Hello!

Just a small piece of trivia. The theory of ego depletion states people have a finite amount of willpower, and psychologically resisting something once will make it more difficult to resist the next time. We see this in Arkham Knight, Cyberpunk 2077, and Baldur's Gate 3 - where the main antagonist is connected to the players' psyche. Do you know of any other games where this concept might apply?

Duke Nukem Forever?

Also, I've completed Cyberpunk 2077 and didn't notice anything like that 'finite amount of willpower" and "resiststing something" more difficult.
***SPOILER***
If you mean the process of corruption, it's a plot thing and will not progress until the very end, you can literally spend weeks in real time with no ill effects.
***SPOILER***

That's probably for the sake of convenience. Putting the player on an actual timer (in this specific scenario) is just bad mechanics.

Apparently, in Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy 13-3:

One of the superbosses can only succumb to a status ailment if you hit the boss twice with the status effect.

(Note: I haven't played the game; I only happened to read about this on a wiki the other day.)

In any case, I think this could actually be a good way of handling more severe status ailments in RPGs, particularly if the target is a boss.

(One could also make it take more successes to inflict the status again after each time the status effect works; this would be similar to the way some Etrian Odyssey games increase resistance to a status after each time it's afflicted.)

Actually this is an interesting angle to this conversation. It actually makes me realize how boss immunity is annoying given that status ailment immunity should actually be a rare thing. Outside if pokemon, i've found status ailments to be annoying because boss immunity is too damn common.

But closer to the topic is another angle: in Monster Hunter, the bosses (pretty much the only thing you really spend any length of time fighting) are usually only immune to things for [i]logical[i] reasons (like a poisonous creature having poison immunity). When an element sticks to the monster (takes multiple hits of something to actually trigger the ailment), it's resistance to that ailment increases. For example, first time you paralyze a monster might take 10 arrows with the paralysis coating, and it'll be paralyzed for about 5-10 seconds. To paralyze it again, you might need, say, 15 or 20, and it won't stay paralyzed nearly as long, because it's slowly gaining immunity.

It stands to reason this is no different than "gaining levels," in which your characters not only get better performing certain motions as a result of their experience, but a warrior might gain muscles from getting a workout. Similarly, it would make sense that your character would develop a thicker skin in the ego department, too, over time.

But if you want another eample of depletion, you have the "Humanity" meter of the Vampire the Masquerade series. Depending on your choices you can get some back, but as you loose it your character looses control of themselves.

Another example (that I've read about, but haven't actually played) would be the D-Counter in Breath of Fire 5: Dragon Quarter. (Note: This game is very different from the rest of the Breath of Fire series, so it's best to treat it as its own thing.)

In this game, you have a meter known as the D-Counter, which never decreases, but will increase as you play the game. It works something like this:
* When you walk, it increases slowly. (Hence, this serves as a sort of time limit, though it's more like a turn limit.)
* When you use the D-Dash ability, which allows you to destroy monsters without a fight, your D-Counter increases much faster.
* During battle, you can transform into a dragon. This dragon form is *incredibly* powerful (to the point of trivializing boss fights), but the D-Counter increases extremely quickly when in use (something like 10% during a battle you use this dragon form to win). In fact, this form is so powerful that, if you were allowed to use it for every boss fight, the game would be way too easy.
* As the D-Counter rises, the animation of transforming into a dragon changes.
* If the D-Counter reaches 100%, it's game over.

Incidentally, there are three reasons I chose not to get this game when it came out.
* The limited nature of the D-Counter is not what I was looking for in an RPG. (I like RPGs where I can just spend as much time leveling up as I so chose.)
* Saving the game requires a save token, and there's only finitely many. I couldn't get into games with "pay to save" systems (unless the fee is nominal, like in Final Fantasy 1 or Phantasy Star 3), and this system seems even worse. (At least there's a temporary save you can do for, which is deleted on reload, provided you're not playing the European version.)
* The save file is copy protected, so the PlayStation 2 won't let you back it up. I consider this to be a form of DRM, and hence I considered it to be a reason to not get this game. (Note that I've sort of "grandfathered" older game consoles in my no-DRM policy; however, this only applies to game consoles that don't have a DRM-encumbered digital store.)