Have you ever had a game you regret playing? Well I certainly know a game I absolutely hate playing!
I am bored and have nothing better to do soooo. Story time? Story time. (2AM SX1 is weird af so bare with me)
Let me tell you a story about me playing a game called Star Ocean 4 The Last Hope International. Now first let me get this out of the way, my rule in gaming is that I have to play on the hardest difficulty on every game. If I didn't have the hardest difficulty, I would play the game until I got the hardest difficulty then select that and restart the game. This is how I have fun on most games btw. I did not know how hard this game was to 100%, Star Ocean 4 takes it to a whole new level though. I found out that this game is notorious for being a pain in the ass for trophy hunters / achievement hunters whatever. After playing hours of it.
Before I started my game my friend, who is still really obsessed with achievement hunting, said he would give me $100 if I 100% Star ocean 4 Last Hope International for him. Now, he is not the guy who ever backed out of a bet before, so I knew he was serious.
The game:
First, I wanted to get the hardest difficulty, to challenge myself of course, but there were only 2 difficulties to choose from: Earth = Easy and Galaxy = Normal. I obviously chose Galaxy and started my play through. I asked him "How do I unlock Chaos difficulty?" He said: "Just beat the game... not once, but twice." I thought that was fine, grinding was something I love doing since Final Fantasy 1. Well, around 20 hours into the game, killing yet another boss, I told him "This game is very easy! I'll get the 100% in no time!" He started laughing at me. Then another 10 hours into the game, I started to question how long this game is. He did not respond and then said "you're better not knowing." Getting scared, I looked up and it takes around 45 - 60 hours to complete 1 playthrough on normal difficulty. Now I'm panicking. I can surely play the game again, but for a 2nd time? Surely not.
Having a good time with the plot, and was hoping to do some clearing up on some of those optional achievements. Well, I found out the hard way that there are certain areas you can not return to, period..
I was pissed off, see the thing is, there is an achievement that basically says: "Open 100% of the hidden chests in the game! GOOD LUCK!" There are some chests in the 1 time only locations I knew I haven't opened due to inventory space. Then I was already locked out of "Obtain 100% item data!" achievement already as some items are only available there. And don't get me started on craft 100% items with Welch... I absolutely hate Welch... Now that I was locked out, I decided to continue onto the story. I never completed the story btw.
Me breaking:
Ok so I decided to take a break and look up some of those "hard achievements" and well, I started "crying" due to how absurd the achievements are. There is a hidden bonus boss in wandering dungeon. Now that isn't bad. I'm watching a guy play against the Etheral Queen (Bonus final boss) , and he's really good, and talked about the boss for awhile. The last achievement you get is most likely 100% combat challenges, and reading this guy's post about the last challenge made me start to cry.
getting to the ethereal queen will take about five hours and you can't save in the wandering dungeon what means if you fail what probably will happen multiple times you can do everything again. and even if you kill her but don't do it within 10 minutes or you didn't it with lymle you are forced to play it over again because if you save it and fight it again she is double as strong, you literally can't kill her in 10 minutes. and lymle is a fairly weak character because the strong moves she can are elemental and the ethereal queen is immune to all elements. also you can't see a life bar, so you have to switch to lymle when you guess she is almost death. i succeeded with this but it took me six times, and because you lose much after playing five hours for nothing, after the first time i losed this it was enough reason for me to don't play it for a year, so doing it five times after it took much stress, it was the hardest thing i ever completed in the entire gaming and i game for around 10-15 years.
Reading this guy's post on a psn trophy hunter thread made me rethink this game, I didn't want to touch it, it broke me. I never just said "F it! I'm done with this BS!" to any game. Then I told my friend, **** it, take it back and place it back to whatever part of hell you bought it from.
Then last year, I bought the game again for the ps3 because I wanted round 2. Gamestop employee said it only costed $10, which was a heck of a good deal. Then I sat down and got to the first boss before remembering and just shoved it onto my shelf. I'm not playing it for a long time. I learned my lesson the 2nd time playing.
Tl;dr - Never 100% Star Ocean 4 Last Hope International. It will break you.
