The Busted Magic Draw System [Final Fantasy 8]
The Magic Draw System is both a gift and a curse — it’s so busted, so completely broken and exploitable, it’s actually kind of great. Too bad the Magic Draw System infects and boring-ifies every aspect of FF8. Instead of the normal method of learning spells by leveling up and using MP to cast, you have to use a special ability called “Draw” to add spells to your inventory that becomes one-time-use items.
You have to “Draw” spells from enemies, and every enemy gives a different spell. If you follow guides online, you can absolutely smash this system and become OP right at the start of the game. That’s fun and all, but it still involves a ton of extremely boring grindings. To get spells you need, you have to sit in a battle and endlessly use the “Draw” command. Over and over and over. What was wrong with just having MP?
Managing Your Runey’s Ruins Fun [Rune Factory Frontier]
What if Stardew Valley had a poorly explained, inexplicably complicated wildlife mechanic that effected whether your crops would flourish or fail? That’s the Runey System in Rune Factory Frontier. Each area of the game has a population of weird little creatures called Runeys, and maintaining this population is absolutely crucial to progression.
It also makes no sense. It’s boring, terrible, and can cause your progression to grind to a halt if you’re not careful — you can even screw yourself because these little Runey things can be spent as a resource to unlock dungeons. And to top it all off, changes to their vaguely defined ecosystem might not even become apparent for multiple in-game days. So you can ruin your game and not even know it for days.
Check out more gimmicks from the Hall of Fail on the next page.
