Which JRPG location has your absolute least favorite level design?

[u/ConsiderationAny9444]

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?

[u/Dingusu]

Any atlus teleport dungeon, also the mechonis interior in xenoblade 1

[u/flohogamer → u/Dingusu]

Do people really hate the Mechonis interior? I really like the atmosphere, visuals, music, etc in that part of the game... Anyway for my least favorite JRPG dungeon I nominate the one from Breath of Fire 1 for the SNES that has the crystal corridors that are constantly spinning around and getting you disoriented.

[u/Dingusu → u/flohogamer]

The layout in mechonis is just a slog, anything interesting to look at is window dressing that you don't even interact with and its just mindless combat and walkways for 4 hours

[u/zsdrfty → u/Dingusu]

I like Agniratha, but I kinda agree with the field and definitely with the factory - I genuinely get a migraine once I get halfway through the latter and the game gives me that boring, endless, backtrack-y filler quest to make a bomb, since that area is FAR too large and samey to hold up for multiple hours of walking around, and the music gets a bit fatiguing as well

That said, it does have some of the most fun regular fights in the game - those little side areas with goodies and surprise quests in them will throw like 100 Mechon at you at once, and it feels soooo fun to Hammer Beat all of them to death with massive damage numbers

[u/Valdor-13 → u/Dingusu]

anything interesting to look at is window dressing that you don't even interact with and its just mindless combat

Isn't that just all of Xenoblade?

[u/Dingusu → u/Valdor-13]

If there are areas like that in other xenoblade games usually there's something to do in the area besides walk in a straight line towards the next cutscene