The thought came to mind after reading a recent post about Baldurs Gate 3 here but it reminded me of the Japense only PSX game Mizzurna Falls where if you don’t perform a certain action early in the game you are prevented from getting a true ending. While this might not be a traditional soft lock because you can still progress to a point it made me wonder none the less.
I understand BG3 might be a hard lock because the game abruptly comes to a close I am not going to get into the semantics. The only other soft locks I can think of are with Pokemon.
Shout out to the fan translation of Mizzurna Falls. An article on the ROMHacking.net website can be found here.
The Ooze. My memory on this is fuzzy but on genetics lab part 2, there is a room you can enter that has a checkpoint. If you enter the room then you’re locked inside and if you collect the checkpoint and die, you will respawn back into the room and your only option is to lose all your lives or reset the game. I remember getting really pissed off finding this when I was a kid because I spent days trying to beat the game and I had a really good run up until that moment.