Neat Tricks/Mechanics You Discovered AFTER Beating a Game

[sageoftruth]

Basically, the sorts of things you notice that make you want to sit down and play the game again, just to try them out.

Recently, I decided to retry Illusion of Gaia, after leaving it dormant for years. For those who are unfamiliar, it's a Super Nintendo game that plays a lot like 2D Legend of Zelda. Of course, this means that there are puzzles that involve moving blocks or other objects. However, the hero, Will, also has the ability to pull blocks towards him using telekinesis.

While doing this, he spins his weapon, a flute in front of him, like a staff deflecting projectiles. I was amused to soon discover that this actually DID deflect most projectiles. I'd already beaten the game three times in my lifetime, before discovering this. It completely changed how I fought some enemies. Before, I'd use a hit-and-run approach, or exploit invincibility frames from certain attacks. Now, I could just stand there and guard whenever an enemy wound up for a projectile.

What were some neat mechanics or tricks you discovered after or near the end of a game you played?

 

[gsilver]

Super Mario Odyssey has a tutorial for the mid-air hat dive trick in a post-campaign area. I didn't know about it until I got there.

If the inputs to get it right weren't so tricky, it would change everything. Stuff that I see using it on Youtube is nuts.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

For me, these things tend to come during a playthru but usually involve other characters/classes/abilities than I rolled with. Examples are some of the glitches in Borderlands 2, which I'm currently back into, many of which involve Salvador (who I've never played). The old Hyperius glitch I used to use with my Maya was patched tho :-(

I remember in Dragons Dogma the speed run mode. I played thru it myself to unlock the two costumes for the main game, but after watched a video with some incredibly smart tactics to save tons of time. In particular, escorting the cart thru the canyon (kicking the ox unarmed did minimal damage but kept it running full pelt, and rolling alongside it let the player keep up) and following the Duke/King from his room upstairs to the vault downstairs (player picked up the duke, threw him off the top level to the bottom level, got arrested, left his cell and rejoined the duke as he was getting to the vault).

Here's one that is a bit of a reversal, something I discovered before playing. I played Divinity Original Sin on release and had fun with it, but didn't try any of the really crazy stuff that was discovered later (and patched in the Enhanced Ed.) With DOS2, I didn't get around to playing it at release and by the time I did go to start it, all the OP shit was patched already :\ To my knowledge, there's no way to run an older patch with the Steam version, which is really frustrating because I really fancied trying one of the OP things out.

 

[the December King]

In the original Serious Sam, if you let a Werebull charge and strike you at just the right point during a jump, you can get flung onto higher levels of the scenery with only minimal damage to yourself, and be in a prime position to avoid certain hordes while mowing them down. It made me feel pretty cool to do that.

 

[DeadProxy]

I'm sure this has happened to me a couple times and I'm only remembering like 2.

In batman arkam knight, there's an early game tutorial on gliding that you can easily skip, cause gliding isn't anything special and easy to get the hang of. But I went through the entire game wondering about this "glide boost" thing that would get mentioned in tips or loading screens or something and had no idea how to get it. Started over for the NG+ fun and ended up doing it for some reason nd then I got the upgrade and was pretty annoyed at myself for missing something so basic.

Most recently though was for Mafia 3. In that, you can press a button to slow down time to help you avoid cars and take turns at stupid speeds, and I put in probably 12 hours before I even had the thought of "Huh...can I slow down time while shooting my gun too?" And it wasn't until a couple hours after that thought that I actually hit the button and confirmed that yes, Mafia 3 has bullet time, and then I stopped dying so much and the game got pretty easy.

I also remember reading a comment on this site about someone not understanding the slicing mechanic in Revengence and beat the whole game without using the right stick, which is how you manually control where you slice and dice, the most fun part of the game.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I'm gonna take the common one. Castlevania Symphony of the Night. I had thought I beat the game for a good year or two before realizing it has a whole other half and a true ending that you can't access if you don't do a series of unknowable esoteric tasks.

 

[Trunkage]

Super Mario Odyssey has a tutorial for the mid-air hat dive trick in a post-campaign area. I didn't know about it until I got there.

If the inputs to get it right weren't so tricky, it would change everything. Stuff that I see using it on Youtube is nuts.

This was the first time I had to do some training to do a movement in Mario. I didn't even try til after I finished the campaign

 

[Xprimentyl]

Tiger Woods PGA Tour games and Tiger Vision. When you reach the green, you get a once-per-stroke ability to use Tiger Vision which shows a white line that precognitively tells you how the ball is going to travel giving you a chance to adjust before taking your swing. I forget which iteration of Tiger it was introduced in, but I played an entire PGA season without it, instead reading the greens with my naked eye. It wasn?t until my friend came over to play a round with me and I saw him use it, and I was very much ?WTF?!? How?d you do that???? Oddly enough, when I tried using it, it actually made me WORSE as I started second guessing myself and/or adjustments based off of Tiger Vision were further off than I might have done reading the greens myself. I was kinda pissed that I didn?t know about a feature that might have been a huge asset had I known about it, but proud that I managed to get good without the crutch it ultimately was. (Plus the added bonus of watching my friend rage quit when I?d eyeball and sink a 30-foot putt while he missed a similar shot using Tiger Vision!)

 

[Dosbilliam]

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. Wasn't until after I'd beaten that and Revelations that I knew you could cancel the counter animations to do another counter. Would have made that one fight in Brotherhood much easier to get through without taking damage. :/

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Apparently you can wavedash in Celeste. I didn't know this until I watched a speedrun, which I put off until I finished the story since I didn't want any spoilers.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

I didn't discover how to do drive-by shootings in GTA3 until after I'd finished the last mission. I must have been in a police chase or something the first time I got into a car with an uzi and triggered the tooltip because I completely missed it. I went through the whole game passing all of the 'chase and destroy' missions by ramming the target vehicles until they caught fire, which often meant I went through two or three cars per mission myself.

 

[Zeraki]

I recently found out that Mega Man X3 has a bug that allows you to kill a certain boss instantly. It's actually kind of amazing that it made it past the bug testing process.

[tweet t=https://twitter.com/CaptSarcasm86/status/1022874469033959424]

There was also when I found out about Zero's slash dash cancel in Mega Man X4. That really helps when fighting Magma Dragoon and Sigma's final form.

 

[sXeth]

I was well into the second run of Dishonored before I realized you could hide under tables. Also blinking up on top of streetlights.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Whilst playing Dark Souls 2, I appreciated the new feature that allowed infused weapons (i.e.: fire, lightning, magic, etc.) to scale with your INT and FTH stats. A return to Dark Souls 1 about a month ago revealed to me? this wasn?t a new feature at all. DUH! With limited castings of Sorceries and Miracles, this features is kinda what makes non-STR/DEX builds feasible, dumbass! I?ve played an obscene amount of Dark Souls 1 and never once done a FTH or INT build primarily because I prefer melee, but also I?d always thought subsidizing my lack of STR and/or DEX with a modified weapon that no longer scaled with anything wouldn?t be fun; well there ya? go, dummy. What?s even more sad is that I?ve been to the wiki literally hundreds of times and never once bothered to scroll beyond the Basic upgrade path of weapons where it quite clearly shows INT and FTH stat bonuses. Good news: I get to play Dark Souls 1 again in a new way! Bad news: I?m an idiot.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

I played almost completely to the end of A Link Between Worlds before getting the Pegasus Boots because I thought I needed them to catch the guy that gives them to you.

It's one of those weird situations where I think the fact that I had played A Link to the Past made me get a task wrong because I equated it with the guy in Kakariko village in A Link to the Past who you can only catch with the Pegasus Boots and so I just kept waiting and waiting to find them to do it in A Link Between Worlds.