Summary
Many games have items, weapons, and armor for players to collect. This stuff can be used to help a player upgrade their character to stand a better chance in fights or sell those items for gold to improve other things. While it’s great that these games of varying genres allow players to collect these items, the execution needs to be pulled off successfully.
Some of these titles fall into the trap of having an unfortunatelycomplex or tediousinventory management system that makes collecting items quite a pain. While these titles have been deemed great by players, they have found the inventory they are able to access to be lacking in some areas. Therefore, these are by far the worst inventory management systems in some of the greatest games.
Dragon’s Dogmais a classic RPG title that many players have fallen in love with over the years. With many looking forward toDragon’s Dogma 2, many players hope that this next title will makeinventory managementfar less tedious.
Part of the issue withDragon’s Dogma’sinventory management is first found with the use of the total amount of weight the player can hold. This means players can only carry as much as their character has in strength. Besides this, as players progress further into the game, their inventory is likely to get even more cluttered, making it harder to navigate the ingredients a player may need for a recipe.
Star Wars: The Old Republicis an incredible massive multiplayer RPG that unfortunately has a terrible inventory system. In a similar theme toDragon’s Dogma, as player progress further into the various stories or content available to them, their inventory is likely to get cluttered with all sorts of different items.
Although the game does give the playera management systemas items can be sorted, when in combat, this can still be stressful to navigate. To a new player these different colored items, which range in rarity can be confusing to sort out, especially when the player has hardly any inventory space. Figuring out what’s important and what can be simply thrown away takes time to determine.
Part of the fun inThe Witcher 3is using different crafted items to get the upper hand on the monsters Geralt must face. These items are used quite quickly and therefore in a combat situation a player may be going through them at a fast pace.
When the game was first released players found this incredibly stressful as each time a player wanted to use an item such as blade oil, they would need to navigate the slowly filling inventory to use that item again. While CD Projekt Red did attempt to rectify this issue in later patches ofThe Witcher 3, some players still feel that the inventory is a chore to go through both in and out of battle.
AlthoughBaldur’s Gate 3might be the best role-playing game to release in 2023, it has arguably the worst inventory management of that year. Players are once again hit with a weight limit that is different depending on thestrength scoreof their character.
While this is common in many RPGs, this limit is made painful inBG3through the variety of weapons a player is likely to want on hand to deal with the various foes they face. Although players can sort their inventory, this doesn’t put them into different sections and therefore the player themselves is expected to pick up extra backpacks or satchels to clear some space.
Inventory space inBreath of the Wildis a large issue for some players who took the time to adventure in this open-world action-adventure title back in 2017. Although some players may assume that the durability of each weapon would manage this issue slightly, it does not. Players believe that the game should’ve had a way for them to quickly swap between weapons without scrolling through every weapon in the player’s inventory.
It’s mostly small things that make thisLegend of Zelda’sinventory management awful, like sitting through the action of opening a chest, only to find out the player’s inventory is full. Then the player must remember what the damage of that item was, so they can find a weapon to drop that was worse than it.
While some titles have been criticized for their lack of sorting sections, some games likeMass Effectwent the complete opposite direction and had too many sorting sections. One of the biggest let-downs of the originalMass Effecttitle mentioned by players was being unable to see all their items at once when needed.
With so many sections, players spent more time navigating their inventory and less time choosingthe weapon they wished to use. Comparing weapons was cumbersome as well as applying weapon attachments and ammo types for different enemies.
Nioh 2took the issues ofNioh’s inventory from the first game and made no difference to the issues players had. The inventory issues inNiohare less about the space – though this in itself is a problem – and more about thelarge amount of gearthat is consistently thrown at the player.
This isn’t an exaggeration as every foe the player defeats is likely to “reward” them with another pair of boots that is the same as the other pair the player was gifted several minutes ago. These items quickly clutter the player’s inventory, leaving them to constantly throw out shoes to make space for the possibility of getting something better next time.
Unsurprisingly, whileSkyrimis still one of the greatest RPGs Bethesda has ever created, many players to this day still agree that it had one of the worst inventory management screens to date. Many who have enjoyed the title on PC have taken to downloading new UI mods to make this aspect of the game better and have sworn to never go back to the base game’s terrible inventory screen.
Those who play the game with a controller are far more likely to find the inventory screen appealing. Meanwhile, those whopreferred the mouse and keyboardfound it incredibly tedious to navigate, especially since every item is a name the player must scroll through.
