Which RPG has the worst combat?

[Lhynn]

NWN had the shittest combat in any RPG ever.

Not even close.

 

[imweasel]

Arcanum had the shittest combat in any RPG ever

Fixed.

 

[Jaesun]

I thought Ultima VII's Clusterfuck Combat System™ was pretty bad....

 

[JarlFrank]

Arcanum had the shittest combat in any RPG ever

Fixed.

Better than NWN.

 

[Darkion]

I thought Ultima VII's Clusterfuck Combat System™ was pretty bad....

I was going to post something similar earlier, but was afraid to be blasted to pieces by a certain moderator. I hated when those slow start of combat encounter chords started playing in U7.

 

[Delterius]

Arcanum had the shittest combat in any RPG ever

Fixed.

Better than NWN.

I am genuinely unable to decide. We need a DISCUSS!! thread about it. Mods, make it happen (after all it is 'off topic' and you know you want to).

 

[Lhynn]

Arcanum had the shittest combat in any RPG ever

Fixed.

Better than NWN.

Bullshit

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

I didn't mind the chaos of Ultima7 combat. Darklands combat had a similar feel to me. One thing that Darklands and U7 both had was the "oh fuck here they come".

 

[JarlFrank]

Arcanum had the shittest combat in any RPG ever

Fixed.

Better than NWN.

Bullshit

NWN has the worst RtwP combat ever. Arcanum has passable turn based and a fast real time mode to get past trash encounters quickly. NWN's combat is tactically poor because you have only one char under your control, and it's slow as fuck in comparison to similar systems (Infinity engine games have much faster-paced RtwP, quicker animations etc, while NWN is horribly slow). I haven't plyed any other game with RTwP that was this much of a drag. No party control makes it worse becaue it means you have little to no tactics, single char D&D dungeon crawling is fucking pointless.

Arcanum has amazing combat in comparison.

 

[JarlFrank]

This is a question that has come up in the Divinity: OS thread because Volly said most Bioware games have better combat, and I said no, none has. Especially since a Bioware game is the RPG with the worst combat ever: NWN. Some people disagreed and claimed Arcanum was worse (lol no). But Arcanum was passable. It's always bashed for its combat, but it's not the combat system that sucks hard, it's the encounter design for the most part.

Apart from some horrible shovelware Diablo clones whose names I already forgot, which had Diablo combat that felt clunky and un-fluent, NWN has the worst combat in any RPG I played. It's the worst form of RTwP - you can do solid RTwP, but NWN does everything wrong that can be done wrong with such a system. It is slow as fuck, when you play a fighter you spend more time watching two dudes whack each other with long pauses between each strike than actually issuing commands to your character. A single combat turn takes quite long to actually play out, it's much slower than in, say, Baldur's Gate, a game with solid RTwP combat. This could be excused if you actually had things to do during these turns, like commanding a party. But oh, snap! NWN only allows for the control of a single character. Party members cannot be controlled, nope. It's basically single character D&D, and dungeon crawling with only one character in D&D is fucking pointless. Multiplayer can be fun, yes, but the singleplayer has boring as fuck combat because of this. Most fights, especially trash mob encounters, just horribly drag on and have little excitement to them. The only classes that may actually be fun are those with spells because they have more to do than just click an enemy and wait for all the long fighting animations to play out. But playing a wizard in D&D without backup is certain death at low level, and taking a fighter companion along means your tank behaves like an idiot and might run into too difficult situations for him, and you have no control over this because you cannot command henchmen (apart from general commands like "stay close to me!").

There are some worthwile modules for NWN, but the best of them excel because of their non-combat parts. The combat in NWN is unredeemably bad.

If you disagree, show me one game with worse combat (there probably are some Russian shovelware games that are worse).

 

[Mangoose]

NWN is meant to be played in multiplayer modules with a DM.

 

[racofer]

Planescape: Turdment

 

[Broseph]

Ultima VII combat is among the worst. At least in NWN you have some degree of control, you can barely even call U7's clusterfuck a combat system at all.

 

[Renegen]

Arcanum

 

[SuicideBunny]

u7 combat is the shittiest combat in what the codex considers an rpg. outside of that i'd say arcanum rt is the shittiest.

NWN is meant to be played in multiplayer modules with a DM.

multiplayer is the 3d of games. even pocahontas in space was somewhat enjoyable in 3d (in 2d not so much).

 

[Goat Vomit]

Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader
Alternatively: any fallout rip-off

 

[Greenthumb]

Legend

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

NWN had a really shitty Original Campaign, but the combat itself was still better than Arcanum's, mostly because of the spell casting. That had some strategy to it, e.g. casting Greater Malison before a damage spell that had saving throws, crowd control, etc. In Arcanum, not only was melee and gunfighting spam-heavy, but so was spellcasting. Spam harm or disintegrate or whatever. Also, NWN combat was somewhat balanced, unlike Arcanum's, where you are a God if you go magic or melee, and a worm if you go tech. Also less game-breaking combat bugs like throwing stuff not taking action points or whatever.

I don't know which game overall had the worst combat system, since there are many I haven't played, and lots of shitty games most people probably haven't played. Of the well known ones though, I gotta say, many games in the recent Top 70 cRPGs thread top 10 had atrocious combat: Planescape: Torment (to a lesser degree because of scarcity of it), Arcanum, Morrowind, Bloodlines, New Vegas(to a lesser degree due to mods).

I'd say Morrowind probably has the worst combat of any RPG I've ever played, not only was it boring, spam-heavy, and devoid of player skill challenge, but the way it was done in a first person 3D game but run by under the hood calculations created a real feeling of cognitive dissonance for me. Arcanum, a close second.

 

[Lilura]

Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor - watching zombies shamble up slowly, one at a time, makes me fill the bathtub and look for razor blades.
Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader - garbage

Hate to say Arcanum and Planescape: Torment, but it's true they have poor combat. Arcanum should never have flirted with the real-time option. At least those two have redeeming qualities, the two I listed at the top don't.

Gothic 3's combat is also very bad without the community patch.

 

[mondblut]

Ultima VII is in the league of its own.

Beyond it, anything which doesn't have an "end turn" or, at worst, "pause" button qualifies as "worst RPG combat".

 

[Darkion]

I was going to say Ultima VII but then I had a vivid flashback of playing Ultima VIII: Pagan. That was painfully bad, it had the ineptitude of U7 with shiny new features, so if an enemy hit you even slightly your character would be interrupted and trigger a slow animation of recoiling or worse falling down. If your character fell down then it would go into another slow animation of getting back on his feet before resuming a fighting stance, in the meantime the enemies would still be hitting your character and there could be more recoiling and falling until death. Fun times.

Can't comment on NWN and other Bioware games after BG1 because I didn't like BG2 at all, to the point that I never bought anything from them after that one. So I never played NWN, Jade Empire, Mass Effect or Dragon Age.

 

[flabbyjack]

Combat in NWN was fine, it was a nice little roll-up of the 4e ruleset, and combat really shines in the expansions especially Hordes of the Underdark since the level/encounter design wasn't craptastic.

As OP said, there have been so many shovelware titles with atrocious combat that I have only given a few minutes of my time to. Honorary worst combat should go to Lionheart or Inquisitor. Both have redeeming qualities.

Dungeon Lords too, maybe? I can't quite recall.

 

[Lilura]

Beyond it, anything which doesn't have an "end turn" or, at worst, "pause" button qualifies as "worst RPG combat".

I didn't think Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Gothic 2: NotR, Vampire Bloodlines had the worst RPG combat, just because they weren't turn-based or RtWP. Then again, I try to keep an open mind.

 

[Utgard-Loki]

Beyond it, anything which doesn't have an "end turn" or, at worst, "pause" button qualifies as "worst RPG combat".

I didn't think Deus Ex, System Shock 2, [...], Vampire Bloodlines had the worst RPG combat

yeah, that's because they had the worst ego shooter combat.

 

[Lilura]

yeah, that's because they had the worst ego shooter combat.

They're not bad, they're certainly not the worst. And all three offer non-shooter builds.