I've been playing Songs of Conquest lately, and I really love the game - great look, world, exploration, battles, all of it. Maybe I miss traditional fantasy races like dwarves and orcs a bit, but that's nothing. Unfortunately I hit something of a brick wall in the penultiamte mission of the last campaign. I defeated both of the enemy heroes 3-4 times each, and every time they are back within on or two turns with a full army. Basically defeating them does nothing but grant them free teleport to anywhere on the map.

Now, it's possible it 's not exactly cheating and the AI just has enough resources to keep doing this... maybe. But it sure feels like either I'm jsut dumb or I'm playing against someone with six aces. And this made me think back to other instances of feeling cheated by AI.

Pendragon on highest difficulty would be a good example. The battles in that game are a bit chess-like, and I had them start with a set-up where I would just lose one of my knights by default. Or in the final fight the boss would just suddenly in his turn get a new move he didn't have before, making my previous move now turn out suicidal.

I'm sure you had stuff like that happen too, so let's make this a place to bitch about all the times we felt like this.

EDIT: I probably should have titled the thread something different, everyone will think it's about ChatGPT or some shit like that. I forgot that's what's usually meant by AI these days. Damn.

Mortal Kombat games, especially the newer entries, are notorious for this. On Hard and above, the AI will read your input, so the only way to beat it, or even get a hit in, is when it lets you.

This is made even more eye-gougingly evident when the AI is in the middle of a combo, you're blocking waiting for a window to get a hit in, find it, and as soon as you hit Kick or something, the AI interrupts the animation to magically block your hit. Unfair and annoying.

Some RPGs give the enemy unlimited MP or equivalent.

I remember testing how, in Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow, enemies don't run out of PP, ever. (Note that this is not the case in Gold/Silver, as I was able to get an enemy to run out of PP there.)

Hence, I found it rather remarkable when, in Dragon Warrior 3 (NES), early on, the game had me face an enemy that could cast Defeat, Explodet, and Sacrifice (3 spells that, if you've played DW2, are quite terrifying when used by enemies), only to have them all fail with a "Not Enough MP" message.

There's some cases of games in a series not being consistent with this:
* Final Fantasy :FF2 gives enemies limited MP, but in FF4, an enemy doesn't need MP to cast spells. Even worse, enemies have only finitely many MP you can drain (and, in the 3D remake, 0 MP in the most annoying part of the game), yet draining it doesn't stop enemy spellcasting. FF5-FF7 and FF8 limit enemy MP, but then FF10 is like FF4 to my understanding.
* SaGa 1 enforces ability use limits on enemies; an enemy that runs out will run away (if the battle is one you can run from) or just die (if it isn't). SaGa 2, however, does not; enemies have unlimited ability uses. (SaGa 2 has a glitch involving confused enemies using Punch, sometimes for over 65k damage.)

Briefly want to ask, how is that game? Would you strongly recommend it, or is it one that's nice to have but not "essential"? I definitely feel cheated by that type of AI. In fact we are all being cheated, not unlike how we have been cheated by the "pivot-to-video". Imagine all the accurate, text-based content we could have had, had none of this stuff took root.

Anyway, as for the topic, the biggest example I can think of is rubberband AI in racing (occurs in too many games to list). This has annoyed me for several decades now. My point of view is that if I am fortunate to be skilled enough to literally run laps around the competition, I should be able to do so. The "rubberband" phenomenon of keeping the other competitors close, giving them artificial boosts, having them travel at speeds unattainable by the player, just strikes me as literally cheating. I have been told and have read that the idea behind rubberband AI is to make the races exciting; you, the player, can't rest and must engage in intense competition or lose to the non-player competitors. Some may find that exciting; to me, participating in a largely-rigged competition is not exciting, it is annoying and intellectually insulting.

In Kingmaker I once failed an easy lockpick check like 10 times in a row with save scumming. Each time the RNG refused to roll greater than 7.

Similarly, Mordheim has quite a bit of jank with turns of poor attack rolls and dodge rolls followed by your unitsgetting crit and stunned to death. Combined with the poor pathing and glitchy level geometry it can make for a frustrating experience. It only works if you have vision to that enemy. It works for you too; if the enemy can't see your character you can run right up to him and shoot him point blank. There's also a card that allows you to ignore control zones, iirc.

Reminds me of Majora's Mask, specifically the Goron racing minigame. Thing is:
* It's a minigame, so it really ought to be easier than the main game due to the genre shift. (It isn't.)
* Near the end of the race, a Goron will teleport to right behind you and attempt to overtake you. This happens regardless of how fast you are.
* Basically, the only way to win is to knock that Goron down with your spikes. In particular, you can't win just by being fast.
* I have beaten this minigame, but I'm pretty sure my PB was actually a loss.
* This minigame is required for a sword upgrade.

Definately not essential. It looks great and is certainly interesting, feels rather unique so I'm glad I played it, but there isn't that much to it. Really the whole thing is super short, and the whole point is to replay it on higher difficutly levels with new characters. Which is not a bad experience, but just kind of shallow. Plus, like I said, at the really high difficulty it gets not so much difficult as "fluff the rules, anything can happen to kick you in the balls".

If you're really into Arthurian legends and their various depictions you'll probably have fun with it at the current price. If you're not into that at all - you can probably skip it.

Sword Legacy Omen is a better game, though only connected to Arthur in the loosest of ways.

Sidenote: is it just me, or did we all stop getting the purple dot notification for unread forum replies?

Yes, while I'm not recalling playing this myself, the teleporting Goron sounds like a good example of what I mean. I also sympathize with the frustration of the genre shift. If we're talking N64, Banjo Tooie has two notoriously difficult rubberband AI races against a character, where, on top of the cheating AI, one must mash a button to participate in the racing. This is probably one of the more insidious examples of feeling cheated by a rubberband AI race as it entails: genre shift with spike in difficulty, unnecessary controller wear, and an accessibility issue as the cherry on top (since not everyone can physically mash the button at the speed or duration necessary, despite being able to play the game just fine otherwise). While the player can complete the game, they can't achieve 100% completion without succeeding in these races. In other games, that may not be as bothersome, but we are talking about a "collect-a-thon" game where most players will feel 100% completion is the proper way of beating the game.

Is there any game in which the AI does not cheat?

AIs typically only try to maintain the illusion that they are playing by the same rules as the player but rarely do so.

I appreciate the feedback! Sounds like the criticisms I have with many indie titles. And I hadn't realized Sword Legacy Omen had a loose Arthurian connection. Also noticing the lack of purple dot.

Sure, it's just that the illusion is sometimes particularly transparent. Or the cheating gets particularly annoying.

Maybe it's why I like King's Bounty so much - it's essentially Heroes of Might and Magic without any AI controlled factions playing against you, so I could explore the map and play at my own pace to my heart's content without worrying about the enemy making a beeline for my town with 10 black dragons at the end of week 1 :D

A couple of racing games comes to mind. Mario kart style usually employ a pretty agressive rubber band AI, the same with Gran Turismo 2 on th PS1. It's not too bad the way the games are designed but the follow are pretty bad in that regard.

Grid Autosport, if the player is too fast or the best car keeps crashing (due the player send it off track) it will be so fast that it will clip through walls and rails as necessary to mantain the 1st position, as defined by the "story" and "progression".

Dirt Rally, I really like this game and is probably one of my favorite racing games despite all the flaws. The rubber band is of course very present but on rallycross tracks, when there's 4 cars on the same track at once, the AI cars can beat the world record by several seconds (several seconds is 10 to 20% in this type of track) if the player is too fast and the cars are not rendered in screen for some reason. If they are kept on screen, say 1/2 in front of the player they are pretty much decent but once they get off sight and the computer will only have to "imagine" the lap times, things can get pretty dumb...

One term: "Rubber Band A.I.".
Whenever that gets used in a racing game, I feel cheated.

That's so true...

Battle Brothers comes to mind. At first it seems the AI is playing by the same rules but it isn't, and for a good reason, if it were they were trucidated every battle by the player ingenuity. Maybe with a "new AI style of AI" will be smart enough to avoid player's tricks.