Role-Playing Game / Permanently Missable Content

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Bethesda

Thanks to the open-world, generally interconnected, and heavily influencable nature of Bethesda RPG worlds, there are plenty of items and quests that can be forever lost to the player depending on their actions:

The Elder Scrolls:
- Morrowind:
  - The core tenet of Morrowind is that player actions shape the world, so the player is free to kill or piss off whoever they desire. Steal items from a shopkeeper? Don't be surprised if they won't deal with you ever again. Antagonize someone long enough? They might just attack you on sight. Morrowind quite famously does not even prevent the player from killing characters essential to the main quest. If the player does so anyway, the game is gracious enough to pop up a message informing them that they have broken the main quest, but nobody is stopping the player from continuing on.
  - In fact, the game encourages it. If the main questline is broken, a difficult, but more straightforward back path exists allowing the player to finish the main quest. However, to even access it, the player must kill the single strongest NPC in the game. This is actually far faster than actually doing the main quest as intended. By choosing this method, there is only a single NPC that is well and truly essential, as he is necessary for both the intended path and the back path.
  - Unlike later games in the franchise, Morrowind doesn't keep guild storylines self-contained either. Conflicts between guilds can and do happen. It is possible to become the master of every guild, but you have to be very deliberate in what quests are accepted and what order they are completed in.
  - The Fighter's Guild and Thieves Guild are at war, and joining one will cause the other to be more or less hostile to the player.
  - The player is restricted to joining 1 of 3 Vampire Clans and 1 of 3 Great Houses. Questlines for the ones not chosen are gone forever once that choice is made. There exists a well-known exploit that allows a player to technically join 2 great houses however.
  - The Morag Tong missions are assassinations. Their targets include quest givers for nearly every other faction. Can you see the problem?
  - The Infinity +1 Sword Eltonbrand and the legendary shield Spellbreaker can only be acquired if the player is a vampire. If the player gets cured without completing the quests to get these items, they will be impossible to acquire as you cannot contract vampirism a second time.
  - The master trainer for enchantment, Qorwynn, is lost if you kill him. Of course, this is true for anyone else, so why is it a problem here? Qorwynn is a hostile Altmer spellcaster in a dungeon filled with nearly-identical hostile Altmer spellcasters, with no indication, anywhere in the game, that there is anything special about him. The only way to get training from him is to use magic to calm him down first, and there is absolutely no reason anyone would do this without a guide. Kill him, and you'll have to grind to 100 enchantment yourself if you want it.
- Oblivion:
  - The game makes great effort to keep any quest from being lost for good through completing other quests — although this does cause some confusion, such as a thieves' guild quest where you steal from the Archmage. No big oddity there, until you realize that at this point, a decent number of player characters are the Archmage. And while it's pretty good at not having missable quests, it's not good at all with items. Specifically, one of the guild merchants sells a bunch of rare items. He's the only person in the game you can get these items from. You have to kill him for a quest. He also sells a bunch of rare spells, but you can get those again once you're done with the quest line.
  - There's another guild merchant with a unique spell that only he sells. And he's killed as part of a quest. If you didn't buy the spell from him before he dies, it really is lost forever - no other spell in the game has that type of effect!
  - Another example in the Knights of Nine expansion, in order to receive master level training from a trainer requires a recommendation from an advanced level trainer. It just so happens that advanced trainers in restoration get killed during the Knights of Nine story line and their replacements do not give you the recommendation.
  - The main quest requires the player to sacrifice a Daedric artifact - those are one-of-a-kind items obtained through completing a quest. Once sacrificed for the quest, the artifact can never be recovered. To add insult to injury, most such artifacts are not very useful, of limited scope, or only good for entertainment value - but the main quest points the player towards the quest that gives Azura's Star, the best Daedric artifact in the game.
  - Also, upon completion of the main quest line, all of the random Oblivion gates in the world disappear, forever. To be fair, this makes perfect sense, but since the items you receive from in game drops and the enchantments you get from the Sigil Stones are based on player level, anyone who runs through the main quest quickly before doing any side quests will lose the best enchantments in the game.
  - If you murder someone ingame (whether deliberately or not), the next time you sleep you'll be visited by Lucien Lachance of the game's assassins guild. He'll give you a dagger called the Blade of Woe and instruct you to kill a man named Rufio to be welcomed to the Dark Brotherhood. You don't have to do it, but the dagger he gives you counts as a quest item - meaning it's stuck in your inventory - until the end of the Dark Brotherhood questline. If you have no intention of joining the Brotherhood, and you don't want to carry the Blade of Woe around indefinitely, you can kill Lucien as soon as he gives you the quest. On the plus side, you can now drop the Blade. On the negative side, you can NEVER join the Dark Brotherhood at any point in the game, making the guild and all its related quests lost forever.
  - Another offshoot Daedric prince quest, in a realized case of having one's cake or eating it, Clavicus Vile offers to give you his amazing Masque of Clavicus Vile — headgear that increases social prowess (very) slightly — in exchange for the Umbra Sword, one of the game's (two?) optional Infinity+1 Swords, which you must retrieve from a woman (named Umbra) who is under the direct influence of the sword's former wielder... Umbra (a difficult fight, unless you're a powerful Mage). Incidentally, Clavicus Vile gives you an artifact (actually, it just sort of appears in your inventory), styled after his faithful, demonic companion, that advises you to abscond with the sword, both because he's clearly ripping you off, and because the sword may tip the overall greater balance of power (in both Oblivion and the Aedric Realms) in his favor, which would naturally result in a war that would destroy the world. In combination with Azura's Star, it is one of the most useful items ingame, as the sword — in addition to high attack power — is enchanted with a potent 60-second Soul Trap that will trap the soul of anything previously struck by the sword itself that is either felled or dies. Taking the sword effectively leaves the quest open indefinitely, and the demon-dog-statue-thing will remain in your inventory and can't be removed. Arbitrarily, if the player chooses to take the Masque, the sword is, of course, lost for good. This quest entirely subverts the concept of absolute, 100% Completion for the entire game. ^note
  - Most of the better quest rewards are levelled to your character (as well as gold rewards, but this isn't much of a problem), unfortunately these reward items do not scale with you as you level; the item you get is the one you're stuck with throughout the game. Higher-level versions of these items are completely unobtainable if you complete them at lower levels.
  - In addition, there is a house that is in the middle of nowhere with no map marker that has about nothing of value in it, save for two bandits. This isn't interesting by itself, but it's very likely that it will be destroyed by an Oblivion gate as you proceed in the main quest (and it's even possible that it will be destroyed while you're inside, at least giving you a shot to take anything you left inside). So after that, the interior of the house is impossible to access without cheating, and so is anything you may have left in there. Oops...
  - During the main quest, Mankar Camoran kidnaps an Argonian priest named Jeelius for a human (well, lizard-man) sacrifice, and you're forced to kill Jeelius yourself to prove your supposed loyalty to Camoran's cult. If you choose to save Jeelius and attack the villains, you face a difficult battle with the angry cultists (especially since you're forced to surrender all of your weapons and armor when you enter the cult's base). If you succeed, Jeelius will return to the Temple of the One and, in gratitude, offer you free skill boosts in magic. While you can certainly reach the maximum levels of the magic schools without saving him, it's your only chance to do so—if you kill him, he won't revive and you'll never get to talk to him again.
- Skyrim
  - Prior to the 1.4 patch, the Thalmor embassy was home to a rare gemstone called a Stone of Barenziah, and visiting the embassy without claiming the stone prevented you from completing a quest which required you to find all 24 of them. The 1.4 patch remedied this by moving the stone into the cave you use to escape the embassy, which can be revisited. To note though it was possible to jump a fence on horseback at a certain point prior to the patch to get the stone.
  - Skuldafn Temple, a dungeon visited during the main quest line, contains a word wall and a unique Dragon Priest mask, both of which can be lost since Skuldafn can only be visited once.
  - The quest involving Potema the Wolf Queen is split into two parts; first you interrupt the ceremony where a gathering of necromancers attempt to resurrect her, then you have to kill her for good. The second part will only trigger when your character levels up, so it's possible to lock yourself out of this quest if you hit max level (81) before finishing the first part. This has since been remedied by Patch 1.9, which allows you to break the level cap by resetting a Skill Tree that has reached 100, but keeping the levels and Perks obtained with it.
  - Clavicus Vile returns with a quest that mirrors the one in Oblivion. You can have either the Masque of Clavicus Vile, a piece of heavy headgear, or the Rueful Axe, a reasonably powerful two-handed weapon.
  - Vile and Vaermina can both potentially screw the player out of the Oblivion Walker Achievement, as all of their quests can be completed by NOT obtaining their respective Daedric Artifacts (Namira's Quest can also end in a similar way, but it's explicitly said to have been failed, so the player would not be led astray). The game has a total of 15 Daedric Artifacts one can obtain in a single playthrough ^note and the Achievement requires 15 artifacts to be in the possession of any one Dragonborn. Clavicus Vile is particularly cruel about this because his quests are presented like Hircine and Azura's quests, leading you to believe both items are daedric artifacts when only the Masque is. ^note Mehrunes Dagon's quest can also end with his artifact, Mehrunes' Razor, becoming unobtainable if you let Silas live. Unlike Vaermina's or Vile's quests, this does not offer a unique reward (a useful follower for the former and a unique axe for the latter), so there is no real reason not to kill Silas (unless you make the rare choice of roleplaying a Dragonborn who is actually a good guy).
  - Many Quests can be lost forever in a single playthrough because of certain player choices. In the Civil War Question you MUST choose one side to go with. While you get a chance to change your mind halfway through, you must still lock yourself into one of two sides. This can then permanently change the Jarls of the holds you visit. Similarly, if you choose to destroy the Dark Brotherhood instead of joining them, be prepared to miss out on a lot of equipment that are quest-specific (such as the Ancient Shrouded Armor), plotlines, characters (notably, the only master-level trainer of the Alchemy skill is Babette, a NPC who only appears if you join the faction) and followers.
  - Certain quests can be lost forever if you do other quests before them. The most obvious of these is Narfi's quest, as he is the target of the Dark Brotherhood. The same quests can also be lost if a random encounter happens and kills the quest giver. Quest Items however are a little better about it, as they can never be dropped from your inventory once acquired (although some Fetch Quest can let you drop the items, but they are usually common items that respawn every so often).
  - The Dawnguard expansion gives you the option to talk Serana into curing her vampirism. However, approaching the topic carelessly can result in the option being lost permanently. On the other hand, if you do have her cured, it then becomes impossible to become a Vampire Lord.
The Fallout series:
- Fallout 3:
  - The game has collectible bobbleheads that increase your stats. Four of them can be lost forever: Strength is in Lucas Simms's house in Megaton, which you can nuke; Energy Weapons is in Col. Autumn's quarters in Raven Rock, which you can't go back to after you leave; Medicine is in Dad's office in Vault 101, which you lose forever if you don't get it before completing Escape! or Trouble on the Homefront; finally, there's Repair, which is in Evan King's house in Arefu, behind a locked door. Force the lock and break it and it's inaccessable unless you took the Infiltrator perk.
  - Non-storyline quests and special items can also be lost forever if you murder someone crucial to a quest or choose the wrong option. Of course, if you kill random civilians for fun, you probably deserve it. One exception is the Wasteland Survival Guide quest; if you nuke Megaton, Moira Brown will survive, though she's now a Ghoul.
  - Potential party members can be killed before you have the chance to let them join you. You can murder Butch within five minutes of getting a pistol, for instance. You'll also have to kill Clover if you attack Paradise Falls before recruiting her.
  - If you kill Greta for Azhrukal and he gets killed by the subsequently hostile Underworld residents, you won't be able to recruit Charon.
  - If you choose to let the ghouls into Tenpenny Tower during the sidequest of the same name, you may be permanently locked out of your penthouse suite, along with any items you left in there.
  - Mothership Zeta has two points of no return, which will cause any items in the affected areas, including the Alien Captive Recording Logs, to be lost forever. Certain door controls can also be rigged to explode; doing this will permanently lock you out of the room that they open.
  - In Point Lookout, all items left in Calvert Mansion will be destroyed along with the mansion when it blows up at the end of the "Thought Control" story quest.
  - One locked room in The Pitt contains several steel ingots necessary for the Mill Worker quest and achievement, which will be lost forever if you break the lock when forcing it. Worse, there's a Game-Breaking Bug where if you give the last few ingots to Everett in a quantity less than 10, you won't get your reward or the achievement.
- Fallout: New Vegas:
  - The DLC area in Dead Money, the Sierra Madre, is a one-time only visit for the player, in comparison to the main areas of the other DLC campaigns (which can be revisited after completing their respective stories). As such, several items and upgrades tied to this location — including the unique upgrades for the Holorifle, the recipes for the holovending machines and the complimentary vouchers awarded if you make enough money in the casino — as well as the Achievements tied to this DLC, become unavailable once you leave. (PC players can use console commands to return to the area, but this is not supported by any other legitimate in-game access.)
  - Up to two distinct locations within the Mojave Wasteland (Long 15 and Dry Wells) can be rendered inaccessible depending on how the Lonesome Road DLC is completed, with no chance to go back and unlock them again once the decision is made. Both of these locations offer respawning high-level loot, along with a unique set of armor in the case of the latter area.
  - Potential companions can be killed if Hardcore mode is enabled. Though, some companions are found outside, where they're at the mercy of whatever may wander in. A particularly bad spot is Jacobstown, where you meet Lily, which happens to have a Cazador spawn point near the front gate. Another bad spot is the 188 Trading Post where Veronica is found, which is near a Legionary Assassin spawn point. Also, choosing the wrong dialogue or quest options will turn certain groups hostile and prevent you from doing their quests.
  - Craig Boone's companion quest can be lost forever by triggering too many non-repeatable "trust point" events without Boone with you, and a bug may cause Loyal to disappear after the completion of "Volare!", breaking Raul's "Old School Ghoul" quest. Though Loyal can be brought back using the console commands on the PC to relocate him to the player, console players will have to revert to an old save or start a new game file. The reason he disappears is because he's stuck in an old cell in the Nellis Base Hanger. After the quest "Volare!" is completed the hanger becomes a whole new cell after a few game days to add the B29 bomber in it. Raul's quest will also be lost forever if you have been declared a terrorist by the NCR, as you will no longer be able to talk to two of the required people, even if you have a disguise.
- In Fallout 4:
  - If you're quick to make enemies with the Railroad, Brotherhood of Steel or the Institute, this will prevent you ever getting Deacon, Paladin Danse, or X6-88 as companions. Although, you'll be forced to eventually kill one or two of those companions depending on what faction you side with anyway. Furthermore, if a companion ever leaves you due to low approval, it is impossible to get them back.
  - Most merchants sell at least one unique weapon or armor piece. If they die for whatever reason (e.g. hostility to the player or monster attack), then you'll be unable to obtain it.

Final Fantasy

The Final Fantasy series has a huge amount of missable stuff:
- Final Fantasy II:
  - You can permanently lose the Blood Sword, a gimmick weapon that works wonders on the final boss^note. It's in Paul's stash, which he'll share with you if you ask him about the key term "Cyclone." But you can only learn that term from Hilda, and you must do it after the cyclone appears and before you call the wyvern so you can enter it.
  - In the PSP version, there's an Amano art gallery you can unlock as you play through that requires, among other things, 100% bestiary completion. Unfortunately for you, partway through the game all encounters on the overworld become harder—with absolutely no warning beforehand, incidentally—meaning that if you failed to hunt down and kill those monsters before breaking the seal on Ultima...well, sucks to be you.
  - If you want more than one character to learn Osmose, you're going to have to grind either the Coliseum, Fynn Castle, the Cyclone, or Castle Palamecia while they're available—those are the only places to find Wizards, a rare (and in early areas, horrifyingly fast and powerful) random encounter that will even more rarely drop the tome needed to learn Osmose, and once you complete them, you can't go back. As wise use of Osmose can make characters effectively immortal, you have good incentive to do this. Have fun grinding!
- Final Fantasy IV is generally in love with this trope. 90% of the cast will enter the party for just a single dungeon, and then leave forever based upon the random swings of the plot. Unless you've played the game before, you'll never guess when your little mages that are holding an ultra-rare staff are just going to run off without a moment's notice, so you'd better unequip them before that certain plot point. There are a few areas where the game is twice as hard as it should be only because you're stuck with a weak party because your entire A-team was taken away by a shipwreck. Or where you're just stuck with pathetic semi-useless characters (Tellah, Edward). The DS remake expands this to the one-use skill teaching items called Augments, and combines it with a little Guide Dang It!. If you give Augments to non-permanent characters, you're never going to be able to use that skill again. Also, if you don't give the exact number of Augments to the right people before the plot takes them away, you can never get some other skills. Example: If you didn't give three Augments to Porom and Palom before they leave, you're never going to get Dualcast. This is doubly cruel for those who have played the game before, since it just goes against common sense to give skills to characters that aren't going to be around in the end game.
- Final Fantasy IV: The After Years takes this to the next level. Didn't get the needed parts to repair the airship in Rydia's Tale, including two that are dropped by specific enemies which only appear in one deserted room during a specific lunar cycle with the same drop rate as the PinkTail? Sorry, Calca and Brina will have to be scrapped for replacement parts. Lost a battle and didn't reload your save when playing as any of the Eblan Four or picked the wrong dialogue option as Gekkou? Sorry, that ninja is dead. Don't have a party of Cecil, Ceodore and Rosa when Golbez makes his Heroic Sacrifice? Sorry, you can't save him. Also, in the final chapter it's possible to permanently kill brainwashed Shiva and Ramuh if you hit them while they're calming down, which is easy to do by accident if you have an action queued up right when the dialogue that tells you to stop attacking them pops up.
- Final Fantasy V is plagued with a plethora of missables, to the point where it's extremely unlikely that you'll get everything if you don't look it up or know beforehand.
  - Firstly, a lot of bestiary entries are easy to pass over. Special mention goes to the monsters in the Torna Canal—the entire section takes about 10 seconds to navigate, and when you reach the end of the section, you're forced into a cutscene that throws you into a different area. You can never go back to the canal again, making it extremely easy to miss the Sucker and Octokraken if you didn't encounter one while you were there.
  - A number of Summons are found in hidden areas. Shiva is lost forever if you enter Galuf's World without getting her from her secret dungeon, thus robbing your entire Summon skill set of an ice attack for the rest of the game. Ramuh is found as a random encounter on the world map and isn't available until The Very Definitely Final Dungeon if you miss it. Catoblepas is found the same way in a hidden area, and is lost forever if you don't look for it before going to the Merged World.
  - Around half of the Bard's Songs are permanently missable, and you have to go out of your way to find the majority of them. Mana's Paean is the most egregious of these—it's available by talking to a random NPC for a tiny stint at the beginning of the Merged World... and then the area where you get it is consumed by the Void in the segment right after.
  - There are a lot of highly strategic items in the game that are incredibly easy to pass over. A few of them are Steals as well, making them even easier to miss.
- Final Fantasy VI:
  - The Atma/Ultima Weapon sword can only be found in the cave leading to the Sealed Gate. This cave is rendered inaccessible when the entire continent suddenly takes to the air. The GBA version gives you a second chance to get this item.
  - One of the characters in your party, the moogle Mog, can dance to change the terrain and cause various other effects in battle. At one point in the game (in the World of Balance section, before the World of Ruin), you have the choice to save Mog from falling off a cliff, causing him to join your party at that time, or getting an accessory that will halve the MP cost of spells. If you choose not to get Mog at that time, you can still get him to join again later in the game. However, one of his dances, the Water Rondo/Harmony, can only be obtained when he's fighting in water. Since there is no area where you fight in water in the World of Ruin, if you choose to get the accessory, Mog's Water Rondo will be lost forever. The GBA remake added a second chance to learn the dance with the fight against Leviathan, but again, once Leviathan is dead, bye bye Water Rondo/Harmony.
  - If you don't wait for Shadow on the Floating Continent, you lose him permanently as a party member.
  - You can permanently miss out on the Ifrit Magicite... but that would require you to deliberately ignore the thing and move on without it.
  - Some of Strago's Lores can only be obtained from bosses giving you only one opportunity to learn it.
  - It is nearly impossible to obtain all of Gau's Rage skills unless you know exactly what enemies must be encountered and when. There are several areas in this game which eventually become inaccessible, including the World of Balance, and missing even a single unique encounter in one of those areas means you can never collect all of Gau's rages.
  - Due to the way the game handles Interceptor, the dog that randomly protects Shadow and counterattacks, he can be transferred to any enemy that casts the spell Rippler on Shadow: this is because Interceptor is essentially a permanent hidden Shadow-exclusive status effect that can be transferred along with any other status effects with the said spell. If you kill Interceptor's new best friend without having Strago cast Rippler on the enemy in question to transfer it to a different party member first, the dog is lost for the rest of the game.
- Final Fantasy VI ROM hacks:
  - In Antinomia: Final Fantasy VI, not waiting for General Leo means that while he'll survive, you won't be able to recruit him.
  - Also, if you recruit Sabin before recruiting Leo, you won't be able to access the turntable in the Crumbling House, meaning you lose out on the sword "Il Divo", which replaces the Ragnarok.
  - In Final Fantasy VI: T-Edition, letting Cid die at the start of the World of Ruin prevents you from doing any of Cid's quests later on.
  - Final Fantasy VI Brave New World downplays it in comparison to vanilla VI, with Water Rondo being accessible in the World of Ruin, and the Ragnarok Esper no longer being missable. However, it is possible to permanently miss the Reflect Rings.
- Final Fantasy VII:
  - The Wutai sidequest must be started before disc three, as it suddenly becomes inaccessible after disc two due to a sudden plot development. Missing it means you also miss the HP Absorb and MP Absorb Materia.
  - You only have one chance to acquire Barret's ultimate weapon, and it doesn't appear unless he is in your party at the time. All items located at Shinra Headquarters, including Cait Sith's ultimate weapon, are missable because you only get to visit there twice.
  - Ghost Hands, one-use items which drain MP from the enemy, are only obtainable before Shinra levels Sector 7.
  - While the Gelnika can be visited any time, the Turks are unavailable during disc three, so the fight with them can potentially be missed. And all of the Turks carry unique pieces of equipment that must be stolen during the fights against them on disc two. Furthermore, if the player completed Wutai, they have the option of skipping the final showdown with them at Midgar, thus losing the aforementioned equipment.
  - Two Enemy Skills (i.e. Blue Magic) have very small windows to obtain - "Trine" and "Pandora's Box". Trine is used by two non-repeatable bosses (Materia Keeper and Godo, the latter being the only one accessible after getting all four Enemy Skill materias^note), and Stilva, an enemy found in Gaea's Cliffs, an area that becomes inaccessible after a certain point.^note Pandora's Box is a much more extreme case: it's only carried by an undead dragon in the final dungeon (usually the first undead dragon you encounter), and is immune to Manipulate. Said dragon only casts the spell upon death, and will never use the spell on that save file ever again. This also happens if the monster has insufficient MP; if you petrified it with White Wind and if you miss it, your only recourse is to reload your save before the fight and try again.
  - The Leviathan Scales are found in a chest in Junon Underwater Reactor; if you miss them, you can't obtain the Oritsuru (Yuffie's second-best weapon) and the Steal as Well Materia.
  - Many, many materia are missable if you don't pick them up at the first opportunity or miss the wrong sidequest. This includes Comet, Ultima, Morph, W-Item, one of the Enemy Skill Materia, Added Effect, MP Turbo, Steal as Well, MP Absorb, Elemental, Ifrit, Ramuh, Bahamut, Neo Bahamut, Leviathan, and Luck Plus.
  - All four of the Huge Materias can be lost in their respective sequences, sometimes with more content alongside them. 1) Fail to catch up to the train that's heading to into North Corel and watch it crash into the town, costing you the chance to get the Huge Materia and the Ultima materia. If you manage to catch up to the train but fail to stop it, you'll be able to get Ultima, but you’ll need to buy it instead of being given it to you for free, and the Huge Materia will still be lost. 2) Lose the mandatory Fort Condor battle minigame and Shinra's forces will invade it, costing you its Huge Materia, access to Fort Condor itself and the Phoenix Materia in one fell swoop (though at least Phoenix can be dug up from Bone Village). 3) Let the submarine get away in the shooting minigame and the Huge Materia it carries is lost forever. . 4) If you don't input the code to shut down the rocket that's heading towards Meteor, its Huge Materia will forever be lost.
  - If Aeris is equipped with any unique items before her death, you'll lose them permanently for the rest of the game.
- Final Fantasy VIII:
  - Many of the Guardian Forces in the game can only be drawn from bosses and secret bosses (Siren from Elvoret, Carbuncle from the Iguions, Pandemona from Fujin, Leviathan from NORG, Alexander from Edea in Disc 2, and Eden from the Ultima Weapon), which are by definition a one-shot deal. You get a second shot at many of these (except in the Japanese version, for some reason) with a different batch of bosses, but only at the very last stage of the game, by which point their usefulness has become rather limited; and if you miss them a second time anyway, they're gone for good.
  - Upon arrival to the 4th disc, all of the towns in the game are locked off, which also seals off quite a few sidequests and, by extension, unique rewards. Averted with Guardian Forces like Odin, Cactuar, Tonberry, Bahamut and Eden (with Eden even having the aforementioned safety net), the locations of whose can still be accessed on 4th disc ... but finding Ragnarok to get to them is by itself quite obscure.
- Final Fantasy IX:
  - Excalibur 2, Steiner's Infinity +1 Sword, which is only attainable in the game's final dungeon... and vanishes if it takes more than twelve hours, from the start of the game, to get there. Perhaps less obnoxious than most examples of the trope in that it is meant to be an award for speed running through the game, rather than an arbitrarily unobtainable item. (There technically is a way to make the sword reappear and get another shot at grabbing it, but it requires making the in-game clock overflow, which takes two years of play time.)
  - One particularly big example is the end of Disc 3/start of Disc 4, where a good deal of the towns, such as Conde Petie, on the map become unaccessible because of the plot.
  - Disc 3-4 transition closes up Esto Gaza, the only place you get Scissor Fangs. The other one is synthetized with a one-shot (but thankfully unmissable) weapon, the Dragon's Claws, and the Tiger Claws, which can only be bought on Daguerreo, during the events of disc three. If you get to disc four without either Scissor Fangs or Tiger Claws, bye-bye Aura flair.
  - Scissor Fangs be damned, Esto Gaza is also the only place in the game that sells the Octagon Rod, which is the only item that teaches Vivi all 3 of his -aga spells, making him a lot less useful if you miss it since without them, he has no way to hit multple enemies late in the game for sufficient amounts of damage without either wasting a ton of MP to do it and having a chance to miss enemies entirely with Meteor or damaging the party members that don't have armor that absorb Shadow-elemental attacks in the process with Doomsday.
- Final Fantasy X:
  - A pair of oddball items that are a result of a programming mistake are missable; namely, the weapon with No Encounters (dropped by Geosgaeno) and the shield with Magic Counter (sold by the hovercraft on your first visit to the Calm Lands). However, these aren't exactly crucial to the game and merely serve as collector's items.
  - The Master Sphere item. In the NA and original versions, you're limited to 10 (which can't be missed). In the International release, they are rare drops from the Dark Aeons and Penance (and his arms). This lets you get 99 (by killing Penance's arms and then running away), but once you kill Penance for good, this opportunity is gone.
  - Anything that is available within Home, Bevelle, or any other plot important areas that you can't get to. In the case of the second place mentioned, there are two items available during a boss battle. If you don't take advantage of Revive Kills Zombie at the very beginning of the battle, you'll miss at least one of them by being forced to swim right past it.
  - Some of the Al Bhed Primers can be technically missed as they are found in the aforementioned unrevisitable locations, but Compilation Spheres allow you to get them if you did miss them. However, it requires multiple save files to compile the Primers between, so if you only have one save, you're out of luck.
- Final Fantasy X-2 ups the ante and features numerous examples of one-time Guide Dang It! items - especially completion percentage points, which can be lost forever if you ever use the scene skip feature during a plot scene. All the more frustrating, they are required in order to achieve 100% completion, which has a reward beyond bragging rights. However, they are only lost for the rest of the current playthrough; starting a New Game Plus allows you to see these again, as well as carry over completion percentage so you can still obtain 100%.
- Final Fantasy XII:
  - The Zodiac Spear, which, unless you avoid opening four arbitrary chests earlier in the game, can only be acquired from a chest that's only there 10% of the time and only has the dang spear 1% of the time. (That's nearly 700 reloads, on average.) Also, some items, such as Slime Oil, are only available en mass from spam-stealing from a certain gone-after-you-defeat-it-once enemy (Though you can obtain the only one that is actually required by completing 90 tiers of racing, much later in the game).
  - The chest holding the Demonsbane sword, obtained from the Tomb of Raithwall, will only appear if you defeat the first Demon Wall, —the one you're supposed to run away from, since its stats and abilities are far beyond what normal progression would allow your party. Even if you do defeat it, prepare to run back and forth from the entrance to the chamber where the chest appears, as there's a random chance of the chest containing Knots of Rust instead... and that's if the chest even appears at all.
  - Contrary to the game's claims, the Diamond Armlet doesn't actually increase the chance for you to get rare items; rather, it changes the configuration of the items completely.^note Players not figuring this out can get screwed trying to find some items like the Circlet, which can only be obtained from two chests that will only appear once. If you don't wear the Diamond Armlet, both are guaranteed to contain the Circlet, but if you do, one will only contain the Circlet 10% of the time, while other will contain it 50% of the time. If you open them without getting the Circlet, then the headgear is gone forever.
  - If you forget to pick up the Omega Badge after defeating Omega Mark XII before leaving the boss room, it will go away as all loots do the next time you reenter, which means you have no way to sell it to craft the Wyrmhero Blade in the bazaar.
  - In the Zodiac versions of the game, most License Boards have several licenses locked behind unlocking Espers. Because each Esper can only be claimed by one character, anything behind that Esper for other characters' jobs can no longer be acquired as the space where the Esper was disappears entirely. Similarly, each character can get three Quickenings, but there are four Quickening licenses on each board — the fourth space disappears after the third one is claimed, making any licenses locked behind the fourth Quickening slot unobtainable.
- In Final Fantasy XIII, virtually every single item before chapter 11 becomes this as soon as you leave its respective area. Fortunately, most of the items you can miss are either inconsequential or can be found/bought later, but there are a few weapons/accessories that can only be found in these chapters, so if you miss them, guess what? Bye-bye Treasure Hunter achievement!
- Final Fantasy XV: All of the limited-time events were exactly that. Content only for people who had access to the game during those short timeframes, leaving newer players unable to access the Festival or Carnival events.
Final Fantasy VII Remake: Zig-zagged. Within a single playthrough, it's possible to miss items and quests, but the Chapter Select function after beating the game allows you to replay a chapter so you can go back and obtain what you missed.
Final Fantasy Legend III:
- You can use the Talon to travel freely between the Past, Present, and Future to collect anything you missed, but once you use the X-Plane unit to travel to the Pureland, that's it; there's no coming back until the ending sequence. Mostly it doesn't matter, since you can generally find better equipment and spells in the Pureland, but it's possible to miss out on the valuable Talon units Berth and Flushex, which can heal your party and remove transformations.
- You can only visit Floatland once; after returning, anything left there is gone.

Pokémon

In general:
- In the main series of games, up until Pokémon Platinum, in each save file, you only had one chance at capturing stationary Legendary Pokémon (although you can trade for them with other cartridges). If they faint during the battle, that's it and you'd have to restart the game to get another chance. This is mitigated by the fact that you usually challenge these Pokémon to battles, meaning that so long as you're aware this will happen, you can just save before the fight and reload until you capture them. Platinum onwards has them respawn after (re)entering the Hall of Fame, but most players still save scum out of habit or convenience.
  - Pokémon Ranger escalated this with the Manaphy Egg, which was only available once per cartridge. Once Manaphy was transferred over to another game, there wouldn't be another one even if you restarted the game. For this reason, buying a second-hand copy of the game carries the risk of having already transferred over the one Manaphy egg.
- For Pokémon that evolve via leveling up but haven't for whatever reason, hitting level 100 permanently bars that Pokémon from ever being able to evolve. It would take over twenty years, with the release of Pokémon Sword and Shield, for this to be remedied; giving a level 100 Pokémon that evolves by level-up a rare candy will cause it to evolve. Pokémon Legends: Arceus streamlined this further by giving the player direct control of when their mons evolve once they've met the minimum requirement.
- Mythical Pokémon, such as Mew. Although nowadays they're more Temporary Online Content, events that gave them (or items used to access them in-game) out were location-based. Usually, there will only be one event per generation of the game to get these in a particular area of the world. If you miss it, you have to either trade with someone who managed to get one to add it to your Pokédex, or else use a cheat device for it. While some games do contain glitches that allow these Pokémon to be obtained without the need of events, hacks, etc, they tend to be very complicated and/or risky. Over time, some Mythicals (Deoxys , Magearna, Celebi, Mew, Keldeo, Jirachi and all the Mythical Pokémon from Generation IV) have become available through regular means in select games, and they can also be transferred to the mainline games from Pokémon GO, where they're extremely rare but not locked behind limited-time events.
- In another sense of the trope, if you're raising a certain Pokémon, it can lose certain attacks forever if you evolve it too early (or too late in the games without the Move Tutor). Pokémon that evolve with an evolution stone are particularly guilty of this, as evolving one usually results in the pre-evolution's movelist being completely lost and replaced with a much shorter movelist consisting largely of sucky moves (if it doesn't stop learning moves entirely), forcing the player to level grind until they get the moves they want before evolving. It would take until Pokémon Sun and Moon for this to no longer be an issue, with said moves now accessible via the Move Reminder.
- A fair number of Gyms throughout the series have ways to avoid fighting some, and in rare cases all, the Gym Trainers. If you defeat the Leader before fighting these skipped trainers, ALL the Trainers in the Gym will act as if you'd won against them — meaning all the experience and money you'd get from battling with them is lost forever.
  - A similar issue occurs when you're in an area currently under the control of the resident evil team. It's generally possible to sneak past a lot of the Grunts/Employees/what-have-you, but once you've beaten the Boss or Admin at the end of the area, all of them will pack up and leave, taking any experience or money they give out with them.
- Certain items necessary for Pokémon to hold while being traded to evolve have a nasty habit of being only available once per game. If you rely on the GTS for getting trade evos via self-trading^*, you better pray that nothing goes wrong, or else you'll be giving someone a free Porygon-Z with no way to get one of your own without restarting the entire game all over again just to get another Dubious Disc. Later games do make these items buyable in the Battle facilities, but these tend to be rather expensive and locked off until the post-game, and if you lost, say, the only Protector in Pokémon X and Y trying to get yourself a Rhyperior before then... well, you better hope someone will trade you one for the Golem you didn't want.
Pokémon Red and Blue/Pokémon Yellow/Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen:
- In a minor case in Red/Green/Blue/Yellow, you can get five Poké Balls for free from Professor Oak if you beat your rival in the optional Route 2 battle, but only if you don't catch any Pokémon beforehand.
- A Bulbasaur in Yellow requires you to raise your starter Pikachu’s friendship. If you trade Pikachu away and evolve or release/transfer it before getting Bulbasaur, unless you can cheat in a new Pikachu that has your OT, you’re locked out of Bulbasaur.
- Once you speak to the captain of the S.S. Anne and obtain the Cut HM, it leaves port and never returns, so you can't fight any of the trainers there or obtain any of the items. Or see the infamous truck (which, in the remakes, has a Lava Cookie in the game stashed nearby).
- In Pokémon FireRed/LeafGreen, due to a Game-Breaking Bug, if a wild Legendary Pokémon (i.e. Raikou and Entei, the only ones in the game that naturally learn it in the wild) uses Roar, they are treated as if they had fainted, disappearing from the save file altogether. Thankfully, Suicune's moveset was carried over from Pokémon Crystal (where it isn't a "Get Back Here!" Boss), it will not have Roar when fought, and can be caught through hard work and determination without having to worry about it accidentally deleting itself.
Pokémon Gold and Silver/Pokémon Crystal/Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver:
- In Pokémon Crystal, capturing all three of Raikou, Entei, and Suicune (and having them in your party or PC when you talk to the NPC) is required to get the Rainbow Wing which allows you to encounter Ho-Oh. Knock out one of them (or catch and transfer/release it before getting the Rainbow Wing)? Ho-Oh can no longer be battled. If you knock out one, you lose that beast too.
- Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver also had the Pokéwalker route "Beyond the Sea", unlocked after doing a trade on the GTS. Due to Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection shutting down for the Gen IV and Gen V games, "Beyond the Sea" cannot be unlocked to those that have not yet unlocked it.
- Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection's shutdown also made the World Ability Ribbon, a Tower Ribbon that is obtained by completing the Wi-Fi Battle Tower challenge in these games (as well as Platinum), unobtainable.
The game cartridges for Generation I and II die eventually due to the save file and clock being kept up with by an internal button-cell battery. You can't save a game to a dead cart, the clock in Gen II games won't work, and on many of those cartridges that still have save files, Espeon and Umbreon are impossible to get, as they evolve based on the clock. Lapras can also become lost forever in Gen II, since it only appears in Union Cave on a certain day of the week... which, of course, relies on the clock. You can change the battery to fix it, but your save will be lost without backing it up first. On the bright side, the Gen II games show symptoms of a dying battery (the clock stopping), allowing you to transfer your Pokémon to a separate game before performing the procedure. In addition, the Virtual Console rereleases (using emulation) make this a non-issue.
In Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, Team Magma/Aqua's base is permanently sealed off after a certain point, so if you didn't already get the Master Ball, it's lost forever. This was changed in Emerald and Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, where the base remains open (and, even better for ORAS, going back is actually a requirement at one point later on).
Pokémon Colosseum: Mirakle B., a minor trainer in Colosseum (with a unique model and a sped up version of Miror B's battle music) appears in his cave after you beat him, but disappears eventually. Seeing as how you would never go through a now empty dungeon, no one is going to see him without being told.
Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness: The Shadow Voltorb is missing a flag that makes it respawn should you lose to Miror B. in the first battle at the Cave Poké Spot, which locks you out of catching it. And as Shadow Dragonite requires you to catch all other Shadow Pokémon, being unable to acquire Voltorb means you are locked out of Dragonite too. Also, if you don't return Kandee to her mother in ONBS before Cipher invades the building, you can't get a Soothe Bell without trading it in from another game.
In Pokémon Diamond and Pearl and Pokémon Platinum, there is a hidden HP Up at Lake Valor that can only be found while the lake is dried up by the Galactic Bomb. The HP Up is located near the northwestern-most part of the dried-up lake with the dozen Magikarp. If you return to Lake Valor when the lake is filled with water again, you can't get it. It's not as damning as most of the other examples here, since HP Ups can be readily bought at the Veilstone Department Store (albeit for a very high price).
In Platinum, a few seemingly empty ruin caves were added to the game. It was possible to find the legendary golems/titans (Regirock, Regice, and Registeel) in these areas, but only with a "fateful encounter" Regigigas in your party, meaning one that was given out via a Mystery Gift event. Once this event ended, there was no way to access the trio without trading over the event Regigigas from another game. This doesn't apply to the normal Regigigas in the Sinnoh games; it requires having Regirock, Regice, and Registeel in the party to be awakened (and thus most people used the event Regigigas to gather them all easily), but they can also be transferred over from Generation III games to fulfill the requirement.
Some medals in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 require the use of the Global Link to obtain. As the Global Link for Gen V shut down not long after their release, those medals are forevermore up there with the event Pokémon in the "you should've been in the right place in the right year, bucko" department. On December 10, 2013, the Pokémon Dream World was also shut down, dragging down with it many, many features that could only be done online, such as growing berries and finding Pokémon with their Hidden Abilities.
In Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, Electrode can only be obtained through the traps in Team Rocket's Castle. Once Episode RR ends and the castle disappears, that save file will never be able to obtain Electrode without trading from another game.
In Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Eevee!, there are certain special events where your Pikachu or Eevee take an interest in certain landmarks or fixtures and by interacting with them you can raise that Pokémon's affection for you (leading to better luck in battle), but if you turn the Pokémon down or don't have the money for the ones that require it, you can't return and do them over.

Other examples:

Age Of Pirates 2: City of Abandoned Ships is mostly a sandbox game, but it does have two of what you could call main quest lines, one for one of the nations and the other for the pirates. You can do both, but only if you finish the national quest line first. If you even talk to one of the pirate bosses the governor general will refuse to give you missions because of your ties with pirates (nevermind that you keep sinking their ships left and right). That means you will never be able to access some of the game's features, such as the ability to capture towns, that are only unlocked during the national quest line. You are of course given no prior warning or afterwards notification whatsoever that you're being screwed over like that. On the contrary, your character gushes like a schoolgirl in both conversation and journal at how great it is to be given an opportunity to work for the great pirate lord Henry Morgan.
Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura:
- You get a very limited window of opportunity to recruit the Dog into your party, who is one of the strongest melee combatants in the game, needs no items, wields no weapons and thus suffers no durability damage, no matter what he attacks. The recruitment window is limited because as soon as you arrive in Ashbury the Dog's introductory event begins. Unfortunately, that event involves a halfling kicking the Dog while it's down and there is nothing to stop the Dog from dying this way. If you don't immediately run over to the halfling after arriving at the town and chase him away, the dog will die and you will never get another chance at recruiting him. It is virtually impossible to know this on your first playthrough without consulting a guide of some sort, leaving it entirely up to luck, whether you by chance go in the right direction to encounter the halfling in time to save the Dog or not.
- Lava Rocks. There are very few of these items in the game (three or so), all of them found in the Wheel Clan caverns. There is no obvious significance to these items so it is likely that a player will simply sell them after picking them up. Considering that the item stock of most vendors is on rotation this will lead to the Lava Rocks being destroyed once the vendor's stock changes. However, these rocks are the only things that a certain dwarven god accepts as offerings, and without his blessing it is impossible to complete the chain of blessings necessary to gain access to Velorien's blessing of ultimate power, which in and of itself is an unlikely feat without the use of Guide Dang It!.
From the Aveyond series:
- Ahriman's Prophecy has Princess Alicia, an Optional Party Member who can only be recruited if the player agrees to help Ella of Candar to go to the kingdom's Royal Ball and marry the crown prince. Failing to do so would result in the prince marrying Alicia, thus preventing her from adventuring with the heroes.
- In Rhen's Quest, the requirement for recruiting Te'ijal is to give her some sunscreen, which would enable her to travel outside Ghed'ahre. The problem is, there is only one sunscreen available in game, and it exists as one of two reward options after rescuing the druid Rashnu, the other being some silver coins. Clueless players who accidentally picks the latter reward would find themselves denied the opportunity to obtain Te'ijal for the rest of their playthrough.
Baldur's Gate II:
- The Flail of Many Heads was available as a sequence of components early in the game, which weren't too difficult to find. However they could only be assembled in that one location, which upon completion was locked off forever. Particularly galling since there was a shop specifically for the purpose of assembling such items, but the shopkeeper ignored the Flail components, so it would be entirely possible to lose the item while trying to get it assembled.
- In the expansion pack your butler could put the Flail together for you, but since that required you to carry around three useless but valuable items (which took up three times as much space as a weapon which actually worked) for the entirety of the game- when you weren't even aware the possibility existed- not many players took advantage of this.
- In the expansion, if you happen to have kept the Flail, you can also acquire two more heads for said butler to attach, completing the flail, and as you add each head it grows in power, dealing more damage and providing better abilities. Theoretically. The catch? When the final head is added, the Flail begins granting Free Action while it's equipped. That would be fine, except that free action prevents all changes to your movement speed, good or bad. While you're immune to the (by now rather weak) movement-stopping spells like Web and Entangle, you're also "immune" to spells like Haste, and the Boots of Speed. Since both of these are especially useful for melee fighters, who are most likely to be using the flail... Suffice it to say that many experienced players avoid applying the final upgrade, considering the Flail more useful with one head missing. Sadly, once you perform the upgrade (without knowing what the "improved" flail will give) there's no way to downgrade it again other than editing your inventory with an external program or reverting to an earlier save. Since Free Action is a relatively uncommon effect, it's not immediately obvious to many players that they've effectively received a debuff, so they may overwrite their previous saves before realising the problem.
- Certain dungeons (The Planar Prison, the Sahaugin City, etc.) cannot be returned to once you leave them, and any items contained therein are perpetually missed.
- The Big Metal Unit in the Throne of Bhaal expansion is the supreme king of this trope. First, it requires you to collect the Gold Pantaloons from the first game, carry your character over to the second game, collect the Silver Pantaloons in the second game (which requires you to be a colossal dick, something you're not likely to do unless you're doing an evil-aligned playthrough,) carry your character over again into Throne of Bhaal and collect the Bronze Pantalets before going to a special blacksmith in Amkethran to forge them all together. This is justified, however, in that the item is intended as an easter egg to challenge extremely dedicated players. More details can be read about it on Baldurdash.org.
- If you leave anybody in Spellhold, without telling the companion to meet up somewhere else (like the Copper Coronet in the slum district of Athkatla), odds are good you're going to end up leaving that character in the depths of the Asylum maze without any meaningful way to get them back until the expansion.
Baten Kaitos:
- The first game. As if getting 100% Completion wasn't hard enough (there are 1,000 distinct items to collect), many of the items are one-shots, and some can only be acquired by letting other items age, in real time, over days or weeks, and you have to take a picture of every single enemy in the game, including one-shot bosses.
  - In order to get 100% completion, you must take pictures of every character in your party. Every time you do so, there is a small chance that said character's photo will have a particular feature; this is called a rare shot, and naturally, you must also take rare shots of every character in your party. It so happens that in ONE particular boss battle, one character's appearance will notably change. Not only must you take a picture of that character in that state, but you must ALSO get the rare shot, and the only chance you have to get both of these pictures is in that one boss battle!
  - Diadem. Within a relatively short time frame, you have four bosses to photograph, six Auras obtained during a plot event through counter-intuitive means, each of which transforms 5 times over the course of the game and a merchant who sells a unique item and disappears after a plot event. Said merchant also blends in to the stylised background. Thats 41 items total.
  - Those transforming items? After the game's first big Wham Episode, the party gets scattered across the five continents. If the characters have transforming magnus (particularly the Auras) in their decks and you don't get them back before they change twice, you'll miss a transformation. Also, to get back four of the five missing party members, you have to fight four minibosses, one which must be faced with nobody but Xelha in your party. If she doesn't have a camera, then that boss' photo is lost. And if you left an Aura in the deck of the final party member, you'd better start speedrunning to get that character back (doesn't help that you have to go through two That One Boss fights, as well as two long dungeons to get there).
  - The Alfard Empire in general. The enemies you face there change every time the plot demands you go there, and then there's the Phantom Goldoba... Just to be on the safe side, visit the room in the front of the ship last. There are no items in there, and you have to visit every room before the boss appears, so make sure you get all the items before entering that room.
  - On your first trip to Mira, you have to go through a portal, keeping up with a character who will later become a party member while enemies try to assault you. You can shoot them down to keep from getting into battles with them, and shooting down an entire formation will net you a reward. If you miss a reward you want early, you can just intentionally fall too far behind to start over, but the reward for the very final group is Secret Recipe 4, which can't be obtained anywhere else. (The reward for group 10 of 13 is also essential, as it is Lyude's Level IV special move and by the time it appears as a random drop, it's probably no stronger than your regular attack magnus.) Just don't shoot down everything, because you won't run into those enemies again and you need to add their photographs to the list. And one of those enemies has a random drop that can only be obtained from it!
- Baten Kaitos Origins seemingly goes out of its way to avert it...though it isn't perfect. The "Tub-Time Greythorne" and "Warm Cheers" magnus (and by extension "Icy Jeers" which it ages into, and also by extension the sidequest that uses it) are missable after a certain plot event that occurs very late in the game. There are also four enemies that can be missed for your enemy list; one is the Ballet Dancer, the only random encounter in a one-time area that doesn't show up later in the Coliseum, but the really nasty ones are Valara, Nasca, and Heughes - the player is offered an option for whether to fight them. Saying "no" robs you of a perfect enemy list, saying "yes" robs you of the best ending. Thankfully, the player's magnus and enemy listings can be carried over to a New Game Plus, so even these things aren't strictly gone forever, and considering that there are only around 650 magnus to collect and about 130 enemies, it certainly did a better job than its predecessor. The fact that New Game Plus is required to actually have 100% Completion mitigates this a bit.
Bloodborne: The game has several phases that change the state of the game world, and some things can only be done or found in certain phases.
- Doctor Iosefka can gift you with Iosefka's Blood Vials, special healing items that recover more HP. She'll do this indefinitely, but only during the evening phase. After you reach Odeon Chapel and trigger the Night Phase, she will no longer replenish your supply, because she's been replaced by an imposter. There are some Iosefka's Blood Vial items scattered around, but they're few and far between.
- There are two safe houses for survivors that open up: Odeon Chapel and Iosefka's clinic. Sending a survivor to one means you miss out on the alternate situation of the other. In the case of Iosefka's Clinic, Iosefka will give you some useful items, and survivors sent to Odeon Chapel will survive to the endgame unless you have Adella kill Arianna or send the Suspicious Beggar there. If sent to Iosefka's Clinic, the imposter turns them into Celestial Mobs.
- There are 4 1/3 Umbilical Cord items in the game, which is rather lucky because two of them can be rendered unavailable if you make the wrong choices; Arianna's is only available if she survives past the final boss battle (instead of falling victim to Adella if you take Arianna's blood too often, the Suspicous Beggar if sent to the chapel, and Imposter Iosefka turning her into a Celestial Mob), and Imposter Iosefka's cord can only be looted if you kill her after the Blood Moon rises; kill her when you can first reach her, and she'll drop an Odeon Writhe rune instead (which she won't drop if killed post Blood Moon).
- Eileen the Crow's questline can only be properly started before entering the Forbidden Woods (if you don't heelp her out then, she'll go insane after the Blood Moon), and if you don't find her before the Blood Moon phase she will vanish, never to be seen again.
BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm has some notable examples, but it’s by no means all of them.
- Several of the Bitcoins are only available during very small windows. For instance, one of them can only be gotten when Cornelia leaves her bedroom door open after a specific cutscene in Chapter 3. Another requires you to have a bottle of Rum in your inventory when talking to someone at the Fanon Party, which happens once and can’t be revisited.
- A few of the Inbox sidequests actually go away if you don’t finish them before beating the main story. This is never mentioned anywhere beforehand. Even worse, the “Epic Souvenir” quest disappears after the very next chapter. Did we mention that clearing every Inbox mission is required to unlock the Sky Abyss and get the best ending?
- Hopefully you picked up a glowstick at the Vocaloid concert and remembered to get it signed backstage. If not, then you won’t have the item the quest giver needs, so you can say goodbye to the True Ending for that playthrough.
- One of the missable Inbox quests is also part of the running Deep Web subplot, so if you don’t do it when you have the chance, then you’ll lose out on the game’s biggest Bonus Dungeon and all of the treasures inside.
- After reading all this, it probably sounds like a good idea to do every sidequest as soon as it becomes available, right? Well, thinking like that is how you miss the Astral Error. It’s hidden behind a locked door in the 4chan Code Room, which you only get to visit once. But the key is in Twitch, which you also visit once, and that visit happens pretty well after the Code Room mission shows up at the Inbox. So you can only find the Astral Error, (and fight not_intended), if you wait to do that particular sidequest. Also, this Code Room quest is the same as the Deep Web one we were talking about earlier. So basically, you’ll miss a Bonus Dungeon if you do the quest too early, but you’ll miss another Bonus Dungeon if you wait too long. Yeah, there’s a reason why this game is said to have so much replayability.
- Naturally, any items in The Spire are lost once you beat the dungeon and return to the future. This also applies to items in Her World, although there isn't really anything that special in there.
Breath of Fire III has the Beast Spear, a weapon for Garr. It has far more attack power than any of his other weapons (his next closest weapon is a good 40 points weaker than the Beast Spear), though it also weighs a lot and drains a bit of his HP every turn, which for some makes it Awesome, but Impractical. Anyway, it can only be obtained by examining the ashes of a Duel Boss before leaving the room where you fought him. Take one step outside, and the weapon is gone for good.
Bug Fables has a dig spot in the Wasp Kingdom Hive containing a Dark Cherry. Most of the Wasp Kingdom Hive is a One-Time Dungeon, and after completing Chapter 5, it closes off and this Dark Cherry cannot be accessed again. Dark Cherries are renewable if expensive, so nothing major is completely lost.
In Child of Light, Aurora's stepsister Norah is later revealed to be Nox, a daughter of the Queen of the Night, and has been manipulating Aurora the whole time. After this event, Nox permanently leaves the party, meaning that if you still have any items equipped on her or used any Rare Candy items on her, they are lost forever.
Anything in Zeal in Chrono Trigger.
- Opening the sealed chests in the Middle Ages before opening them in the Present. You also miss the opportunity to upgrade certain weapons and armor if you don't allow the pendant to react to the chests.
- You can take the Swallow or the Safe Helm, but not both. You can buy Safe Helms later, but if you pass up on the Swallow, you won't get another shot.
- You can get Magus to join your party, ONLY if you refuse to fight him at a certain point. If the question presented didn't already seem like a "But Thou Must!", his boss theme plays while you make the choice, basically telling players that there is no point in saying no... except that there is. And in the DS version, you can only get his Bestiary entry for this fight if you do kill him... which, of course, means he can't join your party unless you do another NG+.
Chrono Cross:
- There's many a time when making a choice that enables you to get one character will result in you losing another: for example, opting not to save Kid at Guldove will let you recruit Glenn, but any chance of recruiting Razzly is — you guessed it — lost forever. There's a New Game + option that seemingly makes up for this, but it only becomes available about halfway through the game.
- It's VERY easy to lose Razzly's Level 7 ability for good. Fight an adjacent boss with her in the party? Fail to witness tragedy? Good bye Raz-Flower. And the most powerful combo attack (Infinity plus one spell?) in the game.
- Say yes to Kid when she first offers to join? Well, you just lost Leena. Answer one or both of the questions she asked earlier wrong? Well, you just lost her best tech.
- The Rainbow Weapons are the most powerful weapons of the game, and you need to do several steps in order to obtain them, such as recruiting Zappa (who hints at these weapons earlier) and talking to Nikki in the S.S Zelbees, after which, if you don't do them, those opportunities are gone, meaning it's impossible to fight all of the 6 Dragons as the Black Dragon can't be fought and the Master Hammer, which you'll need in order to forge these weapons, can't be brought.
Cyberpunk 2077
- There's a variety of loot that can be recovered from Yorinobu Arasaka's penthouse during The Heist at the start of the game. The most obvious is his pistol Kongou, but there's also a set of his clothing, his father's Disc-One Nuke katana Satori, and a pet iguana, all of which become unobtainable after making your escape.
- How you play out the Pickup, which happens before the Heist, can also make you lose out on certain items however you choose. Killing Dum Dum makes you lose out on his iconic pistol Doom Doom later on in the story, but this requires siding with Maelstrom, which makes you lose out on Royce's iconic pistol Chaos, which you can only get by taking him down, as well as the Sir John Phallustiff which you can only get by siding with Meredith Stout for the mission in question.
- Evelyn Parker's Cocktail Stick katana can only be officially obtained in the few points in the game where the Clouds club is accessible (though unofficially, you can still grab the thing if you have the cyberware and the tricky jumping skills to get through a hidden way back into the place).
- For the players who bought Phantom Liberty DLC, its main quests in Dogtown can be locked out if they quit the main missions early on, or refusing President Myers and Solomon Reed's offers in the fourth main mission.
Corruption of Laetitia:
- There are some one-time dungeons in this game, such as the hallway created by Malayna's deadly sins and the Tower of Revelation, meaning the player only has one chance to grab the items inside.
- Arowar and the nearby marsh are mutually exclusive locations, and choosing to go to one locks the player out of the other. It's also possible to lose several sidequests in Arowar if the player chooses to raze it rather than avoid civilian casualties.
Dark Cloud 2:
- You can take pictures of various enemies and items, many of which are temporary, including one-shot bosses.
- A glitch in Chapter 3 can cause chests that contain Fruits of Eden, a valuable item that increases your characters' maximum HP, to be lost forever. One set of chests will disappear if you fail to open them immediately after they appear; if you open another (specific) chest before a later chapter, a chest that should appear in that later chapter will never appear at all. Thankfully, the rest of the chests in the game appear to be free of glitches.
- The Moon Flower Palace, the Chapter 7 dungeon, goes away at the end of said chapter, taking its Medals and Invention Ideas with it if the player doesn't complete it by that deadline. You also lose the ability to use time travel, so any missed treasures and photos from the future sections are gone for good.
In Dark Souls, it is very easy to miss items or events permanently if you don't know what you're doing. Usually, this means killing an NPC, which will render anything they sell or give as a present unavailable. Except... you have to kill certain NPCs in order to save other NPCs, and some items are only available by killing otherwise friendly NPCs. Joining Covenants and getting access to their rewards sometimes requires joining before killing certain bosses; kill those bosses and you can't ever join. In the first game, there are special weapons that can only be obtained by cutting off the tail of draconic bosses. Did you not cut off the tail? Too bad, the weapon's gone. However, the item is only rendered lost on that playthrough: starting a New Game Plus will reset everything and give you another chance (the enemies will be a lot harder though).
While very hard, it's possible to make any and all Digimon permanently inaccessible in Digimon World 3 and the PAL release Digimon World 2003. Digimon have a "requirement" to be met before you can actually recruit them, which is always a minimum and maximum level. In short, if ALL of your current Digimon are above that level, you just can't get that other Digimon. The easiest to lose like this is Veemon, the only Digimon which you cannot get in any of the starter packs and also the best rookie in the game. The max level for recruiting him is freaking 30. And you only get Mega-Level Digimon on level 40. Fortunately, the fight for recruiting him is fairly easy.
Deltarune: Because each chapter revolves around sealing a fountain that creates a Dark World and causing it to be reverted to the room it was based on, this comes up a few times:
- Any items you didn't pick up or ran out of before you seal a fountain are gone. If you're lucky, you might be able to buy some of these items in the Castle Town from the next chapter onwards, but not all of them are included. Even worse is that some items can be used to craft other items, so you'd better hope you have copies if you wanted to obtain those items while still keeping their components.
- Additionally, in the Light World you have a "Ball of Junk" to represent your Dark World items. If you choose to discard it, you won't have any of these items when you return to the Dark World.
- If you don't find and defeat the Superboss of each chapter, you'll lose out on certain items. Interestingly, the game will know if you did so on another save file and the items will become available to you on your current one.
- In Chapter 1, if you defeat any enemies violently, you'll miss out on the chance to walk around and talk to various NPCs before you leave, but not much else changes and the enemies are all recruited to the Castle at the start of Chapter 2. However, from that point on, defeating an enemy violently will mean that they can never be recruited again, and also be lost if you recruited that type of enemy already. There are also NPCs that will only be recruited if you do specific actions or if you have a certain number of recruits. And that's not even getting into if you choose to do the "Weird" route.
- The missable content got to the point where an update was added to Chapter 2 to warn you before you save at the Castle after leaving the Cyber World in case you wanted to reload and go back for anything you missed:
  You thought about how you can't go back to the Cyber World anymore. You considered it carefully!
- Even the Light World isn't safe from this, as there are items you can only get in specific chapters, and some have different options of how to use them. Also, if you didn't wait by the water and talk to Onionsan, or if you made them go away, then they won't show up when you go back there in the next chapter.
Dragon Age:
- Dragon Age: Origins:
  - All of your party members can be lost to the ravages of this trope if you anger them too much or by making certain decisions during quests. They'll also leave with all the gear you equipped them with.
  - Zevran is possibly the best example. Hired as an assassin to kill you in an ambush, his defeat leaves him knocked unconscious. At this point the game has done nothing but paint him as a Smug Snake miniboss. You're given the option to kill the threat while he's down or wake him up for questioning. The thing is he doesn't really have any information the player doesn't already know. So, unless you know that he's a potential party member, most people choose to kill him in their first playthrough.
  - When you first arrive at Lothering, two possible companions are available. If you leave Lothering and complete one of the main quests without having picked them up, it gets destroyed by the darkspawn, and you lose any quests, loot, and potential party members forever.
  - Another rather annoying example is in the Human Noble origin. If you don't go to the treasury to pick up the powerful "Family Sword" weapon before escaping the castle, it's gone for good (along with all the treasure chests that you couldn't open if you chose Warrior instead of Rogue).
  - Random encounters and sidequest levels are often impossible to enter after the corresponding quest is solved, leaving the loot one has not picked up inaccessible. As the party inventory is far from infinite, sometimes the player will find themselves unable to pick everything up without destroying some of their valuables. Note that these items are vendor trash that solely exist to be sold for relatively small amounts of money. None of these items are anything you would go back to get anyways.
  - A minor but rather annoying example appears in the "Return to Ostagar" DLC. If you already looted the Magi encampment chest using the key the Hungry Deserter gave you, you will miss out on the rather powerful Corrupted Magister's Staff. On the other hand, the DLC also gives you another chance to recruit Dog.
  - The unique items that appear randomly on certain enemies/chests are lost forever if you don't get them and overwrite the saves before fighting them/entering the area they appear.
- Near the end of Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening, the Darkspawn lead two separate attacks against the player, one on the city on Amaranthine and one the Warden's base, Vigil's Keep. The player has to choose which to save, and if you choose Amaranthine any party members currently stationed at Vigil's Keep will die in the attack. It is possible to save both Amaranthine and your soldiers at Vigil's Keep (though the keep itself is still rendered unusable for the rest of the game) but doing so requires the player to complete a lengthy sidequest that involves, among other things, collecting ore deposits. Said deposits happen to be located in places you can't return to after leaving, which means if you don't get them the first time you're there you can't finish the sidequest (and by extension, save your party members).
- Dragon Age II is full of this. The game is split into three acts, and any quests, treasures, party members, etc. that you don't get in one act will be unobtainable in the next. It's also possible to miss or lose every party member except Varric, depending on your choices. Finally, certain areas and dungeons are inaccessible as soon as you leave them.
- While Dragon Age: Inquisition avoids this trope for the most part (Codex entries are available in more than one source, nothing super-important is kept in chests that only Rogues can unlock, and very few quests of note are lost over time), this trope does pop up in a few other ways:
  - The one type of quest that is lost by story advancement is personal quests, which are not available in the post-game, permanently locking out some dialogue, character development, and quest rewards. And in Blackwall's case, if you don't build his approval to the point that his personal quest triggers, he will leave the party permanently in the post-game.
  - It is only possible to choose one of the three class specializations per playthrough. Even though it's implied that the other two trainers are still hanging around Skyhaven, you can't change your mind once you make a choice. Even if you reset your skill points, you'll still have the spec you chose, just with no points invested.
The Dragon Quest series:
- Dragon Quest II:
  - If you have a completely full inventory when you come across the Silver Key, do NOT decline to drop one of your items to make room for it, or else the chest holding the key will disappear. The "Open" spell keeps this from being a Game-Breaking Bug, but it does mean a lot of extra grinding before you can open silver doors.
  - In the iOS versions, the Princess of Moonbrooke's most powerful weapon can be missed if the player defeats the enemy in the basement of Midenhall Castle with every character's inventory full.
- Dragon Quest V: In the SNES version, you can never return to the Ice Mansion or Dwarf Cave in the Fairy Realm after Powan/Treacle uses the Flute/Beacon of Spring, so any treasures left behind are permanently missable. Averted in the PS2 and DS remakes, where you can explore the realm again after going through the Lost Forest in the third generation.
- In Dragon Quest VI, you can lose a character if you tell him the wrong thing at the wrong time. To be specific, if you tell Amos the truth about him being the monster that menaces the town every night before giving him the Seeds of Reasoning that allow him to control the transformation, he'll leave the town, never to return. To be fair, a lot of the Non Player Characters in the town tell you that doing so is a bad idea, since they hail him as the town's saviour due to chasing off the monster that gave him the curse that causes him to transform every night, he never causes any major damage during his rampages, and the game itself gives you multiple prompts on whether you want to do it.
- Dragon Quest VII does not allow you to collect certain NPCs for your island after the first or second disk, which means a certain amount of Tinymedals will always be out of your grasp. And if you don't resolve one of the towns' problems properly (which takes 3 times), the town's still ruined in the present.
- In Dragon Quest VIII, the items in the town of Neos are lost forever after a certain major plot event occurs. The game also doesn't prevent you from selling items with finite availability. Shopkeepers are nice enough to warn you when something you're about to sell is one-of-a-kind, but they usually fail to warn you against selling items that are relatively common, but have limited availability (Rare Drops, Casino wins). Such items are often required to craft the best weapons in the game. Of course, there's seldom if ever any indication of this in-game. Therefore, most knowledgeable players follow this mantra: don't sell anything that can be used in the Pot, since it'll show you which items you can and can't use in Alchemy.
- Dragon Quest IX featured an online shop called the DQVC that could only be accessed once per day. A large quantity of the game's Vanity Items could only be obtained by purchasing them there, and the items offered varied week to week. When the store went down, these items were then lost forever. The store and certain quests were lost forever once they closed the quest service and store with the permanent shutdown of the DS's online servers at the end of May 2014. And at least one quest required a store-only item to complete. An offline version of the store is still accessible, but only offers a very limited selection of items.
In EarthBound (1994):
- The Starman Supers in the Stonehenge Base can Randomly Drop the Sword of Kings for Poo (his only weapon, actually). When the base's boss is defeated, all enemies in the base disappear and the sword is permanently lost.
- The Gutsy Bat. It's one of Ness's Infinity +1 Swords and can only be found on the Bionic Kraken in the Cave of the Past. Said enemy only appears in the immediate area before the final boss, making it almost useless, especially since you are past the Point of No Return.
- Ness receives a big stat boost after defeating Ness's Nightmare in Magicant after the eighth Sanctuary location... unless he's already level 99. Which can happen while you're hunting in the Stonehenge Base if you're unlucky enough.
- Also in Magicant, if you accidentally pass by the Magicant Bat (which is thankfully on the correct path), Goddess Band, or one of the few Bags of Dragonite in the game you're out of luck as Magicant will disappear after defeating Ness's Nightmare.
Eternal Sonata has an old lady that can be spoken to in Chapter 4. Doing so will allow you to access a Score Piece later on. However, if you don't speak to her in Chapter 4, she will be sleeping for the rest of the game, making that particular Score Piece lost forever.
The Fable series:
- In Fable: Multiple:
  - There's a very special weapon in a key chest in the Heroes Guild. However, if you do not obtain all the necessary keys or just procrastinate in opening the chest before Jack of Blades attacks the Heroes Guild, the weapon is, you guessed it... ... This gets fixed in the expansion pack, as you can revisit the (rebuilt) Guild after the attack. Later in the game, you may encounter a demon door that demands all your keys to open, which would make all the contents of the chests you haven't opened yet lost forever... but you're given ample warning, and it's optional.
  - Another demon door requires you to find three suits of armor, the first one being bright plate mail. Unfortunately, it's only sold in the Arena; and you can only visit the Arena once, at a specific point of the main quest. So if you didn't buy all its parts, at the one and only possible time, you can never open the demon door. (This is fixed in the expansion, where you can buy the armor in one of the added locations.)
  - There is a demon door that opens only if you had married the villainous Lady Grey. If you choose to expose her evil deeds instead (only possible in the expansion), you're out of luck. Or if you become Mayor in Fable: The Lost Chapters, by turning her in. A way to achieve both ends would be to court her, fight Thunder (the Demon Door is in an area off-limits and only accessible if you fight Thunder for Lady Grey's favour), then turn her in (find her dead sister).
- Fable II only has one (potentially avertable) instance of this. If you don't choose the Love/The Needs of the Few ending, you can't resurrect your dog, who dies during the end of the main quest. Because of this, any dig spots you missed can't be dug up. However, if you have the Knothole Island DLC, then you can get your dog back by sacrificing a villager at Cheet-Ur's Crypt.
In Faria, the towers all crumble after you clear them, making it impossible to collect items you missed. However, only one easily missed item is unique: the Hyperspeed 3 in the Phantom Tower.
Finding Light: The player has to evade all guards in Arcadia while making their way to Phoenix if they want the Airwing relic, and they only have one chance to do so.
Fortune Summoners: This can happen, but not to anything good or important:
- You can miss an accessory for Arche in the bonus quest if the player continues with the main story from a Prologue Clear save without playing through it. The bonus quest can only be accessed from a Prologue Clear save.
- Also, the two accessories which can be won from Rock-Paper-Scissors, as well as the few items to be found in Minasa-Ratis Magic School after fixing Mr. Towarin's magic pot, as the normal school area becomes permanently inaccessible.
Fossil Fighters: The Seabed Cavern in Champions has six vivosaurs that can be found there. Since you only visit the area once throughout the story, with no chance at a return, those vivosaurs can all be found elsewhere... that is, their head fossils can be found elsewhere, at extremely low encounter rates. The body, arm, and leg fossils of those vivosaurs only appear in the Seabed Cavern.
Get in the Car, Loser!:
- All major bosses have their own achievements for winning on Devil Clock mode.
- "Keep Honking — I'm building meter" requires the player to have Emily use 10 fully charged Sword of Fate attacks. Since she's only available in DLC 2, this achievement becomes unattainable after the DLC is completed.
The Golden Sun Series:
- The first game Golden Sun doesn't have anything that is technically missable during the game, but once the final credits roll and the file is completed, they cannot play that file anymore (unless the clear data is saved to a separate slot). However the sequel, Golden Sun: The Lost Age, has extra content, including a bonus dungeon, that is locked unless the player picked up all Djinn and optional items in the first game and then transferred their save file.
- Transferring a save file from Golden Sun to Golden Sun: The Lost Age can be done with either a link cable or a manual password. However the Wii U virtual console releases obviously can't use a link cable, so if you want to transfer over your 100% file with a gold password, have fun entering those 260 characters!
- Golden Sun: Dark Dawn has this with permanently missable djinn and summons, the former having an incredible 24 potential missable Djinn and 6 summons spread over three different points of no return, out of 72 total djinn and 13 summons. Particularly irritating in that some of these djinn and summons have very small windows of opportunity to get them, and there wasn't anything like this in the first two games. The Ninja Sandals equipment is also lost forever if you don't talk to a certain NPC the first time you're in Kaocho. Additionally, some Encyclopedia terms can be lost forever if you don't talk to random NPCs in the Morgal region, frustrating those who consider filling it out as part of 100% Completion. Even more irritating, oftentimes those terms WILL appear in other characters' dialogue, but they're not highlighted in red, so it doesn't count.
Near the beginning of Infinite Undiscovery, Sigmund gives you his sword. It's nothing special and the Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness makes it useless fast. As a further temptation, it does sell for a pretty high price for such an early item. If you sold it, say goodbye to the Infinity +1 Sword.
Kingdom Hearts: Multiple:
- In the first game, finding and using multicolored marks called Trinities is one of the requirements for 100% Completion. In Halloween Town, a Red Trinity can be found in the base of Oogie's Manor, and you must use that Trinity before fighting Oogie Boogie for the first time. After you beat Oogie, he merges with his manor, and beating him makes him collapse to the ground, thus rendering the Trinity lost forever. Another catch is that to use the Trinities, you have to have Donald and Goofy in your party for them to work. Many players who couldn't be bothered to switch Jack Skellington out of their party at the Save Point at the top of the manor and backtrack to the Trinity with Donald and Goofy ended up tearing their hair out in frustration. The Final Mix version moves the location of that trinity, preventing it from being lost forever.
- Kingdom Hearts II has a few harmless missables during the tutorial, but they aren't even counted in Jiminy's Journal (the main tracker for completion). Considering it was made by Square Enix (see the opening entries in this trope), it's surprising that otherwise, the series has mostly avoided this problem since then.
- Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, which requires 100% to get the bonus ending:
  - The game can lock you out of a few otherwise boring chests during the final chapter. If you miss them, you'll have to pick up on your old Aqua save (hope you still have it!), open the silly boxes, beat the game again and then redo the final chapter. And you just know it was for a Potion or something. And optimally you'll want to get them before an even earlier plot event, because after that, the area will be guarded by an unavoidable superboss. (namely, Young Xehanort)
  - The post-game battle levels: both Terra and Ventus can have the battle levels of their worlds raised significantly after completing the Final Episode, making grinding to Level 99 a much faster process. Due to a bug, however, the player must not touch either of their Terra or Ven saves between beating their final bosses and beating the Final Episode, or else the battle levels will stay where they are, and they'll have to make new files to set their completion flags and try again. (Graciously, Aqua's battle levels can never be raised and are exempt from this status, but that just makes for a completely different problem.)
In King's Field II, a certain merchant (Lyn), sells a number of dead useful items, but at the time, they seem rather expensive. It's only until later one realized that a) many of her wares are otherwise unattainable, and b) her prices are actually quite low. Of course, by then she's been killed.
Knights of the Old Republic:
- Two planets/cities can't be revisited after a certain point due to being destroyed by the Sith with little to no forewarning, and all items and sidequests therein are rendered lost forever.
- There are also smaller and more numerous examples such as a runaway girl found on your ship, that will eventually run away again and be left to her own fate if you don't finish the 'side-quest' within the time limit.
Several weapons and items in The Last Story can be missed if they're not gotten before certain key events. The Fast Bow, a revamped version of the regular bow, can only be obtained by defeating the boss Lesser Shadow in less than four minutes, which can be very difficult to do if the player doesn't know the best strategy to prevent the boss from recovering HP. There's also a rare katana, obtainable through a Chain of Deals, that cannot be complete if the player completes Chapter 31 beforehand. A wine bottle can also be missed from a drunken man if the player gets past all the moments of nightime in the game. Lastly, there are optional chapters that are missable at key points, namely 20, 21, 25 (these three after 31), 24 (if 20 isn't done), 42 and 43 (if the player skips directly to 44, which will trigger the game's finale and take the player to New Game Plus).
Several examples of this appear in Legend of Legaia
- There are four paths that each lead to the first Mist generator, and attempting to go to the valley before you have revived three Genesis Trees in Drake Kingdom will cause a cutscene to play in a hidden area in the canyon. Each canyon contains a treasure chest, but once you have revived three Genesis Trees, these valley crossings will become inaccessible and the treasure chests therein are also forever outside your grasp.
- Any item in any of the four Mist Generator dungeons ^note and any item in either Rogue's Tower or Noaru Valley, both in the Seru-kai, is permanently lost once you complete the dungeon, as the area becomes inaccessible.
- There are not one, but two items that become such in the first hour of the game. When the Mist attacks Rim Elm at the beginning of the game, you can talk to the shopkeeper to get three Healing Leaves, and talking with Mei and offering to have her stay with your family during the Mist attack will cause her to give you her Pendant when you leave for Drake Castle.
Obscure Game Boy Color RPG Lil' Monster has the Dowser and Dragonscale ability gems, and their associated monsters, Gyro and Argon. These two monsters are fought as bosses. However, the bosses will only appear once, and if you lose to them, they'll vanish. You'll never be able to get their ability gems. Frustratingly, missing Gyro/Dowser also means you miss the Disc-One Nuke, Minhand, which doubles your attack power, as the monster that holds that particular gem only appears when you use the Dowser gem to summon a monster to fight.
Lisa: The Painful features lots of it.
- In the Area 2 after you get TNT in the construction site, two guys will appear in the far right of the area. If you interect with them, they will offer a fair amount of mags in exchange of some of your TNT. If you accept the offer, they will blow up a whole village, killing almost everyone in it. It will make you permanently miss the chance to recruit 3 party members (Jack, Yazan and Tiger Man) and buy some items that are unique to that village, if you haven't done yet. The Definitive Edition rectifies the last bit slightly, as it adds in a new way to get the Dismal Map if you didn't get it before.
- After leaving Factory Town for the first time, Brad is ambushed by a gang called the Road Scholars who offer him the ultimatum of fighting them or handing over all of his mags. If you lose to them, they will kill everyone in the village. Didn't find and return Mad Dog's club before then? Sucks to be you, as he's dead and you can't recruit him.
- Ajeet will refuse to join your party if you've taken at least two pills of Joy up to that point. Thankfully, the cutscene where Brad is force-fed Joy does not count.
- If you complete the EWC's Eternal Championship, Brad will get kicked out, locking off all three modes. By doing this, you lose the opportunity to grind levels/mags and recruit Shocklord.
In the Game Boy Advance version of Lord of The Rings: Fellowship of The Ring, there were a series of Runes the player needed to obtain to unlock doors in the Mines of Moria. However, there is nothing that indicates the need for these runes taking up space in the limited inventory. And since there is no way to go back to previous areas, these items can be lost forever, making the game Unwinnable by Design, or Unintentionally Unwinnable, depending on perspective.
Lost Odyssey:
- Items from areas that cannot be returned to become available in an auction house that exists for that sole purpose. Even if the player loses the auction for an item, it will reappear until the player wins it; winning items this way is sufficient for 100% Completion. Given that to get the 'all items' achievement requires nearly 700 items, literally hundreds of which are in items almost indistinguishable from mundane items and are usually overlooked, dozens hidden in inexplicable places or that require incredibly hard puzzles to get to, about 50 from sidequests ranging from easy to merciless, 24 from following vague clues to hidden items and 11 that are literally invisible with no indication that they're there, and something like 70 of these items can be missed, being able to buy what you miss is only fair.
- There are two spells which can only be purchased from two different vendors. One is in an area at the end of the second disc, the other is in an area near the beginning of the third disc. Each of these vendors are in areas that once you progress far enough, can NEVER be visited ever again. Granted, you get more powerful versions of these spells later (and they aren't missable) but you could still miss out on an achievement this way.
Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals averts a situation like this when it comes to sold items by including a shop late in the game where you can buy back any item you've ever sold.
In Lufia: The Legend Returns, once Seena reveals herself as Erim, you can no longer recruit the Egg Dragon.
Luminous Plume:
- All stages can only be cleared once, which means any chests the player misses are lost forever.
- Southlight Village become unavailable after beating the Ashen Calamity, along with any quests that can be taken there.
LunarLux: When opening combination lock chests, failing too many times will cause the chest to be permanently locked. This is to discourage brute force guessing and encourage looking for clues.
Lunarosse has very little of this, mostly one or two inconsequential items not needed for the best ending. Early versions made it possible to lose a party member permanently, locking you out of the best ending, but the revised final version allowed you to get her back via a sidequest.
Luxaren Allure: Crystallized Hope, if you miss more than two, you can't craft the Infinity +1 Sword. Although, you get a good bit of armor instead. Also, Aggressive Edges. There's just enough to craft one of everything to craft with them. So if you miss one after the last Point of No Return, and you crafted everything you could, you can't craft with Aggressive Edges anymore, and an Aggressive Edge is needed for the Infinity +1 Sword.
Machina of the Planet Tree -Planet Ruler-: The Heads I Win, Tails You Lose version of Gertheim will drop Unlimiter II if the player wins and is the only opportunity to obtain this accessory.
The MARDEK Flash RPG series has several examples of this — unless you save certain items in your storage at the very end of each chapter, they are permanently lost in future titles:
- The cosmetic "tunics" that Mardek and Deugan wear in Chapter 1 are unique, and cannot be obtained again (due to the Time Skip) unless placed in storage.
- The Lapis Lily item that Elwyen gives in Chapter 2 for completing her sidequest (a useful accessory that partially protects against three different elements) is unique. Failing to finish the sidequest in 2 means you lose out on it for the rest of the series (and unlike other examples, this accessory retains its usefulness for a long time after its acquisition).
- Killing Gope (the sympathetic bandit) in the Gem Mine in Chapter 2 not only locks you out of part of the Trilobite Cave/Cambria for the balance of the chapter (and when you do access it in Chapter 3, several chests are permanently blocked off), but you miss out on additional character development and a travelling merchant who sells some powerful items. By default, Gope is considered dead in Chapter 3.
- Mardek's Infinity +1 Sword in Chapter 2, the Champion Sword, is only awarded if the Arena mode is completed. It's a unique item, to boot — fail to complete the 20 waves, and you lose out on it for the following chapter. Additionally, the "Keyblade" sword is a unique item only dropped by a specific enemy in the Catacombs, and doesn't carry over unless placed in storage.
- Once you enter Moric's battle-saucer in chapter 2, you've permanently sealed off from the Catacombs, lose your chance to unlock Cambria, and boosted the hire price of Zach by 1000%. Also, when you go into the throne room in chapter 3, everything is closed off (it's possible some areas could be revisited in subsequent chapters, but since the series was rebooted, that's something of a moot point).
In Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, the boss Mammoshka has a 50% chance of dropping the 1-Up Gloves (auto-revive a Bro if he gets KOed). You're gonna have to reset if you don't get it when you kill him, since there's no other way to get them.
Marvel: Avengers Alliance:
- The Special Operations used to do this until later when Playdom released the first few heroes for an outrageous 200 CP.
- There's also the case with Moon Knight. It had tasks similar to Spec Ops without being as Guide Dang It! as Spec Ops are. However, if you didn't finish the tasks before the time expired, you lost your chance.
- They later started slowly retiring lockboxes one by one. If you didn't manage to luck out on getting enough non-duplicate covers from the boxes before the boxes expire, sucks to be you.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance allows you to return to almost any area you've already completed, but there are a few exceptions, such as the SHIELD base in Atlantis or the fake Dr. Doom's castle in Murderworld. Any items missed there are gone until your next playthrough.
Mass Effect:
- Mass Effect:
  - Mass Effect 1 notably has no Point of No Return backup like the third game OR a post-game like the second. So, once the four primary planets have been finished, you automatically return to the Citadel, where several new sidequests become available... and then you hightail it out of Dodge and cannot return to the Citadel in its current, un-invaded by the geth state for the rest of the game. If you then complete the game while you still have things to do and don't have a backup save, there's no way to get to them without replaying the whole game again in New Game Plus. On top of that, the game makes no indication that this is going on.
  - Dovetailing with the above, the two pieces of DLC could be frivolous to players who already completed the game before they came out / realized they were available, since without a backup save there's no easy way to get to them without starting the whole story over.
  - There are Achievements you gain from having certain party members in your party for a certain percentage of the game. However, since you only get Liara once you leave the Citadel for the first time, and the planet she's on is only one of many you can visit, it's possible for there to not be enough game left to complete once you get her, locking you out of the achievement until the next playthrough. You have to go recruit her immediately, avoiding any optional quests until she's part of your team. Garrus is only acquired a couple story missions before Liara, so he's almost as difficult.
  - The Feros colony offers several sidequests which can never be completed if the hero ends up killing the characters associated with them — nice job, Shepard. Even better, failing to save the Colony locks you out of a War Asset in the third game.
  - Did you tell Admiral Kohaku about his dead men before you started the Cerberus side arc? Welp. So much for that, then. Bear in mind that Admiral Kohaku's men are on a planet in the same cluster where you get Liara, and about the only thing to make them even a little hard to get at is the Thresher Maw.
  - Several side quests and subplots are potentially continued on in the next two games. Permanently Missable Content times three. Oh, and the skip dialogue button can also choose dialogue, so it's possible to accidentally choose something you didn't want by accident.
- In Mass Effect 2, most weapon and armor upgrades can only be found during missions. Thanks to the game's rigid mission structure, there's no way to revisit the locations of missions you've already completed. Complete the mission without getting the upgrade, and you're outta luck. New Game Plus mitigates this somewhat. Additionally, there are three separate mini fetch quests you can perform on Illium where you can find an item or information significant to a separate NPC. These can only be found during Miranda's loyalty mission, Samara's recruitment mission, and Thane's recruitment mission. if you don't find these items during their respective missions, you can't complete the fetch quests.
- Mass Effect 3:
  - You regularly find new weapons during missions. Most of them can be purchased at the Citadel if you miss them, but two weapons, the M-358 Talon and the M-99 Saber, have to be found during missions or else they become unobtainable. While none of them are mandatory to complete the game, it's always nice to add a new gun to your arsenal. (Made even more noticeable in the Expanded Galaxy Mod, which adds a Wall of Weapons to the shuttle bay and lets you see exactly what guns you're still missing.)
  - During the From Ashes DLC, if you fail to find all three terminals during for the Eden Prime: Resistance Movement sidequest during your visit to Eden Prime, the quest remains open in your journal and impossible to complete without the use of cheats.
  - Once you complete Priority: Tuchanka, several side quests on the Citadel will become locked out if uncompleted including the opportunity to reunite Liara with her father. Additionally, if you wait too long to complete two side missions (evacuating Grissom Academy and disarming the bomb on Tuchanka) after they become available, they will be considered failed, locking you out of the relevant upgrades and war assets.
  - There's a glitch on one sidequest in 3, the one with the salarian Spectre and Kasumi Goto. If you leave the Citadel while it's going, if you activate the Spectre terminal, if you trigger any other sidequests - and this is a game where sidequests are triggered by walking past people - or if, by some accounts, you hit pause before completing it, even though it's a quest that requires meandering across several areas - you can't complete it and those War Assets are lost forever.
  - The game tries to mitigate the frustration factor by letting you buy any any quest item on the Citadel if you don't find it during the mission where it's normally found.
- Mass Effect: Andromeda:
  - At the end of the Elaaden main questline, the player must choose whether to give a Remnant drive core to the local Krogan leader, or keep it for themselves. If kept, it is impossible to found a colony on Elaaden, which locks out at least one sidequest and one of the game's finite Remnant data cores (see below)
  - A sidequest acquired early in the game requires finding nine Remnant data cores. There are only eleven in the game, and four of them can only be found off the critical path in the Remnant vaults on each free roam planet, which cannot be accessed after they are activated. Another can only be found during an endgame mission, in an area that cannot be returned to. Miss too many of them, and the sidequest cannot be completed
  - There's an achievement for solving twenty Remnant decryption puzzles, of which twenty-two can be found in the game; as with the data cores, most of them can be found inside the Vaults
Mega Man Battle Network:
- In Mega Man Network Transmission: If you didn't get the golden Mystery Data from the data graveyard before defeating Zero, the Zero chip is lost permanently.
- The main series itself goes out of its way to avert this. Every boss has a stronger version which you can rematch an unlimited number of times and can drop any Battle Chips its weaker versions can. From the 4th game onwards, weaker enemies in earlier areas are replaced with their stronger counterparts once you get far enough, but a few select areas will retain the weaker enemies so that all variants of all enemies can still be found.
- While the main series normally averts it, there is one instance in Mega Man Battle Network 2. If you don't buy gifts for your friends while you are overseas (easy to miss) you can't return and buy them (even though you can return to the location) but none of the thanks yous are unreplacable if you look enough.
- In Mega Man Battle Network 4: Red Sun and Blue Moon, the mystery data contain different items depending on what playthrough the player is on. Moving on to the next playthrough without picking up all the blue and purple mystery data can cause the player to miss a HP memory or Navi Customizer part forever. This also applied to green mystery data, which made certain chips such as Wideblade S and Longblade S more easily gettable on certain playthroughs, but virtually impossible on others.
Mega Man Legends has the Bomb and Plastique, which are hidden in the city as part of a sidequest. If they explode, you lose them forever - although the Buster parts made out of them are easily outclassed.
Thanks to a glitch, the Mock species in Monster Rancher 2 can become lost forever. You get the Mock by randomly receiving some seeds from the item store after getting a monster to Rank B. There's no guarantee of when you'll get the seeds; you have to keep visiting the store. However, if you get a monster to Rank A without getting the seeds, you'll never be able to get the Mock.
In MS Saga: A New Dawn, there's an optional opponent fight early on that can only be accessed if your characters head to a certain spot before that area can be actively entered. If you completely miss this fight, then you miss out on also 100% Completion with the MS guide.
Naufragar: Crimson: The Jaded Woodland and Indigo Caverns cannot be revisited after the story progresses, meaning the player only has one chance to get all the treasure in those dungeons. The river obstacle course minigame in Triptophia River also only gives the player one chance to get all the treasure.
Neverwinter Nights:
- Neverwinter Nights has a summoning pool where any unique or quest-specific item can be found for a small fee. Which only makes the trope's presence in the sequel all the more unforgivable... Neverwinter Nights also had companions who would tell you their life stories as they adventured with you (read: once you reached a certain level), and eventually would give you a special item in exchange for something related to their backstories. However, you could only find these special items in the first chapter, and they vanished once you moved to the second chapter. If you didn't adventure with every single companion in the first chapter enough to make the trade, their items were lost forever. Chapter two has them reveal a second part of their backstory and give an upgrade to their item, but only if you received it in chapter 1. You can get another upgrade in chapter 3 - but you can be below the level required by the end of the chapter. Of course, in practice "adventuring with them enough" amounts to practically only hiring and dropping them again every so often to keep hearing their life stories and eventually helping them finish their own quests. The game only tracks how many levels you've advanced since the last chat, not how much time you actually spent with each companion, and since all but one of them hang out at the same place right at the start of chapter 1, making the required rounds once you've figured this out is easy.
- The expansion Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide has this in spades, since completing each chapter moves you to another location, preventing you from coming back for the unfinished sidequests or undiscovered treasures. One particularly painful example, however, is the "ointment of stone to flesh" found in an optional room in the Excavated Ruins, in the Interlude chapter. The reason it's painful: at the start of Chapter 2, your henchman gets turned to stone. If you have the ointment, it's easy to restore them to life... but if you don't, and haven't brought any stone-to-flesh scrolls along, your only hope is to amass enough cash to buy the (very expensive) stone-to-flesh scroll from a merchant.
In Neverwinter Nights 2, most locations and related sidequests become inaccessible in Act III; even the titular city of Neverwinter effectively shrinks from three districts to one. Some Non Player Characters, however, are relocated to different areas, mostly plot-critical ones.
Everything before the timeskip in Nier becomes inaccessible afterwards, since the New Game Plus starts off right afterwards. This becomes a problem if you forget weapons from before the timeskip since you need to get them all for access to Ending D. The time attack trophies for the bosses after the timeskip can be missed, but with New Game Plus can be redone if you're persistent.
Nocturne: Rebirth isn't too bad about this thanks to the New Game Plus feature, but there are some items that can only be obtained within a limited window of opportunity per run.
- There are some optional items that can be obtained in Algiz, but the party will be locked out of the village for the rest of the game after Hypnosis's raid exposes their vampirism.
- The Brave Clear reward for beating Shylphiel is Luna's best non-sorcerous weapon, which doesn't drop from enemies. This means it's possible to miss it if the boss is beaten while the party is overleveled.
There aren't a lot of these in Opoona— the biggest ones are a pair of artwork in the Artiela Museum (if you don't view them right when they appear, you won't be able to add them to your Artbook), and the friendship of Ine. First, you've got to make sure you can play the ukelele by a certain point in the game, or else you'll miss friendship with her. Secondly, another character will give you an item that you can sell for lots of money, but you have to give it to her to both cement her as a friend and to get an item that's necessary later on for increasing the friendship of another one of your friends.
Paper Mario:
- In Paper Mario 64, there are a few Badges found in Peach's Castle. You can either collect these with Mario at the very end of the game, or nab them with Peach during her mid-chapter segments and place them in a treasure chest so that Mario can obtain them at a different location. However, if Peach grabs these Badges, but doesn't place them in the chest by the time her Chapter 6 segment is over, they are, of course, lost for good.
- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
  - The Tattle Log averts this, as its missable entries can be picked up from Professor Frankly's trash can once the last opportunity to fight an enemy has passed. You still miss out on seeing Goombella's commentary on the foe.
  - During Chapter 3, two Glitz Pit teams retire (though they really got life-drained by Grubba for snooping around) and are succeeded by newcomers: the KP Koopas are replaced by Wings of Night (four Swoopers) and the Hand-It-Overs are swapped for the Destructors (two Spinias and two Spanias). You can face them in a bout if you fall down the rankings, but it requires a lot of failures and doesn't achieve anything special. Once the chapter is over, the retired teams rejoin the Glitz Pit lineup if you choose to go through it again, making it impossible to fight the teams that replaced them.
  - Flower Finder is the only badge where getting multiple copies becomes impossible after a while. Of the two enemies that drop it, Shady Paratroopas are never fought outside of the Glitz Pit (where items don't drop), while X-Naut PhDs are only around until the X-Naut Fortress is abandoned after Chapter 7. Dazzle sells a Flower Finder badge, so it's always possible to get one of every badge for the badge log.
  - If you defeat Gloomtail and then set off the next event without going behind him and blowing open the crack in the wall, the stuff in that secret chamber will be inaccessible due to the floor to his room dropping way too low to reach the door. Thankfully the only items that can be lost this way are an Ultra Shroom and Jammin' Jelly, which are generic, albeit powerful, healing items that are infinitely purchasable from a store for an expensive price. Your inventory is also likely filled with many of both items or their superior combined form, anyway, so it isn't a huge loss even utilitarianly, in addition to completionary.
  - In Creepy Steeple, there is a box you can open that will release a horde of Boos. One of the Boos will ask you how many of his brethren emerged from the box. Answer correctly, and he will reward you with an Ultra Shroom. You only get one shot at answering the question, so if you get it wrong, the Ultra Shroom can be lost.
  - Lumpy is a Ratooie who shows up in Rogueport Harbor after you clear Chapter 1. As part of a business venture, he'll ask you to invest your coins with him in increments of 100, stopping at a total of 300. He'll leave after you clear Chapter 3, regardless of how much money you gave him, and return after Chapter 6. Once he returns, depending on whether you gave him 100, 200 or 300 coins, he will pay you back 300, 600 or 999 coins respectively. If you didn't give Lumpy any or enough coins before he leaves, too bad. Fortunately, there are many other ways to earn money, so it's not a huge issue.
- In Paper Mario: Sticker Star, there is no way to get the pages in the Book of Wiggler (Wiggler's Diary) after reuniting all of Wiggler's segments with his body near the end of World 3.
Parasite Eve has the backstage area and sewers at the start of the game. Both areas contain items like weapon and armor upgrades, healing items, and guns. Some of the items are very well hidden. When you drop down to the sewers, you can't return to the backstage. Likewise, once you beat the mutated gator boss, you lose access to the sewers. Miss out on any of the items and you'll lose them for good. Other than that, the game is quite generous in letting you revisit old areas whenever you want so you can still find items you might've missed the first time. There's another Point of No Return when you confront Eve for the last time, so any items that you haven't found by then can no longer be obtained.
In Parasite Eve 2, there's a key item you can find at the start of the game, but it requires inspecting a statue twice and there's nothing prompting you to check it a second time. If you don't pick up the key item before clearing the first area, you'll lose access to several pieces of equipment you could have bought much later on since you need the key card to access them.
The Persona series:
- In Persona's SEBEC route, you have one free space in your party that you can fill with Elly, Brown, Yuka or Reiji. Pick one, and you miss out on the others. The worst offender is Reiji, whom you have to jump through some hoops to recruit in the first place. The game checks to see if you're on the right path to get him when you have the recruit conversation with Yuka, and if you've missed anything out, you get locked into having Yuka on the team instead of Reiji. Additionally, should you choose the wrong dialogue options at certain points in the game (which are not telegraphed in any way), you can easily lock yourself out of the protagonist's ultimate Persona. This means that you've locked yourself out of the protagonist's ultimate skill, which turns the Final Boss into an absolute joke.
- Persona 2: Innocent Sin: It's possible to miss out on all of the ultimate Personas in this way. The first instance is that if you let Yukino stay behind at Caracol to grieve over her now-dead Love Interest Shunsuke Fujii, then not only does she not get Durga, but she'll die not long after. The second instance is that if you don't bother to check out the four unmarked rooms in Mt. Iwato and leave their chests alone, you cannot get the items holding the Ultimate Personas for Tatsuya, Maya, Lisa, and Eikichi. Finally, if you don't have Jun's initial Persona Hermes equipped on him during the boss fight against the four Longinus Mechs at the Aquarius Temple, then you can't mutate it into his Ultimate Persona, Chronos.
- The female protagonist's route in Persona 3 Portable has two Social Links that are only available for one month each. If you fail to complete the Moon link in September or the Fortune link in November, they (and the powerful Personas that they enable access to) are gone for good.
  - Even back in FES, it's easy to forget to confirm that you've taken Elizabeth (or Theodore in Portable) out on a date to obtain key items to fuse certain Personas before the quest's deadline.
  - Many sidequests, such as retrieving the Old Documents, have deadlines, generally a few days before the next Full Moon. In some cases, those deadlines are misleading, though; in the case of the quests to get items from S.E.E.S. members, the items can only be retrieved on a specific day. In "I Want To Drink Oden Juice," you must buy some drinks from the vending machines in Kyoto (which you visit during the Class Trip, and cannot return to) and trade them with a girl. Failing to buy those drinks renders the quest impossible to complete.
  - Portable also introduces missions in which civilians wander into Tartarus and must be rescued before the next full moon, after which they will die. Two of the victims are involved with the Hierophant and Hanged Man Social Links — not rescuing them means their links can't be continued for the rest of the playthrough.^note Worse still, making progress on these two links also unlocks the Temperance and Sun links respectively, meaning those can also be permanently missed if their introduction scenes haven't happened yet. Maxing out the former two links and then letting them die has no gameplay drawbacks, but they won't appear during the optional conversations in the epilogue.
  - The Linked Episodes in Reload. Missing even one of them locks you out of future episodes with the linked character and the Persona you get for finishing all of them. Some of them are only available for one day, like all of Akihiko's and most of Ken's, or have specific choices you need to make to be able to continue them (like buying a flower from Rafflesia for Junpei to give to Chidori before she dies, and refusing to give Shinjiro's reinstatement form to Mitsuru when meeting with her).
- Persona 4:
  - Certain Social Links will not be accessible after a certain date. Failing to complete Justice or Hierophant before the last kidnapping locks you out of completing them, for instance. Golden changes this up a bit - you get a bit more time to complete Justice and Hierophant so long as you didn't get a bad ending, but there are two bonus Links that have the exact same issue. Aeon gets locked off in December, while Jester has the same cutoff point that Justice and Hierophant did. Failing to complete any of these locks out out of the ultimate Personae of that Arcana. Failing to complete Aeon before you defeat Ameno-Sagiri also prevents you from getting the Bonus Dungeon and the epilogue, while failing Jester prevents you from getting one particularly dark Bad Ending and a few extra scenes. And of course, if you don't know beforehand about these deadlines they will catch you completely off guard (though it's possible to guess that something's going to happen with Aeon because the game gives you extra opportunities to talk to her).
  - If you're looking for achievements, there are two books that you will only get if you hang out with Daisuke and Kou, your friends from the sports club you join. If you max out their link by then, they will be unavailable.
  - The superboss has relatively strict requirements—complete her Social Link and defeat all six optional bosses by December 24—but there's also an extremely short window of opportunity to unlock it. After you unlock the True Ending and revisit the Velvet Room for the Orb of Sight, you must immediately go back inside, or you will be unable to fight the boss.
- Persona 5:
  - Unlike previous games, you cannot return to a dungeon again after defeating the boss, as stealing someone's Treasure erases their Palace from existence. This means that any chests you didn't open are now inaccessible.
  - The Golden Beam gun for Akechi cannot be obtained once you complete the sixth Palace due to a combination you being unable to enter a Palace after beating the main boss and the group being ambushed by the police shortly after beating Niijima's shadow. In the original game this also applies to the Lumina Saber and Sirius weapons available in Iwai's shop as they can no longer be purchased after Akechi permanently leaves the party.
  - Certain Mementos sidequests can be missed if you forget to read Mishima's texts, preventing you from obtaining the related achievement and 100% completion.
  - The Sun Confidant will not be accessible after the election begins in late November. Justified as he's a politician who's running at the time, and mercifully, he will warn you about it.
  - It's also possible to miss out on the Temperance Confidant if you didn't get it up to a certain point prior to faking your death, as one rank requires you to be at school to get a quest from Kawakami, and since you can't go to school if you're faking your death, there's no way for you to grab this quest, so you can't rank Temperance up.
  - The Strength Confidant needs to be completed before reaching the end of Mementos on the last day, because doing so begins a sequence of plot events that culminate in Justine and Caroline being fused into their true form, Lavenza. Since the Strength Confidant was written around Justine and Caroline specifically, it's obviously not accessible anymore.
  - In Royal, the Consultant and Justice Confidants are no longer accessible after November, as Takuto resigns from being a counselor at Shujin Academy on November 18th, and the protagonist fakes his death after foiling Akechi's assassination plan a few days later. This also locks you into the ending path of the vanilla game, as well as if you don't complete the Consultant confidant before December, and you'll miss out on the new third-term events and Bonus Dungeon added in Royal, as well as being locked out of the True Ending.
  - Also in Royal, the Justice Confidant is manual rather than automatic, and unlocks the Jazz Jin club at rank 4. Neglect that confidant before plot-related reasons make it unavailable and you lose access to the Jazz Jin, and miss out on potential stat upgrades.
  - The Super Boss fight with the twins Caroline and Justine becomes unavailable once you're locked into Mementos in the endgame, however the fight with Lavenza in the third trimester is available regardless of whether you beat them or not (and is even harder).
The Phantasy Star series has a few examples:
- In Phantasy Star III, there are stores in Cille and Shushoran that sell Star Mist and Moon Dew. But the player can only access the stores in the first generation. These stores are destroyed at the start of the second generation. What makes it worse is that the Dews are ridiculously expensive, even so early in the game, so chances are you won't get them all all without doing hours of grinding to get enough money.
- In Phantasy Star IV, there are plenty, usually because the dungeons are run by a Load-Bearing Boss:
  - One of the Laser Barriers, a pair of unique lightweight shields, is found in Zio's Fort, which crumbles after he's defeated.
  - The Swift-Helm, one of the only armor pieces that increases agility (and is extremely valuable if you can hang onto it for Gryz at the end), and the Genocyber Claw, the only one of Rika's weapons with a dark elemental instant-death effect, are lost with the Air Castle when it disintegrates.
  - The only way to get Kyra's other Moon Slasher is to defeat a particularly rare enemy in the Garuberk Tower, which crumbles after the second Dark Force is defeated.
  - The Vahal Fort can only be unlocked after you take the Silver Soldier mission from the Hunter's Guild, but that mission can only be taken before retrieving Elsydeon, otherwise someone else will take the job and it's gone for good, along with Wren's best weapon, the Photon Eraser, and his best attack Skill, the Positron Bolt, which is itself part of the game's most powerful Combination Attack, which means you also lose Destruct forever. This is to prevent Script Breaking for when Demi will disconnect herself from Nurvus in order to become able to join the party again.
- The Bio-Plant is the only place to get a Graphite Crown for Alys (unless you give her Rika's). It's gone for good once you leave the dungeon because Seed self-destructs.
- It's possible to visit Molcum before Zio burns the place to the ground. You don't actually get to go in, but you can still see some of the Non Player Characters that you'll later see in Tonoe walking around and talk to the guards. Since it requires you to skip going to Zema (which is home to the second major plot point, and the main objective after leaving the Academy at the start of the game), most players aren't going to see it unless they try to recruit Rune early.
- If, for some reason, you don't take The Ranch Owner mission at the Hunters' Guild, you'll miss out on some fun NPC dialogue in Mile because they all drop dead when the Edge opens.
Pillars of Dust: Old areas cannot be returned to, which is why each chapter has a checklist of secrets the player needs to find before starting the next chapter.
Planescape: Torment is mostly generous in this aspect, but certain examples are still present:
- The entire post-Sigil portion of the game is surprisingly linear, so anything you missed in those areas becomes this by default. This includes one of the game's most powerful items for a high-level mage (good luck finding it, by the way) and an Infinity +1 Sword. There's also a companion you can recruit during that time that's not only near-impossible to find without consulting a walkthrough, but, if you happened to leave Sigil with a full party, you will have to permanently leave him or another companion behind.
- Non-plot-critical items left in a ground pile vanish after you leave the area, which can potentially destroy some unique equipment. It doesn't help that your companions tend to drop their inventory items on death (in case you're not able to bring them back).
- Removing a dead party member from the party renders them permanently unavailable. Normally this shouldn't be a problem since very early in the game you gain the Raise Dead ability... except it's easy to miss the NPC or the conversation branch that triggers it; you can spend a long time in the game before discovering that resurrecting party members is possible at all. Certain companions can, under specific circumstances, give you unique spells, which can thus be lost forever as well.
- There is a superboss you can fight in a late-game area that drops an insanely powerful ring when killed. The item is technically not unique ^note, but the boss is. Triggering this enemy's appearance involves failing an extremely annoying sidequest that is only available during the early portion of the game. There's no explanation for the connection between the two, nor is there a hint that there is more to the outcome.
The Princess Remedy series has Jealous Chests, which lock themselves if certain expected, but optional, actions are performed:
- Princess Remedy In a World of Hurt: The action is opening any other chest is opened the Super Chest that contains the Infinity +1 Sword turns into the Jealous Chest which cannot be opened.
- Princess Remedy In A Heap Of Trouble: It locks itself if Remedy dates anyone before talking / opening it.
Invoked in Rakenzarn Tales. One of the game's themes is choice and consequences. As such, it's impossible to get everything, recruit all possible party members or fill out the Monster Compendium in a single run.
RealityMinds:
- Subevents are only available for a limited time and some subevents rely on previous ones, though the player can press the S key to get a hint about one of the currently available subevents.
- The Space of Mystery and the Space of Truth are the only dungeons that cannot be revisited in the post-epilogue, which means the player only has one chance to get all the treasure and enemy glossary information. This is because these realms are maintained by Ridgefern, who dies in the epilogue.
Ruina: Fairy Tale of the Forgotten Ruins: Kileha's sidequest will be lost if the player cannot raise her affection enough before the Holm occupation event.
''Save the Light:
- In the "Hall to the Heart"-section of Bismuth's Forge, there is a treasure chest that appears after defeating some enemies. If you fail to open that treasure chest before leaving the area, it will disappear... and the enemies you need to defeat to get it will never appear again.
- In the Bonus Dungeon of the Pyramid Temple, you have to navigate the labyrinth to get the Blue Keys in order to unlock the gates. However, there are only two keys, and one of the three gates leads to another Warp Pad instead of either a room containing the Grumpy Badge or another containing a Light Steven Fragment and a green switch, the latter which makes the healing pool accessible. Once you retrieve both keys, you can't get them back, so you must pick carefully.
Secret of Mana: All monsters in the Pure Lands disappear upon completing the area. A few monsters are unique to this area and drop rare equipment, most notably the Griffin Hands, which drop Griffin Helms, which are the best headgear Randi can equip.
Shadow Hearts:
- The game switches the entire map from China to Europe around the halfway point. Everything in China? Gone for good, because you never go back. Oh, and you can't go back to places you leave while you're in China, either. And you need to answer the first response all three times while Alice is being interrogated by Dehuai, with no indication the chosen response matters before, during, or after, to unlock an extra dungeon and sidequest that is otherwise — you guessed it — lost forever.
- Amon fusion. This fusion is obtained from a boss and requires finding a certain item (in the same dungeon, but not located in a chest) before reaching him. If you kill the boss first, you lose access to it. Moreover, the Seraphic Radiance fusion requires Amon and an item from China that is also not located in a chest.
- In Shadow Hearts: From the New World, no area ever vanishes, preventing you from losing access to the items within. However, there are Snaps - using Johnny's "Snap" ability on enemies to get their picture. For the most part, you can either trade for Snaps you miss or take their pictures in Lovecraft's Pit Fights. But if you fail to snap Malice Killer, Malice Gilbert, Tirawa, Mudopkan, or a Malice Soaker, you'll never have the chance again.
Skies of Arcadia averts this for every collectible... except treasure chests. And finding all of them is part of getting Vyse's Infinity Plus One Title in Legends.
- In the Dreamcast version, Aika's best weapon can only be obtained as a rare drop from a random encounter in the second to last dungeon which disappears once you beat the boss.
- Two of the best items to equip the Delphinus with, the Sparkling Deck and the Moon Gun, can only be obtained by defeating Gadianos, a monster that is only encountered once in the game and will flee if not defeated quickly enough. The Sparkling Deck in particular boosts the Delphinus' defense by a ludicrous amount (500, compared to the second best deck's 70) and makes the final ship battle against Zelos a joke. Gadianos isn't hard to beat if the player knows what they're doing, but the game gives little indication he's going to flee before he does, or that he's carrying such valuable loot to begin with.
Sonic Chronicles: Any side quests, special items, and optional party members not gotten or completed prior to any of the Points Of No Return (Metropolis Zone, the Twilight Cage, and the Big Bad's lair) are lost forever. The party members are a particularly annoying example; while Cream is easy enough to find and doesn't affect the plot that much if you do miss her, Omega is tough to find, can only be recruited in a fairly small timeframe, and missing him leaves his entire subplot unresolved. On top of that, Shadow will be seriously pissed with you for the rest of the game.
SoulBlazer wants you to find these 8 Emblems. If a Dolphin who would've cheerfully given you an Emblem when he was asleep had, regrettably, woken up, then good-bye, Magic Bell.
South Park: The Stick of Truth has an absolute crap-tonne.
- At the very beginning of the game, you MUST friend Clyde before the elves interrupt the tutorial. Failure to do so locks Clyde out of being your friend forever, due to being banished from space and time, as well as being the main antagonist. This also makes it impossible to get the More Popular Than John Lennon trophy for the rest of that save file.
- During the Tower of Peace section, if you fail to get the Lambtron or Mongolian Bow, you cannot go back to them as the Tower is subsequently destroyed.
- If you fail to get the Dodgeball or Mace of Restoration during the quest where you need to save Craig from detention, they're lost forever. Similarly, the Chinpokomon found in the school during this day in the game, Poodlesaurus Rex, becomes unobtainable during and after the assault on the school by the humans/elves (depending on whether the New Kid sided with Cartman or Kyle).
- All loot and Chinpokomon in the Giggling Donkey becomes unobtainable after beating Jimmy, as the bar is destroyed soon after.
- Like the above, all loot and Chinpokomon in the UFO become unavailable as well after the UFO crashes into the South Park Mall.
- All loot and Chinpokomon in the military base becomes this as well, as the outbreak of Naxi Zombies prevents you from going back.
  - During this section of the game, failing to kill enough Zombies to satisfy Sergeant Yates' side quest prevents you from ever friending him.
- Since you can't enter the school after battling Cartman or Kyle all loot in the school becomes unobtainable after learning Clyde stole the Stick.
- All equipment in Unplanned Parenthood becomes this after starting the battle with the Giant Baby Nazi Zombie fetus, as it ultimately destroys the entire shop.
- While in Canada, you MUST spare the Bishop, or else he is unfriendable. Pretty understandable, considering you just murdered him.
- All loot in Clyde's fortress becomes this after starting the fight with Nazi Zombie Princess Kenny, as starting, and ultimately beating, the battle, ends the game, and destroys Clyde's fortress.

South Park: The Fractured but Whole has less than it's predecessor, but still has some regardless.

Any loot in Mephisto's Lab becomes unobtainable as you can never go there again after The Many Asses of Dr. Mephisto.
Any loot in the Christmas or South Park: The Stick of Truth sections become unavailable after visiting either Unplanned Parenthood or Cartman's House as you can never go back to these areas either.
- During Farts of Future Past, you're given the option of friending the goons from your backstory on Coonstagram. Fail to do this before you enter your parent's room, and those friends are lost forever, since from then on, you enter the final boss.
There is also a slight version with the City Wok Ninjas. During the mission where Mitch Conner (Cartman) sics the Ninjas on you, you have the option of paying $5000 to get them to lay off. Now normally, this is utterly ridiculous and you are forced to fight the Ninjas. But, if you do have the money (either by hacking or playing the DLC prior to this point), the Ninjas DO actually leave you alone. But this comes at the cost of forever losing that fight-specific artifact and DNA.

Spore Creatures: Any part dropped that is a quest reward or a random drop from interacting with a creature, which is not picked up before leaving an area, will become permanently unattainable without making a new save. On top of that, failing to save Flubit will screw you out of the chance to collect any parts there until the postgame, making the next planet much more difficult due to you effectively skipping a planet's worth of growth.
Star Ocean: The Second Story:
- Midway through the player's first visit to Flik, the town is destroyed, permanently killing off several characters. If the player didn't have the foresight to go out of their way to a different town (despite a character telling you to get back in line with the plot) and grind enough money to get an item that allows you to pickpocket characters, you'll miss out on the Mischief, an absurdly-useful item that causes Randomly Drops every 30 seconds. By extension, the Pickpocketing system itself is an example of this, as there are plenty of missable items (including one that's only located on Claude's father's ship, just before it's destroyed) that the player only gets one chance at.
- Both Opera Vectra and her boyfriend, Ernest, are both missable, particularly in the case of the latter. While it's relatively easy to obtain Opera (though it requires going back on a boat and following her to a previous city to watch a cutscene where she speaks to a King), recruiting Ernest requires you to go out of your way and see optional/semi-hidden cutscenes that require the player to backtrack all the way to the very first forest, with no fast travel option.
- The game has a notable subversion of this trope. Midway through the game, Expel is destroyed, and the characters are sent to a new world to continue their quest to defeat the Twelve Wise Men. This is played for significant drama, and there is no way to get back there... unless you know that at the very last save point of the game, you can turn around, leave the Final Dungeon and locate a random NPC (a character who is standing in the middle of a crowd at the back of an arena), who will then tell you that he's found a way for the characters to transport themselves (via dream?) back to Expel... and once you do, there are new encounters, items and a Bonus Dungeon to find.
- Both Star Ocean and Star Ocean: The Second Story do contain plenty of things that the player has only one chance to get, mostly in the form of optional characters. Both games only allow certain characters to join the party if other characters are not present - enforced either through specific scripted events, or through the party size limit of eight characters (opportunities to remove characters from the party are very limited). Additionally, Star Ocean has a specific point where you can permanently lose the chance to gain a specific party member by leaving the room - without any indication, before or after, that this has any significant side effects.
- The Sharp Edge in Star Ocean: The Second Story is a rather weak weapon for Claude that you can only get if you take second place in the fighting tournament, then speak to a specific NPC. Oh, wait, after the tournament was over, you left town BEFORE you spoke to that NPC? Guess what, the sword's lost forever. And did you know that Claude can customize it a few times and end up creating his Infinity +1 Sword? Guess you shouldn't have forgotten to get it!
- There is a particular hidden witch in Star Ocean: The Second Story you may talk to in an early town, which promptly becomes uninhabitable a few minutes of game play later, and then much later in another town. If spoken to in both locations, she unlocks Indalacio Limiter Off, an alternate form of the last boss. It's a variance due to the fact that most players don't want this to happen, as he will destroy you.
Suikoden doubles up on this.
- Several characters have short windows of opportunity where you can recruit them, and it's not immediately obvious this is the case. The final blacksmith is probably the worst; while he's always there and gives the option to recruit him, you need to take 4 other blacksmiths along. Because the game forces mandatory party members on you most of the time, you actually have very few chances to get him. Save after a certain point and he'll just be there taunting you forever.
- There's also Pahn's fight against General Teo. It's a very tough fight unless you know about it in advance, and have spent time levelling Pahn up in preparation. As Pahn leaves for a chunk of the game beforehand, and comes back under-levelled and under-equipped, you may well ignore him. Lose the fight? Pahn dies, unceremoniously.
- The doubling up comes into play because one character dies during the game, and in order to bring them back and get the best ending, you need to have recruited everyone else, and for them to all be alive. And the army battles have perma-death. Make a bad choice and get some random character killed, they're gone. If this or any of the above happen, your chance to resurrect Gremio is gone for good, and so is your shot at the good ending.
Suikoden II:
- The game locks a lengthy bonus scenario involving "McDohl", the Player Character from the original Suikoden, behind the player having the Old Save Bonus from that game — if you don't have a completed gamefile, no McDohl for you! More overtly, a specific recipe is non-obtainable if you didn't achieve 100% Completion in the previous game, due to requiring Gremio's survival and recruitment as the 108th Star of Destiny.
- Clive's infamous sidequest, which requires the player to reach Elsa (the woman Clive is chasing for an unexplained reason, as set up in the first game) in 20 real-time hours or less. Yes, the game forces the player to conduct a pseudo-speedrun of the game in order to reach the end of what is otherwise a minor sidequest that doesn't impact the plot as a whole. It doesn't help that Elsa runs to locations that the player doesn't have access to early on in the game. Some online guides even recommend taking advantage of Sequence Breaking (namely, utilizing the infamous "Matilda Gate Glitch") in order to complete the quest.
Super Mario RPG:
- After entering the castle of the Mushroom Kingdom for the first time, you'll enter the main hall where Toad will walk from the castle's entrance towards the throne room. Said main hall contains a Hidden Treasure chest. In order to find it, you'll need to jump and stand on Toad's head, then use the additional height to jump on a hidden ledge right above the door that he enters. That's where you'll find the hidden chest. You only get one chance at this and the only way to know it's there (other than using a guide) is to have the Signal Ring, an accessory which is only available significantly later in the game. However, said accessory only lets you know hidden chests are in any given room, but does nothing to help pinpoint their locations^*. The main hall is rather large, so first-time players will be left jumping in every inch of that room looking for a hidden chest that is in a place they not only can't possibly reach any longer, but is in a place they have no idea can be reached at all. The Switch remake averts this by adding a permanent Toad in the main hall who the player can use to reach the chest at any time after recruiting Mallow. In addition, the dev team went out of their way to render the ledge to be clearly visible◊, looking nothing like an inconspicuous wall structure as seen in the original SNES game◊.
- If you avoid getting caught fewer than three times while hiding behind the curtains in Booster Tower, Booster will reward you with the Amulet. If you do get caught three times, Booster will challenge you to a fight instead, but you'll lose your chance at receiving the Amulet. Averted in the Switch remake, where the Amulet has been renamed "Booster's Charm". While it can initially be missable in the same scenario as mentioned for the SNES version, you can acquire it after defeating Booster in a rematch post-game.
- Similarly to the Amulet example above, your only shot at obtaining the Feather comes from avoiding Dodo during the segment where you disguise yourself as a statue to get into Nimbus Castle. If Dodo catches you twice, you will be forced to fight him and he won't drop the Feather. Somewhat averted in the Switch remake. Even if you miss out on the Feather from Dodo, you can now buy one from the treasure hunting Toad in Moleville after reaching Nimbus Land. Keep in mind that it's possible to have two Feathers in your inventory this time around, as the Feather in Moleville will always be available whether or not you got the original one from Dodo. As such, some players may potentially miss out on having an extra Feather during their playthroughs for the Switch remake.
- In both versions of the game, grinding to increase your maximum Flower Points (FP) to 99 isn't a particularly difficult task. However, there are several instances where opportunities to increase FP as quickly as possible are lost:
  - There are a couple of instances where helping out NPCs in certain locations at specific times will net you FP-increasing items, such as Flower Tabs (1FP increase), Flower Jars (3FP increase), and Flower Boxes (5FP increase). Miss these chances and you'll won't be able to receive them, such as saving certain Toads in the Mushroom Kingdom during Mack's/Claymorton's attack. In addition, one particular case in Seaside Town relies on dialogue choices you make to Yaridovich/Speardovich after gaining the fifth Star Piece. Give him the Star Piece right away and you'll receive a Flower Box from the town's elder after the former has been defeated. However, refusals cause the elder to be tickled, downgrading the prize. You'll get a Flower Jar from one refusal and two will get you a Flower Tab, but three refusals or more? All you'll get is a single gold coin.
  - Right after defeating Knife Guy and Grate Guy at Booster Tower, you'll immediately head straight to Booster Hill. Here, you'll have to play a Chase Scene minigame where Mario must catch up to Booster and Peach (the latter is tied up on the former's back) as they all head to Marrymore. Each time Mario is able to catch up to Peach by jumping on Snifits/Snifsters and barrels, you'll gain a flower that increases your max MP by one point. Potentially, this can lead to a significant MP boost, but it all depends on your skills at the minigame. This is also your only shot at playing this particular minigame, as it won't happen again during future visits to Booster Hill.
In Sword of Mana, several cases of this include items and attacks only acquired with certain stat builds, characters who when killed or leaving the party take any items you gave them with them, and of course anything you missed prior to Dime Tower.
Tales Series:
- The Nancy and Elwin romance quest in Tales of Phantasia has very precise steps that must be done at specific instances of the game. Because of the Time Travel element of the plot, missing any step in the sequence will fail the quest entirely and it will not be possible to fix your mistake until the next time you play through the game.
- Tales of Destiny 2: Crafting the penultimate weapons for the party requires you to find 18 pieces of Berselium scattered throughout the world. Like the Phantasia example above, this game features the use of Time Travel, so miss a single one on a trek through one of the game's timelines and your chance at getting the weapons is gone for good, since many areas cannot be revisited in the "present" time.
- Tales of Symphonia:
  - The game has quite a few treasure chests that can only be accessed once. As there is a reward for getting them all, this is extremely frustrating. However, this game is basically designed to be played more than once, using the New Game Plus feature to carry over your rewards from previous playthroughs; it's literally impossible to get everything in the game in one run, even if you know how.
  - Several sidequests become lost later in the game... That is, until you see the very last cutscene before the final boss, in which not only do the lost sidequests re-open, but at least two new sidequests will open.
  - Those looking to achieve 100% Completion also need to use a Magic Lens once on each and every type of enemy in the game to complete the Monster List and get a reward. This includes bosses, whose Monster List entries are lost if you don't use a Magic Lens on them before you beat them. And Raine has to be the one to scan them (with the exception of a handful of cases where this is impossible), or you don't get the full entry — mercifully, the formal Completion Meter doesn't care about that distinction, but you might.
  - Another ToS sidequest this trope applies to is one involving a set of three optional bosses, the "Sword Dancers." If you haven't beat one by a certain point in the story it disappears forever. Also they have to be beaten in order - if you miss one the ones after it won't ever appear... which screws you out of the prize for beating all three - the Kusanagi Blades, Lloyd's Penultimate Weapon.
  - If you're looking for 100% completion of your item list, Martel help you not miss items in Palmacosta or Ozette. These places become inaccessible after certain portions of the game.
- In Tales of Vesperia:
  - Most sidequests (and the items, outfits and cities unlocked by completing them) have a very specific time frame in which you can complete them. Once that time's up, it's lost for good. And it doesn't help that there's usually absolutely no indication that a sidequest is even there. So, there are two strategies: Talk to everyone in the town you're in before moving on and hope you'll stumble across something, or just buy the strategy guide. It wouldn't be so bad if every single sidequest in the game was missable. Along with this, an entire dungeon can be missed if you don't go to a certain random location before a key story event. At no other point can you go to this location and get the quest that opens the dungeon. What makes this especially bad is the fact that you have to go to this specific location, at a specific time, twice!
  - The Secret Missions: bonuses awarded for carrying out certain (unhinted) actions during certain (unhinted) boss battles. You have to complete them all for one of Yuri's Titles. In particular, Secret Mission 16 (which is achievable during the boss fight with Estellise) requires you to use an item during the fight that can only be obtained by completing a specific sub event by sleeping in the Mantiac inn BEFORE setting foot in Myorzo. The sub event that gives you the item is just as easy to miss as any other event.
  - Another fun example: the first two steps of a subquest that awards Judith's second-best weapon starts hours before you've even met her. Both steps involve immediately retracing your steps after you've been implictedly told to move forward, and must be done before entering Capua Nor. ^note
  - Interestingly, there are a few quest that lampshade the fact that you fucked up and will be unable to finish it, like the "Dark Enforcer" sidequest.
- Tales of the Abyss is prone to a great deal of Sequence Breaking that will render many skits, titles, costumes, items, weapons and sidequests utterly lost forever. Events need to be triggered during a very small window and chained with secondary and tertiary events that happen well into the game. Miss one step or take the wrong one and it's goodbye Infinity +1 Sword. This is particularly frustrating because 1) events are activated and deactivated seemingly at random, providing no heads-up whatsoever as to their importance, and 2) you're stuck for the most part in a linear quest that allows for very little roaming.
The Tiamat Sacrament: While most items can be obtained by revisiting old areas, there is only one chance to get the tenth Rune Blade, since it involves Rune Sealing the boss, Az'golath.
A recurring case in the whole Trails Series: there’s a mind-boggling amount of side-quests and items that can be missed. The games expect the player to really take their time talking to everyone again and again as much as possible in order to trigger hidden events, and these are all situational, meaning that if you didn't talk to X character before to trigger an event with character Y later, then you can kiss that side-quest goodbye.
- The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky: Forgot to talk to a cat in one chapter? You're locked out getting Zemurian ores from the final chapter to forge a powerful endgame weapon. Didn't go all out to seek out a NPC in the chapter to see what he has to say (and by the way, you need to do this several times in the chapter, often needing you to backtrack or go to an off-the-way location that is otherwise unnecessary in your quests)? You lose an achievement. Heck, you even lose an achievement for failing to talk to birds in several specific areas in specific chapters. It's that obnoxious.
- As highlighted in the video example of the main page, The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel is filled to the brim with these. Forgot to fish or forgot to scan an enemy on one of the routes? Forgot to play a minigame against an NPC in one chapter? You can kiss getting a trophy for the corresponding achievements goodbye. Missed a small detail in a sidequest, or miss one of the many hidden sidequests? You can kiss getting the perfect score goodbye. Heck, getting a perfect score even requires praying that the Random Number God doesn't screw you over in select boss battles. It's that kind of RPG.
Undertale:
- The game has an interesting variation: certain minor events change depending on what the player did in previous playthroughs. Some of them can only happen the "first" time, so, unless every game file is scrubbed away and replaced with a "clean" one, the player is going to miss them. A notable example is the True Pacifist ending. If the player has ever completed a Genocide run, then the "True Pacifist" will be forever tainted into what is dubbed the "Soulless Pacifist ending". "Forever", as in "even if you delete the game from your old computer and install the game in a different computer, you're still screwed, at least for gaming services like Steam."^note
- If you decide to leave the Ruins before sleeping in your room's bed, you can never gain the Butterscotch Pie in that play-through. A similar case applies to Hard Mode, but you'd miss the Snail Pie instead before heading into the Toriel battle.
- The hidden enemy Glyde is infamously difficult to encounter. They only appear in a single room, they have a very low encounter rate and can only be fought before beating Papyrus, the area boss of Snowdin. Once you do beat Papyrus, Glyde is gone forever and can't be found again unless you do a second playthrough.
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines has several unique items, some useful only for trade and some granting Status Buffs, hidden in locations that can only be reached once as part of a quest. One Collector of the Strange will forewarn the player character to look out for certain items before the related quests; if the PC has already done the quest and gotten lucky, she is uncharacteristically nonplussed to learn that they're carrying around various prized Artifacts of Doom.
Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria has an interesting variation of this that also combines it with Level Grinding and Guest-Star Party Member: several characters leave the party as the game progresses, but you also get various items when they do depending on their level, with the best rewards if you grind them to level 40 or 45 depending on the character, while you'd normally be around level 20 or so at that point of the story. Most of these items are unique and generally very powerful, effectively making the transition from Level Grinding to Disc-One Nuke.
A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky:
- Mint's Cloak can only be obtained by completing the Chain of Deals sidequest to get Mint the best present in Silver Spring. This one seems pretty minor at first, but it's used to craft a very useful item later in the game, so it pays to get it.
- The Jr. Bandit's Badge and Amos' Book can only be obtained while infiltrating Avishun prison as kids. Fortunately, these are pretty minor accessories and are quickly outclassed.
- Cupid's Bow, obtained by successfully completing the Match Maker Quest in Dragon's Mouth. If you mess up or continue with the plot before finishing, you don't get another chance until New Game Plus. Fortunately, this is also quickly outclassed.
- Before the Major Update, all of the equipment you obtain in dungeons was unique. Each piece of equipment can be used in multiple different Item Crafting recipes, so it was possible to accidentally waste a crucial component for an Infinity +1 Sword, and most ultimate weapons were mutually exclusive.
Wild ARMs:
- The Maze of Death in the original. Once you find the Crystal Bud, you only have a certain amount of time to escape before it collapses. You can just use the Escape spell and leave but doing so means you miss out on an optional boss and a Guardian.
- The Photopshere also counts. Once you defeat Mother she crashes it into the Inner Sea. In the original you could miss Rudy's Twin Orbs ARM this way.
- The Gate Generator can only be traversed once. And it's a dungeon you are thrust into on short notice courtesy of Zeikfried. Miss any items here and you won't be able to get them elsewhere.
In Wild ARMs 2, Marivel is needed to find the Fab Science Lab, while inside, you battle Bulkogidon and afterwards, you'll see an hourglass-esque object appear, it has Lucifer and Asgard 2 forces inside, you'll have to switch to Marivel and check it to get it, people are known to exit the dungeon without doing this and so the hourglass vanishs preventing you from a 100% game.
In Wild ARMs 3, a superboss needs to have every chest in the world open to fight him. Luckily, no chests were placed in any one-time dungeons. Unfortunately for Wild ARMs 4, which has the same boss, that's not the case.
In A Witch's Tale, one of the cards can only be obtained in a one-shot area available in the New Game Plus.
In Wizardry Tale of the Forsaken Land there is an NPC on level 1 of the dungeon who you can play various minigames with, most of which give you very rare and useful items upon completion. Each game is harder and more rewarding than the last and you can replay them as often as you want... until you beat the main quest, at which point the NPC, and for that matter any uncompleted quests in the game become completely inaccessible. However you can now access the secret bonus dungeon, which was right behind the minigame NPC all this time.
Xenoblade Chronicles 1:
- Xenoblade Chronicles is rather merciful about this; the mission list explicitly tells you quests which quests will expire if you don't complete them by a certain point in the story. That being said, you can still miss out on a bunch of Affinity Coins if you don't hunt down the unique monsters of the Mechonis before completing the core. What can still be frustrating is the game only using a single symbol to show a quest will time out, without any distinction over when or how. There are three ways quests can time out:
  - Mutually Exclusive quests will expire once you complete one side of them. These are easy enough to identify thanks to the blatant conflicts of interest in the quests themselves, but nothing ever warns you that your choice can lead down completely separate branches.
  - Refugee Camp quests will time out when said camp moves, since all the problems surrounding the place become irrelevant. You have to talk to an NPC to initiate the move, and they clearly warn you about this.
  - Quests that expire after the Wham Episode. This makes sense, as Nothing Is the Same Anymore and upheavals are felt everywhere. What sucks is this happens without warning, and this category accounts for about 70% of timed quests, plenty of which aren't in areas directly affected.
- Shulk's Penultimate Weapon. During the final phase of the Final Boss, Shulk is given his Infinity +1 Sword, which replaces his currently equipped weapon. Due to the way New Game Plus works, the Penultimate Weapon is never given to him again and is one of a kind. This is not so bad with Shulk's Infinity -1 Sword variants because they can be reacquired as quests during the late game. Just don't go into the final boss with the weapon and you will be good.
Xenoblade Chronicles X: There is nothing material in the game that can be missed out on. Even the character who ends up leaving the party for good has his affinity missions be mandatory, so you don't miss out on his skills (the game also averts So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear by giving you back that character's equipped items once you talk to Doug in his final Heart-to-Heart; the only catch is that you have to wait until the Playable Epilogue). However, it does have a case of Temporary Online Content as, due to Miiverse shutting down, the two achievements related to the BLADE Reports that can no longer be obtained.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has very little that can be missed:
- The unique monster Relentless Arduran will be unobtainable if you kill any of the earlier growth stages.
- The titan Indol eventually becomes inaccessible, but other than a few quests that start there, everything relocates elsewhere once you cross that point in the story.
The Xenosaga series mostly avoided this in full; despite that you couldn't actually return to most areas after having visited them, there was an Environmental Simulator where you could pick up things. However, this only worked (for the most part) with combat areas; in the third game, for example, there's a small sidequest that can be missed. In addition, the first two games have extremely useful items that either have an extremely low drop rate or have to be stolen from bosses. Xenosaga Episode I also has the e-mails, some of which are very unlikely to be found by playing the game normally. Not only are many of them lost forever once you've gone past them, but missing one often makes it impossible to get later e-mails, as well.

Permanently Missable Content / Role-Playing Game

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