Worst RPG

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Monde Luna
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Worst RPG

Post by Monde Luna »

I figured since we have a top ten list it would be nice to see what everyones least favorite(s) RPG(s) has been.

My vote goes to the ARPG FF Crystal Chronicles, it drove me crazy I couldn't even complete it.

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Guild_Premier_Ghaleon
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Re: Worst RPG

Post by Guild_Premier_Ghaleon »

Xenosaga... Good GOD I hated that game. I was psyched when it came out because I'm a Xenogears addict, but that game was nowhere near as awesome.
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Dark_Fairy
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Re: Worst RPG

Post by Dark_Fairy »

Final Fantasy X-2, at least until I think of something worse because I'm sure there is. >_>

Ok, yeah. I finally thought of something worse. Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage. Hands down.
Last edited by Dark_Fairy on Thu Jan 29, 2009 9:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Blue_Sycro
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Re: Worst RPG

Post by Blue_Sycro »

Certainly this isn't the worst RPG ever, but I have to be honest. I simply could not bring myself to like Kingdom Hearts *waits to be pelted with rotten fruit*

I have tried multiple times to get through that game and I simply could not. I thought the beginning was cool, but after like 3 or 4 of those worlds or whatever, I felt like I was just trudging along only because of the "OMG ITS TEH GRATEST GAME EVAR U HAFF TO PLAY IT LOL" hype surrounding it, rather than actual enjoyment of the game.

It was just so...I mean, you're attacking annoying and never ending hordes of little shadows with A GIANT KEY while completing countless tedious tasks (if I had a nickel for every time I fell off a platform it took me way too long to get to, well I wouldn't be very rich at all because I usually turned off the game in frustration at that point :roll: ), while your various battle buddies get slaughtered repeatedly. It just felt like busy work. Also, most of the encounters with Disney characters I found to be more schmaltzy and ham-fisted than actually nostalgic.

Oh and I also want to mention Legend of Dragoon. Just...no.

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Re: Worst RPG

Post by Nobiyuki77 »

As much of a Dragon Quest fan as I am, Dragon Quest VII for the PSX was INSANELY long. Plus, it required you to look through every nook and cranny to find little shards to continue. These little buggers could be anywhere. After 35 hours I just gave up.

I also have issues with Persona 3's inability to let me play the game at my own pace and lack of ability to directly control my party members.
-Nobi

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Re: Worst RPG

Post by Guild_Premier_Ghaleon »

An awesome RPG that had minor flaws that drove me insane, Arc the Lad II. I love the series, but you were forced to play for an hour or two because saves were so far apart. Drove me crazy.
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Re: Worst RPG

Post by Dark_Fairy »

Blue_Sycro wrote:Certainly this isn't the worst RPG ever, but I have to be honest. I simply could not bring myself to like Kingdom Hearts *waits to be pelted with rotten fruit*

I have tried multiple times to get through that game and I simply could not. I thought the beginning was cool, but after like 3 or 4 of those worlds or whatever, I felt like I was just trudging along only because of the "OMG ITS TEH GRATEST GAME EVAR U HAFF TO PLAY IT LOL" hype surrounding it, rather than actual enjoyment of the game.

It was just so...I mean, you're attacking annoying and never ending hordes of little shadows with A GIANT KEY while completing countless tedious tasks (if I had a nickel for every time I fell off a platform it took me way too long to get to, well I wouldn't be very rich at all because I usually turned off the game in frustration at that point :roll: ), while your various battle buddies get slaughtered repeatedly. It just felt like busy work. Also, most of the encounters with Disney characters I found to be more schmaltzy and ham-fisted than actually nostalgic.

Oh and I also want to mention Legend of Dragoon. Just...no.
I won't throw rotten fruit at you. :p The Disney characters did have a sense of "meh" to me at first. Really, while most parts about it I do love (I don't like Donald and Goofy as your main party and some other minor things), I think Kingdom Hearts is just one of those games your either going to love (me) or hate (you).

I am curious though, what's wrong with Legend of Dragoon? I liked that game, even though I got stuck and still haven't beaten it. o_o

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Re: Worst RPG

Post by Sonic# »

Nobiyuki77 wrote:As much of a Dragon Quest fan as I am, Dragon Quest VII for the PSX was INSANELY long. Plus, it required you to look through every nook and cranny to find little shards to continue. These little buggers could be anywhere. After 35 hours I just gave up.

I also have issues with Persona 3's inability to let me play the game at my own pace and lack of ability to directly control my party members.
I had the same trouble with Dragon Quest VII. It was awesome at first, but was just too long. I still have a save for it, about... yes, 35 hours in.

I'm playing Persona 3 right now though, and the pace has never been an issue. Harvest Moon-style day progression is fine by me, and I accept the fact I can't progress quickly in Tartarus (I normally finish it my second visit) by alternately leveling up or just ignoring Tartarus and going to the next month sooner. And I've found the alternate character AI to be adequate... once I understood what it would do in a given situation, I found (and find) it fun to properly complement their actions.
Blue_Scyro wrote:KINGDOM HEARTS NOOOO (paraphrase)
I can see where that comes from. I know sometimes I would suffer from KH fatigue (go to a world, remain superficially involved with the story there, fight tons of black things, go to another world). But I ended up enjoying it anyway. Our contrast might be between your "you're attacking annoying and never ending hordes of little shadows with A GIANT KEY" and my "You fight with a giant key! Awesome!" >_>

There are a few RPGs that I don't like because they're so dated, like Sword of Vermillion. As far as ones I wouldn't have liked at any time... hm. It's difficult to say, since any RPG I've played for a worthwhile amount of time (20+ hours) I have liked, even if I got tired of it, and I can't remember many I played less than that. I guess the one that comes closest to horrible for me is Samurai Legend Musashi. I was expecting something as well made as Brave Fencer Musashi, but it felt... unfinished. It was also frustrating that it was easy to die but hard to save.
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Re: Worst RPG

Post by LunarRaptor »

Final Fantasy II (no, not the one that was actually FFIV with Cecil and Kain). The actual Final Fantasy II, AKA "Final Fantasy: What Were We Smoking?".

These quotes from Fly Bear Dot Com's review spell out quite nicely what I hate about that game and why I think its the worse one ever:
Final Fantasy II is an RPG that tries to break away from the standardised rules as we know them and become something more organic that could only be done on a console capable of storing, retrieving and manipulating thousands and thousands of numbers at once. Characters don't have levels or classes; their abilities increase and decrease proportional to how they act during combat - a character who primarily performs physical attacks with an axe will eventually evolve into a fighter who's good with axes, for instance. Instead of having a set list of spells arranged on tiers according to power, they all begin weak and can only be mastered through repeated casting. This is much closer to the idea of "Role Playing" than any other game in the series, since, if we want to be a fighter, we have to damn well get out there and fight stuff, not collect a piece of crystal and then select "Fighter" from the Job menu. When we later encounter enemies who are weak against ice, we don't just give somebody an ice spell or the Shiva summon that we've got lying around, we've got to put in the hard yards and learn to cast ice with enough power to do damage, assuming we weren't smart enough to diversify our line-up early. The characters have statistics, and numbers still pop up above people's heads when rocks fall on them, but the way they all relate is something the feels natural and alive, not the end result of collecting an arbitrary number of experience points. This is all well and good in theory.

In practice, it's another kettle of seafood soup. We might not level up, but there's still indicators on the menu that show how good each character is in each area, and the temptation to make those numbers get higher by being sneaky is very, very hard to resist, especially when it becomes apparent how easy it is. Maximum HP, for instance, increases proportional to how much damage that character suffers, which makes sense early on when monsters can kill you pretty damn easily and you need to toughen up... except, later on, there's nothing stopping you finding an area where the monsters are now too weak to harm you (literally; they'll do 0 damage) and start getting your characters to attack themselves. When everybody's on low HP, heal them and do it again. By the time you run out of MP, just kill off the pathetic monsters and find, to your delight, that your party's maximum HP (along with strength, defense and weapon proficiency) is now three times what it was beforehand. This takes maybe five minutes. Don't pretend that you wouldn't.

Except... this isn't really sneaky, it's necessary if you want to survive. As in the ice example from earlier, you will run into situations constantly where a certain spell or weapon type is clearly the way to go, only to discover that nobody is capable of using it properly because you've relied on axes and fireballs all game. It might seem like its our fault for being over-specialised, but if we had split weapon / spell usage evenly, none of them would be powerful enough to take down a regular enemy, much less a boss. This reaches new heights of stupidity when the party climb a ridiculously difficult tower in order to attain Ultima, ostensibly the most powerful spell in the world... except, when we get it, it's on level 1 and barely scratches a goblin. -Fatal Hopper- Aeris; this is the sort of stuff that makes me break down in tears.

The people who made this game knew about these problems. Instead of, say, trying to work around them, they added a feature to cover the holes in the gameplay: The "Swap" spell, which exchanges your HP and MP with the target. This sounds like one of those obscure Blue Magic spells that only completists bother getting, but... cast it on a Goblin with 6 HP and 0 MP, finish the battle, and, lo and behold, your stats are through the roof, because the game thinks you were reduced to 6 HP and 0 MP by the astonishingly difficult battle you just survived by the skin of your teeth. The only reason this spell exists is so you can cheat with it, because the people who made this game realised their system was totally unbalanced, but couldn't think of a way to correct the damn thing. This is so monumentally inane that it beggars belief.

This is still a game about the player relating to and manipulating abstract numbers, it's just that it's more frustrating and less satisfying. The characters don't really evolve organically, because not only can we plainly see how the stats are doled out, but the game expects us to notice and actually helps us exploit its loopholes. If the rest of the game were properly balanced, if the dungeon designs were clever rather than annoying, if anything here didn't feel so half-finished, then this might seem like one of the first post-modern video game moments, but, honestly... it's just really, really stupid. It's not that it's "weird" or "experimental", it's that it starts by taking control over the all-important numbers away from the player, then realises it doesn't know what to do with it and gives it back, but by then it's too late. If you want something "experimental", play Final Fantasy VIII; at least the numbers make sense.
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Re: Worst RPG

Post by Blue_Sycro »

Dark_Fairy, thanks for resisting the fruit-throwing :wink: I know what you mean about the love/hate thing. I really wanted to love it, which is why I've tried to get through it like 5 times now, but for whatever reason it just doesn't click with me. Perhaps I'm too impatient.

As for Legend of Dragoon - For me, it was just really flat and I didn't feel any connection to the characters. And the random battles all the way out the dungeon. Dear GOD the random battles... Maybe I'm being superficial, maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance to grow on me, but there was no way I could make it through four discs of that. Again, impatience.

Sonic, the "KH fatigue" as you call it (I like that term) is pretty much what always stopped me. I'd sort of play through a world, go do something else in the 'real world' or whatever it is those non-gamers call it, and then when I thought about going to play some more, I just didn't feel like it at all.
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I lol'd.

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Re: Worst RPG

Post by Werefrog »

Blue_Sycro wrote: Sonic, the "KH fatigue" as you call it (I like that term) is pretty much what always stopped me. I'd sort of play through a world, go do something else in the 'real world' or whatever it is those non-gamers call it, and then when I thought about going to play some more, I just didn't feel like it at all.
I think they call it the world :D .

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Re: Worst RPG

Post by Monde Luna »

O geez Kingdom Hearts, I totally feel you there Blue_Sycro. I forced my way through KH1 but didn't have the heart to finish KH 2. I'm a pretty big Disney fan so I really wanted to like the game. But I always seemed to finish a world and then put the game away for a month or two only to go back complete a world, rinse and repeat. I just feel like the story could have been executed better and I got sick of fighting. That is my general complaint in most RPG's though after awhile I get sick of fighting, story, story, story that is where the meat and potatoes is at!

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Re: Worst RPG

Post by brightshield »

Eternal Sonata on the 360 no contest. Some of the most annoying characters ever, and the worst RPG story ever by far. Even worse than the original FF. 95% of the story is filler, and it's not even interesting filler. Then the main plot comes in and tries to deep and complicated, when in reality it's shallow, rushed, and very poorly told. If the gameplay was great it could made up for the poor story and characters, but sadly it's only average at best. Most of the game you're stuck watching a boring story that winds up being mostly filler anyway.

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Re: Worst RPG

Post by LuciaOne »

I agree with the KH stuff, I played it because it was so much fun to kill Heartless. The story is a total joke. I remember playing KHII and just saying "Are you serious?" to any sort of plot development.

I hate FF7.
That'd be my worst RPG.
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Re: Worst RPG

Post by HikariOmoi »

LuciaOne wrote:I hate FF7.
That'd be my worst RPG.
I've never played the game myself, but I've heard enough hype to know that this could be considered scandalous. ;p

My worst RPG...? Huh... well, I played FF: Crystal Chronicles for a little while (ten - twenty minutes?) and couldn't continue. I wasn't very impressed, but, as you can see, I didn't give it much of a chance.

Also, Wild Arms 2. It starts off with three missions with the three different characters. I could do two of those missions, but as soon as it came to the girl's mission I was like, "...WTH, what do I do!? DDDD:!!" (Keep in mind I was probably 12-13 when I played it...) I even looked at a FAQ for it but couldn't make heads or tails of it. Actually, talking about it gets me so riled up I want to try again. (Back in the day, I'd rent it a lot to try and get past that stupid level. Eventually I learned to stop wasting my money.)

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Re: Worst RPG

Post by Werefrog »

HikariOmoi wrote: My worst RPG...? Huh... well, I played FF: Crystal Chronicles for a little while (ten - twenty minutes?) and couldn't continue. I wasn't very impressed, but, as you can see, I didn't give it much of a chance.
Crystal Chronicles is only worth playing if you have some people over. I thought it was fun. It wasn't the best, but it was a good multi-player RPG.

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brightshield
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Re: Worst RPG

Post by brightshield »

I hate FF7.
That'd be my worst RPG.


I just hope your reasons are better than "it's got too many fanboys" or "it's overrated". Personally, I love the game, but I'll admit that it has flaws. However, calling it the worst RPG ever just sounds heavily biased to me. I mean even if I hated it, I'd still give it credit for making RPGs popular outside of Japan, and convincing companies to bring over many other RPGs.

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Sonix
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Re: Worst RPG

Post by Sonix »

When I was searching for another RPG, I stumbled upon FFVII (of course...) and hearing how good it was, I really wanted to play it. No wonder though, all those fanbois (yes, I not y) talking 'bout how its THE best RPG ever made and there won't ever be better RPG. So yea, unless it was perfect, I'd be dissappointed. And so I was.

No, its still not the worst RPG.
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Re: Worst RPG

Post by localflick »

Love it or hate it, FF7 is probably the most impactful (not influential, well it was, just not the most influential) RPG ever released. It almost always shows up in best and worst lists and as mentioned above as well as countless other boards and posts, it did greatly popularize the genre outside of Japan.

It was the first RPG with a scope massive enough to attempt a full 40+ hour 3D RPG with fully rendered (not just in-game) cutscenes and have a localization included within the massive budget so we English-speaking Americans can go to Wal-mart and buy a copy. There's something to be said for that and I believe it deserves some respect.

I don't think it's the greatest game ev-ar, especially because of the flawed stereotypical characters and some parts of the storyline that were a little weak. But it's very impressive that an RPG on that scale was even attempted, let alone successfully (from a financial standpoint) executed.

Unfortunately a lot of younger gamers weren't around when it came out and don't all appreciate what a big release it was, and many tend to judge it based on more modern games that are much better than FF7. Many of those games wouldn't have existed without it, and out of the ones that would have come out regardless how many would have made it to America?

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Re: Worst RPG

Post by GhaleonOne »

I think it was more the leap in technology than FFVII that made RPGs popular. People went nuts over the 3D aspect of FFVII, but people were already doing that based on the early "Ultra 64" screens of the FFVI gang in 3D before FFVII was even announced. FFVII just happened to be the lucky one that got released first. If I remember right, Grandia came out on the Saturn in Japan the same year, and was every bit as good and graphically beautiful (albeit a different art style) as FFVII was. In fact, at the time, Grandia was touted as the FFVII-killer for the Saturn. It just never sold as well without that FF name. Plus, the Saturn just didn't have the Playstation drawing power.
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