Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger are both great games. I never played Mana Khemia 1. I have the second game, but I was never able to get into it.
Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger are both great games. I never played Mana Khemia 1. I have the second game, but I was never able to get into it.
"Repent your sins through death!" - Ramirez - Skies of Arcadia
Bad Games, the Finally
4. Tower of Druaga: Nightmare of Druaga (PS2)
You know, I have nothing intelligible to say about this one. I made the worst games list off games that simply left an impact on me, and this one happened to. The only thing I can really say is it is outclassed by a flash based game on the web that came out years before this one, yet wasn’t even good enough for me to finish or remember the name of. smurf this game.
3. Final Fantasy VIII (PSX)
Our main character runs out of the room screaming at the though that someone might think about him after he dies. And no one ever brings this moment up again. And the scene happens because they presume Seifer, who they clearly saw willing side with and go with the sorceress, is dead. Is there any need for me to say more about this game? Because the writing doesn’t get any better then that.
I guess I could add in that it is just as bad, if not worse, then FF VII in terms of character differences in battle. There are two things that determine what you do in battle, limit breaks and what GF you have equipped. Let’s not even bring up blatant Limit Spamming tricks with Aura later in the game.
While we are on GF’s, Junctioning is trout. Yes, the system makes sense from a purely mechanical standpoint and is pretty straight forward. No, it makes no smurfing sense from an in-world stand point, and the game does nothing to try to explain it. Worse yet, it starts rendering magic pointless. Yes, you can find a way to actually use magic easy enough while keeping it functioned to stats. Though why? You junction your strongest spells to attack because you want to bludgeon people to death. And doing so is just as, if not more so, effective then actually casting magic. In practice and flavor this is just a waste of a system.
Last thing I’ll say, and believe me, most people here know I”m able to rant about way more in this game, Drawing is a smurfing terrible way to get magic. If you like the card game it’s fine, but I hate it. Drawing from nature points works, but is still slow and time consuming and nothing more then busy work. The only non-frustrating way to get magic is by breaking down items. Moving on.
2. Record of the Agarest War 2 (PS3/360)
The only game that I’m sadder to put on this list is the one that is going to follow this, but this one really hit me hard. Not just because it failed not only as a game, and as a sequel to Agarest War, but you could tell these guys put in the effort. This was not a lazy attempt, but just an utterly failed one.
Not only was it switched from an SRPG to a JRPG, but they trying to hold on to the focus of unite attacks. How this translated was, from the beginning, you will be doing the same trout the entire battle, which will be lengthy as smurf, until you no longer need to look at the screen to play through the fights.
The Characters just fall flat compared to Agarest War as well, and once again fail to even be well made characters in their own write. I’m not sure if it was just due to poor translation or not, but the dialogue just feels so unnatural compared to the last game, and it’s hard to give a smurf about these people because of it.
Worse yet, they take essentially the main antagonist for most of the last game, and he just get’s slapped down like a bitch in the smurfing tutorial fight. That was just insulting to me. And again, I see what they were doing, and I can see all the effort they put into making this. But dear god did it fail.
1. Mana Khemia 2 (PS2)
I originally planned to do this prior to top 10 rather then top 5. Though when I started thinking about it, I realized this had to be done after Mana Khemia. It does, to an extent, apply to Agarest War 2 as well, but more so with this game you would need to understand exactly why it was I loved the first game so much to understand why I despise this game so. When I sat down to write this entry, I actually got so mad thinking about it I wasn’t even able to focus on the typing anymore.
The more objective reason I hate this game amounts to the same reason I hated Dante’s Inferno, and that was how shamelessly lazy the game was. This games combat is nothing more then a carbon copy of Mana Khemia. What makes it worse though was in this case it wasn’t even ripping someone else off, it was just a recycling of the last game that had made. There was nothing added to combat in this game to distinguish it.
Even worse, they took the great character writing of the first game and went, ‘let’s take a single aspect of each character from the last game, and make a character who only possess’s that aspect’. Not only did they get lazy with programming, but even the writing lacked any semblance of care. Designs and art direction were lifted entirely from the last game as well.
Dante’s Inferno may have been a shameless rip off, but Mana Khemia 2 is more then that. This game was the creators of one of the most unique plots in the realm of video games just deciding they didn’t give a smurf. I know a lot of people think this is odd to feel about a video game, but this is what people mean by betrayal. It’s really strange considering there had only been Mana Khemia prior to this, but the speed at which they got this insanely lazy is pure bulltrout. There is not a single excuse for Mana Khemia 2. Even the likes of FF VIII and Agarest War 2 don’t compare to my disgust for this game and everything it represents to me.
Special note: Some of you may be saying ‘but don't you hate Dragon Quarter' to which I respond NO SUCH GAME EXISTED!
You know, I keep thinking maybe I should play FFVIII one of these days to see if it's actually as bad as some people say it is, and then I remember the orphanage plot twist is a major part of the plot to that game and it pretty much kills my desire to play it.
Some good choices on this list. I'd probably have put FFVI and Chrono Trigger even higher but the odds are I probably haven't played most of the games you put above them. A lot of these are games I've never even heard of, which I guess goes to show you how interested I am in games compared to other people here.
Imagine the size of the list if I didn't condense some into single spots, and every game I forgot about had a spot.
I know I've missed Secret of Evermore and three Ace Atornney games.
And Prototype.
First Lord of the Realms game, a few old DOS based RPG's, Might and Magic Heroes III and V......
And yeah, the sad part is I don't think the Orphanage bit was the worst thing in that game by a fair bit.
To tell you the truth, I actually liked FF8. However, I will admit that most of the characters are horribly under developed. The plot is a convoluted mess, and battle mechanics are the most broken in the entire series. Still, I highly enjoyed the game. I loved the sci-fi world, and the card game a lot. I also really liked Squall to be honest. I thought he did the quiet brooding thing, better than Cloud at least.
"Repent your sins through death!" - Ramirez - Skies of Arcadia
VIII is never as bad as people claim it is, Manny. It's not the best by any means, but it's one of the most enjoyable gameplay experiences I've had. People like Neo might complain that you can rig the game so you're overpowered, but really you can do that in any FF game if you really want to.
Bow before the mighty Javoo!
I just draw here and there every now and then as I go along, just continuing with the story. I don't grind out the refinement abilities right away, I just play the game and the challenge stays pretty nice.
BoB said this about FFVII I believe, and I'll extend it to FFVIII: if we applied the same critical focus to all games as we do to FFVIII, we wouldn't be left with many good video games.
I think FFVII's story can get pretty asinine in parts too, to the point where it probably diminished my enjoyment of the game a lot (and I would probably rank it in my top three Final Fantasy games if it'd stuck with the themes of the Midgar sequence, which is one of the most perfectly executed sequences in the history of video games, rather than meandering off into a supernatural alien soap opera). And much as I love it, FFVI's story has some pretty dumb moments too ((SPOILER)really guys? You seriously trusted the Emperor?), but nothing that rivals the orphanage plot twist, which has to rank pretty high on the list of contrived coincidences I've encountered in fiction.
I guess there is something to be said for gameplay. Last time I went through FFV, which probably has the best gameplay of the main series entries, I overpowered all my characters into complete tanks so I guess you can break any of them.
The complaint isn't that you can do that, the complaint is it's just how the game goes. You know how you become overpowered? Junctioning high level magic to stats. How does the game tell you the system works? By junctioning higher level magic to stats you are stronger.Originally Posted by Loony BoB
You become overpowered by doing EXACTLY WHAT THE GAME TELLS YOU TO. there is an ever so subtle difference here. ;P
Also, my issue listed wasn't about being overpowered. It's that the set up of the Junction system itself makes the use of magic almost pointless outside of exploits like Aura.
And no, I don't believe that defense in the slightest for either VII or VIII.
1) Not all issues are of equal merit. Specifically the problems i have with FF VIII are things I have more issues with then other games.
2) Not all games have the same number of issues.
3) I give all games critical focus, and still I manage to enjoy a smurf ton of games, as you can notice from the massive size of this list, which isn't even a complete list of games I've played and enjoyed. ;P
Edit: I will say in regards to Man's FF VI comment, it was a bit stupid of them, but they didn't really trust the Emperor, hence them keeping an eye on the guy. It was more a coming together of what seemed to be, at the time, a mutual threat that required cooperation. A bit of a stretch, yes, but nothing I find breaks the suspension of Disbelief.
(SPOILER)You have a point, but even so, they didn't really prepare enough. When Kefka came and started killing Espers at Thamasa, there was nothing anyone could do because most of the people who might have been able to stop him were elsewhere. It doesn't really break suspension of disbelief, but it's still a clear case of characters holding the Idiot Ball and exhibiting Genre Blindness. Don't get me wrong, some classic stories have quite a lot of Genre Blindness (how much of Genesis of the Daleks could have been averted if people just stopped trusting Davros?) but regardless I still regard it as a flaw.
Fair enough really, that was a pretty weak moment of writing on their part.
I am on a playthrough of FFVIII at the moment (I've only played it once before) and I have to say I'm thoroughly enjoying it as I did the first time. The problem with Final Fantasy games (especially on EOFF) is that they are far too over-analysed and over-criticised. I've been on this forum for less than two years and I could create a list of every FF game and compose a huge list of faults for every one... bearing in mind I've only actually played four of them!
I do love EOFF but the hate expressed for individual titles is ridiculous. I don't think any of the main FF titles have universally panned by everyone. The majority of them would score (at least!) 8/10. So basically, having FFVIII as the third worst game OF ALL TIME is bit of a joke. True it does have quite a few issues that are understandably frustrating but the positive aspects of the game (which far outway the negative) seem to be tragically ignored by many.
I agree with Bubba, there are far, far, far, far, far worse games out there and I think Neo just puts them onto this list because of his high expectations for an FF game and/or the desire to make it controversial and/or because other people rate them higher than he does, so he feels he has to compensate by hating them even more, or something. In which case I could justify saying FFII and FFVI are amongst the worst games I've ever played. They are most definitely not. One was just crap for an FF title compared to modern games, and the other was just overhyped to the point that it could never, ever amount to the hype.
If you actually think there is nothing in FFVI that breaks the suspension of disbelief then you're a nutter.
Bow before the mighty Javoo!
>>> FF13-2 followed by FF13 are the worst ever.. case closed.
Oh yeah, interesting list NeoCracker, is just me or you have not played the Suikoden games yet??
man, you have missed a lot.
>> The black orb glitters ominously... but nothing happens..
I actually have played them, I've had a couple threads chronicling my play through of 1 and 2, it's just I started playing them after I'd started this list, so they aren't on it anywhere.
And no BoB, not only is that statement not a defense, it's just flat out not true. No choices I have made at any point have been made for the sake of being controversial. Were that the case VII, VIII, and X would have been my three worst games of all time, or if I wanted to be less obvious I would have switched just VIII to the #1 spot.
And besides, have you not scene how often I've bitched about FF VIII in other threads? My hatred of that game has long since been recorded here. Unless you think the past few years of hatred expressed for FF VIII has been me pre-planning to build up to this moment.
And no, FF VIII isn't crap compared to just FF titles. That's why it's on this list.
And if you think something if FF VI breaks disbelief, what is it BoB? Well? :P
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