String fullTitle = 'Carrier Pigeons';
int postNumber = 10881786;
String image = '1714066672049370.jpg';
String date = '04/25/24(Thu)13:37:52';
String comment = 'Show me /vr/ related games with worse backtracking than this one. I'm genuinely curious if there is something worse.';
'How bad is it compared to the last 1/3rd of Terranigma?
That game makes you fly/walk between towns, doing a super long trading sequence quest for hours, sometimes just wasting time to wait for each town to upgrade itself before you can do the next part. There is no combat and no dungeons during this sequence, just talking to NPCs and moving between cities.';
'>>10881883
For the whole second half of Abyss you are delivering messages between kingdoms. Sometimes they are so minor it's embarrassing. You legit feel like a royal errand boy of the worst kind.
>tell king I said this
>fly half way across the map
>ah, I see, well tell that king that I said this
>fly all the way back
>ah, I see I see, tell him I said this
>fly back again
>hm, yes... very interesting, tell this other kingdom I said this
>fly all the way there
>so that's how it is.... tell the first kingdom we said this
Now rinse, wash, repeat for hours... and the worst part is, you unlock fast travel at the very, VERY end of the game... when you don't need it at all. Sad thing is that I really wanted to like this one.';
'>>10881786
Tales of Abyss isn't just bad about backtracking but missing entire big events and items if you don't backtrack at a specific point in the story. You're never going to finish it 100% without following a guide.';
'>>10881901
Yeah, that sounds very familiar.
A lot of JRPGs seem to do something similar. Most of the time making you go around the world again just to pick up plot coupons. I guess a lot of devs realize they haven't hit the mandatory 40 hour mark and toss in some quick padding?';
'>>10881916
Oh that's nasty, but I bet your right. Playing Symphonia before, it had a surprising lack of backtracking and kept the story progressing nicely with a mix of story, sidemissions, bosses, combat, and puzzles. Then I went to Abyss and was just stunned at just how bad the backtracking and pacing was. Sometimes it was literally just delivering a message as minor as "I agree".';
'>>10881786
Probably Bushido Blade and the ridiculous backtracking all the way back to the beginning of the game to reach the true last boss and ending.';
'>>10881786
all King's Field games';
'>>10881786
Basically every jrpg up to the late 90s was this.
The classic "dump your ass on the world map and tell you fuck all" during the last quarter of the game was a well known way to force the player to retread literally the entire game looking for the one NPC or cave that would trigger progression.';
'>>10881904
Sounds like FF7';
'>>10883104
It's way worse than FF7. You miss entire big sidequests if you don't arbitrarily backtrack to random locations between story event 88 and 89 with no indication that you should, and if you trigger the next story event before doing it, it's a lost forever until new game+.';
'>>10881904
>You're never going to finish it 100% without following a guide
That's every JRPG.';
}