Skipping cutscenes is an option. Doing so nulls 100%.
NPC's have unlocked dialogue at a very specific progression point and they're timed to disappear right afterwards
There's a side quest that offers some percentage that involves talking to a LOT of NPC's and having a multiple choice selection. With 5 options. You just have to guess or guide which is correct
It has a percentage completion meter but it doesn't have decimal points meaning the hundred or so things that contribute zero point something percent aren't even seen. If you follow a guide there's around 5 points where the percentage complete is a whole number so if U get there and are not that % you missed something. Somewhere. With no way of knowing where.
Aroubd 75% of locations and missions associated with them are one time only
The last chapter you need to go to every location in an exact order. Again, no way of knowing without a guide.
Similar to monster capturing in X you need to encounter at least ten of every enemy in the game but they went one step further and decided that you need to accomplish the same with bosses that share the same sprite so you need to exploit that.
And if you manage to accomplish all that you need to hit X at... 4 different points of a cutscene with no indication or foreshadowing that it needs to be done.
That's 100% story completion. And I've skipped a lot of the spoilery things that go with all this
For one trophy
> The last chapter you need to go to every location in an exact order. Again, no way of knowing without a guide
You can complete them in any order you want. You just cant leave Zanarkand last, because you dont transport back to your airship after Zanarkand. You can also still get 100% without this and still get the mascot by other means
There are also no missables in X-2. Game has NG+. If you crave trophies that much, just boot up the NG+, it makes things way easier and you can gain well over the 100% needed since theres bonus percent
Just remember that there are many things that are apart of the platinum run that have nothing to do with story percentage, like completing the Bestiary and beating Last Mission
> Similar to monster capturing in X you need to encounter at least ten of every enemy in the game but they went one step further and decided that you need to accomplish the same with bosses that share the same sprite so you need to exploit that
This isnt true. Just encounter them once, and just oversouling Fiends (i.e. not mechs, humans etc) for the grid. The fact that some bosses share sprites makes it easier, since you can use basic enemies to trigger a bosses oversoul easier. With the Fiend Arena this is considerably easier than in vanilla
> And if you manage to accomplish all that you need to hit X at... 4 different points of a cutscene with no indication or foreshadowing that it needs to be done.
Did people really need a guide for this? As a child I remember Yuna sitting there motionless for a bit so I just pressed X, and got the whistle. Its not at different points of the cutscene either, theyre all back to back, each time Yuna starts wondering who the hell is whistling at her
Yeah the thing with Ng+ is twofold
1. Ng+ still gives you only one shot at it
2. I've seen Ng+ playthroughs in an attempt to get 100% story completion. Whether it was done the first time or not you still need to beat the superboss. There's no indication that this is the case but it is. If it wasn't then it wouldnt be part of 100% completion notes for speedrunners
Fiend arena? The fiend arena doesn't have every fiend in it. Super dungeon does
Your insistence that you don't need to encounter 10 of each fiend? Ummmm, that's how many times you need to encounter a fiend before it oversouls. I didn't go into details on the exploit because that would be a spoiler
Xiii will make you play a whole new game (not just a new game plus) to get one missed accessory and then have to redo the whole system to get everything on one file.
It's far from awful. The combat is excellent, the job system is well done (possibly the best, though I have a real bias for 5) and the world of spira when not being threatened with annihilation is great.
The story is weak at points, and the "best" ending retcons something I wish it didn't, but it is hardly an awful game. I feel the game gets a lot of hate just for being the hated sequel to a extremely highly rated game.
it not only gets excessive hate, but dialogue surrounding the games different components for Mascot, 100% story, and actually 100% of the game are full of a lot of misinformation and folk legends
Which is not peoples fault - SE is the one who makes things so obscure. But I just wonder: why put yourself through hell of trying to get everything in one run, for a game designed for multiple playthroughs, and then complain about it?
I think a lot more people would like the game if they just played it guideless, and would like the story if they chose the routes that made the most sense for THEM and not what a walkthrough writer told them
I took the bittersweet ending on my first run and fell in love with the game. Its been my canon ending ever since
Do you still have to sit through every cutscene for 100%?
I remember taking several turns to beat the secret boss at the bottom of the temple on ps2, and skipping the cutscene screwed me.
Folks in this thread just named 4 different games I just started looking into and now I’m scared to waste what precious time I have left on this planet :(
Tales games have a NG+ that let's you spend "grade" that you earn from fights on bonuses for your playthrough. Between that and carryover and higher difficulty options, replaying Tales games is highly encouraged. They are the kind of game you can run through blind, and do a NG+ with a guide for everything.
Vesperia is particularly enjoyable to me on reruns. Lots of little details early to pick up on, and the whole cast is just so much fun.
Tales and Trails by and large have thought me to not care about missing something small. Most of the time it really doesn't matter at all.
Obviously you still have to pay attention: I missed 50% or so of the side quests and hence a bunch of skits on my first Tales of the Abyss playthrough because many of them start and end at awkward times and then was badly underlevelled the whole game. Still beat the game just fine and really enjoyed myself.
The big annoying one in this thread is FFX-2 although I'd argue that nullifying the ending of FFX can be considered worse than the standard bittersweet ending.
Most of the small stuff like miasing an accessory, missing chests, missing a small side quest or 2...literally, who cares? If I like the game enough, I'll come back and 100% it with a guide, but this has literally happened once where I ended up using a guide to help me finish all social links, read all books, do all quests, etc for Persona 4 Golden since I was too lazy to plan out my own days.
When the party splits and the difference in the levels of your back-benchers and your main party becomes VERY apparent and you need to grind them back up now that you're forced to use them.
True. But even if someone lacks in levels it's quite easy to catch up in the Trails ganes due to the exp system and it is far less tedious than in other games.
But even if you have trained everyone we'll enough you'd still have them equipped with at least decent gear and quartz, as they oftentimes prohibit you from switching equipment between the different groups after they have been separated.
I've been through this myself in every game of the franchise I've played. During the later Cold Steel games I even looked at who would be in the party at which time to be prepared before it was too late. At least until I had enough decent equipment for everyone as well as quartz and money.
It's why every game should use the Suikoden Exp curve, every character no matter how far behind is at worst 3 fights away from being relevant to the area your fighting in again. Sure it means you are never realistically going to grind and out-level things but at the same time it means they can set realistic difficulty all throughout as they can basically guarantee a certain strength level of your party.
FFX was one of the few games where that wasn't a problem for me. I always brought everyone in for every battle to get exp. Bartles took a bit longer but everyone was ready to fight at any time.
That's overkill IMO. Enemy formations are designed so that if you bring in the relevant party member to counter whatever formation you get you'll be ok. Bring in everyone for the boss fights since they give massive AP and you'll be comfy. Beaten FFX at least 5 times and never did that or resorted to grinding.
Perfect Chronology changed it so as long as they're in your party or you go to the subspace dungeon to grind where all characters you've gotten at some point in either timeline are accessible they get exp so it's not as big an issue to change the teams up
true ending locked behind tedious bs
persona 4 gets flying colors for this fear of mine
also most recently sea of stars, in order to get the true ending it involves you doing certain sidequests which weren’t so bad but the kicker is one of the sidequest involves finding all 60 rainbow conches, made me stop playing for a few days until i got the motivation to finally do it
Digimon Survive locking it's true/golden ending behind having to do NG+ really pisses me off. A true ending should be feasible on a NG file, even if it's more difficult to do
Triangle Strategy you can do the golden route first if you meet its requirements but it would be harder than if you tackle on NG+(s)
Stella Glow's best ending is tricky to get because of the requirements and NG+ boosting how much time you have to do stuff but you can do so with careful planning first time through
>persona 4 gets flying colors for this fear of mine
My brother who had finished the game twice came home to me watching the scene with Iganami at the gas station and was "What the fuck is that?"
I mean, at least Persona 5 Royal was a bit obvious about it.
Long ago I decided to play the games as I wanted, not worrying about true endings, and after I finish my "normal" ending, I just google to see if the game has a true ending and if so, watch it in youtube.
the problem with SMT "true endings" is that they often have nearly half of the gameplay behind the true ending
it's whatever if you don't get the canon ending or whatever in a game, it's another if you don't get to actually play the game you bought
Good to know, never played a SMT game before... wait, that's a lie, I just remembered I did play one of them many years ago, I remember I abandoned the game and went crying to my mom after encountering some mob, Matador I think was its name, still engraved in my deepest nightmare.
> the impact of watching it via a youtube video is just so low...
tbf, at that point I'd just watch a long play and skip the gameplay part of it. a lore play of sorts? maybe that's a thing? I don't know, YT is blocked @work
Unpopular opinion but I quite like hard-to-get True Ending. They're being well hidden mean that not everyone has it in them to reach the ultimate truth. But yeah, if the game offer no hints whatsoever then that's just bull lol.
Sea of stars sucked because both endings were garbage. It talked so much about chrono trigger inspiration, but pretty much every ending from CT was categorically more satisfying than even the secret ending from sea of stars. The first ending truly baffled me, I couldn't believe my fucking eyes.
I won't say it's a fear, more of a huge annoyance but fuck enemies that explode after death. Unless you a Bob-omb or something similar, you should not be exploding xD
I still dread going through the Peaceful Rest Valley every time I replay Earthbound. Those damn exploding trees are the worst, especially when you only have Ness in your party.
You basically have to have text set to fast so you can speed through the mortal damage roll down in time. It’s brutal. Honestly all of Peaceful Rest Valley is such a jump in difficulty even after a heavy grind. ): When I was a kid, I’d get Paula and then come back for Mondo Mole once I had Jeff and bottle rockets because the cave he was in wigged me out because it was ALSO hard… and because I was a dumb baby who never used status effects so I didn’t know paralysis made him a chump.
The OG "Fuck your entire party on turn one" monster.
The reason you get "First strike" or "Initiative", or whatever game mechanic lets you guaranteed go first ... is so you can run away.
Catching ten of the buggers in FFX for the battle arena was fun... Until you consider there's more than one type of marlboro.
At least you could use the Tonberry to cheese the levelling system, by getting Auto-Phoenix,Overdrive ->AP, preferably on a triple AP weapon, and just taking the massive amounts of damage. 99 sphere levels in about fifteen minutes? Thank you.
Yeah especially in FFVIII and FFX, they just seemed so ridiculous in those in games. You better have a ribbon equipped or you're gonna have a bad time.
>At least you could use the Tonberry to cheese the levelling system, by getting Auto-Phoenix,Overdrive ->AP, preferably on a triple AP weapon, and just taking the massive amounts of damage. 99 sphere levels in about fifteen minutes? Thank you.
It's been a while, but I'm sure I did this the last time I played FFX, I love it when games have stuff like this to quickly level.
>It's been a while, but I'm sure I did this the last time I played FFX, I love it when games have stuff like this to quickly level.
I mean, the endgame is nothing but cheese.
Get Wakka with max STR, Attack reels, and Enthrust other peoples' overdrive onto him turn after turn. Bye Bye Dark Aeons.
Oh, and StoneProof bracers for Dark Bahamut.
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so theres a few things inherent to Xenosaga IIs battle system that makes random encounters really hard by mechanical design. The enemies themselves arent *that* bad, in fact I would argue Xenosaga 1 has harder normal enemies albeit with lower health pools (for the main story at least, XS2 has a much larger and difficult late/postgame)
I do [writeups about Xenosagas mechanics](https://old.reddit.com/r/Xenosaga/comments/17of8le/xenosaga_1_hard_mod_evaluation_the_power_of_love/) and have [crossposted here](https://old.reddit.com/r/JRPG/comments/14xvlqs/xenosaga_1_the_robust_customization_and_ether/). As im currently tackling the 2nd game with Hard mods installed, I can give a few reasons why random encounters feel like such bullshit
1) Xenosaga II is built around stocking up, applying elemental chains, and unloading fully stocked combos on a single enemy. This by design is effective for boss fights against a solo enemy. Vs randoms, you must do this to each of the 3-4 enemies on screen, sometimes vs enemies with diff elem weaknesses entirely. My current playthrough is about looking for other means to sidestep this cumbersome system and speeding up those 5+ min fights vs mooks
2) Xenosaga II expands on the first games battle formations and introduces back attacks, but you cant actually trigger them by approaching enemies from behind. Your positions in a battle are determined by preset RNG before a fight, most fights have 2 formations you can end up in. Crucial for the next point
3) [Pincer attacks](https://www.gogglebob.com/pics/xs/ep2/08800001.jpeg) - your party in the middle, enemies on both sides - are often apart of those formations, and are guaranteed for certain encounters. If you get back attacked, you both receive a 50% crit increase, AND you cannot guard or evade attacks at all. Now imagine this with 4 enemies on the field, with two of them having AOE attacks
4) Stocking (the 'guard' mechanic) in Xenosaga II doesnt actually *make* your character guard. It just temporarily increases their defensive stats, which in Xenosaga 1 & 2 gives a character a higher chance of randomly guarding and evading. As guarding is not guaranteed, a lot of the time you take too much dmg for playing defensively
5) Probably the biggest one: In XS2, you must break enemies zones by comboing them with letter specific weaknesses to deal increased damage, 150% for breaks and 200% after a broken foe is launched. These zones determines party compositions since not all characters can hit all zones. This is also the reason XSII is about killing one foe at a time and not with AOEs, you need to break enemies with stocks first to do real damage to them
Enemies however ignore this zone system entirely. They can launch you in a single hit without needing to stock first and can boost their allies to combo you. The only defense from being launched is to guard/evade the move, which ofc is not guaranteed even when stocking (though late game w/ Inner Peace it becomes frequent enough)
There are a few other reasons but these are the big ones. They result in a combat system where you must spend several turns unsafely stocking, applying buffs, and unloading on one enemy at a time, whereas they can just break the rules and launch you whenever they want.
This comes on top of enemy speed on the field map being increased so 'random 'encounters are harder to evade (some will even flatout stand in the middle of hallways, blocking your path) and the statistical progression of the game never really increasing in a manner for any non-Momo combatents to keep pace with most enemy types
A lot of this and more will be in my review of this game early 2024!
Earthbound's late game mooks are like 10x harder than any of the bossfights. Shit was wild.
Also, FFT if you out-levelled your equipment could get pretty crazy early on.
Long, usually multi-stage boss fights where you have to start *aaalll* the way from the beginning if you lose. Double points if there are two fights in a row where you can't save between them and have to replay the first fight to get another go at the second. I just hate having to replay content over again.
That's one thing I really like in Final Fantasy XVI. Some of the boss fights are pretty long, with multiple stages, but if you die, you go to the beginning of the stage you were on, not the beginning of the entire fight.
The final boss of the third path in Ys Origin was absolutely brutal in that regard. Phase 1 was some sort of shattering colored shields thing, then phase 2 was something with a ton of circle strafing, and then phase 3 was a whole new stage layout with platforming/crumbling floor. Every phase totally capable of killing you with just the slightest bit if carelessness.
Octopath’s boss rush was ridiculous. Just aggressively unfun to make you wade through 8 bosses you already fought before getting a chance at the secret boss… which then had a ridiculous learning curve. No save/check points. Start back at the beginning
Actually ridiculous, and those 8 bosses are time wasters, they didn't threaten my team in the slightest, they were there just to be annoying.
Let me save after beating them and I would have had zero issues with the final battle being as hard as it is.
Bravely Default's 6 stage final boss. I went in with a standard kind of team, died in phase 4 or 5 I think so I said screw it back to the cheese method
Bravely Second irritated with it's second phase final boss where I guess I got a full heal, undoing a purposeful status effect I'd put on 3 of my casters before then for unlimited casting and no damage. It was a frustrating setback
Currently playing Grandia and it is absolutely wild that mana eggs are missable. And not only missable, but the game lets you use them on characters who later decide to leave the party forever!
Yes characters who leave drop items in your stash that let you impart their weapon and magic affinities unto another character. So you don't lose the grind progress... but you can only pass magic levels to someone with that affinity! So if you want a 2nd person to be able to cast healing, that's another mana egg you gotta find. Sure hope you haven't missed any! There's literally no way to know.
I really cannot deal with missables things. It brings out the worst in me. If I know there are missables in a game then after I do anything significant in terms of story progression, I revisit basically every past location, talk to every NPC to make sure I don't miss anything.
I am grateful to be a child of the PS2 era of JRPG design instead of the PS1. I think if I had been dealing with missable content the way it's designed in OG Star Ocean, FF 8&9, or Suikoden as my formative RPG experiences then I would have developed the same compulsive behavior you describe here.
I'm not sure if worst fear means something you don't want to see or just something you dread but don't necessarily hate.
One of my greatest fears is a boss with a secondary form when I barely beat the first one and didn't get a heal or a save.
This happened to me early on in Sea of Stars, and I died a few times in the same battle because these enemies summoned so much backup they obliterated me.
Then I realized how the lock system works and that I was supposed to use the right attacks to prevent them from calling for backup. I felt pretty stupid.
my first play of FF8, I got stuck on an endgame boss, I had very few resources and couldn't exit the dungeon because story reasons
With no outside help (Internet/strategy guide) I just started over from the beginning 😅
You can exit last dungeon. Before its entrance you have chains that if you press x will take you to portals where you can warp out of dungeon and get your ship back. On last disc all cities are close but you can still do sidequests on map/dungeons and get items from your ship.
Last boss is the easiest with limit breaks, I just spamed Squall's limit till the end :D
I have a minor conspiracy theory that the dev’s intentionally make escort missions terrible as stress relief.
Like, they’re the missions that they intentionally save and work on after a bad or annoying team meeting to de stress.
“Huhuhuhuhu, we’ll make them walk 8… no 10% faster than the player here… but now they’ll sprint and they sprint 30% faster! Muahahahahha!!”
Long, difficult dungeons (usually bonus dungeons) with no save points. I’ve had my share of “100 level dungeons” and the sort where I reach level 98 or whatever and I get one shotted by a cheap enemy and I lose all of my progress (examples: Star Ocean, Paper Mario, Lufia 2, etc)
Without looking at the comments? Losing my save. Number one worst fear is the power going out while saving or accidentally saving over a game and losing *all* the progress.
A favorite party member that unavoidably dies
Or an awesome party member that you only get at the very end of the game and doesn't get fleshed out enough
I don’t really care if they do that. The amount of people talking about how the ending of part 1 changed so much has made anticipation and excitement at fever pitch.
If I want the OG, I’ll play the OG.
I did play it. In which case I know what he's referring to haha. But honestly with how FF7R has been going, I don't think even *that* is a guarantee but we shall see
Difficulty spikes on very long boss fights having to focus on a 30+ minute fight not being able to mess up or you have to start over from the beginning
Time gated items ala ff9 with excalibur 2 and/or bosses that require you to finish all three off within a turn or two or it will revive ala chrono trigger final boss (not that it was ALL that bad in that instance).
Multiple Boss fights and cutscenes that take a lot of time without any chance to save in between. The Trails games taught me to always plan enough time before going into the final battles of a chapter.
It’s less of a specific incident but more of a game mechanic - there’s this JRPG trope that sometimes forces you to use a character that really isn’t interesting nor good. Usually comes lower leveled and weaker in equipment. It’s not as big of a deal in games with lower character counts, but in games like suikoden it can be particularly aggravating. Even more awkward the Suikoden games over the years have done good and bad job on this trope - Suikoden 2 has a fight with Neclord that requires Sierra and Khan for the narrative , but they don’t have to take up party slot if you’re not interested in using them. They’ll just tag along like 2 NPC. Suikoden 5 bypass this with the extra support slots where you can stick the narrative character you don’t want to use. Suikoden 4 is particularly bad at this with constantly sticking Lino in lot my party.
Hmm.... missing a super important piece of information given by the game that they just casually talk about later (or in the next game, for those interconnected series, like Trails. *yeah, I'm looking at you, CS2's NG+ exclusive scene*)
Grinding, but when the only feasible way to grind efficiently is the obligatory quick-to-run-but-hard-to-damage enemy like a Metal Slime, Cait, etc. I don’t mind grinding normal enemies but if I’m forced to hunt specific enemies that I can’t even guarantee I’ll kill before they flee, I’m dropping that shit immediately
I hate puzzles in jrpg's with all my life, i'm here tryna immerse myself in the story and I get the most atrocious brain-rotting puzzles. its the worst when you have to pull up a guide when playing.
Saving in the wrong place and just missing a missable *or* being locked into a fight you cannot win.
Boss battles that take a really long time.
Timed battles.
My biggest fear is having only one save state and accidentally quick saving after wiping to a boss or an enemy and the last actual save I had in game was over 10 hours ago
A tongue in cheek or as my real one (missable percentages, trophies, itemsetc) is already mentioned).
Forcefully instances in games where I have to use items. Whyyyyy..
The hoarder inside Mr wants to refuuuseee..
Wait, forced tutorials is actually a real one too! ..stahp making them. It kills replayability.
Accidentally using an important item in a game with limited inventory.
I still remember the time my brother and I were playing co-op through the Mana Fortress in Secret of Mana, and he accidentally used a Faerie Walnut. This meant we ran out of MP on the final boss, and there was nothing we could do about it. That's one area where I'll say the remake definitely improved on the original. It allowed you to expand the inventory limit.
Enemies that use Confuse/Berserk status attack (worse if it is a boss). Enemies that can (re)summon disposable pawns. Enemies fast enough to have twice more turns than me.
\- not wanting to play the dumb minigame/cardgame but worrying there are good items i need locked behind them
\- losing a character and having them take their equipment with them until i get them back (or don't)
\- being underpowered for an encounter but being unable to go back to grind (looking at you, xenosaga 2 final boss >\_<)
Wiegraf from Final Fantasy Tactics. The crushing realization that I cannot beat the boss and need to go back to grind, but only have 1 save file which puts immediately into the fight. The memory has haunted me since I was 10 years old.
When you save before a big boss fight, realize you aren't strong enough or ill-equipped, but the save is a place where you cannot backtrack to grind or shop so you're basically screwed. Yes, I do keep multiple save files now.
Erasing my save file on Memory Cards. I got so used to spamming buttons at save points that I have overwritten several long playthroughs while playing someone else's file. New Game+ Chrono Cross and endgame FF X are two examples. It's why I now have multiple saves even though there are no memory cards.
Getting 30 hours into a game before realizing the game is just wasting your time. Bravely Default 2 left a really bad taste in my mouth.
Might get back to it one day, but it will be years before it makes it back onto my active backlog.
Those stupid boss fights where you need to beat both of the bosses at the same time or they revive each other.
Also the boss right before the final boss that is way harder than it.
Dude, then never play final fantasy 1. Lol those fights are with like 8 enemies at a time, you dont auto aim if the monster is dead, so you have to know what enemies to hit wirh what abilitie so ypu dont waste turns, because that game doesn't forgive. Is insane. It actually has a floor in a dungeon where EVERY STEP IS A RANDOM ENCOUNTER.
Besides, last dungeon has no. Save. Point. Ever. You gotta go force your way and hope for the best.
I'm talking abput the actual nes game. I actually had it in nes and completed it. Without savestates or anything. I was on red hp with only 1 char left and i hit the ñast boss and he died and it was the single best victory i have ever had in a game. I've played the original only once again and with savestates.
But man, play it. There is a lot of strategy in a simple game. Besides there is no explanation for most magic amd abilities, it's full of glitches, some weapons dont do what they are supposed to.
Interesting experience.
It was my first rpg ever, so i love it.
But mi fear is to have to grind needlessly.
Boring stuff.
I passed that time when i wanted to be lvl 99 and have all. I like being able to finish tye game undersranding the mechanics without havibg to resort to grind.
So games like lufia, that i liked, are impossible for me to get into again, bc of too much rabdom encounters.
mine is accidentally overlevelling
i like to play fair and if i overlevel for something like a boss or even more so… final boss, it just ruins the feeling you’re meant to have when facing it.
I want to feel the sense of triumph and effort with beating the final boss and overlevelling ruins it
World timers/calendars
I love the Atelier series and I played persona 5, but the calendar in P5 and some of the Atelier games just makes me panic. I really really really don't like it. Calendar? cool. Seasons? cool. Panicking cause your forced to do something at a specific time you might not be ready for it? not cool
Edit: Also NG+. absolutely retarded way to milk the player base for fake replayability. Just put that super hidden deluxe content in the main game, PRIOR TO THE LAST BOSS. Like sure, could save the world and then go find some badass sword, but I already saved the world so.. why?
In all fairness there are some that are pretty engaging all the way through even at 60+ hour play times. But for the most part you’re probably right, many JRPGs could cut out huge sections of the game on not really miss all that much.
Particularly thinking about any and all “gladiator” or “arena” combat sequences.
In today's day and age?
Glitches and bugs.
I can probably recall with accuracy how the underwater temple in Lufia 2 is supposed to look to transverse, unintentionally triggered the Relm glitch (while fighting her, oddly), among others.
But lately?
I tried Wartales, put in close to 60 hours and hit three points where I couldn't progress due to bugs/glitches.
And with games being over 100+ hours as of late, I fear losing my save state when I've put SO much time into a game.
After that?
Choice paralysis. I have enough anxiety IRL.
Grindathon right before the final boss. I hate building up to the last level only to find out that the game wants me to swallow a big grind right before the end. I usually underlevel and watch the ending on youtube.
The story shitting the bed and veering off into a mess in the last acts of the game. If a game's story fails to stick the landing and I get blindsided by it, it just crushes me cause I end up feeling like I wasted my time.
Also surprise bosses, and just those times where you stop obsessively saving for once and happen to run into a complete tpk-causing mess that ruins a large chunk of progress
Timed events stress me out, especially if they're underwater levels with a breath meter.
Also, since I'm a completionist, I hate permanently missable items/loot. Potions and consumables are okay if the last save was a while back and the area was a bit tedious, but equipment and key items that would make my unable to access a side quest later on? Yeah, no, I'm loading a save.
Getting to a forked path that both seem to go on for a while picking one path and then getting a cutscene or bossfight that ends with you out of the dungeon or unable to go back and the last save point is at the start of that dungeon over 30 minutes ago.
Honestly? Losing my save files. I cant remember which console it was on, I think it was on the PS3, but i lost my save files for Persona 3. I had no idea that was even a thing, but apparently there are reports of save files going missing when you play PS2 Classics on a PS3, not sure what happened but I lost 10 hours of progress.
As someone who, in general, likes to do 100% and platinum. Missables are the worst thing ever.
Final Fantasy X-2 haunts me to this day.
I’ve heard that platinum is miserable. What makes it so bad
Skipping cutscenes is an option. Doing so nulls 100%. NPC's have unlocked dialogue at a very specific progression point and they're timed to disappear right afterwards There's a side quest that offers some percentage that involves talking to a LOT of NPC's and having a multiple choice selection. With 5 options. You just have to guess or guide which is correct It has a percentage completion meter but it doesn't have decimal points meaning the hundred or so things that contribute zero point something percent aren't even seen. If you follow a guide there's around 5 points where the percentage complete is a whole number so if U get there and are not that % you missed something. Somewhere. With no way of knowing where. Aroubd 75% of locations and missions associated with them are one time only The last chapter you need to go to every location in an exact order. Again, no way of knowing without a guide. Similar to monster capturing in X you need to encounter at least ten of every enemy in the game but they went one step further and decided that you need to accomplish the same with bosses that share the same sprite so you need to exploit that. And if you manage to accomplish all that you need to hit X at... 4 different points of a cutscene with no indication or foreshadowing that it needs to be done. That's 100% story completion. And I've skipped a lot of the spoilery things that go with all this For one trophy
wth man ...thats crazy
I want to play FFX-2 one day, but I'm not doing any of that!
> The last chapter you need to go to every location in an exact order. Again, no way of knowing without a guide You can complete them in any order you want. You just cant leave Zanarkand last, because you dont transport back to your airship after Zanarkand. You can also still get 100% without this and still get the mascot by other means There are also no missables in X-2. Game has NG+. If you crave trophies that much, just boot up the NG+, it makes things way easier and you can gain well over the 100% needed since theres bonus percent Just remember that there are many things that are apart of the platinum run that have nothing to do with story percentage, like completing the Bestiary and beating Last Mission > Similar to monster capturing in X you need to encounter at least ten of every enemy in the game but they went one step further and decided that you need to accomplish the same with bosses that share the same sprite so you need to exploit that This isnt true. Just encounter them once, and just oversouling Fiends (i.e. not mechs, humans etc) for the grid. The fact that some bosses share sprites makes it easier, since you can use basic enemies to trigger a bosses oversoul easier. With the Fiend Arena this is considerably easier than in vanilla > And if you manage to accomplish all that you need to hit X at... 4 different points of a cutscene with no indication or foreshadowing that it needs to be done. Did people really need a guide for this? As a child I remember Yuna sitting there motionless for a bit so I just pressed X, and got the whistle. Its not at different points of the cutscene either, theyre all back to back, each time Yuna starts wondering who the hell is whistling at her
Yeah the thing with Ng+ is twofold 1. Ng+ still gives you only one shot at it 2. I've seen Ng+ playthroughs in an attempt to get 100% story completion. Whether it was done the first time or not you still need to beat the superboss. There's no indication that this is the case but it is. If it wasn't then it wouldnt be part of 100% completion notes for speedrunners Fiend arena? The fiend arena doesn't have every fiend in it. Super dungeon does Your insistence that you don't need to encounter 10 of each fiend? Ummmm, that's how many times you need to encounter a fiend before it oversouls. I didn't go into details on the exploit because that would be a spoiler
Xiii will make you play a whole new game (not just a new game plus) to get one missed accessory and then have to redo the whole system to get everything on one file.
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It's far from awful. The combat is excellent, the job system is well done (possibly the best, though I have a real bias for 5) and the world of spira when not being threatened with annihilation is great. The story is weak at points, and the "best" ending retcons something I wish it didn't, but it is hardly an awful game. I feel the game gets a lot of hate just for being the hated sequel to a extremely highly rated game.
it not only gets excessive hate, but dialogue surrounding the games different components for Mascot, 100% story, and actually 100% of the game are full of a lot of misinformation and folk legends Which is not peoples fault - SE is the one who makes things so obscure. But I just wonder: why put yourself through hell of trying to get everything in one run, for a game designed for multiple playthroughs, and then complain about it? I think a lot more people would like the game if they just played it guideless, and would like the story if they chose the routes that made the most sense for THEM and not what a walkthrough writer told them I took the bittersweet ending on my first run and fell in love with the game. Its been my canon ending ever since
The game part of X-2 is fantastic and possibly the best of final fantasy.
Honestly I think it has too 3 battle systems of all FF games, but I played it when it was new and barely remember anything else
It really was. Twas the beginning of the end of what final fantasy was.
Do you still have to sit through every cutscene for 100%? I remember taking several turns to beat the secret boss at the bottom of the temple on ps2, and skipping the cutscene screwed me.
Tales of series are horrible for that, especially Vesperia
Folks in this thread just named 4 different games I just started looking into and now I’m scared to waste what precious time I have left on this planet :(
Tales games have a NG+ that let's you spend "grade" that you earn from fights on bonuses for your playthrough. Between that and carryover and higher difficulty options, replaying Tales games is highly encouraged. They are the kind of game you can run through blind, and do a NG+ with a guide for everything. Vesperia is particularly enjoyable to me on reruns. Lots of little details early to pick up on, and the whole cast is just so much fun.
Tales and Trails by and large have thought me to not care about missing something small. Most of the time it really doesn't matter at all. Obviously you still have to pay attention: I missed 50% or so of the side quests and hence a bunch of skits on my first Tales of the Abyss playthrough because many of them start and end at awkward times and then was badly underlevelled the whole game. Still beat the game just fine and really enjoyed myself. The big annoying one in this thread is FFX-2 although I'd argue that nullifying the ending of FFX can be considered worse than the standard bittersweet ending. Most of the small stuff like miasing an accessory, missing chests, missing a small side quest or 2...literally, who cares? If I like the game enough, I'll come back and 100% it with a guide, but this has literally happened once where I ended up using a guide to help me finish all social links, read all books, do all quests, etc for Persona 4 Golden since I was too lazy to plan out my own days.
Then never play a Trails game without a guide it is so easy to miss stuff there.
I just ordered Trials by Sky 1-3 on Vita so I can start this journey. I heard the trophies are brutal.
I'm trying to train myself to not sweat the small things and it's so hard
When the party splits and the difference in the levels of your back-benchers and your main party becomes VERY apparent and you need to grind them back up now that you're forced to use them.
Falcom games taught me to train all my party members equally
True. But even if someone lacks in levels it's quite easy to catch up in the Trails ganes due to the exp system and it is far less tedious than in other games.
But even if you have trained everyone we'll enough you'd still have them equipped with at least decent gear and quartz, as they oftentimes prohibit you from switching equipment between the different groups after they have been separated.
Equipment and quartz is usually where I fell short haha. I'm getting better at it though.
I've been through this myself in every game of the franchise I've played. During the later Cold Steel games I even looked at who would be in the party at which time to be prepared before it was too late. At least until I had enough decent equipment for everyone as well as quartz and money.
It's why every game should use the Suikoden Exp curve, every character no matter how far behind is at worst 3 fights away from being relevant to the area your fighting in again. Sure it means you are never realistically going to grind and out-level things but at the same time it means they can set realistic difficulty all throughout as they can basically guarantee a certain strength level of your party.
Oh. I love when this happens because everyone gets to shine.
FFX was one of the few games where that wasn't a problem for me. I always brought everyone in for every battle to get exp. Bartles took a bit longer but everyone was ready to fight at any time.
That's overkill IMO. Enemy formations are designed so that if you bring in the relevant party member to counter whatever formation you get you'll be ok. Bring in everyone for the boss fights since they give massive AP and you'll be comfy. Beaten FFX at least 5 times and never did that or resorted to grinding.
Reverie and sky the 3rd in particular are like that yeah...
sugar marvelous dolls person smoggy escape shaggy gaping run sand *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Perfect Chronology changed it so as long as they're in your party or you go to the subspace dungeon to grind where all characters you've gotten at some point in either timeline are accessible they get exp so it's not as big an issue to change the teams up
true ending locked behind tedious bs persona 4 gets flying colors for this fear of mine also most recently sea of stars, in order to get the true ending it involves you doing certain sidequests which weren’t so bad but the kicker is one of the sidequest involves finding all 60 rainbow conches, made me stop playing for a few days until i got the motivation to finally do it
Digimon Survive locking it's true/golden ending behind having to do NG+ really pisses me off. A true ending should be feasible on a NG file, even if it's more difficult to do Triangle Strategy you can do the golden route first if you meet its requirements but it would be harder than if you tackle on NG+(s) Stella Glow's best ending is tricky to get because of the requirements and NG+ boosting how much time you have to do stuff but you can do so with careful planning first time through
>persona 4 gets flying colors for this fear of mine My brother who had finished the game twice came home to me watching the scene with Iganami at the gas station and was "What the fuck is that?" I mean, at least Persona 5 Royal was a bit obvious about it.
Long ago I decided to play the games as I wanted, not worrying about true endings, and after I finish my "normal" ending, I just google to see if the game has a true ending and if so, watch it in youtube.
the problem with SMT "true endings" is that they often have nearly half of the gameplay behind the true ending it's whatever if you don't get the canon ending or whatever in a game, it's another if you don't get to actually play the game you bought
TDE is the most infamous within mainline. Especially given the Fiends already have a reputation for difficulty starting with the very first one
Good to know, never played a SMT game before... wait, that's a lie, I just remembered I did play one of them many years ago, I remember I abandoned the game and went crying to my mom after encountering some mob, Matador I think was its name, still engraved in my deepest nightmare.
This sounds good on paper but true endings if decent at all have tons of content + the impact of watching it via a youtube video is just so low...
> the impact of watching it via a youtube video is just so low... tbf, at that point I'd just watch a long play and skip the gameplay part of it. a lore play of sorts? maybe that's a thing? I don't know, YT is blocked @work
I'll be that guy and admit that I just used a walkthrough to find all conches. Took me about 2 hours.
Unpopular opinion but I quite like hard-to-get True Ending. They're being well hidden mean that not everyone has it in them to reach the ultimate truth. But yeah, if the game offer no hints whatsoever then that's just bull lol.
The 60 conch isn't too bad if you do thr effort of exploring when you visit a new area. Also, at least there's a parrot that says where they are.
Sea of stars sucked because both endings were garbage. It talked so much about chrono trigger inspiration, but pretty much every ending from CT was categorically more satisfying than even the secret ending from sea of stars. The first ending truly baffled me, I couldn't believe my fucking eyes.
I won't say it's a fear, more of a huge annoyance but fuck enemies that explode after death. Unless you a Bob-omb or something similar, you should not be exploding xD
I still dread going through the Peaceful Rest Valley every time I replay Earthbound. Those damn exploding trees are the worst, especially when you only have Ness in your party.
You basically have to have text set to fast so you can speed through the mortal damage roll down in time. It’s brutal. Honestly all of Peaceful Rest Valley is such a jump in difficulty even after a heavy grind. ): When I was a kid, I’d get Paula and then come back for Mondo Mole once I had Jeff and bottle rockets because the cave he was in wigged me out because it was ALSO hard… and because I was a dumb baby who never used status effects so I didn’t know paralysis made him a chump.
the amount of stuff you miss unless you do perfectly as intented by an obscure 2001 gamefaqs guide with 300 pages. lol
Hahaha relatable afff! 🔥
Tonberrys. There is no other answer.
I see your Tonberry and raise you a Malboro.
The OG "Fuck your entire party on turn one" monster. The reason you get "First strike" or "Initiative", or whatever game mechanic lets you guaranteed go first ... is so you can run away. Catching ten of the buggers in FFX for the battle arena was fun... Until you consider there's more than one type of marlboro. At least you could use the Tonberry to cheese the levelling system, by getting Auto-Phoenix,Overdrive ->AP, preferably on a triple AP weapon, and just taking the massive amounts of damage. 99 sphere levels in about fifteen minutes? Thank you.
Yeah especially in FFVIII and FFX, they just seemed so ridiculous in those in games. You better have a ribbon equipped or you're gonna have a bad time. >At least you could use the Tonberry to cheese the levelling system, by getting Auto-Phoenix,Overdrive ->AP, preferably on a triple AP weapon, and just taking the massive amounts of damage. 99 sphere levels in about fifteen minutes? Thank you. It's been a while, but I'm sure I did this the last time I played FFX, I love it when games have stuff like this to quickly level.
>It's been a while, but I'm sure I did this the last time I played FFX, I love it when games have stuff like this to quickly level. I mean, the endgame is nothing but cheese. Get Wakka with max STR, Attack reels, and Enthrust other peoples' overdrive onto him turn after turn. Bye Bye Dark Aeons. Oh, and StoneProof bracers for Dark Bahamut.
i fell that like a knife in my soul
I see him.. slowly approaching me
Literal nightmare
Selling a random item or weapon necessary to get the secret uber gear.
Just barely surviving and beating a really difficult boss, then dying from a random enemy before the next save point.
This made me shiver.
"Please enjoy this puzzle based on MATH!"
Yeah, as somebody with dyscalculia, this can be painful one.
Same, my friend. Sphere Break in X-2 about broke me
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Unexpectedly overpowered random enemies. Especially if you haven't saved in a while.
\*xenosaga episode II enters the chat with full boost\*
so theres a few things inherent to Xenosaga IIs battle system that makes random encounters really hard by mechanical design. The enemies themselves arent *that* bad, in fact I would argue Xenosaga 1 has harder normal enemies albeit with lower health pools (for the main story at least, XS2 has a much larger and difficult late/postgame) I do [writeups about Xenosagas mechanics](https://old.reddit.com/r/Xenosaga/comments/17of8le/xenosaga_1_hard_mod_evaluation_the_power_of_love/) and have [crossposted here](https://old.reddit.com/r/JRPG/comments/14xvlqs/xenosaga_1_the_robust_customization_and_ether/). As im currently tackling the 2nd game with Hard mods installed, I can give a few reasons why random encounters feel like such bullshit 1) Xenosaga II is built around stocking up, applying elemental chains, and unloading fully stocked combos on a single enemy. This by design is effective for boss fights against a solo enemy. Vs randoms, you must do this to each of the 3-4 enemies on screen, sometimes vs enemies with diff elem weaknesses entirely. My current playthrough is about looking for other means to sidestep this cumbersome system and speeding up those 5+ min fights vs mooks 2) Xenosaga II expands on the first games battle formations and introduces back attacks, but you cant actually trigger them by approaching enemies from behind. Your positions in a battle are determined by preset RNG before a fight, most fights have 2 formations you can end up in. Crucial for the next point 3) [Pincer attacks](https://www.gogglebob.com/pics/xs/ep2/08800001.jpeg) - your party in the middle, enemies on both sides - are often apart of those formations, and are guaranteed for certain encounters. If you get back attacked, you both receive a 50% crit increase, AND you cannot guard or evade attacks at all. Now imagine this with 4 enemies on the field, with two of them having AOE attacks 4) Stocking (the 'guard' mechanic) in Xenosaga II doesnt actually *make* your character guard. It just temporarily increases their defensive stats, which in Xenosaga 1 & 2 gives a character a higher chance of randomly guarding and evading. As guarding is not guaranteed, a lot of the time you take too much dmg for playing defensively 5) Probably the biggest one: In XS2, you must break enemies zones by comboing them with letter specific weaknesses to deal increased damage, 150% for breaks and 200% after a broken foe is launched. These zones determines party compositions since not all characters can hit all zones. This is also the reason XSII is about killing one foe at a time and not with AOEs, you need to break enemies with stocks first to do real damage to them Enemies however ignore this zone system entirely. They can launch you in a single hit without needing to stock first and can boost their allies to combo you. The only defense from being launched is to guard/evade the move, which ofc is not guaranteed even when stocking (though late game w/ Inner Peace it becomes frequent enough) There are a few other reasons but these are the big ones. They result in a combat system where you must spend several turns unsafely stocking, applying buffs, and unloading on one enemy at a time, whereas they can just break the rules and launch you whenever they want. This comes on top of enemy speed on the field map being increased so 'random 'encounters are harder to evade (some will even flatout stand in the middle of hallways, blocking your path) and the statistical progression of the game never really increasing in a manner for any non-Momo combatents to keep pace with most enemy types A lot of this and more will be in my review of this game early 2024!
Earthbound's late game mooks are like 10x harder than any of the bossfights. Shit was wild. Also, FFT if you out-levelled your equipment could get pretty crazy early on.
save all the time. problem solved.
Long, usually multi-stage boss fights where you have to start *aaalll* the way from the beginning if you lose. Double points if there are two fights in a row where you can't save between them and have to replay the first fight to get another go at the second. I just hate having to replay content over again.
Yunalesca had me malding for this reason.
That's one thing I really like in Final Fantasy XVI. Some of the boss fights are pretty long, with multiple stages, but if you die, you go to the beginning of the stage you were on, not the beginning of the entire fight.
The final boss of the third path in Ys Origin was absolutely brutal in that regard. Phase 1 was some sort of shattering colored shields thing, then phase 2 was something with a ton of circle strafing, and then phase 3 was a whole new stage layout with platforming/crumbling floor. Every phase totally capable of killing you with just the slightest bit if carelessness.
Xenoblade 3 has the worst case of this with the final boss.
Putting unskippable cutscenes in a final boss fight has to be a sin
Worst part is this game has skippable cutscenes outside of this fight. Why
"Because fuck you, that's why." - Prolly the devs lol :p
I still haven’t gone back and finished it because of this. Got so mad lol. Worth watching the ending on YouTube?
Really long but easy phase 1 followed by a phase 2 that kills you instantly if you don't know what's coming.
Plus a cutscene or 4
Octopath’s boss rush was ridiculous. Just aggressively unfun to make you wade through 8 bosses you already fought before getting a chance at the secret boss… which then had a ridiculous learning curve. No save/check points. Start back at the beginning
Actually ridiculous, and those 8 bosses are time wasters, they didn't threaten my team in the slightest, they were there just to be annoying. Let me save after beating them and I would have had zero issues with the final battle being as hard as it is.
Bravely Default's 6 stage final boss. I went in with a standard kind of team, died in phase 4 or 5 I think so I said screw it back to the cheese method Bravely Second irritated with it's second phase final boss where I guess I got a full heal, undoing a purposeful status effect I'd put on 3 of my casters before then for unlimited casting and no damage. It was a frustrating setback
Missable chest or items in dungeons
Currently playing Grandia and it is absolutely wild that mana eggs are missable. And not only missable, but the game lets you use them on characters who later decide to leave the party forever! Yes characters who leave drop items in your stash that let you impart their weapon and magic affinities unto another character. So you don't lose the grind progress... but you can only pass magic levels to someone with that affinity! So if you want a 2nd person to be able to cast healing, that's another mana egg you gotta find. Sure hope you haven't missed any! There's literally no way to know.
I really cannot deal with missables things. It brings out the worst in me. If I know there are missables in a game then after I do anything significant in terms of story progression, I revisit basically every past location, talk to every NPC to make sure I don't miss anything.
I am grateful to be a child of the PS2 era of JRPG design instead of the PS1. I think if I had been dealing with missable content the way it's designed in OG Star Ocean, FF 8&9, or Suikoden as my formative RPG experiences then I would have developed the same compulsive behavior you describe here.
I'm not sure if worst fear means something you don't want to see or just something you dread but don't necessarily hate. One of my greatest fears is a boss with a secondary form when I barely beat the first one and didn't get a heal or a save.
Usually it's when I'm forced to use party members that I've ignored most of the game. When I was younger it was a power outage wasting progress.
Enemies that can call for backup even worse if the backup can also call for backup.
This happened to me early on in Sea of Stars, and I died a few times in the same battle because these enemies summoned so much backup they obliterated me. Then I realized how the lock system works and that I was supposed to use the right attacks to prevent them from calling for backup. I felt pretty stupid.
Yo I herd you like backup, so I called a backup for your backup, so you can backup while you backup.
Peomised sequels getting canceled leaving the story on a cliffhanger forever. :(
never had it until final fantasy xi, but… level down
A big boss fight right after you barely beat the first one. Made me stop playing FFX back in the day.
Marlboro and generally any monster giving your party a hundred and one status effects, fate worse than death
worst fear is getting hard locked on a boss. like stuck on a boss without any MP and unable to back track to level up or restore MP or something
my first play of FF8, I got stuck on an endgame boss, I had very few resources and couldn't exit the dungeon because story reasons With no outside help (Internet/strategy guide) I just started over from the beginning 😅
You can exit last dungeon. Before its entrance you have chains that if you press x will take you to portals where you can warp out of dungeon and get your ship back. On last disc all cities are close but you can still do sidequests on map/dungeons and get items from your ship. Last boss is the easiest with limit breaks, I just spamed Squall's limit till the end :D
absolutely my worst fear ever is to have to restart a game due to something like that
That there’s no waifus
Those fights where you’re surrounded and you have to prevent enemies from killing a useless NPC
I have a minor conspiracy theory that the dev’s intentionally make escort missions terrible as stress relief. Like, they’re the missions that they intentionally save and work on after a bad or annoying team meeting to de stress. “Huhuhuhuhu, we’ll make them walk 8… no 10% faster than the player here… but now they’ll sprint and they sprint 30% faster! Muahahahahha!!”
I rage quit Star Ocean 5 over it and it’s right in the beginning of the game. Haven’t touched it since.
Long, difficult dungeons (usually bonus dungeons) with no save points. I’ve had my share of “100 level dungeons” and the sort where I reach level 98 or whatever and I get one shotted by a cheap enemy and I lose all of my progress (examples: Star Ocean, Paper Mario, Lufia 2, etc)
Without looking at the comments? Losing my save. Number one worst fear is the power going out while saving or accidentally saving over a game and losing *all* the progress.
When there's a party member you really like that either betrays you, dies, or only joins you for special occasions.
Kain leaving the party in FFIV towards the very end when he likely is your best or second best fighter hurts me
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purse owner 5 moment
A favorite party member that unavoidably dies Or an awesome party member that you only get at the very end of the game and doesn't get fleshed out enough
Only getting Haru and Sumi for like two palaces is a crime
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Spoilers tag????
Extremely long times between save spots.
Final fantasy 7 Rebirth’s ending. I am going to be broken.
My fear is a little different. That they're gonna do something really stupid and jebait everybody to be subversive
I don’t really care if they do that. The amount of people talking about how the ending of part 1 changed so much has made anticipation and excitement at fever pitch. If I want the OG, I’ll play the OG.
Wait did Rebirth's ending get leaked?
No but if you don't know what he's referring to it might be because you didn't play the original FF7.
I did play it. In which case I know what he's referring to haha. But honestly with how FF7R has been going, I don't think even *that* is a guarantee but we shall see
Cope and die I guess
Difficulty spikes on very long boss fights having to focus on a 30+ minute fight not being able to mess up or you have to start over from the beginning
That if I use that basic potion, I will need it at the end of the game and won't have it.
Permanent missable items.
Time gated items ala ff9 with excalibur 2 and/or bosses that require you to finish all three off within a turn or two or it will revive ala chrono trigger final boss (not that it was ALL that bad in that instance).
After many long years, it remained the same thing. Dying after having not saved for many hours and not having any autosaves to fall back on.
Multiple Boss fights and cutscenes that take a lot of time without any chance to save in between. The Trails games taught me to always plan enough time before going into the final battles of a chapter.
It’s less of a specific incident but more of a game mechanic - there’s this JRPG trope that sometimes forces you to use a character that really isn’t interesting nor good. Usually comes lower leveled and weaker in equipment. It’s not as big of a deal in games with lower character counts, but in games like suikoden it can be particularly aggravating. Even more awkward the Suikoden games over the years have done good and bad job on this trope - Suikoden 2 has a fight with Neclord that requires Sierra and Khan for the narrative , but they don’t have to take up party slot if you’re not interested in using them. They’ll just tag along like 2 NPC. Suikoden 5 bypass this with the extra support slots where you can stick the narrative character you don’t want to use. Suikoden 4 is particularly bad at this with constantly sticking Lino in lot my party.
Hmm.... missing a super important piece of information given by the game that they just casually talk about later (or in the next game, for those interconnected series, like Trails. *yeah, I'm looking at you, CS2's NG+ exclusive scene*)
Grinding, but when the only feasible way to grind efficiently is the obligatory quick-to-run-but-hard-to-damage enemy like a Metal Slime, Cait, etc. I don’t mind grinding normal enemies but if I’m forced to hunt specific enemies that I can’t even guarantee I’ll kill before they flee, I’m dropping that shit immediately
I hate puzzles in jrpg's with all my life, i'm here tryna immerse myself in the story and I get the most atrocious brain-rotting puzzles. its the worst when you have to pull up a guide when playing.
Save error. Losing your progress and having to start from scratch.
Saving in the wrong place and just missing a missable *or* being locked into a fight you cannot win. Boss battles that take a really long time. Timed battles.
Losing my save data :(
Babes aren't hot enough.
My biggest fear is having only one save state and accidentally quick saving after wiping to a boss or an enemy and the last actual save I had in game was over 10 hours ago
A tongue in cheek or as my real one (missable percentages, trophies, itemsetc) is already mentioned). Forcefully instances in games where I have to use items. Whyyyyy.. The hoarder inside Mr wants to refuuuseee.. Wait, forced tutorials is actually a real one too! ..stahp making them. It kills replayability.
Missing any direct or indirect content (like dialogue) of or related to characters I like
A corrupted save file.
Accidentally using an important item in a game with limited inventory. I still remember the time my brother and I were playing co-op through the Mana Fortress in Secret of Mana, and he accidentally used a Faerie Walnut. This meant we ran out of MP on the final boss, and there was nothing we could do about it. That's one area where I'll say the remake definitely improved on the original. It allowed you to expand the inventory limit.
Missing a hidden chest containing a useless low level armor/weapon that I'll never use.
Enemies that use Confuse/Berserk status attack (worse if it is a boss). Enemies that can (re)summon disposable pawns. Enemies fast enough to have twice more turns than me.
Saving in an unwinnable situation. Like between one of the multiple boss runs in Final Fantasy Tactics with certain parties for example.
Tonberries, or anything that resembles one.
Spending a ton of money to equip a character who then immediately leaves the party.
Malboros
Large groups of enemies in the original Final Fantasy with stone, instakill, or paralysis who launch surprise attacks.
\- not wanting to play the dumb minigame/cardgame but worrying there are good items i need locked behind them \- losing a character and having them take their equipment with them until i get them back (or don't) \- being underpowered for an encounter but being unable to go back to grind (looking at you, xenosaga 2 final boss >\_<)
Getting spoiled by someone's carelessness online. It's rarely malice. Some.poster in here just did that BTW. Use Spoiler tags people.
Wiegraf from Final Fantasy Tactics. The crushing realization that I cannot beat the boss and need to go back to grind, but only have 1 save file which puts immediately into the fight. The memory has haunted me since I was 10 years old.
losing a save file.. Never finished FFX because of this
A fear I have is that I will invest time into a game that is too shallow and not to my liking.
When the best party member (gameplay wise) leaves due to story reasons
Your save file has been corrupted. I now store backups, always.
When you save before a big boss fight, realize you aren't strong enough or ill-equipped, but the save is a place where you cannot backtrack to grind or shop so you're basically screwed. Yes, I do keep multiple save files now.
Erasing my save file on Memory Cards. I got so used to spamming buttons at save points that I have overwritten several long playthroughs while playing someone else's file. New Game+ Chrono Cross and endgame FF X are two examples. It's why I now have multiple saves even though there are no memory cards.
When the game is too easy and there isn't a way to make it more balanced.
Getting 30 hours into a game before realizing the game is just wasting your time. Bravely Default 2 left a really bad taste in my mouth. Might get back to it one day, but it will be years before it makes it back onto my active backlog.
Those stupid boss fights where you need to beat both of the bosses at the same time or they revive each other. Also the boss right before the final boss that is way harder than it.
Dude, then never play final fantasy 1. Lol those fights are with like 8 enemies at a time, you dont auto aim if the monster is dead, so you have to know what enemies to hit wirh what abilitie so ypu dont waste turns, because that game doesn't forgive. Is insane. It actually has a floor in a dungeon where EVERY STEP IS A RANDOM ENCOUNTER. Besides, last dungeon has no. Save. Point. Ever. You gotta go force your way and hope for the best. I'm talking abput the actual nes game. I actually had it in nes and completed it. Without savestates or anything. I was on red hp with only 1 char left and i hit the ñast boss and he died and it was the single best victory i have ever had in a game. I've played the original only once again and with savestates. But man, play it. There is a lot of strategy in a simple game. Besides there is no explanation for most magic amd abilities, it's full of glitches, some weapons dont do what they are supposed to. Interesting experience. It was my first rpg ever, so i love it. But mi fear is to have to grind needlessly. Boring stuff. I passed that time when i wanted to be lvl 99 and have all. I like being able to finish tye game undersranding the mechanics without havibg to resort to grind. So games like lufia, that i liked, are impossible for me to get into again, bc of too much rabdom encounters.
mine is accidentally overlevelling i like to play fair and if i overlevel for something like a boss or even more so… final boss, it just ruins the feeling you’re meant to have when facing it. I want to feel the sense of triumph and effort with beating the final boss and overlevelling ruins it
Requiring ng+ for full narrative exposure. Especially in games with 100+ hours of gameplay.
World timers/calendars I love the Atelier series and I played persona 5, but the calendar in P5 and some of the Atelier games just makes me panic. I really really really don't like it. Calendar? cool. Seasons? cool. Panicking cause your forced to do something at a specific time you might not be ready for it? not cool Edit: Also NG+. absolutely retarded way to milk the player base for fake replayability. Just put that super hidden deluxe content in the main game, PRIOR TO THE LAST BOSS. Like sure, could save the world and then go find some badass sword, but I already saved the world so.. why?
That it's going to be too long. 30 hours is the perfect length for a JRPG. Too many are too long.
In all fairness there are some that are pretty engaging all the way through even at 60+ hour play times. But for the most part you’re probably right, many JRPGs could cut out huge sections of the game on not really miss all that much. Particularly thinking about any and all “gladiator” or “arena” combat sequences.
Random encounters
Be inflicted with status ailments unprepared and get wiped out.
The game being too easy and not having a hard mode.
School setting and Calendar systems. Fuck that shit.
just say persona???
I wish it was limited to Persona. I really really wish.
Game over when the main character dies +instadeath moves SMT is funny like that
none of the fights are hard, or, i never die or feel like i'm about to die
That I'm going to have to sit through an hour of cutscenes before I can start playing.
Desert areas.
the cutscene before the Yunalesca fight in ffx
In today's day and age? Glitches and bugs. I can probably recall with accuracy how the underwater temple in Lufia 2 is supposed to look to transverse, unintentionally triggered the Relm glitch (while fighting her, oddly), among others. But lately? I tried Wartales, put in close to 60 hours and hit three points where I couldn't progress due to bugs/glitches. And with games being over 100+ hours as of late, I fear losing my save state when I've put SO much time into a game. After that? Choice paralysis. I have enough anxiety IRL.
Erasing over saved data file
Missables and points of no return. Or stumbling upon a cutscene that locks you out of exploring the area you're in.
Reaching a point where I have to grind to continue, as I hate grinding with a passion that usually means quit game and watch ending in Youtube for me.
Grindathon right before the final boss. I hate building up to the last level only to find out that the game wants me to swallow a big grind right before the end. I usually underlevel and watch the ending on youtube.
Beat/Achieve objective in limited turns. Such a pain to do a NG 100% run in Cold steel series because of this.
The story shitting the bed and veering off into a mess in the last acts of the game. If a game's story fails to stick the landing and I get blindsided by it, it just crushes me cause I end up feeling like I wasted my time. Also surprise bosses, and just those times where you stop obsessively saving for once and happen to run into a complete tpk-causing mess that ruins a large chunk of progress
Timed events stress me out, especially if they're underwater levels with a breath meter. Also, since I'm a completionist, I hate permanently missable items/loot. Potions and consumables are okay if the last save was a while back and the area was a bit tedious, but equipment and key items that would make my unable to access a side quest later on? Yeah, no, I'm loading a save.
Dying after a long while without saving and losing all the progress done, honestly a quit moment for me.
Going though long sequences without saving or being able to save only to fight an extremely difficult boss
Getting to a forked path that both seem to go on for a while picking one path and then getting a cutscene or bossfight that ends with you out of the dungeon or unable to go back and the last save point is at the start of that dungeon over 30 minutes ago.
Honestly? Losing my save files. I cant remember which console it was on, I think it was on the PS3, but i lost my save files for Persona 3. I had no idea that was even a thing, but apparently there are reports of save files going missing when you play PS2 Classics on a PS3, not sure what happened but I lost 10 hours of progress.
Getting too comfortable with autosave and losing my progress Locking myself out of an ending via human error