Games by order of appearance 0:09 Persona 5 0:13 Lost Odyssey 0:18 Xenoblade Chronicles 0:22 Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic 0:28 Zelda: Breath of The Wild 0:32 XCOM 2 0:34 MGSV 0:36 Puyo Puyo Tertris 0:41 Final Fantasy XII 0:44 Persona 4 0:48 I am Setsuna 0:50 Super Mario RPG 2:14 Legend of Heroes: Trails in The Sky 2:17 SMT3: Nocturne 2:22 Dragon Quest (Switch) 2:30 Final Fantasy 3:30 Dragon Quest XI 3:34 Pokemon Sword & Shield 3:46 Final Fantasy X 3:50 Monster Hunter World 3:56 Final Fantasy IX 4:05 Octopath traveler 4:14 Dark Souls II 4:29 Pokemon Gold & Silver 4:32 Team Fortress 2 4:41 Tales of Vesperia 5:29 Street Fighter 2 HD 5:32 Dragon Quest VIII 5:39 Minecraft 6:02 Earthbound 6:07 Overwatch 6:27 Persona 3 6:33 Skies of Arcadia 6:48 Super Smash Brothers Ultimate 6:50 Sonic Mania 6:53 Final Fantasy XIII 7:00 Final Fantasy VII Remake 7:26 Final Fantasy VII 9:28 Chrono Trigger 10:11 Dragon Quest III (Switch) 10:20 Final Fantasy VI 13:07 Bug Fables 14:55 Final Fantasy VIII 16:10 Kingdom Hearts 16:45 SMT: Digital Devil Saga 2 17:09 Steven Universe: Save The Light 17:14 Chrono Cross 17:28 Slay the Spire 17:35 Ring Fit Adventure 17:47 Darkest Dungeon 17:54 Left 4 Dead 2 18:11 Skullgirls 18:25 Lisa The Painful

Bad design: Bosses/High Level Enemies that are just completely immune to status effects. What's the point in having characters that can inflict negative status effects if they can't inflict them when it matters most?

I'm glad you point out that making bosses immune to status effects makes status effects useless in the rest of the game. That's something that has bothered me for years.

Status effects for me... "Not gonna bother using them on trash enemies, since I can kill them so quickly." "Oh, this boss is IMMUNE to status effects? Why do these things exist again?"

There's this boss on Bravely Second called "Turtle Dove" with attacks that can cause Love, making one of your units fall in love for another unit of your party While in Love, your unit will always copy the move that the loved unit used (even if they don't have acess to it), so if you strategize around it, you can use this in your favor But, if another character falls in love for the same unit, these two units will stop repeting the loved's moves and actually start attacking each other out of jelousy

In case anyone wants to quickly refer back to a specific type of status effect: 4:16 Damage Over Time 4:40 Stat Buffs and Debuffs 5:07 Turn and Action Economy 5:48 Debilitators 6:12 Loss of Control 6:35 Shields 6:52 Setups 7:14 Transformations 7:40 KOs and Insta-Kills

Taunt is also an important effect, to put in on someone who can stand the strong attack or do it to decide who dies instead of your main DPSer

I like when there’s a way to get rid of effects. Monster Hunter World does this, where to get rid of fire/blast, you roll, theres energy drinks to get rid of sleep, antidotes and various antidote-related items for poison, doing something with the joystick for stun, nullberries for dragon/effluvium/water/ice/thunder, and... nothing for Paralysis. I like how it’s something different for most effects, so that you can get rid of them easily but you’ve gotta remember what does it. Wish some of the things you need a nullberry for were diversified a bit, but ahh well...

My recommendation for immobility effects like stun or paralyzed, is to make them ramp up instead of being instantly activated. Such as needing to hit a foe three times to build up three stacks of stun, the first two stacks function as a "speed down" effect, and only turns into temporary immobility at three stacks. Another benefit of this if a foe is immune to stun, three stacks can turn into a strong speed down effect instead. Stacking poison also lets you adjust how many turns you put into your poison damage, and makes poison focused characters able to specialize in doing something across multiple turns.

I like that Burn and Paralysis in Pokemon have a secondary effect of cutting attack and speed in half respectively. Also, the badly poisoned status is really nice for especially tanky Pokemon

I just love how Matador’s immense speed in Nocturne is just a genius tool to force the player to learn how if you don’t use buffs or debuffs you aren’t going to beat the game

I always like the Earthbound status effects because they were very real takes on what status effects would be in a modern setting. Nausea is one of my favorites, especially its effect in Mother 3, because you either take damage each turn from vomiting, or you feel too queasy to stomach any health restoring food, so you can't heal. It's a very tangible effect of an innocuous thing we experience in real life applied to the mechanics of a game.

You can also make status effects too powerful, South Park the Stick of Truth comes to my mind, where all effects, specially bleeding are way too effective. I played as a thief and I could just use a bouncing ball (that hits multiple enemies) with a perk that inflicted bleeding, and the ball would inflict anywhere from 2 to 5 stacks of bleeding on every enemy, now they lost a ton of health each turn and becausa I was a thief some of my abilities got bonus damage because the enemies were bleeding. It made the game too easy, although it was satisfying pulling out that strategy.

17:36 I never thought Ring Fit Adventure would be nominated like THIS.

When it comes to games I've played with status effects, Etrian Odyssey is one of my favorites. Most bosses have at least one weakness to a status, and killing enemies while they have a certain status can net you a rare drop at times.

My first thought when it comes to status effects has to be the Etrian Odyssey series, the games that taught me to appreciate them when so many other JRPGs make them useless. While its list of status effects is pretty standard, it makes them extremely useful. The games are difficult - random encounters are a constant danger, rather than a mild annoyance - so anything that lets you mitigate this helps a lot. Particularly notable is poison, which deals a good amount of damage - often proving far more effective than other attacks against normal enemies, and still dealing a healthy amount of damage to bosses. And, yes, statuses work on bosses. While bosses do tend to have more resistances and immunities than normal enemies, they're still valid targets for statuses. If anything, the game does lean towards status effects being a bit too powerful, but it works in the context of the games' difficulty. Getting your party wiped out due to being hit with status effects sucks (and in fact enemies with poison attacks are many a player's first game over), but it's not out of character for these games, so it feels less jarring. And when they're used to make things a bit too easy for the player, it's satisfying, because you know how difficult things can be - so anything that trivializes a fight makes you feel awesome rather than bored.

There's one status effect that really got me in Metroid Prime 2. An enemy in the last main area can hack Samus' suit, causing frame drops and static until you reboot her suit with an arbitrary button combination. You Ctrl-Alt-Del a freaking power suit.

2:28 JOEY JOJO JR. SHAB That’s the worst named party I’ve every heard.

My favorite story about status effects is the Chac enemy from FFX2. These super-tanky, basilisk-like monsters can't be run from and they have a 255% chance to inflict Petrify on two of three party members every turn in combat. So what happens when you walk into into a fight with 100% immunity to Petrify? 255% - 100% = 155% chance to petrify a target immune to petrify. That's just how math works.

Oh my god I know this "Boss is immune to nearly all status effects" trope all too well. It makes the bossfight so much less fun, I always love to experiment with status effect but am seldom rewarded for it.

I think it’s worth pointing out that, as with so many things in the rpg genre, these general tropes of status effects, what they do, and often their aesthetics can be paralleled directly back to Dungeons and Dragons.

It's really rare for me to care about Stat effects. If the game doesn't go out of its way to show how they're useful and well integrated to the systems. SMT and DQ are basically the two ones that I see myself constantly thinking about it.

Earthbound had a couple of unique takes on status effects: -Ness could get homesick, which would randomly waste turns until you called your mom. -In addition to messing with your controls, the Mushroom would sometimes cause your targeting to change, but never in a way that made it predictable. It was also quite possibly the only status effect in any game that you'd be paid for getting treated. -Characters could become Possessed: this entailed having an invisible enemy that would sometimes stun the possessed character and take pot-shots at their teammates for minimal damage. WoW had the more-or-less-mandatory-to-bring-up Corrupted Blood, which as a result of a coding oversight created a virtual version of the current global crisis. Pokemon has several interesting status effects that, while useless in the main campaign due to how easy it is, can all simultaneously counter certain strategies and provide opportunities for the player that can use them effectively. Of particular note are Encore (force a player to re-use the last move that they used for several turns), Rest (put your own pokemon to sleep to heal all damage - it also removes any other status they might have), Toxic (poison that effectively forces players to eventually switch or die from the accumulating damage), Substitute (take 25% damage to ensure that the next attack does nothing), and all kinds of arena-wide effects that are both specific and general in how they change the flow of combat. In general, any game with a unique set of mechanics is going to present a similarly unique opportunity to mess with the effects via status effects.

I love how miitopia's status effects are pretty mundane things that have not so mundane effects. And the way they appear is different depending on ur personality. when the "avenge" attack happens, a party member faints and the ones with high enough relationship levels attack the enemy who caused it, stubborn, cool, and energetic miis become angry, allowing them to attack twice but have no control. Whereas Kind, Airheaded, and Cautious Miis start crying, giving them a chance to miss. The last personality type, laid-back, has no status condition from this. I love how they so creativity mix RPG and Life Sim elements

For as many flaws FFXIII has, it was the game that made me realize status effects exist and aren't useless. The effect is so noticeable that it might as well be bad design (like you're actually forced to use deprotect to kill armored turtles or whatever, so it isn't much of a decision) but up until playing that game, I just brute forced/grinded through every turn based game ever.

Skyrim: Poison is weak, complicated, tedious, and half of everything is immune to it Also Skyrim: Wearing this armor inflicts a ton of constant unavoidable AoE damage to everything nearby

One of my favorite boss fights ever is in Digital Devil Saga. In Digital Devil Saga, you can have your characters learn moves that reflect specific elements. Because DDS uses the press-turn system, reflecting attacks not only sends the damage back at the opponent, but it also immediately ends their turn and switches to the opposing sides turn. Now this one boss used a bunch of elemental magic. However I noticed that they weren't immune to any elements, and they only used the last element I attacked them with. So I could attack them then set up the elemental reflect. They would get hit with their own attack, and it would be my turn again. Sure it wasn't the hardest fight once you figure out that exploit, but it felt amazing once you realized it.

Monster hunter does it best. Because you know what monster you’re hunting you are encouraged to make the right gear with the right status effects. For example, if you’re going against something hats blubbery, bleed is usually effective. Hunt down the monsters that do bleed first and you can use that effect on the next ones weak to it. Same with stun, sleep, poison, etc. all kinds of status balancing and adaptation.

I enjoy SMT'S status effect system, because the point of the system is to abuse it and cheese through weaker enemies, it works because the enemies and player have full access to all abilities putting them on equal footing.

i love the improvements to technical damage in p5r. It's very useful on mid-bosses without weaknesses. But then there's my entire party getting hit by brainjack and i get to watch them massacre each other. Fun times.

FFX's post-game is a master class on how to take status effects, gear crafting and the often forsaken item usage and build puzzle games around their use. Figuring out how to beat all the super bosses in the monster arena, and then the mega bosses after that, is very satisfying if you don't use a guide. Or only using a guide if you can't figure out how to beat the bosses at first. Unfortunately, the sphere grid holds players back. It isn't nearly as bad as it sounds to have to max out your grids, but only if you figure out one of the ways to cheese levels. (or look them up) But it still adds a ton of pointless grinding hours to the game.

My favorite standard status effect system is used in the Etrian Odyssey franchise. Random encounters are dangerous and rarely will a damage class be able to one-shot the strongest enemy in a fight. But with a debilitating condition these enemies are as good as dead (or at least way less dangerous) so classes focussing on status effects are valuable during exploration. While buffs and debuffs always work - although they have several mechanics surrounding them - other conditions are harder to inflict especially on bosses and the walking mid-bosses you spend much of your time avoiding. There is also a hidden system that makes it much harder for the same condition to be inflicted again after it was inflicted once - but this slowly reverts over the course of several turns (although it doesn't quite reach the initial value). So while they can be powerful status classes aren't (usually) super broken and they still need to be diverse instead of just focussing on a single condition. So status classes can be valuable in boss fights as well. 2 for 2 for an archetype that is sadly more often than not useless in many RPGs. The games also have the flavorful bind system where you can inflict (or by inflicted by) head bind, arm bind or leg bind which prevent the usage of skills that use the bound body part as well as lower one of your stats (and leg bind also disables evasion). A boss giving you trouble with its tail swipes that hit the entire party? Break its legs and you'll be safe from those attacks for a few turns.

I like the idea of the every boss being able to be effected by status effect except the final boss. The final boss being immune to most common status effects like poison, blind etc but being extremely weak to some obscure status effect that you know the players will under look and in turn discover how powerful/what those effects really do and in turn incentivize a new playthrough

That was honestly one of the smoothest sponsor transitions I've seen so far

FFX's Reflect spell was one of my favorites. It reflects *all* spells onto the opponent party, but reflected spells can only reflect once. You can take advantage of this by: • Casting Reflect on yourself to protect yourself from enemy spells, at the cost of being unable to cast beneficial spells on yourself. • Cast Reflect on your enemy to turn their self-buffs into party buffs, at the cost of being unable to target them with hostile magic. • Cast Reflect on yourself so you can target yourself with hostile magic, reflecting it onto the enemy and piercing their own Reflect spells. It creates a whole host of interesting tactics, and post-game enemies like the Arena bosses all revolve around it in some way or another. In the sequel game, FFX-2, there's an extra layer of strategy added onto the spell. Black Magic can be cast on a single target at full damage, or the full enemy party at reduced damage. *But* if your entire party has Reflect up, you can cast Black Magic on your entire party, reflecting 3 different spells onto the enemy for total damage that exceeds a single full-strength spell. Reflect is one of my favorite effects for this very reason!

Random notes from a hobbyist RPG developer here: Status effects that only boost a stat, or debuff an enemy stat, and take a full turn to use, can be really boring if not handled with extreme caution. If there are several of these in your party's skillset, then you might start to see a very significant amount of turns being spent just on those buffs/debuffs at the start of every single big enemy/boss battle, and setting them all up and maintaining them starts to feel like a chore. As an alternative, you could mix those effects/attacks in with other skills (as described in this video), or give them unique activation conditions that don't require excessive turn usage. A passive that increases crit rate when dodging, a skill that causes a character to take hits for others and increases defense for each hit tanked, an attack skill that boosts the user's attack power and does more damage at low HP... you get the idea. Etrian Odyssey has a really good handle on status skills and status effects. Every character class has a moveset of skills which almost all have multiple purposes from status effects to possible additional hits, and some activation conditions rely on other characters' skills for some incredible synergy. Furthermore, every enemy has their weaknesses and resistances to specific status effects clearly listed, so you can plan ahead to take out tough foes and even bosses by being prepared and exploiting those weaknesses.

I remember loving the burn effect in Pokémon gen 2 and 3. I just loved it for some reason. It was years later that I learned the burn reduced attack. I wish I knew that earlier, but that would explain a lot.

14:52 *talks about overpowered status effects, while Daisoujou uses mahamaon* seems about right, insta death in SMT is very obnoxious

I like that one pokemon move that confuses you but sharply increases your damage, kinda quirky.

He's definitely a fan of smt series, seeing how many of smt and persona songs he uses, and all the exemple he takes from thoses games

Great video, but I was really hoping to see that one clip of a charmed Mitsuru casting Diarahan on a low-HP Nyx, followed by an instant ragequit.

I'm surprised that there was no mention of Bravely Default. Their whole premise is based around changing turn orders and using your special attacks to change up stats on the battlefield. They event have enemies that take away brave charges from characters, thus changing how you use your status effects.

In a video about status effects I'm really surprised not to see Etrian Odyssey anywhere in your examples. They have what has to be one of my favorite status systems in video games; Binds. Every enemy is broken into "parts" like in Monster Hunter, but and each "part" (head, arms, and legs) has certain skills associated with it. You use "Binds" to inflict a Silence Like condition for a few turns, and like in monster hunter, enemies build up resistance over time to any status you might inflict. Most bosses can actually be affected by other status conditions, too, but the most useful one by far is "bind". Say a boss has a powerful attack that uses its head, you can try to bind its head and that will lock it out of using that attack until the bind wears off. Pair this with Atlus's typical brutal difficulty and you have a set up for really fun and a surprisingly unique spin on JRPG gameplay.

Etrian Odyssey incorporates some of the best uses for status effects I've ever experienced. Nearly every boss and normal enemy has certain status resistances and weakness. Being weak to a status increases the odds of it successfully being inflicted, and the effects are so potent the player really feels the benefits when they land. Whether that's binding a monster's arms just before they unleash a devastating, party-wide attack, or silencing a foe before they can heal their allies. Where in past games, inflicting status effects is brushed off as unreliable, in Etrian Odyssey, it is a possibility to consider every turn. Certain classes specialize in inflicting statues, and most others have at least one or two they can use as a backup/bonus effect if a more straightforward approach isn't viable.

Just a small bit I noticed from my decades of JRPGS: If the first time a player uses a status effect spell, and that spell misses, then the player will NEVER use that spell again. First time use should have a huge buff to hit% to encourage the player to use the mechanic.

So we can enjoy the slow torture of watching someone walk through blighttown while toxic and scrambling to stay alive.

One of my favorite instances of status effect usage is in "Labyrinth of Touhou 2". The game is a turn-based JRPG with an ATB (similar to Final Fantasy 5 - 9). Stat buffs and debuffs work in the way that they decay, meaning each turn, some of their effectiveness wears off, but in turn, casting the same buff or debuff will stack up to a maximum. One of the characters, a tank specifically, has an ability to increase her own physical and magical defenses by a lot, while also paralyzing herself, making her lose a lot of her turns. The first instinct is to give her paralysis negating gear, but it's actually better to embrace the paralysis. Since you lose some of your stat buffs each turn. being paralyzed will prevent you from losing stat buffs, meaning you will have to spend less of your valuable MP to reapply your stat buffs. And since the character is pretty much useless outside of taking hits for your team, you're not really losing out by having one character less to combat your opponents. Long story short, Labyrinth of Touhou 2 managed to turn a negative status condition into a boon to your character.

The entire Epic Battle Fantasy series, particularly 5, is based around the concept of utilizing abilities and states that would be completely useless in other, more traditional, RPGs. Would you believe me if I told you that Wet is one of the most useful states in the entirety of 4 and 5?

Another things I would like to add are: 1. The differences between similar effects, for example, in Pokemon both poison and burn makes the same effect of damage over time, but burn from what I know also debuffs the opponent's attack, and that against a more elaborated AI can be an important decision. 2. The presentation, this is more oriented to the UI so is understandable that you didn't talk about it, but if the status effect isn't clear with what it does or when is happening the player would be annoyed with that weird symbol which doesn't have an explanation in-game and would force the player to research outside of the game and would also make the player forget about it and don't do anything about it, frustrating the player's experience with the game. PD: Thanks for add something about Lisa the Painful at the end, I love it

2:14 Trails in the Sky, one of my favorite games.

One interesting example of using status effects from Xenoblade Chronicles is Riki's art, Say Sorry. Say Sorry is a physical attack that removes all the debuffs from the enemy, but increases the damage of the attack for each debuff the enemy has. On top of that, Riki has 5 other arts that inflict debuffs (paralysis, poison, blaze, chill, and bleed), so you can stack up a shit ton of debuffs on the enemy, and use Say Sorry for massive damage.

ATLUS in general has some really interesting ideas when it comes to using buffs and debuffs. Not all of them are good (Persona 3 is a really good example). My personal callout is the Bind system from Etrian Odyssey. Almost every attack in the game, player or enemy, uses either the head, arms, or legs. And there are moves and items that can temporarily bind them, preventing the character from using moves with that part. It also uses a variant of SMT's buff/debuff system: An ATK Up will negate an ATK Down rather than them applying separately. Casting multiples of the same buff only increases the time, though, not the effect. You also can't keep stacking up buffs endlessly, since you can only have 3 unique buffs and debuffs at once on each character.

One game that I felt did status effects in an interesting way was Tales of Berseria. Here, the length of your attack combo is dictated by your soul gauge, but when you exhaust it you can refill it using a powerful attack that lowers your souls. The result is you can get very lengthy combo strings but the time between having to refill it grows shorter and shorter until you can't anymore... or it would, except inflicting a status ailment gives you back a soul. Consistently applying statuses, especially stun, is the key to a long combo in that game. Adding on to that, each stat buff is tied to one of the regular debuffs like burn or poison, making it more likely to inflict the other if one has been afflicted, and those regular debuffs in turn make stun happen more often. It combines stat ups, DoT/Control debuffs, and status synergy all in the service of having amazingly long combos.

You know, as I watched this video, I started to consider other things that are related. First is status resistance/immunity. Bosses being affliction-proof has been around a long time as a cheap way to make a fight tougher, but sometimes mobs can have immunity to certain afflictions as well. It's a tricky balancing act and should be done in a way that makes sense. One way I thought of doing it is that while bosses should be immune to the most debilitating effects (instakilling a boss should be a puzzle and not just "press X to deathspell"), they're not immune to everything. In the game engine I've been theorizing, most every affliction has levels which determine how badly the affliction affects the target; bosses can be immune to all but the lowest levels of those afflictions, which still gives those afflictions meaning. For example, let's say Poison does more damage, and impairs accuracy and evasion, at higher levels; with this setup, while the boss' probability factors won't be affected, they still take gradual damage from being poisoned. Another is status treatment. Yeah, there are antidotes and other remedies that appear throughout the games, but if some multi-status remedy comes along, there needs to be some factor besides cost to balance them out, because - let's face it - once the late game or endgame roll around, you're going to run out of "better equipment" to buy, and if that multi-remedy is more efficient than specialized remedies, the specialized remedies are going to be an afterthought. In the system I had in mind, things would be different: while multi-remedies exist, they are only capable of treating every status at once. The dedicated status remedies instead replace the status they "cure" with a special status that not only overwrites the intended status, but prevents its reapplication for some time.

The geo effects from Disgaea are genius. It adds so much dimension to the game for people wanting more out of it and makes use of the lifting mechanic while also being incredibly flexible and diverse. They can also take the form of a more traditional status effect system for players who are there for the main campaign alone!

Status effects in the Etrian Odyssey series are extremely important, and they come in three distinct types. Binds are hybrid debilitators: Leg Bind reduces Agility and disables evasion and the Escape command, Arm Bind reduces physical damage and many skills, and Head Bind reduces TEC (or INT) and disables a number of more magic-like skills. Any or all of these can coexist on one target. Ailments consist of more of the traditional effects: poisioning, paralysis, petrification, etc. etc. Generally these come in a hierarchy, and higher-priority ailments override lower-priority ones - and can't be overridden in return. Blind tends to be low, petrify tends to be pretty high. Probably the most creative one is EO3's Plague, which spreads to your other characters if left untreated. Buffs and Debuffs are more direct modifications to stats and such. Troubadour songs, Sovereign Orders, and the like go here, and each party member and enemy can have three of each. Depending on the game, it's possible to use a buff or debuff that affects the same thing to cancel these out.

I gotta comment on the way Golden Sun's status system and comprehensive Djinn system blend together. It's simply amazing.

I really appreciate that if you brainwash an enemy in Persona 5 Royal there's a chance you can just tell them to submit to you instead of negotiating with them. It's a neat mechanic that makes the effect extra worth while.

So.. What colour do we use use for the next video? Dan and Mike: *YES*

I'm glad you acknowledged the Trails games (both with that brief video clip of Trails in the Sky FC and with Sophisticated Fight as background music), because I find the status effects in those games to be super interesting when combined with its fluid turn ordering. Having temporary status effects (HP/EP/CP heal, zero-cost spells, CP drain to 0, critical damage, etc) bound to specific turns adds a new level of strategy to managing player speed and turn order -- just buffing your team's speed and delaying your opponents as much as possible isn't necessarily the best strategy, because that could end up giving an opponent a critical turn or giving one of your party members a CP-0 turn. That also ties into managing CP -- if an enemy is going to get a critical turn soon, do I interrupt the turn order with an S-Break and steal the critical effect for myself, or do I preserve my party member's CP and try to tank the critical hit? Alternatively, do I try to inflict an ailment like Seal/Mute/Sleep on the enemy before their turn so they can't take advantage of the critical bonus? Add in the combat link system from Trails of Cold Steel, and critical turns become much more important because it also means a guaranteed follow-up from your link partner. There's a lot of interesting strategy that can be done, which is one of the reasons why I've been so hooked on the series recently

16:58 to be fair this can happen in any smt/persona game. i remember getting charmed in the lucifer fight and that demon fully healed him and he has a significantly higher hp bar and very high defense compared to nyx avatar.

13:06 Ah! I was hoping Bug Fables would show. And in a moment of good too. Your videos are always great, keep up the good work.

My most memorable status effect is the "Gravity" status effect by the "Wall of Flesh" boss in Terraria in a specially difficult modded game-mode. It flipped you screen upside down when you got hit for some ~5 seconds, which had a huge effect on disorienting the player, even though it had no actual in-game effect. Very fun and chaotic boss fight.

How about the Hollowed status from the Dark Souls game. It added a whole heap of risk/reward, you had to spend resources to enable cooperative help whilst also opening yourself up to the risk of invasions. If you died then the Humanity you spent was gone, so do you spend another Humanity for another chance at an easier boss fight with coop help?

16:08 I do love how well the story and gameplay mechanics of Xenoblade Chronicles tie together in regards to visions of instant-KO attacks.

One of the coolest parts of status effects is discovering unintended exploits. Like in Oblivion where you can make custom spells with the same OP status effect with a different name and stack them until the starting fireball spell is a one-hit kill. Fun for those who want to go through all that trouble and completely ignorable if you don't want to do it.

I was a fan of how smt sorta relied on its buffs and debuffs. And how the press turn system almost required you to take huge consideration about how your actions effect the pacing

i respect the sponsor transition, but not enough to actually watch it.

In a way, even basic hit-stun featured in nearly any game with combat is a sort of status effect.

"Great is the weapon that cuts on its own"

NOOO!!! Not the money down status effect! It affects only KZfaqrs, and the worst part is that it is always cast randomly and takes a random amount of time to cure. By then, most of the battle is over. They need to patch that out.

One thing I'd like to add to all this is the timing/pacing of statuses and their potencies can change a playstyle a ton. I'll be using SMT 3/Nocturne and 4 as my primary examples here with their main stuff: stat buffs. For a quick breakdown, Taru = attack, Raku = defense, Maka = magic (Nocturne only) ,and Suku = accuracy/evasion/speed and suffixes are -kaja = increase, -nda = decrease. The second thing I would like to quickly bring up are the 'end game' stat changing buffs; Luster Candy and Debilitate. Luster (rough translation from RaSuTa) Candy, in the games it appears, is a party-wide buff that increases all stats one stage. Plain, simple, super effective. Debilitate does the opposite by debuffing all of the enemy party's stats a stage. Compared to possibly focusing on a couple stats early on or taking quite a bit of time to use it all. Third thing. Dekaja and Dekunda. What do these do? They remove all stat changes then and there. There's a boss exclusive skill that comes into play much later where it's a full stat change wipe for both parties in a single action and, more often than not, will be used if the boss is fully debuffed or your party is fully buffed. Onto the meat now You can get an early skill in 4 called Fang Breaker. What does it do? Small amount of damage and *attack* *down*. It's very early and you probably wouldn't have Tarunda for a while longer. So it's fantastic to have, especially for bosses. But it's single target. Have to make it count. On the other hand, you will eventually find demons with non-element Breath attacks, specifically Fog Breath and Acid Breath with effects differing between 3 and 4. In 3, Fog Breath reduces agility by *two* stages. In 4, it instead affects agility and attack, each only one stage. Regardless, both blow Sukukaja out of the water and both are surprisingly early depending on the demon you use or magatama in 3. Being able to drop multiple stats or multiple stages early is very huge, even at end game where you might have Debilitate and/or Luster Candy ready.

Burnout from Monster Train is an amazing status effect. You can play reform cards that not only bring dead units back to life, but also buff their stats. However, reforming units applies burnout, a number that ticks down each turn. Once the burnout reaches 0, that unit dies. The best part is that some units have abilities that only trigger once another unit dies, so you can use the burnout timer to your advantage. Monster Train has many more awesome status effects that are at the core of the combat. I highly recommend checking it out.

Earthbound's homesickness is an interesting status ailment since no enemy can give you this effect (you have a 1/256 chance of getting it after the end of a battle starting from level 15-75)and you can't use an item or PSI to cure it; instead needing you to talk to your Mother to cure it

10:28 The trope I hate the most in boss fights. This brings the battle down to the same level as a random mob encounter, resulting in bruteforcing your way through. What's the point of grinding for all those spells that inflict status effect if the majority of late game bosses are immune to everything!?

wow, i've never realized how much of an impact status effects have on most games. very well-made video!! thanks and keep it up :D

I just got the notification for this, but i better see vanilla p5's final boss while watching this

I'm just posting to say that seeing Skies of Arcadia made me feel happy. I hope that game gets a PC release (perhaps even a remaster) one day. Also, my favorite status effect is getting mercenaries drunk in Jagged Alliance 2; some will go from hating a team mate to loving them after a bottle of liquor.

Thank you for this video. I'm designing a game with a lot of status effects myself and it's been reaffirming to hear that I've been designing them in a decent fashion.

Phenomenal Footage. You very clearly illustrate concepts for novices, avid players and developers. Your selection of games is excellent as well.

This is excellent! I think a big part of what might need more expanding upon is the consequence of dissipating a status effect, as that can dramatically impact continuing forward in a game. Items, inventory management, spell/MP availability, using turns to heal, the consequences of things like REFLECT, theres a lot of content to work with. In Legend of Dragoon for example, poison does massive damage but you also have a limited inventory, so your percieved value of items that cure that condition is raised, but you also value those item slots more. Plenty to ponder :)

Design doc back at it again with a great and interesting topic. Please keep up the amazing work. You make amazing videos! You deserve more recognition.

I remembered having so much fun fighting demons in strange journey using demons that reflects ice bcs i cant damage them otherwise, i died but still had fun

I really loved how you added Trails in the Sky to your video. It's one of my favorite games with probably the most interesting action economies out there. I hope you're gonna make a video about that soon ^^

Lost Odyssey!

I finished my first Etrian Odyssey game earlier this week (Etrian Odyssey Untold) and that game had fun combat and bunch of tricks you can utilize in battles. For example, you have a character with a passive skill that lets them attack a random enemy whenever they take damage. The class has access to all kinds of other skills that hurt yourself but also attacks at the same time or gives buffs. So you can get extra attacks on enemies on both your turn and your opponent's turn. But then there's also the Grimoire Stone system which gives you access to skills from other classes or even enemies. You can use Vulcan Stance to make normal attacks deal damage on all enemies for few turns and that includes the attack you perform by taking damage. Or maybe add a passive Penetrator skill that makes normal attacks pierce through enemy lines, giving you a chance of attacking two enemies at once. Or you can up your defense and make enemies attack you more often by using Provoke. Unfortunately EO suffers somewhat from the same problem as most other RPGs. The normal battles are so short that you are better off just attacking instead of using status effects. Although it gets partially around the problem by having some loot that can be only obtained if the enemy has been inflicted with certain status effect or is killed with a specific type of attack. And there are some stronger enemies that feel like bosses if you decide to battle them early. Most bosses are single enemy encounters so all attacks that hit multiple enemies can be thrown out of the window but at least they can be hit with status effects. Binding the final boss's arms was a huge help since it made it unable to use an attack that reflects all of your attacks for one turn. I basically killed myself on my first try since I didn't know it had a skill like that.

I really like the status effect system in dicey dungeons, they are rather unique and interesting imo

I really appreciate you having captions on your videos!! I'm not hard of hearing, but I sometimes have trouble focusing on what people say, so I always have captions on whenb possiuble.

Sleep bombing in Monster Hunter is still my favorite status effect strategy in any game.

I'd like to give a shoutout to epic battle fantasy 5's combat system, especially on higher difficulties. It's one of those SMT-types where it is very much a "use status effects / buffs / debuffs or die horribly" system, but with a lot more intricacies. Buffs and debuffs overwrite each other, and both of them are percentage based, going from +100% to -50% (Though in player hands, usually +70% to -30%, unless you use equips that modify this). Many enemies are immune to specific status effects, requiring you to change strategies, and there are plentiful ways of inflicting all of them. There are even debuffs that reduce two stats by 5% a turn (if you're buffed, -10%/turn total), and most statuses make characters take extra damage from a source, but that also consumes a stack of that debuff. Most status effects come from attacks too, which gives the "at least this does damage, even if it doesn't hit them with a status" but also "do I want to heal this enemy to inflict this status effect?" For example, an enemy that absorbs water. The main source of the "bad luck" status, which makes other statuses easier to apply, deals water-based damage. Thus, you can go "do I want to heal this enemy now to make applying other status effects easier?" There are also Neutral status effects, like Dry and Invisible, that increases damage from one source (fire, bomb for dry, magic for invisible) and reduce damage from another (ice, lighting for dry, physical for invisible). Another thing I like is the equipment system, especially how it interacts with status effects. There are weapons that are very powerful and inflict powerful status effects but have a drawback. Powerful stat weapons with no status effects either way. Weaker equipment with very good status effects. There's an accessory that gives +20% in every single stat (except hp) when a similar end-game accessory only gives +5, but the stronger one curses you every turn, making you weak to holy damage and reducing your def/mdef by 5%- which means you run out of defense buffs quicker, and without them, you'll land to -50% or lower quickly, meaning you'll just die.

You’re sponsorship status effect was very clever! I love your channel!

Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep's Mini spell makes enemies smaller but take damage if you walk over them.

This is why I love Persona 5 Royal, the status effects actively make the game more fun when you use them because of the genius Technical system.

Playing FF7 remake on Hard and Persona 5 royal on merciless difficulty was a great way to be forced to take advantage of status effects. putting Rufus to sleep then 1 shotting him with infinity edge is so satisfying

fascinating, can't wait to watch all your videos lol

Bonus points for classes that can exploit the fact the enemy has an ailment on them. Like the night seeker from etrian odyssey. They have passives that let them do even more damage to enemies suffering from ailment, and other skills that have bonus effects for the same reason, and they stack. Also blind is my favorite status ailmet to inflict.

I love Frigid Coffin in Bug Fables. It's a freeze spell that freezes enemies and bosses often. Leif gets from a level up early on. Why I love it so much is that it has a 3tp cost (semi low amount) and does 4 damage (base attack does 2 for reference). This is great because you still can use it as a nice damage dealing move, no matter your luck. The other two character's skills also do 4 damage, though Kabbu's is defence peirceing and Vi's hits multiple times, making attack ups much stronger. Proves you can make attacks that deal the same damage be varried.

When all the mooks go down in a few hits so status effects are pointless, but bosses are immune to status effects when they would be helpful is just awful design. And that's why I love the Tales series. For the most part, bosses in Tales games aren't immune to statuses. In Tales of Destiny Remake, even the super boss can be affected by any status effect so poisoning him helps a lot to chip away at all his HP, and even full stun effects like sleep and petrifaction work on him. Helps that ToDR also has weapons for all the main characters that carry statuses on all their attacks, both physical and magical. Petri-locking bosses with Leon is so broken but feels so good. Rutee's sleep-locking Tidal Wave/Maelstrom combo is also fun.

Dark Souls 1, when you get "egged" blocking the helmet slot from being equipped until a special item is used.

Just came in to say that your thumbnails are so good, but this is my favourite one