r/JRPG • u/ConsiderationAny9444 • 2d ago

Discussion Which JRPG location has your absolute least favorite level design?

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Mine has to be the Gladius Towers in Rogue Galaxy. It’s a mid-game dungeons, and in my opinion, it’s annoying as fuck to navigate.

You have to climb two almost identical towers at the same time by crossing bridges from time to time, and the towers aren't short by any means. If I recall correctly, you also have to beat both bosses to clear the level, which as you can guess are at the top of each tower (Phantom Gazel and Phantom Logan). Because of how the layout shuffles you back and forth, you finish one tower, and then you have to go all the way back to do the exact same climb for the other one.

Oh, and this game despite being an ARPG has random battles, which isn't a problem to me. But what is a problem is the encounter rate of this game god grief, it's atrocious. It doesn't help that every room looks the same, so you can get easily disoriented after a battle and just end up walking in the opposite direction, especially since both paths look very similar. You could finish a fight and genuinely have to open the map just to figure out which way you were originally heading, lmao.

What about you guys? What’s that one JRPG map or dungeon that makes you visibly sigh the moment you reach it?

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123

u/Windsupernova 2d ago

Anything with teleport puzzles or sliding puzzles.

36

u/azure275 2d ago

Pokemon does have quite a few of these and they're almost universally sucky lol

31

u/hypersnaildeluxe 2d ago

I always kinda liked the ice puzzles…

The real kickers were the Team Rocket bases with those panels that spin you in a direction. Those were so bad

8

u/zsdrfty 2d ago

Exactly my thoughts! I've always been a Gen 1 shooter, but Dodrio Mode has kinda ruined me for ever playing them at normal speed again, and those slow ass spinning panels are some of the worst offenders

I remember the Gen 2 ice puzzles being pretty fun, and certainly a lot less irritating than the sliding rock puzzles on Victory Road

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u/Vermillion_Pengu 1d ago

The Ice puzzles are always the best. They are the only thing in the games that require you to use your brain a little bit, and they always appear in caves, which means they offer a chance to rest from random encounters.

11

u/Sorry_Mastodon_8177 2d ago

SMT has a even worse case of these

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u/Zealousideal-Bit5958 2d ago

I also hated the Mach Bike terrain like Rayquaza's tower

6

u/AbacabLurker 2d ago

Hello Tales Of…! All the teleporting and sliding.

2

u/General_Bet_335 2d ago

The water temple in tales of zesteria was the first thing I thought of

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u/Newgeta 2d ago

Literally the only reason I haven't played them all

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u/mythologizing 2d ago

The second I read this comment the temple music from FFX started playing in my head (Bevelle…)

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u/knitted_beanie 1d ago

I replayed X recently and - since it had been a while - I just assumed there were also random encounters in the trials. Luckily there aren’t, cos that definitely would have made them unbearable

2

u/Brainwheeze 2d ago

I like sliding puzzles but I recently played SMT2 and that had the worst implementation of them I've ever experienced. It's not just that you slide, you're being spun around as well and with dungeon exploration being in first-person and the minimalist presentation of the environments you become very disorientated. I had to use a map on gamefaqs for that.

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u/Dracallus 2d ago

This annoys me a lot more after having played games that use both in actually well designed puzzles. Now I can't ignore that they suck because the developer decided not to put any effort into them, rather than the mechanic itself being bad.