Bosses that are immune to status effects, I never use status effects on weaker enemies. So why have them if I can't cast them on bosses? There are solutions to this that won't trivialize a boss fight.
even better, turn around, take one step, triggering a random encounter AT YOUR DISADVANTAGE and then the enemies WIPE YOUR PARTY OUT before you even have your turn yeah. I am talking about you, SMT 3 Nocturne
*This* is the only instance where random encounters bother me. They're typically fine for me, but if I take a single step and run into another one, yeah, that's gonna get annoying fast.
@@christianalbertjahns2577 try to play glory of Heracles in DS. The game have random encounters and always throw a battle almost too strong for your party sometimes making your life miserable
-Opponents getting serious, and showing their real strength, after you beat them. Why not fight with full strength in the first place? -enemies level up with you. (looking at you ff8) -non skippable cutscenes -Winning the fight but losing in the cutscene. -Breakable weapons
I love Oblivion and FF8, I love having to break the game in two to see my characters actually progressing, I love getting destroyed as a "reward" for beating something that's outright dangerous to fight at a low level, I love having a specific way to break the game in two by even looking at it (alchemy and cactaur) /massive fucking sarcasm
I hate when the bosses have immunity to status changes. You learn moves like poison or sleep but they don't even work while the bosses can use these moves effectively on you and attack twice in a row
@@UltimateGamerCC no, just balance the status elements to not be OP. Etrian odyssey does it perfectly. You need them to win. EO 5 final boss was very hard i got lucky and skill that inflicts sleep landed which let me to heal my party and win.
Not knowing where to go is a hallmark of classic JRPGs, I am just thankful to whoever wrote the guides for phantasy star 1 and 2, I wouldn't have beaten 1 if it weren't for it.
@@palepants9475 Tends to happen to me with games that are grindy, like Phantasy Star 2. I am not much of a speedrunner but this days I am playing rpgs as quickly as i can muster.
My pet peeve is item management. You can only hold a certain number of items which is annoying. You either have to use them get rid of them or store them.
I completely agree. I despise excessive item management especially when you can only hold a certain amount. Additionally, I really dislike it when games have excessive amounts of loot or item collecting that involves different tiers of the same item. For example, collecting the same exact "epic sword" 20 times except the item is categorized with "normal," "rare," or "legendary" tiers all with different stats. Don't even get me started on breakable weapons either...
It's why I could just never get into the Ultima series. I don't need uber linearity or my hand to be hold, but I do like a reasonable idea of what I need to do to move the game forward. The Ultima series has always just thrown you into a huge world with some vague directive like "Beat the Gargoyles" or "Become the Avatar" and you have to figure it all out on your own. It feels like grasping for the light switch in the dark.
I always laugh at #5 since it reminds me of the SpongeBob scene “How many times do we need to teach you this lesson old man?!”. My pet peeves I’d add are game over from party leader death even though I have 99 resurrection items and forcing you to complete mini games to advance the story.
I don't mind fighting the same guy twice or more, if it makes sense in the story. I like random encounters, it makes me feel the danger...provided I can take 3 steps between two of them.
It usually doesn't make much sense though. Usually the first time you beat them, even though you've killed them in battle, they somehow are alive fine in the cutscene and just use a smoke bomb to escape or even worse run away somehow. DEpite being beaten in battle , somehow they are faster than you are. If the game actually writes a believable reason for them to escape its fine, but it's usually bullshit plot armor.
I think the best version I've played of the repeating boss is Ultros from Final Fantasy VI, because he was never that hard (unless you were underlevelled), and he was played for laughs.
One a simliar note, you keep having to fight Seifer in Final Fantasy VIII, although he seems so weak and useless every time. I guess you're supposed to feel sorry for him for beating him up over and over.
My pet peeve is bosses that have instant death attacks that can't be blocked. So you're doing really well, and then bam, instant death to a character just because... even worse is when a boss has multiple attacks like this. So you can get rng screwed on multiple occasions.
I'm ok with random encounters under certain situations. First is if there's a way to turn off the encounters, whether it's from the system menu Bravely Default and Bravely Second style, or if its something the player unlocks through gameplay, like the Encounter None skill from Diablos in FF8. And the other is as long as they're disabled in puzzle rooms. Sometimes the encounter rate is designed with the knowledge that the player's party will be a sufficient enough level to beat the next boss even if they choose to cut a straight path without exploring, but random encounters in puzzle rooms are the work of the devil and are the ultimate evil 😁
Yes it really depends on dungeon design. In FF4, FF5, FF6, FF7, FF8, FF9 and FF10 for example, they're almost never a problem because the "dungeon" layout is simple and the rate isn't too high. I really like how the obscure ps1 JRPG Shadow Madness did it : just before a random battle you hear a roar and if you duck for 2 seconds when you hear it, you'll avoid the battle. I also like the surprise effect of random battles, like *"bam you never expected it but you're now in front of a dragon preparing a massive attack. Will you survive it?"* Newer JRPGs that removed random battles lost this thing. Plus seeing monsters walking around in the distance often looks dumb. I always saw random battles like things that were supposed to trigger your imagination : are you fighting bandits? Well, that means that even though the game didn't show it to you, those bandits saw your team and decided to raid you. Or they were passing as merchants and tried to sell you poisonous food or talk you into selling them your ladies... ...The game just skips all these little events your brain can come up with, and just shows you the end result (= you have to fight them). Same if you fight a single scorpion repeatedly : it might be the same scorpion which developed a grudge towards a member of your team and doesn't know when to quit... Your imagination is the limit and it's way better than having monsters and bandits standing around or slowly walking in a plain - not only it makes enemies less dangerous / frightening (they only attack if I'm ten feet away and I can just walk around them? What a joke) but it's also more immersion-breaking in my book because it's just dumb. Dragons should do dragon-things which means flying to you when you appear as a small dot in the horizon, wolves should do wolves-things, bandits should do bandit-things like talking among themselves, setting-up camp, etc. I'll always prefer random battles when they're done right. In FF7, FF9 or FF10, they're just perfect. With the improvements to graphics developers thought that they were being clever by making everything look more realistic in J-RPGs, but that made them lose part of their appeal : the fact they often were symbolic representations of what really happens. When Lightning or Noctis walk around for example, everything is so detailed, with every member following them, that you can't tell yourself that this is symbolic and there's actually more to it, whereas in FF1~FF9 it's obvious that this character walking on the world map is actually the whole team slowly traveling by walking, talking among themselves, sitting down when they're tired, etc. It's obvious the trip from a town to the next sometimes lasts one or two days, not the 3 minutes YOU spent as the player, so the games are full of untold small events. Only people with minimal imagination skills will understand though, but I tend to think J-RPGs initially appealed to the more imaginative gamers. It's a mistake to bash random battles just because some developers poorly implemented them or didn't understand their strength.
Difficulty spikes is way up there for me. Nothing like sailing through a game no problem, so you don't overly stock up on healing supplies. Then you hit a boss that one-shots party members whenever he wants and you aren't able to leave the dungeon to grind and resupply.
Enemy level scaling. Random stat gains upon level-up (I hate this because as an OCD person it makes me want to reset until I get the "perfect" level-up. Either make the level-ups static or let me assign the stats I want at level-up). Items with insanely low drop chances (like the Pink Tail from Final Fantasy IV).
My pet peeve with some jrpgs is those with multiple endings that require a very cryptic or specific route to get the true or good ending and the only way to find out is to look at a guide to get that ending because there are no hints in the game.
Getting the A ending in Valkyrie Profile. There is absolutely no way a player is able to figure out how to do it on its own and without reading a guide first.
There's probably a lot of story elements in JRPGs I hate, but mechanically feels more tricky. A common complaint here that I agree with are random encounters (which the video mentioned) and bosses immune to all ailments (completely nullifies an alternative strategy). Personally I get aggravated at permanently lost content such as invested party members or towns with treasures that can get easily missed forever, and I also hate when you're given multiple choices but it quickly is made pointless.
Things I hate in JRPGs, UI Clutter - Some games just have so many stats and things going on that I lose focus, Empty Hall Dungeons - Some are just non interesting tunnels to navigate and are there to pad gameplay, EXP pooling - If a character is not in combat and gets no levels then the game forced you to use them and they are super under leveled, Individual Inventory - When characters can only carry x amount on their person and this is on a per character basis and the inventory is also filled by their equipped items.
The majority of these are pretty circumstantial IMO, because they can be done well if handled properly. But the one I absolutely agree with is bosses that heal. It can be so effing frustrating, and unless you're given some kind of warning before they do it so that you can prevent it, then it's nothing short of infuriating every time it happens.
@@nigele8625 Yeah, I doni't mind if the healing comes from minions. It makes the strategy behind the fight better. But when they can unlimited heal themselves, it's just not cool;.
Now the ONE thing I hate with a PASSION in JRPGs, are *harem MC shenanigans* for story focused games. They just make the whole thing worse, and it's for the same problem as 'having the whole game revolve around the MC'. That because romance is an important aspect of stories, and when you pretty much concentrate that to ONE character of said sex, it just... makes a lot of things feel hollow and awkward in many different areas. Not to mention it is often 'separated' from the main plot, because of the difficult of adapting dinamic romance options to the story itself. I don't really mind love triangles, quads and maybe more, but when EVERYONE is concentrated only on the MC, it...sucks for me.
Man, classic JRPGs were often awful with directing the player. I flash back to Tales of Eternia. Once you hit the part where you have a ship that can go under-water. Maybe I missed a hint but I really felt like I was just diving at random in that thing. And while I don't HATE random encounters (definitely prefer when you can see them on the map) there is definitely ways to do them wrong. Xenogears comes to mind. You can get in battles mid-jump in that game, which makes already bad dungeons like The Tower of Babel even worse. Nothing like getting in a battle while jumping over a hole, losing your momentum, then falling down to the bottom of the dungeon to start it over again... multiple times if you're unlucky.
Bosses healing is the worst sometimes it's fine if it's like an enemy or an extra boss, but when it's out of absolute nowhere right near the end for example that's the worst for me
I actually quit on Bravely Default 2 mostly because of this. I was fighting a boss about 10-15 hours into the game for over half an hour as he healed himself again and again. I had been grinding for close to three hours in the dungeons leading up to him, had the best equipment available at the time, and appropriate jobs for the fight and it still took me more than half an hour to not beat him because I shut the game off and decided I had better things to do with my life. If a boss can heal itself for as much or more damage than you can do in a turn, then your game is shit.
@@therealjaystone2344 Bernard in the desert area. I was pounding away on the guy for about half an hour. He stole all my MP, and kept using drain attacks to hurt me and heal himself. I had taken away 2/3 of his health when I ran our of ethers to replace the MP he stole. I was out of MP and he one-shotted my healer with a critical hit. I still had a couple phoenix downs, but without MP and him healing himself so much I could tell it was only a matter of another 15 minutes and I'd lose. I rage quit, and never looked back.
My biggest pet peeve is when you have a game with like 8 characters, party size is 4, and you find the 4 you like best. You level/gear them up and they carry you through the game. Those 4 are your chosen 4. Then you get to the final boss and you need to split your 8 characters into two 4 character parties. So you have to either split your chosen 4 up, hoping the two good ones can carry the other 2, or have one good party and one bad one. Well, guess I better go back and spend hours gearing and leveling those other characters now.
#1 reminds of the Golem from Etrian Odyssey 1 and Untold. It's an optional boss from a quest, it becomes available when you're still considerably below the recommended level but with preparation, a good strategy and luck (the most important part) you can take it down... only for it to recover 50% of its HP upon death. By that point you already used all your items, half of your party is dead and the survivors have no SP to use skills so good luck. It's like the devs couldn't personally kick you in the nuts so they did the next best thing.
Things I dislike in JRPGs: -Bad tutorials (especially in games with convoluted battle systems) -Convoluted systems (for battling, item creation, leveling up, whatever) -When the church is the bad guy (I'm fine with good commentary about the church having too much power, but 9/10 times it's just a tired cliché) -Bad guys brainwashing or controlling the main girl to make her a boss fight (this cliché is really tired) -Final boss being all "I'm going to destroy the world because the world wants its destruction!" (no, it never does, and your motives were never interesting)
My number one goes to bosses you OBLITERATE in the game but once beaten the boss either gains a stupid power and beats your ass, or just end up going "Nope don't even have a scratch". They often add that with the "I have you all at my mercy and could win now but i'll let you live because i feel like it".
Best example of "Where the hell do I go" happened to me about 26 years or so ago when I bought a little, rather unknown gem called Final Fantasy II (IV, but it was a US cartridge) and I reached Kaipo, but I didn't know enough english to understand what I was supposed to go, so I never picked up on this whole "Talk to Rosa, go through the cave, get Edward and find the remedy" thing and since the cave seemed rather tough to me I never really tried it either. In the end I gave up on the game until a few years later until I english was a lot better and the internet was a lot more widespread and I finally solved this puzzle. As for the difficulty spikes: I vividly remember Terranigma and the weird castle with the witch boss where you had to be 25 to really deal damage to her, otherwise it was basically just chip damage of 1, 1, 1, 1 all over again and again. The first time I fought this boss I was pretty unprepared, because everything else worked out somehow, but the boss? No chance. In the end I bought a ton of fire rings and used the s you got from casting them over and over again to my advantage.
Oh boy, that witch in Terranigma obliterated me the first time. After that, I made sure to always grind in that one small room in Grecliff with the two golems. It was relatively quick and easy and you could enjoy the rest of the game without any issues.
@@awetistic5295 Yeah, I did the same in the area with the wolves when I was younger and then in the kitchen inside the castle. You can just run into the room from the right, kill the enemy and then immediately leave through the door you came in on the right. Takes less than 10 seconds per kill if your level is decent, maybe 15 is you're lower.
My number one thing I hate is when developers punish your effort with bad endings because you didn't do certain things, it's even worse when the requirements for better endings are cryptic af. The thing is, I don't use guides unless I'm really stuck so of course I encounter very often normal or bad endings that are not satisfying at all. I could look up ending guides before I start my adventure but I have more fun going in completely blind without knowing anything.
Random encounters is not a problem if it is done right, it's a huge problem though if these random encounters are too frequent and you end up fighting every couple of steps. Another problem for me is excessive grinding. Like there's a new weapon in the shop for 5000 gold and each battle only gives you 50-100, and you need three new weapons for your three party members (not to mention new armor!), you end up grinding for an hour or two or even more just to buy a couple of new shop items. Another thing I hate are the points of no return, be it one dungeon or the whole game. For example if you haven't explored all of the dungeon's nooks and crannies yet but you chose the wrong direction and ended up in a boss battle and you can't come back and explore more. Or when something big happens in the game and it locks you out of previous places or places you haven't explored yet or locks you out of side quests you haven't yet completed. Man I hate that, let me do everything I want and don't punish me for advancing the story!
"you end up grinding for an hour or two or even more just to buy a couple of new shop items." And then you find the same item or better in a random chest 20 minutes later
Arc the lad 2 is a good example of this bullshit! The last 2 dungeons of this game have a difficult spike that will make you pull your hair out! And there's also a point of no return! AND THE FINAL BOSS IS HARD AS FUCK!!!
Yo nice video! Interersting points, this is what I think: 1. I don't mind fighting the same boss when done well, usually that happens when it fits the story. One example is "the rival that doesn't give up" (Kuze from Yakuza 0, most rivals in Pokémon games, Vholran Igniseri in ToA). Another one would be when you meet an enemy you can't beat yet like Melfice in Grandia 2 (It is weird tho how sometimes some of these just let you run away.) Can't remember instances when I particularly remembered hating seeing an old face but I can definitely see your point. 2. Yeah sometimes I lose myself but most of the times it happened in the past when I was playing when too tired from work, but some games definitely get sketchy at times with some locations, seen that happen to me more in other genres tho (Adventure/Horror games). 3. *Me taking 2 steps down the school corridor* LIVED IN BURIED MEMORY Also if I can add something I feel like some normal mobs encounter are way too tanky. Yes not hard, just too tanky, feels like every mob is a miniboss at times, makes me wanna lower difficulty just to put it to max again for boss fights. 4. and 5. Most of the times probably just comes down to personal preferences, for the healing thing I wouldn't mind as long as the game gives you countermeasure against it or it's again somewhat tied to the plot situation (you're fighting another adventurer party). Again tho great video and refreshing to see, hope to see more interesting content like this one!
So, here's my own list of JRPG annoyances: 1). MP Scarcity. Why give me a group of people, all with nice and cool abilities, and not let me use my spells? Mashing the "Attack" command because anything else consumes too much precious MP is insanely boring. There's no strategy in there, there's no variety of what you do, it's just Attack Attack Attack. Yes, I love seeing my mages walking up and plunking something for single digits of damage because using MP is not wise when you can cast like 5 spells and you're out of MP, even in mid-game and there's no items that restore MP (or they are too rare and precious to use frivolously). Compare this to a game like Wild ARMs 2 that did away with MP and let mages be mages, much more fun gameplay. 2). Pre-Boss Cutscenes / Checkpoints. No, I don't want to have to watch a cutscene before I attempt a boss each and every time. Nope, don't want none of that. Usually only done by older games, but even a few newer games will do it too. 3). Backtracking through earlier areas with random encounters. Ok, you don't like random encounters? How about when a game has you go back through an earlier part of the game where you must fight random encounters that are utterly meaningless? No, I don't want to take my level 50 party back through some area I had to go when I was level 10 and be forced to fight those random encounters near there. A variation of this is in games where you can see where the battles are (in the form of visible monsters) and they still chase you even though you can one-shot all of them. Still annoying AF. 4). XP Splitting. Please for the love of .... stop splitting XP between group members. I hate killing something that gives 100xp only to check the status screen and see that each of my 4 members only got 25xp. And then, there are the games that split XP by _everybody in the group_ including backrow characters! Here's looking at YOU, Breath of Fire 1. Half of the group is useless, and is only there to soak up XP. It takes absolutely forever to levelup when you are splitting XP earned by 8. That 7,200 XP looks nice on the screen, but each group member is getting
Actually in Final Fantasy Legend II, the battles were not random. There is a pattern. When the game is loaded from its last save, the battles occur after these many steps in between on the over world: 0, as in immediately, 4,1, 38, 66, 10, 55, 2 and repeat if I remember correctlly.
My biggest pet peeves are games where the enemies scale in power and difficulty to the players character meaning no matter how much you grind you never feel any stronger(final fantasy 8) Similarly but distinct is games that gatekeep your growth based on how far you get in the game, so when you get to certain bosses you can only be as powerful as the arbitrary limit (final fantasy 13) Over leveling/gathering the best weapons and armor should always be a viable option in jrpgs, the real difficult strategy fights should be an option for people who want to do low level or average level runs with average equipment, if I want to go out of my way to buy, loot, and craft legendary weapons and spend 2-10 hours getting 10-20 levels above average I should be able to destroy the boss with relative ease and not feel like my efforts are wasted
definitely a personal list as i don't take nearly as much issue with some of these as other people do, but i am rather surprised to see that there was no mention of "dialogue options that don't matter" or "when you're given two options for responses but you are required to pick one of them to progress"
Nah, I like random encounters, I don't like when in modern rpgs you can basically skip every monster in a dungeon. What's the point of having enemies if you only need to fight them when you are underleved?
Some stuff that i hate: - JRPGs with limited save spots, like just in towns or even outside of dungeons. Mainly in hard games. There's few things more frustrating than have to replay a entire dungeon when u lose to a boss at the end of it. - Bad economy. I HATE when games have equipment and important stuff too pricey, even more when we have a lot of party members and don't have enough resources to properly equip then. - Bosses that can only be beaten with a specific set of equipment/skills/party-member or even character builds.
@@noukan42 Call it as you please. In most cases, games assumes that you always have your party members equipped with the "last tier" when you encounter a new set of enemies. In these cases, you need to grind for gold, or suffer trying to fight unbalanced enemies.
@@neycosta4381 most games that i have played can be finished comfortably at the "medium" difficulty whitout ever buying a single piece of equipment, and even the hard one rarely require you to buy the entire set on every character. For example, WOTR unfair would require the most up-to-date AC items on the main tank, but not much else. Aa a general rule what you find is strongsr than what you buy. There are some games that work as you described, but they are few and mostly old.
Also, I know Atelier Iris 3 is a lesser known rpg (but it's still fun and amazing by the way) has a later boss enemy that's optional called the baby puni. It's literally a tiny almost microscopic slime creature with a pacifier in its mouth! But that little fucker will decimate your party faster than shit and it heals every single turn! Sometimes more than once! I have never beaten it!
The worst thing for me is when my favorite character suddenly turns out to be evil, especially when you could have them as party members before and leveled them up a lot.
Hmm... Well... I completely agree on those bosses that heal themselves for a considerable amount (or even completely), just a few moments before you thought you finally got them down. It's infuriating. I also do not like those random encounters, especially when they happen very frequently (like every five steps). It interrupts the flow of the game, and serves no real purpose in my honest opinion. There are also a few thing I like to add that I personally hate with a passion. The first is QTE (Quick Time Events). I really hate those. Especially when that random key you have to push also appears at a random location. It spoils all the fun I have in a game, and makes me completely nervous. In some occasions I even stopped playing that game and completely removed it, to never been touched again. The second is precision jumping. Jump a tiny fragment of an microsecond too early or too late , and you tumble back to the very start, only to be forced to start all those jumps you have done previous all over again, and again, and again, and again, and again.... It's completely maddening to be honest. The last thing is a very lengthily unskippable cutscene before you can fight the level (or end) boss. If you loose that battle you have to watch that same cutscene again for minutes and minutes and minutes, before you can give the fight another try (and pray you don't loose, because you can watch that same lengthily scene again). You would think the game developers will give you a save point just before the boss fight, but NO - You HAVE to watch that bloody cutscene over and over again, only to be able to do that boss fight again. These are my biggest downers in a game. Sure there are more little nags, but I can get over them. The above however...
Considering the amount of times some Trails games appeared in this video, my guess is that Loewe, Arianrhod, and Sigmund Orlando gave you a thorough trashing. I mean, those are the SOBs from those games that REALLY made me grip my PSP hard. Especially that unfair, cruel and depraved moment in Trails in the Sky the 3rd when you fight Loewe and Cassius Bright TOGETHER in the arena. Yes, optional battle, but... those two are just unfair together. Or Sigmund in Azure's chapter 4 beginning... Unfair boss + time limit = AAARRRGGGHHH!!! And yes, I know that last one is a "story battle" you can lose. So what? I like S-Ranking all my Trails chapters.
I'll be the weirdo and say I don't hate random encounters as a mechanic. A lot of games just decide to actively harrass the player with it. The radar in older SMT games and Etrian Odyssey give you a decent heads up, and Bravely Default lets you customize your experience. I may prefer enemies shown on the overworld, but after a while I'll catch myself avoiding them, which leads to less Exp/Money in the long run. A game's battle mechanics have to good enough to make me want to engage with them.
Bravely Default, Popolocrois story of seasons has lowered my tolerance for older turn based RPGs. An encounter rate slider and auto battle made grinding painless.
I played Xenoblade 2 before they made patch to sort items. I spent hours scrolling through a redicliously long list looking for a specific item. This is the only game where I encountered this and it's not so bad when they put the sort by function in, but Xenoblade 2 has way too many different kinds of items.
Games like Xenoblade 2 and star ocean that have really deep and intricate mechanics, but don't explain them very well or much at all and expect the player to just figure it out
I can agree with the healing thing, but it doesn't bother me that much UNLESS it is a fight where a "part" of the boss is doing the healing, and you can kill it(ok the healing stopped) but then the boss is programmed to revive the healer part within like 4 rounds or something. It just turns the entire fight into a pattern where you can;t risk doing anything else or you lose ground. I would add, or replace on your list: The trope where you get busted and put in jail or otherwise and lose all your gear and then have to fight your way back out, only to miraculously find 100% of all your gear in one box. Because the enemy knows enough to disarm you but not lock your stuff up or even split it up? None of the enemies wanted any of your stuff? Related: Locking away magic skills and then forceing you to use the magic caster party member. Enemies immune to physical damage(only magic) early in the game where you barely have any MP, but then they put them in random encounters. Similar: when the game gives you a new super powerful elemental weapon in a chest, but then the next area the enemies are healed by that element. Like getting a fire sword and 30 seconds later you have to fight through a volcano. UG! A fairly common sequence where you go to a new town and the story forces you into a dungeon or some other long quest before you can explore your surroundings. Menu type dialogue options, but if you pick them in the wrong order you miss some of them forever. Front Mission 3 is like this, and you can even miss unlockables this way!
I'll never forget RPGs like Beyond the Beyond and Revelations Persona One where random battles could lead one to suicide. The last dungeon in BTB where you had to perfectly navigate through a cave which had holes that would drop you to the previous floor below and The last dungeon in the Snow Queen quest in Persona where you had to navigate through a very intricate maze and both had frequent random battles through out which took me almost hours to complete. UGH!!!
Beyond the beyond is a classic tale of what did I do to make you hate me devs! I still like it though. Original persona could be devastatingly difficult sometimes.
I don't like when you beat the ever-loving crap out of a boss and then the boss goes "Ouch! You win this time but I'll be back." They don't seem like you even hurt them. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is my most recent example. You overkill the crap out of them and turn them into ground beef and they just brush it off.
Playing XC3 and one battle in particular at the first castle is emblematic of this as I trashed them with a Chain Attack only for the cutscene to show them wiping the floor with my party... At that point I wish they would've done like they did with other certain bosses and the fight ends when their HP hits 50% then goes into a cutscene.
So far I'm liking XC3 a lot but there is a huge disconnect between the plot and the gameplay. Like how Ouroboros aren't nearly as impresive in combat as they are in cinematics, or how some Heroes are suppose to match the power of your entire party on a 1 vs 6 fight yet when they join you they are just a watered-down version of what your party members can become if they use the same class.
Trails is big on you beating the shit out of a guy and then your characters being like "he almost beat us! He was holding back and we still nearly died!" No. You pounded him bloody. Don't be modest.
I hate the grinding. I'm okay with having side quests, since they give you a mean to gather resources and gain experience, but a lot of the time doing the side quests isn't, not even by far, and not even adding everything you yet from the random encounters you have to deal with during the necessary travels, enough to be as strong as you would need to be to beat the boss at the end of the chapter, so you have to go wander around looking for fights you aren't doing for fun, but because you have no choice. Grinding is so annoying.
My greatest bugbear is having long non-skippable speeches or sequences before awkward boss fights (Jecht in FFX being a good example). Another bugbear is bad or non existent mapping. As for random encounters, no problem usually unless you are going back and forth trying to solve puzzles, or can't find a save point. I played a recent game, The Lost Child where encounters were mostly random and it was fine. Random encounters enable developers to force you to do a certain amount of grinding.
No Erick the last guy is almost never the hardest, its USUALLY some random ancient dragon/robot/demon who of course happens to be Completely separate from the story line just minding its own business in some cave and USUALLY you need to go through some convoluted step-by-step bullshit side-quests JUST to get the privilege to fight it.... only for it to bitch slap you since you didn't overlevel, overprepare or use some cheese tactic.
It hands down has to be missable items, skills, weapons, armor, etc. This is especially bad in RPGs that have no New Game + option. I get paranoid as hell having my eyes glued to a guide just to make sure I'm not missing anything. Killed a boss and it didn't drop its 1% drop rate item? Too bad. Did you talk to this NPC at the right time? If not you just ruined your chances at a very nice weapon. Did you encounter said enemy or loot all treasures before completing the dungeon that will suddenly disappear forever? You're SOL.
I totally agree with you, it's by far the worst thing for me on an RPG. Extra point when the game has some bestiary or encyclopedia list or something to show you that missing stuff you missed and you will never get. I wonder how hard is to create an RPG without going with that stupid trope or at the very best, not abuse it
My biggest issue with JRPGs is often the childish way of story stelling. Not even childish stories in itself, I can stomach that. But having simple to understand concepts hammered in a simplistic way over and over in your head (Persona 5 is a big offender here imo) which you've and everyone else understood perfectly the first time, is soooo annoying.
My main gripe are RPG's with a convoluted menu systems and hard to understand skill trees. Also RPG's like some Tales games that have really bad weapon upgrading. I want to play the game, not look at menus forever.
Thanks to this garbage JRPG I finished recently, I'd like to add two more things that really grind my gears: 1. introducing halfway through the game a tedious gimmick feature that's integral to the progress of the game 2. bad story tropes, like fighting your dad, yourself or God in the final battle, or the whole "it was all a dream" ending trope that should be considered illegal in this day and age
That all sounds like FFX stuff. Weapon synth was introduced late, and you fight two of those three things, and the dream bit. Most people like X though
@@ztdk Interestingly, I didn't mean FFX, cause that was one of the first JRPGs to introduce that kind of over-the-top story trope. I really like this game, it's just that this trope has been really overplayed ever since. Without spoiling too much, I meant one of the Star Ocean games...
Unskippable cut scenes. That can add even more headaches to your points about bosses. The first time I’ll want to watch cutscene but not each time I have to attempt the boss
5 Replayable bosses are honestly better than all being new types as you see the evolution of thier style like in the tales of series where xillia has a strong enemy cast and they have kits as good as the protagonist 4 Yeah I hate that too as a lot of old games and even some new games really don't give enough clues to solve it yourself without hand holding to carry you through the puzzle. 3 random encounters are annoying. Enjoy it more when the mob is on the map and you can choose to either battle them or walk around them especially in new game plus mode in the tales series or kh to allow us to just skip them. 2 yeah middle of the game the battles are either bullet sponges and one shot without much exp given so you are wasting your time when you get middle road of the story. 1 bosses that heal is annoying as your hard work is all wasted basically making your hard work combos and whatever else you did meaningless. Again tales of does this well by making a party healer for the enemy and you can just rush them immediately to win faster but might get jumped by the other fighters.
Two things I hate the most. 1. Slow beginnings. I love a good story, but I don't believe the game should take 40+ minutes with only dialogues and cutscenes right at the start. it must show some mechanics, how the battle system works, etc. Balance between story and gameplay is important at the beginning. 2. Too much explanation about the game mechanics. I hate tutorials, especially the ones with tons of dialogue we can't skip. It's much more fun to learn things during the gameplay (That's what I love about FromSoftware games).
I don't mind repeated bosses as long as their character isn't annoying and they've learned new moves and upgraded their stats to match. Then it's like they've become a rival to your team, constantly training themselves to outdo you on your next meeting. The absolute king of this must be Janus Cascade of Wild Arms 3 with EIGHT fights, but I still liked him because he gets new moves and abilities each time and stops using the weaker ones, and as a result one of your encounters with him is unwinnable! You get the last laugh on him in the end though.
I hate Bosses that heals aswell. I think I solved it though in some games by shielding the enemy against magic which made the healing jump to my team instead :) Random battles... well I played so many games with it so Im so used to it.
I hate when you're way deep into the story, at the point where the world is on the precipice of total annihilation, and then your party has to screw off for 5 hours doing some sidequest to get a couple high level items. Final Fantasy VII is my favorite game of all time, but Chocobo breeding kills the momentum. First you have to fight a bunch of random battles while finding just the right chocobos in just the right places, then you have to race them to build them up uhh but before you do fight more random battles to get the gil to buy the greens to raise their stats, then save right in front of the farm so you can quit and reload over and over again so you get just the right offspring chocobo, then you do that all over again and again and again grinding gil then buying greens then feeding bird then racing bird then matings birds then resetting when it's not the right bird. All to get Knights of the Round, and for me at least enough Gold Saucer GP to go do the random bullshit generator in the Battle Square to get Omnislash because you have to win enough times in one sitting because you can't leave! To get Barret's Level 4 Limit it's part of the save-the-world storyline, to get Tifa's you jam out on a piano, but Cloud's is locked behind some real-ass bullshit. I've just got to do all that, save the game, turn it off, go back to my life, new day, come back and continue playing the game I'd been enjoying up until that point. Solution for chocobo breeding would have been clearly defined parameters for what comes out, i.e. choose the female first baby is female, choose the male first baby is male, Good/Good = River, Good/Great = Mountain. I'll tell you from experience, every guide you read tells you what worked for them and I've done something completely different and got the same result and have done the suggestion the same and get a different result. Solution for Battle Square is either you get Omnislash automatically for beating it the first time in Disc 2. Dio walks in and says "wow you're good bubby, have this!" and then it's up to you if you want to do the grind for W-Summon. Chocobo racing is nothing if you put in the greens, and there's an easy way to get a mill gil to buy greens if you don't want to grind. Also, get rid of whichever chocobo you need to get HP MP materia and screw off with that even being an item in the game. How about HP÷MP+Strength^Luck while you're making things up people would never use.
The healing bosses is exactly the thing i hate in the super robot wars series. In the series,the bosses regenerate a % of their hp every turn AND they have a shield that reduces damage taken. You can destroy the shield so what's the problem?The problem is that the shield freaking regenerates the next turn!!!! Freaking hate this
I've been stuck on the atelier sophie 2 elvira second boss fight for quite a while because of the difficulty spike, she takes multiple turns, she can put everyone to sleep, she clean wipe everyone's stat buffs while dealing massive damage she can inflict multiple status' at the same time while summoning monsters that block magic and physical attacks and come to find out you will have to fight her a third time where she is even stronger, blue reflection second light has you fight the final boss 4 times, so yeah the typical boss troups are in modern jrpgs as well.
I can empathise with the being lost and having no clue what to do or where to go. Random encounters can be frustrating when you need to be somewhere and know the route but you are constantly being dogged by random encounters. The other aside from healing, is a bosses ability to completely render your squad inactive due to a status effect and to beat the boss you know you need other active squad members to have any chance of beating them.
To actually pull up some fair stuff. Random encounters can speed up grinding, thake the ff7 games, the old ff7 I would grind to level 30-35 early on, but in the remake I'm only lvl10 in the slums and I've completed every currently available side quest. Another example is I believe is ff13 that games has no random encounters but your so criticality under leveled for bosses the difficulty feel artificial.
@@arkeshn729 I'm still playing it, I think it's a good ff game but not a good ff7 so far. It honestly feels like if they just remade the actual ff7 in the engine with a few changes and more secrets and I mean a lot more secrets. Then it could be amazing. I would love to see 9 be remade next
@@drewtheunspoken3988 yeah but when you go through all your healing items rapidly in a boss for example one of the boss fight I remember in the later chapters I had 99 hi and regular potions. Went through all of them and still lost at that fight. Lot of the bosses where more tedious and frustrating than fun. The summon bosses and the beginning where fun, hated the combat tho. Had an open space to move around to avoid attacks but you couldn't move? Unless I missed something it seems like you where ment to move around the field in a fight but they scraped it
@@raistlinmcguire2786 There were a lot of baffling decisions in that game. I've actually played through it several times but you have to use a specific party using a specific strategy or it's near impossible.
I do agree about the bosses that can heal themselves. I also hate that bosses get all their health back after doing transformations in the games. I also hate when there are games where you can't win a battle no matter how much grinding you do. I also hate having to grind for a new attack or spell and then finding out that it is complete garbage.
Some of the points on this list, I feel like it really depends on how the featured mechanic is implemented. For example, I don't mind recurring bosses if there's actually a reason for you to be fighting them again. Like, maybe they're the antagonistic rival character who simply wants to prove they're better than you and so they try to do just that multiple times throughout the story before they finally get that they can't beat you. Maybe there's a story reason, like, say, a character who's an android who, even if you destroy them, can just have their personality data and memories transferred into a new body. However, I DO mind them if they're there only to serve as obvious filler. If you don't need to throw a boss fight at the player at the end of a dungeon, don't have this schmuck we beat a few chapters ago show up for no reason just for the sake of there being a boss fight. When it comes to bosses that heal themselves, it depends, imo, on how much they heal, and whether that healing is a thing they can do whenever they want or if they only do it at certain HP thresholds. If they can do it whenever they want, but the amount they heal is an amount a properly leveled and geared party could reliably outpace, then at that point the boss is just wasting their precious opportunities to try and kill you by desperately trying to delay the inevitable. If they heal themselves for, say, a quarter of their health, but only do that once when they fall below 50% of their health bar, then it's fine because while it's a setback, it only happens once. However, if they can heal themselves for, like, 20% of their health, an amount that took you, like, 10 turns just to deal that much damage, and they can do it whenever they please, then yeah, that's a right pain in the ass. And while I agree with you on the points you made with unbalanced difficulty, I'd like to throw something out there that I don't think you mentioned. It's something I like to call "Psyche!" bosses. These are bosses where the game goes out of its way to make you think the boss is going to be weak to one element or status, only for you to discover when actually fighting it that "Psyche!", it's actually weak to something completely different that, due to how the game made you think it'd be weak to something else, you probably don't have anything with you to hit its weakness. For example, say you're going to be fighting a giant, monstrous plant in the depths of a lush forest. Obviously it'd be weak to fire since it's a plant, and NPCs in a city near the forest mention how the forest ecosystem is so delicate that even the smallest amount of poison would be able to kill any of the plants in there. So you bring party members and gear that can deal fire damage and inflict the poison status... only for the boss to ACTUALLY be weak to wind and the paralysis status.
Also I gotta say I love your channel man. I initially subscribed because you were saying things completely different than what liked or wanted to hear. I'm like a complete 180 but I agree with random encounters. In present day there should be zero random encounters in games. I don't mind fighting the same boss over and over and I don't mind them healing because that requires a change of strategy. I myself always had a tendency to over level so the difficulty spikes never hit me hard. But I'm as slow as worm. A game that takes "30 hours" takes me about 90. Perfect example, I'm sure people would say "oh I 100% eiyuden chronicle in 10 hours" it took me about 38 and that's the first game I think I ever 100%.
My biggest pet peeve, by FAR, is the ending of 90% of JRPGs. It can have an amazing story throughout, but as soon as you get to the end and it becomes, "kill god with the power of friendship", my opinion of the game gets cut in half. I've spent decades trying to wrap my head around that concept, and I've made zero progress.
See I'm fine with most of the things you listed. I hate crafting and side quests when you're trying to get on with the main plot (looking at you Xenoblade 3)
I like repeat encounters with a boss that I genuinely enjoy, like if they generally bring out the best in the combat, or change enough that it renews the experience, but I get annoyed when I encounter repeats with a boss that's just a big mindless lump that had little if any character and/or no apparent reason to come back.... also sometimes a game just picks the worst options for their repeats. XD I think a big problem with the 'where do I go/what do I do?' syndrome is games establishing a VERY clear and often heavy-handed pattern on how you're supposed to progress, both in main and in side content, yet so many game still have that one part where some guy just decided to 'get creative' and make you think about it yourself, not realizing that you've been trained the whole game to expect explicit directions at every turn. Being confused by this sudden shift isn't stupid at all. You're taking into account everything you've learned you up to this point. You paid attention and now you're getting punished for it?
As much is I love modern rpgs I find older titles realy hard to play. Then again that might be because I don't realy like turn based combat and I HATE random encounters. Let me know if anyone else has a different opponent I would love to hear your takes.
I agree with you, I hate random encounter in old jrpg, but since I grown up with those games I still able to tolerate it since I don't have any other option at that time lmao.
Love turn based, hate random encounters. Actually been enjoying games like Divinity OS 2 or Pathfinder WotR way more than your standard "I hit you, then you hit me" JRPG loop recently
I do like random battles partly because they keep things from getting stale. The roly poly fight in Chrono Trigger right outside the first town always bugs me because you ALWAYS fight it. Every goddamn time you enter or leave the town. It just gets really old. At least random battles aren't the same thing over and over again. But the more important reason for them is to be a risk/reward mechanism. Do you cast your really powerful spell that will end the fight in one turn, or save it for a more dangerous fight later? If you know what's up ahead, this simply becomes a calculation. But if you MIGHT run into something dangerous, then the choice becomes a lot less obvious and a lot more tense, and you feel like a huge badass for planning ahead skillfully and overcoming unexpected setbacks. Because you need time to weigh those choices, turn based combat goes hand in hand with this style of game. However, this only matters if you have limited resources. Modern games lean far more into having easily replenished resources, which makes all of this just a wast of time. Why do I care about conserving my MP when I have half a billion ethers in my inventory and I can just cast osmose to steal MP from my enemies, and the next save point will just full heal my team right before the boss anyway? This is why modern games have drifted away from random/turn based battles. They're trying to be a completely different type of game, and obviously some people will like one style of game over the other. But the next time you try an old RPG, keep this in mind. You just might enjoy it more that way.
Random encounters are a product of their time when memory limitations left no other option available to fight enemies in that genre. It probably should have been abandoned much faster than it was, but remember JRPGs are primarily based in Japan, a culture very reluctant to break with any kind of tradition, even an annoying outdated one like that. Unskippable cutscenes would be my addition to the list, especially ones leading into a tough boss or several.
"Random encounters are a product of their time when memory limitations left no other option available to fight enemies in that genre" - not at all, devs always had an options to add visible wandering enemies, looking as abstract skulls\devils\clouds (just one small sprite for all encounters in the game) - and as you touch them, normal battle begins. There was no tight limit for the number of wandering sprites also, because we got a numerous ARPG`s on the same hardware, plus Zelds games.
@@realavt Surprising to hear. I cited that from Design Doc in their article on Random Encounters. The other reason they offered was a desire for the first Dragon Warrior/Quest and Final Fantasies to imitate early Dungeons and Dragons with random encounter tables. Maybe they just didn't want every game to be like Zelda, and it does make encounters easier to dodge. And we do know for a fact that too many sprites on a screen causes flicker and slowdown on the NES. Even Zelda 2 has that happen.
Nah, random encounters are just a creative choice, not an outdated mechanic. They fit better in procedural games where every combat is more significant.
@@WhiteFangofWar yes, devs had they own reasons and preferences - all I wanted to say, that it was a design choice, rather than hardware limitations...
5 . I'm on board with this opinion. 4. I like to figure out where to go and what to do. Being less guided makes me feel better. I can figure it out. Why the dislike for this? 3. Random encounters have really become a growing pain in the back. Even games like Guardian's Crusade had a better solution to that but were considered to easy since you saw where the enemies were. 2. Yes, that sucks really hard. They do have play testers. They could test how the fights and boss fights work out at certain levels and creating a lurning curve. some developers however were just lazy. 1. That one depends. If you are underdeveloped and won't deal enough damage, well, tough luck.
I really hate long rpg’s having missable content such storylines, cutscenes, treasures, achievements, …. Having to replay 20-30 hours of a game just to get it to 100% always angers me. So I’m sometimes playing with a missable guide but that often spoils the story… you can understand my dilemma here.
Some of mine not mentioned here. - Bloated dungeons. Especially the final dungeon which is pretty common place to take 3+ hours and have a half dozen floors. - The ending sequence. By this I mean the part where we've built up the game to an epic final conclusion only to learn that a new unseen threat was the true villain the entire time! Most stories are not made better by a crazy world threatening twist in the finale. - Low drop rates. If you think I love your combat system so much that I want to farm anything with a >5% drop rate you're wrong. I might be able to tolerate a 25% chance drop rate for the most rare item in your game...but even then I use tolerate for a reason. - Mini games that aren't really mini games. See Triple Triad as one of the best examples. Some JRPG's make fishing supremely rewarding to the point where you are playing at a handicap if you do not thoroughly engage in this mindless activity for literal hours by the end of the adventure. To me a mini-game needs to be just like it sounds. Short and sweet or with added complexity but still entire optional. Examples of short and sweet are the kinds of things you see in say Zelda a Link to the Past. More complex and involved but not so important it feels vital to the games progression would be Fort Condor in FF7 remake Integrade.
The one about having no idea what to do next is one I can co-sign. I could do with a hint or two about where I need to be to progress the story, but I don't want a red carpet rolled out for me. I might happen across some good loot while roaming around. Everything else is fine, but the one difficulty spike I didn't like was the Calasmos fight in vanilla Dragon Quest 11. That entire game was a cake walk, then Calasmos one shot my entire team a couple of turns in. Everyone was level 99 with the gear available fully upgraded at the forge. Had to abuse Hendrik's defensive abilities to have him be the meat shield all fight and minimize damage to the others since nearly all of Calasmos' attacks hit the entire team multiple times for big damage.
LOL! so true, I agree with all of them! I lost the count of how many times you have to beat Songi in Legend of Legaia for instance, maybe 3 or 4? lol. Random encounters really is a pain in the ass, some games make an item available in late game to stop random encounters, but most don´t even do this. You have mastered the game, and want to explore the world map, and there you go. And when even in transport vehicles they occour? man that sucks! Being lost in the game perphaps is the mosy annoying of it all!, how many games have I not beaten because of this? and some this happens even in the beggining lol.
I hate that some RPGs don't leave you reminders of what you have to do next. I hate when I go on a gaming break and then when I finally play the game again I literally have no idea what I was supposed to be doing.
And there's bosses that when you kill them, restore their health completely. Because, you must kill them by one particulary way that you must find. (I don't remember the game)
i think rather than healing bosses, i'd wrap it into a more generic "badly scripted bosses". ones that can use their super attack over and over if you have bad rng are just as bad as ones that will spam cur4. they need to either cycle thru things so you have a bit of expectation so that you can strategize around it, or at least limit how many heals or superattacks they can do in a row or within some time or turn period.
The reasonnwhy old JRPG had random encounter is because the systems nor teh games had enough memory to fill the map with visible mosnter to fight so they solved that issue with random encounter, but that was a problem of old games, games from like the PS1 above era could a 100% have no random encounters and work with no issue but they still keep it because it was a part of the genre, what i like about the moder JRPG iks that devs are undertstanding that we hate random encounters so less games use them. P.D. The only kind of game that i agree that needs random encunter are First Person dungeon craeler like Mary Skelter and something thatg i like about Mary Skelter is that the game actually has a low encunter rate
1. Insta-kill encounter enemies - imagine your enemies are taking initiative and then they cast a petrification spell? In some games, petrify can also trigger game over. 2. Enemies that can steal/destroy your equipment - ohhh boy! I don't really care if enemies can clobber me to the ground but getting mugged doesn't feel good. Macca beams SMT, steal equips/destroy equipment from strategy rpg and so on.. 3. Stall tactic - "why you little!!" 4. Random stat increment - I don't like playing Fire Emblem just for this stupid factor
I have to admit... I found it hard to focus on your "where to go" complaint, because I was busy rocking out to Palace of Destruction. Perhaps TOO good a choice of music, methinks. Fun video overall, although not sure I 100% agree with all of them. (Definitely going to agree that random encounters should have gone the way of the dodo long ago.)
Healing enemies/bosses shifts the dynamic from dps to spike damge, which can be a fun strategic shift as long as it's not done cheaply. Dps does not exist when healing is present. There are only 2 forms of damage: pressure and spike. Pressure makes an enemy have to do something, like heal or move or take a certain action. Spike is how you secure a kill, and it involves setup and coordination. All of the damage needs to come all at once, to beat the heal. This can be fun because you can't just out-dps dudes, you have to coordinate spikes. As long as it's not done cheaply, that is, lol.
I am curious to hear some opinions, what is worse to you? A complicated battle system that makes the game more challenging/harder, or a system that has the potential to break a game? Example, the system in Resonance of fate/End of Eternity, vs the Junction System from FFVIII. One i feel is hard to master but once you do, the game ramps up to meet you. The other, once you master, you break the game and it's too easy?
I gave up on SMT3 nocturne due to the random encounters. "Oh, what is that in that room" - random encounter, random encounter - get to the room, it is nothing - random encounter - back to the point I was before.
That random encounter one is why I HATED playing Persona 1 and 2. I'd be lost as hell in a dungeon and every 5-10 seconds: random encounter! It drove me insane! I am so glad most modern JRPG's have gotten rid of totally random encounters. Now I get to choose if I want to go near the enemy or fight it. It's also nice being able to ambush an enemy without it being RNG like in older FF games.
My biggest pet peeve with JRPG's is a lack of choice or illusion of choice. Being able to develope relationships with characters is what role playing is all about. The side quests, the extra content, the journey itself is what matters. That being said, star ocean 2 had an amazing system. You couldn't romance characters but the more skits you saw, the higher your affection for each other would become and then if one of you fell in battle, the other would become enraged. I would like to see more systems like that. They don't have to be deep and they don't have to be game breaking either but rewarding storywise and if you do manage to get to that point, give you a slight advantage in battle in certain situations.
