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"What were they THINKING?!"
— One of The Angry Video Game Nerd's catchphrases.

Sometimes, it feels like the Disappointing Last Level is oncoming within these games, but it's really the bitter aftertaste from these moments. Sequence Breaking is perfectly acceptable if it means not having to view these scenes.

Keep in mind:

  • Sign your entries.
  • One moment per game to a troper. If multiple entries are signed to the same troper, the more recent one will be cut.
  • Moments only, no "just everything he said," or "The entire game" entries.
  • No contesting entries. This is subjective, the entry is their opinion.
  • No natter. As above, anything contesting an entry will be cut, and anything that's just contributing more can be made its own entry.
  • Explain why it's a Dethroning Moment of Suck.
  • Please make sure the moment is fictional and is neither an event that occurred in real life nor something gameplay-related. We have a perfectly good Scrappy Mechanic page for the latter.
  • Any moments on the creators themselves will be cut.
  • Please do not add any Content Leak before their official release. It completely spoils anyone who wanted experience the story themselves and falls under Speculative Troping.
  • No ALLCAPS, no bold, and no italics unless it's the title of a work. We are not yelling the DMoSs out loud.

The following series have their own pages:

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    A 
  • Leobracer: Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation is one of my favorite games on XBOX 360. Heck it was what made me get a 360 in the first place. I loved the story, I loved the characters, and I especially loved the music. However, every time I would replay it, there was one mission that I always dreaded playing. That mission being "Moloch Desert". So after fulfilling four of the mission’s six objectives, the Estovakians begin to retreat, and Ghost Eye orders us to go after them. But then, Ghost Eye receives an order from central command right as soon as the Strigon team arrives to ambush Garuda team, that all units are to evacuate the AO. So do we evacuate from the AO? No. The game forces us to disobey that order because Shamrock gets cocky and engages the Strigon team. Ghost Eye repeatedly orders us to ceasefire and evacuate, but Shamrock stubbornly continues to engage Strigon all because they’re so close to reaching Gracemeria. And once the Strigon team is shot down, Shamrock blissfully says that they can finally return to Gracemeria, while Ghost Eye warns that they’re not getting around a penalty for it. Once the mission’s over, the debrief reveals that the reason why we told to evacuate was because Estovakia was planning to nuke Gracemeria to oblivion to deny the Emmerians a victory. After the base commander reveals that information, Garuda team is suspended from flying all because we were forced to disobey orders. If it wasn’t for this mission, I would have considered Fires of Liberation to be the best game in the Ace Combat series, but forcing us to disobey orders left a very bad taste in my mouth.
  • Midna: Abobo's Big Adventure is made out of equal parts Rated M for Manly, Ludicrous Gibs, and Refuge in Audacity to begin with, so maybe the ending shouldn't have been a surprise. But it was - it almost looked like a montage of clips from a snuff film, for Christ's sake. Abobo drinking from Shredder's bleeding arm was pretty funny in a Crosses the Line Twice kind of way, admittedly, but that doesn't come until after you're forced to watch Samus getting curb-stomped American History X-style. The game itself is pretty fun, but I still sort of have to question the sanity of whatever mad genius came up with that ending.
  • Slimbship4: Ambition by Zap Dramatic is full of So Bad, It's Good moments, but the third episode made me outraged to no end. The player is in charge of conducting a psychological exam on Ted Hartrup who spent the previous two episodes as a suicide bomber, threatening to "blow us all to hell". As suicide bombing is considered an act of terrorism, you'd expect to win by declaring him psychotic. But that's not the case. You win by declaring him sane despite the aforementioned suicide bombing and his claim that God is talking back at him. The game even says that he should not be held criminally responsible just because he had an amoral wife who didn't do much by that point. That completely cemented him as a Creator's Pet for the author, Michael Gibson, and a representation of his religious and social views. It's even more rage-inducing when you consider that Gibson intended for his games to be realistic. If they actually were, then Ted would actually be held criminally responsible if he was declared to be sane. What a total waste of $5 a month!
  • philipthepatsy: Animal Crossing: New Leaf is a fantastic game. However, there's one thing that really upsets me. When you receive a request to put in a police station, you are given two options. One option will give you Copper, the other will give you Booker. In every game before this, Copper and Booker were a team. Now they have to be split up?! Why would they do that? It may not seem like that big of a deal, but it's a big slap in the face for fans of both Copper and Booker.
  • Schismatism: I'm a big fan of Bit Blot's Aquaria, from its Ecco the Dolphin-styled gameplay to its presentation of a world filled with races which each caused their own extinction, but the game completely loses it in terms of plot when it introduces the Walking Spoiler known as Li. It's a baseline example, in my opinion, of a Romantic Plot Tumor, which takes Naija's motivations (exploration, learning, curiosity) and throws them right out the window. Many a player was thrilled when, at the end of the game in the good ending, Naija's mother shows up and voices these concerns.
  • darkrage6: Army of Two The Devil's Cartel has a really bad twist that casts a damper over the entire series. Salem is El Diablo, yep that's right, the same guy who would do anything for his partner and generally went out of his way to save people in the previous two games becomes a full-blown psychopath who has no qualms about killing innocent people in cold blood(starting with the mayor) and couldn't give less of a fuck about Rios or anybody else but himself. This is completely nonsensical and asinine in so many ways. First, the reason given for him turning evil is REALLY shitty, basically Alpha and Bravo want to escort a girl to safety and Salem is against it, saying she "isn't their priority", (this coming from the guy who saved several civilians in 40th Day)after some persuading he reluctantly goes along with it, and his car gets hit by a rocket and everyone presumes him dead, and he essentially hates them for choosing the girl over him, I can understand him being upset, but turning against his own organization and his own fucking partner? No, just no.
  • Shadow 200: Asura's Wrath. The disk material doesn't so much as end on a sequel hook. This wouldn't be so bad if it didn't essentially mean that in order to see how the story ends, or even how an incredibly large portion of the plot unfolds, you'd have to shell out even more money for their DLC. Keep in mind, Asura's Wrath isn't a freeware game. In my eyes, it was basically the point were Capcom decided that The Almighty Dollar was more important to them than their dwindling fanbase. It's not a good business practice in the least, and if anybody else implemented it, their clients would be ticked off over it. Capcom can calmly pucker their lips and kiss my ass cause I will no longer buy anything of theirs.

    B 
  • Minister Of Sinister: My Dethroning Moment is from the Baldur's Gate series, the second game, specifically. There are a lot of moments in the series, including some from either Enhanced Edition version, that arguably deserve to be listed here, particularly a large number of severe Karma Houdini incidents, but I'm going with one from the original second game because it's the single most groan-worthy part of the series as a whole; specifically, the prologue portion of the game. In this prologue, it's made clear to you how your character acted in the first game — like a good guy. And your companions were all good guys too. It's one thing for them to include Imoen in your canon party — because she's Imoen — but the others can't hold a candle to her. It's a ludicrous, even egregious example of Railroading and Cutting Off the Branches, and given the amount of work they put into the rest of the game it smacks of laziness and not caring. How hard could it possibly have been to have given different parties for each alignment to allow people who chose Evil not to suffer the logical dissonance of having travelled with people who are completely at odds with you in terms of motivations and morality. Not to mention that one of those characters is Minsc, a character I patently hate, and the game pretty much forces you to take him along at risk of being crushed under the blows of a Clay Golem or two. Overall, this moment is the absolute nadir of the series and my only comfort is that there are no other moments like it.
  • Almighty King Prawn: As a little kid I loved watching my brother play Banjo-Kazooie and Tooie on the his Nintendo 64. Needless to say, 5-year-old me was extremely excited for Nuts & Bolts to come out. (This being the early days of the internet where you couldn't look up games easily and had to just buy them.) So we turned the game on to see a fat and depressed Banjo and Kazooie, a joke that didn't really land all too well. They see Gruntilda and they're about to fight: finally, the game's starting! We're gonna have so much fun and snark! And then this dumbass who calls himself the "Lord of Games" comes in, says they're outdated and no one likes them anymore, and forces them in cars. Being as young as I was, that scene genuinely broke my heart. I still think about it a lot. Poor me became a borderline Stepford Smiler, desperately waiting alongside my brother for a Banjo-Threeie that never came. All I can say is thank God for Smash.
  • The Lucky Cat: I enjoyed Baten Kaitos for the most part, but there is one part of it that spoiled much of my gaming experience. The ending. To put into context, once the final boss is defeated, the islands land below the taint clouds, Xelha unleashes the ocean and seemingly dies as a result, but the Meemais form together to become the whale, reviving Xelha, who reunites with Kalas and the others. All this is fine and good, and it's a good payoff after everything the characters have gone through. But then the dethroning moment comes - basically, Kalas turns to you, the Guardian Spirit and says what amounts to, "Thanks for helping me on my journey, but now you have to go home! Bye!" ...And that's it. After everything that's happened between the player, Kalas, Xelha and the party including having your memories wiped by Kalas and Melodia, his betrayal, siding wth Xelha to go back to Kalas when he redeems himself, Giacomo, Ayme and Folon blocking you off to fight him, killing a god together, and that's all they could think of as the final send off? Kalas doesn't even ASK the Guardian Spirit what they want, if they want to stay with him in the new world. He gets what he needed out of them and then pretty much just tosses them aside just like he did when he betrayed everyone, but because he's a good guy this time, he gets away with it. To add insult to injury, the characters then wave at you as the screen Fades to Black in a way that makes it look like even the characters are bored of this scene. Way to make an emotional impact!
  • sanfranman91: Even though Batman: Arkham Origins was a obvious cash-in rush job, it was not the bugs or the repetitive gameplay that convinced me to return the game to Gamestop. Rather, it was the campaign's poor decision to crank a plot twist that damaged the Arkham franchise's image. What is the twist in question, you ask? The Joker is revealed to the main villain. Not only that, he impersonated Black Mask so he can order the assassins to hunt Batman down. Look, I understand that The Joker is Batman's unquestionable Arch-Enemy. That said, this is now the third Arkham game that features the Big Bad and the way Origins introduces the Joker instantly ruined what was once an interesting plot. Adding insult to injury, when Batman meets the real Black Mask, he turns out to be a tortured, weak-hearted Flunky Optional Boss. Given that the assassin was hyped to be a dangerous and clever adversary for Batman, this left a bad taste in my mouth. I for one would like to explore the psyche, traits, and motivations of other members of the Rogues Gallery and perhaps have them be the center of the story. It would certainly lead to more creative stories and challenges than if the player was duped into playing yet another game of stopping the same villain over and over again. In short, it's a predictable twist that wastes an infuriatingly high amount of the plot's potential.
    • Sam Max: While I actually enjoyed Batman: Arkham Origins for the most part, my big problem is the battle against the Electrocutioner. Granted, it wasn't too far into the game, but I expected him to put up more of a fight than "taunt you and get defeated by one hit." Now, I don't know the most about his character, but the game itself portrayed him as a deadly assassin, so I don't know why WB Games couldn't at least make him a proper boss fight.
    • He Who Must Not Be Usernamed: For me it was the last boss battle, when Jim Gordon chews you out for seemingly killing Bane. Commish, Bats clearly did it in self-defense, in a situation when there was no other possible outcome, after an entire night of doing nothing but help the police, and in doing so he managed to save your life as well. What the hell are you complaining about?
  • neckinhalf: Don't get me wrong here: Batman: Arkham Knight is a good game. However, one crucial thing in particular just left that bad taste in my mouth: the "end" of the Arkham Knight. The Arkham Knight has assembled a freaking militia and drone tank army to defeat Batman. He was willing to help Scarecrow coat Gotham in fear toxin. Late in the game, it's revealed that the Arkham Knight is Jason Todd, one of the former Robins. Honestly, I don't know why I'm spoiling this, as it's extremely obvious if you know a drop about Batman lore. So, how does Bats finally defeat the revenge-filled man who was willing to do all of this to get to him? Talking to him. Not a fireside chat, of course, but a bunch of "This is not you!" statements, basically. With that, the "Arkham Knight" is gone. Easily Forgiven (on both sides) doesn't even begin to cover it.
    • cricri300: Four words: The Joker comes back. As the person above remarked, I don't know why I'm spoiling this, considering that, by now, it should be obvious that he'll appear in everything Batman-related, but he's here again! Oh, and the game is more Batman dealing with him than with Scarecrow. The Arkham Knight is like that because of him, he appears in almost every cutscene, follows Batman around commenting on everything and has more screen time than the freaking main villain! What could have been a good plot with Batman interacting with other villains gets flushed down the toilet because the Joker comes back.!
      • What helps soften the blow is that based on dialogue from Joker, Strange, and Scarecrow about Batman bottling up his feelings suggests that Joker is really a split personality Batman made, that was briefly woken up by the Toxin of the first game and briefly appeared after beating Mr. Freeze. Though the game itself is suggesting that Joker came back from beyond thanks to Batman's blood infection, which honestly feels like cheating; not only did the series have a record of Doing In the Wizard, giving actual reasons for seemingly supernatural events, but Knight was trying to be even more realistic, removing Bane and the Titan formula. That and Batman is not a magic hero.
    • Truffle: I was more annoyed with the ending. In particular, how we were Left Hanging. In what seems to be a last minute Deus ex Machina, Jason arrives just in time to stop Scarecrow, then just as quickly disappears into the night. Shortly after this, Bruce either kills himself, or fakes his death, meaning he and Jason never truly managed to make amends. How disappointing! All that build-up and drama, which ultimately leads nowhere.
    • MM Trigger: The worst thing is that the intended moral is about trusting one's allies, but it's made clear that Batman's just inevitably suffer due to their own incompetence. Additionally, and most likely unintentionally, the game suggests that Batman's biggest mistake was always letting his enemies, or at least Joker, live because:
      • The entire series was Joker's fault; he hired the assassins, his plot in the original game was used to gain support to build Arkham City, and much of the plot in Arkham Knight ties back to his prior actions. If Batman never saved him in Batman: Arkham Origins Gotham would've been happier.
      • His surviving enemies collectively funded the militia.
      • A Gotham Story reveals that Gotham lost a class action suit against the Arkham City inmates, and a subquest about rescuing firefighters reveals that cutbacks and layoffs drove the chief to work with Firefly; saving the Arkham City inmates is what put the firefighters in danger.
    • Dr Zulu 2010: Related to one of the above, the sub-plot regarding the five persons infected by the Joker's blood. Remember how in Arkham City, Joker's plan is to unleash his Titan infected blood to every hospital in Gotham to poison the people via blood transfusions? The same Titan formula that slowly kills Mr. J and Batman after the former's blood is in the latter? Well, let's retcon with the four that didn't get the cure not dying or dead, with no explanation for how they're still alive, but are turning into Joker lookalikes. This leaves me with so many questions like: How is Joker's blood able to turn them similar like the Joker? As in getting the white skin, green hair AND the same exact personality as him? Is Joker's blood magical or something? Is this a side effect of the Titan formula that if you somehow fought the toxins that kills you it makes some sort of mutation? The latter one is hard to believe since it's foreshadowed that Batman is the fifth one who slowly turn into the Joker. It's fairly obvious that this game isn't wrote by Paul Dini, who wrote the previous games (except Origins) because he wouldn't let such a massive plot hole to happen.
  • Lemon_Starburst: For me, Bendy and the Ink Machine had been losing me for a while, but it completely lost me with its ending. To make a long story short, the game is implied to be in a time loop and it is never explained what happens to you and everyone else trapped in the studio. You get an item that lets you see things in the previous levels that were hidden before, but these things are at best easter eggs and bits of lore that don't really answer anything. It doesn't help that it seems to pull a "The Last Jedi" and outright ignored what it had been building up since Episode Two. Joey Drew? He's mended his ways completely offscreen and sent you to the studio to destroy Bendy. He's not even in the studio at all. The horribly monstrous Bendy that's been stalking you the entire game? He's just a creepy ink monster, not Joey like the game had been implying. All of the foreshadowing that there was more to Henry than we knew? Doesn't matter, we never see what happens to anyone after you finish off Bendy. Top this off with a lackluster final boss and you just have a disappointing finale to a really promising game. I know it's made by a small team, but it honestly doesn't feel finished once the credits start rolling—there are just too many unanswered questions to feel satisfied after beating it.
  • SorPepita: BioShock Infinite is and probably will always be my favourite videogame story of all time, but I believe they screwed up royally when retconning Daisy Fitzroy's motivation. Before the retcon, she was an excellent example of how one person can fight monsters while still being a monster herself, and anyone who doesn't think so can find plenty of examples in history (and there is one which greatly resembles Daisy's Moral Event Horizon of attempting the murder of an innocent kid in spite of the whole thing starting as a noble crusade: Tsarism was a hideous regime and revolting against it was fully justified, yet the Revolution ended up killing Nicholas II's children, including 14-year old Alexei). But plenty of people complained that the Daisy they knew would never do such a thing (despite all previous interaction with her amounting to a single cutscene), and so in Burial in Sea we learn that it was all a plan to motivate Elizabeth into destroying Comstock. Apparently being kidnapped and tortured by him for the purpose of turning her into the Lamb who would destroy the Sodom Below wasn't motivating enough. Yeah, the new Daisy makes oh so much more sense.
  • SomeNewGuy: The ending to BlazBlue: Chronophantasma is easily the single most horrific instance of a Sudden Downer Ending I have ever seen in a video game. In the course of only a few minutes, the heroes lose everything, all their victories are rendered pointless (Oh, Terumi's dead and Relius is left powerless? Here, have a villain that was never mentioned or foreshadowed who pulls story breaking powers out of her ass in order to destroy everything we've worked for for 3 games), all of the heroes are either dead (Platinum), Face Heel Turned (Nu, Ragna), beaten to the point they can't do anything to stop Izanagi (Noel, Jin), utterly broken by everything they've gone through (Bang, Litchi, Carl), utterly powerless to do anything to save the world (Rachel, Valkenhyn, Hakuman), or so consumed by their desire for revenge they're no better than the actual villains. (Kokonoe, Tsubaki). It is fairly safe to say that nothing was accomplished except giving the Big Bad exactly what she wanted.
    • Heartlesswithaheart: I felt it hit sooner than that, namely when everyone but Kokonoe decides to avoid sacrificing Celica (a character I already hate) in favour of... thinking of something else. Normally, this would just be a generic (and out of place for the series) shounen anime moment, but if they waited any longer, the world would be doomed and everyone would die. Obviously, that would include Celica, who everyone is trying to save. Not that it would matter much anyway, since she's a clone that would die in six months regardless of what happened, and Celica herself was fully for the idea of Kokonoe's plan. Then Rachel shows up and reveals that nobody needs to sacrifice themselves because of a reason that was not only vaguely foreshadowed, but would make more sense if it were revealed as something else. It felt very out of place for the series, felt like an Ass Pull, and existed to make Kokonoe seem like the villain for suggesting the choice that leads to the best outcome and getting annoyed with the "heroes" for suggesting what could be the worst possible choice aside from not doing anything.
  • Cerotech Omega: As much as I like the BlazBlue series, one of my biggest complaints is that the series is about the Azure, its champions, and its corrupters as a whole, not "The Trials, Tribulations and Endless Suffering of Ragna the Bloodedge" — emphasis on "Endless Suffering". While it started turning towards this particular tale during Chronophantasma, there's one particular moment in Central Fiction that, in hindsight, makes the entire issue supercritical from day one. That moment is where Ragna submits to becoming the world's enemy. Normally, I get depressed when a hero loses all hope in their own cause, like when Ragna admitted in CP that his destiny had already been decided for him to begin with (three games too late for that warning, Rachel), and look forward to when they bounce back, even if they never do, but it's the implications behind the story's existence in the first place that take the whole scene from distressing to disgusting. The entire story reads out like Amaterasu's badly-written cry for help from her younger 'brother' Susano'o, better known as Yuuki Terumi, who was revealed to be the cause behind the entire godforsaken plot and someone I shall henceforth call DS for "Discount Satan", because that's all he really is. Basically, DS manifests in the Susano'o unit after Amaterasu had been undergoing an existential crisis and, instead of thinking "this girl's whining is getting on my nerves; better find out what's wrong and fix it so she can shut up for once in an aeon, but in a way I can benefit from in the long run", decides that she doesn't deserve the power she possesses and decides to destroy it all out of raw spite and rewrite it in his own twisted image, which he sets about doing by abandoning the Susano'o unit and manipulating world affairs. So what does she do, especially with her chosen hero? Does she descend incognito and fight DS, or guide anyone who can fight him into doing so? She doesn't. Is her plan "empower the hero to figure out what's going on and put a stop to him"? No! Did she entertain using her godly powers to manipulate affairs behind the scenes with DS' schemes in mind, moving every pawn on the field into his inevitable checkmate? Oh, I remember now! She orchestrates affairs so she can project the symptoms of her abuse onto her capital-T The Chosen One, having his mentor figures literally beat every third option and semblance of free will out of him — something DS is more than glad to do on his own — and reset affairs if Ragna takes the realistic outcome and decides "Forget my life", "Count me out", or "Screw the entire planet"! All of this amounts to literally making Ragna's fate as her "stress outlet" so concrete that he cannot even die of his own accord! Am I remembering the story correctly?! Amaterasu literally empowers the abuse of Ragna the Bloodedge to forget the abuse she and her manifestation are already experiencing courtesy of DS, which takes victim blaming and Stockholm Syndrome to their utmost repulsive conclusions, and that Ragna's entire story amounts to being the Cosmic Plaything until he agrees to be a pawn of fate, to which his only reward is the right to erase himself from existence, is an affront to BlazBlue, common sense, and writing in general, especially since "rebellion against fate" was a major running theme for the series in the first place. The worst part of all this, and why it's my dethroning moment, is that up until these implications registered to me, Ragna was my second favorite character in the series, behind Makoto, only being held back from a narrower margin by how badly the universe has it in for him and how it never lets him do anything that isn't part of the game of destiny... one which I learned is far too childish to be a suitable conflict between gods. I originally wanted Makoto's "death" in the story to be my dethroner due to how it perfectly embodies the story's treatment of the secondary cast, but that only applies to CF, whereas what happened to Ragna retroactively afflicts the entire series with terminal cancer and refuses to give it appropriate medical care. The disgusting implications of this entire plot paint every member of the core cast, save Jin, Tsubaki and possibly Makoto herself, in the most repulsive light imaginable, and have offended me to the point that I refuse to watch actual gameplay pan out and see the finer details anymore. Amaterasu, you finally got your broken shell of a man for all eternity, and this is the hero you deserve. I hope you're proud of yourself. Anyone who has stayed on for the plot, you are free to your interpretations, but at least try to entertain that my criticism is my own view of how things turned out.
  • Treb: Bully for the most part is a fantastic sandbox game. However, there is a mission in the fourth chapter that is a horrible case of Gameplay Story Segregation. Stronghold Assault. Jimmy, seeking to take down the Jocks, comes and asks Algie for assistance from the nerds in the library. Now, I spent the entire game doing all the side quests for the nerds, having 100% respect from them, and it just doesn't make any sense that they would be so hostile towards Jimmy. From a gameplay standpoint, the mission involves fighting some enemies up to the observatory, before you finally face off with Earnest (who Jimmy helps with his campaign earlier in the game) and what ensues in a repetitive, pattern based boss fight. This is a huge Out-of-Character Moment for the nerds who have, at this point, been built up as friendly and sympathetic characters.

    C 
  • Saberwulf 2018: Call of Duty: Ghosts is easily one of my least favorite Call of Duty titles for good reason. The mid-credits scene is by far one of the biggest "fuck yous" a Call of Duty game has ever pulled on any player. Just when you thought you defeated Rorke and saved the day, Rorke suddenly appears out of nowhere, abducts you, and imprisons you in a pit in the jungle. Rorke was clearly shot in the chest with a .44 Magnum round. Who could survive any of that? And they have the gall to end this game on a cliffhanger? No wonder why this game failed.
  • InTheGallbladder: Can Your Pet? is ostensibly a lighthearted, if simple, Ridiculously Cute Critter Raising Sim. However, the ending completely ruins it. I won't go into detail, but simply put, the game suckers you into invoking Video Game Cruelty Potential to the nth degree and gleefully metes out its Video Game Cruelty Punishment. That's right, it exists only for a Player Punch built around a juvenile "dead baby"-style pun.
  • The Dog Sage: The ending of Castle Crashers. You rescue the orange princess and she removes a veil revealing Tricky The Clown who does a dance during an Acid Trip Sequence. Now, if this was a free flash game, that'd be fine, but not for something for which I coughed up money. Honestly, I expected better than that. Doesn't stop me from playing the game, but still.
    • Marioking 98341: A similar mistake happens with the end of BattleBlock Theater. You beat the game, rescue Hatty, and it is revealed that Hatty is in a vegetable state. Okay, that actually works, it is actually a effective Tear Jerker. But than, the "Buckle Your Pants" song happens, and as catchy and ridiculously hilarious it is, it completely ruins the mood of what just happened. Thankfully the moment right after that was a bit of a Author's Saving Throw with the reveal of the hat growing green now, possibly giving life back to Hatty. If the 2nd and 3rd scenes were switched around, this ending would have been a LOT better. The game is still fantastic though.
  • Trialman: Okay, unlike some others, I do enjoy Castlevania: Judgment. However, the way they characterized Sypha in this game is absolutely horrendous. For this game, Sypha was turned into a fanatical Church Militant, who wants rid of Dracula's dark powers. The thing is, she takes it so far, she comes off as more of a Knight Templar. The worst case of this is in the story mode of Cornell, a werewolf who represents the idea that Dark Is Not Evil. His first rival battle is against Sypha, and the pre-battle dialogue shows the worst side of this game's version of Sypha. Cornell asks her if she's clergy, to which she gives a "None of your business" response. Cornell then politely asks if she can free him from being a werewolf, to which she responds with essentially, "You're a werewolf, you are therefore evil by default, so I shall kill you!" This moment really gets under my skin, due to how Sypha refuses to even consider that Cornell might be good, in spite of his friendly attitude, and explaining he doesn't want to be a werewolf. Worse still, one quote Sypha might say before fighting is "Brand me a heretic and I shall wear the title proudly", showing that she knows what it's like to be oppressed for what she is, rather than who she is, but then she does the exact same thing to Cornell. Never mind that she wants to destroy people with dark powers, when she uses attacks based on calling the spirits of the deceased, which should surely qualify as a dark power. Shame on you, for taking a classic character, who hadn't been seen in years, and then beating her legacy and respect to a pulp. Also, they gave her massive boobs, even though she's known for being a Sweet Polly Oliver.
    • ChrisX: Aside the boob part (which I'm more neutral with), I agree on this being one of the few things that made me unable to enjoy Judgment. Call it favoritism or such, but Sypha was one of my favorite Castlevania characters (or at least just the ladies), to see her being reduced to this, it feels like she got the short end of the stick. We may now revile Konami's pachinko obsession and business strategies, but this is saying something when Sypha's portrayal in the pachinko version of Dracula's Curse was more accurate and betterthan this! I wouldn't blame the fans if they say that Judgment!Sypha's personality goes straight into Fanon Discontinuity.
  • CPF Mfan: The ending of the otherwise great expansion pack for Command & Conquer: Generals, Zero Hour. Basically, the GLA launches a counter offensive against the USA after they got the hell beaten out of them by the USA in not one, but TWO campaigns in a row. Their attack is successful beyond belief; not only do they completely obliterate US Forces in Europe and wreck the USA itself (due to the American leaders picking up the idiot ball), causing them to withdraw from all their strongholds in the world, but the GLA actually manages to launch a full scale invasion of Germany. What does NATO, the USA, and the EU do? Absolutely fucking nothing. They just sit on their hands while the dirt poor Middle Eastern / Central Asian army marches on Europe, leaving China to pick up the slack, which ends with China beating back the GLA and becoming the new world superpower. Regardless of your stance on current world politics, this ending is so improbable (requiring the US and EU to lose all semblances of competence and power, while making China impossibly perfect) and unnecessary (completely negating the Moment of Awesome that was the Zero Hour US campaign) that it is ridiculous.
  • Julayla: I would like to bring in one game no one expects, which I believe has a moment that sucks: Conker's Bad Fur Day. I enjoyed the game very much. Heck, I like to play it again or watch playthroughs of it. However, there is one thing I find that sucks: Conker's Idiot Ball when it came to Berri's resurrection. It happened when the game froze and Conker was talking with one of the programmers. With the help of the programmer, he should have been able to resurrect his girlfriend while getting some weapons and arriving to the throne room to finish off Heinrich. But no, it was not to be. When I played the game, I was like, "Did he actually forget about Berri?" Well, yes he did. Because after the final boss is killed with a katana, when the people he dislikes begin appearing, Conker finally realizes that he forgot to bring back Berri and tries (and fails) futilely to get the programmer back, thus the Downer Ending we get. All I can say afterwards is, "What an idiot indeed."
  • bisonx: I'm a huge Contra fan, and I enjoy Shattered Soldier, but as fun as that game was, the only thing I don't like about the game is the game's Darker and Edgier plot. Bill Rizer, the John Matrix Expy, has been framed for destroying 80% of the world's population while Lance Bean, the Rambo Expy, is assumed to have been killed by Bill. And later, it turns out that Lance became the Big Bad, or so we think, but beating the first five stages with an A or S rank reveals that he only rebelled to overthrow the Triumvirate, and then he dies in Bill's arms before Bill and Lucia go after the Triumvirate. Something tells me some old folks back at Konami must have really hated Rambo.

    D-E 
  • InTheGallbladder: I've played games that depressed me, games that disappointed me, and games that left me utterly infuriated. However, not once have I ever played a game that's left me feeling as though I was totally stolen from. That is, until Dark Matter, which ends all of a sudden on a white-on-black Wall of Text (sans BGM) which doesn't resolve or explain jack shit beyond the fact that the game has just ended, although it also gives you the friendly reminder that you can explore a bit if you want. I should note that this game was billed as being complete and sold for $15 USD on the market.
    • Aj Wargo: No one likes a game with No Ending, and this is that. But, I have good news to anyone reading this in the future- you won’t have to experience it. They have actually pulled Dark Matter from distribution and are offering refunds to anyone who bought it. Good call!
  • Doc Sharp: The Bed of Chaos boss fight from Dark Souls. It's a platforming-based Puzzle Boss in a game that doesn't lend itself well to any of those aspects, especially given the convenient bottomless pits that show up midway into the fight coupled with nigh-undodgeable attacks. It's rage-inducing, not creative, and basically something that just shouldn't be in the game, and I dread having to deal with it any time I replay an otherwise wonderful game.
    • Sinister_Sandwich: The worst part about the Bed of Chaos is how it reduces one of the most important characters in the backstory, the Witch of Izalith, to a big tree monster with no dialogue, no intro cutscene, dull music and one of the worst boss fights Fromsoft has ever come up with. Unless you paid very close attention to lore snippets, you wouldn't even be 100% sure that the Bed really was the Witch of Izalith and not just some big monster that took their soul.
  • Thragg Lootrippa: Long-time fan of the Dawn of War series here. Soulstorm already has a good deal of infamy for being a barely working game released as the last gasp of a bankrupt company. That's understandable. But the one moment that breaks the willing suspension of disbelief is the Chaos hero for the campaign, Lord Firraveous Carron. Carron is a Chaos Lord, a superhuman that betrayed his makers and has been killing other superhumans and aliens, scheming to bring more death and seize more power, or fighting other renegades for anywhere up to thousands of years. Being a Chaos Lord means being tougher then all the other traitors, being evil enough to conquer galaxies for one's goals. He acts like a bloodthirsty warlord when you play campaign as Chaos, and that is to be expected. But invade his stronghold and successfully blow up his dark temples and he starts crying. A Chaos Lord that has been in the business for anywhere up to thousands of years cries over destroyed temples. Sobs. Defeat him on his territory and he flees the battle while having an emotional breakdown, only to be crushed by the opposing commander. This is the behavior of a pathetic cult leader. Are you kidding me?
  • Capa: I liked Dead Space 3, but the Dethroning Moment of Suck for me was when Ellie finds out that Isaac killed Norton in self-defense, even though Carver told her that he betrayed them and tried to kill Isaac, she still gets angry at him and basically accuses him of wanting to kill him all along. That makes no sense because even after he found about his betrayal, he still saved him from both Danik's men and the Nexus. If he wanted to kill him, he could just let one of the Unitologist soldiers or the Nexus kill him. This was the point that just ruined completely ruined Ellie's character for me and spoiled it.
  • emilethetemplar: I could complain for a while about the mess Devil May Cry 4 call a plot, but the moment I can't get over is the revelation that Gloria, you know, the person who gave the Sparda to the Order, is in fact Trish in disguise. I get she was trying to get their trust in order to spy on them for Dante, but if she hadn't done that, the Order would not have been able to unleash the savior in the first place! Trish just made things worse for everyone and got a bunch of innocent people killed! Next time, let Dante do the job himself. In fact, I'm pretty sure Nero could have handle Sanctus and the Order all by himself without the Savior intervention.
  • Mightymoose 101: Dante bragging about murdering a women and her unborn child (even if said child was the son of the Big Bad and a horrible abomination itself) in DmC: Devil May Cry just to get a rise out of Mundus. The fact that Dante never even called Vergil out for this horrific act angered me enough, and I don't give a fuck if it was actually Vergil who did it, this was the Moral Event Horizon of the game which fully cemented Dante as a vile, disgusting little shithead whose sole existence pisses on the character's legacy and the entire franchise.
    • SenorCornholio: That moment may have been utterly terrible, but the establishing series boss fight in the demo pretty much doomed this game to failure. You know the one: Dante encounters the game's second boss, the Succubus, and the game proceeds to have Dante act like a self-entitled little shit to which the best comeback he and the Succubus can give each other is "fuck you". Not only is this Narm incarnate, it's also the direct opposite to how the old Dante would act. Pretty much everyone and their mothers have made fun of this scene in the past, to the point where "fuck you" may as well be the tagline for this game. And yet gamers are supposed to see this game as better than the originals? Capcom, if so many people are ironically laughing at scenes from your game, maybe there's a reason it's regarded as the black sheep of the franchise.
    • Nikku: I could write a novel on why this game was easily one of the worst ever made, but one moment that stuck out like a sore thumb was the bit near the start where a white wig just happens to land perfectly on DINO's head. He looks at his reflection and goes "Not in a million years!" before throwing it to the floor. Alright Ninja Theory, we get it, you don't like the proper Devil May Cry games. Stop reminding us every three seconds!
    • Dr Zulu 2010: I'm sorry, but this version of Dante is my most hated video game character of all time. Why?! Well, look no further than the intro where we get a POV shot of Dante picking up two strippers and having a threesome with them. If it were an original character, I won't like it but I won't be this livid. Instead, Capcom and Ninja Theory took one of my favourites video game icons and turned him into a Jersey Shore reject. Thanks to this, Tameem Antoniades has reached the ranks of Randy Pitchford, Peter Molyneux and Phil Fish as my most disliked game designers of all time.
  • bulmabriefs144: In Dragon Quest IX, Marionette, having been animated by one of the Fyggs, is among the few characters to not actually transform into a monster. Possibly because the wish made was relatively unselfish, and perhaps because she wasn't actually the one to make it. Regardless, she tries to make friends as requested by his original owner Marion. After she is called a "monster" for standing up after apparently dead (dolls have no pulse, remember?) she lives just long enough to realize that she had no real friends for her trouble, tells the townsfolk that she is going on a trip, and is found lifeless near Marion's grave (having removed the Fygg from her body). The maid notices the doll Marionette, and drags her off unceremoniously. If you examine her after that, it just says "The doll just sits there lifelessly."
    • cricri3007: The ending. So all Celestrians go to Heaven? I guess they deserve it, for working for centuries for their God. What? The villain is totally redeemed? But he tried to kill God, resurrected an evil empire and abducted his fellow angels to power his minions up. And I, the guy who had to lose his holyness and become an human in order to defeat him, am rewarded with being the Guardian of the whole earth?! I call bullshit.
  • Redhead64: When I completed the Nintendo DS version of Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter I began to wish I hadn't. Why? Because of the ending. In short, what it shows is that the whole thing was All Just a Dream of minor character Mike, and everyone else (save for Heather) no longer exists. All those characters and towns I saved over the course of two games and You just erase them all from existence?! This is how you end the series?! It's quite possibly the most jarring, infuriating, depressing and pointless ending I've ever laid my eyes upon! At least there's fanfiction...
  • The Dragoness: Duke Nukem Forever. Now this game was a dozen years in the making, and at best it was decent. There was a Capture the Babe mode that leaned towards Black Comedy Rape, and there was the Disappointing Last Level creeping in. However, they're not on the list. What makes this the Dethroning Moment of Suck is the Alien Hive level. Now, alien rape is something I'm fine with in the context of the story; but Duke comes across the twins he was with at the start of the game, who have been kidnapped, raped and are about to die a horrible death. For as much of a chauvinist Duke is, he's always been portrayed as genuinely loving and caring of women. How does he react to their plight?
    "Guess you're... fucked."
    • Dr Zulu 2010: While not as big as a DMOS as the last one, it's still worth to mention since it's a good example of how not to do a jab at the competition. After you clear the casino stage, the army arrives and say to Duke to wear a power armor, which he refuses to wear since it's "for pussies". Now, Duke Nukem 3D also has jab towards Doom and Quake, but they work since 3d has innovated the FPS in its own right.note  When DNF makes this jab at Halo, it fails since Forever was riding the coattails of better games, poorly. (Which also includes Half-Life and Call of Duty) In the end, that pointless joke at Halo doesn't work and feels like the game equivalent of refering a better movie in the middle of your own; it makes me want to play those instead since they have done those mechanics much better and are more fun.

  • MsCC93: The ending of Ed, Edd, N Eddy: Jawbreakers!. I remember playing this game as a 12 year old and getting disappointed. The Eds get all of the raffle tickets, only to find the kids already eating jawbreakers. Eddy is rightfully confused as to why he didn't win, and it turned out that Jimmy had the winning ticket all along. As usual, Sarah and Kevin mock the Eds for not getting any jawbreakers. You would think that because this game is so difficult, that the Eds will have a happy ending, but no. It's just like the show when it's another Downer Ending. It's no wonder I don't have any nostalgic feelings towards this game now.
  • Loekman 3: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a game that I enjoyed playing through and much of the questlines are rather fun and interesting... at least until the "Paarthurnax" mission where Delphine orders that I kill the afromented Paarthurnax, aka one of the nicest and most noble dragons in the game if I want to talk to her again. Okay I get it, the Blades hated dragons and Paarthurnax used to be a minion of Alduin before his Heel–Face Turn, but what is not understandable is the fact that Delphine still wants him dead and the fact that if the Dragonborn refuses to kill him, she and Esbern cut off all ties with the player. Seriously?! Despite everything I did for you the moment I refuse one single order you refuse to aid me any further?! Not to mention that killing Paarthurnax after everything he did for humanity just because he's a dragon takes their Fantastic Racism and It's All About Me traits to an extreme, and essentially makes them no better than the dragons they tried to exterminate. However, the reason why it's a huge DMOS to me is that the game never gives you the opportunity to either call her out on this or murder both her and Esbern because they're marked as essential even after they've already served their roles so you can't even vent out your anger on them. You either kill Paarthurnax and then the Greybeards will be the ones to cut all ties with you (with a much better reason to do so than Delphine) or refuse and this quest will sit in your log forever. After previous quests give you the opportunity of multiple choices, this comes of as big slap in the face from Bethesda and this mission is what single-handedly led me to do the Civil War questline first before completing the main quest just so I don't get to see her face again after we drop her off into their hideout.
  • Lil Maibe: I love Etrian Odyssey 4 to bits. So naturally I was looking forward to the European release of Etrian Odyssey Untold. And oh boy, was I disappointed. I wouldn't have expected a game that plotholeriddled after the excellence of the fourth one. But the bit that takes the cake, the point where even without thinking about the plot as such I stared at my 3DS half-blankly, half-ready to throw it came in the Story-Mode when you confront Visil in the 5th Stratum. How exactly can Visil, the father of Yggdrasil NOT know about the site the main character was summoned to investigate? This was the final straw for me because there's already been not a single element to the story in the new story-mode that would not have been there purely because the plot demands it, but too much is just too much.

    F 
  • Purple Shirt: The ending of Fable. No, not the Xbox game - I mean the 1996 adventure game. I mean we have a plot that is actually pretty interesting. So now Quickthrope is going to get the knowledge of the ancients... So what happens next? Oh no, the game pulls an just a dream twist and it reveals "lol it was all a book Quickthrope was reading in hell." Dude, that just came out of left field. Twists like that only work when you don't just pull it out of nowhere.
  • Maxaxle: The ending of Far Cry 2, from the bit where you kill every surviving friend you had to the ending cutscene. At the beginning, I was feeling fairly positive about the game and thought that GTA-esque vehicles, explosive weapons, and incendiary weapons (considering the novel fire system) could make the game extremely memorable, nevermind the original driving force of the main character (to kill an immoral arms dealer). I quickly became jaded about it, however, having done dirty jobs for the two equally oppressive sides (and doing so was actually mandated by the plot to be necessary), blown up scores of mounted-gun-trucks, and killed easily a few thousand Mooks with relative ease, and found that most non-plot-related gameplay was useless unless you needed diamonds (and even then, the plot missions pay extremely well). As the "plot" dragged on (it consists entirely of you exploiting people for diamonds to pay for weapons, doing delivery missions for malaria medicine, and being revived by your original target every so often as a result of your own plot-mandated actions), I came to realize that, although the original intent is still in the Player Character's head, and supposedly the two employers are to be used for information on the target, the whole game is the protagonist going to South Africa to earn loads of diamonds, with the player along for the ride.
    • Cynical Bastardo: For me, the true low point is when the Player Character finally catches up with the Jackal... and decides to side with him. True, the UFFL and the APR are complete bastards, but to renege on the game's main objective seems pointless and a huge letdown to me. Furthermore, if you take the diamonds across the border to bribe the guards to allow the civilians to escape, he expects you to shoot yourself afterwards. Why anybody would do that at the behest of a man they were sent to kill in the first place defies all logic and reason.
  • Killerweinerdog: Brace yourselves, ladies and gents because boy do I have a lot to say on this matter. I have been a fan of the Far Cry series since 2: It was a unique experience for me, a combination of FPS and sandbox RPG that got me hooked. And from the beginning, I was well aware of the franchise's penchant for endings that aren't all smiles and rainbows, and I went into Far Cry 5 knowing this, while still falling in love with the new mechanics: A customizable player character, new vehicles, even stepping up the flight mechanics from 4 to include actual airplanes and air combat! And that's just scratching the surface of the bits of gameplay that I loved. And, with this in mind, I really, really, really tried to love this game. But I couldn't. Why? The endings. Good God, the absolute, comprehensive and complete piles of garbage, vomit, shit and piss that was the endings. You can literally see the point where an Ubisoft exec stood up during the storyboarding and said, "you know what? I don't want a good ending on this. Make it happen, chop-chop." And then it just completely blindsides you with awkwardly shoehorned-in downer endings out of nowhere. They render everything you did All for Nothing and turn the Big Bad of the game into a massive Karma Houdini. Yeah, I get it. Happy endings are overused. But there is a big difference between effectively using the Bittersweet/Downer Ending tropes and a half-heated attempt at one that just takes the reward of a completed game and rips it into pieces in front of your face, and then tries to make you, the player, feel bad. How dare you go after the Big Bad's family, despite the fact that everything you did was in defense of what they were doing to you (you know, the kidnapping/torture of you and your friends, hunting you down, repeatedly trying to kill and brainwashing you)! The absolute worst part of this is, when the endings were first uncovered by players, there were theories about how it may be All Just a Dream to try and justify what they just saw, but then Ubisoft had the nerve to speak up and say, "oh no, if you were paying attention there was a radio report about a nuke going off in Moscow so the nuke ending actually happenned." Said radio report was never brought up in the story, and was simply just a 10-second sound clip you might have heard if you were lucky enough to have heard one of the dozens of random bits that play over the radio, assuming you listened to the radio at all while playing. Again, there's effective use of a trope such as Foreshadowing and then there's a half-assed attempt like this that completely misses the mark and makes a trainwreck out of the story.
    • Legomaniac90: Virgil's death at the hands of Marshall Burke and his subsequent suicide due to Faith Seed's Bliss powers, due to the Idiot Ball passing between nearly all involved (seriously, would it have been too hard to strap Burke down or at least disarm him?). But the kicker: Virgil is then never mentioned again, not even in passing; meaning his death was a cheap attempt at shock value meant to hammer home (for the zillionth time) how eeeeeeeee-vil Faith Seed and her Bliss is. What a waste of a perfectly good character.
    • Aj Wargo: Allow me to properly explain what Killerweinerdog’s Dethroning Moment is. After a boss fight with the game’s antagonist, Joseph Seed, one of the most loathsome and deplorable villains I have ever seen in a video game, it looks like you and your allies are finally going to send him to jail. Happy ending, right? Nope! Out of nowhere, a fucking NUKE goes off. How? Who would want to nuke a backwater part of Montana? And though you and your team tries to escape, your car crashes and Joseph drags you off to a bunker where he murders the mission control offscreen and makes it clear that he intends to brainwash you. Not to mention I think the whole radio broadcasts open up a plothole, since the game said that Joseph and his equally horrible siblings shut off all communication with the outside world, so that should include any outside broadcasts like news reports on any foreign affairs! And you know what else is stupid? Apparently, what causes global relations to break down is… Foreign terror attacks. Really? Since when did fucking terror attacks cause global tensions to rise? This backlash was so bad that they had to make a sequel where it’s revealed that some people did escape the nuking and Joseph finally gets his comeuppance, but, since this nuking was on a global scale, we don’t know what happened to the rest of the world! What happened to Jason or Ajay? Fortunately, it seems as if Ubisoft realized the massive screw up they made and have retconned the whole thing. They’re either claiming Joseph was just hallucinating and no nukes were fired and he was properly arrested, or that "only" Montana was nuked. You decide which one you think is better, but I’m going with the former, and I hope that any re-releases of this game choose to change this ending, too.
  • Someoneman: Shukesoo's Tower from Fairy Fencer F. So there's this Fury on top of this legendary tower whose top has never been reached despote hundreds of adventurers trying. Of course you're going to have to climb it. Gameplay and Story Segregation aside (the enemies there aren't much stronger than what you've fought before), this isn't too bad, for the first two floors, at least. After that, Tiara and Harley inexplicably decide to stop fighting, leaving Fang to fight the remaining enemies on his own. And when Fang does manage to retrieve the Fury from the tower's summit (something that has never been done before), the girls have the nerve to start calling him an idiot. Sure, he was being arrogant, saying things like "Bow down to your god!", but they left him to fight these supposedly legendary monsters all on his own for no reason other than "they felt weird". If anything, he has earned the right to brag a bit about this. This entire sequence just made Tiara and Harley much less likable.
  • Kirby 0189: I love Fate/Grand Order. It's what made me learn to appreciate mobile games after viewing them as worthless Shovelware for years. But there's a moment from Boudica's Interlude that really made me roll my eyes and cringe. The Interlude is rather basic overall, with the gang discussing Boudica's life in Chaldea while walking in the forest with her before a bunch of lustful monsters attack. I don't mind basic Interludes since they can still be pretty fun (i.e. Hans' Interlude having him drag Ritsuka and Mash to different locations to beat up random people because he's bored, or Babbage's Interlude having him as a superhero), but the last cutscene was just uncomfortable. After all of the monsters are killed, Dr. Roman, who's normally one of the nicest characters, starts acting out Boudica having lost and being at their mercy, and all of the options in Ritsuka's Dialogue Tree have him play along too (there are tons of But Thou Must! moments in the game, but seeing how this one moment made me despise Ritsuka for the longest time and I still have a pretty cynical viewpoint of him outside of the turas realta manga, I can safely say this is the worst instance of the game not giving me any choice) when I wanted to do anything but and the game normally paints Ritsuka as a Nice Guy, all while Boudica, who has dialogue in My Room saying that she doesn't like people lusting after her, is laughing her ass off. Mash thankfully calls out both Ritsuka and Dr. Roman and gets them to apologize, but was that scene really necessary to begin with? And did no one on the writing team realize the implications considering what happened to Boudica's real-life counterpart? Couldn't those pointless text boxes have been devoted to something more meaningful, like Boudica's thoughts on working together with Romans in Chaldea or her looking back at Septem?
  • Lance Omikron: I really loved the F.E.A.R series, mainly due to how immersive the first two games are, especially the first. The action sequences made you feel like a badass with a plethora of guns and melee moves, and the horror sequences were impressively scary and made you question if your badassery would truly protect you. This all changed in F.E.A.R. 3. In F3AR, you have to earn experience to use the melee moves that are available right from the start in the other games, and one playthrough of the single-player mode will maybe get you enough to unlock only one move. Killing enemies causes achievement progress notifications to pop up on the screen, absolutely killing the game's immersion due to constantly reminding you that, yes, you're playing a game. But the actual DMOS that I'm building up to is... the Collectible Alma Dolls. Yes, each level contains a collectible doll made in the likeness of the series' main antagonist. Collect them all for an achievement! Horror games thrive on immersion, and if there's anything that can permanently destroy it, it's stupid, gimmicky, cartoony collectible items. To me, the Alma Dolls are the tombstone on the F.E.A.R. franchise.
  • Five Nights at Freddy's:
    • Dr Y 9 K: Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location and its stupid twist in the end. Before I go on, let me just say that for the most part, I found Sister Location rather disappointing. I was disappointed with the gameplay, the lack of cameras save for the Private Room, Ennard's canon design, and I was especially disappointed with the non-canon Custom Night. The only redeeming quality for the game was the animatronics themselves. But even that didn't last long. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you what may be the series' worst twist possible: the identity of Springtrap. For almost two years, we were led to believe he was actually William Afton, the series Big Bad, dead and revived. But then the creator released a cutscene, that pretty much confirmed he was actually Michael Afton, William Afton's son. What? You mean to tell me that Springtrap is not the Creepy Awesome Robotic Psychopath I thought he was, but yet another innocent(?) soul? That was terrible! That was the worst, most character-derailing Ass Pull I had ever seen! It made me permanently disown the series and stop liking it! For so long, Springtrap had been one of my favorite animatronics, since I always saw him as the only legitimately "evil" animatronic. Now I can't look at him or enjoy him the same way anymore. The creator said he wanted Springtrap to return, and so did I, for a while. But now? I want nothing to do with him, or this age-old series.
    • batmany: I was really looking forward to the release of Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator (AKA FNAF 6) in the hopes it would finally wrap up some of the numerous plot twists and mysteries of the franchise. Well, the game was released earlier this week and....well, it makes absolutely no sense. The reason why is because it utterly contradicts everything established in previous games. The ghostly children being freed in FNAF 3? Nope, they're now possessing Molten Freddy! How? When? At no point (apart from Baby) were any of the Funtime Animatronics ever haunted by ghosts. Remember in Sister Location how Baby didn't like being created for murder and wanted to be free? Remember how Elizabeth (William's Daughter) was an innocent victim of a tragic accident? Now she's daddy's little killer! Why? There was absolutely no indication that either had any interest in murder. And, speaking of Sister Location, now William Afton is Springtrap instead of his son Michael. Nevermind the fact that the Custom Night in SL strongly hinted that Michael was Springtrap and that the Freddy Files guide book even stated that this idea was entirely plausable. Speaking of Michael, he dies in this game by sacrificing himself in a fire with the other Animatronics. Apparently Scott forgot or is completely ignoring that Michael is cursed with immortality. Also, Springtrap survived a fire before so why would this one be any different? William Afton has gone from a evil genius serial killer who lurks behind the scenes to what can best be described as a poor man's version of The Joker. Fazbear Corporate went from being an incompetent if well-meaning company with some questionable business practices to a blatantly over-the-top corrupt one with no regards to safety whatsoever. I could go on and on about how this game did a piss-poor way of explaining things. I feel Scott was more concerned with trying to appease fans who were not happy with Sister Location's plot twists and haphazardly trying to wrap everything up in a neat little bow. Scott, please, if you ever make another FNAF game, give me "Miketrap" and "Freakshow Baby" and retcon this mess of a game out of existence.
      • DukeNukem4ever: Mine would be the fact that the mystery of the Bite of '87 and existence of Shadow animatronics went completely unexplained. Since this is (currently) the Grand Finale, I was expecting these things to become finally clear. But no, once again we have to draw suggestions what exactly happened back then. The creator pulled this trick back in Five Nights at Freddy's 4, and now he did it again. As much as I respect Scott Cawthon, I sometimes can't understand his logic. And apparently I am not the only one to think so.
    • Meme Master 245: As a FNAF fan, I was really looking forward to Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach ever since the first trailer came out. But between the constant delays,issues with Scott I won't go into here, and its buggy release, I gradually became a bit skeptical. While I haven't gotten too far in the game, I already hate the 'stop-and-go' style of gameplay and constant bugs, but my D Mo S comes in the form of the true ending. I won't beat around the bush: William Afton comes back! It was bad enough in Five Nights At Freddys VR Help Wanted when they brought in Glitchtrap in a way that raised far too many questions, but this game went out of its way to make it so the beautiful Golden Ending of FNAF 6 was All for Nothing! It's honestly really depressing to learn that, between Afton's return and the Blob, Mike and Henry died for practically nothing because FNAF is so devoid of ideas that they have to rely on the same bad guy instead of doing anything new. At this point, why should I ever care about any Happy Ending they present when I know that the creators can just ruin it? Also, the fact that the false pizzeria was built underground is really confusing.
  • Gyrobot: While the DLC for The Force Unleashed was always letting you be the bad guy, it seems that the Endor DLC proved to be a complete sacrilege to everything Star Wars stood for. You play as Starkiller as he takes out everyone in Endor in a tasteless matter that is stoking the creator's ego and the Kratos-inspired Sith sadist who indulges in the slaughter of not just Ewoks and Chewie but the entire Star Wars franchise.
    • Happy Man: I've never seen a single video game moment/scene that enraged me so much as the scene where the Dark Apprentice kills Chewbacca, Han, and later Leia. It's like a very, very, very, veeeeery bad fanfic brought to life. Even if it wasn't canon, seeing the player character killing three beloved characters of the franchise was something beyond awful, and not fun at all.
  • Sammie1191: While I loved Fire Emblem: Awakening, one particular moment in Chapter 13 pisses me off to no end. “Marth” is revealed to be Lucina, Chrom’s Kid Fromthe Future, they share a tender moment, Chrom’s wife sees them… and assumes he’s cheating on her. Not only is this stupidly out of character for Childhood Friend Sully, Maribelle, who becomes a magistrate in most of her endings and Sumia, who ‘slapped’ Chrom in the face in an earlier scene but Olivia puts more effort into saving a dog from Henry than fighting for her baby’s family! She pretty much just rolls over and accepts it! You know what this tells me? They don’t trust their husband. The kicker? The Female Avatar is the only one who is remotely reasonable and trusts Chrom enough to let him calmly explain what’s going on. Don’t get me wrong, I ship Chrom with the Female Avatar, but why does she have to be the only one that doesn’t assume he’s cheating on her? Yeah, she’s not happy about it, but she just calmly says ‘I trust you, can you tell me what’s going on,’ why can’t the others do the same thing? The only one I can see this fitting is Olivia given how fast they marry, trust would be an issue, but the others have known Chrom long enough to know him better than that. It's just a stupidly out of character moment made to be a comedic moment when it wasn't called for.
  • bubblesishot46853: It's time to choose a side in Fire Emblem Fates. Naturally, if you want a fun, easy, lighthearted adventure, you side with Hoshido. Sure, there are a few untimely deaths, but nothing too big. So, we're almost done, and ready to fight Xander. Corrin's taking a beating and refuses to fight, that's fine. And Xander readies the killing blow... and suddenly Elise jumps in front and takes the hit. And she dies in Xander's arms. What...the fuck? This is supposed to be the happy-go-lucky easy path, not the tragic path! Worse, Elise's death does absolutely nothing. She wishes for Xander to be at peace, but Xander insists to keep fighting anyway, making her death entirely pointless. Yes, I know two of the siblings have to die, but why couldn't it have been Leo, since he has the legendary Brunhyldr? Or better yet, Camilla die, seeing as she's my most hated character? Overall, the story got unnecessarily dark from that point on, and Birthright's promise of a easy, light-hearted campaign became false advertising. It was an unnecessary dick move, and it made tons of people, myself included, completely shun Birthright. At least I have the comfort of knowing this doesn't happen in the other routes, and I can still pretend that Elise survived.
    • Dr Zulu 2010: I know that the localisation of FE Fates is rather controversial, but one thing who annoys me the most was in the Revelation path when they change the original dialogue from Saizou and Beruka's C support. In the original script, they both say about how they do to live up with so much deaths on their conscience; setting up a Birds of a Feather type romance between the two, and how NOA and Treehouse decide to do with this serious conversation? By replacing the entire conversation with ellipses. I understand the defense of this as being a funny moment between two silent types and don't get me wrong; I like humoristic moment in works of fiction, regardless of how dark the work can be. But not when it comes to the detriment of character development. If Nintendo and Treehouse doesn't treat a character heavy moment with a good level of respect and seriousness, then why should I bother with buying more of their products if they're gonna treat them as a joke?
    • Cyrena Peleman: How the second generation characters were implemented and done is horrible in general, with most of the kids understandably resenting their parents for dumping them in a Deeprealm until they were able to fight. This suddenly turns admirable characters into terrible parents. Ryoma of all people never tells his own son that he's the crown prince of Hoshido. Shiro, as a fully grown adult, basically wanders out of his Deeprealm and figures it out himself. That's right, wise prince Ryoma doesn't tell his own son that he's literally going to become king of Hoshido one day. It gets worse. All Ryoma does is tell Shiro off for being irresponsible and reckless. Maybe because he had no idea he was going to be running an entire country someday! That's just completely idiotic on Ryoma's behalf and demeaning to his character.
    • I Like Robots: I'm a big Fire Emblem fan, and I'm one of the people who considers Birthright the best of the three paths. It's a simple, pretty unremarkable story of good vs. evil, but it at least doesn't sink to the insultingly terrible writing of Conquest and has the best characterization for Corrin (a noble hero rather than a whiny lapdog of the Card-Carrying Villain). That being said, the lowest moment of the route for me was at the end of Chapter 15, when, if the Avatar doesn't have at least an A-rank support with Kaze, Kaze dies by falling into a chasm in a badly-written, out-of-the-blue way. Now, Plotline Death can be done effectively and serve as a Player Punch, given proper, earned buildup, foreshadowing, and motivation, and it's framed as a Heroic Sacrifice with Kaze saving Corrin's life, but considering this is not only suddenly robbing the player of a unit they have potentially trained up and may have gotten attached to as a character, there is absolutely no way to know about the conditions to save Kaze without looking it up on the internet, or through sheer dumb luck. Add on the fact that if Kaze dies, his daughter Midori is permanently unavailable for the rest of the playthrough. All in all, this feels like a cheap stunt to try and force some kind of Tear Jerker out of the audience, but ends up nothing short of random, confusing and frustrating.
  • Tropers/cookieman: Fire Emblem Heroes usually integrates units into the story by putting them under "contract slaves" under one of the villains, Veronica. Yeah, it's the plot of Book 1's story and although it's a bit generic, it's understandable. Book 2 has Veronica team up with an evil king, Surtr, however, and for the first portion of the book, she provides him those contracted troops. However, Veronica ends up disagreeing with him, and then she ends up getting put as a sacrifice. But the point is that there's signs of horribly bad writing when it comes to these contracted forces, one moment in Book 2 Chapter 7-5, where Surtr kills one of the main characters's sisters in front of them, and those contracted troops (particularly from Thracia 776) still come out to get you ... with freaking Surtr there as well. There's absolutely no explanation on who enslaved those heroes, and what's worse is that previous battles with Surtr have been him with other Muspell generals and generic enemy units, making this one very hard to really understand. All in all, the "contracts" have gotten really bad to explain, and it just seems like they're just excuses to pointlessly integrate them in the story.
    • Dr Zulu 2010: Book 2 may be an inprovement over book 1 as far as storytelling but the final stage of chapter 10 may be the most frustrating and pointless chapter ever. Basically, Fjorm tells them about something called the "Rite of Frost", which has the power to cancel Surtr's invicibility. However, that requires the person performing the rite to sacrifice their lives. So, they finally use this power and... it fails. Surtr got ressurected meaning that Fjorm performing the rite ends up being a Senseless Sacrifice, slowly dying from the rite. And guess what? Book 3 has no mention of what happened to her, implying that she dies offscreen with not even a handwave. If the reason for why she isn't mentionned in Book 3 is because you can play it before Book 2, then just have her staying in Nifl to help her siblings to rebuild their kingdoms while making peace with Muspell and not making her suffer the rite of frost. Don't make her secretly dying where there is not payoff after all.
  • I Like Robots: Fire Emblem: Three Houses is an excellent and enjoyable game in my opinion, with high-quality writing and worldbuilding, interesting characters, and fun gameplay. That said, one moment on the Azure Moon route had me shaking my head at how contrived it feels. Chapter 17, "Blood of the Eagle and Lion." At this point in the story, the Adrestian Empire is fighting a war of conquest against the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus and the Leicester Alliance, both of whom are individually weaker than the Empire. The Kingdom seeks to ally with the Alliance in order to bolster their strength and stand a better chance at beating the Empire, and the Alliance has offered their support to the Kingdom earlier in the route. The three factions and their commanders meet at Gronder Field. Characters remark that fog is rolling in, making it hard to distinguish what army soldiers belong to. Alright. Luckily, the Alliance army starts far enough away from the Kingdom army that Friendly Fire shouldn't be an issue.

    So, Claude has been portrayed as a highly intelligent, and somewhat self-serving, commander, and he's been clever enough to hold off the Empire alone for five years while the Kingdom army and its commander were out of commission. So he decides to sit safely on the sidelines and watch the Kingdom and Empire go at it, or even lead a full retreat, deciding that fighting the Empire isn't worth the risk if he might attack and kill Kingdom soldiers by mistake, right? Nope! Claude takes firm grasp of the Idiot Ball and orders his army to blindly charge forward into battle and attack anyone who isn't an Alliance soldier, leading to the needless deaths of several Alliance soldiers and any Golden Deer students not recruited into the Kingdom army. If he attacks Dimitri, he even lampshades the fact that, as enemies of the Empire, they shouldn't be fighting one another.

    There are a few big issues here. First, Claude ends up crippling the Alliance army after this stunt. The Kingdom comes out on top in the battle, and Claude himself escapes with injuries, while the Alliance forces are decimated enough to set themselves up for an invasion by the Empire. Dimitri and the Kingdom army have to rush to his rescue two chapters later. Second, anyone who mentions the Alliance and Kingdom soldiers fighting at Gronder treats it like a completely unavoidable accident, rather than Claude deliberately putting himself and his army in that position. Third, this feels extremely Out of Character for Claude. He's the least aggressive and most perceptive of the lords, the last person who should be ordering a blind charge, and a schemer who isn't afraid to retreat or surrender if the odds turn against him and he has little chance of winning. He's a risk-taker, sure, but "taking risks" that have a high chance of payoff for him if they succeed, and little to no chance of causing issues for him if they fail, is different than him putting himself into a position where he could end up actively crippling his chances to win the war.

    What's worse: Once the Empire's invasion of Derdriu is halted and Claude saved, he mentions he's dissolved the Alliance and stepped down as its leader, hands over the Alliance domains back to Dimitri and the Kingdom, and leaves the continent. Um... Was this all a stunt to weaken the Alliance to the point where Dimitri and the Kingdom would have to save it, then be able to hand him the reigns and leave the continent without consequence? Yeah...Either way, you're not making yourself look great here, Claude. All in all, Claude ordering the charge in Azure Moon Chapter 17 is weak writing contrived to force a darker nostalgic Mêlée à Trois Call-Back when only the first instance of it was justified during Part I, and a quick excuse to get Claude and the Alliance out of the plot to allow the Kingdom full reign of the continent.
    • Dr Zulu 2010: I agree with this. What makes it worse is that the justification for Claude's actions is that he can't make the difference between the Kingdom's forces and the Empire's due to the fog. This is Gameplay and Story Segregation at its finest because the map doesn't have fog of war making Claude, who is meant as a smart trickster mind you, like a short-sighted moron.
    • General Luigi: As much as I love Fire Emblem: Three Houses, I feel as though the game really dropped the ball with Dimitri's redemption. Maybe I just failed to catch earlier hints at their gradual Character Development, but it felt very abrupt to me. One minute they want to pursue their retreating enemy deep into enemy territory despite doing so being suicide, and then soon after that Dimitri has chosen to put aside the pursuit of revenge and liberate their home instead. Supposedly, they did some soul-searching between when Rodrigue died and when we see them next, but the problem is that we don't see any of it. It's a colossal violation of Show, Don't Tell and felt to me as though Dimitri's personality in effect did a complete 180. To top it all off, it felt to me as though my character's role in the whole thing was trivial. Do I have to confront Dimitri over their warped thinking, slowly chipping away at the darkness they've become trapped within? Nope! Rodrigue solves the whole thing in an instant by dying! My agency already felt limited due to my character being a Silent Protagonist, but this really took the cake for me. I had been looking forward to seeing Dimitri slowly break free of their trauma with my help. After that scene, though, I felt as though my character didn't even need to be there.
      • Roasted Feeled Chestnuts: Rodrigue's death frustrated me a lot, killing off a favorite for the sake of someone else's character development aside, because of how contrived it is. We have seen Rodrigue in action before, he's a high level Holy Knight equipped with a Silver Lance and has Aura and Fortify in his arsenal and has trained both of his sons to be powerful warriors, he knows how to fight. And all of a sudden, he gets stabbed by an angry little girl by using his body as a shield and dies shortly after. First off, why did he use his body as a shield? What happened to using his weapon to deflect an attack? After all, lances beats swords, and Fleche was using a dagger, which counts as a sword weapon. It's not like they were in the middle of a shopping trip that the assassination attempt happened either, it happened right after a grueling Mêlée à Trois battle. And even if he doesn't have his lance with him, why not use magic to blast Fleche away? There were not any indications that he lost his weapon and/or ran out of uses of his magic, if anything, he wasn't even present in the battle since he's unplayable. But no, instead we get the worst case of Gameplay and Story Segregation I've ever seen, and one that solidified Azure Moon as my least favorite route in the game.
    • legomaniac90: Crimson Flower’s complete wasting of Those Who Slither In The Dark. Unlike literally every other route, where you get to fight them yourself in game, Crimson Flower chooses to end after Rhea’s defeat with some text that pretty much says “Oh yeah, those Slither guys got defeated offscreen!”. Which is insulting enough, but made worse by the fact that Crimson Flower is shorter than the other routes (18 chapters compared to 22 for AM/VW and 21 for SS). They couldn’t have squeezed in an extra bit where Edelgard and company take Those Who Slither In The Dark head on?
  • Ruderuby: I've grown to dislike Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes as time has gone on, most of all Golden Wildfire, which has my least favorite part across both games; the final battle against Rhea. First of all, she has barely had any relavancy in the story up until this point, so there's a low chance that the player will feel that big of a connection to her, even those who has played Three Houses and pretty much know all about her backstory. But my biggest problem comes from how the story is suddenly trying to make her look like a sympathetic villain. Now, I myself do find her sympathetic but also understand how and why she's being treated like a villain. But the big problem is that Golden Wildfire has throughout its entire run done nothing but condemn her, so the attempts to make this moment more tragic come completely out of left field, and the bad stuff about her becomes much easier to believe, so saying it's supposed to be morally ambigious doesn't work because the story hasn't provided me with any reason to feel bad for killing Rhea while also removing the reasons that actually made me feel bad. And Melody of Clarity, which is obviously meant to make it more melancholy, just adds salt in the wound because it is so good, and I wish it was playing in a story that makes me feel conflicted instead of confused.
  • cricri3007: The ending of The Following. The main game ended on a bittersweet ending, so the expansion starts by undoing every effort you made in the main game, sending Crane to the countryside to search for a cure. Then comes the Downer Ending: There is no cure. The only reason people in the countryside don't transform is because they've been infected with a special slower-acting strain of the virus which allows them to retain their human form and consciousness during the daylight. So, having found this "cure", you can decide to either nuke everything to destroy it, or try to return to the Tower where Lena can make more of it or try to complete it. If you choose the second option, the Mother force-feeds Kyle an entire vial of the stuff and forces him to kill her, after which Kyle, delerious, still tries to make his way back to the Tower, slowly losing his mind in the process. Then he exits the sewer outside of the quarantine zone, where he kills or infects a mother and her kid, thus spreading the infection to the whole world. There's a reason it's listed on the Audience-Alienating Ending page. After an ending like that, I can only say fuck that ending for ruining the whole game.

    G-I 
  • Charsi: In Game of Thrones: Ascent,Tyana's judgement was uncomfortable to go through even after several reincarnations. After Rona accuses her of being an enemy's spy, she doesn't bother presenting any proof of that, only mentions some letters she found, but burned by the time your character asks for them to examine (if she not outright admits she has no proof whatsoever, just felt like playing Hanging Judge), after your daughter Jayne, rightfully calling you out on injustice, tells she has taught Tyana how to write, thus would be able to tell whether the letters were Tyana's handwriting. Tyana is promptly imprisoned and her fate never gets resolution as far as we know, the not saintly, but usually Reasonable Authority Figure Player Character is Railroaded to be okay with this procedure and never gives her a chance to defend herself, prompting even Jayne to run away in an attempt to try and get proof of her innocence, and not even getting suspicious of Rona in the meanwhile, who has already made the decisions behind your back and calmly lets you take the heat for her actions. This seemed to be uncharacteristic naivete and disturbing abuse of power on your character part, who is renown for his/her compassion toward smallfolk and whose way of thinking and ruling is usually more modern than medieval. In fact, the Player Character's main appeal is that they don't just MST the tv series' plot, but actually show in the original volumes how to do it better. Hell, when Jayne, usually the Kate of the house, is the Only Sane Man, that says something about the rest of the cast...
  • Retloclive: The campaign for Gears of War 3 has a really annoying mishap when it came to the entire Sidequest of trying to locate some Imulsion fuel to get a submarine working. They first travel to the cities of Mercy and Char to find some fuel, which Mercy ends up as a huge tearjerker portion of the game due to Dom's Heroic Sacrifice, and they fail to get some fuel as a result. They then go to Char where they manage to get some fuel from Griffin's refinery company, and at this point, all seems well with the story. However, what happens afterwards is where this plot-line goes completely off the rails. They arrive at the Endeavor Naval Shipyard to find the submarine, and for some bizarre reason, they suddenly require fuel again as if the stuff they picked up in Char was just used to fill up the truck they arrived in. To make matters worse, it turns out that the shipyard had fuel anyway. Meaning that while they may have not known about it in hindsight, the entire journey that Delta Squad spent in Mercy and Char searching for fuel turned out to be completely pointless, and that Dom's death could have been completely avoided had they just gone straight to the shipyard. A whole section of this game just comes off feeling like complete Filler now, and it's not like there wasn't easy fixes to this. Like why did the fuel that Delta Squad picked up in Char suddenly become irrelevant? Or why couldn't the fuel they found in the naval base just be another part that needed to be replaced in the submarine? None of how this played out made any logical sense.
  • thisisthebloke: If there's one character I dislike more than any other in Genshin Impact, it is Yae Miko. Now I know, this is not for complaining about characters I don't like, but I feel like I need to explain a few things, specifically, how the culmination of several things compelled me to call this a DM o S. Among the many things people complained about in Act 3 of the Inazuma chapter were how the resistance basically does no strategization and is an afterthought in the second half of it; however, that's not really where my issues lie. Where they really lie is with Yae Miko, who, in the aforementioned second half of the act, says that everything you've been doing up until that point to stop the tyranny of the government has basically been pointless and that she has her own plan for dealing with everything, which you have to follow through. She basically hijacks the plot and forces everything to go her way, and she retains her stupid smug smirk the whole way and I fucking hate it. One follow up quest you can do after (can in the sense that you don't need it to progress the main story, but you do need it to get to the DM o S) has her say that her life is perfect and that she finds no reason to intrude on matters concerning the populace. Now, this isn't a DM o S: it's just bad writing. But as time went on and as more content was released, it doesn't seem like the developers learned their lesson. Another optional event after this has a character that struggles with trying to confront her has Miko verbally humiliate them. At this point I couldn't help the developers were intentionally trying to make her this absurdly perfect, obnoxious, manipulator that revels in the frustrations of others for her own amusement, but again, no real single moment to pin this on. And then she got her own dedicated quest. No, the quest as a whole is not a DM o S; that'd be against the rules. But everything that happens leads up to it. The quest starts with various characters in the city preaching about the hot new rumor, which has our protagonist going to her to see if she knows anything. Initially, she spends the quest not really giving a shit about the madness mantra plaguing the city...but then she learns that it's coming from a book from a rival that's causing her business' market share to suffer. Not a good sign, but even then, nothing too major. She then has you help her write a competing book to dethrone the rival, which she promises to at least pay you in royalties: keep this in mind for later. The book is a smashing success, and the rival's book is dethroned. All's well that ends well, right? No, perhaps unfortunately, it keeps going. Miko leads you to where her rival is, and it turns out to be a long deceased yokai that possessed a human writer desperate to find some success. Miko, however, laughs about it, having known this yokai when he was alive, and expresses mere amusement at the trouble he caused. Miko then asks the protagonist for help putting the yokai to rest, and by this point even they are getting sick of all the errands they've had to do for her, but they have to stuff their fists into their mouth lest they get their paycheck revoked. Mind you, this is after having the yokai possess the protagonist so that it could speak to her in the first place. Ooookay, really suspicious, but even then, nothing tangible. But then we get to the quest's end, where the real dethroning moment of suck comes in. After the yokai is put to rest, Miko suggests she and the protagonist dine in celebration. The protagonist goes to the designated meeting spot...only to find her treating herself lavishly and eaten multiple things already, and has protagonist spot the bill. Meaning, spend the paycheck they just got from all the royalties. And now, the genre that the book was for is out of fashion, meaning Miko is in need of a sequel for more money. Do you know what this means? Yae Miko basically just used the protagonist to indulge herself, manipulating a bunch of people in the process, and now basically has them under her fingertip. This is the Dethroning Moment of Suck. You know, usually the character centric quests explore the flaws a character has and allows them to grow closer to the protagonist. Miko's has the protagonist and their partner admonishing her constantly for her constant smugness and apathy to several things and ends with the protagonist being utterly exasperated from being played like a fiddle. One of her friends in story even admonishes her for taking things too far and yet Miko herself doesn't visibly show any sign of understanding or learning or basic fucking character growth. After several quests and what just seemed like character shilling, I just wanted the game to finally explore her flaws and give me a reason to care for her aside from wanting her to get punched in the face so hard that she bleeds, and instead the game fucking doubles down on it by capstoning her obnoxious behavior to the point that she basically engages in extortion. I can't comprehend how anyone thought this wouldn't be anything short of infuriating and was so fucking pissed that I had to fight chucking the controller at the television and decided to vent in the form of this writeup.
    • Leobracer: Sangonomiya Kokomi is my favorite character in Genshin Impact. When her character quest was released, I immediately started it with great anticipation. Unfortunately, Kokomi’s character quest is ruined by the mistake that is Kouzen. This minor character single handedly ruined Kokomi’s character quest. Part way through the quest, we find that this asshole is looking to sabotage the peace talks with the Tenryou Commission, and he’s gathered other like minded soldiers to join him. Worse, all of them are the guards that Kokomi assigned to watch over the area where the peace talks were to take place. Rather than do the logical thing and replace all of them with soldiers she can trust, Kokomi instead lets them remain for fear that they would get suspicious and try to sabotage the peace talks in some other way. Then during said peace talks, just when things were going so well, Kouzen then proceeds to try to backstab Kokomi, the very woman he swore to protect, by accusing the Tenryou Commission of colluding with the Fatui and charging at them, causing the Tenryou soldiers to rush in to defend Sara, and the Traveler has to get in between the two groups to prevent either side from taking the first shot. After that, Sara has a conversation with two of her soldiers who confirm that while they were approached by the Fatui, they did not engage in any sort of collusion, meaning that Kouzen’s accusations were completely false. Sara and Kokomi agree to continue the peace talks some other time, and Kokomi, the Traveler, Paimon, and Kouzen and his ilk return to Watatsumi Island. And this is when the moment that completely destroyed Kokomi’s character quest had occurred: Does Kokomi punish Kouzen and his fellow douchebags for trying to sabotage the peace talks? No. She rewards him instead, by telling them to go through some Training from Hell to make them stronger. I don’t care what his reasons are, sabotaging peace talks is a war crime, so Kouzen should have executed for his actions, and the rest of his group should have been dishonorably discharged from service. I honestly hope he dies in the future, onscreen, off screen, whether by the hands of Kojou Sara, Raiden Ei herself, Scaramouche, or even by the Abyss Order, it doesn’t matter, I really hope that we never see him again.
  • Izzy Uneasy: While it's no doubt that Ghost Trick is awesome, one moment that made me upset was the scene where Madame Emma hangs on the chandelier with no way to get down. Maybe it's just me, but I felt extremely sorry for her. Thankfully, credits show that Emma is alright.
  • Ammand The Corsair: As a huge fan of The Godfather I was massively looking forward to the sequel - only to have Aldo Trapani reduced to a Previous Player Cameo who gets killed in the prologue. One other is the Mangano sub plot; Dominic forms an alliance with Don Mangano only for you to reach your next destination and BANG!, Mangano supposedly betrays you and you start a war. Would this have not been more effective if you'd interacted together more first, become friends even? Then, to top it all off, you can just shoot the Don at his compound without any dramatic resolution; the same as any Mook. Oh well, at least he gets something to do, unlike Tony Rosato.
  • F: I really liked God of War III, but the ease in which Poseidon and Hades get killed off is seriously awful. Zeus gets a long battle culminating with being impaled repeatedly on the Blade of Olympus, leaps away essentially unharmed given an opening of about a second, one-shots Kratos when he makes it to the top of Olympus, and then needs two equally epic battles in quick succession followed by a No Holds Barred Beatdown to actually kill; and his brothers are supposed to be almost as powerful as him, which they demonstrate quite admirably against the Titans. Instead, Poseidon is apparently essentially helpless without his Leviathan and Hades can be killed by an almost totally depowered Kratos; both of which happen in the first hour or so of the game. Not only is this doing a colossal disservice to two of the greatest of the Olympians, but it also means that none of the other boss fights are ever going to compare with them in magnitude; seeing as how Helios, Hermes, and Herakles aren't even close to their league. The almost total lack of a boss fight against Helios, the bizarre absence of Artemis, and the anticlimactic ends to Hephaestus and Gaea are one thing; but this is just too far.
  • bisonx: The Gradius and R-Type fangame G-Type. It's not that bad of a fangame, but to me, I think the game completely jumped the shark when the game makes you fight a Brainwashed and Crazy Vic Viper that was assimilated by the Bydo, and needless to say, you end up destroying it. What, was this game made by anti-Gradius R-Type fans or what? Was this meant to be a Take That! to Gradius?
  • XenXero: Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock was a pretty fun game that had a really cool campaign mechanic. In the story campaign, you play as the various rockers playing a setlist, and when you finished, they would transform into their Warrior of Rock form and perform an epic encore song. When you get to Judy Nails, a punk girl who specializes in Alternative Rock genres, her setlist includes such greats as "Seven Nation Army" by The White Stripes, "Losing My Religion" by R.E.M., and "Bohemian Rahapsody" by Queen, arguably one of the greatest songs ever written. Then she goes into her Warrior form and becomes a succubus-like demon to perform her encore. So what did they pick to follow-up on such a great setlist? JANE'S FUCKING ADDICTION! Personal feelings for the band aside, who is the idiot that thought it was a good idea to follow-up "Bohemian Rhapsody" with "Been Caught Stealing"?. To this day, that intro of two guitar notes and dogs barking is forever etched as the definitive sound of disappointment for me.
  • Chimanruler 15: The mission Roman's Sorrow in Grand Theft Auto IV. After Dmitri destroys Roman's business and apartment, Roman and Niko begin to find a new place to live. During the trip, Roman chews Niko out for causing all of this to happen. Roman has a right to be angry, but the problem here is that while Niko did make some stupid decisions that led to this event, (a) he was trying to help, and (b) none of this would have happened if Roman hadn't landed himself in hot water in the first place due to his stupid gambling problem (and unfortunately, Niko doesn't think to bring this up). It wouldn't have been as bad if Roman only got angry at Niko for the fires, but no, he blames him for everything bad that has happened in his life and takes absolutely no responsibility for any of it.
  • Lobos 1943: As an Italian-American, I hated how in Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned and Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony Luis Lopez and Johnny Klebitz were always using ethnic slurs, especially against Italians. Luis never shuts up about how much he hates Italians and constantly calls them "dagoes" and "guineas". He seems to think that all Italians are mobsters, which irritates me. Its made even worse by the fact that Luis is such a wooden character. Then there's Johnny Klebitz, who says "All you guineas are two-faced pricks!" What is even worse is that he says this after conspiring to steal from them. As someone of Italian descent, I had to put down the controller because I was so angry and offended that I couldn't see straight. I am not trying to say that the mafia are good, but the only reason they even go after Johnny and his biker gang in the first place is because they stole from them. What were they expecting the mafia to just throw up their hands and give up?
  • Crashnburner 187: I like Grand Theft Auto V, but the scene where Trevor kills Johnny Klebitz really rubbed me the wrong way. I understand that the writers needed to show that Trevor was an unhinged homicidal maniac, but having him kill the main character from a previous game in the series only just cemented my dislike for this character. Especially so, since Johnny was a much more likable protagonist than Trevor is. It just seems like a bad Revenge Fic was picked up by Rockstar and made canon.
    • Vexer: That annoyed me too, though I just handwaved Johnny's death as being one of Trevor's drug-induced hallucinations like his mother. Unfortunately I couldn't really do that with the moment that annoyed me the most, specifically in the mission "Legal Troubles" where pretty much every character holds on to the Idiot Ball for dear life for completely nonsensical reasons. Basically Devin's secretary Molly wants to confiscate and destroy the physical copy of movie producer Solomon Richards finished film, Michael(thinking it's the only copy of the film) doesn't want that to happen so he goes after her, which results in a long car chase that ends with Molly getting killed by an air turbine, the stupid part comes when Solomon reveals that the physical copy of the film was not the only one(which most people playing the game had already guessed at that point) and there were digital backups, Solomon then says he thought Michael knew, despite Michael's actions clearly indicating otherwise. Solomon was stupid for not telling Michael before he went after Molly, Michael and Molly were both stupid for assuming the physical copy was the only one. The whole mission was basically one gigantic case of Poor Communication Kills that never should've happened, even with how over-the-top GTA is, there isn't enough Willing Suspension of Disbelief in the entire universe for me to believe that all of those characters could act this stupid in ways that defy any kind of logic, thus making the whole mission feel like a completely pointless Idiot Plot which killed off a potentially interesting character in one of the dumbest and most-contrived ways i've ever seen in any medium.
  • SomeNewGuy: The "Blue Hard Mode" ending for Gunstar Superheroes. Congratulations on completing the highest difficulty setting with the more difficult character! As a reward, you get to see the entire Gunstar crew die horribly in a random ship accident, making the entire game *ding dong* entirely pointless.
  • Grotadmorv: I've played a few Super Mario World ROM hacks, and Hack is one of my favorite series. When Hack 5 released, I enjoyed it until I reached the final level. The game randomly turns into political commentary and has Donald Trump appear in a cutscene. The rest of the level is set inside his phone, complete with insulting messages and enemies with Trump heads. This is really out-of-place for the series (which has never had real people in it before, let alone presidents), and I was completely dissatisfied with turning a fun series of ROM hacks into a lame insult towards Trump. I haven't played any of the other games in the series since.
  • matohibiki: Halo 4's ending. Reducing the final battle to what amounts to a cutscene, and a pair of one-button QTEs is just incredibly underwhelming. Not to mention the fact that the framework of the QTEs was stolen from Modern Warfare 2, and incredibly watered-down.
  • Dr Zulu 2010: I admit that I enjoyed Heavy Rain ironically. But, even I can't enjoy the sex scene between Ethan and Madison. Granted, you have the choice to agree or not, but the fact that David Cage wanted to have Ethan and Madison ending together as the best outcome for both of them shows how he can't write his main female characters without being in a romantic relationship, no matter how non-sensical it truly is (Carla and Jodie are also big examples). But the thing is that it comes out in the worst moment possible with the dumbest of reasons; Ethan has killed a man (or spared him but ponders about it) while Madison not only barely escaped being killed by the mad doctor, but escaped a near-rape situation with Paco. I don't think banging the next guy you found who is a prime suspect and may think he might be the Origami Killer was a good idea. Also, when time is of the issue, the worst thing to do is to drop the clothes and rub your genitals together. I'm not against sex scenes in video games, but adding sex and romance for the sake of having sex and romance does not a mature game makes.
  • Henry Stickmin Series:
    • Loekman 3: The Henry Stickmin Collection is easily among the best games I played, and I enjoyed each and every one of the routes through and through. However, despite all this, there is one route in the game that is an absolute miss for me and that is in the Pure Blooded Thief/Convict Allies path on Completing the Mission. See there, Henry and Ellie wanted to join the Toppat clan to get away from both the government as well as the Wall. Fair enough, but is the last path of the route which is the DMOS. See, I have to pick between three sides, the Toppat as originally intended, the government or the Wall. Given that this is the same route where Henry betrayed the government to steal the Ruby from the ship, it makes no sense for me to side with anyone so I chose none, only for me to be pissed when it led to a fail instead of an ending. Not only that, when I side with the government, we got an ending where Henry and Ellie are pardoned for their crimes and forgiven by the government. I do not understand why are we allowed to side with them given the fact that Charles whom previously wanted to open fire on Henry for going rogue, suddenly ask him to help them? And Galeforce pardoned their crimes and trusted them even though they may have ulterior motives for sabotaging the rocket. I really dislike this path, and it's the only one where I do not want to replay when I'm revisiting the game.
    • dynamicDiscovery: While I think Mission's branching timelines were handled flawlessly, I can't get behind what happened to Henry's fellow infiltrators in the middle of the Relentless Bounty Hunter/International Rescue Operative route. When they find the cybernetically-repaired Right Hand Man in the Toppat base's warehouse, and Henry's squad provides suppressing fire, Right Hand Man catches Henry trying to flank him and vaporizes the others with a single energy shot. What worsens my realization that the three died unceremoniously is that they are never acknowledged again, even once Henry succeeds in his mission to defeat the Right Hand Man. Henry must've been slammed pretty far out of there in RHM's retaliation, so the scene would've worked better if RHM's attack only hit Eel (the guy attacking him with the assault rifle), so Frog and Turtle couldn't accompany Henry until RHM was knocked out by the cheap fighting combo. No wonder Puffballs regrets finishing up the game with what actually happened.
  • Fofa: In Heroes of Might and Magic V, it turns out Biara was disguising herself as Isabel all along. Then it's shown in the Dungeon campaign after the Dwarf missions that the real Isabel was with Raelag all this time, giving many players the impression that they were "spending quality time together". Later Word of God statements only served to send this further into WTF territory: they answered that only Raelag caught on to Biara disguising herself as the fake queen, so he went to rescue Isabel by himself and escaping from Sheog is a time consuming affair. First, this wasn't even implied at all in the cutscenes, so that could've been re-written, and second, why the hell didn't Raelag say anything?! If he had told the other heroes who were with him at the time, all those innocent people might still be alive and averted most of the damage that was done. Definitely the lowest point of the series' writing, reminding me why I rarely play the campaign modes.

  • Interceptor: I find Hopkins FBI entertaining for all the wrong reasons, but the target range scene had me shaking my head in utter disbelief and is just utterly stupid by any standards. In order to get the next clue left by Bernie Berckson, Hopkins had to shoot a target five times, which already sounds enough like an obvious trap already. Behind the target is a live victim which the clue is attached to, and killing her presents you with the next clue. Here's where it gets truly asinine: there's actually an option to check behind the target beforehand, but the game tells you there's nothing there. There's not even the slightest Hand Wave to why Hopkins couldn't see or hear anything beforehand; the game acts as if nothing exists until you shoot the target. The worst part: it's the protagonist's fiancée Samantha who was behind the target the whole time. That's right, the game forces you to kill her in order to progress. The protagonist's somewhat nonchalant reaction (a rather casual and monotone "oh no") doesn't help the situation at all.
  • Duke Nukem4ever: Hunt Down the Freeman was already a disaster to begin with (albeit a bit Narmy one), but its ending is a complete joke. Adam, who turned out to be the real Big Bad of the story, gets killed in the space of a cutscene. Sure, Adam was a true villain of this story, but he was a Punch-Clock Villain at worst and I don't think he really deserved to die such a humiliating death. But this is not the worst part. The worst part comes when Mitchell confronts Adam in the end over what he did and starts listing the reasons for hating him. You'd expect, that Mitchell would rant about Adam killing his HECU buddies early on, tricking him into killing a lot of innocent rebels or, heck, even killing Sasha, a civilian, right? Wrong. All Mitchell rants about is how Adam betrayed him in pretty much the final level of this goddamn game. Sure, Mitchell is supposed to be a ruthless bad guy, but even he was at least uncomfortable when everything listed above happened. Even worse? After those reasons are listed, Mitchell says the next line: "You fucked up my face." That's actually what he says, word for word. You know this game sucks when its main protagonist puts his face being screwed above everything else that happened afterwards.
  • bisonx: The infamous Conquest Ending from Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2. Nepgear is forced to kill her fellow CPUs, including her own sister, just to power up the demon sword. And because they can't defeat Arfoire without the Gehaburn. And in the end, with all the CPUs dead, Arfoire actually embraces her defeat, because without the CPUs, Gamindustri is doomed. So what was the point of getting the sword, anyway? Just to traumatize the player. I'm at least thankful that this ending is completely non-canon, though.
  • N Troper: I'm quite a fan of the Neptunia series, getting started in it through the Re;Birth games released on Steam. The humor is one of the best I've seen, the characters are quite charming and the writing is better than what outward appearances would suggest...with the exception of Anonydeath's character arc in Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory or Re;Birth 3. This is a villain that actively invaded Noire's privacy along with hacking an entire nation's network, aided in the kidnapping and experimentation of CPU Memories in children, helped throw Gamindustri into disarray for his own amusement and brainwashed Peashy for 10 years, altering her memories and forcing the heroines to fight her, outright gleeful at their horror when they found out they've been fighting Peashy for all this time. What does he get for it? NOTHING. In the end, he is allowed to freely roam Gamindustri with no punishment for his crimes whatsoever, in a game where every other villain had what was coming to them or were given actual, proper redemption. Not to mention every character firmly grasps the Idiot Ball whenever he is featured. At one point, Nepgear, a tech genius that KNOWS that Anonydeath is a capable hacker, doesn't think about implementing a jamming device to prevent further hacking until they get hacked by him again in a scene that ends with the party having to SAVE him from fake Noires that he openly admits to molesting, blackmails Noire afterwards into saying she did it all for him with the promise of deleting his "Noire folder" when at this point he's tricked them all enough that Noire would normally be clever enough to not trust him to do so and Plutia, who DESTROYED Arfoire mentally because she kidnapped IF, Compa and Peashy, openly voices that he is cool because of how easily he gets under Noire's skin like she conveniently forgot his brainwashing of her adoptive daughter. All in all, Anonydeath was the absolute low point of what was otherwise a fun game.
  • It Takes Two (2021):
    • Aj Wargo: I think I speak for all of us when I say I have never seen a more morally disgusting scene than the "Kill Cutie" sequence of It Takes Two. The players are forced into brutally murdering an adorable elephant toy and watching as its killers laugh at their daughters misery. The worst part is, Cutie clearly doesn’t want to die, and the game doesn’t offer another way around this issue. Forget Abby, Cody and May are the most morally disgusting video game protagonists ever. And this makes me question- is this how the industry is going to go now? Constantly tormenting and abusing the player and giving them no choice but to do horrible acts while the industry itself is rewarded for it? Here’s the basic lesson, people- you aren’t evil for doing these acts, the developers are evil for forcing them you to do it in the first place, and developers should learn to treat you with decency and respect.
    • Maths Angelic Version: I second that the scene of the main characters killing Cutie was just terrible. Basically, they get the idea that their daughter's tears would reverse their curse, so when they realize their cloth selves can't interact with her directly, they jump to killing Cutie to make her cry (instead of just rejecting this ludicrous fake Curse Escape Clause or at least trying something else). So you are treated to a drawn-out scene where these Designated Heroes drag the innocent elephant to her death while she begs for her life, at two points even mutilating her by getting a leg and an ear dragged off. As if that weren't bad enough, you are forced to participate in this scene, so the game also indulges in the terrible trope of "force the player to do something abhorrent and guilt trip them about it". And then... the "heroes" cheer and bathe in their daughter's tears, and when it doesn't work, their immediate reaction is "oh no, we're stuck like this" instead of remorse for the horrible deed they committed for nothing. This scene was apparently supposed to show how self-centred they had become, but it went so far with its cruelty that it just became impossible to care about them. It doesn't help that there was also a terrible attempt at Black Comedy that ended up being plain disturbing instead. In the end, this scene was so callousnote  and cruel that it turned me off the game as a whole. A shame, considering that it would've been a cool work if not for this awful, awful moment.

    J-L 
  • Lord Daddy Funk: Jade Empire has a pretty big one. All game other characters have reported seeing a flaw in your fighting style (the reason for this is that Master Li purposely put one in that he could exploit later on to kill you); after roughly 12 hours of gameplay, with all this build up and foreshadowing, you finally kill the Emperor who you've been lead to believe was the real villain, and how does the scene where Li betrays you pan out? With your techniques being quickly exploited in a fight and him defeating you? Nope, you get distracted by something shiny and he kills you without anything save your attention span being exploited.
  • Dark Super Shadow 64: Kid Icarus: Uprising is awesome, but what I didn't like is the ending. Well not the actual ending, but the implications of it. The DMOS in my eyes is that Viridi didn't learn anything. Hades, Medusa and their commanders tried to murder everyone to feast on souls and make their army dominate. They all got killed. The Aurum harvested chunks of the planet and brainwashed one of the Gods. They got killed. Chaos Kin possessed Palutena and sent Centurions to attack the land. He (or it) got killed. Viridi bombed a population of humans, and was attempting to do it more. She got off scot-free and went back to doing it more. Granted, I never liked Viridi to begin with, but could we at least see her comeuppance and gain satisfaction? She doesn't even need to die! I just want her to have a change of heart or something.
    • Phantom Heartless 5: I have to agree with the above. Kid Icarus: Uprising was the first game 3DS game I played for my birthday and I love it to death. And while Viridi is one of my favorite characters in the game, my only complaint was that there wasn't a boss fight with her. I mean come on! I get that she looks like a kid, but so does Pit! And she's a goddess at that! I'm pretty sure they could've squeezed a boss fight in there somewhere.
    • SenorCornholio: I agree with Phantom Heartless 5, big time. Viridi is also one of my favorite characters in the game; heck if it weren't for Hades, she'd be numero uno. But the lack of a boss fight was such a huge step backwards for the game that it just boggles the mind! I mean come on, she's the goddess of nature! Wouldn't a fight with her be amazing? It'd probably be on par with Hades or Palutena if it actually happened. Imagine her using her nature powers to great effect, potentially controlling the battlefield and using her powers to really give Pit a run for his money. But nope; instead the Aurum Arc below happens, then the much better Chaos Kin Arc happens, and Viridi is never fought once, nor does she ever show off her powers aside from using Reset Bombs, which were manufactured anyway so they don't even count. And if Super Smash Bros. is any indication, the closest we'll ever get to seeing what Viridi's made of is a goddamn Mii Costume. Such a huge disrespect to such a memorable character.
    • Calamity 2007: The entirety of The Lightning Chariot chapter, not only is it a Marathon Level with tons of pits that are hard to avoid because of the game's controls, and filled with Mimicutes but because at this point of the story Palutena is Brainwashed and Crazy you have to deal with Viridi and Hades constantly belittling and mocking Pit throughout the level to the point where it quickly stopped being funny.
    • n00dl3gal: Kid Icarus: Uprising is one of my favorite games of all time, and while I loathe to criticize it, I have to acknowledge that the entire arc with the Aurum was stupid as hell. First it came right the fuck out of nowhere, and then it's never mentioned again. Not even Pyrrhon makes an appearance again. What a waste of three chapters.
  • Kaxis 19999: For me, the cutscene before you fight Awakened Saiki in The King of Fighters. It seems like you could fight Mukai at first, but then he's killed by Saiki for disobeying his orders! Trust me, you could have used him as a shield while you escape, but no, you decided to take the Villain Ball and kill Mukai for disobeying a single order! As if your situation hadn't already gone From Bad to Worse.
  • InsertCleverNameHere: Admittedly, I haven't actually played Kirby and the Forgotten Land, so I can't really form my complete thoughts on it. However, I was greatly irked by the reveal that Clawroline, and by extension the entire Beast Pack are Good All Along. This cat tried to kill Kirby back in Wonderia, and now we're just supposed to see her as an ally because her husband, Leon was brainwashed. Umm... if you knew Leon was brainwashed by Elfilis, why did you follow his orders? This plot twist also bothers me because I feel like that Kirby uses Heel-Face Turns too much, so a very forced Heel-Face Turn was painful.
  • Kevjro 7: In Knights of the Old Republic, Calo Nord survives the bombardment of Taris and joins up with the Sith. This makes no sense. He got buried under a pile of rubble from a collapsing building, and even if he could've survived that, there's no way he could've gotten out of there, nor is there a way someone could've known to help him. And even if he could've gotten out of there, the Sith troopers would think to shoot first and ask questions later, so Calo Nord would have either died from the resulting fight, or stolen their ship after he won and gotten the hell out of there. Him not dying and being recruited by the Sith is just completely illogical.
  • A Splashing Koi: In one of the routes in The Last Hope I Had Left (a Puella Magi Madoka Magica tie-in for the PSP), Kyouko and Madoka go to save Witch!Sayaka, like they did in the original anime. This time, though, Homura has already killed Oktavia. What does Kyouko do? She turns into a Witch. Yeah, the girl who watched her entire family die before her eyes all because of her wish despairs and turns into a Witch over someone she had known for less than a month.
    • Andy J: I was rubbed the wrong way with Kamijou's reaction to Sayaka's, umm, "condition" at the end of her route in the game. His freaking out was understandable, what wasn't was him saying, "Shizuki is the only one I need!" Kamijou is already a rather controversial character, but this was just bad.
  • JMRS: Ah, The Last of Us Part II. Why did you have to have such a lacklustre story compared to your predecessor? If I wanted to, I could just list off every single reason why the story to this game sucks, but since I'm only allowed to pick one moment, it would have to be the bit where Joel gets killed by Abby. Not only does it make Joel look much more stupid than he was in the first game (which is to say not at all), but there's also the buildup. Abby is being attacked by a horde of Infected, then Joel and Tommy show up to save her and get her back to her friends. Tommy is even nice enough to say "Y'all should come back with us. Restock before you head out". And after that selfless act of kindness, Abby just straight up shoots Joel in the knee with a shotgun, then batters him to a pulp with a golf club. It would have been one thing if she was conflicted about it, but she just beats him with her golf club without a single second of hesitation. Making it even worse is that halfway through the game, you have to then play as Abby so that you can sympathise with her. I'm sorry, game, but I just cannot sympathise with this woman after she just killed the man who saved her life, even if she just wanted to avenge her father.
    • Enigma Lobo: I will also add that the fight between Abby and Ellie is the lowest point in the game for me, mainly due to how we are forced to play as Abby beating Ellie to near death just to proceed with the game. We, as Joel in the first game, went from viewing Ellie as simple cargo to being a surrogate daughter and friend, while witnessing her grow into to a self-sufficient survivor and partner. But in the second game? Forget all of that. Ellie's the enemy now because we're on Abby's side. You know, the one who tortured and murdered Joel in front of Ellie and expressed no remorse nor hesitation for her horrible deeds. Not only did the second game fail to have me sympathize with Abby, it also trivialized Joel and Ellie's experiences and journey in the first game in favour for a new set of characters that were either underdeveloped or near-impossible to root for.
  • FalconPain: The endgame of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is considered by many to be the high point of Ganondorf's characterization in the series, and I largely agree with that... except for one major misstep. A bit of context here: he obtains the full Triforce from Zelda and Link once the latter arrives. Ganondorf wants to revive the power of Hyrule and win it for himself, but King Daphnes intervenes, gets the Triforce before him and wishes for Hyrule to be destroyed forever. This makes Ganondorf go Laughing Mad, as he realizes that his plans are ruined and he is about to die. So he makes it his final goal to ensure that Link and Zelda die as well, and no longer holds back against Link. The fight starts, and Link swordfights a highly skilled Ganondorf while Zelda takes Link's bow and supports with stunning Light Arrows. And then the stupidity happens. Ganondorf rushes over to her location, puts one sword away and backhands her into temporary unconsciousness before drawing the sword again to face Link for the second phase. This... makes no sense. He is racing against the impending drowning of Hyrule and the act of sheathing his sword takes time. Why does he not simply strike her with it? It can't be a desire to leave her unharmed, as he is specifically trying to kill them. It can't be because she's a child, because he's going all out against Link. It can't be that he doesn't consider her to be a threat, as she has been filling him with arrows the whole time. It shouldn't be sexism, considering he was raised by an entire civilization of warrior women. Even the Doylist argument of antiviolence fails, since he has been striking Link with his swords repeatedly without blood or horrible implications. In fact, he could have easily struck her with the sword and it would not have broken our suspension of disbelief for her to recover for the third phase. In short, I am incapable of coming up with an even halfway plausible reason for him to go out of his way to punch her and it tarnishes an otherwise excellent final boss sequence.
  • SenorCornholio: I am easily one of the biggest The Legend of Zelda nuts out there; unless it's the CD-i games, you'll see me being absolutely proud to own most of the Zelda series...with one small exception: The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes. Now, they can freely get away with making the story an Excuse Plot that largely focuses on comedy; said comedy reminds me a bit of EarthBound (1994) and I like that. What instead kept me from wanting to progress was the fact that the game outright required friends to 100% the game, and even then they'd have to have perfect coordination together; if you played by yourself, you'd have to resort to using Doppels which...well, when you find yourself unable to complete the second world, it's telling, then, how tedious of a process it was. So after a good long time of not touching the game, I decided to look up some game footage to see what I was missing, and not only did the game seem to not get better with its gameplay (in fact it got worse), but the story itself actually left me disappointed. For reference: the Witch of Drablands, Lady Maud, cursed Princess Styla (totally not Zelda) with a bland and hideous gimp suit all because she hated the way she dressed. That by itself is a pretty petty reason to curse someone, but whatever; another female antagonist in the Zelda series is welcome...unless your name happens to be Lady Maud. I know I'm not supposed to talk about entire characters, but this, is not, a character. This is a driving force for the plot, and nothing more. When you actually meet her, she reveals to have absolutely no threatening charm to her, thus wasting the idea for a vile witch in a lighthearted game. Now, I'm not saying she should be necessarily complex; several villains, including many incarnations of Ganondorf himself, fall under Card-Carrying Villain status quite often, but I was at least hoping she'd be at least a little bit of a threat. This old hag is not imposing like Ganondorf, Onox, or Demise, she's not clever like Veran, Vaati, or Cia, and she's not entertaining like Zant or Ghirahim; she's pretty much the equivalent of that one annoying old neighbor across the street who thinks she's hot stuff but really just annoys everyone surrounding her. On top of that, your first encounter with her has her siccing her "pets" on you in a Boss Rush, thus showing she has no intentions of proving her worth. And the Final Boss fight against her just seems so slow and uninspired, it's a wonder she even counts as a villain. She's so ineffectual that the king at the end of the game doesn't even press any serious charges for her crimes. Give the likes of Yuga credit: at least he did something in the story aside from kick it off, and had several excellent boss fights to boot. That, and EarthBound (1994) had Giygas. With Maud however, the crimes she's committed would only really offend two groups: the people of Hytopia, and Rarity. Other than that, this villain just plain sucks.
  • KingBowser9001: I thought it'd never happen, but after dozens of hours of playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, I've finally come across a bad level. That well-deserved "honor" goes to The Lost Pilgrimage, one of the Korok Trials. Basically, you have to follow a Korok named Oaki through the forest to make sure he reaches the shrine at the end of the path in one piece. This normally won't be so bad... Except if he sees you, you're forced to restart. Yes, you read that right. Nintendo has actually resorted to an insta-fail Stealth-Based Mission in my Wide-Open Sandbox. But whatever, you can just sneak around the trees, right? Nope, you're in The Lost Woods, where straying too far from the path leads to a faceful of fog. For grand prize points, Oaki is almost the same color as the grass, making it difficult to see him if you're not constantly using Stasis. Despite that, there are 2 main moments here that make this level a DMoS. First off, at one point, Oaki will suddenly stop, turn around, and run backwards. It happens fast, leaving you without much time to find cover. Even worse, you were probably following extremely close behind him to keep track of where he is, making it an even bigger cheap shot. It's also nearly impossible to tell how far Oaki can see, so even when hiding, you have to position yourself perfectly so as to not get seen or swallowed up by the fog. Shortly after that, Oaki moves along... Until a wolf howls. He then stops and calls for help. Well, hero, this is exactly why you were put up to this garbage mission! So go save him like you know you should! ...Except when you do, he yells at you anyway and forces you to restart. This was the one WTF-inducing moment in my entire playthrough of the game. Gee, game, sorry for answering his explicit cry for help like a normal person would! Ungrateful Bastard, indeed. Even though I haven't done everything in the game yet, this is so far the single worst level in the game for me. The fact that somebody actually playtested this and thought it would be a good addition to the game is bull, to say the least. It's the polar opposite of everything that makes the game fun. Good thing the rest of the game is pretty awesome, though, that's for sure.
    • Abodos: The most annoying quest for me was "Under The Red Moon". The quest requires you to be standing without armor on the designated pedestal when a Blood Moon is in the sky from 9 to midnight. But the Blood Moon appears at semi-random with the chances only increasing if you kill lots of enemies. This means that you've got to go around killing monsters while monitoring the sky at night to see if the Blood Moon is there. And if you don't arrive at the pedestal by midnight for the Shrine to appear, you've got to do this whole process all over again. Especially annoying because this is one of the quests you need to complete to see the resolution to Kass's story arc, which is genuinely heartwarming and satisfying.
    • treehugger0369 If we're talking stealth missions, for me it was the Yiga Clan Hideout. For one, this absolutely cannot be skipped if you're trying to complete all of the main quests; it's necessary to free Divine Beast Vah Naboris, as the Yiga Clan stole the Thunder Helm needed to even get close to the dang thing. You have to sneak around highly powerful Yiga Blademasters. This isn't so bad in the first room where they're relatively easy to snipe, but they're everywhere in the second room, along with treasure to tempt you into blowing your cover. If any of them spot you, the door to the next area will shut and you'll have to kill everyone in the area to proceed, and odds are high the Blademasters will One-Hit Kill Link. Did I mention Saving, Fairies, and Mipha's Grace are all disabled? And no, if you get lucky enough to kill everyone in an area, you can't cheese it by leaving the Hideout, saving, and then moving on; I tried that, and next time I reloaded everyone that I killed was back. The only way it was made tolerable was to freeze the most annoying guards with Stasis+ while having the stealth armor equipped so none of the others saw me. (Pro-tip: leave the treasure; it'll still be there when you beat the boss sans annoying guards) The "intended" (insofar as BOTW intends for you to do anything) way to beat the Hideout is to distract them with Mighty Bananas and then either just run past or Sneakstrike them, but waiting for them to spot the Bananas gets annoying, and trying to speed up the process by making noise runs the risk of them spotting you first. And just as salt in the wound, once it's beaten, you have the chance for Yiga Footsoldiers and Blademasters to just appear out of nowhere when you're roaming the land, in addition to the usual disguised ones(which get a power boost). The Blademasters in the field are nerfed compared to the ones in the Hideout, but it's still annoying when you're trying to parry Guardians near Hyrule castle(where the Yiga turds are the most common) and one decides to appear out of nowhere and team up with the Guardian to leave you in perpetual Ragdoll.
    • Kashimakitty: While the final battle in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has been criticized many times before, the ending itself stings a lot more for me. One of the things I've always liked about Zelda games is the colorful NPCs and seeing how their lives go on once the world is saved, with the ending to Ocarina of Time being particularly noteworthy for this. This game's ending, however, was easily the most anti-climactic in the series. Just to highlight how irrelevant every character other than Zelda is, one doesn't even need to free the Divine Beasts in order to get the Golden Ending. The only thing required is to see all of the memories of Zelda.
  • Life Is Strange:
    • Animeking 1108: As much as I enjoyed Life is Strange, Chloe's behavior was often a sour spot for me. However, what really annoyed me was in episode 1 when David confronts her about his missing gun and then notices her pot. If the player fails to hide, Chloe will immediately blame Max for the weed. If the player either denies it or if they succeeded in hiding, David will slap Chloe after one-too-many disrespectful comments. If the decision ends up being final, David is painted as the bad guy for disciplining Chloe, and she will blame Max for not having her back. First off, if Max hid, it was her fault in the first place for telling her to hide. Second off, if Max didn't hide, Chloe had no right to throw Max under the bus to save her own skin and blame her for what happened. Third, Chloe was doing drugs, and as the game later reveals, stole a gun, both of which are illegal, which only justifies David's actions even more. Despite all that, the game has the audacity to guilt-trip the player for letting that smartass junkie get some well-needed karma for her actions.
    • Maths Angelic Version: I despise Life is Strange, and the ending is the main reason why. We have learned that Max's use of her powers has caused a tornado to appear for... some reason, and now she has to either let it destroy a town or go back in time to undo the entire game and allow Chloe's murder to be committed, rendering the entire story pointless — if Max's powers had never manifested, the outcome would have been exactly the same except that she hasn't learned the lovely lesson that her attempts to use her powers to make things better only made things worse because the story arbitrarily decided that using time travel to undo your mistakes is bad.note  Add the whole Bury Your Gays thing, and you have a terrible ending with terrible implications. I get that the message is "accept the past", but this kind of story just doesn't work for conveying that — you have to accept the past because you can't change it, not because you could change it, but the universe decided that you accepting it is so goddamn important that innocent people have to die over it.

    M-R 
  • Twilight Pegasus: One of my favorite games is Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis. It's a lot of fun, with great characters, addictive gameplay, and an interesting story. Unfortunately, the character writing can be very inconsistent, especially in regards to one character that I really, really hate: Pamela Ibis, the Cute Ghost Girl. She, I feel, is the main reason for one of the game's absolute dumbest moments ever. In one of her later character quests, she makes her own potion, forcing people to drink it, not realizing that the potion is making people sick, almost killing them. Vayne and the others manage to stop her from giving more people the potion, and she goes about her merry way. But what happens after this? Vayne's workshop buddies tell him to call out Pamela for her reckless endangerment of other students and make her take responsibility. Considering the type of character Vayne is, he tells her off as gently and politely as possible...and how does Pamela react? She cries and plays the victim. You'd expect the other kids to call her out on being a little brat and not taking responsibility for her nearly killing other students with a hackneyed potion, right? Nope! Instead, they yell at Vayne for "not talking to a woman more delicately" and daring to punish her, so Pamela is a flat-out Karma Houdini! This is absolute bullshit! Pamela is the one in the wrong, not Vayne! He didn't even insult her or yell at her, and he had every right to confront her on her actions! Not only is this an unnecessary Kick the Dog moment for poor Vayne, who did absolutely nothing to deserve this, the other characters are written to be out of character to the point of being uncharacteristically mean spirited, possibly for the sake of comedy, and it makes them come off as hypocritical when they were the ones who told Vayne to confront Pamela! This scene alone solidified my hatred for Pamela and forced me to acknowledge the game's uneven character writing. I still like it for what it is, and I play it every now and again, but this moment alone officially cemented Pamela as The Scrappy for me.
  • legomaniac90: Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 had Iron Man and Mr. Fantastic essentially create mind-controlling nanites to control supervillains into doing their bidding, which they did using tech reverse engineered from a known supervillain and which creates a Hive Mind that nearly assimilates the world. So what punishment do they get for this? Nothing! The closest they get is an optional conversation with Mr. Fantastic and the other Fantastic Four. What a terrible resolution to a good game.
  • Miracle @ St. Olaf: The way Max Payne 3 resolves the conflict between Max and Serrano is just awful in every direction. Serrano had taken a flying leap over the Moral Event Horizon by murdering an innocent, helpless woman in cold blood, and yet the writers somehow expected us to pity and root for him once he runs afoul of another, slightly nastier villain and gets tortured. Well, boo-fucking-hoo, Rockstar; the guy's a remorseless killer and he earned his bad karma legitimately. Further rubbing salt in the wound is that Max frees Serrano, allows him to take revenge on the doctor who was torturing him, and then... he just lets the guy go. Remember, seeing women get hurt is one of Max's biggest Berserk Buttons. He fled from New York to Brazil in the first place because he killed a mobster's son, without a second of hesitation, for the act of hitting a woman. Not only does he completely forget about what Serrano did to Fabiana, but his internal narration even has him admiring the evil fucker and hoping he survived (Though the fact that the building that he was in completely collapsed thankfully means there was practically zero chance of him surviving, but of course they Never Found the Body). If Max suddenly being okay with violence against women was supposed to be some attempt at Character Development, then I have to say Rockstar's writers are even worse at their job than Joe Hazelwood was at his. Nevermind all the Fanservice in video games; if you want a compelling example of real misogyny in the medium, look no further.

  • Jerrik: In the Neverwinter Nights module, Maugeter - The Keys to the City, the final mission. And what's truly a shame is that everything before it was pretty good. It was a module with a unique premise, with your character moving to a city divided into seven districts (kind of like Ba Sing Se), and slowly establishing yourself there. You are contracted to complete tasks, most often to deal with all the criminals robbing everyone in sight, even though the city guard is everywhere you look. You use the money, reputation, and opportunities you get from this to buy houses, join the mercenary guild, and most importantly, obtain the gate passes that give you access to the more important and prosperous districts. And then with the final mission, it all goes horribly wrong. When you are investigating a possible criminal hideout, you are suddenly knocked out, taken prisoner, and strapped to a machine that drains you of your power, with no chance to avoid this. Some wizard you've never seen before turns out to be behind this, and he also turns out to be responsible for every criminal in the game. He did all this, you learn, because he used to be a hero, but he overestimated himself and got beat up by a Beholder, so he started draining peoples lives for power so he could be strong enough to 'save the world' (from what exactly is never established), the criminal activity was just to supply him with money, and the whole thing seems to be some kind of poorly thought-out Take That! to every RPG ever. You are freed by one of the criminals you had fought earlier, and after helping you the guy goes to try to and kill his boss, dying in the attempt, without ever explaining why he's doing any of this. Then, after you kill the wizard, you are taken prisoner again, this time by the totally incompetent city guard, and thrown in prison. You get some weird dream sequence of waking up in prison and escaping repeatedly, only to wake up for real to find out that city officials, being totally embarrassed that they didn't notice one of their heroes going crazy and eating peoples lives, have decided to charge you with everything from trespassing to murder in an attempt to cover up what happened, have decided to exile you from the city, and will send you to fight in some pointless war they're having with a neighbour of theirs. You are given no opportunity to do anything about any of this, you lose everything you gained, everyone you helped just abandons you with a "It was nice knowing you" attitude, and the game ends with you being sent to fight and most likely die in some war you don't care about. Also, you never get to see the seventh and last area of the city.
  • Master N: Nightmare Of The Snow is one of the most phenomenal Explorer Horror games I have ever played, with fun gameplay and a story with such emotion that even other games of its type rarely reach. But there are three things that infuriate me- the shibitos, the fact that the entire conflict is revealed to have arisen from a contrived miscommunication, and the worst moment that serves as a black mark on this otherwise great game, and the subject of this entry, the True Ending. To sum up, the heroes and spirits are trapped in a pocket dimension by Hikari, the Ice God, so the heroine Yuuki sacrifices herself to Hikari in exchange for freeing everyone else, Taiga and Kayako are left heartbroken and then become paranormal investigators, then go on a mission to go after a cult that Kayako- now a depressed Broken Bird instead of her prior chipper self- believes has the key to saving Yuuki. That's right, your reward for playing the entire game at least twice, solving all the puzzles, and dodging the shibitos- all that effort- is a freaking Cliffhanger. I absolutely hate it when a work feels the need to screw over the main characters and/or not resolve the plot in a misguided attempt to get people exited for a sequel, especially since this one fell into the same trap many Cliffhanger endings do- mainly, that the sequel is in hiatus, with the last update being back in 2020. On top of that, the marketing for said sequel is really ambiguous on whether this plot line will be resolved at all, and even suggests it wont. note  Both of these mean that the cliffhanger may very well never be resolved, and Yuuki will be trapped forever and separated from her love interest and best friend. And the worst part is that the game actually has an ending, the Good End, that is a satisfying conclusion because it gives closure to the characters while still being bittersweet enough for the genre, and it even does a Sequel Hook without being a cliffhanger. But the mere existence of the sequel's demo means that it never really happened, and yet the true end is so depressing that it actively makes me not want to play the sequel in fear that it will end in a similar manner and depress me more! So until the sequel comes out and resolves this cliffhanger in a satisfying manner, I will consider the Good End to be the canonical one.
  • dynamicDiscovery: A few months or so after I played OMORI, I really couldn't bear the taste left by it, but I'm only able to get into something more specific than that. I will make one thing crystalline-clear beforehand: this game is not for me. I played it outside my comfort zone in terms of how I consume media, but my developed idea of what media I should consume is still not something OMORI was written with in mind. It was written for fans of offbeat, EarthBound-esque Dramedies. I was attracted to the content nonetheless, so my word should be taken as Constructive Criticism to make of at least in some way.

    Near the end of the main route, Sunny tries to stop his former friend Basil from killing himself. But Basil remains in denial about Sunny's Accidental Murder of the latter's sister Mari, and both boys hallucinate and break down, physically fighting each other in desperation. Sunny tries to calm himself down, but it doesn't work like it did before, and Basil ends up stabbing Sunny in the eye. In short, Basil doesn't take to Sunny's help. He wrests all agency from Sunny's mind, cripples his body for life, and makes them both collapse helplessly on the floor. Some people see this as a climactic consequence of Basil's toxic positivity, or a lead-in to a message of how love and friendship are more powerful than past trauma. But this being a violation of Sunny's safety and trust, combined with the fact that all alternatives involve Sunny's friend (whom I can't see as his actual best friend) dying by suicide, and that all responsibility is seemingly forced on Sunny for a mess that occurred of no one's fault, I find this deeply anxiety-inducing and degrading instead. Yes, I am unironically arguing that the fight's effects on Sunny, including the psychological sense of betrayal, are just as bad as someone being raped. It is biologically impossible for me to empathize with Sunny and sympathize with Basil at the same time, and such an act whose repercussions the latter isn't brought into the open for has no place in any cultural mainstream.
  • cricri3007 For me, Overwatch Jumped the Shark with the release of Hammond. Not only is his design out-there and too cartoony, even by Overwatch's standards (the mech on its own is fine, but the hamster looks too stylized), but his backstory makes no sense whatsoever (so there was a hamster on that colony we were told was made to study primate in space, somehow nobody in Junkertown wondered why their Champion never appeared in person?), and a hyper-intelligent hamster stretch credibility too much. At least a sentient gorilla was somewhat plausible, and is a long-standing trope. He clashes as much with the rest of the game as Tinkerbell would in the Crapsack World of Westeros.
  • Thepenguinking2: Creating a worthy sequel to the memorable classic that was Plants vs. Zombies was no doubt gonna be a difficult feat, and while said sequel, Plants Vs Zombies 2, was quite the heavily Contested Sequel, I personally thought that it was a decent, if not great follow-up to one of my favorite games of all time. So, to be expected, I was hyped for the final world, Modern Day. A visit back to your house from the first game with the zombies pulling out all the stops, pitting you against everything you've faced this far, starring some familiar goes with beefed-up changes? Sounds like a fitting finale! And near the end, Zomboss tries to stop us with a twisted Boss Rush where all the battles use plants from one world forward, on a may or may not be bogus claim that we're ripping time apart? Sweet! I face up against the three-level battle that seems to build up to a big final battle... And the game ends right there as Zomboss gives Crazy Dave a taco with a waffle in it. No temporal abomination fusion of all the previous bosses? No fight against the original Zombot from the first game? Not some giant time-twisting machine Zomboss plans to use to break apart time itself? Nothing? I can't think of a single ending I've been more disappointed in than this one. All that build up to some epic Final Boss with the stakes higher than they've ever been in a series where if even one zombie slips by you're gone, all to end on some cheap gag about Crazy Dave's love for tacos. Just then I understood why the sequel was as contested as it was. I was just starting to love it more than the original, and this pathetic ending just blew it all. There's not even a credits roll! And we don't get even a hint at whether or not what Zomboss was saying is true. And if it wasn't, as you'd expect with Zomboss spitting out Blatant Lies from the start of the game, why do we just let him slip by and do whatever he wants? That's probably what allows the events of Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 and Penny's Pursuit to happen. Good going, Dave and Penny.
  • Silverblade 2: The end of Prince of Persia (2008), big time. First Elika sacrifices herself to seal Ahriman which already feels like a cheap Tear Jerker but wait there's more! After the credits roll, you have to destroy the very trees you have grown throughout the game because the prince would curse the world in order to revive Elika so everything goes back exactly like it was at the beginning of the game. What a wonderful reward!
  • L Dragon 2: [PROTOTYPE 2]. Much like the ending to Mass Effect 3, the ending here makes the whole series feel rather limp. Without going in too deep, you kill Alex Mercer, the main protagonist of the series. That alone is a rather poor story choice, but what makes it worse is just how they handled his character. In the ending of the original he had saved Manhattan, truly cared for his sister, was disgusted at the depravity of Blackwatch and Gentek, and was overall starting to become more human. 2 completely does away with all this, turning him into a generic villain that is too easily defeated, all to make way for a generic character to be the hero who doesn't even care about PARIAH or any of the evils of the corporations. To put it simply, They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot.
    • AB Lb0y: Worst yet, the fact that when you kill Mercer, you magically shoot out a load of black tentacle thingies which somehow kill every infected person in Manhatten. Biggest. Cop-out. EVER.
  • Professor Layton:
    • Maths Angelic Version: I love Professor Layton. Well, at least I did before the ending of Professor Layton and the Unwound Future made me swear off the series. It's revealed that Celeste is actually Layton's girlfriend Claire. It was thought that she died when a time machine exploded ten years ago, but for reasons that make no sense note , she was sent ten years into the future and is doomed to die soon. Claire won't even let Dimitri continue his attempt to save her because she thinks tampering with time is too dangerousnote , so she says goodbye to Layton and goes back to get killed in the explosion. The initial reveal that Claire died because Bill's greed made him go ahead with an unsafe experiment was bad enough. Having her reunite with Layton, only to (1) make them unable to properly enjoy most of their time together because Claire had to hide her identity for most of the game, (2) have Claire die shortly after being able to reveal herself, (3) introduce a potential way to save her just to explicitly shoot it down and (4) have the greedy bastard responsible for her death (and indirectly responsible for the main plot) get away with it is borderline sadistic. Oh, and just to rub salt in the wound, Luke moves away from Layton.note  If this was supposed to be a Bittersweet Ending, they overdid the bitterness to obnoxious levels, even when it didn't even make sense. What a terrible payoff for following the trilogy of DS games to the end.
    • The Meteor King: One thing I absolutely despise about Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask is how at the ending it's revealed The Masked Gentleman is a pissed off Randall Ascot who hates how everyone moved on with their lives after he died. It has to be the weakest villain motive I've ever seen for someone who's been assumed dead for years would be so pissed off that his girlfriend moved on and married someone else, or that his family's fortune went to someone else. How spoiled and whiny can you possibly be to cause so much damage over that? Worse still is how in the end he's forgiven and it's revealed that the people he was mad at actually were just holding out for him being alive, despite having no obligation to believe he was. The ending just left a sour taste in my mouth altogether.
    • Melancholy Utopia: I immensely love the series; never has puzzle-solving been so much fun. But I cannot simply ignore how utterly stupid the reveal was in Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy with Layton holding the Idiot Ball, and it will never cease to piss me off. Descole is Layton's brother separated from him at a young age due to adoption, and Leon Bronev is his biological father. Boy, where do we begin? First of all, there was absolutely zero build-up to the reveal. It was never even foreshadowed that this was the case, and if there was, it was done with such subtlety it would put the Ass Pull of Frozen to shame. At least with Don Paolo, Layton figured out halfway through that he was an old classmate of his, but Descole needed to tell him straight to his face how he knew him. Another thing about this reveal is that Layton doesn't even remember him, which could have been easily forgiven if Layton had been a newborn baby with poor memory span at the time (come to think of it, why didn't Level-5 make it so?!), but that's the thing; he wasn't! He was around 5-7 years old, at that point, how could you have completely forgotten you have a brother?! To add insult to injury, Layton is supposed to be an intellectual who acknowledges small details that go unnoticed by most, but he forgets something as crucial as that. Another thing was how utterly poorly Emmy's betrayal was executed. Her reason? "Uncle Leon is all I have left in this world"... nothing more, nothing less. What the hell? I expected a flashback or such of Leon taking her in so we'll know how, but there's absolutely nothing explored on this matter. The only thing I really liked about the ending was that Layton told Leon to piss off (in his kind manner, but still) because he selfishly gave them up for adoption for his archeological research due to a promise to his dead wife. Unfortunately, this isn't enough for me to make up for the piss poor conclusion of an otherwise great gaming series.
  • InTheGallbladder: Ah, Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney. A fun game, maybe a bit dumbed-down on a few counts, but with an engaging story... that's mercilessly trampled into the dirt by its own epilogue. Turns out Labyrinthia is not a fantasy land, but a massive conspiracy that the Storyteller has been keeping under wraps for about a decade. Okay, odd, but given the Schizo Tech in earlier chapters, I can't say it came out of nowhere. It does, however, provide the setup for something stupid enough to single-handedly decimate the whole storyline: all the history, woes, and motivations of Labyrinthia and its inhabitants owe to the Storyteller trying to help Espella get through her childhood trauma with a succession of increasingly grandiose lies. Never mind that him lying to her is what caused the trauma in the first place. This culminated with him knowingly running roughshod over the lives and memories of Espella, Darklaw, and Newton. And yet, he still earns his happy ending.
    • Mieu: I absolutely loved Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney. But the ending completely ruined it for me, and when I replay it, I will just not play the Ending for two reasons: One, pretty much all of it is a click along. There's like two puzzles thrown in and the rest is a huge reverse exposition dump with the player as Phoenix occassionally making very easy deductions. Two: Everything is just a ruse to deal with and "solve" the never before mentioned childhood trauma of Espella! I loved that people actually died, but from the moment that Maya died on, I knew it wasn't going to be as epic as I'd hoped. But the ending was thoroughly anticlimactic, with a stupid last minute backstory and the magic not being real. I was hoping for so much more.
  • contrafanxxx: While Project X Zone 2 was a good game, I have a few gripes with it. One problem I have is Kogoro Tenzai and Mii Koryuji not being around for the sequel. Honestly, Mii in particular was built up to be the main character of the Project X Zone series, but instead, they throw both Kogoro and Mii out the window and replace them with Reiji Arisu and Xiaomu back as the lead characters. I don't mind Reiji and Xiaomu, but honestly, they should have had Kogoro and Mii return once again. Just as long as they don't become an Official Couple, despite the Crosspedia saying that Mii had a bit of a crush on Kogoro. And to top it all off, the biggest "fuck you" Bandai Namco could give to Kogoro and Mii and their fans is that the Koryuji mansion is featured briefly in the second game, yet the two don't even make an appearance, they're only mentioned in passing.

  • McJeff: Red Dead Redemption. Yeah, kill off the main character. Fine. Great artistic statement. Wow, what a great way to make me feel like I wasted the last 30 hours of my life. I don't have much tolerance for Downer Endings and Shoot the Shaggy Dog in the first place, but pulling it in a videogame, where I've actually done something as opposed to sat there and read/watched, just really fucking pissed me off.
  • Lord TNK: Resident Evil 2 may not have such Narm howlers as the first game, but that can make the bad acting even worse. It's not even So Bad, It's Good. Sherry frantically shouting about her father getting caught by the monsters, and the very next sentence having a neutral tone, was probably the worst for me.
  • ShinyVulpix: In Resident Evil The Dark Side Chronicles Alexia is ultimately responsible for Alfred's death, instead of Steve. Alexia killed him because "he didn't wake her up on time". This felt as a slap in the face for me. In the original game, Resident Evil – Code: Veronica, Alexia genuinely loved her brother and even tried to avenge him. It was this particular thing that gave her character some depth. Instead, they made her another hollow villain with no redeeming qualities.
    • Tropers/legomaniac90: If you think that's bad, wait until you see the bad end of Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, where you kill Leon and Claire in front of poor Sherry, and no, fading to black before it happens doesn't help. But that's not the DMOS. The DMOS comes when the game ends there, with no look on how this could affect the future of the franchise. Nothing.
  • Dr Zulu 2010: In my opinion, Resident Evil 6 was the weakest of the series and the one who ticks me off for his ludicrous story; a major understatement in my part: mostly the Ada's doppelganger's subplot. Long story short, Ada has a clone who is in fact Carla Radames being injected with the C-Virus. Now, most clone stories I've heard has the people learned somewhere of the clone's existence and, if it is the Big Bad, stops his plans. But there, nobody except Ada acknowledge the clone's existence. Sure Jake is out of the case since he didn't see a lot of the clone and Chris is blinded by vengeance and, for all we know, the fake Ada is the one who considers like the real one. But, it is inexcusable in Leon's case since he saw a video showing the birth of the doppelganger. Considering that he knows Ada for a long time, why didn't he say to Chris before they splitting up in Chapter 4 "By the way, there's an Ada clone roaming in the boat. You should be careful and not confuse her for the real one."?
    • willowoftheriver: For me, the hugest DMOS in the game was finding out that Sherry was retconned into having been in the custody of Simmons since Raccoon City. Her having been raised by Wesker, as indicated by Wesker's Report, would've left open so many fascinating directions to take her story and character, yet they decide to gloss over all those years and just say she was with some random government official who was only created for RE 6?
  • Pgj1997: While I thoroughly enjoyed Rhythm Heaven Megamix, I'd have to say the ending of the story really sucked. I don't know if this was in the original Japanese version, or if this was the fault of the localization team, but either way, it's bad. Tibby has finally reached his mother, who has turned a purple color and won't speak. After a List-of-Experiences Speech, Tibby's Mom still won't talk, despite Tibby asking multiple times immediately after his speech. A few seconds later, Tibby's Mom finally turns back to her normal color, and then talks. Apparently, the reason she turned purple was because she was holding her breath to get rid of the hiccups, which is how this whole kerfuffle started in the first place. What? After a big speech like that, with admittedly awesome music to go with it nonetheless, that's the note we're ending on? I get that it's supposed to be a joke, but it's just insulting.
  • Loekman 3: Ride to Hell: Retribution made me laugh a lot because of how awful it is. But there is one moment that made me cringe and not in a funny way and that was the revelation of how the conflict started in the first place. What was it you ask? It's the fact that Jake's dad bet his wife on a race!!! What!!! So you're telling me that in desperate times, you're fully willing to essentially sell her out to slavery just to settle his gambling debts? Now sure he ran way after losing and killed most of his men but that just makes Caesar's motive far more understandable given that he didn't keep his own of the bargain even though he lost fairly. If I ever knew that a lover or close relative would be fully willing to sell me out just to settle their gambling debts, I would never look at them the same way again and would probably abandon them given that they clearly care more about their own self-interest over mine.
  • Ace Trainer Alicia: There's a lot that could be said about the absolute worst written quest in RuneScape history, "Hero's Welcome," but the DMOS specifically is the point where everything goes south. The quest starts off with preparations for the arrival of the titular hero V, who had been teased for a couple years beforehand as the newest god to join the diverse Runescape pantheon. He's built up to be this mighty hero-type who will always defend his people, and there's even a rousing ballad that plays during the scene when he arrives to greet his people... but the DMOS comes almost immediately after: He gets murdered almost immediately after being introduced, without ever getting a chance to do anything. What the hell, Jagex? You built up to introducing a new god and expected us to care about him only to immediately kill him off? Not only is this a staggeringly bad way to kill off a character, there's absolutely zero excuse for such shoddy writing, since previous quests have handled that sort of thing rather well to the point that even the death of the World Guardian's one-note Satellite Love Interest was bittersweet and tragic. To add insult to injury, the rest of the quest stops being at all about V and the Fremennik people despite being billed as being about them, instead choosing to focus on some random Dragonkin we've never seen before having a completely nonsensical pissing contest, as well as bloated, hamfisted exposition about a random Out Of Nowhere Elder Artifact as the World Guardian suddenly decides to go on a Roaring Rampageof Revenge for V's death, despite only knowing him for a few minutes. That's right, the entire plot hinges on the protagonist being enough of a suicidal moron with zero priorities to want to avenge some dude s/he only knew for a couple minutes—a reaction s/he never even has the option to have about the death of his/her own wife/husband! The entire quest is an Idiot Plot! And to top it all off, the quest is tone-deaf and laden with horrifically unfunny jokes, including post-quest dialogue in which a random innocent fisherman is blamed for V's death, resulting in his wife leaving him for his brother. Because an innocent man's life being ruined because of a false accusation, or in this case, because everyone is holding the Idiot Ball is just the most hilarious thing ever, right?
    • SCP Ihpkmn: I quit Runescape because of two reasons: the quest Firemaker's Curse and the third World Event. The former was a quest that was so utterly frustrating that it put me off playing the game for a month, full of frustrating fire puzzles that were almost unplayable because of the pathfinding system Runescape uses for firemaking, a Fake Difficulty boss fight which actually hit you harder if you had armor on, and a glitch which made the quest unbeatable until I logged out three times. The latter... it involved climbing onto the back of an apocalypse-bringing god who was going to devour Gilenor, the planet Runescape takes place on. It consisted of doing repetitive actions that weren't worth doing more than once a day, was swept by a faction of alleged militant atheists that most people picked because the actual popular factions in the game weren't represented, wasn't acknowledged at all by anyone outside of the event- despite it absolutely wrecking two major cities in the finale- and overall, stank.

    S 
  • Master N: Today on "Master N rants about endings he hates", we're looking at Sacred Earth - Alternative, in which you play as Konoe in her search to find her memories and save what little is left of the world, and the story is fairly intriguing, though not without some problems. So you get to the end and fight the Final Boss... and even if you win, she kills Konoe and destroys the world anyway, and brings about an implied Happy Ending Override for Promise. OK, a lot of RPG games have Multiple Endings, so clearly that's the bad end and the player has to go back and do something to trigger the Golden Ending. So you go fight the Superboss and unlock the True Final Boss fight, and what's your reward for all that hard work? The exact same depressing ending, with ONE additional scene added that's nothing but a Cliffhanger. As I have stated on my troper page, there is no worse ending for a video game than one that ends by invalidating the player's efforts, and the fact that the game teases you with an alternate ending only for it to be essentially the same ending with one minor difference feels like a giant middle finger to any players who got through the game's challenges. Basically, it's Final Fantasy XIII-2's ending all over againnote , and is so bad that it killed my interest in the series going forward, because I do not want to stick around if it's gonna do this again.
  • Ryan Puffs: Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell is a interesting game to say the least. The Grand Finale to the Saints Row series... outsourced to a different studio, only focusing on activities, and is a expansion pack. I could probably dedicate this entry on how they handled Dex, but that's been discussed a lot already and I'd have nothing new to bring to the table. What I can bring to the table is how they handled Troy Bradshaw. Tormet Fraud is a reskinned Insurance Fraud that instead has dead characters from the previous games shaving off years that have to spend in Hell, the other two being Tobias and Luz, but that's not the main focus. Troy is one of them, which is fair that he's in Hell. He continued to help the Saints, a street gang that's involved with murder and other crimes. However, the issue is the narration. It treats Troy as if he's a treacherous scumbag who deserves his time in Hell for his history of betrayal... except he was literally just doing his job as a undercover cop, which arguably puts him in the right. And even then, even after he became chief of police, he kept Playa alive during their coma and even helped protect Johnny Gat in prison, after he tried to kill Troy. Yes, Troy forgave Gat for his attempted murder by making sure no one harmed him while he was in prison. You could argue about how they make Julius out to be a disloyal asshole too, and it's very much true that they paint him in a dishonest light, but at least that has the justification of him trying to kill the Playa via the boat bomb. Not only has Troy done nothing wrong to the Saints, he helped them and expressed disgust at Julius' methods in dismantling the Saints. What this eventually boils down to is Protagonist-Centered Morality to the extreme, the good things Troy has done for the 3rd Street Saints be damned.
  • nerullralishaz: An older game that always infuriated me was Shadowrun on the Sega Genesis. Without spoiling too much, you get to the final boss and fight him in a tough battle. Then at 25% health here comes an ally who you saved in a previous mission. He tells you the bad guy is too strong to defeat (despite having already knocked him down to 25% health). He then tells you how to trap the boss. Do you actually get to do so? No! Instead, it immediately goes to a (poorly animated) scene where they show you trap the boss. Game over, roll the credits. Huh? Just a little hint to a game designer: players might actually want to click a button or something to get to the ending. Not just have it handed to them out of thin air and then go to credits. Terrible ending to an otherwise entertaining game.
  • Luca Earlgrey: Not long after 7th Dragon III: code VFD starts, Nodens is under attack by dragons. Okay, so Unit 13 barely manages to kill a lesser dragon, and the next they see is Spectus, a High Dragon that Nagamimi stresses is too powerful for Unit 13 in their current state to fight. Unit 13 insists on charging at the dragon, and just to rub salt in the wound both dialogue choices amount to the same answer: "We gotta stop this dragon and save people!" As a result, Spectus beats the whole group to near-death, and Nagamimi chews out Unit 13 for their stupidity despite there being no dialogue option to wisely retreat. Like geez, sorry the game didn't let me say "Yeah, saving civilians is important but you're right, we should retreat for now instead of committing a Stupid Sacrifice."
  • AnarchyBalsac: Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne has the True Demon Ending. You kill everything and everybody just to help some emo kid who's sore about getting his ass kicked grind his ax with God. Granted, God is supposed to be evil up until and through this game, but clearly you are too if you did this just to go after him.
    • JayJuJayMeMan: Made worse by the fact that you have to work hard to get this ending. You must complete a Bonus Dungeon, and face the game's True Final Boss.
    • Grumpy Old Man: I agree. Though Atlus may have been trying to make the point that working hard for someone who seems to be the good guy could backfire and turn you into a brainwashed monster, it was probably better presented in a way that didn't require long sidequests and an extra end boss.
  • matteste: While I am highly tempted to put the writing of the entirety of Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse here, if I had to pick a single moment it would be the alignment choice scene without question. To go into detail, let's start with the least shitty option first, the Massacre route option. Now in the game, while there are questions that push into one alignment, the game makes a huge failure in actually writing around that. It fully expects you to take the other route and as a result, if you pick Massacre, it will come out left field with everyone suddenly turning on you immediately (despite that some said they would support you no matter what you choose) fully intent on killing you where you stand. (Nozomi even pulls a fake "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight just to try and get a free shot in. Makes you wonder how deep that so called "friendship" really where, doesn't it). All of this while the Isabeau battle theme from the previous game just to try and hammer in that this was not the path you where supposed to take. Even the goddess of Tokyo squeezes out a faint "Why?" later on just to drive it in further. Now for the worse of the two, the Bonds route choice. Now while this one is more in line with the rest of the narrative and you are predictably forced into a battle with Dagda, it was here that Danu went from my hated characters list to my shoot on sight list. Understandably, Dagda is furious over you not keeping your end of the bargain so then he logically takes back the life he gave you. Now since Nanashi is the main character, there of course have to be some way to save him right? Of course there is, just have Dagda's mother Danu create a new Dagda that is subservient to her that can keep Nanashi alive. Not only is this morally questionable on several levels, despite Danu saying I Did What I Had to Do, it ultimately rings hollow due to the writing treating it as ultimately the right option and she never get's called out on this and the original Dagda goes on to be forgotten in favor of the doll she created in his image. Is it any wonder Dagda turned out the way he did with a mother like her.
  • Magister Flopsy: Mainline Shin Megami Tensei storytelling has always been about themes first and characters second, usually having paper-thin characters that act as mouthpieces for the ideologies they represent. However, Shin Megami Tensei V has paper-thin characters even by the franchise's usual standard, to the point it makes the game's story border on Excuse Plot. And nowhere is this more apparent than the scene where Dazai embraces his role as the game's law hero. Literally he goes from adorkable coward to Large Ham evil anime priest in the span of one scene.
  • Sam Max: I liked Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time as a whole but Penelope's betrayal is a divisive for a good reason: it practically came out of nowhere. Especially since Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves has her spend a good chunk of the game having a crush on Sly, yet here, she hates him because she felt her potential was being wasted, even though she didn't have that many missions in Sly 3, and seemed to have no problem with that. It's just frustrating all around.
    • SenorCornholio: For me, the worst moment in this otherwise fantastic entry in the Sly Cooper franchise is the final battle against Le Paradox. The guy's been set up as a competent, if not egocentric villain who does keep letting his presence known instead of staying in the shadows, but is still supposed to be of skill equal to Sly himself. Great buildup, but piss-poor execution. Problem 1) the battle is a Cutscene Boss. You basically just press the buttons to focus on the fight. 2) The only bits of "gameplay" are chasing after the skunk. So basically, even Penelope above had an awesome boss fight that didn't involve her being cowardly and didn't incorporate this lousy cliché. 3) His motives (initially thought to be Revenge) turn out to be proving that he's the greatest thief who ever lived by stealing the Coopers' canes. Way to shoot yourself in the foot there, stinky. 4) After you defeat him, Le Paradox begs for mercy and then steals Sly's hang glider, flying off and leaving Sly's fate unknown to the general populace, and if you're really dedicated to 100%, you'll find that Sly's been stranded in Ancient Egypt! This game was otherwise amazing; in fact, I'd say it's probably my second favorite in the series after Band of Thieves. But this final boss was a disappointment due to lousy gameplay mechanics and an unsatisfying ending that left us on a Sequel Hook. Hopefully Sly 5 rectifies this if it ever comes out...
  • Maths Angelic Version: SongBird Symphony was a cute little rhythm/platform game that I unfortunately ended up souring on due to the pretty bad missteps in the final act. First it's revealed that the Owl is an Evil All Along genocidal monster, which is a pointlessly dark twist that only serves to clash with the tone of the rest of the game. That's followed by a "touching" scene where the Masked Bird reveals herself to be Birb's mother, and it's explained that she and the Magpie Gang were trying to stop Birb's quest to help the Owl build his artifact because they knew about his true nature. This is so infuriating because instead of making a legitimate attempt to explain themselves, the Magpie Gang just kept on trying to intimidate and bully Birb into giving up. Not only was their approach stupid, mean and ineffectual, but we get the lovely implication that Birb's mother apparently thought it would be a good idea to sic bullies on her son to "protect" him. The story tries to Hand Wave away the "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot aspect by explaining why the Masked Bird didn't want to reveal her identity, but that in no way kept them from just telling Birb why he shouldn't be helping the Owl.
  • Kirby 0189: The ending for the Sonic 3 half for Sonic 3 & Knuckles is incredibly abrupt and unsatisfying, just having Sonic watching the Death Egg falling from orbit for no reason and then jumping at the screen. I know they rushed Sonic 3 onto store shelves and made Sonic and Knuckles later to release the rest of the content they wanted, but just how terrible the ending was compared to the Sonic games before it, along with how they didn't remove it from the locked-on game despite not needing a half-assed ending at what is now the halfway point anymore, just hammered in my dissatisfaction with the whole package that makes me hate this particular entry in a series I otherwise love.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (2006):
    • TheMustachioedOne: Alright, it seems unnecessary at this point to even bother going into this one, but no Dethroning Moment of Suck page featuring video games would be complete without that one moment in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006). After clearing all of the characters' stories, you unlock Final Story. And Sonic dies immediately after the chapter starts. You then have to go through the Very Definitely Final Dungeon... without the main character, the one whose name is on the fucking box. They still need him to defeat the final boss, and then comes the greatest Ass Pull the series has ever indulged in. The Chaos Emeralds apparently can bring one back to life now, something that's never been either established in previous games nor this one, so long as they're coupled with True Love's Kiss. Who delivers the kiss? The human princess, of course! The scene wouldn't be so squicky if the game's design didn't make the humans and the main cast look like they're from completely different universes, and if Sonic, of course, weren't a goddamn corpse. The game literally needed to write itself out of existence in order to avoid having to make Sonic commit to that sort of relationship.
    • InTheGallbladder: For me, it was Blaze's Heroic Sacrifice. I didn't like Silver, and turning a character I actually liked and thought they could do more with into his personal martyr didn't help.
    • Chimanruler15: The entire story was poorly written, but what annoyed me most was Sonic's character. Of course, Tropes Are Not Bad, so completely changing a character is not necessarily a bad thing as long as it's done properly... but it wasn't. Throughout the story, Sonic, being an emotionless robot, shows absolutely no concern for anything and anyone besides Elise. He didn't even care that Silver tried to kill him twice, even though the subject was brought up four times. Apparently, someone you knew for only two days is THAT important. Here's the DMoS, though. When Sonic and his friends arrive in Soleanna after defeating Iblis in Flame Core, Shadow and Rouge are nowhere to be seen. While Tails reacts appropriately with concern, Sonic's response is nothing more than, "Those two can take care of themselves." Wow. If Sonic ever actually did care about anything besides Elise, then the writers did a very bad job of showing it. My goodness.
    • Maths Angelic Version: My least favourite moment is when Elise gives herself up to Eggman to "protect her people" when he threatens to destroy Soleanna. Of course, this turns out to be a terrible decision because giving Eggman access to the Flames of Disaster can help him conquer the world and tyrannize everyonenote , so letting him destroy Soleanna would be the lesser evil. There's also the fact that Eggman has already double-crossed Sonic in the story, so he could easily decide to accept Elise's surrender, and then destroy Soleanna later anyway. What makes this moment even more insulting is that Sonic has spent all his story rescuing this stupid princess several times only to see her getting kidnapped again, and now she gives herself up?! Making Sonic's story about saving Elise was a dubious decision in the first place — one thing Sonic the Hedgehog usually has over Super Mario Bros. is that the "save the world from a mad scientist" Excuse Plot is cooler than the "save some stupid princess who gets kidnapped all the time" Excuse Plot — but the ending makes it particularly bad.
  • TheMisterSonic: Before Sonic Forces was out, I was like "Oh, man! Chaos is back from the first game I ever played! I have so many theories about why he's teaming up with Eggman and what he's to do for the story!" Classic Sonic defeats him in one hit. In a cutscene. Four minutes in. And it's not even the real Chaos. And Tails, who did, or at least was able to take out Chaos 4, cowers in fear of his most basic form. You never get to fight him. I wish I could sue for false advertising. I have a ton of other problems with the game, and I'm usually pretty forgiving with the series, but this is unacceptable.
    • Dr Zulu 2010: Heck, just the reveal that Chaos, Zavok, Metal Sonic and Shadow were clones created by the Phantom Ruby and there is a whole lot of them is pretty insulting; Sonic Team has reunited quite a reunion of villains, for the 25th anniversary game nonetheless, and they weren't even the real deal and that came from someone who is pretty lenient in game quality overall (to the point that niche games with a metascore of 60 are considered playable).
    • Supreme-X15: I have issues with Infinite's backstory. I had the impression that Infinite was a mysterious entity and a dangerous villain, and his epic Villain Song implied as such. However, Episode Shadow reveals that he was once normal and had no powers. He called himself the Ultimate Mercenary who led a group of mercenaries aligned with Eggman, and they were easily defeated by Shadow, who also handed his cocky ass right back to him, calling him weak in the process. This lead to the "Ultimate Mercenary" throwing a tantrum, going insane, discarding his original self, and becoming Infinite with the power of the Phantom Ruby. Holy hell, I was so disappointed with this backstory. In the main game, he's meant to be the most dangerous and threatening villain Sonic and friends have faced, but he comes off an egomaniac and sadistic bully, especially to the Avatar. His boss fights are almost pitifully easy, and he's Upstaged by Eggman at the climax of the game, disappearing without a trace. I would love his character more if it wasn't for his backstory being so petty, his inflated ego being so fragile, making costly mistakes during the game's run, and being written out entirely by the end of the game. Sonic villains have always been entertaining, in one way, or another, but Infinite just generates less favorable feelings for me. Boring personality, and weak backstory, thy name is Infinite. At least I can still enjoy his theme song.
    • SenorCornholio: For me, it has to be the third-to-last level, Iron Fortress. To recap, you just stopped Infinite's illusion of the sun falling onto everyone, and you and Modern Sonic defeated him for the third and final time. Now you're ready to take down Eggman and save the world. Sooooo...how do we ruin that? It's quite simple, really; just follow these simple steps and you, too, can make a terrible climactic stage! Step 1: make it a Classic Sonic stage. I already mentioned in my last entry how badly Classic Sonic plays, and it's no exception here. But long story short: he drops like a rock, his controls are awkward, and he has no plot relevance otherwise. Step 2: put incredibly unfitting music in this stage. The background music is cheery beyond belief despite the fact that the war is entering its final stages. Whoever made this music was clearly not informed where it should go. Step 3: there's a random Auto-Scrolling Section at the halfway point of the stage. There's been auto-scrolling before, but using Classic Sonic's completely backwards controls just makes it even more difficult to deal with. If you're still not accustomed to this control scheme, be prepared to die. A lot. Step 4: combine this with the stage's main gimmick. Throughout the level are rotating wheels that launch Sonic if he Spin Dashes. Because you're auto-scrolling, you have barely any time to use them before you're pushed off the wheels and sent careening to your death. Bottom line: this stage sucks on both the gameplay and story fronts, and even though I accepted everything the game had to offer, for better or for worse, this was easily the game's biggest sin. I was right, Christian Whitehead should just take the reins on Classic Sonic for the foreseeable future.
  • Fofa: Soul Calibur V, I have a problem with your writing. Pyrrha and Patroklos are the Spotlight-Stealing Squad and none of the other characters get any real story time. The Replacement Scrappy levels are too high, and the games' story could have just ended at IV. But I draw the line at how you wrote out my favourite character, Cassandra. Bascially, She was shocked into a one-blow submission from Sophitia's forced Face–Heel Turn and somehow ended up in an alternate dimension, unable to return. Come on Namco, Cassandra was more badass than that! I'm calling Fanon Discontinuity on this one.
    • Storm Kensho: What really teed me off about SC5 was the developer justification for why Taki (longtime series Ensemble Dark Horse) had retired from her mission of hunting the evil of Soul Edge: Apparently, Taki being 46 years-old meant she was too old to be a ninja and, like a proper woman, retired and trained a successor. Talk about massive Values Dissonance! For one, anyone, especially a woman (who generally age a good bit slower than men, especially if they don't put their bodies through the stress of pregnancy and childbirth) will be more than capable of performing physical acrobatics and possess above-average flexibility into their fifties if they're vigorous enough with training and keeping themselves in shape, which Taki undoubtedly would due to being, y'know, Taki. Secondly, Mitsurugi is the exact same age as Taki in SC5 and is just as skilled and as capable as he was 17 years prior despite being in a similarly-harrowing profession.
    • Animeking 1108: What turned me against the game was Patroklos' Establishing Character Moment, where he murders an innocent man suspected of being Malfested. What made it even worse was the smug smile he had while saying "It's a shame you can't prove it" after the man claimed his innocence. Really, Namco? Designated Hero doesn't even describe him. I give Hank Hill, Carly Shay, and Haruhi Suzumiya crap for being in the Designated Hero trope, but at least they never killed anybody.
    • WRM 5: I agree with Animeking 1108, but I'd like to expand on it a bit. See, the bit that immediately precedes that moment is actually fine. Patroklos arrives in a town torn apart by war and is beset by three people who are fighting to end the bloodshed. He decides that they must be malfested and kills them. That's a great sequence and perfectly establishes what I think they wanted to say about Patroklos: he killed three people who weren't actually evil, yeah, but it was understandable: he was being misled and they did attack him first. If THAT had been Patroklos' Establishing Character Moment it would have been tremendously effective. Unfortunately, as has been mentioned, that wasn't the end of the scene because immediately after that Patroklos stops a homeless man on the street and declares him malfested because he's pale and filthy. First off, what? I thought the point of the preceding scene was that Patroklos doesn't actually know what a malfested is. The three guys he killed weren't pale or filthy. If being pale and filthy is a factor in determining who is malfested than that means he knew those three guys earlier weren't malfested and killed them for no reason. More than that, the smug expression and "pity there's no way to prove it" line is what really drives the point home: Patroklos knew full well that this guy was almost certainly not a malfested and he didn't care. He's not a champion of justice who's being misled by the villain, he's just a murderous bigot who enjoys killing people for little to no reason. So why is he the hero again?
    • Loekman 3: What made me truly hate him is when he sees Phyrra becoming the host of Soul Edge. So does he try to help his "little" sister to break free from the sword's control as his goal in the entire story, does he attempt to remind her of who she is or try ask for help to help free his sister? No!!! Instead, he just runs away from her immediately after seeing her in that state and when he met her again, he kills her without any remorse or pity, as he sees her as just another malfested for him to kill. And he would have done it too if it weren't for the Ass Pull time travel from the Edge Master. This is the real moment to me that cements Patroklos as one of the most triumphant example of Designated Hero in the history of video games.
  • Gyrobot: Spec Ops: The Line, White Phosphorous. Now I understand it was meant to mercilessly attack the player for what he usually does in UAV style missions. But not even No Russian had done something like that. Actually, now when you think about it... How would you feel if No Russian had a "Infilitration Meter" where in order to keep your cover you are forced to kill civilians rather than walk menacingly with your Light Machine Gun? That was what the White Phosphorous event felt like.
    • cricri3007: The revelation that Konrad was Dead All Along. Other games had a similar message as this one, criticizing the player for being violent and a "monster". But what those games had is also something that could be said to be representative of the developers, something that caused your protagonist/the player to do those things. Ryan built Rapture, The Rook Island "call the strong" and make everyone crazy over time, among others. By revealing that Konrad didn't even exist, the devs are saying everything the player did is entirely his/her fault, without any acknowledgement about their part in it.
  • Loekman 3: Miles "Evolved" Suit from Marvels Spiderman 2 got me to say like "Why man...?". Besides being ugly and completely uneccessary, the reason for doing so is apparently because he wants to distinguish himself from Peter, but like he already does that from the very start and that is not to mention that he does this while in the middle of a Symbiote invasion that threatens the entire planet with it. Oh and to make things even worse, nobody showed any complaints about it, in fact they praised it with Peter, Ganke and Hailey thinking that his new appearance suits him.
  • StarCraft II
    • Enchanter468: Let it be known that thus far I love StarCraft II, but one revelation really frustrates me. During The Reveal of the Bad Future, we learn that the Overmind, the world-devouring nightmare from the first game, didn't do any of said world-consuming of its own free will. Instead, it was forced to do that by its masters, and the Queen of Blades, implied in the first game to be the Zerg's ultimate weapon against the Protoss, was really created because she was the only way the Zerg could hope to be free of their enslavement. Not only does this Retcon contradict the way the Overmind acts in the first game's Zerg campaign (where it seems to be quite happy about its mission and never angsts about its children being "slaves"), but it turns an extremely cool Big Bad that turned against its masters and ate them before tearing across the galaxy with the desire to absorb the Protoss, into a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds with no free will of its own, which inevitably brings on a large amount of Villain Decay. I like the way the new Eldritch Abomination Big Bad is shaping up, but did Blizzard really need to neuter the Overmind to get us here?
    • Retloclive: For Starcraft II, something that really pissed me off was when Wings of Liberty came around where the Terran Dominion are portrayed as the evil empire where Mengsk rules with an iron fist... It's like Blizzard Entertainment totally forgot that throughout the Brood War expansion to the original game, Mengsk's Terran Dominion had gotten their butts handed to them by both the UED and Kerrigan's Zerg Swarm to the point that Mengsk had nothing left but ruins of his former empire by the time Brood War was over. Sorry Blizzard, but I'm never going to buy the fact that it only took the four-year interlude between the original games and Starcraft II for Mengsk's Terran Dominion to suddenly rebuild and become the Terran powerhouse again, especially when other Terran factions like the Kel-Morian-Combine, and the Umojan Protectorate, are just sitting there ready to step in and take advantage of the weakened state that the Terran Dominion was left in after Brood War. For me, this failure at world-building was the starting red-flag where I just knew right away that the Starcraft II trilogy wasn't going to be as good as the original games.
  • Princess Togezo: As much as I love Stardew Valley, Caroline's six-heart event really dropped the ball in my opinion. In this scene, Caroline and her daughter Abigail are arguing, with Abigail frustrated at Caroline being controlling, and Caroline angrily retorting that she and her husband Pierre let Abigail live with them rent-free until she finishes her schooling, and Abigail doesn't seem to appreciate that at all. And then it's revealed that this whole argument started because Caroline expected Abigail to dress a certain way — which, considering what we know about this family from other scenes, most likely means more femininely. Whether intentional or not, this scene ends up making Caroline sound really entitled, like she's owed the feminine daughter of her dreams just for doing things she's supposed to do as a parent, and has the right to hold her parental responsibilities over Abigail's head when the latter doesn't conform with her vision. Given that Caroline comes off as likable in other scenes, this one scene is really jarring and gave me a slight Broken Pedestal towards her character. For what it's worth, she did apologize later in the same scene, but given that (as far as I remember) there's no later moment where Caroline learns to more fully accept her daughter for who she is, it doesn't feel like she learned her lesson.
  • Connor 2107: Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was a pretty lackluster experience overall, and the game's story did it absolutely no favors. To summarize, the Batman we've known and loved for at least four games gets brainwashed by Brainiac, and later shot in the head by Harley Quinn. But that's not the DMOS. The DMOS is right before Harley kills him, she calls him out for "causing long-term mental and emotional damage to everyone you knew." Excuse me!? Harley, you once helped the Joker dose a five year old with TITAN. You do not have the moral high ground.
    • I Like Robots: This game's writing as a whole is awful, and there are several examples of suckage I could list, but because Batman's death has already been mentioned and I can only pick one moment, I'll add the aftermath of the Flash's death for being especially egregious. So the Flash has previously saved the Suicide Squad from being taken to Braniac's ship and brainwashed by mind-controlled Green Lantern. The Flash succumbs to Braniac's mind control and the Squad kills him. Afterwards, Captain Booomerang outright tries to piss on his corpse. Already crass and unfunny, but it gets worse; Deadshot stops him and says they should show him some respect, only for the scene to turn into an idiotic dick joke with the Squad congratulating Boomerang for being apparently well-endowed. Yes, seriously. The scene is the epitome of what's wrong with the game's story: Immature, cringeworthy and edgy writing and disrespect for beloved heroic characters. And as a game canon to the fantastic Arkhamverse, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
  • Namco: The last 10% of Suikoden V. While an otherwise refreshing game that wonderfully shows the implications of leadership of a queendom, the last bit is a horrid, horrid, Ass Pull to the story. Just after the last War battle, and fighting Allenia and Zahaak, the story spews out Ass Pull, just so Creator Pets Gizel and Marscal Godwin are redeemed. After having every last one of his plans destroyed, all of Falena against him after their Genocide plot, and even losing his home, I expected resident Smug Snake Gizel to go out into one of the biggest Villainous Breakdown in video game history. Instead, he goes off on a tangent about how the sun rune warped his and his father's minds into doing the worse things they did, and before you can call them on it, he then says they still knew what they were doing all along and were doing it for Falena's prosperity. There is so much wrong with this namely, they say the rune affected them because they were near it. There are many, many, times where you see scholars in the same room as the damn thing, and they aren't afflicted at all! and the Godwins spend maybe 5% of the time they are in the room with it. Hey, if it afflicts those near it, how could anyone ever approach the Queen without being influenced themselves? Gizel's death after his duel with the Prince is handled in such a way that Tearjerker is impossible. After everything he did to screw with every citizen of Falena, players are supposed to feel Sympathy for the Devil which is very hard to do after watching the Meanwhile scenes: his Smug Snake personality is up to eleven as the new Knight Commander. Despite the fact the game could have ended there (Lym even points out how dumb it is that there's still more to do), developers felt the need for a textbook example of Xen Syndrome with Ashtal Mountain. It is the Scrappy Level of the game (Minus Twilight Forest) with Let's Split Up, Gang! which, filled with Demonic Spiders and while done before in ruins, this time apparently, the game needed padding for the dungeon of a boss (all That One Boss for bonus points) for each of the three parties (when you likely have maybe a party and a half of leveled characters to this point) and an extremely unsatisfying final boss which is a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere. Marscal taking the sun rune here is an absolute WTF moment. The final boss comes about because he's testing whether the Prince will be a good royal...except there's only ending in which he even becomes Knight Commander, and most probably shelled out for the 60-107 star ending. Afterwards, Lyon will die if you didn't 60 or more stars, or they will have a Disney Acid Sequence, and see the Prince's dead parents. What makes even this a fail? Zahaak and Allenia are there, and happy for them. The same girl who was going to kill the prince for Gizel is clapping for him. It is so jarring for her after that it ruins the whole scene. Worse still, Gizel and Marstal are there, and happy as well, as if the whole thing was just for the Prince to be a better himself. This almost ruins it entirely because of how Out of Character everyone is. The final nail in the coffin? The antagonists are five feet away from Ferid and Arshtot, and they don't even so much as reprimand them, let alone call them out on everything they've done and how they haven't the right to act as if every death was just so the Prince could beat the Sun rune.

    T-Z 
  • Noa JM: Another day in Team Fortress 2 has the release of 'Blood In The Water' which features more hilarious hyper masculinity hijinks and more much needed backstory, but the most egregious example of all is that the fact that the Sniper is revealed to be not actually Australian, but New Zealand... lian? Anyway, this is annoying because his character was designed to be based on the stereotype of how an Australian was seen by the general American public and this is the TF2 Team giving the finger to the designers and artists who had spent many years of hard work designing his character. Which, to be fair, was thrown out the window when Valve decided that the Chuck Norris and 'Australians are manly' meme was funny despite it being out of date for several years, and introduced Saxton Hale and the subsequent comics that say that Australia is full of manly things and mustaches and who knows what else. But the point is, the comics are just unnecessary filler and now that they've destroyed an integral part of the Sniper's character, it is hard to look at the game and its community any more who insist on shoveling in lame jokes hoping that it would reach meme status, like their earlier works. Do note that this is merely the straw that broke the camel's back - I had thought that the game was slowly sliding downhill for years ever since the Sniper Vs Spy update. To summarize, what an insult to nine years of work - people toiled to bring a funny and stereotypical representation of a nationality, and it was changed in a heartbeat despite all evidence to the contrary. Shame on you Valve. Stop focusing so much on TF2 and bloating the plot with stupid, pointless backstories and let the cash cow rest.

  • Luca Earlgrey: Time Crisis 5: True Mastermind Edition: For all the game's weird reveals, the one that sticks out out like a sore thumb to me and made me apply palm to face is when Keith Martin, player-1 character of Time Crisis II, reveals that Robert, player-2 character of the same game who's become the Big Bad of this game, murdered Christy Ryan, the VSSE's internal auditor and Damsel in Distress from Time Crisis II, and that Christy was Keith's girlfriend at the time. At that point, my Willing Suspension of Disbelief went out the window, because as a professional crisis-solving armed organization that has solved some pretty nasty incidents like a coup (first game), a Kill Sat launch (Time Crisis II), one nation invading another (Time Crisis 3), and a rogue branch of the U.S. military almost nuking the entire country (Time Crisis 4), surely the VSSE must have anti-fraternization policies in place? There was no prior hint that Keith and Christy were dating and it just seems like a bad way to add more tragedy to legacy characters (i.e. "oh no, my old partner killed our mutual coworker, oh and that mutual coworker was my girlfriend"). Maybe if this taboo relationship is elaborted on in a hypothetical Adaptation Expansion port (much like how the console ports of Time Crisis 3 and 4 add side modes that take place from allied characters' POVs and interweave extra details into the story) so that it's not just some brief mention, I'd be a bit more sympathetic, and even then, I still think making two coworkers in such an organization date each other is pretty gross — even civilian employers have an unspoken rule of "don't shit where you eat."

  • Maths Angelic Version: I'm a long-time Touhou Project fan, but I can't stand the story of Wily Beast and Weakest Creature. If I have to point to one moment that ruins it, it's when it's revealed what you're actually fighting for: you're being tricked into helping an alliance of animal spirits who believe that the strong have the right to abuse and enslave the weak. This twist would have been fine if it led to the protagonist rebelling against the animal spirits, but nope. The rest of the game has them making you fight Keiki, a god who tried to protect the victims of their cruel and unjust system. While the story is annoyingly unclear about her exact morality,note  no interpretation is appealing in the slightest because of how utterly unlikable the animal spirits are.note  If a Keiki victory would improve things, I obviously don't want to be forced to fight her, and if it would just lead to the destruction of the Animal Realm, I have absolutely no interest in saving that awful place full of awful people. ZUN's explanation does nothing to save it either because the allegory (corporate tyranny vs. AI tyranny) is shallow and presents a false dichotomy not worth asking in the first place (and even if it had been better written, an "oops, it turns out everyone is unlikable" conflict or "oops, you made sure The Bad Guy Wins" twist is not a good fit for a game meant to be replayed a lot). Finally, it's a shame that the cool concept of a liberator and sculptor goddess is wasted on this cynical nonsense.

  • Kenya Starflight: I love and adore Undertale, and even like Alphys despite understanding why some players find her annoying. But her random text messages in the Hotland zone feel pretty unnecessary, adding no story or character development that isn't already given in other parts of the game and doing little more than slow down an already lengthy section of the game. And if you're the kind of person who's driven nuts by chatspeak acronyms and smileys, hoo boy...

  • Lily Nadesico: The end of the June mission in Valkyria Chronicles II, with Cosette going through a sudden Heroic BSoD for reasons that, while reasonable, end up seeming contrived and artificial within the plot of the game (she had healed people before, where does that fear of blood come from? And she's a medic who has a fear of blood? What gives?) and Avan shooting himself in the gut just to make a point and motivate her to get over her demons. Thereby irresponsibly removing himself from the chain of command and diverting medical attention from injured civilians and soldiers who needed it more than him. And we're supposed to consider him heroic and admirable for that. Geez, and people get all worked up over the infamous Faldio debacle in the first game...
  • And Thus Discord: Vanquish. The ending. So, Burns dies. The Heel–Face Revolving Door antics were annoying, but okay. Killed off the only memorable character, but okay! We get to the end, we get a phoned-in Token Romance. Not unusual in a game with a mostly Excuse Plot. Suddenly, Remote-controlled robot suits! Winters commits suicide! The Big Bad is winning! What climactic final confrontation will round off this epic - oh. Roll credits. What an utterly transparent Sequel Hook. I'm not falling for that ploy.

  • Enigma Lobo: My opinion on Telltale's The Walking Dead and it's writing had declined since the second half of Season 2, mainly due to my issue with how certain characters were treated that just didn't sit right with me, along with the drop in quality in terms of story telling. Sarah's death in Season 2 felt both mean-spirited and spiteful towards a child who was confirmed by Telltale to have PTSD (as well as shown to have signs of anxiety and panic disorders), and the vitriolic response from the writers regarding about their distaste towards Sarah made them appear highly immature and unprofessional towards people of disability. The overall quality with A New Frontier was also a massive let-down that felt very disconnected to the previous seasons, mainly due to the story focusing on the dreaded family drama and love-triangle within the Garcia family instead of Clementine, along with the sudden deaths of Kenny and Jane, or the abrupt downfall of Wellington that negated the entire point of Season 2. The final nail in the coffin for me was the second episode of The Final Season, featuring the return of Lilly, who I felt so Out of Character they don't seem like the same person at all. We had a well-written character from Season 1 who was portrayed as a morally-complex and well-intentioned character who was pushed into villainy due to the trauma and injustice they had endured. Upon returning into The Final Season? Lilly has been inexplicably reduced into a remorseless child kidnapper, child torturer, child soldier engineer, and child murderer, purely to create a villain for The Final Season. After finding myself disliking Kenny and Jane in Season 2, I found myself appreciating Lilly in turn back in Season 1, and seeing them return in Season 4 as a horrific and irredeemable monster was the last straw for me.
    • Pigeons: This! This was by far the worst moment of the entire (otherwise brilliant) series for me. It was so disgusting. The actual death itself I can handle - if the aftermath had been written well, in fact, it would have been the most effective player punch I'd ever seen. But... Sarah was a 15-year-old girl, possibly somehow disabled, who had gone through more than anyone in the group with what happened to her dad from episode 2 onwards and how much she'd had to cope with. My Clem was really close with her and protective of her, and watching her get eaten alive by walkers while screaming for help, and for her dead dad tore me apart, and then... Nothing. We're just supposed to enjoy the 'heartwarming' scene immediately afterwards. Sure, we got to tell Jane off briefly... But when she leaves the group soon after, because boo hoo, she's the only one affected by Sarah's death, and only for her own selfish reasons, we're supposed to be torn up about it. No way. I wanted to grab Jane and throw her down to the walkers, not be forced to feel sympathy with her. Every death afterwards left a bad taste in my mouth, and I couldn't get into the sadness of it. Sure, episode 5 was heartbreaking, but whenever someone died, I was sitting there grinding my teeth, because I kept thinking "oh sure, we'll be sad for Rebecca/Luke/whoever. Sarah mattered much more to me, so can we please stop mourning these people when the sweetest and most innocent character in the season (who's been with us since episode 1!) apparently didn't matter whatsoever?" Absolutely disgusting. As much as I love these games, I'm never getting over how awful that was.
    • Noa JM: A moment in the otherwise stellar Episode 5 of Season 2 stands out with myself. Firstly, Mike, Bonnie and if you're nice to him, Arvo. You're forced into a railroaded plot where no matter how nice you treat Arvo or how much you agree with Bonnie and Mike you're gonna get shot by Arvo and have to go with Jane and Kenny. Bonnie's attitude towards Clementine also forces her into Jerkass territory if you cover Luke instead of saving him, as she decides to blame her for Luke being dead and is willing to leave Clementine behind to bleed out from her gunshot wound. Mike is a painful example of Lima syndrome, as he disregards all sense of logic and is constantly sympathetic to Arvo (which, to be honest, can make sense if you robbed him). But still, taking the truck and all of the supplies knowing that there's an 11 year old girl and a newborn baby that needs it? Ultimate dick move, you three. And due to the story's penchant for open ended interpretation of characters that disappear offscreen, one possibility is that they Karma Houdini'd their way out of the situation.
    • Truffle: What annoys me is how much time and effort I put into bonding with the characters only to end up watching them die. The game constantly gives you the illusion of choice, except it's less of a choice, and more a case of delaying the inevitable. Saving someone in one chapter will only cause their death in another. If Walter saves Nick in chapter two, he'll die later in chapter four. If you convince Sarah to leave the trailer with you, she'll die later at the observation deck. And regardless of whether you run to help Luke, or choose to stay and cover him, he dies anyway. It really makes the game slip into Too Bleak, Stopped Caring, and the only characters who impact the plot are Jane and Kenny, making everyone else expendable.
    • Capn MP: As awfully handled as that potential death scene for Sarah was, especially considering that "leave Sarah behind" death in the trailer is handled *infinitely better*, I could tolerate it. What made me question even bothering with the rest of the series was a part in the first episode of Season 3/A New Frontier/callitwhatyouwill. It's revealed that Clementine is alone because Kenny, and presumably AJ, just died in between seasons. At least as far as this episode goes, Kenny's death is the only one seen, and even then only through a flashback sequence. Now yes, it's true that important and beloved characters die all the time in this show, hell, look at the end of Season 1. But the difference between that and this is that, while Lee died saving Clem, and his served an important purpose as setting the groundwork for Season 2's Start of Darkness, Kenny dies because of a car crash. That's it. Sure, he gets the walkers away from Clememtine and AJ before they eat him, but that doesn't change the fact that his death was completely unnecessary. We, the player, spent all of season 1 becoming Fire-Forged Friends with him as Lee, and 4/5ths of season 2 becoming like a daughter to him as Clementine, and they want to give him such a lame, unnecessary death as this? Fuck. You. This is as bad as that Alien movie where it's revealed at the very beginning that Newt just died in a fuckup with the cryotube. They just killed off an important character who deserved so much more. They can kill Kenny all they want to, but for Christ's sake, don't do it at the very start of the season in an incredibly unsatisfying way. Honestly, who *didn't* want Kenny to be present for the events of season 3, even if he dies later? Waaait a minute. I think I just figured out why Kenny died so quickly and so unimportantly. Remember the end of Season 2, where you had a choice between him and Jane? Both of them are very different characters and having Kenny/Jane around for a significant length of time in Season 3 would make the story actually diverge based on who you picked, and then The Walking Dead wouldn't be able to railroad us up the ass like it always has done. I never played the Jane ending but $5 says the scene would've gone exactly the same with a different character in place. Seriously, back in the era of Season 1 the railroading was fine, because Telltale Games was a smaller, not so well known company, and it would've taken a lot of effort to make it seriously diverge. And even back then, sure it was the same story, but it was at least a good story. But just throwing away this awesome character for the sake of being too lazy to make the plot different with two different characters, is unforgivable.
    • Duke Nukem4ever: Jane's death is different, but it's no less infuriating. Basically, after discovering that she was pregnant with Luke's baby, Jane basically commits suicide and comes back as a walker, with Clementine either leaving her or putting her out of her misery. What? Back in Season 2 Jane was against commiting suicide, yet in Season 3 she is okay with it. Sure, being pregnant during zombie apocalypse is a nightmare, but there are many ways to get a happy ending out of this. And the family you can accept in Jane's ending? Gone without a trace with only some implications existing. Good thing Season 4 managed to rescue the franchise literally at it's dusk.

  • Aj Wargo: I would have liked Warhammer Quest 2: The End Times, but for one simple issue- the random Travel Events. While most of them can be dealt with easily, there was one that I always dreaded coming across- the one involving encountering priests. This is where the game plays it's most dirty trick- the worst outcome for any of these is for the selected characters to sustain an injury via either the priest casting a curse on them for standing still (which is extremely petty), the priest bursting into flame, or the priest turning out to be a bunch of Nurglings. And note that I listed three examples there- that means all three choices can lead to your characters being injured, and the only way to remove injuries I know of is to level up. And the worst part? There's no way to know which choice injures your characters- it's literally up to the RNG! I’d expect this in something like Darkest Dungeon, for God's sake!
  • Ordeaux26: I did like We. The Revolution for most of the game until after you execute Robespierre. After that, the game introduces us to Bruno, who is your brother who was assumed to be dead for the entire game is still alive. It is revealed that Bruno has been manipulating the events of the whole game to get back at your father by seeing his son turn eviler and eviler. This moment pretty much destroys and ruins all the progress you have made up until this point and the nuance surrounding the different people in the French revolution, as in the end, it was all part of some guy’s evil plot. It gets worse after that as the game shifts over to real-time strategy, which is extremely poorly done.
  • metalgearhemuli: The Midnight mission from World of Subways 4 - New York Line 7. The whole game is a fairly realistic subway-based Simulation Game until you reach this mission, where you have to avoid a fucking serial killer in a dark subway station, and the mission has fucking jump scares up the ass. What the fuck were they thinking, putting this kind of a survival horror mission that wouldn't feel out of place in a goddamn Slender game, in a fucking subway simulator? This is a genre with a rather niche audience, and I doubt they would enjoy this kind of an out-of-place mission.
  • tsstevens: The WWE Video Games and 2K's utter refusal to fix the system breaking bug that, were the game to crash (which is often) all your save and install data will corrupt and you lose everything. Doesn't matter how many thousands of hours you put in or how much you try and sync the online saves, you lose everything and even though knowing about the problem for years nothing is done to resolve this issue. And just to rub salt in the wound 2K will promote super sales on their old games and in game currency and look boxes and price them higher than they were new, claiming the game is "special." Then, just when I began to let 2K slide and give them a fourth chance (after 2K15, 2K16 and 2K18) child exploitation may be extreme to say of their begging kids to not only gamble on loot boxes and microtransactions but the company begged them to pressure governments to allow underage gambling. EA may be considered the route of all evil in gaming but 2K cheerfully exploits children.
    • Aj Wargo: One moment I’ve always hated was in the 2011 edition of Smackdown Vs Raw on Christian’s Road to Wrestlemania. Basically, Christian is participating at the Royal Rumble in his final ever match on the ECW brand against any of the meager cast of ECW wrestlers.... and then Dolph Ziggler shows up and interferes by distracting the referee, and his opponent chair-shots him, causing him to lose the match and his ECW championship. Not only does Dolph ruin what should be a milestone match in Christian’s career, he makes a bit of a rant before he starts ruining the match which I can’t understand because he uses confusing slang- but my best guess is that he’s saying that he doesn’t think Christian deserves to be on Smackdown. That’s all? That’s extremely petty! Also, you can speak with Dolph backstage prior to the match and Christian calls him a nickname, which could also be the reason he interfered, which is even more petty! The worst part is, Christian isn’t extremely angry at Dolph, and though he does get his revenge by beating Dolph on Smackdown next week, that’s little justice for me! Dolph should have been suspended for doing that! And what’s especially dumb is that the game takes away all control after Christian’s opponent chair-shots him, preventing you from even trying to kick out! If that’s the case, why not just have a cutscene after Christian gets chair-shotted? You don’t have to take all control away and spite us!

  • Gameite2260: XCOM: Enemy Unknown has a very horrible and cliche ending. The psionic volunteer soldier you selected makes a Heroic Sacrifice to pilot a temple ship, to stop it from destroying the earth when it blows up. But after all, this was only one ship of theirs. Maybe the aliens will finally be mad enough to raid your base just like in the original ga- Nope! The game ends right there. Not only is this an unrealistic ending to the alien attacks, but it also left a lot of plot points unanswered. What was up with the Outsiders? They're never mentioned again. And why was the XCOM government leader guy so creepy?
    • Sensemaker It's also ridiculously bad science, the ship suddenly starting to act like a black hole isn't even wrong; it's nonsensical. (A black hole has the same gravitational effect as any other object of the same mass unless you are very close.) The rest of the game had been "somewhat plausible-ish", but now we descend into comic book science.
  • Mudapa: Xenoblade Chronicles 1 is a great RPG. If you never heard of it, check it out. It's one of the most solid games on the Wii. But, one moment really ticks me off. So, when Shulk and friends enter the Bionis Heart, they encounter Lorithia, who has Melia's Brother, Kallian, under her control. After her defeat, she has her as well as Kallian are killed. In Melia's mind, Kallian speaks to Melia one last time, saying she's the last hope for the High-Entia. This is a truly emotional moment. But, it seems as no one heard Kallian (besides Melia), except Riki! What?! Kallian's Last Words were for Melia. Riki has no reason hearing it anyway. And, the worst part is that it was never explained how he heard! Just the fact how The Goofball of the group heard out of all of them, ruins an emotional moment.
  • General Luigi: I didn't care for Xenoblade 2's seventh chapter in general, as I found most of its plot twists predictable—and not the good kind of predictable. The finale of said chapter took the cake, though, thoroughly souring my opinion of how well the game's plot was executed, which I found to be a real shame, as I liked the game's story overall. If my understanding of the plot's overall structure is correct, then this was supposed to be the finale to the story's second act, second only to the ending itself in importance—possibly even more important than the ending. I did not buy Pyra being reduced to a vegetative husk for a second, and considering Xenoblade 2's love of Seemingly Hopeless Boss Fights, I fully expected her to come back right when everything seemed hopeless and help Rex turn things around. I felt absolutely no suspense. While the worst part for me was without a doubt the trite and predictable double cliché of The Power of Love and what was, for all intents and purposes, a Disney Death, I also feel that the writers wasted a lot of potential by taking that route. I think they could have made an entire subplot out of trying to bring Pyra back, and it irks me that they went with such a cheap and overused solution instead.

    Mario and Yoshi 
  • ilovedededeAGAIN: I love Super Mario Sunshine, being one of my favorite Mario games, but the one scene I never liked was when Mario was on trial. There are so many things wrong with this scene. 1. A normal trial in Real Life would last a few hours to even a day. This one lasted only a good two minutes before Mario was deemed guilty. 2. What absolutely pissed me off the most was that the judge and the jury simply deemed Mario guilty: that part in particular left an absolute bitter taste in my mouth because the court had no evidence that Mario was the culprit, they deemed him guilty simply because they thought he was the criminal. They didn't even give him an attorney and there we're no witnesses called either, so this is a fail (even Chuggaaconroy pointed this out). To make it even worse, Mario wasn't even the criminal in the first place: it was a clone of him called "Shadow Mario" who is actually Bowser Jr. in disguise, and if you see him throughout the game, he has a light-blueish color to him - not like Mario. Are the judges idiots or what? Finally, they even didn't give Peach and Toadsworth to object (granted, they did try to object, but the judge automatically ruled it down before they could even say anything aside from "Objection!"), which just flat-out made me pissed because Peach is royalty - the judges should not be able to rule her down. And in the end, Mario is wrongly deemed guilty, gets put in the Delfino Plaza prison for the rest of that day, and is forced to clean up the entirety of Isle Delfino - while on a freaking vacation! And to make it more cheesy, the police said told Mario not to slack off as they'd be watching him. I've "slacked off" so many times in the game, even right in their freaking sight, and they don't even give a crap. As if they forgot that they we're supposed to be watching Mario! Poor Mario was nothing but a Butt-Monkey woobie in that scene! What?!
    • Ninetails 2000: Agreed! The worst part of this is that the court mentions that the graffiti was part of a crime spree that's been going on for months. Mario arrived that day and before he even left the airstrip (after the plane he was on nearly crashed, no less), he had already set to work cleaning graffiti that was already there! And if you walk around and talk to the NPC's about it, they all immediately blame Mario for the problems. This becomes especially stupid given that Shadow Mario has (intentionally) made himself visible enough during his crimes for people to recognize him on sight. There's even an artist sketch that clearly shows that whomever it is is a solid blue individual with red eyes. Also, as the previous poster pointed out, where do they get off dismissing royalty like that? If a friggen' princess is coming to the defense of Mario, then maybe you should hear her out! F.L.U.D.D. even lampshades this during his talk with Mario by pointing out that the real criminal is still running rampant while they're busy throwing Mario under the bus.
    • Ecclytennysmithylove: Thirded. I expected some Character Development from the judge, the jury, and the Isle Delfino residents (i.e. they feel remorse for what they done after being informed that Bowser Jr. was the imposter, and then apologize to Mario for the misunderstanding). But no, in the end they just cheered for Mario for defeating Bowser and Bowser Jr.. Some friendly citizens they are!
    • Maths Angelic Version: Fourthed. The whole Kangaroo Court mess rendered the Piantas utterly unlikable to me. Either they're complete idiots, or they're cruel enough to realize that Mario is innocent, but decide to frame him anyway because he seems to be an appropriate scapegoat and a nice solution to their problems. Not that it's a great solution in either case. If I were Mario, you could bet I'd be trying to escape from Isle Delfino anyway (and rely on Peach to bail me out later if I got a criminal record). Not out of pure selfishness ("these idiot Jerk Asses don't deserve my help"), but also out of genuine fear for my safety ("if they'll throw me in prison for a crime I obviously didn't commit, what about harsher punishments?"). The worst part is that this idiocy is in no way necessary - the plot would have worked if Mario had simply arrived at Isle Delfino, been told that the Piantas needed his help, and decided to help them because he's a good guy.
    • Chimanruler 15: Fifthed. What makes all of this even worse is that the Piantas don't bother establishing a motive for Mario's supposed crimes. Do they even know how the legal system works? Mario was fighting a monster at the airport, something that the Piantas would have discovered if they had simply bothered to hear Mario, his companions, or any staff at the airstrip out. If Mario was doing something good for the town, then what reason would he have to vandalize everything? Oh, and the Piantas don't do anything while Mario is clearly chasing around the real culprit who captured Peach. I wonder how this town is able to function.
    • Case: A mainline Mario game starts with a lengthy unskippable cutscene. Hey, kids, want to play some Mario? All right, just wait a few minutes while we (fail to) explain why he has to collect the shines! That the cutscene looks and sounds downright incomplete at parts, and, well, everything written above, just makes an already bad problem worse.
    • Mineboot45: Damn straight. I think Chuggaaconroy put it best: "This is more rigged than Saddam Hussein's trial!"Full Quote
  • Aj Wargo: Although I know some people really like Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, a series of problems early into the game lead me to give up on the title. At the end of Dimple Wood, Bowser needs to get a Banzai Bill from a Wiggler, who requests that he eat the oversized carrot he plucked out of the ground. The first issue is that the minigame to eat it is needlessly difficult, to the point where I just barely completed it. But that’s nothing compared to what happens next- the Wiggler, without warning, suddenly gets angry and attacks Bowser... because he did what it asked. What? That makes no sense! It seemed perfectly fine about the whole ordeal beforehand, and even implied it was okay with Bowser eating the carrot, never once indicating it would get angry. I know the joke is that Wigglers have a bad temper, but when they directly get angry because of something they told you to do, it rings totally hollow. But that wasn’t what made me give up on it. After you beat the Wiggler... you have to fight ANOTHER boss called Durmite literally five minutes later with the Mario Brothers. Who thought of this? Did anyone stop and think that putting two bosses in quick succession at this early of a juncture was a bad idea? Needless to say, with my intelligence insulted and my patience expired after three stupid moments in succession, I gave up after that point.
  • Silverblade 2: I don't usually care for "plots" in Mario games, but - god - the opening intro of Yoshi New Island is one big insult for fans of the original game. The beautiful ending is retconned for the sake of a cheap joke: the parents who were brought Mario and Luigi are actually not their parents. Makes even more pointless with this game's ending that recycles the opening verbatim.
    • Falcon Pain: In addition to the above observation, it raises an additional bit of Fridge Horror. So Mario and Yoshi defeat young Bowser and save the stork and Luigi, and then Kamek's back to kidnap them again and bring them to a new set of Bowser's castles before the night's over? As much mileage as the series gets out of the idea that Bowser kidnaps Peach "every other week", the rebound time has never been so low that you have to wonder if the period of freedom is less than the period of captivity, or if it's even possible to call it "defeating" Bowser. Also, the stork was so far off that he had to cross an ocean (complete with island of Yoshis) on the way between the wrong home and the right one? At this point, the Here We Go Again! factor is so confusing and unrewarding that it would have made more sense to just make the game a remake of the first one with new levels and bosses.
    • Gunarm Dyne: I gave Yoshi's New Island the benefit of the doubt for the most part. I forgave the idiot retcon to the original game's ending. I forgave the butt kazoo title theme. I even forgave Bowser's Giant Space Flea from Nowhere appearance. What I could not forgive was the absolutely pitiful attempt at a climactic final boss with nothing that sounded like a final battle theme. It's hard to put into words but, suffice it to say, it completely ruined what was otherwise a decent boss battle. The original game's final battle was epic enough on its own but made legendary by its hard rock theme. The pathetic final fights in this game were simply the final nail in the coffin that destroyed everything that made the original game great.
    • Aj Wargo: I’ll gladly add Adult Bowser's Giant Space Flea from Nowhere appearance to this list. For one thing, this doesn’t work because there was no Foreshadowing. If there had been a few cutscenes after castle levels showing Adult Bowser seeing what was going on in the future- maybe via Present Kamek's magic- and deciding to help Baby Bowser out, that might have made this work. The only hint once might get is by completing the game but having used the Flutter Wings on a level, at which point Adult Bowser orders them to complete the game correctly to fight him. But as that is not something most players would do, it doesn’t work. Also, here’s another good point- this was completely pointless. We had just gone through a fight with Baby Bowser, and thus having Adult Bowser show up accomplishes nothing story wise. Plus, wouldn’t this be causing a Time Paradox if Adult Bowser won? Surely he can’t be that stupid! And you know what's really dumb about this? This concept had already been done before in Yoshi's Island DS, and they actually did this correctly as Adult Bowser is shown to you at several cutscenes prior to the final level, so it's clear he's going to be the final boss! I think after doing this, and also completely bungling the development of Balan Wonderworld, Arzest should be blacklisted from working with any big name company and reduced to developing shovel ware that no one will buy.
  • SenorCornholio: I'd been a huge fan of Paper Mario ever since Thousand-Year Door, and had played it plus the other two to death numerous times. They're fun, charming, and have great stories in general. As such, I was stoked to hear of the fourth game, Paper Mario: Sticker Star. I didn't hear any big spoilers for the game, so I was still looking forward to it when it came out. I put the game in, played it, and...it turned out to be the most disappointing game I've ever played. So Miyamoto wanted to ditch everything that made the Paper Mario series so beloved, and it failed miserably. I could pick any one moment, from the overly childish plot that could give Yoshi's New Island above a run for its money, to the numerous Guide Dang It! moments and That One Boss battles, to the amount of times Kersti is separated from you, leaving you without a core game mechanic. But the worst of it has to be the ending. First of all, Bowser is completely silent in this game. No longer is he the Large Ham big kahuna of the Koopa Kingdom; here he's just a voiceless, personality-less monster who Mario has to beat similarly to New Super Mario Bros., which even though I'm a huge Bowser fan, it wouldn't be so bad it weren't for the second point: the fight itself. Bosses in this game have tons of HP, with the Megasparkle Goomba (the first boss) having 90. This basically means you have to use powerful stickers called "Thing Stickers" to beat them, and even then you have to use just the right one. Here however, you have a multi-phase fight with five phases, and the Things you need don't even do much damage to the big turtle; all they actually do is handicap him slightly. causing the fight to drag on even with the Thing Stickers you need. Third, the only potentially cool part (the Giant Bowser fight and Kersti's Heroic Sacrifice) is made moot right afterwards, where Mario uses the Royal Stickers to wish Kersti back to life, something that shouldn't even be possible in the context of any Mario game ever. And yes, I am aware of how wishes work in the Mario series in general, but never once has it ever been implied in any game that you can just wish someone back to life. If that were the case, then Admiral Bobbery and Lord Blumiere could just revive Scarlet and Timpani respectively if they wished hard enough (which I'll admit, the problem was apparent with TEC and Luvbi at the end of those games as well, but you could potentially come up with a theory on how those happened other than "it just kinda did"; plus at least those deaths weren't immediately reversed until after the final chapter). Fourth, all those Super Flag Achievements you could potentially get that are extremely annoying to obtain? They open up during the credits anyway, even if you didn't complete them! So all the extra work is even more pointless than mere bragging rights. Needless to say, it nearly swore me off of the Paper Mario subseries in general, and I only picked up Paper Mario: Color Splash to give the series a second chance; thankfully, Color Splash turned out to be an overall superior game with better humor, better overall moments, and an improved version of its own predecessor's battle system. So basically, screw Sticker Star and move on to Color Splash.
    • KingBowser9001: You know, the entire game could technically be considered a DMoS for the entire series, but since I can't list the whole game, I'll second this. Taking this up a notch, the entire climax felt like a slap in the face to me. First off, remember the long and epic final dungeons in the past 3 games? Yeah, now how about a bunch of empty hallways with 2 frustrating boss fights? On the topic of those boss fights, take a look at our final bout with Kamek. He turns your stickers into flip-flops and summons clones. It gets worse because Kamek also exploits one of the biggest problems with the battle system: The inability to skip your turn. This turns him into a flat-out Goddamned Boss. And now, the dethroning moment of the dethroning moment- The Final Boss. Lackluster portrayal aside, Bowser has a heavily flawed boss fight. Not only does he have 400 health points, but somebody at Intelligent Systems thought it would be a good idea to make Bowser a Sequential Boss and give him 5 Thing weaknesses! Even worse, unlike previous bosses, he's borderline Unwinnable by Design without them! The last phase had the potential to be an awesome and actually Nintendo Hard boss fight, but unlike the rest, it goes down in about 2 minutes without much effort after Kersti's sacrifice. Even more insulting to the big guy, it's possible to defeat him without Kersti, turning that into a Stupid Sacrifice. It's still goddamn easy! And then the ending, which, no thanks to the biggest Ass Pull I've ever seen in a Mario game, makes Kersti's sacrifice mean nothing! Thank God for Color Splash, which did all of this crap better.
  • DarkChirano: I didn’t drink as much of the “Color Splash fixes every issue with Sticker Star” Kool-Aid as other players. After it wore off, I slowly came to realize how much worse and more disingenuous the game truly is compared to its predecessor. There’s several moments I wish I could pick from this disrespectful, credit-stealing trashheap, but as I’m only allowed one per game, and I can't pick game mechanics (of which Color Splash still has many big issues), I choose the final Big Paint Star flashback. Why? Because not only does it reveal the flashbacks were all just window dressing to make a mystery out of a padded out version of ''Sticker Star''’s opening, but it highlights many of the plot issues with the main villain and game as a whole, and affects several other scenes and characters. First, if it’s so easy to make black paint, why has this never happened before? Remember, this game is saying the whole world is now made of paint, all of it flowing from Prism Island’s Big Paint Stars- there is simply no way this situation never came up before. Even for Color Splash’s “random” non-sequiturs and rambling jokes, that idea is simply too stupid to consider. Second, why does only Bowser become a black entity, but Mario and Roy don’t? The game never properly explains the mechanics behind Bowser’s transformation, and it also makes it very clear the black paint wants to spread, so there’s no reason not to possess whatever it touches ASAP. Prism Island and the entire Mushroom World should have been covered in the stuff by now. There’s a difference between leaving some mysteries for players to discuss and flat out not explaining basic information about your villain, and ''Color Splash'' does the latter. Even worse, there was actually an easy way to fix this- just have Huey drop a line about feeling the energy of the Gold Royal Sticker (something only Bowser has touched before) or something. For sake of reference, Samurai Jack gave its similar black goo villain, Aku, an explanation of the unique circumstances on how he became sentient. Third, the black paint mostly being contained to these flashbacks and not doing much outside of two levels gets one to realize how little plot momentum there actually is the whole game (especially the chapter leading up to this flashback). It’s nice some story is back, but what’s driving players to experience it if the main villain isn’t around in the present day? There was a reason why Count Bleck and Bowser were so highly regarded, as well as Grodus having his fans- they were more involved on-screen. Fourth, in order for Black Bowser’s plan to even begin, his smarter minions like the Koopalings and Kamek have to not realize something is up. I must remind players Kamek has raised Bowser from birth, and he was there when Black Bowser was created- he’d be the first to know Bowser’s acting strange, but he never brings it up in any of his three story scenes, instead acting like discount Jafar as in ''Sticker Star''. The fact Peach notices (at first), but not Kamek, is frankly insulting. Finally, it shows why making paper so prevalent for the series was such a stupid idea, as it shows the bizarre form of laziness behind the initiative- the developers will throw in ideas merely if it's unusual or paper related, but they won't actually think it through. That scene alone epitomizes everything wrong with not just Color Splash, but the direction of the eighth generation Paper Mario games- if the game doesn’t care about the fine details of their main villain force, why should I care what evil they perform? It just raises too many questions.
  • Gemidori: I'll be real honest and say that I fucking hate Paper Mario: The Origami King. I find it to be an obnoxious and dreary mess that's no better than the two predecessors. I could fill the entire page with all of my grievances with the game, but the absolute worst bit has to be the Big Bad King Olly, by far my least favorite Mario villain period. His murderously annoying Royal Brat personality and his role in Bobby's weak ass death scene (I really couldn't be bothered to care) weren't painful enough apparently, because then at the very end you get his origin...His creator scribbled a bunch of sappy shit on him that he just never bothered to read. This is the only reason he decides to kill all Toads. That entry right above me? It just happened all over again. They came up with the laziest idea possible, only this time they trade in the "it must be paper related" bit with something a lot stupider: a direct Take That, Audience!. After eight years of constant criticism regarding the overusage of Toads (not just Paper Mario — almost the entire franchise), these developers just piss into your mouth laughing by putting your complaints into the head of a genocidal racist. You have no idea how bad of a message this sends. Now that would easily be bad enough...but it gets worse. Olly finally gets to read the damn scribbles in an ultra-forced Redemption Equals Death moment that I find very hard to buy, so now you get two more melodramatic lame ass death scenes back to back. Yep, dudes, good way of stretching my suspension of disbelief so far and fast that it snapped. Smithy was better written than this asshole. Sticker Star and Color Splash have definitely worn at my patience and tolerance a lot, but this, especially Olly, finally broke me. It destroyed my love for Paper Mario altogether, and frankly I'm more than finished with any future Mario RPGs — I genuinely never want to see another one ever again after this nightmare. Fuck the Origami King, both game and character. Also, Bowser does nothing on his own.
    • Grotadmorv: For a point that often goes undiscussed, the portrayal of Kamek, Bowser Jr's famed Beleaguered Assistant and caretaker, really bothered me in this game. So we see a flashback where he caused Bowser's Castle to crash into Shangri Spa and put the entire Koopa Troop to humiliating manual labor to pay for years worth of damages. While a Brick Joke later on makes it understandable he'd get confused and he was panicking at the time, the flashback showing it has him as a clear Unreliable Narrator exaggerating his heroics. He then pretends to spend the entire streamer section Wangsting that Bowser doesn't trust him and acting like a smug asshole whenever he does anything right, even though we have seen full well that he is refusing to owe up to his mistakes. Not helping is that when Bowser Jr. gets shredded, Kamek only cares about saving Jr. so he can use his Clown Car. Not to mention the bizarre Non Sequitur "joke" the game's writing randomly gives to him. In the end, the green streamer plays out like a potentially fun Enemy Mine getting ruined by Character Derailment.
  • Big Jimbo: While Super Mario Maker 2 is a very good game, the Story Mode just stinks. The very worst moment is when everything is finally rebuilt, and Undodog is preparing to press the reset button like he did in the beginning. Not only does it make your progress completely pointless, it feels a bit mean-spirited when you take into account that Undodog clearly admits his desire to press it if you talk to him, and it doesn't help matters that none of the other characters even bothers to stop him (which also happened the first time). I can honestly say Super Mario Sunshine's plot comes off as less of an Idiot Plot.
  • InsertCleverNameHere: Gold Mario being the reward for beating 200c in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Now here's the thing: I usually don't mind clones like Pink Gold Peach, especially not after the following installment, Mario Kart Tour, brought back many missing veterans, including Birdo. That said, if you're going to include a reskin of Metal Mario in your game, you don't lock it behind 200c! That's just a terrible prize to give to a player for beating an brutally hard mode!
  • Draggon753: I haven't played Super Princess Peach due to not owning the game, but even if I did, I don't think I'd want to play it. The reason why? Luigi's treatment in the game. I'm a big fan of the Mario bro in green, and I find the Butt-Monkey treatment towards him absolutely disrespectful, and IMO said treatment is at it's absolute worst here. Once Peach defeats the boss of World 7, Luigi is rescued. He floats down in a bubble, and once he's released from said bubble, Peach picks him up, happily spins him around, and then tosses him to the side, while the game says "You saved the green man?". Okay, first of all, Peach, why would you do such a thing to Luigi? He's the brother of the man you supposedly love, and he's helped rescue you on most occasions, and this is how you treat him? And second, the fact that the game couldn't bother to refer to Luigi by his name and just calls him "the green man" is super insulting to me. I'd expect Bowser to refer to Luigi as something other than his name, but the parasol doing this? Really? And then there's the ending: Peach has defeated Bowser, itself hilarious irony given how he's always been kidnapping her, and Mario has been saved. Peach and Luigi both rush to Mario to celebrate the rescue, and suddenly Peach knocks Luigi aside, sending him flying into the air which ends in him landing smack into the door of the cage previous holding Mario, and landing flat on his face on the ground. Yeah. Peach knocked Luigi aside so she could get to hug Mario first. Once again, what the actual hell, Peach?! Why would you do that to Luigi?! He did nothing to deserve you treating him so coldly like that! And during the whole end sequence, Mario, Peach and the Toads are just happily celebrating Bowser's defeat without acknowledging poor Luigi lying on the ground, clearly in pain from what just happened to him. Sure, Luigi's back on his feet in the credits scene, but you can't act like the poor treatment he received in the previous scene didn't happen, game! Like I said earlier, I'm a big fan of Luigi, and it hurts to see him getting treated so poorly. I'm used to seeing internet videos where Luigi is the Butt-Monkey, and as much as I hate to see it (Especially the Dorkly parodies), I can look past said videos because they're merely Fan Works, but this particular case of Luigi being treated badly is from an official Mario game, and I cannot forgive such a thing. "Super Princess Peach" is already one of the more unpopular Mario games out there, but most complaints have just been towards the gameplay mechanics, and no one I've seen has ever acknowledged how bad poor Luigi gets it here. Next time I play Super Smash Bros., I'm gonna have Luigi fight Peach so he can get his revenge on her for what she did to him.


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