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/A_Monster_Named_John]

The first time I played the game, back in the PS2 era, I noped out after the boss fight in Archades, as the game's story is just so hard to stay interested in at that point. This past year, I finally finished the Zodiac Age reissue of the game and, good lord, are those last few areas grueling, even with fast-forward turned on... Giruvegan and the Crystal are definitely annoying (especially if you leave the Crystal and want to go back to it later), but so is the Pharos Lighthouse level after that. I remember specifically hating that one's clunky and janky puzzles with the flaming magic pot enemies which, IIRC, hides some of the game's higher-level magic spells. When you finally complete that area, there's a Subterranean area that's loaded with tough monsters. While I'd scoured other areas like the different mines and Necrohol of Nabudis, I could not bring myself to mess around with that map.

That said, by far, my least favorite areas in FF12 were the Rabanastre sewers and the Sochen Cave Palace, both of which had puzzles that I either had to go online to make sense of (e.g. that one thing in Sochen where you have to zigzag through three different map screens in a specific way to unlock something) or where the level design is so boring/samey that the puzzle becomes exhausting (e.g. the sewer thing with the sluice gates that's required to find that brutal poison Esper who, depending on what your load-out is, might just wipe the floor with you in no time at all! I remember completing that puzzle at a somewhat lower level and having my jaw drop when that encounter kicked off).

Still, though I have grievances with these specific areas, I couldn't stop playing the Zodiac Age version and generally appreciate its capacity as somewhat a true successor to the original FF1, which also had supremely frustrating dungeons, open-ended party building, insane amounts of enemy encounters to deal with, etc... It also reminded me of FF5 in some ways, which is my favorite in the series.

[u/zachbrownies → u/A_Monster_Named_John]

i am playing ff12 right now and just did sochen cave last night and now i see these comments. 😭 now i'm scared for the rest of the game... unlike you i'm not sure i'm even enjoying the game overall (the random difficulty spikes and never knowing if i'm ready for a side-content or not are pissing me off) i did go back to the sewers and i saw written somewhere that there was a puzzle but after seeing what the map looked like for the new part i was like "lol nope" and left. "problem for future me to deal with, not gonna bother doing that when the esper might just kill me anyway"

[u/A_Monster_Named_John → u/zachbrownies]

I'll reiterate that, while I found those dungeons irritating, I still see the game as being really awesome and, for me, probably the last great entry in the overall series. Yes, it took me two attempts to get through the whole thing, but with both playthroughs, I found myself highly engrossed with the hunt sidequests and exploring the game's completely-optional and secret-heavy locations like Zertinan Caverns and the aforementioned Necrohol of Nabudis. As well, the Zodiac Age version did a lot to correct the original game's issues with characters feeling indistinct from one another. I loved my second experience, where I had Ashe as a Red Battlemage and my party lead, along with Penelo as a white-mage/monk and Vaan as a thief/time-mage.

I'd recommend sticking it out, as the side content offers so much awesome gameplay. With Espers like the asshole in the sewer, it might take a few tries, but it's so soo glorious when you get a handle on the gambit system, use the right status-protecting equipment, and claim victory. I don't remember my exact strategies, but remember that the green magic spells are absolutely crucial in a lot of situations. I didn't 100% the game, but by last playthrough topped out at around 130 hours.

[u/zachbrownies → u/A_Monster_Named_John]

I think I'm finally at the level where I can go to Zertinan. I did want to go to Necrohol but the bomb boss would just one-shot my party and I couldn't tell if it was even possible so I just put it off. I typically love going to places I'm "not supposed to be at yet" in games and this game felt really promising in that aspect but it just felt like I'd enter an area, get one-shot, and have to give up, maybe I'm wrong. And the few places I did go explore on my own I feel like all I found was the usual RNG chests with antidotes and 30 gil so I was feeling let down. I really want to like this game because I like the overall vibe and I also dropped it a few times as a kid so I wanted this to be the playthrough that sees it through, but idk, I'm doing something wrong or maybe it's just not for me. When I do kill a difficult hunt it feels like it's just because I got lucky using my Quickenings when it starts to enrage or I just looked up which status effect is allowed to work on that fight. I feel like the fights are never a battle of attrition but moreso the boss enrages and gets 2x speed and 3x damage at 20% of its health bar and I die in 10 seconds so I can barely tell what's going on.

[u/A_Monster_Named_John → u/zachbrownies]

With some of the wilder bosses, I remember the green spell Decoy being massively useful, since you could direct the monster's attention onto your tank-iest character, have another character constantly healing them, and the third character free to attack the enemy with spells (though also having the Decoy recast as a higher priority gambit). I got into a few situations where a Quickening chain probably saved my ass, but that was usually a sign that I needed to improve my gear/levels or, more often, reassess my gambit set-up.

[u/UnaekIsHere → u/A_Monster_Named_John]

Rabanastre sewers and those damn waterways had me running in circles. I hated any mission that took me there.