Most Overrated RPGs of All Time
I always look at the kind of slavish "Best. Game/Movie/TV Show/etc. Ever." opinions with suspicion. It's just that, with the exception of Mass Effect 2, nothing has ever lived up to thE hype you can find on boards like this. I still have my doubts Persona 3 or 4 are half as brilliant as so many say. And lord knows Final Fantasy VI has never been able to hold my attention enough so I'd finish it.
What are your choices?
Top 4 most over rated RPG's
4. Dark Cloud. This had a unique idea but it got old fast.
3. Tecmo Secret of the Stars. I should replay this but it was awful. A rare flop for Tecmo.
2. Lufia 1. Maybe because the series makes more sence playing 2 first.
1. Secret of Mana. Just hate this title. Can't get into it, and hated playing it every time I tried it.
World of Warcraft
Unofficial Top Ten List in no particular order:
Final Fantasy VII - Can't hold my interest past Midgard anymore, I haven't been able to finish a playthrough in years. The writing is just terrible from Cosmo Canyon onward, and the gameplay balance also gets worse the further in. Great soundtrack though.
Mass Effect 2 - Way over-hyped and not nearly as strong in the world building as the first game. More shooter than RPG for my taste. Mordin and Jack were great but I pretty much hated most of the new characters.
Final Fantasy X - Overly melodramatic with a battle system that doesn't really become fun until your 30 hours in, by which point you don't care anymore. The rest I could say is well documented on this forum so just do a post search.
Persona 4 - Does a few things better than P3 for sure, but also makes some bad mistakes as well. The social-sim part is more fun but the dungeon crawling is more tedious than it needs to be and the story isn't as strong through multiple playthroughs. I also hate the True Ending as it always felt poorly tacked on and largely just redid the more dramatic and better scripted ending sequence to P3.
Valkyria Chronicles - Interesting gameplay that suffers from poor balancing and the Computer A.I. taking it's sweet time to take its turns because it knows its just going to cheese you with the RNG anyway. All this packaged with a bland and overdone "war is hell" anime troperiffic story. It also has the worst menu system I've ever encountered in a modern game.
Golden Sun - Boring story, generic world, and a customization system that always sounded better on paper than in practice. It would have been better had it been an SNES game. It just always feels dated to me, like it was trying to emulate the 16-bit era but made the mistake of inheriting some of the bad traits as well which don't fly as well for modern gaming taste. I hear the sequels are better but the first game left a bad taste in my mouth so I it may be awhile before I ever get around to them.
Crisis Core - "Only good game to come out of the Compialtion" my ass.
Dragon Quest IV - Like three cool characters who become pointless after their respective chapters and a boring grindy battle system that doesn't have something like Job Class or Monster raising to break up the monotony. Story sounds better on paper than in execution but that's kind of DQ's whole schlick. It just had the misfortune of being squeezed between the better entries in the series, not to mention that Final Fantasy finally kicked off its Golden Age around the time this game came out.
Kingdom Hearts II - While it may have the best collection of worlds of any entry in the series, my enthusiasm for it is hampered by the asinine writing; the poor pacing; the "let's make the player go through all the worlds twice!" mechanic that has never been appreciated or liked by players since like ever; and the battle mechanics that are roughly just set up a few support skills and then mash X until everything is dead gameplay that made the game boring. If you've only played KH1 and 2, and you're still somehow excited for KHIII, I can't even begin to fathom how.
Ocarina of Time - Yes I'm counting it. 3D controls are clunky, the best puzzles are just redo's of the better puzzles from LttP, and the new combat system divorces the gameplay into combat/exploring as opposed to the seamless design of the top down Zelda titles.
True beauty exists in things that last only for a moment.
Current Mood: And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe. Maybe this year will be better than the last. I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself. To hold on to these moments as they pass...
Your favorite RPG.
That's right if you're reading this then your favorite RPG is OVERRATED
what if my favourite rpg is FFTA?Originally Posted by Pike
Your favorite RPG.
That's right if you're reading this then your favorite RPG is OVERRATED
For me it's Final Fantasy X for reasons that Wolf stated,
Other than that, there's a couple. Breath of Fire III was severely disappointing to me, despite the fanbase hyping it up to high heaven. There was just something bland about the world compared to IV, as well as the fact that beyond the half-way point (by which time the game was still pretty strong, IMO, what with the reveal with Garr and whatnot), the plot just falls apart and it's all just "Go there, meet God, and, uh, kill God, i guess. Why? What? Who cares! What are all these characters doing with you? Idk, you need some party members I guess! Oh and here;s your missing friend, but hje's suddenly evil, but no, he's dead now. So yeah, please kill God."
Kind of FFXIV, but that may be because MMOs just might not be my thing. Don't get me wrong - I had tons of fun. I just can't see myself investing so much time of my life into it, especially since you basically have just three larger areas to explore, to which I say bulltrout because FFXII had more and if you want to keep people coming back, you'd think that more places to explore are the logical solution.
Yeah, Crisis Core has a surprisingly good reputation for a cringe-worthy fanfic!
I also don't get why Super Mario RPG gets so much attention. I mean, it was fun and all, but the Mario and Luigi series (Bowser's Inside Story, especially) are vastly superior in every respect, IMO.
Ocarina of Time is an okay game, but nowhere near the best Zelda. Hell, even nowhere near the best Zelda. Heck, while we're at it, I also think Majora's Mask and Wind Waker have become retroactively too big as a result of the backlash to the later games, since while they're both good games, I don't think they deserve as much praise as they get. Idk, Twilight Princess just hit that soft spot for me, so the rest felt kinda meh in comparison (though they're still all excellent games).
Dragon Quest VIII. Still an amazing, immersive experience, but it's a bit annoying that the game with one of the least interesting character progression systems is the only one people at large seem to recognize. And that's sad.
And lastly, NEVERWINTER NIGHTS! Good God was this game lame! And everyone and their mother seemed to play the hell out of it over here when it came out, saying how amazing it is. Yeah, yeah, I get that it has a very mod-friendly engine, but honestly, I never give a crap about mods at all. I want a nice world, cool system, and good story with good characters. I got none of that! The engine was very easy to use for modders but a result of that was that everything looked the same! Every dungeon, ever town, every friggin' home of which there are hundreds looks identical! The characters are also blocky and completely undistinct from each other, and everything is just gray. The world map from previous D&D games that let you explore all its locales freely is completely gone, and instead you have each chapter set in a different hub from which you have to perform basically the same set of fetch quests every damn time! That's the main problem with the story - every chapter is identical, the plot is weak and the characters are completely unremarkable, not to mention you don't even get to form a party and instead have to deal with this hireling bulltrout that does not in any way work as a replacement to a full party. The expansions thankfully rectified many of those problems by giving you an actual party and much more interesting storylines, but the game still left a sour taste in my mouth, despite being praised so much by everyone around. I actually think 3rd edition D&D is a much better system than 2nd ed, but the 2nd ed video games were just much better done than NWN (not sure how Icewind Dale 2 handled D&D3 since I haven't played it yet, but I do plan to someday!).
The main one coming to mind right now would be Valkyrie Chronicles.
It's a combination of all the thing Wolf Canoe said, plus a few other issues. I like the game, but I definitely don't love it. I was planning on going back to beat it at some point, but it's not a priority.
If nothing else, it will let me laugh at (secretly ogle) the Big Baddie AKA F-Cup Hitler.
WW2 errybuddy.
Jumping on the FFX train here. Again, like Wolf Kanno said, though I'll add the extreme linearity which doesn't seem to drag it down compared to FFXIII, which gets ripped to shreds for the same problem. Post-game content is literally a monster killing grindfest and a few characters are unbalanced or overpowered.
Other RPGs? Hmm. I'm tempted to say Pokemon if I'm honest. While I'm getting back into it now, there are still a few issues for me, mainly to do with catching pokemon, like version exclusives, trading pokemon and other barriers to just filling out my pokedex, dammit.
The thing that saved FFX for me was Blitz Ball. I spent more time on my team then I did in game. I may aswell call the game Blitz Ball Manager as that was what it was for me.
I found Blitzball a chore because of the several important items that could only be found through playing the upper echelons of competition, like Wakka's best reels overdrives.
Actually on that note, you can add 'asinine minigames' to the list of things I hate about FFX. Smurfing lightning dodging.
Ooh, can I add The Last Story? I hate how it overshadowed Xenoblade simply because it had Sakaguchi's name on it. Sure, it had a cool system, fun party banter, and smart deconstructionist of fantasy tropes, but the overall plot was weak, world felt restrictive, and the main breeding pair was just abysmal. It's basically, to quote the ever insightful Lindsay Ellis' comments on Dear John, White Bread meets Mayonnaise Girl and they are perfect for each other.
Honestly, I've never seen two characters that are so dry and wooden in an RPG.
I found Blitzball a chore because of the several important items that could only be found through playing the upper echelons of competition, like Wakka's best reels overdrives.
Actually on that note, you can add 'asinine minigames' to the list of things I hate about FFX. Smurfing lightning dodging.
True if I look back at it story wise it was only a so-so game, but my Blitz Ball team was top notch.
Master of the Fork
Cid's Knight
FF VII.
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