Fnord

Third mini-rant:

Don’t you hate it when games force you to go back and do secondary objectives in order to progress? You’re at level 20 and suddenly the game puts up a roadblock and says “hey, you’ve not got enough secondary objectives done in the previous levels. Now go back and do those!” And worse yet when each level have multiple paths through and you need to just guess which one has the secondary objective in it, so you’ll need to replay the level several times just to find it.

I’m perfectly fine with games hiding bonus levels, upgrades, or other such things behind secondary objectives, but I never liked it when the primary path requires you to go back to replay past levels just in order to be able to go forward.

Note that I’m not complaining about things like how the stars work in Super Mario 64, where each level has multiple objectives, each giving you a star, and you needing a certain number of stars to unlock the next part, that’s a different thing. I’m talking about things like when games have regular levels, and each level has say an objective where you need to find a certain object, get a certain number of points and killing a certain number of enemies, and the game forces you to have to have completed an average of 2/3 secondary objectives on each level in order to progress

Cece09

The closest i can get to this is fairy fencer f. To level up quests you need to get items but the main ones you need you need to go all the way back into old levels and they require you to change the enemies. Only then can you collect them but you arent sure to get that item each time. Remember when i first played it I spent over 1 hour trying to collect like 3? Earth stones but they just never dropped! Plus the enemy that dropped it wasnt that common so i had to keep running back and forth

Blue Ϟ Lightning

is there a specific game you are refering to thats annoyed you recently? :3

aonrao

Yeah, I’m also curious. Which game are you thinking of? =)

Fnord

Dream Tale was the game that made me make this post

Fnord

Dream Tale.

But it’s not unique. JYDGE is another I dropped because of this very reason.

Lucky Thirteen

Don’t you hate it when games force you to go back and do secondary objectives in order to progress?

Being an explorer, I enjoy taking my time to explore every nook and cranny, collect stuff and do a whole bunch of sidequests before progressing with the main story, so this never really bothered me. In most of the open world games, I actually treat the main quests as the “side activity” :D

Fallen Kal

Haha, I’m exactly the same :D Glad I’m not the only one.

Honestly can’t think of any game that forces you to do a certain amount of secondary goals before letting you progress.

Lucky Thirteen

I can think of one: Ass Creed Odyssey (to some extent). I wonder if Fnord is talking about that game :D

And indeed, I think we aren’t alone :)

Fnord

I find it a bit more excusable in open world games, if you need to do a set amount of side quests to progress with the main story. I’m talking about games with a linear set of levels where you need to do side objectives in order to progress (but where it’s not needed in order to beat the level). Dream tale, a game I tried earlier today had things you needed to collect in each level, and each level also had multiple paths through, with only one path having the item, and usually there were no way to go back to another path. So in order to find the objects you need you would have to replay the levels until you find the right path.

JYDGE does things in a different way. Here you see what the side objectives are for each level, and in order to progress you simply need to do a certain number of those. Many of which were a bit annoying to do.

Sonic Lost World also does this, but I never ran into a road block there. It would have bothered me if I had done it though.

Lucky Thirteen

Oh yeah, good point about JYDGE. I really liked the game, but I said to myself a couple of times how nice it’d be if the medals weren’t needed to unlock next levels.

each level also had multiple paths through, with only one path having the item, and usually there were no way to go back to another path.

Ah, I’m usually spared these situations becaue I follow guides for the side stuff/collectibles, but I can see how something like that can get tedious especially if you’re not fan of walkthroughs.

godprobe

I… don’t think I quite remember any games like this that I’ve played?
Is this a common trope in a particular genre? Or I may simply be blanking…

It definitely sounds annoying though, so you have my backing on that! Optional secondary objectives are fine with me though. And games where the difficulty spikes to a level where you probably need to complete some things you skipped is also mostly okay as far as I’m concerned (as long as those things you missed are clearly laid out).

Fnord

It is relatively common. I think platformers, puzzle games and tactics games might be the biggest offenders here.