A recent thread on Reddit asked What moment in video games made you go “fuck this”? These were the pet hates relevant to RPGs:
1. Repeating cutscenes
“When I have to watch the cutscene again every time a boss kills me and I have to start over. I don’t mind doing the same fight 50 times before finally killing the boss, but making me watch the same 2 minutes cutscene each time is the surest way to make me give up after a bunch of tries and never pick up the game again.”
This always feels like it’s supposed to be part of the “punishment” for failing at the fight. But yes, it’s horribly annoying.
2. Forced intros
“When you can’t skip the “cool” intro when you load the game for the 50th damned time.”
Alternatively, with slowly scrolling text, at least have a tap-to-display-at-once option.
3. Endlessly spawning enemies
“There was a particular room in Dead Space 2 that endlessly spawned enemies. I did not realize they were endlessly spawning until I’d tried to clear the room for like two hours. Died so many times, used all my ammo, etc. Once I realized I could just run through the room, I was so pissed at myself for wasting that much time.”
This is a little bit of an issue in 9th Dawn II, combined with the super-long dungeons. On the plus side, it made grinding quicker.
4. Too-hard bosses
“Playing Castlevania on NES. Worked so hard to get to Dracula. Eventually was able to beat him with 2 bubbles of health left. I was like, “yes! Fuck you.” Then the motherfucker turned into his demon form and killed me. I was not aware of this. Said fuck it. Never played it again.”
This is my pet hate. After playing through hours of a gaming and building my skills and levels, I don’t want to feel like a Level 1 player again. I’ve done the hard graft. I don’t want an Endgame Boss (at least on Normal/Easy/Casual mode) that takes two dozen attempts to kill and an intricate strategy that’s nothing at all like anything else earlier in the game. And often this fight is impossible, if there’s no further way to level your character. MazeQuest was an otherwise-wonderful recent game with an unbalanced final fight.
5. Too-long dungeons
“The deep roads and the fade in Dragon Age: Origins. Multiple-hour long dungeons are bad enough without forced party members or no party at all.”
This was a little bit of an issue for me in 9th Dawn II, made worse by the total lack of automap. Conversely in the Adventure to Fate games I played recently, there was a marvellous portal-in, portal-out system so you could get to the temple and merchant.
Anyone else got any pet hates about features (or lack of features) in RPGs?