Just confusing the people that don't read past the first sentence. :-P

I love Fortnite!
Just kidding, I don't care about that crap.

Endless Space looks cool but has some of the least intuitive ship design I've ever seen, and it always puts me off the game. Taking the tooltips at face value, there is no reason to mount defenses since they're all specialized, unlike the weapons. Even if you mount the right defense for the weapons the enemies will happen to be using, if you believe the tooltips the defenses still look pointless. A shield apparently subtracts 5 damage from a beam attack, costs 4 production and takes up 4 tons. A single beam does 135 (!) damage at optimal range, costs 4 industry and takes up 8 tons. I mean, judging by that information, only an idiot would bother with defenses. And no, there is no slot limit for weapons, so they directly compete with defenses for tonnage. To be fair, the shield module also lists ''120 defense'', but the game never explains what exactly that does. But even if it's good enough to be worth mounting instead of a weapon, what is even the point of the puny 5 laser damage resistance? Ditch that and tell me what the defense stat actually does. I think the combat system is also cryptic and unintuitive like this, so I'd rather play any of my other 4X.

been a while since i played that one, i thought that at the end of the design there is a clear total attack and defense number for a design but i might be mixing it up with 2 here, i do remember that with all the dlc installed the game turns into this FFA design war where the a.i. exploits any design weakness you might show... show up with heavy armor and guns blazing you can be sure the next a.i. fleet will be laser armor based, change the guns for lasers and it will adjust with shields etc etc etc... It is actually a pretty cool game battle wise though that company does indeed have a knack for obscure numbers only to be found out by heavy trial and error... belief me when i say that investing in defense does help

This reminds me of some RPGs where I found armor to either be not worth the trouble, or to actually do more harm than good.

Not worth the trouble:
* Might and Magic: World of Xeen. When a character's HP is reduced to -10, the character's armor (all parts of it, not just the chest piece) will break. It turns out that armor only protects against physical attacks, and there are some areas (including the starting town) where only physical attacks get used; furthermore, the most dangerous enemies don't use physical attacks (with the exception of Dragon Zombies, but they go after your Cleric, so in the area where they appear, you only need one character armored).
* TES: Arena. Armor takes up a lot of inventory spaces, can degrade, and there are other defensive options (including custom shield spells) that make it unnecessary. There's also the fact that the weight of armor slows you down, and this is true of later games in the series as well.

Does more harm than good:
* Final Fantasy 2: Heavy armor drastically lowers your evasion, which in turn affects initiative and run chance. Furthermore, many enemies, including the final boss, have attacks with an HP drain effect that ignores defense but not evasion. (For those familiar with the game, it's as if those enemies were using Blood Swords against you, as the mechanic is the same.) Furthermore, your chance of gaining agility (which contributes to evasion) after a battle is proportional to your evasion.
* Metal Saga (PS2, not a SaGa game): Armor panels on tanks slows them down, making them attack less frequently. A tank armed with a bunch of low-tier sub guns that hit all enemies and nothing else is really the best way to fight, at least later in the game; enemies won't get much chance to attack. It also turns out that armor panels can't be replaced in the field, but damaged parts can be repaired in the field (and even during battle) with the proper skills.

By the way, I find it more fun to take damage and heal afterwords than to prevent damage in the first place, so I prefer to spec my party/builds to optimize healing capability rather than defense. (Exceptions apply if the damage is enough to kill characters before I can heal (like if it's a one hit kill); exception to the exception applies if there's some way I can take advantage of that death.) In particular, I find healing fun.

Nioh's 2d chapter-boss ruins the whole game, after crawling your way through the village, with oke very dumb opponents walking their paths but all in all reacting to you in a decent way you suddenly find yourself faced with this dumb demon ( which in a way thankfully ) displays computer like behavior. there is no excuse anymore for boss routines following strict paths you where willing to try'/endure when younger in several shoot m ups.
( yes i gave up, yes i will return and yes this was a very big dissapointment for a game 10 years in development )

Final Fantasy XIII is about 30 hours to long, grinding is something you do to obtain something and never felt good unless your on cocaine or something, different ( yes i know there are many exercises in real life expecting sonore training routines )

Dragon Age Inquisition is bioware's most boring game ever produced

What is commonly referred to as "grinding" can actually be quite fun if you are making steady progress.

In particular, it's good if you are constantly increasing a certain number (like XP or gold in conventional RPG designs), or if the random things you get come with a high probability (stat gains in SaGa games (when the stat isn't already higher than it needs to be), common drops (even if you need a lot of them).

What isn't fun, however, is trying to get something with a low probability to happen; this includes rare drops, rare skills (in something like a SaGa game), and things like Dragon Quest 5's monster recruitment (also applies to Dragon Quest 6, but at least you can get Healusall/Omniheal more easily).

Another opinion that some might find unpopular:
* Games should have assist modes.
* There's no shame in using an assist mode to get past part of the game that just isn't fun.

Well that is one point of the story, other considerations might be "is the game even worth your time without the extra investment of growing to a certain point to accomplish this 'feat' aka most games feature expanding difficulty levels which certainly oriental made games try to make you accustomed with. thinking in that same line, is that game even for you if you can't bring up that extra input of time to learn a certain skill.

Sometimes you just can overthink things too such as... "where do all the cars go in cities skylines if you upgrade your 2 way streets with parking space to 2 way streets with tree's planted on the previous mentioned parking spots"
you bought the game because you wanted a city builder/simulator and not a citybuilder simulating a simulator...

Nioh made me excited because of the difficult style melee weapon fighting to be suddenly faced with a machine

again if you set values straight you could enjoy both games by for example understanding the worth of the simulated simulation or the fun you might find in varieing your shogun skills with running obstacle courses but the other side is understanding that maybe that wish or longing you had for a special type of game stems from sort of inner recognition of a certain need for your life wich can be obtained by playing the specific game you had in mind making the game you actually bought totally worthless from a certain standpoint

as i said earlier this is prob more a case of overthinking then standing grounded with both feet but i do feel the earlier statements hold merit in their own kind of way

i'm certainly not ignoring how games are made with a specific target audience in mind and we all know that back in your teens and twenties games may.. have served another need then they do when your 20 years past that age

One possible solution: In the game's assist mode, provide an option to increase XP rewards, perhaps along with other things. If the game is manageable for a patient player on default settings, someone who turns on 4x XP when more levels are needed won't have issues if they just want to get on with the game.

(As a side note, if the game is to offer an option to disable random encounters, I think it would be best presented as an assist mode option.)

Swords are over represented while spears are under represented in video games. Sure, there are games like Dynasty Warriors, Mount & Blade games, Total War games, etc., which do justice to the use of spears during the eras in which those games try to showcase. I just think that spears could demand to have at least an equal amount of respect as swords. Or polearms in general.

Funny thing is that I have played games where swords are not that great of a weapon choice, even recently:
* In Morrowind, the strongest bound weapon is the axe (making axes the best choice for early on before you start getting high-end weapons), and the most interesting artifact weapon appears to be the mace with the "Absorb Magicka" effect, mainly because it's an effect you can't otherwise get without cheating or mods (except on a certain scroll with a rather unfortunate name, and that scroll is a consumable, so regular use isn't practical).
* In Lennus 2, swords are not the best choice for damage, as most hit only once. There's the Tsunami Blade (3 hits, but you can hit 3-5 times with a fist or 5 times with a bow at that point), and the Gomutai Blade (3-5 hits with an HP drain effect, but there's a fist weapon that hits 8-10 times, and this particular weapon is not easy to get; it is, however, overpowered due to its 100% HP drain effect), but other than that, swords just aren't that good.

Of course, then there's games like Disgaes, where the ultimate sword is blatantly overpowered (we're talking significantly more attack power than the ultimate axe and the same range as the ultimate bow (on what is supposed to be a melee weapon)). (That item is also notable for the fact that its name contains a swear word, as it's a romanization of the game's director's name.) (At least spears have one property that's sometimes useful; many spear skills move the attacker, allowing you to move characters to places they wouldn't be able to move on their own. On the other hand, fist skills, which move the target, may be more useful.)

By the way, speaking of spears, I could mention SaGa 2 DS. If we exclude the x16 weapons that can't be obtained before postgame (and the spear is easier to get than the sword), we have this situation:
* The most powerful weapon is the Seven Sword, but that's a random drop from a rare and powerful enemy, and it only has 7 uses. It also hits only one enemy and requires high STR and AGI to be useful (which hurts robots in particular, as they need to divide their equipment toward both attributes instead of just raising one extremely high).
* The most powerful practical weapon is the Excalibur, which hits an entire group, always hits (so you don't need AGI), and has infinite uses, but you can only get one of them per playthrough; only via New Game + can you get more than 1.
* Then there's the Gungnir, a spear, which is basically the Excalibur with 30 uses, but unlike the Excalibur, the Gungnir can be won in the arena, so you can get as many as you want; also, for players who don't like consumables, don't forget that a Robot can recharge it to 15 uses on rest (but it becomes only 7 if you unequip it to give to someone else). (If you're a player who hates consumables, I actually would recommend a party consisting entirely of Robots and Monsters.)

Also, Wasteland has no swords, but it does have spears and axes, and the axe is actually the strongest melee weapon in the game. Then again, once you get machine guns you're going to want to use those all the time (don't worry, there's *pklenty* of ammo to find).

I see.. Then perhaps it's me that has been quite unlucky in trying to find a game where spears are equally represented as swords.

You know, I was kinda pissed at the fact that spears were removed from the later Elder Scrolls games after Morrowind. I mean, it's not like the fans were expecting them (the developers) to aim for the fanciest animations for the spear play so as to match the animations they've created for the swords, as spears are most effective when used for thrusting only (or at least that's what I think).

Well, to be fair SaGa 2 *does* over-represent swords compared to other weapon types (the original was even worse; the Gungnir spear was the *only* one and you could only ever get 2 (one from a boss drop)), but at least it has the infinite Gungnir supply going for it. With that said, in the original SaGa 2 (and in the remake), most swords (and most melee weapons, for that matter) weren't that good. In fact, the only ones that I consider useful are:
* Rapier, Sabre, Lightsaber (Laser Sword in FFL2), and Catclaw (which is actually a fist weapon in the remake, albeit still using the old mechanics with a slight nerf), as those weapons use AGI to determine damage. Load up a Robot with a whole bunch of these, and it'll be able to deal 4 digit damage and actually hit, as only one stat is needed. (This strategy isn't as good on Humans and Espers due to their slower stat growth that favors lower stats over higher ones, unless you're in a boss fight and use that one item that temporarily boosts the user's AGI.)
* Gnugnir and Excalibur, due to the fact that these weapons never miss; in addition, if you have less than 70 STR, you are treated as though you had 70 STR when using this weapon, so these weapons work well even at low strength. (Note that Gungnir is really only practical for Robots due to limited availability.)

Aside from that, what *does* work well in SaGa 2, aside from those:
* Martial arts are great early in the game; their power increases as durability decreases, and will last a while; Human/Esper stat growth is slow, so having another source of power is definitely helpful.
* Guns, since damage isn't stat dependent, and the Musket and Magnum rarely miss (particularly useful against one particular annoying boss). There's even a Laser Gun that deals 350-400 damage no matter what, making it useful against enemies that resist most things (like one late game boss in particular).
* Heavy artillery (like SMG and Grenade; the Samurai Bow also behaves like heavy artillery, but is again really only practical for Robots); stat independent damage to a group, and often times strong enough to wipe out entire groups at once.
* Magic: The damage formula for spells is different, and has the result that enemies don't resist them as much as weapon attacks, except when they're immune. Some bosses are immune to elemental damage, but that only ends up being a major issue for one of them. Late game bosses tend to resist physical attacks more than magic, and Flare deals with the one late game boss that resists elemental attacks (unfortunately, it isn't available for the earlier bosses, unless you get it as an Esper ability from one specific mini-boss fight).

Edit: Why the low rating for a post I spent so much effort into?

Sorry, but you contradict yourself. If you need progress for fun, then it's progress that is fun. If you don't get fun by doing "grinding" without it, that means "grinding" still sucks.

Oh Im a spear fan too , sad many games dont have them or pikes :(
Depends on the spearhead , some allow you to chop-chop like the halberd , some dont even have a pointy end.

Yeah, I guess this is the fate of us spear fans whose lives are mostly spent looking for a game with usable spears haha.. And I do agree with you on how other forms of polearms or other variations of a spear can also be utilized for different ways of attacking. I guess it's safe to say that my concern in regards to the lack of spears' presence in video games goes to cover polearms as well.