RPGs that didn't impress you...

I tried playing Kingdom Hearts once. Got to the first town and stopped. The game didn't give me a clear objective, so I had to run around trying to figure out what to do, all while mindlessly killing endless waves of shadows. It made me nauseous.
 
I agree with KH's objective, it is very vague. The game expect the player to explore the universe to meet its objective. It can get very frustrated for sure. I only clocked 2 hours in the first one, and I was so excited to tryout the game too. Finally got a copy of KH 1 and KH 2 used via kijiji and picked up Chain of Memory sealed @ EB, pretty disappointed. I will give it another try later.
 
[quote name='oremites']No. You should just leave the PS2 RPGs to those of us with low expectations.[/QUOTE]

I wasn't comparing my current expectations with other people's, but my current expectations with my former expectations before playing truly great games :)

Stuff like the Arc the Lad games, Evolution, some later FF games, etc. I'm sort of masochistic because I still play this stuff, hoping to find a diamond in the rough but never do. It's exhausting. I expect much, much more.

I want something sandbox style, but with enough variety and unfolding events to keep it from being formulaic.
 
Arc The Lad: Twilight of the Spirits. Normally, if I enjoy an RPG, I'll play blissfully and not notice the time slipping away, never to return. With this game, I felt every minute of the five hours I played it for. Bland combat, stupid story, everything that makes an RPG bad. I was charmed by the Arc The Lad name when I bought it, but now it sits neatly on my shelf, ironically the first game in my PS2 collection, gathering dust.
 
[quote name='PuppetYuber']picked up Chain of Memory sealed @ EB, pretty disappointed.[/QUOTE]

Well I think I'll just list a couple for now since I'm sure I could come up with a bunch but I kind of want to at least give some reasoning.

First off you reminded me of how much I hated KH: Chain of Memories... and I love KH 1 and 2. In my opinion the card system just wasn't very fun, the fact that all of the worlds were from the first game kind of made the game bland, and the randomly generated dungeons were pointless and boring.

Now time for a fairly well regarded game... I really dislike Final Fantasy XII. I played about 15-20 hours in the game and finally decided I just couldn't go on. Personally I didn't find the plot all that exciting because I like my plots more character-centric rather than mainly political intrigue. But I think what killed the game most for me is that it failed to satisfy what I like most in games. My favorite aspect of games is exploration; I love playing classic RPGs and exploring the dungeons to find out if a chest is going to contain an alright item or a really good one. Thus my problem with FFXII is that all the chests are random so there never really seems to be a reason to explore all of the dungeon, and even if you did there wouldn't be a guarantee that you wouldn't get a string of 5 Gil chests. I also didn't really like the hunts simply because there wasn't a whole lot of protection or indication of how hard a fight was going to be till you tried it so I'd backtrack to a dungeon to fight a hunt monster only to find that it obliterated me... so then I would just feel like I wasted a bunch of time and would have to come back and fight it later... just didn't feel like the hunts were well structered I guess.
 
wild arms 5 feels like it was made in 2001

[quote name='icebeast']
Now time for a fairly well regarded game... I really dislike Final Fantasy XII. I played about 15-20 hours in the game and finally decided I just couldn't go on. Personally I didn't find the plot all that exciting because I like my plots more character-centric rather than mainly political intrigue. But I think what killed the game most for me is that it failed to satisfy what I like most in games. My favorite aspect of games is exploration; I love playing classic RPGs and exploring the dungeons to find out if a chest is going to contain an alright item or a really good one. Thus my problem with FFXII is that all the chests are random so there never really seems to be a reason to explore all of the dungeon, and even if you did there wouldn't be a guarantee that you wouldn't get a string of 5 Gil chests. I also didn't really like the hunts simply because there wasn't a whole lot of protection or indication of how hard a fight was going to be till you tried it so I'd backtrack to a dungeon to fight a hunt monster only to find that it obliterated me... so then I would just feel like I wasted a bunch of time and would have to come back and fight it later... just didn't feel like the hunts were well structered I guess.[/QUOTE]

u have every right to feel this way.

they should have put on the cover .... takes 30-40 hours to really take off.. no really the """judges"" don't even show up until the last 1/3 part or whatever...

i really dont want to say anything about "classic rpg crap.. its old and dated and NOT fun

there chests.. you want good items FIND THEM

the hunt.. they had stars for how hard they were.. and hard = good
 
Digging up an old post.

I enjoy Western and JRPG's. An RPG isn't at least to me only about battles and linear vs non-linear game-play. It's about a story. Suikoden 2(by far one of my favorites) had a great story to tell. It wasn't mind numbing battles, but an engaging tale that kept you going till the end. Rogue Galaxy for the PS2 was a very good story, and at times the dungeons felt a bit drab but in the end it was a worthy play through.

On the other side of the spectrum, you have Morrowind which is an excellent game, better than Oblivion IMO and provides YOU the option to be whatever you want. So rather than a JRPG have a hero for you, you are the hero. You choose when and what to do when you feel like doing it. The different types of RPG's suite different tastes. Some people like Fallout, I hated it(talking part 3). It was dull, very very dull, like Ben Stein.


How many of you played Lunar as kids and were enchanted by the tale of Dragonmaster Alex? JRPG's are like really good fiction books. A story that is being told as you play through it. Think of the Saxon Tales by Bernard Cornwell, or Harry Potter, Lord Of the Rings. Western RPG's are the choose your own adventure type as others have stated. You don't read the book, you are the book. A little change of pace is a good thing but one is not better than the other. Eventually playing to much of one thing is a bad idea. You will get tired of it eventually. RPGitis, its an illness that plagues many when you experience to much of a "good" thing.
 
Couldnt force myself to finish persona 3 fes, final fantasy 12, wild arms 4, odin sphere and a few others. Enjoyed mostly everything else.
 
Final Fantasy XII is the best game of its decade and makes JRPGs where you have to actually press buttons to fight feel archaic and obsolete. :cool:
 
[quote name='cochesecochese']DQVIII - The battles were just too slow for me. I don't have that kind of patience anymore.[/QUOTE]

Gonna have to reneg on that. Went back and played through the JPN version and wow what a difference some tweaking makes. It's the same game but with much quicker load times and a midi soundtrack instead of a symphonic one. Loved every moment of it. I do miss the 'first person' battles especially after the lightning fast battles of DQ IV/V/VI DS but I can live with the animations.
 
ps1 games are "old"? I remember when Asteroids finally came out on a home gaming system called Atari. =\
And P3 ruled. Love the jrpgs.
 
I'm not able to get into P3 the way I got into P4. I love P4, I'm currently on my second playthrough, but I'm only a couple of hours into P3.

I also love FFX, FFXII and I like the battle system of FFX-2 (I can deal with the rather silly story).
 
I will say one RPG that I know a lot of people love and I hate with a passion is Final Fantasy IX. I can't really say anything about it I did like besides the music.

I found the story dull and all over the place, the graphics and art style unimpressive, the characters I wanted to curb-stomp, I thought Kuja was a woman for the first 10 hours, and the inclusion of the fiends felt almost like a cameo to make fans of FF1 go "oh yeah!".

I commited to it though and completed it in hopes it would get better. It never did.

Then again I really liked Final Fantasy VIII which a lot of people hate for the magic/junction system. So what do I know?
 
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Totally agree with everything you said about FF9. There are Final Fantasy games that might be bad, but are still interesting and different, but Final Fantasy IX is something much worse-- a boring Final Fantasy game.
 
Anything I've ever played by GUST. Ar Tonelico, Mana Khemia, that's two strikes out of three already and I'm balking at taking the risk of paying $30 to Amazon to try out the first Atelier Iris game. Now if I could borrow it or get it cheaply...
 
Stay away from the original four .hack games. I can't speak for the newer trilogy that came out a couple years ago, but the old ones SUCK, and this is coming from a fan of the many anime series.
 
[quote name='Z-Saber']Stay away from the original four .hack games. I can't speak for the newer trilogy that came out a couple years ago, but the old ones SUCK, and this is coming from a fan of the many anime series.[/QUOTE]

I didn't mind the first two of the original .hack games. Combat could get a bit dull but it was new enough and then had enough changes in part 2 to at least keep me playing.

By the time part 3 and 4 rolled around it was painful.

.hack//GU is quite good though. Combat has been totally redone so you have combos, special moves, block, jump, dash and tons of other stuff. Except for the MMO setting it doesn't even feel like the same series. I recommend them.
 
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