I was about to joke about it being more a "taste cardinal sin" than a crime against gamedesign, but then I saw they brought the "Moktar" game here.

I'll be whimpering in that corner over there, don't mind me ^^'

1. It won't make *every* battle a walk in the park; remember that you can only use the limit break if the meter fills up. It's especially noticeable if you consider battles that aren't boss fights; you will not be able to use this ability in most battles. (Also, why use that ability to justify taking away other abilities like Healing Wind and Fury Brand that are also interesting to use?)
2. If the ability is indeed too powerful, why is it even in the game in the first place?
3. Remember that this game has Knights of the Round; unlike Planet Protector, which doesn't do damage, Knights of the Round is alone enough to win battles.

With that in mind, another cardinal sin worth mentioning: Long attack/spell animations. I remember thinking that Paladin's Quest's 17 second long Spirit animation was way too long (even Storm's 10 or so second animation was a bit much), and here we have a summon that takes about 90 seconds from the time the casting animation starts to when the battle's normal flow resumes. Even worse, the final boss has an attack that takes 120 seconds (in non-JP versions; who thought replacing an already too long 25-second animation with an absurdly long 120-second one was a good ides?), and unlike KotR, you can't choose not to use it because it's used by an enemy.

I would argue that being able to save yourself into a corner without warning (that is, a "dead man walking" situation) is an even worse cardinal sin. There are two instances, one in Final Fantasy Adventure, and the other in Ys III (*not* Oath), where reloading put me in a situation with an enemy on top of me, causing my character to immediately die. (In Ys III, I was able to survive it by opening the menu just in time and equipping the Shield Ring.)

In the particular instance I am talking about, retrying just the 3rd phase would not help. A typical player would realistically not have any characters zombied on the 3rd phase on the first attempt, and the attack that kills non-zombied forms is used *right away* at the start of the phase. In other words, surviving that attack requires that the player handle the earlier parts of the battle differently.

Getting quests from nobody, asking to recover some useless trash and:
* you do it without questions or doubts
* you kill tens of people in the process
* everyone else think good of you now

Being a jack of all trades and master of none. Ruined Splinter Cell. ''Hey lets make it a TPS with rambo options and a stealth game so everyone can play it!'' Retarded. It was a forgettable TPS with bad stealth. And this has happened to many games as of late, especially with the obsession with open world.

In RPGs, filling the game with misc items where you have absolutely no idea if they are beneficial, or even required, at some point of the game.

Like in Fallout 2, it is full of such items. I keep carrying some small trinkets like same sheriff badges or dices or playing cards with me because how the heck do I know if having them in your inventory e.g. opens up some new dialogue option with some character elsewhere, or it is even a quest item for someone else?

Hence, I keep reading Fallout 2 FAQs about items I encounter, are they safe to leave behind or not. Cat's Paw magazines, yeah right...

I recall the opposite happened to me in the first Fallout. I had dropped some item somewhere figuring out that surely I will not need it anymore... but then near the end of the game it dawned to me it would have been very useful. I went back to where I thought I had left it, but no, I couldn't find it anymore.

SPOILER WARNING FOR FALLOUT:

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If I recall correctly, it was one of those holodisks which revealed that the mutants are sterile and can't reproduce. Having it in your inventory would make the end boss became despaired and commit a suicide, so you'd win him without having to fight him.

However, fortunately my Speech skill was very high at that point (126 points or something) so I could convince him to kill himself even without the holodisk, not having to fight him. He asks for proof that his mutants are sterile but I didn't have that with me anymore (the holodisk), but I was still able to convince him about it, by telling him to ask one of the female mutants.

Oh well, I guess I could have just fought him as well, but I felt better I was able to use "the smart way".

Splinter Cell (first game at least) was already ruined by being 3rd person view, and having ultralinear levels. It was like Thief for toddlers.

Lie to gamers about what will be your game...

Oh well, depends from the point of view.

Chaos Theory was great (its the 3rd) and the first two ones were good IMO. Level design isn't even close to as good as Thief's but it more linear levels needn't necessarily mean a worse stealth stealth game. The sound mechanic was very well refined, with a sound meter showing your own walking speed and having a masking point displayed on it. Also, the guard behavior and placement was such that you have to be very careful when moving near guards. I was still able to finish Chaos theory without raising an alarm once as well, so you aren't forced into using your gun.

Being asked in platform games to make completely blind jumps. It's basically asking the player to risk giving up at least one life just to see what's down there.

Quest arrows/GPS in RPGs and open world games. It's just lazy and it encourages the player to look at the minimap in the corner of the screen instead of the landscape in front of them. Tell me where to go and what I'm looking for and tell me about distinctive landmarks, turns, and distances that will help me figure out how to get there, the way real humans tend to do.

My take on the 'no good endings' controversy- I get annoyed when games berate you for playing/enjoying them. Something like Spec Ops: The Line, which otherwise does a great job of deconstructing the 'one man army badass' FPS genre, goes too far with its developers claiming that the 'right way' to play is to quit the game and just stop. Or then you've got Braid and its "If you want 100% completion you have to wait two real-time hours, and probably start again because you've probably already missed one thing you can't go back for, all to make a point about obsession". You can tell me that the character I'm playing is a screw-up and should stop, but if you don't write that he stops, that's on you, not me.

Okay, so everything I do in this game is making the world worse and making me a bad person? Fine, you know how else I can stop that happening? Not buying it in the first place. But since I've given you my money, I'm going to play it, because the bad choices I'm forced to make to continue playing don't make me a bad person because IT'S A SODDING GAME, none of it's real and none of it reflects who I really am.

Also. having a nonlinear world with no way of reminding yourself where you're supposed to be going if you haven't played for a while and forgot what's going on in the plot.

I very much agree with one slot autosaves and unskippable cutscenes. Especially in combination with bad checkpoint placement. One slot autosaves ruined Rayman Origins for me (autosave got corrupted while I was halfway through), and right now, I'm considering giving up on The Saboteur which allows you to make manual saves, but doesn't save your mission progress, so I die in the middle of a story mission, return to the last checkpoint, but that checkpoint is bugged, and the truck I was supposed to get on has already driven off without me once the autosave is loaded, so I can't continue the mission and have to restart from scratch, hoping I won't die again right in the middle of it because than I might have to restart the whole mission another time. It's such a waste of time. Autosaves should be convenient and not make your life worse, but this one slot autosave practice is really prone to such issues.

Also, games with exploration, collectibles or side quests that lock you out of areas to explore or side quests to complete once you've moved on, without warning you about that point of no return. Especially in combination with one slot autosaves. "Oh, so you overlooked something or weren't ready to move on yet, when the game closed that door behind you? Sorry, but you can always start a new game or watch what you missed on YouTube ..." As a sidenote, that's one way to teach players to avoid going where the game tells them to go, for fear of moving on too quickly. (EDIT: But I see this has been mentioned before as well.)

Another pet peeves of mine is forcing translations on you, e.g. via determining your system language, with no in-game way to set the game back to its original language, or even no reasonable way outside of the game. Having to mess around with configuration files is awkward enough, but some games don't even give you that option; I won't change my system language just to bypass that a game forces its German translation on me. It should be up to *me* to decide what language I prefer the game to be in, not to my OS.

There's actually something even worse, something that actually happens in many classic adventure games: The item that you missed prior to the point of no return is a *required* item. Since you missed that item, you can't complete the game and have to start all over. (Or, as some players undoubtedly did, abandon the game entirely.) I have heard this referred to as a "dead man walking" situation.

I note that Wizardry 4 does this, except that there is a *very clear* warning prior to the point of no return, and the game has 8 save slots (all manual), so a reasonably smart player will make a backup save before passing the point of no return. (Rather humorously, one of the clues about how to get the item is *after* the point of no return, but some players could reasonably figure it out before that.)

repetitive gameplay/grinding for no reason ^^ - i don't care if the game is 15 or 25 hours if the 10 added hours are just grinding and pure boredom ^^ - mafia 3 may totally qualify for that

From games I play currently or played recently:
Large world to explore but nothing interesting to find in it: Two Worlds 2
Jump & Run elements in a FPS; getting stuck in level parts: Rise of the Triad (2013)

Why did no one mention invisible walls yet? They are the epitome of lazy and bad game design.