The worse part of the Tower of Babel for Xenogears is that in the story, your mechs can all fly. There is no reason they have to make these horrible jumps.
The real problem with the Babel Tower is how the game loads the random encounters. It basically starts loading them on the background, and in the meantime you can move, but no other input is recognized until the screen shatters and you enter the battle. So if you are not playing this off of a PS1 with the original disc, you might be running towards a jump, have a battle loading on the background and you won't know it until you try to press Jump and realize you just fell to your doom (with a random encounter starting immediately after). When playing on the PS1, I remember I could hear the disc spinning and stopping whenever a new battle was being loaded, so I would stop all movement for 2-3 seconds until the battle started. This saved me a lot of frustration and made me hate Babel less. However, I reckon it's a problematic dungeon nevertheless. I like the setting of the dungeon to be honest. Those chapters between Thames and Shevat are the most exciting in the game for me.
@@benjaminkeith1417 I played the hell out of xenogears back when it came out. I think my characters were somewhere around level 93-94, which required an insane amount of grind. I just had a lot of time back then and I love that battle system more than any other to this day, thanks to the fantastic animation and sound of the Deathblows
SNES AND PS1 had the largest concentration of rpgs, and a lot of them were pretty damn good. I don't play handhelds. But I see where they port or remake games I loved, and wanna play the handheld exclusive stuff. My friend gave me a DS and one of the Pokemons forever ago. I immediately bought Hoshigami, FFIII, and Tactics A2 since my job at the time required me to sit staring at mile markers for long periods of time otherwise. It felt more like a distraction that I'd drop the second I got home. So I'm not too great with handhelds.
Xenogears is my favorite game of all time and I've played through it countless times. But to this day, the idea of having to make a long jump in Babel Tower gives me a cold sweat
@@libatako The first time, yes, the second time I was ready. And the Babel Tower only makes you want to look for an old save game after it. No, God, please no!
I love Xenogears too but yes when I saw the game on the thumbnail I instantly thought of Babel Tower. I want to play it too but I know it takes FOREVER to make that jump. When I was younger, I used to make my brother do it. He would get it on the first try! There's a few jumps I had a hard time with. Blackmoon forest, and another one where we met Balthasar I think...
(In Response to comment on Breath of Fire 3 not being any good)..... BLASPHEMY!!!!!!! TAKE IT BACK!!! AHHHHHHHHHHH *bangs head repetadly on desk while screaming than dives out window*
With the Disc 2 plot not streamlined into story telling would be nice, it'd be awesome to actually play those parts instead of being told "By the way, we went here and did this, then here and did that after and then..."
Well, technically the only thing that needs to happen is Square selling the IP to Nintendo. Because Monolith made Xenogears but they work for Nintendo now. Or Nintendo and Square agree to work together so they can put it on both platforms. Unsure if this could ever happen but it would be the best outcome for the fans. One can only hope.
Wizardry 4's dungeon is a non euclidean nightmare. Your maps are useless and one wrong step can take you back 5 floors. The entire game takes place in one dungeon. What I'm saying is that middle age gamers represent.
Art questionable but yes I loved Nintendo Power and all the ways it helped people through the then modern games. The better version of game informer is how I think of nintendo power of the 80's and 90's. Though i am only 34.
Dorter Trade City is the epitome of a hard fight really early in a game. I had so much trouble with it, but I had even more trouble with something else in FFT. You mentioned the fight at Riovanes Castle. I shit you not that I got through the first 2 fights headed into the castle without issue but because I had saved directly after the second fight and in no other place on my memory card I was SOL. No matter my formation, characters or options I could not beat the main battle in the castle because Velius and his demon team destroyed me so badly in every fight I tried to put up that I had to restart the entire damn game over with. I will NEVER forget what happened to me at Riovanes, but I guess if anything it was memorable haha. Great Video David!!
Watching along... "Oh, Xenogears. Yeah, the sewers kind of sucked, but he picked that over the Babel Tower? Soon as I'm done, I've *got* to comment about that." Watching some more... "Well okay then. You win this time."
I find the sewers way worst than the Babel tower. I can straight run through the entire game w/o much issue but the sewers takes the cake. I usually have to fully heal myself and save scum my way to the boss to avoid take a series beating before i reached it.
Xenogears was an amazing game that was my favorite title of that era and I love it so much it's literally the story that made me become a writer... I said "I want to write stories like this". ...It's also a game with a PROFOUND amount of flaws... one of them being that you are absolutely right, it had some really just ABOMINABLE dungeons. Ironically, you named I think numbers 3 and 5 in terms of what I'd rank as worst... As you say, Babel had pretty interesting parts, and while I had to retry the jump to the swinging pipe (and all the random battles that entailed) a bunch of times, I otherwise think I never fell much.... I thought that the part of Solaris where you're wandering around with Citan and Elly for a frikking eternity being attacked every five steps was worse... but that's still only my #4. Worse than even the sewer, the final dungeon was just PAINFUL. Like "I pushed through everything else up to this point, but I'm done. I'm loading my old save point outside the final boss room" bad on my replays. But even that was better, I think, than Fort Jasper. Good lord.... just utterly nebulous layout, way too long, everything looks the same, and to make matters worse, you're constantly being run down by enemies physically traversing the map to beeline at you, with a lame, boring fight every time, just spawning ad infinitum. It wasn't too bad the first time when I had a strategy guide, but I lost it at some point before future playthroughs? Ugh... that is just BRUTAL trying to fly blind. The sewer was awful and took forever at the best of times with annoying enemies, yes, but at least my memory could keep track of where I'd been to process of elimination where I should try to go... at least I wasn't trying to physically flee from the excessive overkill amount of stale battles. And those 5 aren't even the only ones... I can recall at least two memorably painful dungeons, and that's just what I recall like a decade later. Great game, lotta problems... including just savage war crimes of dungeons. As an aside, I loved Wild Arms 2 and honestly can't even remember why I didn't finish it, but I broke off from playing and never returned to it right near the end... Because I didn't recall the Trapezohedron, I looked it up and I think I quit literally RIGHT before I got there (I recall the Raypoints). I've always regretted I didn't finish that game, but now it feels like I dodged a bullet... I should just look up a Let's Play instead, I guess. Also, I actually adore BoF III and love the whimsically winding and absurdist nature of it's narrative (I felt like it's a bit like the Wild Arms franchise in that sense), but in terms of the desert? Oh gawd, yes. I absolutely concur. I think I've attempted about 5 or 6 playthroughs of BoF 3 and completed exactly 2, because every other time I got to that desert, and was like "F*ck this sh*t." Which, that was entertaining, so I'm just gonna watch the other one, but officially predicting: BoF II shows up on the SNES version of this list, don't it? Highfort, Simafort, Infinity, and omg, Bando... freaking BANDO, man... just.... ugggggggghhhhhh....
I'm surprised you didn't include the Snowfly Forest from Vagrant Story. It's effectively a teleport dungeon (the rooms simply do not connect to each other in any predictable fashion) and it shares Breath of Fire 3's problem of being giving the wrong instructions just before entering. There are multiple boss fights, as well as a random fire elemental that can kill you more easily than the bosses.
The Xenogears sewers had a map and compass. Those are two tools of navigation players tend to ignore. Use them together and it's not hard to navigate the sewers. The Solaris dungeon of endless copy paste hallway is much more of a maze than the sewers if you ask me. The tower of babel on the other hand, has platforming that cannot be fixed by a few working brain cells and a compass. Burn it to the ground.
Babel wasn't too bad where the camera sucks on lower levels. But those platforms you have to fight before they activate, and managing fuel before the Seibzehn fight were still issues.
They really needed to separate the platforming from the random encounters, or maybe just remove the platforming altogether because it's not what the game was ever about.
Fuel consumption was the most difficult aspect of the game for me. Like the series of fights leading up to the fight w/ Elly/Vierge (Get out of the army), and then a stupid minigame I sucked at before Dora the Destroyer. It made me grateful to Id because at least I was supposed to lose to him. Plus that scene made it all worth it. I had no idea who or what he was yet. I assumed he'd be the final enemy at that point. Why couldn't the Xenogears team get proper support? It's already my favorite game, and they had to rush it! But yeah. ""That was pretty interesting! But dropping a war ship on me is cheating! Take it back!"
I forgot to mention it. The worst part of the platforming was when you would go to make your jump and trigger a random encounter, falling off the ledge and losing tons of progress. The encounter screen would lag, and there'd be a period where you could still move. But not jump at all. That made platforming really bad. Edit: This is what my last post was supposed to be but I got distracted thinking about the game again.
As i teengaer i plyed xenogears and as i remeber most difficlut dungeon was in Merkava or Deus. when you need to memorize it and find some stupid swithes to unlock path to deus core. Ias i remember i and my friend when reach this dungeon expect to finish fas and finaly see final boss. however we manage to find way out after 4 hours of playing. Even not from first attempt. Only on second day.
The Persona 2 dungeon makes sense, the area was made to be an inescapable maze by way of rumors and it's a rumour that allows you to solve the puzzle and leave. Your characters (not sure why you call them NPCs btw) traverse the whole thing multiple times trying to figure out the riddle.
@@ShadowBaofu I think Atlus did the right thing by branding Persona as part of the SMT series in America. That is only for the Playstation 2 and on, but it gave people a much better idea of what they were getting into. Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne is my favorite JRPG. I found Persona 2 significantly easier than Persona 3 or 4. Both parts of Persona 2 are very well done, and I am happy that Eternal Punishment received a fan translation.
@RaineTCG You are absolutely correct, but Atlus made the right decision in making it part of the series in America. There are thematic similarities and mechanic similarities, but mostly because they are difficult dungeon crawlers at least in the 6th and 7th console generations. Persona shares a lot of personas/demons with Shin Megami Tensei, like Jack Frost for example. Persona 3/4 also used a press turn system very similar to Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne's press turn system. Fusion mechanics are nearly identical. I am less familiar with SMT's branding in the current generation.
The Final Fantasy Tactics complaint is hilarious. Level/Job Grinding easily destroys that Stage of the game, you can unlock a good amount of the jobs at that point. You can literally break this game early without even trying. Hell I was in 5th grade when this game was released.
6:44 Here's a fun fact. That "common enemy that reduce you to 1 hp", *dies in one hit* from any magic type attack, including fei's chi... Or you beat it with triangle enough. It's a trick enemy that will only take 1 damage from any physical attack but has very low hp and magic defense. And if you're slow to notice this and keep trying to hit it with deathblows, it wont die fast enough and it will reduce one of your party members to 1 hp as it escapes. *The game expects you to do something different when doing one thing doesn't work.* In similar fashion, the boss of the same dungeon will punish you for using deathblows.
Linden Stromberg I just think once you figure out all the bullshit the game becomes redundant. And the “we were all in the same orphanage!” plot twist made me so mad
Me and my cousin used to always mock Rei every time he said, "Doesn't this just beat all." Dorter Trade City in Final Fantasy Tactics is definitely tough if it catches you unawares. The first time I encountered that battle I was thoroughly creamed. Now every time I go through the game I tend to overprepare so much that Dorter and just about every main battle in the game is a cakewalk. Random battles can still be tough, though, if you get the stronger and/or more annoying enemies. Almost all of the dungeons in Beyond the Beyond are challenging in one way or another. For me the worse one is the sand cave. Not only are the enemies really strong, but Mayan heads that keep poking up to block your path and invisible pitfalls that drop you down to the previous levels drive me insane. It's really easy to lose 2 or 3 levels of progress if you're not careful.
My first playthrough Ramza kept dying and I couldn't get past this battle. Finally I beat it but I had a female knight turn into a gem and I kept playing because I didn't think I could do better. (I didn't understand I could grind in the area just outside the town)
Tower Of Babel is also infamous for having a bug where the game will freeze when one the boss does this specific attack. It only happens on the PS1 version for all I know, but seeing that attack basically meant you had to reset. So this fight devolved into you trying to beat this guy super fast, and not setting off the conditions that have him use the attack. And the BOF 3 desert is what compelled me to discover GameFAQs. A stupid translation error made the desert a friggin nightmare.
I'm surprised the North Cave from Final Fantasy VII didn't make it on her. A glitched save location that can render your entire save file unusable? Sounds like a nightmare. I'm sticking with the Switch Port.
My top 5 5 Forest of Contusion Tales of Eternia 4 The entire ice section in Final Fantasy VII 3 Central Park Parasite Eve 2 Law City Zenaboes The Legend of Dragoon The Moon The Legend of Dragoon
Oof i had a lot of nostalgic feelings about ToE's Forest of Temptation, mainly because i got stuck there for a long time as a kid who barely understood english (i ended up restarting the game a lot too because of that dungeon for some reasons lol). And there was really no better feeling than somehow accidentally getting your way through some bullshit dungeons despite not understanding the puzzle at all haha.
I feel u breh changing the stupid laws in lod those fuks then when u finally complete to go fight i believe the zombie divine dragon why the fuk is their no continuation of lod or hd remaster
The Hospital and Museum in Parasite Eve I found a bit of a drag more than anything else. Nevermind the Chrysler Building on a New Game Plus. The two levels in Legend of Dragoon though, moreso that law city... Oh yeah.
Xenogears is the unrivaled GOD of JRPGs. Final Fantasy 16? Better be an HD remaster of Xenogears in the style of FF7 Remake, because, oh Wave Existence, that game deserves to fully flesh out its cut content! I found Kislev Sewers annoying, but the Tower of Babel? I didn't hate it as much as many people did. What I did hate, however, was the Shevat dungeon, the one you go into when you get Maria for the first time!
I would like to add the honorable mention of Digimon World 2. Not so much for the designs of the floors (although, you could argue that too), but because there is NO save point. You could spend 3-4 hours leveling, befriending new digimon, and getting cool items, only to lose it all if you die (usually at the boss of course). I realize this issue is far from unique, plenty of games do it, but this was the one that *I* had to deal with.
Tower of Babel’s encounters aren’t actually random, they trigger at exactly the same point every time. You can skip them all if you jump over the trigger points. And the sewer isn’t so bad, you at least have a map to navigate it. And you can avoid the environmental damage entirely by jumping over the water and dodging the propellers.
I don't remember ALL of he encounters in Babel being trigger points, but a lot of the ones in the later outside portions are (basically the "traffic jam" type enemies). Xenogears in general has a problem with, "jump function disabled when random encounter is loading," and it often leads to unintentional falls. I first noticed it on the Mountain Path to Citan's house on my very first playthrough, and XG is my favorite game of all time but it's not perfect. That being said, I don't know why this guy got so frustrated by either of the dungeons from XG that he mentioned, because yes, Kislev Sewers do have a map, Omegasols are dirt cheap, the Hp to 1 move is rarely used anyway, the damag-terrain should honestly almost never touch you (except possibly in the case of, "encounter loading, you just failed to jump over sewage from pipe"), and in the Tower of Babel they not only give you a shop to refuel halfway through it (which is ALSO dirt cheap), they give you enemies in the encounters that ARE random that will literally not attack you unless you hit them first, and will otherwise refuel you because altruism.
@@benjaminkeith1417 Anything becomes hard if you give yourself sufficient extra restrictions: "lol, no using Doc for this b/c masochism." Know what's way harder than Id on foot? Id in Weltall vs Brigandine in the Aveh Desert. I hear it's possible to win. You know what's super hard? Getting the Trader Card from Hammer using only one person in your party. It's also pointless. In fact, it's probably not doable even with a Speed Ring S-coked-out Crescens* who goes into Hyper Mode on the perfect turn, unless you got some stat-editing going on. *Oddly, even though Citan is faster than Emmy, Crescens is faster than Fenrir. Weird. The fights I don't especially look forward to in XG are the Gate #2 pairs of back to back Elements b/c resource management is no fun for those, gimmicky fights like Opiomorph, and Alpha Weltall if I've decided to try for the Slayer Robe (mostly b/c I don't play on a PS1 and Deus immediately beforehand likes to freeze, complicating retries).
I seem to remember there being a "workaround" of sorts to the random battle load. If memory serves, I think there was an audible cue with the drive spinning up and doing some seeking just before triggering a random battle. If you listened for it, you could avoid missing any of the jumps.
Xenogears is my favourite game, but some of the dungeons in this game were outrageous. Specifically the ones that needed intense 3D platforming, when half the time Fei never jumps when I need him too Still adore the game, but that is one downfall for sure
I do agree the beginning of the Tower of Babel is utter horseshit, however for me personally after beating the first inside section where you can fall down to the water below, it's actually a pretty fun dungeon. Granted, my other favorite genre is platforming of any kind, so I totally get that I'm heavily biased on this one. Plus, right after beating the dungeon you go to Shevat which is probably the coolest location in the entire game, especially if you managed to get the optional badges. Just wish the dungeon didn't open with awkward rope-swinging and claw-bridge timing.
It's weird, because BoFIII is actually my favorite. And it's the only one I never beat. Probably need to go back and do that at some point. That reminds me. I had a bit of trouble with the haunted house early on in that one. Edit: I never played the fifth game. Probably for the best.
Oh, Xenogears has plenty more reasons not to replay it besides the Towel of Babel. There's the aforementioned sewers (I think sewer levels should be banned from video games forever). There's Fort Jasper, with its overly long, drawn-out hallways filled with large groups of enemies and unintuitive way to progress. There's the final dungeon, which is visually uninteresting and goes on for freaking ever. There's the entire second disc, which is an absolute clusterfuck. And then there's Chu-Chu.
The Desert of Death in BOF cemented my hatred for ANY desert or desert themed area in any RPG ever. My god, was that the most soul crushing experience ever
Never finished the game because of that, and up to that point I was hooked on it. Even after I got past it, years later and using a guide, I coudn't bring myself to finish it. I guess it was just too much frustration.
I guess I'm weird. I didn't mind the desert. It wasn't exactly difficult and I liked the random encounters. Also, bonebreak was a badass skill that could be learned there.
If you're playing BTB with an emulator, you can save state every time a character levels, and just keep re-loading the save state until it rolls the cap for that stat. Finn has reached level 2! Save State Hit the button and keep reloading until you get the highest number possible for each stat line (Usually 2-3 VP, 2 LP, 1 MP, 3 STR, 1 DEF, 1 SPD for Finn). Make sure you save after getting the desired number in each stat so you only have to re-roll the next line. Each character has different caps for each stat at various level ranges. Tont has the highest MP gains (4 cap), Domino, Lorele and Samson cap at 4 STR at various ranges, Edward/Annie cap at 3MP at certain ranges. You'll see the stat maxes change as you level, but you should always try to get the max on each stat and make sure you get 1 DEF and 1 SPD on every level up. Usually you'll want to roll for at least 1MP with non-caster types as well. (defense and speed can be gained at every level up) 26 is a good level to upgrade classes with this method. It makes the random encounters a lot faster, but the dungeons are still awful.
the BOF 3 i enjoyed a fair bit, the desert only stumpted me once when i realized i should have read that note that said teh directions were wrong and i needed to basicly do the opposite. other then that I dont see it being a huge problem
Shout outs to Beyond the Beyond, I actually just cleared Gaea Shrine (and the Tower of Arawn) yesterday. The game has a lot of that Camelot charm, but man did they make some frustrating design choices. I used a guide to get through Gaea Shrine because I couldn't stand how long it took to get through. It really doesn't help that after Gaea shrine, you then have to retrace your steps through Mist Valley, then do two 7 floor dungeons back to back. Gaea temple was pretty awful, what easily killed it for me was the high encounter rate and battles taking forever to clear. It doesn't help that you spend a lot of time with a party that consists mainly of spell casters (in a game where precious MP is scarce) with only 2 melee fighters, with one of them being cursed. I don't know what they were thinking making Samson's curse actually affect him in battle, half the time he didn't attack and the other half he would damage himself for 1/4 his health. They should have just made the curse bring him to level 1 and nothing else. I did back flips when I finally got that curse removed (only 11 hours into the game!) Whew, rant over!
I hear you. I've been through Beyond the Beyond quite a few times and it's a fun game, but the difficulties can drive you up the wall. It would be one thing if Samson's curse only lasted a short while, he literally has it for nearly half the game. And it's a shame that you don't get any other melee fighters until much later in the game, after Samson has been cured and then you have to build them up a lot to make them useful. Although admittedly Annie can cause a fair amount of physical damage for a spellcaster, much more than Taunt or Edward.
Disagree with the Desert of Death in BoF3 While that area drags for a while, I think it was one of the best parts of the game, that actually added something unique during the progression through your quest to meet Myria. I also loved the music that plays when you're walking through the desert.
No Tower of Temptation from Grandia? Constantly backtracking through hoards of enemies to solve puzzles that are rooms apart, then 3 bosses and 0 save points, with a lowered skill exp rate
Ah, Dorter. That moment when "yeah, this game is fun!" turns into "WHY AM I DYING SO MUCH?!?!". Honestly, I do like the map's design and the general concept of the fight, but it is an absurd difficulty spike right out of left field when you are still learning the basics. Still would have considered replacing it with any of the multi-stage fights where you can save in between stages and get permanently stuck, though.
That DQ part was actually a really neat story IMO. The bait and switch was also felt by the characters. I was heart broken part way through when you get betrayed! To each her own
Thank you. I hated the Dharma Temple section in DQVII so much! That area pissed me off and you didn't even mention the awful boss fight with that pig and cat that completely rely's on RNG.
That really wasn't their fault. Square voraciously cannibalized budget and staff from Xenogears to make FFVIII not miss its ship date, while keeping Xenogears' schedule exactly the same. One of the great tragedies of the 90's game industry...
I disagree about the Tower of Babel, I think the the final dungeon in Xenogears is is a lot worse due to the damaging terrain effects, so many areas looking more or less alike, and the chained boss battles of Ramsus and Miang right after each other.
Ive literally been playing RPGs for almost 30 years now. To this day, there has never been a more frustrating experience than the desert in Breath of Fire 3. Wtf were they thinking when they put that in the game? How did game testers give that the green light?
Also for Tactics, the Chocobo battle towards the end of the game owned me for the longest time. Everything I could go through with minimal issue but the Chocobo's seemed to be overpowered, attacked first and sometimes chained attacks. If you want a game that will drive you nuts with dungeons, play Brainlord on SNES.
Pretty decent list overall. The only one I disagree with is DQ7. That area wasn't particularly long, it was really straightforward, and it definitely didn't require hours of grinding. There were harder sections, and even that's not saying much since it was overall a pretty easy game. I guess I could see it being a little annoying reaching the temple and finding out there's another challenge to overcome before gaining access to job changes, but it makes sense for the story so that didn't really bother me either.
The Dharma dungeon was pretty frustrating, but that's mostly because you have to get through it without magic and only have some dingy magic rock to restore your HP. It's definitely one of my least favorite parts of the game.
The worst part about Dharma Temple is that there are a bunch of unwinnable fights before you can progress. And since the penalty for losing is losing half your gold, it gets annoying if you don't deposit it all beforehand. Thankfully, there's a bank in the slum, so you aren't completely screwed. Also, before you get dropped, there's a casino where you can get much better gear than normally available at that point if you have the patience.
Of course, the casino is one more nasty aspect-- you get there, you hear about FINALLY CLASS CHANGE TIME, and your first instinct as a first time player is to go get that and come back to the casino after. Especially if you don't know how gear doesn't change with classes in this particular DQ and you think that it would probably be wise to choose your classes first before gearing up.
Funny thing is, Dorter's trade city was the first time the game really clicked for me. A mage targeted my knight with a spell right before his turn and I went ... ..why don't I..why don't I just stand between those 2 enemies? xD
Yup, solid list. I feel like FF8 sewers at the end of disk one should have an honorable mention. Another of Breath of Fire 4 Desert of Death successor, Golden Plains.
honestly the sewer dungeon by itself isn't the worst, but I think the entirely too long scenario of you stuck in the prison leading up to it just made it feel extra terrible
5:23 - Even with this game, I don't think the Tactical RPG genre really took off until Disgaea came out. In Disgaea you just tower throw a Mage up there, pick off the Archer and mop up the other guys, battle over.
FFT was my first tactical RPG . It wasn't until Disgaea when I learn to like them . I got the first Disgaea by sheer luck . I enter Game Stop at the time the game arrived at the store . The manager knew I liked RPG's . She told me about it and I brought it . I guess I was the only person that brought that game there . Because they had only 2 copies . They never sold the 2nd . I was very temped to get that one just to sell on the Internet . As it got so high in price there . But never did .
I agree with most, but I have to disagree about Breath of Fire 3, Desert of Death. Sure, they do set you up for failure with the instructions, but the game has been teaching you to keep notes on puzzles like this the whole game with hidden items, secrets, and mini-games. I know it's an acquired taste, but this game ranks up there as top five games on PS1.
Like this page and what I do here? Consider supporting me on patreon! www.patreon.com/davidvinc [0:38] - 10) Nava's Keep - Alundra [1:36] - 9) Galbadia's D-District Prison - Final Fantasy 8 [2:44] - 8) Desert of Death - Breath of Fire 3 [3:52] - 7) Air Raid Shelter - Persona 2: Innocent Sin [4:47] - 6) Dorter Trade City - Final Fantasy Tactics [6:09] - 5) Kislev Sewers - Xenogears [7:18] - 4) Trapezohedron - Wild Arms 2 [8:26] - 3) Gaea's Shrine - Beyond the Beyond [9:38] - 2) Dharma Temple Sequence - Dragon Quest 7 [10:51] - 1) Tower of Babel - Xenogears
The desert of death is nothing and i mean nothing too worry about and actually is just a time consume. you can litterally just walk straight for a couple hours and reach the boss, i know i tried.
One of my least favorite dungeons was Caracol in Persona 2 Innocent Sin. It's long and tedious, with every battle just being repetitive. The Shelter wasn't that bad at least for me, since it gave me a chance to grind up my levels, since I was a bit too low leveled at that point. By the time I was at Caracol I was already higher leveled than most enemies. Not even the music is good, something that other dungeons like Club Zodiac and Giga Mancho had going for them. You can't even tell if it looped or not. The only upside is that you get to rematch Joker. Edit: I know that the music was supposed to convey the atmosphere and increase tension, but they still could've made something better to still suited the mood/atmosphere like Mt. Iwato
If I had to list one from the Playstation, it'd probably be the Pleasing Garden from Wild Arms. To start, it's a chore to enter in the first place due to being a moving, invisible dungeon in the middle of a desert. Then, it's got two different logic-defying puzzles that you're only given extremely vague hints about from the last town that require you to do counter-intuitive things like exiting out of a door you already came through earlier so it takes you somewhere different before you can fight the boss that's significantly more difficult than the boss that came before and the boss that comes afterwards.
Absolutely hated that place the first time I ever did it. Now? Don't mind it at all because it's a lot easier than I remember it being. It can be done in ten minutes or so with very little difficulty.
Desert of Death... THE reason I never beat Bof3, for all the reasons you mentioned. But nevermind that, cause Beyond the Beyond really ought to be the whole list! Every single dungeon in that game is a nightmare. Often confusing, with a frustratingly high encounter rate and monster difficulty that harkens back to Dragon Warrior 2 in its bloodthirstiness.
unless you made an actaul attempt to level early on in FFT you were going to get bodied. and if you are playing casually without auto potion then you're doing it wrong. that might be why that fight was so hard for ya. but basing it off your experience of a playthrough when you were 15 as opposed to going back and playing it again is kind of well, immature. Oh, and the Desert in BoF3 was easy, just time consuming. You can literally see where you need to go on the horizon after i think 1 day of walking. And the story was great, the characters got good treatment with story development, music was amazing, mini games were fun and you had to go kill 'god'. The beginning is probably the worst part since it takes a little to take off but outside of that the games pacing is fine. Sounds like a You problem.
Even if I consider Xenogears the best JRPG ever I must agree . . .babel was a pain . . . .the rewards you get after finishing it tho . . .just awesome and one the best parts of the story.
most other JRPG's: save often and you cannot go wrong. Rogue Galaxy: Save often and get stuck in death loops where there is no escape and no way to get stronger... multi-stage boss battle at end of the hall way your stuck in. Rogue Galaxy may not be PS1 but I mention because your explanation of Tower of Babel reminded me of how one bad experiance can ruin your ability to play a game a second time.
"If we camp at night and move during the day, we can't see the stars and we'll get lost!" Me: .......How inconvenient! If only there was some star visible during the day that always rose in the east and set in the west every single day....
Dorter Trade City isn't a dungeon, nor is it anywhere near the worst. Off the top of my head Riovanes Castle where you can lose in 1 or 2 turns because Rafa starts right in front of the strongest enemies & you have to keep them from killing her or you lose. She's an AI party member so you can't grind her, & if you make the mistake of saving in the castle (like I did) then you're just kinda stuck there trying to get lucky enough to kill them before they can kill her.
My favorite in the Dragon Quest series, VI, has a dungeon where you find the strongest shield in the game that is worthy of an entry in this list, unless you have a strategy guide it's really hard to compile all the rumors you find throughout the world(s) that serves as vague hints for the multiple puzzles inside that dungeon
One thing about Xenogears I think didn't quite get said is that the reason the platforming in bagel is so bad with the random encounters is because of the way the ps1 handles loading an encounter. Namely DISABLING YOUR JUMP COMMAND IF A BATTLE IS BEING LOADED. So you either jiggled in place to do a fight before every single jump or listened really close for the disc to spin up for encounter, otherwise you would press jump, nothing would happen and you would fall right off the edge...it really was hell.
There was a teleportation dungeon right before endgame in Beyond the Beyond that was the worst kind of bad. Just a single cave a few screens long, and the cave is fairly wide open. However, there is a single file path you must follow to traverse the cave. There are no visual cues, no hints, and if you take a SINGLE step off the path, you are teleported back to the entrance. Coupled with a very high encounter rate on tough monsters, it's easy to lose your place. It's tedious, can easily take a couple hours to traverse without using a guide, and there's no treasure. Literally the only reward you get is putting the dungeon behind you. Absolutely horrible.
How about that one dungeon in the first Breath of Fire? I can't remember if it's the very last or like 2nd or 3rd last. But basically it's a maze where everything looks the same. To make matters worse, the whole screen rotates every several steps, combined with the random encounters, you're going to get lost/discombobulated/forget where you have already walked. I spent literal hours as a kid trying to finish it. EDIT: Durr this is PS1 dungeons, now I have to watch your SNES video to see if you covered this! 😁
"I really didn't like BOF3" - Me: "Haw dare you?!" XD I'm joking. I love the game though, both story and gameplay. But I respect your arguments my friend.
I know I'm late to the conversation, but for the Desert of Death in Breath of Fire 3, the easiest way to traverse it is to have Ryu face between the True North Star and the False North Star. That's it. Just walk in that straight line from start to finish. You'll reach the other side. No problem.
6:17: "Before Xenogears, I can't really think of many horrible sewer dungeons." The one from Chrono Trigger comes to mind. This level is one of the very few legitimately bad things you can point to about CT. Not only was it a really annoying dungeon, it was entirely optional. Why is that bad? Because if you didn't go through it, you missed out on some important lore that you could never get later on in the game, and it was all too easy to miss. So not only do you have to notice it, (or remember to notice it, on later playthroughs,) but then you have to slog your way through it, then slog your way back afterwards.
Suggestion: If you make a top 10 worst rpg towns put Nottagen from Dragon Quest 7, because that was more tedious than anything from Dharma Temple(Renamed Alltrades Abbey in the 3DS remake)
that was the first rpg i ever played! i had no idea what i was doing and just kept grinding lvls. i ended up WAY overpowered for the rest of the game about a 1/4 of the way through until i found out gamefaqs.com was a thing LOL
Honestly, the first time I played breath of fire 3 I quit at the desert. I didn't beat it till i came back to the game like a year later and started over.
If you want a really "fun" dungeon from a PS1 era RPG, Persona 1, Snow Queen Quest, Thanatos Tower, Max Ambrosia run. Imagine if you played an RPG where after completing the first dungeon, you have to clear the final dungeon immediately after. Your only means of preparation are what's available to you at the beginning of the game. Oh, and you can't save in this dungeon, and the only way out of it is to clear it. Also, if anyone in your party dies, they lose the ability to use Personas making that character useless, and you have to choose one party member at the beginning to start off with this effect. You can clear this by going to a room on the first floor that's out of your way.
During the Prison sequence in FF8, you only fight one forced encounter with Zell (and maybe a random encounter) before getting your weapons back. The two enemies in this forced encounter should die in one or two hits. Quistis and Selphie rejoin the party after this encounter, at which point they have their weapons for the entire dungeon.
Worst Playstation dungeons I ever played... -Saga Frontier: The Mosperiburg Dungeon (Riki's story). Especially the Magmaslimes, and using combos to impress the Ring Lord. -Parasite Eve: The Chrysler Building. Museum if we're talking the first playthrough. -Legend of Dragoon: Zenebatos. Basically, you get legislation, then get it made into law, and distribute it throughout the city. Simple, right? Wrong. The locations are very far from the other two, and you have to run across the city three separate times for each law you want to change. And you have to dodge guardian robots that arrest you if they catch you, sending you back to the starting point. Long story short, it's DMV the Dungeon. That's pretty much it.
Want to see more? www.twitch.tv/davidvincstreams
I agree tower of babel is why I still havent beaten xenogears til this day
The worse part of the Tower of Babel for Xenogears is that in the story, your mechs can all fly. There is no reason they have to make these horrible jumps.
Tower of babel made me quit xenogears
The real problem with the Babel Tower is how the game loads the random encounters. It basically starts loading them on the background, and in the meantime you can move, but no other input is recognized until the screen shatters and you enter the battle. So if you are not playing this off of a PS1 with the original disc, you might be running towards a jump, have a battle loading on the background and you won't know it until you try to press Jump and realize you just fell to your doom (with a random encounter starting immediately after). When playing on the PS1, I remember I could hear the disc spinning and stopping whenever a new battle was being loaded, so I would stop all movement for 2-3 seconds until the battle started. This saved me a lot of frustration and made me hate Babel less. However, I reckon it's a problematic dungeon nevertheless.
I like the setting of the dungeon to be honest. Those chapters between Thames and Shevat are the most exciting in the game for me.
@@benjaminkeith1417 I played the hell out of xenogears back when it came out. I think my characters were somewhere around level 93-94, which required an insane amount of grind. I just had a lot of time back then and I love that battle system more than any other to this day, thanks to the fantastic animation and sound of the Deathblows
playstation 1 was basically a j/rpg lover's paradise.
You said it
Also the Nintendo DS!
SNES, PS1, and handhelds.
SNES AND PS1 had the largest concentration of rpgs, and a lot of them were pretty damn good. I don't play handhelds. But I see where they port or remake games I loved, and wanna play the handheld exclusive stuff. My friend gave me a DS and one of the Pokemons forever ago. I immediately bought Hoshigami, FFIII, and Tactics A2 since my job at the time required me to sit staring at mile markers for long periods of time otherwise. It felt more like a distraction that I'd drop the second I got home. So I'm not too great with handhelds.
Jrpgs were at their peak around this time
Xenogears is my favorite game of all time and I've played through it countless times. But to this day, the idea of having to make a long jump in Babel Tower gives me a cold sweat
John Paul Yep, Babel Tower. Jumps. Battles. Bosses(*). More jumps. Camera. (All)
Looking for the reaper in the sewer was also fun
@@libatako The first time, yes, the second time I was ready. And the Babel Tower only makes you want to look for an old save game after it.
No, God, please no!
Trails?
I love Xenogears too but yes when I saw the game on the thumbnail I instantly thought of Babel Tower. I want to play it too but I know it takes FOREVER to make that jump. When I was younger, I used to make my brother do it. He would get it on the first try! There's a few jumps I had a hard time with. Blackmoon forest, and another one where we met Balthasar I think...
(In Response to comment on Breath of Fire 3 not being any good).....
BLASPHEMY!!!!!!!
TAKE IT BACK!!!
AHHHHHHHHHHH
*bangs head repetadly on desk while screaming than dives out window*
One day I will wake up to a Xenogears remake announcement, I'll never lose hope.
I’ll settle for a switch port with 3x speed
With the Disc 2 plot not streamlined into story telling would be nice, it'd be awesome to actually play those parts instead of being told "By the way, we went here and did this, then here and did that after and then..."
@@ChaoticNarrative absolutely it is such a bummer that the second half of the game was rushed because the first half is SOOOOO GOOD!!!!
@@starboundtransraceactivist847 s
Well, technically the only thing that needs to happen is Square selling the IP to Nintendo. Because Monolith made Xenogears but they work for Nintendo now. Or Nintendo and Square agree to work together so they can put it on both platforms. Unsure if this could ever happen but it would be the best outcome for the fans. One can only hope.
Any 35 - 45 year retrold gamers here? Miss those gamepro, Egm, Nintendo power mags. The art was just amazing.
Yup although I just barely make that mark at 35 lol. To be 36 soon.
Wizardry 4's dungeon is a non euclidean nightmare. Your maps are useless and one wrong step can take you back 5 floors. The entire game takes place in one dungeon. What I'm saying is that middle age gamers represent.
I'm 30 and remember them. good times
Art questionable but yes I loved Nintendo Power and all the ways it helped people through the then modern games.
The better version of game informer is how I think of nintendo power of the 80's and 90's.
Though i am only 34.
I can still smell the print from those magazines.
Dorter Trade City is the epitome of a hard fight really early in a game. I had so much trouble with it, but I had even more trouble with something else in FFT. You mentioned the fight at Riovanes Castle. I shit you not that I got through the first 2 fights headed into the castle without issue but because I had saved directly after the second fight and in no other place on my memory card I was SOL. No matter my formation, characters or options I could not beat the main battle in the castle because Velius and his demon team destroyed me so badly in every fight I tried to put up that I had to restart the entire damn game over with. I will NEVER forget what happened to me at Riovanes, but I guess if anything it was memorable haha. Great Video David!!
Watching along...
"Oh, Xenogears. Yeah, the sewers kind of sucked, but he picked that over the Babel Tower? Soon as I'm done, I've *got* to comment about that."
Watching some more...
"Well okay then. You win this time."
I find the sewers way worst than the Babel tower. I can straight run through the entire game w/o much issue but the sewers takes the cake. I usually have to fully heal myself and save scum my way to the boss to avoid take a series beating before i reached it.
Babel tower wasnt bad and led too one of hte best parts of the game... when chu chu is relevant for one whole fight.
The Stalactic cave after you meet bart would be the second worse part of the game.
@@mikeduff3431 The final dungeon is waaaaaaaaay worse than the sewers.
Xenogears was an amazing game that was my favorite title of that era and I love it so much it's literally the story that made me become a writer... I said "I want to write stories like this".
...It's also a game with a PROFOUND amount of flaws... one of them being that you are absolutely right, it had some really just ABOMINABLE dungeons. Ironically, you named I think numbers 3 and 5 in terms of what I'd rank as worst... As you say, Babel had pretty interesting parts, and while I had to retry the jump to the swinging pipe (and all the random battles that entailed) a bunch of times, I otherwise think I never fell much.... I thought that the part of Solaris where you're wandering around with Citan and Elly for a frikking eternity being attacked every five steps was worse... but that's still only my #4. Worse than even the sewer, the final dungeon was just PAINFUL. Like "I pushed through everything else up to this point, but I'm done. I'm loading my old save point outside the final boss room" bad on my replays. But even that was better, I think, than Fort Jasper. Good lord.... just utterly nebulous layout, way too long, everything looks the same, and to make matters worse, you're constantly being run down by enemies physically traversing the map to beeline at you, with a lame, boring fight every time, just spawning ad infinitum. It wasn't too bad the first time when I had a strategy guide, but I lost it at some point before future playthroughs? Ugh... that is just BRUTAL trying to fly blind. The sewer was awful and took forever at the best of times with annoying enemies, yes, but at least my memory could keep track of where I'd been to process of elimination where I should try to go... at least I wasn't trying to physically flee from the excessive overkill amount of stale battles. And those 5 aren't even the only ones... I can recall at least two memorably painful dungeons, and that's just what I recall like a decade later. Great game, lotta problems... including just savage war crimes of dungeons.
As an aside, I loved Wild Arms 2 and honestly can't even remember why I didn't finish it, but I broke off from playing and never returned to it right near the end... Because I didn't recall the Trapezohedron, I looked it up and I think I quit literally RIGHT before I got there (I recall the Raypoints). I've always regretted I didn't finish that game, but now it feels like I dodged a bullet... I should just look up a Let's Play instead, I guess.
Also, I actually adore BoF III and love the whimsically winding and absurdist nature of it's narrative (I felt like it's a bit like the Wild Arms franchise in that sense), but in terms of the desert? Oh gawd, yes. I absolutely concur. I think I've attempted about 5 or 6 playthroughs of BoF 3 and completed exactly 2, because every other time I got to that desert, and was like "F*ck this sh*t."
Which, that was entertaining, so I'm just gonna watch the other one, but officially predicting: BoF II shows up on the SNES version of this list, don't it? Highfort, Simafort, Infinity, and omg, Bando... freaking BANDO, man... just.... ugggggggghhhhhh....
I'm surprised you didn't include the Snowfly Forest from Vagrant Story. It's effectively a teleport dungeon (the rooms simply do not connect to each other in any predictable fashion) and it shares Breath of Fire 3's problem of being giving the wrong instructions just before entering. There are multiple boss fights, as well as a random fire elemental that can kill you more easily than the bosses.
The Xenogears sewers had a map and compass. Those are two tools of navigation players tend to ignore. Use them together and it's not hard to navigate the sewers. The Solaris dungeon of endless copy paste hallway is much more of a maze than the sewers if you ask me.
The tower of babel on the other hand, has platforming that cannot be fixed by a few working brain cells and a compass. Burn it to the ground.
Babel wasn't too bad where the camera sucks on lower levels. But those platforms you have to fight before they activate, and managing fuel before the Seibzehn fight were still issues.
They really needed to separate the platforming from the random encounters, or maybe just remove the platforming altogether because it's not what the game was ever about.
Fuel consumption was the most difficult aspect of the game for me. Like the series of fights leading up to the fight w/ Elly/Vierge (Get out of the army), and then a stupid minigame I sucked at before Dora the Destroyer. It made me grateful to Id because at least I was supposed to lose to him. Plus that scene made it all worth it. I had no idea who or what he was yet. I assumed he'd be the final enemy at that point. Why couldn't the Xenogears team get proper support? It's already my favorite game, and they had to rush it! But yeah.
""That was pretty interesting! But dropping a war ship on me is cheating! Take it back!"
I forgot to mention it. The worst part of the platforming was when you would go to make your jump and trigger a random encounter, falling off the ledge and losing tons of progress. The encounter screen would lag, and there'd be a period where you could still move. But not jump at all. That made platforming really bad.
Edit: This is what my last post was supposed to be but I got distracted thinking about the game again.
As i teengaer i plyed xenogears and as i remeber most difficlut dungeon was in Merkava or Deus. when you need to memorize it and find some stupid swithes to unlock path to deus core. Ias i remember i and my friend when reach this dungeon expect to finish fas and finaly see final boss. however we manage to find way out after 4 hours of playing. Even not from first attempt. Only on second day.
The Persona 2 dungeon makes sense, the area was made to be an inescapable maze by way of rumors and it's a rumour that allows you to solve the puzzle and leave. Your characters (not sure why you call them NPCs btw) traverse the whole thing multiple times trying to figure out the riddle.
Seriously. It's not that bad at all. This guy never played Eternal Punishment and had to map every dungeon after Club Zodiac.
@@ShadowBaofu Estoma exists though. And the Undersea Ruins are annoying af haha
@@ShadowBaofu I think Atlus did the right thing by branding Persona as part of the SMT series in America. That is only for the Playstation 2 and on, but it gave people a much better idea of what they were getting into. Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne is my favorite JRPG. I found Persona 2 significantly easier than Persona 3 or 4. Both parts of Persona 2 are very well done, and I am happy that Eternal Punishment received a fan translation.
@RaineTCG You are absolutely correct, but Atlus made the right decision in making it part of the series in America. There are thematic similarities and mechanic similarities, but mostly because they are difficult dungeon crawlers at least in the 6th and 7th console generations. Persona shares a lot of personas/demons with Shin Megami Tensei, like Jack Frost for example. Persona 3/4 also used a press turn system very similar to Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne's press turn system. Fusion mechanics are nearly identical. I am less familiar with SMT's branding in the current generation.
Yeah p2 doesnt suck
Breath of fire 3 is awesome.
And yes...desert is f-ing hell
aka Desert of killjoy, i had to spend my whole 3 years to find 2nd hand guidebook to get through this.
I literally quit there 3 times I never beat that game because of it.
@mackinzie man hell nah, I watched a walkthrough on TH-cam 😅
The Final Fantasy Tactics complaint is hilarious. Level/Job Grinding easily destroys that Stage of the game, you can unlock a good amount of the jobs at that point. You can literally break this game early without even trying. Hell I was in 5th grade when this game was released.
Roof of Riovanes Castle
6:44 Here's a fun fact. That "common enemy that reduce you to 1 hp", *dies in one hit* from any magic type attack, including fei's chi... Or you beat it with triangle enough.
It's a trick enemy that will only take 1 damage from any physical attack but has very low hp and magic defense. And if you're slow to notice this and keep trying to hit it with deathblows, it wont die fast enough and it will reduce one of your party members to 1 hp as it escapes. *The game expects you to do something different when doing one thing doesn't work.*
In similar fashion, the boss of the same dungeon will punish you for using deathblows.
Dude, I kill the boss of that dungeon with deathblows every time...28 AP at a time. :p
I always hated FF8's Tomb of the Unknown King, even though I love the atmosphere and story of it.
Up, right, up right, and so on. Honestly, once you figure that out, it becomes kinda boring.
I just hate FF8 in general LOL
@@TheBrazilRules FF8 is not a game for casuals. But it is one of the best of all time.
@@lindenstromberg6859 Agreed. Easily my favorite FF game. Hell it's probably my second favorite game period.
Linden Stromberg I just think once you figure out all the bullshit the game becomes redundant. And the “we were all in the same orphanage!” plot twist made me so mad
Me and my cousin used to always mock Rei every time he said, "Doesn't this just beat all."
Dorter Trade City in Final Fantasy Tactics is definitely tough if it catches you unawares. The first time I encountered that battle I was thoroughly creamed. Now every time I go through the game I tend to overprepare so much that Dorter and just about every main battle in the game is a cakewalk. Random battles can still be tough, though, if you get the stronger and/or more annoying enemies.
Almost all of the dungeons in Beyond the Beyond are challenging in one way or another. For me the worse one is the sand cave. Not only are the enemies really strong, but Mayan heads that keep poking up to block your path and invisible pitfalls that drop you down to the previous levels drive me insane. It's really easy to lose 2 or 3 levels of progress if you're not careful.
My first playthrough Ramza kept dying and I couldn't get past this battle. Finally I beat it but I had a female knight turn into a gem and I kept playing because I didn't think I could do better. (I didn't understand I could grind in the area just outside the town)
Tower Of Babel is also infamous for having a bug where the game will freeze when one the boss does this specific attack. It only happens on the PS1 version for all I know, but seeing that attack basically meant you had to reset. So this fight devolved into you trying to beat this guy super fast, and not setting off the conditions that have him use the attack.
And the BOF 3 desert is what compelled me to discover GameFAQs. A stupid translation error made the desert a friggin nightmare.
Breath of Fire III is literally my favorite game of all time (followed by SotN and CT) but I have to agree about the desert.
Trails?
Except for that god forsaken rope pulling game.
I liked the game, too, but the end of the game was a nightmare.
Symphony of the Night is unmatched. Nothing compares.
Kazuya aria of sorrow, bloodstained
I'm surprised the North Cave from Final Fantasy VII didn't make it on her. A glitched save location that can render your entire save file unusable? Sounds like a nightmare. I'm sticking with the Switch Port.
My top 5
5 Forest of Contusion Tales of Eternia
4 The entire ice section in Final Fantasy VII
3 Central Park Parasite Eve
2 Law City Zenaboes The Legend of Dragoon
The Moon The Legend of Dragoon
Oof i had a lot of nostalgic feelings about ToE's Forest of Temptation, mainly because i got stuck there for a long time as a kid who barely understood english (i ended up restarting the game a lot too because of that dungeon for some reasons lol). And there was really no better feeling than somehow accidentally getting your way through some bullshit dungeons despite not understanding the puzzle at all haha.
I feel u breh changing the stupid laws in lod those fuks then when u finally complete to go fight i believe the zombie divine dragon why the fuk is their no continuation of lod or hd remaster
The museum was way worse than anything else in Parasite Eve.
The Hospital and Museum in Parasite Eve I found a bit of a drag more than anything else. Nevermind the Chrysler Building on a New Game Plus.
The two levels in Legend of Dragoon though, moreso that law city... Oh yeah.
@@gunpsycho The Law city is DMV the game lol.
Xenogears is the unrivaled GOD of JRPGs. Final Fantasy 16? Better be an HD remaster of Xenogears in the style of FF7 Remake, because, oh Wave Existence, that game deserves to fully flesh out its cut content!
I found Kislev Sewers annoying, but the Tower of Babel? I didn't hate it as much as many people did. What I did hate, however, was the Shevat dungeon, the one you go into when you get Maria for the first time!
Great Video! I remember the original Valkyrie Profile having some horrid dungeons!
I would like to add the honorable mention of Digimon World 2. Not so much for the designs of the floors (although, you could argue that too), but because there is NO save point. You could spend 3-4 hours leveling, befriending new digimon, and getting cool items, only to lose it all if you die (usually at the boss of course). I realize this issue is far from unique, plenty of games do it, but this was the one that *I* had to deal with.
Tower of Babel’s encounters aren’t actually random, they trigger at exactly the same point every time. You can skip them all if you jump over the trigger points. And the sewer isn’t so bad, you at least have a map to navigate it. And you can avoid the environmental damage entirely by jumping over the water and dodging the propellers.
I don't remember ALL of he encounters in Babel being trigger points, but a lot of the ones in the later outside portions are (basically the "traffic jam" type enemies). Xenogears in general has a problem with, "jump function disabled when random encounter is loading," and it often leads to unintentional falls. I first noticed it on the Mountain Path to Citan's house on my very first playthrough, and XG is my favorite game of all time but it's not perfect.
That being said, I don't know why this guy got so frustrated by either of the dungeons from XG that he mentioned, because yes, Kislev Sewers do have a map, Omegasols are dirt cheap, the Hp to 1 move is rarely used anyway, the damag-terrain should honestly almost never touch you (except possibly in the case of, "encounter loading, you just failed to jump over sewage from pipe"), and in the Tower of Babel they not only give you a shop to refuel halfway through it (which is ALSO dirt cheap), they give you enemies in the encounters that ARE random that will literally not attack you unless you hit them first, and will otherwise refuel you because altruism.
@@benjaminkeith1417 Anything becomes hard if you give yourself sufficient extra restrictions: "lol, no using Doc for this b/c masochism." Know what's way harder than Id on foot? Id in Weltall vs Brigandine in the Aveh Desert. I hear it's possible to win. You know what's super hard? Getting the Trader Card from Hammer using only one person in your party. It's also pointless. In fact, it's probably not doable even with a Speed Ring S-coked-out Crescens* who goes into Hyper Mode on the perfect turn, unless you got some stat-editing going on.
*Oddly, even though Citan is faster than Emmy, Crescens is faster than Fenrir. Weird.
The fights I don't especially look forward to in XG are the Gate #2 pairs of back to back Elements b/c resource management is no fun for those, gimmicky fights like Opiomorph, and Alpha Weltall if I've decided to try for the Slayer Robe (mostly b/c I don't play on a PS1 and Deus immediately beforehand likes to freeze, complicating retries).
I seem to remember there being a "workaround" of sorts to the random battle load. If memory serves, I think there was an audible cue with the drive spinning up and doing some seeking just before triggering a random battle. If you listened for it, you could avoid missing any of the jumps.
Xenogears is my favourite game, but some of the dungeons in this game were outrageous. Specifically the ones that needed intense 3D platforming, when half the time Fei never jumps when I need him too
Still adore the game, but that is one downfall for sure
I do agree the beginning of the Tower of Babel is utter horseshit, however for me personally after beating the first inside section where you can fall down to the water below, it's actually a pretty fun dungeon. Granted, my other favorite genre is platforming of any kind, so I totally get that I'm heavily biased on this one. Plus, right after beating the dungeon you go to Shevat which is probably the coolest location in the entire game, especially if you managed to get the optional badges. Just wish the dungeon didn't open with awkward rope-swinging and claw-bridge timing.
sorry, im a bof3 guy.
yeah it seems he just sucks
It's weird, because BoFIII is actually my favorite. And it's the only one I never beat. Probably need to go back and do that at some point. That reminds me. I had a bit of trouble with the haunted house early on in that one.
Edit: I never played the fifth game. Probably for the best.
Timber Maniac Careful the last boss can do death & confuse at high rate.
@@timbermaniac5756 spend like 15 minutes grinding right before the house and the mcneill manor is ez mode.
@@BeatdownGG exactly lol
Oh, Xenogears has plenty more reasons not to replay it besides the Towel of Babel. There's the aforementioned sewers (I think sewer levels should be banned from video games forever). There's Fort Jasper, with its overly long, drawn-out hallways filled with large groups of enemies and unintuitive way to progress. There's the final dungeon, which is visually uninteresting and goes on for freaking ever. There's the entire second disc, which is an absolute clusterfuck. And then there's Chu-Chu.
The Desert of Death in BOF cemented my hatred for ANY desert or desert themed area in any RPG ever. My god, was that the most soul crushing experience ever
Never play Wild Arms III then. The whole game is a desert segment.
Never finished the game because of that, and up to that point I was hooked on it. Even after I got past it, years later and using a guide, I coudn't bring myself to finish it. I guess it was just too much frustration.
I love BOF3 but as soon as he said desert of death I started to feel uneasy
I guess I'm weird.
I didn't mind the desert.
It wasn't exactly difficult and I liked the random encounters.
Also, bonebreak was a badass skill that could be learned there.
I didnt like the desert but i finished it and i even got the hidden sword lost in the desert.
Kids today will never know the frustration of getting stuck in a game without the internet.
If you're playing BTB with an emulator, you can save state every time a character levels, and just keep re-loading the save state until it rolls the cap for that stat.
Finn has reached level 2!
Save State
Hit the button and keep reloading until you get the highest number possible for each stat line (Usually 2-3 VP, 2 LP, 1 MP, 3 STR, 1 DEF, 1 SPD for Finn). Make sure you save after getting the desired number in each stat so you only have to re-roll the next line.
Each character has different caps for each stat at various level ranges. Tont has the highest MP gains (4 cap), Domino, Lorele and Samson cap at 4 STR at various ranges, Edward/Annie cap at 3MP at certain ranges. You'll see the stat maxes change as you level, but you should always try to get the max on each stat and make sure you get 1 DEF and 1 SPD on every level up. Usually you'll want to roll for at least 1MP with non-caster types as well. (defense and speed can be gained at every level up)
26 is a good level to upgrade classes with this method. It makes the random encounters a lot faster, but the dungeons are still awful.
Dorter Trade City separates the boys from the men.........I was definitely a boy on first playthrough XD
the BOF 3 i enjoyed a fair bit, the desert only stumpted me once when i realized i should have read that note that said teh directions were wrong and i needed to basicly do the opposite. other then that I dont see it being a huge problem
Xenogears is one of the best RPG of all time.. But i completely understand your frustration with Tower of Babel.
Shout outs to Beyond the Beyond, I actually just cleared Gaea Shrine (and the Tower of Arawn) yesterday. The game has a lot of that Camelot charm, but man did they make some frustrating design choices. I used a guide to get through Gaea Shrine because I couldn't stand how long it took to get through. It really doesn't help that after Gaea shrine, you then have to retrace your steps through Mist Valley, then do two 7 floor dungeons back to back.
Gaea temple was pretty awful, what easily killed it for me was the high encounter rate and battles taking forever to clear. It doesn't help that you spend a lot of time with a party that consists mainly of spell casters (in a game where precious MP is scarce) with only 2 melee fighters, with one of them being cursed. I don't know what they were thinking making Samson's curse actually affect him in battle, half the time he didn't attack and the other half he would damage himself for 1/4 his health. They should have just made the curse bring him to level 1 and nothing else. I did back flips when I finally got that curse removed (only 11 hours into the game!)
Whew, rant over!
I hear you. I've been through Beyond the Beyond quite a few times and it's a fun game, but the difficulties can drive you up the wall. It would be one thing if Samson's curse only lasted a short while, he literally has it for nearly half the game. And it's a shame that you don't get any other melee fighters until much later in the game, after Samson has been cured and then you have to build them up a lot to make them useful. Although admittedly Annie can cause a fair amount of physical damage for a spellcaster, much more than Taunt or Edward.
Disagree with the Desert of Death in BoF3
While that area drags for a while, I think it was one of the best parts of the game, that actually added something unique during the progression through your quest to meet Myria.
I also loved the music that plays when you're walking through the desert.
No Tower of Temptation from Grandia? Constantly backtracking through hoards of enemies to solve puzzles that are rooms apart, then 3 bosses and 0 save points, with a lowered skill exp rate
Ah, Dorter. That moment when "yeah, this game is fun!" turns into "WHY AM I DYING SO MUCH?!?!". Honestly, I do like the map's design and the general concept of the fight, but it is an absurd difficulty spike right out of left field when you are still learning the basics.
Still would have considered replacing it with any of the multi-stage fights where you can save in between stages and get permanently stuck, though.
What about The Chrysler Bldg in Parasite Eve...75 floors of fun
I purposely don’t include bonus or optional dungeons in these lists.
@@davidvinc I was wondering the same thing. Good to know. :-)
75 floors of slooooooooooow plodding randomly generated where the fuck am I going fun.
What is with the two secret dungeons in Grandia? There was a kind of endles tower in a desert kind of landscape. All your equipment was suddenly +0.
That DQ part was actually a really neat story IMO. The bait and switch was also felt by the characters. I was heart broken part way through when you get betrayed! To each her own
I loved all the story in that segment, the felling of doom in the town, the tournament, the prison break.
Never made it past the tower of Babel
persona 2's shelter sucks, but persona revelations is waaaay worse, it's like old snes smt dungeons.
Thank you. I hated the Dharma Temple section in DQVII so much! That area pissed me off and you didn't even mention the awful boss fight with that pig and cat that completely rely's on RNG.
Xenogears is like GOT starts off great then dies in last 20%. Second disc was an insult
That really wasn't their fault. Square voraciously cannibalized budget and staff from Xenogears to make FFVIII not miss its ship date, while keeping Xenogears' schedule exactly the same. One of the great tragedies of the 90's game industry...
Watching David talk about bad dungeons is really satisfying during this COVID bore-fest.
I disagree about the Tower of Babel, I think the the final dungeon in Xenogears is is a lot worse due to the damaging terrain effects, so many areas looking more or less alike, and the chained boss battles of Ramsus and Miang right after each other.
Ive literally been playing RPGs for almost 30 years now. To this day, there has never been a more frustrating experience than the desert in Breath of Fire 3. Wtf were they thinking when they put that in the game? How did game testers give that the green light?
Breath of fire 4 Giza plain is the sequel to that horrible dungeon!
Xenogears deserved a 3rd entry for its last dungeon.
Also for Tactics, the Chocobo battle towards the end of the game owned me for the longest time. Everything I could go through with minimal issue but the Chocobo's seemed to be overpowered, attacked first and sometimes chained attacks.
If you want a game that will drive you nuts with dungeons, play Brainlord on SNES.
Sorry, I wasn't able to make it through this whole thing. I heard Xenogears music and had to go listen to the soundtrack again.
Every dungeon in xenogears is horrible. The enemy spawn rate and platforming mechanics were atrocious. Love the story though
Pretty decent list overall. The only one I disagree with is DQ7. That area wasn't particularly long, it was really straightforward, and it definitely didn't require hours of grinding. There were harder sections, and even that's not saying much since it was overall a pretty easy game. I guess I could see it being a little annoying reaching the temple and finding out there's another challenge to overcome before gaining access to job changes, but it makes sense for the story so that didn't really bother me either.
The Dharma dungeon was pretty frustrating, but that's mostly because you have to get through it without magic and only have some dingy magic rock to restore your HP. It's definitely one of my least favorite parts of the game.
Xenogears babel tower. There are some points where you have to jump to continue, and if you fail you start at the beginning again.
The worst part about Dharma Temple is that there are a bunch of unwinnable fights before you can progress. And since the penalty for losing is losing half your gold, it gets annoying if you don't deposit it all beforehand. Thankfully, there's a bank in the slum, so you aren't completely screwed. Also, before you get dropped, there's a casino where you can get much better gear than normally available at that point if you have the patience.
Also the whole getting you used to a party member and ripping him out right before this immense challenge.
Of course, the casino is one more nasty aspect-- you get there, you hear about FINALLY CLASS CHANGE TIME, and your first instinct as a first time player is to go get that and come back to the casino after. Especially if you don't know how gear doesn't change with classes in this particular DQ and you think that it would probably be wise to choose your classes first before gearing up.
Funny thing is, Dorter's trade city was the first time the game really clicked for me. A mage targeted my knight with a spell right before his turn and I went
...
..why don't I..why don't I just stand between those 2 enemies? xD
Yup, solid list. I feel like FF8 sewers at the end of disk one should have an honorable mention. Another of Breath of Fire 4 Desert of Death successor, Golden Plains.
The sewer dungeon wasn't that bad. The tower later in the game while you're in the gears was terrible.
honestly the sewer dungeon by itself isn't the worst, but I think the entirely too long scenario of you stuck in the prison leading up to it just made it feel extra terrible
5:23 - Even with this game, I don't think the Tactical RPG genre really took off until Disgaea came out. In Disgaea you just tower throw a Mage up there, pick off the Archer and mop up the other guys, battle over.
FFT was my first tactical RPG . It wasn't until Disgaea when I learn to like them . I got the first Disgaea by sheer luck . I enter Game Stop at the time the game arrived at the store . The manager knew I liked RPG's . She told me about it and I brought it . I guess I was the only person that brought that game there . Because they had only 2 copies . They never sold the 2nd . I was very temped to get that one just to sell on the Internet . As it got so high in price there . But never did .
I agree with most, but I have to disagree about Breath of Fire 3, Desert of Death. Sure, they do set you up for failure with the instructions, but the game has been teaching you to keep notes on puzzles like this the whole game with hidden items, secrets, and mini-games. I know it's an acquired taste, but this game ranks up there as top five games on PS1.
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[0:38] - 10) Nava's Keep - Alundra
[1:36] - 9) Galbadia's D-District Prison - Final Fantasy 8
[2:44] - 8) Desert of Death - Breath of Fire 3
[3:52] - 7) Air Raid Shelter - Persona 2: Innocent Sin
[4:47] - 6) Dorter Trade City - Final Fantasy Tactics
[6:09] - 5) Kislev Sewers - Xenogears
[7:18] - 4) Trapezohedron - Wild Arms 2
[8:26] - 3) Gaea's Shrine - Beyond the Beyond
[9:38] - 2) Dharma Temple Sequence - Dragon Quest 7
[10:51] - 1) Tower of Babel - Xenogears
The desert of death is nothing and i mean nothing too worry about and actually is just a time consume. you can litterally just walk straight for a couple hours and reach the boss, i know i tried.
One of my least favorite dungeons was Caracol in Persona 2 Innocent Sin. It's long and tedious, with every battle just being repetitive. The Shelter wasn't that bad at least for me, since it gave me a chance to grind up my levels, since I was a bit too low leveled at that point. By the time I was at Caracol I was already higher leveled than most enemies. Not even the music is good, something that other dungeons like Club Zodiac and Giga Mancho had going for them. You can't even tell if it looped or not. The only upside is that you get to rematch Joker.
Edit: I know that the music was supposed to convey the atmosphere and increase tension, but they still could've made something better to still suited the mood/atmosphere like Mt. Iwato
I started Xenogears this week after not playing it in over 18 years. I rented it back then and didn’t get far. It’s a brilliant game.
Man, I always love Grandia's intro. I miss the old days. Great list!
Best part of Tower of Babel: Random Encounter triggered just as you started jumping, making you not complete the jump.
If I had to list one from the Playstation, it'd probably be the Pleasing Garden from Wild Arms. To start, it's a chore to enter in the first place due to being a moving, invisible dungeon in the middle of a desert. Then, it's got two different logic-defying puzzles that you're only given extremely vague hints about from the last town that require you to do counter-intuitive things like exiting out of a door you already came through earlier so it takes you somewhere different before you can fight the boss that's significantly more difficult than the boss that came before and the boss that comes afterwards.
Sealed Cave from FFIV.
Honorable mention: Fossil Roo from FF9. This part of the game is absolutely awful, pointless, and adds nothing to the game.
Absolutely hated that place the first time I ever did it.
Now? Don't mind it at all because it's a lot easier than I remember it being.
It can be done in ten minutes or so with very little difficulty.
Ugh... Trapezohedron still gives me nightmares...
Dharma tempfrom dw7 isn't even hard, it's just tedious. The labyrinth to get that wind spirit clothes however, is really screwed.
Desert of Death... THE reason I never beat Bof3, for all the reasons you mentioned.
But nevermind that, cause Beyond the Beyond really ought to be the whole list! Every single dungeon in that game is a nightmare. Often confusing, with a frustratingly high encounter rate and monster difficulty that harkens back to Dragon Warrior 2 in its bloodthirstiness.
I got so lost in one of those dungeons . I remember getting way overlevel .
Two that came to mind were Seraphic Gate for both Valkyrie Profile and Star Ocean 2.
unless you made an actaul attempt to level early on in FFT you were going to get bodied. and if you are playing casually without auto potion then you're doing it wrong. that might be why that fight was so hard for ya. but basing it off your experience of a playthrough when you were 15 as opposed to going back and playing it again is kind of well, immature.
Oh, and the Desert in BoF3 was easy, just time consuming. You can literally see where you need to go on the horizon after i think 1 day of walking. And the story was great, the characters got good treatment with story development, music was amazing, mini games were fun and you had to go kill 'god'. The beginning is probably the worst part since it takes a little to take off but outside of that the games pacing is fine. Sounds like a You problem.
I love breath of fire 3, BUT OH MY GOD THAT DESERT!!!
Even if I consider Xenogears the best JRPG ever I must agree . . .babel was a pain . . . .the rewards you get after finishing it tho . . .just awesome and one the best parts of the story.
most other JRPG's: save often and you cannot go wrong.
Rogue Galaxy: Save often and get stuck in death loops where there is no escape and no way to get stronger... multi-stage boss battle at end of the hall way your stuck in.
Rogue Galaxy may not be PS1 but I mention because your explanation of Tower of Babel reminded me of how one bad experiance can ruin your ability to play a game a second time.
"If we camp at night and move during the day, we can't see the stars and we'll get lost!"
Me: .......How inconvenient! If only there was some star visible during the day that always rose in the east and set in the west every single day....
Dorter Trade City isn't a dungeon, nor is it anywhere near the worst. Off the top of my head Riovanes Castle where you can lose in 1 or 2 turns because Rafa starts right in front of the strongest enemies & you have to keep them from killing her or you lose. She's an AI party member so you can't grind her, & if you make the mistake of saving in the castle (like I did) then you're just kinda stuck there trying to get lucky enough to kill them before they can kill her.
I'm surprised the xenogears cave early on where you're with Bart in your gears isn't mentioned. That one frustrated the hell out of me
My favorite in the Dragon Quest series, VI, has a dungeon where you find the strongest shield in the game that is worthy of an entry in this list, unless you have a strategy guide it's really hard to compile all the rumors you find throughout the world(s) that serves as vague hints for the multiple puzzles inside that dungeon
Isn’t that a Super Nintendo game?
i feel like people may have never learned to watch the "shadow" when doing jumping puzzles in these older games.
One thing about Xenogears I think didn't quite get said is that the reason the platforming in bagel is so bad with the random encounters is because of the way the ps1 handles loading an encounter. Namely DISABLING YOUR JUMP COMMAND IF A BATTLE IS BEING LOADED. So you either jiggled in place to do a fight before every single jump or listened really close for the disc to spin up for encounter, otherwise you would press jump, nothing would happen and you would fall right off the edge...it really was hell.
There was a teleportation dungeon right before endgame in Beyond the Beyond that was the worst kind of bad. Just a single cave a few screens long, and the cave is fairly wide open. However, there is a single file path you must follow to traverse the cave. There are no visual cues, no hints, and if you take a SINGLE step off the path, you are teleported back to the entrance.
Coupled with a very high encounter rate on tough monsters, it's easy to lose your place. It's tedious, can easily take a couple hours to traverse without using a guide, and there's no treasure. Literally the only reward you get is putting the dungeon behind you. Absolutely horrible.
How about that one dungeon in the first Breath of Fire? I can't remember if it's the very last or like 2nd or 3rd last. But basically it's a maze where everything looks the same. To make matters worse, the whole screen rotates every several steps, combined with the random encounters, you're going to get lost/discombobulated/forget where you have already walked. I spent literal hours as a kid trying to finish it.
EDIT: Durr this is PS1 dungeons, now I have to watch your SNES video to see if you covered this! 😁
"I really didn't like BOF3" - Me: "Haw dare you?!" XD I'm joking. I love the game though, both story and gameplay. But I respect your arguments my friend.
I know I'm late to the conversation, but for the Desert of Death in Breath of Fire 3, the easiest way to traverse it is to have Ryu face between the True North Star and the False North Star. That's it. Just walk in that straight line from start to finish. You'll reach the other side. No problem.
6:17: "Before Xenogears, I can't really think of many horrible sewer dungeons."
The one from Chrono Trigger comes to mind. This level is one of the very few legitimately bad things you can point to about CT. Not only was it a really annoying dungeon, it was entirely optional. Why is that bad? Because if you didn't go through it, you missed out on some important lore that you could never get later on in the game, and it was all too easy to miss. So not only do you have to notice it, (or remember to notice it, on later playthroughs,) but then you have to slog your way through it, then slog your way back afterwards.
Great video I just discovered this channel recently but I love it!
Suggestion: If you make a top 10 worst rpg towns put Nottagen from Dragon Quest 7, because that was more tedious than anything from Dharma Temple(Renamed Alltrades Abbey in the 3DS remake)
Beyond the Beyond!! I rage quit that crap when I was 13!
that was the first rpg i ever played! i had no idea what i was doing and just kept grinding lvls. i ended up WAY overpowered for the rest of the game about a 1/4 of the way through until i found out gamefaqs.com was a thing LOL
Honestly, the first time I played breath of fire 3 I quit at the desert. I didn't beat it till i came back to the game like a year later and started over.
If you want a really "fun" dungeon from a PS1 era RPG, Persona 1, Snow Queen Quest, Thanatos Tower, Max Ambrosia run. Imagine if you played an RPG where after completing the first dungeon, you have to clear the final dungeon immediately after. Your only means of preparation are what's available to you at the beginning of the game. Oh, and you can't save in this dungeon, and the only way out of it is to clear it. Also, if anyone in your party dies, they lose the ability to use Personas making that character useless, and you have to choose one party member at the beginning to start off with this effect. You can clear this by going to a room on the first floor that's out of your way.
I remember that, back then, I didnt know that you could drink water in the deserst of BOF3, what a nightmare.
I agree with a lot of this, but I never had a problem with tower of Babel in xenogears
During the Prison sequence in FF8, you only fight one forced encounter with Zell (and maybe a random encounter) before getting your weapons back. The two enemies in this forced encounter should die in one or two hits. Quistis and Selphie rejoin the party after this encounter, at which point they have their weapons for the entire dungeon.
Omgggggg I love BF3 but I do agree on the desert
Worst Playstation dungeons I ever played...
-Saga Frontier: The Mosperiburg Dungeon (Riki's story). Especially the Magmaslimes, and using combos to impress the Ring Lord.
-Parasite Eve: The Chrysler Building. Museum if we're talking the first playthrough.
-Legend of Dragoon: Zenebatos. Basically, you get legislation, then get it made into law, and distribute it throughout the city. Simple, right? Wrong. The locations are very far from the other two, and you have to run across the city three separate times for each law you want to change. And you have to dodge guardian robots that arrest you if they catch you, sending you back to the starting point. Long story short, it's DMV the Dungeon.
That's pretty much it.