I like being challenged in video games. But the older I get, the more tired I get of the typical "git gud" challenge presented by so many video games. Of course I enjoy a good arcade-like challenge every once in a while, but I no longer have the patience to constantly play games where every stage and boss requires you to spend a significant amount of time learning layouts and attack patterns in order to progress.
Instead the kind of challenge I've grown to love in my games is resource management. Games where the challenge is not for the player to grow skilled enough to beat any boss without taking damage, but rather for the player to deal with any situation using a limited set of resources they're given. These are games that might not immediately strike as challenging when you're starting out, but as you play further you start to realise the limitations the game has placed upon. Limitations that, if exceeded, might force you into a permanent failstate that forces you to restart the entire game.
At first glance it seems like it's simply bad game design. Who would actually want to play a game (especially a long RPG) where you genuinely can't progress in the game anymore and have to restart the whole thing if you've played poorly enough? It sounds extremely stressful, and the average player will likely resort to constantly using a guide in order to make sure they won't end up in a permanent failstate.
However, I think it's actually a wonderful design choice. It is indeed extremely stressful, but I think that stress is the whole appeal of these kind of games. The constant anxiety of trying to optimise your playthrough in order to not play the game wrong gives weight to every choice you make in the game. Knowing its possible to fail your entire playthrough will make you play much more carefully, but every risky action you take feels so much more rewarding.
And as an example of what I'm talking about I have decided to write about the following games and how they incorporate permanent failstates as their core design philosophy:
Persona (3-5)
Atelier
Fire Emblem
Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter
All of these are games where it is very much possible to end up in a situation where you have no choice but to reset your whole playthrough, and all of these games are often criticised for this design. People say their design is hostile to the player and their punishment for mistakes is too harsh. But all of these games are also close to my heart specifically because they have this constant fear of playing wrong, and I will now tell you why this anxiety inducing player hostility is wonderful.
Living a whole year one day at a time
I'm sure Persona needs no introduction, it is by far the most popular out of the games I will talk about here and even if you haven't played it, I'm sure everyone reading this has at least heard of it. However, I will give a quick explanation of the games' central mechanic: the calendar.
In Persona 3, 4 and 5 you live out one year in the life of a high schooler, and to reflect this, the games have a hard time limit of about one year. Most days do not having anything story related happening so the player is allowed to spend their days however they want. But there is a catch: most actions you take (whether it's hanging out with friends, working at a part time job, fighting monsters in a dungeon or anything else a normal high schooler might do) will consume one day from the year you are given. A year is a lot of time though, and if you spend your time wisely it is very much possible to max out all your social stats and clear every single optional task the game has to offer in just that one year. Even if you aren't interested in a completionist playthrough, you are given so much time that a casual player can finish the main story without fear of time running out.
But on the flip side, if you play the game carelessly you might end up in an unwinnable situation. Perhaps you spent all your time hanging out with friends and once a mandatory fight happens you aren't strong enough to deal with the enemy. Or maybe you spent all your time just grinding and grinding battles, neglecting all your social obligations and missing out on all the story you get from hanging out with your friends.
The key to Persona's gameplay loop is balance. You need to fight monsters to make yourself physically stronger but you also need to befriend all the people you can and raise their friendship level as high possible. And because there is a limited number of days in the game, every single day presents you with a choice: what would be the most optimal way to spend this day?
It is honestly very hard to end up in a truly unwinnable situation in Persona, especially in 5. The games aren't designed to be constantly replayed, and the games expect you to be able to clear its main story in one playthrough. In fact, Persona is so lenient with its time limit that many often say the time limit might as well not exist.
But I believe the time limit is an essential part of the games' design. Because even if the time limit is very lenient and failure is unlikely, even the faintest possibility of a permanent failstate forces the player to carefully consider every action they take. Add on top of that the fact that certain activities are only available on specific days, and you have a gameplay loop that gives the player anxiety about every choice they make. If there was no time limit and the player would be allowed to do anything at their own pace, the result would be game that's a lot more relaxing, a game that would be much more appealing to a casual mainstream audience and a game that I would find very boring.
When the time limit is removed
Moving on to a more obscure territory is the Atelier series. People who have never played Atelier often assume it's a comfy casual series because it's about a cute girl doing casual things like running an alchemy shop, instead of more ordinary activities like traveling across the world and killing gods. But much like Persona, this seemingly casual series of cute girl RPGs is centered entirely around a hard time limit, and this time limit is much harsher than the one in Persona.
Atelier games usually present you with a single goal like becoming a top level alchemist in the time the game gives you. It might sound simple, but to reach your goal you must do a lot of alchemy, and to do a lot of alchemy you must explore the world and fight enemies to find the materials you need for said alchemy. You synthesise materials that make you stronger, so you can fight stronger enemies that drop stronger materials that you can eventually use for your ultimate synthesis. And I find this gameplay loop very fun and satisfying, but there is one more key element to it: the constantly looming time limit.
Every single action you take will consume your time limit. In Persona only actions that end your day will consume the time limit, but in Atelier there are no safe actions. Everything you do will consume time. Each monster you fight, each item you craft, moving between areas, even gathering materials from the ground will all consume a day from your calendar.
And unlike Persona where every day starts and ends with a scripted sequence to ease you on the passing time, Atelier's time flows at a much more free pace. No action in Persona ever takes more than one day, but in Atelier a single action can take several days. You might spend days synthesising one item and moving long distances on the map might take several weeks at once.
Naturally the time limit in Atelier is also higher than Persona to compensate how quickly time flows (Atelier games often have a limit of 3-5 years), but it is much more stressful with the timer than Persona ever is. Time passes so quickly from even simple actions that you can waste your precious time really easily. But this also forces you to put great consideration into every action you take. The best materials and strongest enemies are located very far away from your atelier, and traveling such long distances will take many of your precious days. So you can't constantly travel back and forth every time you need a specific material. Every long distance trip you take must be planned carefully, and once you've arrived you must accomplish as much as you can before returning to your atelier. Your inventory size is also limited so you can't pick every material you see, you need to carefully consider what items are worth taking with you.
That said, while Atelier's time limit is stricter than Persona's, even in Atelier you likely won't run into a permanent failstate unless you play very carelessly. If you put careful consideration into your actions, you'll do just fine. The games aren't impossibly difficult, but the time limit is there to ensure you're always moving forward instead of spending time grinding and crafting before every strong enemy. Because of the time limit you have to challenge every boss with the resources you have access to at the moment and can't afford to take the time to grind.
Unsurprisingly most people hate this. If you look up any conversation about Atelier you will see loads of people repeat the same sentiment: I really want to like these games but the time limit makes these games too stressful.
Fortunately for these people, Gust and Koei Tecmo listened to these criticisms, and none of the recent games have had a time limit. The casuals rejoiced and now Atelier is more popular than ever before. You can do whatever you want without consequences, you will never feel stressed at any choice you make, if a boss is too hard, you can take your time grinding your stats without worrying you're playing the game wrong. And most importantly: you will feel comfy playing as a cute girl.
And yet despite how popular and acclaimed Atelier is now, I find it all so very boring. Atelier used to be one of my all time favorite video games series, but now I no longer even feel any desire to buy the latest games in the series. The games being designed entirely around managing the time limit was what made the games so fun for me, and I think Atelier moving to a more casual direction is what made me realise how much I love this kind of stress and anxiety inducing game design.
The removal of the time limit isn't the only significant change Atelier has had in recent years, but because everything in Atelier used to be designed around the time limit, its removal is the easiest to point out. With no time limit there is no longer any weight in the player's actions. With no time limit the player can take their time grinding and crafting as much as they want. With no time limit the games's challenge stops being about effective resource management, and instead it is simply about making your numbers go up.
It's not my place to dictate how others play their games. A lot of people are having fun with the modern Atelier games so maybe I'm just a toxic elitist for thinking it's boring. But I wish the games would at least include the time limit as an optional hard mode instead of removing it entirely (which is something the Atelier Marie remake did, but as it's a remake I don't think it counts)
Permanent death and limited experience
Going back to a more popular series that hopefully needs no introduction, next up is Fire Emblem. For a long time Fire Emblem was a series everyone was aware of but very few people actually played, and the reason for this was simple: in Fire Emblem any unit that loses a fight will not simply be knocked out and then revived when the battle is over like in other RPGs. In Fire Emblem if a unit loses in battle, they will die. They are gone forever and they won't return unless you reload your save file.
Just like with Persona and Atelier, it is possible to end in an unwinnable scenario. Except whereas Persona's and Atelier's time limits only exist to put pressure on the player instead of actually being a real threat, in Fire Emblem the fear of ruining your save file is very real. If you don't play strategically enough and lose too many characters, it is very likely you simply can not beat the game as you are lacking characters.
I think this is great design though. In so many other strategy RPGs you can take risks without consequence, if your strategy requires sacrificing a character, you can simply sacrifice them and they'll be back in your party in the next fight. But this is not possible in Fire Emblem. In Fire Emblem the challenge does not come from defeating all the enemies, the challenge lies in finding a way to defeat all the enemies without losing any of your characters.
But just like with Atelier, Nintendo and Intelligent Systems listened to the people who said they hate the idea of permanent death. They saw how many people said they would love to play Fire Emblem if only the permanent death was removed, and so, starting with Fire Emblem Awakening the series moved to a more casual direction where permanent death was no longer mandatory. And much like Atelier, Fire Emblem became more popular than it had ever been after this barrier was removed and casuals could finally play the games without worry.
Unlike Atelier however, playing Fire Emblem without the permanent death was entirely optional. For those who still wanted the classic challenge of permanent death, that option was still available. Fire Emblem had found a middle ground that pleased both casuals and hardcore players.
Except not really.
The permanent death may be the most obvious part of Fire Emblem's challenge, but there is one other aspect that makes Fire Emblem so challenging: you can not grind at all. There is only a limited amount of enemies you can fight in a stage, and since you can't replay stages there is technically only a limited amount of experience you can obtain in the game.
And so every battle presents a choice: will you take certain victory and fight with your strong characters who don't benefit much from the exp those enemies give, or will you take a risk using your weaker units to fight, and ensure they receive experience from these enemies and be stronger for future fights?
I believe this is Fire Emblem's real challenge. Of course the permanent death also makes the games difficult, but the permanent death is something the player will actively try to avoid, and it is easy to simply restart a stage if you lose a character. The limited availability of exp on the other hand is not something they player can actively look out for, it is out of the player's control. Much like the time limits of Persona and Atelier, this will haunt the player across their entire playthrough and make them question every action they take.
Even if you successfully keep all your units alive, if you've only been relying on a handful of your strongest characters it is entirely possible you don't have enough strong characters by the end of the game. And because exp is so scarce, it makes the permanent death hurt so much more. You're not just losing that unit, but you're also losing everything you invested into them.
But when Fire Emblem moved to a more casual direction, they also added the ability to grind optional battles as much as you want. But whereas removing permanent death is a toggle that can be ignored, once grinding was introduced to the series it was something the games were designed around. Sure you don't have to grind in the optional battles if you don't want to, but then you aren't playing the game like you're expected. If grinding is an option then clearly the game expects you to simply grind before hard battles instead of utilising every tool at your disposal to overcome overwhelming odds.
Even if permanent death is still an option, I think it loses a lot of weight because you are now able to grind. Why wouldn't you only use your strong characters for hard story fights when you can level up your weaker characters in an optional fight with significantly lower risks but all the same rewards?
Though to be fair to Awakening, while it may have made the series more casual friendly in general, grindable optional fights weren't introduced there as they were already featured in Sacred Stones and TearRing Saga before it.
When the casual game goes hardcore
Breath of Fire is a series of 5 RPGs released between 1993 and 2002 (technically there was a mobile game released in 2016 but people like to pretend it doesn't exist). I have not played the 4th game yet so I can't speak about it, but the first three are fairly basic RPGs of their era, but with a small twist in the gameplay being the protagonist's ability to transform into a dragon (hence the series' name). But despite calling them basic, they are well made games and continue to be popular among JRPG fans to this day.
However the fifth game in the series, Dragon Quarter, is anything but basic and continues to be divisive among fans to this day. Dragon Quarter abandons everything the series is known for, replacing its RPG traditions for a dungeon crawler that feels closer to Resident Evil than any JRPG.
Gone is the colorful world seen in the previous games, instead the game takes place entirely within a single underground dungeon. And much like Resident Evil, your resources within this dungeon are very limited. You can not go back to a nearby town to simply buy any items you need once you've run out, every item you obtain is valuable because of its scarcity. Even saving your game is done via an item that is in limited supply.
That alone would already make Dragon Quarter too stressful for most people, but Dragon Quarter goes a step further in making sure the player is as anxious as possible: the infamous D-Counter.
The D-Counter is a gauge in the player's HUD that starts from 0% and slowly rises towards 100%. Different actions you take will raise it by different amounts, but even simply walking around will raise it by 0,01% every ~20 steps and each turn you spend in battle also raises it by 0,01%.
But it gets worse; like in other Breath of Fire games your protagonist can transform into a dragon and receives significant stat boosts in that form, but this time the dragon form penalises you by raising the D-Counter by significant amounts. Each turn you spend as a dragon raises the counter by 2% and each attack you make raises it by at least 1% (stronger attacks raise it even more).
There is no way to lower the counter, and if it ever reaches 100% you die. And if you've saved your game when your counter is too high, you might have to restart the entire game.
Dragon Quarter is significantly shorter than any Persona, Atelier or Fire Emblem though, and the game kind of expects you to fail on your first playthrough. There's also a lot of secrets (including brand new story scenes) you can only see on subsequent playthroughs. So not only are further playthroughs expected, they are encouraged.
You might have guessed this already, but I love this. Dragon Quarter is an incredibly stressful game and it is extremely easy to end up in a permanent failstate.
Your limited resources and the slowly rising D-Counter make the game hard, but like Persona's time limit those are there to encourage careful play, it's unlikely you run into a permanent failstate simply from running out of items or walking in circles so much your D-Counter goes to 100%.
Dragon Quarter is actually about resisting temptation. Once you obtain the dragon transformation, you can use it to kill any enemy and boss without trouble. It is absurdly strong and even during the endgame nothing can stop your dragon form. But every time you turn into a dragon, you get so much closer to the permanent failstate.
And so Dragon Quarter's challenge lies in finding ways to defeat enemies in your human form using your limited resources. But any time you face a challenge that seems too hard, you ask yourself "can I defeat this on my own or should I give in to the temptation?"
This dynamic is what makes Dragon Quarter such a brilliant game.
Closing thoughts
When it comes to Dragon Quarter I am sympathetic to the people who hate it. It is a sequel that abandons its previous target audience to instead appeal to insane people like me. Indeed, this game has no reason to be called Breath of Fire, and fans of the previous four games have a right to be disappointed at its more hardcore direction.
But the reason I wanted to talk about Dragon Quarter is because I think I also have a right to be disappointed when a game loses its challenge in order to appeal to a wider audience. Yes, everyone who complains about Dragon Quarter being too stressful is in their right to do so, but similarly I want to complain when a game loses its hardcore edge for the sake of a wider audience.
Atelier is a series where the risks (and the anxiety of their consequences) were a large part of their appeal to me, and when those risks are removed, the games have lost their appeal. Same with Fire Emblem, when the anxiety of not being able to grind is removed, the games start feeling a lot less strategic to me.
It is ironic then that Persona, the most popular and mainstream game I talked about, hasn't lost its time limit. Though Persona keeps introducing new ways to make the games easier, they have stuck to their guns regarding the time limit, no matter how much players complain about the anxiety they feel because of it. I think that's admirable.
I do not want to come across like I am telling people they can't enjoy modern Atelier or modern Fire Emblem, I am not telling people that the way I enjoy these games is the only right way. Most people do not enjoy time limits, permanent deaths and resource management. That's fine, you can enjoy games however you want and I am not trying to take options away from you.
What I actually wanted to say with this essay is that these stressful games have an audience. It may be a niche audience, but people like me do exist and we enjoy this kind of challenge. Most people will think permanent failstates are the result of poor game design, but these games are intentionally designed this way. I am tired of people who act like Atelier was fixed by removing the time limit, I am tired of seeing people call old fans toxic elitists for wanting these games to bring back the challenge from the older games and I am tired of feeling comfortable in RPGs that used to make me stressed.
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