10 Cruel Tricks Video Games Played On RPG Players

There are few RPG tropes more universally despised than making the player fail if their party leader dies during battle.

Typically speaking, most RPGs will allow your party to continue fighting if the player character "dies" or is incapacitated, simply shifting perspective to another character.

You'll also often be able to revive the fallen leader with something like Final Fantasy's Phoenix Down, and yet some especially sadistic RPGs have shirked this convention altogether.

Perhaps the most prominent example is Final Fantasy XIII, which throws up a Game Over screen if the party leader is KO'd - a decision which proved hugely controversial among fans.

After all, it makes no sense that the battle would just suddenly... end if one person, no matter how powerful, was taken out. And if we can use revive items to bring every other party member back to life, why not the leader?

It typically feels like a lazy way to artificially inflate a game's difficulty, and Final Fantasy XIII is hardly the only example - other "offenders" include Mass Effect, Persona, Yakuza: Like A Dragon, and many others.

You'll struggle to find someone who actively advocates for this gameplay mechanic, because who among us hasn't been stung by it and lost a ton of progress?