>> Hideous RPGs.

[Lord Chainsaw]

Yeah, Beyond the Beyond is pretty bad.

That development team reeks, and for some merciless reason they decided to put out more games after that. Not surprisingly, Golden Sun, made by the same guys, is almost as bad.

[Destai]

Yeah, Beyond the Beyond is pretty bad.

That development team reeks, and for some merciless reason they decided to put out more games after that. Not surprisingly, Golden Sun, made by the same guys, is almost as bad.

Golden sun I&II is in my opinion (And I can say this with alot of confidence) The best original RPG on the gameboy advance and a helluvalot better than most (personally Id say ALL but meh) of the RPG's remade for the gameboy. The music is actually seriously good for an RPG in general. The puzzles and gameplay (include magic outside of batle and stuff) is extremely fun. Great characters, and storyline and just all the makings of a class RPG basically. I personally dont think its anything like beyond the beyond.

[Crossblades]

Yeah, Beyond the Beyond is pretty bad.

That development team reeks, and for some merciless reason they decided to put out more games after that. Not surprisingly, Golden Sun, made by the same guys, is almost as bad.

Golden sun I&II is in my opinion (And I can say this with alot of confidence) The best original RPG on the gameboy advance and a helluvalot better than most (personally Id say ALL but meh) of the RPG's remade for the gameboy. The music is actually seriously good for an RPG in general. The puzzles and gameplay (include magic outside of batle and stuff) is extremely fun. Great characters, and storyline and just all the makings of a class RPG basically. I personally dont think its anything like beyond the beyond.

Yes, I agree very much

[Lionx]

Mystic Quest..-_-

[lordblazer]

Morrowind. lol got ya lol Morrowind owns all.

Anyway worse RPG will have to be I'm sorry to piss you guys off but man Radical Dreamers for the playstation just sucked. It was a crappy storyline. It was a nice escape but man the main character just sucked. Heck I liked the villians better.

[Doomie]

Legend of Dragoon.

Oh smurf yes.

[Prancing Mad]

Robotech for super nintendo. I hear Paladin's quest for nintendo is also bad. Legend of Dragoon was actually kinda bad. I played it through, but I don't know why. I think it's 'cause the graphics were flashy.

You know what peeves me? I hate RPGs where they just ASSUME you know where everything in the world is. You know it'll scream at you "You should go visit Azzmataz!", to which your reply after an hour of searching is," where the poop is Azzmataz!?!" only to find out it's actually in the opposie direction of where you were going. I mean can't they just say "You should go east, to Azzmataz!". I hate it when they assume you know where everything is and they don't need to tell you. Though not an RPG, Star Fox Adventures was like that, for the first few hours I played, followed by me giving up 'cause I couldn't find the stupid place.

*note: The name of the place was not Azzmataz. Any resemblance of the town dubbed as "Azzmataz" to a town either fictional or real, is purely coincidence.

[Lord Chainsaw]

Golden sun I&II is in my opinion (And I can say this with alot of confidence) The best original RPG on the gameboy advance and a helluvalot better than most (personally Id say ALL but meh) of the RPG's remade for the gameboy. The music is actually seriously good for an RPG in general. The puzzles and gameplay (include magic outside of batle and stuff) is extremely fun. Great characters, and storyline and just all the makings of a class RPG basically. I personally dont think its anything like beyond the beyond.

Dude, you don't want to start me up on Golden Sun. I've seen some pretty bad RPGs in my day. Golden Sun doesn't stand out as the worst RPG I've ever played, but it does stand out as the worst I've ever played to ever get such recognition.

Before I get to bashing it, I'm going to have to agree with you that the music was pretty good. Don't quote me on this, but I think the composer was the same guy who did the music to Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. Anyone who can compose a masterpiece such as Highbrow is automatically exempt from a knocking.

However, that's as far as I'd go with Golden Sun. It is said it is the best original RPG on the GBA, but what does it have to compete against? Nintendo doesn't really advocate RPGs. Look at the Gamecube. The only major RPG in the traditional Japanese sense of the word that comes to mind is Tales of Symphonia. Coincidentially, it is also being worshipped in the same sense as Golden Sun. Now Tales of Symphonia is a different topic altogether. I haven't finished that game yet, but from the little I've played it doesn't seem all that stellar.

But Golden Sun. The puzzles and gameplay are redundant. I'm not going to fault the game for using the Dragon Warrior battle system (although I really should). Remakes such as Phantasy Star Collection and the Breath of Fires can get away with using the monotonous turn-based systems because they are homage to the players that respected those games enough to pick them up. Golden Sun is a brand new effort. Furthermore, if after 16 years, the programmer still hasn't learned how to use an autotargetting system that Final Fantasy learned how to perfect while it was still on the NES, then we have a problem.

But it does have those Genies or Jinn, or whatever. It seems like a cool idea in theory, but the game is so painfully easy anyways, there's no point in getting technical with what class and abilites you want to use. You don't even have to deal with classes at all the master the game. If you so choose, you can simply summon whatever you have equipped in full force on the boss and take it down. That's how I killed the Kraken, supposedly one of the toughest bosses in the game.

And the puzzles. Here's my philosophy on puzzles:

If you have random battles, don't do them.

This is probably why I tolerate Lufia II, and actually enjoy its puzzles. On the other hand you take a game like Wild Arms, and you have a flat out mess when it comes to the dungeons. Golden Sun's puzzles are not as messy as Wild Arms, but they are painful due to the fact that some of the instructions aren't quite descriptive, and I get tired of puzzles with logs or log-like objects in them rather fast.

And the story. Oh, the story. I've tried to look at this from different angles. I'm very open to good video game stories. The first thing I look for is how the gameplay tells the story. The second thing I look for is how the player's immersion in the world tells the story. The third thing I look for is how the plot helps the story along. The fourth thing I look for is how the characters paint a believable and exciting story. The fifth thing, and most important, is when I take all of these elements and put them together to see how fantastic the story I'm experiencing is. That is, after all, the reason I play the game.

Not very many game creators are ingenius enough to make the gameplay tell the story. It will often help it along, but rarely will you see an instance such as ActRaiser or from what I hear, Black and White, where such is the case. So a lack of this element is a given for Golden Sun.

What about the immersion? Not much. We have Isaac, who grows up in the cliche mountain village of Vale or Vail or whatever it was called. He's on the mission or journey or something to stop the bad guys from activating four elemental doohickeys. If we're going for immersion, it helps to have an innovative scenario. It's pretty difficult to be immersed in the roll of a character we've seen thousands of times. Now that isn't to say it's impossible. It's quite possible. But you do it with plot twists, symbolisms, and gripping themes. Muting the main character in an attempt to immerse the player is simply not going to cut it.

I'm covering the plot and characters together, because of the similarities between them. That similarity being, of course, the lack of anything that could ever hope to qualify as depth. The story is simple, and we've seen it a thousand times. Of course, it is not necessary to have a complex plot to have a good plot. Many games have excellent plots with very few amounts of text. The amount of plot means absolutely nothing. If it can deliver a strong message, then it is perfectly fine. The restraints of the GBA is not an excuse for lack of plot. SNES Quintet did incredible things with plot. Moreso than many modern games. It's how you use what's given to you that makes your plot. It is true that my favorite GBA game, Breath of Fire II, does not have the greatest plot. It does deal with some serious themes. I wouldn't go as far as to call the plot stellar though. The characters ramble for half an hour like broken records in Golden Sun. They state what you must do numerous times, but the direction in the game is so bad, you're still lost. The characters are in no way developed. Final Fantasy 6, 7 years prior, in 1994, found a way to develop just about every one of it's characters. That cast of PCs was at least 3 to 4 times as large.

And finally, I must talk about this surprise ending of the first game. The truth is, I've never played the second half of Golden Sun. I refuse to call it Golden Sun II, because it is of course, just Camelot's way of ripping you off and making you pay for the second half of the game you had bought without knowledge it would be a half game.

But Xenosaga and Hack do this. Why am I upset about Golden Sun? Xenosaga and Hack are marketed as part of a series. The designers of Golden Sun got so caught up in their pretty graphics, they suddenly realized they didn't have any space to finish their game. Knowing the contents of the game were so shallow, their only hope was to reel people in without the knowledge that they'd be buying half a game.
I got to the end of the first half of Golden Sun, felt like a moron, got disgusted, and decided that was enough.

And those are the reasons I dislike Golden Sun.

[Kalen]

Grandia. I don't know why so many people loved that game. I hated every minute of it and quit playing it around 30-40 hours.

[Lionx]

Actually one of the worst things i felt happened in Golden Sun is this..:

First Game: Main character cannot talk

Second Game: You have a different main character, HOWEVER, despite the point that he talked alot in the previous game, he is somehow mysteriously muted in this game. But the previous game's main character whom you bump into eventually CAN TALK OMFG! <_< weak..

[Dreddz]

Oh yeah? Explain yourself

*explains*

[Meat Puppet]

pacman 2
good that was horrible

[NeoCracker]

Well, there are not to many I hate. One was SoulBlazer, I mention this because it sucks. I havn't played it for a couple years so i don't really remember why it sucks, but it does.
Next is quest 64. after the first boss the game is painstakingly easy and the character and plot development suck.
And now for all you paladin quest haters, screw you. Well, not really. I have played it. It was a simple fun game, not much of a story and nothing great about it, but still a fun game.

Oh, and now the game i despise. Final Fantasy VIII. I will admit it had great graphics, but a game is much more than graphics. First off, its never a good thing when you main character runs from a room screaming at the thought of someone thinking about him when he dies. And how so many people grow to like a looser who hates them all and seems anti-humanity all together is a myserty to me. Sure they
*Spoiler*
All knew eachother since kids and have a bond, but generally people don't stay friends when there friend becomes a complete dick.
*End spoiler*
For those who didn't read the spoiler, Squall is a dick. Also he has a few to many issues he needs to see a doc about. I think he ruined about the whole game for me.

[Erdrick Holmes]

FFVII. Games that leave plot-holes the size of Canyons are terrible.

[DMKA]

Tales of Fantasia failed pretty hard.

Not as hard as Earthbound though.