Mega Man Legends 2

While the first Legends game could be forgiven for its technical shortcomings, Legends 2 came out in a post-OoT world and there are no more excuses for bad controls and bad lock-on. And they are so bad.

Locking on to flying enemies doesn't guarantee you hit them at all, but it will put the camera low and close to you so you can't see any other enemies dropping bombs at your feet or any other obstacles. "Lock-on" is generally too generous a name for it because even while you're holding down the button, your target can change if somebody else gets in your line of sight/fire. Or it will feel like that happens when your target dies and the lock-on immediately snaps to something else before you even realized you killed something. Yet other times, the lock will remain on the enemy as it explodes. There's no consistency. It feels so awful.

The rest doesn't feel much better. Mega Man moves like a tank. Dodge and jump are the same button but you can't dodge if you're locked on so it's completely pointless and you will do one move when you meant to do another. And you can't jump out of your dash.

If you can get used to the controls, unfortunately your reward is annoying dungeons and enemies. Sometimes you'll step on a spot and be paralyzed as you take damage, even though there was no indicator anything was there. Lots of enemies only have narrow windows of vulnerability, and waiting for the opportunity to hurt them is just a bore.

At least a full hour of my 10 hour playthrough time was spent grinding enemies in an area where they infinitely respawned in the dungeon with the last macguffin. I earned half a million zenny and thought that should be good for anything I'd ever need in terms of equipment and upgrades. This was wrong. There are individual parts that cost 600k or even 800k each. It is so grindy for absolutely no reason.

Because I didn't have the most beefed up weapons, both phases of the final boss took forever. A drastic difficulty spike. No predictable patterns, very limited opportunities to do damage, and to run and avoid damage I basically couldn't see the boss at all. Just terrible.
And the reward I got for beating the game? I unlocked Easy Mode, which is proof once again that the developers don't understand the purpose of difficulty options and why we like them.

The game earns points for its presentation, with the cartoony graphics looking like they're cel-shaded. The voice acting is pretty terrible and lacks subtitles in cutscenes, but I enjoy Tiesel chewing the scenery. The dungeons that mess with gravity do have a cool gimmick going for them. It's not all bad, but it's not a game I can recommend anybody.

Also, I'm disappointed in the soundtrack. A lot of the ambiance is nice and fitting for the ruins, but the series is known for some of the most iconic songs in chiptunes and its characters are literally named Rock and Roll. That they would have a main area of the game just play Vivaldi's Spring feels like the epitome of laziness, like they just left in a placeholder track and didn't consider their brand.