Interactive LoTR, no thanks. Been there, seen that.
At least LOTR had the whole ring thing going on.
Dragon Age is just BAD DUDES COMING THIS WAY WOAH. They made interactive LOTR, and then took out the parts some people who haven't seen LOTR might find interesting.
Final Fantasy VII - Best RPG ever? Hardly, you had an emo main character that I wanted to punch if not outright kill, and the story was hardly anything amazing. It certainly lacked the epic nature of the previous FF games.
Chrono Cross - Sequel to Chrono Trigger sign me up! You get how many characters?! Awesome! Oh wait, none of them really do that much, add anything and really is a bulletin point to stick on the box. The plot stunk and it was revealed the main characters from the previous game only fucked up things worse and died horrible deaths, yay!
Metal Gear Solid 2 - Holy shit did you see that trailer that debuted at E3, holy shit, how can a game have such graphics, it's incredible! Tranquilizers! Amazing! Playing as Snake here now and wow this is great, freaking great, hahaha, fake death and now...wait...what's this....who is this.....some skinny pretty boy blonde? The hell....where is Snake, when can you play Snake again. Who is this girl....why does she keep going on about such shit when I'm fighting for my life....the president even thinks this guy might be a girl? Oh geez.....you don't even get to play Snake anymore. And what's up with this stupid plot.
I mean I never played a ton of Morrowind (I HATED the dice rolling aspect of it, although I love me some DnD now. I guess it was the whole I hit that fucker 6 times with my sword but I didn't actually do anything).
However Oblivion and most games like it I can never get in to. Sure I played it for many many hours but I would always expect something more, and then it never happened so I eventually just gave up.
Instancing the cities played a large part in that. Thats really the one reason I loved WoW the world flowed, no load screens except crossing continents.
Also every WoW expansion was a let down, sure the game was pretty shitty before them but I loved it for that. (Cept Molten Core).
HL2. To the person complaining about the flashlight it worked tons better then the stupid Doom 3 one.
But, without any doubt whatsoever, the crowned king has to be...
The Xenosaga Series
Just to be clear, I love Xenogears. It was the first game I played I actually gave a crap about, and while I recognize it's nostalgia talking I still love it to death. I convinced myself I was going to get the same feeling from this series, and hoo boy was I wrong. That's my own fault, but I think that's where the biggest dissapointments come from.
Yeah, this is on my list as well. I also love the shit out of Xenogears. I like that it's a long game. I like the style, setting, and just about everything. It has warts, to be sure (ololcrucifixion scene and entire second disc), but I always had a soft spot in my heart for it.
For me, the key to Xenogears is being able to form an emotional connection with the characters. I like Fei (as my avatar suggests), I like Elly, and Citan, and Bart. Other than Allen, and the bridge crew of the Elsa, I never really liked any of the Xenosaga crew.
I feel that Xenosaga Ep. 1 was a decent game. It starts off so slow, but after the giant Gnosis ship, the story picks up steam. I could only make it halfway through Ep. 2 before I just stopped. Between the dragged out story surrounding Jr., Albedo, and MOMO, the inexplicably changed voice cast (for the worst in every respect), a boring and needlessly complex battle system, and a complete lack of pacing, I just couldn't force myself to go through it.
I hear that Ep. 3 is better, but I don't know if I can put myself through it.
Nightslyr on
PSN/XBL/Nintendo/Origin/Steam: Nightslyr 3DS: 1607-1682-2948 Switch: SW-3515-0057-3813 FF XIV: Q'vehn Tia
Final Fantasy VII - Best RPG ever? Hardly, you had an emo main character that I wanted to punch if not outright kill, and the story was hardly anything amazing. It certainly lacked the epic nature of the previous FF games.
Chrono Cross - Sequel to Chrono Trigger sign me up! You get how many characters?! Awesome! Oh wait, none of them really do that much, add anything and really is a bulletin point to stick on the box. The plot stunk and it was revealed the main characters from the previous game only fucked up things worse and died horrible deaths, yay!
Metal Gear Solid 2 - Holy shit did you see that trailer that debuted at E3, holy shit, how can a game have such graphics, it's incredible! Tranquilizers! Amazing! Playing as Snake here now and wow this is great, freaking great, hahaha, fake death and now...wait...what's this....who is this.....some skinny pretty boy blonde? The hell....where is Snake, when can you play Snake again. Who is this girl....why does she keep going on about such shit when I'm fighting for my life....the president even thinks this guy might be a girl? Oh geez.....you don't even get to play Snake anymore. And what's up with this stupid plot.
The first two of the three were released more than a decade ago.
edit: wait, chrono cross is technically just 9 years and 8 months old, if judged by USA release.
Final Fantasy X - God, what a let down. I bought a PS2 (my first of three) for this game, among others. The story was mediocre at its strongest, the title character turned out (to me) to be an annoying dumbass with unwavering dumbass enthusiasm as his primary character trait, skill acquisition was tedious, and the combat was the most boring I'd encountered in a FF game. And my god, the missions for getting ultimate weapons was stupid. Dodging lightning? Who thought that was a good idea?
I know everyone thinks Auron is the greatest thing since Jesus or sliced bread, and that Lulu is some sort of sexy goth queen, but all I see with the two is a brooding stubbly bore with an attitude issue and horrid posture and some gothy anorexic woman covered in belts. And they're some of the better characters. God, I really hated the cast of that game, which is kind of a problem in a character-driven title.
Also, the worse chocobo racing game ever. In the middle of that, I realized that, though I was literally right before the final group of battles, I really did not want to keep playing that game.
EDIT: Though one thing I could say, it was a pretty good looking game.
Synthesis on
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Alfred J. Kwakis it because you were insultedwhen I insulted your hair?Registered Userregular
edited May 2010
Pong left a lot to be desired in the graphic apartment if you ask me.
Way late to the party but that leaked Doom 3 Alpha was some incredible stuff. It's a shame the actual game started sucking out loud after about 20 minutes of gameplay... though I hear the final levels are pretty awesome.
Did you stop playing like, right after Archades? Because it was going ok (if not slow as shit) until then and then it completely fell apart. You could almost pinpoint the exact point at which Matsuno lost his shit and left the company. Everything after Archades was a catastrofuck with the sole exception of Cid, and not even he could salvage it.
I tend to get hyped by reports from the forum that a game is awesome, and these have severly let me down:
Dragon Age The Landsmeet and it's leadin were some of the best gaming time I had in 2009 or early 2010 (I forget), and what I expected from the rest of the game. Too bad that was only like 1% of the game. The combat and skill progression systems are easily the worst I can remember playing recently (and that includes Too Human, which has a retardedly limiting skill tree system), the enemies are incredibly boring and repeated, the equipment is bland, the side quests are entirely skippable, your companions range from merely annoying to actively rage inducing in their stupidity, and the conversation/decisions in the actual dungeons are terrible.
Had to lime the statements above. I'd say my biggest disappointments come from games that start out great and I get totally into them, only to drop off a cliff. By the end of the game I'm hating myself and forcing myself to finish it, wondering why I ever liked it in the first place.
Of the 2 mentioned here, I'd say the far bigger disappointment was FFXII because the bait and switch comes so much further into the game. Up until Archades it was my favorite FF (except maybe Tactics). I couldn't figure out what the hell happened; the story just instantly changed direction out of nowhere! Then I read later about Matsuno leaving (somehow I missed this when it happened) and it all made sense. Put me in the camp of liking the FF's with more grounded, political storylines (Tactics' story was the best) over the fantasy/anime grandiosity of most of them (FFVII struck a nice balance for me). I am one of the few who thought the story in FFX sucked.
Way late to the party but that leaked Doom 3 Alpha was some incredible stuff. It's a shame the actual game started sucking out loud after about 20 minutes of gameplay... though I hear the final levels are pretty awesome.
You heard wrong, the final levels of doom 3 were as bad as what followed them.
Preacher on
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Final Fantasy X - God, what a let down. I bought a PS2 (my first of three) for this game, among others. The story was mediocre at its strongest, the title character turned out (to me) to be an annoying dumbass with unwavering dumbass enthusiasm as his primary , skill acquisition was tedious, and the combat was the most boring I'd encountered in a FF game. And my god, the missions for getting ultimate weapons was stupid. Dodging lightning? Who thought that was a good idea?
I know everyone thinks Auron is the greatest thing since Jesus or sliced bread, and that Lulu is some sort of sexy goth queen, but all I see with the two is a brooding stubbly bore with an attitude issue and some gothy anorexic woman covered in belts. And they're some of the better characters. God, I really hated the cast of that game, which is kind of a problem in a character-driven title.
Also, the worse chocobo racing game ever. In the middle of that, I realized that, though I was literally right before the final group of battles, I really did not want to keep playing that game.
EDIT: Though one thing I could say, it was a pretty good looking game.
Final Fantasy X - God, what a let down. I bought a PS2 (my first of three) for this game, among others. The story was mediocre at its strongest, the title character turned out (to me) to be an annoying dumbass with unwavering dumbass enthusiasm as his primary , skill acquisition was tedious, and the combat was the most boring I'd encountered in a FF game. And my god, the missions for getting ultimate weapons was stupid. Dodging lightning? Who thought that was a good idea?
I know everyone thinks Auron is the greatest thing since Jesus or sliced bread, and that Lulu is some sort of sexy goth queen, but all I see with the two is a brooding stubbly bore with an attitude issue and some gothy anorexic woman covered in belts. And they're some of the better characters. God, I really hated the cast of that game, which is kind of a problem in a character-driven title.
Also, the worse chocobo racing game ever. In the middle of that, I realized that, though I was literally right before the final group of battles, I really did not want to keep playing that game.
EDIT: Though one thing I could say, it was a pretty good looking game.
I'm going to have to go with FF 13 as well. As a game its certainly not the worst game ever. I myself played Spore, and hated it to the point that it made me angry that I had played it at all. The difference is just the hype and anticipation that built up in the nearly three years that I was waiting for the game.
Its all just lolOpinions, but I didn't care much for the story, and found that it was badly presented over the course of the game. I didn't like (or care about) any of my party members or, by proxy, the world they were trying to save.
The whole time I was waiting for this game to come out I kept hearing about how the battles were supposed to look like the battle scenes from Advent Children, and that was supposed to be the reason why you could only control one person in your party. Well outside the first cutscene on the train there was little that reminded me of Advent Children fight scenes, and I found the battles boring, drawn out (for bosses anyways) and easy.
I will give them props for trying to cut out what my brother calls "all the jRPG fat", and I don't mind the lack of cities, or the "30 hour tutorial" that some complain about. Those were probably the better aspects of the game (read: cut out the grindy pointless stuff) that I wouldn't mind if other jRPG developers imitate. My main beef is that I play jRPGs for the stories and the pace of the battle systems, which I didn't like in this game at all. After finishing the game I got the impression that I waited 3 years just for the pretty graphics, and everything else was kind of lazily put together. After having finished the game, I don't think I'll bother playing it again or grinding for the last few trophies (though my girlfriend might).
I loved the retry option for battles, and the graphics were certainly incredible. but honestly, is there any real reason why I couldn't have a little more control over my party? Maybe through macros or gambits? Why can't anyone revive, or become the party leader, when my party leader dies? Also, start hiring better writers. Or maybe my dreams will come true and Yoshitaka Murayama and Yasumi Matsuno will create a company and start churning out games. Probably not.
As an aside, I had such low hopes for FF 12 after reading reviews about it, that when I finally played it I didn't hate it as much as I thought I would. I guess expectations play a huge part in these things. Maybe I should stop reading reviews about upcoming games from now on!
Valleo on
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L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
edited May 2010
I've got to say it. I just have to. I'm sorry. Really.
I loved every iteration of GTA before that, but then (and this is a major gripe for me with some of the industry) they tried to be "realistic". I mean the driving is ok, I LOVE the physics engine but aside from that I found my self unable to do half the wacky shit I was able to in Vice City or San Andreas. I mean the multiplayer is loads of fun but I'm still disappointed at the game we got.
But, without any doubt whatsoever, the crowned king has to be...
The Xenosaga Series
Just to be clear, I love Xenogears. It was the first game I played I actually gave a crap about, and while I recognize it's nostalgia talking I still love it to death. I convinced myself I was going to get the same feeling from this series, and hoo boy was I wrong. That's my own fault, but I think that's where the biggest dissapointments come from.
Yeah, this is on my list as well. I also love the shit out of Xenogears. I like that it's a long game. I like the style, setting, and just about everything. It has warts, to be sure (ololcrucifixion scene and entire second disc), but I always had a soft spot in my heart for it.
For me, the key to Xenogears is being able to form an emotional connection with the characters. I like Fei (as my avatar suggests), I like Elly, and Citan, and Bart. Other than Allen, and the bridge crew of the Elsa, I never really liked any of the Xenosaga crew.
I feel that Xenosaga Ep. 1 was a decent game. It starts off so slow, but after the giant Gnosis ship, the story picks up steam. I could only make it halfway through Ep. 2 before I just stopped. Between the dragged out story surrounding Jr., Albedo, and MOMO, the inexplicably changed voice cast (for the worst in every respect), a boring and needlessly complex battle system, and a complete lack of pacing, I just couldn't force myself to go through it.
I hear that Ep. 3 is better, but I don't know if I can put myself through it.
Man, I forgot all about these.
I also loved the original Xenogears. It definitely had its problems, don't get me wrong. But I'd never seen either any anime or anything to do with giant robots, so it all seemed very fresh to me when I played it. Most importantly, it had an extremely cool setting - a relatable modern-day world on the surface, but with crazy excavated technology, ancient ruins, an evil, invisible empire in the sky and a floating paradise where the scrappy rebels plotted against them. I loved the characters, too, especially how we actually got to flesh out the side characters as much or more than Fei and Elly. One of my favorite scenes in the game is when you finally get Margie back to Nisan, and her and Bart start reminiscing about growing up in the cathedral as kids. No world-shattering epiphanies, epic battles or crazy plot twists, just two young adults having a normal conversation about their childhood. You very rarely see that sort of thing in any game, let alone a JRPG, a genre particularly prone to over-the-top buildups.
Then Xenosaga showed up on the PS2, and all the problems from the original game were magnified. Xenogears was at the very top end of cutscene to gameplay allowance, but I could live with it, because the cutscenes served to build this fascinating world. Xenosaga just went overboard, and the cutscenes felt like something to slog through to get back to the actual game.
But even worse, for me, was the fact that they'd abandoned the modern/near future setting in favor a world composed entirely of spaceships and space stations and other hi-tech space shit. The art direction seemed so sterile and flavorless. Everything looked like the interior of the ship in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Maybe if I'd played it longer it would have gotten better, but the game didn't make me want to, and that's what disappointed me. I didn't even end up buying it.
Final Fantasy X - God, what a let down. I bought a PS2 (my first of three) for this game, among others. The story was mediocre at its strongest, the title character turned out (to me) to be an annoying dumbass with unwavering dumbass enthusiasm as his primary , skill acquisition was tedious, and the combat was the most boring I'd encountered in a FF game. And my god, the missions for getting ultimate weapons was stupid. Dodging lightning? Who thought that was a good idea?
I know everyone thinks Auron is the greatest thing since Jesus or sliced bread, and that Lulu is some sort of sexy goth queen, but all I see with the two is a brooding stubbly bore with an attitude issue and some gothy anorexic woman covered in belts. And they're some of the better characters. God, I really hated the cast of that game, which is kind of a problem in a character-driven title.
Also, the worse chocobo racing game ever. In the middle of that, I realized that, though I was literally right before the final group of battles, I really did not want to keep playing that game.
EDIT: Though one thing I could say, it was a pretty good looking game.
X was okay, but I loved Freya.
I didn't play IX.
Also, X was horrible. But I already said that.
Hup dur. I'm getting my games mixxed up.
Anyway, uhm... let's see.
Spore, like so many others. Can't believe I wasted 50$ on that.
Warhammer Online: Caught up in hype, can't believe what I got instead. It's such a shame.
Halo 2: I hated the SP experience in comparison to Halo CE, and never played online. Halo 3 was better, but then again I played online for that one. Both were let downs, but Halo 3 not so much.
I'm one of the few that enjoyed Oblivion more than FO3, it seems. Kind of funny; mom bought me Morrowind on the original xbox for 20$ since it was cheap and I had no clue what to expect of it. One of the best surprises in my life I've had to date.
Champions Online was also dissapointing from what time I spent in the beta, and I think WotLK has made WoW the best it's been in ages, though PvP seems just bad and it seems it will never be balanced.
Biggest, hugest letdown of the decade? Damn, that is such a tough call.
...
Oh man, I am so going to get reamed for this one.
Morrowind.
<snip>
Yeah, the game does a really, really terrible job of starting you out in that world. It's easy to stray too far from civilization and ending up getting eaten by something much too big for you. It also is not a very pretty game by any standard----but it is alien in a way that no other RPG has been in my mind.
I'm going with Oblivion as the biggest disappointment. I've never played any other Elder Scrolls game, but I've heard how great Morrowwind was, and some of my friends were raving about Oblivion.
So I bought it, I thought, "Hey, this will be great" then I start playing aaaaannnddd.....what? This game sucked ass.
The combat was, simply put, BORING, fighting anything in that game felt like vacuuming, or at first I thought that, but I've had fun vacuuming before.
The story was unbelievably lackluster. I did not find myself at any point going "Man, I want to save this world". And for the most part, the side-quest/guild stories just plain...sucked. I mean, the Dark Brotherhood was alright, but everything else? The fighters/mages guild just were not fun, and were not engaging. And even with the thieves guild I thought it was pretty interesting at first but by the end I just went:
Ya know, I bet I can RUN through this shit and still that Elder Scroll
and I was right.
Oblivion, in my opinion, was just a failure of a game that I was all excited for and it amounted to poop.
Final Fantasy X - God, what a let down. I bought a PS2 (my first of three) for this game, among others. The story was mediocre at its strongest, the title character turned out (to me) to be an annoying dumbass with unwavering dumbass enthusiasm as his primary , skill acquisition was tedious, and the combat was the most boring I'd encountered in a FF game. And my god, the missions for getting ultimate weapons was stupid. Dodging lightning? Who thought that was a good idea?
I know everyone thinks Auron is the greatest thing since Jesus or sliced bread, and that Lulu is some sort of sexy goth queen, but all I see with the two is a brooding stubbly bore with an attitude issue and some gothy anorexic woman covered in belts. And they're some of the better characters. God, I really hated the cast of that game, which is kind of a problem in a character-driven title.
Also, the worse chocobo racing game ever. In the middle of that, I realized that, though I was literally right before the final group of battles, I really did not want to keep playing that game.
EDIT: Though one thing I could say, it was a pretty good looking game.
X was okay, but I loved Freya.
I didn't play IX.
Also, X was horrible. But I already said that.
Hup dur. I'm getting my games mixxed up.
Anyway, uhm... let's see.
Spore, like so many others. Can't believe I wasted 50$ on that.
Warhammer Online: Caught up in hype, can't believe what I got instead. It's such a shame.
Halo 2: I hated the SP experience in comparison to Halo CE, and never played online. Halo 3 was better, but then again I played online for that one. Both were let downs, but Halo 3 not so much.
I'm one of the few that enjoyed Oblivion more than FO3, it seems. Kind of funny; mom bought me Morrowind on the original xbox for 20$ since it was cheap and I had no clue what to expect of it. One of the best surprises in my life I've had to date.
Champions Online was also dissapointing from what time I spent in the beta, and I think WotLK has made WoW the best it's been in ages, though PvP seems just bad and it seems it will never be balanced.
I agree with most of this actually well not Halo 2 I enjoyed it not as much as 1 or 3 but I don't regret it.
I wanted to love Warhammer I really did but a combination of me always picking the shitty classes and being out leveled killed it pretty quick.
I loved everything about Champions in theory. But when I got to playing it I don't know how to explain it but it just fell short.
And while WoTLK made WoW the best it's ever been I had so much fun with vanilla that it has created a Plateau that probably won't be reached again.
Come to think of it most MMO's let me down. I always pick a bad class (Warhammer, Conan) or the game just isn't interesting enough or is just a buggy pile of shit.
The only 2 I've played with some consistency since then is LoTRO and CoH.
Oh god, I thought of another one. Probably my #2, because the game itself built my expectations and then kiled them dead: Prince of Persia 360.
I had read all the talk about how easy, etc and decided to try it based just on the aesthetic. It was as promised: simplistic, very easy. But as I went through the game more and more I started to see it as tongue in cheek, and ultimately a spot on satire built into everything from the impossbile floating walls to the 'plays itself' control scheme. The complaints I had heard were all pretty similar - that you felt outside the game, that you weren't the Price, that it didn't feel satisfying because you weren't doing these awesome moves, it was being done for you. And I loved it; it was a brilliant commentary on gamers themselves: You want escapism. You want to be the prince.
But the prince is pathetic and secondary. The prince is superficial, carried along for the ride by the true hero and the game plays on your expectations, defies you for trying to find some adolecent joy as a bad ass parkour ninja who saves the world and gets the girl. And then it all ends, perfectly.
I was ready to put it up there with SotC as one of my favorite games just for being this self aware. And then it ends again, and it just came crashing down. It wasn't done intentionally. They weren't poking at gamers and escapism, they weren't aware the price was a sad, sad figure. They were just appealing to the lowest common denominator...and failing at it.
Ugh. I feel dirty just thinking about it now.
JihadJesus on
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
edited May 2010
I remember MORROWIND being one of those "video card check" PC games when it came out, and dang did my PC fail that one. What's the zone to which you travel by riding a giant bug ? I got there to find a sandstorm in progress, and my frame rate dropped to about 1.5.
Per minute.
And that was the end of my MORROWIND experience. After all that I've read here, I wonder if I may try it again now that I have a PC that could run a Reaper.
I was really excited when I bought this. I think the story was pretty great, good graphics, but the combat just got old and stale. The quests were largely boring and I especially hated having to unlock the ability to get items out of the new plants/monsters every chapter. I always felt like I spent the majority of my time just trying to get the ability to complete all the fetch/fed ex quests because I didn't know how to remove the liver from a ghoul, despite killing them in droves. By the time I got side quests under control, I'd forget what the heck I was doing in the first place to progress the main story.
I think the thing that annoyed me most though was having to level up my sword skills twice. I mean really, because the swords are made of different metals I have to learn to swing them the exact same way twice?
Come to think of it most MMO's let me down. I always pick a bad class (Warhammer, Conan) or the game just isn't interesting enough or is just a buggy pile of shit.
This is pretty much where I'm at. I've tried all these different MMOs thinking, holy shit this is going to be amazing! And I'm completely bored within a month, tops. I love the character creation and starting areas, generally, but then always end up becoming bored with the world at large.
My friend hyped it up to hell and high water before I started playing it. I expected the most engrossing, well written, dynamic RPG of all time. What I got instead was a game that was good but by no means great. The dialogue choices were always hit or miss, leaving me with an either blatantly good, neutral, or evil option. Half the time the line you picked isn't even really the line you say. I found myself getting frustrated with Shepard's inability to say what I wanted him to say rather than being impressed with the so called "choices." The morality system was a complete joke. I mean good, neutral, evil may have felt fresh and new about ten years ago, but it's no longer worth hyping up since it's been played out so many times. There was never any real "choice" in the game; nothing really made me sit there and think about what path I should take. Though I think that had something to do with the horrible bland characters.
The characters in that game were awful. I can't think of another RPG I've played where I cared so little about the cast of characters. They're all introduced so poorly and for no real reason. Why the hell do ashley, rex, and garrus join your elite squad? What qualifies them? Why are they important to the plot? They're not. The game gives you your entire team within 5 or so hours of the game with little to no real back story on any of them. Every single added member of your team is there just because. Oh sure, they might give you some kind of throwaway reason. Sure, you'll be able to cite something. But none of them are so intrinsically tied to the plot that you can't see the game progressing without them.
Compare mass effect to a chrono trigger, a game over 15 years old. In CT, every single character is woven so thoroughly into the story of the game, they're always the one driving the progression of events. Conversely, mass effect just felt like a story with characters that just so happen to be around when it happens. The most game ruining moment for me was having Liara participate in some mind numbingly bland and irrelevant banter after killing her mother while running back to the ship. So let me get this straight...you've just killed your mother, the person you probably look up to more than any other person in existence, and you're going to be cheery and chummy immediately after?
The game drove me up the wall...not with how necessarily bad it was but with how painfully short of awesome it turned out to be. The writing as a whole in that game was mediocre at BEST. Bland sci-fi story, bland universe, bland aesthetics, bland characters, bland game. My favorite part of that game was the battle system, and even then, that wasn't anything worth writing home about.
For me it's the following:
Star Ocean 3 - The game that ruined jRPGs for me forever. A shitty crafting system, terrible characters, dumb enemies, bad layout, everything. And this was all in the first ten hours of a game that supposedly gets worse.
Honorable mention: The entire fucking jRPG genre besides Shin Megami Tensei and maybe Kingdom Hearts and FFX.
Spore - We all know where this went wrong by now.
Hellgate London - So yeah, just not what we thought. See spore.
As I think about this thread my eye keeps getting drawn to the part of my desk where my two copies of Star Trek Online lay, one of which has a lifetime subscription associated with it.
Chen you're about the last person I was expecting to have that sort of sentiment about Disgaea. What about it makes you say 'meh'?
The endless, endless grinding, especially to unlock the uber class who shames all other classes.
I like stats as much as the next guy, but like someone said before, it's just max-maxing and not min-maxing.
That and geopanels are retarded.
Going to second this one.
I like my SRPGs to actually have some sort of strategy. In Disgaea most fights are either stupid easy or you just can't win. The only strategy I ever used was trying to cheat the item worlds to power level, which got really boring really fast.
In fact, every SRPG I've played since Tactics Ogre has been a disappointment.
I'm also going to add Megaman ZX. The game felt like a huge step back after the Megaman Zero series, which stunned me. New system with more horsepower and bigger cartridges yet there's actually more padding? Not going to mention the terrible map, because that actually didn't bother me so much.
And then ZX2 came out and introduced the one single feature that I've never wanted in a Megaman game. I didn't even bother with it.
I loved every iteration of GTA before that, but then (and this is a major gripe for me with some of the industry) they tried to be "realistic". I mean the driving is ok, I LOVE the physics engine but aside from that I found my self unable to do half the wacky shit I was able to in Vice City or San Andreas. I mean the multiplayer is loads of fun but I'm still disappointed at the game we got.
At least Saints Row 2 fills that void nicely.
You know, I loved GTAIV to death, but still felt that void from a true successor to San Andreas
So I played Saints Row 2, and thought it was pure garbage
Then I just started playing San Andreas on the Xbox again, and...didn't really enjoy it anymore
It's weird, but I think they took that franchise exactly in the direction that I wanted, without me even knowing
Well it seems to turn off different people for different reasons but for me its the buggy and terrible ground combat that I can't stand. It is sad because I love the space borne portions.
I loved every iteration of GTA before that, but then (and this is a major gripe for me with some of the industry) they tried to be "realistic". I mean the driving is ok, I LOVE the physics engine but aside from that I found my self unable to do half the wacky shit I was able to in Vice City or San Andreas. I mean the multiplayer is loads of fun but I'm still disappointed at the game we got.
At least Saints Row 2 fills that void nicely.
You know, I loved GTAIV to death, but still felt that void from a true successor to San Andreas
So I played Saints Row 2, and thought it was pure garbage
Then I just started playing San Andreas on the Xbox again, and...didn't really enjoy it anymore
It's weird, but I think they took that franchise exactly in the direction that I wanted, without me even knowing
You filthy whore. Saints Row 2 is no San Andreas butits a million times more fun to play and more creative than GTA4. And I say this after playing 10 nminutes of Saints Row 1 and hating it for the obvious and poor GTA rip-off it was.
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Dragon Age is just BAD DUDES COMING THIS WAY WOAH. They made interactive LOTR, and then took out the parts some people who haven't seen LOTR might find interesting.
Final Fantasy VII - Best RPG ever? Hardly, you had an emo main character that I wanted to punch if not outright kill, and the story was hardly anything amazing. It certainly lacked the epic nature of the previous FF games.
Chrono Cross - Sequel to Chrono Trigger sign me up! You get how many characters?! Awesome! Oh wait, none of them really do that much, add anything and really is a bulletin point to stick on the box. The plot stunk and it was revealed the main characters from the previous game only fucked up things worse and died horrible deaths, yay!
Metal Gear Solid 2 - Holy shit did you see that trailer that debuted at E3, holy shit, how can a game have such graphics, it's incredible! Tranquilizers! Amazing! Playing as Snake here now and wow this is great, freaking great, hahaha, fake death and now...wait...what's this....who is this.....some skinny pretty boy blonde? The hell....where is Snake, when can you play Snake again. Who is this girl....why does she keep going on about such shit when I'm fighting for my life....the president even thinks this guy might be a girl? Oh geez.....you don't even get to play Snake anymore. And what's up with this stupid plot.
I mean I never played a ton of Morrowind (I HATED the dice rolling aspect of it, although I love me some DnD now. I guess it was the whole I hit that fucker 6 times with my sword but I didn't actually do anything).
However Oblivion and most games like it I can never get in to. Sure I played it for many many hours but I would always expect something more, and then it never happened so I eventually just gave up.
Instancing the cities played a large part in that. Thats really the one reason I loved WoW the world flowed, no load screens except crossing continents.
Also every WoW expansion was a let down, sure the game was pretty shitty before them but I loved it for that. (Cept Molten Core).
Yeah, this is on my list as well. I also love the shit out of Xenogears. I like that it's a long game. I like the style, setting, and just about everything. It has warts, to be sure (ololcrucifixion scene and entire second disc), but I always had a soft spot in my heart for it.
For me, the key to Xenogears is being able to form an emotional connection with the characters. I like Fei (as my avatar suggests), I like Elly, and Citan, and Bart. Other than Allen, and the bridge crew of the Elsa, I never really liked any of the Xenosaga crew.
I feel that Xenosaga Ep. 1 was a decent game. It starts off so slow, but after the giant Gnosis ship, the story picks up steam. I could only make it halfway through Ep. 2 before I just stopped. Between the dragged out story surrounding Jr., Albedo, and MOMO, the inexplicably changed voice cast (for the worst in every respect), a boring and needlessly complex battle system, and a complete lack of pacing, I just couldn't force myself to go through it.
I hear that Ep. 3 is better, but I don't know if I can put myself through it.
Switch: SW-3515-0057-3813 FF XIV: Q'vehn Tia
The first two of the three were released more than a decade ago.
edit: wait, chrono cross is technically just 9 years and 8 months old, if judged by USA release.
Final Fantasy X - God, what a let down. I bought a PS2 (my first of three) for this game, among others. The story was mediocre at its strongest, the title character turned out (to me) to be an annoying dumbass with unwavering dumbass enthusiasm as his primary character trait, skill acquisition was tedious, and the combat was the most boring I'd encountered in a FF game. And my god, the missions for getting ultimate weapons was stupid. Dodging lightning? Who thought that was a good idea?
I know everyone thinks Auron is the greatest thing since Jesus or sliced bread, and that Lulu is some sort of sexy goth queen, but all I see with the two is a brooding stubbly bore with an attitude issue and horrid posture and some gothy anorexic woman covered in belts. And they're some of the better characters. God, I really hated the cast of that game, which is kind of a problem in a character-driven title.
Also, the worse chocobo racing game ever. In the middle of that, I realized that, though I was literally right before the final group of battles, I really did not want to keep playing that game.
EDIT: Though one thing I could say, it was a pretty good looking game.
Had to lime the statements above. I'd say my biggest disappointments come from games that start out great and I get totally into them, only to drop off a cliff. By the end of the game I'm hating myself and forcing myself to finish it, wondering why I ever liked it in the first place.
Of the 2 mentioned here, I'd say the far bigger disappointment was FFXII because the bait and switch comes so much further into the game. Up until Archades it was my favorite FF (except maybe Tactics). I couldn't figure out what the hell happened; the story just instantly changed direction out of nowhere! Then I read later about Matsuno leaving (somehow I missed this when it happened) and it all made sense. Put me in the camp of liking the FF's with more grounded, political storylines (Tactics' story was the best) over the fantasy/anime grandiosity of most of them (FFVII struck a nice balance for me). I am one of the few who thought the story in FFX sucked.
You heard wrong, the final levels of doom 3 were as bad as what followed them.
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X was okay, but I loved Freya.
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I didn't play IX.
Also, X was horrible. But I already said that.
Its all just lolOpinions, but I didn't care much for the story, and found that it was badly presented over the course of the game. I didn't like (or care about) any of my party members or, by proxy, the world they were trying to save.
The whole time I was waiting for this game to come out I kept hearing about how the battles were supposed to look like the battle scenes from Advent Children, and that was supposed to be the reason why you could only control one person in your party. Well outside the first cutscene on the train there was little that reminded me of Advent Children fight scenes, and I found the battles boring, drawn out (for bosses anyways) and easy.
I will give them props for trying to cut out what my brother calls "all the jRPG fat", and I don't mind the lack of cities, or the "30 hour tutorial" that some complain about. Those were probably the better aspects of the game (read: cut out the grindy pointless stuff) that I wouldn't mind if other jRPG developers imitate. My main beef is that I play jRPGs for the stories and the pace of the battle systems, which I didn't like in this game at all. After finishing the game I got the impression that I waited 3 years just for the pretty graphics, and everything else was kind of lazily put together. After having finished the game, I don't think I'll bother playing it again or grinding for the last few trophies (though my girlfriend might).
I loved the retry option for battles, and the graphics were certainly incredible. but honestly, is there any real reason why I couldn't have a little more control over my party? Maybe through macros or gambits? Why can't anyone revive, or become the party leader, when my party leader dies? Also, start hiring better writers. Or maybe my dreams will come true and Yoshitaka Murayama and Yasumi Matsuno will create a company and start churning out games. Probably not.
As an aside, I had such low hopes for FF 12 after reading reviews about it, that when I finally played it I didn't hate it as much as I thought I would. I guess expectations play a huge part in these things. Maybe I should stop reading reviews about upcoming games from now on!
I loved every iteration of GTA before that, but then (and this is a major gripe for me with some of the industry) they tried to be "realistic". I mean the driving is ok, I LOVE the physics engine but aside from that I found my self unable to do half the wacky shit I was able to in Vice City or San Andreas. I mean the multiplayer is loads of fun but I'm still disappointed at the game we got.
At least Saints Row 2 fills that void nicely.
Man, I forgot all about these.
I also loved the original Xenogears. It definitely had its problems, don't get me wrong. But I'd never seen either any anime or anything to do with giant robots, so it all seemed very fresh to me when I played it. Most importantly, it had an extremely cool setting - a relatable modern-day world on the surface, but with crazy excavated technology, ancient ruins, an evil, invisible empire in the sky and a floating paradise where the scrappy rebels plotted against them. I loved the characters, too, especially how we actually got to flesh out the side characters as much or more than Fei and Elly. One of my favorite scenes in the game is when you finally get Margie back to Nisan, and her and Bart start reminiscing about growing up in the cathedral as kids. No world-shattering epiphanies, epic battles or crazy plot twists, just two young adults having a normal conversation about their childhood. You very rarely see that sort of thing in any game, let alone a JRPG, a genre particularly prone to over-the-top buildups.
Then Xenosaga showed up on the PS2, and all the problems from the original game were magnified. Xenogears was at the very top end of cutscene to gameplay allowance, but I could live with it, because the cutscenes served to build this fascinating world. Xenosaga just went overboard, and the cutscenes felt like something to slog through to get back to the actual game.
But even worse, for me, was the fact that they'd abandoned the modern/near future setting in favor a world composed entirely of spaceships and space stations and other hi-tech space shit. The art direction seemed so sterile and flavorless. Everything looked like the interior of the ship in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Maybe if I'd played it longer it would have gotten better, but the game didn't make me want to, and that's what disappointed me. I didn't even end up buying it.
Hup dur. I'm getting my games mixxed up.
Anyway, uhm... let's see.
Spore, like so many others. Can't believe I wasted 50$ on that.
Warhammer Online: Caught up in hype, can't believe what I got instead. It's such a shame.
Halo 2: I hated the SP experience in comparison to Halo CE, and never played online. Halo 3 was better, but then again I played online for that one. Both were let downs, but Halo 3 not so much.
I'm one of the few that enjoyed Oblivion more than FO3, it seems. Kind of funny; mom bought me Morrowind on the original xbox for 20$ since it was cheap and I had no clue what to expect of it. One of the best surprises in my life I've had to date.
Champions Online was also dissapointing from what time I spent in the beta, and I think WotLK has made WoW the best it's been in ages, though PvP seems just bad and it seems it will never be balanced.
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Yeah, the game does a really, really terrible job of starting you out in that world. It's easy to stray too far from civilization and ending up getting eaten by something much too big for you. It also is not a very pretty game by any standard----but it is alien in a way that no other RPG has been in my mind.
So I bought it, I thought, "Hey, this will be great" then I start playing aaaaannnddd.....what? This game sucked ass.
The combat was, simply put, BORING, fighting anything in that game felt like vacuuming, or at first I thought that, but I've had fun vacuuming before.
The story was unbelievably lackluster. I did not find myself at any point going "Man, I want to save this world". And for the most part, the side-quest/guild stories just plain...sucked. I mean, the Dark Brotherhood was alright, but everything else? The fighters/mages guild just were not fun, and were not engaging. And even with the thieves guild I thought it was pretty interesting at first but by the end I just went:
Oblivion, in my opinion, was just a failure of a game that I was all excited for and it amounted to poop.
Hup dur. I'm getting my games mixxed up.
Anyway, uhm... let's see.
Spore, like so many others. Can't believe I wasted 50$ on that.
Warhammer Online: Caught up in hype, can't believe what I got instead. It's such a shame.
Halo 2: I hated the SP experience in comparison to Halo CE, and never played online. Halo 3 was better, but then again I played online for that one. Both were let downs, but Halo 3 not so much.
I'm one of the few that enjoyed Oblivion more than FO3, it seems. Kind of funny; mom bought me Morrowind on the original xbox for 20$ since it was cheap and I had no clue what to expect of it. One of the best surprises in my life I've had to date.
Champions Online was also dissapointing from what time I spent in the beta, and I think WotLK has made WoW the best it's been in ages, though PvP seems just bad and it seems it will never be balanced.
I agree with most of this actually well not Halo 2 I enjoyed it not as much as 1 or 3 but I don't regret it.
I wanted to love Warhammer I really did but a combination of me always picking the shitty classes and being out leveled killed it pretty quick.
I loved everything about Champions in theory. But when I got to playing it I don't know how to explain it but it just fell short.
And while WoTLK made WoW the best it's ever been I had so much fun with vanilla that it has created a Plateau that probably won't be reached again.
Come to think of it most MMO's let me down. I always pick a bad class (Warhammer, Conan) or the game just isn't interesting enough or is just a buggy pile of shit.
The only 2 I've played with some consistency since then is LoTRO and CoH.
I had read all the talk about how easy, etc and decided to try it based just on the aesthetic. It was as promised: simplistic, very easy. But as I went through the game more and more I started to see it as tongue in cheek, and ultimately a spot on satire built into everything from the impossbile floating walls to the 'plays itself' control scheme. The complaints I had heard were all pretty similar - that you felt outside the game, that you weren't the Price, that it didn't feel satisfying because you weren't doing these awesome moves, it was being done for you. And I loved it; it was a brilliant commentary on gamers themselves: You want escapism. You want to be the prince.
But the prince is pathetic and secondary. The prince is superficial, carried along for the ride by the true hero and the game plays on your expectations, defies you for trying to find some adolecent joy as a bad ass parkour ninja who saves the world and gets the girl. And then it all ends, perfectly.
I was ready to put it up there with SotC as one of my favorite games just for being this self aware. And then it ends again, and it just came crashing down. It wasn't done intentionally. They weren't poking at gamers and escapism, they weren't aware the price was a sad, sad figure. They were just appealing to the lowest common denominator...and failing at it.
Ugh. I feel dirty just thinking about it now.
Per minute.
And that was the end of my MORROWIND experience. After all that I've read here, I wonder if I may try it again now that I have a PC that could run a Reaper.
I was really excited when I bought this. I think the story was pretty great, good graphics, but the combat just got old and stale. The quests were largely boring and I especially hated having to unlock the ability to get items out of the new plants/monsters every chapter. I always felt like I spent the majority of my time just trying to get the ability to complete all the fetch/fed ex quests because I didn't know how to remove the liver from a ghoul, despite killing them in droves. By the time I got side quests under control, I'd forget what the heck I was doing in the first place to progress the main story.
I think the thing that annoyed me most though was having to level up my sword skills twice. I mean really, because the swords are made of different metals I have to learn to swing them the exact same way twice?
This is pretty much where I'm at. I've tried all these different MMOs thinking, holy shit this is going to be amazing! And I'm completely bored within a month, tops. I love the character creation and starting areas, generally, but then always end up becoming bored with the world at large.
Very much agree with this.
It bored me silly.
I still love the single player because it's just so insane, but god the multiplayer and the shinyness...
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Star Ocean 3 - The game that ruined jRPGs for me forever. A shitty crafting system, terrible characters, dumb enemies, bad layout, everything. And this was all in the first ten hours of a game that supposedly gets worse.
Honorable mention: The entire fucking jRPG genre besides Shin Megami Tensei and maybe Kingdom Hearts and FFX.
Spore - We all know where this went wrong by now.
Hellgate London - So yeah, just not what we thought. See spore.
Not to take away your thunder but someone already said it.
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Going to second this one.
I like my SRPGs to actually have some sort of strategy. In Disgaea most fights are either stupid easy or you just can't win. The only strategy I ever used was trying to cheat the item worlds to power level, which got really boring really fast.
In fact, every SRPG I've played since Tactics Ogre has been a disappointment.
I'm also going to add Megaman ZX. The game felt like a huge step back after the Megaman Zero series, which stunned me. New system with more horsepower and bigger cartridges yet there's actually more padding? Not going to mention the terrible map, because that actually didn't bother me so much.
And then ZX2 came out and introduced the one single feature that I've never wanted in a Megaman game. I didn't even bother with it.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
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You know, I loved GTAIV to death, but still felt that void from a true successor to San Andreas
So I played Saints Row 2, and thought it was pure garbage
Then I just started playing San Andreas on the Xbox again, and...didn't really enjoy it anymore
It's weird, but I think they took that franchise exactly in the direction that I wanted, without me even knowing
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
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Cryptic made it? So it launched with anemic content?
pleasepaypreacher.net
You filthy whore. Saints Row 2 is no San Andreas butits a million times more fun to play and more creative than GTA4. And I say this after playing 10 nminutes of Saints Row 1 and hating it for the obvious and poor GTA rip-off it was.
I think LotRO is the only game I've heard of that qualifies as worth the lifetime sub.