Can't stop talking about these, can I? Returning to the Playstation because why not.
Swamp - SaGa Frontier
Currently, I'm playing through this game, but one sidequest that is featured in just about every protagonist's quest is the Arcane quest. One card, the Grail card, is one of the cards needed in that quest, and it's in the Yorkland Swamp. Problem is, in order to get it, you gotta get the schmuck bait. This basically means get drunk from liquor stores until they give the go to so you can head into the swamp. Only you head in there drunk, naturally, impeding your movement. You also got these eyes in places which are monsters, and they are usually a tier above the monsters that would normally appear at your current stat level (reminder this is a SaGa game so no real level ups). Every time you run into an encounter, everyone in the party is hit with a random status ailment, even with proper protection, making fights much harder than usual. The worst is the Kraken enemy which is especially tough, hits multiple times, and can use Maelstrom. To be fair, the Arcane quest is worth it, because training a mage to get Tower is worthwhile, but for those in SaGa Frontier trying to get this, do yourself a favor and get the Grail card first, and as early as possible, that way you won't have too hard a time.
Virgil Palace (Riki's quest only) - SaGa Frontier
As if right on cue, another SaGa Frontier dungeon. I've finished all the quests so far save Emelia's and Riki definitely has it the worst. Tanzer is pretty darn tough, but the real clincher in Riki's story? Virgil Palace, in Mosperiburg. Here's the deal, Virgil challenges you to eight trials, some easy, some gimmicky, and some blatant and annoying. Most of the enemies fought here are of the highest tier too, such as the Snowfolk in the Pacman maze section and the Dullahans in the graveyard part. Now those are actually some of the easier ones, along with the barrel hunt, the mini-tournament, the bowling alley-of-sorts, and the sort-of straightforward one. The high/low game show is weird but usually doable, and that leads us to two of the more annoying ones. I can't tell what's worse, the stupid spike room where deviating from the female's path puts you into encounters all the time (and she really loves to randomly move) or the magma slimes which completely take LP and are too fast (btw Riki in monster forms usually doesn't go past 7 LP, so good luck keeping him alive). And then you fight Virgil himself, in which you gotta utilize combinations to impress him up to a score of 10, otherwise he's just bound to curbstomp you. There's certainly challenges in SaGa Frontier, but Riki's easily the hardest one of all because of this one place.
Rockaxe Castle - Suikoden II
Look I like the Suikoden series but some of their dungeons can get on my nerves. Among them is Rockaxe Castle, the site of an important part of the story and a battle with Gorudo. Here though, the encounter rate is much higher than the rest, and in a way it's a bit boring if you've decided to bring some powerful members every step of the way. I think the reason I put it here as a terrible dungeon is, after the memorable event and battle inside, there's still treasure past the bridge where the event occurred. The Thunder Rune and Mother Earth Rune are rare but amazing runes here, but having to automatically leave after the event occurs, plus going through a monster-heavy dungeon all to get the rest of the treasures. It's tedious for a completionist like myself. Luckily the cockatrice enemies in this dungeon can actually drop additional Thunder Runes, and I was actually very lucky to get another one while going through here.
Honorable mention goes to L'Renouille Castle, an obvious ending fatigue dungeon which likes to give fixed soldier encounters.
Neclord's Castle - Suikoden
Again, the problem with this one is that it's long, packed with plenty of strong enemies, and while worth it in the end for an iconic battle against Neclord I again must go back through this blasted castle to get the optional stuff. It's more rewarding though, mostly because you can recruit Pesmerga as well as find a hidden Rage Rune. But still, there's so much to go through just for backtracking purposes, and an Escape Talisman doesn't work here either.
Honorable mention goes to Moravia Castle, which has a large bit of backtracking and tough enemies . The good news here is that there's no boss to fight in this one, but I still need to return to get...a useless recruit.
Darm Tower - Ys.
And now for our non-Playstation RPG, Ys. at least for the Famicom release barely had a helpful guide, and the confusing Darm Tower only caused me to be more frustrated than I would have wanted. My guide just kept telling me to go to some place that I know I couldn't reach yet for whatever reason. Add to that the enemy types which are still progressively tough, even when at the max level and absolute best equipment, and can still kick your ass, and there's just loads of frustration to do. A number of mini-quests here don't have a lot of hints to them. Lost all the silver equipment? You need them back, as Dark Fact ends up being impossible to kill unless the full set is equipped, and making it worse is that there's better equipment found in the dungeon, sometimes earlier than the silver equipment. What about that seemingly useless Evil Ring that kills you if you put it on? Need it for one small room in the tower. Then there's the mirror maze. Perhaps what really sucked was having to go back to Luta just to get the Blue Amulet, another instance of having no hints whatsoever. I'm so glad that despite it's difficulty, this game is short enough, but it's so rough and confusing that I don't want to touch it again.
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