RELATED: Hardest RPGs Ever Made
It is a controversial subject because it arguably breaks the game and can especially ruin the fun of any multiplayer mode. Others will argue that games should be played the way players want, so min-maxing is fine. Regardless of which side of the fence one falls on, the games detailed below all punish the idea in one way or another. It is often not on purpose, though, and more a result of how the game’s systems interact with each other.
5 Pokemon
Almost everyone on planet Earth is familiar with this iconic franchise and how it works. Instead of working with a human party, players control a Pokemon trainer who catches a variety of the titular monsters and uses them in battle. There are ways to optimize a particular Pokemon’s stats. If one knows the meta, they can have extremely powerful allies during a fight.
However, they can also shoot themselves in the foot if they only train one Pokemon all the time. They will find themselves severely lacking if an enemy Pokemon attacks its weakness. Maybe one can make it through the game like this, but certain battles will end up being a lot harder than they need to be. Most of Pokemon’s fun is finding and leveling up these different monsters, so one is losing out on a lot if they only focus on min-maxing one of their captured beasts.
4 Disco Elysium
Disco Elysium is simultaneously a subversion of the RPG genre and extremely faithful to its core tenets. The dystopian RPG follows a detective who wakes up with no memory of who he is or how he got into the hotel where he awoke. Players are free to attribute state points to any number of abilities.
RELATED: Great Modern Text-Based Games
Even though the game has almost no combat, stats like strength are still important. In fact, every stat is important and might just come in handy at the most unexpected time. Min-Maxing might certainly be a valid way to play the game, but completely ignoring certain traits is the recipe for unexpected deaths. At the same time, this leads to a uniquely exciting playthrough.
3 Dungeons And Dragons
No list about min-maxing would be complete without mentioning the game in which the concept originated. In fact, it is the originator of the genre and every other RPG owes it a small debt. The whole fun of D&D is immersing oneself in a new world and making decisions as if players were really living inside whatever fantasy world they created along with the kit they bought.
Min-maxing might be a sound strategy for dealing big damage, but it is also a surefire way to ruin the fun for everyone else in the party. There are also video games that adapt the ruleset of various D&D editions like Baldur’s Gate and Knights of the Old Republic. If it is a single-player campaign then min-maxing is not a question of ethics. Instead, one could end up with a ruined playthrough if they allocated their stats poorly.
2 Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall
The second game in this storied Bethesda franchise introduced numerous mechanics that became trademarks to the series, including the bettering of abilities by repeated use. While min-maxing is not explicitly punished in this game, it is a part of the game’s core mechanics. Players are allowed to assign advantages and disadvantages to their character. While advantages make their character stronger, it will also cause them to level up slower.
RELATED: Tips For Newcomers To Daggerfall
Adversely, disadvantages add a weakness of some sort while netting more experience during gameplay. Since it is a part of the game’s systems, it is not exactly like other RPGs that punish min-maxing. There are even ways to pair advantages and disadvantages so that they cancel each other out, giving the character the boost in leveling while having none of the drawbacks.
1 Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion
Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion was a game changer in several ways. It streamlined a lot of the classic Elder Scrolls mechanics to make the game more accessible and understandable while not sacrificing the series’ depth and freedom. Being a launch title for the Xbox 360, it also introduced a whole new legion of gamers to the series and western RPGs as a whole, leading the way for future titles like Fallout 3, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age.
Even though it was a lot easier to understand than prior entries, players could level themselves up into a corner if they min-maxed in the wrong direction. Enemies constantly scale to the player’s level and constantly grow stronger regardless of where one puts their stats. Because of this, it is easy for enemies to become too powerful if players focus on the incorrect stats. It is quite easy to do this completely by accident, potentially making the later hours of Oblivion extremely difficult.
MORE: The Best RPGs For Level 1 Runs
