I am playing Horizon Zero Dawn and haven’t gotten to the first main event, but it gives me this feeling like if I upgrade all my equipment now it might be for nothing. I know that is not the case, I looked it up, but what are some games that are the worst offenders? One I can think of is Aerith in the original FF7.
Resident Evil Village,
You do multiple playthroughs for upgrades and stronger guns, and then get stuck with the same power level Chris at the end
When playing Mount and Blade Warband with the Viking Conquest module, you start in the country of Friese. Due to things that happen during the mainquest, you pretty much get kicked out of the country and get threatened that after a ceartain amount of time passes, the lords will brand you as an enemy and turn hostile. This is exceptionally bad if you end up saving money and decide to invest in a business in the capital of the country, which can be quite a lot. Its best if you take your money when leaving and open a business somewhere else.
The worst offenders are Jeanne d’Arc and Baldur’s Gate 2 which just decide to take away your important characters with everything they had in their inventory and leaving you without an important class.
Yuffi fucked my materia junctioning in FFVII - was so pissed off I didn’t play for a month.
Chrono Cross.
I used Harle all damn game when I got her and she leaves your party near the end. Finished the game with just some replacement, bah.
WARNING: Last of Us 2 SPOILERS below
In The Last of Us 2 mid game when you start playing as abby and have to starting building the skill tree again… it just really killed the flow of the game for me on a level that few games made me feel.
I think overall the game itself is still good but that alone def lowered my score for the game along with some other things.
Tarkov giveth and Tarkov taketh.
GTA: San Andreas. You can capture every territory and have it taken away
Damn you Yuffie!
Amazed that I haven’t seen this here, but Dawn of Mana for the PS2. Amazing and heartbreaking story, but good lord was it awful having to start all over again every single level and lose all your upgrades.
Seasonal games like, uhh, you know which.
100% agree with Aerith in FF7. I mean it was definitely an emotional moment when she died. Anger is an emotion. All that time spent on levelling her absolutely wasted in seconds.
Promoting Zylo in Shining Force. He was a badass wearwolf that could sprint around the map and had huge damage output from a leaping slash with his claws.
Then I promoted him and he went from my best character damage wise to average at best. His badass wolf form replaced with just being a hary dude in blue armor. His leaping slash replaced with just gesturing whith his hand to have some blue clouds pass over the screen to damage the enemy instead. Eventually leving him up got his damage output back but man did he ever lose a ton of cool factor.
Returnal
In risk of rain 2 all of your gear is given to the final boss part way through the fight. You can get it back by doing damage but the stronger you are going into that fight, that harder he hits while trying to get your stuff back.
I always thought that was clever. It doesn’t take long before you’re basically back to your old build, and every shot gets you there exponentially quicker. It was never a death moment as much as a temporary hinderance.
My favorite thing was using Goopo to clone myself right before Mythrix starts pulling in your items. Having a full powered copy absolutely shreds him and you can hide while it happens.
Mithrix stage 4 is more of a cutscene than an actual boss phase imo though, once you get to that point the run is practically already won