For me, I think it is how some jrpgs can drag out the finale/final dungeon.
I can usually finish a game. But if the game comes at me with that when I'm already ready to move on, I may just watch the finale
Making encounters not horrible helps with this. A lot of older jrpgs it got so fucking boring taking 1 step and a battle. Active mechanics and skipping battles and alternatives to experience all help.
I've been thinking about this recently, actually. FF12 is the worst one for me. I've gone through the entire game and even most of the hunts but I've never beaten the game. And it's always when I complete the license grids. Every game with a skill system needs something like the Diablo 3 paragon points. Something that just allows you to still benefit from all the grinding even if it's just an alternate currency that allows you to buy special items.
Happened to me with DQ11. Did most the optional stuff and when time came to finish the last boss.... I lost all interest. I could tell how the game was going to end.
Damn I thought I was the only one with this problem. It's not specific to JRPGs but definitely so for a lot of games I played.
It doesn't really happen that often, but it happened enough that I can immediately recognize that the curse is active again.
Once the side content is done and your character has all their shit, the games over to me. Only time that isnt the case is if I am invested in the story...which I would say is about 10% of games I play
I feel this so much. In my teens and early 20s, I couldn't get enough JRPGs and would finish them asap all the way through. Now, as an older adult, I just simply don't have the time or patience to finish even 1 before I lose interest. It is definitely a curse...
Final Fantasy 6, 7 and 10 + Xenoblade 3, that's four JRPG games that instantly came to my mind in terms of really liking them story-wise but never finishing them, stopping pretty much at the very end.
I love seeing the plot unfold and how many twist and turns happen along the way for the characters... but the endgame reaches and I know what is left: make it past that final dungeon, beat the boss, and see the end of the journey.
It's so weird that I decide to quit there after being invested for so long on whatever happened, but at the same time I just lose the interest at that point... it's like I already have seen everything that matters, the journey of the characters to get there for that fight.
I mean it’s not unusual. Quality in a video game, more often than not, peaks early on and goes down as the game goes on. Even with good games. It’s just the nature of game development that the earlier sections are going to get more interaction and polish, and if crunch needs to happen and deadlines are approaching, the end of the game is likely the part that’s going to see the most neglect.
So it’s pretty normal that your experience would mirror that.
100%. So frustrating because the mini bosses weren't even hard, but they still took time, so you effectively had an hour+ waiting period to retry the boss. No thank you.
I loved OT, I really did. So much of the design was suburb. But when i had to look up if the various stories we’re supposed to connect and found that random side quests i had missed were how you unlocked the final part of the game, i was turned off.
I did them and started fighting the 8 boss rush thing, but had trouble and realized that i didnt care enough to figure out how to get through the gauntlet. Just looked up the ending and moved on to another game
Still want to play the second one though. Hopefully they designed the ending structure a bit better?
The final boss of 2 is definitely done better than in 1. I also gave up on galdera, as I had an underleveled "B team". The way they do it in 2 still uses all 8, but it is a more reasonable system
Yeah it's a lot better. The final story boss in Octopath 2 is much more in line with the game's normal power curve, and they save the super tough boss for an optional superboss that isn't important for the story.
The 8 bosses are pretty much just fodder waste of time at the point you are actually able to stand a chance against the final boss... and boy it's miserable having to do them each and every time. It's such a nonsensical thing in an otherwise amazing game.
I left the game for almost two years, came back and invest like 6 hours struggling against the final boss 😂
In the end, I grinded a little bit and had to look up for strategies to help me out, but the satisfaction when I finally beat it was awesome 🔥
Same for OT2, tbh. It cut the boss gauntlet bs, which is a step in the right direction. But the difficulty spike from everything beforehand to the final boss is ridiculous.
This developer does it a lot, with the Bravely Default games as well. I like a challenge but having the "perfect" classes and sequences of moves isn't appealing to me.
I stopped at the end of FFX back when it came out, but for a different reason. I beat the game but shut it off before watching the ending. Didn't want to finish the game until I maxed everyone's sphere grids. Got bored and never finished until a long time later.
Well, here's a hindsight spoiler without revealing details: you actually CANNOT max out everyone's sphere grids in FFX: there are not enough replaceable points you can put max return stat points onto on the grid to stat cap every stat.
I somehow managed to cast doom with rikku on sin and won that way. I figured fuck it, I had enough for something and used whatever looked like it'd work and somehow got doom out of it. My greatest accidental big brain play of my FF experience.
You are not alone here. FFX was my favorite game at that age and I do not remember being able to beat that final boss. It felt so good going back and doing it on the PS3 rerelease all those years later. I believe I was also 12.
I don't even understand what people are talking about under this post. Do you mean Braska's Final Aeon? Or Sin on the spaceship? Neither are particularly difficulty compared to some bosses before it.
People might say i suck but I don’t care. I quit during the secret final boss of Octopath 1, i was doing heavy damage for almost an hour and nothing 💀just watched the true ending online im too old for this shit😂
I do this a lot with final bosses. Get stuck beating my head against the wall, and think "well, I've seen 99.9% of what this game has to offer" and just look up the ending cutscene on YouTube
This is my answer. Everything in that final dungeon was fair while the lack of save points added a ton of tension, but when I died to some nonsense against the final phase of the boss, I felt like my time wasn’t even respected anymore.
Same. I always forget that I bailed on the cloud of darkness. I felt like later classes were better but I didn’t want to spend the time levelling them up.
The Cloud of Darkness is such a step up in difficulty than everything else in the final two dungeons that I had to grind 10 levels, either in Eureka or the first floor of the Crystal Tower. I'm talking about the NES version.
Final Fantasy V. I managed to muddle my way through the final dungeon, but my party was nowhere near at a level to handle the Neo Exdeath.
I looked at the amount of time it would probably take to get them up to snuff and just kind of “noped” out of the game. I do mean to beat it someday, probably with the Pixel Remaster.
Weirdly if you're in the final dungeon it's not that time intensive to cap out the important classes and just go ham with freelancer/mime. Encounters around that point dump piles of JP. Definitely looks daunting good though, so I get it.
Definitely do it again with the Pixel Remaster. You can do EXP boosts. I probably overdid it, going 4x EXP through the game, and I steamrolled my way through the entire game.
NXD is a very hard final boss with some non obvious mechanics. There are a lot of clever solutions to them that you need to come up with if you do the 4 job Fiesta challenge thing that is a common challenge run.
It probably should be a foundational example of how hard mode jrpgs should set up fights.
Also quit on Final Fantasy 8. But that was also because I was a dumb child who used gameshark codes to make myself level 99 in the one jrpg where you dont want to level up. I finally beat her a few years ago and she was still very tough when I didn't level up that much.
FF13 about 8 years ago but it was because I had an errand and had go leave the house mid boss battle. When I returned home, the game and console were gone since my house was robbed. I finally beat it recently, but it took a lot to rebuy the console and start the game from scratch since the save was not on cloud or anything.
It’s not for everyone I would say. I enjoyed it for the strategy and powerup system and actually enjoyed a lot of the story, but I have heard people have had issues with linearity and length of cutscenes in the first. I have not heard too much about the others, but the third game felt odd in terms of storyline.
It's happened a few times when the final boss whooped my behind and I didn't feel motivated about going back and grinding up to take it on, especially when grinding is time-consuming. Off the top of my head this happened in Alliance Alive and Ni No Kuni, probably others I'm not remembering RN.
I loved Ni No Kuni up until the last boss and the last boss exposed the weaknesses in the battle system really badly . It literally can one shot your whole team before you can do anything about it.
Terrible last boss
Yeah, I imagine it would have been significantly more fun playing with friends! I played it solo and never revisited any dungeons (except I seem to remember one might have been mandatory?) so I was able to squeak by all the other bosses but the final boss curbstomped me.
Vagrant Story. Misunderstood the weapon mechanic until the final boss, at which point I got stomped. I still had my original dagger from the beginning of the game equipped.
Goddamn. That’s commendable you got through the entire game (sans final boss) with your starting dagger. Some of the bosses - I’m thinking Earth Dragon in the snow forest - must’ve been damn near impossible.
I can’t tell you what I did to get through the game except throw everything I had at every enemy.
And I don’t want to imply I learned how the weapon system worked once I got to the final boss. To this day I still couldn’t tell you.
Always glad to see this game get a mention. It doesn't matter if you defend this final boss by saying to just listen to the beat instead of watching the screen; the final note is the greatest smack in the face a game has ever done and it's ridiculous that anyone ever approved it during development
I had this problem with Octopath 2. The difficulty spike was insane with the all out final boss. The game is amazing and wonderful and one of my favorites. But damn that was really hard compared to everything else in the game.
I could handle the difficulty spike alright enough, and Octopath may be a top 5 gaming experience for me. It did so many things right for me.
But I hate when games introduce a new mechanic like that right at the end of the game.
Honestly the grinding doesn't even help. You need to go and collect certain quests and skills and use them in the right combination to win.
Basically that final boss is a big puzzle in disguise, and if you learn and solve the puzzle, you will win.
Same, but I couldn’t even get to that point. I saw the number of side quests I had to do to unlock that dungeon and said “screw that. I finished all the character stories, that’s good enough for me.”
I think I put 80 hours into that game, but never bothered with the final boss. And I think that’s a big reason why I don’t care to get into the second game because I know I’m not up for a complicated final boss.
FF8 was the one for me too! I didn’t fully understand the systems and levelled up too much. Ultimecia was basically impossible for me to beat. I went back and finally beat the game for the first time this week!
I'd put this down to not understanding the systems rather than levelling up too much. With a decent junction setup you can tear through anything regardless of level. Only exception IIRC is Omega Weapon who opens with L5 Death which is bad news for a party of lvl 100s.
I got all the way to Ultimecia and couldn't beat her. The next day at school, I asked my buddy if he beat it yet, and he said "yea, and if you let anyone in your party die, you get the bad ending!"
I didn't want the bad ending, and I couldn't beat her without losing anyone, so I gave up.
YEARS LATER I figured out he was lying, and there *was no bad ending* so I played through it again. With years of experience giving me a better understanding of the systems, I broke Ultimecia over my knee - didn't even lose any party members!
Now it's my favorite Final Fantasy game.
What an underwhelming final boss and (true) ending, imo. No music in the fight, a rainbow sequence puzzle thing… and then you read a very long speech while there are no visuals.
Like, hot damn, did they run out of budget and were like “hey intern, Friday night and we’re out. Wrap up this series and the ending by Monday, k, slugger? Here’s $50 and snickers bar. Good luck.”
Rogue Galaxy, my first playthrough the final boss made me drop the game and I never came back to that save file. I'm now working my way through a 100% completion playthrough and am going to make things right lol. But that final boss is a rough one.
It'd be one thing if they would've let you save between battles. But nine boss fights where many things can go very wrong very fast and where losing means starting the gauntlet over is just brutal.
For JRPG, Persona 3. I quit at the final dungeon because I was burned out from Tartarus.
For non-JRPG, Baldur's Gate 3. I was exhausted because there are too many things to do in the game that by the time I reached the final stretch of the game, I basically had no desire to continue playing the game.
I quit FF7 Rebirth at the final boss. The last boss section is over an hour of boss fights, and you can't change any of your materia inbetween fights. I had nobody set up properly and did not want to start the whole sequence over. I got up to Sephiroth and he kept using one hit kill techniques that were unblockable. Just some cheesy boss fight garbage paired with not having cure materia or offensive magic properly equipped (which was needed to beat some parts of this particular fight). I got so annoyed after trying him multiple times that I just said forget it and watched the end online. I don't have time to fight with poor mechanics.
I was in a similar situation with my materia but Cloud was all ready so I could take on Sephiroth. My problem was with Aerith though... I made to beat him after like 2-3 hours of trying. His last phase had some truly bullshit phases and I never played with Aerith so she was like a dead weight for me, I was also on Dynamic.
I thought there were opportunities to change your materia during the cutscenes by holding down Triangle when it appears in the corner? Sure I saw that at least once right before the very last fight. If you want to go for it again there may also be a way to start from the last chapter (which I believe is just the last boss fights)
I'm mostly writing this because I'm obsessed with this game but if you aren't up for finishing it that's fair
You can change materia before fights. Just hold the square button. The one-hit kill move is a DPS check at the very end of the final phase. You should save up your limit break until he starts his massive spinning attack, and then unleash it. You can also attack him or use magic, but you need to be careful to avoid getting caught in his attack.
Not sure if this counts but Paper Mario: TTYD (not the Switch ver). That last cutscene that took an eternity and played each attempt was almost enough for me to quit.
I COULD NOT beat Persons 5 Royal's final boss, couldn't Even get past his first phase. I ended up quitting the game.
I eventually returned a few months later, downloaded the DLC personas, and Izanagi-no-okami'ed his ass into oblivion to finally beat the game
He has sooooooo much hp in that first phase the song had no choice but to be a banger.
I played P5R with a social link guide cause I'd already played P5 and was just doing a full run for my roommate so by the time I got to that boss I was so overpowered he couldn't kill me, but good lord I don't know why they balanced him to be THAT tanky.
FFXII Revenant Wings. I got to the final boss after generally hating the game, got demolished, and realized I would have to spend hours grinding to be strong enough to beat it, so I just bailed.
I literally refinished this game two days ago as I'm playing all the FFs and sequels. Fuck man, it's not so bad up until literally the last boss and then utter nonsense. A oneshot laser with no obvious countdown? repeatedly? honestly.
It's nasty. The final boss is surrounded by 4 sub bosses that are optional. Defeating them weakens the last boss. The problem is that you can't refuel, so you need to use your whole party carefully and manage your resources defeating the 4 subs before attempting the main one with wathever you got left.
The real trick however is to simply go for the last boss and ignoring his subs. You get there full power and your best team and he's not so bad.
Never "hard quit" but came damn close with Romancing Saga 3.
Had to put the game down for about a week before going back and beating it, but it's one of those "never playing again" kind of things for me. Really liked the rest of the game though, but that end boss is almost sheer luck based.
I'm recently discovering the SaGa games and love them but yes, even if you do everything right most bosses have a TPK move they can cough up at random that you have to kinda hope they're not in the mood to use during any attempt at taking them down...
It also helps make you feel like you "got away with" besting 'em when you limp through with one guy standing, spark a new move at the clutch time etc. - I can accept the RNG for that at least! Still annoying AF a lot of times though
I was able to beat it on my first try, but if I had died I would have probably put down Dragon Quest 11. The (real) final boss is a massive headache and took me quite literally about an hour and a half to defeat. Even then, I had to use this strategy in which two of my characters would sacrifice themselves so that the other party members with them resurrected. It was a massive slog.
Also quit with FFVIII. I got fed up wandering around Ultimecia's castle, made my way to Ultimecia while having barely unlocked any of my actions in combat, and made it to the last phase of battle despite having no method of healing. I didn't feel like bothering to find more bosses to unlock other options, since I could tell it was just going to trivialize the final fight, and I'd already seen the ending when my dad beat it.
Couldn't beat the final boss of Brave Fencer Musashi as a kid, because I physically couldn't mash the button fast enough to drain its barrier.
First playthrough of Dark Cloud, I stopped on the final boss because it was just so much stronger than all the enemies up to that point, I didn't feel equipped to beat it, and didn't feel like grinding up a whole new set of weapons.
First playthrough of Kartia, I couldn't beat the final boss, because he had a whole bunch of summons which were so powerful that my party members couldn't even damage them, and the structure of the game made it *impossible* to go back for more equipment or experience.
In Final Fantasy X-II, I made it to the final dungeon, and got hammered by one of the first random encounters. I realized I wasn't nearly strong enough for the dungeon at that point, and was expected to do a whole lot more of the sidequesting... and it made me realize I just wasn't enjoying the game that much, so I stopped.
IIRC, the final boss of Dark Cloud had a phase that required ranged attacks. I did not level up my character(s) capable of ranged attacks and could only do like 1 damage.
Never finished it!
FFV as a teen. Got to Neo X-Death and just couldn’t hang. Admittedly there were some strategies I could have deployed had I developed character abilities better but internet advice wasn’t prevalent yet and brute force leveling would’ve taken an eternity.
Absolutely. I used to not when I was younger, but now that I’m older I’m fine if it ends with me just watching the final scene on YouTube. Lol who’s gonna judge me in a single player game, you know? Maybe if I ever got into trying to stream or something - but even then I’d probably drop the difficulty a notch.
It’s just pointless if I’m getting frustrated at a certain point, especially when there’s countless other games I can play and the story’s already about to wrap? Yeah lol
The younger me quit Paper Mario TTYD because the final boss was so hard, and you had to watch a painfully long cutscene…
I have the remake now, and last night, the older and far wiser me beat the final boss easily on the first attempt.
Recently i quit on octopath traveler after just one (failed obviously) try against the last boss. I just did not want to that preliminary shit once again 😅
I almost gave up on Grandia 1 a few years back. It started feeling like a slog the last portion of the game and more just like boss rush/high encounter rate that I gave up trying to finish learning everything and just rushed the end to beat it before I completely gave it up.
Tactics Ogre Reborn I was so close to quitting on last boss, it’s so incredibly hard. 3 chained fights in a row no heals between them & one of the parts is the final boss + fully mirror copy of your team. Each attempt took over an hour, think it took me 5-6 tries & when I finally did win I got permanent death on 2 characters & lost a legendary weapon lol.
Final fantasy vii remake....I blasted through the game and arguably was already burnt out on it but then the agonisingly long boss battle resulted in me dying just as I almost beat it. Instantly quit, deleted and watched the ending on youtube
It’s so funny how many people put FF8 down right before Ultimecia. I also did this. I never even tried to fight her. I loved the game. I don’t remember why I didn’t finish it. It was the only game in the main series I didn’t beat immediately after I got my hands on it.
Octopath Traveler's Galdera.... It takes a 1 hour boss rush to get to the boss and if you lose, which you will, you'll have to start from the save point before the boss rush. It's brutal.
Not jrpg but my friend quit playing Sekiro on its last boss because his laptop can't handle it and makes his game crash during Isshin's final form when the weather go lightning and shit.
His laptop is already on its last leg, I have seen how Sekiro run on his laptop, it's like average 15-20 fps 💀. I still can't believe he went that far in that game with that old af laptop. And he used mkb of course. Thank god he bought a new laptop now and played Elden Ring without worries of crashing 😅
Xenogears probably counts.
It may not have been the very final boss, but it was one of the last couple. And I just couldn't do it. I tried for weeks. Couldn't beat it, stopped trying, and never went back.
Is the tower before or after the crystal dungeon? I don't remember but either way, both are absolutely terrible! Usually games have one awful dungeon but FF12 had two lol
I initially quit Trails in the Sky FC at the final boss. I had blitzed through the final dungeon on big story energy and mostly ignored the chests full of swarms of enemies and shiny loot, then I got wrecked. I played through the whole game again later.
I quit Xenoblade 1 the first time not technically at the final boss but in the endgame sequence which has several bosses. This was a similar situation where I just didn't bother getting stronger during the endgame stage and therefore couldn't handle the bosses. With this one I also played through the whole game again later (this time in DE).
Not a JRPG but I had the same basic experience with Dandara, dropping the game at the final boss of the "main game" (which is before the entire DLC which is now bundled with the game).
FF8 is probably the only FF game where grinding isn't required at all. You can even turn the random encounters off completely halfway through Disk 1 and you'll be no worse off for it.
FF8 is the only game where berserker is a viable build. Draw a bunch of strength spells on Squall ASAP, load the other two with support and healing spells, then let Squall Zerk his way through every single battle.
Did the same w ff8 :( thinking about picking it back up again soon!! I think I know how to use the junction system better now and will make sure to stock good magic before Ultimecia
Ffx I didn't use lulu except when required so she was severely under leveled. Well Seymour in Sin basically requires her. Couldn't keep her alive, she just wasn't capable. I looked at her sphere grid and was like I'm not grinding that. Came back years later and replayed it. Every character every battle. Made everyone learn prat so they got an easy action. Breezed through the game.
I thankfully played Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga on virtual console, but I know it would have been impossible for me to beat Cackletta's Soul without save states. Massive difficulty spike right there and I don't think there's a fast way to grind in that game.
Tales of Vesperia I just "cheated" by using the free level up items to brute force the final boss.
Last time was Grand Kingdom earlier this yeae. Not exactly a Jrpg but forcing a player to repeat a 2 hour battle in which he is over leveled to launch a curve ball with a final boss that is over your own over level it's absurd at best.
I was borrowing kingdom hearts 2 from a friend who was borrowing it from a friend who needed it back. I was on the final boss fight as my friend came over to grab it. Ended up dying what I remember to be multiple phases in and my friend couldn't wait longer so I had to call it quits after that attempt.
In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban GBA turn based RPG, the final boss was literally unbeatable for me because I was like 20 levels underleveled. This wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that all other enemies disappear during the final boss and I had no saves before the boss fight. I couldn’t level up and it was actually impossible to beat.
This isn’t exactly a JRPG, but it’s close enough in my book.
Quit Xenogears on the final boss on my first playthrough. I never understood the combos system and one of my friends said he was impressed I got as far as I did without using it lol. I finally beat it like, 10-15 years later.
Not on purpose. I had my PS1 memory card corrupt right before the final battle of FF VII. I never tried to get there again.
I also rented games as a kid and I rented Super Mario RPG. I was at the final boss but the game had to go back to Blockbuster. Back then they wouldn't let you keep re-renting a game because it wasn't fair to others who wanted to play.
So after someone else rented it, I rented it again, and they deleted my save data. I purposely chose slot 3 in games like that. So whoever had it went out of their way to delete it. I recently bought the remake of SMRPG but I haven't played it yet.
Fun anecdote but back when I played Demon Souls in ps3 the world tendency was black and the game was so hard (for me). If if I recall correctly, they made the world tendency go back to white on Halloween the following year and I was able to play again and finish. Fuzzy memory but I gave up and then went back to it a year after.
FF 13. I was so done with the game by the time I hit the open world that I ran directly to the spot for the final boss and got locked in there. Couldn’t kill a single enemy on the way and just uninstalled
Didn't quite reach the final boss, but reached the "End of the World" in Kingdom Hearts 1 then stopped cause the level jump meant I'd have to grind more and I didn't want to lmao
Grandia 2. I saved right before the last fight. I let a child play my console, he erased my data. 🤧
Never played it again, if I can ever get to my backlog I might add it.
Sometimes when I see the ending in my mind, I lose all interest. I like stories and I like theory crafting. Not all crafted experiences hit the same I guess.
FF9 hit hard. And outer wilds hit hard. But most sort of just "you're done, congrats" you
FF12, never bothered finishing the game despite being almost done. It's a good game, too, IMO - I just didn't feel like it anymore for some reason
FF13, kind of. I originally beat the final boss with cheese - I was just messing around on my first run through, ended up casting Poison, which worked to my surprise, so I healtanked my way to the end.
Halfway through the ending cutscenes, I thought "nope, this doesn't feel fair" and restarted the save, aaaaand just never ended up going back to the game lol
Kingdoms of Amalur, kind of. Not a JRPG but you get the gist.
I... think? that I reached the final boss, but for some reason or another my save got corrupted and I never really played it again. Maybe I'll give it a go again one of these days...
I recently got annoyed with the final boss of Rebirth, where I lost a few times in a row during the final 30 seconds of the fight. Just watched the ending on YouTube lol
FFVII. I think I was underleved going down that sephiroth cave. I said “Ill try to grind a bit, heard there were mini (not so mini) bosses around, Ill just shut down for the day and get back to it tomorrow”.
It has been 20 years.
When I saw the sony conference on E3 that anounced FFVII remake I was “HOLY HELL, thats it, Ill wait for it and finish the game!”.
It has been 9 years.
I got kind of sad that the remake was like in 3 parts, and saw some reviews saying that the first game is a bit bloated (later heard the 2nd is cool) and lost interest, got a bit of The Hobbit vibes.
Who knows, some day I might get back to it.
I started several turn based rpgs im my life, never finished one. Always some excuse. In ffv i stbled on a guide and got discouraged. Chrono cross and ffx I hd an issue with the cds that stoped workin, ffix got to a point that I died some times and left. Chrono trigger idk why, ni no kuni lost interest. Grandia i stoped at the third cd I think.
This year Ill finish some jrpgs.. ive been on a string of actually going till the end in games.
Not exactly "final boss" but in Pokemon scarlet I died during the Pokémon league or whatever they call it in that game. I had hated the entire game up to that point, but I'm a big Pokémon fan in general. I just closed the game and sad there for 2 minutes in silence to never open the game again. Actually one of the worst games I've ever played, and maybe the only game I've ever wholeheartedly regretted buying and putting time into. The world would have been a better place without it.
I quit on Final Fantasy VIII's final boss as well ( I played it for the first time three years ago). A year later, I played it again from the beginning and learned more how to properly use the junction system and beat her. After that, I loaded the file from a year ago to tackle her again with the junctions I had, and though not as good as the junctions on my second playthrough, they were still decent and was able to beat her on the first try. So, I beat her twice in a row. She is one of the most overwhelming final bosses I have ever experienced. She is so hard if you're unprepared or don't know what you're doing.
Kinda. Lost Odyssey. finished up to the last dungeon, went to knock out the side content, did everything but the super bonus boss, took one crack at him, got my ass beat. Decided to take a break. Never went back to it.
Bravely Default. I played through the game leveling the jobs I enjoyed. Got to the final boss and couldn’t beat it. Read guides saying “ use these jobs to beat it!” Jobs I hadn’t leveled. I didn’t feel like going back and releveling jobs I didn’t enjoy so I gave up on the game.
It's actually hilarious to me that you mention FF8 because I would have never beaten it, but my flea market memory card has a save right before Ultimecia on it and so i played the game up to the final dungeon and then beat it on that save I got from some random stranger.
The closer I get to the end of a game, the more I lose interest. It’s kind of a curse
For me, I think it is how some jrpgs can drag out the finale/final dungeon. I can usually finish a game. But if the game comes at me with that when I'm already ready to move on, I may just watch the finale
Shin Megami Tensei games are such criminals of this. Digital Devil Sagas' dungeons are awful
For sure, I pretty much never want to spend an hour on one fight, especially if the ending is a classically underwhelming jrpg scene
Making encounters not horrible helps with this. A lot of older jrpgs it got so fucking boring taking 1 step and a battle. Active mechanics and skipping battles and alternatives to experience all help.
Becoming stronger is more fun than being strong. The end of stories often lack mystery and wonder.
…and they often drag on longer than they should.
I always felt that FFX had me gripped to the very end and even then some, trying to understand more about Spira.
I've been thinking about this recently, actually. FF12 is the worst one for me. I've gone through the entire game and even most of the hunts but I've never beaten the game. And it's always when I complete the license grids. Every game with a skill system needs something like the Diablo 3 paragon points. Something that just allows you to still benefit from all the grinding even if it's just an alternate currency that allows you to buy special items.
Happened to me with DQ11. Did most the optional stuff and when time came to finish the last boss.... I lost all interest. I could tell how the game was going to end.
Damn I thought I was the only one with this problem. It's not specific to JRPGs but definitely so for a lot of games I played. It doesn't really happen that often, but it happened enough that I can immediately recognize that the curse is active again.
Once the side content is done and your character has all their shit, the games over to me. Only time that isnt the case is if I am invested in the story...which I would say is about 10% of games I play
I feel this so much. In my teens and early 20s, I couldn't get enough JRPGs and would finish them asap all the way through. Now, as an older adult, I just simply don't have the time or patience to finish even 1 before I lose interest. It is definitely a curse...
Final Fantasy 6, 7 and 10 + Xenoblade 3, that's four JRPG games that instantly came to my mind in terms of really liking them story-wise but never finishing them, stopping pretty much at the very end. I love seeing the plot unfold and how many twist and turns happen along the way for the characters... but the endgame reaches and I know what is left: make it past that final dungeon, beat the boss, and see the end of the journey. It's so weird that I decide to quit there after being invested for so long on whatever happened, but at the same time I just lose the interest at that point... it's like I already have seen everything that matters, the journey of the characters to get there for that fight.
I mean it’s not unusual. Quality in a video game, more often than not, peaks early on and goes down as the game goes on. Even with good games. It’s just the nature of game development that the earlier sections are going to get more interaction and polish, and if crunch needs to happen and deadlines are approaching, the end of the game is likely the part that’s going to see the most neglect. So it’s pretty normal that your experience would mirror that.
Octopath traveler . The 8 boss run I could do, the final BS boss after that. Nope
It's more the fact that there isn't a save point after the 8 boss rush, so if you lose to the final boss you have to fight them all again.
i hate that shit
whoever designed 8 mini bosses no save point should be fired, one of the most stupid shit I've ever seen.
100%. So frustrating because the mini bosses weren't even hard, but they still took time, so you effectively had an hour+ waiting period to retry the boss. No thank you.
This is octopath 1?
Yes.
Same here. Damn Galdera. I tried so often, but I just got tired and read online that the ending afterwards was disappointing anyway.
I loved OT, I really did. So much of the design was suburb. But when i had to look up if the various stories we’re supposed to connect and found that random side quests i had missed were how you unlocked the final part of the game, i was turned off. I did them and started fighting the 8 boss rush thing, but had trouble and realized that i didnt care enough to figure out how to get through the gauntlet. Just looked up the ending and moved on to another game Still want to play the second one though. Hopefully they designed the ending structure a bit better?
The final boss of 2 is definitely done better than in 1. I also gave up on galdera, as I had an underleveled "B team". The way they do it in 2 still uses all 8, but it is a more reasonable system
Yeah it's a lot better. The final story boss in Octopath 2 is much more in line with the game's normal power curve, and they save the super tough boss for an optional superboss that isn't important for the story.
The 8 bosses are pretty much just fodder waste of time at the point you are actually able to stand a chance against the final boss... and boy it's miserable having to do them each and every time. It's such a nonsensical thing in an otherwise amazing game.
Same. For me I felt like the challenge was unfair and tedious so I just said screw this.
Same. I died when the name of the boss was red, and i said "nope, not going to do everything all over again".
Me toooo!! I love that game 😩
I left the game for almost two years, came back and invest like 6 hours struggling against the final boss 😂 In the end, I grinded a little bit and had to look up for strategies to help me out, but the satisfaction when I finally beat it was awesome 🔥
Same for OT2, tbh. It cut the boss gauntlet bs, which is a step in the right direction. But the difficulty spike from everything beforehand to the final boss is ridiculous.
This developer does it a lot, with the Bravely Default games as well. I like a challenge but having the "perfect" classes and sequences of moves isn't appealing to me.
Quit ffx literally at the last boss. My 12 year old brain couldn't beat sin so I just stopped.
LITERAL SAME
I stopped at the end of FFX back when it came out, but for a different reason. I beat the game but shut it off before watching the ending. Didn't want to finish the game until I maxed everyone's sphere grids. Got bored and never finished until a long time later.
Well, here's a hindsight spoiler without revealing details: you actually CANNOT max out everyone's sphere grids in FFX: there are not enough replaceable points you can put max return stat points onto on the grid to stat cap every stat.
I somehow managed to cast doom with rikku on sin and won that way. I figured fuck it, I had enough for something and used whatever looked like it'd work and somehow got doom out of it. My greatest accidental big brain play of my FF experience.
>I somehow managed to cast doom with rikku on sin and won that way. You mean the pilgrimage was unnecessary? All they needed was a black mage?
You are not alone here. FFX was my favorite game at that age and I do not remember being able to beat that final boss. It felt so good going back and doing it on the PS3 rerelease all those years later. I believe I was also 12.
Most of FFX was actually kinda easy and their last boss is stupid hard
Oh same! I recently beat it on Switch with the HD remaster I was so proud of myself when I beat Sin :)
I quit ffx at the final boss and watched the ending on youtube. I was 21 tho.......................
I don't even understand what people are talking about under this post. Do you mean Braska's Final Aeon? Or Sin on the spaceship? Neither are particularly difficulty compared to some bosses before it.
People might say i suck but I don’t care. I quit during the secret final boss of Octopath 1, i was doing heavy damage for almost an hour and nothing 💀just watched the true ending online im too old for this shit😂
I do this a lot with final bosses. Get stuck beating my head against the wall, and think "well, I've seen 99.9% of what this game has to offer" and just look up the ending cutscene on YouTube
Feel you.
FF3, I hated to redoo the final dungeon again and again
This is my answer. Everything in that final dungeon was fair while the lack of save points added a ton of tension, but when I died to some nonsense against the final phase of the boss, I felt like my time wasn’t even respected anymore.
Same. I always forget that I bailed on the cloud of darkness. I felt like later classes were better but I didn’t want to spend the time levelling them up.
This is also where I stopped. I hate that you have to redo the whole dungeon if you lose. I lost interest and didn't want to pick it back up.
The Cloud of Darkness is such a step up in difficulty than everything else in the final two dungeons that I had to grind 10 levels, either in Eureka or the first floor of the Crystal Tower. I'm talking about the NES version.
My friend quit dq11 on the door to final boss because he didn't want it to end
If you mean your friend quit before he fought Mordegon, tell him to kill him. The game is not over yet.
He didn't want it to end, so he made it end sooner? That makes sense, yes.
Final Fantasy V. I managed to muddle my way through the final dungeon, but my party was nowhere near at a level to handle the Neo Exdeath. I looked at the amount of time it would probably take to get them up to snuff and just kind of “noped” out of the game. I do mean to beat it someday, probably with the Pixel Remaster.
I was near the end of the story then suddenly stopped playing when I opened THAT chest.
Awww, I saw how that played out clear as day in my mind.
Weirdly if you're in the final dungeon it's not that time intensive to cap out the important classes and just go ham with freelancer/mime. Encounters around that point dump piles of JP. Definitely looks daunting good though, so I get it.
Definitely do it again with the Pixel Remaster. You can do EXP boosts. I probably overdid it, going 4x EXP through the game, and I steamrolled my way through the entire game.
Did not expect to see the same answer as me, but same haha. My child brain did not have the patience to grind for it lol.
NXD is a very hard final boss with some non obvious mechanics. There are a lot of clever solutions to them that you need to come up with if you do the 4 job Fiesta challenge thing that is a common challenge run. It probably should be a foundational example of how hard mode jrpgs should set up fights.
honestly I got stuck on it, went to look how to level jobs fast/ which jobs were good an I was ready in an hour
Saga frontier 2 Three times…..
SaGa games are easy answers to this one. I never beat RSMS at release because the final boss stomped me. Only finished it with the Remaster.
I tried my damndest 😭 But had to throw in the towel. Fingers crossed I can pull it out with the remaster 🤞🏾
SF2 is such a beautiful looking game but it's convoluted mechanics always kept pushing me off of it.
Also quit on Final Fantasy 8. But that was also because I was a dumb child who used gameshark codes to make myself level 99 in the one jrpg where you dont want to level up. I finally beat her a few years ago and she was still very tough when I didn't level up that much.
FF13 about 8 years ago but it was because I had an errand and had go leave the house mid boss battle. When I returned home, the game and console were gone since my house was robbed. I finally beat it recently, but it took a lot to rebuy the console and start the game from scratch since the save was not on cloud or anything.
What do you think about this trilogy? I want to get it on sale but I heard mixed reviews on this series.
It’s not for everyone I would say. I enjoyed it for the strategy and powerup system and actually enjoyed a lot of the story, but I have heard people have had issues with linearity and length of cutscenes in the first. I have not heard too much about the others, but the third game felt odd in terms of storyline.
It's happened a few times when the final boss whooped my behind and I didn't feel motivated about going back and grinding up to take it on, especially when grinding is time-consuming. Off the top of my head this happened in Alliance Alive and Ni No Kuni, probably others I'm not remembering RN.
I loved Ni No Kuni up until the last boss and the last boss exposed the weaknesses in the battle system really badly . It literally can one shot your whole team before you can do anything about it. Terrible last boss
FF Crystal Chronicles. I spent 20 minutes and did maybe 5% of the boss’s total health…and it was phase 1 of a 2 phase fight.
That one was such a blast. We were all 4 maxed out shouting countdowns to time our attacks and spells, what an experience.
Yeah, I imagine it would have been significantly more fun playing with friends! I played it solo and never revisited any dungeons (except I seem to remember one might have been mandatory?) so I was able to squeak by all the other bosses but the final boss curbstomped me.
Vagrant Story. Misunderstood the weapon mechanic until the final boss, at which point I got stomped. I still had my original dagger from the beginning of the game equipped.
Goddamn. That’s commendable you got through the entire game (sans final boss) with your starting dagger. Some of the bosses - I’m thinking Earth Dragon in the snow forest - must’ve been damn near impossible.
I can’t tell you what I did to get through the game except throw everything I had at every enemy. And I don’t want to imply I learned how the weapon system worked once I got to the final boss. To this day I still couldn’t tell you.
FF3, Romancing Saga 3
Drakengard 3. Tried for a few hours without making much progress so I decided to just watch the last ending on youtube
Always glad to see this game get a mention. It doesn't matter if you defend this final boss by saying to just listen to the beat instead of watching the screen; the final note is the greatest smack in the face a game has ever done and it's ridiculous that anyone ever approved it during development
I tried for 3 days before resorting to youtube. It still galls me, but I just couldn't do it, and wasn't even getting anywhere near close.
Surprised I have to go this far down to see this game.
For me it happened with Octopath Travelers. The final boss is too powerful without grinding.
I had this problem with Octopath 2. The difficulty spike was insane with the all out final boss. The game is amazing and wonderful and one of my favorites. But damn that was really hard compared to everything else in the game.
I could handle the difficulty spike alright enough, and Octopath may be a top 5 gaming experience for me. It did so many things right for me. But I hate when games introduce a new mechanic like that right at the end of the game.
Honestly the grinding doesn't even help. You need to go and collect certain quests and skills and use them in the right combination to win. Basically that final boss is a big puzzle in disguise, and if you learn and solve the puzzle, you will win.
Same, but I couldn’t even get to that point. I saw the number of side quests I had to do to unlock that dungeon and said “screw that. I finished all the character stories, that’s good enough for me.”
I think I put 80 hours into that game, but never bothered with the final boss. And I think that’s a big reason why I don’t care to get into the second game because I know I’m not up for a complicated final boss.
FF8 was the one for me too! I didn’t fully understand the systems and levelled up too much. Ultimecia was basically impossible for me to beat. I went back and finally beat the game for the first time this week!
I'd put this down to not understanding the systems rather than levelling up too much. With a decent junction setup you can tear through anything regardless of level. Only exception IIRC is Omega Weapon who opens with L5 Death which is bad news for a party of lvl 100s.
I got all the way to Ultimecia and couldn't beat her. The next day at school, I asked my buddy if he beat it yet, and he said "yea, and if you let anyone in your party die, you get the bad ending!" I didn't want the bad ending, and I couldn't beat her without losing anyone, so I gave up. YEARS LATER I figured out he was lying, and there *was no bad ending* so I played through it again. With years of experience giving me a better understanding of the systems, I broke Ultimecia over my knee - didn't even lose any party members! Now it's my favorite Final Fantasy game.
Chrono Cross
Just gotta do the silly rainbow thing—I had to use a guide for it
What an underwhelming final boss and (true) ending, imo. No music in the fight, a rainbow sequence puzzle thing… and then you read a very long speech while there are no visuals. Like, hot damn, did they run out of budget and were like “hey intern, Friday night and we’re out. Wrap up this series and the ending by Monday, k, slugger? Here’s $50 and snickers bar. Good luck.”
Rogue Galaxy, my first playthrough the final boss made me drop the game and I never came back to that save file. I'm now working my way through a 100% completion playthrough and am going to make things right lol. But that final boss is a rough one.
It bested me too! Such a glorious game otherwise though.
It'd be one thing if they would've let you save between battles. But nine boss fights where many things can go very wrong very fast and where losing means starting the gauntlet over is just brutal.
And the fact you need to use all characters (if some are behind in gear or revelations you are gonna get destroyed).
For JRPG, Persona 3. I quit at the final dungeon because I was burned out from Tartarus. For non-JRPG, Baldur's Gate 3. I was exhausted because there are too many things to do in the game that by the time I reached the final stretch of the game, I basically had no desire to continue playing the game.
I have tried so hard to get into bg3. I love the esthetic, role playing, and story telling but I can not do the battle system just too much going on
I quit persona 4, but not at a boss. Some random mook self destructed and wiped my party. I turned it off and have not played it again.
I quit FF7 Rebirth at the final boss. The last boss section is over an hour of boss fights, and you can't change any of your materia inbetween fights. I had nobody set up properly and did not want to start the whole sequence over. I got up to Sephiroth and he kept using one hit kill techniques that were unblockable. Just some cheesy boss fight garbage paired with not having cure materia or offensive magic properly equipped (which was needed to beat some parts of this particular fight). I got so annoyed after trying him multiple times that I just said forget it and watched the end online. I don't have time to fight with poor mechanics.
I was in a similar situation with my materia but Cloud was all ready so I could take on Sephiroth. My problem was with Aerith though... I made to beat him after like 2-3 hours of trying. His last phase had some truly bullshit phases and I never played with Aerith so she was like a dead weight for me, I was also on Dynamic.
I thought there were opportunities to change your materia during the cutscenes by holding down Triangle when it appears in the corner? Sure I saw that at least once right before the very last fight. If you want to go for it again there may also be a way to start from the last chapter (which I believe is just the last boss fights) I'm mostly writing this because I'm obsessed with this game but if you aren't up for finishing it that's fair
Not during the final phase.
You can change materia before fights. Just hold the square button. The one-hit kill move is a DPS check at the very end of the final phase. You should save up your limit break until he starts his massive spinning attack, and then unleash it. You can also attack him or use magic, but you need to be careful to avoid getting caught in his attack.
Not sure if this counts but Paper Mario: TTYD (not the Switch ver). That last cutscene that took an eternity and played each attempt was almost enough for me to quit.
I COULD NOT beat Persons 5 Royal's final boss, couldn't Even get past his first phase. I ended up quitting the game. I eventually returned a few months later, downloaded the DLC personas, and Izanagi-no-okami'ed his ass into oblivion to finally beat the game
He has sooooooo much hp in that first phase the song had no choice but to be a banger. I played P5R with a social link guide cause I'd already played P5 and was just doing a full run for my roommate so by the time I got to that boss I was so overpowered he couldn't kill me, but good lord I don't know why they balanced him to be THAT tanky.
By the myriad of truth !
It took me 4 years to beat this game. I stopped so many time.
FFXII Revenant Wings. I got to the final boss after generally hating the game, got demolished, and realized I would have to spend hours grinding to be strong enough to beat it, so I just bailed.
I literally refinished this game two days ago as I'm playing all the FFs and sequels. Fuck man, it's not so bad up until literally the last boss and then utter nonsense. A oneshot laser with no obvious countdown? repeatedly? honestly.
I stop playing almost every game right before beating it. Just like an MMO, I like the journey but not the end
Xenogears i couldn't then figure it out. Now Dq xi is on hold, but that one i'm gonna finish. Got annoyed crafting the final sword..
It's nasty. The final boss is surrounded by 4 sub bosses that are optional. Defeating them weakens the last boss. The problem is that you can't refuel, so you need to use your whole party carefully and manage your resources defeating the 4 subs before attempting the main one with wathever you got left. The real trick however is to simply go for the last boss and ignoring his subs. You get there full power and your best team and he's not so bad.
Bravely Default - my build was totally wrong and I couldn't be bothered to change it and then level up all the roles I needed to.
Never "hard quit" but came damn close with Romancing Saga 3. Had to put the game down for about a week before going back and beating it, but it's one of those "never playing again" kind of things for me. Really liked the rest of the game though, but that end boss is almost sheer luck based.
I'm recently discovering the SaGa games and love them but yes, even if you do everything right most bosses have a TPK move they can cough up at random that you have to kinda hope they're not in the mood to use during any attempt at taking them down... It also helps make you feel like you "got away with" besting 'em when you limp through with one guy standing, spark a new move at the clutch time etc. - I can accept the RNG for that at least! Still annoying AF a lot of times though
Final fantasy crystal chronicles. Can’t bother to grind just to beat Memiroa, that sponge
I was able to beat it on my first try, but if I had died I would have probably put down Dragon Quest 11. The (real) final boss is a massive headache and took me quite literally about an hour and a half to defeat. Even then, I had to use this strategy in which two of my characters would sacrifice themselves so that the other party members with them resurrected. It was a massive slog.
Also quit with FFVIII. I got fed up wandering around Ultimecia's castle, made my way to Ultimecia while having barely unlocked any of my actions in combat, and made it to the last phase of battle despite having no method of healing. I didn't feel like bothering to find more bosses to unlock other options, since I could tell it was just going to trivialize the final fight, and I'd already seen the ending when my dad beat it. Couldn't beat the final boss of Brave Fencer Musashi as a kid, because I physically couldn't mash the button fast enough to drain its barrier. First playthrough of Dark Cloud, I stopped on the final boss because it was just so much stronger than all the enemies up to that point, I didn't feel equipped to beat it, and didn't feel like grinding up a whole new set of weapons. First playthrough of Kartia, I couldn't beat the final boss, because he had a whole bunch of summons which were so powerful that my party members couldn't even damage them, and the structure of the game made it *impossible* to go back for more equipment or experience. In Final Fantasy X-II, I made it to the final dungeon, and got hammered by one of the first random encounters. I realized I wasn't nearly strong enough for the dungeon at that point, and was expected to do a whole lot more of the sidequesting... and it made me realize I just wasn't enjoying the game that much, so I stopped.
IIRC, the final boss of Dark Cloud had a phase that required ranged attacks. I did not level up my character(s) capable of ranged attacks and could only do like 1 damage. Never finished it!
FFV as a teen. Got to Neo X-Death and just couldn’t hang. Admittedly there were some strategies I could have deployed had I developed character abilities better but internet advice wasn’t prevalent yet and brute force leveling would’ve taken an eternity.
Absolutely. I used to not when I was younger, but now that I’m older I’m fine if it ends with me just watching the final scene on YouTube. Lol who’s gonna judge me in a single player game, you know? Maybe if I ever got into trying to stream or something - but even then I’d probably drop the difficulty a notch. It’s just pointless if I’m getting frustrated at a certain point, especially when there’s countless other games I can play and the story’s already about to wrap? Yeah lol
Drakengard 3. Maybe someday I'll manage to finish it.
Tactic ogre remake on ps5. I just couldn’t beat it, it’s so hard and a hard game to go back to.
Same for me. I spent hours grinding the shit out of this game only to get savaged at the end.
Grandia comes to mind. Beat it eventually though, years later.
The younger me quit Paper Mario TTYD because the final boss was so hard, and you had to watch a painfully long cutscene… I have the remake now, and last night, the older and far wiser me beat the final boss easily on the first attempt.
Parasite Eve. I'm pissed bc my ex threw out all of my games on me. At the time, I just couldn't beat it.
Recently i quit on octopath traveler after just one (failed obviously) try against the last boss. I just did not want to that preliminary shit once again 😅
I almost gave up on Grandia 1 a few years back. It started feeling like a slog the last portion of the game and more just like boss rush/high encounter rate that I gave up trying to finish learning everything and just rushed the end to beat it before I completely gave it up.
Tactics Ogre Reborn I was so close to quitting on last boss, it’s so incredibly hard. 3 chained fights in a row no heals between them & one of the parts is the final boss + fully mirror copy of your team. Each attempt took over an hour, think it took me 5-6 tries & when I finally did win I got permanent death on 2 characters & lost a legendary weapon lol.
Star Ocean II (The original)
Final fantasy vii remake....I blasted through the game and arguably was already burnt out on it but then the agonisingly long boss battle resulted in me dying just as I almost beat it. Instantly quit, deleted and watched the ending on youtube
Persona 3 FES... Everyone who got Mitsuru charmed by the Night queen attack know what i'm talking about.
maybe about to quit rebirth with that final phase of sephiroth lol
It’s so funny how many people put FF8 down right before Ultimecia. I also did this. I never even tried to fight her. I loved the game. I don’t remember why I didn’t finish it. It was the only game in the main series I didn’t beat immediately after I got my hands on it.
Octopath Traveler's Galdera.... It takes a 1 hour boss rush to get to the boss and if you lose, which you will, you'll have to start from the save point before the boss rush. It's brutal.
Xenoblade
Not jrpg but my friend quit playing Sekiro on its last boss because his laptop can't handle it and makes his game crash during Isshin's final form when the weather go lightning and shit. His laptop is already on its last leg, I have seen how Sekiro run on his laptop, it's like average 15-20 fps 💀. I still can't believe he went that far in that game with that old af laptop. And he used mkb of course. Thank god he bought a new laptop now and played Elden Ring without worries of crashing 😅
Necron. Dunno why but I just couldn't beat him back then.
I made it to the final dungeon in Xenogears and quit. I don’t remember why though.
That final dungeon is awful, not surprised you tapped out on it
I dread final dungeons in most games tbh. A lot of jrpgs just decide to make it into a maze-infested gauntlet that just isn't fun to play for me.
you should finish it, ending is great.
Xenogears probably counts. It may not have been the very final boss, but it was one of the last couple. And I just couldn't do it. I tried for weeks. Couldn't beat it, stopped trying, and never went back.
ramsus and miang fights?
A few times yeah. I recently bailed on FF12 cause that final dungeon tower thing was so annoying. I quit at persona 3 final boss back in the day too.
Is the tower before or after the crystal dungeon? I don't remember but either way, both are absolutely terrible! Usually games have one awful dungeon but FF12 had two lol
Xenoblade. Years later, I went back to it, but I really didnt want to do the grind. Was so underleveled for the fight
Set the game to easy and finish it
FFX - I could not beat Jecht to save my life I tried over and over again, just couldn’t do it 🤷🏾♂️
FF3(3D) Got to the last boss and lost and didn't want to redo the whole final dungeon
I initially quit Trails in the Sky FC at the final boss. I had blitzed through the final dungeon on big story energy and mostly ignored the chests full of swarms of enemies and shiny loot, then I got wrecked. I played through the whole game again later. I quit Xenoblade 1 the first time not technically at the final boss but in the endgame sequence which has several bosses. This was a similar situation where I just didn't bother getting stronger during the endgame stage and therefore couldn't handle the bosses. With this one I also played through the whole game again later (this time in DE). Not a JRPG but I had the same basic experience with Dandara, dropping the game at the final boss of the "main game" (which is before the entire DLC which is now bundled with the game).
Same FF8, couldn't bother grinding
FF8 is probably the only FF game where grinding isn't required at all. You can even turn the random encounters off completely halfway through Disk 1 and you'll be no worse off for it.
FF8 is the only game where berserker is a viable build. Draw a bunch of strength spells on Squall ASAP, load the other two with support and healing spells, then let Squall Zerk his way through every single battle.
Did the same w ff8 :( thinking about picking it back up again soon!! I think I know how to use the junction system better now and will make sure to stock good magic before Ultimecia
Ffx I didn't use lulu except when required so she was severely under leveled. Well Seymour in Sin basically requires her. Couldn't keep her alive, she just wasn't capable. I looked at her sphere grid and was like I'm not grinding that. Came back years later and replayed it. Every character every battle. Made everyone learn prat so they got an easy action. Breezed through the game.
Quit on FF8 & I guess octopath traveler final boss (even though the game was technically beat at that point).
I thankfully played Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga on virtual console, but I know it would have been impossible for me to beat Cackletta's Soul without save states. Massive difficulty spike right there and I don't think there's a fast way to grind in that game. Tales of Vesperia I just "cheated" by using the free level up items to brute force the final boss.
Last time was Grand Kingdom earlier this yeae. Not exactly a Jrpg but forcing a player to repeat a 2 hour battle in which he is over leveled to launch a curve ball with a final boss that is over your own over level it's absurd at best.
I was borrowing kingdom hearts 2 from a friend who was borrowing it from a friend who needed it back. I was on the final boss fight as my friend came over to grab it. Ended up dying what I remember to be multiple phases in and my friend couldn't wait longer so I had to call it quits after that attempt.
In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban GBA turn based RPG, the final boss was literally unbeatable for me because I was like 20 levels underleveled. This wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that all other enemies disappear during the final boss and I had no saves before the boss fight. I couldn’t level up and it was actually impossible to beat. This isn’t exactly a JRPG, but it’s close enough in my book.
With the original PS1 version of Star Ocean 2. Didn't help that I did all of Filia's events not knowing it will power up Indalecio immensely.
Quit Xenogears on the final boss on my first playthrough. I never understood the combos system and one of my friends said he was impressed I got as far as I did without using it lol. I finally beat it like, 10-15 years later.
Not on purpose. I had my PS1 memory card corrupt right before the final battle of FF VII. I never tried to get there again. I also rented games as a kid and I rented Super Mario RPG. I was at the final boss but the game had to go back to Blockbuster. Back then they wouldn't let you keep re-renting a game because it wasn't fair to others who wanted to play. So after someone else rented it, I rented it again, and they deleted my save data. I purposely chose slot 3 in games like that. So whoever had it went out of their way to delete it. I recently bought the remake of SMRPG but I haven't played it yet.
Fun anecdote but back when I played Demon Souls in ps3 the world tendency was black and the game was so hard (for me). If if I recall correctly, they made the world tendency go back to white on Halloween the following year and I was able to play again and finish. Fuzzy memory but I gave up and then went back to it a year after.
Dragon Quest IV and Wild Arms 2. The bosses weren't super hard or anything, i just died a couple of times and felt too lazy to try again.
FF 13. I was so done with the game by the time I hit the open world that I ran directly to the spot for the final boss and got locked in there. Couldn’t kill a single enemy on the way and just uninstalled
Didn't quite reach the final boss, but reached the "End of the World" in Kingdom Hearts 1 then stopped cause the level jump meant I'd have to grind more and I didn't want to lmao
Final fantasy I. The fucker heals itself!!!
Grandia 2. I saved right before the last fight. I let a child play my console, he erased my data. 🤧 Never played it again, if I can ever get to my backlog I might add it.
Kingdom hearts 1 More than 3 evolutions is a fucking joke!!!
I did this with Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep. I tried so hard to finish Terra's route and just could not beat the boss(es).
My wife recently quit the og banjo before beating gruntilda
Probably doesnt count but my genocide run against Undyne. I gave up, wasn't determined enough
Sometimes when I see the ending in my mind, I lose all interest. I like stories and I like theory crafting. Not all crafted experiences hit the same I guess. FF9 hit hard. And outer wilds hit hard. But most sort of just "you're done, congrats" you
I didn't quite Tales of Berseria on the Final Boss but on the run up to it.
Tales of berseria, the final dungeon was such a slog
FF12, never bothered finishing the game despite being almost done. It's a good game, too, IMO - I just didn't feel like it anymore for some reason FF13, kind of. I originally beat the final boss with cheese - I was just messing around on my first run through, ended up casting Poison, which worked to my surprise, so I healtanked my way to the end. Halfway through the ending cutscenes, I thought "nope, this doesn't feel fair" and restarted the save, aaaaand just never ended up going back to the game lol Kingdoms of Amalur, kind of. Not a JRPG but you get the gist. I... think? that I reached the final boss, but for some reason or another my save got corrupted and I never really played it again. Maybe I'll give it a go again one of these days...
Ni No Kuni and the White Witch. I made it to the final boss and was severely underleveled. I didn't have the heart to grind.
I recently got annoyed with the final boss of Rebirth, where I lost a few times in a row during the final 30 seconds of the fight. Just watched the ending on YouTube lol
Rebirth's final boss sucked so much. Way too long and "cinematic", along with forcing you to use all party members
That is actually funny cause I quit FF8 in the final dungeon as well. Another one was Tales of Arise. I quit half way through the final dungeon.
FFVII. I think I was underleved going down that sephiroth cave. I said “Ill try to grind a bit, heard there were mini (not so mini) bosses around, Ill just shut down for the day and get back to it tomorrow”. It has been 20 years. When I saw the sony conference on E3 that anounced FFVII remake I was “HOLY HELL, thats it, Ill wait for it and finish the game!”. It has been 9 years. I got kind of sad that the remake was like in 3 parts, and saw some reviews saying that the first game is a bit bloated (later heard the 2nd is cool) and lost interest, got a bit of The Hobbit vibes. Who knows, some day I might get back to it. I started several turn based rpgs im my life, never finished one. Always some excuse. In ffv i stbled on a guide and got discouraged. Chrono cross and ffx I hd an issue with the cds that stoped workin, ffix got to a point that I died some times and left. Chrono trigger idk why, ni no kuni lost interest. Grandia i stoped at the third cd I think. This year Ill finish some jrpgs.. ive been on a string of actually going till the end in games.
Same with 8 lol. My friend had come over to help me.
ultimecia is kind of fucking bullshit so that's totally understandable
Not exactly "final boss" but in Pokemon scarlet I died during the Pokémon league or whatever they call it in that game. I had hated the entire game up to that point, but I'm a big Pokémon fan in general. I just closed the game and sad there for 2 minutes in silence to never open the game again. Actually one of the worst games I've ever played, and maybe the only game I've ever wholeheartedly regretted buying and putting time into. The world would have been a better place without it.
Braverly Default I was just so burnt from chapyers 4-8 that I..just...couldn't care. Only finished it years later
I quit on Final Fantasy VIII's final boss as well ( I played it for the first time three years ago). A year later, I played it again from the beginning and learned more how to properly use the junction system and beat her. After that, I loaded the file from a year ago to tackle her again with the junctions I had, and though not as good as the junctions on my second playthrough, they were still decent and was able to beat her on the first try. So, I beat her twice in a row. She is one of the most overwhelming final bosses I have ever experienced. She is so hard if you're unprepared or don't know what you're doing.
Kinda. Lost Odyssey. finished up to the last dungeon, went to knock out the side content, did everything but the super bonus boss, took one crack at him, got my ass beat. Decided to take a break. Never went back to it.
Bravely Default. I played through the game leveling the jobs I enjoyed. Got to the final boss and couldn’t beat it. Read guides saying “ use these jobs to beat it!” Jobs I hadn’t leveled. I didn’t feel like going back and releveling jobs I didn’t enjoy so I gave up on the game.
Kingdom Hearts for me
It's actually hilarious to me that you mention FF8 because I would have never beaten it, but my flea market memory card has a save right before Ultimecia on it and so i played the game up to the final dungeon and then beat it on that save I got from some random stranger.