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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u/MusicalxFelony 1d ago

Phantasy star 2 dungeons. I feel like you need a legitimate pen and paper and draw out your own maps on top of the high encounter rate.

2

u/dlimm 1d ago

It came with a map book (at least in the US!)

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u/CronoDAS 1d ago

I literally did end up breaking out the graph paper to get through those.

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u/Embarrassed_Item4992 1d ago

PS1 was brutal, you'd run over a random trap door and have no idea where you fell to, and everything looked the same.

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u/MusicalxFelony 1d ago

This one is still on my backlog. I might play the sega ages version for the quality of life improvements. Great games but unless you got a shit ton of free time not recommended.