You say that Dragon Quest / Warrior is the first video game to implement critical hits. This is not true. Wizardry 1: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, way back in 1980, had them, and I'm fairly sure rogue or one of its early descendants (also 1980 or so) did as well. And there may be even earlier instances than that. Another point is that D&D explored tying status effects with critical hits (there's an entire series of these) and also gave characters options for doing more powerful attacks with risks (called shot, power attack, and similar feats) 20+ years ago. These are tabletop games, but I think it's completely valid to continue to look at tabletop games for inspiration and ideas. If you want a specific D&D video game example, there's Devastating Critical in the original Neverwinter Nights, which, like the critical in Wizardry, instantly kills the target (assuming a failed Fortitude save). One final point on weaker hits: several tabletop games (like Storyteller (White Wolf), Shadowrun) have degrees of success. In these games, you roll a handful (or several) of d10s or d6s and you need them to roll above a certain number. If you just barely get that number of dice above that threshold, you get a "bare success". Your action works, but not so well. If you reach a certain threshold of successes, you get a critical success. Occasionally, if you roll one fewer than the number of successes needed, you'll succeed at a cost--decided by the Storyteller / GM. Similarly to this, games like World of Warcraft and Bloodborne have glancing blows, where you hit, but you do much less damage. And, of course, there's always the critical fumble in D&D where you roll a 1.
I remember first ranting about critical hits. P5's technical crits is a step up, but we can seriously go so much further with this underdeveloped mechanic, both mechanically and narratively.
Little sponsorship tip: Use an example. You mentioned a specific course, said it helps makes your projects "more inclusive" and addresses "problems you might never have thought about". While both of those may be accurate, without any frame of reference, I don't know what kind of inclusivity you're referring to, or the kind of pitfalls I might run into. With both those questions unanswered, I can't tell if this is something I should care about. Something like including the line: "For example, most people don't consider text size when building a website, but this course pointed out that when text size is hard to read or distracting, many users will simply leave your site for an alternative. This course is filled with little design tips like that." Bam. Tells me how I might accidentally be excluding people, and gives me the information to infer who. Hope this comes off as constructive criticism
@@Tralfazz74 Recently i have seen Videos such as *The Skillshare Problem Nobody Talks About* and *RU-vidrs Sold Out To Skillshare. The Truth.* knowing about these, i would not recommend using Skillshare or at least suggest to watch/read some reviews about it first.
Pokémon does that as well. Have two mons with max buff attack and defense, they would deal damage the same way if they had none, but if by chance one of them hit's a critical, not only it deal more damage, but it completely ignores the defense boost the other had.
Probably because random crit in any competitive FPS or casual FPS but focus on skill based instead unknown chance of getting actual good teammate and team comp (Most of the time) which is TF2 & Fighting game is obviously bad (because most of your tactics, game knowledge and countermeasure is ruined by your character instantly die to that 1 random attack or a burst of it by being in range of it and RNG isn't in your favor), so he doesn't need to explain it.
@@michaeljonathan9715I mean, being weary of random crits is part of game knowledge. If the entire game hinged on a single crit , there were other issues there. It is harder to deal with guaranteed crits since reliability is stronger than sporadic.
Super Mario RPG has an item critical system. There's a chance that every item used in battle will be a freebie, so you get the effect but keep the item for another use.
Reminds me of the Free Meal skill in Monster Hunter. I've been in love with having that skill on my gear set, because I'm bad and need to use items a lot. XD
@@Vgy1592 There's also the Spare Shot skill, which lets gunners not consume a bullet after firing, which is already good since gunners have limited ammo, but it also doesn't consume the bullet in the clip, so it extends the time between reloads, which is the real bonus.
Star Ocean 2 on ps1 had an interesting healing item critical system. There were generic healing items such as potions, but there was also food. Different foods had different HP/MP refill rates, ie large dish heals more than a sandwich. However, characters in your party have favorite foods, and if the food is consumed they get a 100% HP/MP refill. So even though Chicken Skewers heal 5% HP, since they are Diaz’s favorite food he gets a full heal. The favorite foods are rare and can be made in item creation.
The Tales series usually has that either as a skill that anyone can learn or a character who will be the kind of item user character where they get a lot of skills that are over around using items. Since the series is an action RPG items will have a cooldown so you can't just spam the mid combat. In Xillia, Leia has three item usage skills where one of the skills will have you use the item but not trigger the cooldown, one of the skills will allow you to use the item without consuming it and one of the skills allows you to skip the animation of using the item. I've had all three trigger at the same time before and it was hilarious
@@IosLocarth Actually Leia also had Multi Item that makes the item used affect all party members at once instead of just one but with half the effectiveness.
I mean it don’t really matter if my 1 hp unit is hit by 20 or 60 damage. The vestal is gonna get everyone back above deaths door. Crits favor the player overall due to how deaths door means you can never just get one shot. Technically a single attack could spell a character’s doom if it also applies blight -bleed or you have a heart attack right after but if you are struggling to maintain status protection hp and sanity it’s your own damm fault for not retreating before that battle. Granted sometimes the rewards are worth a death or 2 and the ones that make it through the meatgrinder earn your respect and prove they are worth building up. Like my leper who crit every turn on the shambler fight while the two highwaymen both were struggling and one straight up offed himself in the middle of the fight and the other one who died to a random enemy on the way through the rest of the dungeon. Yeah it sucked they died but they would of buckled under pressure some other time. That leper never let me down though. He never outright performed badly and when I needed miracles they came from altard
To be fair david only knocked him down with the slingshot. He then used goliath's sword to kill him so it would be a critical stun (idk) leading to a finisher?
@@kd2240 It's like in Arcanum, when you make a critical hit on a targeted attack (head in this case), some kind of debuff applies. Stun, prone, blindness, etc.
@@LukeVilent Slings are much deadlier weapons than modern people give them credit for. The Romans hated fighting slingers, considering the weapon a borderline war crime.
In wargroove, crits are based on unit specifics. For example: pikeman crit when they stand next to eachother, archers crit if they don't move this turn, mages crit when standing on mountains, knights when they move in a straight line ... Adds alot to the strategy.
I was just coming to the comments to say the same. I really like Wargroove's system as it rewards the player for building their army composition in certain ways and playing to those strengths.
I really enjoy seeing additional effects on crits (status, self-heal, etc.). Makes them feel more "special" and rewards speccing into critical hit chance with more than just large numbers.
It's something that you find in the TTRPG scene (Dungeons & Dragons, Savage Worlds, etc). Specially useful when "attack for more damage" outclasses most status effects; tying the status effect to an attack makes it worth going for.
I am playing SMT4 for the first time before Nocturne remaster launches and oh boy, I did so many rage quits from having the whole party die from critical wave, titanomachia and stuff like that. It feels like the enemies have a higher critical rate of attack than you will ever have
@@herrscherofshrimps1451 Null is a term for attacks that do 0 damage due to element affinity. For example, a demon with Null Fire will not take damage from any fire attacks at all. In SMT having damage nullified usually skips the rest of your turn, and in SMT IV specifically this makes the enemy Smirk, causing them to have increased stats and a much higher critical chance.
one of my favorite example of crits, which I'm a bit surprised didn't at least get mentioned, is in Dead Cells. It's a roguelike, where you rebuild your character each run, similar to Hades. Only in Dead Cells, crits are rarely, if not, never random. Instead, most weapons have different conditions for dealing guaranteed crits. Some examples might include a slow greatsword that rewards you for pulling off full combos by making the last few hits in one crits, a bow that deals crits if you fire from far away, and even some more interesting ones, like a hammer that crits enemies that are frozen, a spear that deals crits when you pin an enemy with a wall to it, a sword that deals crits when your health is low enough, or a double ended blade that deals crits for a few seconds after killing several enemies in quick succession. While it might not be any sort of x-factor, since you know exactly how to get guaranteed crits, what it does is encourage you to build your loadouts and play differently each run, more than just having different weapon types would. For example, if you find the aforementioned hammer, you might start to prioritize weapons and bombs that can freeze your enemies easily in order to profit. If you're using that bow I talked about, you might prioritize traps instead to keep the enemies at bay. Or if you're using that double-ended blade I mentioned, And you're picking a new perk in between zones, you might go for perks that that also reward you for being in constant, close quarters combat. The way the game handles crits is really unique I've found, and is part of what makes the game so replayable imo, even for a metroidvania.
War Groove is a turn based strategy game with a similar approach: Each unit (besides the commander, who instead has the titular war groove) has a criteria that gives a unit-based multiplier, such as knights if they moved 6 spaces in the process, pikemen supporting adjacent pikemen, dogs surrounding enemies, etc. Pretty fun, I think ^^
@@TwoEyesOpen There's also Extra Credits (though they are not exclusive to game design), with a bigger focus on game animation, NewFramePlus and Video Game Animation Study, and with a bigger focus on psychology related to games, Daryl Talks Games.
Lowkey one of the reasons I could never get into the series. I'm not a fan of how ridiculously punishing the luck-based mechanics are in what's meant to be a strategy series.
@@Skallva It's not so bad recently. The last two games have a mechanic for turning back time with a few charges per map. It's not perfect, I'd rather not have to 'cheat' to get around my characters being crit on a 1 or 2% chance, but it makes it at least slightly less frustrating than in past games.
@@RockR277 Yeah, the turnwheel and Divine Pulse, in spite of how unelegant of solutions they are, make playing the older games a lot more frustrating, because at least Echoes and 3H, you can rewind to before the cheap dodge or crit happened without having to restart the whole 30+ minutes chapter all over again. I hope IS experiments with the crit mechanics more in the future. The games have a decent core but are bogged down by some archaic ideas.
Yeah I assumed it was going to be mentioned given the thumbnail and it’s importance to the hold up mechanic that can immediately end a fight without killing them Plus ot more fair that certain options like dispair if you don’t have any items or skills to negate it (seriously I lost so many times due to a bad roll with that so I just used abyssle surge to cheese through the casino battle arena
@@jmurray1110 he kinda did mention it really, it's the same system that SMTV has, it's basically the turnpress system with a tad more depth in the batton pass
Fun fact about Crypt Of The Necrodancer: It DOES actually have critical hits, but only with certain weapon types. The gold weapons cause you to deal a massive amount of damage if you hit someone the turn after you pick up money, meaning there's actually some strategy to it as well.
in bad rpgs crits only change the strategy from “always attack, but heal if you’re real low on hp” to “always attack, but heal if you’re moderately low on hp”
Yep, if enemies can just randomly crit, you don't just keep yourself above surviving a round, you keep yourself above surviving a full crit round. No one likes dying just because RNG said no.
I personally really like Xenoblade's approach to critical hits. When one is hit, it does some extra damage but more importantly fills the party gauge which allows for chain attacks or revives. In Xenoblade 2 that effect is magnified where there are mechanics like crit healing, the ability to increase critical damage with accessories or certain blades, or critical recharge arts to endlessly artspam and unleash specials, all the while filling the party gauge as well.
Critical hits in some of the Shin Megami Tensei games are game changers. You showed Nocturne a few times in the vid but I think it’s interesting how SMT 4 can give you the smirk status on crust which is a godsend if you get it but the enemy getting it is terrifying. AND it gives you extra turns on the press turns which is both amazing and terrifying
It does not make any significant difference. Criticals are laughably unimpressive and non-exciting in megaten. Damage multiplier is low and you will never see them because spamming magic is the optimal build in some games and even with phys builds will only see crits on moves with built in criticals, who all have drawbacks to make up for that crit chance-nulling the point entirely. Even nocturne, the most notorious example of physical bias, only sees its first viable move being a built in crit move. The earlier part of the game is just tornado spam. Also, dark might exists. And smirking in IV is never as beneficial for the player as it is for the ennemy. there is no point in the game where you’ll see crits be relevant since magic build will never see them, and the phys builds crits are extremely rare without huge luck investment (over 100 luck). At that point you have to wonder if you’re really impressed by those crits when you BUILT them for that. Also, the two « hard » fights of IV are won through weakness spam and dodge tanking. Zero crits, aside from the bosses’. Yes go hit minotaur with tetanus cut crits, you’ll jizz your pants afterwards. And in apoc same problems but phys builds will spam critical eye anyways. So zero surprise. then you have 5 with nonsense like figment slash and critical aura… what’s the point again? And that’s all, no other megaten game has gameplay worth talking about since they’re all story driven. Think about it, truly, when have random natural crits ever impressed you in any megaten? As opposed to crits in games like fire emblem?
@@smtandearthboundsuck8400 in 5 I’d say crits are at their best, honestly. Late game planning turns out around the crit magatsuhi skill was a big game plan for me and physical Nahobino has skills that scale better with hits. Using the stuff that game offers to plan around a crit isn’t optimal I imagine but it worked and felt really nice when I was able to squeeze and extra turn out of it when 1 turn can make the difference in a fight. In older games crits aren’t as important since those skills aren’t around but getting an extra turn from them is always very nice especially if you find yourself in a fight where you don’t have all 4 party members built with moves that target the enemy weakness. Fishing for crits again isn’t optimal but whenever I did get one by chance and it allowed me an extra turn I always found that very satisfying. But that’s just for me and how I played, those things are gonna be very subjective on how people play and who enjoys them
Crits aren’t a make or break part of SMT but I still think they’re more involved there than they are in most other RPGs where it’s purely extra damage randomly
Something that I really like about Pokemon Crits is that, on top of the bonus damage, the attack ignores certain defense boosts and attack debuffs - like how a hit to a critical point would ignore most defensive boosts.
@@elitemagikarp4822 IMO it depends on the crit rate. It functions as a built in fail safe against stalls and slightly reduces the win rate of highly defensive strategies (which tend to be unfun)
I really wish random crits didnt exist in pokemon, ive have lost WAY too many battles just because the enemy got a lucky crit on an attack that wouldnt make my pokemon faint. Oh, but whenever I get a crit its when the enemy has a tiny amount of HP left, its quite rare for me to get a crit that actually did something.
Monster Hunter has always had my favorite implementation of critical hits based on what armor and weapons you decide to go out with Giving you almost complete control on how often you'd like crits to hit
Surprised that Critical Hits having effects out of combat wasn't brought up. But maybe for a part 2. Like in Pokemon Sword and Shield, you can only evolve a Farfetch'd into a Sirfetched if you get 3 crits in one battle. Sure, you get have to get the crits in battle but then to have it a longer term effect outside of battle is rather a unique twist.
There's also the vending machines which have a chance of giving you two of whichever drink you bought (much like vending machines IRL). Always satisfying to be repeatedly buying lemonades and occasionally getting an extra or two in the process (except for in Gen. 7 where they nerfed the drinks to oblivion on top making it hard to find vending machines that you can actually use).
If I understand correctly, he sorta brought this up when talking about Darkest Dungeon (the whole critical impacting stress which leads to permanent changes for the rest of the run). I dunno if this is a correct analogy though; I've never played Darkest Dungeon.
Let me tell about a wonderful MMORPG called Mabinogi (or at least it was wonderful many years ago, until it got ruined by crazy updates and gacha circus). It has a lot of skills. But specifically it has a lot of non-combat skills. And among those it has craft skills. And those can have critical fails or critical successes. And boy is it F U N. (enchanting too) Yes, there is a durability system. Also gathering activities can have lucky finishes and huge lucky finishes. Imagine you're chopping a tree or gathering wool from a sheep and suddenly get like TWENTY pieces at once. ..No, it doesn't have critical fails, that kill the sheep. Strange, I know.
Sorry, what's the out of combat effect in your Pokemon example? The only effect to evolving your Farfetch'd into a Sirfetched is that now you have a stronger Pokemon to use during combat. There's no effect outside of battle at all, let alone a "longer term" one.
@@cjnf11 Huh, maybe FFXIV lifted that system. In XIV you previously had the chance to "crit" for an HQ item while gathering. Since removing HQ items now crits give you an extra of that item. In crafting you can randomly get a "good" or "excellent" status that plays in to your next crafting action which will enhance it. You can also ignore this status if you choose a buff instead of an action. And yeah, there's durability to the item you're crafting. It's a neat system.
Jhin from League of Legends is another fantastic example of scheduled critical hits. While his fourth shot does massive damage, it comes with the downside of having to reload afterward. The perfect time to attack Jhin is while he's reloading, so stepping forward to get a critical shot in on an opponent as Jhin can risk an unwanted and disadvantageous fight.
and to add more complexity on top of that, jhin passively gets a movespeed boost when he crits, even on his 4th shot. so while he's vulnerable while reloading, he also has an easier time running away until his gun is loaded again.
@@gewreid5946 no Yasuo is the one with the mechanic where you press R and 1v5 the enemy. I can see where the confusion arises, as they are similar mechanics, but they are fundamentally different.
really weird that you didn't talk about SMT or Persona, especially with all the Persona clips. The press turn system is an interesting way to deal with crits, especially in modern Persona with the all out attack or with SMT IV with smirk.
Because it isn’t good. Spamming weaknesses will always be better than crit fishing. Which is usually the exciting part in other games, but in smt you’re always given a guaranteed way to replicate what a crit does but better : by exploiting weakness, buffs like crit eye/aura, moves with guaranteed crit, passives with guaranteed crits etc… Crits are boringly implemented in megaten.
@smtandearthboundsuck8400 what a weird way to look at it lmao, investing into crits in megaten is fun because you avoid having to go through the process of painfully checking the affinities of a new enemy, you are able to get more turns on bosses without weaknesses, and you have way more free skill slots than on a magic build
@@kevinfelix2302 what does "investing into crit" means? Building your character full luck? That gives you a still pretty small chance to crit in all megaten games. It's probably strongest in SMT IV. All the while gimping yourself from other important stats Or do you mean using abilities that give you 100% crit? Then that's exactly the point I was making.
@@smtandearthboundsuck8400 I guess saying "investing into crits" was the wrong way to word it but I feel like it's well understood for a fan of the series that you Stat into phys and get one or two crit abilities, that way you pack a decent punch normally and sometimes get some really satisfying crits. I feel it's pretty naive to think that you always have the "better" option of hitting a weakness, specially on hard modes where on a first run you will almost 100% of the time will have to run back bosses because your first try will be a test run for trying out weaknesses, which you don't have to worry about that much if you're building phys/crit. Also by the late game like half of the bosses just don't have weaknesses lol
In Shin Megami Tensei games you can use status effects to get guaranteed critical hits, like freezing an enemy with ice magic and then punching it, it's super satisfying.
@@legendarydragon2564 technical attacks are weaker than crits iirc, and setting up a scenario to pull off a technical is a waste of time and resources compared to fishing for normal crits, which is much more likely to occur because Luck is the best stat in all of the SMT franchise. Edit: On top of being weaker in power to a normal critical hit, technical hits don’t produce One Mores, and disable the ability to normally crit if you try to land a technical hit, ie: using a wind/nuclear attack on a burning target. Unfortunately, magic can’t crit to begin with, and not all elements can afflict Nerve status conditions, plus the effects of Freeze and Paralysis are simply weaker than inflicting more potent statuses like Charm (or mindjack in P5 for some reason) or actually just straight up instant death, because that’s actually a status condition. P5 and to an extent all other Persona games, give the player very little reasoning to use statuses aside from Hama and Mudo because killing is just easier to do with crits and unga bunga Physical attacks.
@@devranyilmaz9806 I wouldn’t call technicals a waste of time since they can naturally occur during the course of a battle. Also, you can’t recruit dead demons/shadows which is one incentive not to use instant death attacks and another incentive to use certain ailments since it can make recruiting and other functions easier.
You mentioned fighting games earlier, but I was surprised at the lack of Counter Hits being mentioned. Landing an attack during the startup of an opponent's attack gets you a solid bonus in a lot of games, such as more damage or better combo opportunities. They sound like the closest parallel in the genre at large to me.
This is a really good point. There's a similar kind of critical mechanic in Star Renegades - it's turn-based, but each turn has a "timeline" in which attacks are performed, and hitting a target while they're preparing an attack causes a critical hit for bonus damage. Also, some attacks will delay an opponent's action if you hit them before they act, which can push the attack out of the current turn and into the next in some cases, or just open them up to more criticals from the rest of your team.
another cool example of effects of crits is Messy Criticals from Vampire the Masquerade, where you do a skill check so well you accidentally make it noticeable that you're a vampire, which is a bad thing in a game where the secrecy of vampires is paramount.
In SMT IV and SMT IV Apocalypse, crits and nulling elemental attacks typically grant a status ailment called Smirk. While a character has Smirk, their defensive stats get stronger and their next attack deals more damage-but that attack expends Smirk. Smirk is also expended at the start of the next round. The benefits aren’t all that interesting (though they enable instant-kills in Apocalypse), but damn if it doesn’t feel satisfying to get.
I like how the critical hits in Xenoblade 1 and 2 contribute to the party gauge. It makes critical hit rate one of the most important stats in those games because it will be worth it in the long run. Reviving teammates, chain attacks, and warning about visions in 1 are all very important actions that use the party gauge, especially when you’re doing the base game.
Xenoblade 2 just makes crits OP by instantly recharging certain arts and fully healing your character with the right equipment on top of the base critical damage, _bonus_ critical damage, and any other damage buffs. Combine that with a 100% critical rate being not just possible, but _easy_ with the right Blades, and things can get very out of hand. If you want to count other bonuses other than strictly crits, you have the ability to ignore guard or defense, or increase the bonus damage for hitting an elemental weakness for the entire party.
Would intentionally play Backburner pyro just to wipe an unsuspecting enemy team. Often dying many times in the process to get there, as no backblast makes pyro super defenseless.
to give credit where its due TF2 did at least implement a mechanic to moderate the extremes of RNG (even if it was more of a counter-cheat measure). The server basically keeps track of how much damage someone did vs how often they rolled a random crit. If someone just landed a couple of crits they won't get another until they can do enough damage with regular shots to balance it out.
You mentioned fighting games several times, but never the counter hit. This is the most traditional critical hit in the genre imo. If you hit an opponent while they're attacking, they will take extra damage and will be stunned for longer, allowing for easier and more devastating combos.
Extra damage may vary between FGs. Some don't at all like Guilty Gear but the extra hitstun is where the money is at, unlocks more combo routes off a counter hit confirm than a normal hit confirm and may lead to high optimal combos
my favorite variant of the Critical Hit occurs in Devil May Cry where if you parry a specific enemy at the last second you get a one-hit-kill on them if that's not similar enough, the secret mission where you're required to do this is even called Critical Hit
Also worth mentioning that in Pokemon (and maybe other RPGs), critical hits don't take account of negative stat changes, so they have an impact on strategising whether using such moves would be worthwhile, especially if you know you enemy has a move/ability with a high crit chance
I remember a game called "Doom and Destiny advanced" where every single action had a chance to crit. Attacks, heals, debuffs, buffs. Status effect crits were really important since they doubled how many status tokens were applied to a target, which could help break through an enemies status resistance, or really strengthen an ally.
SMT's press turn is my favorite crit system in a jrpg, whenever you hit an opponents weakness/get a crit, you get an extra turn. Your opponents also get this mechanic.
well, the smt system lets you die without any counter measure available on the early stage of the game (crit on main character then attack again main character = enough damage to kill him and instant game over) that's a major flaw on this otherwise good system and a workaround could and should have been found since first games.
@@TheOnlyRaviol that’s only in early game when you don’t have as many options. Later in the game, you can find some demons that are strong against the attacks and eat up all their turns
@@TheOnlyRaviol I think only Nocturne in hard mode and IV have that problem, and even then In IV you have a demon after the second figth and you have pixie in Nocturne.
Critical hits against AI: Cool game mechanic that can feel awesome and give the gameplay more variety Critical hits against players: Complete and utter bullshit, possibly the worst game mechanic ever created Note: This only refers to random critical hits, headshot crits for example wouldn't count There's a reason most TF2 players despise random crits.
Critical hits in Pokemon are actually one of the only things that turns 'Setting up your defensive Pokemon to take any hit as well as heal and waiting' into a much worse archetype of team, as defensive teams like that are typically on the slower side, and are thus more susceptible to moves hitting them first, allowing you to get crit and killed. That archetype also prolongs the battle, and thus the longer battle allows you more chances to crit the enemy that set up. The length of a typical Pokemon match has room for 0-1 crits, MAYBE more than 1 on a particularly an unlucky day.
@@harpot678 I thought criticals in pokemon are like, 4% chances now, or something like that. In a competitive setting (doubles), criticals are pretty rare.
I'd further clarify that to: Critical hits against human opponents: all skill, best mechanic ever cause it lets a good player be good Critical hits against myself: absolute joke. I was lagging. Wall hacks or aim bot probably
I've always thought of crits as the character finding an opening to hit the weak point and with more effort than their regular attack, so it even makes sense in terms of how characters naturally interact in their world
Which is why skill based crits make sense. One game that I think does crits especially well that I'm kind of sad doesn't seem to get mentioned in the video just hovering over it all is Gunfire Reborn. Most enemies take critical damage if you shoot them in the head. How much critical damage? That's determined by your weapon's crit multiplier, since it's a roguelike. You can get scrolls, hero specific skills, special inscriptions on your weapon, and more to increase the damage of your crits. One run I had recently I was playing as the sniper hero who gets to stack an additional damage multiplier on their crits every now and then with their primary skill, and would up one-shotting minibosses and carrying my teammates in the run. With 36x normal shot damage and a pretty high per shot damage in the first place, hardly anything could stop me and that was honestly the most fun I've had in the game in a while. The run peaked when I got to shoot a single arrow through the gills of four abyssal serpents, taking away over half of the bosses' collective health. Also, another cool touch is that the starting gun with infinite ammo you constantly have has a higher than normal crit multiplier, making it less boring than it would be otherwise.
I like the crit system from Wargroove. It's based on the idea of "under what circumstances would this unit naturally gain an advantage?", and every type of unit has a different trigger. So pikemen of course crit when they're next to another pikeman, but mages crit when they have a defense bonus - I suppose they need a safe place to prepare their spells?
Wargroove has an interesting critical hit mechanic for a strategy game, almost every unit class has a condition that makes it always hit critical when fullfilled. Like a spearman needs to be adjacent to another spearman or a Knight needs to move exactly 6 spaces away and then attack.
In Final Fantasy XIV, there's a healer job called the Scholar whose focus is around critical heals, going so far as to have an ability to guarantee your next heal is a critical, and giving a secondary shield if you use your primary single target heal. It also scales the amount of damage/healing on crits based off of your critical chance, with a secondary, more traditional crit hit system called "Direct Hits."
Don't forget about the Batman Arkham games. You could do crits by timing your free flow attacks right, which would make your combo grow twice as fast, allowing you to perform insta-KO moves after only 4 hits!
This was actually similar to the "combo kill" system in the original Assassin's Creed (and promptly abandoned for future entries in the series for no good reason) where a perfectly timed follow-up on a successful hit would perform a special attack which usually instakilled the target. There's also a similar-ish mechanic in Absolver, called "perfect hits" by the game itself, but known to the playerbase as "goldlinking" - they don't have a combo counter, and don't do bonus damage or any other direct effect, but timing your attack input correctly just after a hit lands (or misses, with slightly different timing for a hit), you can cancel your recovery animation into the next attack in your combo, allowing for faster chaining of attacks than you'd get if you were just mashing the buttons.
Minecrafts crit system is actually really cool in PVP, To crit you have to time a hit to when you are about to land on the ground, crits deal more knockback and more damage. But air time makes you more susceptible to knock back. The system also rewards use of extra items like potions, A slow falling potion makes the window for a crit bigger, but increases air time, and a jump boost potion thrown at an enemy throws off their timing for crits as they jump higher.
I know that music in the background at the beginning! It's sophisticated fight from the legend of heroes: trails in the sky! I just beat the trails arc in the legend of heroes series and am looking to start the Crosbell arc!
"Criticals" are already used for fighting games for a while, those are the Counter Hits They usually give you not only extra damage, but also provide extra hitstun that leads into more combo opportunities or routes
Fiora in Xenoblade 2: "Wait, critical hits are supposed to be a random chance?" Things crits can do in XC2: Deal more damage; deal extra critical damage on top of the base critical damage; deal more damage _for the entire rest of the right;_ fully heal your character; instantly recharge your arts; all of the above simultaneously.
@@typehere6689 Xenoblade Chronicles 2 for the Switch. Fiora is a playable character cameo from the original Xenoblade Chronicles and is available from the DLC Expansion Pass.
Thank you! I kept thinking it was from Baten Kaitos, but both games were part of my childhood. I think there was a battle theme from FF13 in there that also made my ears perk up.
I feel like you've lengthened the video by making the definition of critical hits more broad than most people would, but there are some great points here.
I think it's worth Noting that pokemon's "basic extra damage" crits *do* have their own extra effect. They ignore negative stat changes. If the pokemon who deals a crit has had their attack stat lowered, the critical hit not only does extra damage, but calculates that damage as id the stat was not lowered to begin with. Likewise if the enemy being hit by the crit has increased their defenses. I once used this on a (gimmicky) Hydreigon set with 100% crit chance Draco Meteor. Draco Meteor is one of the most powerful attacks in the game but it has the side effect by dropping the user's special attack by 2 stages (up to a max of 6) every time it's used. This build not only got an extra 50% damage boost, but never got the penalty because the crits ignored it.
In Kingdra (that can also have the Sniper ability that makes its crits hurt more), this is (or at least used to be) not really a gimmick, but one of the main sets.
@@stephenfong1144 Yes. That's what you get when your critting chance gets at +3 or more (since Gen 6). Typically, that's done with held Scope Lens (+1) and Focus Energy setup (+2).
I really liked critical hits in Into The Breach! Well actually it's more like enemies have a chance to *not* do damage, so it's like a reverse-critical hit, I guess
re: monster hunter, they also had a series of weapons in earlier games from chaotic gore magala which had both a positive and negative affinity, so there was a chance to get a crit and an uncrit. It really helped show the weapons as coming from a split of the two sides of magala, gore, which had high raw and negative affinity, and shagaru, which had lower raw but decent affinity
Those weapons also had the interesting mechanic that if you 'beat' the frenzy virus then the negative and positive added together for a usually 70%+ affinity chance. The armor skills on the chaotic gore set were damn good at getting and maintaining that bonus.
I like how in Mario & Luigi there are two critical hit mechanics: The typical one based off chance, and one where if you time your attacks properly, you do extra damage or you may continue attacking, depending on the attack.
@Design Doc Is one of the few channels I'll watch all the segways and sponsor thankings for. Thank you for sharing your design analysis; you've definitely changed the way I look at design for video and tabletop games.
Just the entire TF2 mini crit and crit system, to name something, take the Market Gardener, it's a melee option for the soldier that deals a crit when rocket jumping, and in TF2 a full crit on a melee weapon almost always kills your target, this leads to a whole new playstyle where you rocket jump across the map using certain rocket jump related items for an instant kill if you have the skill to hit a moving target moving at Mach 2. and that is just one example, tons of weapons use this one 3x multiplier for tons of unique playstyles, like with the Frontier Justice, Enforcer, and Jarate/Bushwacka. Edit: I got the ambassador and enforcer mixed up, the enforcer has no crits.
12:51 I'd argue that with Fire Emblem, the system in its original state was fine, but as the years passed and the original developers left, the original intention of permadeath and critical hits coexisting was lost. The original game was designed for the roster to be completely expendable - there was a total of 52 playable characters, and you received a plentitude of each classtype. Character stats ultimately didn't matter all that much, as enemies weren't all that threatening. The critical hit ultimately exists as a way to create a miniscule threat to your units to create a unique ludonarrative for the player. While the second game, Gaiden, had a drastically smaller cast and identical critical trigger rate, they attempted to make this less of an issue by providing revival springs. Genealogy of the Holy War began to shake things up with a new system; while the playable cast was smaller, similar to Gaiden, the Critical system became much more restricted, as it was relegated to a character-based ability - only certain characters were capable of triggering a critical, with some only capable of doing so if they were under 50% HP. This made things much more predictable, and drastically lowered the chance of surprise deaths for the player. They then included an extension of the critical system to the new weapon and family mechanics: There were no infinite supply of weapons in this game. Rather, you would return to the castle blacksmiths to repair them. Once a weapon had killed 50 enemies, it began to have a small chance of activating a critical hit, until 100 kills, when the weapon gives the unit a 50% crit chance. Then, if the unit is adjacent to a sibling or their spouse, they gain an additional 20% chance of triggering a crit. The system was ambitious, and didn't work too well in-game, but it was much more predictable and couldn't be abused as much against the player. Thracia 776 features what is likely the series' most refined critical system. Every unit features a stat called a Follow-Up Critical Modifier, or FCM (some will also call it the Pursuit Critical Coefficient, or PCC). This stat grants characters a higher chance of triggering a critical hit if they perform a second attack in combat. Then, to make the follow-up attack's critical potential more distinct, every character's first attack is locked to have a maximum of a 25% critical chance. To lessen the cost of enemy criticals, the playable cast was once again sized up to 52, and twelve items were introduced that not only increased the growth rates of the character holding them, but also negate the ability for the character to be hit by a critical hit. Future installments in the series often began to grow worse and worse at handling critical hits, as development swapped hands between different directors and teams with different interests. The desire to tell stories with much smaller casts is something Intelligent System continues to lean into, but the lack of desire to change the systems that run counter to this new direction, like dealing with enemy critical hits and the permadeath system that Fire Emblem was based upon, hampers the modern experience. And the Turnwheel/Divine Pulse system is not an effective resolution to the problem.
I like how Ekko in league has a periodic critical that gives him lot movement speed as an effect, really great for positioning in a fight (in addition to a burst of damage, but videogame gotta videogame)
Another example is applying crits to items, which I thought you were gonna bring up in the Pokemon example. In more recent Pokemon games, when using a ball to attempt a catch, they've added a chance for a Crit Capture, greatly upping the chance you caught the Mon! An even older example is Super Mario RPG. Sometimes using an item will just net you a free one in return.
There is one enemy in Dragon Quest IX that can crit whenever it wants, and It is actually more dangerous in a 1v1 than the final boss, because crits in that game seem to ignore defense.
In Mario + Rabbids crits are a central mechanic of the game, as landing one not only does extra damage but also enables your weapon's status effect. Effects like honey and ink can be _critical_ to winning fights, so it's important to take crit chances into account when attacking.
Of course, then you have R. Luigi, which is the crit-focused character on your team: His weapons have a heightened crit rate (potentially up to 100%) and deal two of the most useful statuses: Stone, which completely stops the opponent whereas Honey, Ink, and Freeze each stop one action (Honey stops movement, Ink blocks normal attacks, and Freeze blocks special actions,) and Vampire, which cause attacks that hit the afflicted character to heal whoever hit it. There's also the mechanics of dash attacks (attacking by crossing into your opponent's space during your move, Rabbids have special effects with those) and team jumps (go on a teammate to move further and over otherwise impassible terrain. Mushroom Kingdom residents have special effects with those.) However, the only relevant part to that is that R. Luigi's dash inflicts Vampire as well.
Notably, if you want to really do all in on crits, some weapons (Nemesis Sword and Zagreus Bow) already have inherent crit chances, and there is no notably distinction between them and Artemis's crits as far as I can tell, so grabbing the crit passives from Artemis and Deadly Strike goes a long way.
In SMT the crits are awesome, they can only be dealt with physical attacks, but landing one will guarantee one more turn for your party, and it is completely up to luck, except if the enemy is frozen, or if you have certain skills and the Kagutsuchi (you don't wanna know what that is) is in a certain phase at the time the battle takes place. SMT to me strikes the perfect balance between randomness and careful strategizing if that word even exists
Idk if you mentioned it or not, but Fossil Fighters did some cool things with the critical hit, like some creatures having higher chances (or in one case ALWAYS) scoring a critical. I think there's an attack raising skill that seems to highly or even make the critical chance 100% as well but I'll have to do some research.
Fire Emblem also has the Devil Axe where critical hits are punished by the character receiving the damage instead of dealing it. The trade off is that the Devil Axe has one of the highest base attack stats in the game.
I love videos like this that clearly defined the options in game design and destroy the assumptions that the most popular way to do something is the only way to do something
One thing you didn't mention about crits in Darkest Dungeon is that if your character lands a crit, they'll get a temporary buff dependent on their class, so a healer will get a healing buff while a rogue will get a dodge boost for instance. I love this idea of the effect of a crit changing according to who landed it and I'd wish more games try something like that.
Hearing the Star Ocean: Till the End of Time battle theme close out this video had me HOLLERING! So glad to see that OST get its share of well-deserved representation 👍
I like how Dead Cells uses its crits, the crits aren't based on RNG, but instead some weapons have a specific condition that causes crits, like "Enemies looking towards you take crits" or "Poisoned enemies take crits"
Critical Hits in a Pokemon Nuzlocke are so interesting and an experienced player has to factor in that their opponents next attack could kill their pokemon even if a non crit would be safe.
It does add a layer, but at the same time, fuck if it doesn't turn most of your own crits into a hindrance rather than a help. If the enemy gets a crit? You lose a teammate. If you get a crit? You lose a teammate. And with Nuzlocke rules, that's a whole route wasted. Bonus points if you're running on dupes, have duped out everything on the route except a 5% or lower encounter, spend fifteen minutes searching for it, and then when it finally arrives, RNG says you just wasted all that time because it rolled a 20.
"Interesting" is one way to describe it i guess. In my opinion Pokemon has enough stategic depth and unpredictability with team compositions, abilities, movesets, held items and natures/ev's so that random crits and random status afflictions make the battle system worse. If I win a battle because of a random effect it feels like I didn't earn it and I wasted my time actually planning how to win, if I loose a battle because of a random effect it's the worst experience I can have playing Pokemon.
@@janb.3600 true, but at the same time a lucky crit can enable an underdog win where the opponent has buffed up their defence massively or overall is just slightly more skilled. It inspires hope but also fear.
I loved the whole critical/weak/technical mechanic in both Persona 5 Royal and Persona 5 Strikers. Made me really go for status effects for once - and made them actual fun. And crits in DQXI were satisfying beyond belief, same as the whole Victimizer move with Erik. Something about bigger, bolder numbers showing up just feels great :)
I like the way Minecraft handles crits, you land a crit by attacking while landing. The timing is quite strict and takes time to get used to, plus jumping might put you in a dangerous situation, making landing one feel even better.
You mention the idea of positioning and sweet spot in fighting games, and some sort of do this already. Conventional 2D fighters like KoF and Street Fighter (where there's no block button) already have the option of the cross-up, where attacking as you cross the opponent's center line renders the attack unblockable, but closer to the idea of the critical hit is the staggering amounts of damage that rear grabs can deal in games like Tekken and Soul Calibur. Related is the idea of the counter hit, where again, depending on the game, hitting an opponent as they attack causes increased hit-stun, damage, or even turns the move into a launcher, stagger or wallsplat. Again, there's no random chance, but the idea of rewarding skillful play or risk-taking is creating an advantage for those who'll take it.
I admit its surprising that there were no mentions of crits in the Persona series. Especially since they are the other method (baring elemental weaknesses) to force Down status on an enemy to prepare for an AOA, which are important gameplay.
@@SuperPaperPokemon even the press turn variant in other megaten games popped up unmentioned - both the refund of a turn icon into a half turn icon on crit and the loss of multiple turn icons on miss were shown, albeit it's easy to forgiven anyone for not noticing since they lack the visceral satisfaction of knock downs and the subsequent one mores or aoa ... or at least, it's a lot less visceral when just watching. having an enemy to burn through all of their _party's_ turns because they hit one of your guys with something they absorb _does_ feel pretty fantastic when playing, i have to say
Yeah it's a pity since it's such an interesting system that's applied to both enemies and the party! It creates a lot of synergies, you can use fusion to cancel your persona's weakness... I think it would have fit the video pretty well!
@@hi-i-am-atan It shares a lot of balance considerations with Octopath's Break system, so maybe he didn't want to double up. Octopath is known by most people who play SMT, but I don't think the other way around is true.
Wargroove is a tactical strategy game like Advance Wars or Fire Emblem. In that, critical hits are determined 100% by strategy. Each unit has a condition under which it will always do bonus damage. For pikemen, it's being adjacent to another pikeman. For war dogs, it's attacking an enemy that has already been attacked by a wardog. For archers, it's not moving before shooting. The lack of randomness fits a game about pure strategy.
Missed opportunity to talk about Golden Sun, which I always think back to in discussion of crit systems. Golden Sun has the Unleash system, a mechanic that changes between games but the basic idea is each weapon has a unique special attack with its own name and visual effect, which will do bonus elemental damage and often carry status side effects, the odds of triggering based on how long that character has been using that weapon. Unleashes are really fun because of the aesthetic differences as well as the mechanical ones, and it does a good job of giving feel and personality to what would otherwise be boring stat sticks like in most other games.
125% chance of getting a Crit on a gun that fires like 10 bullets per second. Plus a 15% chance that my Crits are even stronger Crits. Plus a 30% chance that my Crits DOUBLE my firing speed. PLUS a 30% chance that my Crits inflicts Slash/Bleeding at the same damage level as the Crit, meaning if I land even a handful of those on the enemy, I can literally stop shooting them and the Bleeding will finish them off in a matter of seconds anway. Warframe is SUCH a balanced game you guys. XD
I'm surprised when you mentioned defensive crits you didn't mention evasion tanks in Xenoblade. A class that specifically revolves around increasing your evasion stat as much as possible while generating as much agro as possible to have a really unique type of tank.
@@kitthekat6844 some weapons deal crits on the second and/or third swing of the combo, some weapons deal crits based on status effects and environment conditions, some weapons and skills are focused around making other weapons deal crits. For example: Electric weapons crit enemies standing in pools of water Fire weapons turn the "covered in oil" effect into a damage-dealing "covered in burning oil" effect Some shields make your next attack deal extra damage after you parry There are a bunch of dual-wield weapons which are focused around using one weapon to make the other crit (e.g. the ice crossbow, where one hand freezes enemies and the other crits frozen enemies) The Hokuto's Bow is a ranged weapon that does very little damage on its own, but it applies a status effect that increases all the damage an enemy takes, and to top it off, when the enemy dies it spreads that effect to all enemies around it The Scythe Claws are a dual-wield weapon that crits when you alternate which hand you use
Fighting games also have "just frame" attacks. Similar to the "sweet spot" mechanic, a just frame is a skill-based critical triggered when you input a special move command with specific timing. Kazuya in Tekken is the most obvious example with his Electric Wind God Fist. Do the move normally and you get the standard version, but the just frame version gives benefits like increased damage, faster recovery, etc. You can train to do it more consistently, but there's always the chance you might hit it just right on accident. And on the defensive side, you have just defense and instant guard in some games, which is blocking at the last possible second to get bonuses like reduced block damage, faster block stun recovery, or less push back to enable easier reversals. Parries in Third Strike are a type of just defense, but you have to risk eating an attack since, unlike a regular just defense, you don't have a chance to block normally if you're a bit too soon with the input. It's less of a critical attempt in that way since it's an all-or-nothing skill with higher reward for the higher risk.
Crits kinda do exist in fighting games. In many of them, if you punish an opponent's whiffed attack, you get a counter hit which either increases the damage of an attack or in some games allows for more devastating combos to be performed on the opponent. Some games like blazblue and under night even have something that's called a fatal counter when you punish an opponent's whiffed heavy attack, which can lead to even greater damage and combos. The best part of this system is it depends on reading the opponent and not on chance.
12:58 Imo enemy crits are _mostly_ fair in fire emblem, and it's possible to approach high-crit enemies in such away that you'll be fine no matter what, but the keyword is _mostly._ That paladin Damian spawns and attacks on the same turn with no warning if I remember correctly, which is in of itself indefensibly unfair (and unfortunately not super uncommon in the series), so that's the main problem rather then the killing edge he wields, which is sort of just insult to injury in this case, but it would otherwise be possible to adapt around.
Actually, he only attacks if the pirates have been aggroed on you (you cross a certain point and the boss says something, and they only start attacking then). If you took the top route and avoided aggroing them, you'll be okay
Oh yeah now I remember. Not that it gets a pass because of that though, since the player can't be expected to know except through hindsight. In fact unreactable obstacles probably make up the vast majority of what could be called bullshit in games. And I forgot to touch upon it originally but Design Doc also used footage of Lloyd at the shrine of seals with a light brand, which I think is legitimately in line with the point he's trying to make since you have no choice here but to soak a potential critical hit. I don't remember exactly what the matchups might be like but I get the feeling that there's a real possibility of a player having no units who can reliable fight him (also I always found it funny how he drops an item that nullifies crits). Maybe it would have been better if the video talked about this example specifically, but I guess it doesn't matter all that much since it's just one bullet point towards the goal of the video.
