Terrible RPG dungeons: Part 1

After having a lapse of activity and almost no new ideas to think of, I am now starting to think of good things to write about. How about RPG dungeons that are terrible? I guess that would work. Saw a few videos encompassing 8-bit and 16-bit RPG dungeons, might as well offer my thoughts on some of them. I'll do 5 per post, and will just select randomly. Yes, there are multiple parts to this, but why not. Anyways, let's see what we got here for terrible RPG dungeons. For this first part, I will look at terrible dungeons in Playstation and Playstation 2 titles.

Almost every dungeon in Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure

I really don't want to generalize. I really don't. Since Rhapsody is already an easy game, the dungeons are expected to be just as easy. That's not the problem. The problem is all the dungeons look incredibly boring and uninspiring. The caves all have one type of color and the exact same designs; simple passageways with some forks in the road here and there. The temple/castle like dungeons are pretty much the same way, even the final dungeon for crying out loud. They look slightly nicer than the caves, but that's pretty much all there is to them. The forest you go to at the beginning is probably the only exception to this one, since it has signs and other places connecting it. However, the rest of Rhapsody's dungeons look like they came straight from a dungeon randomizer from the looks of things. Unlike Growlanser 3 or Lufia 3, games that actually randomize their dungeons, Rhapsody's dungeons are NOT randomized. There really doesn't look like a lot of thought was placed in making these dungeons at all.

TerraTower - Chrono Cross

I mean, the game itself isn't TOO much of a slog, but there were certainly people that didn't really like TerraTower because it's almost completely a slog all the way through. You can't compare this final dungeon to the Black Omen, oh no. The encounters here are usually not tough, but more of a nuisance overall, and the enemies do actually chase you unlike most other ones. Furthermore, the tower has a whole lot of text dumps that most players really don't care for. Then of course, it's got boss rushes, where you fight six bosses before the final one and each of them have basic respective elements to use, meaning your strategies can overwhelm them at this point. There are some vague hints as to how to do the final boss correctly using the ChronoCross, but how many of us really did that on their first go?

The Law City of Zenebatos - The Legend of Dragoon

The premise is excellent, an ancient city where it's possible to change and make laws at a whim. It's got a legislation center, automated guards running around catching intruders and sending them to jail. The center of course is how you make the laws, but the complicated steps are sure to bore players. It's a lot of back and forthing, ensuring you first get a law maker from the legislation center, sneak past the guards, then getting a law output, then a law launcher. There's also a portion where you have to actually wait in line, at least this one can be changed via law, but still. You of course are required to do the law process at least twice, but a few other ones can be done to remove the guards, the random encounters (which are of course rather tough by the way), or to stop the waiting in line, or to remove all the shops which is something you probably will end up doing accidentally if you don't watch it. And the boss group you fight in Zenebatos sure pulls some annoying strings, a fast enemy with petrification abilities, an equally annoying one with an instakill maneuver, and both of whom have strong hit-all attacks. Just icing on the cake for one of the worst. Luckily, The Legend of Dragoon doesn't have a whole lot of awful ones besides this one.

Fort El-Eal - Suikoden 4

Like TerraTower, Fort El-Eal is a case of a final dungeon where players are likely to have ending fatigue. Or not, you really decide. Heck, Suikoden 4 barely had dungeons overall, and this being the final one at least makes it somewhat memorable. Helping matters is the fact that you get to play a dispatch party with Elenor in the lead to fight off Graham Cray himself, which is fun, while Lazlo's group has to fight the Giant Tree, which is lame. Despite the parties splitting up, it actually looks like you have to go through the dungeon twice, with the main party going even further. One of the things that ruins this further dungeon trek is that stupidly long staircase. Yeah, like anybody wants to climb up a large set of steps, especially giving the high random encounter rate this game has.

North Cavern - Suikoden 3

This is here mostly because of one enemy. Bone Soldiers. These things are tanks sporting 600 HP, which at the first time I fought them in Chris's chapter 2 my characters surely did not have that amount. The Bone Soldiers are not incredibly overpowering, since all they do is attack and that's basically it. They don't have special effects to inflict characters with and don't really have anything magical. But this cave had plenty of them, and up to six can be fighting in one group. Battles will likely take a long time to win because you are trying to snuff out up to 3600 HP total from a large group of durable bones. This was so problematic for me when I played Chris's chapter 2, especially since I didn't hone in skills for most of my characters at the time. I had a much easier time with Geddoe's chapter 2 and Hugo's chapter 3, but that's because they have more magically-oriented characters and better-skilled parties, a lesson I learned the hard way after getting repeatedly beaten in Chris's chapter 2. As for the North Cavern itself? It's straightforward, but it does have an annoying spiral section in the middle which takes too much time. It is also usually not too important in storylines most of the time, and is usually there for treasure boss fighting at the very end.