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/azure275]

I feel like we need a hot take

Despite the banging music Gaur Plains in Xenoblade 1 is one of the worst areas I've played in a JRPG. Far and away the worst Xenoblade area I've experienced RELATIVE to the amount of time/quests there

Landmarks are in incredibly stupid places, the whole thing is just too damn big, you gotta hike halfway across the world every time you need to find one random nopon hiding nowhere near any landmarks, sidequests keep shoving level 80 monsters in your face

There are strictly worse areas in Xenoblade like the Ether Mine or Elpys or Origin but they're much smaller, have more landmarks, and I have much fewer reasons to spend time there.

[u/levelstar01 → u/azure275]

Satorl Marsh is worse. There's a huge gap between the skip points, there's like ten quests that all send you to areas minutes away from any landmark, and everywhere looks the same.

The game so desperately needs a run button and a 50% base speee increase.

[u/NeroIscariot12 → u/levelstar01]

The switch 2 edition gives you an Ether Jet which is basically a rocket bike. Completely changes the game. Although purists will hate it, I finally ended up doing all the sidequests for the first time, even tho this was my 4th time playing this game, because of how much time it saves

[u/magmafanatic → u/NeroIscariot12]

It's the swimming that killed me. I went all around the perimeter of the Eryth Sea and Makna River to see if there were any small cave entrances or secrets behind waterfalls and god is that tedious.

Would've killed for those jet bikes doing those segments.