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Worst JRPG you have ever played.

I actually really want to check out this game some day. I can't remember who, but one GAFer has a love-on for this title and they completely sold me on the gameplay of it. Can the VA be disabled?

I played it in undub, so wouldn't know for the VA.
I found it quite enjoyable, even though the difficulty scaling is a joke.
 
White Knight Chronicles (especially the 2nd one).
I really really tried to like this game, but I just can't. It feels so bland and lifeless.
 
I haven't played it very far, but what I played of Dawn of Mana was pretty awful. It looks kinda nice, but that's all this game has going for it.

White Knight Chronicles (especially the 2nd one).
I really really tried to like this game, but I just can't. It feels so bland and lifeless.

Wait, the second one is even worse?
 
Lol @ everyone saying FFXIII. Sure, it had a lot of problems, but WORST RPG EVER? Come on. Most of you probably haven't played a lot of RPGS if that's the case. FFXIII is definitely better than FF Mystic Quest, Quest 64, or EGG, for example.

FFXIII is not a good JRPG but I agree that it is far from being the worst. Dat Hyperbole.

I also don't understand the Tri-Ace hate in this thread. I'll take a game with fun gameplay and stupid characters and plots over games like Ni no Kuni which look good but are just boring to play.

As for my personal worst JRPG... I doubt many J-RPGs can beat Time and Eternity in this aspect.
 
actually, now that I think about it, there's a far worse game then the two I posted earlier, it's just that I've repressed the memories of it.

The 7th Saga

man oh man was that game awful. random battle after random battle after random battle

Wait, the second one is even worse?

Yup.
 
White Knight Chronicles (especially the 2nd one).
I really really tried to like this game, but I just can't. It feels so bland and lifeless.

Won't say its the worst but I agree completely with everything else. I really tried to like it too but I just could not sit through the second game. Beat the first and thought it was pretty bad, got a few hours into the second and just COULD NOT put myself through anymore.

And I was fucking cheating!

Just could not do it. Randomly want to see the end but the game is so boring, the areas are so big, the combat is so bad.... and the AI... ugh.
 
I remember playing and greatly disliking Quest 64, but I can't quite recall why I didn't like it at all - perhaps I'm doing myself a service. This was a long time ago.

I didn't care much for Tales of Legendia at all. Almost every facet of the game has issues, and I didn't gel with the soundtrack as much as some. There are many titles where one aspect might be awful but another can hold the game a bit on its own (like a great battle system) but there was nothing in Legendia that I could bring myself to enjoy much.

Granted, many of the titles mentioned in this thread I haven't played.
 
actually, now that I think about it, there's a far worse game then the two I posted earlier, it's just that I've repressed the memories of it.

The 7th Saga

man oh man was that game awful. random battle after random battle after random battle.

If we were at a bar, I'd look you dead in the eyes and ask your wife if she'd like me to buy her a drink. 7th Saga was marvelous.
 
still more well thought out than FF13's plot, characters, art direction, gameplay & level design -_-

FF13's plot was muddled and could have been better; but art direction and gameplay? The combat was amazing. The art was beautiful. And Lightning/Sazh/Fang were great... counterpoints to how crappy Hope/Snow/Vanille were imo.

To each their own.
 
Unlimited Saga. Was a fucking abortion of a game

ABSOLUTELY.

FF13's plot was muddled and could have been better; but art direction and gameplay? The combat was amazing. The art was beautiful. And Lightning/Sazh/Fang were great... counterpoints to how crappy Hope/Snow/Vanille were imo.

To each their own.

FF13 is not a good game, but is far, FAAAAAAAAAAR from the worst RPG ever.

I remember playing and greatly disliking Quest 64, but I can't quite recall why I didn't like it at all - perhaps I'm doing myself a service. This was a long time ago.

I didn't care much for Tales of Legendia at all. Almost every facet of the game has issues, and I didn't gel with the soundtrack as much as some. There are many titles where one aspect might be awful but another can hold the game a bit on its own (like a great battle system) but there was nothing in Legendia that I could bring myself to enjoy much.

Granted, many of the titles mentioned in this thread I haven't played.

Quest 64 is basically a game that was shipped even though it was only 1/4th complete. The combat system is there (and is actually pretty fun) but they never figured out how to use it with more than 1 person, the environments aren't finished, the quests aren't finished, and what was finished was never properly localized. It got shat out onto market.
 
Blue Dragon is the only one that jumped out at me as being actually bad, though I haven't played a ton of JRPGs, I just didn't care for it.
 
I love JRPG's, but really wasn't a fan of Lost Odyssey - let the hate commence!

LOL, its a gorgeous game, but yeah that villain, that plot, average combat mechanic hampered by the fact that your immortals can't die and they need to learn from mortals their skills.

I've played this very recently and while I liked some of it, coming away from it a week or so later, I can say its quite mediocre. And this is coming from a large background of jrpgs played & beaten.
 
Legend of Dragoon. I hate everything about it. Dumb as rocks story, awful character design, forgettable music, confusing battle system. Definitely Sony's attempt to catch the lightning in the bottle that was the post FF 7 JRPG craze.

The only good to come of it was that hilariously bad commercial campaign.
 
<cracks knuckles>

You lot? You're all fortunate, if those are the worse JRPGs you've played. A little over a year ago, there was a thread for "Worst game you've ever completed", and I nominated a JRPG there that I still stand by today.

This beauty:

hlBtxxx.jpg


Now, first of all, it's imperative that I highlight that people might argue it's not a JRPG. I'm including it because it has JRPG battles and a Japanese designer (emblazoned on the cover, to boot!) (Edit: and I've just looked up the name. If it's the *same* Hiroyuki Miura, he's certainly got valid JRPG credentials)

2tdCcxC.jpg


In between the battles progression is closer to a point-and-click adventure. Very simple puzzles, but given it's aimed at a family audience, I'm willing to overlook that. The graphics *are* diabolical, though. It's from 1995 and very clearly low-budget, and my word, it shows.

But all the negatives would be forgiven if the gameplay was top-notch...

...the gameplay is linear, boring, combat is dull, and the whole thing is over in about an hour. The whole thing. There's about five fights, total

Oh, and on the subject of an ending... it doesn't, really. It ends with 'To Be Continued", and does very little to resolve the plot.

I need to highlight: This isn't me being an arrogant, oh-I'm-too-good-for-kid-friendly-games person. Both of my parents were in education, so I saw a lot of software pitched at kids for education purposes, and I developed an understanding on their own merits; I remember being utterly charmed - in my mid-teens - by the Broderbund Living Books series, for instance. This game, though, is still dire.
 
Some new JRPG that everyone has played/heard of. That's the worst one I've ever played.
Yep. That's how it always goes. I envy you people that have only been subjected to great RPGs such that FF X-2 and FF13 were the worst that you've ever played.

This is always a hard topic, there are so many bad, bad RPGs out there. I think that I'll go with Trinity Universe. I remember seeing the game reviews and immediately NIS caught my eye. Hey, I love Disgaea and La Pucelle, they'll have good characters at the least right? WRONG! This game is the most boring cliche of anime that I've played, even down to the horribly designed characters(and obligatory MC with dog ears/tail). The dialogue and story were some of the worst that I've had to suffer through, and the dungeon crawling and combat were exceptionally bad. I'm not sure if I've ever been that disgusted with a game before or since. That game taught me to not trust review scores(averaged 7/10 or so).

Time to read through the thread and bring back some bad memories.
 
Probably Avalon Code. The game had some cool ideas with the book but the game isn't very fun and the story sucks. Played it on and off for 15 hours, but I dropped it and ended up selling it. Luckily I got the game for free.

I was also not a fan of Suikoden 3. The battle system is just OK and the story is nothing special. I also thought it was dumb how the whole conflict started because
some girl made some magic clones
.

Recently I played Fire Emblem Awakening and it wasn't good either, though most people seem to love it. I already went in expecting mediocre story/characters, but the game eventually became a chore to play as well. It takes you a long time to level up classes, and there's no point to most of the classes when you can break the game with a single Sorceror with Nosferatu (though pairing up helps). My Morgan was literally a one-man army. And if you want to see many of the party chats, prepare to grind, grind, grind. The game is too grinding-oriented. Though it's not like the characters are that good for the chats to be worthwhile. Glad I didn't pay $30-40 for it. I got it for $15 and sold it for $39.
 
Hyperdimension Neptunia.

This is probably it for me too. How Compile Heart managed to take the game mechanics and dungeon exploration from Trinity Universe and make them even extremely more bland and dull is beyond me.

From it's incredibly high encounter rate to the nonsensical plot to the one-dimensional dungeons, Hyperdimension Neptunia is probably the worst game I have in my JRPG collection.
 
Legend of Dragoon. I hate everything about it. Dumb as rocks story, awful character design, forgettable music, confusing battle system. Definitely Sony's attempt to catch the lightning in the bottle that was the post FF 7 JRPG craze.

The only good to come of it was that hilariously bad commercial campaign.

I'm genuinely surprised that someone else on here didn't care for it at all. I remember playing it and how insanely linear the game was and that was about it. The combat hit mechanic was ok, but it was done better in FFVIII without it being displayed on screen.

What even happened in that game anyway?
 
Not the worst RPG existing and not the worst I played, but the worst that I actually finished : Tales of the Abyss.

The first 15 hours are ok, and then... horrible pacing, horrible worldmap, horrible backtracking, horrible dialogue. THE HORROR. I even feared turning on the PS2, because I knew after loading my save I would be stuck with long and repetitive dialogue filled with cliches and unbearable technobabble.

When it was released nearly everyone was saying it was excellent and the best in the series, so I forced myself to finish it. And the game was long.
 
Final Fantasy 8
It was hard to imagine anything being worse than Final Fantasy 7, but it managed it.

Special mention to Xenoblade Chronicles.


There are worse than those I'm sure, but I tend to avoid playing games that I don't think I'll enjoy.
 
I would have to go with Last Rebellion.

The First battle took 20 mins to beat. The second battle also took another 20 mins to beat. Ejected the game and threw it out.
 
This is probably it for me too. How Compile Heart managed to take the game mechanics and dungeon exploration from Trinity Universe and make them even extremely more bland and dull is beyond me.

From it's incredibly high encounter rate to the nonsensical plot to the one-dimensional dungeons, Hyperdimension Neptunia is probably the worst game I have in my JRPG collection.

The idea that a game can sell solely based on tits is a strong and dangerous one. It's a particularly deep hole of which a lot of Japanese Developers are running very quickly around the edge of, often with shaky balance.
 
One of the things about perceived worst Jrpgs in this thread is a lot of it is based on initial impressions where we don't give them a fair chance. One of the times I've been guilty of doing it was with Brigandine on ps1.

My brother bought the game, I gave it a try, and the grid based combat and terrible long and slow combat sequences turned me off to it...my brother stuck with it because he felt there could have been some redeeming value to it. I made some offhand comment that the game was too slow and boring and would have been playable if it was faster...he then looked at the options and saw he could turn off the battle animations and switch to fast battle speed...all of a sudden it was like seeing a whole new world, and this was like a dragon force on ps1

That day I learned I shouldn't have passed judgement on a game for one terrible aspect that could be toggled with a switch...
 
Breath of Fire V - Dragon Quarter. Such a great series up to this abomination.

I agree. I loved BOF3, gave up on BOF4 and was utterly flabbergasted by BOF5. Keep your wacky roguelike rules out of my BOF plz thx.

Of course Star Ocean 3 and 4. Bought them both, they both stank.

Also every Saga game that I've played.

Also Suikoden 4.

And XenoSaga
 
Rogue Galaxy probably. It wasn't exactly bad but it was painfully average coming off Dark Chronicle which is one of my favorite games.
 
I'm amazed at all the Final Fantasys in this thread, I guess GAF doesn't play very many JRPGs.

Personally I would probably say Time and Eternity just because of how recent it was. I might go with Enchanted Arms looking back a bit further.
 
Air's Adventure for the Sega Saturn. Out of all the JRPGs played since starting the genre during the nes days, this one is the sloppiest and most unfun to play. I remember the miserable summer I spent with this one and had to try desperately to find enjoyment from it. Combat was atrocious and used awful pre rendered characters that were pixellized to hell. I would be curious if any others around here have endured this one.

LOL... FF XIII was one of my favorite JRPGs from last gen and I played just about all of em.
 
I never realized there was so much hate for SO3. I don't remember a whole lot outside of the MC being typical teenage save the world tryhard. I do remember a red haired girl with a boomerang or chakra of some sort in the party that I liked and the final boss(Freya) on the highest difficulty being one of my favorite boss fights at the time though you had to grind a lot to get to that point.

Then aagain I vaguely remember enjoying Quest 64. Maybe because it was the only JRPG(I think?) JRPG on the N64 and I was craving one so much after just coming off of FF6, SMRPG and Secret of Mana.

But Rise was #1 waifu!

Rise would have been #1 waifu if she didn't throw herself at you so much. Gotta make a hunter work for his prey! As is, she's on par with the other party girls IMO.
 
600full-shin-megami-tensei-persona-2-innocent-sin-cover.jpg


Controversial opinion, but I finished this game last summer and damn near hated the entire time I spent playing it. I kept pushing on based purely on the adoration the Persona community gives it(particularly with it's direct sequel combined..."best Persona story ever!")

Bullshit.

I finished Persona 1 PSP weeks before I started and while that game was dated as well and is far from great itself, I found it to be a more pleasant and interesting game compared to this nightmare sequel. The many changes to the fusion system(practically gone now), the sluggish combat, the terribly overhauled and overwrought demon conversation system(WAY too many variables to choose from to get a positive gain). The team fusion attacks that are equally as infuriating to deal with as a Saga game.

I was also really let down by the plot, which mostly revealed itself at the bitter end while the whole of the game was filled with trite animu cliche's, often shying away heavily from the foreboding marketing and theme. The end was bittersweet, but given how poor I found the core gameplay, dungeon layouts, and various game mechanics, I chose to avoid jumping into the sequel. Most seem to agree Eternal Punishment is the superior game and a vast improvement, but I just could not revisit another 30+ hours of those systems.

I usually have a high threshold for negotiating through many terrible RPG's, but Persona 2 Innocent Sin was one of the first to really test and challenge my own ability to do so. Awful game.

FFXIII-2 gets a close nod. Terrible plot and characters. Weaker battle system that removed much of the strategy and need for paradigm consideration throughout the game compared to its predecessor. So many awful minigames to suss out to experience the bulk of its content outside the critical path. I really hated that one too.
 
I was ready to say Final Fantasy X, but then I remembered it.

I tried to hold back the memories.

I tried to forget.

The pain.

Final Fantasy XIV.
 
Beyond the Beyond, so much expectations for an RPG on PS1 and I get this.

Hoshigami because who makes a game like this? Geez.
 
600full-shin-megami-tensei-persona-2-innocent-sin-cover.jpg


Controversial opinion, but I finished this game last summer and damn near hated the entire time I spent playing it. I kept pushing on based purely on the adoration the Persona community gives it(particularly with it's direct sequel combined..."best Persona story ever!")

Bullshit.

I finished Persona 1 PSP weeks before I started and while that game was dated as well and is far from great itself, I found it to be a more pleasant and interesting game compared to this nightmare sequel. The many changes to the fusion system(practically gone now), the sluggish combat, the terribly overhauled and overwrought demon conversation system(WAY too many variables to choose from to get a positive gain). The team fusion attacks that are equally as infuriating to deal with as a Saga game.

I was also really let down by the plot, which mostly revealed itself at the bitter end while the whole of the game was filled with trite animu cliche's, often shying away heavily from the foreboding marketing and theme. The end was bittersweet, but given how poor I found the core gameplay, dungeon layouts, and various game mechanics, I chose to avoid jumping into the sequel. Most seem to agree Eternal Punishment is the superior game and a vast improvement, but I just could not revisit another 30+ hours of those systems.

I usually have a high threshold for negotiating through many terrible RPG's, but Persona 2 Innocent Sin was one of the first to really test and challenge my own ability to do so. Awful game.

Question. Did you play Persona 4 and if so, did you enjoy it?

Magna Carta on PS2. Fucking despicable.

What a waste of beautiful art and character design...

Square should hire that dude, he's being wasted at that korean MMO company.
 
Persona 4G

Horrendous visuals, 3 hour cutscene before you even do anything, worst dungeons in a video game I've ever seen, etc etc.

U wot m8

You're really lucky if the WORST JRPG you've played is P4G.

Edit: My worst in recent memory is probably Valhalla Knights III. Awful game.
 
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