Wolf Kanno's Bottom Ten JRPGs.

[Ayen]

Don't miss the announcement of an announcement of an announcement.

[Mirage]

I was getting there. Next week's announcement is actually a roadmap that shows that the game's development is scheduled to start next month.

[NeoCracker]

I think I may be one of the only people here who has played Digimon World 2. I am also probably the only person alive who loves that game. (No, it is not good. No, I do not recommend it to ANYONE. It's a rather shit game.)

[Wolf Kanno]

Okay, so I'm terribly sorry this took so long but I was kept busy by real life stuff and I mulled around about how to address the last two entries. We've reached the titles that I actually hate.

Number 2 should come as no surprise to anyone who has been on this forum since 2009. I have made (http://home.eyesonff.com/showthread.php/133323-One-thing-I-loved-the-difficulty?p=2886217&viewfull=1#post2886217) it pretty clear (http://home.eyesonff.com/showthread.php/135502-Is-it-worth-it?p=2943383&viewfull=1#post2943383) where I stand on this game (http://home.eyesonff.com/showthread.php/132564-Final-Fantasy-X?p=2928972&viewfull=1#post2928972) on numerous occasions (http://home.eyesonff.com/showthread.php/136188-Which-genre-is-FFXIII?p=2957039&viewfull=1#post2957039)and because of that, I decided I couldn't simply write up a wall of text explaining my grievances. I've done that, it's repetitive, and I'm an artist dammit, I can be more creative. So I wrote some of my feelings in the form of a song...

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By which I mean I wrote up some cheesey lyrics in the tune of an established song, half-ass sang it with no music and then made a video with the same level of effort as a freshmen working on assignment for their least favorite subject that didn't count towards their grade. So basically I put as much effort into it as the developers did. I hope you enjoy. :wcanoe:

079cNAr035Y

[Pumpkin]

Your voice is deeper than I had imagined

[chionos]

Dude, you put more work into that than FFXIII deserves, but I applaud your dedication to hating the game.

[Vyk]

Somehow that reminds me of a Disney character. I imagine you as Aladdin now :P Very well done though, interesting concept and well done on the delivery

[Wolf Kanno]

The song is from Avenue Q by the way.

joWYZYBhH3A

It's a musical about an adult satire of Sesame Street where they deal with adult issues but it still involves puppets and is absolutely hilarious.

[Ayen]

Yeah, FFXIII sucks. It's like if you troutted out horse vomit.

[Elpizo]

Well, that was as bad as FF XIII was, Wolf, no offence. ^^" Mission accomplished?

[Loony BoB]

With how much time WK invests in FFXIII, I'm starting to think he secretly likes it, but doesn't want anyone to know so overcompensates with trash talking. >=]

[Slothy]

BoB, there's an old marketing adage: a satisfied customer will tell 3 or 4 people. An unsatisfied customer will tell 9 or 10.

[Loony BoB]

So what do you call someone who tells hundreds of people at every opportunity they get, years after the experience? :D Guilty pleasure, I'm thinking. ;)

[Mirage]

nah. it's just bad

[Slothy]

We call that a customer who's rage knows no limits.

[Galuf]

FF XIII is pretty cool game. though i had no expectations when playing it so eh idk

[Ayen]

nah. it's just bad

It sucks so bad he makes up his own songs.

[Wolf Kanno]

With how much time WK invests in FFXIII, I'm starting to think he secretly likes it, but doesn't want anyone to know so overcompensates with trash talking. >=]

You were accused of stalking when you were young weren't you?

BoB: No no, the restraining order is just her way of saying she loves me.

I've only played the game once and to date it's the first FF I have ever debated about trading in, which is something I don't do with any of my games. I won't bother with the sequels because frankly there wasn't anything about the original I liked enough to warrant going back through them. smurf this sorry excuse for a game.

[Egami]

There really is no excuse for how much XIII blows. There is truly not a single aspect of the game I like and it is the only FF game I actually dislike. There are some FF titles I enjoyed and even respect but don't care much for, but XIII and it's sequels are just...let's just say that I think Toriyama should never be allowed to direct a FF game aver again.

[Madame Adequate]

FFXIII is a pretty decent game and I had a lot of fun replaying it a few months back. I 5-starred every mission and thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Spuuky]

I'm not a huge fan of FFXIII but there's zero chance it would be on this list if it didn't have Final Fantasy in the name.

[chionos]

I'm not a huge fan of FFXIII but there's zero chance it would be on this list if it didn't have Final Fantasy in the name.

Maybe not on WK's, but it'd be on mine.

[Del Murder]

Like Spuuky implied, FFXIII is a good game, just not a good FF game.

[Ayen]

No, it's just a bad game period. Only if it wasn't Final Fantasy we wouldn't be talking about it five years after the fact.

[Pumpkin]

I like it. It was a subpar Final Fantasy imo but it was still a fun game and that's why I've played it 3ish times

[VeloZer0]

I won't say that FF13 was a good game that was judged to harshlet because it bore the FF title, but I will say that FF13 was a so-so game that unfortunately couldn't come close to living up to the FF name. I don't regret the time I spent playing it, but at the same time I have no particular desire to play it ever again.







.... much like FF12.

[Fynn]

I just think FF13 is a ton of wasted potential, with a world that is interesting on paper but is executed so poorly with it's writing, further bogged down with the unbelievably boring gameplay. Seriously, even X was better, and that used to be my least favorite FF.

[NeoCracker]

Yeah, I don't get the 'only bad by FF Standards'. FF Standers range from amazing to crap. They cover the entire spectrum. :p (Except the Music, it's pretty consistantly great.)

[sharkythesharkdogg]

/ramble

Just came here to say the majority of the music was nice, and the work put into the world, monsters, etc was also pretty good.

I've played other games that sort of lead you from one place to the next with very little in the way non-linearity or variety and it was fine. The first Xenosaga comes to mind. You basically are carried from one dungeon area to the next with scripted scenes in between. (looooong scripted scenes)

I guess the difference is I understood the story, I cared/was interested in the story, and I liked the characters. I also liked the combat system and the ability system for those Xeno characters. So even though it wasn't a very open world, I didn't care. I wanted to know what happened next, and really felt like continuing down the corridor to figure it out. Also, at least it had towns instead of random orbs.

For FXIII I still really don't know what the story was. Considering I follow Xeno games just fine, and I didn't really follow XIII, I think that's not a good sign. The characters, maybe because I didn't fully understand their motivation, also kill me. Everyone hates Snow, for example, and I agree. Pumpkin knows I always say he's a combination of Fred Durst and Mathew McConaughey. Some of them are okay, but none really grab me. There's more characters I actively dislike than ones that I'm neutral towards.

Then there's the fact that I feel like the combat is on autopilot. The paradigm systems sounds freaking great. I was so excited to try it, but I was left disappointed. It's not really the system itself, it's the combat system it's attached to. I don't particularly enjoy MMO style combat engines, and that's the path other RPGs are taking. I'm only partially controlling one character, and the others are left completely to their own devices. It pulls me from getting into the game even more because it's actively less engaging to me.

So I'm left with a game that has lots of scenes trying to explain a story to me (poorly), and using characters that I don't really resonate with to do it. When it's actually my turn to play I'm left traveling down corridor after corridor to get where ever we're going. Since I don't really care about where we're going, I have time to notice that getting there might look different, but it basically feels the same in every location. When I finally get to engage with the characters (combat), I find I really only get to engage with one character, and even that feels like a surface level of control. I basically say, "Okay, try this set up. All right, shift to this pattern." Then I watch and see how it goes. I hope they heal when they need to, buff when they need to, etc., but I can't really control it.

I watch scripted scenes, I watch characters run blindly down hallways, and I have what feels to me minimal input into characters once their finally in a fight, so I'm basically watching that too. I'm watching a story I don't really care about unfold basically on it's own.

It feels like an interactive book/movie and when you have one of those you better make sure the characters are engaging and the story makes sense. XIII never did to me, and so it was completely forgettable.

[metagloria]

I'm going to say something I don't think anyone here has ever heard before...

XIII's not a great game, but it's better than VI.

[Egami]

I'm going to say something I don't think anyone here has ever heard before...

XIII's not a great game, but it's better than VI.

Pssst...there is a thread for that: Controversial opinions about Final Fantasy (http://home.eyesonff.com/showthread.php/161331-Controversial-opinions-about-Final-Fantasy)

:cool:

[Fynn]

I'm going to say something I don't think anyone here has ever heard before...

XIII's not a great game, but it's better than VI.

:stare:

[Elpizo]

I'm going to say something I don't think anyone here has ever heard before...

XIII's not a great game, but it's better than VI.

Run, run, or you'll be well done!

[Pumpkin]

I agree the story was wasted potential but I think for me personally IF it had been executed properly it would have been one of the more interesting ones in the series. The characters I'm torn on. I like half of them, I don't mind one, and I hate the others. But I thought the Paradigm system was buckets of fun and it's one of my favourite things. I think it's what helped me get involved in the combat since most of it was automated. But switching to the right Paradigm at the right time was the difference between winning and losing. Even regular fights could take forever if you didn't think about your party set up. The lack of towns was also exhausting

But despite that, there were some beautiful locations, some moments that I thought were touching, the story still interested me despite not living up to its full potential, and I had fun playing it. So :shrug:

[Fynn]

The music was beautiful :monster:

[Bolivar]

Wolf, you have such a beautiful voice!

Writing could use some work, though.

[Slothy]

I'm not a huge fan of FFXIII but there's zero chance it would be on this list if it didn't have Final Fantasy in the name.

Even ignoring the title, it is at the very least the worst RPG I played last generation. Which is impressive since there were some real stinkers I played. And it's more likely one of the worst RPG's I've ever played.

Multimillion dollar budgets, and relatively high production value will never be able to hide god awful gameplay and writing. If it were a game with half the budget made by a company other than Squenix and without the FF name, I think much fewer people would be defending it.

[Wolf Kanno]

Last entry will be up before the weekend is over and I'm probably not doing anything special for this one.

Hints:
It is the oldest entry on this list.
Most of you have probably never heard of it.
It had awful sequels on Sega platforms
It's a terrible port of a so-so PC game.

[Scotty_ffgamer]

I feel like I've heard of this game and that it's going to really bother me that I can't guess it based on the clues.

[Ayen]

Shadow of the Beast?

Wait, that's not a JRPG. Haha, I'm silly. Clues reminded me of that game though.

[Scotty_ffgamer]

I'm going to guess (probably incorrectly) that it might be Hydlide. I feel like this is wrong, but who knows. I'm pretty sure it's a bad game that was a port of a PC game. I also feel like it had sequels on the Genesis and Saturn.

[Skyblade]

I'm going to guess (probably incorrectly) that it might be Hydlide. I feel like this is wrong, but who knows. I'm pretty sure it's a bad game that was a port of a PC game. I also feel like it had sequels on the Genesis and Saturn.

But Virtual Hydlide for the Saturn was a remake, not a sequel...

[Wolf Kanno]

But Virtual Hydlide for the Saturn was a remake, not a sequel...
Well yeah, it would help if I got my facts straight. Didn't realize it was a remake until I looked it up. Hell I didn't realize it had a backwards save system until I popped it back in a week ago to double check I wasn't crazy about how awful it is.



I'm going to guess (probably incorrectly) that it might be Hydlide. I feel like this is wrong, but who knows. I'm pretty sure it's a bad game that was a port of a PC game. I also feel like it had sequels on the Genesis and Saturn.

You are correct.


#1 Hydlide
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Originally I was thinking of doing one of those psyche out entries where I would say FFVII or some trout but frankly I don't care enough anymore to do it.

So number one is a game I doubt many of you have heard of and to go back to a discussion I had with Bolivar about how one comes to obtain bad games, I am partly wrong. It is true no one buys a bad game for themselves, but sometimes you do buy them for other people. This game was an odd Christmas present I received a number of years ago along with Seicross (which I doubt anyone has ever heard of) and Power Glove which is most famous for being the game that came with the Nintendo Power Glove peripheral which sadly I did not receive with this game.

This was easily my least favorite game on the NES that I actually owned, I think only the Uncanny X-Men game and the Back to the Future games come close to being worse than this title but I luckily don't own any of those games. Through the years it has remained one of my least favorite games with only a handful more actually joining that list but still the contempt simply grew.


62372


Hydlide is an old Action-RPG for the MSX and the NEC-PC series of computers in Japan in 1984. The first game was ported to the Famicom and later the NES. It recieved two sequels for the MSX, the third entry was eventually ported to the Sega Mega Drive and retitled Super Hydlide, from what I've heard, this entry is actually pretty decent if a bit forgettable. Finally, as Skyblade pointed out, the first game was remade for the Sega Staurn as a 3D Action RPG and um yeah... It's probably one of the reasons why the Saturn failed outside of Japan. So what is so gosh darn awful about Hydlide? Well just about everything actually...

Imaging if the original Dragon Quest and the original Legend of Zelda had a child together. Not a bad idea on paper but let's also say the people designing this game didn't know jack what they were doing. Hydlide looks like a Zelda game in action except when Jim (yes that is the heroes name) attacks, instead of getting a visual of the sword attacking you simply see a box in the corner switch from Defend to Attack. The sprite remains the same and you have to be on top of enemies to hurt them. There is close to know real feedback on how you are doing besides watching the life bars and noticing how Jim is losing health like it was out of style while the enemy doesn't.


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There are no healing items in the game, instead, Jim regenerates health very painfully slow by standing on grass completely still. If you were silly enough to stand still on the edge of the screen, an enemy can easily just spawn right next to Jim and murder him. I should point out that these stipulations also means that when you go exploring dungeons, Jim cannot heal unless you leave them and thus reset all the monsters, meaning dungeons and bosses have to be tackled in one setting.


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To achieve this without dying, Jim gains levels by killing monsters, like DQ, this is a very long and drawn out process as it takes forever to gain the XP needed to get a level up and you need seriously leveling to not be murdered by the majority of creatures in the game. There are of course a couple of problems with this, the lack of feedback from combat mentioned above means you might get killed quickly if you're not paying constant vigilance and you need to kill A LOT of monster if you want to level up. The other issue is that once you've leveled up enough, less challenging monsters stop giving XP. They can still murder you pretty quickly if you are not paying attention but killing them is largely pointless after that point. Once you reach this point, it's time to play the wonderful game of randomly attacking every new monster to discover which ones you can beat and get XP from, and which ones will just flat out murder you. This part is surprisingly frustrating.


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Jim, like Link, collects items as well that aid him on his quest. Unlike link, none of them show their value to you in a logical way. Did you know you need the Cross Item to even hurt the Vampire boss? All the item does is allow you to actually inflict damage on it, without you can't. Didn't know that and tried to fight him anyway? Sucks to be you, course some lucky players most likely found the item before they ever found the Vampire making this a moot issue but I feel this all really shows the issues with the games design. In fact probably one of the few decent things that came out of playing this game is understanding the absolutely brilliant design of games like Dragon Quest 1 and The Legend of Zelda because they have things like townspeople to drop hints, items that give immediate feedback (most of the time) and a world structure that slowly branches out that makes absolute sense. Hydlide is pure trial and error with excessive grinding and arbitrary item collection


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Now granted this game kind of predates Zelda and DQ, and normally I try to be more fair to older games where designers didn't really have any prior knowledge to go on and simply through ideas on a wall until something sticked. With that said, I feel I can still see this game for being as awful as it is simply because DQ and Zelda learned from this games clunky UI and design on how not to make a frustrating and ultimately poor game. They made the world branch out in a good pace which rewarded exploration or being daring to seek out the fringes of what was safe with better equipment to help expand the world. They had incredibly user-friendly interfaces that even a child could understand with both visual and audible feedback to tell you how you were doing; they made growing stronger much more rewarding and satisfying. Most importantly, they made the goals clearer and easier to understand by setting you up with simple objectives that when added up, create actual progress; instead of just endless wandering, with no direction, and constantly trying everything to see if something new might happen to make you feel like you're getting somewhere.

Play this game to understand where the genre has been and then be grateful. Don't come to me whining about how (insert relatively well known game) is the worst RPG you've played. Play this game and tell this is not one of the most frustrating, least rewarding, and terribly designed RPGs ever concocted.

With that said, you now know my Bottom Ten JRPGs I owned. I now bid you Eyes on Final Fantasy, Adieu.


ARiiO_41Id8

[Scotty_ffgamer]

Oh! I was right. I was a little iffy on the sequels part, but I was pretty certain I had heard that we got sequels on Genesis and Saturn. I've never played Hydlide, though I've seen the cartridge at used game stores before. The only reason I even know about it is because of the Angry Video Game Nerd video about it (one of my friends and I watched through all of those one summer because we were bored). Anyways, it looks every bit as terrible as you describe. Someday I feel like playing it just so I can experience how terrible it is, but I'd rather play good games.

Super Hydlide actually looks like it did some interesting things though. I looked up the other games after I made my guess just to see if I was correct. I'm still not sure if I'd ever want to play it, but it's not the worst looking game I've seen. Also, it has a point where you are just walking in space, killing bad guys. Can't go wrong there.

Thanks for the entertaining list, Kanno! I enjoyed reading every bit of it, and it's always interesting seeing some contrarian views on more popular games.

eVVrMLSKduM

[Pike]

I haven't played any of these games.

Well that was anticlimactic.

[Elpizo]

I've known of Hydlide since the Angry Video Game Nerd did a video on it. Didn't expect it to be your number one, though.

[Fynn]

I have not heard of this game either, but it was still a really enjoyable read.

Great list, Wolf, as was to be expected :)

[Pumpkin]

Awww its over now :G

Great list!

[Vyk]

I too only know of Hydlide thanks to AVGN, but I actually tried Super Hydlide. And it isn't a steaming pile like the first game. But it is also not really that good. I think when Ys came around and used the exact same fighting and leveling mechanics, and did it a thousand times better, they maybe learned their lesson and actually tried a little. Not very hard, but they tried just a little. Its actually kinda funny how GOOD Ys is, considering it too has you walking into monsters to kill them without any animations or anything

[Skyblade]

ProJared's awesome Hydlide reviews:

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For those who didn't watch them all, let me point something out:

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Look at that box art. The bit right at the top. Published by ATLUS. Yes, that ATLUS. They only did the publishing in the West, but still...

[Rocket Edge]

I'm not a huge fan of FFXIII but there's zero chance it would be on this list if it didn't have Final Fantasy in the name.
Well, dunno about WK but XIII is easily the worst game I've played.

[Polnareff]

I had the displeasure of playing and owning Virtual Hydlide. It is actually probably the worst out of the series, if you can believe it.

[Christmas]

I read it as top ten and was wondering why FF XIII made it into the list while FFVI is out. :lol:

[Forsaken Lover]

There is no way in hell FFXIII is anywhere close to the worst JRPG ever. It's not even as bad as another FF game, VIII.

Then there are a ton of shitty little shoestring budget JRPGs from Idea Factory/Compile Heart, like the first Neptunia or Chaos Wars.

[Wolf Kanno]

There is no way in hell FFXIII is anywhere close to the worst JRPG ever. It's not even as bad as another FF game, VIII.

Then there are a ton of troutty little shoestring budget JRPGs from Idea Factory/Compile Heart, like the first Neptunia or Chaos Wars.

Well if you read the opening post you would know these are my bottom ten JRPGs I own. I'm sure there are worse games than XIII, hell I listed one of them. But I also have the foresight to know I wouldn't like many of them and thus I don't play or own them.

With all that said, I still do consider XIII to be pretty bad for a AAA title from a flaghsip franchise made by a company that sort of wrote the book on what JRPGs should be.

[Galuf]

Boy am I glad "Shadow of Mind" isn't on this list!