What games had easy soft locks that prevented you from either progressing or getting a true ending? angielski

The thought came to mind after reading a recent post about Baldurs Gate 3 here but it reminded me of the Japense only PSX game Mizzurna Falls where if you don’t perform a certain action early in the game you are prevented from getting a true ending. While this might not be a traditional soft lock because you can still progress to a point it made me wonder none the less.

I understand BG3 might be a hard lock because the game abruptly comes to a close I am not going to get into the semantics. The only other soft locks I can think of are with Pokemon.

Shout out to the fan translation of Mizzurna Falls. An article on the ROMHacking.net website can be found here.

Perrin42,

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. If you don't give the sandwich to the small dog you can't finish the game.

Davel23, (edited )

I got bit by this one. Went over to a friend's house to spend the day playing HHGTTG. Several hours later we discovered we couldn't win the game because I had neglected to feed the dog 15 minutes in while he was up getting a drink or something.

AnyOldName3,
@AnyOldName3@lemmy.world avatar

It really shows that Douglas Adams was an author and not a game designer with how easy it is to soft-lock that game if you visit rooms in the wrong order or spend too long or short a time exploring one. Most of the possible mistakes become reasonably apparent reasonably quickly, but not always.

figjam,

I played Earthbound as a kid and got stuck in a golem without the item needed to get out. Since I got it used I didn’t have the game guide. No idea how much stuff I missed but I never picked it up again.

abraxas,

I remember that, and I remember finding a way out too. I just don’t remember what it was.

I’m pretty sure that’s not a full-on softlock. Just so bad it feels like one if you miss something.

AceFuzzLord,

Don’t know if anyone has said it yet, but Fallout 3. There is a story quest where you have to ask a radio host named Three Dog information about your father and it’s a percentage based skill check that if you fail it, I don’t think you can progress (unless I am completely mistaken since it’s been more than a half decade since I last played).

To make matters even worse, even at a maximum 100 in speech, the skill check can still be failed. Again, not 100% sure whether or not the Three Dog skill check is even required or if you can just run to the right place to progress the main story, but if you are a first time player you could absolutely screw yourself over not knowing about this.

loutr,
@loutr@sh.itjust.works avatar

IIRC failing the speech check is the “normal” outcome. If you convince him he gives you info you would have come across later, allowing you to bypass the next main story quest.

abraxas,

Yeah, that was always a weird one to me. It’s one thing for speech checks to give you advantages and shortcuts, but that straight up cut 30 minutes off the game.

pastermil,

In every game in Suikoden series, you’d have to recruit 108 characters in total to get the true ending.

Around half of these are part of the story, so you’d get them whatever you do, but the rest you’d have to do some sidequest to get them, a lot of them are missable.

Also, you can get some characters killed, dooming you from ever getting that true ending.

abraxas,

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)

pastermil,

And I thought 4 & 5 was brutal…

abraxas,

I dunno which of the two is worse. I fell for the Pahn one in S1, but managed to guess right in S2 by sheer luck (it’s between a default “Watch Out!” and “Nanami!”. You have to pick “Nanami!” or you lose out on the good ending. And you automatically say “Watch Out!” if you don’t pick fast)

GrayBackgroundMusic, (edited )

Xmen on Sega genesis. At one point you have to literally reset the console. I was 10 and didn’t understand that’s what it was telling me to do. No game had ever done that, and prof x was breaking the 4th wall telling the player to do that. The game never broke the 4th wall otherwise. I didn’t understand until a decade later when I read it on some listicle.

Kolanaki,
!deleted6508 avatar

Sierra adventure games, like King’s Quest and Space Quest, were notorious for this kind of thing. Like there could be an item you have 1 chance to get, and you didn’t know, so you don’t get it and then several hours later when you’re at the end of the game, you realize you need that thing to solve the puzzle and actually move on. But you can’t. Because you didn’t get it when you had the chance and you can not go back.

BeanGoblin,
@BeanGoblin@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I like the Unstable Ordinance from Space Quest IV that you can pick up near the start of the game. It’s entirely useless, you can’t ditch it, and if you have in your inventory near the end of the game, it blows up and kills you. Everytime. You have to restart nearly the whole game and resist the adventure game urge to grab everything that isn’t nailed down.

ripcord,
@ripcord@kbin.social avatar

I thought it blew up when you went into the sewers which isn't long after you pick it up. But still, it's a trap you don't realize is a problem right away and really sucked :)

RaincoatsGeorge,

Those games didn’t give a fuck about your feelings. I remember some of those point and clicks had zero chill. I played one where all I wanted to do was cross the street. My character was immediately run over by a car and I had to start over. The typing games could be even worse. Oh sorry this bees nest is attacking you, here’s hoping you grabbed the bug spray under the carpet on the 3rd floor and are quick enough on your feet to type out the exact sequence of words necessary to get your character to use it. ‘Use bug spray’ sorry can you please be more specific. Oh never mind your character is dead, no saves, heres the worst 8 bit death audio anyone has ever created.

Theharpyeagle, (edited )

Ah, fond memories of playing Hugo’s House of Horrors and having to frantically type while a dog bites your face off.

RaincoatsGeorge,

That’s the exact game that came to mind. At least a few years ago there was a website where you could play all those games , I don’t know if it’s still up.

M500,

In cave story, there is a decision around the middle of the game. If you make the wrong decision you can’t upgrade to the best weapon in the game.

I forget all the details, but i was annoyed when I found out about it.

azulavoir,

there’s several decisions like this, it’s just the way the game is

Starglasses,

Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced had tons of missions that required items and gave items. Your inventory had a cap so once you reached it you needed to decide on which inventory items to dstroy to make space for new rewards, or leave the rewards behind.

There were so many repeating quests so those rewards were safe to destroy. But if you destroyed a required item from a one-time quest(i don’t think there was anything special to mark these one-time side-quests)… no 100% game for you.

Starglasses,

You could also save your game mid-battle. I learned the hard way I shouldn’t have saved in a major story battle. Death in those were Game Over. There was only one save slot, so I was locked in a battle I had no chance of surviving.

csolisr,

I went through that exact problem, didn’t have space to stuff a single item from a mission I thought would be repeatable and so I got stuck in 99% completion - the only solution was to trade it from another cart and that was not gonna happen

Theharpyeagle,

I loved that game but there’s no way in hell I’d ever have the patience to 100% it, good lord.

bomanicious,

Ys 8 has a soft lock toward the end where if you didn’t do enough side quests to build up enough affinity with your castaway group and party members you would get treated to a bad/neutral ending. Fortunately at that soft lock point there are enough ways to build up those points so you can progress past that point.

GenBlob,

The Ooze. My memory on this is fuzzy but on genetics lab part 2, there is a room you can enter that has a checkpoint. If you enter the room then you’re locked inside and if you collect the checkpoint and die, you will respawn back into the room and your only option is to lose all your lives or reset the game. I remember getting really pissed off finding this when I was a kid because I spent days trying to beat the game and I had a really good run up until that moment.

hogart,
@hogart@feddit.nu avatar

Little Big Adventure 2. Just before the last boss I managed to save myself on the last island without a way to leave it. But I needed to leave and get another Ball or w/e it was to unluck a door. It was my first real pc game experience ever. Dunno why I stuck with this hobby after that tbh :)

Coelacanth,
@Coelacanth@feddit.nu avatar

Disco Elysium has a number of potential soft locks, though you kind of have to go out of your way to actually get into one. The easiest one is probably paying for your hostel room the second night. Usually a combination of decisions and unlucky dice rolls are necessary to actually get locked, and/or poor use of skill points (meaning you can’t spend one to re-try the crucial roll).

There is also a seemingly minor decision in a side quest that can make a certain check during the ending unwinnable and thus lock you out of one of the most impactful moments in the game.

RaincoatsGeorge,

It only kind of counts but dead rising 1 fits. You have to follow an exact sequence of events, be at exact spots at exact times, or the main story ends and you can only get bad endings.

It’s actually really hard because you end up having to run from one boss to another and if you’re late there isn’t enough time to resupply. I eventually got to a boss fight where I didn’t have enough time to do anything else and I just couldn’t get past him. It isn’t that the game ends, but it just completely scaps the main story progression and says something like ‘the truth is lost forever’ .

all-knight-party,
@all-knight-party@kbin.cafe avatar

I almost give that game a pass purely because of how much you're meant to start over again anyway. It's not like you spent the entire time on one perfect go through with no do overs, you'd probably already restarted a bunch of times by then, it's just another crazy mistake you couldn't have known you could make in that game.

Not that that really makes it better, but it's not on par with doing the same thing in a giant RPG, unless you only got one shot or something, but knowing that game I would doubt it. I never got that far, though, that game is... weird and particular

RaincoatsGeorge,

Definitely a weird game but it worked.

db0,
@db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

King’s Quest was the king of soft locks.

CorrodedCranium,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

Yeah? How so? While I’ve numerous clips of that game I don’t think I’ve seen what you are referring to

db0,
@db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

There’s like 7 king’s quests.

db0,
@db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/…/Sierra this is but a small sample of the pain that was old school Sierra

HidingCat,

Fuck Sierra games, it's why I gave up on them and played only Lucasarts point-and-click adventure games.

ripcord,
@ripcord@kbin.social avatar

Same although I didnt get into the lucasarts games until the 2000s. I played every Sierra game and love/hated them all not realizing there was a better way to live.

db0,
@db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Friends don’t let friends play Sierra games without walkthroughs

yukichigai,
@yukichigai@kbin.social avatar

Any of the Sierra "X Quest" games. Space Quest, Police Quest... so many soft locks. I remember Police Quest had a soft lock that would trigger on the first day but wouldn't become apparent until day 3 or 4.

leaky_shower_thought,

this one reminds me of Farcry 4. The one with Pagan Min.

if you just stay and be a good boy, you get a free trip to where you really wanted to go.

It’s easy to not do this because maybe the welcoming committee is not around anybody’s standards.

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