4
This week on Semi-Ramblomatic, Yahtzee tries to explain to himself (and you) why he doesn’t like strategy games.
Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SecondWindGroup
Second Wind Merch Store: https://sharkrobot.com/collections/second-wind
source
33 comments
I feel like I'm attracted to the RTS genre for the same reason's that turn Yahtzee off. In a way, every RTS has the hidden resource of time. You can only focus on so many things at once, and I enjoy the challenge of having to split your attention between so many different things. It feels like a juggling act where you're trying to keep all of the different balls in the air
Nice video, I think you're really onto something. I say that as someone who grew up on RTS (Brood War and AoE2) and on the chess tournament circuit. Then I did a master's in philosophy, focusing on systems theory and the importance of holism. I love precisely what Yahtzee doesn't, it seems.
He was so close to figuring out he is too dumb for them
xcom turnbased tactical
City builders actually are too much of a paint by numbers, thats sort of the point you're not competing against anything. At much smaller scale where I'm building individual rooms by hand in a small camp or colony things are both a lot more personally expressive and 'a video game' for lack of more accurate term.
Holy, wtf, Lemmings!!! I remember that so vividly
I love turn based tactics but hate real time strategy. I don't like to be rushed in that sort of game and I also don't like all the base building stuff. If I am going to build a base I want it to last more than 30 minutes rather than have to build a new one every level. Not a huge fan of XCOM as when I first tried it with the reboot I got a game breaking bug during the tutorial and just never played again. However I do really like Troubleshooter Abandoned Children which is based on XCOM mechanics wise but is like a jrpg where you are a private police force company in a distopian crime ridden mega city.
I definitely feel that about the sense of uncovering with XCOM, or rather the sense of building towards something. I don't have as big a distaste for strategy games as Yahtzee, but it's really not my favorite, and yet XCOM is one of my favorite games ever. And I think it's that sense of discovery and construction that pulls me in. At the start of the game you just have a small mook squad with duct taped together rifles barely able to hold their own against squeaky aliens that look like they shouldn't even be able to stand and you're doing it all from a run down hole in the ground full of rocks and junk. Then by the end of the game you have a small army of hardened soldiers in power armor blowing away armored gorillas with their plasma rifles so they can stride home to your high tech base, and not a single element of it was just handed to you. You didn't find a newer better base, you built this one yourself, room by room. You didn't find better weapons, you built these yourself one by one after taking apart enemy weapons. You didn't hire better soldiers, you took your grunts and put them through the wringer until they came out the other end. Everything you have in the game is EARNED because YOU DID IT, rather than just unlocking a new character or a new unit type because you're on the level where they're introduced. And, because it happened this way, it lets me see the big picture because it gives it to me piece by piece. In the same way Yahtzee describes starting with a small corner of the map and uncovering the rest, so it is with every aspect of the game; they're given to you one at a time in such a way that by the end of it your a master of your entire operation and it never felt like the game had to pull you aside and train you how to do anything. XCOM is one of my favorite games I think because the accomplishments make me feel like I accomplished something myself. As I get to the end here too, I think this all is also why Darkest Dungeon is another of my favorite games. Oh and of course, the setting and style and tone of both certainly goes a long way towards making me love them.
I'm not a big fan of RTS games either and I've kinda put it down to what I'm gonna call "fiddliness." I like Strategy RPGs though (Fire Emblem, Shining Force, Super Robot Wars, etc) mostly because you can give your units a clear advantage and the strategy is fairly straightforward — move conservatively and don't get surrounded while trying to single out and surround your opponent's guys as best you can. Unless it's endgame Super Robot Wars, where the strategy is "min-max one unit that can take out 10-20 guys in a turn, use your remaining 29 dudes to mop up the 5 remaining guys, check the FAQ to make sure there isn't some secret thing you have to do to unlock a unit in this stage."
XCOM isn't a strategy game. It's a puzzle game. Every mission is a puzzle where you have to figure out how you can move your guys to prevent the enemy from ever getting to move their guys.
XCOM also happens to be among my favorite games. Valkyria Chronicles is also right up there, as it's similar in a lot of ways.
I like turn based strategy games but I've never been into real time stuff. The major exception to this is a little gem called Majesty. In that game you have just enough control to pick what buildings and what units to build but beyond that it becomes a game of herding cats because you can't control your units beyond providing motivation or building in a way such that they have a higher chance to see enemies while they're busy getting drunk and therefore have a higher chance to actually fight them. For someone who really doesn't like micromanaging in RTS games it was a joy to play
So to put it another way, you dislike strategy but are quite fond of tactics?
One big factor for me is the consequences of failing. Having 30+ minutes of spacing between checkpoints would be inexcusable in a first person shooter, but it's par for the course with strategy games. And the time between when you know you're dead and when you actually die is way higher.
Somehow they make me feel like I have a lack of choice. Like there is usually one or two optimal ways to play or move and I dont want to do that so I lose badly.
0:30
You're apply tactics, strictly speaking.
What sacrilege is this? Talking about the glory of the original Amiga version of Lemmings while showing footage of the inferior NES port? Tsk!
Well, there isn't a queen with a submachine gun game, but there is Shotgun King.
Honestly i love strategy games, starting up a new one gives me an almost unrivalled sense of joy… however, after approximately 3 hours of play i get so bored that i would rather play overwatch just to feel something other than bordem. Thank square enix ff14 exists because without it i might be playing overwatch, apex legends or god forbid, fortnite
You might try empire earth, the original one. Not any of the sequels. I've never been a fan of RTS, but that game was, and still is from time to time, crack for me. I've never thought too deeply as to why I like it, but it just "feels fun" to play, even if I'm getting my teeth kicked in. Worms is another that comes to mind. Though, that one is more akin to lemmings at war than an RTS.
I wonder how Yahtzee feels about Brütal Legend. It starts as an action game, but gradually folds in more and more RTS elements as the game goes on until you're straight up playing basic RTS battles, but you're still playing a hero character in the thick of the action the entire while rather than a disembodied overseer.
Did Yahtzee ever review that one for Zero Punctuation?
I generally like RTS and they were my main played genre of games for a long time, back in the "Command & Conquer" and "Starcraft 1" era.
I do hate party based RPGs for pretty much the same reasons Yahtzee gave for not liking Strategy games. For me a RPG is all about immersing myself into a character and dealing with the game world and its problems and challenges as that character, with its strengths and weaknesses. Being a disembodied group intelligence or guardian angel to a group of interchangeable characters and using them like tools in my tool belt by compensating ones weaknesses with another one's strengths defeats the whole point of a RPG for me. I'm not playing a a role anymore and not immersing myself into one character.
It really sucks that there is this supposedly near perfect, universally hailed and applauded big blockbuster RPG in the form of "Baldur's Gate 3" everyone is raving about and I am excluded from enjoying it because it just had to be one of those party based non-RPGs.
RTS however are a totally different genre from which I want different things and thus I have no problem "hovering" over stuff there.
nintinder
"i don't like to delegate" and this is why yahztee isn't RUNNING second wind.
Someone wasn't good at Ceasar 2 and it shows….
I think this could have been summed up by the part where he said he didn't like chess. Most of these games are chess adjacent. If you aren't a fan of those types of board games you probably aren't going to click with strategy games or tactical RPGs.
white people be like
This video has made me question why I enjoy RTSes, when I'm like you and don't like having to micro five different mechanics at the same time. I might just be on some childish playing-with-toy-soldiers shit, honestly. Good vids, big fan.
It really is that you can't think about two things at once. With XCom, you can only focus on one character at a time. With management games and large-scale strategy games, there's too much to focus on
btw Zombie Night Terror was a good heavily Lemmings-imspired game.
Not enjoying Civ should actually be a prison offense.
Coming here as a pure strategy player.
I love rts, less because of the management aspect. I think I might be alone in saying that I play strategy games to create my own story. Failure, mismanagement etc. are not bad in my eyes, merely story points in my civilisation's road to success and my road to self-expression. Damn perfection and good planning, my dwarf fortress city will live on — actually it won't, but it was a hell of a ride down to the bottom.
New dating app: Genres and subgenres of video game preferences dictates who you match with.
Comments are closed.