So I just had the worst experience while playing a video game. And no, it had nothing to do with Xbox Live.

For a few weeks now, I’ve been playing though Dragon Quest 8, I game I bought over four years ago but never finished because I got lost in what I was supposed to do after a specific point, and so stopped. But I picked it up again a few weeks ago and started over from the beginning, to see if I could finally finish it.

So I got past the part I originally got lost at (which probably had more to do with the fact that I have more skill playing JRPGs now than I did when I first bought the game), and entered the dungeon where the main bad guy was. Now, I knew the fight wasn’t going to be the final one between my characters and this guy – there where way more places in the game I hadn’t been to yet, or in some cases didn’t even have access too yet. So this was just going to be the first of what would probably be three or so more fights between me and this guy.

What I didn’t count on however was that the bad guy would pull a total One Winged Angel on me and change forms, then force me into another fight after the first one. There I was, all happy because I had survived the first really tough boss fight in the game, and the game goes and pulls a bait-and-switch on me, with a leveled-up boss fight directly after the first one. On top of that I had absolutely no chance to heal in-between the fights – so some of my party had half or low health, or were running out of magic. It’s because of that – and because I had to spend so much time healing – the second fight took over an hour. While the first one lasted ten minutes at most.

I was so pissed off I almost threw my controller at the TV.

If you don’t know, I love RPGs. Especially JRPGs, which the Dragon Quest series is one of the most famous of. It’s not that well known in America, but the series is huge in Japan. So much so, the Government had to ask Enix (now merged with Squaresoft to be known as Square-Enix) to not release the game during the week because too many people were taking off from work or school to play it. Hearing this is what sparked my interest in playing the series. And, up until now I was finally having fun with this game. The fact that I’d played more JRPGs before I picked it up again has helped in that regard.

But that? Pulling that with that boss? That was just mean. And yes, I have the strategy guide for the game, but it never even hinted that such a thing was going to happen.

And you know you’re talking it all a little too personally when you’re yelling and cursing at the screen after you win and not all “yes!” about it. :p