I'm replaying Dragon Age 2 because I hate myself and my family, and I just did the solo Arishok battle at the end of act two. This HAS to be the most poorly designed battle encounter in RPG history.
First off, his health bar is endless and he can take health potions, making the fight last for-fucking-ever. Secondly, his attacks can stun-lock you if you're not careful, and if he gets you against a wall forget it. Third, as a warrior or rogue you only regenerate stamina on kills, so you have to rely on stamina potions which have a long cooldown. This leads to not being able to use abilities that often, which leads to you sitting and watching your character hack away slowly against an endless health bar. Health potions are also on a cooldown, and the guy hits hard.
So... the battle results in a fucking endless parade of running away waiting for potions to refill, doing a special attack or two, then slowly watching your dude hack away with basic attacks that barely move the health bar, then running away again kiting the big dummy around over and over again. I fucking DARE you to come up with a worse encounter in RPG history. I'm not even gonna put restrictions on it, by year or budget or anything else. Come up with a better one, anywhere, and I'd love to read about it. 'Cause as of right now I think this is the winner by a wide margin.
First off, his health bar is endless and he can take health potions, making the fight last for-fucking-ever. Secondly, his attacks can stun-lock you if you're not careful, and if he gets you against a wall forget it. Third, as a warrior or rogue you only regenerate stamina on kills, so you have to rely on stamina potions which have a long cooldown. This leads to not being able to use abilities that often, which leads to you sitting and watching your character hack away slowly against an endless health bar. Health potions are also on a cooldown, and the guy hits hard.
So... the battle results in a fucking endless parade of running away waiting for potions to refill, doing a special attack or two, then slowly watching your dude hack away with basic attacks that barely move the health bar, then running away again kiting the big dummy around over and over again. I fucking DARE you to come up with a worse encounter in RPG history. I'm not even gonna put restrictions on it, by year or budget or anything else. Come up with a better one, anywhere, and I'd love to read about it. 'Cause as of right now I think this is the winner by a wide margin.