Working Title 09.13.06: Underrated/Overrated - RPGs

Posted by Jordan Williams on 09.13.2006

In the fourth and final week of Underrated/Overrated, we take a look at the most underrated and overrated games in the genre of the role-playing game. It's about to get downright UGLY.

Well, here it is. The fourth and final week of Underrated/Overrated. This week I am going to break down what is quite possibly the most heated genre in all of gaming.

RPGs.

I am sure this is going to be an issue of foregone conclusions and really bad clichés, but oh well, that's what RPG's are all about. Now, for those who have been with me for a while, you know how this works. I am going to show you my opinion for the most underrated and overrated games in a certain genre. Again, this is my opinion; this isn't some sort of voting thing were I tally up numbers, nuh-uh. This is what I think.

Now, sit back, relax, and enjoy the issue, because we all know watching someone say your favorite game is really not all that great is a good way to keep your blood pressure down.


The Genre of the Menu


Yeah, I was really stretching for that one. Anyway, if there is one thing any RPG has in common, it's always SOME sort of a menu screen, be it many or just a few. Anyway, onto the main point. RPGs have been around for just as long as gaming has. One of the best fundamentals of gaming is that it can take you away to a fantasy world in which you can be the hero. RPGs took this notion further; not only were you the hero, but you were also the story. You determined its outcome. You were the lone crusader against all that was evil in the world. RPGs are known for their deep stories, wonderful characters, and climactic battles.

Or at least, they used to be.

Not saying that all RPGs of today are bad, but there is definitely something missing. It seems like more and more RPGs are just coming out with pretty standard casts of heroes, and really, really, really predictable storylines. It just seems like a lot of companies have just given up on offering up that same RPG feel. They just slap any random fantasy story together, put in a leading male character, add some crystals and a dragon or two, and whammo: instant RPG.

The times need to change. I love RPGs, but they are just getting so stale nowadays that I'm finding it really hard to get as submerged in them as I used to.

But that's neither here nor there; I know what you all came for. You want to know my picks. Well, let's get this ball a-rollin'.

But first...


MMORPGs vs. RPGs


Again, I got a lot of mail telling me I should split the two up. Again, I'm not going to. Why? Well, this reason is a lot more simplistic than my reasoning with FPSs.

I don't consider MMORPGs to be RPG games.

Why? Because to me, you can't get the same feel from both games. I'm not saying MMORPGs are bad, but they don't have that same big storyline feel to them that RPGs do. Sure, while you are online, it is ultimately up to you and the other users to build up the experience, but how often do you really see that happening? How often is there a real story there? I don't see it. Most of the time, all I see is a real emphasis on finding a party and then spending all of your hours in the same area killing a lot of enemies. Where the hell is the story in that?

Meanwhile, with an RPG, although you (most of the time) only have one or two players, there's a lot more story and character depth present. That spells a real RPG to me; nowadays, it's not all that great, but it's still there. So, sorry to all of you who really were dead-set on me splitting up the genre yet again, but I can't do it. Too bad.

Now, for real this time, let's get to the picks.


Underrated



Honorable Mentions: Tales Series (Namely Symphonia and Legendia), Phantasy Star Series (Not counting PSO), Secret of Mana Series, Final Fantasy IX, Skies of Arcadia
Edit: For those of you who saw the early version of this issue, yes, I know Skies of Arcadia wasn't included. To tell you the truth, it was a game I wanted to put in, and I forgot about it.

Yes, your eyes DO NOT deceive you. You ARE looking at an RPG for the Nintendo 64. Calm down, I know. It's a shocker. But the fact that it is shocking the hell out of you is the very reason as to why it is on this list. I can safely say that none of you have ever played Hybrid Heaven, and if you have, I demand you e-mail me so I can win this bet I have with a friend.

Just look! I couldn't even find the a good enough box art of the game to put up here!

Anyway, Hybrid Heaven is an action RPG for the N64 that had so many plot twists you would've swore it was made by Square (as it was, then). Basically, you played as an agent (don't get used to how he looks) who is trying to stop a full-scale alien invasion. Those damned aliens are trying to pull an "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and swap out important figureheads with their alien counterparts. We don't take that shit. So, you have to go into their base of operations, which is ironically under Manhattan. Why is it that all of the cool shit with aliens ALWAYS happens in New York? (Jis the Editor's Note: Don't forget southern California...or Roswell. You know the one.)

Anyway, the plot took you into the deep recesses of this giant alien cover-up plot. You might be wondering where the RPG element comes in, right? That's all in how you fight. You see, you mostly fight these sick and twisted amalgams of aliens and humans throughout the game. You have no snazzy spells, no swords, no nothing. Just a gun and some good ol' hand-to-hand combat. You'll be using the latter a lot more.

But there's a catch.

You see, you only start out with the basic moves. How do you get new moves? Simple. You learn them...by having them done to you.

It's a wonderful play on the Blue Mage job from the Final Fantasy games. Say you are fighting someone and you want to get a move that really inflicts some damage on them. You have to open yourself up and let them do that move to you before you forget it. Pain is always the best teacher.

And even from there, the game took the RPG element even further. Your character had stats...for every single body part. That's right. You never leveled up as a whole. Your body parts did. I can tell you right now, nothing is more hilarious than having a level 50 left arm and a level 2 right arm. Furthermore, each of your limbs had their own menu and own set of attacks. Certain moves could only be learned on certain limbs and could only be executed with a conjunction of other limbs.

Seems needlessly complicated, right? Well, it was at times, but it was still probably the most original way to do a turn-based battle that I have ever seen in any RPG in the last 10 years. Name another RPG that took the standard turn-based battle system everyone else had grown to love and turned it right on its ear? Can't think of one, can you?

So, why didn't this game get all of the praise and hype that I thought it deserved? Again, it was another case of the Nintendo Curse, and the fact that this game got such a limited release and was so under the radar to those who didn't have Nintendo Power that NO ONE had ever heard of it. I know the first time I saw it was at Blockbuster, and the only reason I picked it up was because Super Smash Bros. was always gone and I needed something to play. It was probably one of the best mistakes I have ever made.

The game got fairly average reviews when it came out, but it, to this day, is still one of the most original RPGs I have ever seen. It's just further proof that you don't have to base your game around the same fantasy world full of magic, dragons, and guys who look like chicks in order for it to be good. Sure, the game might be recognized a bit more if you did all of that, but it doesn't make the game any better. Not by a long shot.

Verdict: PAINFULLY Underrated.


And on another note, just because most of my underrated games are Nintendo-based, don't take it as me being a fanboy. It's just a fact that a lot of good games came out of the Gamecube and N64 that got overshadowed due to Sony taking over the industry. It's all coincidental.

Now, seriously, this next one is even more of a forgone conclusion than me choosing Halo as one of the most overrated shooters in history.


Ladies and fanboys, I give you what I think is quite possibly THE most overrated RPG I have ever played, and also quite possibly the most overrated game I have ever played, regardless of genre.


Overrated



Honorable Mentions: Kingdom Hearts, Star Ocean Series (Not picking on Square-Enix; they just have a lot of overrated RPGs.)


Since I sort of gave this one away a long time ago, I'm not even really going to force you all to act surprised over this.

Here it is, Final Fantasy VII, the game that is constantly hailed with being not only the best RPG ever, but also the best game ever. I, for one, call BULLSHIT.

Sure, Final Fantasy VII was a great game; it was damned good for its time and was one of the first real climactic RPGs. But was it -THAT- good? Hell no. RPGs are about story and characters; we can get to the battle system and crap later, but you mainly play it for the people in the game. FF7's characters were so cookie-cutter and generic that it still surprises me to this day how Cloud and Sephiroth are considered some of the best protagonists and antagonists in gaming history.

First we have Cloud, who has the personality of a paper plate, with all of the edge. I'm sorry, but if I am going to play a game that allows me to take control of the lead character, I want there to be some redeeming qualities. Cloud didn't have many. He was way too short on words, didn't really DO much, and overall was just a player avatar. I didn't pay for a player avatar.

Meanwhile, you have Sephiroth, who is quite possibly the most overrated and worst villain ever. The guy looks like he just got kicked out of a Drag Bar because he was offensive, and to top it all off, for someone who is supposedly so wicked evil, his claim to evil fame is that he swooped down from the ceiling and stabbed a distracted girl in the back?

What the fuck? Is that what passes for villainy now?

Sure, it was a plot twist that came out of NOWHERE, but...that was it? You killed off a character? Not trying to bash anyone who was deeply saddened by this scene, but come on. It's a Final Fantasy game; you know for a fact someone is going to die before the game finishes, and really, Aeris wasn't all that useful to begin with.

And again, Sephiroth was supposed to be a villain? Hell, let's look at some villains from other Final Fantasy games.

You have Golbez (sort of) in Final Fantasy IV. He killed Tellah, someone USEFUL.

You have Ex-Death/Exodus/whatever you want to call him in Final Fantasy V. He killed Galuf; not quite as useful, but useful nonetheless.

Then you have the granddaddy of them all, Kefka. Who did he kill? THE FUCKING WORLD. There was no pansy-ass, stabbing-through-the-spine, oh no. Kefka ENDED THE WORLD. You know it's bad when a CLOWN succeeds where you fail and does it in STYLE.

Now, now. I don't like Final Fantasy VII simply because of Cloud and Sephiroth. I was one of the unfortunate few who didn't play the game when it first came out; actually, I played FFVII almost two years after the fact. After hearing almost two years of critic reviews and fan reviews about how this game was single-handedly the best thing to ever come in CD form, I just HAD to play it.

The end result? "...That's it?"

Where was this giant RPG Tour de Force everyone else saw? I saw a fairly thin RPG with some pretty cliché and tame characters (the innocent girl, the brash dude, the engineer, the annoying team, etc.) and some really uninspired battles. Where was this game everyone else played? I let myself get caught up in the hype, and to an extent that is my fault, but it's more the fault of the people who overhyped this game up to mythical proportions.

But, overall, the biggest gripe is what FFVII has done to the REST of the series. After Square saw how fans reacted to FFVII, they thought they had something real on their hands. They thought this was the new way to sell their RPGs. What resulted were Final Fantasy 8, X, and X-2: games with fairly thin plots, the same characters just made over and slapped with a new weapon, and no more real villains, just cheap excuses for them. We have Squall who was almost exactly like Cloud, and then we have Tidus who was just their overactive bastard child. The games just became parodies of Final Fantasy VII. Square-Enix even said that with Final Fantasy XIII, they are trying to make the main character into the light of a female version of Cloud.

Why did they let a great yet mediocre game become the new quality standard?

And for those who have noticed, I left out Final Fantasy IX from that equation. I still think Final Fantasy IX was the only one of the 'new' batch that I felt at least TRIED to get back to the games' original roots and tried to do something different with the series instead of just spitting out Final Fantasy VII with a different title.

I don't hate this game; I hate how this game has now become what every RPG aspires to be instead of what every RPG aspires to surpass. Final Fantasy VII was a great game that was ruined by its fans and then the industry's laziness to surpass it. It's even more apparant with all of the cash-in spurring from FFVII now, proof that they weren't so good is showing that Final Fantasy VII isn't even a game anymore; it's become Square's license to print money. Why do something better when they know all they have to do is make a game like Final Fantasy VII (which was original, at the time) and then know it'll sell like hotcakes?

Like I said, I don't hate the game. I hate what the hype for this game has done to the genre. It was supposed to make a benchmark for future games to surpass (and it wasn't a hard one), but it just made the gold standard for what RPGs are supposed to be like. Thus, any RPG that isn't like it never gets its due respect.

Why?

Because it's no Final Fantasy VII.

Verdict: Overrated to the HIGHEST degree

Agree? Disagree? I know some of you disagree. You HAVE to. You know where to send the mail if you do.


READER MAAAAAIL!!

This week brought me two pieces of Reader Mail, so I'm going to be a good little author and answer them.

Our first mail is from first-timer Ryan Tryzbiak about his thoughts on Halo and Virtua Fighter 4:

I just read your column for the first time today, so forgive me if some of this is a bit dated. I have to agree with your pick of Halo as being overrated. I've only played it a few times with my friends, but I found it boring and simplistic. The only effective thing to do in multiplayer seemed to be run people over with vehicles.

My other issue is that you could shoot someone over and over in the body and they wouldn't die, then they would headshot you and you would die. I understand the need to make headshots powerful, but you should die if I'm pumping your chest full of lead. I would take my trusty Red Faction II on the PS2 and its multiplayer any day of the week, plus it has a pretty interesting single player story to boot.

I may have to disagree with your pick of Virtua Fighter 4 as overrated. I've only played Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution, but from what I hear it isn't that much different from the original (correct me if I'm wrong). VF4 doesn't seem very fluid at first, but I found that once I learned the game it was plenty fluid. Also, it doesn't see how you say that it could degenerate into button-mashing. A decent player could embarrass a button-masher with evades and counterattacks.

In Soul Calibur II, on the other hand, any scrub can pick up Talim, Raphael, or Kilik and instantly be super annoying. That's the beauty of VF's clunky controls. If you don't learn the button combos, you will just be flailing aimlessly. Keep up the good work.

Thanks for the mail, and I completely agree with Halo in that respect. While this story comes more from Halo 2 than Halo 1, it still fits. During multiplayer sessions I used to get painfully annoyed because I'd spendforever chasing someone down and emptying clip after clip of SMG (or other gun) ammo into their back or chest, but all it'd take was a single shot from a shotgun to take me down.

I get it, shotguns are strong, but some of the weapons are just flat-out broken.

As with Virtua Fighter 4, I guess I must've missed something in the controls because even before learning the buttons, the game just seemed to be too easy. I agree with your take on Soul Calibur II/III, but then again, I am one of the only people I know who plays almost solely with Astaroth, so button mashing is completely out of the question.

Our next mail is from Working Regular, Doug Bernard. He writes:

I'll be quick with the over and under's, but I will go on a rant about RPGs if you would be so kind as to indulge me. But first:

Underrated:
LOTR: The Third Age
Beyond WoW, this was the last true RPG I played. Simple gameplay, fast paced battle and a world I love. But I think because it seemed fairly easy, and because it was made by EA this game isn't really put in any good light, I'm sure you could find a better underrated RPG though

Overrated:
Final Fantasy 7
Please how could this game not be the most overrated RPG ever? If any gamebrought RPG to the masses here in the States it was this game and I thinkthat's what makes this overrated. This game was for many their first forayinto RPG's so it holds a special place for them and they have blinders onwhen they look back at it.

And now for my rant. I don't know when anyone else got into RPGs but for me it was back in the SNES days. In the span of a year or two I played through Final Fantasy 6 (released as part 3 here), Illusion of Gaya, TheSecret of Mana, Super Mario RPG, and the greatest game of all time Chrono Trigger. Frak anyone that says that its not. (Ogre's Note: It's not) So anyway the SNES was dieing and out comes the PS1. And what a year or two later Final Fantasy VII comes out forcing me to buy a goddamn Playstation. You heard the hype. This game was huge. It was bringing in new RPGplayers all over the place. It was grand, it was amazing, and it waseeehhh. Yeah I played through it. I was impressed with all the pretty graphics and the scale of the game but you know what, I just wanted to get through the damn thing. Maybe I was to nostalgic for my other games but they were all superior in my mind and I just couldn't understand what everyone was going crazy about with part 7 when part 6 was so much better.
After playing through 7 that pretty much started me on course not to pick up another RPG until I just had to try KoToR. I never played any other Final Fantasy, I tried Chrono Cross but it wasn't the same, I sadly never picked up a Dragon Warrior game, all of this stemming from the fact that I was do disappointed in 7, its sad I know, I pry missed out on a lot of good games. I have slowly gotten back into them over the past year or two. Thanks to games like Baiten Kaitos, Lost Kingdom, KoToR, Mario/Luigi games, WoW (which I could only play for one month as I was seeing how it started to consume me) and Oblivion I have slowly started to keep an eye out for new RPGs and at least be interested in what comes out. But in closing let me just ask one or two little favors to those who make these games that has bugged me since 7, SPEED UP THE GOD DAMN DIALOGUE AND STOP USING THOSE FRAKING DRAMATIC PAUSES IN THE CUTSCENES, these games take long enough I don't want to spend half my time waiting for some stupid little girl to go cry around a room before she stops and actually says something to me that truly means nothing, your wasting my freaking time.

So, I really think Doug Bernard takes up residence inside my skull because he seems to know exactly how I think, and that is a tad creepy. Anyway, I have noticed that fans that have played Final Fantasy pre-7 tend to look down on it. Why? Because they/we know how good Final Fantasy USED to be before Final Fantasy VII became the gold standard. Again, thanks for the mail, Doug-o.


The Under is Over


Well, folks, it was fun, but this brings an end to the spectacle that was Underrated/Overrated. What do I have in store for next week? Well, after seeing all the news surrounding the Halo and the DOA movie, I started thinking of video games I'd like to see translated into movies.

So, next week, you all will get the start of a three week issue entitled "Hollywood: The Game" in which I'm going to show you the top three games I'd like to see made into movies.

Until next time, I'm Jordan Williams, and this columns lack of a name is OVERRATED.