History GameBreakingBug / RolePlayingGame

*** Version 2.0.1 introduced a crash that occurs if you SequenceBreak and register your game's box Legendary in the Pokédex before you're supposed to do so. Obtaining a Koraidon/Miraidon early will cause the game to crash if you scroll down to your last three party slots [[spoiler:in the menu where you switch in the Legendary against the AI professor's Koraidon/Miraidon in ''the last battle of the main story''.]] Fortunately, the crash doesn't occur if you loop around to the Legendary by scrolling up from the top of your party, and the next game patch fixed it.

* ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiNINE'' has Drive Shot, a skill that deals Gun damage to a row of enemies. Certain Xbox emulators do not play nice with Drive Shot, and will experience major framerate drops or even crash whenever it's used. While there aren't a lot of mandatory battles where it's present, it's still annoying, especially when the person using Drive Shot is [[AnnoyingVideoGameHelper one of your Reinforcements]].

*** And then there's the music, which is all stuttery and broken on Windows Vista and newer [=PCs=], due to the game using a deprecated [[UsefulNotes/ApplicationProgrammingInterface API]] called [=DirectSound=], which has been discontinued in Windows Vista onwards[[note]]The game was released when Windows Vista was already in the market. While it's understood that Vista was one of the black sheeps of the Windows world and few people used it, it was still irresponsible for Bethesda to not test the game thoroughly under Vista[[/note]]. Granted, there are fixes for this, but it involves spending an entire day hacking the game, or having a sound card whose manufacturer has put out their own fix for things (e.g. Creative and their [=ALchemy=] software), or downgrading to Windows XP (32-bit, because even the 64-bit version doesn't support [=DirectSound=]). Pre-made fixes? Bethesda issued DMCA takedowns left and right to sites hosting pre-made fixes. Apparently their stance is either you live with it, show your love for the game by spending time fixing it yourself, or take a hit for the game and downgrade your PC to an old discontinued OS that can't take full advantage of your hardware.

*** A mirror match between a Pokémon with the ability shadow tag (Wobbuffet or Wynaut) and holding the leftovers item results in a game that cannot be finished or until someone forfeits. The first thing that happens is force each other to drain all of their PP moves. When those are exhausted, the move struggle becomes the only move left to use. No matter the stats, Wobbuffet and Wynaut will heal each other more than the amount of damage done by struggle due to their pitiful attack but super-high HP in general. This got fixed next generation where struggle always cut 1/4th health and players can escape if both Pokémon had shadow tag and further less of an issue in generation VI when the ability no longer affects ghost types.

*** Version 1.2.1. introduces a crash that happens if you SequenceBreak and register your game's box Legendary in the Pokédex before you're supposed to do so. To be more specific, obtaining a Koraidon/Miraidon early will cause the game to crash if you scroll over your last three party slots [[spoiler:in the menu where you switch in the Legendary against the AI professor's Koraidon/Miraidon for ''the last battle of the main story''.]]

** ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork5'' has a nasty bug that will render you unable to plug-in or start a Liberate Mission (both vital to storyline progress) after the end of a Liberate Mission if the last two digits of your maximum HP in hexadecimal format are 01 or 02. For example, if your max HP is 2562, in hexadecimal it's 0A02, which will trigger the bug. Meanwhile, a max HP of 306 is 0132 in hexadecimal, which is safe. Thankfully, max HP increases in increments of 20, so only two such max HP values (770 and 2050; 0302 and 0802 in hexadecimal respectively) are possible to achieve without the -1 penalty to max HP from each direct use of Dark Chips (which are far inferior to using them for Chaos Soul Unison anyways), and both require you to have an odd number of HP+ 50s equipped.

* The Platform/GameBoyAdvance port of ''VideoGame/PhantasyStar Collection'' is hampered by a bug that will cause everything but the music to freeze after a very short period of play -- sometimes, as quick as 15 seconds. It's possible to very slowly make progress in the game by saving frequently (like every minute or so) and hoping it didn't freeze during the save this time, but even in the best case scenario, the game will freeze about 3 minutes after starting every time. While saving that frequently can theoretically allow someone to beat the games, it'd take the patience of a bodhisattva.
** While not every copy of the game has the above glitch, they do have a problem where attempting to save in ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarI'' will randomly cause the game to freeze and force the player to reset (and lose the save). Supposedly, not saving while the music is looping can reduce the chances of this happening.
* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarIII'' has a game-breaking glitch near the very beginning of the game if the player performs some light ScriptBreaking. At the beginning of the game, after Maia is kidnapped and Rhys is sent to a dungeon, if the player uses an item to escape from the dungeon, the script needed to remove the guards from the town exit will not play, leaving the player forever trapped in the starting town. An NPC in the castle even [[BreakingTheFourthWall breaks the fourth wall]] by praising the player for their ingenuity before informing them that, regrettably, they must start the game over.
* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarIV'':
** After the fight with Zio, two of your party members leave the group to pursue other things. This frees up enough space for the next two to join up. However, the fight with Zio can be extremely difficult, and the two characters who leave are the ones with the most HP and highest defense (assuming you didn't just equip Rune with two shields), meaning there is a very decent chance that Chaz, Rika, and Rune will all be Near Death when the fight ends. After the cutscene where Gryz and Demi leave, up pops a "Chaz was defeated!" message on the worldmap, and the game ends.
** There is the legendary "Level 99" glitch, which makes it so that leveling any character to 99 will actually make them ''lose'' skills. While this is true, the actual glitch starts activating around level 96 or so, with characters like Rika suddenly losing hundreds of technique points, and Wren losing the Positron Bolt skill (it still appears in the menu, but has zero uses available). The androids even start gaining a Mental stat (which, being machines, they normally do not), and Demi gains an impressive number of technique points (but no techniques to use them with.)

** The European version (or at least, some European versions) of ''Atelier Iris ~Eternal Mana~'' has an irritating bug ''right'' at the very end of the game where it will crash during the ending sequence. This is doubly annoying, as not only is it impossible to see the entire ending, but you also can't get a completed save file as a result, preventing you from playing the NewGamePlus.

* ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork 4'' has several, as a result of the game's unpolished state:
** A very nasty bug happens in the Blue Moon version, where the game will freeze and crash after any battle during Woodman's scenario if the game is being played using anything other than an original GBA. This means the entire game is UnintentionallyUnwinnable unless you either dust off a GBA to play it on or use some sort of cheating device to disable random encounters.Trying to use the Aqua Man or Guts Man Navi chips triggers the freeze as well.
** Another bug happens when you try to use the Free Space battle board to fight the bosses of the opposite version of the game, because it's entirely possible to do this as early as the first tournament, but doing it before you obtain all 6 Double Souls of your game version (meaning a NewGamePlus ''Plus'' at least) will permanently corrupt the game's code (as it screws up the order of the Double Souls), which means your cartridge will be literally broken, as in it will crash and the title screen won't even start up, leaving your game as nothing more than a useless piece of plastic.
** [[spoiler:When Dr. Regal attempts suicide at the end]], there's a dramatic slowdown when [[spoiler:Lan and Chaud]] try to reach out for him. If the player skips the cutscene at this point in the Japanese version, [[https://twitter.com/GreigaMaster/status/1282825728636018688 the slowdown will carry over to the credits]].
* ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork 5'' has a nasty bug that will render you unable to plug-in or start a Liberate Mission (both vital to storyline progress) after the end of a Liberate Mission if the last two digits of your maximum HP in hexadecimal format are 01 or 02. For example, if your max HP is 2562, in hexadecimal it's 0A02, which will trigger the bug. Meanwhile, a max HP of 306 is 0132 in hexadecimal, which is safe. Thankfully, max HP increases in increments of 20, so only two such max HP values (770 and 2050; 0302 and 0802 in hexadecimal respectively) are possible to achieve without the -1 penalty to max HP from each direct use of Dark Chips (which are far inferior to using them for Chaos Soul Unison anyways), and both require you to have an odd number of HP+ 50s equipped.

* ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork 4'' has several, as a result of the game's ObviousBeta state:

* The Game Boy Advance version of ''VideoGame/TheLordOfTheRingsTheFellowshipOfTheRing'' is loaded with these, due to being released in a rushed ObviousBeta state. These range from important items that are absolutely needed to progress through the quest not spawning when they should, to rooms accidentally being left unfinished or inescapable, and there's even a glitch where passing through a specific doorway in Moria will freeze the game. The latter actually had an entire page on the Black Label website dedicated to getting around the freezing.

** Because the game engine had to actually play out every combat between NPCs, rather than simply scripting it, it was originally possible--although highly unlikely--for Gorion to ''win'' the fight he's meant to die in. The game would then be softlocked, on account of the plot being totally derailed. Luckily, the Enhanced Edition fixes this.

* The infamous UsefulNotes/GameBoyColor ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' game is full of these to the point where finishing the game is only made possible through the use of cheat codes to warp into the final mission of the game due to improper coding. And good luck getting there with the enemies' broken evasion chance and HitboxDissonance.

* The UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch port of ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublicIITheSithLords'' was unbeatable in its original release, containing a bug that makes it impossible to progress past a certain cutscene midway through the game. Port developer Aspyr acknowledged the bug and patched it a month later.

*** Getting a GameOver while you have Watt as your active party member in the UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch Online port of the game [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjiNZYIOoZ4 causes the app to crash during the Game Over sequence]].

* The UsefulNotes/GameBoyAdvance port of ''VideoGame/PhantasyStar Collection'' is hampered by a bug that will cause everything but the music to freeze after a very short period of play -- sometimes, as quick as 15 seconds. It's possible to very slowly make progress in the game by saving frequently (like every minute or so) and hoping it didn't freeze during the save this time, but even in the best case scenario, the game will freeze about 3 minutes after starting every time. While saving that frequently can theoretically allow someone to beat the games, it'd take the patience of a bodhisattva.

** The Wii version ''VideoGame/TalesOfGraces'' works okay on the first playthrough, but [[NewGamePlus starting the game over]] will frequently cause the game to stop working in all kinds of spectacular ways, from graphical glitches to outright freezing at random moments. The UpdatedRerelease, dubbed ''Tales of Graces F'' for the UsefulNotes/PlayStation3, fixed these bugs. It's also the only version that the rest of the world outside of Japan can ever play.

* In the UsefulNotes/{{Macintosh}} game ''VideoGame/TaskMaker'':

*** Another glitch in ''VideoGame/TalesOfTheAbyss'', though, isn't quite so nice. Anise's Dying Moon attack is badly bugged; after using it, there is a strong chance it will be impossible for Jade and Tear to use their [[LimitBreak Mystic Artes]] until the battle ends. If the attack wasn't satisfied with that, occasionally it will outright ''cause the game to freeze''. To make matters worse, Dying Moon is one of the most useful attacks in Anise's arsenal, meaning this bug greatly hurts her viability as a party member. The one upside is that if you know what you're doing, it's possible to use this same bug to seal certain bosses' Mystic Artes - including even [[ThatOneBoss That One]] BonusBoss.

*** One unforseen effect of using an emulator (confirmed for Pokemon G/S/C) with a "Turbo" mode can be a slow but inevitable save file corruption if the game is saved while in Turbo mode. Trainers running offscreen instead of towards the player, substituted for high level enemies, spouting glitched dialogue and eventually completely crashing the game. The worst part is it doesn't happen instantly, instead the glitches simply increase in frequency until the save is completely wrecked.

*** A mirror match between a Pokemon with the ability shadow tag (Wobbuffet or Wynaut) and holding the leftovers item results in a game that cannot be finished or until someone forfeits. The first thing that happens is force each other to drain all of their PP moves. When those are exhausted, the move struggle becomes the only move left to use. No matter the stats, Wobbuffet and Wynaut will heal each other more than the amount of damage done by struggle due to their pitiful attack but super-high HP in general. This got fixed next generation where struggle always cut 1/4th health and players can escape if both pokemon had shadow tag and further less of an issue in generation VI when the ability no longer affects ghost types.

** Version 1.2.1. introduces a crash that happens if you SequenceBreak and register your game's box Legendary in the Pokedex before you're supposed to do so. To be more specific, obtaining a Koraidon/Miraidon early will cause the game to crash if you scroll over your last three party slots [[spoiler:in the menu where you switch in the Legendary against the AI professor's Koraidon/Miraidon for ''the last battle of the main story''.]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Quest 64}}'' has a bug that will cause the game to freeze when using Rock Shower on a group of Skelebats in the Blue Cave.

---->"Funny how a game based on free exploration breaks when you don't do things in the right order..."

*** And then there's the music, which is all stuttery and broken on Windows Vista and newer [=PCs=], due to the game using a deprecated [[UsefulNotes/ApplicationProgrammingInterface API]] called [=DirectSound=], which has been discontinued in Windows Vista onwards[[note]]The game was released when Windows Vista was already in the market. While it's understood that Vista was one of the black sheeps of the Windows world and few people used it, it was still irresponsible for Bethesda to not test the game thoroughly under Vista[[/note]]. Granted, there are fixes for this, but it involves spending an entire day hacking the game, or having a sound card whose manufacturer has put out their own fix for things (e.g. Creative and their [=ALchemy=] software), or downgrading to Windows XP (32-bit, because even the 64-bit version doesn't support [=DirectSound=]). Pre-made fixes? Bethesda issued DMCA takedowns left and right to sites hosting pre-made fixes. Apparently their stand is either you live with it, show your love for the game by spending time fixing it yourself, or take a hit for the game and downgrade your PC to a old discontinued OS that can't take full advantage of your hardware.

*** Version 1.6 created a massive bug in the settlements, causing many of them to set their food, water, defense, and power resources to zero, with all the associated problems having none of these resources would cause. Some players report scrapping televisions and jukeboxes helps to fix the problem, but for others, that still doesn't work. Considering settlement building was one of the massive selling points of ''Fallout 4'' in the first place, it made a lot of people really angry, and, as of 1.7, it still has not been fixed.

* ''VideoGame/{{Atelier}}'' series:

* The Game Boy Advance version of ''VideoGame/TheLordOfTheRingsTheFellowshipOfTheRing'' is loaded with these, due to being released in a rushed ObviousBeta state. These range from important items that are absolutely needed to progress through the quest now spawning when they should, to rooms accidentally being left unfinished or inescapable, and there's even a glitch where passing through a specific doorway in Moria will freeze the game. The latter actually had an entire page on the Black Label website dedicated to getting around the freezing.

* v1.08 of ''VideoGame/Deltarune'' introduced a large number of glitches that range from loading you in the wrong zones to completely softlocking the game.

*** At the game's launch, [=WiFi=] battles always started on the same RNG seed. While this is exploitable in itself, the worse issue was this particular RNG seed guaranteed that Sheer Cold, a OneHitKO move, would always hit the opposing Pokemon without fail, rendering battles pointless as it all comes down to who can use Sheer Cold first.

* ''VideoGame/Persona3'', at least the remastered port of ''Portable'' due to the player reports coming from there, has the FinalBoss potentially becoming {{Unwinnable}} at the final phase because a glitch can cause it to refuse to drop its AttackReflector even after more than the normal number of turns has passed.

* ''VideoGame/MightAndMagic'' adds some realism to the world by having wandering civilians in the sixth episode. Knowing that these civilians could potentially get in the party's way, the developers added a "Shout" command force them to move aside. Forward to the infamous ''Might and Magic IX'', and the wandering citizens no longer move when you need them to and can completely block doors. Since the game autosaves when you go into buildings, you can go into someone's house and never be able to leave without going back to an older save.

** There's also the infamous "[[http://earthboundcentral.com/2009/01/weird-earthbound-glitch/ Circus Tent Glitch]]": in Threed's circus tent, checking the area right below the bottom-right pillar will sometimes delay the "No problem here" text. If you do this enough, the game will start to [[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByGCQ-MIYAEgbzz.jpg print out]] [[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByZa-1NCAAAx3ps.jpg garbage]] [[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByZadEuIMAAknj0.jpg data]], sometimes in indefinite quantities. Eventually, enough checks on the spot will cause the glitch to [[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByGCtDFIAAAoFBX.jpg mess around]] [[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByGDF2SCEAADYBY.jpg with sprites]], sometimes causing the game to display [[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByZbcG6CEAAlzk6.jpg random sprite data]] and/or emit what can best be described as HellIsThatNoise.

* ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiNINE'' has Drive Shot, a skill that deals Gun damage to a row of enemies. Certain Xbox emulators do not play nice with Drive Shot, and will experience major framerate drops or even crash whenever it's used. While there aren't a lot of mandatory battles where it's present, it's still annoying, especially when the person using Drive Shot is [[StopHelpingMe one of your Reinforcements]].