Your Top 5 (or less) Worst RPGs (and why)

[Yuri-G]

Was gonna do a top 5 but I actually found it hard to think of 5 games I really hate, so whatever. Post one, post ten, it's all the same.

5) Advance Wars - I actually really like this game, but Fog of War alone gets it a mention up here. And screw you, it's kind of an RPG. It exists within an RPG-related subgenre, at least. But seriously... fuck Fog of War. Fuck it dry with a chainsaw.

4) Arc The Lad: Twilight of the Spirits - I could see some people liking this game, I really could. It's not horrible in any one area, it's just far too basic. The battle system was the only thing that set it apart from any other game I've played, and that wasn't enough to keep it interesting. It was after the fourth or fifth ridiculously cheesy, highly telegraphed plot twist (OH MY GOD THE EVIL GUY WHO WAS REALLY GOOD WAS REALLY PRETENDING TO BE GOOD AND IS REALLY EVIL WHOA) that I finally had to put the controller down and call it a day.

3) Lunar: Dragon Somethingorother (DS) - Forgot the name, forgot the characters, forgot the dungeons, I barely remember the box art. Forgettable in every single way, I'm still reeling from a game this bad hitting a series this good. Oh, and if anyone has the address of the guy who thought of the "lose HP as you walk" deal, please PM me so we can ensure this shit never happens again, for any reason, in any game, ever.

2) Saga Frontier 2 - Beautiful graphics. Fascinating characters. Interesting and engaging battle system. I honestly don't remember why I hated this game, but I think it had something to do with insane balance issues from one area to the next coupled with disjointed storytelling that deconstructs a decent story into many ugly pieces. Or something like that.

1) Legend of Dragoon - Worst. Localization. Ever. It's like the whole game is one big "ALL YOUR BASES" joke. It's a shame too, because the graphics were nice, the battle system was great, and the characters/story themselves were fine. I guess the lesson here is: When you hide good characters behind stilted, grammatically tragic dialogue, you might as well just puke on the disc and call it a day.

All in all, I haven't played nearly enough bad games.

[Krandor]

Hate is a strong word, but the combat system in Suikoden III drove me ballistic. I loved the story/graphics/sound etc, but the combat system was so maddeningly awful I could never bring myself to even get close to finishing the game.

[Cyn]

#1 - Unlimited Saga. This game just sucked in every way, only game that i ever bought and played less than 1 day.

#2 - FFVIII. Not so much that it was a terrible game, it was just a massive disappointment, especially following behind FFVII. Nice graphics, but over all bad characters, and annoying battle system.

#3 - FF: Mystic Quest. Very bland and uninspired. The easiest RPG ever created.

#4 - RO - Guess I'm just not into sickeningly cute Asian shit and silly hats.

#5 - D&D Tactics. - While the combat was tactical, it was based on the P&P game, which is definitely a role playing game. However, not 1 thing was good about this game, despite being delayed like 8 times. I think they finally just gave up and released it in a fit of fuckit.

[Vinen]

#1 Secret of the Stars
Tecmo fails at making an RPG... badly.
#2 Dual Orb 2
Game had a total of... wait for it... ONE battle music track it used for the entire game!... not to mention you had to grind out through ears even moreso then in 7th Saga in order to beat each boss.
#3
#4
#5 Final Fantasy 7
Less a factor of a game and more a factor of the fanbase. The overzealous fanbase of the game who insist it's the greatest thing since sliced bread sickens me and makes it impossible for me to enjoy the game without seeing every flaw.

Honestly really need to think of #'s 3 and 4. Nothing is popping into my head-

[Haiko]

1# Romancing Saga
2# Romancing Saga
3# Romancing Saga
4# Romancing Saga
5# Romancing Saga

You know why? play the game to find out...

[Vinen]

1# Romancing Saga
2# Romancing Saga
3# Romancing Saga
4# Romancing Saga
5# Romancing Saga

You know why? play the game to find out...

It's not a terrible game Unlimited Saga is much much much worse-

//beat Romancing Saga with all 8 characters

[Elcura]

I don't really remember a lot of bad RPGs I've played, so I'll just list a few in no particular order.

FFVIII - Uninspiring story. Actually, that wasn't so much the problem, saving the world stories are like the bread and butter of RPGs. But this story just felt sloppy to me, situational "Oh hey, that happened" bullshit. The characters were dull, cliche and overall boring. Dialogue made me want to sleep and the best part about everything I just mentioned (story, characters and dialogue) were done so much better in Laguna's story/flashback. A full game at that quality would have been amazing. The battle system, while still classical FF (ATB, you can't really go wrong) managed to tack on absolutely retarded additions. Junctioning? Drawing? I don't think I need to elaborate why these were bad ideas, also poorly implemented. The concept/idea is nice and I love the thought of it but in reality it's god awful.

.Hack (Infection to Quarantine) - I have to say, .Hack did not have a bad story, at all. I was rather compelled by the story, settings and characters which made me play all the way through to near the end of part 4. It was a fantastic universe, imaginative and pretty well presented. It kinda did feel like playing an MMO, which is a good thing in some regards, and a bad thing in every other. While I liked the battle system in the first game, and the concepts that came with it I soon came to abhor everything to do with combat by the 3rd game. Nothing. Fucking. Changed. You got new skills that looked the same and did more damage, who fucking cares? The battle system became tedious and dungeon crawling became fucking abysmal. It's not that I hate dungeon crawling (I finished Rogue Galaxy after all) it's just that you have to do so much of it and the majority of dungeon crawls amounted to nothing. Most of the time there was no feeling of accomplishment what-so-ever. I still think Infection by itself is a good game, and the way it ended was nothing short of spectacular. The problem arises when you look at the series as a whole and realize that apart from the story, nothing changed. Also, I forgot to mention how fucking retarded hacking and obtaining those core sphere things were. It wasn't that bad (just felt like an arbitrary way to extend game life) until the last game, where to unlock the last dungeons you needed nothing short of the fucking alphabet x2. That's when I gave up, nothing is worth the frustration of fighting creatures dozens of times, hacking them all for the same fucking core sphere, not to mention when you use the technique sometime it fucks up and makes you take a break.

The Summoner - Not a terrible game by all means. Just...average. It isn't particularly exciting to play and it isn't particularly exciting to progress in. The only thing that made the game worth while was the hidden D&D joke scene at the end of the game. Some interesting twists, interesting characters and environments. The battle system wasn't great but ultimately it got the job done and didn't make me not want to play it.

Eternal Ring - Back in the day when RPGs on the PS2 were scarce (before FFX) I remember renting this game. It's a first-person RPG, and while it's an interesting concept it certainly doesn't help at all when trying to feel connected to the character. There's no immersion in the first-person either, cause you're obvious a white male. Not everyone who played this game is a white male. The story was dull, environments were dull at first, then became slightly more interesting and the battle system was pretty horrible. There were some nice concepts (again, like most RPGs I don't like) and a decent amount of customization, but it didn't help that you could get the best ring in the game half-way through (light and dark versions) and pretty much stomp on the already non-existent difficulty (though the effects were pretty cool). Overall, this could have been so much more, if it wasn't first-person and actually tried for character development (my memory is hazy tbh).

Digimon...Adventure...Something 1 - I honestly don't remember the name of this game fully. It's basically Digimon mixed with Monster Rancher. I like Digimon, at least, I used to like it (I haven't watched it since S3 finished) and back then I was eager to play the games. This was during the Pokemon era mind you, so it seemed like a good idea. But unlike Pokemon, or even Digimon there was no lasting Digimon for you to own. Basically, it's incredibly retarded to give Digimon a fucking life cycle, complete with poop and portable toilets. WTF?! Not only did you send a good amount of time training your Digimon (a good portion of it's incredibly short life cycle) but you couldn't even completely control what form it took. And your Digimon was basically a parasite of some sort that could possibly be every Digimon ever made ever. No sense of camaraderie or anything. I hated it and after my Digimon basically turned into a shit monster for no apparent reason I turned off the game and nearly broke the disc (I was young), not caring if Blockbuster would bust me (they did later on, but that was for Wipeout Fusion, what a retarded game that was as well).

Wow, holy shit that was long...

[Julian]

That digimon game was fun ((((((((

also, 2nd the .hack thing, stopped playing on the first dungeon of the 4th game due to gate hacking, stupidest thing ever created, dunno why I didn't stop sooner

Top 5 worst rpgs... I dunno, there's a lot of shit I don't like, and I can't really think of anything right now, was about to go to sleep when I decided to read this thread <_< will update this post tomorrow maybe

[Kaylia]

Thread like this make me want to hurt people. None of the game [I played] listed here are horrible and deserve "worst rpg award". They usually have one big flaw, but to go as far as call it worst >_>...dunno. Worst rpg should be something along the line of what Angry game nerd review.



FFMQ was awesome and had some of the best music on early snes era.
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=yjT0PCv-cnA
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=sOgo6fXbJI4
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ0KilHkxFk
Those 3 musics made me want to say "fuck yeaaah" and go beat on giant slime in my backyard with a sword. Of course, there was no slime, and I only had a wooden stick, but that's beyond the point. Story was simple, but come on, compared to other game back then, it was still fine.

Of course, nostalgia goggle make me say it's awesome, but even when I try to rationalize and compare it to other rpg of nes/snes era, I don't think it was that bad. It's not close to the chrono, mario rpg and ff4/6 out there, but it's on par or better to almost everything else.



As for ff8, you guys need to give it another try. I'm almost certain most of you hated it for the wrong reason. Not saying it would make it to your favorite top 5, but going as far as put it in your "5 worst"? Beat it with ultimecia/rinoa and ff3/ff8 connections in mind, read the database as you progress, try to enjoy the music and laguna's childish antics and your opinion will probably change.
If you don't remember what the lunar cry is, what was Esthar's objectives, who Adel is, maybe you didn't pay enough attention to the story to enjoy it.

[Exoduso]

The FF8 bashing is hilarious... like FF7 was any better.

[Quicklet]

Gotta second Secret of the Stars being among the worst. Oh and Drakkhen or whatever it was for the SNES.

[Einherjar]

Unlimited Saga was a terrible game, and those involved in its production should be ashamed.

[Fallso]

The FF8 bashing is hilarious... like FF7 was any better.

FF7 was a masterpiece of storyline finnese with a depth of character that I've yet to see from a Final Fantasy game yet. The backstory that explains stuff about the characters is also something you don't get too much of these days.

FF8 was different in the essence they essentially tried to redo FF7 with the emo main character and "oh noes world go bye bye" storyline, which I feel they didn't flesh out as well as they could've done.

[Cyn]

I've played every US FF since the first one on NES, and VIII and XII were the only ones I lost interest in before beating. Hell, VII I beat like 3 times with all secrets, capped levels, and optional bosses. That game pretty much defined 3D console RPGs. Maybe I was expecting too much from VIII, but it really seemed to take steps backwards in every department other than graphics to me. And XII was just lame all around, I hope they get rid of that crappy hands-off battle system.

But... I'd say if you weren't into FF at least by VI, then you probably have no real frame of reference regarding how awesome VII was in the early PS1 days.

[Zilong]

FF8 was awesome, the whole junction system is so fucking abusable it's not even funny (hi2u death status) and the whole refinery system adds that much more awesomeness to the junction system.

Though granted, I never was a huge fan in caster based combat, so the entire game was like almost a Attack spammer wet dream...you can practically add any element and status effect on your normal attack, and basically spam limit when conditions are met...loved the whole renzokuken, duel, and shot limits.

But yeah, I can see how that'd piss people that actually like MP, but to me, those magic are awesome as it is junctioned to my stats, not that I'd need to use them with the ability slots allowing auto buffs, and fuckton of items acting like a pseudo magic anyway (XXX stones, tiers of potions, auto-XXX abilities)

Hell, the only magic that can't be replaced is like meltdown, but there is doomtrain for that.

As for the worst RPG I've played...I'm not really sure since I usually just stop playing them and forget about them.

Though if I had to pick one, I guess it'd be...FFX-2, it really ruined the FFX's bittersweet ending, and while the whole dress sphere system was somewhat innovative along with probably the better implementation of the whole ATB system, the mockery of a FFX lore and the whole wasted potential of what it could have been (or rather, what it shouldn't have been)...is just horrendous.

Add in the fact that 90% of the enemies are just recycled FFX shit (hell, even the FUCKING FINAL BOSS IS A FUCKING RECYCLED TIDUS) it just doesn't feel like a real game to me.

I really liked FFX's storyline and how it ended the way it was, but this fucking game just had to appear in the canon and ruin it for me.

[Sasarai]

#5 Final Fantasy VII (and related spinoffs) - Honestly under other circumstances this game wouldn't be on anyone's top 5 worst RPGs list, but I put it here because of it's fanboys and spinoffs. It is not the "greatest game ever" and honestly one of it's most appealing aspects (it's open ending) was ruined by said rampant fanboyism popularity.

#4 Grandia III - Such a shame, it started off so well! For much of the first disk this was a really fun game, the characters were interesting (Alfeena excluded) with a genuine connection to the hero and the battle system was fun and even addicting. It all just went downhill from there. Interesting characters leave, characters with no purpose/personality join. Battle system goes from fun to bothersome. Plot develops and is so simple it makes the series' previous installments plotlines feel like reading Sun Tzu's "The Art of War". Would be closer to the top if not for that good start.

#3 Dragon Quest: The Journey of the Cursed King - Another popular RPG and for the life of me I can't understand why. I remember reading a review for a Tales of game (possibly Legendia) where they actually put the whole game down because it wasn't DQ. Let's set things straight here, this game looks awful. The characters are stereotypical bores with voice acting that rivals Enchanted Arms for "hitting the mute button" reaction. The battle system (while being traditional DQ) still looks like something from RPG-Maker. If someone can tell me why this game deserves such high esteem in comparison to many other awesome RPGs, I'd like to hear it.

#2 Final Fantasy X-2 - What list would be complete without this game? A pure fan disk and nothing else. I can only imagine SE created this to cater for the 12 year old girl market who were unhappy with how FFX ended and wanted something easy to comprehend. I think they failed. The plot is mind-numbing for anyone, regardless of age/gender. Some of the mini-games are so horrendous, it questions ones sanity as to whether it truely is worth going through it all to see a short extra cutscene. What about the ridiculas fanboy additions? Any serious gamer can not be impressed with a half-naked 16 year old chick who gets into breast comparison scenes, just to try and plug what is essentially a very unimpressive RPG. The dressphere system keeps it off the top spot, for me.

#1 Breath of Fire 5: Dragon Quarter - Oh my god, I hate this game. With a passion. What a way to end the Breath of Fire series. Having played from the start, the sheer disappointment playing this beginning to end was like a kick in the crotch. Everything that made the previous installments so good, was destroyed. The D-Counter system essentially insured you would never want to transform into a dragon and had a retarded increase rate if you weren't in a battle for all of 10 minutes. Characters were boring. Plot, non-existant til the end. Battles were a real chore but nothing in comparison to mindlessly roaming the endless underground corridors untill you want to launch your PS2 controller through the screen. I'm all for a series heading in a new direction before it stagnates (See: #3), this one however only went from good to bad, not good to better.

[Elcura]

Thread like this make me want to hurt people. None of the game [I played] listed here are horrible and deserve "worst rpg award". They usually have one big flaw, but to go as far as call it worst >_>...dunno. Worst rpg should be something along the line of what Angry game nerd review.

As for ff8, you guys need to give it another try. I'm almost certain most of you hated it for the wrong reason. Not saying it would make it to your favorite top 5, but going as far as put it in your "5 worst"? Beat it with ultimecia/rinoa and ff3/ff8 connections in mind, read the database as you progress, try to enjoy the music and laguna's childish antics and your opinion will probably change.
If you don't remember what the lunar cry is, what was Esthar's objectives, who Adel is, maybe you didn't pay enough attention to the story to enjoy it.

Eh, like I said before I just listed 5 RPGs I didn't particularly like. They aren't the worst RPGs in the world just ones I personally didn't think much off. As for FF8, I've played it recently (like 2-3 years ago) and my opinions of the game haven't changed since then.

FFVII isn't much better, but the battle system alone puts it above FFVIII for me. I hate drawing and junctioning, with a passion. Maybe the "Your Top 5 (or less) Worst RPGs (and why)" puts people off into thinking every post here is factual and not totally opinionated. I'm not about to bash or call anyone stupid in this topic for liking FFVIII, and that's the way it is.

[Kaylia]

Actually, I dont think I read your post when I typed my reply I posted it after reading Cyn's post.

Anyway, doesn't change the fact I think it's rediculous to list ff7-8, arc the lad, legend of dragoon, RO, .hack and a few other I played. Hell, I make fun of .hack all the time because I hated the gameplay, but "worst"? No way. "Worst" rpg is something like this, not a game that had the best graphics for its time, good soundtrack, good script, character development and the like (talking about ff7/ff8).

[Elcura]

Worst RPGs in the world? No, but some of the worst RPGs I remember playing? Yes.

I'd say it was impossible to list bad RPGs if you've never played them, out of all the RPGs I played these were the ones that stick out in my mind for being bad. And bad means not as good as the others.

[layoneil]

Hoshigami: Ruining Blue Earth (PS) - worse tactical RPG ever, only one i ever started and not finished. a single Lv 8 character was better than a full party of Lv 5 characters if the enemy on the stage was all Lv 6.

Shadow Madness (PS), Jade Cocoon (PS) - i don't even remember why they exactly were awful, just that i tried playing them and couldn't. i do remember Shadow Madness being completely horrible, while Jade Cocoon was a potentially good game that just didn't work.

besides those, i don't remember other RPG games that i tried playing that was really horrible.

.hack sucked for being 1 game split into 4, by the time i got to the third part i didn't care anymore and stopped playing.

FFVIII sucks for being an FF game but it's a good game in general.