History ScrappyMechanic / RolePlayingGames

* In the obscure GBC ActionRPG VideoGame/MetalWalker, for maximum combat efficiency, you bounce your Walker off walls to make angled shots. In the final dungeon, however, the walls are electrified and damage you if you connect with them.
* ''VideoGame/UnlimitedSaga'' based its entire gameplay around the "Reel System," essentially a slot machine you can rig. [[LuckBasedMission It's harder to rig than you might think]], and sometimes you don't even get a "good" option. What's particularly awful is that luck is applied to CharacterCustomization, and it's possible for bad luck to make your stats ''go down'' at level up.
* ''VideoGame/ShadowHeartsFromTheNewWorld'':
** The Stock system. While this puts artificial limitations on how often you can combo, it's not all that bad, and the Double option (take two moves in one turn) can expediate combat. No, what makes it a Scrappy is that ''both sides'' have it. Combat strategies often fly out the window because every time an enemy gets a Stock, it ''will'' Double and KO one of your party members. Since you gain Stock by taking damage, if you Combo and don't KO them, you'll eat a Double on the next turn. Instead of strategizing, you're forced to watch their Stock bar like a hawk and aim Hard Hits or Hard-Hit-magic at them whenever it gets close to full. And Hard Hits cost you Stock as well. End result: the only time it's smart to Combo is in the Pit Fights.
** Hilde's "Calories" system, the same game. In the last game, whether Joachim was himself, Golden Bat (GlassCannon), Invisible (high Magic Defense) or Grand Papillion (superhero) depended on how many fights you were in. There were ways to manipulate this, so all it took was good timing. In ''From The New World'', whether Hilde is Slim (magic-oriented), Curvy (physical-oriented), or Peach Bat (GlassCannon) depends on her Calories, gained by absorbing them from enemies. The problem is that turning her from one form to another takes forever, since you need ten Calories of a given type to be in a specific form (Negative for Slim, Positive for Curvy), and the absorption attack works only once on a given enemy. And odds are good Hilde will get killed a lot while she's in the Peach Bat form. ''Forget'' her Masked forms - you need ''100'' Calories of a given type for that, which you can't really reach without expending rare, irreplaceable items or spending hours draining enemies. ''And'' all three forms have unique attacks, so you ''have'' to keep switching her.
*** This is hyperbolic; you don't ''have'' to use all of Hilde's different forms if you don't want to, it's perfectly viable to just put her in Curvy form and play her as a straight physical character, or Slim form and play her as a straight mage, for the entire game. But the system ''is'' still very clunky and irritating, so doing so is arguably the ideal way to play her, and when the best way to deal with a character's unique gameplay gimmick is to ''ignore it'' that's not a good sign.

* ''VideoGame/MonsterHunter'':
** In the games, every time you use some type of recovery item, such as food rations or potions (and anything except a Power Pill or Armor Pill), your character stops to do a vigorous flex which takes about an extra two seconds, even if you're battling a monster. During this time, you can't move, and you can't dodge. First-time players will have a hellish time picking out the right moment to use items, if such an opportunity even presents itself. Although you can use the Cooking armor skill to make this animation go by hilariously fast (along with the much longer animation for eating cooked meat or fish), there are many situations where you'll need a different armor skill to make things easier.
** The camera system in the early games can get really annoying, especially if you're a ranged hunter. Even if you aren't, you use the L button to ''snap'' the camera to wherever you're facing, and then the directional pad to manually scroll around in 360 degrees. Trying to find a small and fast monster? You risk a potentially strong hit with the D-pad, ''or'' have to squint to find it by camera-snapping. Later games alleviate this by using the secondary shoulder buttons to spin the camera around, but if you are plaing the Nintendo 3DS version of ''3 Ultimate'', you need a Circle Pad Pro attachment so you can use the ZL and ZR buttons or the second Circle Pad to control the camera; otherwise you're stuck with the physical D-pad or the very cumbersome touchscreen D-pad.
** The games treat training missions like normal quests. This means that every time you get beaten, it's going through 3-4 screens detailing your non-present loss of money, non-present loss of guild points, non-present quest reward, then "Would you like to save"? another loading screen and then back to the main training screen, to finally choose that training mission again, another loading screen and damn, we're finally back to try again! Sure, it's optional, and ''Monster Hunter'' is notoriously NintendoHard, but would it be so bad to just give the option to try the fight right again, if you're already raging for having been beaten one or two strikes before finally taking that monster down?
** Training school quests. Side effects may include Pulling out your hair, or a broken PSP. The reason? If you die, you fail the mission. Beating one training of each monsters unlocks the Fatalis missions for 100% Completion. God help if you're playing the Unite version where you face G-rank Monsters for the G-rank Fatalis missions...
** ''Tri'' introduces underwater combat, and it's very annoying. It's not because of the OxygenMeter--there's frequent sources of air and the meter depletes very slowly. Rather, the water is fairly difficult to see in, and you have the maneuverability of a stone while the monsters you're fighting can swim circles around you. Fighting near the surface proves to be a pain in the ass because if you have to look down, the camera will move above the surface of the water, which will block out your vision. Fortunately, ''4'' takes underwater fighting back out.
** The portable games up to ''4'' lack an online multiplayer component. The idea is that instead of connecting to the Internet, you instead meet up physically with other players to play. In Japan, the series is a blockbuster hit, so finding local players isn't a huge problem. But in many other countries, finding players is very difficult due to the series being less popular, forcing a lot of players to take on the HR-based quests solo. This makes {{Damage Sponge Boss}}es a [[GoddamnedBoss pain]] at best and [[ThatOneBoss nightmarish]] at worst due to the time limit.
** Area boundaries. Touching one immediately sends you to the next area, but [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard enemy monsters don't follow this rule]] and will only change areas when they feel like it. This means you could be trying to reach a monster only to end up in the next area instead. Ranged hunters need to be very careful when finishing off monsters near a boundary; if the monster is slain beyond the boundary, you can't carve it!
* ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights2: Mask of the Betrayer'': The Spirit Eater curse. Of course, playing properly (with proper alignment), it's easy to keep the bar full with only limited need to eat soul, and lowest hunger. If you choose to be a villain with it however, your cravings will rapidly exceed the available supply of spirits. You can remedy this using Satiate, which often involves waiting 15-30 minutes ''in real-time'' before you're allowed to use it. Before patches, the Spirit Eater abilities shifted you either towards LawfulGood or ChaoticEvil, bad news for ChaoticGood, LawfulEvil, or TrueNeutral characters.
* In many d20 and ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' adaptations, player characters are often only permitted to open chests by forcing them or picking the lock, both all-or-nothing approaches that can take ages for a hard lock and a malevolent RandomNumberGod. Some ''D&D'' games avoid this with the Knock spell, an arcane spellcaster's lockpick.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Wizardry}}: Tale of the Forsaken Land'' the magic leveling system certainly qualifies. You make spells via some combination of two or three monster materials, which randomly drop from appropriate enemies (Thief's Blood from various level Thieves, for example). Fair enough. You can also access a special merchant halfway through the game. Sell him at least one of any material, leave the dungeon, and every time you come back you can buy an infinite quantity of that item. Here's the problem. You need to go to town to fuse materials into spell stones. You need to go to the dungeon to find or buy the materials. It is not unusual for spells to have several dozen levels before they're maxed out with each level barely improving anything individually. You can hold, at most, 60 items at a time and more likely about half that number. Run through halls past weak enemies to shop, Transfer Potion to town, repeat with frequent breaks to get more Transfer Potions.
* ''VideoGame/RomancingSaGa: Minstrel Song'' has a mechanic where events in game move on based on how many battles you fight (with them moving faster when you defeat stronger enemies). Sounds like an interesting idea in theory, except when you consider the painfully short window of opportunity between events, the fact that its hard to avoid encounters, the game punishes you for running, and many event bosses are far too powerful for you to handle with any sort of ease, easily wiping out your entire party. Also in one character's story this mechanic can make you ''miss the boat'', trapping you on the island you start on, until a good three fourths through the game. At that which point the town on the island becomes infested with monsters, and the only real way to progress this is to beat a bunch of dinosaurs that will often and easily wipe you out. Not fun at all.
* The farming in ''VideoGame/RuneFactoryFrontier'' isn't that different from most ''VideoGame/HarvestMoon'' games, and the dungeoneering aspect of the game is fun as well. The ScrappyMechanic of the game is managing Runeys, cute little nature spirits that determine whether your land will be prosperous or in ruins. Balancing their ecology requires hours of monotony, and ignoring them pretty much guarantees that your crops will take twice as long to grow.
* ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'':
** An old-school one: forcing an immediate GameOver whenever the PlayerCharacter is [[StatusEffects petrified or imprisoned]]. You can have a dozen stone-to-flesh scrolls and could undo it in a heartbeat, but noooo, it's GameOver just 'cause <CHARNAME>, and only they, got turned into a statue. In game terms, they're not even dead!
** Almost as frustrating is when Jaheira is petrified/imprisoned and decides that the best course of action is to run ''all the way back to the Harper stronghold'' even if you've already done that quest. And this may very well screw up a Jaheira romance.
** You have to have your entire party together to travel between world areas, or to enter certain plot-important areas. Trying to travel while your characters are spread out plays a loud, irritating "You must gather your party before venturing forth" message. Every time. Multiple times, if you click repeatedly. The games' buggy pathfinding means that it's easy for your party to be separated without you even noticing until you hear the message for the thousandth time and tear your hair out.
** In the first installment, you need to heal everyone before going to sleep, because resting recuperate very little [[HitPoints HP]]. This can be frustrating when you have many injured in your party, since you'll have to remanage your healers' memorized spells and pay multiple times for a room at the inn. This was fixed in the sequel where the (enabled by default) options to automatically use healing spells on rest and automatically rest until everyone in the party was fully healed.
* "Forced Evasion" in ''[[VideoGame/EndlessFrontier Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier]]''. Given the ridiculous possibility of combo lengths reaching into hundreds of hits, thereby giving enemies little chance of attacking the party, the developers had to give enemies ''some'' form of help in the form of this mechanic. If an enemy (only of certain types, but primarily bosses and [[FlunkyBoss their flunkies]], although most endgame {{Mook}}s seem to be able to do it as well) hits the ground after being juggled in the middle of a {{Combo}}, there's a chance the attack instantly ends (hence ''Forced'' Evasion), with any remaining hits automatically "clunking" for zero damage; it's also possible the enemy may gain a chance to counterattack after Forced Evasion. The problem arises for two reasons: there's no probability of how likely Forced Evasion might be triggered for any enemy and all enemies in the game differentiate via weight. The latter becomes annoying because an enemy's weight may make hitting the ground unavoidable in the midst of the start-up animation for certain attacks from party members. This is compounded with late-game {{Mook}}s having access to a barrier like bosses possess, where it must be broken first before any significant amount of damage can be dealt to them. Unfortunately, the moment it breaks, the enemy is tossed into the air; depending on their weight, it might screw up players' combo flow for the attacking party member, especially if it's a new enemy type or boss they haven't encountered yet, making it that much more likely for the enemy to hit to ground and trigger Forced Evasion, with a possible counterattack as a follow-up. Rectified in the sequel ''Endless Frontier EXCEED'': enemies now have an "E. Gauge" that increases as enemies take damage. If it reaches maximum, enemies can trigger a Forced Evasion, yet it depends on a noted percentage of chance seen above the E. Gauge; once used, the gauge empties and must be filled again. Furthermore, Forced Evasion can also be used by the players' party by sacrificing 50% of the "Frontier Gauge" used for "[[LimitBreak Overdrives]]", but provided the characters are also near death. Unfortunately, if the enemy (usually bosses) trigger an Overdrive of their own, player-induced Forced Evasion is nullified from use.
* ''VideoGame/DarkCloud'':
** The weapons system. Spending weeks tediously building up weapons for six different [=PCs=], only to lose all that progress by [[BreakableWeapons having them break...]] especially sucky if you have just managed to clear several levels of a dungeon. This was thankfully fixed in the sequel, where broken weapons simply wouldn't hit, but could be fixed afterwards.
** Weapons don't stack, which means you can only take ten or twenty of them on any foray into a dungeon. Have fun going back to town every five new levels.
* ''VideoGame/DarkChronicle'' fixed ''Dark Cloud'''s weapon issues, but new scrappy mechanics were introduced:
** A weapon's element is now determined by being the element with the highest stat, rather than chosen by the player.
** Weapons and items are now merged into one inventory, where even like weapons cannot stack and thus take up valuable space
** Monica's monster transformations, which each have to be leveled up individually (in contrast to Steve the robot, which could be upgraded simply by buying, finding, or building new parts).
* ''VideoGame/UltimaVII''. The characters needed food to survive. However, instead of automatically eating, like in the previous games, they had to be manually fed whenever they got hungry. Combined with the clever but crude inventory system, feeding the party (not getting food, but putting it in their mouths) took up more game time than combat.

* ''VideoGame/BatenKaitos'':
** You'd be hard pressed to find a member of the fandom who doesn't hate ''Eternal Wings''' [[FakeDifficulty turn timer]]. At the start of the game, you have infinite time to make decisions on what magnus you want to use, but as you class up, a little timer starts appearing. If the timer runs out without you selecting a magnus, that character's turn is skipped. It starts at a reasonable thirty seconds, but eventually lowers to giving you ''seven seconds''. Thankfully, the prequel replaced it with a much more sane system.
** The level up system, which is accessed through blue save points. To level up, you have to teleport to a church through blue flowers and reflect upon your experiences. In practice, this was not only time consuming, but it was possible at one point to [[UnintentionallyUnwinnable trap yourself]] on the enemy airship, right before ThatOneBoss, with no way of leveling up by overwriting your save file using a red flower (that lets you save, but not level up).
** ItemCrafting in ''Eternal Wings'' might be the worst implementation of item crafting in any game ever. To craft magnus, you insert the ingredients into a character's deck, enter battle, and use the ingredients in a certain order; doing so properly will cause the magnus crafted to appear in the loot screen after battle. What's wrong with this? What's ''right'' with this? You can only craft one magnus per battle (and considering the best magnus are made of ''other'' crafted magnus, that's a problem), it's entirely luck-based whether or not you get the magnus you need, and most, if not all, of the item combinations are never hinted at. At the very least there's a menu option that tells you combinations once you've found them, but that's small comfort after all that. The only way to efficiently do this is to go to an early game area, empty a character's deck, and put nothing but the magnus you need in.
** After a fight, you can view your results and your loot drops. Except, when enemies drop magnus, you can only pick one of the magnus they drop, and all the rest get scrapped. Better hope they don't drop a bunch of rare items!
** Ultra Rare shots. Each character has two photographs that can be taken with the camera; a standard picture that sells for pocket lint, and an 'Ultra Rare' shot that RandomlyDrops. Both shots are needed for HundredPercentCompletion. Getting the Ultra Rare requires endless grinding, praying that you'll get the Ultra Rare shot before the sun burns out. Even worse, there's two pictures that are only available in one boss fight, and one is an Ultra Rare.
* ''VideoGame/VagrantStory'' has the Risk meter, which causes the player's physical attacks to miss more, critical hit more often (this bit has never been observed), and increase damage and healing received the higher it goes. So chaining together more than 8 attacks is severely punishing, as that's when the Risk meter starts jumping by dozens, and if it maxes out, you basically turn what should be a 2-minute fight with even the most basic enemies into a 30-minute marathon because you can't ever land a hit or do proper damage. There are items and other strategies to help reduce Risk, however on one's first time run through one may very well die on even the first boss because one couldn't figure out how to manage the Risk meter.
* ''Neptunia'' series:
** Since one of ''VideoGame/HyperdimensionNeptunia'''s weak points is its gameplay, it would only be natural for this game to have a few shoddy mechanics:
*** The item system, which fell flat since it was restricted to battles only. What's worse is that even when you have a certain item skill's at maximum activation chance, it still has a chance of not activating, basically leaving your characters in luck's hands.
*** The partnering system is no better. If the character at the front loses all her HP, [[LazyBackup the character who was backing her up won't switch places with her for some strange reason]].
*** Switching characters and activating HDD requires attacks with button combinations that you are likely to forget since there are so many other possible combinations to boot.
*** Try to figure out how the shares work without consulting a guide; it's quite a trial.
** VideoGame/HyperdimensionNeptuniaMk2, the series reboot, fixed some of these issues, but isn't perfect:
*** The LazyBackup issue is still present, even with '''fifteen''' characters to choose from.
*** mk2 suffers from a poorly-explained AP system that makes performing [[FinishingMove EX Finishers]] somewhat arcane.
** ''VideoGame/HyperdimensionNeptuniaVictory'' finally ironed out the battle system (though the LazyBackup problem still exists), but introduces a new ScrappyMechanic: hidden treasures. Every time you enter a zone, a hidden treasure box is placed somewhere on the map, with random contents. [[RandomlyDrops This]] would be bad enough of its own, as some of the treasures are really worth your time, but the real problem is finding them, which is done by emitting a treasure-revealing sonar wave. Three problems with this: the range is pitiful, you have to hit the button constantly to keep looking, and the wave is noisy. An item could be made to display the location of the hidden treasure on the mini-map, but usually couldn't be created until halfway through the game. This was also added into the Re;Birth remakes until ironically, V Generation finally phased it out.
** The LazyBackup issue was finally resolved in ''Neptunia Re;Birth 3'', but the hidden treasure was replaced with a set of multiple hidden blocks that are semi-invisible and whose shadows can be seen. Unfortunately, hitting those blocks will usually yield a small amount of credits rather than at least 1 guaranteed treasure as found in the old system.
** The Viral system has absolutely no right to exist. Basically, a monster can randomly become "Viral", supercharging it to the extent that, if you're not considerably overleveled for the area you're in, it WILL OneHitKill any member of your party. It's like the RandomNumberGod just arbitrarily decided "Imma give you a game over now, have fun continuing from your last save point!"'' Particularly painful in the early game, when you won't have enough powerful techniques to blow the monster off the field before it wipes out your entire party single-handedly.
* ''VideoGame/WildArms4'': The Hex system. The battle grid consists of six hexes where characters move around and attack. Particularly scrappy is the fact that you have to ''choose''' between whether you can move ''or'' attack during your turn. Considering the use of Combination attacks where several party members have to be in the same hex, and "Ley Points", hexes which give you your elemental attacks, you have to choose between giving your enemy a free hit on you or using less effective attacks. Except [[GameBreaker Raquel]], the only character who can move ''and'' attack on her turn. This unbalance, fortunately, was remedied in ''VideoGame/WildArms5'', where everyone can move and attack on their turn.
%% Pokemon has its own page at ScrappyMechanic/Pokemon.

* ''VideoGame/ZettaiHeroProject''. If you die, you lose your equipment. This is problematic for two main reasons. The more minor issue is that, as [[CameBackStrong death is an integral part]] of gameplay, it makes items essentially useless until very late in the game when you get the ability to retain a decent number of equipped items on death. This is a Scrappy Mechanic in its own right, but this pales in comparison to how this affects the post-game. Like other Nippon Ichi games, this one is a grindfest post-game, largely centered on improving your items. But you're safe because of that aforementioned item protection mechanic, right? No. The game autosaves and you are not given ANY manual save slots, so if at any time your battery dies or game crashes in a dungeon you lose ALL of your equipped items. Best of all is that the game actually lies about when it is safe to save - just because you're in your home base does NOT mean it is always safe to turn your game off. Cue permanent RageQuit. The severity of a game-breaking bug, somehow made into a deliberate feature and wrecking the game for many players. Nippon Ichi Software has lost some previously devoted fans over this.
* The third and fourth VideoGame/EpicBattleFantasy games have a form of AfterCombatRecovery, which is often much-needed - but instead of giving you back your health and mana all at once, it recovers gradually. In the third game it's based on steps taken (which leads to a lot of wandering around aimlessly for no real reason), while the fourth game uses real time (because RewardingInactivity is [[SarcasmMode always a lot of fun]]). Even worse, the fourth game has a very annoying glitch; when you load a save, your health and mana are supposed to be refilled to maximum, but this "maximum" doesn't factor in boosts to Max HP and Max MP from your equipment. So if you have a lot of bonus HP and/or MP from your equips (and late game, you almost certainly will), this leads to sitting around and waiting ''every time you open up the game''.
* Item combination in ''VideoGame/{{Arcuz}} II''. To enchant equipment or enhance enchantments, you need two elemental gems, a special stone and your weapon. Each enchant level has a failure chance (10% from level 1 to 2, 25% from 2 to 3, 50% from 3 to 4). If enchanting fails, not only does it consume all the gems used, but is also removes all existing enchantments on the equipment. And a further kick in the face is that the game saves after you combine/enchant any items, regardless of success, so no refreshing your window to cheat!
* ''VideoGame/CrimsonShroud'': Someone at Creator/{{Level5}} decided that the best way for a player to find a required PlotCoupon would be to have it as a ''very'' rare item drop. That is only dropped in a single area. By a specific enemy. That will only appear if you kill a different specific enemy first. And then not tell you what the item is when it ''does'' drop, so you may just pass it over in favour of grabbing weapons or health/mana potions as loot after the battle. And if you do get the item, the game will not in any way indicate to you that it is important. Or that you need to travel back to an area you've already cleared in order to activate it. And only ''then'' will you get the key you need to progress to the next area.\\
To make it worse, the 'key-as-an-item-drop' mechanic comes up a ''lot'' more in the NewGamePlus. The player will be missing most of the new areas because the right enemies weren't killed in order for the drop to occur. Or, you know, the player just wasn't lucky enough to have the drop occur even when s/he did things right. And even if you do manage to find keys, the game ''will be '''damned''''' if it tells you where to go to use them.
* ''VideoGame/EtrianOdyssey'':
** ''[[VideoGame/EtrianOdysseyI Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millenium Girl]]'': The Grimoire Stones are an excellent idea, giving you lots of flexibility with giving your party additional cross-class and monster skills to use. What makes them annoying is that the process of gaining stones is completely random -- you have to wait for a chance for a stone to be created, and even then, the skills you get in one is random. Creating the ideal stone takes a lot of praying to the random number gods that the desired skills drop quickly. The following remake, ''The Fafnir Knight'', fixes several problems with this by reducing the degree of randomness involved and even giving the player a few options in controlling what they can get.
** ''VideoGame/EtrianOdysseyVBeyondTheMyth'': A core mechanic of the series is the ability to draw a map of the dungeon on the system's touch screen, so it makes sense for this game to add the ability to turn in your map to the council and get rewarded (with the ability to start your expeditions on higher floors) if it's accurate enough. Unfortunately, many players reported Ramus rejecting their maps due to their mapping style not being recognized by the game. Note that the game doesn't give any official guidelines on how to "properly" draw maps.

** The inventory system. BagOfHolding is thoroughly averted. In ''Earthbound'' and ''Mother 3'', each character can hold up to 14 total items, and in ''Earthbound Beginnings'', only 8. To make this worse, key items also take up inventory slots, which makes it incredibly annoying when trying to stock up on other types of items only to find out that you can't carry anything else with you and forcing you to throw away any items that might come in handy later. ''Earthbound'' added a system where you could store important items for future use, but you still had to find a phone, call Escargo Express, wait for them to show up, and pay a convenience fee. Fortunately, ''VideoGame/{{Mother 3}}'' fixed this by giving key items their own separate inventory so they don't clog your inventory.
** The inventory also has a sub-issue in that items of a type don't stack - five hamburgers take up five slots in your inventory, not just one. Detractors point out that this is almost unique to the Mother series, compare it negatively to other games (e.g. ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'') where you can stack dozens of an item, and call it fake difficulty. The system does have its defenders though, who point out that it's silly to expect 99 hamburgers to take the same amount of space as 1 burger, and that if you could stock dozens of healing items it would make the game a lot easier.
** In the first two games, if someone in your party gets K.O.'ed during battle, they remain that way even after the fight until you revive them. If everyone goes down, you go back to where you last saved, only Ness/Ninten is revived, and everyone loses all their PP to boot. This wouldn't be such a big deal in and of itself, except that most of the time, your methods of reviving anyone are limited. This is especially annoying when you're exploring enemy territory, as opposed to within a town (where you can just walk to a hospital), and would be better off with more people active than unconscious.
* ''VideoGame/{{Earthbound Beginnings}}''
** An infamous mechanic is that dialogue with random [=NPCs=] can sometimes end with them sneezing and giving whoever is leading the party, usually Ninten, a cold, which acts like poison and causes them to lose health over time and which you can only get rid of by a trip to the doctor at a hospital (if there is a hospital nearby, that is) or by using Mouthwash (which you don't get to buy until you reach the town of Snowman during the second half fo the game). This is more common with [=NPCs=] dressed with blue clothes, but is not exclusive to them. The chance of the game punishing you with a cold for completely no reason heavily discourages talking to the [=NPCs=], which is a shame because they usually have interesting things to say.
** The "But [enemy] was already gone" gimmick. If an enemy is defeated while a character is still targeting them, the game will display this message instead of automatically targeting another enemy like it does in the sequels, causing the character to waste their turn. It gets especially annoying if you had either Ninten or Ana use a PSI ability, which causes PP to be consumed even with the enemy gone. On the bright side of things however, this also applies to enemies as well.
* ''VideoGame/{{EarthBound|1994}}''
** The "Homesickness" status effect, which causes Ness to start missing home and also causes him to waste turns during battle. There's no telling when it will appear either outside of knowing that a higher level means that it's less likely to occur (and even then, nothing guarantees that Ness won't start feeling homesick at random), so pray that it doesn't happen to pop up during a though Boss Battle. On the bright side, you can easily get rid of it by simply calling Ness' mother with a phone... but, same as before, if it happens to appear in an area with no phones available then you are screwed. Even if you regularly call Ness' mother to prevent him from feeling homesick, ''Ness can still be affected by it regardless''. The only good thing about "Homesickness" is that it adds a layer to Ness' characterization, especially considering that he is a SilentProtagonist.
** The "Mushroomized" status effect, which is basically "Strangeness" (confusion) dialed up to the point that it's unfair. There's no way to cure it outside of visiting specific locations, it can't be cured or prevented with PSI or items, it lingers after battle, it foists an InterfaceScrew on you outside of battle, and it turns every battle with it into a LuckBasedMission where you're one random "whoever is feeling funky" away from [[TotalPartyKill nailing your own party with Rockin or Fire β]]. There's a reason why inflicting this status ailment is the sole reason Shrooom! is ThatOneBoss, and raises the question as to why such a version of a status ailment that is typically easy to get rid of exists in the first place, because this mechanic is ''frustrating''.
** Condiments can be this to some. While the idea of combining a condiment with a specific type of food to make it's healing more effective sounds good in paper, the condiment takes up inventory slot and you wouldn't be to blame if you forgot that you even had it until you use a healing item (as the condiment activates automatically regardless of whether it would go along well with the food or not). The only time many players use them is to exploit the famous [[GameBreaker Rock candy]] [[GoodBadBugs + Sugar packet trick.]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Mother 3}}'':
** ''Enemies calling for help''. It was already annoying in the previous two games and is made even worse here. Doesn't help much that most of the enemies that are able to call for help are usually GoddamnedBats. It certainly doesn't help either that there's no limit to how many times, or how often, an enemy can call for help: it is not uncommon to encounter a single such enemy... and end up fighting as many as 12 of them before you finally take the cantankerous bastards down.
** "Lucas/Kumatora began to feel feverish!" This means they're about to learn a new PSI ability, which is a good thing, but you lose your ability to run until it wears off, which is a bad thing. This serves no purpose other than to slow the game pace down, as it not only forces you to move at the game's ludicrously slow walking pace but also means you can't run past enemies or through weak ones to avoid fights.
** In battles, if you decide to have [[ActionPet Boney]] use food on another party member in order to heal them, there is a chance that he might ''eat'' what was meant to heal that person. While this does not happen very often, it is especially frustrating when a party member is in critical condition and Boney just eats what was intended for them instead of healing them, ''especially'' if Boney is at full health. Double the frustration since out of everyone in Lucas' party, [[FragileSpeedster Boney is the fastest and is usually the first one to attack]], and his lack of special abilities and high-offense powers make him ideal to [[ItemCaddy carry all sorts of items]], but the chance of him eating the food that is not intended for him discourages giving him any healing items.
* ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'' has the Ratings system in the battle with Mettaton. You're not told what it is (It's easy to believe that it's just for show), with the only hints being easy to miss if you don't talk to NPC's, and figuring out the best strategy to earn points is counter-intuitive or really difficult and comes bundled with several other fiddly mechanics that are also not introduced before-hand (The disco party, sexy legs and rewinding). It all combines to make [[ThatOneBoss the most frustrating and difficult battle]] of the Pacifist route.
* ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' and its sequels have the matchmaking system. Unlike a lot of multiplayer games which use a dedicated server for the players to play on, this one uses a peer-to-peer (or [=P2P=]) connection, which can badly hurt players who face frequent internet connection issues. It's also not unheard of to spend a good half hour or even more trying to search for one of your friends who are in the same area and level range, and NOT being able to summon them at all, despite having met all the requirements to summon one another.
* ''VideoGame/DarkSouls2'' decided to base multiplayer on a mechanic called Soul Memory (rather than using Soul Level like the previous game), which is a tally of every soul you've ever picked up, whether you've spent it wisely, poorly or ''lost it due to mistakes''. This means that highly proficient players who are experienced with the game, and spent their souls carefully would be on the same level as inexperienced players who were experimenting on how to spend souls and/or may have lost chunks of their soul-value to tactical mistakes. This implementation was made in an effort to curb {{Twinking}}, as the first game allowed players to stay low level, but have very good equipment to invade and steamroll new players. Unfortunately it was felt that this went too far in the opposite direction. The ''Scholar of the First Sin'' edition fixed this to a degree with the Agape Ring, which allows you to stop increasing your Soul Memory.
* ''VideoGame/StarOcean'':
** ''VideoGame/StarOceanTillTheEndOfTime'': Item Creation is rife with these. For starters, you can't just choose what you're going to create. You have to repeatedly click through the "Original Invention" option, with the cost changing each time, until you get a cost that could be for the item you want. Or maybe not. It may come up one time in a thousand. And when you get it, one of your inventors may, for no discernible reason, sleep through the process, depriving you of their skill and drastically lowering the chance you'll succeed. Oh, and each attempt costs money, sometimes a lot of money, regardless of whether anything is actually produced.
** ''VideoGame/StarOceanTheLastHope'' has the bonus board. This gets some dislike due to the fact that it gets wiped every time you end a particular playthrough and load a savefile. Sure, this is specifically designed to prevent SaveScumming, but surely there could have been at least a little leeway that could have been programmed in? (I.E. allowing you the choice to keep it if it's been an hour or more since your last save, or something like that?)
* ''VideoGame/StarWarsKnightsOfTheOldRepublicIITheSithLords'': The game's influence system is this for some, but the most prominently disliked feature is the "jealousy" featured between the other two members of your player character's love triangle, depending on which gender you play. For female characters, high influence with the Disciple and low influence with Atton results in a couple arguments between the two, but that's the extent of it. However, a male character who has high influence with Visas and low influence with the Handmaiden will see an argument between them, with the Handmaiden becoming so infuriated with the player that she refuses to speak to them for the rest of the game. This means you lose out on her sparring matches, which can teach you an extra ability to add your wisdom bonus to your defense, and more pertinently, the ability to [[spoiler: train her in the ways of the Force.]]
* In ''VideoGame/TheWitcher3'':
** The combat system tries its hardest to be like a more natural console-style action system instead of the messy computer style the last two games had, but misses one crucial element: your two separate dodges (one for quick stepping and the other for full rolls) lack invincibility frames, meaning that even if you roll through an attack you will still get hit and take damage, and considering how irritating enemy tracking is, dodging is basically worthless.
** To skip a line of dialogue, you need to press the "Skip dialogue" button twice: once to bring up the prompt to skip dialogue and then again to actually ''skip'' the dialogue. You can't mash like in a telltale game either, if you're playing the game again, you have to wait for the prompt to fade in before it skips.
* ''VideoGame/ChildOfLight'' has a cast time for each action, similar to the ''VideoGame/{{Grandia}}'' series. If a character is attacked during that time, their action is cancelled. The game's strategy thus comes from timing your attacks so you hit enemies while they are casting their attacks. But for some reason, the developers gave some enemies "interrupt counters", which makes them instantly perform a powerful attack if you interrupt them. Why did anyone think it would be a good idea to [[ViolationOfCommonSense punish players for making clever tactical decisions]]?
* ''VideoGame/PathOfExile'' has [[BladderOfSteel no pause feature]], not even if you're not in a party. Need to step away from the game (e.g. due to messages from friends, a phone call, or a bathroom break)? You'll have to portal back to town just to guarantee you won't be killed randomly while AFK.
* ''VideoGame/GoldenSun'':
** The first game lets you transfer clear data to the sequel where character levels and stats, items, and Djinn can be transferred over. You can transfer by either two [=GBAs=] via link cable or by inputting a password. The password route can get incredibly lengthy if you choose to transfer everything over whereas transfering less data has shorter passwords. Opting to transfer everything is extremely time consuming and woe to you if you messed up somewhere and have to scroll through each page to see where you put in the wrong character!
** The infuriating battle mechanic where if a party member has targeted an enemy for an attack that dies before his turn, he'll just defend instead of automatically targeting a different enemy. Not only does this force you to anticipate how much health enemies have to avoid wasting turns, but it also makes nuisance battles against weak foes take longer since you'll keep wasting turns guarding if you decide to just mash the A button to keep blindly throwing attacks.
** The game's core mechanic of actively tying spells and stats to equipped Djinn effectively renders nearly them and the accompanying summons as AwesomeButImpractical barring rare circumstances. Using a Djinn puts it into standby which basically unequips it from a character, and any stat boosts, psynergy, or class changes that came with it get flushed right down the drain for a few turns. Since you tend to be fairly reliant on the stat boosts and psynergy gains, especially if going for one of the more esoteric classes in the game (like Ninja or Samurai), there is very rarely a scenario where you can afford to use them. And then there are the infamous [[ThatOneAttack Djinn screws]] which can gimp your character or your ''party'' something fierce, denying you all possible benefits the Djinn could otherwise offer until they're reset, which takes vital turns the enemy will likely use to kill you off.
* [[WizardNeedsFoodBadly Hunger]] in ''VideoGame/DarkestDungeon''. When it happens, you need to give your heroes some food or have them suffer damage and stress. What makes it a Scrappy Mechanic is that it's completely random: you could go an entire long quest without encountering it, or have it happen multiple times in a short quest, and using food to [[HyperactiveMetabolism heal a hero's HP]] does nothing to prevent it: you could feed your entire team until the game tells you they are full, take a few steps, and have the hunger popup appear. And bringing more food with you means less space for actual loot.

* ''VideoGame/SwordOfVermilion'' has treasure chests, like just about every RPG ever. You open the action menu while standing in front of one, choose "Open", and the game tells you that you found an item. Works fine, right? Wrong. For unexplained reasons, the menu has both "Open" and "Get" options. After opening a chest, you need to select "Get" from the menu to actually put the chest's contents in your inventory. You could go through an entire dungeon, recover the MacGuffin at the bottom, return to the NPC who gave you the quest, only to be confused as to why you couldn't continue, all because you forgot to get the item after opening the chest.
* UsefulNotes/RPGMaker FES has a few restrictions that can be really annoying:
** Attacks are either magical and cost MP, or deathblows that are CastFromHitPoints. If you want a special attack that costs MP but is based off a character's physical strength, you're out of luck.
** You can't change the message that appears when a character uses a special attack. If you have a character named Bob and a spell called Fireball", the game will always display "Bob Fireball" when you use the spell in battle, which always looks wrong. There's no reason why they couldn't just insert "used" between the character and spell name to make it look more natural.
* ''VideoGame/LufiaAndTheFortressOfDoom'' doesn't allow the player to target specific enemies, only allowing them to target groups of similar enemies, after which the party member will attack one of them at random. This not only takes some needed strategy out of the game, but makes certain WolfPackBoss fights far harder than they should be due to the fact that you can't just dogpile on one enemy at a time to reduce the number of attacks per turn you're being dealt.
* Some players feel this way about the platforming segments in ''VideoGame/BoxxyQuestTheGatheringStorm''. They’re a nice bit of variety, and they don’t appear too often, but the UsefulNotes/RPGMaker XP engine really wasn’t made for platformers, resulting in awkward controls and some minor issues with collision detection. A few maps also have enemies that follow you around and get in the way of your jumps, adding a stressful element to something that was already hard enough to begin with.

* And only in ''VideoGame/SecretOfEvermore'' is the character's [[ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy absurdly low accuracy]]. You start the game with a paltry 33% accuracy, meaning you'll be missing most of your attacks and taking a ''lot'' of unfair hits from enemies who wouldn't have had the chance to land an attack had the RandomNumberGod not given you the middle finger, and it doesn't raise much from there. Even at level 30, where you're strong enough to comfortably ''beat the FinalBoss'', and with the Jade Disk that boosts accuracy, you'll still only have about 45% accuracy and will miss very frequently. This would be annoying on its own, but as you need to wait between each attack so the Attack Gauge will fill (as discussed prior), this can turn what should be an easy fight with a spider who will squash in one hit into a frustrating {{Luck Based|Mission}} [[HitAndRunTactics Hit And Run Battle]] where you walk away poisoned and with about 60 less hitpoints. Pretty much your only reasonable alternative is to keep spamming the Speed formula, which boosts accuracy, but since it costs wax (used by [[GameBreaker Crush]]) and two parts water (used by [[WhiteMagic Heal]]), it's ''really'' not something you can afford to waste on every random enemy.

* In VideoGame/DigimonWorld2 the level grinding system is a complete time sink because of the games level caps and how you need 2 digimon to combine to raise said level cap. In order to do THAT you need to fire gifts at digimon in order to befriend them. To make matters worse since you start off at level cap 13 you end up with a level 1 rookie digimon which you have to level grind AGAIN to reach the level cap. Don't grind up to the level cap before combining? Your level cap either remains the same or even ''lowers''. You can spend hours grinding levels and then combining only to ''lose progress''.
* ''VideoGame/{{Miitopia}}'':
** The game has character relationships that can affect how said characters can treat each other during a battle. While it can lead to some awesome and funny moments when it works in your favor, it can also work against you. Characters with certain traits will do things that will piss off their party, such as refusing to accept a healing spell aimed at them or stealing someone's item to use it for themselves. This can also potentially have a Mii become infuriated with the offending Mii, ending the benefits the two share until they make up.
** Having no control over your party except for the main character is annoying for many. Miis act somewhat randomly and will not always use skills optimally or target specific enemies that you want. This gets doubly annoying in cases where the main character is separated from the party since you're basically watching a leaderless party doing their own thing in battle without any input from you.
** Party separation in general happens fairly frequently when the plot calls for it. This can potentially make some battles much harder if you were relying on a specific party composition. There's also two occasions in the story where [[spoiler: the Dark Lord]] kidnaps your party members and resets your level back to one, forcing you to start all over again with a different job and needing to recruit new allies. If you were giving your Mii specific grubs to raise certain stats, they won't be helpful to other jobs that doesn't take advantage of them.
* ''VideoGame/BravelyDefault2'' and its freaking ''counters''. In the original ''VideoGame/BravelyDefault'' and ''VideoGame/BravelySecond'', these were fairly rare, generally limited to a few specific enemies, including bosses whose job skills included counterattacks (notably Kamiizumi and Kikyo). In ''Bravely Default 2'', starting late in the prologue, '' '''every''' boss'' and a fair number of normal enemies can counter you. Their counters do not cost any sort of resource; there is no limit on how often they can trigger per turn; and they can counter ''anything and everything'' (except Specials), that you can do, including physical or magical attacks, status effects, buffs, healing magic, and ''defaulting''. There is even one that is literally called "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Counter Any Ability]]", which usually gives the boss free BP when the player uses, well, any ability. Supposedly, the developers implemented such an obnoxious mechanic in order to curb GameBreaker strategies, but it ended up backfiring, feeling more like TheComputerIsACheatingBastard, and actually encouraging the players to [[BeatThemAtTheirOwnGame cheese bosses]] even ''more'' because trying to fight them fairly just results in eating more counters.

* In ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'', Athenian Water[[note]]"Revive" in the SNES English translation[[/note]] is not the most popular of items. It revives a KO'd ally and restores 50 HP. Sounds good on paper, but 50 HP becomes low-tier fast. By mid-game, regular {{Mooks}} can easily reduce a revived ally's HP to single digits or KO them with one attack. This can be circumvented by having a second ally ready with a Mid-Potion[[note]]"Mid Tonic" in the SNES translation[[/note]] to immediately restore 200 more HP (which doesn't really work if two playable characters are KO'd, as there can only be three active playable characters at any one time), or by using Crono's Raise[[note]]"Life" in the SNES English translation[[/note]] or Marle's Arise[[note]]"Life 2" in the SNES English translation[[/note]] Techs (which doesn't work if Crono/Marle is KO'd).
* In ''Xanadu Next'', dungeons work like they do in ''Zelda'' with your character requiring keys to open doors to progress, unfortunately keys are very rarely dropped in the actual dungeons if at all. Instead, you have to purchase InterchangeableAntimatterKeys from the shopkeep in town on a regular basis, compounded by the low amount of money you get from defeating enemies, the constantly rising cost of keys, and the sheer amount of locked doors you encounter means you ''constantly'' have to return to town, sometimes after using up your last key just to enter a room with nothing in it but another locked door.
* ''VideoGame/NeoTheWorldEndsWithYou'':
** The reminders to eat. Anytime you approach a restaurant with 0% Fullness, some dialogue pops up about how the party is hungry which stops you from entering until they're done talking . For whatever reason, these chats only trigger right at the door which just interrupts people who don't need the reminder and doesn't help anyone forgetting to eat.
** Scramble Slam and its hazy, confusing, barely explained points system. The Scramble Slam is a possible daily challenge that occurs a few time through the game where the teams need to fight for control of territories by defeating certain noise or other teams, and earn points, which, at the end of the slam, are traded for rewards. However, not only does this make the player face against a long string of battles, it also never sufficiently explains to the player how the point system works or quite what they're related to, making it easy for the player to never reach enough to get the most basic of rewards.
** If your current character gets stunned, the game doesn't automatically switch to another, and hitting the attack button of a stunned character will do nothing. This becomes incredibly frustrating when it reverses the value of the AntiFrustrationFeature whereby having any player controlled character dodge an area attack will cause all AI characters to do so too. For example, in the Cervus Cantus boss fight, where it's possible to have your current character picked up by a Raven Noise just as the boss is charging his lightning burst, and be left frantically thumping the attack buttons to select a character who is able to act in order to move behind cover in order that the [=AIs=] do so; if you don't, the whole party will be hit which because of the shared HP system is an almost certain OneHitKill.

* ''VideoGame/LiesOfP'':
** Once the demo finally released, players took issue with how the dodge is implemented. Unlike what you'd expect from a ''Souls'' game, the dodge is a sidestep rather than a roll, and doesn't cover much distance, frequently collides with enemy hitboxes rather than passing through them with invincibility frames, and overall feels clunky to use. The end of the demo reveals that there is a skill tree that makes it possible to upgrade your dodge, but you need to get a few hours into the game before it becomes available, and in the demo itself it is unlocked after you basically have done everything there is to do, so you can't make much use of it. Your only other defensive option is perfect guarding, which is more reliable, but requires strict timing and is unforgiving if you fail - the window in which the perfect guard is active lasts only 8 frames, compared to 12 for the same mechanic in ''{{VideoGame/Sekiro}}''. The devs have fortunately said that the dodge isn't supposed to be this poor and it will be better on release. That being said, even with the full release, the dodge is still considered not all that good and many problems they have with it remain.
** The game seems to lack a "poise" or equivalent stat that confers resistance to stuns and staggers. P seems to have practically zero stagger resistance, making it very easy for him to get stunlocked to death when facing multiple enemies or enemies with long combo attacks.
** Starting with Fallen Archbishop Andreus, nearly every main story boss with few exceptions have 2 phases in which you have to deplete a full health bar before moving on to round 2. And if you brought a specter, odds are they'll die in round 1 so you're on your own when the boss is at full power. And if you lose, there's no checkpoint, you start at round 1 again. It would be fine if this were the case for only a few bosses but again, it's for practically 3/4ths of the game. The big problem with this is that most of the bosses have radically different movesets for phase 2, often requiring you to completely switch mental gears and readjust to all their new attack timings.
** Fury Attacks are notoriously difficult to deal with. Not only are they unblockable, but they often come with excellent tracking to make dodging them impossible. The biggest problem though is simply learning to deflect them- until you master their individual parry timings, it is impossible to deal with them. While early bosses will clearly telegraph when they are about to swing, later bosses will fake the player out with delayed timings and ambiguous animations. It often means that many bosses are pure TrialAndErrorGameplay until you have enough raw muscle memory to block their Fury Attacks. The only way to alleviate this is in a first playthrough to use the Ghost Walk Amulet, which allows the player to dodge Fury Attacks, but it is the heaviest amulet of the game, and only obtainable through trading the Green Monster's Rare Ergo. On New Game+, a P-Organ Upgrade can allow you to guard normally, but that's only on Phase 7.
** In general the amount of enemies that have built-in delays even in normal attacks is a large point of contention, echoing sentiments shared by ''VideoGame/EldenRing'' players. It goes hand-in-hand with Fury Attacks to make combat less about snap reflexes and more about memorization, and where other Soulslikes might start to tone back or entirely drop excessive delays in enemy attacks near the end game, it's a design choice that permeates ''Lies of P'' from start to end.

* The Attack Gauge in both ''VideoGame/SecretOfEvermore'' and ''VideoGame/SecretOfMana''. Whenever you throw an attack it needs to recharge, which takes about four full seconds, and throwing another attack before it recharges not only will do [[ScratchDamage scratch (if any) damage]] but also drops it down to zero again. It seems to exist to prevent you from being able to run in and {{Button Mash|ing}} similar to games like ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast'', but it largely feels unneeded and only really serves to [[{{Padding}} slow the game's combat down]] and force you into constantly using HitAndRunTactics.

* ''VideoGame/{{Earthbound}}''

* ''VideoGame/DarkSouls2'' decided to base multiplayer on a mechanic called Soul Memory (rather than using Soul Level like the previous game), which is a tally of every soul you've ever picked up, whether you've spent it wisely, poorly or ''lost it due to mistakes''. This means that highly proficient players who are experienced with the game, and spent their souls carefully would be on the same level as inexperienced players who were experimenting on how to spend souls and/or may have lost chunks of their soul-value to tactical mistakes. This implementation was made in an effort to curb [[Twinking]], as the first game allowed players to stay low level, but have very good equipment to invade and steamroll new players. Unfortunately it was felt that this went too far in the opposite direction. The ''Scholar of the First Sin'' edition fixed this to a degree with the Agape Ring, which allows you to stop increasing your Soul Memory.

*** The scanning. Before you would hold a key and have all items, people and points of interest around you quietly highlighted. Now you have to perform a "scan" that only momentarily highlites everything in a small radius, accompanied with a ping sound and animation. A misplaced nod to realism becomes sheer annoyance, since you're obviously going to constantly keep scanning to ensure you don't miss anything, turning your hero into a goddamn echo-sounder.

** ''The Millenium Girl''[='=]s Grimoire Stones are an excellent idea, giving you lots of flexibility with giving your party additional cross-class and monster skills to use. What makes them annoying is that the process of gaining stones is completely random -- you have to wait for a chance for a stone to be created, and even then, the skills you get in one is random. Creating the ideal stone takes a lot of praying to the random number gods that the desired skills drop quickly. The following remake, ''The Fafnir Knight'', fixes several problems with this by reducing the degree of randomness involved and even giving the player a few options in controlling what they can get.
** A core mechanic of the series is the ability to draw a map of the dungeon on the system's touch screen, so it makes sense for ''Beyond the Myth'' to add the ability to turn in your map to the council and get rewarded (with the ability to start your expeditions on higher floors) if it's accurate enough. Unfortunately, many players reported Ramus rejecting their maps due to their mapping style not being recognized by the game. Note that the game doesn't give any official guidelines on how to "properly" draw maps.

*** The inventory also has a sub-issue in that items of a type don't stack - five hamburgers take up five slots in your inventory, not just one. Detractors point out that this is almost unique to the Mother series, compare it negatively to other games (e.g. ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'') where you can stack dozens of an item, and call it fake difficulty. The system does have its defenders though, who point out that it's silly to expect 99 hamburgers to take the same amount of space as 1 burger, and that if you could stock dozens of healing items it would make the game a lot easier.

* In the first two games of the ''{{VideoGame/Mother}}'' series, if someone in your party gets K.O.'ed during battle, they remain that way even after the fight until you revive them. If everyone goes down, you go back to where you last saved, only Ness/Ninten is revived, and everyone loses all their PP to boot. This wouldn't be such a big deal in and of itself, except that most of the time, your methods of reviving anyone are limited. This is especially annoying when you're exploring enemy territory, as opposed to within a town (where you can just walk to a hospital), and would be better off with more people active than unconscious.
** The inventory system in both games is pretty bad, especially in ''Earthbound Beginnings'', as not only it is limited to a small number of items for every character, but key items also take up inventory slots, which makes it incredibly annoying when trying to stock up on other types of items only to find out that you can't carry anything else with you and forcing you to throw away any items that might come in handy later. Fortunately, ''VideoGame/{{Mother 3}}'' fixed this by giving key items their own separate inventory so they don't clog your inventory.

* ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'': Cutscenes overriding player's actions. Let's say your cloaked rogue is stalking through the enemy fortress, scouting for the team, and serving as the pointer for your mages who are safely tucked far behind. Then they trigger the cutscene (even something completely inconsequential), and suddenly your entire team is dragged in, stealth is off, a dozen enemies spawn all around you, and you're screwed.

** The "Mushroomized" status effect, which is basically "Strangeness" (confusion) dialed [[UpToEleven up to the point that it's unfair]]. There's no way to cure it outside of visiting specific locations, it can't be cured or prevented with PSI or items, it lingers after battle, it foists an InterfaceScrew on you outside of battle, and it turns every battle with it into a LuckBasedMission where you're one random "whoever is feeling funky" away from [[TotalPartyKill nailing your own party with Rockin or Fire β]]. There's a reason why inflicting this status ailment is the sole reason Shrooom! is ThatOneBoss, and raises the question as to why such a version of a status ailment that is typically easy to get rid of exists in the first place, because this mechanic is ''frustrating''.