For some reason, there are games that are going just great, full of fun and variety. Then we come to the parts that truly let us down! Here's our list of the Top Ten!



10. Richter Mode in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - As cool as an extra character Richter is with his plethora of moves, his game is a pretty big failure of imagination. No story, no items, no equipping, and no leveling. You can sort of increase your maximum life with the life-ups, but it is missed potential. You want to beat this mode? Hydro Storm! Hydro Storm! Hydro Storm! At least Maria in the Saturn version plays like a mix of Mega Man and Street Fighter. Go Blue Dragon of Death!!

9. Roxas in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 - The last third of the game has a terrific storyline, but that doesn't make up for the fact that 358/2 day's missions were essentially nonstop chores for Roxas: all missions either make you gather hearts (kill enemies), find "clues" (i.e. find places on a map where your target icon appears to interact despite said places having nearly nothing to make them easy to find... while killing enemies), or collect items that the other members could've done themselves, which more often than not only is found after killing certain enemies. Despite the fact that this game was obviously designed to explain Roxas' role in everything, they only do that in the last third of the game, and all you see with Roxas before that portion is him being everyone's butt monkey.

8. Final Fantasy VIII - Disc 4 - It is really unfortunate that this game didn't give you a warning before entering Lunatic Pandora, as Disc 4 is the next time you have access to the overworld, and it is quite different. All towns and villages are sealed off, making many of the sidequests inaccessible. The story also takes quite a turn, having focused - at least for the most part - on the Rinoa/Squall romance... but then implodes in the second half of disc 3 when Time Compression becomes the main focus. A real sign that the developers probably didn't have an ending in mind ahead of time.

7. Xenosaga 3 - Censoring - The Xenosaga series revolves around fairly mature themes and features some dark and disturbing scenes in general. While Xenosaga 1 also had censorship, it unintentionally made some of the more disturbing scenes even more disturbing (Albedo anyone?), this one completely removes blood from the cutscenes, making some scenes (like one of the characters staring in shock at her hands, which are originally covered in blood) look silly and lose the impact that the rest of the game succeeds at giving.

6. Tetra Master in Final Fantasy IX - While a lot of people can gripe about the inconsistencies of FFVIII, I don't think many have the same to say about Triple Triad, the card game. The rewards are very good and can alter the way you play the game in many fundamental ways (Lionheart on Disc 1!) Too bad the same can't be said for FFIX's version. Tetra Master isn't as integrated into the game thankfully, but its complicated rules, lack of real rewards, and a convoluted play style using hexadecimal numbering make it pretty useless to me.

5. Sonic Adventure 2 - Knuckles and Rouge's stages - What was the low point of the first Sonic Adventure is made even worse in the sequel, now that there are two characters whose sole gameplay is trying to find Chaos Emeralds pieces. Their stages just aren't fun and are not particularly challenging. They just take a long time to complete. And all these problems are amplified in the Outer Space stage. While graphically stunning, the constant up and down gravity manipulation required to find the pieces is tedious as hell!

4. Haunting Ground - Alchemy System - As far as I can tell, this system works by randomly inserting random items in random order and you then get a different random item. Worst of all, created items do not tell you what they even do! While I'm sure there is a definite pattern to the system, it is not intuitive at all and suffers from a real lack of imagination. Even a simple file explaining it would have sufficed...

3. Kingdom Hearts II Atlantica Stage - Of all the things that Kingdom Hearts II did right (Organization XIII, the more mature plot and the music), it has been accused of rehashing the gameplay of too many of the Disney worlds from the first game. How do I wish they did this with the Little Mermaid. What was a fun stage with controls that took some getting used to in KH is now a sing along series of minigames that are painful to watch and not much fun to play through. I know Ursula's first form was annoying to figure out in KH, but did we really deserve the absurdly average Atlantica adventure that we got in the masterpiece that is Kingdom Hearts II?

2. Sonic Adventure 2 Secret 3D Green Hill Zone - You have to collect 180 Emblems just to be able to see this 3D rendering of the first stage in the original Sonic. It is fun to run through, but thanks to Youtube, hardly worth the effort unlocking it these days.

1. Adamant Armor - One of the hardest items to get in the history of all the Final Fantasy games. This uber armor from Final Fantasy IV is only obtained by fighting the ultra rare enemy the Pink Puffs (or Flan Princess or Pud Princes, depends on the version you're playing). These enemies have a 1/64 chance of appearing in a certain room of the Lunar Subterranae, and even if you fight them, you only have a 1/64 chance of getting the Pink Tail. Do the MATH! And the worst part is that the Armor is hardly the ultimate equip, which one would expect given how hard it is to get. All it does is make you a tank from physical attack. Good for leveling up, I suppose, but my dreams of soloing Zeromus with Rydia remain unfulfilled!