10 Video Games That Didn’t Know When To End
4. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3
In many ways a simulation game as much as it is an RPG, Persona 3 takes place over a year as you attend high school while also using your Persona to combat beings called Shadows, who feed on the minds of conscious humans. You spend the majority of the game alternating between developing relationships with your classmates and journeying into the Tartarus to fight Shadows.
Everything progresses nicely until at a certain point it all grinds to a halt. Suddenly the story lacks the momentum that had advanced the plot prior. For two in-game months there is a distinct lack of things to do other than maintain your relationships with the other characters while the story meanders in superfluous directions. It feels like the game is stalling for time before reaching its climax.
While its true that this down time is used to further develop the relationships between the characters, it comes at the expense of the ending. The timeline should have been spaced out more to accommodate these narrative demands, but instead you get a whole lot of filler that only delays the inevitable.