[spoiler]At the end of the game you have to destroy a Khaak M0 which is attacking the planet of Omicron Lyrae. Once you’ve done enough damage, a scripted scene starts where your wingman sacrifices himself in a kamikaze run with his fighter.
The problem is that this isn’t a game that limits you to a dinky little fighter. I had three capital ships in that system, including one with multiples of the most powerful weapons in the game. So it made his noble sacrifice seem rather stupid.[/spoiler]
Also, I agree about KOTOR2. For a game that gives you a spaceworthy freighter as your home base, the ending was depressingly claustrophobic.
Having just (five minutes ago) finished it, I have to nominate the newest Prince of Persia.
[SPOILER]Not only does your companion die at the end in one of those noble sacrifices apparently required of all games (and heavily foreshadowed throughout), but that doesn’t end the game. The only way to get to the end is to destroy the guardians of good that you spent the entire game restoring, free the evil god who’s going to destroy the world, and nullify your companion’s sacrifice by bringing her back from the dead in time to witness said world getting destroyed.
There isn’t even an option to just walk away – it took me about a half hour of wandering around trying things before I realized that it really was going to REQUIRE you to perform the most moronic of actions possible in that universe in order to complete it.[/SPOILER]
At least the game had a reasonable difficulty curve – none of the near-impossible feats that most games stick at the end (I’ve finished all but the last level of innumerable games – I’m getting used to it).
Nippon Ichi SRPGs. Yeah, the bonus bosses are entirely optional, but why on God’s green Earth did they have to make it so damn difficult to beat That One Guy? I wasted so many hours of my life trying to farm good items and level grind my characters, only to get stomped into a fine paste by Prinny Baal. (This is, incidentally, why I have to refrain from buying Disgaea 3 until I graduate, because I know I’d never be able to resist the temptation otherwise.)
this is the second time someone has done that to save her life. You’d think that the protagonist might realise that this is a bad idea, since he’s spent the entire game cleaning up after the last time.
Tip of the iceberg. There are still big games done by major companies that don’t bother to have a decent proofreader, or even a half-assed native speaker go over the text for the game. Either that, or they ignore the advice they’re given. I’ve got a friend who works in the industry. He has fits over localization issues sometimes, and it’s often like pulling teeth to get even stuff that is massively wrong corrected.