Poll: The Most Disappointing RPG of All Time

[Snufkin]

Geforce 6800? It ran like shit on 7600GS.

 

[Brancaleone]

Ultima 8

 

[Alex]

Ultima 8

I can never say that. Ultima 8 was my first CRPG. If anything, it was amazing, and I didn't care about the problems with platforming because I didn't know any better yet.

 

[Froila]

Avadon: The Black Fortress

It wasn't that bad actually, just smelled too biowaresque.

 

[Joni Odin von Hassenstein]

Risen 2 and Dragon Age: Inquisition.

 

[Panzerbjorne]

Mine would be DA2 and Elex 2. I loved Origins and was excited for the sequel. When it was clear the game was badly rushed and reused so many small maps I was gutted. Also hated the changes to the combat.
I missed out on a lot of Piranha Bytes games they just weren’t on my radar growing up so Elex was my first and I really enjoyed it. Idk what happened with the sequel it felt like it was a bad copy paste of the first one but with offensively bad voice acting and writing. I uninstalled after two hours it was painful.

 

[Azdul]

Ultima IX: Ascension

This was a doozie, yes. So was Descent to Undermountain.

What did you expect ?

Descent to Undermountain
Lead Creative Designer: Chris Avellone
Division Director: Feargus Urquhart

---
Ultima 9 was released undercooked, but is a playable action-adventure on modern hardware.
Oblivion had balancing issues and weird artistic choices, but modders turned into perfectly serviceable roguelike around 2022.
Gothic 3 has the same story as Oblivion - balancing issues are being fixed and missing content is still being added in 2025.
Cyberpunk 2077 - completely playable after few years of patching.
---

The true tragedies are games like Descent to Undermountain - the game is not available from GOG or as a freeware, so no one will be motivated buy a boxed copy for 70£ to spend years fixing it.

 

[d1r]

Ultima IX: Ascension

This was a doozie, yes. So was Descent to Undermountain.

Oblivion had balancing issues and weird artistic choices, but modders turned into perfectly serviceable roguelike around 2022.

Tell me more about it.

 

[mondblut]

My biggest disappointments were Baldur's Gate for not being turn-based, Morrowind for not picking up where Daggerfall left off, and Neverwinter Nights for not being the Neverwinter Nights.

I guess Wizardry 8 should have a honorable mention too. For not being Stones of Arnhem.

By the time Oblivion was announced, I was thoroughly immunized to disappointment.

 

[Azdul]

Ultima IX: Ascension

This was a doozie, yes. So was Descent to Undermountain.

Oblivion had balancing issues and weird artistic choices, but modders turned into perfectly serviceable roguelike around 2022.

Tell me more about it.

You just install Maskar's Ultimate Leveling and Maskar's Oblivion Overhaul to fix leveling, add crafting and emergent quests. Disabling level scaling can be achieved by adding Oscuro Oblivion Overhaul, or through Maskar's ini settings.

Oblivion Character Overhaul V2 + variant of Vulkan renderer + OBSE + bug fixes + engine fixes make Oblivion run stable with high framerate and without potato faces. Or you can wait a decade for OpenMW to add support for Oblivion .

You may also want to add some other overhauls compatible with Maskar's, like Waalx Animals and Creatures, Martigen's Monster Mod, Francesco's Creatures and Items Resources, WarCry - to increase variety of creatures and equipment, creating modern (and stable) equivalent of old FCOM:


Sure, it will not make Oblivion a role playing game - that would require story and dialogues. More like a roguelike, where 'get Amulet of Yendor' suffice for narrative.

 

[Glop_dweller]

• FO3
• Bards Tale 4

 

[Ysaye]

Chaos Chronicles / Realms of Beyond

Also bloody Realms of Arkania HD.

 

[Falksi]

3 "winners" for me, Dragon Age 2, Witcher 3 and Oblivion.

Oblivion was just such an incredible leap downwards from Morrowind in so many ways. I couldn't believe how copy-paste and bland the world was, and how shit like level-scaling had been included.

Witcher 3 was everything I didn't want in the series too. The first two games had their issues, but both contained great stories, captured the feel of being a Witcher, and were very well woven. But the 3rd entry bloated all that shit up to the max, watered everything down mechanically, and made monster hunting feel mundane and like a day job. And before the patch the movement controls were abysmal. Like, if those movement controls were on an 80's NES game, the AVGN would have made several episodes about them as "worst ever"

Dragon Age 2 was just an abomination. Whilst Origins had flaws, it still felt like a lot of care had gone into it, but DA:2 was absolute pure dross. The Arishock fight remains one of the worse boss fights in gaming history.

 

[Shaki]

Where is the option to vote for Colonoscopy Shit? That was 100% my biggest disappointment since I loved AoD and was expecting it to be as good or even better.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

I still have trauma from Dungeon Lords. Whoever perpetrated it should be waterboarded and forced to play Oblivion, which was almost as shitty, for a year straight.

 

[Nortar]

DA2 and FO3 in the list.

Not mentioned in the thread yet - Expeditions: Rome.
After the decent first game and great in every aspect Vikings, the last Expeditions game turned into diverse shit with a number of retarted desgin decisions.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Shouldn't that be Neverwinter Nights? I bet the expectations must have been quite high after the success of BG2...

The OC sucked, you didn't control a six character party, it was fugly etc. A lot of decline.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Ultima IX: Ascension is possibly the one true answer to this question.

I still enjoyed it...

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Eye of the Beholder 3.
Baldur's Gate.
Deus Ex 2.
Fallout 4 (Fallout 3 was still a RPG).

More recently: Encased and Mechjammer (the settings were incredibly cool, but both of them were published basically unfinished, and then abandoned)

 

[Snufkin]

Eye of the Beholder 3.
Baldur's Gate.
Fallout 4 (Fallout 3 was still a RPG).

More recently: Encased and Mechjammer (the settings were incredibly cool, but both of them were published basically unfinished, and then abandoned)

Why you didnt like BG1?

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Eye of the Beholder 3.
Baldur's Gate.
Fallout 4 (Fallout 3 was still a RPG).

More recently: Encased and Mechjammer (the settings were incredibly cool, but both of them were published basically unfinished, and then abandoned)

Why you didnt like BG1?

Because I played it right after Fallout 1&2, and it was decline along all the line, and a 180 turn with respect what I liked in Fallout and what I expected to be the evolution of RPGs:

Idiotic RTwP instead of TB.
Non existent player agency.
Static environments with absolutely no interactivity.
Linearity of the quests a no emergent gameplay.
Unispired and boring setting.
5 CDs instead of 1 CD for no apparent reason.

 

[Abu Antar]

I don't hate it as much as others, but Oblivion actually made two of my friends stop gaming entirely.

My biggest disappointment is Demons Age. I knew that it wouldn't be good, but what they did to the corpse of Chaos Chronicles was such a shameful act that I can't even describe it in words. An unfinished mess that should never have seen the light of day. I can't understand how I managed to beat it. Not because of how bad it was, but because of how buggy it was, and how it tried to delete, and corrupt my saves.

 

[Zlaja]

I feel like anyone who doesn't answer Gothic 3 simply wasn't aware of the Gothic series at that time.

I liked it (not half as much as Gothic I & II and obviously with the Community Patch)...

Community patch doesn't count. We're talking about vanilla game here. The 1.0 beast.

Deus ex Invisible war

How the fuck was this not on the list? For shame!

 

[Erebus]

Though Tides of Numenera probably deserves to win, I'd say that Wrath of the Righteous deserves an honorary mention, considering how much effort was put into it for such an unsatisfying result.

 

[Hammer Of The Heretics]

For personal disappointment I have to go with Ultima IX, Gothic 3 and Deus Ex: Invisible War. The first was my favorite series dying with an ignominious whimper, and the other two were stunning drops from the heights of their predecessors.