Author Topic: Your Favorite Bad Games  (Read 2943 times)

NotMiki

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Your Favorite Bad Games
« on: May 23, 2013, 03:00:14 AM »
This came up in chat in relation to a discussion about the worst RPGs ever.  So I put this to you, dear friends: what RPGs do you like but do not think are objectively good?  Why do you like them so much?  Why are they not very good?

To get the ball rolling:
SaGa Frontier 2.
Which is artsy and bold, and has a lot of pretty watercolor art, and good music, and tries for a compelling, epic storyline with all the grandiosity of a History Channel special on World War 2.
And kinda almost succeeds at that but the gameplay is an utter mess.  An utter mess.  Exhibit 1: skills are shared, so that when one person learns something, everyone can subsequently use it!  ...as long as that person ever unequips that skill.  because the trigger for it to become commonly usable is for it to be in the unequipped skills table, I guess.  Also, duels provide an interesting way of trying to spark techniques!  And lower-level techniques get higher priority than higher-level ones, so it pretty much doesn't work!
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VySaika

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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #1 on: May 23, 2013, 03:51:08 AM »
Oh man. I'll grant, a fair handful of games I really like are actually straight up bad.

Aiden Chronicles, for the N64. One of the few RPGs on the system....and is probably the worst one. Yes, including Quest64. It has some oddly fond memories for me, of a time when I got insomnia irregularly and at one point it became my go-to game for that. Also, Jenna liked it so she'd sit and watch me play it forever.
The Good: Character interactions are decent, there's....something resembling a story in there, and the setting has some neat ideas. Got me into the idea of truenames being a cool magical force, which I've adopted for RPs here and there, so it gets some credit there.
The Bad: Graphics. Sound. Gameplay. Being a massive glitchfest. Permadeath. The decent story being obscured by layers of what is this I don't even. It's a 2/10 game, and there's a reason for that.
I may add some more later, but this was the big one. I like this game! It's awful. -_-;
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SnowFire

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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #2 on: May 23, 2013, 04:10:46 AM »
Threadjack time.  The titles says "Favorite Bad Games" but you asked about RPGs.  I'm ignoring the request and going with bad games in general, because RPGs that I like I usually think of them as authentically good.  (Perhaps disliked by others, or lopsided in its virtue / flaws where I'm willing to focus on the good parts while ignoring the bad, but either way it's good to me.)  Instead, the realm of "objectively bad games that I find myself still playing anyway" are usually strategy games.  Playing Civ4 or Civ5 on the hard difficulty levels is, well, hard!  Sometimes I want a break and to just win, and win big.  I kinda liked knowing the perfect strategy in games like Civ2 or SMAC and rolling the AI on the toughest difficulty level.  But those don't count because those are excellent games.  And I played a bunch of MOO2 as well, and it's a severely flawed game (balance?  what's that?  how'd you like to do some more micromanagement?), but it's still a good game, so it doesn't count either.

The two strategy games I'd call bad that I've still sunk too much time into are:
A) Liberty or Death.  Old SNES Koei game.  Can only be played sanely either playing both sides and just role-playing around and attempting to have both sides use real strategies, or on an emulator as the British.  (Okay, or as the US on the console, sure.)  Why the difference?  Because the game is BRUTALLY rigged in favor of the colonists.  Massively.  Hugely.  They run around collecting huge taxes with their loyal militias guarding the entire map, while the British force runs on a shoestring and has all incompetent commanders.  And crucially, just way fewer of them.  And of course the Loyalists are Special, in the sense of they ride the special carriage to school and probably lose in fights with angry rabbits.  The one thing the British have going for them is a better starting navy, which is good, because the AI is totally incompetent about avoiding the giant naval cannons pointed at their armies, and will cheerfully stand under their withering fire for no gain and lose all their troops.  (But don't worry, Americans, with your excellent and efficient tax collection from a loving populace, you'll eventually be able afford a fine navy to tangle with the British.)
Anyway, you can be a genius in the actual battles, but the British are just massively screwed for a lot of reasons.  Let's start with the most obvious one: in order to win the game, they need to conquer the MAP.  Wipe the rebels out and clear them away.  The problem?  The map is pretty large, and you just don't have enough troops to do it with.  There are like 72 provinces, and the British get maybe 90 officers total over the game - and start out with far less than that.  And some of your officers, and especially the Loyalists, will likely get captured early.  And as you force the Americans back, there's no conception that losing territory means less manpower or anything - the only effect is less funds (but the Americans are awash in funds anyway, from their huge territorial spread thanks to the militia tax collectors).  So as the British spread their army more thinly and thinly and have just a tiny force at the front, the Americans are compressed and have hordes of troops where they want 'em.  Doesn't matter we're in frigging' Ft. Stanwix, the extreme boonies where like 3,000 people at most lived - it can, and has been, the US recruiting center for some giant push back, almost like Ogre Battle or something where the periphery of the empire somehow launches a massive renewed rebellion.  Yeah there are like 3,000 SOLDIERS coming at you from it.
Okay, so you're thinking that this is just a game about capturing officers then so as to reduce the number of regiments the Americans can throw at  you.   Yes and no.  The problem is there is no "execute" button; you must imprison captured officers.  And they never die of old age or prison riots or anything.  And there are PRISON BREAKS.  Yes, if you capture "too many" enemy officers, they start breaking out of prison and raising new armies to attack you with (shouldn't we just imprison them IN BRITAIN?!).  Now, for the Americans, this isn't a big deal - since they have far more officers total than the British, if they've gotten to the point that British officers are escaping, that means there are few British left to fight.  But for the British, it's a terrible problem, and means you should throw as many fish back as you can.  Militia officers for sure - you "just" occupy the entire state, and the militia can't respawn in hostile territory to them.  But you have to let the weaker officers go free too, so that you can be more assured that the badasses you capture stay in prison.  Note also that this means that, perversely, Hard mode can be easier if you want to actually win the game - the one way for officers to die is via chance in battle.  The odds of this go up, for both sides, on Normal or Hard mode. 
To go back to the stats issue, officer stats plays a pretty huge role in how well your army performs.  The Japanese seem convinced that every single Continental army officer was a super tactical badass, and the British were (almost) all morons.  Maaaaaybe, but if we're playing to stereotype, they at least could have preserved the "Americans are undisciplined yokels" and "the British troops are at least properly drilled."  But no!  Plenty of British officers have terrible Discipline ratings and have lazy soldiers who can't do anything, and plenty of US officers other than von Steuben or Washington have high Discipline which makes it easy for them to have crack troops if they bother to spend time drilling.  So perversely as the British you want to incent the attack-happy AI to attack you right away when they get new troops in, so you can kill 'em before the AI bothers to train 'em.
So.  Why do I like this game?  Because I want to play a simulation of the Revolutionary War, damnit.  And the game does give you wildly historically inaccurate battles where your 1750 troops somehow defeat an unrushing mass of like 3000 American troops in a mega-slaughter that ends with 70% casualties on both sides, casualties that get replenished nearly for free after a mere 2-3 months.  (Protip: The actual revolution's battles were much smaller, and had like 2-3% death rates if that.)  And the music is shockingly not bad, if too repetitive.

B) Imperialism II.  Build stuff which allows you to get more stuff which allows you to build an army which allows you to take Indian stuff which allows you to get even MORE stuff which enables you to get more ships & armies which enables you to kill even MORE Indians which enables you to get more stuff which enables you to attack harmless European minor countries you've been in a quiet no-shots-fired bizarro war with for 150 years, but now it's on, which enables you to eventually overthrow other major European powers and steal their colonies and steal their land and win.  The history is just so bad in this game.  And so is the economics - your fancy shmancy hard-working intelligentsia need HATS from the New World, specifically hats made from squirrels in the arctic or something, and if they don't get it they're not working, so having your colonies cut off means you spiral into despair and loss very fast.  The diplomacy system is awful - you can't coordinate with an ally at all, so if 2 allies fight the same enemy, the only way to stop the war is for one to break the alliance and sign a separate peace.  There's no way for both to come to peace at the same time (short of the unlikely event of the total defeat of one country).  The retreat system is awful and far too forgiving - if there's a territory nearby that's unoccupied, you can always instantly retreat for free.  It doesn't matter that your peasant levy is beign chased down by 5 regiments of horsemen, they GET AWAY and can "retreat to victory" and conquer into your homeland and other such nonsense.  This MIGHT be okay if maintaining a large army was easy, but armies & ships inexplicably consume huge amounts of food (yes, food is the limiting factor for your army usually by lategame...), so you're stuck seeing where the enemy attacked, reloading a turn ago, then teleporting there to actually defend it lest someone break in.
Meanwhile, it turns out the entire New World was explored & exploited by like 1620 or so.  Wut.  Also there's absolutely 0 point in being nice to the Indians; if you pay the Indians large amounts of money, and research technologies, and build special units, you can gain the right to "buy" their land and then develop it and then they'll "sell" the goods to you cheap.  Of course if you get into a war, the other European power will just murder the Indians and take the territory, rendering your investment worthless.  OR you can just murder the Indians yourself, get XP for your troops, maybe build up to a general, and rather than "buy" the goods at a discount, get them for the price of 0$.  And let you build things like forts in the province so it MIGHT hold against a European power (if you do the annoying reloading mentioned above.)
Lastly, the difficulty modes need work, like many old strategy games.  On the hardest difficulty, you probably lose early, but if you somehow survive, you win as usual becuase the amount of cheating doesn't scale, and a human in the lategame should win.  Sigh.
Why do I like Imp2?  I dunno.  See the first statement.  It IS fun to build out your transportation network, and watch as resources cycle into each other and turn into stuff that you use to get more resources, repeat.

DjinnAndTonic

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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #3 on: May 23, 2013, 02:20:53 PM »
Phantasy Star II: Dear god this game is so bad, why do I love it so much? I love the aesthetic and -feel- of the original Phantasy Star setting. From the stupid names to the eighties anime hair. Also, being a sci-fi JRPG is cool. I wish there were more of these. They keep letting me down though (XS3, Star Ocean, Phantasy Star's own MMO sequels... sigh).

Lufia 3: It's pretty bad. Not the worst in the series, but not good. I love its microscopic graphics, and the fact that it boasted the best in the Lufia series til the recent DS remake of 2. Mostly I think it's just pretty novel to have a nine-person standard party size.

Trinity Universe: Skinner box with Disgaea characters and pretty snappy writing. Of course I love this piece of trash.

Lunar Dragon Song: I found it enjoyable somehow. I really don't know how. Everything I remember about it objectively was terrible, but it was just what I needed when I played it, somehow.

Grandia 1: I don't think this is one is actually that bad. At its core, the battle system is solid (and the other games in the series reinforce this). But at the end of the day, the balance and the bad acting wear on my nerves in a way they never did when I first played it. Luckily, Nostalgia Goggles are in full-gear for Grandia. It's still one of my favorite games and even more favorite memories. When the emo ruled the landscape of RPGs thanks to Cloud and Squall, Grandia was breath of fresh air, and I still enjoy watching Justin's adventures as he continually travels East to Alent~

superaielman

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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #4 on: May 23, 2013, 02:26:59 PM »
I'll second Grandia. The exploration element of the plot worked well, and Justin was endearing enough. Guido still needs to die.

7th Saga- Everyone knows the story here.  Old school RPG that for some insane reason was made much harder for the US release. Even with all the game's problems (what plot?),  the core gameplay is neat.  The duels are a fun concept (If real bad in execution) and there are real differences between the various parties.
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Grefter

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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #5 on: May 23, 2013, 11:52:18 PM »
FF8 and Chrono Cross -  Both experimental wrecks that came out when Square could publish anything and make a profit.  They both have different attempts to streamline leveling systems that kind of fail but manage to be infinitely more interesting (partly due to how they fail) than the proceeding games they published.  Which is more intellectually stimulating, trying to fix FF8 or trying to fix FF9?  As much as we shit on them both narratively, the direct competition is honestly not that big a jump in cohesive storytelling.  They aren't FFT, but like they are not Baiten Kaitos or Parasite Eve 2.
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Pyro

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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #6 on: May 24, 2013, 12:07:30 AM »
Lufia 1. One of the first RPGs I ever played, and I've become familiar enough with it to like it even on replays. I like screwing with equipment options and seeing what the most efficient way to handle enemy squads is. The bad is... okay it's got no auto retargetting, the speed system is a fucking stupid mix of TB/CTB that doesn't give you any idea what resolves when,  the items do lots of (sometimes bad) things with no description whatsoever... And the dungeons drag on horribly. The plot such as it is gets hijacked by two of the most grating fetchquests in RPG history (gemstones and Metal hunt). It's easy to get lost... uh... yeah this game is bad.

Arc the Lad 2. I liked Elc and the Hunter system. But this game is kinda bad. A huge reason for this is the slow combat system. Enemy death animations take a while and in general the game just does not play nearly as fast as it should. This is agonizing if you score an MT KO on 3 or more foes.  Also the relatively cliche but decent story surrounding Elc/Shu/Lieza with a bit of worldbuilding and style gets hijacked by Arc and it rather goes downhill without a clear focus on who the actors are. The SRPG gameplay is not deep enough to justify the game, well, being an SRPG.

Lufia 3: The good: Large party size with an interesting combat mechanic to use it with. Challenging bosses to put the system to use.
The bad: Translation, characters, dungeons being randomized and silly, plot...
The AMAZING: ... FRUE DESTRUCTION!

Fenrir

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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #7 on: May 24, 2013, 12:16:31 AM »
There are a lot of games with fundamentally broken/strange gameplay but enough neat little stuff or a strong setting. FF8, Shadowrun (Genesis). Shin Megami Tensei I-II, Every single SaGa game but FFL3. Legend of Mana. Suikoden 4! Drakengard.

Ultimately I wouldn't necessarily call them bad though. If I want to play SaGa Frontier 2 and it provokes more positive emotions than a "good" RPG, that has to count for something. Ultimately I don't think -
...
Oh wait. Drakkhen. My favorite bad game. I kept playing just to see more weird stuff happening.

Anthony Edward Stark

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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #8 on: May 24, 2013, 02:50:33 AM »
Snow, have you played Empire: Total War? It should be up your alley, and I think it's like ten bucks on steam.

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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #9 on: May 24, 2013, 04:13:55 AM »
FF1 and SD3 are both games that aren't very good but I have played quite a lot of because short + class systems and those are fun to plumb.

For non-RPGs, uh... nothing recently, but when I was younger I spent quite a lot of time on random PC games which are probably quite bad like various pinball games and the likes, the worst I can recall was nothing more than a slot machine simulator without even much (any?) of a timing element. Obviously these types of games would never be "favourites" though since they were just pure time-wasters and 15 years later I can't even remember their names.

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SnowFire

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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #10 on: May 24, 2013, 04:20:45 AM »
Snow, have you played Empire: Total War? It should be up your alley, and I think it's like ten bucks on steam.

Played the tutorial, didn't get a chance to get into it more than that.  Seemed fun though, yes.  I enjoyed Rome: Total War.

Anthony Edward Stark

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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #11 on: May 24, 2013, 05:17:33 AM »
Snow, have you played Empire: Total War? It should be up your alley, and I think it's like ten bucks on steam.

Played the tutorial, didn't get a chance to get into it more than that.  Seemed fun though, yes.  I enjoyed Rome: Total War.

Wait for a Steam sale and you might be able to snag it for like 2.50. Fun, although not necessarily a game exclusively about the Revolution. I liked naval combat more than land combat myself, but that's partially because sailing ships are really cool.

Also I see NEB forgot to mention FF13

Dark Holy Elf

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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #12 on: May 24, 2013, 06:32:27 AM »
oh ho ho fuck off

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Grefter

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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #13 on: May 24, 2013, 07:25:14 AM »
No Fallout Tactics Rob?
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Anthony Edward Stark

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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #14 on: May 24, 2013, 07:40:34 AM »
I'm honestly not much of a fan of FOT. It focuses in on combat without doing much to improve it beyond the state it was in from 1/2, while simultaneously discarding the things that made Fallout appealing to me. You know, branching story and having non-combat methods to solve things. I think, generally, good bad games will be ones that are flawed in execution, like SnowFire's example of victory or death. FOT's problems were mostly problems of core concept, which means that it is pretty unsalvageable.

I suppose along that line, maybe KotOR2 as i played it at launch would fall under this aegis? It's got great concepts and characterization marred by some of the worst execution ever, just incredibly buggy and huge areas of blatantly cut content that was like a hole in a wall, and you kept wondering why they didn't at least throw a fucking blanket over it.

NotMiki

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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #15 on: May 27, 2013, 05:03:34 AM »
SaGa Frotier 2 is maybe too good for this list, so let me add...Baroque.  Which is perhaps close to the platonic ideal of unplayable, arty rpgs.  You keep running the same dungeon over and over.  Every time you start again you are level one, seemingly no matter what you do.  It is not clear, to start with, whether you keep replaying the same period of time over and over, or whether time progresses at all between your runs, or whether you are even the same person each time or what.  Combat...is awful and clunky and the game's mechanics are intentionally (I assume) obscured so you don't really know how to do even basic things.  And you just keep doing the same dungeon over and over, with more or less the same results, wondering what you are supposed to do to make the game progress.  And it's all worth it, maybe, because every time you get to the bottom level of the dungeon, as you approach your goal, you hear that same refrain, "don't go crazy don't go crazy don't go crazy don't go crazy don't go crazy don't go crazy don't go crazy don't go crazy don't go crazy don't go crazy don't go crazy don't go crazy don't go crazy don't go crazy don't go crazy don't go crazy don't go crazy don't go crazy don't go crazy don't go crazy don't go crazy don't go crazy don't go crazy don't go crazy don't go crazy."  They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.  It's a silly definition of insanity, but it happens to be a perfect definition of Baroque.
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SnowFire

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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #16 on: May 27, 2013, 07:17:28 AM »
SnowFire reads http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_(video_game), sees plot section

what is this i don't even

Fenrir

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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #17 on: May 27, 2013, 10:34:37 AM »
I love Baroque! (And wouldn't recommend it)
I have a save with the entire library filled. Seriously. (This is ~300-400 Hours)

Don't forget that the only mission you're given is shooting the thing at the last level of the dungeon. And whether you shoot it or not, the game restarts.
All the NPCs are insane, including a guy who obsesses about boxes. (IIRC his daughter's remains are in one of the boxes he lost)
In the dungeon you eat bones and hearts instead of food to survive.
It's not that arty though, it's way too anime for it. The way the plot is handled is pretty much Dark Souls: The anime: The roguelike: More obscure edition. (in a neat apocalyptic industrial setting)

The non story parts aren't really that complicated for a roguelike. You just use the regular attack most of the time, and can lock on to strafe around them. There are about 10 categories of items (weapons, armors, hearts, etc) and most items in each category functions -fairly- similarly.
Eat stuff to not die, but watch out for unidentified items (like explosion bones) Throw stuff you don't need at enemies. Equip stuff like this asbestos vest. (! Nice) Open a box for a surprise. The parasites you eat (?) are a little more complicated but they only are introduced in the later floors.
Have you tried fighting in first person? Somehow the game changes radically between third and first person mode. You can attack while moving in first person, but not in third. First person fighting is pretty rad, and much meatier than something like Elder Scrolls. Third person immensely sucks.

There's actually a tangible sense of progression, as you keep getting stronger as you slowly fill the item / baroque / title list, but you do repeat the same thing over and over.

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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #18 on: May 27, 2013, 03:30:14 PM »
Baiten Kaitos fits into this category for me. The plot tries to do some different things but it just ends up a mess but the horrific voice acting makes it an entertaining mess like watching The Room or any other so bad it's funny movie.
The soundtrack is typical Sakuraba junk but every so often you get something like this song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z38dY57VEZQ&list=PL68E09FBCFDD19453
which just reinforces the hilarious badness of the game.

I found the main character fairly irritating, but some of the supporting cast was pretty funny like Lyude who had perhaps the worst voice acting in the game and was a stuffy prince type, but had special moves that were completely contrary to his character and involved things like just running up and beating the enemy repeatedly with his gun.

The combat started slowly, but got more interesting as the game progressed and around the end of the game it's actually fairly engaging and fast paced. The best part of the game however was around the middle when you fight the big evil king you had been warring with for the majority of the game. He goes through the typical evil transformation to a more powerful form and his design is spectacularly awful. My sister and I had to pause the game for like 5 minutes because we were laughing so hard at his design. 

superaielman

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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #19 on: May 27, 2013, 06:18:07 PM »
Miki: for what it's worth, I would definitely lump Saga Frontier 2 in this category.  It's hard to say that the game is more than some interesting concepts, considering how poor the gameplay and story execution is.
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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #20 on: May 27, 2013, 10:01:41 PM »
For RPGs, Might and Magic 2. Plot barely exists, characters don't at all, and I shudder at the thought of going into the game without the hintbook or online equivalent. Also, you start with terrible weapons/spells and no armor or money, so the beginning is unreasonably unfun. Did I mention that many monster types don't drop any treasure? Because that is also true. But all that said, this is a game where you can find treasure like a Ray Gun +11, challenge the optional Cat From Hell (and its support, 200+ Cat Corpses, but one good true-MT spell will wipe those out... once it finishes resolving) and where the actual final challenge in the game is a timed cryptogram.

For non-RPGs, Seek and Destroy. It's like some tank fanatic won the lottery and decided to make the game he'd always dreamed of. There's barely enough plot to laugh at and I would describe the gameplay as cumbersome, but this is still a game where you can stick angel wings and a giant laser on your Maus and fly around blasting lesser vehicles.

Anthony Edward Stark

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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #21 on: May 28, 2013, 02:21:07 AM »
To its credit, BK did have one really clever twist that used what we all thought was nothing more than a shitty way to directly address the player when actually it was a way to buffer us from things that would have given it away. Didn't like the rest of it but that was legitimately clever.

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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #22 on: July 13, 2013, 12:16:46 AM »
Come on guys. No one has mentioned Beyond the Beyond yet?

Dude. When I found out who the black knight really was!

Mind.

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DjinnAndTonic

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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #23 on: July 17, 2013, 06:58:30 PM »
My favorite part of Beyond the Beyond was the 20-hour subquest to prove Samson's identify by -Lifting a Pillar-. Do you even lift, indeed.

superaielman

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Re: Your Favorite Bad Games
« Reply #24 on: September 09, 2013, 02:44:07 PM »
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Lufia 3: It's pretty bad. Not the worst in the series, but not good. I love its microscopic graphics, and the fact that it boasted the best in the Lufia series til the recent DS remake of 2. Mostly I think it's just pretty novel to have a nine-person standard party size.

Mmm, I think I disagree with the bad label here. Lufia 3 tries a bunch of innovative things on the gameplay front and also attempts to give the game some degree of challenge. It's very ambitious for any title, let alone a GBC game.  It largely succeeds at having a unique feel, even with the hideous GBC level polish.

 The plot/writing.... yeah that's campy bad, no defending that.
"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself"- Count Aral Vorkosigan, A Civil Campaign
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<Meeple> knownig Square-enix, they'll just give us a 2nd Kain
<Ciato> he would be so kawaii as a chibi...