Games that improve massively thanks to self-restriction

Mega Man X5, without restriction it's an incredibly easy and boring entry(And quite honestly it's badly made in some ways). Without armors, or subweapons, and on Xtreme, it's a blast, providing enough challenge to be really hard but not as bullshit as X6, and the bosses actually start being really good(Volt Kraken as an example) since you actually take a lot of damage from them unarmored and they don't die in 10 hits or have most of their attacks negated by the OP plasma shot.

With self-restriction, even easy games such as Pokemon become hard. I remember the fun I had going through X with the following rules -

Give it a try and see how hard it can be, especially with the second gym being a Rock one.

So you just grind until your Pokemon have enough hp to beat gym bosses? That sounds boring as fuck.

Nothing is boring with the tism.

The new Hitman

You actually had to explore the levels and find shit. Made the game a lot of fun.

Problem with the witcher was that it wasn't designed for that since quests only show up on the minimap.

Playing Aliens Vs Predator 2009 Marine campaign using only the handgun was extremely satisfying for some reason.

Most of them? Past 2007 at least.
Dark Souls, PSO2, Nier Automata, DMC4 to just name a few.

You can actually go back and have a blast this way with older games as well.

What modern convenience are you referring to?

Autosave being the prime one.
Playing it as real-time roguelike deleting your shit if you die once made it a whole new fucking experience.
Shit like levels and stats and rings can be mostly ignored as well if you want it to be more exciting, but I dunno if it's "modern convenience".

Other than preventing overleveling, what do you refer to in Nier: Automata?

Healing

It was more of
Like half of the chips make you into a demigod individually, mostly healing and defensive ones. Game deals with it really nicely by Very Hard mode, but then you can make your attack super powerful and one shot most bosses.
So just play on VH and not use any chips, and you don't even have overleveling problem.

...

To me that would just waste an enormous amount of time having to run through the earlier areas to get to later parts of the game.

Not to mention if you do things like say, fall off a ledge in blight town or something. The game is really long so you'd have to potentially go through hundreds of attempts unless you're absurdly good at the game and have run it dozens of times.

Dark Souls gives you way too much ways to heal with little to no effort.

That's why those kinds of run are usually made after you're done with the game but still want more for some reason.

That's my problem with most games with permadeath, old ones included. It usually feels like I just wasted my time on something that wasn't fun trying to get to fun parts. I guess that's why rogue-lites is a thing now.

Whatever game I play I usually try to go only melee, can be fun sometimes

I tried starting with VH but the intro is pure bullshit on VH with no saving and the unskipable start cinematic.

shitty quests

Radiant ones…and some guild quests are lacking.

But there's plenty of good quests

I found that to be pretty entertaining in Blood Dragon. You could get some leaping chain kills going.

You're pulling my leg there mate.
Basically enable VH when you're somewhere in the middle of the game then.

The game reliably gives you five to twenty healing potions at every checkpoint at no cost and the healing flask can be upgraded to heal almost your entire health bar, in addition to all of the other ways you can heal in that game. No idea why so many people think the estus system is well-balanced or limiting.

Miracles require investing in faith. Which requires a faith build. At around the midway point in the game leveling starts to slow down drastically so double dipping into faith doesn't appear to be worth it since you heal slowly with it's miracles anyway.

A friend of mine even told me I should recreate my character because I invested a lot in Resistance because at around level 40 or so because there was no way I'd have enough endurance for the better equipment.

In terms of the game giving you "too many ways to heal" that's not the point. The game gives you options but it's really the length of time that is required to heal that matters. There's no way to heal in the game that doesn't stop you in your tracks and completely make you vulnerable to enemy attack immediately upon doing so. Which makes it incredibly risky to do. I've found players that actually dislike this approach because it forces you to return to a bonfire if you make too many mistakes.

Ontop of that depending on which build you're playing healing is made irrelevant by how you probably won't have that much health anyway until much later in the game. It makes it so that you have to heal more often which is more and more risky.

To me unique builds are more interesting than just restarting the entire game. Since they require much less time investment and require you to get really really good at the game.

Playing JA2 v1.13 while only using WW2 era weapons is a hell of a lotta fun.

I was a little concerned that the mercs would be way too outclassed by modern weapons, but the skittish enemy AI meant going old-school was super viable. Often had to use smoke and get in close since almost no one had scopes, but getting a good automatic burst off with the SMGs could kill enemies just as effectively as flashy assault rifle. Ultra satisfying to best a 15 stack of elite soldiers with 70 year old shooters.

The only real problem was running into hollow-point ammo which would absolutely shred through my unarmored team. Had a lot more mercs straight up die compared to vanilla runs where kevlar might let them live with some wounds.

To be fair I'd do a lot better now that I learned the game as opposed to the cold turkey start I did initially.

It's balanced by how you can't move while using it. If you watch runthroughs of new players in Dark Souls almost every time they die to a boss is when they're trying to frantically heal and a boss kills them.

Estus in the game is more so the amount of mistakes you're allowed to make between the bonfire and fighting the boss.

It was a reaction to how Demon's Souls had no restriction on the amount of healing items you had. It's why magic was so broken in that game since you could just grind a little and get so many healing items that it didn't matter.

I think A-tomato's flexibility in terms of difficulty is one of it's best points.
I never felt like I'm too weak or too powerful, since I could adjust almost any aspect of the gameplay to my liking.

Real life.

Crysis 1 is pretty fun going fists and barrels.
Sometimes chicken.

Every boss attack pattern is designed so that there's enough time at certain points in the fight to heal, what's the point? And that's just for aggressive bosses like Artorias, for most bosses it's incredibly easy to find space to heal.

DeS had both an carry cap and a weight restriction on the amount of grass you could carry and still required you to manage your inventory and not overuse healing items, since it's a finite pool which will run out if you keep using them indiscriminately. Saying it's a reaction isn't even really accurate, it's just a return to the crystal flask system from KF3.

i would reset the level if i let any of the AI soldiers die in halo 1, i don't remember if it was feasibly possible in 2 or 3, its been ages

i thought it was fun but i also only had like 3 games to play at the time

now it seems a real stealth games and you really have to be aware of your surroundings
what do you do for all those massive open fields you have to traverse to get to an outpost though?

That requires knowing the attack pattern though. The game isn't frustrating to the point where bosses are just trial and error. If you learn a boss's pattern you can complete it fairly reasonably. Once you know the boss's pattern healing becomes irrelevant because you know how to avoid their hits anyway. And it's possible to complete the game without getting hit by any of the bosses. (and there are builds that require you avoid getting hit like the Glass Cannon build due to it reducing your health pool)

I do know it's why they nerfed magic in Dark and why they gave you a finite cap on how many spells you could cast rather than a magic bar. Due to how broken it was in Demons Souls.

No kindling or using humanity to heal
Team must utilize 6 Pokemon, can't just beef one up and overlevel it
Magic only
No Moon of Mahaa-Kalaa (it isn't really that overpowered I just think it's less fun than dodging)

Good quality thread
I can't think of anything to add myself though, sorry

Oh I forgot a massively important one:
No using healing/damage buff items ever

I've always played this way. My team must be equal to or greater level than the highest level that the gym leader/rival has.

paper mario ttyd

ONLY LEVEL BADGES
DOUBLE PAIN
NO POWER UP PARTNERS
NO HP OR FP BADGES
NO DEFENSE UP BADGES
NO LUCK BADGES

its possible. have fun

also, no power up badges.

Any game that has saving - NO SAVING. It is saving that makes your decisions irrelevant, and makes you not focus on the game, since you can just reload.

An opposite thread would be better - which games DO NOT REQUIRE self-restriction to be good?

And that is around 1-3 points? Which heal an unupgraded vit bar completely. And let's be honest here, the base amount of health is enough to beat the game easily without any other kind of restriction.
You are a retard. At this point no one should even listen to you.

In the classic Resident Evil games I like to restrict myself from pausing when there's enemies nearby. It makes you feel a lot more helpless which is a good feeling for these types of games. Letting you reload in the inventory screen is such a stupid idea, it makes reloading a completely pointless mechanic that only wastes time.

Dark souls playthrough without backstabbing or parrying

How did they fuck it up so hard?

...

That was only possible on the Easy setting….well maybe normal.

But heroic and legendary got the Captain killed super often.

No grind either. You have to play more with base stats, dual types, resistances brought by them and movesets.

It would be nice if all gym leaders were level adjusted.

I did just this. Using the "b" button block negates all damage. THe only enemy I had trouble getting the the timing down on was the train boss.

And also going solo or only using your main pawn.

How did you get anything but frustration out of that weak piece of shit?

This.

Morrowind is a game where self-restriction is important. Alchemy alone is game breaking so the bare minimum is to set some restrictions on what you do with it.

Megaman Battle Network 2/3 with the following restrictions:
It really goes a long way for 2. In hard mode, a lot of the bosses actually become difficult because they can outlast normal chip combos. Bass' aura also cockblocks decks composed of normal chips. It really forces you to get the most use out of each individual chip, and it makes normal enemy encounters challenging, especially if you don't pull a fullcust on the first hand.

Thief, not knocking out anyone at all and saving only when you complete an objective, because it's stupid as fuck that if you knock out someone they never wake up for the rest of the mission.

Shadow of Mordorks
Not getting any health upgrades and limiting abilities like vault stun makes the game halfway decent to play and yet, it's still piss easy to win.

Vehicle sections were the worst, especially when you're trying to keep your guys alive.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

It's crazy how much that helps you actually get into the game, instead of just following one waypoint to the next like some questing robot.

Wrong. Quests are on notice boards and contain information on who to contact to start the quest. During the quests there's lots of information on where to go if you actually bother to listen to what people are saying.

Many quests can be accidentally started without even needing to go to quest givers… like finding a corpse/whatever and reporting it instead of being told to go look for someone to then find the corpse.

You can play almost completely without mini map although I reccomend getting friendly HUD mod where you can at least see a compass when you activate witcher senses. That way when a character says something like "West of this village" it can streamline it a bit. Or you can actually see which way the sun is setting and figure it out naturally. There are times when there's not enough information and you will need the map. That's why i had a hotkey for enable/disable the mini map. I think I had it set to hold-to-activate mini map, ensuring I wouldn't get too comfy leaving it on.

And someone in the other DaS3 just says shields are useless.

The opinions regarding DaS3 is so divisive at times.

People who say shields are useless are just trying to show off because if you're good enough at dodging then shields are useless in comparison. Shields make the game way easier when you know how to use them while keeping an eye on your stamina to roll away if you need to. Also lets moderately skilled players play far more aggressively without having to have the enemy's moved memorized.

The other thread has two people spamming about how dodge and R1 is the only way to way DaS3.

Shit is just wack, I guess the chan is becoming worse for vidya discussion especially when people here aren't really good at vidya anymore.

Both sides are sort of wrong. Shields are useful, but not on the level of crazy good they were in DS1 but since dodge rolls and i-frames are ridiculously good in DS3, having a shield at all becomes a lesser priority.

Really though, the DS3 combat system is somewhat odd because they tried to mash together Bloodborne and DS1 and the final product suffers because it lacks the focused mindset behind the design of the combat of either game.

But DaS3 does introduce more build variety than Bloodborne.

It just does not excel on either tanky build of DaS1 or dex money in DaS3, so you get something balanced, a heavy guy that can roll quick and has hyper armor, but will be staggered like hell if he's attacked.

...

Yeah, there is this one autist that keeps posting in the thread aggressively defending DaS3.

I'm that one "autist", and no, DaS3 is worth defending because it's just one or two DaS2 autists trying to make their game look less bad.

I know, that's the joke.

What is the joke?

All of the shitty ones by not buying or playing them.

This.

SotN is just broken as fuck.

This shit is the best. Improves playthroughs of Half-Life, STALKER, Deus Ex, and even GTA:SA immensely.

Makes me feel autistic as fuck though

OP if you install infinite heaven and the hardcore mod you can have all that stuff off and even deploy without weapons normally, or go full OSP mode and the hardcore mod increases enemy sight, hearing, etc. You can do a lot to enhance the mgsv experience.

Came to say this as well, with the frostfall mod, camping mods and the realism mods like hunger/thirst/peeingxshitting/sleep deprevation, drug withdrawal, etc, the game gets really fucking immersive. It's actually funner to just lose yourself in the wilderness and hunt pelts sometimes. Helps too that modders have made better quests than bethesda have, like the housing mod quest to do with the dwemer.
Your argonian looks adorable

There are quests that are not on boards that you just get by talking to a random fag on the street. Like for example the dwarf who gambled away some documents in Novigrad and lies about having them stolen. That shit is only visible on the minimap.

user, I'm making space to reinstall the game. If it is fundamentally broken with all these things turned off imma cut you.

If it truly is a 10/10 then you've earned my respectful nod.

...

wait a sec, did they reoptimize this game or something? It's only like, 30 gigs now. I could have sworn a year ago it was 50+ gigs.

The last good need for speed was underground 2 but you can slog through the shitpiles that are most wanted and carbon if you don't use the time slowdown in addition to removing the AI catchup mechanics, tuning up the AI difficulty and installing some mods to remove the garbage post proccess while not touching car tuning (i don't mean performance parts, you can give your car objectively better performance by tweaking some car settings and the developers were too retarded to account for it). Also don't get someone's pink slips in most wanted because that leads to you having way too much cash and cars that perform much better than other racers.

AVP 2010 wasn't to bad, especially in retrospect when compared to new games. Marines had a particularly OP ability to knock over the Xenomorphs if you guard right and I forget it but there was also a decent tactic against predators.

me and my cousin got autistically good at this game playing the multiplayer demo

how did you deal with tanks?

yes, and particularly in games that allow strealth approach (Metal Gears, Splinter Cells, Hitmans, Dishonored, …) it's always better to play with "alerts kill you" and pacifist way, also XCOM without an ironman mode would most likely have been boring, and skipping cutscenes make many games better, because mediocre CGI cutscene movies are annoyingly interrupting the gameplay flow

The main problem with these hyperconveniences that are standard in modern games, map markers in particular, is that games are built with them in mind not as a convenience, but as a core gameplay element.

It used to be that a quest was
That later turned into
And nowadays it's more along the lines of

This, half of the fun in Morrowind was making sense of the directions some s'wit gave you.

I agree. This is what made the last Zelda so great, turning the map off was an actual option. It also helps greatly with immersion.

Alright, just got through with giving it a shot and you weren't kidding. This is like, 100 times better. My biggest issue is that DD becomes pretty mediocre with the markers off, but I suppose that more reason to leave him safe at the base considering I got caught pretty quick and he got shot up pretty good.

On that note, it's so different and good I'm restarting the entire game. Already deleted my save and I'm half way through the opening, which I forgot was super fucking good. It honesltly may be my favorite opening in vidya and you can appreciate it even more when you realize what is happening in that scene and how you are actually being trained in the heat of everything.

I'm actually excited to play this game again. Good job OP.

Yeah it does make you feel like a real fuckin nerd but it adds a lot to the game.

a bit off topic, but

Ambient occlusion is becoming the new bloom. It makes the game way better when you have a little of it but then idiot developers overuse it to the point of absurdity. With bloom this made every screen 50% pure white and with AO this makes characters look like they have a shadow duplicate following them around.

nuHitman. Disable Batman detective vision bullshit and opportunities, turn off HUD, play on Professional mode and suddenly the game becomes almost as good as Blood Money.

I always thought Kirby games played better without the copy abilities.

The original Thief games were really good at setting up limitations for you, like not allowing guards to be killed. Thief got a lot harder if you tried going for using nothing but rope arrows.

I've also done small weapons only (all pistol caliber weapons or 5.56 "pistols") which was frustrating more than fun, as I imagined it would be aggressive, run-and-gun tactics but it ended up being a lot of turtling in front of doorways. It's really a game of range when it comes down to it. Then again I'm a savescumming casual so I guess it's never challenging at all.

I also found out how broken an all-stealth team is. Once I reached about mid-game and had full ghillie and AS-VAL/SL9SD loadouts, assaulting at night was too easy.

I've also tried Soviet Bloc weapons only. Painful early game but becomes pretty fun once you get out of the pistol stage. I combined that with ammo being only procured on site but that's not really difficult. If I try something like this again, I'll make it full innawoods and refuse to capture any cities; mercs are paid entirely by doing raids and selling enemy gear.

I've also occasionally thrown in little personality quirks into these runs like male mercs only, only mercs/guns I haven't used, and roleplay IMP mercs. I recommend these more than anything.

Playing Skyrim without any black smithing, enchanting, or alchemy make the balance a bit better at the same time less of a grind.

Playing Fo4 on hardest difficulty without ever using any uniques. (No double shot sniper rifle, no exploding shotgun).

Are there any mods that let you go out on the field without any weapons, those OSP missions on the 2nd chapter were the only good thing about the 2nd half.

Symphony of the night is a lot better if you restrict yourself which you can do in multiple ways, red rust runs are my personal favorite.

Kinda off topic but I love some older FPS for the reason that OP likes turning off help. If you play Goldeneye 007, you get a mission briefing telling you all of your objectives, then you're expected to figure out where everything is on your own. It is so much more satisfying exploring an environment searching for the objective, than following a waypoint and ignoring everything around you. Pretty much all modern video games would be significantly improved if they got rid of help.

Yep. Infinite Heaven lets you set random (or always) settings where you can “crash land” (meaning you wind up somewhere you didn’t want to go and are wounded from the start), are “compromised” (meaning you are always in combat and the enemies refresh your known location every minute, also you can’t extract until you get at least 2 KM away from your starting site), and you can also set Subsistence for any mission or free roam. Among other things; I forget the rest.

They can stack, too, even when they’re random. Getting them all at once is a bitch, but it’s a fun as fuck bitch. Particularly if you turn on extra roaming vehicles and enemies.

Fuck off back to funnyjunk

But they’re worthless. Nighttime is literally just daytime with a blue filter, and there aren’t even any mods that let you set night as actually being realistically dark. I hate it so much.

I remember my nights being pretty damn dark because of some sweetfx I was using.

The most I've done was restricting saving in Call of Pripyat so I only allowed myself to save in the main stalker bases on each map

Set the brightness to minimum and suddenly you'll have trouble seeing in the night (at least with my laptop's screen)

Quake 2 becomes much better if you never use the armor item that runs on BFG ammo, as soon as you equip it you will never die unless you are a complete retard. Also Nightmare difficulty has to be unlocked with the console or a source port. No idea what the fuck they were thinking with that one.

Playing Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest on Lunatic/Classic and not allowing any of the bonus items you get for buying the other routes or for castle battles/visits proves a pretty fun challenge already, but not allowing tonics and resetting has made its strategic genius shine to me. Goes from a pretty good game to an excellent one.

woah are you me? I beat Hitman a little while ago.

It's almost as good as Blood Money this way. Mankind Divided is also great if you turn off the reticle and don't use icarus dash and invisibility and aug vision.

too bad i didn't buy either because fuck denuvo.

Story and length of MD are shit though. It doesn't even work with Human Revolution's story.

Saber only.
No charge attacks.
No buster or sub-weapons unless they're absolutely required for platforming/etc.

I'm not saying you have to cut off your left arm and if you die in the game you die in real life levels of make-your-own-difficulty.
Just use the saber and nothing else and notice how much more intense the gameplay becomes when you're forced to play the levels by the developer's own rules and restrictions in making them.

Either I'm an idiot that forgot to post the image or Codemonkey ate my image.
GOD DAMN IT CODEMONKEY FIX YOUR FUCKING SITE

He doesn't care about main objective and having fun raping soldiers and bugs in Drassen.

Hell, even playing that game just limiting yourself to the pulse rifle makes it more fun. Scrounging for the tiny amounts of pulse rifle ammo that some levels have is great fun.

I remember doing this on heroic with a friend back in the day. Good times. Was extremely sad to see that in the MCC, the marines would sometimes just poof out of existence. As in you turn around there is a marine, but turn around again really fast and there is no longer any marine on the map. Only thing I wanted out of the MCC to work, but of course it had issues out the ass for me.