the best, and worst in RPGs

[tino1498]

so i was thinking about fable (my favorite game) the other day, and i realized that there were alot of things missing. for one, a real free roaming environment, the ability to jump, and a worthwhile spy like system in which you wouldn't get caught. Then i remembered Morrowind, it had all of those things except that you had to remember way too many things the combat SUCKED.
so what do you think western RPGs are doing good at and what do you think they are bad at?

 

[Squarewave]

Western rpgs(well many of them) are good at creating a virtual world, rather then the story based jrpgs. Its generally easier to relate to them sense they take elements from cultures that I can relate to better.

AS for bad
The storylines are normally not that great, not nearly as "epic" as a jrpg. They also can very wildly in game structure (compared to jrpgs) from game to game making it harder to get into a new game sense most of the time you have to learn a completely new system for how stats/equipment/controls work

 

[stompy]

FFX for worst. Really, that game sucked... Wait, I've got something worse. FFX-2. Fan service, and then blatantly trying to sell games through sex.

 

[losethegame101]

In my opinion, the first two Fallout games are the two best RPGs in existence. They had a great story and were actually pretty fun to play. Plus, if you wanted to be an evil bastard, you could really be an EVIL bastard.

 

[Durant]

FFX for worst. Really, that game sucked... Wait, I've got something worse. FFX-2. Fan service, and then blatantly trying to sell games through sex.

FFX for worst? I tend to disagree here. FFX was supposed to be different. Think of the Final Fantasy games previously. Final Fantasy 7 gave you some military guy and Final Fantasy 8 placed you as a military guy in training. Final Fantasy 9 broke the trend first by giving you a fantasy setting but I do think it kind of underhandedly tried to make you feel you were this knight to protect the princess (Royal Guard). FFX continued trying to give you a more fantasy setting away rather than giving you large structured cities and made many attempts at giving you new locales to blow you away. In some regards I can hold FFX a bit near to FF7-9.

FFX-2 however is a different story. They wanted to do something different again and with them finally realizing the potential of sequels (I think Advent children had been announced) they decided to create this load of crap. My brothers bought it but I never played it. Removing the guys from the story made the game too chick-like (sorry for the feminists) and I do feel that it was a poor play on the story to create a sequel based on their dramatic ending (or at least i found it dramatic that the character i played with the entire game faded into nothing) and its the main reason I didnt play FFX-2.

To conclude though if its any company that deserves to be beaten with a stick though, its Square (now called Square-Enix) as the best game in my opinion that they have made and has not had a sequel (Chrono Cross is not a sequel and your a fool if you believe so) is Chrono Trigger as this game revolutionized the game standards when it was released.

 

[Markness]

The best, hmmm, I'd have to say Baldurs Gate. Long, interesting, funny and addictive. I'm regretting I broke the only computer that was bad enough to run it.

As I haven't played many RPG's, I can't think of a worst right now, but maybe one will come to me.

 

[nightfish]

... Then i remembered Morrowind, it had all of those things except that you had to remember way too many things the combat SUCKED....

If you need to get a pen and paper out for a electronic RPG you know you've a good 'un.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

FFX-2. Only time I've been truly grateful for a scratched disc.

Also, how is Chrono Cross not a sequel? Because yo don't play as Crono or Lucca or Marle? It still is a sequel to Chrono Trigger, because later, they explain that the events in CC would not have happened were it not for the events in CT.

Edit: Also, Lucca is still indirectly involved, through Kid, who

Spoiler

started on her vendetta against Lynx and Marle when they killed Lucca, who was heading up the orphanage. Therefore, were it not for Lucca, Kid, one of the main characters, would not be there.

 

[tiredinnuendo]

My favorite RPGs are Fallout 1 and 2 (pure awesome), Morrowind (my first experience where I really felt like I had a whole world to play in), Dragon Warrior (my first "big" RPG on a console), and Mass Effect (which only slips in for story delivery).

Least favorite.... man... there were so many terrible ones. I'll go with Two Worlds.

- J

 

[VRaptorX]

wait...FF9 broke the trend?


Um......no it didn't. It was a homage back to the first 6 games. 7 and 8 broke the trends and 9 fixed it.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

I am an addict when it comes to good RPG's. I BUY a system based on whether or not it will have good RPG's, because of the current and complete up in the airness of the companies I own all of them now, because I'm an idiot. But I consider myself an rpgamer first, and an everything else gamer second. If I don't have an RPG to play, something feels wrong with the world. I love both types, western and JRPG, though being a console gamer I'm more friendly towards the JRPG variety. So instead of saying what RPG's do right and wrong, I'm just gonna say what Western RPG's do extremely well, and what JRPG's do extremely well.

Western RPG's tend to do somethings REALLY well, the best in western RPG's (Fallout 1/2, Mass Effect, Baldurs Gate 1/2, Never Winter Nights 2, KOTOR 1/2, Jade Empire and sort of Oblivion/Elder Scrolls) offer deep virtual worlds with a well established background and mythology that you can delve into and enjoy as well as a maliable story which can change according to your actions, they also offer character customization, which few JRPG's offer. In my opinion the current pinacle of what Western RPG's do right is Mass Effect, if you ignore the boring sidequests, it offers an excellent choice system, a dramatic storyline, a deep galactic history and a cool action oriented battle system. Another good example of the other type of Western RPG is Oblivion, it fits into the "complete freedom" type that Western RPG's like to be and gives you the side-questalicious, do what you want, complete character freedom fun that hard core western RPG fans crave.

JRPG's also do things extremely well, for example, until Mass Effect I have never seen a Western RPG that offered a truly dramatic story with moments that had me at the edge of my seat. JRPG's also offer, in my opinion, extremely cool and visually dynamic scenery and enemy design, though nowadays most of them just rip off FF8 (Enchanted Arms anyone?). JRPG's in some cases can also offer extremely deep and interesting battle systems that allow a great deal of strategy and variety (FFX, Shadow Hearts: From the New World and Xenosaga 3 being my personal favorites). JRPG's can also, often, do Characters and Character interaction better than Western RPG's, though there are exceptions(NWN2 had some really great character interaction).

And with that over and done with, here are my favorite and least favorite RPG's from both the west and the east.

JRPGS
Best

- Chrono Trigger: Of Course

- Final Fantasy 6: The Final Fantasy Formula at its best.

- Suikoden V: Deep Characters, Deep Story, Deep World, 80 Hours of Gameplay with no Sidequests.

- Persona 3: Fun Battles, Great Characters, Great Story, Brilliant Visual Design.

- Final Fantasy X: I loved the battle system, I loved the ending, screw you nay sayers.

- Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door: Super Fun and has a brilliant battle system.

- Xenosaga 3: Possibly one of the most epic games I've ever played (you get like 3 end boss battles throughout the game)

- Shadow Hearts Covenant: Great battles, good story and it's funny, really, really funny.

Worst

- Legend of Dragoon: Half Assed Final Fantasy Rip-Off with an unimaginative battle system and a stereotyped story.

- Star Ocean 3: Repetitive, button mashy battles and ANNOYING characters, way to many anime cliche's in this one.

- Xenosaga 2: Complete Shite, too many bad anime cliches, too many OOC moments, too many changes.

- FFX2: Fun Battle System, Inane Story, Inane Characters, Inane Voice Acting ... need I say more.

Western RPG's
Best
- Mass Effect: Full of fun battles, great drama, a cool main character and wicked game direction.

- Baldurs Gate 2: I really loved this game, it made my custom built self voiced character feel like a part of the story, it was good at that.

- Fall Out 2: Funny, Fun, Exciting, Moody and it has some truly great story moments though the overall story is kinda meh, but that's not what makes the storylines in a fallout game great now is it? Plus you can punch a rat and make it explode.

- Oblivion: Fun, Massive, Interesting world, complete customization and freedom, The Dark Brotherhood, The Theives Guild etc.

- Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich: What? It's an RPG, and it has Superheroes beating up Nazi's.

- KOTOR: Best Plot Twist Ever! That and who doesn't love playing as a Jedi?

- Planescape: Torment: A Story better than any other Western or Japanese RPG, though the super tough battles and rough difficulty were a bit of a turn of it was still extremely fucking worth it.

Worst
- Diablo 2: Yeah, I know, but I hate it, nothing but mindless hacking and slashing.

- Arcanum: They tried, so hard, but failed. This game could have been brilliant, but it felt sloppy and crappy.

- Never Winter Nights: I loathed how you could only play one character, DND IS NOT designed to work with 1 character, or even 2 characters, you're supposed to have 4, and even then... argh! I just didn't like it.

- KOTOR 2: I put this on here because it was almost better than the original, until it completely fell apart near the end. This game could have used a lot more polish an about 10-20 hours more length to finish the story.

- Summoner: Pretty much everything that's wrong with Western RPG's, hard, strange, archaic, and boring.

 

[Spinwhiz]

Okay, here is where my age comes in:

LOVED :

Final Fantasy (the original...yes...for the NES)
Dragon Warrior (again, original NES)
Phantasy Star 1, 2, 3 (never played 4 and it's damn near impossible to find)
Shining Force 1 & 2 (but these can probably be seen more like strategy/tactics games)

There were a couple others as well, Suikoden (sp?) seemed to be the first to implement multiple options for group members (I think there was like 80 you could find and use?) Also, I remember Breathe of Fire being pretty good.

HATED :

Final Fantasy X, X2, X12 : Seriously, wth. Let's make a game where the best weapons in the game are damn near impossible to get AND not even needed to completely wreck the last guy. Also, why does everyone look like a chick? I also only used a small portion of the grid in FFX12, the rest of it was useless (in the weapons anyways)!

Phantasy Star Online (Ever since Dreamcast): Way to screw up an awesome series. After PS4, nothing even matched up to the old ones. It didn't even seem like the same world or play type. It was more like playing through an Alien's movie with a twist of Groundhog Day. I'd like to find the guy who screwed it up and punch him right in the balls for being dumb.

Shining Force Neo : Wow, what a steaming pile of monkey dung this was. Again, let's change the whole damn format of a top selling game! MORONS!

Master of Orion 3 : More of a TBS than anything, but I think it deserves to be burned in effigy with the other crap. Way to completely take a great game and completely turn it into a mathematics and strategy nightmare.

 

[Charley]

Personally, I agree insofar as the Fallout games and NWN2/Baldur's Gate series were excellent RPGs. Fallout was particularly great because it sits outside the Western RPG's requirement to either be a Tolkien ripoff or a Star Wars ripoff. Here's where people come to love or hate J-RPGs, you either like your historic, "believable" (I use the term loosely) Tolkien/Star Wars combos, or you go for the more aesthetic Japanese joys of pointy hair, oversized swords and universe-threatening bad guys.

However, I personally find a lot of the western work to be a little dry and demanding a lot of number crunching and manual-trawling to get the best out of it, whereas the Japanese games are more accessible, by and large (look at FFX-2, you didn't need to even engage your brain to play)

 

[Sylocat]

Gee, another thread about RPGs, the OP of which didn't even mention JRPGs, that immediately turned into an FF-bashing marathon. What a humongous surprise.

Things I've learned from The Escapist's forums:

1. There are only two types of RPGs: Japanese RPGs and non-Japanese RPGs.

2. The only JRPGs ever made are FFVII, FFX and FFX-2.

3. The reason Western RPGs have "more variety" than JRPGs is because the Japanese are a bunch of xenophobic dicks, not because you are comparing half of one single franchise to every other RPG on the planet.

 

[windfish]

Gee, another thread about RPGs, the OP of which didn't even mention JRPGs, that immediately turned into an FF-bashing marathon. What a humongous surprise.

Things I've learned from The Escapist's forums:

1. There are only two types of RPGs: Japanese RPGs and non-Japanese RPGs.

2. The only JRPGs ever made are FFVII, FFX and FFX-2.

3. The reason Western RPGs have "more variety" than JRPGs is because the Japanese are a bunch of xenophobic dicks, not because you are comparing half of one single franchise to every other RPG on the planet.

I hear sizzling. Because you just burned like 1,000 people at once. Nice.

Personally, I've never played FFVII (costs like $500 on Amazon now anyway), FFX, or FFX-2. I've only ever played FFVI, and I liked it alright. I haven't really played that many RPGs, and the ones I have played I haven't found too much to get annoyed with. I actually don't mind grinding a little - I do mind grinding a lot, but that basically doesn't happen that often in a well-designed RPG.

However, in the olden days of RPG making, developers didn't quite have the hang of level design, so there were some really grind-heavy moments.

I played the original Dragon Warrior (well, remade for the Game Boy, because I'm a little younger than some.) I really liked it, but it did have some flaws - 3 major grinding times, and the fact that non-healing spells were only really useful between major weapon purchases, because you only ever fought one monster. However, I see Dragon Warrior as the RPG basic engine - the rock on which the church was built.

Dragon Warrior II (which came bundled up I) was a really, really early party-based game, with the Standard 3: Hero (heavy weapons, heavy armor, no spells), the Prince (medium weapons and armor, medium spells) and the Princess (light weapons and armor, emphasis on spells.) The trouble was also that that game was very, very grind-heavy, especially since there was a long wait between getting party members, so the princess (the last party member, and the one with the least HP) would be way behind, barely able to survive against the monsters in her area. And the game was really hard.

I played Golden Sun and Lost Age before any Final Fantasies, but I liked them more than FFVI, so I guess that says something. I just really liked the world. No grinding necessary at all, simple and elegant combat system. and interesting characters.

Anybody remember the Quest for Glory adventure game series? Part RPG, part Adventure game, pure gold.

 

[tiredinnuendo]

Gee, another thread about RPGs, the OP of which didn't even mention JRPGs, that immediately turned into an FF-bashing marathon. What a humongous surprise.

Are we reading the same thread? I saw several people who commented that JRPGs did "x" right while Western RPGs tend to do "y" right, and people who listed JRPGs often listed several titles. Often at least one Final Fantasy title was on the "like" stack.

Perhaps you're just seeing what you expected to.

- J

 

[exoneuk]

Worst I ever played? Without a doubt, Blaze and Blade on the PSOne. New levels of awfulness. Terrible 3D graphics, terrible gameplay, and generally speaking, TERRIBLY TERRIBLY disappointing, given that it promised so much and could have been so much better. A wasted opportunity that annoys me summat chronic.

I also dislike: FFIX. Good God, did that one bore me. I was so disappointed in it! It was nowhere near as good as I wanted it to be. I had no inclination to finish it, unlike 7 and 8, so I just couldn't. I didn't want to. I gave it to a mate and he quickly passed it on himself (and I don't blame him...)


My favourites are mostly JRPGs. There aren't many Western ones that I really like. I much prefer to play them for a good story and to get engrossed in characters. My favourite ever will always be FFVII. A lot of people I speak to go on about hoe overrated it is, etc. Does this detract from it being a good game to me? I think it's absolutely gobsmacking. I love and genuinely feel for all of the characters (barring Yuffie, the sneaky cow) and could sit and watch that game being played for weeks. That's how good it is to me.

I also love Suikoden 2, moreso than the first one. The first one is good but 2 has a better feel to it. It's a lot more accessible and friendlier to play than the first one, although I think it is much harder. I found it quite hard to die on S1... strangely. I do not care that much for S4, S5 or Tactics (Tactics especially given that GRATING Mona Marshall voices the main character and irritates the living crap out of me!!! SHUSH! SHUSH YOU!!!!). Suikoden 2 is just a fabulous story too. It comes across as relatively simple and straightforward and yes, a very linear, but if I want to branch off and do my own thing, I'll play a MMORPG. Or I won't as I can't be arsed to.

Wild Arms is also amazing from a storytelling point of view. I cannot believe I've had that game for ten years and I have NEVER seen the little bit of story after the main titles have finished. Amazing. Oh and that opening title sequence? Bloody gorgeous, especially with the Sergio Leone-style theme tune. Marvellous!

Grandia makes me smile. I absolutely adore how that story starts from such an innocent angle and then turns into this epic adventure that drags you and pulls you in until I CRIED. I cried when I finished that game! The ending was so cute and lovely, it was soooo good. It makes me cry out for a sequel featuring what Justin and Feena do afterwards and before they go back home to see Sue (all grown up!!). I did not care much for the sequel. I disliked the main caharcter for about 90% of the game. I struggled to WANT to finish it, sadly. And why have they not released Grandia 3 here yet? Bloody people...

OH. If Vandal Hearts counts then stick one in too. Cracking little game. Makes me smile and the dialogue is truly brilliant.

 

[MaxRaine]

I feel like adding to this as well.

I've never encountered an RPG Japanese or Western that didn't have something bad in it. But I tend to always look at games as a whole, I can easily forgive flaws if the major part of the game is amazing. Thus I won't get into the whole "This part of this game sucks" thing and simply make a small list of my favorite and not so favorite RPGs.

Favorites:

Suikoden 1,2 and 5 - I first fell in love with Suikoden at a friends place as I didn't own a PSX back when it was released. The idea of having 108 character to find, of whom you could actually play with 60 something, was amazing. The magic combinations that you could make that was so fun when you found them. Another very fun part is finding all the Unite attacks that the people in your army can perform if you have the right people in your party. Also the amazingly fun Big battles in the first game (Which were a hidden mini game in the 4th game) was a nice addition. All these games has had an amazing story as well, and the fact that they've all been taking place in the same world is an awesome plus for me, that way they mention things that happened in the previous games and you encounter and recruit people you recognize from before. Best game so far imo is Suikoden V, but I haven't played the third one (to my knowledge it wasn't released in Europe for some odd reason) so I don't know how good that one is. I've read rumors that the next Suikoden might come to the Wii instead of the PS3 which would be bliss for me since I won't buy a PS3 due to unwanted utilities that makes it too damn expensive. But that's probably just lies... Woah... need to turn off rant mode now.

Final Fantasy VII - I'm sorry, I love it and no matter how many people frowns at the mention of it, this is the case. The story is one of the best I've ever encountered in a game and the characters are all interesting in their own way.

Breath of Fire 3 - Best game in the series, period.

Fallout 1 - I loved the way it played. I would probably like the second one as well but to me you need to make a certain kind of character to even stand a chance in the beginning. My sneaky, silk tongued, "Guys, guys, let's talk about this" character is always put to death by the first group of monsters I meet (the geckos).

Not so favorite:

Oblivion - Fun for a couple of hours then it gets boring... I need to be fed constant story and or action preferably both at once... and slaughtering innocents got boring too fast =P

Neverwinter Nights (an all other D&D rules based games): I've never liked games that revolves around numbers and luck. I have too little of the latter.

Legend of Kartia: I have suppressed why exactly I hated it but I know I did... a lot.

There we go... sorry about the lenght... enjoy =P

 

[VRaptorX]

oh I got the greatest of worsts.


You end up arguing at an employee at Play and Trade that Cecil (FF4) is not a rip-off of Cloud (FF7).

yes that has happened to me. Who hires these idiots?




Also the reason 7,X,X-2 are mentioned the most....they sold the most.....which is sad. The two that only focused on graphics and the one that focused on sex for their marketting campaigns sold the most.