Incredible! It’s been great to see deeper analysis into the art of video games as opposed to the usual “plot summary disguised as analysis” type videos. I was particularly compelled by your distinction between pain and tedium, especially when you said that pain is more than just the absence of pleasure. It made me think more critically about many of the painful games I’ve played and why some techniques work while others don’t.
Re:grinding to avoid paimful choices, the way i see it, the game lets you "earn" your escape from the dilemmas by allowing you to do the most self-sacrificing thing you can as a player - wasting your own time. The whole game asks what makes someone a good man and a good father, and a willingness to suffer pain to protect another from it seems to be a part of the answer. When the player is the one willing to have their most resource taken (time), it makes sense to me that Brad and the other characters would be spared
I watched up until 7 Minutes and now bought the game. I will return as the first seqment already was well written to build up to point you wanna make about Lisa. Thx
I discovered you from the Tears of the Kingdom video. I'm glad the same level of thoughtfulness and quality is reflected in your other work, including this video. I admire how despite enjoying the games you cover, you still stand strong in asking difficult questions that encourage these works to take things one step further, especially here when discussing whether games should be fun as a requirement or not. Cheers! You should be proud. I could only dream of reviewing games in the same way you do. I look forward to hearing more from you.
I can't really agree, for me Lisa the painful was anything but tedious or boring. It was hard and unfair sometimes but constant shifting from dark and depressing moments to absurd dark humour kept me really engaged and drove me to exploring whole Olathe and completing as much side quests as i could. Some fights were a bit frustrating but it just made me try different party members and learn new and fun synergies and playstyles. The possibility of death of each party member is painful but bearable and the intended way is not to savescum and repeat fights until no one dies but make the best of the bad situation, try each of the new recruits and learn how to use them properly so when someone from the main party dies you are preapared for this. For you it was probably the minmaxing that made the whole experience less engaging as using aquired items adds a lot of depth to the whole fighing system. On the other hand Lisa the joyful was the tedious one both story and gameplay wise for me. There wasnt any depth to the fights just get a good timing on attack,tank dmg, heal and repeat. There werent as many interest points and the whole game was just getting from boss to boss fighting each of them the exact same way and getting to the end. Buddy as a main character had a lot of potential but ended up really unlikeable and bland in comparasion to Brad. I am not saying that Lisa the painful doesnt have any flaws but for me at least it was really engaging and profound experience to play this game.
I'm about to watch, and before I dive in I need to let you know what an unbelievably good job you do with analysis in the space of video game critique and essays. Hope you keep it up and get the 1mil subs you deserve
hey, if you want to play more of these "not ment to be fun" games. i recoment you play pathologic, i think it is the perfect representation of these idea of games, along side also being one of the first that i've seen. recommend you play pathologic 2, but if you want you can also start with patholgic 1, it's still really good.
I attempted (and failed) to get into Pathologic 1 a few years before starting this channel - maybe I'll give the remake a try next year. Thanks for the recommendation!
@@Erumore by the way they are also releasing pathologic 3 next year, a remake of the bachelors route. i think next year will be really good to give a try to pathologic again.
I disagree with your take on pain mode just making the game more tedious and not more difficult. Rather I feel it essentially forces the player into dealing with the difficult and sometimes random circumstances of the game by making you choose to sacrifice potential hours of gameplay time and risk a worse outcome, or to push forward with the losses you've endured to that point, the former of which is a good enough deterrent to make the latter the correct choice in my opinion.
I agree with this in theory, and I actually think it can be a pretty good solution to 'The Savescum Problem' - but in LISA I still think that Pain Mode results in more tedium than anything else because of the high amount of randomness involved in the losses you take. On top of that, on a first playthrough (which will always be the most important), you're going to make a lot of mistakes: going to areas in the wrong order, fighting enemies you're not ready for yet, falling for unexpected tricks that damage or kill you, etc. When you lose an hour of progress and it wasn't really your fault, and you have to redo everything all over again, that's tedium. If Pain Mode is supposed to be intended for subsequent playthroughs, then I think it defeats the point to go into it with prior knowledge of what's coming. Regardless of whether we agree or not, I appreciate the comment and I hope you enjoyed the video.
I like your analysis, but your Overwatch remark is very misguided. Overwatch has a lot of mechanical and tactical depth to it, which can bring a lot of fulfillment from the mastery of it, and ironically, trying to perform consistently well in such complex competitive environment, can induce distress on a level that can easily exceed that of an experience like LISA as well.
pretty fair critique overall. but i would like to point out a few things. long post ahead. I disagree that the game is responsible in anyway for the "min-max optimization" disease or that it can work around this disease if it tried, the game instead tries to teach you to use your items, and it prepares you early on for the reality that your party members and items can be taken randomly, you have to accept it and stop fighting it at the expense of your sanity. I used to have this disease as well, but the habit of saving items because you might need them for a harder fight ultimately hurts your odds, you're assuming that something harder will come, when it may, or may not. you're also overvaluing items that you can most likely find or earn back before another fight. you're crippling your progression by turning the game into a battle of attrition and ignoring the tools you are given to keep you ahead. you are also especially incentivized to use these items in Lisa, where you have many ways to lose your items, so its a use em or lose em scenario, save-scumming ruins all these little decisions and instances and should only be a last resort. on top of that, Lisa has many instances where you CAN get through without items, or losing party members, but this requires a lot of skill it also bleeds into the save-scumming issue. you're in general criticizing a game for having a save system. you cannot stop save-scumming, and people's innate desire to retry for better outcomes. as you acknowledged, this is also against the nature of the game, it cant, however be rectified in a game with a save system like this. However, it is in general, in our best interest to stop resorting to save-scumming and grinding, Lisa especially is a game where you are expected to live with your actions and choices, just as Brad has to. so while it is tempting to play this way, it's not entirely fair to treat it as a valid option, then bring it up as a critique cause it's perceived as an easy way out, when many of the the things that happen only happen cause they take you off guard, you're robbing yourself of the experience by save-scumming and cheesing these encounters to avoid them and that's on you. you list examples of how the game could do better by making you make hard decisions, yet you falsely think they're poorly done cause you are grinding or worming your way out of them, most people play in a natural way, where these decisions DO seem painful and meaningful, and it's not cause they wasted time redoing them or grinding. you said painful mode is more tedious but it actually incentivizes less tedium because its less viable to redo saves that can be an hour apart, instead you have to keep going. in a way you acknowledge that this is where the true pain comes from, because you yourself can't even live with the decisions so instead give up to tedium to come out on top. It also does come down to how much you value your time like you said, but I have to add that while it can be enjoyable to play this way and have tons of items and all party members, it isn't an intended way to play, and leaving "fun" out of the equation, I'll instead point out that it's not even a valid way to play any game for the first time, as when you strive to perfection, you stop actually experiencing the game, and instead turn it into a resource hoarding game, where you learn to cheat out every problem instead of working around them and learning to live with them. sometimes if you're clever its rewarding to, for instance farm mags for ransom money, but i wouldn't say that's very time consuming or poorly done. I'll admit there is times its fun to see how good you can do without items, relying on your skill to complete battles without losing party members, i just think it's unfair to act like this playstyle is encouraged or expected to be a viable work around to the many issues you face in this game. It's ultimately impossible to stop someone from wasting hours to get a better result, or using cheeky save-scums to get around a dilemma. so if we leave this out of the core experience and stop meta gaming, you'll find we can only do the best we can, and live with the consequences, a lesson the game teaches us through the story as well, that's why I, and many people find this type of game interesting.
this goes for the addiction critique to, you CAN backtrack every time you get a withdrawal, but should you? since you acknowledge how much this game wastes your time, i don't think it's in your best interest to go back for a rest, both because of the extra time cost, and because you're just fighting the games core mechanics more than playing the game itself. the sleeping makes sense to me also as its easier to fight off withdrawal when you've had a rest. although it's also ultimately a small boost when compared to the risk of sleeping, the real big boost comes from actually using joy, as using joy effectively heals you as a rest does, but also gives you the buff. you're working with small variables to give you a comparatively small boost compared to just using joy. so i would just endure the withdrawal like you have to in most of the game, sometimes you fight it off without resting also, and get a welcome boost of power, this makes the joy system more captivating also. Joyless runs also have more benefits than you give them credit for, yes you have only one tangible advantage with the companion, and as you said its fitting with the narrative that it doesn't make a huge difference. but there is incentive outside of the challenge, the new ending scene, and honestly the small dialogue with Buddy where you can confidently say your doing your best and that you did quit joy, not everything needs to have a big reward, sometimes you just need a small incentive and this is incentive enough to do atleast one joyless playthrough in my opinion. Also, some small inaccuracies. Brad didn't hammer it into Buddy that she was the last female, part of the issue was that he didn't explain enough, just that she needed to be strong. think about it, if you were a father would you tell your daughter that she's the last girl on earth and everyone wants to rape her? that's why when buddy does learn from her uncles that she can "save the world" she's more willing to leave. if anyone actually explained the reality of the situation early, things would have played out completely different. And at the end, Brad WAS already turning he just hadnt physically changed, so it does explain how he killed a small army. this is supported by the bite skill and the cry and scream skill he gets further into the fight, skills that joy mutants use. overall i think the experience of the game just fell flat cause of some bad habits on your part, but i understand where these complaints come from. I'm also not trying to handwave every part of the game by saying "yeah, It's meant to suck" instead I'm trying to point out, the difficulty of these decisions fit into the games ludonarrative making you feel like you're wrong all the time. there's many times when decisions might seem simple, but these are often things that can come back and bite you, there's many times when you end up questioning if you made the best choice, this is what gives weight to the decisions, the thought that you might not be struggling if you saved your party member or if you gave Buzzo your arm instead. the mutilation of buddy is an example that seems simple to you, showing that many of these decisions just didnt have an effect on you. the difficulty of that decision is wondering if it will come back to bite you. will Buddy hate you even more? will this change the ending? you dont know at that point, and Buddy's nipple that you receive just furthers the feeling you've done something very wrong. on top of that Buzzo still tries to take your items or your other arm, and if you mess up he takes both, so on top of it you lose in some way no matter what. but the game just didnt grab you like that and that's fine, but i assure you there is depth there, if you play the game trying to avoid every hard decision i can see how you just wouldnt feel the same about these harder decisions. I just cant agree on the game having less meaningful decisions or being that tedious.
I'm more than willing to take some of the responsibility for my min-max playstyle, but I still think it's on the game to force the player to break out of that habit if it leads to a less impactful experience. In my example with Terry and your inventory at the beginning, the only change required to turn that choice into an impactful one would be to block the player from going back after the choice - this is a moment where a small design change would result in more meaningful choices for the player and less tedium. Likewise, if there were no random encounters and no possibility of farming mags, you actually would have to make impactful choices about how to spend them - but you don't, because you can convert time into currency by farming. If this isn't the intended way to play, then the option shouldn't even be in the game. This is the key point for me, and it's why I don't think I'm fully to blame for the tedious experience I had, though like I said I'm willing to take partial responsibility for my own habits. Same thing with the Joy withdrawal - if I CAN remove the negative status effect for free, why wouldn't I do it, no matter if it costs a few minutes? If the game doesn't want me to do it, then why does it give me the option? If LISA is a game about hard decisions, which I think we both agree on, then why does it allow you to worm your way around them at all? I would say these are flaws in the design, not in me as a player. I praised the moments where you have to choose between an arm or a party member because there really is no way to grind or savescum your way around them. You might second guess yourself later and wonder if you made the wrong call, because you were forced into a situation where there was no good outcome, only various shades of bad. If you leave a kidnapped party member behind without paying their ransom, it's not a difficult choice you've made - you just didn't feel like wasting your time grinding. Thanks for watching and I appreciate the thoughtful comment!
@@Erumore honestly the cave shades that drop mags might've been an oversight, but maybe they were intended to give you an option if you really needed mags, and werent expected to be exploited. i never farmed them ever, so hard to tell really. but in general, it seems we just have different playstyles. Lisa definitely caters to people who want to min-max, but it also encourages you to power through issues. I just think that if you dont enjoy side stepping the issues in an exploitive way, you shouldnt play that way. I stand by the fact that Lisa and most games in general can be exploitable, so i wont hold it against the game. I also agree terries decision doesnt have much weight, but thats actually not because of being able to go back and get the items. my first playthrough i collected every item up to that point and lost them all. its still not a big deal, compared to having Terry, a few jerkies and mags is nothing. I think the beginning is a test to see how you will behave later and an introduction to this type of choice. the right decision is always Terry, the game is trying to psych you out because you dont have that much items but Terry also appears useless, even if you lost all the items however, you won't feel their loss, after a few hours. But again good video, I just have to respectfully disagree
Incredible! It’s been great to see deeper analysis into the art of video games as opposed to the usual “plot summary disguised as analysis” type videos.
I was particularly compelled by your distinction between pain and tedium, especially when you said that pain is more than just the absence of pleasure. It made me think more critically about many of the painful games I’ve played and why some techniques work while others don’t.
Re:grinding to avoid paimful choices, the way i see it, the game lets you "earn" your escape from the dilemmas by allowing you to do the most self-sacrificing thing you can as a player - wasting your own time. The whole game asks what makes someone a good man and a good father, and a willingness to suffer pain to protect another from it seems to be a part of the answer. When the player is the one willing to have their most resource taken (time), it makes sense to me that Brad and the other characters would be spared
I watched up until 7 Minutes and now bought the game. I will return as the first seqment already was well written to build up to point you wanna make about Lisa. Thx
It's inspired quite a few well made fan games too, Lisa the Pointless in particular is fantastic and in some ways eclipses the game that inspired it.
I discovered you from the Tears of the Kingdom video. I'm glad the same level of thoughtfulness and quality is reflected in your other work, including this video.
I admire how despite enjoying the games you cover, you still stand strong in asking difficult questions that encourage these works to take things one step further, especially here when discussing whether games should be fun as a requirement or not.
Cheers! You should be proud. I could only dream of reviewing games in the same way you do. I look forward to hearing more from you.
I admire your courage to leave the F&H guards unchanged for the video. Don't think i've seen one of their "Stingers" on a yt video before.
I can't really agree, for me Lisa the painful was anything but tedious or boring. It was hard and unfair sometimes but constant shifting from dark and depressing moments to absurd dark humour kept me really engaged and drove me to exploring whole Olathe and completing as much side quests as i could. Some fights were a bit frustrating but it just made me try different party members and learn new and fun synergies and playstyles. The possibility of death of each party member is painful but bearable and the intended way is not to savescum and repeat fights until no one dies but make the best of the bad situation, try each of the new recruits and learn how to use them properly so when someone from the main party dies you are preapared for this. For you it was probably the minmaxing that made the whole experience less engaging as using aquired items adds a lot of depth to the whole fighing system. On the other hand Lisa the joyful was the tedious one both story and gameplay wise for me. There wasnt any depth to the fights just get a good timing on attack,tank dmg, heal and repeat. There werent as many interest points and the whole game was just getting from boss to boss fighting each of them the exact same way and getting to the end. Buddy as a main character had a lot of potential but ended up really unlikeable and bland in comparasion to Brad. I am not saying that Lisa the painful doesnt have any flaws but for me at least it was really engaging and profound experience to play this game.
agree 100%
Womp Womp and Skill issue
Well, looks like it'll be a while before I can continue this video. Never heard of it before, but I'll have to play it as soon as I'm able
I'm about to watch, and before I dive in I need to let you know what an unbelievably good job you do with analysis in the space of video game critique and essays. Hope you keep it up and get the 1mil subs you deserve
Sing the spider segments in Lisa the first don't offer any significant challenge is the most bizarre and brazen boast I've ever seen.
i think i might be going insane but i swear to god i heard you say "Fear and Chungus" near 57:00
just finished watching Spartacus. great movie, thanks for the heads up!
In LISA, the game hates you. In Funger, the world in the game hates you. If that means anything
hey, if you want to play more of these "not ment to be fun" games. i recoment you play pathologic, i think it is the perfect representation of these idea of games, along side also being one of the first that i've seen. recommend you play pathologic 2, but if you want you can also start with patholgic 1, it's still really good.
I attempted (and failed) to get into Pathologic 1 a few years before starting this channel - maybe I'll give the remake a try next year.
Thanks for the recommendation!
@@Erumore by the way they are also releasing pathologic 3 next year, a remake of the bachelors route. i think next year will be really good to give a try to pathologic again.
I'm getting the vibe you're a "save scumming is cheating" type gamer haha
I disagree with your take on pain mode just making the game more tedious and not more difficult. Rather I feel it essentially forces the player into dealing with the difficult and sometimes random circumstances of the game by making you choose to sacrifice potential hours of gameplay time and risk a worse outcome, or to push forward with the losses you've endured to that point, the former of which is a good enough deterrent to make the latter the correct choice in my opinion.
I agree with this in theory, and I actually think it can be a pretty good solution to 'The Savescum Problem' - but in LISA I still think that Pain Mode results in more tedium than anything else because of the high amount of randomness involved in the losses you take. On top of that, on a first playthrough (which will always be the most important), you're going to make a lot of mistakes: going to areas in the wrong order, fighting enemies you're not ready for yet, falling for unexpected tricks that damage or kill you, etc. When you lose an hour of progress and it wasn't really your fault, and you have to redo everything all over again, that's tedium. If Pain Mode is supposed to be intended for subsequent playthroughs, then I think it defeats the point to go into it with prior knowledge of what's coming.
Regardless of whether we agree or not, I appreciate the comment and I hope you enjoyed the video.
I mean.. LISA is fun though lol
I see someone else got tired of asinine comments made full of confidence online
Subscribed, Fear and Hunger reference is much appreciated
For the game that's emphasize on pain and wasting your time, i'd rather pkay Dark Souls lol, at least that game taught me to not giving up
man, one argument over and over again - i had so much fun and no pain etc sorry
Bad take after bad take after bad take
I like your analysis, but your Overwatch remark is very misguided. Overwatch has a lot of mechanical and tactical depth to it, which can bring a lot of fulfillment from the mastery of it, and ironically, trying to perform consistently well in such complex competitive environment, can induce distress on a level that can easily exceed that of an experience like LISA as well.
I completely disagree with you, but the video was still great
how
explain pls :3
pretty fair critique overall. but i would like to point out a few things. long post ahead. I disagree that the game is responsible in anyway for the "min-max optimization" disease or that it can work around this disease if it tried, the game instead tries to teach you to use your items, and it prepares you early on for the reality that your party members and items can be taken randomly, you have to accept it and stop fighting it at the expense of your sanity. I used to have this disease as well, but the habit of saving items because you might need them for a harder fight ultimately hurts your odds, you're assuming that something harder will come, when it may, or may not. you're also overvaluing items that you can most likely find or earn back before another fight. you're crippling your progression by turning the game into a battle of attrition and ignoring the tools you are given to keep you ahead. you are also especially incentivized to use these items in Lisa, where you have many ways to lose your items, so its a use em or lose em scenario, save-scumming ruins all these little decisions and instances and should only be a last resort.
on top of that, Lisa has many instances where you CAN get through without items, or losing party members, but this requires a lot of skill it also bleeds into the save-scumming issue. you're in general criticizing a game for having a save system. you cannot stop save-scumming, and people's innate desire to retry for better outcomes. as you acknowledged, this is also against the nature of the game, it cant, however be rectified in a game with a save system like this. However, it is in general, in our best interest to stop resorting to save-scumming and grinding, Lisa especially is a game where you are expected to live with your actions and choices, just as Brad has to. so while it is tempting to play this way, it's not entirely fair to treat it as a valid option, then bring it up as a critique cause it's perceived as an easy way out, when many of the the things that happen only happen cause they take you off guard, you're robbing yourself of the experience by save-scumming and cheesing these encounters to avoid them and that's on you. you list examples of how the game could do better by making you make hard decisions, yet you falsely think they're poorly done cause you are grinding or worming your way out of them, most people play in a natural way, where these decisions DO seem painful and meaningful, and it's not cause they wasted time redoing them or grinding. you said painful mode is more tedious but it actually incentivizes less tedium because its less viable to redo saves that can be an hour apart, instead you have to keep going.
in a way you acknowledge that this is where the true pain comes from, because you yourself can't even live with the decisions so instead give up to tedium to come out on top. It also does come down to how much you value your time like you said, but I have to add that while it can be enjoyable to play this way and have tons of items and all party members, it isn't an intended way to play, and leaving "fun" out of the equation, I'll instead point out that it's not even a valid way to play any game for the first time, as when you strive to perfection, you stop actually experiencing the game, and instead turn it into a resource hoarding game, where you learn to cheat out every problem instead of working around them and learning to live with them. sometimes if you're clever its rewarding to, for instance farm mags for ransom money, but i wouldn't say that's very time consuming or poorly done. I'll admit there is times its fun to see how good you can do without items, relying on your skill to complete battles without losing party members, i just think it's unfair to act like this playstyle is encouraged or expected to be a viable work around to the many issues you face in this game. It's ultimately impossible to stop someone from wasting hours to get a better result, or using cheeky save-scums to get around a dilemma. so if we leave this out of the core experience and stop meta gaming, you'll find we can only do the best we can, and live with the consequences, a lesson the game teaches us through the story as well, that's why I, and many people find this type of game interesting.
this goes for the addiction critique to, you CAN backtrack every time you get a withdrawal, but should you? since you acknowledge how much this game wastes your time, i don't think it's in your best interest to go back for a rest, both because of the extra time cost, and because you're just fighting the games core mechanics more than playing the game itself. the sleeping makes sense to me also as its easier to fight off withdrawal when you've had a rest. although it's also ultimately a small boost when compared to the risk of sleeping, the real big boost comes from actually using joy, as using joy effectively heals you as a rest does, but also gives you the buff. you're working with small variables to give you a comparatively small boost compared to just using joy. so i would just endure the withdrawal like you have to in most of the game, sometimes you fight it off without resting also, and get a welcome boost of power, this makes the joy system more captivating also. Joyless runs also have more benefits than you give them credit for, yes you have only one tangible advantage with the companion, and as you said its fitting with the narrative that it doesn't make a huge difference. but there is incentive outside of the challenge, the new ending scene, and honestly the small dialogue with Buddy where you can confidently say your doing your best and that you did quit joy, not everything needs to have a big reward, sometimes you just need a small incentive and this is incentive enough to do atleast one joyless playthrough in my opinion.
Also, some small inaccuracies. Brad didn't hammer it into Buddy that she was the last female, part of the issue was that he didn't explain enough, just that she needed to be strong. think about it, if you were a father would you tell your daughter that she's the last girl on earth and everyone wants to rape her? that's why when buddy does learn from her uncles that she can "save the world" she's more willing to leave. if anyone actually explained the reality of the situation early, things would have played out completely different. And at the end, Brad WAS already turning he just hadnt physically changed, so it does explain how he killed a small army. this is supported by the bite skill and the cry and scream skill he gets further into the fight, skills that joy mutants use.
overall i think the experience of the game just fell flat cause of some bad habits on your part, but i understand where these complaints come from. I'm also not trying to handwave every part of the game by saying "yeah, It's meant to suck" instead I'm trying to point out, the difficulty of these decisions fit into the games ludonarrative making you feel like you're wrong all the time. there's many times when decisions might seem simple, but these are often things that can come back and bite you, there's many times when you end up questioning if you made the best choice, this is what gives weight to the decisions, the thought that you might not be struggling if you saved your party member or if you gave Buzzo your arm instead. the mutilation of buddy is an example that seems simple to you, showing that many of these decisions just didnt have an effect on you. the difficulty of that decision is wondering if it will come back to bite you. will Buddy hate you even more? will this change the ending? you dont know at that point, and Buddy's nipple that you receive just furthers the feeling you've done something very wrong. on top of that Buzzo still tries to take your items or your other arm, and if you mess up he takes both, so on top of it you lose in some way no matter what. but the game just didnt grab you like that and that's fine, but i assure you there is depth there, if you play the game trying to avoid every hard decision i can see how you just wouldnt feel the same about these harder decisions. I just cant agree on the game having less meaningful decisions or being that tedious.
I'm more than willing to take some of the responsibility for my min-max playstyle, but I still think it's on the game to force the player to break out of that habit if it leads to a less impactful experience. In my example with Terry and your inventory at the beginning, the only change required to turn that choice into an impactful one would be to block the player from going back after the choice - this is a moment where a small design change would result in more meaningful choices for the player and less tedium. Likewise, if there were no random encounters and no possibility of farming mags, you actually would have to make impactful choices about how to spend them - but you don't, because you can convert time into currency by farming. If this isn't the intended way to play, then the option shouldn't even be in the game. This is the key point for me, and it's why I don't think I'm fully to blame for the tedious experience I had, though like I said I'm willing to take partial responsibility for my own habits. Same thing with the Joy withdrawal - if I CAN remove the negative status effect for free, why wouldn't I do it, no matter if it costs a few minutes? If the game doesn't want me to do it, then why does it give me the option? If LISA is a game about hard decisions, which I think we both agree on, then why does it allow you to worm your way around them at all? I would say these are flaws in the design, not in me as a player.
I praised the moments where you have to choose between an arm or a party member because there really is no way to grind or savescum your way around them. You might second guess yourself later and wonder if you made the wrong call, because you were forced into a situation where there was no good outcome, only various shades of bad. If you leave a kidnapped party member behind without paying their ransom, it's not a difficult choice you've made - you just didn't feel like wasting your time grinding.
Thanks for watching and I appreciate the thoughtful comment!
@@Erumore honestly the cave shades that drop mags might've been an oversight, but maybe they were intended to give you an option if you really needed mags, and werent expected to be exploited. i never farmed them ever, so hard to tell really. but in general, it seems we just have different playstyles. Lisa definitely caters to people who want to min-max, but it also encourages you to power through issues. I just think that if you dont enjoy side stepping the issues in an exploitive way, you shouldnt play that way. I stand by the fact that Lisa and most games in general can be exploitable, so i wont hold it against the game.
I also agree terries decision doesnt have much weight, but thats actually not because of being able to go back and get the items. my first playthrough i collected every item up to that point and lost them all. its still not a big deal, compared to having Terry, a few jerkies and mags is nothing. I think the beginning is a test to see how you will behave later and an introduction to this type of choice. the right decision is always Terry, the game is trying to psych you out because you dont have that much items but Terry also appears useless, even if you lost all the items however, you won't feel their loss, after a few hours. But again good video, I just have to respectfully disagree