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.
Endwar has unit promotions that were persistent between engagements in online mode. You would build up your recruits and turn them into veteran units who were pretty strong over a bunch of engagements. If your opponent beat a unit it would enter a downed state and it would take some time for the downed unit to get evac’d from the map. If your opponent chose to keep firing at the downed unit and got it’s health to zero before evac, they would be obliterated and go back to being a fresh, unpromoted unit. One hot battle could take you from a grizzled and terrifying commanding officer back to weenie hut Jr.