The thought came to mind after reading a recent post about Baldurs Gate 3 here but it reminded me of the Japense only PSX game Mizzurna Falls where if you don’t perform a certain action early in the game you are prevented from getting a true ending. While this might not be a traditional soft lock because you can still progress to a point it made me wonder none the less.
I understand BG3 might be a hard lock because the game abruptly comes to a close I am not going to get into the semantics. The only other soft locks I can think of are with Pokemon.
Shout out to the fan translation of Mizzurna Falls. An article on the ROMHacking.net website can be found here.
FF12 had some bullshit chest near the beginning of the game… If you opened it you lost the ability to 100% the game and get the Zodiac spear ( reportedly some ability to get one in a very tedious grunts fashion but it’s been ages)
Basically the straw that broke the camel’s back for me with ff… The games story and combat was already a let down after they dropped the turn based combat like all of them ff1-ff10
But yeah generally I dislike many soft lock mechanics or illogical things that punish you for just playing the game… Oftentimes these were put in games just to sell strategy guides.
I haven’t played 2 or 3, but at the very least FF4 isn’t turn based. Its pseudo-realtime.
I remember ff4 being turn based or at least the same menu maybe active time where if your too slow npcs will act but it’s been awhile