Under-appreciated Features

I think Airy, of Bravely Default, might just be one of the more under-appreciated characters in gaming. Not because she's super interesting, but because she helps solve something that's always been a bugger for me in RPGs.

When you open up the menu, she tells you/strongly hints at, what you're meant to be doing!


They're not all that obvious!

Sure, in the internet age we can all just look up the answers, but I wish some older J-RPGs had a feature like that, because I've often got fairly far in a game, gone off it for a month or so, only to come back to it and have absolutely no idea what I should be doing. And sometimes, I don't want to look things up.

I don't think anyone bangs on about how useful Airy is to those of us who are easily sidetracked, so here's to Airy.

That said, I'm sure there are plenty of other games that do neat little unheralded tricks, so let's celebrate them.

Also I miss fun cheat codes

Nice idea Muss!

Microprose Grand Prix had hotseat local multiplayer. As it was a PC game of the early 90s (you all voted for it as a classic I assume ) there was no way to handle split-screen with the then-cutting-edge 3D graphics. So, for multiplayer, the game would start off in the cockpit of one of the human players, with the others being controlled by AI. After a certain period of play, you'd get a countdown warning; after this the computer would take over, and then it'd swap to another human player, with another countdown to easing you in.

Come to think of it, the original Super Mario Bros. games did this as well with 2-player mode, switching between Mario and Luigi.

We were quite happy waiting for our turn in the olden days, as long as the game being played was as fun to watch as it is to play. It also means not having to jam in conflict-inducing multiplayer (I still haven't decided on the NSMBWii/U situation).

Muss wrote:

Also I miss fun cheat codes

Don't we all?

Also, I get what you're saying, but... Airy can go to hell. For a couple of different reasons.

Little underappreciated things... One that I know Zero will back me up on is the awards system from the original two Smash games, that didn't make it into the next few. I liked them, although the game kept calling me Butterfingers.

Jimbob wrote:

Nice idea Muss!

Microprose Grand Prix had hotseat local multiplayer.

Excellent shout! I never played the original, but I still love Grand Prix 2 and you're absolutely right about spectating, to the extent that I liked watching the odd short CPU only race. The quality of the game's physics engine was remarkable for its time, and the various driver aids meant it played well even on a clunky keyboard. I'm aware that GP2 is still getting updated with modern tracks and car liveries, a testament to just how good it still is. I recall that game being packaged in a large box, with an A4 sized colour manual which even had a couple of pages on the aerodynamics of slip streaming complete with diagrams.

Makes me truly sad Microprose aren't around anymore, most of what they touched was gold.

Funnily enough Bravely Default has a few of these, the ability to toggle random encounters anywhere between completely off and incessant, and the ability to make auto repeat your moves from a previous battle to make grinding an irrelevance. Both functions that should be included in RPGs everywhere that will likely never be seen again.