For part one of this three-part status effect miniseries, head over to this post, Status effects are poisons that turn my silent heart to stone
The nightmare continues. What, you thought that it was over? Unfortunately, this is not the case, as status effects are nearly as numerous as the hitpoints of a high-level Final Fantasy character. I don’t want to talk about all of them, as some of them actually make sense. But where’s the fun in that? It’s not the JRPG way, man!
So, instead, let’s take a look at some of the other bizarre, nonsensical, and pointless status effects from the world of RPGs. Is it going to be a fair and accommodating look at them? No. No it is not.
Curse
Voodoo shit. Execration (not excretion). Hexing (not Hexen). The fine art of cursing is something that we’ve probably all tried at some point. That dick stole my money in the lunchroom, so I’m going to recite a curse that will cause his head to be replaced by his ass while he sleeps. They never work, unfortunately, not even with the use of a voodoo doll or an elaborate ritual site crafted in the luggage closet.
However, the world of Final Fantasy does not play by our rules. In fact, a curse is a very dangerous thing to even the greatest of heroes, as a curse spells certain doom for someone who does not act to nullify this terrible affliction. How so? Well...that’s the tricky part. Sometimes, it kills you after a certain number of turns.
Or it makes you unable to use special attacks.
Or it lowers your stats until it is cured.
Or it just up and fucks your whole party with poison, disease, confuse, and sap.
Seriously, can’t someone standardize this shit? I mean, calling it “curse” is pretty damn vague anyway. How about “Bullshit?” It’s far more representative of the actual spell, especially for the last one.
Honestly, what the fuck kind of shit is poison, disease, confuse, and sap all at the same time? For
everyone in the party! It basically means that you’re going to slowly lose health in three different ways, and cast random shit on your fellow party members. Good god.
No matter the particular version of curse, it can die in a fire, which would probably be more effective than trying in vain to get one of your characters to heal it.
Confusion
As long as we’re on the subject of stuff that makes no sense, let’s have a chat about confusion. The basic concept behind a confusion status is that a character’s brain got rewired temporarily, and he’s no longer able to tell who is a friend and who is an enemy. He’ll often respond to this with plenty of sword swipes, fire spells, and sometimes even beat the shit out of himself.
Holy hell, where to begin.
First off, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a JRPG enemy, but let’s have a quick look at this guy:
FUCK. OK, now let’s have a lookie here:
What is enemy? I do not know! How do I tell? Is it the one that I most want to have sex with? Hmm, still can’t decide!
Not stupid enough for you? OK, how about this? When you get confused about something, what’s generally your instinctual response? To attack the thing nearest to you? Or to, I don’t know, maybe take a step back for a second, reevaluate the situation, maybe have a nap? I typically don’t get cast-happy when I’m confused, but maybe that’s just me.
I also don’t start cutting myself with a sword. Is this some sort of psychological doppelganger response here? Oh god, I’m confused! I think that perhaps this enemy has replaced the real me with an evil twin, and to defeat this evil, I must defeat myself! I suppose it isn’t that farfetched considering how often you have to fight an evil shadow version of yourself in JRPGs. But, come on man, in that case you don’t actually have to try to light yourself on fire!
How do you cure confusion? In a way that’s more likely to cause confusion than anything: by smacking the afflicted character in the face.
Here’s what the game assumes:
Party member 1: “Oh no, I’m confused! Better start punching myself in the crotch!”
Party member 2: “I’ll save you!” *smacks party member 1 in the crotch*
Party member 1: “My eyes have been opened! You are a gentleman and a scholar.”
Here’s what the situation would really be like.
Party member 1: “Oh no, I’m confused! Better start punching myself in the crotch!”
Party member 2: “I’ll save you!” *smacks party member 1 in the crotch*
Party member 1: “What have you done to my fucking crotch? You’ll die by my hand, you evil bastard!”
The best part of confusion is that you lose all control of your character, which is awesome when your healer gets confused and you happened to be all about of panacea bottles. It’s even better when your whole party gets confused and you get to watch some ultra-violent version of
The Three Stooges play out in front of you. Dammit Curly, stop spamming firega.
Stop
Remember playing “Red Light/Green Light” as a kid? When someone yelled “red light,” you had to freeze in place; if you moved, you were out. You could only move when the leader yelled “green light.”
Stop, otherwise known as temporal stasis (I guess), is very similar. Someone yells stop, and you stop. You can’t move, attack, use items, or do anything. You just stand there.
“Oh, you mean like paralysis?” you say. Yes, just like that, except that it doesn’t make any sense! No matter how you understand stop, it’s total bollocks.
Let’s say that it’s just as simple as someone stopping because they’re servile and they were told to, just as in “Red Light/Green Light.” Maybe they just really like that game, and they couldn’t really get over it as a kid. Either way, as their friends die around them, you’d think that they’d say, “Hey, maybe I could recite a healing spell under my breath and still win the game!”
If temporal stasis is more to your liking, you’re going to be disappointed. Temporal stasis means that a person experiences no passage of time, even though the passage of time continues around him. To him, massive amounts of time would pass in an instant. Now, to achieve stasis, the actual space around that person would have to be affected, as would anything that entered that temporal field. So, let’s say a jackass tries to swing a sword at the stopped character. Nope. Impossible, because as soon as that sword enters the temporal stasis field, it would be subject to the same rules as the person in stasis. No movement would be possible, not even that of inertia, so a sword stroke that began outside of the stasis field would still stop instantly.
Also, my scientific logic is as impenetrable as my conception of a stasis field, so step off.
And with that, friends, the prosecution rests. There is nothing left for me to say about status effects, and I hope you’ll agree that we should cast petrify on those little bastards.
But the fun isn’t over yet. This is but part two of three in this series of happy fun. Part three will be a great time, of this I am sure. What could it be, you ask? Well, I’ve talked about all of this existing status effects that I hate…but what about new status effects? A new star is born every day, right? Let’s give birth to some stars, baby.
Gross.
Thanks. I really needed your ironic humor after what just happened. Keep the series going, and consider finding a full list so the series can continue infinitely.
@mkshiranui
YOU ARE SO WEIRD.
@Kauza
You may not have experience JRPG "punching myself in the crotch" syndrome, but I've suffered this several times with the advent of Rule #34 on the world wide Internets.
Oh, you mean now I'm not certain about what the right choice was? That's weird, having a conscience and caring about people around me, even when I can't see them?
Don't make me write another terrible blog about how people around here have no sense of humor, because I hate doing so.
Sorry about this, Kauza.
@mkshiranui
what are you talking about
1) I don't believe anyone has a right to be stupid or insensitive on the Web.
2) I don't believe anyone should have spam and insults hurled onto their blog.
3) I don't believe I did the right thing flaming you and am actually SORRY about it.
Understand now?
Mkshiranui:
@mkshiranui
You're being too vague, I need a more well-thought out explanation before I can honestly say I understand. You know, graphs, charts, archives. The works.
Kauza, I need your help here.
I was originally going to steamroll you with a big heaping helping of SCIENCE!, but I think my husband Togail would be better suited for the job.
You guys should really ease up on the hate. You're killing my cool.
Party member 1: “Oh no, I’m confused! Better start punching myself in the crotch!”
Party member 2: “I’ll save you!” *smacks party member 1 in the crotch*
Party member 1: “My eyes have been opened! You are a gentleman and a scholar.”
Best part of the post. Hands down.
I preferred the image of what would happen if someone tried attacking a person in temporal stasis. Imagine, an NPC charges a player with a spear ... and the weapon starts slowly sinking into the field like it was going through syrup. What would be REALLY funny is if the battle cry the NPC was shouting got slowed down as well. It wouldn't make sense, but neither does the original idea.
I like how confusion is handled in real time RPGS, mainly that it screws with your controls. It makes a lot more sense that confusion would be disorienting like that.
Haha, stop is quite ridiculous as is confusion, although I always thought of the latter as 'rage' or 'madness' instead of confusion. Also 'weak' in Tales of Vesperia was bullshit. It cuts your HP in half, max and current, what the hell?
I have no idea what's going on in the comments here, so here's a link for you. Sorry that it isn't youtube and I can't just embed. But you want to click on it, trust me.
http://www.break.com/index/really-awkward-car-commercial-slogan.html
"Also, my scientific logic is as impenetrable as my conception of a stasis field, so step off. "
Uh oh somebody's been hitting the Wikipedia. Loved it Kauza, even if some of these pics are pure undiluted nightmare fuel.
Gotta love how such a good cblog is bogged down by some drama. :p
Excellent piece kauza, and an excellent series so far. Honestly to me the most frustrating thing about status effects is how they wreck your party but have nearly no (if any) effect on enemies.
Confusion actually helped me out many moons ago when I played FFVIII when it came out, which was my first real big RPG. My healer would often get confused, always heal the enemy and it would piss me off because he always had low health and I didn't want to attack him. Then we fought an enemy with zombie attributes, he got confused again, and started doing healing spells on it. I was so ready to rage, but it made me realize that zombies haet healan. Whodathunk?
I learned a lot that day. But screw those other status effects, especially stop, making my main character immobile and making a really long battle feel like it's going forever. Hate that stuff.
This post has been hit by CONFUSION. Users trying to post comments now troll friend, foe, and self.
I acutally have a fond memory of Curse. In Dragon Quest VIII, the main character is the only one to survive the massive thorn-growing sleep-inducing curse in the castle. I might be wrong but he never gets cursed in battle; everyone else turns into a depressed zombie but he's just fine. It's an innate ability that ties into the story and his character (such as it is), and more games should implement something along those lines.
I have this bookmarked, and I'll be back to read it... just some stuff going on right now and I want to enjoy the read! :)
Sorry, Kauza. I didn't want this to happen here. Great post, again, and I can't wait to see your next one.
@mkshiranui
Ah, if only you knew. Okami is one of greatest games ever made, by the way.
@Kauza
As much as I've enjoyed the first and second part of this miniseries, it's the third part that's got me wet. I am seriously pumped to read what invented status effects your twisted mind comes up with.
I don't rightly like you picking on status effects, even though I black out with rage whenever they fuck me over in RPGs, they're the bread and butter of good RPG tactics. You're probably right about the stasis field though, because they can't move through time, it should be impossible for others to move or affect them.
WTF IS GOING ON IN HERE
@tazarthayoot
I still have no idea.
This is brilliant. I love how you try to fit as many puns as possible into the title.
Also curse is cheap bullshit.
You know, with the mention of heart in both titles, I was expecting to see the "Heartbroken" status from Might and Magic 3 show up here. It's completely ridiculous, because it reduces every one of your stats by 1 for each level, and the level gets worse over time if you don't cure it at a temple.