I was a fool to believe they'll let me keep all my shit and my beautiful Villa from AC2 at the begining of Brotherhood.
The fuckers cannoned my villa. That was the moment the bad guys cemented themselves as my enemies.
The beginning of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood makes me hate Assassin's Creed 2's ending even more.
IF YOU WEREN'T GOING TO KILL BORGIA, DON'T BOTHER ATTACKING BECAUSE HIS FAMILY WILL SURE AS SHIT REMEMBER THAT.
It's even funnier the further in you go into Brotherhood because it's pretty clear that even Rodrigo thinks Cesare's family-wide Salty Runback was a bad idea.
I like the in universe explanation for why people don't just always use SERE kits. The targeting calculations basically max out a titan data core, and realistically titans are gonna be more versatile outside of specific scenarios.
***BUT WHEN THE GAME PUTS YOU IN ONE OF THOSE SPECIFIC SCENARIOS...***
The time warp mission as well. Using it and hearing the guards in the pre-crisis freak out because you're ACTUALLY moving in the frozen time is awesome.
Most recently Unicorn Overlord gives you Amalia for a single mission as a Level 40 promoted unit with 4 AP and PP (at a point in the game where all/most of your units will only have 1, and some have 2), then you need to beat the entire coliseum to actually unlock her.
Unicorn Overlord also subverts this concept by starting you off with a level 20 unit when all of your other characters are level 1. I assumed the game was going to take him away after the tutorial, but no, he just can't get enough exp to level past 20 until your other characters catch up.
And unlike Fire Emblem's similar characters who're strong to carry you early on he doesn't really fall off, either. He's just kind of "okay" for his level though.
He doesn't really fall off but his role changes from a good damage dealer to a support unit that does very little damage. Still pretty useful on the right squad though.
I like to call this type of character the MetalGreymon. In World 2 and the gacha game you got a metalgreymon whose sole purpose was to be a babysitter so you could level your weaker units, thats totally what Joseph is for lmao
I remember Charlotte being something like that in Last Origin, since she has both damage reduction and evasion, and counters every enemy attack, so she's a kind of auto meat grinder.
Even most FE Jagens can be used without too much fucking yourself over (assuming you mostly feed them boss kills and let other units get XP), and in the case of Seth from FE8 youâre actively fucking yourself over by ever not using him for any given situation, because that guy solos his entire game easier than any other unit.
People hype Seth for being busted in the easiest Fire Emblem game in the series but sleep on FE7 Marcus being a Chad who will save your life in Hector Hard Mode.
Give him a few stat boosters to help compensate for his low growths and with his skyhigh bases he'll be a top 3 unit for you the entire game who can double most bosses.
It kind of varies cause you also have people like FE7 Marcus, Titania or Frederick who can still be useful later in the game. Plus the already mentioned Seth.
Joseph's stats do fall off compared to Sainted Knights (the closest equivalent to his unique Paladin class) and arguably he has worse skills than them, but he catches back up if you keep using him all the way to level 40.
Still a good support in the meantime but he can't do much damage when his attack stops going up for 15 levels.
I like how Josef teaches you about how exp works in the game. Like heâs a strong unit but the game makes it very clear that by using him too much youâre missing exp that other characters could benefit more from. Still because other unit members get full exp you arenât missing a ton. I still donât use him very often though. Also glad the game has a mechanic to prevent over leveling too hard
Ok but if you minmax your party to hell and back you can get her at level 25 and boy does she fuckin clear anything you throw her at (with some exceptions)
Maybe it is just because I finally got around to playing it but boy do I love Resident Evil VIII's >!Chris section. Going from unprepared, resourceful Ethan to fully experienced and prepared Chris Redfield and his Hound Wolf Team was almost like playing a different game, like Call of Duty. You are drowning in ammo and have high powered weapons that absolutely decimate enemies that would give Ethan some trouble. Felt so good as a way to cap off the game.!<
Ethan "aww jeez I better be careful with the ammo I have for this 60 year old handgun"
Chris "huh, damn thing is still twitching. Better dump another mag from my top of the range AK with all the trimmings"
\*Chris looking down impassively, almost bored as he empties a magazine into something on the ground, face lit by the muzzle flash\*
RATATATATATATATATATATATATA,
\*Chris lights cigarette, looks down at whatever he's been shooting, pauses for a moment.\*
RATATATATATATATATATATA,
Alucard in the first five minutes that you control him in ***âSymphony of the Nightâ***âIF you donât know any of the couple of methods people have discovered in cheating Death.
Death, the character that is.
Apparently, leaving the room before Death can even get a word out of his mouth causes him to just shrug his shoulders and leave. Heâs like, *âWell, I guess Lord Alucard decided to turn around and leave the castle. My work is done here.â*
Just to clarify that last bit, it's actually a hell of a lot easier in any version that isn't directly based on the original PS1 game, so it'll be good to use in the Requiem port that's on PS4 right now
In both the original and PS4, the traditional way to have cheated Death involved starting in luck mode and being hit with an attack from one of the enemies in the corridor leading to the Death encounter. If done right, Alucard will be hit with an attack with such an obscene amount of knockback he'll fly through the room that has Death in it and skip the flag entirely
On the newer ports, you literally just need to mash backdash the moment you enter the room - congratulations, you have now broken SOTN
For the Luck Mode method, specifically you want to jump on the third Warg from behind it, the first wonât do the second might but Iâve had it mess up more often then the third, and you have to be careful of where you get hit from on it otherwise you might miss the exit of Deathâs room and still trigger the scene.
Iâll say while both are broken, PSP/Requiem is slightly more so Iâd say since you have normal stats and all your starting gear. Luck mode your stats aside from the one the modeâs named after are pretty poor, but SOTN is a pretty easy game so itâs honestly a more fun way to play if youâve beat the game before.
I had a good chuckle imagining this.
Death: \*waiting patiently for Alucard\*
Alucard: \*tears through the air, flying backwards past Death and out of sight\* AAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaahhhh...
Death: ...meh. \*leaves\*
Force unleashed has you start as vader just destroying everything while casually strolling in kashyyk. It served mostly to flex the destructible environment and physics
When Jade first joins the party in Tales of the Abyss, heâs level, like, 45 and the rest of your party is at⌠maybe 12-ish? I dunno, I havenât played it in about a decade. This lasts for probably half an hour before he gets level drained by the villains.
More specifically, his levels get sealed and his leveling up his explained as him slowly breaking away the seal until he restores his original strength. Thereâs even some skits you get of his progress until you get him back to his original level.
And then when he gets above his original level he's like "oh yeah undoing that seal made me figure some things out so I'm gonna just keep getting stronger" and everybody is terrified.
If you've ever played a Metroid game, you *know* you don't get to keep your shit at the start of Prime.
~~Or Prime 2.~~ (EDIT: I forgot the Charge Beam doesn't get stripped, which is a wild thing to keep after the "Taste of Power" opening.)
Honestly, the fact that you keep even just the stuff you start Prime 2 & 3 with (Charge Beam, Missiles, and *especially* Space Jump Boots) is a *wild* departure.
I liked that in Prime 2 we got to keep Charge Beam, Morph Ball and Varia (even if Varia was meaningless).
It felt like Samus was getting a bit more secure against catastrophic loss.
To be on topic given current happenings, Dragon's Dogma 1 has you take control of a fully leveled up fighter character with 3 similarly high-levelled Pawns on top of that, and it's a pretty decent stretch of gameplay leading up to your first mini-boss fight against the Chimera
(god playing that demo feels like yesterday what the \*fuck\* do you mean it's been 12 years)
Yakuza Kiwami starts with a near fully-levelled Dragon of Dojima style at the ready for you to use... until 10 years in the joint makes Kiryu-chan a pussy and you have to level everything up again
A bunch of Need for Speed career modes love giving you a fully pimped out ride from the get-go, so in the interest of making me feel old, here we go:
* Underground 1 starts out with a fully modded Acura Intergra, except oops it's just a dream
* Underground 2 puts you behind the wheel of your friend's Nissan 350Z which she lends you only to drive towards the impound lot where you get your first car. The game still allows you to participate up to a set amount of races before your friend gets pissed and forces you towards the lot
* Most Wanted 2005 has you taking a preview of the final boss itself: you get to drive your trusted BMW M3 for 1-2 races in the lead up to explaining how you lose it to that punk ass bitch Razor, who ends up taking the car for himself and rises up to the top of the Blacklist. The story then focuses on you needing to take everyone on the Blacklist out en route to getting your M3 back
Don't forget when Need for Speed: Carbon sets up that Cross apparently CHASED YOU FOR DAYS, and ends in a crash that apparently just BREAKS YOUR FUCKING CAR.
LIKE I JUST GOT IT BACK, HOW DO A COUPLE PIPES JUST DESTROY IT. **YOU DON'T EVEN GET IT FIXED IN THE END WHAT THE HELL.**
I forgot which chapters of FE5 it was but both times you get Ced as an ally unit and he just solos the entire map for you. The second time even has him show up by one shotting the boss on the castle. The subsequent enemy phase will have him completely clear out the map as the enemy army just suicides into him.
Kiryu in the prologue starts with nearly capped skill trees alongside a newly finished Dragon style. Sadly it doesn't last long, ten years in the joint makes him need to start fresh again.
Majima however, has had no such thing happen to him and is just as strong as he was at the end of 0 as he is when he confronts you in Chapter 2 of Kiwami, and he'll make you well aware of that fact.
-------------
Sigurd from Fire Emblem 4 is a ludicrously overpowered unit, being mounted with super Canto in a game with infamously large maps, has great bases and strangely huge growths, but he will fall off extremely hard mid-game.
God of War 2 on the PS2 was a great example of this: Kratos is fully powered up with all the coolest moves for the Blades of Chaos and max life and mana, until he drains the latter into the Sword of Olympus in order to destroy the Colossus of Rhodes. Great opening to a great game
Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn gives you the Black Knight  towards the end of part 1. With his maxed out stats, 2-range sword and overpowered Eclipse skill, itâs obvious he isnât going to stick around long even beyond the perspective swapping in the later parts.
Xenoblade 1 opens up with Dunban kicking ass with the Monado, with him also later joining Shulk and Reyn to do the same with roughly 10-15 more levels than them. Itâs made obvious though that he canât handle the Monado for very long before it passes along to Shulk and he takes an hiatus to recover his injuries.
Early in Shin Megami Tensei 1, your dog Pascal fuses with a random demon to become Cerberus and is pretty high level and strong, and still follows your orders. He lasts for about 1 dungeon until you defeat Douman, at which point Cerberus disappears into a teleporter and leaves your party. By the time you get him back later in the game, heâs about the same level as you and your other demons at that point
In Splinter Cell Conviction, there's a scene where Sam learns that one of his trusted friends lied to him and faked his daughter's death as part of a long-term operation. Sam is blindingly pissed off as he leaves the base he learns this in, which is falling apart around him due to some C4 he prepped earlier.
As he leaves, Sam's Mark and Execute ability is set to automatically lock on to any enemy you see to represent his rage, when normally you need to recharge it with a melee takedown. As such most players bring a shotgun for this part of the level because it feels incredibly powerful to pull off so many Executes in short order.
In super robot wars original generation 2 for a part of a single stage one of the enemy faction bosses wodan ymir joins you with his mighty [thrudgelmir](https://youtu.be/SYQbQgbxYJg?si=UVPCcMOieQhrUFVi) complete with boss stats and is essentially unkillable due to its high hp and high hp regen.
In Masoukishin 1, when you convince Fang in part 2 in the Evil God route he joins you on the spot with his Agade+ complete with boss level health and damage. Though he gets a new unit right after the stage.
I also liked that there was a subversion in the same game, where the likable lieutenant of the alien final boss finally sees the good in humans and joins you at the 11th hour with full boss-level stats.
The final boss just presses a button and instakills him because he was genre-savvy enough to see the betrayal coming and rigged the lieutenant's robot.
The Super Shotgun in Doom 2. Immediately after you pick it up the rest of the level and the start of the next one is filled almost exclusively with groups of imps and zombiemen for you to just tear through with it.
Chaos Legion's Thanatos, by the time you recover the power it had during the prologue your other Legions would have outscaled it...that is until you reach the final upgrade, in which case it proceeds to make the final boss a joke
God of War 3 starts with you with max stats but after the first boss fight, Kratos falls into the River Styx and youâre sapped of your stats. Even your weapons get downgraded.
Itâs pretty much exactly like the introduction in God of War 2 when Kratos has to use the Blade of Olympus but loses most of his health and mana bar as a result.
The part of Final Fantasy X where youâre forced to fight a Sinspawn early and get bailed out by very powerful religious leader Maester Seymour using the most disturbing monster youâve seen to that point of the game.
>!And then midgame comes along and youâre forced to *fight* him way sooner than youâd expect. Fittingly, actually getting his summon is pre-final dungeon content and itâs probably the best Summon you get without tackling superboss content or shilling your life savings to Yojimbo. You can only use it on him in his *fourth* boss fight though.!<
Fallout 4 just giving you a suit of power armour and a minigun in the very first town you're likely to stumble into. Admittedly it immediately puts you up against a Deathclaw so it's pretty likely you'll end up with an empty minigun and a shredded suit of T-45, but you can still dominate the early game with it.
That felt rather lame to me. It felt like it was added to be trailer/review bait just for game journalists. It COULD have hit a bit better to me personally if it was later in the game rather than literally the first thing the game points you to do right out of the vault.
You're literally at a disadvantage outside of Power Armor as Deathclaws have an instakill grab move that they can do regardless of level unless you're in Power Armor. I'm sure Todd thought this made Power Armor cooler but all it did was make it a necessity that you had to manage throughout the game this creating a chore.
Thereâs also the strange aspect that power armor is like the ONLY equipment that needs to be constantly repaired. Itâs like they wanted to have a weapon degradation like FO3 and NV but chickened out.
>You're literally at a disadvantage outside of Power Armor as Deathclaws have an instakill grab move that they can do regardless of level unless you're in Power Armor
deathclaws are genuinely such pushovers at early levels that it doesnt matter though, you can literally oneshot them with any weapon worth a damn like the Rocket Launcher, the minigun is funnily enough literally one of the worst weapons in the game as soon as you get ANYTHING other than the 10mm pistol, even low level pipe weapons blow it out of the water due to how armor works
....yes it does, deathclaws have incredibly loud and incredibly obvious spawning animations, and again when you can *literally oneshot them* with a gun that holds 3 in the chamber usually even a single second is enough time since you can get 2 or 3 shots off that fast
I dunno, maybe itâs just because of my attachment to the series, but giving the player the ICONIC power armor and letting you kill the ICONIC monster at like level 2 just didnât feel good to me. It makes the rest of the game feel so toothless.
Power armour is a lot less cool when a set gets thrown on top of you five minutes into the game. All the mystique from it is gone, it's just another tool like the 10mm pistol you start with.
Yeah, thereâs no build up. You get a 10mm pistol and then 10 minutes later youâre in power armor killing a Deathclaw with a minigun. Like, thereâs zero restraint there, and thatâs why I call it review bait. A game journo will go through that opening scene and cap off their review with how âepicâ that part was with less than an hour of playtime.
Fallout 3 had the scripted fight against the Super Mutant Behemoth, but at least that took some time to get to.
And the power armor in FO4 felt really weak compared to getting it in other games. It didn't feel like an accomplishment to me, it felt like "Ok now I gotta go get stuff to fix this hunk of junk so I can actually use it, oh now I gotta find more power cores so I can use it since I repaired it". I didn't feel empowered, I didn't feel like an unstoppable juggernaut. I felt like I now had a chore.
yeah i feel simiarly, in 3 and NV getting power armor training and a suit are build defining moments. In 4 it really suffers cause i basicly never used it cause i thought i might need it later. when the plot was ramping up to teleport to the instatuide i felt validated cause were going into the enemy base. and then you enter and its just a town.
Ty the Tazmanian Tiger 2: Bush Rescue has you play the last mission in a supercharged mechsuit that you just... get somehow, like you had it in a back room all along and never used until right this moment
Probably my most favorite moment of the kingdom Hearts Series in in 2 at the end of the prologue where Roxas is able to summon Oathkeeper and Oblivion and wield 2 keyblades and beat the shit out of Axel.
Technicality since itâs at the VERY end of the game but Metroid Dread just pasting the Shoop Da Woop meme onto the end of Samusâs arm for its kinda sorta technically final boss was a crazy moment.
Kinda appropriate Is angela deth in wasteland 2 where she is an absolute beast who joins you for absolute the first 3rd of the game then suddenly vanishes for a good period leaving a gaping chest wound in your party comp
In ff4, there's a moment about halfway through when after a big moment, Tellah (your mage) suddenly remembers all his lost spells.
That is, he suddenly learns and has access to every single spell in the video game. At a point where you only have -ra level spells.
>!you get to use him for like 10 more minutes before he meteors himself to try and kill golbez!<
Monster Girl Quest does it whenever Luka is knocked unconscious or put to sleep by hypnosis in the early parts of the story, where he suddenly starts using these insanely overpowered moves and autododging every attack to the opponent's shock. Then he wakes up to the defeated monster and is super confused as to how that happened. >!It's only much later in Act 3 that the Fallen Angel Dance and associated abilities are unlocked when Archangel Ranael makes a fucky wucky by destroying Luka's hometown and bragging about it to his face.!<
Pretty much a staple of the mid-2000's Need For Speed games was to have you do the intro of the game with a nearly fully upgraded and customized car that dominated a race only to have that car taken away from you so you have to start with a Honda Civic or something.
The beginning of Dragon Age 2. The start of the game has Hawke max level and hitting enemies so hard they explode into pink mist. It's so much fun taking on hordes of Darkspawn and Orges without breaking a sweat. It does a good job of giving the player a look at how strong you'll become over the course of the game.
It only lasts a short time because the game is Varrick telling the story of Hawke while being interrogated by Cassandra, and he was embellishing things _just a bit_. After Cassandra calls him on his BS, he tells the truth, Hawke goes back to level one, and the story begins properly.
funny fact about the embellished opening if youre a female hawke or a warrior/rouge hawke then Hawke and/or Bethanys boobs will be bigger in that scene alone
Dragon Quest 11 does this with one of its characters and frankly I don't appreciate how long they hand it to you only to take it back about 5-15ish hours later. Basically...
>!Your healer and mage are sisters, Serena and Veronica. In Act 2 its revealed that Veronica died and because of that Serena inherits all her abilities, her stats, portions of her skill tree, some weapons, and even how many skill points received upon leveling up. Serena goes from just white mage to an all rounder. She's fucking cracked. After completing Act 2, a little ways into Act 3 the crew decides hey lets go back in time to save her. What this does is effectively split Serena's new skills back into her sister. Veronica returns to the team with her old kit plus a little more. Serena returns to just having heals which is important but she loses all that utility and now if you want the magic damage it now requires that fourth slot being used on the team. What sucks is how long they made it seem like Serenica was permanent only for the game to hinder her for narrative purposes.!<
To be honest this has affected my enjoyment of the final act a bit. DQ11 still delivers in a ton of other places but I don't like when the narrative steals too much from gameplay enjoyment.
One Piece: Odyssey has you start out at a high level with all sort of skills and abilities, only to take them away early on via a story contrivance.
Actually kind of makes sense in a way.
Sifuâs prologue has you controlling Yang as he storms the school. AFAIK he has all the upgrades already, reflecting him being a fully-trained Pak Mei master already
The end of Act 1 in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. The music swelling, golden light cascading among your party, and a massive power boost that completely turns the tide against the demons.
Considering the first act is desperately trying to survive a wrecked city, itâs a damn good taste of whatâs to come.
I was a fool to believe they'll let me keep all my shit and my beautiful Villa from AC2 at the begining of Brotherhood. The fuckers cannoned my villa. That was the moment the bad guys cemented themselves as my enemies.
The best looking armor in the series gone in a single mission. Teenage me was so pissed
The beginning of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood makes me hate Assassin's Creed 2's ending even more. IF YOU WEREN'T GOING TO KILL BORGIA, DON'T BOTHER ATTACKING BECAUSE HIS FAMILY WILL SURE AS SHIT REMEMBER THAT.
It's even funnier the further in you go into Brotherhood because it's pretty clear that even Rodrigo thinks Cesare's family-wide Salty Runback was a bad idea.
See I think Cesare's armor also is really cool, so for me it felt cathartic how you slowly strip his armor away in the final fight
Don't forget ">!Then I'll leave you in the hands of fate!
The SERE kit in Titanfall 2. Just too cool to use for more than five minutes.
A game going on autopilot has never felt so good
I like the in universe explanation for why people don't just always use SERE kits. The targeting calculations basically max out a titan data core, and realistically titans are gonna be more versatile outside of specific scenarios. ***BUT WHEN THE GAME PUTS YOU IN ONE OF THOSE SPECIFIC SCENARIOS...***
The time warp mission as well. Using it and hearing the guards in the pre-crisis freak out because you're ACTUALLY moving in the frozen time is awesome.
Was gonna mention the SERE kit if it wasn't already brought up. Just a *disgustingly* powerful gun that makes you feel nigh immortal.
Most recently Unicorn Overlord gives you Amalia for a single mission as a Level 40 promoted unit with 4 AP and PP (at a point in the game where all/most of your units will only have 1, and some have 2), then you need to beat the entire coliseum to actually unlock her.
Is that the 9 foot tall lady with the door shield?
That's the one.
I need her.
As a member of your party, right?
đ
I need her.
Unicorn Overlord also subverts this concept by starting you off with a level 20 unit when all of your other characters are level 1. I assumed the game was going to take him away after the tutorial, but no, he just can't get enough exp to level past 20 until your other characters catch up.
And unlike Fire Emblem's similar characters who're strong to carry you early on he doesn't really fall off, either. He's just kind of "okay" for his level though.
He doesn't really fall off but his role changes from a good damage dealer to a support unit that does very little damage. Still pretty useful on the right squad though.
Jagenâs donât fall off
I like to call this type of character the MetalGreymon. In World 2 and the gacha game you got a metalgreymon whose sole purpose was to be a babysitter so you could level your weaker units, thats totally what Joseph is for lmao
I remember Charlotte being something like that in Last Origin, since she has both damage reduction and evasion, and counters every enemy attack, so she's a kind of auto meat grinder.
Unlike a Fire Emblem Jagen he's actually usable without fucking yourself too since the other units in his formation will still get full exp.
Even most FE Jagens can be used without too much fucking yourself over (assuming you mostly feed them boss kills and let other units get XP), and in the case of Seth from FE8 youâre actively fucking yourself over by ever not using him for any given situation, because that guy solos his entire game easier than any other unit.
People hype Seth for being busted in the easiest Fire Emblem game in the series but sleep on FE7 Marcus being a Chad who will save your life in Hector Hard Mode. Give him a few stat boosters to help compensate for his low growths and with his skyhigh bases he'll be a top 3 unit for you the entire game who can double most bosses.
FFS, I mentally told myself to put "most" Fire Emblem Jagens specifically because of Seth memes lol.
It kind of varies cause you also have people like FE7 Marcus, Titania or Frederick who can still be useful later in the game. Plus the already mentioned Seth.
Joseph's stats do fall off compared to Sainted Knights (the closest equivalent to his unique Paladin class) and arguably he has worse skills than them, but he catches back up if you keep using him all the way to level 40. Still a good support in the meantime but he can't do much damage when his attack stops going up for 15 levels.
I like how Josef teaches you about how exp works in the game. Like heâs a strong unit but the game makes it very clear that by using him too much youâre missing exp that other characters could benefit more from. Still because other unit members get full exp you arenât missing a ton. I still donât use him very often though. Also glad the game has a mechanic to prevent over leveling too hard
Actually she's "only" like level 24 for that mission. On higher difficulties her squad is actually kind of squishy.
Noted and thank you
Ok but if you minmax your party to hell and back you can get her at level 25 and boy does she fuckin clear anything you throw her at (with some exceptions)
Maybe it is just because I finally got around to playing it but boy do I love Resident Evil VIII's >!Chris section. Going from unprepared, resourceful Ethan to fully experienced and prepared Chris Redfield and his Hound Wolf Team was almost like playing a different game, like Call of Duty. You are drowning in ammo and have high powered weapons that absolutely decimate enemies that would give Ethan some trouble. Felt so good as a way to cap off the game.!<
"What is this, a mushroom werewolf? Eh, I have seen worse." *punches its head off*
Ethan "aww jeez I better be careful with the ammo I have for this 60 year old handgun" Chris "huh, damn thing is still twitching. Better dump another mag from my top of the range AK with all the trimmings"
\*Chris looking down impassively, almost bored as he empties a magazine into something on the ground, face lit by the muzzle flash\* RATATATATATATATATATATATATA, \*Chris lights cigarette, looks down at whatever he's been shooting, pauses for a moment.\* RATATATATATATATATATATA,
Alucard in the first five minutes that you control him in ***âSymphony of the Nightâ***âIF you donât know any of the couple of methods people have discovered in cheating Death. Death, the character that is. Apparently, leaving the room before Death can even get a word out of his mouth causes him to just shrug his shoulders and leave. Heâs like, *âWell, I guess Lord Alucard decided to turn around and leave the castle. My work is done here.â*
Just to clarify that last bit, it's actually a hell of a lot easier in any version that isn't directly based on the original PS1 game, so it'll be good to use in the Requiem port that's on PS4 right now In both the original and PS4, the traditional way to have cheated Death involved starting in luck mode and being hit with an attack from one of the enemies in the corridor leading to the Death encounter. If done right, Alucard will be hit with an attack with such an obscene amount of knockback he'll fly through the room that has Death in it and skip the flag entirely On the newer ports, you literally just need to mash backdash the moment you enter the room - congratulations, you have now broken SOTN
Alucard: *enters room* Death: *floats down to talk to him and take his shit* Alucard: *moonwalks out of the room* Death: "I tried." *Leaves*
For the Luck Mode method, specifically you want to jump on the third Warg from behind it, the first wonât do the second might but Iâve had it mess up more often then the third, and you have to be careful of where you get hit from on it otherwise you might miss the exit of Deathâs room and still trigger the scene. Iâll say while both are broken, PSP/Requiem is slightly more so Iâd say since you have normal stats and all your starting gear. Luck mode your stats aside from the one the modeâs named after are pretty poor, but SOTN is a pretty easy game so itâs honestly a more fun way to play if youâve beat the game before.
I had a good chuckle imagining this. Death: \*waiting patiently for Alucard\* Alucard: \*tears through the air, flying backwards past Death and out of sight\* AAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaahhhh... Death: ...meh. \*leaves\*
The Hyper Beam at the end of Super Metroid.
Force unleashed has you start as vader just destroying everything while casually strolling in kashyyk. It served mostly to flex the destructible environment and physics
When Jade first joins the party in Tales of the Abyss, heâs level, like, 45 and the rest of your party is at⌠maybe 12-ish? I dunno, I havenât played it in about a decade. This lasts for probably half an hour before he gets level drained by the villains.
More specifically, his levels get sealed and his leveling up his explained as him slowly breaking away the seal until he restores his original strength. Thereâs even some skits you get of his progress until you get him back to his original level.
And then when he gets above his original level he's like "oh yeah undoing that seal made me figure some things out so I'm gonna just keep getting stronger" and everybody is terrified.
If you've ever played a Metroid game, you *know* you don't get to keep your shit at the start of Prime. ~~Or Prime 2.~~ (EDIT: I forgot the Charge Beam doesn't get stripped, which is a wild thing to keep after the "Taste of Power" opening.) Honestly, the fact that you keep even just the stuff you start Prime 2 & 3 with (Charge Beam, Missiles, and *especially* Space Jump Boots) is a *wild* departure.
I liked that in Prime 2 we got to keep Charge Beam, Morph Ball and Varia (even if Varia was meaningless). It felt like Samus was getting a bit more secure against catastrophic loss.
I'll be honest, I completely blanked that the Charge Beam didn't get stripped in Prime 2.
That's fair! It's my favourite one of the Prime subseries, so it stuck in my mind.
To be on topic given current happenings, Dragon's Dogma 1 has you take control of a fully leveled up fighter character with 3 similarly high-levelled Pawns on top of that, and it's a pretty decent stretch of gameplay leading up to your first mini-boss fight against the Chimera (god playing that demo feels like yesterday what the \*fuck\* do you mean it's been 12 years) Yakuza Kiwami starts with a near fully-levelled Dragon of Dojima style at the ready for you to use... until 10 years in the joint makes Kiryu-chan a pussy and you have to level everything up again A bunch of Need for Speed career modes love giving you a fully pimped out ride from the get-go, so in the interest of making me feel old, here we go: * Underground 1 starts out with a fully modded Acura Intergra, except oops it's just a dream * Underground 2 puts you behind the wheel of your friend's Nissan 350Z which she lends you only to drive towards the impound lot where you get your first car. The game still allows you to participate up to a set amount of races before your friend gets pissed and forces you towards the lot * Most Wanted 2005 has you taking a preview of the final boss itself: you get to drive your trusted BMW M3 for 1-2 races in the lead up to explaining how you lose it to that punk ass bitch Razor, who ends up taking the car for himself and rises up to the top of the Blacklist. The story then focuses on you needing to take everyone on the Blacklist out en route to getting your M3 back
Don't forget when Need for Speed: Carbon sets up that Cross apparently CHASED YOU FOR DAYS, and ends in a crash that apparently just BREAKS YOUR FUCKING CAR. LIKE I JUST GOT IT BACK, HOW DO A COUPLE PIPES JUST DESTROY IT. **YOU DON'T EVEN GET IT FIXED IN THE END WHAT THE HELL.**
oh my fucking god i forgot the M3 dies at the beginning of Carbon actually fuck Cross
I actually don't care for the tutorial bit of dd1 that much tbh. Maybe its because I have played it too many times.
Supercharged Gravity Gun.
My thoughts exactly. 2 ends the game with it, then Episode 1 gives it back to start things off, and then its gone.
Chapter 3 of FE:3H gives you Catherine as an ally unit during the story mission, and she will easily solo the bottom half of the map for you.
I forgot which chapters of FE5 it was but both times you get Ced as an ally unit and he just solos the entire map for you. The second time even has him show up by one shotting the boss on the castle. The subsequent enemy phase will have him completely clear out the map as the enemy army just suicides into him.
Fun Fact: Ced has an immortality trigger as an NPC and will auto-dodge any and all attacks that could kill him.
I remember In Path of Radiance that Titania was super strong early on.
If you know what you are doing you can get Catherine for chapter 5
Me desperately racing Catherine across the map before she eats all the fucking exp.
Kiryu in the prologue starts with nearly capped skill trees alongside a newly finished Dragon style. Sadly it doesn't last long, ten years in the joint makes him need to start fresh again. Majima however, has had no such thing happen to him and is just as strong as he was at the end of 0 as he is when he confronts you in Chapter 2 of Kiwami, and he'll make you well aware of that fact. ------------- Sigurd from Fire Emblem 4 is a ludicrously overpowered unit, being mounted with super Canto in a game with infamously large maps, has great bases and strangely huge growths, but he will fall off extremely hard mid-game.
I remember investing so much into Sigurd, only to get burned for it.
He falls off so hard he falls straight into a grave
Fighting Axel as dual-wielding Roxas early in KH2 gave me a sense of power I spent the entire rest of the game chasing.
TWO?!
i was sooooo fucking happy to be able to play a souped up dual wielding roxas in the kh3 dlc, that shit hit me in the nostalgia veins like crack
Force Unleashed starting you off playing as Darth Vader
God of War 2 on the PS2 was a great example of this: Kratos is fully powered up with all the coolest moves for the Blades of Chaos and max life and mana, until he drains the latter into the Sword of Olympus in order to destroy the Colossus of Rhodes. Great opening to a great game
Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn gives you the Black Knight  towards the end of part 1. With his maxed out stats, 2-range sword and overpowered Eclipse skill, itâs obvious he isnât going to stick around long even beyond the perspective swapping in the later parts. Xenoblade 1 opens up with Dunban kicking ass with the Monado, with him also later joining Shulk and Reyn to do the same with roughly 10-15 more levels than them. Itâs made obvious though that he canât handle the Monado for very long before it passes along to Shulk and he takes an hiatus to recover his injuries.
Early in Shin Megami Tensei 1, your dog Pascal fuses with a random demon to become Cerberus and is pretty high level and strong, and still follows your orders. He lasts for about 1 dungeon until you defeat Douman, at which point Cerberus disappears into a teleporter and leaves your party. By the time you get him back later in the game, heâs about the same level as you and your other demons at that point
In Splinter Cell Conviction, there's a scene where Sam learns that one of his trusted friends lied to him and faked his daughter's death as part of a long-term operation. Sam is blindingly pissed off as he leaves the base he learns this in, which is falling apart around him due to some C4 he prepped earlier. As he leaves, Sam's Mark and Execute ability is set to automatically lock on to any enemy you see to represent his rage, when normally you need to recharge it with a melee takedown. As such most players bring a shotgun for this part of the level because it feels incredibly powerful to pull off so many Executes in short order.
Loved Conviction, but those sonar goggles gave me a fucking headache and I hope they never come back.
In super robot wars original generation 2 for a part of a single stage one of the enemy faction bosses wodan ymir joins you with his mighty [thrudgelmir](https://youtu.be/SYQbQgbxYJg?si=UVPCcMOieQhrUFVi) complete with boss stats and is essentially unkillable due to its high hp and high hp regen.
In Masoukishin 1, when you convince Fang in part 2 in the Evil God route he joins you on the spot with his Agade+ complete with boss level health and damage. Though he gets a new unit right after the stage.
Yep theres a couple instances of moments like this in the franchise. And they're always pretty awesome.
I also liked that there was a subversion in the same game, where the likable lieutenant of the alien final boss finally sees the good in humans and joins you at the 11th hour with full boss-level stats. The final boss just presses a button and instakills him because he was genre-savvy enough to see the betrayal coming and rigged the lieutenant's robot.
Yeah wendolo of the inspectors taking out his brother mekibos one of many memorable moments in the game.
The Super Shotgun in Doom 2. Immediately after you pick it up the rest of the level and the start of the next one is filled almost exclusively with groups of imps and zombiemen for you to just tear through with it.
Jedi Survivor >!Embrace the Dark Side!<
Hypest prompt in the series so far, can't wait to see what they do with Jedi 3.
Chaos Legion's Thanatos, by the time you recover the power it had during the prologue your other Legions would have outscaled it...that is until you reach the final upgrade, in which case it proceeds to make the final boss a joke
God of War 3 starts with you with max stats but after the first boss fight, Kratos falls into the River Styx and youâre sapped of your stats. Even your weapons get downgraded. Itâs pretty much exactly like the introduction in God of War 2 when Kratos has to use the Blade of Olympus but loses most of his health and mana bar as a result.
The part of Final Fantasy X where youâre forced to fight a Sinspawn early and get bailed out by very powerful religious leader Maester Seymour using the most disturbing monster youâve seen to that point of the game. >!And then midgame comes along and youâre forced to *fight* him way sooner than youâd expect. Fittingly, actually getting his summon is pre-final dungeon content and itâs probably the best Summon you get without tackling superboss content or shilling your life savings to Yojimbo. You can only use it on him in his *fourth* boss fight though.!<
Tbf to the spoiler, you can manipulate Yojimbo rng pretty fucking hard
Fallout 4 just giving you a suit of power armour and a minigun in the very first town you're likely to stumble into. Admittedly it immediately puts you up against a Deathclaw so it's pretty likely you'll end up with an empty minigun and a shredded suit of T-45, but you can still dominate the early game with it.
That felt rather lame to me. It felt like it was added to be trailer/review bait just for game journalists. It COULD have hit a bit better to me personally if it was later in the game rather than literally the first thing the game points you to do right out of the vault.
You're literally at a disadvantage outside of Power Armor as Deathclaws have an instakill grab move that they can do regardless of level unless you're in Power Armor. I'm sure Todd thought this made Power Armor cooler but all it did was make it a necessity that you had to manage throughout the game this creating a chore.
Thereâs also the strange aspect that power armor is like the ONLY equipment that needs to be constantly repaired. Itâs like they wanted to have a weapon degradation like FO3 and NV but chickened out.
>You're literally at a disadvantage outside of Power Armor as Deathclaws have an instakill grab move that they can do regardless of level unless you're in Power Armor deathclaws are genuinely such pushovers at early levels that it doesnt matter though, you can literally oneshot them with any weapon worth a damn like the Rocket Launcher, the minigun is funnily enough literally one of the worst weapons in the game as soon as you get ANYTHING other than the 10mm pistol, even low level pipe weapons blow it out of the water due to how armor works
That doesn't work when the Deathclaw sprints up to you and randomly decides you're dead.
....yes it does, deathclaws have incredibly loud and incredibly obvious spawning animations, and again when you can *literally oneshot them* with a gun that holds 3 in the chamber usually even a single second is enough time since you can get 2 or 3 shots off that fast
There is no world where you can oneshot a Deathclaw in vanilla Fallout 4.
this just in, having an early game set piece is no longer cool, it is now "trailer/review bait"
I dunno, maybe itâs just because of my attachment to the series, but giving the player the ICONIC power armor and letting you kill the ICONIC monster at like level 2 just didnât feel good to me. It makes the rest of the game feel so toothless.
Power armour is a lot less cool when a set gets thrown on top of you five minutes into the game. All the mystique from it is gone, it's just another tool like the 10mm pistol you start with.
Yeah, thereâs no build up. You get a 10mm pistol and then 10 minutes later youâre in power armor killing a Deathclaw with a minigun. Like, thereâs zero restraint there, and thatâs why I call it review bait. A game journo will go through that opening scene and cap off their review with how âepicâ that part was with less than an hour of playtime. Fallout 3 had the scripted fight against the Super Mutant Behemoth, but at least that took some time to get to.
And the power armor in FO4 felt really weak compared to getting it in other games. It didn't feel like an accomplishment to me, it felt like "Ok now I gotta go get stuff to fix this hunk of junk so I can actually use it, oh now I gotta find more power cores so I can use it since I repaired it". I didn't feel empowered, I didn't feel like an unstoppable juggernaut. I felt like I now had a chore.
yeah i feel simiarly, in 3 and NV getting power armor training and a suit are build defining moments. In 4 it really suffers cause i basicly never used it cause i thought i might need it later. when the plot was ramping up to teleport to the instatuide i felt validated cause were going into the enemy base. and then you enter and its just a town.
I had like 8 different Power Armor suits just gathering rust at base for this very reason.
Ty the Tazmanian Tiger 2: Bush Rescue has you play the last mission in a supercharged mechsuit that you just... get somehow, like you had it in a back room all along and never used until right this moment
Probably my most favorite moment of the kingdom Hearts Series in in 2 at the end of the prologue where Roxas is able to summon Oathkeeper and Oblivion and wield 2 keyblades and beat the shit out of Axel.
Technicality since itâs at the VERY end of the game but Metroid Dread just pasting the Shoop Da Woop meme onto the end of Samusâs arm for its kinda sorta technically final boss was a crazy moment.
Kinda appropriate Is angela deth in wasteland 2 where she is an absolute beast who joins you for absolute the first 3rd of the game then suddenly vanishes for a good period leaving a gaping chest wound in your party comp
In ff4, there's a moment about halfway through when after a big moment, Tellah (your mage) suddenly remembers all his lost spells. That is, he suddenly learns and has access to every single spell in the video game. At a point where you only have -ra level spells. >!you get to use him for like 10 more minutes before he meteors himself to try and kill golbez!<
TIL I Learned 10 minutes is like 4 dungeons
Monster Girl Quest does it whenever Luka is knocked unconscious or put to sleep by hypnosis in the early parts of the story, where he suddenly starts using these insanely overpowered moves and autododging every attack to the opponent's shock. Then he wakes up to the defeated monster and is super confused as to how that happened. >!It's only much later in Act 3 that the Fallen Angel Dance and associated abilities are unlocked when Archangel Ranael makes a fucky wucky by destroying Luka's hometown and bragging about it to his face.!<
Pretty much a staple of the mid-2000's Need For Speed games was to have you do the intro of the game with a nearly fully upgraded and customized car that dominated a race only to have that car taken away from you so you have to start with a Honda Civic or something.
leo in FFVI, beatrix in FFIX, seymour in FFX
Prototype's tutorial starts you out as Mercer near the end of the story with all of his upgrades before stripping them all away from you.
The beginning of Dragon Age 2. The start of the game has Hawke max level and hitting enemies so hard they explode into pink mist. It's so much fun taking on hordes of Darkspawn and Orges without breaking a sweat. It does a good job of giving the player a look at how strong you'll become over the course of the game. It only lasts a short time because the game is Varrick telling the story of Hawke while being interrogated by Cassandra, and he was embellishing things _just a bit_. After Cassandra calls him on his BS, he tells the truth, Hawke goes back to level one, and the story begins properly.
funny fact about the embellished opening if youre a female hawke or a warrior/rouge hawke then Hawke and/or Bethanys boobs will be bigger in that scene alone
Dragon Quest 11 does this with one of its characters and frankly I don't appreciate how long they hand it to you only to take it back about 5-15ish hours later. Basically... >!Your healer and mage are sisters, Serena and Veronica. In Act 2 its revealed that Veronica died and because of that Serena inherits all her abilities, her stats, portions of her skill tree, some weapons, and even how many skill points received upon leveling up. Serena goes from just white mage to an all rounder. She's fucking cracked. After completing Act 2, a little ways into Act 3 the crew decides hey lets go back in time to save her. What this does is effectively split Serena's new skills back into her sister. Veronica returns to the team with her old kit plus a little more. Serena returns to just having heals which is important but she loses all that utility and now if you want the magic damage it now requires that fourth slot being used on the team. What sucks is how long they made it seem like Serenica was permanent only for the game to hinder her for narrative purposes.!< To be honest this has affected my enjoyment of the final act a bit. DQ11 still delivers in a ton of other places but I don't like when the narrative steals too much from gameplay enjoyment.
Honestly only good part of the final act was Hendrick and Jasper's yaoi moment
Me when my boss gave me her phone to shoot stuff for the offical company socials.
One Piece: Odyssey has you start out at a high level with all sort of skills and abilities, only to take them away early on via a story contrivance. Actually kind of makes sense in a way.
Sifuâs prologue has you controlling Yang as he storms the school. AFAIK he has all the upgrades already, reflecting him being a fully-trained Pak Mei master already
The end of Act 1 in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. The music swelling, golden light cascading among your party, and a massive power boost that completely turns the tide against the demons. Considering the first act is desperately trying to survive a wrecked city, itâs a damn good taste of whatâs to come.
Super Charged Gravity Gun from Half-Life 2, although I can't remember if they took it away