5 near-perfect RPGs ruined by one terrible mechanic

Great RPGs are built around strong mechanics that keep players engaged for a long time. Many of these mechanics have become staples of the genre, but not all of them are worthy of praise.

In fact, many of these games are considered perfect, even some of the best in the genre. Unfortunately, they all have at least one mechanic that really drags the rest of the game down, ruining otherwise perfect experiences.

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga Deliberately Weakens the Duo Against Cackletta

The Mario & Luigi series has always succeeded in offering a satirical, RPG-like experience to the Mario universe. Superstar Saga, the first game in the series, serves up a great story alongside some strong turn-based battles. However, one moment near the end can ruin the whole experience.

During the confrontation with Cackletta, the game’s final boss, Mario and Luigi are forced into a battle against Cackletta’s Soul after battling Bowletta. Unfortunately, the duo has to battle the soul with 1 HP at the start of the battle. By this point in the game, players will probably have enough healing items to restore their HP. But still, starting off a boss battle already underpowered is frustrating, wasting turns and resources on restoring Mario and Luigi’s health rather than fighting.

Cackletta's Soul is also a hard boss in its own right, with long swinging arms and powerful magic attacks that will test a player's reflexes in more ways than one. It’s the only real blemish that Superstar Saga has.

Horizon Zero Dawn Won’t Let Players Climb Everything

Horizon Zero Dawn is one of the PlayStation 4’s greatest games, and one of the best new franchises to come out of Sony. From start to finish, Aloy’s journey to discover who she is in the middle of a post-apocalyptic future is filled with great action. Only minor nuisances, like the traversal mechanics, get in the way at times.

The open-world of Horizon Zero Dawn is filled with many different biomes, ranging from snowy mountains to sandy deserts. Unfortunately, not every structure within this world is climbable. Players can only climb these areas on pre-determined paths, with yellow surfaces directing them where to go. Considering this game came out around a few days before The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which lets Link climb almost anything the player wanted him to, the PS4 game’s traversal system already felt outdated.

Horizon Forbidden West improved upon this by featuring both free-form climbing and set pathways to follow. But the first game’s traversal mechanics were the only sour spots in an otherwise perfect game.

Metaphor: Refantazio’s Final Boss Just Never Ends

Metaphor: Refantazio offers up many of the same turn-based combat and complex storytelling that has defined Atlus for years, to the point where it has quickly become one of the best JRPGs ever made. Nearly every moment of this game is perfect, but things take a turn for the worst once the final boss battle hits.

Destroyer Charadrius is the final form of Louis Guiabern, the main antagonist. Throughout both phases, Louis will fire off a relentless barrage of extreme damage attacks that directly target every party member's weaknesses. He will also inflict status ailments and remove all buffs applied to party members. The worst attacks Louis can perform are the ones where he takes away the party’s turn count, and can one-hit KO a member depending on the tribe they hail from.

Attacks like these don’t feel like they make the boss harder, but just pad out the time it takes to defeat them by adding mechanics that make them more frustrating to defeat. The final boss of Metaphor: Refantazio is easily the worst one in the game.

Lies of P Needs to Fix How it Handles Weapons

Lies of Pborrows heavily from other Soulslike games, primarily the ones developed by FromSoftware themselves. And that’s not a bad thing, as it ended up being a fantastic game. Unfortunately, it also borrowed a game mechanic that, while not unique to Lies of P, is something that makes both Soulslikes and traditional RPGs very annoying.

There are a lot of weapons that P can use in his exploration of Krat, but each weapon only has a finite amount of durability before it breaks down. P must manually repair each weapon with a grinder in order for that weapon to have its full attack power back. In an already hard game filled with multiple hard-hitting enemies and RPG systems to keep track of, worrying about weapon strength feels like a needless way to make the game slightly harder.

Lies of P gets a lot of things right, but certain elements of its design feel very archaic. If the game gets a sequel, hopefully it adds some of its own uniqueness to make it really stand out.

Demon’s Souls Open With a Needless Death

Many of the Soulslike games of today owe their success to Demon’s Souls, the game that helped FromSoftware achieve mainstream success and create a whole new subgenre of RPG. This game established many of the precedents gamers know today, especially the punishing difficulty that comes with interacting with the game’s world. But it also starts off with a very annoying trope that just feels bad to experience.

The opening moments feature the playable character making their way through a foggy kingdom of Boletaria. They are then ambushed by a giant monster and are forced to fight it with very little experience. It is a fight that the player is supposed to lose, since it leads them to the Nexus hub world to properly start the game. While this is understandable for story purposes, a hopeless boss fight feels more like a waste of time.

Many other games, including other FromSoftware titles like Elden Ring, also open with a boss battle the player is predetermined to lose. But as the years have gone by, it's clear that what Demon’s Souls has done is much less enjoyable than people think.