I am playing Horizon Zero Dawn and haven’t gotten to the first main event, but it gives me this feeling like if I upgrade all my equipment now it might be for nothing. I know that is not the case, I looked it up, but what are some games that are the worst offenders? One I can think of is Aerith in the original FF7.
The gameplay effect is that it gives you a very tense and surprisingly difficult fight that really tests you and matches the situation well.
I can see why people would find it annoying (because skill inheritance is painfully slow and some rings have abilities you want on pretty much everyone) but I really liked that they went there. The story justification for how you lose the rings is pretty stupid though, I agree with the other comment (u/Kmann725) on that.