Lunar Adventures: exploring a little bit of everything

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Annoyance of the Day ™: No save point after a lot of dialogue in games

I picked up a used copy of Sword of Mana for the Gameboy and have been playing through it. It’s a pretty fun game, but hampered by some of the worst dialogue I’ve stumbled across in years along with a sub-par story, especially by Square standards.

Last night, I got to the last boss, but lost against him. I really want to try again, but here’s the problem — right before the last boss is an interminable amount of exposition (that makes little sense) and crappy dialogue. Frankly, I’m pretty sure the story has me nonplussed to the point that I don’t really care that much what the ending is. I just want to beat the last boss for completion’s sake.

So here’s my question — why force the poor gamer to sit through a ton of dialogue potentially more than once? The creators of the game have to know that there’s a good chance of dying at the last boss, since, presumably, as the last boss, he’ll be difficult. Easy solution — stick a save spot after the dialogue and before the actual battle. Voila, you can keep fighting the last boss without having to sit through the exposition over and over.

I’ll probably try again one more time, simply because an uncompleted game nags at me like a mosquito buzzing my ear. But after that, screw it. I might even sell the game back to Gamestop so it won’t be sitting in my room, taunting me that it’s unfinished and that there’s a long, boring dialogue scene to deal with again.

Sat June 17th, 2006 1:48 pm

Filed under Gaming