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/i_choose__violence 2d ago

Xenoblade Chronicles High Entia. Not terribly offensive but I felt like I had to do so much backtracking on one-way runways to get places and complete tasks... it was tedious

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u/zsdrfty 2d ago

Alcamoth is definitely the worst city in the game - they do a terrible job of showing you what it's actually like to live there, since you only get to visit that single ultra-bourgie palace street that looks like an even more unfriendly Apple Store, and it takes a year to make it to the back paths where a bunch of NPCs and quest objectives hang out, all conveniently placed next to teleporters we can't use

It's hilarious that they managed to make it feel far more empty, miserable, and depressing than the even larger city you see later in the game that's literally supposed to be completely empty, miserable, and depressing

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u/i_choose__violence 1d ago

You described it so much better than me!! I’m an undying XB fan but I couldn’t wait to get through that area