[GENERAL DESIGN] WHAT IS THE WORST IMPLEMENTED/THOUGHT OUT SYSTEM YOU'VE ENCOUNTERED?

author=Sated

The followers are hilariously stupid - you can only "equip" them by dropping weapons on the ground right before a fight starts, and they'll often accidentally hit each-other and then start fighting each-other to the death.

Makes me glad that vanilla Skyrim usually limits you to a single follower... but they're still capable of starting wars if you don't use mods to make them smarter.

Sweet lord, I want this game now.

author=LightningLord2
Can we cite systems that we actually like but are poorly used due to factors unrelated to the system itself? Final Fantasy 7's Materia system is really fun - it has some really unique stat modifiers that level up and teach skills attached to your gear - you can even combine the green magic materias with blue ones for even more unique effects. There's a few things that could make it more interesting (such as equips that only allow certain materia in slots), but it's a very good system overall. The only thing holding it back is the nonexistent game difficulty.

I feel pretty much exactly the same way about Xenogears. I fell in love with its combo-based battle system the moment I saw it, and the variation for the gear battles too. Sadly, for most of the game the horrendous pacing leaves you with too little or too much of either, and when you do get a chance to enjoy it the game's overall lack of difficulty makes the fights short, shallow and unimpressive. You get a few enjoyable plot battles but they're few and far between. Its optional content really isn't substantial from a gameplay perspective either, but at least it's good for plot.

It's often cited that Xenogears was very incomplete when it shipped, and people point to the cut down disc 2 for that. That's certainly a factor but moreso I feel like it never got the gameplay and pacing balancing that just about every other highly lauded RPG or the era got.

It says a lot about the content that did make it that Xenogears still manages to be such a widely-loved favourite among classic RPG fans.