SHAM DIFFICULTY
I’ve just finished going though Kingdom Hearts 2, a game that I own and haven’t played for some time now. 
I still love the game, the music is amazing, the story hopelessly cheezy and confusing, and the characters each unique and interesting. My gripe with the game, while playing it last night, was specfically (though many bosses did this) was the last boss, Xemnas. What I want to point out is this example, and a few others, is poor game design masquerading as difficulty or a challenge. In other words some game designers are trying to make games a challenge, but instead of a higher difficulty that one must tackle their opponent, instead they give said opponent some unremarkable power that tips the scales in the enemies favor. Sorry but that’s just lazy.
Case in point. Though I love Kingdom Hearts, some of it’s boss battles are ridiculous. Especially towards the end, then everything goes to hell in a hand basket. Near the end of the game you begin to meet these Nobodies that have the ability to fling about clear pink squares wherever they want in huge formations. When you attack them they cause the squares to return to themselves and when you’re far away they ceaselessly swipe a wall of them at you. How do you get around this? You don’t. My logic tells me that bad guys should be harder as you go on in a game, but it’s also telling me that I should have to think more and strategize, not buy more health potions. See where I’m getting at? Yes the bad guys should have more life and more attack and some nasty spells or what have you, but it should also be something that I can figure out, like a puzzle. Battle in real life has always been a sort of puzzle where you learn what your enemy is up to and try to counteract. Well most the time.
There's good reason why nobody has made a RTS of colonial times?
May Buddha help you if you see this man on the battlefield
In other words an RPG or action game should never just be hack and slash. I mean even Dynasty Warriors musters some strategy about amongst it’s endless hacking and slashing…even if it’s only seeing Lu Bu and calling a full scale retreat of your entire army. Ya he’s that frightening and don’t you dare mention anything about that ridiculous tiara to his face.
I’ll just skip ahead to Xenmas because I want to get to a few other examples outside of Kingdom Hearts. Now it’s notorious for the last boss of a video game to have multiple forms. Quadrupily so if this game was made in Japan and is in anyway associated with Squaresoft. Squaresoft doesn’t even bother going into detail on how the final boss has transfomred…they just do it, even if it doesn’t make any sense.
Wait...why? Oh, one winged angel...but he doesn't have one wing. If anything he has a plethora of wings. And two Xena's death rings above his head...or 2/5 of the olympic symbol.
Kingdom Hearts and Squaresoft take the multiple forms of the last villain to the umpth degree. I count at least six, and I might be forgetting some…my brain is already trying to block out the traumatic event. This is 
complete overkill! Can you save during all these battles…no. Though the game does let you retry at different intervals which I’m thankful for because if they had made me go back to the beginning I would have thrown out the game there and then. The most frustrating bit had to be his final form where he’s dressed in what I can only guess is a zebra skin coat and is a full fledged Sith, wielding two lightsabers. Now add to the mix that this last boss suddenly gets the abilities of characters from Dragonball Z (instant teleporting, impossible energy attack to avoid, etc.) and you have a boss that is more frustrating to fight than to play.
This is a key thing to remember, and a hard tight rope for game designers to walk, the player should feel challenged, never ever frustrated. When the player get’s frustrated it doesn’t matter how much you’ve done right with the game, that one nagging frustration will gobble up everything that is good. Which is why game designers need to really think when they are making their bosses and generic baddies. Does the baddie pose a hurdle that the player can identify and tackle, or does the baddie have an unavoidable bitch smack. If it’s the latter then I’m sorry but you’re being lazy. You’re making the game harder in all the wrong ways. Instead of a hurdle to overcome you’ve thrown a rock right at there head. “Sucks to be you…buy more potions.”
Now I’m not saying games shouldn’t be hard. That’s why games have difficulty settings, because some of us want to enjoy a game without feeling like we’re helpless firework wielding Jubilee vs. the Juggernaut from X-Men.
Other Examples
Some other perpetrators, of which are mostly just games I’ve played more recently are World of Goo and Team Fortress 2.
World of Goo
World of Goo was an incredible game with amazing music and a very different style about it. Unfortunately later on in the game all the great things about it were overshadowed by how precise and 
demanding it could be. Now I first want to applaud the creators for making a ’skip this level” function, and though I never used it because I wanted the full experience, the idea of it was genius and something that was really needed to avoid player frustration, so I’ll take the blame for that one since they gave me a way out. My real frustration though lies in how precise you have to be in a timely manner. For instance on one of the levels I needed to keep moving balloons among other pieces or my creation would fall to the pits and I would fail. Unfortunately when I tried to grab up one of my little balloon friends all the other gray goo blobs would swarm around it and I would have one hell of a time trying to get it. I’d even go and play my flute to distract the gray ones but they’d eventually realize I was trying to get the balloon piece and effectively head me off at the pass. Then I’d try and press on those flies (another great idea though weakly implemented) so I would have another chance at fixing my toppling tower…however the fly didn’t usually go back to my last move, it merely went back a few seconds to which I still didn’t have enough time to save my creation. I’d end up having to use all the flies and even then it usually didn’t help. I’m not much of a puzzle player because I can’t stand numbers or science. Those just aren’t my gifts. So when something as unique as Portal or World of Goo comes along, it’s refreshing and fun to give my mind a workout. And even though Portal was challenging at parts, it never left me frustrated and angry. Valve really did an incredible with the game and all other puzzle game designers should take note.
Team Fortress 2
I have a love hate relationship with Valve. Only a minute ago I was typing how great they made portal. And they really do make great games, which is why I own so many of them, but I think Valve makes some very 
poor choices when it comes to balance issues in many of their games. It doesn’t stop me from playing their games, though I probably should, so I could get more work done. Team Fortress 2 is an incredibly addicting game. It’s visuals are fun and cartoony yet the game is ruthless. Now I’ve already written about how the sporadic updates disrupt the gameplay and how they really need to fix the spy’s backstab. But right now I want to talk about crits. Crits in the game come at random when you shoot whatever weapon you are wielding. The problem is the characters in the game that crit the most are not the characters that need it. The demoman and the soldier are death dealing machines. You could be drunk or high as a kite and you’d still fair pretty well as either.
This doesn’t mean there aren’t incredible soldiers and demos. If you know what you’re doing you’re even more deadly. I’m merely pointing out that you need no skill whatsoever to point and click and kill. So who crits the most. I would argue the soldier and the demo. I’m sure someone out there would argue against me and show a pie graph of crit percentages, but I’ve played the game long enough to stand by what I say. Now both of these classes cause explosive damage. Mixed with how often they crit, other classes don’t pose a great threat. I’ve been blown apart by crit missiles that missed me completely but apparently their critness makes them have a much larger impact radius.
Point is if anybody needs crits it’s the poor scout. The character is practically worthless unless parried with a competent team doing a lot of work, or played by a pro, in which hitting them is impossible…unless you’re a soldier or demo, in which case you just aim at your feet and you’ll be fine. These gameplay issues among a wide variety of others cause the game to be frustrating beyond belief. But Valve has made such a great game that I can’t help but come back and keep playing, much to the chagrin of my sanity.
GRINDING UP
The next lazy game design flaw (you can tell I’ve been playing a lot of RPG’s as of late) is leveling up your characters. Now leveling up your characters is a fun asset to the game and for those who want to ceaselessly grind away till their characters are demigods, let them do so or go buy them World of Warcraft. But a lot of 
us don’t want to fight the same monsters over and over again so we can finally be able to move forward in the story. In fact many of us only have a little time to squeeze in games when we can and enjoy story much more than we do claiming that we can beat the last boss with all the ultimate weapons, armor, and stats.
This is where I would like to applaud Kingdom Hearts and any of the Tales games. Never did I feel like I needed to go out of my way to have enough level experience to move on in the story. The level progression should flow with the story because anytime running around an area hoping a random encounter will pop up, is a distraction from the story and it immediately pulls you from the world you were once immersed in. I didn’t play Final Fantasy XII because the characters looked incredibly lame, related to one another, and just about everything was a different shade of beige or brown, that and the fighting system was lame. It’s also been awhile since I played Final Fantasy X but I don’t remember much leveling up. So hopefully future games have learned and can find a compromise a letting those who want to grind, grind, and those who want to enjoy the story, enjoy the story without grinding.
OPTIONAL BOSSES
Abyssion from ToS
I wasn’t sure where to put this so I’ll just put it here. In most RPG’s the final boss is some incredibly powerful person or thing, usually the most powerful person or thing in the realm…but not in the game. This has never made sense to me and I find it rather dumb. A
Nebilim from ToA
lot of RPG games have hidden bosses within them that are much more powerful than the last boss. So through the story we’re led to believe that the final boss is almost god like (ex. Sephiroth from FF7 and Yggdrasill from Tales of Symphonia) and yet in these same games are bosses exceedingly more powerful than the last boss. I know it’s fun for some gamers to try and find everything, and presenting a challenge for those gamers that ceaselessly grinded till they were unstoppable, but it doesn’t
Ruby Weapon
usually make sense in the context of the story. At best the games try to squeak by on the these optional powerful bosses either being in hiding or locked away. But if they’re so powerful why aren’t
Emerald Weapon
they the last boss of the game. You can’t convince me that Sephiroth is almost a god when Ruby or Emerald Weapon could easily take him on. Why didn’t they? I’m not saying get rid of optional bosses, because grinders still need to be able to make videos and post them on youtube boasting how they took down an incredible boss with no damage. I’m just saying that you need it to make sense within the context of the story. How? Well let’s say the final boss was trying to awaken an ancient evil but you kill him before he can. Make it an option to awake it yourself if you want to. It makes sense in the story and provides a boss for grinders to fight. Everyone wins!
Well that’s enough for now I think. I’m just pointing these things out because I want RPG’s to grow and excel, especially because they are the types of games that hold the most story. But it seems like RPG’s are in a bit of a rut and need some help. Just trying to offer up some solution.
I’ll be coming up with the latest villain section, part 3, pretty soon here and also look forward to the complex natures of some movie and video game villains.
