Top 5 Overrated RPGs

[Madame Adequate]

Final Fantasy IX
Dragon Quest series
Final Fantasy Tactics
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Fallout 3

Honorable mentions:
Persona/SMT series
Chrono Trigger
Kingdom Hearts
FF XII
Earthbound

[Laddy]

IX is slightly overrated, not nearly as much as you claim. XII is underrated to the average FF fan, imo.

Earthbound is good, but definitely overrated. Same with CT. Persona (well, 3 and 4) is a great series.

The last two are an affront to the genre.

My list:
Final Fantasy X (Okay plot, beautiful soundtrack, and very good battle system plagued down by flanderdized characters, weak character advancement, and meh character designs)
Fallout 3 (Dumbed-down RPG elements, boring story, over-reliance on overly simplistic combat, dull gameworld.)
Mass Effect (It's. Not. An. RPG. It's an FPS with tacked-on character development and dating sim elements comparable to Star Trek slashfic)
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Ugly and loaded with uninterseting filler. Skyrim is slightly better in this regard.)
Dragon Age Origins (Generic fantasy world with uninteresting character advancement and badly-written dialogue.)

[Pike]

Neverwinter Nights - I've tried to get into this about a million times and I can't, I'm sorry

FF 9 - It's cool if you like it but I just don't understand how people can like it more than many of the other FFs Maybe I'm missing something? Like, if you want a retro FF, go play a retro FF.

Oblivion - Terrible character design, boring world, least interesting plot/lore of all the TES games, "I saw a mudcrab the other day" *grunt* "Okay, bye" = SUPER REALISTIC CONVERSATION????? Almost redeemed by Shivering Isles.

KotOR - I kind of feel bad for putting this up here because I did enjoy this game a lot and it was very solid but I feel that it is a 4/5 RPG rather than a 5/5 one. Not a bad game by any means, but yeah overrated.

[Madame Adequate]

Sorry Laddy but any criticism of FFX's characters is nullified by the fact that Wakka.

Also not commenting on whether it belongs in a list like this or not, but Mass Effect is much more of an RPG than Deus Ex is.

[Pike]

Yeah but Deus Ex is Deus Ex.

[Del Murder]

The Persona series is the only one that comes to mind for me. I've never had an issue with any other RPGs as I typically like the popular ones.

[Psychotic]

Oblivion ruled because it had a lot of spoons you could collect in it. Fallout 3 ruled too because there were a lot of spoons you could collect in it but you could also put them into a gun and fire the spoons at people and kill them with the spoons. MILF and Laddy actually have no idea what they're talking about.

[Bright Shield]

Final Fantasy series
Kingdom Hearts series
The Elder Scrolls series
Mass Effect series
Fallout series

[Pike]

Final Fantasy series
Kingdom Hearts series
The Elder Scrolls series
Mass Effect series
Fallout series

The more I think about this the more I realize you can actually make a really good argument for every single one of these being overrated. Yes, even my beloved TES.

[Laddy]

Point taken. But Deus Ex is miles better than Mass Effect, RPG or no.

Sorry Laddy but any criticism of FFX's characters is nullified by the fact that Wakka.

Wakka was as subtle as a nuclear bomb in every conceivable fashion. Final Fantasy X's writing is pretty...blatant.

[escobert]

FF VI
Kingdom Hearts
TES III Morrowind
Halo series
Call Of Duty series

[NeoCracker]

Final Fantasy series
Kingdom Hearts series
The Elder Scrolls series
Mass Effect series
Fallout series

I like you more and more with each passing day.

[Madame Adequate]

Sorry Laddy but any criticism of FFX's characters is nullified by the fact that Wakka.

Wakka was as subtle as a nuclear bomb in every conceivable fashion. Final Fantasy X's writing is pretty...blatant.

Yes, that's what I said - Wakka is awesome.

[Sephex]

Name a popular game to get a rise out of people: The Thread!

[Bolivar]

Xenogears and Morrowind top the list for the same reason. They would've been incredible books. They're not fun video games.

Both had awesome settings with thought-provoking plots. There's almost nothing redeeming outside of that. The combat is thoughtless in Xenogears; in Morrowind it's actually painful to play. To make matters worse, there's almost nothing to do in either game other than combat and conversation. Morrowind is an RPG bereft of puzzles; Xenogears is a game with a few very bad puzzles. Neither game grasped the fundamentals of dungeon design, but Xenogears is actually bad whereas Morrowind's dungeons are just boring. Both games have atrocious platforming: in TES3 I only came across it a scant few times, whereas Xenogears had the poor sense to actually make it a big part of the game. Xenogears also failed trying to have a plot that was way too long for a single JRPG and they ended up shoehorning so much of it onto the disc w/o gameplay. Morrowind kinda failed on the exploration front. With its flat topography and limited view distance, it just doesn't have the same wonder of exploration that Oblivion had. It also had the color palette of a 2007 First Person Shooter.

If I had to round out a top 5, I would throw in Final Fantasy VI, Mass Effect 2, and maybe Oblivion.