[Rant] Bullshit gaming, you know how it is.

tl;dr:

I don't mean RRoDs or YLoDs or any other system failures. I don't mean glitches or bugs or broken menus (ie can't load a game) in games either. I can also imagine a thread can be dedicated to PC gaming mishaps too. Lets exclude those and save that for another pc gaming savy poster to make a thread worthy of.

This thread is basically a catch all rants for the modern works that we see in games today that at first glance we wouldn't mind but consider a work-around of the gameplay. In other words, bullshit. Bullshit parts of the game that shouldn't really exist other than just to annoy you or to make the game seemingly challenging or add towards the unnecessary process.

There's obviously quite a few games out there that didn't make the budget and got pushed out regardless of the quality in its production. Lets be careful not to include these either because obviously, that'll be all in this thread be about. I don't mean Tomb Raider and its glitchy polygon mess but the likes of Xenogears' second disc being that narrating scene 50% of the time. Besides how do we know for sure if said game was budgeted on time but we just called it bullshit because we just wanted to find something to dislike about it? So lets save that for another thread, k?

Ditto for games that were made for the genre specifically. (Hard as nails sort of type of games are as it says it is, HARD AS NAILS. ETC)

Here are a few examples that I had encountered just very recently. And for the record, I played quite a few games to be pretty unfazed by just about anything. Only reason why these seemingly popped out the woodwork for me was the succession of them in a day. (Who knows, I may have been having a real bad day there. )

First, 3D Dot Heroes, first official dungeon in. Picked up a key and unlocked the door. There was several locked doors, and I happen to unlock the one room that gave me the boss door key. Which is accessible beyond several locked rooms with no available key in the sight. At least from what I can see. O.o'

Second, I'm playing FFV and I just barely made it out of that 4 crystal battle by using Zeninage (Gil (FF currency) for massive damage). Then the fucking Gil Turtle that is a chance encounter while you could rank up 40k gil in 10? steps. Granted these events are separate but yet related, but why are they necessary?

Third, I'm playing Shining Force III (USA poor scenario 1) and reached the second to last battle. This two parter (switches between the two) battle splits up your whole team into halves. The game forces itself to pick the ones you're not using aka crap members into a dash and hit battle while the former is to hold the fort. Lets not forget the last battle is set immediately after that.

ARGH. These are all fixable sure (Reset 3D dot, grind my weak members in SFIII with the Tomb battle, quicksave cheat for the Gil Turtle), but given the amount of bullshit I saw in a day, these just happen to unravel my gaming bullshit meter.

What sort of stuff had you played recently (or at least memorable) that irked you so when it really shouldn't?

How ya doing, buddy?

If you don't feel like grinding your weak members in SFIII just switch a few of your strong members into the reserve force. The final boss is positioned in such a way that you can't actually get close to him with many characters, so having every strong member on team A ends up being a bit of a waste anyway.

As for my crowning Bullshit gaming moment: Shadow of the Beast. One of the later levels is set in a castle and there are various locked doors, each with its corresponding key. Whenever you used a key it would disappear from your inventory; gone forever. And that applied if you used the wrong key too. There was nothing to indicate which key was for which door so you were left with sheer, blind luck. Make the wrong decision and your game's fucked. Sorry pal. Gonna have to start over again from level 1.

I'm still astonished that any game designer would actually pull that shit.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Ah! Amiga

If you don't feel like grinding your weak members in SFIII just switch a few of your strong members into the reserve force. The final boss is positioned in such a way that you can't actually get close to him with many characters, so having every strong member on team A ends up being a bit of a waste anyway.

I should bold the word "force". The game did NOT offer me the option to manage my forces when I went to the battle. I just had to Return/Wing it out. But yeah, I already beaten SFIII earlier today by doing exactly what you said. I swapped out a couple of good ones.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Oh, there is plenty of whine moments. I'll just mention these two for now.

1. One of the biggest gripes I always have in RPG games in particular, is when they set the game up in such a way that if the main character dies, in any sort of way, it means instant game over, even if you have 3 other characters all of which can use a 2 second cast revive! Why do games still use this system? It is so fucking frustrating sometimes. Final Fantasy 13, Radiata Stories, Persona 4, just to name a few.

Persona 4 in particular is brutal because of the amount of enemies you face that cast instant death spells. I finally just exclusively used personas that had Immunity against death because of the amount of RNG game overs I suffered. It's a total BS mechanic. Nothing worse then losing 2 hours of progress because of that shit. And it happend to many times it is unbelievable.

2. You are being way too nice about your SF3 example. That system in general is annoying. I hate it when they do that in RPGs in the final dungeon or final boss(es) they force you to use most, if not every single one of your characters, knowing damn well that you only used 3 or 4 of them, through the entire game. I mean really, who uses all 10 characters?

Now in some cases it wont matter that much, in the case of RPGs where the non-active characters get full exp, it usually isnt a big deal, in that case its just a matter of buying a few weapons and you are good to go, but in most cases those guys never got any XP and you are screwed. So now you have to spent 2 hours to level up all those characters you never used...great! Suikoden 3, Final Fantasy VI, Magna Carta: Tears of Blood, Rogue Galaxy are a few that had this.

Magna Carta is probably the worst one because it's the final bosses that forces you to use different characters and you get no choice whatsoever, and in my scenario I had to use 4 characters over 2 different battles that were all level 4 or below, so I had no chance and had to spent hours getting them good gear and levels to just barely beat those bosses. All I can say is thank fucking god for the save point being between them.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Wow. Thanks for posting OTHER game examples. I had no idea about those having the same complaints in them. I haven't finished some of those yet but man, its good to know going in those someday.

As for the leader dying and etc, I can understand that in tactics in general and etc. But rpgs with several protagonists, yeah.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Actually, unused characters in Rogue Galaxy did level up and gain the normal stat boosts. A percentage of earned XP was also gained by characters not participating in battle. Sure, you'd wind up with Jaster, Kisala, Simon and Zegram being pretty beefy. But even if you went the entire game ignoring Jupis (and who didn't?) he was still able to hold his own somewhat okay in the final battle where you were forced to use him. (And to people who didn't bother with Steve, SHAME ON YOU.)

A convention that I dislike is the one in which enemies grow progressively stronger as you do. What this means is that the same clueless goblin fodder you opposed and destroyed in the beginning of the game still somehow remain a challenge if you go back to the beginning area fifty levels and six legendary swords later. Even worse, it presents the idea that these simple goblins could actually pose a legitimate threat to the elder lich dragon endboss since they take roughly the same amount of time and effort to dispatch. The lich dragon never had the chance to grow stronger over the course of the game, but everything else learned their lessons, hit the gym and came back to hurt you with a vengeance. I think weaklings should remain weaklings to provide a sense of accomplishment and progression. What was once difficult should become easy so that there's a proportionate sense of growth as you move through the game. I think a more recent example of this, on some level, was Torchlight.

Another thing I strongly disliked, something that was mostly prevalent in the post-FFVII PSX era, was inescapable CGI sequences. We loved them in FFVII because they were new and imaginative. But a few other programmers decided that they had put so much work into trying to outdo the animations in FFVII that nobody was allowed to skip over them. So we had to watch, time after time, the most basic of summons sequences just because levelling them up was also kind of important. The biggest culprit here was Legend of Legaia. GOD THOSE WERE FUCKING LONG. But a small handful of others made you wade through needless sequences too.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Star Ocean the Last Hope used the pointless drivel during LONG cutscenes too. Props for mentioning that.

But wow, didn't know Torchlight used the FFVIII system. ;\ Will keep this in mind then.

FELIPE NO

The problem with The Last Hope is regardless of cutscenes, the story made no fucking sense whatsoever.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Oh man really. See I wasn't even playing this but I was playing something else while SailorDaravon played this. I can SEE it out the corner of my eye. Its that atrocious. I mean, I keep LOOKING at SD like "DO YOU NEED TO DO SOME SYNTHESIZING AGAIN?"

But hey I'm getting off topic here. Some rpgs has pointless drivel and such. Even long cutscenes. But yeah combine the two, and you got a real winner! Third with such atrocious mannerisms that make you cringe.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Outside of Crash's example, I don't know of any recent examples off of the top of my head.

HOWEVER, old school gaming, there were a couple of games, usually adventure games, where if you missed an item early in the game, you were screwed for later in the game. For example, Kings Quest 5. I forgot the item, but there's an item you get way early in the game that is used against the witch near the end. If you miss the item, you can't go back and get it, and thus have to start over again. ARGHRGHARGH.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Crash Landon

Actually, unused characters in Rogue Galaxy did level up and gain the normal stat boosts. A percentage of earned XP was also gained by characters not participating in battle. Sure, you'd wind up with Jaster, Kisala, Simon and Zegram being pretty beefy. But even if you went the entire game ignoring Jupis (and who didn't?) he was still able to hold his own somewhat okay in the final battle where you were forced to use him. (And to people who didn't bother with Steve, SHAME ON YOU.)

I only ment that you were forced to use them in the final battle. I didnt even remember if they gained exp or not, but either way I had to spent some time on them because they all had terrible terrible weapons.

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Another thing I strongly disliked, something that was mostly prevalent in the post-FFVII PSX era, was inescapable CGI sequences. We loved them in FFVII because they were new and imaginative. But a few other programmers decided that they had put so much work into trying to outdo the animations in FFVII that nobody was allowed to skip over them. So we had to watch, time after time, the most basic of summons sequences just because levelling them up was also kind of important. The biggest culprit here was Legend of Legaia. GOD THOSE WERE FUCKING LONG. But a small handful of others made you wade through needless sequences too.

I found the summons to be more annoying to be honest. Most of them lasted like 30 seconds or more. Thank god FFIX had the option to use the short cast version. Best option ever!

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I'm playing through all the Metroid Primes again, and one thing that sticks out at me from all of them is unnecessarily long boss battles. You do a thing, it does a thing, and bam, it takes a lot of damage. Doing this 3 to 5 times is acceptable boss length for an action game, I think. But good lord, I had to fight 6 Warrior Ing today, and they each took a full minute to take down. I remember the first boss you fight in number 3 taking forever, too. Boss battles go from clever and neat to tedious and just tests of endurance.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by bag0k

I'm playing through all the Metroid Primes again, and one thing that sticks out at me from all of them is unnecessarily long boss battles. You do a thing, it does a thing, and bam, it takes a lot of damage. Doing this 3 to 5 times is acceptable boss length for an action game, I think. But good lord, I had to fight 6 Warrior Ing today, and they each took a full minute to take down. I remember the first boss you fight in number 3 taking forever, too. Boss battles go from clever and neat to tedious and just tests of endurance.

Endurance bosses SUCK. That I can agree on. Shame of it is that they're becoming a staple option for final bosses I had kept on seeing. Doesn't surprise me that they'd try it for a couple bosses early on.

BTW I know what you're talking about. I beaten MP on the Wii's trilogy not too long ago, fun game and all that, but that ice golem battle was the pain in the ass and I thought it wouldn't get worse than that but it did. Took me forever with Omega Pirate but then I read up somewhere that bombs do a lot of damage. Did that battle a redo over and he wasn't even tough at all. I imagine some of these bosses can be crazy if you don't have enough power/items/level/health etc. So it can be different for each player and their gameplay style.

I was speaking idiomatically.

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For example, Kings Quest 5. I forgot the item, but there's an item you get way early in the game that is used against the witch near the end.

Hey there

I'm almost positive that a similar flaw was contained in KQ6. There was a certain item you had to possess near the end of the game upon sneaking into the castle that could be missed early in the game, although I can't recall the specifics. Had something to do with the guy in the boat on the dock, I think.

Most amazing jew boots

I think it was for all of the adventure style games ie: kings quest series, Shadow of Darkness series, Gabriel Knight series, etc.

Also OH GOD the Metroid Primes. Loved the games, hated a couple of select bosses, such as the Ice Golem and the Omega Pirate. My targeting finger hurt so much after those battles. Plus, the boss at the end of MP3 was so anti climatic :/

FELIPE NO

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What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I'm playing Radiata Stories right now and happened to die after a 10 minute long sequence of people talking talking talking talking that was completely unskippable. Was a bit when I found out those things weren't skippable. Also was annoyed when I found out if the main character dies you get game over.

While I'm talking about the game, is there any strong reason to start a New Game + to play through the alternate race path when I've got a save right before you make the choice? I just beat the game this morning with the non-human path and want to know if there's any reason to replay the 15+ hours leading up to the choice.

Originally Posted by bag0k

I'm playing through all the Metroid Primes again, and one thing that sticks out at me from all of them is unnecessarily long boss battles. You do a thing, it does a thing, and bam, it takes a lot of damage. Doing this 3 to 5 times is acceptable boss length for an action game, I think. But good lord, I had to fight 6 Warrior Ing today, and they each took a full minute to take down. I remember the first boss you fight in number 3 taking forever, too. Boss battles go from clever and neat to tedious and just tests of endurance.

You should play Alundra.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Ahaha, Alundra is a total bitch like that. Loved the game but God damn did some of those fights drag on.

I always thought that Vagrant Story was a bit of a shit when it threw you up against a boss that you didn't have a decent weapon to fight it with so you had to rely on that damage reflecting art thing or just do 1 damage each time you hit it but then your risk went up loads and it just took fucking hours and was really annoying and that's why I never finished the bastard game.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Shin

Ahaha, Alundra is a total bitch like that. Loved the game but God damn did some of those fights drag on.

I always thought that Vagrant Story was a bit of a shit when it threw you up against a boss that you didn't have a decent weapon to fight it with so you had to rely on that damage reflecting art thing or just do 1 damage each time you hit it but then your risk went up loads and it just took fucking hours and was really annoying and that's why I never finished the bastard game.

Loved the initial story line, got to the 3rd boss and was doing like 3 damge a swing. Put the controller down, then walked away and never came back...

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Saga Frontier, while a decent game, was notorious for one-hit-you-lose battles. You had to seriously hope that whoever you got was weak enough to beat. If it was, you saved immediately and the cycle continued.

I can understand not being prepared to face certain enemies. However, there were times in this game where you couldn't prepare for those enemies because you had yet to fight any other enemies. Yet you have to fight some enemies if you hoped to succeed in the game.

On the bright side, you learned fast to shake off losing at the game. In addition, it was cool when you could....

Spoiler:

Do the storyline with Rogue and Red (or was it Bleu?), win/lose, and double your stats. By that point, you could wipe out anything.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Eh, SaGa Frontier wasn't as bad as you say. There was ample opportunity for grinding in most character scenarios. Granted, they didn't make things completely simple for Riki or Asellus, but with a little diligence you could manage long enough to survive. And it's not like you weren't thrown ridiculously strong allies to help protect those two.

Red, Amelia, Blue and T260G were freaking cakewalks. Lute was too, for the most part, except that you had the option of facing his endboss within the first hour and if you didn't grind, there wasn't much chance you'd win. But really, a couple hours beating krakens was all it took for any of the characters, main or supporting, to get super buff. All you needed was Gen, Mei Ling or Annie as your allies and you were fucking good to go. Thunder wasn't bad either.

The only things capable of an OHKO, in my experience, were krakens and that damned earth turtle in Shrike.

Additional Spam:

Originally Posted by Dr. Uzuki

Hey there

I'm almost positive that a similar flaw was contained in KQ6. There was a certain item you had to possess near the end of the game upon sneaking into the castle that could be missed early in the game, although I can't recall the specifics. Had something to do with the guy in the boat on the dock, I think.

No, the guy in the drydocked boat only told you about the four islands and gave you a lucky rabbit's foot if you clicked where it sat on his table. The rabbit's foot was used soon after for getting past the sense gnomes. But even if you didn't have it, the book allowed you to teleport out of that trap so you could find the solution.

I've never run across anything that absolutely spoiled KQ6, though missing certain things did divert you into the lesser ending. You had to make it rain on the secret island if you wished to progress to the best ending and that took a decent bit of preparation.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Crash Landon

Eh, SaGa Frontier wasn't as bad as you say. There was ample opportunity for grinding in most character scenarios. Granted, they didn't make things completely simple for Riki or Asellus, but with a little diligence you could manage long enough to survive. And it's not like you weren't thrown ridiculously strong allies to help protect those two.

Red, Amelia, Blue and T260G were freaking cakewalks. Lute was too, for the most part, except that you had the option of facing his endboss within the first hour and if you didn't grind, there wasn't much chance you'd win. But really, a couple hours beating krakens was all it took for any of the characters, main or supporting, to get super buff. All you needed was Gen, Mei Ling or Annie as your allies and you were fucking good to go. Thunder wasn't bad either.

The only things capable of an OHKO, in my experience, were krakens and that damned earth turtle in Shrike.

You're both sort of right, sort of wrong. Plenty of things could OHK you if you wandered off the beaten track. Ever tried going to Lute's end game right off the bat? You can try. Doesn't end well.

Also, Crash, Riki can be maxed out in twenty minutes if you know what you're doing. Monsters, since their forms are based on what attacks you have, can be forced into becoming the uber secret boss monster if you know what to assimilate when. Shrike lab. Twenty minutes. Flower monster of death.

So, in summation: Yes, lots of things in SaGa can off you if you wander into the wrong place, but the game is fairly nice about that sort of thing if it happens. And also, the game kicks epic ass.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Can we count the fucking Calcabrina Dolls from Final Fantasy 4? I can't remember the whole of it since its been years since I've played it - but theres two sets of dolls or something and if you don't kill the first set, it'll transform with the second set. Even if you kill the second set and theres nothing for the first to combine with - ITLL STILL FUCKING DO IT.

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Another one is from my favorite game of all time - Final Fantasy Tactics. I have nothing but the highest compliments to give the game but there is one boss mission that is too fucking hard for no good reason. I say this as someone whos beaten the game more than once and gone through some epic shitstorms of throwing the controller in disgust over some of the harder levels. But one of them is just fucking obscene in its technical bullshit.

YouTube Video

The infamous "double boss battle" with Wiegraf. The first half of the battle is a one-on-one with the sonuvabitch and its tough. No support characters, no way to heal unless you waste an action for a round... but then Wiegraf transforms into a Zodiac demon and summons two lesser demons (which are fairly hard no matter what level you're at) and then you party shows up. Theres no break in battle, you just do two boss battles back to back. And by this point, your main character is probably really, really beaten down and easily killed meaning you just wasted a good hour plus on the first half of the fight, only to be frustrated for another hour as your team is being killed off slowly.

And for another of my favorite games ever - Wing Commander. This is towards the end of the game, Vega Campaign, Kurasawa System.

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This is one of those awful "Do something that would take 10 minutes to do without any effort, but instead we're going to make you go to two random battles first so you can get damaged and THEN you get to your main objective and have only 45 seconds to complete it" missions. We all know them.

Basically, you go to two sorties - one in an asteroid field - against some fighters. So if you're not getting shot, you're hitting rocks. And by the time you get to the cap ship, its already under attack by vastly superior numbers and taking heavy damage. I've never completed this mission in all the years I've played the game. Now I just eject and skip the damn thing.

FELIPE NO

I'll toss out any of the Fire Emblem battles with bosses using Killer weapons. There's nothing more annoying than to spend an hour or more fighting through waves of soldiers and working your way across a map, only to be struck down by the boss in a single lucky hit. This is usually the worst later on when your mages still aren't powerful enough to do much damage to the bosses from a distance, so you're forced to take that 25% chance of losing everything. Several times.

Originally Posted by LeHah

The infamous "double boss battle" with Wiegraf. The first half of the battle is a one-on-one with the sonuvabitch and its tough. No support characters, no way to heal unless you waste an action for a round... but then Wiegraf transforms into a Zodiac demon and summons two lesser demons (which are fairly hard no matter what level you're at) and then you party shows up. Theres no break in battle, you just do two boss battles back to back. And by this point, your main character is probably really, really beaten down and easily killed meaning you just wasted a good hour plus on the first half of the fight, only to be frustrated for another hour as your team is being killed off slowly.

The first part of the Wiegraf battle was never that bad as long as you had a skill set for the occasion. I always went Lancer. The big problem was that Velius is an incredible asshole and casts Cyclops, which is pretty much instant death for anyone caught in its large range on the restrictive map. Try silencing him to get rid of that and he starts petrifying everyone one at a time with a 100% chance. Plus his three demon buddies weren't exactly pushovers with their powerful attacks.

Then there's the battle right after Velius with Celia and Lede on the roof. That one isn't so much a difficult fight as it is somewhat dependent on luck. They move fast and can insta-kill the people you have to protect any time they like.

I've beaten FFT twice on PSX, gotten past these fights on PSP, and I'm still scared of the Riovanes Castle series of battles.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by LeHah

Another one is from my favorite game of all time - Final Fantasy Tactics. I have nothing but the highest compliments to give the game but there is one boss mission that is too fucking hard for no good reason. I say this as someone whos beaten the game more than once and gone through some epic shitstorms of throwing the controller in disgust over some of the harder levels. But one of them is just fucking obscene in its technical bullshit.

Remember it all too well. When I first got there I was so unprepared it wasnt even funny. I tried my best 3 or 4 times, but it was obvious it wasnt going to happen. The real shitty thing is there is NO way to leave once you get in there. Thank god had a older savegame that was 2 hours back. I used that and when I tried Wiegraf again 4 of my guys were high level monk ninjas, or ninja monk, whichever was the dual fist one, and well they cleaned house.

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Ahaha, Alundra is a total bitch like that. Loved the game but God damn did some of those fights drag on.

Loved Alundra, but the boss fights really were fucking annoying.

Now that I think about it, I never did finish Alundra. I simply couldnt beat the last boss, or at least what I think was the last boss. One of these days I really should replay it, just to see if the game is as hard as I remember it to be.

Jam it back in, in the dark.