Rajaah
Honorable Member
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- 14,933
I've had a few:
Mega Man 3 (NES) - Got very far in this over what seemed like weeks. Problem is I was co-playing it at a friend's house on his copy, and when we'd get a password we'd save it. Every stage could take an entire afternoon because we weren't very good. Finally we had most of the Doc Robots down and it was almost time for Wily Castle, which I was incredibly stoked for. Well, long story short, he lost the piece of paper with our passwords on it, think his mom threw it away not knowing what it was. So that was that for our MM3 game. We never resumed our playthrough, but I think he later finished the game on his own and I emulated it about 8 years later to finally see the rest.
Final Fantasy 7 - Played this on release, and every time I defeated Diamond Weapon, the game would freeze on the Midgar Cannon cutscene. I must have beaten Diamond Weapon like six times, hoping it'd resolve itself. This is about when I discovered the wonder of store refunds, and was able to exchange it for another copy (which worked). So this probably doesn't even count towards this list, but it's a close call.
Final Fantasy Tactics - Back in 1998 I was playing this and ran into the brick wall that is Riovanes Castle, where you fight a trio of very nasty bosses in a row. The game has you fight a relatively normal battle before this (which locks you into the area) then asks if you want to save. I said yeah because up to that point I had no reason to suspect anything. My characters were underpowered because I avoided as many random fights as I could, something I did a lot of in 90's RPGs. I actually made it past the first boss due to heavy gimp-tactics with autopotion, only to be squashed by the second with no way to leave to the overworld and shop or re-strategize. That was it for the playthrough, and I lost probably around 30 hours. Even if you get past that fight there's another super-hard fight after it before you can leave. The rest of the game (it's about halfway) never reaches that difficulty again. On my second run I made sure I was completely prepared before I went to that place again. But not TOO prepared (see below).
Xenogears - There's a one-on-one mech fight with Vierge about 8 hours into the game, in a dungeon that you can't leave once you reach the save point / boss. Levels don't help, only parts for your mech. If you have the latest parts for your mech you can roll the fight. The latest parts happen to be sold by a robot right next to the save point, which seems to be the designers' way of telling you "you must have the latest equipment to proceed". Problem is, they also give you the option to fight the robot merchant (why?) which I don't think happens anywhere else in the game. So when I first talked to it and saw a "fight!" option I chose that, defeated the robot, and saved. Then I fought Vierge with outdated equipment and it was straight-up impossible. Friends told me at the time that you get upgrades from the robot right before the fight...the robot I killed off. Had to start the game over again.
Final Fantasy Legend 1 - Yet another save-trap, though this save-trap was my own doing. Throughout my FFL1 playthrough on emulator (circa 1999, so I still hadn't learned my lesson) I was using a single save state to save rather than the ingame save system. At the very least I made a backup save about halfway through the game. I was racing a friend to see who could beat the game first, so I didn't level up adequately for the final dungeon. That and, ya know, I ran from everything in 90's RPGs. The enemies seriously ramp up in power around the final dungeon, and I found myself in the middle of the dungeon having trouble winning any fights. That's when I discovered that the random attacks were all predetermined (i.e. if you're going to get attacked in five steps and lose half your party to one round of preemptive attacks, you'll still get attacked in five steps and have the battle repeat itself if you reload the save). This meant I was trapped in a dungeon I couldn't leave and couldn't avoid the random fights or their outcomes. Ended up reloading the save from around halfway through and replaying the rest, this time stopping to prepare for the final dungeon. I lost the race.
Final Fantasy Tactics again - Playing the PSP version of this in 2012 or so, I made sure to be powered-up and prepared for everything the game threw at me. I leveled the characters way up, maxed out skill trees, always had the best equipment. Then I ran into the chocobo war in Chapter 4. It's a fight near the end of the game where you have to take on a flock of chocobos in a swamp. Unlike almost every other main story fight in the game, they level up with you due to being classified as monsters. High level chocobos are complete murder-machines in FFT, and bombard your party with huge-damage range attacks before your party even gets to move most of the time. Because of this, my powered-up, high-level party would get DESTROYED by this fight every time I attempted it. I might take out one or two of the eight chocobos, but no amount of strategy-altering helped when they always got the first turn due to their speed. This one is interesting because I wasn't trapped by a bad save system; the game just punished me for being overpowered. Had to start the entire game over, again, and this time I probably lost around 60 hours. This is my biggest game loss, I think. I've heard of similar things happening to people in FF8 due to the final boss leveling up with you, but I always had low levels when I played that game (finally, my 90's strategy of running from everything in RPGs paid off).
Mega Man 3 (NES) - Got very far in this over what seemed like weeks. Problem is I was co-playing it at a friend's house on his copy, and when we'd get a password we'd save it. Every stage could take an entire afternoon because we weren't very good. Finally we had most of the Doc Robots down and it was almost time for Wily Castle, which I was incredibly stoked for. Well, long story short, he lost the piece of paper with our passwords on it, think his mom threw it away not knowing what it was. So that was that for our MM3 game. We never resumed our playthrough, but I think he later finished the game on his own and I emulated it about 8 years later to finally see the rest.
Final Fantasy 7 - Played this on release, and every time I defeated Diamond Weapon, the game would freeze on the Midgar Cannon cutscene. I must have beaten Diamond Weapon like six times, hoping it'd resolve itself. This is about when I discovered the wonder of store refunds, and was able to exchange it for another copy (which worked). So this probably doesn't even count towards this list, but it's a close call.
Final Fantasy Tactics - Back in 1998 I was playing this and ran into the brick wall that is Riovanes Castle, where you fight a trio of very nasty bosses in a row. The game has you fight a relatively normal battle before this (which locks you into the area) then asks if you want to save. I said yeah because up to that point I had no reason to suspect anything. My characters were underpowered because I avoided as many random fights as I could, something I did a lot of in 90's RPGs. I actually made it past the first boss due to heavy gimp-tactics with autopotion, only to be squashed by the second with no way to leave to the overworld and shop or re-strategize. That was it for the playthrough, and I lost probably around 30 hours. Even if you get past that fight there's another super-hard fight after it before you can leave. The rest of the game (it's about halfway) never reaches that difficulty again. On my second run I made sure I was completely prepared before I went to that place again. But not TOO prepared (see below).
Xenogears - There's a one-on-one mech fight with Vierge about 8 hours into the game, in a dungeon that you can't leave once you reach the save point / boss. Levels don't help, only parts for your mech. If you have the latest parts for your mech you can roll the fight. The latest parts happen to be sold by a robot right next to the save point, which seems to be the designers' way of telling you "you must have the latest equipment to proceed". Problem is, they also give you the option to fight the robot merchant (why?) which I don't think happens anywhere else in the game. So when I first talked to it and saw a "fight!" option I chose that, defeated the robot, and saved. Then I fought Vierge with outdated equipment and it was straight-up impossible. Friends told me at the time that you get upgrades from the robot right before the fight...the robot I killed off. Had to start the game over again.
Final Fantasy Legend 1 - Yet another save-trap, though this save-trap was my own doing. Throughout my FFL1 playthrough on emulator (circa 1999, so I still hadn't learned my lesson) I was using a single save state to save rather than the ingame save system. At the very least I made a backup save about halfway through the game. I was racing a friend to see who could beat the game first, so I didn't level up adequately for the final dungeon. That and, ya know, I ran from everything in 90's RPGs. The enemies seriously ramp up in power around the final dungeon, and I found myself in the middle of the dungeon having trouble winning any fights. That's when I discovered that the random attacks were all predetermined (i.e. if you're going to get attacked in five steps and lose half your party to one round of preemptive attacks, you'll still get attacked in five steps and have the battle repeat itself if you reload the save). This meant I was trapped in a dungeon I couldn't leave and couldn't avoid the random fights or their outcomes. Ended up reloading the save from around halfway through and replaying the rest, this time stopping to prepare for the final dungeon. I lost the race.
Final Fantasy Tactics again - Playing the PSP version of this in 2012 or so, I made sure to be powered-up and prepared for everything the game threw at me. I leveled the characters way up, maxed out skill trees, always had the best equipment. Then I ran into the chocobo war in Chapter 4. It's a fight near the end of the game where you have to take on a flock of chocobos in a swamp. Unlike almost every other main story fight in the game, they level up with you due to being classified as monsters. High level chocobos are complete murder-machines in FFT, and bombard your party with huge-damage range attacks before your party even gets to move most of the time. Because of this, my powered-up, high-level party would get DESTROYED by this fight every time I attempted it. I might take out one or two of the eight chocobos, but no amount of strategy-altering helped when they always got the first turn due to their speed. This one is interesting because I wasn't trapped by a bad save system; the game just punished me for being overpowered. Had to start the entire game over, again, and this time I probably lost around 60 hours. This is my biggest game loss, I think. I've heard of similar things happening to people in FF8 due to the final boss leveling up with you, but I always had low levels when I played that game (finally, my 90's strategy of running from everything in RPGs paid off).
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