What's your biggest loss in a game? (Data wipe, save corruption, impossible boss, etc)

Nirgon · Jul 17, 2019

Couchy said:
First one was the water temple in Ocarina if Time. I took a wrong turn or missed a key, and lowered the water level. Couldnt go forward or back. Had to make a new start on that one.

Second was also from Zelda. I was at the end of Wind Waker and was just finishing all the side quests before I went to the final dungeon. My brother sold his gamecube with all the games without telling me. Only recently made a concentrated effort to beat it. Definitely worth it.

Ok I had this happen too and was ASSURED it was impossible to get stuck.

Coleslaw · Jul 17, 2019

My dad accidentally put my Vita through the wash and it broke my system and my memory card. I didnt have ps+ cloud saves enabled for it at the time.

$80 for a 32gb card...lol.

Noodleface · Jul 17, 2019

Rajaah said:
Final Fantasy Tactics - Back in 1998 I was playing this and ran into the brick wall that is Riovanes Castle, where you fight a trio of very nasty bosses in a row. The game has you fight a relatively normal battle before this (which locks you into the area) then asks if you want to save. I said yeah because up to that point I had no reason to suspect anything. My characters were underpowered because I avoided as many random fights as I could, something I did a lot of in 90's RPGs. I actually made it past the first boss due to heavy gimp-tactics with autopotion, only to be squashed by the second with no way to leave to the overworld and shop or re-strategize. That was it for the playthrough, and I lost probably around 30 hours. Even if you get past that fight there's another super-hard fight after it before you can leave. The rest of the game (it's about halfway) never reaches that difficulty again. On my second run I made sure I was completely prepared before I went to that place again. But not TOO prepared (see below).

This exact situation happened to me. What a dumb decision on their part to do that. That's when I learned about dual-saving games.

Me and a friend spent about a week doing the second boss over and over and one day by the grace of God we beat him, and beat the last boss there.

It was absurd..

Kaige · Jul 17, 2019

Final Fantasy games had a lot of that stuff if I recall. Final Fantasy Adventure for Game Boy I think locked you in the final temple with no way to return to the rest of the game. No vendors or anything, you just had to get stuff off the trash mobs between the entrance and the Final Boss.

FF6 had that problem with getting stuck in Cyan's Nightmare realm too, where you couldn't get out unless you finished it.

Siliconemelons · Jul 17, 2019

I got stuck in FFT during some place where you eventually got to a "basement fight" it may be what you all are talking about... or not... it had some EEPPIIICCC music (yet I cannot seem to find it) but it was a few fights one after another and my dudes just cant make it... I think they had a bunhc of dragoons and casters? just rapefest.

Hateyou · Jul 17, 2019

I remember this happening a lot in my years of gaming to varying amounts but the only ones that really stuck with me is Xenogears and one of the newer ninja gaidens.

Ninja gaiden I was 3/4 of the way into the game maybe and got stuck on a boss for so long I looked up what the problem was. I just could not take all the damage he was dealing long enough to kill him. Turns out I had missed a lot of life pickups and just wouldn’t be able to beat him. I sadly gave up.

Xenogears was similar, but on the final boss. I had just missed too much stuff and was underleveled, and didn’t have another save to go back to. That one still makes me sad, I never beat it, that memory card in the closet still has my game saved at the final fight.

Talenvor · Jul 17, 2019

FF3: got it for snes at release and made it all the way to some cave where a new character would glitch your game if you used her sketch skill. I didn’t know any better and used her, bugged out the game and saved my game. Thought my game was broken so exchanged it at Walmart and had to start over. Same thing happened but this time I didn’t save my game and avoided using the sketch skill the rest of the game. It was forever ago so I don’t remember how many hours I lost and had to redo but as a kid it felt like a ton (I’m guessing somewhere between 20-40 hours)

Resident evil: rented a ps1 from blockbuster with RE. Didn’t come with a memory card so if I died I had to start the game over. Made it all the way to the first hunter on a blind run then died. Didn’t play it again until I owned a PlayStation with the game (and a memory card!)

Utnayan · Jul 17, 2019

Didn't happen to me but happened to my buddy Dextor/Kaubel in EQ. After 6 months of gathering all his epic quest pieces, he was all fired up, late at night (early in the morning) and handed the quest pieces to the wrong NPC by mistake just out of sheer excitement to get the item and also being ultra tired. (Druid epic). Petitioned a GM for help - said they wouldn't do anything it was his mistake and to start the quest over.

He quit the game along with a lot of folks after that BS.

Cybsled · Jul 17, 2019

I got fucked on a FFT save also: underpowered and save point made it impossible to remedy that. I gave up on the game vs replaying it (since i was renting it)

Metalhead · Jul 17, 2019

Talenvor said:
FF3: got it for snes at release and made it all the way to some cave where a new character would glitch your game if you used her sketch skill. I didn’t know any better and used her, bugged out the game and saved my game. Thought my game was broken so exchanged it at Walmart and had to start over. Same thing happened but this time I didn’t save my game and avoided using the sketch skill the rest of the game. It was forever ago so I don’t remember how many hours I lost and had to redo but as a kid it felt like a ton (I’m guessing somewhere between 20-40 hours)

Oh man I remember that glitch. Something like using sketch on a invisible enemy or something? Anyway you could get the game to do all kinds of weird and awesome stuff. 99 of every item, General Leo could be in your party for good, invincibility, infinite mana, graphical anomalies, the works. It was a fun bug to mess around with lol.

Friday · Jul 17, 2019

FF7 - 100+ hours played was nearing the end. Fought Ruby weapons severely under powered but was able to maintain the fight with rez, potion, attack, rez potion, attack etc.

Took me like 3 days to beat ruby weapon that way on/off again in between school homework, dinner, and band practice.

Was near the end of the game, had explored everything, gotten a lot of hidden stuff on my own.

Save was corrupted. Guess I learned if you overwrite the same save file on PS1 memory cards (many many times) they can get corrupted.

Had to start all over from scratch. Young me was definitely better at that kind of loss back then cause I restarted and went back at it again.

This actually got me started on a job or something mowing lawns so I could actually buy a trustworthy memory card so it never happened again.

Lambourne · Jul 17, 2019

Lost many savegames to corrupted floppies over the years but the one that hurt the most was a text adventure I'd been writing. Spent an entire day writing it (on a C64) but because saving to tape took forever, I hadn't done so. Eventually I had written so much the C64 ran out of memory and locked up. Switching off the power supply, knowing I was wiping out all of my work by doing so, sucked really bad.

To add a happy story, earlier this year I was able to recover a Dungeon Master savegame that I had last played in 1992. It was on an Amiga 3.5" floppy that had been in the attic all those years. Was able to recover it and create a disk image so I could continue playing on an emulator, even ran the entire dungeon again with online maps to check how many secrets I'd missed.

Fifey · Jul 17, 2019

Back in high schoo, was playing Star Ocean 2 and was deep into the game, think something like 70-80 hours had a buddy over at my house and he started playing a new game, ends up overwriting my save file and I've neverplayed that game since.

Rajaah · Jul 17, 2019

Metalhead said:
I actually liked BoF 3 alright. I never made it past maybe.. 50% in BoF4. I wish they would revisit the series after all this time (that isnt a mobile game).

Bro, I'm in the same boat with that series. BoF3 was fine, BoF4 not so great. I got it around six years ago and I've been chipping away at it ever since. I'm maybe halfway through it now. About once a year I tell myself I'll get through BoF4 this time, and give it another go, and if I'm lucky I get another 3-5 hours or so of the way before I shelve it again. I love the series and for some reason I can't get into 4 at all.

Xadion said:
I got stuck in FFT during some place where you eventually got to a "basement fight" it may be what you all are talking about... or not... it had some EEPPIIICCC music (yet I cannot seem to find it) but it was a few fights one after another and my dudes just cant make it... I think they had a bunhc of dragoons and casters? just rapefest.

Those are the Lost Archives or something like that. The dragoons can attack you through the walls/bookshelves with Jump and it's just brutality.

FFT's devs saved most of the rapefest-type fights for stages like that where you can't leave once you start. For such a good game, some of their design choices are awful.

Vanessa said:
I was close to calling you out for confusing Weapons then I googled it and it was *I* whose memory of this was foggy... holy crap I would've bet $100 on the idea that your party never fought Diamond, only Ruby, Emerald and Ultima (the purple dragon-looking one). I thought Sapphire was owned in the sea by the Junon cannon and thought Diamond got a big hole blasted through it via the Midgard Cannon and that you never fought either of them (which is true for Sapphire, but yup... you're right... you DO fight Diamond).

God, I never NEVER thought I'd get a deet wrong about FF7. Dementia INC!!!

You could pretty much ask me anything about any Final Fantasy pre-2001 and I'll know the answer. Diamond Weapon is a pretty forgettable fight at least. I hope they put Sapphire Weapon back in as a secret boss or something in FF7 Remake Pt VI.

Chris · Jul 17, 2019

Vanessa said:
I was close to calling you out for confusing Weapons then I googled it and it was *I* whose memory of this was foggy... holy crap I would've bet $100 on the idea that your party never fought Diamond, only Ruby, Emerald and Ultima (the purple dragon-looking one). I thought Sapphire was owned in the sea by the Junon cannon and thought Diamond got a big hole blasted through it via the Midgard Cannon and that you never fought either of them (which is true for Sapphire, but yup... you're right... you DO fight Diamond).

God, I never NEVER thought I'd get a deet wrong about FF7. Dementia INC!!!

You don't fight it in the Japanese version though!

Couchy · Jul 17, 2019

Nirgon said:
Ok I had this happen too and was ASSURED it was impossible to get stuck.

I spent hours trying to go back. If there was a way a preteen me sure as hell couldnt find it. No youtube to check for answers either. I got the player's guide for my second playthrough. Followed that to the letter so it wouldnt happen again.

Damn water temple! Always the worst

sakkath · Jul 17, 2019

Mangina stole our guild bank on tholuxe paells because he wasnt getting the preferential treatment he thought he deserved for pretending to be a female. I got some revenge by training velketor to the zone in where he was dual boxing, killing both of his toons and he couldn't get his corpses back until GM came to reset him.

Tim · Jul 17, 2019

Dragon Warrior 3 on NES when I was probably 11-12 years old. I had a year+ old save, which I saved at various times on all save slots. Apparently I changed classes and leveled up too many classes on too many characters at Shrine of Dharma, and not only was my level 80's save toast, it also corrupted all the other saves, and I had to start totally over. Even a new game wouldn't save without corrupting until I deleted all 3. I was crestfallen. That was the save I even sent the victory screen into Nintendo Power mag, because that's the sort of thing 11 year old me was proud of.

I still go back and play that game and the remake on emulators sometimes since it's my all time favorite game, but now with the ability to speed up the game that sort of grind isn't exactly a massive time sink.

Khane · Jul 17, 2019

Baseball Stars for NES. Anyone who's ever played it needs no explanation

Rajaah · Jul 17, 2019

Tim said:
Dragon Warrior 3 on NES when I was probably 11-12 years old. I had a year+ old save, which I saved at various times on all save slots. Apparently I changed classes and leveled up too many classes on too many characters at Shrine of Dharma, and not only was my level 80's save toast, it also corrupted all the other saves, and I had to start totally over. Even a new game wouldn't save without corrupting until I deleted all 3. I was crestfallen. That was the save I even sent the victory screen into Nintendo Power mag, because that's the sort of thing 11 year old me was proud of.

I still go back and play that game and the remake on emulators sometimes since it's my all time favorite game, but now with the ability to speed up the game that sort of grind isn't exactly a massive time sink.

DQ3 is IMO the #1 RPG on the NES. I know that leveling up and class-changing and re-leveling once has all kinds of benefits. Does continuing to class-change and re-level (every time your characters reach a high level) make your characters even more powerful or is it a diminishing returns situation like I assumed back then?

What's your biggest loss in a game? (Data wipe, save corruption, impossible boss, etc)

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