What's a game where you can win every single battle and still lose?

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Poll of the Day » What's a game where you can win every single battle and still lose?
And not just for stupid plot reasons.

I think this is a style of Greek tragedy but IDK
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Mario Party
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Ogre Battle? get bad ending anyway.

games like SMB where you have a timer you can play skillfully but still die from the timer

there's a game where that was basically how the story went

4x games with alternative win-conditions

really what would qualify here is any game with alternative lose conditions. that's what the timer is and that's what alternative win conditions are if the AI can reach them too.
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Final Fantasy Adventure/Adventure of Mana.

At the end of the game, the Mana Tree is still destroyed no matter what you do.
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mass effect 3? kind of.
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Pandora's Tower has several different endings based on your performance across all of the levels, and some of those endings could definitely be called "losing" from a narrative standpoint.
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Like Fable 3?
Xcom 2 you could ignore the time critical objective that will end the game once it completes, you could also just get really unlucky stopping it I think.
Far Cry 5 .
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Metroidvanias with a bad end dictated by beating a boss without possessing a certain item?

Also, Tales of Xillia2 makes you earn that bad ending.
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Nichtcrawler-X posted...
Also, Tales of Xillia2 makes you earn that bad ending.
It's been ages, but I believe Tales of Symphonia 2 does something like that. In the finale, you're thrown into a battle against Lloyd and Marta (?) , and if you defeat them, you get a bad ending. (Unless I'm mistaken?)
Not technically a battle, but the way the Persona Dancing games work, you can do perfect for nearly the entire dance, but if you screw up a few notes in the final seconds, you're destined to fail. Your oass/fail status is based on live audience reception, which drips when you mess up and recovers when you do well. But at the end of the song you don't have time to recover.
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Valkyrie Profile comes to mind: it's another game with a 'bad' ending. (Which is also the ending you're 99% likely to get unless someone tells you what to do)
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aHappySacka posted...
Life


wait till you get to new game+ with all the cheats and item's carried over
Having a goal is good, but don't let your goal depress you. Goals are meant to inspire.
Mega Man X5

Even if you do everything perfectly, it's still possible for the shuttle launch to be a failure and for Zero to die.
What would Bligh do?
Soul Nomad and the World Eaters
Win the first battle against a World Eater and the world blows up sending you into a extra ending
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Any strategy game you can just ignore all defense and leave your base open to attack.
Zareth posted...
Mega Man X5

Even if you do everything perfectly, it's still possible for the shuttle launch to be a failure and for Zero to die.
Luck based performance and permanent missables make that game extremely annoying for me.
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You only need one T-Rex to make the point, though. ~ Samus Sedai
Yeah X5 is bad. You pretty much need to follow a guide to the letter to get everything in the game.
What would Bligh do?
Tales of Symphonia 2 if you defeat the final boss Lloyd and Marta you get the bad ending
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Zareth posted...
Yeah X5 is bad. You pretty much need to follow a guide to the letter to get everything in the game.
And to think, they arguably made it worse in the next two games, since Reploids with power-ups can be possessed (X6) or killed (X7) and their reward is permanently gone . :(
Yeah it's kind of amazing that X8 turned out to not be complete garbage.
What would Bligh do?
faramir77 posted...
Mario Party
lmao
This is a good one if true. I haven't played it in so long I don't remember.
yeah, I'm thinking I'm back
AltOmega2 posted...
lmao
This is a good one if true. I haven't played it in so long I don't remember.
It's likely true with the later Mario Party games, like 9 and 10.

No joke, one time while playing Mario Party 9, I went from first place, to second, to last, and then back up to first... all in the same round . The game's just like that.
The earlier games were also pretty bad for "It's the last turn and you've been leading all game? Oops, looks like it's time to give all your stars to somebody else and there's nothing you can do to stop this." That's not strictly "winning every battle and still losing," since your overall loss is a consequence of losing that one critical battle (a loss which was entirely luck-based), but it's no less frustrating for it.
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^ But it's by design, right? It's primarily meant to be played by groups at parties and allow anyone to potentially win via random mechanics (such that whoever owns the game doesn't have an insurmountable advantage...as with many others). Irritating for me, but possibly fun for casuals.
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wpot posted...
^ But it's by design, right? It's primarily meant to be played by groups at parties and allow anyone to potentially win via random mechanics (such that whoever owns the game doesn't have an insurmountable advantage...as with many others). Irritating for me, but possibly fun for casuals.

Yep, for better or worse, that's the design. Personally, I'm less keen on party game design that makes it so anyone can win regardless of how well they play than I am on party game design that makes it as fun to lose as to win, but it does mix things up to prevent people that aren't as good at the game from feeling like they have no chance the whole time, and that's not bad. Mario Party can just be a little extreme about it sometimes.
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adjl posted...
The earlier games were also pretty bad for "It's the last turn and you've been leading all game? Oops, looks like it's time to give all your stars to somebody else and there's nothing you can do to stop this." That's not strictly "winning every battle and still losing," since your overall loss is a consequence of losing that one critical battle (a loss which was entirely luck-based), but it's no less frustrating for it.
I mean, is "Chance Time" really a battle? If you're not the one who landed on it, there's absolutely no input from you. It's not like you had a chance - even just one based on luck - to alter the results in any way.
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darkknight109 posted...
I mean, is "Chance Time" really a battle? If you're not the one who landed on it, there's absolutely no input from you. It's not like you had a chance - even just one based on luck - to alter the results in any way.

It's at least a point of conflict that involves you. Functionally, Chance Time is identical whether you land on it or somebody else (disclaimer: there may be some hidden weighting based on who lands on it of which I am not aware), so if you would consider it to be a battle in which you participate when you're the one doing the formality of punching the dice, I don't know that it makes sense to not consider it one when somebody else is doing it. Of course, conversely, that same argument could be used to say that it's not a battle regardless of who's doing it or from whose perspective you're considering it.

Mostly, though, I'm just using "battle" as a catch-all term for every event in the game that contributes to the progression and final outcome in some way. Some of those are more active than others, but I think it makes sense to apply the term that broadly.
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adjl posted...
Functionally, Chance Time is identical whether you land on it or somebody else
No, there is a key difference in that you have a degree of control if you're the one who landed on it. Certainly at the start the dials are spinning slow enough that you can choose at least one of them with a high degree of accuracy (two if you're practiced at the game). If you're in the lead, you can ensure that the consequence of chance time is just a few coins trading hands; if you're last, you can ensure that the stakes are high ("swap coins and stars", for instance) and - again, if you're practiced enough to land the second dial accurately - that you're one of the participants, guaranteeing you will move up in the rankings no matter who gets hit on the third dial.

It's not pure random chance.

adjl posted...
Mostly, though, I'm just using "battle" as a catch-all term for every event in the game that contributes to the progression and final outcome in some way. Some of those are more active than others, but I think it makes sense to apply the term that broadly.
It's an issue of semantics, but to me I'd say that "battle" should describe an event where both players have input into the outcome, even if it's luck-based. Minigame? Battle. Single-player minigame? Not a battle. Duel? Battle. Using Boo to steal a star? Not a battle. Bowser minigame? Battle. Landing on a Bowser space in the hopes of triggering a Bowser Revolution? Not a battle.

An event where you have no ability to affect the outcome isn't a "battle", as I see it - it's just an event on the board. I mean, taken to the logical extreme, if "every event in the game that contributes to the progression and final outcome in some way" is a battle, then landing on a blue space is a battle, because those three coins affect the outcome of the game. That seems overly broad to me.
Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!
FreezinIceKirby posted...
It's likely true with the later Mario Party games, like 9 and 10.

No joke, one time while playing Mario Party 9, I went from first place, to second, to last, and then back up to first... all in the same round . The game's just like that.

Mario Party is the reason why I have a hatred for Luigi (he was the fortunate character for the AI).

I was in first with 4 stars. Luigi was last with 0 but with a nice cache of coins. Luigi has last turn. Luigi rolls high. Toad is a space away from him. Luigi buys star. Toad respawns a few spaces away. Luigi buys second star. Luigi has enough steps to get to Boo. Luigi steals star from me (we are now tied at 3 stars apiece). Luigi is about to end his turn but gets a mystery block. What was in the mystery block? A ****ING STAR!
Blah, blah, blah, and blah.
Azn_Psycho posted...
Mario Party is the reason why I have a hatred for Luigi (he was the fortunate character for the AI).
Unless you're just talking about your own experience, I don't think that's true.

The perception that the Luigi AI was better came from the "Luigi wins by doing absolutely nothing" viral videos (where, incidentally, he's the only non-AI character shown), but in the actual game his AI is the exact same as everyone else's.
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Poll of the Day » What's a game where you can win every single battle and still lose?