10 mods at the Emporium on the Citadel, almost exhausting my entire money reserves - something which wouldn't have been possible without the few extra credits I made by selling superfluous equipment to the outfitter on the ship. The only criticism I have is that there is no "sort by" filter for the selling screen (e.g. selecting that you want to sell shotguns, assault rifles, etc. instead of the standard arrangement by item level) - that would've made things less tedious and time-consuming.

Saving

This may sound silly, but one thing I honestly perceived as such a quality of life improvement when I started playing Mass Effect is that you can not only save literally everywhere, but you will also continue exactly where you left off upon loading. In Nier Automata - and quite a few other games for that matter - you can either only save at certain checkpoints, or the game will automatically place you next to the nearest checkpoint upon loading your save (which may be a fair walking distance away from where you actually left off). However, in Mass Effect, you won't find yourself in the general vicinity of where you last saved, but at the exact same spot - a true blessing that spares you a lot of backtracking and frustration. (I know some people like to call this "save-scumming", but believe me, when one of your squadmates can't join you in battle because they got stuck behind a closed door - which happened to me with Wrex on Noveria - you will thank every god in existence that you're able to load a recent save game.)

Exploration and sidequests

If there's one aspect where Nier Automata and Mass Effect are actually tied, I'd say it's the open world exploration. All criticisms aside, the environments of Nier Automata are a true highlight, and I spent hours walking around just enjoying the scenery, atmosphere, and music. Although Mass Effect is understandably more limited in the graphical department due to its release in 2007, the extraterrestrial landscapes nevertheless manage to look truly captivating, and I had fun taking screenshots of some of my favorite views. However, while you usually explore the world of Nier Automata on foot (or with a mount of your choice), you inevitably will have to use the Mako for Mass Effect's planet-bound missions. Admittedly, the Mako has absolutely earned its reputation as a bouncy vehicle with next to no roadholding, and the physics of that thing are occasionally quite insane. Still, from my experience, it's not completely uncontrollable, and as long as you don't drive like a madman and try to avoid steep terrain, you should be fine - unless you have no other choice than to vertically drive up a cliff (P.S. I hate you Eletania).

Nevertheless, my little excursions in both Nier Automata and Mass Effect ended up having a similar, very relaxing effect on me - which is something that actually surprised even myself, since I'm usually not the biggest fan of open world games. I guess that's because a lot of them tend to have huge, overwhelming maps, and while having the biggest open world is something like a "status symbol" among game developers these days, it doesn't really do anything except making me feel lost and confused. Meanwhile, the free-roaming areas of Nier Automata and Mass Effect are quite spacious, but not so large that you lose any kind of orientation. Also, another thing many open world games do (and that really annoys me) is that they simply put a bunch of symbols on your map for you to traipse around, which is really nothing more than an employment-creation measure for the player. In contrast, Nier Automata and Mass Effect deliberately avoid putting all points of interest on the map - instead, you have to find chests, minerals, and all kinds of other treasures by yourself. While this may be perceived as "userunfriendly" by some players, I think it actually encourages you to go out there and explore, and the feeling of being rewarded for your own curiosity is immensely satisfying - a thousand times better than having everything served on a silver platter.

Last but not least, although Nier Automata is the one that always gets praised for its ambivalent, disturbing sidequests - and rightfully so (in fact, you could say I enjoyed the sidequests more than the main story) - Mass Effect is in no way inferior to it: Just like in Nier Automata, there are sidequests which really make you feel pensive and empty by the end. Personally, "Citadel: Signal Tracking" and "UNC: Geth Incursions" were the ones that unsettled me the most, but "UNC: Missing Survey Team", "UNC: Dead Scientists", and "UNC: Besieged Base" are also runners-up. In general, many of the quests ultimately leave you wondering "what did I actually do right now?" and whether your actions were justified - it truly feels like an insolvable aporia with no right or wrong solution, the only difference being your own moral perspective.

Furthermore, I think it's noteworthy how sidequests are utilized in both of these games from a storytelling perspective. If you take Witcher 3, for example, you will notice that the game tries to make its sidequests into their own independent storylines - a story in a story, so to speak. Meanwhile, the approach of Nier Automata and Mass Effect is completely different: Instead of treating its sidequests as separate entities, they act as little snippets presenting themes and topics that tie directly into the main narrative, enhancing the story as a whole. Together, all these pieces form an intricate, well-constructed web, making up the essence of the story when viewed in its entirety - a strategy which I personally find way more appealing.

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Conclusion

It’s very much a goal orientated vs journey type situation.

It should be noted, that both Ranboo and Tubbo do both in their gameplay and character development but they have different approaches and focus on different aspects more than others.

(This is a long post again, not as long as that one analysis about the claiming of land in the DSMP but it’s still long. Summer break feels long and I for some reason feel the need to write essays. Anyway, this is just for fun so feel free to read if ya want.)