What would you say is the weakest aspect of your favorite RPG game/series?

[Dweller Dark]

1 hour ago, Rudolph said:

@MS-06FZ Zaku II Kai This might take a while, so I do not mind spoilers.

 

The villain of Lonesome Road is incredibly vague and talks A LOT about philosophical crap about the factions and the player character,  who he hates and won't explain why, etc. And he just doesn't stop talking when it's his turn.

[Mr. Freeze]

Chris Avellone Villain Syndrome is when Chris Avellone (one of New Vegas' lead writers) writes a villain and has their entire dialogue be overextended diatribes meant to deconstruct the world around them. See also: KOTOR II and Kreia. 

 

12 minutes ago, Dweller said:

 

The villain of Lonesome Road is incredibly vague and talks A LOT about philosophical crap about the factions and the player character,  who he hates and won't explain why, etc. And he just doesn't stop talking when it's his turn.

 

Also blames you for delivering a package and somehow being responsible for his favorite town being destroyed. And you can't tell him "no you fucking idiot, I'm not responsible for that." 

[Garlichead]

Probably a little out of topic, as I see mostly everyone talking about Western Rpgs, but I am a big fan of the Dragon Quest games. I don't mind the simplified combat or the constant reuse of spells and items between the games. For me that is part of the charm.

 

I must say that i can't stand is the one on one fights that usually occur at the beginning of each game. They are some of the most tedious sections in gaming and keeps me away from replaying the fourth game which is one of my favorites. While i have great memories of it, that game has a very long prologue in which you play through each party member story and it is full of small party fighting. In retrospective, those sections are an small part of the overall game, and i know they will be over shortly, but they really keep me off from playing those sections again.

 

On western rpgs, Fallout may be my favorite western rpg series. Besides what everyone else has mentioned, i have a hard time replaying New Vegas (my favorite after 1) due to the slow movement speed. That game has very spaced out sections, and i dont find desert exploration particularly fun. I really wish they had kept the overland travel from the early game with some wacky random encounters to spice things up. The game world is fantastic, between the funny stuff and more serious political aspects of the different factions. The player choice and the series as a whole has been a huge influence on the kind of pen and paper rpg campaigns i like to run, but every time i replay it the slow movement wears on me.

Spoiler

Finally, in regards to pen and paper rpgs my favorite system is Basic Dungeons and Dragons / BX / Old School Essentials. I enjoy the simplistic rules and how archetypical the player classes are; however, i have seen that many players who got into roleplaying with the newest editions of DnD don't enjoy the simplistic nature of these rule sets very much. I am not interested in character builds or combat heavy scenarios and this makes it difficult to set the right expectations with people looking for those kind of experiences. Nowadays, I mostly run one shots using either BX or Cairn with my nephews who are too young to care about character builds or complicated details, but I miss running games for adults. Its been harder to find players interested into a more straightforward rpg experience.

Edited April 12, 2023 by Garlichead

[Wyrmwood]

Every RPG has flaws of course, even as advanced as some games have become its in my opinion impossible to replicate table-top role-playing. On top of that, even though graphics are much better there's an intentional move towards more stream-lined and accessible games from the bigger developers that only move further from the genre's roots. Luckily smaller studios are still developing proper RPGs and Baldurs Gate 3 is looking like it may manage to be both a modern game and retain the depth of older titles but I'm still sure there will be a bunch of flaws in that game too.

 

Anyway here are some of least favorite things about a few great games:

 

Eye of the Beholder : drawing maps, some love it, I don't, it breaks immersion and it's necessary in this game if don't want to be lost for hours. Hard to call it a real flaw though, probably more of technical restraint of the time.

 

Neverwinter Nights : The Wailing Death main campaign. It's nowhere near as bad as some will tell you but only one companion and no inventory control over them was a bad move. Luckily it's sorted out by the first expansion, pity reworking the main campaign was never done.

 

Neverwinter Nights 2 : on paper the perfect sequel with full parties, better graphics and improved dialouges, but fiddly UI, irritating camera controls and over complicated editor meant the first games the better of the two despite the great campaigns.

 

Final Fantasy (most of them) : da da da dat da da da, every 30 seconds.

 

All Bethesda games post Morrowwind : 2 steps forward each game in terms of graphics and action game-play, 2 steps back in terms of depth and traditional role playing elements every game. Can't see how the next Elder Scrolls is going to be much different from Assassin's Creed Valhalla if this pattern persists. Luckily the games are heavily moddable and I can still enjoy them and I guess it's what the masses want.

 

Pathfinder games : great modernization of the Infinity Engine style games but rather too much "stuff ", it's D&D 3.5 with 5 times as much rules. In fairness this feature creep is from the pen and paper game but Owlcat maybe should of trimmed it a little. Seems weird to be moaning about too much depth though after just knocking Bethesda's streamlining but it does slow down the start (first 50 or so hrs) while I read tool tips or Google mechanics. I actually ended up buying the real rule book.

 

[thiccyosh]

I think for Super Mario RPG my main problem is not playing the game itself, but completing it 100%. Have you seen how hidden some items are or you only have one chance of getting before it gets lost on your save file? And sometimes you have to grind for certain items, see exp share pin you can only get with frog coins, which are either very hidden or you need to play minigames with strict conditions. And then you have a very limited inventory, you don't even get an extra page for really rare stuff, hell if you wanted you can just throw away items you grinded for.

 

Oh yeah and getting to baby fat (the fat yoshi you see as my pfp) requires you to play a rhythm minigame which to this day I have no clue how to play without savescumming, and you need to grind for yoshi cookies and you need to visit Yo'ster Isle at the end of the game. All of this to get some ok items whenever you feed baby fat.

 

I am pretty sure this game was made with Nintendo Power in mind, as you sometimes got hints for games like these on how to get op stuff like the lazy shell.

[Rudolph]

I would say the weakest aspect of the MMORPG genre is that it is, well, massively-multiplayer: I keep hearing all sorts of wonderful tales and anecdotes about them and I admire all the time and efforts that went into crafting those vast worlds where people are willing to sink so many hours, but at the same time, I am all too aware that there is a finite amount of time that you can put into them - if there is nobody to play with, then what is even the point? - and that once the developers decide to pull the plug for whatever reason, it is over pretty much for ever.

[MemeMind]

Morrowinds Ending is kinda abrupt and rushed.

Thats kinda the only thing I dont like about the game. 

[Wyrmwood]

On 4/18/2023 at 4:18 PM, MemeMind said:

Morrowinds Ending is kinda abrupt and rushed.

Thats kinda the only thing I dont like about the game. 

 

Yeah pretty hard to knock that game it does a lot of things right. My biggest gripe was leveling up my walking speed, my level 1 character should have to learn how to fight or cast magic but walk! When you get off the ship you have to follow a villager and need to use sprint just to keep up even though they are simply strolling. Still, its easily fixed.

[LexiMax]

Phantasy Star Online is more of a Diablo-style ARPG than a traditional RPG, but my god the controls for this game are pretty dire.

 

There are three major issues that conspire to make your life hell.  First, you have almost no camera control - the camera sorta lazily tries to get behind your shoulder based on which way you're currently moving.  The only button that does anything to the camera centers it over your shoulder immediately.  Second, there's no way to strafe while keeping your current orientation.  Moving the character also moves which direction they're facing.  Third, the targeting system is pants-on-head stupid.  Instead of having a lock-on system where you target a specific enemy and can then circle-strafe around it, you target whatever enemy happens to be in an invisible cone radiating from the front of your character - not your camera, the character itself.

 

Any one of these issues would be annoying, but dealing with all three at the same time means that you have to re-learn how to play a third-person action game from scratch.  When playing ranged characters, I often have to kite monsters together, then run to the opposite end of the room, turn around, and hit the camera button so all of the monsters are in a straight line in front of me and the targeting lock-on actually works.  In smaller areas, I often don't have time to recenter the camera, and after running to the opposite end of the room I blind-fire towards the camera in the hopes of hitting something.  It really sucks.

 

Despite that, this game is still my favorite RPG and it's not even close.  PSO was Sonic Team at the height of their Dreamcast-era powers, and it had top-shelf aesthetics and music that has aged incredibly well.  Once you get past the control issues and some of the lower-level tedium, this game becomes the perfect "Chill out and grind mobs for an hour or two" game.  The last of the official servers shut off in 2008, and yet there are still hundreds of people playing on private servers right now as I'm typing this - over 100 on Ephinea alone.

 

 

Edited April 20, 2023 by LexiMax

[Denim Destroyer]

All the Ultima games have poor character building options. To have good character building options you need to have stats which are mutually exclusive to one another and allow the player to create specialized characters. A character with high strength and constitution is likely to be a close quartered combatant while one with high strength but low constitution is likely to specialize in ranged combat. Starting with Ultima 4 you have three main stats which influence your three derived stats. These limit you to a melee combatants, ranged combatants, and magic users with little variety in tactics as the games do not implement stealth, combat maneuvers, and different types of magic. Even more limiting is how the series moved to a recruitment only method of filling out a party. While this makes context of the series (person from Earth transported to a fantasy setting) this has the unfortunate effect of removing potential variety in future playthroughs, which is a major element of the role playing game genre.

[Ludi]

On 4/10/2023 at 11:01 AM, Mr. Freeze said:

Fallout will never have the dev time it needs to reach its full potential in storytelling. 

 

And Fallout 2's economy breaks at the halfway point. You have so much money lmao

[Denim Destroyer]

8 hours ago, Ludi said:

And Fallout 2's economy breaks at the halfway point. You have so much money lmao

I have yet to find a RPG this does not apply to.

[Rudolph]

19 minutes ago, Denim Destroyer said:

I have yet to find a RPG this does not apply to.

Make that a video game! :P

 

I am currently playing Fallout Shelter, which is not much of a RPG, and it is surprisingly difficult to NOT reach the bottle cap limit of 999 999!