Unintentionally Unwinnable / Final Fantasy

• Final Fantasy IV: If you change areas 64 times within a town or dungeon without going back to the overworld, a counter overflows and memory is overwritten, then the room you are in becomes the new overworld map. Attempting to leave that map will take you to glitchy places, and may corrupt your other save files. You'll need to know exactly how to use in-game actions to poke the necessary bytes in memory to proceed with the game, especially if you saved your game in this state.
• Final Fantasy V: In the third world, it is possible to land the airship on the entrance to Ghido's cave. The airship is then lost, since walking onto that square will cause you to enter the cave. The airship is, of course, necessary to beat the game. It is also possible to lose the dragon this way, and lose the black Chocobo by landing in the center of the Moore forest, but losing those won't make the game unwinnable.
• Final Fantasy VI:
  • In the World of Balance, there's a tiny patch of land to the right of Nikeah just big enough to land the airship on. But if you land there and go into the town, then there's no way to get back—the town blocks you from reaching that patch on the World Map, and all of the exit points within the town spawn you to the left side. There's nothing preventing the player from saving the game in this situation. And without the airship, the game is unwinnable. This example is especially sinister when you consider that the primary reason a player is likely to take the airship to Nikeah is to pick up Mog's Water Rondo dance, which is Permanently Missable after a brief window of game events.
  • The original Japanese version had a bug in the World of Ruin that would send you back to the World of Balance: if, back in the World of Balance, while climbing the rafters in the Opera House to stop Ultros you had left any of the rats alive, you could later revisit that location in World of Ruin and fight any that were left. If you lose the battle (which is unlikely to happen considering how weak said enemies are at this point of the game, but still not impossible), it will cause the cutscene where Ultros succeeds in his plan to play without Ultros actually being present, sending you back outside the Opera House in the World of Balance. You can't come back to the World of Ruin. This was fixed in all subsequent releases.
  • The game has an Optional Party Member named Shadow, a wandering ninja you can hire temporarily. At one point in the game, if you try to take him back to your main base in Narshe, he leaves at the front gate, before you're properly inside. It's also possible to bring a one-person party with him when you hire him; this one person can be Gau, who — if you use him to fight in a special location called the Veldt — can leave temporarily. Therefore, if you use Gau to recruit Shadow, then lose Gau in the Veldt, then take Shadow to Narshe, you can end up with a zero-person party and be unable to do anything. To do this, you have to traverse most of the game world on foot, then run away from most battles (so Shadow doesn't decide he's earned his fee and leave), with only two characters in your normally-four-headed party for the first leg of the adventure and only one for the later part, to pull this off.
  • There is an obscure glitch that allows the player to end up with an airship at a stage of the game where this isn't supposed to be possible. Landing in the wrong spot can completely ruin the game's scripting. The glitch starts when you play almost half of the game without saving, then deliberately die, which certainly explains why playtesters never caught it.
• Final Fantasy VII:
  • If the player saves just as the battle with the Diamond Weapon would normally begin, then reloads the game, the Diamond Weapon will have vanished, and the game will be unwinnable, due to the cutscene where the barrier over the Northern Cave is destroyed not occurring.
  • It is possible to deliberately, or just by bad luck, place the Highwind in such a way that you exit it and end up on the other side of a hillside, with no way back into the airship, causing you to be stuck permanently.
  • An annoyance with this one is the Materia Cave containing the Quadra Magic, which is put on barren land under a short grassy cliff and intended to only be accessible to a player who has bred a River Chocobo. (The Highwind can only land on grassland and the cliff is impassable.) A slightly unscrupulous player might attempt to land the Highwind on the edge of the grassy cliff such that the party leader appears on the barren side of the cliff, allowing them to access the rare Materia, save... and find they can't get back on the ship any more.
  • In Northern Cave, there's a dividing path, in which Cloud chooses who is going with him and who's going to the other path. If the player sends everyone but Cloud to another path, Cloud will be the single character in the party. However, if you access the PHS menu (in which you change party members), you need to choose three party members, or else you can't exit from the menu and will be stuck in there until you reset the game.
  • Common to speedrunners is a glitch involving entering a battle, leaving and entering another in a short time, which causes the battle to never complete its loading and leaving you with a black screen of death. Some people really have no luck with it.
  • The airship Highwind is required to continue parts of the story in late Disc 2 and Disc 3. Thanks to the ability to bring Chocobos on board, it's possible to permanently lose access to the airship by bringing a special Chocobo on board, parking it in an isolated area, riding your on-board Chocobo over mountains, rivers, and oceans back to the ranch, and releasing it (along with any other Chocobos you may have). In doing so, you have just lost on-foot access to the Highwind - which, as stated, is necessary to advance through the game. You no longer have any special Chocobos which might be able to bring you to the Highwind. Furthermore, it's impossible to breed any new special Chocobos because doing so requires "good" and "great" Chocobos, which are not found on the first continent. Your only way to access the second continent at this point is the Highwind...^note The Cargo Ship which allowed you transport between Junon and Costa Del Sol stops running after you get the Highwind which you just lost all access to. For extra kicks, park it somewhere just nearby, like at one of the islands near Fort Condor, so you'll be able to see it and know that it's forever out of your reach. If you already have Cloud back in your party after getting the Highwind, you'll need to access the sub and park it in Costa Del Sol first.
• Final Fantasy VIII:
  • There's a point where the characters have to stop a missile launch, but to get the codes you have to help out some enemy soldiers. If you refuse to help them, then you cannot change the missile launch, and it's possible to save after refusing to help, which means you'd have to start the whole game over if you don't have a back-up file.
  • After having access to chocobo, it is possible to ride a chocobo through shallow water onto a barren island in world map, get off, and get stuck. Consider that the world map is the place where saving anywhere is possible, it is entirely possible for a player to save here and essentially get stuck for eternity.
• Final Fantasy X-2: Once you pass a certain point in the story, all of the enemies in the world will have been elevated to at least mid levels. If you avoid as much experience as possible throughout the game while also skipping all side events, it is possible to reach a state in which even basic enemies are undefeatable.
• Final Fantasy Adventure:
  • Adventure requires the player to know in advance that they need Mattocks and Keys. The need of Mattocks is eventually eliminated by the Morning star weapon, but if you save when you don't have enough keys and can't go back...then you can't beat the game. There are usually conveniently positioned rooms near choke points with Skeleton and Bubble enemies which will randomly drop keys and mattocks, but there may be spots where you can get permanently locked out if you save in the wrong place. Resetting the game causes all doors to close, so if you have a key shortage, then even going back the way you came might be impossible.
  • It is possible to save at any time in this game through the menu instead of using save points. In at least one room of the airship around the middle of the game, it is possible to be permanently stuck if you save in that room then load that save, you will appear in a fenced off section of the room that's normally inaccessable with absolutely no way of getting out.
  • There is also at least one screen that consists entirely of water. Saving your game on this screen while riding the Chocobo can result in becoming permanently stuck.
• Final Fantasy Legend II: Utilizing the "trashcan bug" can result in an unwinnable state if overused. Using the trashcan as an item at specific MAGI counts will give it the effect of other items. Most of the effects are those of pretty ordinary items that can easily be bought, but if used at exactly 67 or 68 MAGI, it will have the effect of free, normally very rare permanent-stat raising potions (Power at 67, Speed at 68). However, overusing this glitch will screw up the MAGI counter after a certain number of uses (the exact number of uses depends on equipped MAGI) and leave the player unable to progress with the game.
• Final Fantasy Tactics:
  • Tactics has an annoying little game mechanic in several places, including Riovanes Castle and The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, that can lead to this trope. If there are two or more plot-mandatory battles in succession, the player is offered the option to save the game in between them. The next screen is the army-preparation menu, allowing the player to re-equip their combatants before the battle, whose party-formation screen appears immediately after closing the army-preparation menu. At this point, there is no ability to go back to the World Map. If you overwrote your only save file with the offered save prompt, and you are underlevelled for the upcoming battles, your only option is to start the entire game over and avoid making the same mistake later on.
  • In the battle against Gafgarion at Lionel Castle, Ramza is trapped on one side of a wall with the primary villain of the piece, while the rest of his team is on the other side with an assortment of mooks. The way you're supposed to meet up with the rest of your party is to open the gate in the middle of the wall using a switch; however, the ground is laid out so that it's possible to get Ramza to the top of the wall at one corner. With a certain movement skill, Ramza can jump down to the main battle area and help out his teammates without unlocking the gate (given that it's possible that the mooks will outstrip your party members on their own, and that Gafgarion will do his best to keep Ramza away from the switch, this is a reasonable thing to try). However, although that movement skill will allow you to jump down, it won't allow you to jump back up, trapping Ramza on the far side of the gate; if Gafgarion hasn't died, this renders the battle unwinnable, as he can hide in one of the far corners, just out of range of the spells available at that point.
• Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: Missions in Tactics Advance cost money, so you can buy and sell items on the shop until you don't have enough money or sellable items to pay for your first mission.
• Dirge of Cerberus: It is possible to get autosaved at the start of boss fights without enough ammo to win or items to survive, most notably against Weiss, because he's too fast and strong to fight hand-to-hand. Some other boss fights put a vending machine in the boss arena, as little sense as that makes. The battle against Rosso the Crimson is one such battle.

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