Why Is Vampire Survivors Still So Fun?

How did a game as simple as Vampire Survivors take the world by storm? It's a twin stick shooter without the shooting. Yes your character is attacking the onslaught of enemies marching towards you, but you have no direct control over their attacks. You can only move and choose what weapon or item to acquire or upgrade next. Its simplistic pixelated visuals and horror themed motif don't exactly scream "I must play this", and sure the music is great, but every indie game has great music these days. The price is affordable at around $5, and that's what made me give the game a chance when my friend Andrew recommended it to me back in early 2022. A couple weeks later, I was hooked, gifting the game to everyone on my friends list.

So what's the appeal? It's how difficult it is to survive 30 minutes. The hordes increase in size and ferocity as the seconds tick away. Through playing the game and hitting specific milestones, new weapons, characters, and stages are unlocked, as well as earning enough gold to buy upgrades in the power-up shop. Eventually through enough knowledge, and the act of attrition, survival is guaranteed, but what keeps a player going until they reach that point, or beyond?

Let's briefly sidestep to the question of beyond because that was a legitimate concern in approaching this game for a critique. When I first played Vampire Survivors in Early Access, it felt like a simple arcade game. How long can you last, and how much damage can you rack up? Nothing but survival to strive for. Since then the game has undergone a slew of updates, and one of those updates added a final boss and a credits screen. There we go, a definitive end point. A goal for the critique. Now we can return to the question of what keeps a player engaged enough to survive for 30 minutes, let alone take things all the way to the end.

That's the question this video will be trying to answer. I'll begin by narrating the journey from my first attempt at the game, to the first time I survived 30 minutes. After that I'll talk about the steps I needed to take to reach the final boss, with some thoughts on time, my favourite weapons, and the progression of player power sprinkled in, leading to a discussion of why I kept playing after I stopped recording footage, wondering if the compulsion to complete the games' list of unlocks was all that kept me going.

If you haven't played Vampire Survivors and worry about spoilers, I will be showing footage, and discussing characters, bosses, levels, and weapons from later on in the game. Finally, a word of caution. If you have photosensitivity issues, a lot of my footage contains flashing lights and effects, so please be careful. With all that out of the way, it’s time to tell you a story about my journey through this little indie game you may have heard of called Vampire Survivors.

Trying to Survive

My first goal was to survive for 30 minutes. This took close to 6 hours of play. When the game starts, the weapon and character selection is miniscule, and most importantly, you don't know what you're doing. For a game where the only gameplay is moving the character through the level and making decisions on upgrade screens, those first few games seem unfairly complex. Like the player is missing out on crucial information, or that the heart of the game is earning enough money to power up through the shop. I think that's partially true, but it's a loop that reinforces itself. The better you do in game, choosing the right weapons for your character and the stage you play, the further you'll get, the more weapons, characters, and stages you'll unlock, and the more upgrades you'll be able to purchase in the shop, which will lead to longer games, better decisions, and continuing this process.

When I talked about a sense of progression in this version of the game that wasn't there when I played back in early access, I'm mainly talking about the relics. I unlocked the library after three attempts of the Mad Garden. Upon selecting it, I noticed there was a relic listed, and upon entering the stage, there was a green arrow enticing me to follow it. I ignored the swarming hordes, following the siren song of this green arrow. Eventually I found it, and it was a book of weapon evolution recipes. This blew open the game for me. Back in early access, I had heard about weapon evolutions when trying to work out how to get better at the game. If you level up a weapon to its maximum, and have the right item in your inventory, opening a chest dropped by a boss monster will trigger a weapon evolution. It felt that these were the trick to surviving 30 minutes, and now the game was giving me access to these important evolutionary secrets.

Of course it's still easier to look up what items you need for a weapon evolution online. When I first got the grimoire it revealed a few evolutions, but it was still up to me to experiment. I didn't mind this as it was fun filling my inventory with 6 items that I hadn't worked out an evolution for, and seeing if anything happened when I got to max level with a weapon. As the game went on, I started using the wikis for weapon evolutions to make sure I wasn't making an error and wasting a run. This wasn't until I started surviving the whole 30 minutes though, so I'm getting ahead of myself.

I unlocked level 3, the dairy, and the relics here were a bestiary and a map on the pause screen. This added another level of understanding, as I could see that each stage had items just hanging out in the game world. I wondered if this was a hint towards which weapons were best for each stage based off the items needed for weapon evolutions. I also noticed the giant question mark, but when I first made my way over, it was surrounded by enemies that were too high level for me. I figured I needed at least one or two weapon evolutions to make my way there, but the question I had was when, so let’s talk about the importance of time.

In the Mad Garden, every 5 minutes, a ring of flowers will encircle the player, trapping them in an arena with some higher level creatures and a Mantis boss. I think it's best to think of the difficulty of a Vampire Survivors level in terms of time. Once I made it to minute 15, I found making it to minute 20 wasn't too difficult, but after minute 20, if I wasn’t set up to take things to the end of the game, I would get swarmed. This led to a theory that minute 15 is the best time to start making my way towards the question mark (and perhaps the relics, as future relics weren't as easy to beeline at the start of a run). Weapon evolutions unlock at level 10, so by 15 I felt I should at least have one evolution if not a couple. Basically the earlier I selected what weapons and items I wanted, and which evolutions to work towards, surviving to 30 minutes would be all but guaranteed.

And eventually I got there, I survived my first 30 minutes, and then in the same session I did it again. Hold your applause please. Similar to how there's a point in any level when it seems like a win will be guaranteed, once the player works out how to survive the time limit, they can easily do it again. Part of my initial success was playing a new character, part of it was the amount of unlocked weapons and items I now had at my disposal, part of it was all the upgrades I'd purchased at the power-up shop, and part of it was the confidence I'd gained working out how the game worked. On the run I first survived, I had 5 weapon evolutions. It would take a while before I was able to activate all 6, because that requires some additional knowledge in regards to planning at the start of a run, but thanks to all these factors, I had survived, and I could do it more than once. So now, the question forming in my head was… "what now?"

When Does it End?

Yes in the intro I talked about how there’s a final boss, but I didn’t know that at the time. I wondered if I was done with Vampire Survivors. Was my only goal to survive 30 minutes? Was I now supposed to do it with every character on every level, slowly making my way through the remaining unlocks until there were no new secrets to uncover? Yes… and no. I looked it up online, and the internet told me that once a player collects all the relics, a special stage will unlock, leading to a credits screen. There’s my goal. I would reach that credits screen. I mean, that's how most games work right? The game is finished once you reach the credits. What I didn't understand was how many steps there would be between this moment and finally finishing the game. 14 more hours of gameplay, and more than once I thought "well surely that was the end right?", only to be wrong. This happened at least 3 times.

Step one: obtain all the relics. I could survive 30 minutes, and I had a better understanding of how to build my character during a run, not to mention having more characters to select from. Some of them having powerful special abilities, such as Pugnala gaining 1% might with each level. Might is basically damage output, so you can see how having that rise with each new trip to the level up screen can be of assistance. During this time I got to play with new weapons thanks to characters like Pugnala, Poppea, and Giovanna. Unlocking these weapons for use on the level up screen made future runs a lot easier, and by this point I had evolved most of the weapons available, gaining a greater idea of which weapons synergised well, and which I just liked.

Ok. Dave's top 5 Vampire Survivors weapons. #5 Celestial Dusting. I like the idea of farting flowers of death. #4, Phiera Der Tuphello and Eight the Sparrow. Like their evolution, I can't have one of these pistols on my list without the other, and what can I say? I just like being a whirling dervish of bullets. #3, the Pentagram. Originally I thought this was an evil weapon, but when I finally got over myself and unlocked its evolution, I realised its greatness. Gem explosion baby! #2, King Bible. Alongside the garlic, this is an early favourite of most players, as it keeps enemies at bay. I'll usually save a weapon slot for it in most runs, unless I want to shake things up. And #1, Song of Mana. Even more of a barrier, and a must when playing the Library stage. Once it's always on, you're a vertical do not enter sign. Of course, there’s not really a weapon I dislike (not even Carréllo or La Romba), as they all have utility either in their normal or evolved forms, and besides, I don’t start every run looking for my top 5. The decisions are based on the character I’ve chosen, their starting weapon, the stage I’m playing, and what weapons show up on the level up screen. It helps keep each run at least a little fresh once I learned how to properly build my character.

Speaking of the right build, as I was making my way towards relic acquisition, I started to form ideas about the right way to play the game. How it might be best to only collect 3-4 weapons initially, supplement them with thier evolution items sure, but then make room for the items I feel greatly assist any run, like the duplicator or the empty tome. There's a bonus stage called Moongolow that has every item just sitting there, easily accessible. I made a mistake in one run of collecting everything. I wasn't able to level up my weapons because the level up screen was taken up by all the items in my inventory. That's why I like to keep my inital selection low. Not only does it allow me to level up what I already have, but it gives me more chances for the weapons and items I want to appear, as the more I unlock, the greater the selection the game's randomizer has to pull from, muddying my level up plans by not having that weapon or item I want ever show up. Thank goodness for the reroll, am I right?

The Long Winding Endgame Road

After collecting all the relics, it was onto Step 2, which is… uncovering more relics. A secret ending to the Moongolow stage leads to an angelic corridor, leading to yet another relic. This relic opened up a boss in the Cappella Magna stage where you defeat all the reapers, and then they Captain Planet into a super reaper. Beating this boss gave me, you guessed it, another relic! Limit breaks, the ability to level up weapons past their max level, which is an amazing addition if you just want to let loose and show off your power in endless mode. Speaking of endless mode, the two final relics are in yet another secret stage that beating the super reaper opened up, Eudaimonia. This was the level that the internet told me lead to the credits screen, and it did… I just had to play a game in both inverse and endless mode before the final boss showed itself.

But before the final boss, I want to talk about the reaper. The whole game this jackass has swooped in at the end of the time limit, ruining my fun. In the Cappella Magna stage you take out all the different coloured reapers, and wail on them when they team up. I thought the super reaper would be the end of it, but no, once you defeat it, a white reaper takes over slaughtering duty. It’s one of the appeals of endless mode, no reaper to contend with, the stage just resets with harder versions of the same swarms. It’d be great to finally have dominion over death, and that relic I found in the angelic corridor allowed me just this opportunity. It unlocks the silver and gold bracelet, and the left and right metaglio signs.

These are the evolution items for the Laurel and the Clock Lancet, the weapons that I ignored even more than the pentagram for most of my play. The trick with the bracelets and signs is that both need to be levelled to max before the evolution takes place, and each has 9 levels. To top it off, one half of these items buffs you, and the other half buffs the enemies. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to contend with a power-up that powers up the enemies, as the evolution item for Song of Mana is the Curse-o-matic, and levels of curse are able to be purchased in the power-up shop. I ignored this for the longest time, because why would I want to make the game harder for myself?

Because increased enemy quantity means more enemies to kill, which means more experience, allowing quicker level ups. It allows weapons to gain the power they need even earlier, and once I realised that, I rationalised that since I already knew how to survive the game, this increase in enemy speed and health wasn’t going to hurt, and it didn’t. Sure it makes the start of each run more precarious depending on the character, but ultimately it’s a way for the player to gain more power, and this is why the evolution of the Clock Lancet and Laurel was left till the end of the game, it gives you the power to kill the reaper.

Thanks to the Infinite Corridor and the Crimson Shroud evolutions, the reaper went down, but that white bastard reared its ugly head again. The white reaper showed up in the fight against the final boss as well. The first time it appeared and killed me, I was shocked, but as I had the power to revive, I was able to continue…as long as it didn’t appear again. And it appeared again. This time however, I gained a helping hand heh heh heh. At certain milestones through the game these disembodied hands have been applauding me, cheering me on. The final boss is called The Director, but based on the power of the hands, overwriting the power of the white reaper, and then showering me with riches once the boss fight is done, I’d say these hands are the true director of the game. The one who’s wanted me to succeed this whole time, and thanks to their help, I reached the credits screen. I beat Vampire Survivors.

Why Am I Still Playing?

But I haven't stopped playing Vampire Survivors…and I'm wondering why. The game kind of got stale around halfway through my playtime. 30 minutes can be a long time to see a bunch of flashing effects and numbers popping off everywhere. I don't have photosensitivity issues and even I felt tired in my eyes and brain after each successful run. I was thankful for the level ups and treasure chest drops because they were always an audio/visual reprieve. Regardless of the overstimulation, the game itself is less exciting once "solved". I worked out how to survive around hour 6, and while there were many more hours of enjoyable experimentation with stages, weapons, characters, evolutions, and secrets, the gameplay itself became the most boring part. And the more I played, the better I got at making the right decisions to keep the enemies off me minute after minute, making the core gameplay even duller.

But I'm still playing. And despite what I just said, the game is still exciting. Why? Well I think there are two answers. The first is the randomizer I mentioned earlier. It's become known that the creator of Vampire Survivors Luca Galante worked as a developer for a gambling company. With the chests full of random unlocks, the gems to collect, and the joyous cacophany that accompanies each new increase in power, the influence is noticable. However, it's these random elements that keep each run exciting even when the challenge is gone. Each treasure chest will give one upgrade, but there is a small chance for it to give 3, and an even smaller chance to give 5. Each of these is accompanied by more bombast, and that's not even the most explosive and exciting random element. That honour goes to the red gems.

Red gems give more exp than turquoise or blue gems, and sometimes when I collect a red gem, I will recieve what I can only describe as a level explosion. Level after level after level after level. I swear I’ve had 10 in a row. Before writing this paragraph I wanted to understand how it worked, to see if like the chests, there was a small chance to hit a jackpot. It turns out that's not really the case. The following information is from the internet so may not be correct, but I'm going to mention it anyway. To prevent slowdown or crashing there's a limit of 400 gems allowed in the game at a time. Once that limit is hit, a red gem will appear, and all future gems will pool in this red gem, so depending what minute of the game the player is in, and when they collect the red gem, the xp they recieve can fluctuate wildly. Not as random as the chests, but boy does it feel that way when you strike it big.

And while these moments are full of excitement, and there’s still joy in watching my selection of weapons obliterate all who cross my path, the base game no longer holds the same pull. I mean I got more than my money's worth so I'm not sad about it, but yet I'm still playing. The treadmill of unlocks is exciting because new characters and weapons add much needed variety to the gameplay, but since I’ve beaten the game, unlocks are all it has left, and in the middle of finishing this script, I finally completed the unlock list, and the secrets to boot! All that’s left is to purchase the 2 pieces of DLC, opening up a new series of locks to un. I think I’ll purchase it once this video’s out.

Now the pull of the unlocks is strange because I’ve never had much interest in achievements. A list of arbitrary tasks to complete once a game is done holds no sway over me, because I always have dozens of new games to move onto. Achievements have always felt like busy work. That’s what’s baffles me about Vampire Survivors. Even when the core loop of powering up in the shop is done, even after the game is over, I still found myself wanting to complete the list, and I did. Now a lot of the unlocks did feel like busy work, but despite saying that the gameplay wore out its welcome once I knew what I was doing, I think I’m still drawn to the joy and bombast of playing a round of Vampire Survivors. At this late stage, the enemy swarms surround me thick as carpet, and there’s still fun in selecting what weapons and items I want to try and wipe them all out with, especially using some of the late game characters like Red Death or Queen Sigma.

Conclusion

To put it another way, I still like making the numbers go up, and I still succumb to the thrill of a chest or red gem jackpot. When I started writing this script, I was planning on discussing when Vampire Survivors shifted from enjoyable gameplay into a treadmill of unlocks, but now that I reflect on my time playing the game, and that I’m still continuing to play it, I can see that the gameplay itself is still enjoyable. The reason I think I convinced myself it wasn’t is in order to complete all the unlocks, I was using game modes like hurry and endless to make my way through the list as quickly as possible. No longer engaging in said gameplay. Also, I bought into the idea that because the core gameplay is so simplistic, the shine had to wear off eventually. I think that the reason there are so many unlocks and additions, is because developer Luca Gallante realises that you can only push such a simple concept so far… but think how far the concept has been pushed! Even in its early stages, Vampire Survivors captured everyone’s imagination, and it’s still attracting new fans. It feels like the unlocks were the only way to make the game bigger, as adding more base mechanics, a story, or a straight-forward campaign would have ruined its simplicity, its mystery, and thus its charm. And I’ve come to the realisation that I wouldn’t be interested in completing these unlocks if it didn’t add something worthwhile to these same base mechanics that I still enjoy interacting with. It could have done with more vampires though. Thanks for watching.

How I Learned to Love Civilization VI

There’s a joke that I’ve heard about the 4x genre. It goes a little something like this. “I bought Europa Universalis IV last week and I’ve already put over 50 hours into it”. “Ah, so you’ve finally made it past the tutorial”? It says here to “cue laughter”, whatever that means. The Civilization series has always been a light entry into the genre, but this joke rings just as true when I think about my experience in both Civ VI and with previous entries. I’ve put around 65 hours into Civilization VI in preparation for this video. My idea was that I could play 3 full games of Civilization VI and hopefully that would be enough footage and familiarity with its systems to write a critique on it. Ha! Now that’s funny.

If you’re a seasoned player of Civ VI, you’ll understand why. If you’ve never played a Civilization or 4x game before, allow me to try and explain. A game like Civilization VI is mechanics stacked on mechanics sitting beside more mechanics. Yes the game is turn based, with its hexagonal tiles resembling a board game, and in theory that takes the pressure off, but each turn can essentially win or lose you the game. There are multiple win conditions each Civ leader is more attuned towards, and yet to neglect one aspect of your civilization to focus on pursuing such a victory condition can end in disaster. Now I do have to say that by my own admission at this point in my Civ VI journey I know next to nothing. I put about 100 hours into Civ V and by the time I stopped playing I only felt marginally capable. So if it takes so long to become knowledgable, you might be asking what I’m going to be talking about and what benefit if any this video holds.

I like to think of myself as a decent game critic. If I can’t find insight and points of interest in a game after playing it for over 50 hours, I should just go hang up my critic suspenders. We all get a pair you know. What this video covers is the knowledge I’ve accumulated from playing 3 full games of Civ VI, a smattering of my understanding from the games I’ve played afterwards, and my thoughts as to why it’s so difficult to learn all the connected systems needed to actually have fun with the game. I’ll start by laying out how I approached playing Civ VI (what options, leaders, and difficulties I played with), and take you through my 3 games and what I learned playing them, before moving onto the core of the video, which is why the early game is so important, why it’s so difficult to get right for a new player, and how mastering the early game can let players engage with what Civ VI is really all about. Let’s get started.

Hatching a Plan

One would think that a good place to start with any complicated game is the tutorial. Civ VI’s tutorial is better than a lot of other 4x titles (I’m looking at you Paradox), but what it doesn’t impart is just how inter-connected every decision is from the first turn of the game, and how it all snowballs. After the basics of the tutorial, I decided to start a new game to learn on the fly. I clicked the play now button, which picks a random leader and throws the player into a small continents map (2 landmasses populated by 3 civilizations each) with standard turn speed on prince, the standard difficulty. I quickly realised that this meant I was playing the game with all the additional mechanics of the two expansions. Luckily in the ‘create game’ tab, you can choose to play the base game, which is what I decided to do in order to not complicate matters. I had a feeling learning the base game would be complicated enough, and boy was I right. If you’d like me to make a video on the expansions in the future, let me know in the comments. My first 3 attempts at game 1 were disasters mostly due to expanding too early, and not knowing how to protect against barbarians. It was after the third restart that I formed a idea of how I was going to tackle the game.

I needed an advantage, and so I made two decisions. The first was that I was going to lower the game down to its easiest difficulty. I would play 3 full games, each game moving the difficulty up by one, so that by the time I was done with the third game, I’d be back at standard difficulty, and would hopefully have the knowledge and skill needed to tackle the game on its default setting. The second decision was searching online for leaders that were more geared towards beginners. I think it’s beneficial to at least summerise my three games as it will describe a lot of the issues I was having, which will make my insights in the following sections make more sense. I’ll also be explaining some of the mechanics as I understand them at this point in time, if I think they’re relevant to being able to follow my story. If you haven’t played Civ VI it should help to explain just how complex the game can be, and if you feel like trying Civ VI yourself, hopefully you can learn from my many, many mistakes. If you already know how the game works or aren’t interested in my tale, feel free to skip ahead.

Game 1: Romeing Around

For my first game, I picked Trajan of Rome. He’s recommended as an easy civ to play for a couple reasons. Firstly each city settled gets a free building. At the start it’s a monument which increases culture production, allowing the player to research civics on the culture tree as well as expand the borders of each city. Secondly each city settled or captured near the capital gets a free road which makes it easier for units to travel to the borders of the empire, making for easier conquest. Each city also gets a free trading post which boosts trade routes. Trade routes are a great way to gain extra resources from the cities in your empire, or if trading with a city-state or another civ, to gain some favour alongside said resources. Each civ has a unique unit and building alongside their other bonuses. Rome’s is a powerful early military unit called the Legion which is stronger than its contemporaries, and can build forts, or repair pillaged tiles. Rome’s building is the Bath, which replaces the aqueduct, granting more housing, but to be honest, I’m still kind of fuzzy on how population and housing works. On a basic level, excess food in your city grows the population which allows more tiles to be worked for better yields, and these people need somewhere to live so adequate housing needs to be built, otherwise there are penalties. As you can see,Trajan is a powerful leader, and knowing what I know now, my first game should have been a slam dunk. Should have been.

Not really knowing what I was doing, or what kind of victory I should be working towards, all I did was follow the recommendations of the advisor. What to build, what to research, where to settle, all through the game. What resulted was a very boring game of Civilization. Rome is geared towards domination victories, but I didn’t want to experiment with the war mechanics yet. I built these strong units and kept them garrisoned in my cities, mostly keeping my neighbours at bay due to the strength of my forces. In the midgame, Japan was mad with me, so waged a war. I easily defeated his units and when he wanted peace, I agreed. I really should have retaliated and taken a city or two. Speaking of cities, I didn’t settle too many. I was in a Civ V way of thinking. In the previous installment players could build an empire either tall or wide. Tall is a small number of cities (even just one) that are heavily built up. They’re powerhouses. Wide play is throwing down a lot of small cities all over the map, each one giving small bonuses, often focusing on different things. Civ V was more geared towards tall play, and Civ VI is completely the opposite.

I don’t want to say tall play is impossible, but from my 2nd game onward I learned how important it is to build new cities quickly and often. For one, you want to grab the resources around your starting area before another civ moves in and takes them, and that’s doubly important as you make your way through the eras of the tech tree and new strategic resources appear on the map. The greater your stretch of civilization, the greater the chance you will have access to these new resources, and won’t have to wage war or barter with another civ or city-state to gain access to new technology. Cause that’s what I had to do, finding a civ who would sell me iron so I could upgrade my units. I even settled a city on a tiny island just to have access to Niter so I could continue said upgrading.

So while this game was boring (largely because I was playing without a goal), I was learning how Civ VI worked. For example, when Japan declared war on me, so did my neighbouring city-state. Sending envoys to city-states results in bonuses, but whichever civ has the most envoys in any city-state is its suzerain. You gain additional bonuses, you can levy their military for yourself, and they will declare war on anyone the suzerain is in conflict with. I played around with spies, mostly as a counter-measure as Japan kept sabotaging my industrial zones. I kept building up my science and culture, experimenting with the mechanics as they unveiled themselves, and since I was rolling in dough through so many commercial hubs, I thought I was a lock to at least win a score victory when turn 500 rolled around. I was not. My first full game of Civilization ended in a loss, but I was going to take what I learned right into game two.

Game 2: You Gotta Have Faith

Seeing I had such trouble with him in my first game, it’s kind of funny that I chose Hojo Tokimune of Japan for my second game. Japan was recommended to me as another beginner friendly civ. Their main ability allows easier adjacency bonuses for city districts. Districts are one of the big changes from Civ V to Civ VI. Since I stopped recording footage, I’ve played a couple more games, and I think I’m starting to get a handle on how districts work. Instead of just putting down buildings on tiles that will help production, science, faith, or defense, for every 3 citizens in a city you can place a new district that houses all the buildings that improve specific yields, only sacrificing a single tile. Some districts have adjacency bonuses that improve yields. For instance, the Campus which is the science district will give 1 additional science for every mountain and every 2 rainforest tiles it’s placed next to. For these districts that give bonuses, they will also gain a bonus if placed next to 2 other districts. You want to plan out your district placement in a tight clump to take advantage of these bonuses, often considering the best placements when you first settle your city. Of course at this point in my play, I had no idea how districts really worked so just popped them down wherever I could get the best bonus.

But back to Japan. Instead of getting the adjacency bonus for putting a district next to 2 others, it gets it from being just next to 1, so if you build your districts the way you do with other leaders, you could double your adjacency bonus. Adding to this is Hojo’s Divine Wind ability. 3 particular districts, Encampments, Theatre Squares, and Holy Sites are built in half the time. This gives a nice boost to players wanting to win via domination, culture, or faith. It also gives a damage buff to any units that are fighting on a coastal tile. As for the unique unit and building, Japan has the Samurai, which is a more powerful version of the swordsman. The real benefit to this unit however is it does maximum damage when injured. Units only do maximum damage at full health, so this gives Japan a huge advantage in the medieval era. The unique building is the Electronics Factory, which gives culture as well as production, and will increase production for any city within 6 tiles.

In my Rome game, I founded a religion, but it wasn’t until the game was almost over that I figured out that religious units are bought with faith in cities that have a Holy Site. I decided that I wanted to experiment with how religion works, and without meaning to, choosing Japan as the civ to make this experiment with was fortuitous. Not only because Holy Sites can be built more quickly due to Divine Wind, but the adjacency bonus helped boost faith production. I ended up winning a religious victory in the end, and I want to explain a bit about how that works, alongside other observations from this game.

What helped me experiment was that I wasn’t near any other civilization. I was kind of on a peninsula. Way to the north was Sumeria, but I never built close enough to them to have a problem, and there were city states buffering me from the mainland which Sumeria shared with Spain and Persia. After my first game I realised that it was important to build a lot of cities, so as I was continuing to build my empire, any time the advisor recommended building a settler, I would do that, and send them off to found a new city. I founded my religion early (Buddhism to be themetically appropriate), and started using faith to send my apostles and missionaries across the globe to spread the good word.

Religion spreads via religious pressure. If one of your cities practises a religion, that religion will start to exert pressure on that city’s close neighbours. If you have a trade route with other civs or city-states, your religion will travel along that route and start to exert pressure on that city. What missionaries and apostles do is travel like any other unit, and then use charges to explode a huge amount of faith on the city they’re standing next to. Now if another civ has religious units as well, you can trigger a faith war. Defeating a religious foe will drastically lower their faith in the surrounding cities as well as boost yours. That was what won me the game in the end, when I defeated Germany’s last apostle in holy combat. I had wasted so many turns trying to attack the gaggle of Gurus Germany had around its lands. Gurus are a unit that can heal your Missionaries and Apostles but can’t attack other units directly.

As I was finishing up my faith war against the rest of the world, I decided to strike back against Persia who declared war on me a lot earlier in the game, but never encroached upon my territory. I built up some units, combining two of the same type to create corps, and then three to create armies. Back when Civ V was new, one of my favourite changes to the game was the idea that only one unit could occupy each tile. The previous games allowed multiple units of the same type to be stacked on top of each other creating the potential for ridiculous armies. I never liked it because I never knew when to stop stacking. The idea of planning the types of troops and their configuration on the board appealed to me greatly. That’s why when I heard that Civ VI was going to bring back stacking I was annoyed. I didn’t want to go back to the way things used to be.

And thanks to corps and armies, I don’t have to. Not only are these two technologies a fair way down the tech tree, the hard cap of two units, and then three works quite well. The reason I think so is that earlier in the game, aside from support and siege units, it’s a reasonable strategy to have 2 - 3 of each unit type. Not only because of the power and manuverability, but because of a mechanic I’ve only learned about recently, which is if you surround a city with enough units, the city will be under siege and no longer heals damage each turn. It makes it far easier to take and damage cities if you have more units, and you can always sub out a damaged unit with a fresh attacker. Combining units into corps and armies means you need far less units to take a city, and if I knew about the siege mechanic during my Japan game, I might have been able to utilize it, having a melee army, a ranged army, and a siege army.

I took over all the cities on the west side of Persia, razing to the ground the cities I didn’t see value in, leading to every other civ in the game denouncing me as a warmonger. It turns out even though Persia declared war on me, according to the way the game handles war penalties, while I had a right to defend my borders, I did not have a right to invade their lands and take over their cities. Warmonger penalties and war weariness are mechanics that I’m still feeling out the more I play. If you don’t have a good reason to go to war with another Civ, the penalties will be more extreme, and other civs look down on you if you raze cities to the ground, take over another’s capital, and especially if you wipe a civilization from the game.

It turns out that these penalties are much harsher as you make your way through the tech and civics tree. While you uncover more Cassus Belli, which are excuses for going to war that limit these negative penalities, the rest of the world looks upon you more harshly as everyone becomes more civilized. Fair enough. I mean war is terrible, and as we move towards the future, we tend to think less of countries that wage war on others, no matter what Cassus Belli they might have. I guess the trick is either to declare your wars during the early game where the penalties are minimal, or decide that you’re going to undertake a domination victory, not caring if the rest of the world calls you a warmonger. That was the plan for my third and final game, and things did not exactly go to… plan.

Game 3: A Cultured Domination

I decided instead of trying another beginner civ, for my final recorded game I would let the computer choose for me. I ended up as Gorgo, Queen of Sparta, who was one of the civs that was recommended for beginners. Whaddaya know. Greece gains an additional wildcard policy slot. Depending on the government chosen (which are all researched in the civics tree), a player has access to policy cards under the categories of military, economic, diplomatic, and wildcard (the only section for cards that boost the accumulation of great people, which have great bonuses, and can be attracted to your civilization through great people points. Great). These policy cards are earned through each civic tech, and each grants boons and bonuses that can help at specific parts of the game depending on what the player is trying to accomplish. I’m sure you can see how important having an additional slot to place any policy card can be.

It’s Gorgo’s unique ability that formed my strategy for this final game. Upon the death of any enemy whether it be barbarian, city-state, or civilization, the player receives a culture bonus equal to 50% of the unit’s melee strength. So by going around and killing things, I gain culture. My thought was that I’ll split the difference and pursue both a culture and a domination victory, whichever came first. Domination is achieved once you conquer the capitals of all other civs in the game. You don’t have to wipe them off the map. In fact, if you’re worried about the warmonger penalties I discussed before, it’s best to conquer their capital, leaving one city on the outskirts to allow them to wallow in obscurity for the rest of the game. I shared a continent with Brazil and Sumeria. I conquered them fairly early and it was funny to see them denounce me and make empty threats for the rest of my turns.

What aided me in these early wars was Greece’s unique unit, the Hoplite. It’s an anti-cavalry unit so not something I would usually build or take into battle as I usually take down horsemen with my ranged units, but the bonus was too good to pass up. If a Hoplite is standing next to another Hoplite, its strength is increased. I still don’t know when it’s a good idea to keep a unique unit with its bonuses around for an extra era, and when it should be upgraded to a stronger era’s unit as soon as possible. That seems like something that a player becomes familiar with the more they know about the game. It depends on circumstance, which is a topic I’ll be discussing a little later.

So while this conquest was boosting my culture, I learned that the cultural victory is all about tourism. By building wonders and housing works of art in the mid to late game, tourists will flock to your cities. There is religious tourism as well, where people will want to visit the birthplace of their faith, and visit your collection of religious relics, but seeing I spent the last game playing around with faith, I elected not to found a religion this game, which definitely would have made my culture victory a lot easier to obtain. Greece’s unique building helps with this. It’s the Acropolis which replaces the Theatre Square. It’s cheaper to build, gives more culture, and adds an additional adjacency bonus, as well as granting an extra envoy when built. The only downside is it has to be built on a hill, but Greece has a higher bias than other civs to have their game start with hills around, and I never had an issue placing down an Acropolis.

Now here’s an issue I did have. Pursuing a domination victory on a small continents map hits a snag because of the two continents. The Hoplites are an early era unit, so while I conquered Brazil and Sumeria pretty quickly, laying dominion over my own continent, I had no cities on the coast, so I needed to build harbours to build ships in order to discover the rest of the world, as well as research the science to build said ships, and allow my units to embark into deeper waters. This wasn’t until after turn 150. Actually I had a similar issue happen even before I declared my first war. Once again I started the game sort of left to my own devices. My passage to the mainland was blocked by a city-state. A city-state Brazil was Suzerain of. I had to wait until I researched the ability for units to embark onto the water to be able to pass by. I could have conquered said city-state, but even when writing this, with more games under my belt, I like to leave city-states alone. Even if I don’t like their bonuses.

And my resolve for leaving city-states alone was tested once more. I had built a bunch of airstrips and had fighters and bombers at my disposal. If your game reaches the modern era, these units are what you use to wreak havoc. The only problem is they have to be close to a base of operations to refuel, so I couldn’t wage war with them across the sea. You can research an aircraft carrier, but even with all my conquered Brazillian and Sumerian cities, I had no access to oil, which is needed to build it. One of my neighouring city states had access to oil. I could have conquered it, and taken the oil for myself, but again, I didn’t want to attack a city-state cause I was still worried about warmonger penalties at this point in time. I was Suzerain of the city-state though, so I would have access to their oil… if they ever improved the damn tile. I sent one of my builders in to build an oil well, allowing the construction of a couple of aircraft carriers which allowed me to wage war on Nubia and Khmer from the coastline, as my other units marched through their land, taking their capitals.

All the meanwhile I was rolling in culture. I was cultured as f*ck. The amount of great artists, writers, and musicians I attracted was staggering. I didn’t even have the buildings to house all their work. I uncovered artifacts with archeologists, and built wonders. As some of the civs I conquered had built holy sites, I even had access to some relics. No other civ could compare to my artistic output, and yet, tourism was barely trickling in. At this point I thought that I might complete my domination victory first. It was close. I had just finished taking over Khmer’s cities, and was positioning my naval units outside St. Petersburg, as Russia was the final civ I had to conquer. Then on turn 289, victory sneak attacked me. The game was over. I had won a culture victory, and so ended my time with Civilization VI.

Crossing the Rubicon…of Fun!

But that was not the end of my time with Civilization VI. After I stopped recording I kept playing. In the evenings, on the weekends, and even in the mornings sometimes when I couldn’t help myself. Somewhere in the middle of my Japan game I crossed a rubicon. Where beforehand I was struggling to find the fun in Civ VI, and was dreading each new play session, now I can’t get enough. Civ VI is quickly becoming one of my favourite games in years, and I haven’t even touched the expansions yet. No joke, if you’d like me to make a video on the expansions, let me know so I can queue that up as quick as possible. Otherwise, I’ll start to explore them in my own time. Since that 3rd game with Greece I’ve also watched a lot of Civ VI on YouTube. Strategy videos, tips and tricks, and Let’s Plays of the game on the highest difficulty. Many of the additional mechanics I spoke of during my journey through the first 3 games have been informed and enhanced not only by these videos, but all the Civ VI I’ve played since.

So what caused this shift in my feelings towards the game? What changed in the middle of the Japan game that carried me not only through the Greece playthrough, but dozens of hours afterwards? I think it’s knowledge. Somewhere in the middle of that Japan game, I started to finally understand the multitude of systems the game was working with, that understanding brought joy with it, and I became interested in experimenting and exploring how these systems work. Since then, each new game, each new failed start, each new video watched, and each new decision made, increases the knowledge I have of how to play Civ VI, and it’s continued to be an enjoyable process.

The reason I spent all this time outlining my 3 games, and discussing aspects of Civ VI as I went through them is to give everyone an idea of just how much there is to learn about the game, and yet to also show that the game is accommodating to players who only grasp the basics of these mechanics. Game 1 failed because I didn’t have a goal in mind, and in games 2 and 3 I fumbled my way towards a faith victory, and then a domination and culture victory. Without a heavy dose of a helping hand, playing the way I did would not result in any level of success, but as I wasn’t receiving much resistance from the other civilizations (as well as starting games 2 and 3 far enough away from a civ who might declare war on me for the sake of territory), I was able to flourish. Not with complete understanding, but flourish nonetheless. And that success combined with pursuing a goal and gaining further understanding of how the game works, was a snowball rolling downhill that has turned into the avalanche of my new found obsession. So let me finish this off by imparting some wisdom about the most important lesson I’ve learned through all this, and how it links to how I found my enjoyment.

Why I Love the Early Game

The most important thing I’ve learned in my short time with Civ VI is that if you don’t feel confident about your civilization’s progress by turn 50, you should restart the game. The early game is that snowball metaphor I made at the end of the last section. If you feel confident on turn 50, the other civs will not be able to touch you, at least on Prince difficulty. Watching a lot of Civ VI videos and reading forum and Reddit posts, some of the hottest debate among the community has to do with the early game. Do you found a city on the tile your settler is sitting on in turn 1, or do you move it to a more advantageous position, sacrificing a turn or two of production to start off? What should your early build order be? Should you build a scout for ease of movement, or for a little more production, and one less movement per turn, should you build a slinger or warrior, who could deal with barbarian threats they come across? Do you beeline the monument so your city’s borders will grow as quick as possible, starting off your journey on the culture tech tree? You can also choose to build a settler once you hit a population of 2 to quickly found a new city, or a builder to improve your surrounding tiles to increase food, production, gold, or access to nearby resources. I haven’t even touched on growing your city’s population to have access to more surrounding yields, and how you can manually assign them to certain tiles. Just one more mechanic to keep track of and slowly learn all the nuances of through each new game.

And this idea also explains a feeling I’ve had since at least Civilization V, but I think it was there when I was playing the original Civilization back in the 90s. Sometimes you just need that final piece of the puzzle to articulate something that’s been gnawing at the edges of your brain for years. The early game was always my favourite part of any Civ game. Each new start always held such potential. Once the midgame took off, I was either focused on my goal or just making each decision as it came up, and by the late game I was just going through the motions of achieving a victory condition. I always felt somewhat bored or unfulfilled compared to the thrill of starting a new game with a new civ and seeing how everything played out. The first 50 - 100 turns just hold so much potential that Civ has always lost a bit of its spark once the dust settles and the shape of the game makes itself known.

This is likely a larger issue with what I find exciting about games. I’ve said in other videos that before I started my channel, it was rare of me to finish a videogame. Somewhere along the way the gameplay wore out its welcome, or the story wasn’t strong enough to push me through. Heck until a couple years back a huge part of this channel was my impressions videos, where I played a game for a short amount of time and made a review based on that small first impression. I approach each new videogame with that impressions mindset, seeing if it sparks that feeling of potential and wonder that should hopefully push me through to the credits. Is it any wonder that the early game of Civ VI hits me the same? Well there is a significant difference. While I will often drop a game that has lost its spark to try another game, I have kept playing new games of Civ VI over and over again. Not only that, but I have pushed through to victory conditions on multiple occasions now. So why is that? I think it has to do with the very specific power fantasy that Civ VI and perhaps the rest of the 4x genre taps into.

The Civ VI Power Fantasy

In a new game of Civ VI, based off the leader you’ve chosen, you should have a victory condition that you want to strive for. An element of the first 50 turns is seeing if that’s feasible. Depending on your starting location, the resources at your disposal, and who your neighbours are (be they other civs or a host of barbarian encampments), these first turns may be smooth sailing, or absolute chaos. Now instead of having a plan from the outset, It’s recommended to formulate a plan based on these circumstances. To roll with the punches instead of trying to force your will on the game for a specific outcome. Most civs have at least 2 victory conditions that they’re decent in pursuing, and really any civ can achieve almost any victory condition even without a complete understanding of the game. At least on lower difficulties. As of this writing, I’ve completed two games on Prince difficulty. I don’t know if I want to keep moving up or if I’m happy to continue playing on the default setting. It was touched on before, but this ability to roll with the punches is linked to a deeper knowledge of the game’s systems. There seems to be a consensus that the AI doesn’t make good decisions and is not really a threat even on the highest difficulties, but those opinions come from people who are winning games on those higher difficulties. I would say they have the knowledge of Civ VI to be able to adapt on the fly no matter the circumstance, but in a way they’re still experiencing the same power fantasy that I am, having now started to feel comfortable on the default difficulty. The ability to shape your future, and control your own fate.

The reason I’m able to enjoy this power fantasy is due to the allowances the game gives me when I don’t have a perfect working knowledge of its systems. Maybe on Deity difficulty you have to have that to succeed, or maybe by the time one gets there, they just have so much Civ under their belt that the decisions come naturally. Either way Civ VI excels in starting the player off in a unique situation, and then allowing them to shape the course of the game to their own will. The story of my rise through the first 3 difficulties has run in parallel to my continual understanding of the game’s systems, and I have no doubt that if I were to tackle King difficulty, and even try and work my way to Deity, I would still be walking that path of knowledge acquisition. Even if I stay on Prince or decide to move back down, each game will add to that knowledge base, which in turn will make it more likely that those first 50 turns will leave me in a favourable position to shoot towards my preferred victory condition, which will lead to more knowledge and then an easier game and… hmm, maybe this is how the jump to the next difficulty occurs organically.

Conclusion

What I do know is that I’ll be playing Civ VI for a while. Every new thing I learn through pursuing a victory condition or even a failed first 50 turns, is knowledge that I can’t wait to refine and apply to a new attempt. The game is aiding me in this pursuit, because at least on the lower difficulties Civ VI allows success without a comprehensive understanding of its systems. Just as the first 50 turns is an indicator of success in the late game, so are all the more nuanced decisions that can be taken advantage of by those with the knowledge to do so. Citizen placement, what tiles to improve with a builder and when, ideal placement of districts, ideal placements of new cities, what to research, what policy cards to play, and the list goes on and on. Greater understanding of the game’s systems will allow a smoother game, resulting in easier and quicker victories, and I have no doubt this knowledge is required to win on the higher difficulties. Civilization VI contains multitudes. It took me at least two full games to understand that finding the fun means enjoying the journey of acquiring the knowledge needed to bend the game to my will, rather than just reaching a win condition like in other games. I am still a long ways from a comprehensive understanding of Civilization VI’s systems (if I ever get there) but since that revelation, I’ve been enjoying playing and learning about Civ VI through each new turn, and each new game created. Thanks for watching.

Breath of the Wild Critique - A World Worth Exploring

I was travelling to one of the stables on horseback. It wasn’t until this play session that I realised every stable had a shrine nearby to make it easier to access the sidequests and services on offer. As I was travelling back towards these stables from Rito Village the two shrines next to the two stables stuck out like sore thumbs. It was on the way to the second stable when I saw a pillar of blue light on a nearby mountain. As I was travelling on a road, I let my horse keep moving as I panned the camera towards the hill in question, observing a gentle incline that looked easily ridable. I continued riding towards the stable and continued playing the game, but that lone hill with its glowing blue marker kept invading my thoughts. Finally a couple play sessions later, I decided to go off on a little adventure. I took off from the stable at the crack of dawn, enjoying my leisurely stroll on horseback towards the mountain, easily riding up its incline. What I found at the end of that gentle slope and around a bend on the hill was a small pond, a small pond surrounded by cherry blossoms. It was such a serene and lovely little part of the world tucked away in the middle of nowhere. Further exploration found a few Korok seeds, a shrine, and then a cooking pot surrounded by skeletons as it was no longer light out (isn’t it amazing how much time can pass when you're in a shrine). At this point the adventure felt completed so I climbed upon my horse and headed back towards the stable I had departed from the previous morning. I spent over 50 hours with Breath of the Wild, and while I had many other such adventures, this one sticks out as my favourite moment of the entire game. It's odd right? Sure there were Korok seeds, and a shrine, but it's the pond itself, surrounded by cherry blossoms that sticks out most firmly in my mind. That pond was the reward for exploring what was on that hill.

Is the world better than the game?

When I think back on Breath of the Wild, what I loved the most were those small moments of connecting with the world. The serenity of running through the grass as the wind blows through it. The way sunsets reflect off the surface of a pool of water, or how the dirt and rocks gain a glossy reflective texture when it rains. The title Breath of the Wild is appropriate because the care that has gone into making this world feel alive and beautiful is without question. The first time I saw a dragon flying in the distance I was awestruck. When I entered Rito Village for the first time, how exiting the canyon allows the village to be framed in such a way to be wowed at the sheer verticality of it, or heck, let's go simple. Often the most reflective moments are riding on horseback through the expansive fields of Hyrule, listening to the sparse piano hint at something greater and more bombastic, but never delivering. Thematically appropriate considering how I regard the rest of the game.

Ok, that’s being a bit cheeky, but it's not ridiculous to say that any time I wasn't traversing the land on my own terms, riding, climbing, or gliding around, enjoying the scenery and the weather, I wasn't really enjoying myself. I think the phrase "on my own terms" is important here. Early on, on the Great Plateau, I keyed into the idea that if you were storming an enemy camp or fighting enemies face to face, you had failed in some way. This feeling was given some credence listening to the game’s GDC talk. How when designing each encounter, there was indeed a "correct solution", but the developers didn't want the players to search for it. The point of the physics and chemistry systems, of the runes, and the way all the effects of the world work in tandem allows experimentation and ingenuity on the part of the player. This strengthens that feeling I had that if you find yourself in a face to face fight with a foe, you have somehow failed. I mean yes, minibosses and the Ganon fights are an exception, but are they? Even these fights seem to delight in the idea of the player thinking up fun ways to break the encounter or make it trivial, or the player should be so adept at the tools available that they have fun showcasing their mastery.

Sadly I don't have much experimentation or ingenuity in me. As for mastery of the tools available, ha! I really want to blame the controls too. I was using the joy cons hooked together in puppy dog mode, and even in the final fight with Calamity Ganon, instead of running in the direction I wanted Link to go in, he would crouch, and this would result in damage. I never felt like I knew when or how to trigger a flurry rush, but watching a lot of critique videos after I had finished the game let me know I'm not alone there. The window and trigger for the rush seems arbitrary, which is regrettable for such a useful combat tool. To say something positive, gyro aiming for the bow is the best thing ever, especially when combined with bullet time in the air. I just wish bows didn't break so easily, or at all. And since I mentioned bows breaking, I guess now is a good a time as any to inject my opinions on weapon durability into the discourse.

My opinions on weapon durability and degradation

Even late in my playthrough, I never felt that my weapons were as powerful as they needed to be. It did make me feel better about my difficulties dodging attacks and activating Flurry Rush, because what use is masterful play when your weapons are doing jack all to an enemy's health? There is enemy scaling as one plays through the game which increases the weapons you can obtain from downed foes, but the joy of having a strong weapon makes little difference when it's going to break after a few hits. I've mentioned in other vidoes how I love power scaling in RPGs. The arc of starting out weak, and by the end of the game being able to tackle any challenge the thrown your way due to experience. Of course in most games this experience is numerical. You level up enough, or your gear is strong enough that nothing poses a challenge anymore. Your health and strength overwhelm any encounter you come across, and I love that. The slow climb is sweet, because you’re the one who climbed that mountain. You're at the summit now, and you deserve this feeling of mastery.

Now as I said, there is power scaling in Breath of the Wild. Stronger enemies drop stronger gear, and more dangerous areas of the map hide greater rewards. There's also improving armour at the fairy shrines, and gaining more heart pieces and stamina as the player collects more spirit orbs, but even at the end I felt very similar to how I felt at the start. Like I had to use everything at my disposal to get through a combat encounter, and if I was fighting one on one, I had somehow failed. I think the durability system is the reason behind this. If the player was able to keep an arsenal of increasingly powerful weapons and shields as they made their way through the game, earlier encounters would feel trivial. Those red bokoblins and base-level Moblins require very little effort, but they're usually mixed with the tougher variants. Would those tougher variants be as imposing if I didn't have to worry about "wasting weapons"? Cause even with late-game weapons, that they break makes me not want to use them, and this is counter to how I felt about the durability system during my time on the Great Plateau.

The Great Plateau versus the open world

The Great Plateau nails the idea of power scaling because you start with nothing. Seeing the area is meant to teach how the game works to the player, every discovery is monumental as you piece together just what Breath of the Wild can do. Every new weapon, shield, and bow picked up is a triumph. Every enemy camp cleared a milestone. You acquire the tools of your trade (the runes in the shrines) and the game keeps opening up with possibilities. Before this playthrough I attempted playing Breath of the Wild 2 times, and on this third attempt my pathway through the Great Plateau was vastly different to the other two, and just as enjoyable. Joseph Anderson said in his critique that the Great Plateau is a miniaturized version of the entire game. I disagree. I think it's the best part of the game. That's not only because of the aforementioned power scaling with each new discovery, but the discoveries themselves. Once the player leaves The Great Plateau, it's not that their experience plateaus (after all, the story I told earlier about my favourite part of the game was hours later), but the enjoyability of the power scaling sure does. It's because as a tutorial section, everything in the Great Plateau is as handcrafted as the rest of the vast world on offer, but all its secrets and its beauty is manageable. The game is able to guide the player's experience due to the Plateau's lack of scope.

And isn't that the problem with all open world games? They're too fucking big and they’re not worth exploring? Despite its size, I think Breath of the Wild succeeds in having a world worth exploring. How even if it's a Korok seed, there's something to discover in every nook and cranny on the map. How getting to these places is often more exciting than the reward itself, reinforcing the idea that it’s the exploration and traversal that truly lie at the heart of the game. As delightful as I found the townspeople of Hyrule, I only completed a handful of their sidequests because the rewards were often so poor, and I felt the time investment was not worth it. Shrine quests are a different story because a spirit orb feels like a worthwhile reward for the trial presented, but ok let me give a stronger example for how I felt the sidequests were wasting my time, Terry Town. I love the idea. Creating a new village in the middle of Akkala which is a fairly tumultuous and dangerous part of the world. After I found the Goron and they opened up shop, I looked at the prospect of spending 10-15 minutes chopping down trees (as well as having to find other axes since of course my axe wouldn't last the entire time.), and I just went and did something else, leaving Terry Town unfinished for the rest of my playthrough.

Extrinsically intrinsic motivation

So now it's that time in the critique where we discuss intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Every gaming video's got to have it! A primer on how I understand the terms is that extrinsic motivation is when the reward we get for doing something is why we do it. Intrinsic motivation is when the act itself is the reward regardless of what happens at the end. Breath of the Wild shines when the player is intrinsically motivated. When I finished The Great Plateau, I followed the game’s extrinsic motivation. I went to Kakariko Village and met Impa, I went to Hateno and visited the lab, and then I spent many hours tracking down and freeing the four Divine Beasts. It was only then that intrinsic motivation took over my playthrough. I wanted to activate every tower, and explore the roads of every uncovered zone. I knew the Lost Woods and Master Sword existed, so I wanted to find them, and I wanted to uncover all of Link's lost memories. During this time I found shrines, met people, uncovered fairy fountains, and generally had a fun time unveiling the vastness of the land before me, but even then it wasn't too long after accomplishing these goals that I felt that it was time to fight Ganon and end my playthrough. So what happened?

I can't speak for everyone, but I think I need both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation when playing a game. When uncovering the towers and exploring these new areas I often stopped to go on little adventures, like when I reached the stable in Faron and the people there talked about something magical at the top of the waterfalls. Well, I decided to climb those waterfalls. It was rough because of all the lightning and the enemies every step of the way. When I got to the top, all I found was 3 Durian trees, but that was ok, because like the cherry blossom pond, it was the adventure itself that was the important part, even if the adventure happened because I wanted to reach a specific destination for a specific reason.

So the things I wanted to do in the game eventually ran dry. I've already spoken of most of the sidequests not seeming worth my time, and eventually the only prospect I had remaining was to search out more shrines and korok seeds. I mean part of me wanted to make sure I had at least one row of hearts in order to take on Calamity Ganon, but then the prospect of uncovering all those shrines just bummed me out. Heck, the most interesting shrine I came across, Eventide island ended up being a disappointment because the Hinox killed me and it sent me back to the stable I had taken off from at the start of that particular adventure. And while I would have liked to find the final Great Fairy Fountain, or purchase the ancient armour and weapons from the Akkala Lab, the amount of adventuring needed to procure the cash and materials needed for these flights of fancy made me balk at the prospect of spending more time aimlessly wandering this game world that I felt I had uncovered enough of. Basically by this point, my intrinsic motivation was tapped dry, so there was only one final goal to complete, Defeat Ganon.

Mark Brown over at Game Maker's Toolkit says that everything you do in Breath of the Wild is to prepare you for your fight with Ganon. That's why I defeated all the Divine Beasts. It's why I searched out the Master Sword. It's why I made sure to buy as many Ancient arrows as I could, and it's why I climbed the waterfalls of Hyrule Castle, as I didn't want to waste any of my weapons, bows, or shields making my way to this final encounter. And while the fight got pretty thorny in sections, I was adequately prepared. I beat the fucker! And just like that, my time with Breath of the Wild was over. The game ended with Link and Zelda being able to travel the lands together again, and I felt happy to have my preparation for the Ganon fight pay off, but saddened to have to leave behind this world with so much unexplored and so much unaccomplished.

Conclusion

Maybe the intrinsic motivation to explore this version of Hyrule wasn't extinguished after all, it just took completing the game for the flame to rekindle. That seems to be what I consider a great game these days, that when it's finished I want to play it again immediately. I think it's because I wonder how much different the game would be if I ignored the Divine Beasts and just started exploring the world after leaving the Great Plateau. If a 4th playthrough of The Great Plateau would be different than the previous 3, and if left to my own devices the game would share more of its secrets, but most importantly more of its majesty and beauty. That's what I'm left thinking about most of all after the game is done, how great it is to just exist in this world. The strength of Breath of the Wild is its sense of solitude and its picturesque moments. The combat, and the game's systems I find to be detriments rather than positives, which is weird to say. The game part of the game is the part that is the problem, but I think existing in this open world more than makes up for it. That's what's pulling me back in. This is going to sound super corny, but when I decide to replay this game, it will be to experience the breath of the wild. Thanks for watching.

Why Do People Love Nier: Automata?

Intro

Hey hey folks, and welcome to my critique of Nier: Automata. I want to start this off by telling you a story of the first time I took a class in film criticism. It's 2002, I'm 20 years old, and I'm studying animation at the Art Institute of Seattle. As an elective, I take a class in film. All the classes at the institute were in 4 hour blocks with a break in the middle, so for this class we'd watch a film, break, and then come back and discuss it. In the class’ first weeks we watched Mulholland Drive by David Lynch. I’d never seen anything like it before. When the credits rolled, I was angry. I think I yelled, "What? That's it?". I had no idea what was going on. After break we discussed the film. Not only the teacher, but some classmates who were more accustomed to this type of storytelling explained their theories. My world opened. I had no idea films could be like this. I got my hands on Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, and Lost Highway. Not only did I become a fan of David Lynch through discussing one of his films, it further opened my eyes to what cinema could be. I gained a greater appreciation of the artform through the thoughts of others.

It's why to this day, no matter what I think of a film, I'll read reviews, online discussion, and ask friends their opinions. It always leads to a deeper appreciation. I do the same thing with videogames. As I play I take notes after each session, but once a game is finished, I'll watch and read a lot of criticism to see what others thought about it. Part of it is the academic idea of finding gaps in the literature. What aren't people talking about, and is there anything in my notes that can further discussion on the game by approaching it in this way? But mostly it’s to further my own understanding. I'm a lot more confident in my opinions these days, and I want to see how they fare against everyone else's. If anything I think it leads to a more interesting piece of criticism when I finally start writing.

So now we come to Nier: Automata. Bluntly, I don't see what the fuss is about. I'd heard so much praise over the years, and especially after playing Nier, I was looking forward to this. The earnestness, emotion, and spectacle of that game combined with the budget and gameplay of a Platinum Games action title? It sounded too good to be true, and after playing through it, it was. Maybe my expectations were too high. Aside from two particular instances in the game (which I'll talk about in more detail later), I spent my time in Nier: Automata confused as to what is happening, and why I should care. I didn't have emotional attachment to any of the characters (except for Pascal), and the nods and references to philosophy, philosophers, and what it means to be human rang hollow to me. It all seemed like a wink and a nod rather than using the ideas to accomplish something unique.

That’s why I was looking forward to the writings of others. To find out what I was missing. Do you ever feel like something may be too smart for you? That's how I felt when Mulholland Drive ended, and like the movie, when Automata was done, I looked to others to explain it to me. I also wanted to see if I was alone in regards to the game doing nothing for me. And it turns out that aside from one exception, I was alone. Everybody loves this game. Not only that, they think it's a masterpiece of literature. That its themes resonate deeply. That it's a treatise on how to find meaning in life, how to reject nihilism, and how to endure through suffering. And yeah, all that is in there. I could see it as I played, but almost none of it affected me emotionally. In this video I’ll be exploring my thoughts and feelings about the game. What I found interesting and resonant, and why I wasn't able to come away from Nier: Automata with the reverence that so many others seem to have for it. Enjoy.

“We’re not so different, you and I.”

Nier: Automata is about robots imitating humanity. Imitating our mistakes, and due to their programming, not learning from them. The machines think that if they imitate humanity, they can find the answers they're seeking. We fascinate them because we’re a contradiction. In the second fight with Adam, we find out that the machines that came to Earth as part of an alien invasion killed their masters long ago. The machines saw nothing worthwhile in those that created them, but humanity is somehow different. Adam poses a question that fascinates him about human beings. How can a creature be so full of love yet kill its own kind so easily? Now to find his answer he wants to dissect the brains of the humans on the moon, but still, it's a fascination nonetheless.

Now the humans are dead. I don't want to act like I was oh so clever for figuring this out pretty much once I learned that the androids on the moon were trying to liberate Earth from the machines for the mysterious council of humanity, but it seemed like an obvious revelation. Nier was full of sadness and I thought to myself, "What would crush the spirit of the androids we're controlling? Hmm. What if the humans they fight for were wiped out long ago?" And this revelation is so understated too. A lot of Nier: Automata's most important moments are. To return to the idea of the robots imitating humanity, there's a revelation late in Playthrough C where 9S discovers that the black box that is the core of the androids, what makes them them, is built out of machine parts. The androids may be made in the image of humans, they may be more complex, but what was the question Adam posed? How can a creature be so full of love yet kill its own kind so easily? It's cause the other kind look different right?

This was a source of constant irritation as I played through the game. 2B is supposed to be the stoic assassin, but as we keep playing, we encounter not only machines talking, but Pascal's pacifist village, with 9S constantly repeating the mantra of machines having no thought or reason behind anything they do. While playing 2B I felt she was amiable to the idea of the machines being more than they appear to be, which seems ironic seeing that we learn her true purpose is to kill 9S when he becomes too self-aware. Of course by the time 9S reaches these revelations that everything the androids were fighting for is a lie, he's so consumed by rage over the death of 2B that he's become immune to reason. Funnily enough when Adam had captured 9S in playthrough B he mentions how machines can only focus on one thing at a time, and for Adam, the guiding principle that consumes him is hatred. I don't think Adam actually corrupted 9S (well no more than learning a new idea can corrupt an existing belief), but I do wonder what the point of 9S flooding the network with his own consciousness in the ending of playthrough B meant, when in playthrough C everything crumbles as it seemed it was ordained to. Nevertheless, the important point is that for most of playthrough C, 9S is consumed by hatred and vengeance. His guiding principle echoes Adam’s. After all, machines can only focus on one thing at a time.

Pascal’s Wager

The machine that changes the way our androids view the machines themselves is Pascal. Pascal’s guiding principle is pacifism. He’s created a safe-haven for machines that want to live a peaceful existence. Like the machines of the forest, or the cult in the abandoned factory, Pascal's followers don't seem to possess the same sense of self as their leaders. One thing all these groups share is that they’ve disconnected themselves from the machine network, and at least from the events of the game, this seems to be where everything goes wrong. The leader of the cult is dead by the time we arrive, and without their figurehead the followers devolve into zealous murder and suicide. The forest machines sacrifice themselves for a king that can no longer lead them, and while Pascal's village seems like it's working well enough, these disconnections from the network with the machines emulating various facets of human civilization was all part of the machine network's plan. I still don't know why the machines decided to cannibalize the village, and why they were so hell bent on attacking the village's children, but in the end it doesn't matter. Trying to protect his village leads to one of the only aforementioned 2 times where I actually cared about the characters of this game.

Pascal taught the children fear, and it was that guiding principle of fear that caused them to commit suicide. Of course by this point their death seems moot since in choosing to protect them, Pascal sacrifices his ideals of pacifism, what made him who he is. I can see why he asks A2 to either destroy his memories or kill him. Not only did he sacrifice his ideals, but it didn’t help. He blames himself for teaching the children the wrong thing. I sympathized. I had grown to like Pascal's idealism and didn't want to leave him suffering or kill him, so I wiped his memories. The final cutscene of Ending E warns of the risk of making the same mistakes all over again if 2B and 9S are allowed to live. Based on their programming, there’s a good chance for them to not learn from what has happened, and to repeat the suffering and anguish we’ve played through. I have no evidence for it, but felt that with the idea that androids could live for hundreds if not thousands of years, and that there were differences in the A and B playthroughs, that everything in the game has played out repeatedly in countless cycles over the centuries. It could easily play out the same way again, but the pods believe that as long as there's free will, there's the possibility that things may turn out differently. I felt the same regarding Pascal. He deserved a second chance.

We can’t do anything alone

But even though I cared about Pascal, and found the moment poignant due to his anguish and what he asks of A2, I still had no idea why any of it was happening. That's the biggest hurdle I have yet to clear when thinking back on my time with the game. I just didn't understand any of it. So little is told to the player as they proceed through the playthroughs. Yoko Taro has gone on record saying he prefers to write scenes based around emotion, and I appreciate that, except I didn't care about any of the characters. For the first playthrough I was playing a buddy cop duo of emotionless androids. Ok, 9S definitely has his own personality, but it makes no sense. Heck, by the time they sacrifice themselves at the end of the intro, they act like good friends. I had no idea where that came from, and spending more time with these characters didn't do much to warm me to them. I never understood a reason for 2B to care about 9S, and really, I never got a read on either of their personalities. I mean this could be by design. I did argue earlier that the androids are nothing more than fancier machines, and maybe they can't have a personality apart from a guiding principle, but there is emotion there, for how little effect it had on me.

I think Pascal's anguish affected me mostly due to the gravity of the choice on offer, or at least the spectacle of the fight, and all the melodrama beforehand giving the choice weight. Not only did I witness Pascal's ideals fail him, but then I had a decision to make in regards to their agency and whether or not it was right to relieve their suffering, and in which way. I think the immense struggle of the fight beforehand helped in making this moment resonate. Videogames are uniquely equipped to depict struggle, and to use that struggle to make a point. It's why despite my problems with Nier: Automata, I thought that what the game accomplishes with Ending E almost makes up for the rest of it. Almost.

Ending E is playing with a few ideas. The first is that in order to save the characters that we have supposedly grown to cherish over the length of our multiple playthroughs, the final boss is to fight the game itself. To kill its gods, to fire upon its creators. As the credits continue, this bullet hell shooter becomes an insurmountable obstacle. I love that the moment where this occurs is when the credits for Square Enix and its Business Division appear. Everytime we fail the game asks if we want to give up, and finally after multiple attempts, as the messages of encouragement from other players have become more and more prominent, and that song that I've been humming for 2 weeks reaches its crescendo, we're asked if we want help. Accepting it allows us to succeed. The firepower and protection of other players adds to our own, and the names of those evil businessmen crumble before our might as the chorus swells. It's a powerful, effective moment, and after all the games' misery and nihilism, to end with this is stirring. The idea that our strength comes from other people. That we can't truly do anything alone. The game ends with hope. I haven't come across any piece of writing that didn't have positive things to say about Ending E and I agree wholeheartedly. So why couldn't the rest of the game have been this strong?

Conclusion

Plenty of folks think the rest of Nier: Automata is this strong. While I found the references to philosophers surface level (Oh, the robot is called Jean-Paul and he's a dick), others seemed to love the nods to prolific thinkers. While I never knew what was going on and why, scrambling for answers, others were finding meaning in the journey and its revelations. While I couldn't care less about 2B, 9S, or A2 as characters, others connected to them and my guess is it made all the difference. I'm in the minority here. Aside from the beauty of Ending E, I just can't see what others see in Nier: Automata. Did I expect too much after playing Nier? Is it just that the ideas of finding purpose and empathy instead of killing are so foreign to the medium of videogames that Nier: Automata feels like a breath of fresh air? I'm trying not to be a dick here but I didn't find the ideas the game plays with that unique or revelatory, even after listening to what everyone else had to say. Ah well, at least the music's great. Thanks for watching.