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Worst RPGs All Time?

Lord_Potato

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 24, 2017
Messages
10,873
Location
Free City of Warsaw
Dragon Age 2, Oblivion, Fallout 3?
Guys, you're so fucking mainstream.

What about jewels like Mistmare? Pearls like Metalheart: Replicant's Rampage? Rubies such as Heath: the Unchosen Path? Sapphires like Gorasul: Legacy of the Dragon?

Filthy casuals. Codex, you dissapoint.

The point is mainstream "cRPG" are by far the worst ones, i'm sure you can salvage hours of fun from most forgotten mediocre TB cRPG most of us never heard about.
Meanwhile, 10 minutes of DAI would trigger an epileptic seizure for most of us.

I plan to start my first and propably last DAI playthrough soon. Wish me luck, or merely survival!
 

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
11,015
Location
Nottingham
The trouble is that a "Worst RPGs Ever" list doesn't feel anywhere near as satisfying at slagging off the ones which are deemed as good, but aren't.

That said I still think such a list is worth having.

So my suggestion would be to have "The Worst RPG EXPERIENCES ever". Purely subjective & down to the individual, do it on the usual vote system, but it's not about how bad the game is as such it's more about how arduous & painful the individual experience was.

E.g. I'd defo have Dragon Age 2 in there. Every single second playing it physically hurt.
 

undecaf

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 4, 2010
Messages
3,517
Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
I plan to start my first and propably last DAI playthrough soon. Wish me luck, or merely survival!

How about not play it only to prove its worthlessness?

I havent touched a Bioware game since DAO, and from what I can tell, I haven’t lost anything but a bucketload of frustration and cringe.


As far as ”the worst RPG”... It’s Fallout 3, but I do have a certain bias there.

The most overrated is definitely Witcher 3 without much competition.
 

Lord_Potato

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 24, 2017
Messages
10,873
Location
Free City of Warsaw
Neverwinter Nights 1.

I would agree if the OC was its only content. But with so many quality modules that gave me hundreds of hours or fun (and I did not even touch Swordflight or Bastard of Kosignan) I honestly cannot.

And yet its combat system is so dull and tedious, its speed so slow, its lockpicking and trap disarming takes so long, that even the best modules are decreased in quality just by the mere fact that they run in the NWN 1 engine. Such a horrible, horrible piece of shit designed to be as tedious as humanly possible.

You can create a wizard or sorceror and combat will stop being dull (typical for D&D).

Besides I prefer modules where combat is less frequent, or even the last resort, like Dance with Rogues.
The engine has its faults, but it allows lots of roleplaying options, with numerous skillchecks and wide possibilities for character development. It only takes an able modder to achieve much with what Bioware provided.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
Patron
Joined
Jan 4, 2007
Messages
34,332
Location
KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Yes, modules with a focus on other things than combat are pretty good. But anything with combat (or with a lot of lockpicking) suffers from NWN's terribly tedious design decisions.
 

Lord_Potato

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 24, 2017
Messages
10,873
Location
Free City of Warsaw
I plan to start my first and propably last DAI playthrough soon. Wish me luck, or merely survival!

How about not play it only to prove its worthlessness?

I havent touched a Bioware game since DAO, and from what I can tell, I haven’t lost anything but a bucketload of frustration and cringe.

This year I'm doing an unfinished bussiness run.

I finally completed Shadowrun Trilogy (with Hong Kong), Mass Effect Trilogy (with 3), Troika catalogue, Spiders catalogue... I guess now it's time for a serious challenge.
 

undecaf

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 4, 2010
Messages
3,517
Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
I plan to start my first and propably last DAI playthrough soon. Wish me luck, or merely survival!

How about not play it only to prove its worthlessness?

I havent touched a Bioware game since DAO, and from what I can tell, I haven’t lost anything but a bucketload of frustration and cringe.

This year I'm doing an unfinished bussiness run.

I finally completed Shadowrun Trilogy (with Hong Kong), Mass Effect Trilogy (with 3), Troika catalogue, Spiders catalogue... I guess now it's time for a serious challenge.

Ah, ok. Well, I suppose it’s ”Good luck”, then.
 

Gargaune

Arcane
Joined
Mar 12, 2020
Messages
3,604
???
Well, you got your nice fields in DA:I back. That didn't help much.
MMO-style is back in DA:I and turned up to 11 so much that they didn't even bother with fabula and quest design, something that still happened in DA2. Trying to beat World of Warcraft with an offline mmo have lead Bioware and EA to a very "bright" idea of DA4 as always-online game as a service.
Hey, at least they built more than four levels in Inquisition. What does Dragon Age 2 have? City level, Tunnels level, Outdoors level and Other Outdoors level. And I don't remember any quest design aside from "click on NPC to the right to join Templars or click on NPC to the left to join Mages." Which makes jack shit difference, anyway. That's my main gripe, DA2 wasn't just shit, it was cheap shit smeared thin on a full-priced baguette.

As for DA4, who cares? DA2 cured me of day-one purchases and DA3 cured me of Dragon Age.
 

KeighnMcDeath

RPG Codex Boomer
Joined
Nov 23, 2016
Messages
15,307
Hmmm... Heroes of the Lance and dragons of Flame could use a modern metroidvania engine remake. Fucking hated the combat in that. Drakhen could be a bitch to but there are far far worse. Red Crystal was pretty much ass at times but do any of these qualify a Rpg? At least they have combat.
 

Jack Of Owls

Arcane
Joined
May 23, 2014
Messages
4,408
Location
Massachusettes
The trouble is that a "Worst RPGs Ever" list doesn't feel anywhere near as satisfying at slagging off the ones which are deemed as good, but aren't.

That said I still think such a list is worth having.

So my suggestion would be to have "The Worst RPG EXPERIENCES ever". Purely subjective & down to the individual, do it on the usual vote system, but it's not about how bad the game is as such it's more about how arduous & painful the individual experience was.

E.g. I'd defo have Dragon Age 2 in there. Every single second playing it physically hurt.

In that case, Knights of Legend - an early hardcore tabletop simulator (?) that I attempted to play on my beloved C64 when it first came out - I would categorize here as truly subjectively bad because I found it stupefyingly, stultifyingly dull because even the most mundane battles in the most mundane quests against the most mundane enemies would take a minimum of 1-2 hours. Objectively, it was probably a solid RPG with a lot of effort put into it. But, it was... agonizing to play it. I'm sure there are many other examples.
 

octavius

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 4, 2007
Messages
19,671
Location
Bjørgvin
I actually completed Knights of Legend.
It's an idiot savant of a game. It had high production values and one of the most original combat systems, but also the most boring encounter design ever. While the battles tend to be very prolonged affairs, thankfully there are not that many you actually have to fight.
 

Jack Of Owls

Arcane
Joined
May 23, 2014
Messages
4,408
Location
Massachusettes
I actually completed Knights of Legend.
It's an idiot savant of a game. It had high production values and one of the most original combat systems, but also the most boring encounter design ever. While the battles tend to be very prolonged affairs, thankfully there are not that many you actually have to fight.

It didn't help that Knights of Legend came on, like, 8 double-sided floppies that I had to constantly swap out on my old 5.25" Commodore 1541 disk drive (which, btw, forced me to abandon Ultima VI on the C64 since it became a true nightmare to not only deal with that constant swapping but also with no fast disk loaders... it took 1-2 minutes just to go up/down stairs in multi-leveled dungeons (!)) . Did you play the IBM version of KoL with none of that nonsense? If so, no wonder you were able to complete it. Technically it's not a bad game or concept, in fact, it was slick and innovative for the time, but was just about as slow as an actual PnP session.
 

vazha

Arcane
Joined
Aug 24, 2013
Messages
2,069
Dragon Age 2, Oblivion, Fallout 3?
Guys, you're so fucking mainstream.

What about jewels like Mistmare? Pearls like Metalheart: Replicant's Rampage? Rubies such as Heath: the Unchosen Path? Sapphires like Gorasul: Legacy of the Dragon?

Filthy casuals. Codex, you dissapoint.
Mistmare is by no means worst rpg ever, or a bad game to start with. Buggy? yes, extremely. Clunky? very. Full of interesting, ill-executed concepts & ideas? you bet. Still better than most of the recent rpgs out there in terms of originality. Neither is Gorasul a bad game. Havent played Metalheart, so cant comment on that one. But both Mistmare and Gorasul are head and shoulders above such foul excrements as say, DA 2, Daggerdale, Arkania remake or that Sword Coast Legends game.
 

Jack Of Owls

Arcane
Joined
May 23, 2014
Messages
4,408
Location
Massachusettes
Neverwinter Nights 1.

I would agree if the OC was its only content. But with so many quality modules that gave me hundreds of hours or fun (and I did not even touch Swordflight or Bastard of Kosignan) I honestly cannot.

And yet its combat system is so dull and tedious, its speed so slow, its lockpicking and trap disarming takes so long, that even the best modules are decreased in quality just by the mere fact that they run in the NWN 1 engine. Such a horrible, horrible piece of shit designed to be as tedious as humanly possible.

You can create a wizard or sorceror and combat will stop being dull (typical for D&D).

Besides I prefer modules where combat is less frequent, or even the last resort, like Dance with Rogues.
The engine has its faults, but it allows lots of roleplaying options, with numerous skillchecks and wide possibilities for character development. It only takes an able modder to achieve much with what Bioware provided.

For the longest time, that's ALL I ever played with NWN modules - wizards and sorcerers. Didn't realize back then that these were uber-powerful classes that frequently broke those modules. Darkness Over Daggerford for example has an early encounter with an orc army that was designed to be challenging. But it took just two freakin' fireballs to blow those porkers to kingdom come. No wonder I couldn't complete the game due to boredom. But the role-playing and quality of the writing in the best of those modules are my favorite RPG experiences ever. I don't know why I'm not going back and playing NWN since Swordflight is supposedly a real high point.
 

Dishonoredbr

Erudite
Joined
Jun 13, 2019
Messages
2,419
I plan to start my first and propably last DAI playthrough soon. Wish me luck, or merely survival!

Just don't waste your time in the first map , ignore any ''Collect X of something'' and Clock cheat all the trash War Table missions..

Oh worst RPG? Oblivion. Yeah , mainstream , but that game is garbage. I tried 3 times and all of them i quited after Thieves and DarkBrotherhood questlines was finshed becasuse those are clearly the best content of that game. Also Worst Leveling system ever.
 

Sloul

Savant
Joined
Mar 26, 2016
Messages
284
71pweALWWjL._AC_SY445_.jpg


1429622155-6639-jaquette-avant.jpg



also Realms of Arkania HD
 

Metatron

Augur
Joined
Dec 7, 2012
Messages
117
Location
?
Might & Magic IX
Ultima IX
Lionheart
That pool of radiance remake that formatted your hard disc if you tried to remove it from your PC
 
Last edited:

Tyranicon

A Memory of Eternity
Developer
Joined
Oct 7, 2019
Messages
7,700
Dragon Age 2, Oblivion, Fallout 3?
Guys, you're so fucking mainstream.

What about jewels like Mistmare? Pearls like Metalheart: Replicant's Rampage? Rubies such as Heath: the Unchosen Path? Sapphires like Gorasul: Legacy of the Dragon?

Filthy casuals. Codex, you dissapoint.

The point is mainstream "cRPG" are by far the worst ones, i'm sure you can salvage hours of fun from most forgotten mediocre TB cRPG most of us never heard about.
Meanwhile, 10 minutes of DAI would trigger an epileptic seizure for most of us.

I plan to start my first and propably last DAI playthrough soon. Wish me luck, or merely survival!

It's probably one of those games where sex mods can't even help because all the companions are patently unlikable. Except maybe Iron Bull if you're real kinky and you like that kind of stuff.

No judgments.
 

Erebus

Arcane
Joined
Jul 12, 2008
Messages
4,841
Kind of surprised that nobody has mentioned Pool of Radiance : Ruins of Myth Drannor yet.
 

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