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.
Idk if you are unfamiliar with majoras mask but the game has a 3-day cycle the ends with the cataclysmic destruction of hyrule by the moon crashing down, when the moon hits the town the main character is sent back in time to day 1 without any of their consumables, iconic items like your bow or hookshot are kept indefinitely as they each typically require a significant expenditure of effort to acquire
As a kid, the prospect of losing all your bombs/arrows/rupees/stuff every couple hours was kind of a punishing feeling