I'm surprised the Yakuza portion wasn't about Yakuza Zero's 'EAT THE MONEY' system. I mean, they CALL it 'Investing in Yourself', but seriously all I can imagine is Kiryu just gobbling down fistfuls of yen and learning moves by doing so.
@@CleaverMama No, not unless you're Kiryu, who ate billions upon billions of yen, to acquire skills worthy of a true Dragon Of Dojima. But, Majima however, didn't eat too much money to get those skills, so, he's only The Mad Dog Of Shimano. But, and this important too, he DID gain some awesome dance moves, (which even Kiryu hasn't learned) and his singing skill is on par with Kiryu's, if not a bit better. I mean, look at the song they played during his segment! Tell me he doesn't look hilarious and awesome doing that! By the way, the song's called "24-Hour Cinderella". I'm not making that up, fyi. And the outfit Majima's wearing is called "Everyone's Favorite/Everyone's Idol Majima". Which makes it even MORE hilarious, but in ALL the best ways possible.
While the way Kiryu regains his strength is indeed strange, lets not forget how he got that strength in the first place: by punching billions of dollars directly out of people in Yakuza 0 and then injecting himself with it.
One of my sister's partners was trying to sell her on the yakuza games so she was trying to sell me on them. She should have just showed me a clip of this Majima fellow. I instantly love him. I think.
Pretty sure that's just the Prince imagining things. The doors aren't actually there when you come to, and Farah doesn't seem to notice the one time she actually witnesses it. But fair point nonethelss :)
It might not be “weird” but I did like how Nier Automata did the level up system. You were playing as an android and you could level up by inserting special chips, each with their own storage amount. The chips included strength, passive healing, mobility, and so on and each effect had certain levels but that also increased to storage size, so you had to plan accordingly. But what was even more interesting was you’re own HUD display items like a minimap or lock on display were also considered “chips” meaning you could take them out to make it more difficult, but would give you extra space for things like the chips I mentioned. Just don’t take out the OS chip, or do! Your call.
Andy: How do I get Majima into a list video? Also Andy: I really want to complain about Koroks and Padawans in the same video, but how? Corazon Andy: I've had an idea and it's foolproof!
I love how his Fallout character is also just Corazon. Edit: that leads me to believe that Andy doesn't roleplay at all. He's just Andy in every game he plays.
Or the opposite, depending on what gives XP. Like in Fallout 4: "you just spend the last in-game days building your house, congrats you can now snipe more accurate"
Yeah that's the weird thing about the modern skill point system most games like to use. because there are so many ways to gain skill points and just as many ways to distribute them you can level-up one skill quickly by doing something completely unrelated to that skill. Still, some games do get it right like Skyrim's class-based skill system where you can only distribute skill points in a certain class while doing action that are actually relevant to that class. More games should do that as it makes them more immersive.
tbh i sort of get it with the 'basic' upgrades like all stats get a small bonus - your character has gone out in the world and done stuff and has 'experienced' things and now is better than they were before - hence EXP points - it's a reflection of you growing as a person (though i do agree - killing X foes translates to perk points for learning noncombat stuff is a little weird but presumably everything can't be sort of the flash game 'level up!' - at least some like skyrim have skill levels that limit perk allocation till you're competent enough to have gotten there or fallout where you need bodily strength of X to get like strong back to carry more and enough worldly experience to upgrade it past 1 Final Fantasy 2 did their stat improvement in a 'realistic' and also broken way - you gained stats for doing stuff like right then - use a melee attack get strength - take a hit get max hp and defense - use magic get mp and magic bonuses - take magic hits get max hp and mdef - get turns at all get speed - dodge gets more speed - right after the fight you'd instead of just exp you'd get made sense - do X action get Y stat related to that stat - but it also didn't have any sort of scaling applied and was a kinda low stat cap ish game compared to some anyway - a game like disgaea can have stat caps in the millions and this idea would've worked better that way if say you got stats relevant to the foes you fought - getting +1 stats in an early area where like 5 hours into the game +1 is pathetic and you're getting like +10 a pop and another 5 hours in you might be getting like +50 or whatever would scale pretty good - at any time you can get a decent jump compared to current foes but not get broken good for the rest of the game except the stats didn't scale that great really - so spending a few hours early on getting like +100 in offensive and speed ish stats then letting your allies get smacked around let you get hella powerful hella early and relatively hella quick - not a lot of games let you fight low level monsters for a few hours and get you endgame stats (some might let you cheese high level monsters early on but kinda a different story) in a sort of similar ish steady progression sense this web based text game called 'kingdom of loathing' (it's pretty funny but also complicated as shit with some of it's stuff) there is no 'general' exp - instead you get 'substats' for winning fights or noncombat bonuses or eating or drinking - once it reaches a varying threshold you get a stat point in that area - early on get 50 'muscle' substats and your muscle goes up - with higher muscle that might be like 150 substats there's three major stats - muscle mysticality and moxie - which are often used as barriers for equipment as well as scaling for attacks - you've got an attack that might do X% of your muscle to foes - kinda doesn't matter if you're a level 10 muscle class or a level 14 non-muscle class you'll do roughly the same damage with it even level is scaled based on this rather than an abstract exp - muscle classes are leveled based on their current muscle statistic (buffs don't count) which means you can even lower your level by 'deleveling' your muscle (kinda hard to do - you can be buffed down to single digit muscle which would affect basic attacks as well as 'muscle' based skills but not your level - but there are a few things in the game that can take substats and thus your stats and also levels) substats are usually weighted based on class - they typically have a most standard and least favored ish stat i think it's roughly divided up like 2:1:1 RNG in effect but with six base classes there's a 'mystical' and 'moxious' muscle class a 'muscle' and 'moxie' mysticality class (magic basically if it needed explained) and a 'muscle' and 'mysticality' moxie class (evasive ish classes - being a 'funny' game one's called a disco bandit which has evasive and plink ish attacks that weaken foes and 'accordion thief' which is basically THE major buff class with like 4\5ths of it's skills basically being temporary buffs) and then skills are typically class + level based and bought from your 'guild' (skills being permable but not necessarily useful outside of that class) as well as skills learned via quests or whatnot from trainers outside of your guild or even from books or odd items from superbosses (one superboss might give you a skill book that's a permanent 10% boost to your hp or so - another drops a slimy item that increases max mp)
@@delilahchevalier2553 Not exclusively, but trying to unpick Japanese honorifics is a broad and terrifying subject for a non-native speaker Eg : Oniiiii-CHAAAAAAAN
@@delilahchevalier2553 -Chan is just used for cute things, as far as I understand it. Like, couples might use it with each other and parents will use it with their children. It’s often applied to girls, but can also be applied to young boys and anyone else considered cute. So I think Majima is flirting with Kiryu?
@@Rocky123698745 I can believe it, I have never seen a character who exudes a more potent chaotic bisexual energy than Majima. It's how the universe remains in balance; we're all a little bit horny for Majima and so Majima has to be a little bit (and occasionally a lot) horny for everyone in order to keep the fabric of reality from tearing itself apart. Being everywhere, killing zombies, building shit, and still he finds the time to hold existence as we know it together. What a goddamn legend.
I'm finally playing yakuza, starting with 0 and majima is fun and amazing, but I personally found myself really wanting to get back to kiryu after a bit, of course I'm spending wayyy too much time per chapter cuz it's just so fun doing random everythings
It absolutely is. 0 and kiwami (Yakuza 1) are on gamepass rn. I highly recommend playing them. Serious story with great humor, dozens of minigames like shogi and blackjack, and tons of side stories to keep you entertained for 250 hours in Yakuza 0, and 150 hours in Kiwami.
Yakuza is an amazing series. I recently got into it this year. I started with Kiwami, and most people would recommend you start with 0, but personally I’m glad I did the opposite. I’m not a fan of beat em up style games at all, but this series is the exception.
My preferred levelling up method is the one where I forget the game has a levelling system until the end of the game, realising I have 1000 skill points to spend and immediately going from scrub loser to god in front of the final boss
Geez, I can only imagine how hard you thought the game was. Edit: I imagined what a game like Dark Souls or Code Vein would be like with this approach and just thinking about it fills me with dread.
I didn't level up in oblivion for months because I thought there was no reason to sleep in game so I never did. Then I accidentally slept once, gained twenty levels, but also turned into a vampire
Also in Breath of the Wild, you can upgrade equipment by paying off a giant fairy, providing the requisite upgrade materials, and then watching in horror as the fairies become increasingly weirdly “affectionate” in a cutscene as you upgrade stuff further and further.
bill becchio In Stick of Truth you would get points to buy special perks when you got certain amounts of facebook friends, then in Fractured but Whole you got exp for getting instagram followers. So both of them did help you level up
In fallen order, Cal didn’t forget how to use his abilities. He cut himself off from the force so he has to regain that connection to use those abilities again. The memories help him
Even forgetting because of trauma induced amnesia the memory system seems pretty believable and almost acurate to me. Makes way more sense than the standard xp system in my opinion.
I got 2 examples! 1. Its not so much weird as it is a good example of ludonarrative synchronicity: in Okami you never get exp from explicitly fighting, you only get money. Instead you get exp by acquiring praise/faith from people by helping them out or performing miracles for them, feeding animals and restoring nature, all things that restore faith in the gods. You being the mother of gods Amaterasu, this restores your power. 2. In dead by daylight you level up with bloodpoints in a sort of mini strategy game where you outmaneuver the Entity to get the items/perks you want while cornering the Entity so that it steals away what you dont want. Not exactly sure why playing Dots and Boxes with an eldritch horror levels you up but hey it works well enough i suppose.
One of the weirdest ones I've encountered was the level up system in Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. In the game, there's what is essentially a slot machine always running in the top-left corner. If it happens to land on 777, you level up. That is the only way to gain levels in this game
I like how in dishonored you have to sneak into creepy places, or do creepy side quests to get creepy pieces of whale bone that gives you weird magic powers
I remember loving how The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion handled it. You would actually go to bed and your characters leveling up was the result of reflecting on the events of your journey up to that point! Not to mention often you leveling up would have a message describing the specific thoughts of your character during the leveling up!
How about in "Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch" where you feed the familiars sweets to increase their various stats. Alongside traditional RPG levelling up. Why can't *chocolate* make me stronger?!
My first thought is Odin Sphere, where you level up by eating large and elaborate meals (steak tartar, gnocchi, etc.) cooked either by a secret village of rabbits, or a traveling cow person you find in some of the rest areas of each level. You can even drink some yogurt to boost the XP gain from each meal (because it's good for the digestion)
finding the unique lizards and fruit trees in Shadow of the Colossus to extend your health and strength. Because there is like 75 or so lizards but only some of them give you strength when you cut off and presumably eat their tails
Didn't we have to collect specific types of souls depending on which side you wanted to take in Dante's Inferno. You could punish people with your scythe which just took brute force to kill them, but if you wanted to absolve them you had to play this weird rhythm mini game with no music, and you got more points the better you did. Which I guess isn't really weird considering that you're in hell for most of the game, but it definitely stood out to me when I was younger. Especially the mini game
This is an extremely late reply, but I just wanted to thank you. I had no idea there was a secondary set of souls to use to level up. I always just killed everything.
How about Fable III’s Road to Rule? It’s basically a typical skill tree leveling system, implemented by making you walk around the Road and open chests. Design Doc talked about it in one of his Good Design Bad Design episodes as an example of how not to do a diegetic interface.
Even weirder the grids from Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days in which you pretty much to were playing tetris with level up pieces and power ups... So so so weird
Maybe not so much weird as unique, but Final Fantasy X's sphere system was equal parts aggravating and awesome. Aggravating for the fact that the most useful spheres were so rare, awesome because I had Lulu casting Holy for stupendous damage for only 2 MP (that last bit thanks to her doll).
If we're talking weird exploits you used to level up, I always used to just jump into the river at Balmora and keep swimming into the wall to get my Athletics up in Morrowind so I could actually walk somewhere faster than an arthritic snail!
@@SilasHumphreys what about on pc selling merchants own stuff to them for speech xp or telekinesis after using black book power for no mana cost for 30 seconds than fast traveling across map for 100 alteration
Funny how the kinda more logical progression (you get better at the stuff you actually do instead of getting better at sneaking by fireballing enemies) makes it a much worse system. You're encouraged to exploit it and if things go south (looking at Oblivion) you can make the game impossibly hard when you don't exploit it.
Not sure if it fits the same weird category, but Transistor had a system where the upgrades were actually tech-ghosts of murdered people.And then you could stack those trapped souls to merge their powers.
I'm having flashbacks to the irritating "Road to Rule" in Fable III... you get transported to a realm blocked off by a series of gates and chests. The gates automatically open as you progress through certain points in the story, but to upgrade your abilities you have to spend Guild Seals on the chests in each gated area. Meaning you get limited on how you can build your hero. All because the game developers didn't want a menu... Oh and also in Fable III you had to level-up your weapons as well, notably by doing tasks in the world while that weapon was on your person. Tasks included killing certain types of enemies, increase or decrease your moral standing, or hopping into bed with the locals...
Yeah, that Road to Rule could easily just be a skill tree. Design Doc did a Good Design Bad Design video about how the Road to Rule (as well as the Sanctuary basically being a pause menu) was a bad way of doing a diegetic interface, in comparison to Nier Automate.
I really liked Far Cry 3's leveling. The more tribal tattoos you get in your sleeve, the douchier you become. The transformation from regular, scared, frat boy into slaughtering machine made a lot of sense to me that way.
you can just complete story missions and get criminal based drama being serious as f. but the whole concept of the game is mixing those serious moments with whacky mini games and absurd additional missions, making a pretty unique experience
The Yakuza games are a gritty crime noir series, where they left all the side-quest design to a bunch of 10 year olds on a sugar high. The main quest is all about the inner workings of the Yakuza and it's constantly shifting allegiances and power struggles. The side quest is stuff like a man has a jacket that is just so cool he can't cross a bridge without people beating him up, or having to beat up all the zombies in the Michael Jackson thriller video and then you dance with Michael Jackson, who thought you were the best. What really makes the series, is that the main character treats all of these as equally serious *insert dramatic phone pickup gif here*
Have y'all ever done an episode on "games where when you beat them, you unlock an entire additional game"? I can think of 3 off the top of my head: Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, Pokemon Gold/Silver, and pretty much all the Danganronpa series.
4 роки тому
oh, just yesterday i saw a video called "game secrets that unlocked entire games"! in Prince of Persia Sands of Time, find a certain hidden area and you can play the ORIGINAL Prince of Persia!
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night sorta does this. The castle flips upside down and you go through a second adventure through it with all of the levels upside down.
Any time Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga is mentioned, I always feel a burst of happiness. I spent a huge amount of time playing Super Stache Smash in Little Fungitown alone. Still my all-time favourite game. ❤
Wilhelm in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. There are 3 skills that install a cyborg body part. Amazingly, they made his voice sound more robotic after each one. So not only does an arm, leg and shoulder get visually upgraded, but his dialogue sounds slightly different with each cyborg addition.
7 months ago I watched this video and the concept of the wacky majima everywhere system amused me enought that I gave kiwami a try here I am in December having played the entire series and enjoyed every moment of it thank you outside Xbox
You mentioned yakuza Kiwami with fighting Majima, but fighting is the staple of the series. What about Yakuza 0 where money, and lots of it, is needed to level up and the best ways to get money is either managing real estate, or managing a hostess club?
@@lemiru granted but if you are not buffed up or wanna go through all that the hostess minigame is like 3 mins long and I can just be on auto pilot and gain money extremely easily
@@densenito5953 You can easily beat shakedown with slime guns which for some reason do a ton of damage to him like a 12h of his health per shot and the gun has 12 shots (when they are meant to not work at all on tough enemies)
Very fitting that Killer 7 was number seven on a list like this. As for weird leveling up systems, in the Batman Arkham games you beat up fools and pick up trophies to gain xp. Then, when you get enough xp and level up, you get to pick which part of yourself you want to upgrade. Better combat, more useful gadgets, etc.
More power up than level up... in FF8 where you have to let GFs live in your brain to use any junctions. GFs are basically uber-powerful Goa'uld / Tok'ra!
Now I know you can level up the traditional way in Darksiders 2 (happy noises), I know that you can level up specific stats by feeding a golem a combination of rocks.
It's not, strictly speaking, the weirdest method, but in Dust: Elysian Tail you gained some exp from accepting quests, not just completing them, and so could level up like that. This itself wouldn't be so bad if you didn't explode whenever you leveled up. Imagine talking to a kid like: "Hey mister, can you help me find my dog?" "Sure, why not?" [BOOM POW FIREWORKS]
In Saints Row the Third, you earned Respect to unlock new upgrades; it's your run-of-the-mill experience system and in itself not too weird. What's weird is that you could gain Respect - i.e., level up - by streaking naked through the city.
In Baten Kaitos you gained EXP the standard way but to use them to level up you had to teleport through a blue save flower into a church, talk to a priest and pray/meditate on your past experience to level up. Getting to a higher class (which in that game meant the character could use one more card in their battle combos) followed the same process except with the extra step that you had to find unique items specific to each party member. Usually you would get those from or near bosses. The prequel scrapped that levelling system for a more traditional (read : boring) one
How about in Undertale? You murder monsters and that increases your level of violence because it gives you execution points which is thanks to a ghost/demon girl and makes you stronger due to your desire to kill your enemies.
How have you missed Skyrim? Your deeds are painted in the stars, bright enough for everyone to read and remark on. Skyrim has an actual firmament in lore too, so I imagine the dragonborn is just punching holes in the sky to make his stars brighter.
Yakuza is a great example of how to do side activities properly. Fight club, cards, pocket racing, disco, cabaret club, karaoke..... Heck, I still have YK2 installed so I can play a round of club fourshine or karaoke. Getting that perfect score is such a rush!
A lot of West of Loathing (on Steam). -Shovelling poop (presumably horse. Squirrel poop at H.H. ) -Inserting batteries -"Special Air" -Countless random encounters -Foraging beer from cactus -Drinking Alcohol (need a dlc shotglass) And all the laughs and good times by doing ANOTHER playthrough.
While this one may seem a bit obvious, in Pokemon you can shove a bunch of candy down your beloved Pokemon's throat before they suddenly gain more power than that time deku ate All Might's hair
Odin's Sphere. You ate food at a magical touring restaurant that pops up out of nowhere at the sound of a bell ringing in order to gain XP and level up.
Rogue Legacy's system is pretty weird. You explore a dungeon that you can only leave if you defeat the final boss. Most of the time, you die instead, then choose one of your heirs to take another try. When you die, the money that you collected in the dungeon (which, again, you can't leave) somehow gets transferred to your heir. Your heir gives that money to an architect, who uses it to build a castle. As you improve the castle, your heirs gain strength, max HP, max mana, new classes for your heirs, more invincibility time after being hit, etc. for their own attempts at the dungeon.
Special mention to Knights of the Old Republic 2. After hours killing stuff and gaining experience, The Exile learns that they are essentially a Force Vampire and have been not only taking the lives of people they kill but also the latent force that existed in the souls of the departed. Yes, KoTOR 2 gives a canon explanation for a murder based leveling system.
I always found the Kingdom Hearts handheld games weird for their level up systems. I mean, I can't tell you how many hours I spent playing Kingdom Hearts' board game in Birth By Sleep just to get the good spells, or petting weird dream creatures to unlock stuff like "dodge roll".
So...we're not talking about how we injected ourselves with weird slime from slugs in little girls so we could rewrite our genetic code in the first two Bioshocks?
In YIIK, you have to call a talking raven on a telephone, which will take you into your own mind where you have to interact with doors to lock-in stat changes before you can go deeper into your own "Mind Dungeon"
In Okami, Amaterasu doesn't level up by slaying demons. Instead, you earn "Praise" (Exp) by completing NPC sidequests, healing blighted land ... oh, and also by feeding wild animals.
You missed West of Loathing. An old west inspired game where everyone is a stick figure. You level-up your companions by completing various tasks, such as locating all of the game's mines to level up your prospector companion. Or, my personal favorite, feeding one of your companions, Gary the Goblin, actual fertilizer to make him stronger.
The _Shadow Warrior_ reboot had something similar to _Far Cry 3,_ where as you get upgrades, Lo Wang gets tattoos all over his body. There are also karma upgrades and you can spend cash to upgrade your weapons.
Honestly the first thought that came to mind for this was oblivion. Instead of leveling by killing things and completing quests, you levelled by leveling up any of three skills you choose at the beginning of the game. So a good way to get your butt kicked is pick 3 non-combatants skills and level them up a bunch and watch all the level scaled enemies get way stronger. Or conversely pick 3 skills you’ll never use and keep your level low and trounce all the weak enemies as you combat skills rise
In Final Fantasy XI, at higher levels, you gain levels with the aid of a "Brown Mage," which does horrible digestive things to you to make you more powerful.
Don't think I've seen it mentioned here yet. Fable 3, level up by going to a strange manifestation of your destiny as a spectral floating medieval road and opening chests along it to unlock abilities, including improvements to weapon damage, being better at certain jobs, learning new expressions, and dying your clothes. Because COLORS have to be behind a progress wall
I was listening but not really paying attention so I presumed the motorcycle in set dressing was just boxes with a metal grill of some sort lying on top of it, before I actually properly started watching the video only to suddenly see a glowing motorcycle appear in Kazuma's hands and it deck Majima, and I just knew Yakuza rolled like that and accepted that a "business motorcycle" arrived out of nowhere. Hilarity.
Planescape: Torment is a good one. It has you gain experience by remembering your hundreds of past lives where you'd already gained those skills. There's a character in it who teaches in depth you about his religion and you later discover that you actually fabricated and gave him the religious text that he's teaching you from
My favorite is how healers level up in the original Fire Emblem for the NES. In most FE games, healers can get experience by healing, but not so in the NES FE. The only way for healers to get experience is to go into battle, but as they have no weapons, all they can do is get hit by enemies. Basically, you have to send your defenseless healers into battle to be beaten to bits, then heal them, then do it again a bunch of times. It's brutal.
I'm surprised the Yakuza portion wasn't about Yakuza Zero's 'EAT THE MONEY' system. I mean, they CALL it 'Investing in Yourself', but seriously all I can imagine is Kiryu just gobbling down fistfuls of yen and learning moves by doing so.
....New headcanon
What, is that...not how you're supposed to learn skills?
@@War_Magus It's Kiryu's "mmm, yeah. You want this" face that truly makes that cutscene special
@@CleaverMama No, not unless you're Kiryu, who ate billions upon billions of yen, to acquire skills worthy of a true Dragon Of Dojima. But, Majima however, didn't eat too much money to get those skills, so, he's only The Mad Dog Of Shimano. But, and this important too, he DID gain some awesome dance moves, (which even Kiryu hasn't learned) and his singing skill is on par with Kiryu's, if not a bit better. I mean, look at the song they played during his segment! Tell me he doesn't look hilarious and awesome doing that! By the way, the song's called "24-Hour Cinderella". I'm not making that up, fyi. And the outfit Majima's wearing is called "Everyone's Favorite/Everyone's Idol Majima". Which makes it even MORE hilarious, but in ALL the best ways possible.
@@shawnfields2369...well that explains the persistent stomach ache.
While the way Kiryu regains his strength is indeed strange, lets not forget how he got that strength in the first place: by punching billions of dollars directly out of people in Yakuza 0 and then injecting himself with it.
That is strange. I'd expect him to punch billions of yen directly out of people.
@@DanielLCarrier what about billions of dollars worth of yen
Nɪᴄᴋ 100 yen is 1 dollar so take away 2 0s for it
Now that's a cash injection
Anyone else feeling inspired by Majima's dedication to outlandish disguises?
Oh thank goodness, I thought I was the only one.
I feel inspired by his dedication to getting the crap beaten out of him. And his outfits
THAT'S RAD!
Team Rocket would be proud.
@@suprememeatbun Nani?
One of my sister's partners was trying to sell her on the yakuza games so she was trying to sell me on them. She should have just showed me a clip of this Majima fellow. I instantly love him. I think.
Majima is easily one of the most entertaining video game characters ever
Majima is the best. He out extras all others.
A gamer cool boomer?
*Impossible*
I literally just bought Yakuza Zero after seeing his karaoke performance.
Who doesn’t?
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time had you drinking from water fountains that gave you psychedelic visions of the future to increase your health.
Also as you got stronger you removed more and more of your shirt lol
I can't believe I forgot about that!
Loved that game so much!
Pretty sure that's just the Prince imagining things. The doors aren't actually there when you come to, and Farah doesn't seem to notice the one time she actually witnesses it. But fair point nonethelss :)
Ah yes just like ayahuasca
It might not be “weird” but I did like how Nier Automata did the level up system.
You were playing as an android and you could level up by inserting special chips, each with their own storage amount. The chips included strength, passive healing, mobility, and so on and each effect had certain levels but that also increased to storage size, so you had to plan accordingly. But what was even more interesting was you’re own HUD display items like a minimap or lock on display were also considered “chips” meaning you could take them out to make it more difficult, but would give you extra space for things like the chips I mentioned.
Just don’t take out the OS chip, or do! Your call.
Well it does have a more standard leveling system too, the chips are _fantastic_ from a customization standpoint!
They already mentioned that in previous videos.
Sounds similar to the level up system in Mega Man Legends
@@Ninjamanhammer like 3 previous videos lol. Between here and OXTRA. Not that I have an issue, NieR Automata RULES
Personal Persona might be because I also love Nier Automata, so I tend to comment on it a lot in these kinds of videos where it’s relevant.
Andy: How do I get Majima into a list video?
Also Andy: I really want to complain about Koroks and Padawans in the same video, but how?
Corazon Andy: I've had an idea and it's foolproof!
Getting Majima in a video is an agenda all can agree with.
I love how his Fallout character is also just Corazon.
Edit: that leads me to believe that Andy doesn't roleplay at all. He's just Andy in every game he plays.
HanSolo Chewbacca, where is the lie tho
@@mimicmey Corazón is real, he role plays as Andy - a video game reviewer.
Levelling up in most RPGs is strange by nature. "Congratulations, you have killed 50 enemies and as a consequence you can now pick locks."
Or the opposite, depending on what gives XP. Like in Fallout 4: "you just spend the last in-game days building your house, congrats you can now snipe more accurate"
@@HeinerGunnar Don't see what's weird about that. It's like a wax on wax off deal. I'm sure carpenters are accidentally trained assassins.
Remember Marston Mondays?
" _Kill five wolves with your knife_ ? Are you just setting these challenges in your head, John?"
Yeah that's the weird thing about the modern skill point system most games like to use. because there are so many ways to gain skill points and just as many ways to distribute them you can level-up one skill quickly by doing something completely unrelated to that skill. Still, some games do get it right like Skyrim's class-based skill system where you can only distribute skill points in a certain class while doing action that are actually relevant to that class. More games should do that as it makes them more immersive.
tbh i sort of get it with the 'basic' upgrades like all stats get a small bonus - your character has gone out in the world and done stuff and has 'experienced' things and now is better than they were before - hence EXP points - it's a reflection of you growing as a person (though i do agree - killing X foes translates to perk points for learning noncombat stuff is a little weird but presumably everything can't be sort of the flash game 'level up!' - at least some like skyrim have skill levels that limit perk allocation till you're competent enough to have gotten there or fallout where you need bodily strength of X to get like strong back to carry more and enough worldly experience to upgrade it past 1
Final Fantasy 2 did their stat improvement in a 'realistic' and also broken way - you gained stats for doing stuff like right then - use a melee attack get strength - take a hit get max hp and defense - use magic get mp and magic bonuses - take magic hits get max hp and mdef - get turns at all get speed - dodge gets more speed - right after the fight you'd instead of just exp you'd get
made sense - do X action get Y stat related to that stat - but it also didn't have any sort of scaling applied and was a kinda low stat cap ish game compared to some anyway - a game like disgaea can have stat caps in the millions and this idea would've worked better that way if say you got stats relevant to the foes you fought - getting +1 stats in an early area where like 5 hours into the game +1 is pathetic and you're getting like +10 a pop and another 5 hours in you might be getting like +50 or whatever would scale pretty good - at any time you can get a decent jump compared to current foes but not get broken good for the rest of the game
except the stats didn't scale that great really - so spending a few hours early on getting like +100 in offensive and speed ish stats then letting your allies get smacked around let you get hella powerful hella early and relatively hella quick - not a lot of games let you fight low level monsters for a few hours and get you endgame stats (some might let you cheese high level monsters early on but kinda a different story)
in a sort of similar ish steady progression sense this web based text game called 'kingdom of loathing' (it's pretty funny but also complicated as shit with some of it's stuff) there is no 'general' exp - instead you get 'substats' for winning fights or noncombat bonuses or eating or drinking - once it reaches a varying threshold you get a stat point in that area - early on get 50 'muscle' substats and your muscle goes up - with higher muscle that might be like 150 substats
there's three major stats - muscle mysticality and moxie - which are often used as barriers for equipment as well as scaling for attacks - you've got an attack that might do X% of your muscle to foes - kinda doesn't matter if you're a level 10 muscle class or a level 14 non-muscle class you'll do roughly the same damage with it
even level is scaled based on this rather than an abstract exp - muscle classes are leveled based on their current muscle statistic (buffs don't count) which means you can even lower your level by 'deleveling' your muscle (kinda hard to do - you can be buffed down to single digit muscle which would affect basic attacks as well as 'muscle' based skills but not your level - but there are a few things in the game that can take substats and thus your stats and also levels)
substats are usually weighted based on class - they typically have a most standard and least favored ish stat i think it's roughly divided up like 2:1:1 RNG in effect but with six base classes there's a 'mystical' and 'moxious' muscle class a 'muscle' and 'moxie' mysticality class (magic basically if it needed explained) and a 'muscle' and 'mysticality' moxie class (evasive ish classes - being a 'funny' game one's called a disco bandit which has evasive and plink ish attacks that weaken foes and 'accordion thief' which is basically THE major buff class with like 4\5ths of it's skills basically being temporary buffs)
and then skills are typically class + level based and bought from your 'guild' (skills being permable but not necessarily useful outside of that class) as well as skills learned via quests or whatnot from trainers outside of your guild or even from books or odd items from superbosses (one superboss might give you a skill book that's a permanent 10% boost to your hp or so - another drops a slimy item that increases max mp)
I love how Majima calls a yakuza member *"Kiryu-chan"*
It’s even better when you realize ‘chan’ is a term for girls.
@@delilahchevalier2553 Not exclusively, but trying to unpick Japanese honorifics is a broad and terrifying subject for a non-native speaker
Eg : Oniiiii-CHAAAAAAAN
It's not even explain how it ever came to be a nickname for him. Majima just used it the first time they ever met, and Kiryu didn't seem to mind.
@@delilahchevalier2553 -Chan is just used for cute things, as far as I understand it. Like, couples might use it with each other and parents will use it with their children. It’s often applied to girls, but can also be applied to young boys and anyone else considered cute. So I think Majima is flirting with Kiryu?
@@Rocky123698745 I can believe it, I have never seen a character who exudes a more potent chaotic bisexual energy than Majima. It's how the universe remains in balance; we're all a little bit horny for Majima and so Majima has to be a little bit (and occasionally a lot) horny for everyone in order to keep the fabric of reality from tearing itself apart.
Being everywhere, killing zombies, building shit, and still he finds the time to hold existence as we know it together. What a goddamn legend.
Harvesting red goo (adam) from corpses with your creepy but cute daughter with a needle. Bioshock
Yes!!
@@civicrider5556 And being given prize teddy bears every few times you did it of course.
the corpses part is only for Bioshock 2
Wow, looks like I really have to get into the Yakuza series, that Majima gameplay looks stellar!
It's such a great series
I'm finally playing yakuza, starting with 0 and majima is fun and amazing, but I personally found myself really wanting to get back to kiryu after a bit, of course I'm spending wayyy too much time per chapter cuz it's just so fun doing random everythings
It absolutely is. 0 and kiwami (Yakuza 1) are on gamepass rn. I highly recommend playing them. Serious story with great humor, dozens of minigames like shogi and blackjack, and tons of side stories to keep you entertained for 250 hours in Yakuza 0, and 150 hours in Kiwami.
Yakuza is an amazing series. I recently got into it this year. I started with Kiwami, and most people would recommend you start with 0, but personally I’m glad I did the opposite. I’m not a fan of beat em up style games at all, but this series is the exception.
Look for baka mitai, you'll not be disappointed 🤣
My preferred levelling up method is the one where I forget the game has a levelling system until the end of the game, realising I have 1000 skill points to spend and immediately going from scrub loser to god in front of the final boss
Geez, I can only imagine how hard you thought the game was. Edit: I imagined what a game like Dark Souls or Code Vein would be like with this approach and just thinking about it fills me with dread.
@@WynFyre _oof size : _*_Extra large_*
What game did you do that in
I didn't level up in oblivion for months because I thought there was no reason to sleep in game so I never did. Then I accidentally slept once, gained twenty levels, but also turned into a vampire
Either you are half blind or never play those games that will nag you every few minutes if you have any unspent skill points!
Also in Breath of the Wild, you can upgrade equipment by paying off a giant fairy, providing the requisite upgrade materials, and then watching in horror as the fairies become increasingly weirdly “affectionate” in a cutscene as you upgrade stuff further and further.
Did anyone else notice how Andy sounded like he almost burst out laughing when he was reading the part about the Korok seeds?
Well you try saying “giant quivering turnip man” with a straight face lol
@@gruggerduggerhoose lol
I was crying it was so funny to say
Sure “seeds”
What about South park: The stick of truth? You leveled up by making friends on Facebook
Or the sequel where you had to get Instagram followers
@@billybutcher4811 actually that one I believe used a more typical EXP system
@@keeganlafferty1395 you're right! But you still had to collect followers on Instagram but I don't remember what for
bill becchio In Stick of Truth you would get points to buy special perks when you got certain amounts of facebook friends, then in Fractured but Whole you got exp for getting instagram followers. So both of them did help you level up
Watching that Majima Everywhere made me think of the Pink Panther & Clouseau saying "No Kato you fool! Not now!"
You know Andy, based on your perspective a vanilla soy latte is a type of 3-bean soup.
That makes me uncomfortable to think about
This is something I would love to see the mythical kitchen podcast talk about lmao
lmao thanks, i hate this.
I used to work at Starbucks and I'd come up with various names like that to disgust one of my coworkers. Super fun
Majima is a damn gem and I'm so glad the series is getting the attention and remasters it deserves . Love the Yakuza series and I adore Majima
"Its stimulating flavour will put a spicy tingling in your cheeks...Yes, quite a tingling, indeed." That doesn't sound like coffee.....
Coffee is a duiretic.. So to much and you'll break a toilet.
@@conrailowder5226 caffeine is also a laxative.
Thats...definately not what my morning coffee does..
I've played the Sims... Woohoo is sex for a Sim. So, you just made sex coffee.
OtakuUnitedStudio guess what? That’s kinda what diuretic means! Nice going sherlock lol
3:44 i love how once majima spots him, kiryu tries to run away from him
In fallen order, Cal didn’t forget how to use his abilities. He cut himself off from the force so he has to regain that connection to use those abilities again. The memories help him
Even forgetting because of trauma induced amnesia the memory system seems pretty believable and almost acurate to me. Makes way more sense than the standard xp system in my opinion.
Crushing a soul in your hand then giving it to a fire keeper seems a bit extreme.
Draw out your true strength. Leveling you for dying.
Jaro: "You can do it!"
Cal: *falls*
Jaro: "Hm. Perhaps I chose the wrong padawan."
Cal: *sad force noises*
I got 2 examples!
1. Its not so much weird as it is a good example of ludonarrative synchronicity: in Okami you never get exp from explicitly fighting, you only get money. Instead you get exp by acquiring praise/faith from people by helping them out or performing miracles for them, feeding animals and restoring nature, all things that restore faith in the gods. You being the mother of gods Amaterasu, this restores your power.
2. In dead by daylight you level up with bloodpoints in a sort of mini strategy game where you outmaneuver the Entity to get the items/perks you want while cornering the Entity so that it steals away what you dont want. Not exactly sure why playing Dots and Boxes with an eldritch horror levels you up but hey it works well enough i suppose.
What about Prey? To gain skill points you have use neural mods meaning injecting them through your eye!
I thought I had repressed that.
@@dastvan8002 that one was dishonored, same studio but different game
One of the weirdest ones I've encountered was the level up system in Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. In the game, there's what is essentially a slot machine always running in the top-left corner. If it happens to land on 777, you level up. That is the only way to gain levels in this game
Heh, I'm so happy that Andy seems to really enjoy Yakuza series.
Its the best. Already at part 5
Things we learned from this video:
- Andy played Yakuza Kiwami using speakers made entirely out of cotton balls
I like how in dishonored you have to sneak into creepy places, or do creepy side quests to get creepy pieces of whale bone that gives you weird magic powers
Fallout 4 logic...
I'm gonna kill 400 enemies and then I'll get an extra point in strengt-
...in charisma...ill put my xp into charisma
I remember loving how The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion handled it. You would actually go to bed and your characters leveling up was the result of reflecting on the events of your journey up to that point!
Not to mention often you leveling up would have a message describing the specific thoughts of your character during the leveling up!
How about in "Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch" where you feed the familiars sweets to increase their various stats. Alongside traditional RPG levelling up.
Why can't *chocolate* make me stronger?!
My first thought is Odin Sphere, where you level up by eating large and elaborate meals (steak tartar, gnocchi, etc.) cooked either by a secret village of rabbits, or a traveling cow person you find in some of the rest areas of each level. You can even drink some yogurt to boost the XP gain from each meal (because it's good for the digestion)
The first Infamous game, you obtain new powers by literally bringing power to the various parts of the city
finding the unique lizards and fruit trees in Shadow of the Colossus to extend your health and strength. Because there is like 75 or so lizards but only some of them give you strength when you cut off and presumably eat their tails
Hey, do you guys remember when Majima pretended that him and his men were turned into zombies just to fight Kiryu?
Best mission of the entire mode
Prey... sticking needles in my eye.
I always wince when you get that first neuromod installed.
Didn't we have to collect specific types of souls depending on which side you wanted to take in Dante's Inferno. You could punish people with your scythe which just took brute force to kill them, but if you wanted to absolve them you had to play this weird rhythm mini game with no music, and you got more points the better you did. Which I guess isn't really weird considering that you're in hell for most of the game, but it definitely stood out to me when I was younger. Especially the mini game
Yes. Yes we did.
This is an extremely late reply, but I just wanted to thank you.
I had no idea there was a secondary set of souls to use to level up. I always just killed everything.
How about Fable III’s Road to Rule? It’s basically a typical skill tree leveling system, implemented by making you walk around the Road and open chests. Design Doc talked about it in one of his Good Design Bad Design episodes as an example of how not to do a diegetic interface.
Even weirder the grids from Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days in which you pretty much to were playing tetris with level up pieces and power ups... So so so weird
And yet somehow less weird than the rest of the game.
I've been trying to remember the name of Killer 7 for so long. That game was weird as hell, but really fun.
That Thumbnail makes me happy :D just finished Yakuza 0 and loved every second.
Let me expand this list with Code Vein, where you'll get new abilities by reliving other people's sad memories.
Nani kore?
Genuinely surprised jabbing yourself in the eye with alien goop wasn't on here...
Maybe not so much weird as unique, but Final Fantasy X's sphere system was equal parts aggravating and awesome. Aggravating for the fact that the most useful spheres were so rare, awesome because I had Lulu casting Holy for stupendous damage for only 2 MP (that last bit thanks to her doll).
I repeatedly ran into a wall in Skyrim to level up my sneak skill.
If we're talking weird exploits you used to level up, I always used to just jump into the river at Balmora and keep swimming into the wall to get my Athletics up in Morrowind so I could actually walk somewhere faster than an arthritic snail!
@@SilasHumphreys what about on pc selling merchants own stuff to them for speech xp or telekinesis after using black book power for no mana cost for 30 seconds than fast traveling across map for 100 alteration
Funny how the kinda more logical progression (you get better at the stuff you actually do instead of getting better at sneaking by fireballing enemies) makes it a much worse system. You're encouraged to exploit it and if things go south (looking at Oblivion) you can make the game impossibly hard when you don't exploit it.
Not sure if it fits the same weird category, but Transistor had a system where the upgrades were actually tech-ghosts of murdered people.And then you could stack those trapped souls to merge their powers.
I'm having flashbacks to the irritating "Road to Rule" in Fable III... you get transported to a realm blocked off by a series of gates and chests. The gates automatically open as you progress through certain points in the story, but to upgrade your abilities you have to spend Guild Seals on the chests in each gated area. Meaning you get limited on how you can build your hero. All because the game developers didn't want a menu...
Oh and also in Fable III you had to level-up your weapons as well, notably by doing tasks in the world while that weapon was on your person. Tasks included killing certain types of enemies, increase or decrease your moral standing, or hopping into bed with the locals...
Yeah, that Road to Rule could easily just be a skill tree. Design Doc did a Good Design Bad Design video about how the Road to Rule (as well as the Sanctuary basically being a pause menu) was a bad way of doing a diegetic interface, in comparison to Nier Automate.
Majima Everywhere is simultaneously the best and worst thing about Yakuza Kiwami
Rune Factory 4, the game in which your stats are boosted by doing over 30 different activities, including eating, sleeping, walking, and bathing...
"screaming, barbed-wire hate-zombie" and "flying bastard murder-wasps" are the greatest ways to descride enemies I have heard in recent memory.
I really liked Far Cry 3's leveling. The more tribal tattoos you get in your sleeve, the douchier you become. The transformation from regular, scared, frat boy into slaughtering machine made a lot of sense to me that way.
The Yakuza games make no sense, and I more I learn about them, the less I can understand
you can just complete story missions and get criminal based drama being serious as f. but the whole concept of the game is mixing those serious moments with whacky mini games and absurd additional missions, making a pretty unique experience
The Yakuza games are a gritty crime noir series, where they left all the side-quest design to a bunch of 10 year olds on a sugar high. The main quest is all about the inner workings of the Yakuza and it's constantly shifting allegiances and power struggles. The side quest is stuff like a man has a jacket that is just so cool he can't cross a bridge without people beating him up, or having to beat up all the zombies in the Michael Jackson thriller video and then you dance with Michael Jackson, who thought you were the best. What really makes the series, is that the main character treats all of these as equally serious *insert dramatic phone pickup gif here*
Super serious (albeit outlandish) story and main missions
Goofy everything else, especially the side quests
the more I read the replies, the more I want it
Yash Keshavpatnam Y E S
Elder scrolls Oblivion. you could only level up from sleeping, a weird novel activity i'm sure every one of us wishes we could get more of.
That’s how it was for the series, up until Skyrim removed these feature(along with many other things).
Have y'all ever done an episode on "games where when you beat them, you unlock an entire additional game"? I can think of 3 off the top of my head: Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, Pokemon Gold/Silver, and pretty much all the Danganronpa series.
oh, just yesterday i saw a video called "game secrets that unlocked entire games"!
in Prince of Persia Sands of Time, find a certain hidden area and you can play the ORIGINAL Prince of Persia!
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night sorta does this. The castle flips upside down and you go through a second adventure through it with all of the levels upside down.
The two yakuza guys are my favorite friendship now
In Journey to the Savage Planet you eat orange goo you find, and they tell you you're getting tougher because you're growing tumors
Any time Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga is mentioned, I always feel a burst of happiness. I spent a huge amount of time playing Super Stache Smash in Little Fungitown alone. Still my all-time favourite game. ❤
Man those korok seeds🙄 I spent way to long collecting them all just for a shiny gold poop 😒
Lol
Well, tough s***
Actually you collected a bunch of tiny poops just to get a big gold one, even better
You couldn't even use it to stun the final boss with disgust.
In Tony Hawk 2, there was money hidden in bullpoop. You had to skate around in the entire ring finding which piles contained money to buy stat points
Tbh Goro Majima is reason that sold me on the Yakuza series
Wilhelm in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. There are 3 skills that install a cyborg body part. Amazingly, they made his voice sound more robotic after each one. So not only does an arm, leg and shoulder get visually upgraded, but his dialogue sounds slightly different with each cyborg addition.
7 months ago I watched this video and the concept of the wacky majima everywhere system amused me enought that I gave kiwami a try here I am in December having played the entire series and enjoyed every moment of it thank you outside Xbox
You mentioned yakuza Kiwami with fighting Majima, but fighting is the staple of the series. What about Yakuza 0 where money, and lots of it, is needed to level up and the best ways to get money is either managing real estate, or managing a hostess club?
No, that's just how you level up in Real Life
You are wrong, best way to gain money is to get beaten by mr. Shakedown and then reclaiming all your money back with a bonus
@@lemiru granted but if you are not buffed up or wanna go through all that the hostess minigame is like 3 mins long and I can just be on auto pilot and gain money extremely easily
@@densenito5953 You can easily beat shakedown with slime guns which for some reason do a ton of damage to him like a 12h of his health per shot and the gun has 12 shots (when they are meant to not work at all on tough enemies)
Very fitting that Killer 7 was number seven on a list like this. As for weird leveling up systems, in the Batman Arkham games you beat up fools and pick up trophies to gain xp. Then, when you get enough xp and level up, you get to pick which part of yourself you want to upgrade. Better combat, more useful gadgets, etc.
I’ve never played yakuza but I already love majima
More power up than level up... in FF8 where you have to let GFs live in your brain to use any junctions. GFs are basically uber-powerful Goa'uld / Tok'ra!
Never played FF8, but... Stargate reference, yeah!! 😄😁
Now I know you can level up the traditional way in Darksiders 2 (happy noises), I know that you can level up specific stats by feeding a golem a combination of rocks.
It's not, strictly speaking, the weirdest method, but in Dust: Elysian Tail you gained some exp from accepting quests, not just completing them, and so could level up like that. This itself wouldn't be so bad if you didn't explode whenever you leveled up. Imagine talking to a kid like:
"Hey mister, can you help me find my dog?"
"Sure, why not?"
[BOOM POW FIREWORKS]
Persona 5 an electric chair killing one persona to help another
You mean the Gallows. The Electric Chair turns the persona into an item.
In Saints Row the Third, you earned Respect to unlock new upgrades; it's your run-of-the-mill experience system and in itself not too weird. What's weird is that you could gain Respect - i.e., level up - by streaking naked through the city.
In Baten Kaitos you gained EXP the standard way but to use them to level up you had to teleport through a blue save flower into a church, talk to a priest and pray/meditate on your past experience to level up.
Getting to a higher class (which in that game meant the character could use one more card in their battle combos) followed the same process except with the extra step that you had to find unique items specific to each party member. Usually you would get those from or near bosses.
The prequel scrapped that levelling system for a more traditional (read : boring) one
In KotOR 2, you can only upgrade your lightsaber crystal by handing it off to spooky witch mom Kreia so she can judge you for a bit
How about in Undertale? You murder monsters and that increases your level of violence because it gives you execution points which is thanks to a ghost/demon girl and makes you stronger due to your desire to kill your enemies.
Final Fantasy: Crisis Core. You level up stats and abilities when the in-battle slot machine randomly decides it.
How have you missed Skyrim? Your deeds are painted in the stars, bright enough for everyone to read and remark on. Skyrim has an actual firmament in lore too, so I imagine the dragonborn is just punching holes in the sky to make his stars brighter.
No mention of Oblivion? I think needing to fall asleep somewhere to gain a level is like the OG of weird leveling systems.
I love the Majima Everywhere System. And the Yakuza series in general.
I'm a simple man, I see Majima, I click
Worst thing about fallen order is that you can't skip the cutscenes even in new game plus.
If this entire video was an excuse to get Majima and 24-Hour Cinderella into a list video then I'm all for it.
Yakuza is a great example of how to do side activities properly. Fight club, cards, pocket racing, disco, cabaret club, karaoke..... Heck, I still have YK2 installed so I can play a round of club fourshine or karaoke. Getting that perfect score is such a rush!
A lot of West of Loathing (on Steam).
-Shovelling poop (presumably horse. Squirrel poop at H.H. )
-Inserting batteries
-"Special Air"
-Countless random encounters
-Foraging beer from cactus
-Drinking Alcohol (need a dlc shotglass)
And all the laughs and good times by doing ANOTHER playthrough.
While this one may seem a bit obvious, in Pokemon you can shove a bunch of candy down your beloved Pokemon's throat before they suddenly gain more power than that time deku ate All Might's hair
Odin's Sphere. You ate food at a magical touring restaurant that pops up out of nowhere at the sound of a bell ringing in order to gain XP and level up.
Rogue Legacy's system is pretty weird. You explore a dungeon that you can only leave if you defeat the final boss. Most of the time, you die instead, then choose one of your heirs to take another try.
When you die, the money that you collected in the dungeon (which, again, you can't leave) somehow gets transferred to your heir. Your heir gives that money to an architect, who uses it to build a castle. As you improve the castle, your heirs gain strength, max HP, max mana, new classes for your heirs, more invincibility time after being hit, etc. for their own attempts at the dungeon.
Special mention to Knights of the Old Republic 2. After hours killing stuff and gaining experience, The Exile learns that they are essentially a Force Vampire and have been not only taking the lives of people they kill but also the latent force that existed in the souls of the departed. Yes, KoTOR 2 gives a canon explanation for a murder based leveling system.
I always found the Kingdom Hearts handheld games weird for their level up systems. I mean, I can't tell you how many hours I spent playing Kingdom Hearts' board game in Birth By Sleep just to get the good spells, or petting weird dream creatures to unlock stuff like "dodge roll".
So...we're not talking about how we injected ourselves with weird slime from slugs in little girls so we could rewrite our genetic code in the first two Bioshocks?
that was pretty weird tbf
@@outsidexbox Excellent game though
In YIIK, you have to call a talking raven on a telephone, which will take you into your own mind where you have to interact with doors to lock-in stat changes before you can go deeper into your own "Mind Dungeon"
In Okami, Amaterasu doesn't level up by slaying demons. Instead, you earn "Praise" (Exp) by completing NPC sidequests, healing blighted land ... oh, and also by feeding wild animals.
You missed West of Loathing. An old west inspired game where everyone is a stick figure. You level-up your companions by completing various tasks, such as locating all of the game's mines to level up your prospector companion. Or, my personal favorite, feeding one of your companions, Gary the Goblin, actual fertilizer to make him stronger.
The _Shadow Warrior_ reboot had something similar to _Far Cry 3,_ where as you get upgrades, Lo Wang gets tattoos all over his body. There are also karma upgrades and you can spend cash to upgrade your weapons.
Honestly the first thought that came to mind for this was oblivion. Instead of leveling by killing things and completing quests, you levelled by leveling up any of three skills you choose at the beginning of the game.
So a good way to get your butt kicked is pick 3 non-combatants skills and level them up a bunch and watch all the level scaled enemies get way stronger.
Or conversely pick 3 skills you’ll never use and keep your level low and trounce all the weak enemies as you combat skills rise
In Final Fantasy XI, at higher levels, you gain levels with the aid of a "Brown Mage," which does horrible digestive things to you to make you more powerful.
You call Majima Everywhere weird but back in Yakuza 0, you literally level up by *consuming money*
Don't think I've seen it mentioned here yet. Fable 3, level up by going to a strange manifestation of your destiny as a spectral floating medieval road and opening chests along it to unlock abilities, including improvements to weapon damage, being better at certain jobs, learning new expressions, and dying your clothes. Because COLORS have to be behind a progress wall
I was listening but not really paying attention so I presumed the motorcycle in set dressing was just boxes with a metal grill of some sort lying on top of it, before I actually properly started watching the video only to suddenly see a glowing motorcycle appear in Kazuma's hands and it deck Majima, and I just knew Yakuza rolled like that and accepted that a "business motorcycle" arrived out of nowhere.
Hilarity.
Planescape: Torment is a good one. It has you gain experience by remembering your hundreds of past lives where you'd already gained those skills. There's a character in it who teaches in depth you about his religion and you later discover that you actually fabricated and gave him the religious text that he's teaching you from
Majima is a real comedian. He even Majima-bombed in a photo. XD
My favorite is how healers level up in the original Fire Emblem for the NES. In most FE games, healers can get experience by healing, but not so in the NES FE. The only way for healers to get experience is to go into battle, but as they have no weapons, all they can do is get hit by enemies. Basically, you have to send your defenseless healers into battle to be beaten to bits, then heal them, then do it again a bunch of times. It's brutal.