Interesting Gaming Mechanics?

[Holsety]

I am just gonna post a few game mechanics I find interesting, and hopefully you guys will post some as well (if not that's fine though).

Gun exp from Cave Story:
Cave Story is an indy platformer somewhat similar to Metroid, made by one guy in Japan. In this game, you're a robot who fights with various guns. Most of the guns, especially those you get towards the beginning of the game, are rather weak at level 1, but can be leveled up by gaining yellow shards dropped by enemies. You can level up guns pretty quickly, so this is not an extensive powerup system like you might find in other games, but if you get damaged, your wexp will drop (kind of like a shooter but you're not all the way back to 0 if you die!). Some guns only require one hit to go from lvl 3 (the highest) to level 2.

There are a few guns that screw around a bit. The nemesis is great at level 1 and terrible at level 3, the sword is usually considered better at level 2, and the spur charges like a megaman/samus arm cannon and requires no EXP.

Also, in the last 2 dungeons, your weapons always drop to level 1 when you start. This is important for the last dungeon, which is a bonus dungeon, since speedruns there used to be compared competitively by fans.

Roaming monsters from Monster Hunter series:
For all I know this is different in other MH games, I only played MH3T. But monsters will move around the map of the area, which typically consists of about 10 screens, though all or nearly all are at least partially constrained (may or may not swim or go in desert or w/e). This is fairly irrelevant as far as small monsters go. When you're only facing one boss, the boss will usually run away from you a few times, forcing you to go somewhere else. Where this really starts to matter is when more than one boss monster is on the map at the same time. You can be fighting the 3rd major boss, and end up with a flying dragon that you would normally fight several hunts down the road joining the fight. Sometimes the bosses will attack each other, but it seems more frequent for them to team up against the player(s). I haven't played this far yet, but apparently the "second to last" online boss, called Deviljho (roughly meant to translate as "evil jaw"), is a big fan of ambushing hunters in any of the 5 areas in high ranking hunts, even if you aren't really feeling up to fighting him yet.

Basically, if you've ever played an action game like Devil May Cry or God of War...imagine fighting a big boss from one of those games, and then having the boss from the next area come in and start attacking you during the fight.

PCC, move growth and capture from Fire Emblem: Thracia 776:
Fire Emblem is a grid based strategy RPG. If you've played Final Fantasy Tactics, it's pretty similar...not too many others out there. It has a lot of weird little mechanics determining how damage, accuracy, consecutive attacks will be determined. But FE5 is probably the weirdest of the ones made so far.

Here are some of the weirder things:
-Normally in SRPGs units have relatively static movement stats. You might be able to equip an item to boost move in FFT, for instance, or change class for 1 movement point. In Fire Emblem, units have a class that determines their movement score. Amors typically have 5, other ground units mostly have 6, horses usually have 8 (5 when dismounted), and fliers have 9 (5 when dismounted). In Thracia 776, units have a tiny chance (1-3%) of gaining another move point every time they level. While it's not that likely that every unit will get a movement point this way while playing, there's a good chance some of them will. It can be particularly odd if movement points stack on a particular unit. I have an armor in my current runthrough who has 2 more move than he "should", armors are not typically more mobile than other ground units. I also know someone who once had a unit who typically had 6 movement who got 6 more for a total of 12.

-PCC...stands for pursuit critical coefficient. "Pursuit" refers to when a character performs a second attack during a round of combat due to a higher spd stat. Basically, every character has a PCC between 0 and 5. If a character performs a "pursuit", then the PCC is multiplied by their normal chance to critical. Critical chance is normally a function of the skill stat, which is anywhere between 1-20...and most characters with a high PCC have high skill. A character with 20 skill will get that multiplied by 5 on a second attack, giving a 100% critical. There are a few things that reduce critical, but it's much easier to raise it. And a critical attack doubles the attack power prior to factoring the enemy's defense, meaning even a character who would otherwise do 0 damage can do 20 or more in some cases (which is substantial).

-Capture:
Units with a higher "build" stat (representing physical mass) or a mount can use "capture" as opposed to attack on a grounded enemy unit. Their scores during combat drop rather dramatically, but if they succeed in killing the enemy unit this way, it becomes "captured" instead. The enemy's items can then be taken. As long as the enemy is in their grips, the character's stats remain reduced and their movement may be hampered too. In some cases capturing is required to recruit characters. It's much more important for acquiring items. In most FE games you get gold as you complete some chapters, which you use to purchase weaponry and items for your army. In Thracia 776, the main way to get gold is selling enemy weaponry. Or you just use the enemy weaponry yourself. You can also pick up an allied unit and carry and drop it - this has remained in subsequent fire emblem games (capture has not).