fluent2332: Becoming too powerful too soon.
To me, my favorite part of RPGs is the slow process of starting as a complete nobody and building up your power, slowly overcoming the obstacles and challenges before you.
This is the best part of RPGs to me, and one of the main reasons I play them.
My sentiments exactly! I love how, at the beginning, each new piece of (junk) equipment represents a major step forward and a cause for a celebration. The early parts are when RPGs mostly resemble survival games. Later on loot is so abundant it becomes trivial and boring.
My favourite parts:
- In Fallout 2 from a spear to a pipe-rifle and later to your first pistol, scrounging in the meantime for enough junk to sell to be able to afford that shiny leather jacket you saw in some vendor's inventory, saving each stimpack only for the most dire situations. Later in the game, the progression from Gatling Lasers to the Gauss Gun is just meh.
- In Risen, finding a rusty sword after a few fights using nothing but a sturdy branch gives me a better loot-associated dopamine rush than finding thousands of coins in a treasure chest later on.
- In Might & Magic, combat is so much more satisfying when you have to make do with a few simple spells and non-enchanted equipment. It makes real tactics count, rather than just spamming high-level spells later on.
etc...
Know of any mainstream RPGs that have such great humble beginnings? For example, I recently discovered State of Decay – it's like the examples mentioned above, only for the duration of the whole game! Always scrounging for supplies.
