RPG Codex - Top 50 WORST RPGs YOU'VE PLAYED vote thread

[a Goat]

Oh, there were some:

• Lionheart - self-explaining, it's a shame, because in hands of good developers with money, it could have been good.
• Oblivion - one thing I've got to admit is that Dark Brotherhood questline is a must play. Turn it on, make an assassin and do nothing but this questline. Then remove it from your computer and never come back
• Mass Effect - boring plot, setting made of Star Wars mashed together with Start Trek and flavoured with a bit of WH40k(all of this in a bad way) typical Bioware's ineptness to make decent gameplay
• Sacred 2 - to be fair I was never big fan of Sacred but I like Diablo clones, too bad this one sucked
• Alpha Protocol - I've beaten it once. Wanted to do another play-through but the fact that half skills are essentially dump stats makes playing it a repetitive chore.
• Drakensang - I won't even comment on it
• Dungeon Siege 3 - 1 and 2 are nice, as a brainless timewasters, this one is poor.
• Rise of the Argonauts - another completely half-assed diablo clone
• Two Worlds - should have say two Two worlds. Nothing to see here, they wanted to make Gothic but ended up making 3 rather than 1/2.
• Gothic 3 - soundtrack is superb, everything else is very bad
• Star Wolves sequels - the first game was nice, but got extremely repetitive, I don't have enough autism to go through 2 and 3 which are even more repetitive.
• Fable 3 - 1st was nice, I liked the fact that your character was kinda growing-up through the game, didn't played 2 because noxbox but when I've tried to make it through 3... no... just no

I don't understand why so many people are listing Fallout 3 - it's serviceable title, unlike Oblivion.

 

[Finagle]

Realms of Arkania HD remake. A game so bad it was actually good for a few chuckles.

For an old game that was truly awful it has to be Swords of Twilight. Imagine a Bethesda walking simulator but with 1990 pixel graphics, copy pasted maps, and a world where you can do whatever you want but in a world with nothing to do. It did have its own laughs though. Every peasant you bumped into had the exact same portrait, which was Shaun Connery from film "the name of the rose".

 

[tuluse]

With more added pages since my last tabulation, I'll be doing a 2014-2015 tabulation at the end of this year in this thread. All previous votes from before 2014 are thrown out, so this gives the 'Dex a chance to see what changed since the last time I did a count.

You should really start a new thread for this.

 

[Curlbrah]

Some really brave and unexpected opinions in here.

 

[granit]

Some really wrong opinions in here.

 

[MoonlitKnight]

Mass Effect
if it's considered one

 

[Adamaklas]

Yeah , bad rpgs aaah that's "thee" topic of them all ! They have to be really bad !

Restricted Area (2005, Master Creating, it's a hack n slash but ... if you played it you know.)
Dark Stone (1999,Microids, i also hated that theme song)
All diablos. All sacreds, all ,hack n slash, " crpg " labeled shit. I'm a hater! ( I did 3 playthroughs both in Sacred1 and Diablo 2 they were actually awesome when i was 12 ! )
Add all dungeon siege titles to the above (2002- 2011, gas powered games > passed the gas to obsidian)
Risen 2 and Risen 3. (Piranha bytes Pluto Gmbh 13 )
Witcher 1 , fuck you witcher, i don't like sex ( and other pleasures) !
Dragon age 3 , never played D.A. 2.
Arcania , i won't call it with it's full title. (2010, spellbound games or black forest games now, they had the exactly same problem with the latest Sponge bob movie, it makes you wonder, these ppl had never seen a single sponge bob episode in their lives, like not once?. But can you blame "Them?" or "Them money"?)

 

[granit]

Some gentlemen put Morrowind here. What the fuck. Morrowind is easily top echelon CRPG of all time. Hiking sim my ass what is this.
Also Diablo 1 and 2 is not BAD it did what it set out to do (loot slot machine game, esp the nr 2) in a very fine way. As did the modern variant Path of Exile which is an excellent game.

 

[a Goat]

The problem with Morrowind is that when you try to rate it objectively you'll see:

• Nonsensical combat system(and the best thing is - they've only changed the surface of it later on, it's still just as shit in Skyrim as it was in Morrowind)
• unimaginative story(with good antagonist though)
• "nothing special" writing
• 0 character schedules(in 2001)
• bad balance

And so on and so on.
Then you have pros:

• good sense of progression - both because your character gets stronger, and because you're starting to navigate around the island more effectively
• exploration that can take countless hours
• wonderful lore(thanks Kirkbride)

It is more memorable than good. Not bad, mind it, it's above-average material, but the key reason why people like it so much is that if you've beaten it, you've got to know the weird names, the weird places and the geography and it stays with you(it's not the only "unforgettable" game in existence obviously).
For later Bethesda games I don't feel something similar, I guess it's because of "teh arrow", which made the navigation so easy, that having any idea about their geography is redundant, so I filter it.

And people put a lot of wrong games here, the thing that is close to similar "worthwhile opinion" in my post(for example) is probably Mass Effect, but what can I say - I don't like this thing and why would I expect that everybody will like for example Morrowind which has terrible elements for many kinds of people - combatfags won't like it at all, storyfags probably won't like it etc.

 

[Goblino]

Risen 2 and 3, no reason to explain this
Skyrim, I keep trying to make interesting characters and they all turn into the exact same guy
Diablo 2, 3, and any diablo clone ever. Xmen legends/marvel ultimate alliance are the only decent games with a similar playstyle to diablo
Witcher series, these aren't bad games, but they deserve some serious flak for all the unwarranted praise. No matter how you play it, Geralt is just a bad fanfic self-insert, and 3 is singlehandedly responsible for turning a perfectly good misogyny sim into the first ever wrpg waifufag game.
Dragon age anything, I like 1, but these games have shit stories, shit characters, and they feel like the AAA industry actively redefining rpgs as shitass waifu fag sims with a vague sense of choice that keeps disappointing the player imagination.

 

[Gozma]

please don't collect and index the responses in these threads because tasteful people don't post in them

 

[Akratus]

Fallout 3 and Oblivion have an enormously undeservedly positive reputation, outside of the codex. Any worst rpg list needs to have them at the top.

 

[a Goat]

In that case I agree. I remember when somebody posted codex top RPG list on some forum and people were like "no Skyrim???? WAT????". It's completely worth it.

Honestly speaking though - Oblivion qualifies for "terrible game" but Fallout 3 is salvageable. It's not like I've ever turned it on since NV came out but I wouldn't say it's complete shit.

 

[Jools]

Here's my blacklist. I'm sure I'm forgetting something, probably because it was such a horrific experience tha I removed it.

Dark Souls
Risen 3
Oblivion
NWN2 (OC, Vanilla)
ME3
DA2
Magna Carta Tears of Blood
FFVIII
Fallout 3
Fable 3
Kingdoms of Amalur
Jade Empire

 

[Adamaklas]

Here's my blacklist. I'm sure I'm forgetting something, probably because it was such a horrific experience tha I removed it.

Dark Souls
Risen 3
Oblivion
NWN2 (OC, Vanilla)
ME3
DA2
Magna Carta Tears of Blood
FFVIII
Fallout 3
Fable 3
Kingdoms of Amalur
Jade Empire

Yes! That's what i tried to remember, kingdoms of amalur, that fucking action shit that made me feel like i was grinding quests in Barrens to ding my shit... That game was truly an offline WoW questing simulator...

 

[Jools]

Yup, KoA was pretty rank.

 

[Miner Arobar]

Oblivion: not unplayably bad, in the "pick flowers, shoot bandits in the head" kind of way, but utterly and completely dropping the ball on precisely the things good about TES games (worldbuilding, lore).

Ultima 9: obvious traces of plot hastily reworked into something else (for example, what are those Wyrmguard (?) soldiers doing here and there?) and taking the wrong turn outside of miniature-sized Britain would mess up your game. Oh, and whatever they did to Iolo. And your other companions. But especially Iolo.

Lands of Lore 2: some really nice ideas (the uncontrollable changes into a big hulking monster, or a lizard, allowing you to access places you wouldn't get to otherwise), but the storyline for some reason remained completely unclear to me. Perhaps it was the dodgy FMV sequences with bad audio. But I had no idea what I was doing, or why.

 

[darthaegis]

Dragon Age: Inquisition. Man, that game left me so fucking butthurt about Bioware that I found the Codex and now I can't play any Bioware game barring BG1 and 2 for more than 10 minutes. So shit.

 

[Jools]

Ultima 9: obvious traces of plot hastily reworked into something else (for example, what are those Wyrmguard (?) soldiers doing here and there?) and taking the wrong turn outside of miniature-sized Britain would mess up your game. Oh, and whatever they did to Iolo. And your other companions. But especially Iolo.

Ah yes, Ultima IX was one of those I forgot to mention. The horrors.

 

[iLkRehp]

Ultima VIII - jumping
Ultima IX - eveything
Dragon Age 2 - moving a cart doesn't make it a new map
Mass Effect 3
Alpha Protocol

 

[Sceptic]

Lands of Lore 2: some really nice ideas (the uncontrollable changes into a big hulking monster, or a lizard, allowing you to access places you wouldn't get to otherwise), but the storyline for some reason remained completely unclear to me. Perhaps it was the dodgy FMV sequences with bad audio. But I had no idea what I was doing, or why.

Brolapsed because of this one (your entries on Oblivion and U9 are otherwise spot on). LOL2 story is nothing to write home about but it's pretty clear, and competently done. The game has a ton of flaws, particularly with the cheesy-as-hell combat system, but it has absolutely stellar level design (the Temple and the City of the Ancients are IMO among the best levels/dungeons ever made) and some great, elaborate puzzle-solving (again, especially in Temple). Some fantastic exploration elements (Temple, City, Ruins). It doesn't do a hell of a lot well, but what it does well is so good that this alone should keep it off any "worst" lists you can make.

 

[Irenaeus II]

SKyrim
Mass Effect

THough they aren't really RPGs, but FPS with RPG elements

I usually don't play bad RPGs, I stay clear. Never touched Fallout 3, Oblivion or Dragon Age, for instance.

 

[octavius]

OK, the worst/most overrated CRPGs that I've tried:

Ultima VI - claustrophobic playing area and very simplistic combat. Cumbersome and cluttered inventory system. I'm waiting for the Exult or Nuvie version, though.

Bards Tale III - both Amiga and DOS versions were bugged. An insane amount of random encounters against monsters whose names are mostly random combinations of two words. Weird mixture of real time mana regeneration combined with random encounters checked each time you move or turn.

Galdregon's Domain AKA Death Bringer - incredibly tedious combat with no feedback on damage received or taken. Very limited 3D view. Worst DM clone I've tried.

Disciples of Steel - Clunky controls. Small view window + large, mostly empty cites. Having to manually check the prices on each item in turn in shops. Inadequate documentation. Very poor graphics for a 1994 DOS game (just a port from the four years older Atari ST/Amiga version, I guess).

Buck Rogers: Matrix Cubed - random encounters every sixth step. Enemies from the first game suddenly have much better THAC0. Need to manually re-equip heavy weapons after each and every combat, or be at a disadvantage in the next fight. Easily the worst Gold Box game and the only one I've not completed.

Three years later, and I've played the excellent Dungeon Siege remake of Ultima 6, and Bard's Tale 3 is not bad with the unoffical patch.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

OK, the worst/most overrated CRPGs that I've tried:

Ultima VI - claustrophobic playing area and very simplistic combat. Cumbersome and cluttered inventory system. I'm waiting for the Exult or Nuvie version, though.

Bards Tale III - both Amiga and DOS versions were bugged. An insane amount of random encounters against monsters whose names are mostly random combinations of two words. Weird mixture of real time mana regeneration combined with random encounters checked each time you move or turn.

Galdregon's Domain AKA Death Bringer - incredibly tedious combat with no feedback on damage received or taken. Very limited 3D view. Worst DM clone I've tried.

Disciples of Steel - Clunky controls. Small view window + large, mostly empty cites. Having to manually check the prices on each item in turn in shops. Inadequate documentation. Very poor graphics for a 1994 DOS game (just a port from the four years older Atari ST/Amiga version, I guess).

Buck Rogers: Matrix Cubed - random encounters every sixth step. Enemies from the first game suddenly have much better THAC0. Need to manually re-equip heavy weapons after each and every combat, or be at a disadvantage in the next fight. Easily the worst Gold Box game and the only one I've not completed.

Three years later, and I've played the excellent Dungeon Siege remake of Ultima 6, and Bard's Tale 3 is not bad with the unoffical patch.

So then... On to the Ultima 7 series at long last?

As much as you may be tempted, Exult at last look had a couple of very serious bugs that could be game-enders. May have changed in the last year but I suggest you double check.

 

[Krivol]

I managed to finish Fallout 3 and ME1, so I won't pick them as the worst nightmare. I couldn't finish Oblivion (I quit after about 5 hours of pain) and ME2, and Lionheart (finished just after Barcelona) so I would pick them.