Suikoden 1 and 2 in particular have very precise soft-locks.
In Suikoden 1, Pahn has to win a battle that seems to be a scripted loss.
Suikoden 2 (my favorite RPG of all time) is actually beyond brutal. There’s a 3-5 second timed input that doesn’t even make much sense and if you get it wrong, nothing predictable changes except you don’t get the 108th star (just one person having a private word with the strategist that only makes sense later)