Do you feel, when you are at the end stage of an RPG, like the designers are purposefully making you hate the game, so you won’t miss it when you’re done? I’m trying to beat Strange Journey, and I feel like I’m a dog in some disney movie, getting rocks thrown at it by the owner who used to love me but is now telling me to “git! just git already! leave!” and then i have to slump away.
Right now, in Strange Journey, the dungeon is pitch black, and a complete maze with lots of doors. So the top screen is just haziness and I am watching a tiny arrow in my bottom screen that every now and then hits a wall or a door, and behind the door is more blackness for more miles. And when I get past that i get to enter a teleportation maze that, if i don’t walk in the right area in the right phase of the moon, i’ll be sent back to the beginning of the maze. And the enemies are still ridiculously hard. What was so exciting in the middle of the game, thinking one day i’d be strong enough to beat these bastards, has just become depressing as I am still not strong enough to feel truly heroic.
I can’t finish very many RPGs for this reason. It’s either that last level grind, where you’re expected to hit metal slimes in a forest for 6 hours to get strong enough to fight the end guy, or the end guy has 10 stages of life that will last three hours and you have limited potions and no save points during the fight. Is there a worry that if they didn’t make the games this hard at the end we’d potentially play forever? Is Strange Journey trying to keep me healthy by making the game so unpleasant at the end that i put it down and go outside?
Well I won’t be fooled! I’m going to go back to my DS and push the up arrow for another hour and a half, watching my tiny icon not move across a blank screen. And I’m going to like it, because I need to finish this fucking game.
Digital Stowaways 
a strange journey, indeed.