Dragon Arenas trying really hard to ruin my opinion about the game

[Michanicks]

WARNING: ANGRY RANT
I love the game and consider its combat system best among all singleplayer games i ever played. I was praising devs in my thoughts, but after trying out arenas, especially dragon ones, i started to question myself.

1) At which point game developers, people, who love and play games, getting unable to comprehend that nobody loves fixed camera episodes (Oldboy hall is a honorable exception)? That was a bane of Prince of Persia, it's intentionally made Resident Evil uncomfortable because it's a horror game where you are not even supposed to fight, people not gonna say "wow, it's a peak of cinema expierence!", they will be annoyed they can't control the camera and that goals are harder to achieve because our character is virtually blinded and confused. It's getting old fast. Worst offender is Data center arenas where you are literally sometimes out of view and where enemies with lunge attacks can attack you from outside of the screen range. Sometimes it's nearly upside down. I couldn't even enjoy the homage to Raid because i was constantly fighting camera as much as i did enemies. It would be so much more pleasurable to be able to look around in these arenas.

2) Time goals are completely ill-conceived. Instead of feat of skill it's "guess which tactic developers used for this arena". If you don't watch guides, you don't even know you picked the wrong strategy and you have to try something else or you picked right strategy but you don't do it perfectly yet so you have to practice exactly this, but more. There is much more satisfaction in getting better at fighting and avoiding getting hit than at fighting with the timer and RNG and being limited to a single strategy. I didn't see a single good word aboud timed challenges ever, people say that they are worst part of all the arenas in game. Developers just picked a tactic for arena, got lucky with it and now players have to suffer.

3) Wait, you still call it getting good at the game? It's just throwing enemies off the high places as the only viable tactic! It's ruining the whole idea of such complex combat system. Avoid, throw, rinse, repeat;

4) RNG starts to matter in this game? Why, Juggernaut suddenly starts to armoured bumrash you when you in middle of combat when they usually never do this? Why, enemies just watching you instead of attacking, wasting your time? Why, pair of bosses start to comboing unavoidable attacks together that you can't even block? Why, wrong enemy being agressive so your time is worse than usual? Why, flashkick does a difficult combo instead of simple one which costed you a second? Too bad, everything you loved in story mode is gone for the sake of quantity.

5) It's really takes little to no skills to make things hard. Ten year ago there was a lot of "hardcore mods" for games made by teens which take as much creativity as most dragon arenas. It's difficulty modifiers upon difficulty modifiers upon difficulty modifiers. In Tiger arenas there is homage to Drive, homage to Matrix (Dragon arena has another one, but it's nearly the same reference), homage to Oldboy, homage to Raid and many many others that i didn't noticed yet. The only thing i will remember of Dragon arenas is them being frustrating, and not fun, the opposite of what people play games for.

6) Dragon arenas brought no new locations! It's just reuse of Tiger arenas for no other reason than "making something hard and frustrating".

7) Even if you willingfully dropped Master difficulty because your reaction time is not that great, you still have to play on Master in some arenas which is required for 100% completing and platinum. These constant 50/50 combos, Yang invisible blades and hard to react combos where he punishes a single mistake with a -50%-75% health combo/crooked foot and you have to replay the whole 4 bosses in the row just for another attempt for him. Like, man, there is the reason i didn't pick Master in the first place.

Rant is over, thank you, you were a great audience.

[kcnue]

bro i didn't even bother with the arenas! if you finish the game on master, no matter your age, why bother with anything else? you beat the game! don't demand perfection from yourself, it is the path to destruction!

you are ruining your fun with the game yourself, and you are tarnishing the special place that this game originally had in your memory!

this is an awesome game! but ambition ruins it! i first understood this when i was bent on finishing it at age 20, wude ONLY, master! it was horrible! then i decided ok maybe age 25 (cuz some stupid f*kn achievment told me so, right?) then i was like: "you know what? i just wanna beat the game! master, any age, is good enough for me!" and i finished it on master at a very late age, and i was ok with it and it was an awesome experience! and i thus kept my love and appreciation for the game!

had i demanded perfection from myself, it would've ruined everything!

[Michanicks]

Originally posted by kcnue:

bro i didn't even bother with the arenas! if you finish the game on master, no matter your age, why bother with anything else? you beat the game! don't demand perfection from yourself, it is the path to destruction!

you are ruining your fun with the game yourself, and you are tarnishing the special place that this game originally had in your memory!

this is an awesome game! but ambition ruins it! i first understood this when i was bent on finishing it at age 20, wude ONLY, master! it was horrible! then i decided ok maybe age 25 (cuz some stupid f*kn achievment told me so, right?) then i was like: "you know what? i just wanna beat the game! master, any age, is good enough for me!" and i finished it on master at a very late age, and i was ok with it and it was an awesome experience! and i thus kept my love and appreciation for the game!

had i demanded perfection from myself, it would've ruined everything!

All arenas are required for 100% achievements, and also this was a little bit of regular complectionism, because Tiger arenas brought new locations and references and i didn't want to miss them.

After beating "Facing Liming Hui" i realised that Master difficulty is not for me, because it does stack so much bs upon bs so game loses a lot of realism, variety and fun for me. I feel like i struggle with the videogamey problems and play self-imposed immersion-breaking challenge rather than actual game.
Disciple difficulty was the intended difficulty for the game and was the onle difficulty before the update, so i gonna stick to it.

[Kuraft]

Originally posted by Michanicks:

After beating "Facing Liming Hui" i realised that Master difficulty is not for me, because it does stack so much bs upon bs so game loses a lot of realism, variety and fun for me. I feel like i struggle with the videogamey problems and play self-imposed immersion-breaking challenge rather than actual game.
Disciple difficulty was the intended difficulty for the game and was the onle difficulty before the update, so i gonna stick to it.

Last I played the game (which was like ~2 months ago), Facing Liming Hui was the sole reason I played the game for the last ~5 hours of it. I got 3 stamps on it (which means I beat it under 30 or so years old), which was hard, but the satisfaction of successfully deflecting/parrying, doing combos, watching my timing, SWEATING MYSELF more and more bosses I defeat, to finally beat Yang without him taking 5 years off of me, with the music in the background... Priceless experience. Best thing yet, I can play it again to try and get GOLD stamps (which means I have to NOT GET HIT more than 5-6 times during the whole run). How can you not like it? :D

[Michanicks]

Originally posted by Kuraft:

How can you not like it? :D

Easely. You can invest time in many many different things, and since it's impossible to be good at everything in life, i decided to play games purely to have fun in the process and for achievements, not to overcome really hard challenges.

I may play on high difficulties in games, may play difficult games and complete hard challenges only if they either very fun for me, having Steam achievements for this, or both.

To each their own.

[Kuraft]

I mean I get that you're a completionist (I like the taste you have in games btw), but what do you have to gain from Steam achievements if you don't enjoy the game you play? I honestly ask this because I don't know, you can have hundreds of perfect games, thousands of hours invested, for what exactly if not fun (because you probably play difficult games that you do not enjoy for the sake of achievements in it)?

[Michanicks]

Originally posted by Kuraft:

I mean I get that you're a completionist (I like the taste you have in games btw), but what do you have to gain from Steam achievements if you don't enjoy the game you play?

I enjoy Sifu, i just don't enjoy Master difficulty and arenas in it. On Disciple it's great to overcome fair challenge, to enjoy the great combat system, to improve my skill in the fun way, to understand homages and references, that's all great.

Originally posted by Kuraft:

I honestly ask this because I don't know, you can have hundreds of perfect games, thousands of hours invested, for what exactly if not fun

Most of my perfect games i've enjoyed well, i invested many hours in them even after i got 100% achievements for each of them.

Originally posted by Kuraft:

(because you probably play difficult games that you do not enjoy for the sake of achievements in it)?

I don't play difficult games if i don't love them. I don't know which games you talk about in particular, but like example despite Dark Souls series and Hotline Miami 2 could be considered hardcore games, i played them purely for fun, and i continuing to play them despite i got 100% achievements in them and beaten them for like 10 times already.

[Kuraft]

Originally posted by Michanicks:

Originally posted by Kuraft:

I mean I get that you're a completionist (I like the taste you have in games btw), but what do you have to gain from Steam achievements if you don't enjoy the game you play?

I enjoy Sifu, i just don't enjoy Master difficulty and arenas in it. On Disciple it's great to overcome fair challenge, to enjoy the great combat system, to improve my skill in the fun way, to understand homages and references, that's all great.

Originally posted by Kuraft:

I honestly ask this because I don't know, you can have hundreds of perfect games, thousands of hours invested, for what exactly if not fun

Most of my perfect games i've enjoyed well, i invested many hours in them even after i got 100% achievements for each of them.

Originally posted by Kuraft:

(because you probably play difficult games that you do not enjoy for the sake of achievements in it)?

I don't play difficult games if i don't love them. I don't know which games you talk about in particular, but like example despite Dark Souls series and Hotline Miami 2 could be considered hardcore games, i played them purely for fun, and i continuing to play them despite i got 100% achievements in them and beaten them for like 10 times already.

So it truly is all fun and games. Alright, thanks for the reply

[Montezuma the Mighty]

I agree with you 100%. I returned to play Sifu after years from my first playthrough to try out arenas, and after the initial great impression, I found my self raging at the absolutely frustrating experience of harder challenges.
It's not that I don't like challenges and difficulty in games. It's just that there's a limit to the amount of BS that I can tolerate. For example, it's idiotic that the only way to win certain challenges is to follow very specific strategies that you have to either find our by yourself with months of literal work or follow guides.
A game should never feel like a chore. It is meant to have fun.
One could say that we can just ignore the challenges we don't like and keep enjoying the rest of the game, which is a valid suggestion, but it feels bad to give up on parts of a game, especially if the game in question is good. The feeling of incompleteness and surrender leaves a bitter taste that makes the overall experience not enjoyable.