The Top 13 Worst Square Game Areas

This started out as a "worst RPG areas" list, but I was drawing a blank on non-Square entities so it became a Square list. Not to dump on Square here, as they're my favorite game developer of all time (with Konami and From Software essentially tied with them, but yeah). These are worst areas, so not limited to dungeons. Can also be overworld zones, provinces, etc. Because I'm limited to Squaresoft, the whole list won't be dominated by Phantasy Star 2 dungeons. Also, this list won out over the competition, "Top 10 Thiccest Dragon Quest Maous" so there we go.

Previously posted December 2024 as a top 11, now reposted with two new entries (the top two)

Honorable Mention: Song of the Nephilim (Xenosaga) - Because it isn't a Square game, even though it's ex-Square developers making a follow-up to a Square game. This, the second-to-last dungeon went ooooon and oooooooon and had the same 30 second loop of odd music all throughout. It was like a dip into Hell. At least it had music at all, unlike every other dungeon up to this point. At least the final dungeon, Proto Merkava, was a lot more interesting and had some decent music. It took the entire game but they finally delivered something cool for the final area.

#13. Troia / Dark Elf Cavern (Final Fantasy 4) - Going purely off of a first-time playthrough of the game. This area forces you to overhaul your party in order to progress (by taking off all metallic equipment and buying wood/stone equipment from the nearby town). Not a fan of being forced to overhaul my party in any situation. This is right in the middle of the game and usually halts the momentum if you haven't already prepared for it. Then again, this is a minor amount of overhauling (compared to, say, having to change all your classes and re-level at the 11th hour like some RPGs) so it barely makes the list. And adding to this area's badness, you've got overworld foes around Troia that use insta-death abilities, and a long walk to get to/from the cavern.

Oh yeah, and if you're playing for the first time and missed Edward in the Troia infirmary, you just insta-lose to Dark Elf and get to backtrack all the way out of the dungeon to figure out what you missed (after probably getting insta-gibbed by him a few more times).

#12. Eureka + Crystal Tower (Final Fantasy 3) - The final area of FFIII has two back-to-back dungeons and both are very long and very tough. On the Famicom you're locked-in and can't save beyond a certain point, making it even worse. The final boss is an HP/level check and if you fail it, congrats, you get to do the whole final dungeon(s) again. While FFII also has two back-to-back dungeons at the end, it's nowhere near as rough as FFIII's version. In FFII's finale most of the bosses are optional and the dungeons themselves are shorter. FFIII's finale is the stuff of nightmares in comparison and the single toughest challenge in the entire series, probably. The two dungeons in question aren't terrible on their own and the badness of this part of the game is due to the mechanics rather than the actual locations.

#11. Blackbird (Chrono Trigger) - All of your party's equipment gets taken away and you're forced to sneak around until you start getting it back, which is even more obnoxious than having to overhaul your equipment. If you've got Ayla around, she can fight without equipment, which makes this area a lot more bearable. This is notoriously the one part of Chrono Trigger that I don't like. It's another "terrible the first time you play it when you're unprepared for it" area that is less of an issue on following playthroughs.

#10. Galbadia Prison (Final Fantasy 8) - Basically the same thing as Blackbird here. Your equipment gets taken away and you get to stumble around uselessly for a while. Bringing Zell along makes this easier since, again, he can fight with his fists and doesn't need equipment. This area is worse than Blackbird overall, because while Blackbird is at least a really cool area in concept, this place is just a repetitive dull prison. At the end is an FMV/minigame hybrid involving a mountain of sand and a giant drill, and that might be the worst part. You can't see what you're doing because the camera is zoomed out so far, and after a few seconds you just kinda die if you don't move in the right direction.

#9. Kislev Sewers (Xenogears) - What's worse than prison levels? Sewer levels. This place is full of dead ends, annoying random enemies, and so on. It grinds the game's momentum to a halt right when it's really picking up steam, as well. One of the couple of major missteps in a game that I've called the best pre-millennium RPG.

#8. Plate Underside (Final Fantasy 7 Remake) - FF7 Remake had a lot of padding in it to fill out the runtime. A lot. Way too much. While FF7 Rebirth cut way down on the padding (having so much more of the original game to cover made it unnecessary anyway), FF7 Remake is a bit of a slog to get through at times and falls well short of its sequel in that regard.

Nowhere is the padding more evident than in Chapter 6, where your party has to run around the catwalks on the underside of the Midgar upper level plate in order to reach the game's second Mako Reactor. This area goes on and on and involves activating switches, raising bridges, and fooling with giant lamps. If you looked up "padding that exists solely to slow the player down" in a dictionary you'd find this area.

#7. Barnabas' Domain (Final Fantasy 16) - The whole final act of FFXVI is very weak, especially the domain of the Odin bearer. Speaking of padding, they seemed to be trying to drag out the game's runtime by this point, as the main storyline had been resolved but they still needed like eight more hours tacked on. So we've got a castle, and an overworld area leading to it, that are basically nothing but fight after fight with increasingly stat-bloated enemies that drag on and on, leading up to several final battles with heatless bad guys that came out of nowhere. At least Barnabas, and the fight with him, are pretty cool.

#6. Riovanes Castle (Final Fantasy Tactics) - This location needs no introduction. They might as well have named it "Graveyard of First-Time FFT Playthroughs" because that's what it is. Wonder what the percentage is for first-time runs of the game that ended at this point. Quite frankly the only people spared would be people that either overleveled like crazy or were keeping several extra save files, despite the limitations of PS1 memory cards. A massive misstep in one of the best games of all time, and should probably be #1 on this list. It isn't much of an "area" though, consisting of 3 and a half fights and little else.

#5. World 4 (Ruins) (Final Fantasy Legend) - The world and dungeon design really take a nosedive with this part of the first SaGa game. You've got Suzaku harassing you on a constant basis on the overworld, the dungeons are confusing as hell with hidden passages, fake doors, fake stairs, and just general "where the hell do I go" at all times if you're not following a guide. The game damn near falls apart at this point, which is a shame because the area itself is pretty awesome in concept and visuals. Easily the most memorable location from the game...but also its worst.

Maybe they were running out of steam at this late stage in development, because the area after this (the final floors of the tower) aren't much better. They're just a bunch of conveyor belts that usher you to the next area, fighting a bunch of (way too frequent) random fights along the way with foes that cast Death and Petrify. Which is lots of fun (not). But overall I'd say the whole of World 4/Ruins is the worst part of the original SaGa and one of the worst things retro Square ever came up with. At least it's fairly short, like the game itself.

#4. Tower of Babel (Xenogears) - One of the best RPGs of all time also has some of the worst areas. And again it's a shame because the zone itself is so interesting in concept, visuals, music, lore, everything. One of the most memorable locations in any RPG from the era. The problem is that they turned the game into a platformer for this area, and it's pretty clear the game was never intended to be a platformer. Missing a jump and falling down a bunch of floors while being harassed by random battles every few seconds is like a circle of hell.

#3. Depths (Final Fantasy 4: The After Years) - An abyss-like monstrosity of an area that takes as long as the rest of the game combined. While in some ways it's the best part of the game from a pure gameplay perspective, for me it wears thin fast. Floor after floor after floor with very little to break up the monotony, with numerous reused assets, reused bosses, etc. They bring back what seems like most of FFIV's bosses for rematches, and when they run out of FFIV bosses to reuse, you start fighting bosses from other FF games. When I was younger I thought all of this was pretty awesome, but when it comes down to it it's a great big content-recycling mill. Sometimes dead is bettah.

If the various sections of the Depths were more interesting / distinct from each other, it'd be a lot easier to remember this fondly. When I first played the game in 2010 I was pretty much ready to be done by this point, only to be greeted by an area that went on and on seemingly endlessly. Worst part is that there are several "HP check" bosses towards the end that can force a total party overhaul at the last minute, never a good thing. Good luck bringing any low-HP or underleveled characters into the lower floors. It says a lot that in the 3D remake of this game for the DS, they basically removed like 70% of the Depths entirely.

#2. Imperial Capitol Gralea, Magitek Research Facility (Final Fantasy 15) - Also known as Zegnautus Keep, this isn't much of a keep or anything. It's basically an office building in the heart of the imperial city. The main character has to go it alone here, which slows everything way down. I think he loses a lot of his powers, because as I recall you're forced to rely on a ring for the limited amount you can do, necessitating some stealth gameplay for the first time all game. This place sums up pretty much everything wrong with lategame FFXV:

-It's basically a hallway

-It's bland as hell

-It's dark as hell

-It takes hours to get through and completely stalls out the momentum of the otherwise fast-paced final few chapters

-You're stuck with one character and he has to mostly sneak around

-You can't really explore because it's so linear

-There are poison gas sections that are incredibly tedious, stalling the momentum even more

-Despite being inspired by one of the most iconic locations in the series from Final Fantasy VI, this captures neither the vibe nor the mood of that place. It doesn't even have good music.

-They cut a bunch of content from here; you don't fight the mad scientist (Cid equivalent for this game) of the Empire, instead he just disappears. You don't fight THE EMPEROR, instead he dies offscreen. Well, after a random fight with a regular enemy, there's a V.O. suggesting that it was the Emperor you just killed and that he'd been transformed. It reeks of something added in post, because there was supposed to be a section with him and a boss fight and since it all got cut, they just threw a line in there after a regular enemy to "tie up the loose end".

Man, FFXV had so much potential. It's a quality game with quality characters, at least for a while, with a gorgeous open world to explore. While the battles are pretty simple and spam-to-win, they're at least more interesting than FF16. Which makes it rough that they squandered so much of the potential in question. The game is insanely unfinished and the back half, where everything happens, is rushed on all levels. They spent way too much development time on the Duscae territory, which should have been like the first third or even quarter of the game, and that area ended up being pretty much the whole game with an on-rails guided rush through the rest of the world at the end.

#1. Temple of the Ancients (Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth) - The new #1 entry that was worth reposting the list to add. The original TOTA on the PS1 was an awesome, memorable dungeon. Not this time around! They combined this with the final Northern Continent area at the end of Disc 1 to make it all one big area at the end of Rebirth, and it is pretty much every bad dungeon design trope rolled into one. It's way too long, way too tedious, and way too repetitive.

On top of all of that, it culminates with a horrendous ending to the game that completely drops the ball with what is, up to that point, actually a really damn good game. Yep, they take the original ending to Disc 1 and totally mangle it to avoid any sort of emotionally impactful moments. A major character death happens basically off-screen, leaving you wondering if it even happened at all. The other characters laying her to rest doesn't happen, and she keeps appearing (as a ghost?) all throughout the ending so you can't even process her being gone. IS she gone, for that matter? Her not being gone would be an amazing, triumphant twist, but we can't get that either if it's all ambiguous.

It's like they sacrificed one of the most impactful moments in RPG history just to A) Not upset anybody and B) Leave a mystery for the next game. People actually defend it for the latter reason. "Oh, they just created a mystery/hook for the next game that people will be discussing!" Yeah, no, we didn't need that. Everything about this is stupid, and this dungeon is poorly thought-out even on the most basic fundamental levels. I remember being pretty excited about this place in particular since I liked the TOTA in the original game so much. Well, they couldn't get out of their own way and just tell the story without any Weird Bullshit. For whatever reason they heavily bungled the last 5% or so of both of the remake games, let's hope they get it right for the third one.