are there ANY bioware rpgs that are bad

[slipknot4]

Truth be told, I didn't care for Dragon age origins. I tried to love it, I REALLY did, but the more I play it, the more I hate it. Its just not fun for me.

Oh yeah, I could not agree more. It just gets more and more confusing at all the time and after a couple of hours[sup]10[/sup]i just gave up because of how bland and strange it was.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

well i love all of em, but i dont think they are perfect, as they all have flaws, so i could point at just about every game and point something bad about it.

its meant for some people, others not so much

if you focus on gameplay and twitchy reflex stuff, then i can almost garuntee bioware is not for you

 

[Zyxx]

Not having played everywhere Bioware RPG, I really can't say.
I wouldn't count any of them as unbearable, but I think I had the least fun with the original campaign for Neverwinter Nights 2. The original campaign for the first NWN was also pretty weak, and I didn't care too much for Icewind Dale (if I wanted a dungeon crawler, I'd play Diablo.)
But I enjoy Bioware's work, by and large, and will continue playing their games.

Icewind Dale was Black Isle (using the BioWare developed Infinity Engine)

I always get those two confused, for precisely that reason.

 

[sturryz]

Dragon Age was terrible in my eyes, a generic plot where you have to stop a evil dragon from taking over the world with it's armies of orcs and goblins. This is the best material that the people who made Baldurs Gate could come up with? They also wasted their voice talent (Tim Curry's character was-so-freaking-boring.) Loghain was not a very good villian either. A trusted general betrays his king by using the much greater evil as a way to advance himself politically? that hasn't been done before... oh wait. it has been done before, hasn't it?

The entire gameplay element felt like a World Of Warcraft knock off, you ended up using the same combat combos over and over, without much variation what so ever. The skill tree was extremely lacking and really only boiled down to a few abilites you would use over and over.

I think people need to understand that Dragon Ages entire purpose was to sell lots and lots of DLC. Heck, they even plan to just do a console port for the sequel. Think it's about time to understand Biowares true allegiance. back in the day we had games like Betrayel at Krondor, the original Fallout games, Wizardry, Lands of Lore and even Might & Magic. What happen to those days?

 

[ItsAPaul]

Neverwinter Nights was god awful. I don't see how it wasn't trashed in reviews when you go from Baldur's Gate 2 to that.

 

[almostgold]

Mass Effect?

Of course, "bad" is relative, so the question is meaningless.

So for me, yes. I did not enjoy ME. For you, it sounds like the answer is No. Once again, a pretty stupid question.

 

[Legion IV]

let me count. Kotor dragon age and debatibly mass effect but the characters save the game and make it great.

 

[AnAngryMoose]

I recently bought KotOR and I couldn't get into it so far. I've only played the start, but it's not that great. I also found NWN not that great, mainly due to the controls though.

 

[veloper]

yes yes I know I'm crazy but since bioware has made so many good rpgs, I thought I had to ask

Sure, plenty.

The NWN original campaign being the worst by far.

 

[MBergman]

Snipped.

I know you could do that, but it's still like being railroaded. It's something I put up with when I first played it since I was used to the poor DM mentality created by the DMG, so it didn't seem out of the ordinary and was actually fairly authentic to the source material (AD&D 2e) in that aspect. But I've since played infinitely better RPGs, with much better GMs and read much better advice, and also played computer RPGs that handle things far better.

I was actually enjoying Final Fantasy X-2 up until Chapter 5. Chapters 1 & 2 I actually was covering everything, and I'd figured out how to get Paine's special dress sphere in Chapter 1. Chapeter 3 I started getting a bit bored and worked through to Chapter 5 quickly, but I all of a sudden was too low level because I didn't grind enough and just couldn't progress anymore. Baldur's Gate is the same way - it forces you to advance before being able to go somewhere else, and the gameplay isn't that good. The strength of Baldur's Gate was always the story telling, and the gameplay gets in the way of being able to experience the story, and there's the illusion of choice and having a sandbox when you're really railroaded just as much as Final Fantasy X. I prefer the honesty in it that Final Fantasy X shows to just tell you the story. Freelancer is a game with a similar problem - you just can't go wherever you want, and when you go back to an earlier area, everyone's too weak and there's no replay value.

With games like Final Fantasy VIII and Oblivion that I've played now, where the enemies level with you, and you can do things in any order, either getting straight to the main plot line at Level 2 or going off to do side quests until you hit a much higher level, or in the case of FFVIII having to do someo of the main quests first and then doing the side quests, but being able to choose my own pace rather than having to grind a certain amount, I really can't be arsed to play games with such an archaic design.

It's like playing a game that makes you write down a string of letters as your save spot instead of actually saving the game for you. Technology has advanced far enough to not have to bother with crap, and in this case it's story design has advanced far enough.

I enjoyed Oblivion, but I did not really like the leveling system. When you can get to the final area with your character at level one it just rubs me the wrong way. This is supposed to be a demon prince with a army of monsters and this "newbie" can stand against him? It also takes a way the feeling that you're getting stronger, that the monster you struggled with get easier because you get mightier. With that said I still liked Oblivion, the Guild quests and even the main quest kept me entertained.

I've never played FF X-2, but I've played some others FF games and the level grinding was a part I hated, but I never felt that to be an issue with Baldur's Gate other than that you are pretty restricted to the easy areas at first. Baldur's Gate doesn't have the same freedom as Oblivion, I agree but I still prefer it's structure and it's gameplay which I happen to really like as well!

 

[migo]

I enjoyed Oblivion, but I did not really like the leveling system. When you can get to the final area with your character at level one it just rubs me the wrong way. This is supposed to be a demon prince with a army of monsters and this "newbie" can stand against him?

Levelling up is an illusion anyway though. You either fight level appropriate enemies or you die if there's no enemy scaling, or every enemy is appropriate. Level scaling just gives you more freedom. In the case of Oblivion, who's to say you're a newbie? Maybe you're a very skilled warrior and were in prison for years, and can come out and nail it off the bat. If that's how you play it, that's what your story is. I didn't like the specific leveling mechanics for Oblivion, but I did like the scaling.

This comes up in D&D too, especially 3rd edition and later. In reality you'll survive 4 hits in a level appropriate encounter and enemies take 5 rounds to take out. The more poweful enemies have higher AC but you have a better BAB, they have more HP but you do more damage. It ends up not making a real difference.

Where I like the actual leveling where there are enemies you can't beat at first and can later is when they're not artifically contained in different regions. Games like Escape Velocity where fighting a pirate in a Skipper or Argosy is beatabable but a Kestrel with two Lightnings is pretty impossible until you get more powerful weaponry and more money. That's cool, because you're still going wherever you want, and there's still always something challenging for you to face, but in Baldur's Gate you're stuck to the newbie areas first, and then when you level up there's little point in going back. If the encounters were really random and you sometimes run and sometimes win easily it would be fine, but there are some areas that aren't noteworthy or different from other areas, yet they're insanely difficult for apparently arbitrary reasons to do with the plot progression.

It's an aspect that doesn't age well, and certain games are great decades after their release, while others are only good on release. Super Mario Land, Super Mario Bros 3, Kirby's Adventure - those are all games that are still good and still as fun today as they were when they were first released. Baldur's Gate and Half-Life are games that are much less fun now than when they were first released (I'm saying this as someone who used to love both of them, and I refuse to play them any more to avoid tarnishing my fond memories).

If I play Final Fantasy VIII now, it doesn't strike me as outdated, it's still very unique, and it's easy enough to game the system to avoid being frustrated with it, while still not actually cheating. Final Fantasy X even didn't age so well, as going back to Besaid Island has you facing dead easy enemies. It totally breaks any sense of immersion you once had. That's what I'd say makes a good RPG.

That said, I'm still keen on checking out Planescape: Torment, but that's a game I never played before, and it wasn't developed by BioWare.

 

[MisterShine]

That said, I'm still keen on checking out Planescape: Torment, but that's a game I never played before, and it wasn't developed by BioWare.

I told myself I wouldn't jump back in this topic, mainly because talking to people who think KOTOR was shit is like talking to people from the 9th and a Half dimension, but I have to respond to this quote.

The combat is fairly similar to Baldur's Gate (as they use the same DnD edition as the base), but the characters and story are.. well.. There've been a couple games that made me rethink myself as a human being, and view video games as a form of art: Planescape is one of them. Even if you don't like the gameplay style, if a great story can pull you through that.. any RPG fan owes it to themselves to check it out.

 

[Starke]

What really constitutes as bad? It's all a matter of opinion....I've liked every Bioware game I've played,Someone else probably hates them all.it's simply opinion.

No, it's not. I mean, okay, if EVERYTHING is "all a matter of opinion" than nothing can be proven.

There is good. There is crap. And objective analysis of media can be preformed. Note that word "objective" not "subjective". An opinion is subjective, but quality is an objective trait.

Now, (for example) it is my opinion that The Doom Generation is a bad film. That is a subjective statement, however it is based on objective observations about the film (in particular the writing, acting, editing, and cinematography are all pretty terrible (if you care)).

The same rough scheme can be applied to any game or other media form to produce a qualitative evaluation of the work.

As long as one person or even just a group of people like something to them it isn't bad, The world is made up of opinions. It's very hard to paint a black and white picture without it getting a little gray. If you like something you'd consider it good, even if 20 of your friends disliked it, it would still be good to you. Take Morrowind as an example,some people think it's the best game ever,and others consider it boring shoddy and they rag on the combat system, it's a mixed bag. Different people have different tastes and take in every quality differently.

You do realize that I'd made a post on Morrowind right before the one you're responding to, right? Anyway, no. What you're saying can be proven to be unequivocally wrong by one simple litmus test. Among many other things, I like Hellgate London, Two Worlds, Titan Quest and on the film front Van Helsing. So, either everyone who thinks those are bad is wrong, or objective quality is not the only measure that determines if someone can like or enjoy something, like, for instance, nearly every Bioware title.

Okay, back on the Morrowind front there's a really clear delineation that determines what someone's opinion will be. The combat system. Even as someone who burned hundreds of hours in that game, I'm not about to defend it. Morrowind had an unintuitive combat system that depended on dice rolls, which meant you could flail away at someone right in front of you and miss them. Those who got past that tend to drown in the loads of content and love the game, but the combat interface tends to be the barrier.

Not having played everywhere Bioware RPG, I really can't say.
I wouldn't count any of them as unbearable, but I think I had the least fun with the original campaign for Neverwinter Nights 2. The original campaign for the first NWN was also pretty weak, and I didn't care too much for Icewind Dale (if I wanted a dungeon crawler, I'd play Diablo.)
But I enjoy Bioware's work, by and large, and will continue playing their games.

And objective analysis of media can be preformed. Note that word "objective" not "subjective". An opinion is subjective, but quality is an objective trait.

What is the objective unit of measurement of quality?

It depends on what you're talking about explicitly. With dialog, it's how well it flows, and how natural it sounds (usually), with writing as a whole it tends to be how well does the narrative set up and execute it's story, does it remain consistent with itself? Does it rely on writing cliches like deus ex machina or others? Does the writing work together to present a coherent theme or story?

In the case of the film I referenced above, the answer is no. There's literally no third act, the film just stops (almost at random). The dialog is sometimes passable, but usually preoccupied with seeing how it can shock you senselessly. The writing is similarly preoccupied with trying to be shocking or shoehorning in the $6.66 bit into every occasion the main characters buy food, ect. I should probably relent and say the actors aren't bad, they just don't care. They hit their marks, and deliver their dialog with all the conviction of a whipped dog.

Two Worlds was also good.

IS ANYONE FUCKING READING THIS?!

What the fu- How can you thi-

AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!

I thought it was fuckin' hilarious. Hideously weird dialog that kinda works via consistency, and turns out some genuinely hilarious lines. Some really entertaining mass combat later on in the game. Also the item upgrade system was unique (and could have used some more work), but is still one of my favorite upgrade systems I've seen in a game.

KoTOR 2. I didn't like that game at all.

Just as well it was made by Obsidian then.

After, Bioware never lets the player be sarcastic unlike... well... KOTOR2.

 

[imaloony]

I've heard a lot of mixed things about KOTOR2, but from my experience, no.

Granted, I've had little exposure to Bioware, but the three games I've played (Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2, and Dragon Age: Origins) have all been brilliant.

 

[Starke]

I enjoyed Oblivion, but I did not really like the leveling system. When you can get to the final area with your character at level one it just rubs me the wrong way. This is supposed to be a demon prince with a army of monsters and this "newbie" can stand against him?

Levelling up is an illusion anyway though. You either fight level appropriate enemies or you die if there's no enemy scaling, or every enemy is appropriate. Level scaling just gives you more freedom. In the case of Oblivion, who's to say you're a newbie? Maybe you're a very skilled warrior and were in prison for years, and can come out and nail it off the bat. If that's how you play it, that's what your story is. I didn't like the specific leveling mechanics for Oblivion, but I did like the scaling.

Same here, with the caveat that I didn't like that you could never get ahead of the curve, so you never had the feeling you were getting genuinely powerful, but, depending on player choices (which were potentially unintentional), you could end up horrifically behind the curve.

This comes up in D&D too, especially 3rd edition and later. In reality you'll survive 4 hits in a level appropriate encounter and enemies take 5 rounds to take out. The more poweful enemies have higher AC but you have a better BAB, they have more HP but you do more damage. It ends up not making a real difference.

In 3rd and 3.5 your survivability goes up dramatically about the time you hit 3rd level. At first and second it's a crap shoot on if you can survive, but after that, unless you have a malicious DM, you usually have enough hitpoints to survive.

That said, yes, as you're going up in D&D you are expected to fight tougher foes.

Where I like the actual leveling where there are enemies you can't beat at first and can later is when they're not artifically contained in different regions. Games like Escape Velocity where fighting a pirate in a Skipper or Argosy is beatabable but a Kestrel with two Lightnings is pretty impossible until you get more powerful weaponry and more money.

For the uninitiated the Kestral is the highest tier commercially available ship in EV, and runs for around 10m credits. The Lightings are actually pretty easy to dispatch with any respectable ship. It's the combination with their much heavier mothership that makes the situation a real threat. That and the Pirates absolutely love the things.

That said, EV actually did feature regional enemies. Whenever you jump into a system the game queries a list of potential ships and fleets that can be there. Some regions skew much higher and hostile than others. It just isn't clearly delineated until you've spent some time in the game where you can and can't go safely.

That's cool, because you're still going wherever you want, and there's still always something challenging for you to face, but in Baldur's Gate you're stuck to the newbie areas first, and then when you level up there's little point in going back. If the encounters were really random and you sometimes run and sometimes win easily it would be fine, but there are some areas that aren't noteworthy or different from other areas, yet they're insanely difficult for apparently arbitrary reasons to do with the plot progression.

Again that's the kind of thing Escape Velocity did in fact do. It's much more pronounced and explained in Override and Nova, but the original game had several really dangerous systems to jump into without warning. IIRC immediately after starting the game you were within four jumps of a system that could (and did) spawn pirate Kestrels or Corvettes without warning.

The difference was there was no "safe" newbie zone (until Override).

It's an aspect that doesn't age well, and certain games are great decades after their release, while others are only good on release. Super Mario Land, Super Mario Bros 3, Kirby's Adventure - those are all games that are still good and still as fun today as they were when they were first released. Baldur's Gate and Half-Life are games that are much less fun now than when they were first released (I'm saying this as someone who used to love both of them, and I refuse to play them any more to avoid tarnishing my fond memories).

I think Half-Life hasn't aged well for a completely different reason. It's not a open world RPG so there isn't really an argument to be made about newbie zones or the like, and its enemies don't really scale with you, but then again, you don't actually get more powerful except when you're grabbing new weapons. What HL really suffers from today is that every other FPS out there draws heavily from it. If you've played an FPS in the last 12 years, you've played one that was heavily influenced by Half-Life, so going back to the original game now... well... it looks stupid, and bland. It's still a fine shooter, but it's aged terribly for the same reason The Matrix has. Everyone's done it to death.

If I play Final Fantasy VIII now, it doesn't strike me as outdated, it's still very unique, and it's easy enough to game the system to avoid being frustrated with it, while still not actually cheating. Final Fantasy X even didn't age so well, as going back to Besaid Island has you facing dead easy enemies. It totally breaks any sense of immersion you once had. That's what I'd say makes a good RPG.

That said, I'm still keen on checking out Planescape: Torment, but that's a game I never played before, and it wasn't developed by BioWare.

Any of the Black Isle games are worth looking into, (though, Icewind Dale is a bit of a hackfest).

 

[Zyxx]

It depends on what you're talking about explicitly. With dialog, it's how well it flows, and how natural it sounds (usually), with writing as a whole it tends to be how well does the narrative set up and execute it's story, does it remain consistent with itself? Does it rely on writing cliches like deus ex machina or others? Does the writing work together to present a coherent theme or story?

In the case of the film I referenced above, the answer is no. There's literally no third act, the film just stops (almost at random). The dialog is sometimes passable, but usually preoccupied with seeing how it can shock you senselessly. The writing is similarly preoccupied with trying to be shocking or shoehorning in the $6.66 bit into every occasion the main characters buy food, ect. I should probably relent and say the actors aren't bad, they just don't care. They hit their marks, and deliver their dialog with all the conviction of a whipped dog.

How do you reach an objective conclusion on how "natural" dialogue sounds? There's a certain vague range, I'll grant, but how do you determine where it lies?
For that matter, is there a non-subjective way of measuring story cohesion, a method which doesn't rely on the intellect or logical ability of the perceiver?
There's also a lot of post-modern stuff which isn't "supposed" to have a coherent story, or uses cliche in an "ironic" sense. Personally, I think that's a cop-out, but that doesn't stop loads of people insisting on its "artistic merit". Are all of them wrong (as I think) or is there something extant, evaluable and measurable that I don't realize?

Note that I don't entirely disagree with you on the point that some opinions are more valid than others, but I'd like to understand your position a bit more clearly.

 

[migo]

Same here, with the caveat that I didn't like that you could never get ahead of the curve, so you never had the feeling you were getting genuinely powerful, but, depending on player choices (which were potentially unintentional), you could end up horrifically behind the curve.

Yeah, I definitely hit that point. It seemed that almost the best way to get ahead was to not sleep, and on separate playthroughs some things that were easy at first turned out incredibly difficulty to it. All the optimised leveling just didn't seem worth it.

In 3rd and 3.5 your survivability goes up dramatically about the time you hit 3rd level. At first and second it's a crap shoot on if you can survive, but after that, unless you have a malicious DM, you usually have enough hitpoints to survive.

That's true, and 4th ed fixed it so you're starting out at roughly that power level. I found the best way in 3.x to survive was to take a level of barbarian and rage when I was close to death. It was quite satisfying at first but got tedious after a while. AD&D didn't quite have that level scaling feel where you thought it was an illusion, which also made it harder to balance and had even an incompetent DM rather than a malicious one making things miserable.

For the uninitiated the Kestral is the highest tier commercially available ship in EV, and runs for around 10m credits. The Lightings are actually pretty easy to dispatch with any respectable ship. It's the combination with their much heavier mothership that makes the situation a real threat. That and the Pirates absolutely love the things.

Also, the main issue I found was the missiles. I needed to have the money to pay for enough missiles to be able to fight them at range.

That said, EV actually did feature regional enemies. Whenever you jump into a system the game queries a list of potential ships and fleets that can be there. Some regions skew much higher and hostile than others. It just isn't clearly delineated until you've spent some time in the game where you can and can't go safely.

I'm fine with that though, given it's still random. In Baldur's Gate some high level encounters were guaranteed, even though they were plot wise intended for much later.

Again that's the kind of thing Escape Velocity did in fact do. It's much more pronounced and explained in Override and Nova, but the original game had several really dangerous systems to jump into without warning. IIRC immediately after starting the game you were within four jumps of a system that could (and did) spawn pirate Kestrels or Corvettes without warning.

You could also jump out of the system the moment the warning horn goes off and before they can get a shot in at you.

I think Half-Life hasn't aged well for a completely different reason. It's not a open world RPG so there isn't really an argument to be made about newbie zones or the like, and its enemies don't really scale with you, but then again, you don't actually get more powerful except when you're grabbing new weapons. What HL really suffers from today is that every other FPS out there draws heavily from it. If you've played an FPS in the last 12 years, you've played one that was heavily influenced by Half-Life, so going back to the original game now... well... it looks stupid, and bland. It's still a fine shooter, but it's aged terribly for the same reason The Matrix has. Everyone's done it to death.

That's the same with Baldur's Gate now too though. Plenty of games do open world exploration that actually works along with a good story, and without the drawbacks of Baldur's Gate. When it was released it was new and very little else out there was like it. Now it's got nothing to distinguish it.

It's somewhat to be expected that BG wouldn't age well though, because neither has AD&D, whereas systems like Call of Cthulhu, while basic and bland by now still age very well.

 

[TheLefty]

Dragon Age was a fail by far.

I loved, Kotor, and I loved (am am still loving) Mass Effect, but Dragon Age was just horrible in comparison. It was the first game in a while that I stopped playing about half way through out of choice. I expected a Mass Effect or Kotor level story, which it didn't, and I expected the combat to be like Kotor, which it wasn't. I don't even remember how, but it was just horrible.