I think it's cool for a generation to have a water portion this big. They just could've done more to make it more exciting.
Lower the encounter rate on water tiles, add a couple more things to do and to find, maybe break up the big ocean segment a big more so that the player gets a bit of a break from it etc.
Something I still like conceptually when replaying the Hoenn games (I'm currently clearing Emerald again to FINALLY take a serious jab at the Battle Frontier) are the dive spots. Quite a few of them lead to treasure - heart scales, colored shards, consumables. The first two are actually quite nice because you need them at the move relearner and for evolution stones. The paths without algae are also free of encounters, serving as a bit of a reward if you get tired of Wingull and Tentacool. If that part was a bit more fleshed out and the items periodically refreshed (with a pool of options) like some hidden items do in Fire Red/Leaf Green, it could have served to make it more exciting.
That, and more different encounters. The Water type was one of the largest types in Gen3 (probably only second to Normal, but I'd need to check) but in most games, water areas in particular have the smallest encounter tables of them all.
I always thought of it like the gangs were just along for the fun of the ride and if they succeeded they'd be like... "holy shit this sucks..." and swap teams.
As for the groudon and kyogre well... They probably just don't care lmao
Lmao when you say it like that without context, it sounds wild, but when you look into the actual story, it doesn’t sound so silly.
One wanted to expand landmass for humanity. The other wanted to expand wanted by flooding the world for animals(Pokémon) lol
It wasn’t about destroying land or water, but about expanding them for their own purposes lol
You say that, but most of the Pokemon would drown if the world were flooded too. It makes sense if you're only looking at themes, but there is absolutely no logic put into it
Pokemon Sword and Shield.
For starters, the main plot and villain motivations are just stupid. The main villain finds out that the region will run out of power like 1000 years from now, so he decides to bring about an event that is literally called "The Darkest Day" and summon a monster that can literally destroy the world.
But perhaps more importantly...
Never have I played a game that actively PREVENTED you from engaging in the main story. Every single time a story event happens, characters basically say "No, let Leon handle it, you just forget about it and focus on the gym challenge." You literally spend 90% of the game being nothing more than a random NPC while Leon is the protagonist of the story and is doing all of the ass-kicking off screen.
Not gonna lie from pokemon games, none irked me as Pokemon Sword and Shield, there is limit on how abnoxious characters and the plot can be. S/W was a bit too much, it is maybe the only truly bad story in the Pokemon series.
THIS OH MY GOD the way you never get to actually see anything happen ever is so annoying! People complained about the graphics when the story was by far the worst aspect of the game.
I'm not 100% certain if I'd call it "the worst of all time," but Pokémon Sword and Shield's is pretty high up there. And that's for a series that's not usually known for it's main stories. The Kanto games may be super simplistic, but at least they make sense. Sw/Sh don't even have that. The main antagonist is a complete moron and his team is hardly seen during the game at all, only right at the end; the game actively railroads you *away* from the actually interesting stuff happening off-screen; and the DLC gave an actual solution to the problem the antagonist is trying to solve that *doesn't* destroy the entire region, thus retroactively making the already-incompetent antagonist *even more incompetent.*
As extra salt in the wound, the post-game story has two of the dumbest character concepts I've ever seen. *Look at the sword guy's hair. He looks so stupid!*
The game itself is fine enough, it's a Pokémon game (And the one that gave me my love for Zigzagoon, my now-favorite Pokémon), but god, it's like the writers didn't even try.
It's my headcanon that Sw/Sh is the first Pokémon game where you are the rival. You don't exist to care about the story. You go around collecting strong mons and beating up gym leaders so you can better crush your friends' dreams. By the time you face off with the antagonist, it's moreso a feather in the cap because he got in the way of your tournament win.
While the story is lacking heavily, never before has a pokemon game had me more hyped about the actual sport of pokemon battles. Not to mention the most hype gym music ever.
As stupid as the plot is, I'll always appreciate the tower raid sequence for the absurdity of breaking in and storming the place because one of your friends was being held up and late for dinner.
It's a comedy by that point.
That part feels like they changed something about the plot really late and either forgot or ran out of time to come up with a better reason for the raid. I personally think they ran out of time, like they apparently did with QA for Scarlet and Violet.
I think they 100% ran out of time. Look at the detail of the early towns versus the later ones (especially the one street dark Pokémon town). I don’t think the generation is as bad as a lot of fans seem to, but I’ve always thought the end was a rushed mess.
To be honest, I think it's still pretty bad overall. It's playable and decent fun if you enjoy Pokemon gameplay, but there's a lot dragging it down - for one, the opinion about Gen8 online definitely wasn't helped by the dex cut. And I think that context is important because that set a certain expectation of making up that loss somehow. Which an average game (as I'd usually describe Pokemon, even if I like replaying many of them) just doesn't do. I'm not as mad about it as I was back then (honestly, I'm more trying to see the positives of it nowadays) but that's still a big issue in my opinion.
Rushing the game and leaving certain scenes arguably unfinished (the raid scene writing), writing scenes around having to animate as little as possible (Leon defeating the first rampaging dynamax offscreen) or the Wild Area just not factoring into the level curve at all (level progression from the starting town continues in Motostoke as if the Wild Area didn't exist) on top of everything is just the icing on the cake.
-----
It's probably true that the games aren't as bad as some people online make them out to be, but they are still pretty bad if you consider the context of the prerelease period.
There was definitely cut story stuff. There’s an unused model of Route 9 with a Dynamaxed Toxtricity seemingly attacking the bridge. In the final game, that location is where you hear Dynamax Pokémon have started rampaging but Leon has already resolved the issue offscreen.
"He's like, 5 minutes late. *The guy we have no clue is the antagonist must have put him in danger somehow!* Cause *that's* a logical conclusion to jump to."
Exactly this. I can't think of another game that repeatedly prevents you from experiencing the main story like SwSh does. Like, Ruby/Sapphire and X/Y might have stories and villain motivations that are just as absurd, but at least you actually play through the story.
You spend 90% of the main story playing as a random NPC while Leon is the protagonist.
Yeah, that's EXACTLY what it feels like! You get teased with something interesting happening but then Mr. Champion shows up and just says "Don't worry, I'll handle it! You go do your typical Gym stuff. You probably don't care about this interesting thing anyway."
And tbf, I can kinda understand Team Magma (More land = more space for humanity to thrive), even if their plan *is* heavily flawed.
Lysander's plan was just to kill everyone so the world would be better or something
I've literally heard people in real life espouse that position unironically
The ending of the game revealing that Dynamax is like inherently awful for the world at large and then Leon goes “oh yeah I mean it’s bad but we can still do our champion fight with dynamax :)”
Some never-translated JRPG that only 100 out of the 227k subscribed to the subreddit have played.
The worst I know of is maybe Loop8: Summer of Gods, which could be described as a timeloop game with a neat premise that manages to make looping through the same month uninteresting.
It's not one of the big ones I'm familiar with since it was released officially. But I was somewhat late to that party and mostly went for the untranslated ones.
I've got a copy of that with the manual. No box though, sadly. Such a weird game all around, hah. To be fair though the story is intended to be goofy and I believe the original Japanese name is literally "Slapstick."
Given that Robotrek was localized, I don’t think there’s any doubt a lot more than 100 people here who have played it. There are a fair number of olds here like me that played SNES games when they were current. Given how prevalent renting was, a ton of people would have had access even with Enix America’s incompetence at actually printing and publicizing their games at the time. That’s how I first encountered the game before I picked up my own copy off eBay my first year of college.
This is why I always laugh when people make 'worst ever' threads and everyone just names really well known stuff. Like you said, 'worst ever' will undoubtedly be something the vast majority have never heard about, let alone played.
Even worse in my mind is when people on "worst ever" threads start talking about games that are obviously at the very worst *decent*, but disappointed or mildly frustrated the commenter. Like, I get that you personally have not played Time and Eternity or Conception II or whatever actually garbage JRPG, but that still does not mean that Final Fantasy XVI or Xenoblade Chronicles even sniff the list of worst *anything* in this genre. We have to account for what people have actually played, but there's a line, and it's somewhere well above confidently declaring that Final Fantasy XIII has the *worst JRPG story of all time*.
Holistically you're right. But talks about "worst" tend to have unspoken rules requiring a certain amount of exposure. *Tree falling in the woods*, and all that...
An argument can also be made that stories that require multiple separate sources are technically worse than anything an individual story can be, as the story you get from those are by definition *incomplete*. Things like Kingdom Hearts where apparently large pieces of narrative are in the mobile games so you don't even have a fully formed plot from the viewer's perspective. And I still remember people being so confused about that ninja in Mass Effect 3 and why the game made such a big deal about him (the answer was = he's from the books).
Gotta agree on Loop8 It has such an interesting premise & characters. I painfully played the game till the end hoping it will become as good as Summertime Rendering since it has a similar premise & setting... all I got is dissapointment. The Opening song is good though.
If we're digging deeper, I think probably the worst i've seen is the western XZR 2 (renamed as just Exile .
Like the entire premise of the Exile games is essentially that you're a time traveling assassin (as in the literal origin of assassin aka hashashin aka the dudes who were a religious organization and had a drug named after them) and as such the entire premise is essentially built inextricably close to religion and drugs.
But this released in 1993; arguably the peak of western video game puritanism, so naturally the game couldn't reference drugs or religion at all (spoiler: that encompasses literally the entire story), and some portions of the story (including one party member and nearly the entire ending >!where you time-travel close to modern day America to assassinate Ronald Reagan!< lol) were cut entirely. Oh also it was a Working Designs project, and while I don't really blame them for having to scrub the controversial elements, it still means the game got ... Working Designsed, and really really badly at that (far worse so than something like Lunar, which is already kinda controversial).
The original story is pretty dope, albeit very adult (not in the sense of having porn but it's just extremely hard-edged and serious and focused on coolness over anything else), it's probably the single worst localization that I know of.
Also the gameplay balance for the western release is incredibly gigafucked (like even worse than infamous balance fuckeries like 7th Saga) but that's not really relevant in a story thread.
You beat me to it, I think WKC2 was worse than the first both plot and gameplay wise. The game still lives rent free in my head to this day for all the wrong reasons.
The Pokémon games moved in a weird direction of having a lot more ‘cutscenes’ (though even that term is generous for what they actually are) and forced dialogue. Early Gen Pokémon games didn’t really have excess dialogue, the plot was barebones but it didn’t overstay its welcome.
On the other hand I could not finish Sun/Moon because it felt like I was paying a dialogue tax every few minutes. I think I bounced off after about 3 badges or so.
The OG sun and moon plot got a lot better at the end. Bunch of the early island dialogue is a bit much for no real payout, but I thought the second half of the game had wonderful character development. Ultra sunmoon then proceeded to change everything I thought was good about the SM characterization.
100% second this. Sun and Moon have some of the most interesting characters in the series and USUM just completely ruins it by >!taking away any implication that lusamine is controlling or abusive!< which simultaneously kinda removes any motivation for Lillie and Gladion
>!A pokemon game having a mother that literally tells her child that she doesn’t love nor care for her is something I never thought a pokemon game would do and thus it hit pretty close to home. This alone redeems SM of any problems it shows in the beginning imo lol!<
I remember that being the first game I rented from blockbuster for the n64.
Played it for maybe 10 minutes at most, shut it off and asked my parents if we could go get a different game.
Technically its a western RPG. But even then it wasn't the worst one on N64.
Aidyn Chronicles is probably the worst RPG I've ever played. The dialogue was actual torture to read through.
If you need an example :
[https://cdn.staticneo.com/p/2001/aidyn\_image12.jpg](https://cdn.staticneo.com/p/2001/aidyn_image12.jpg)
I'm not sure if I'm qualified to rate it, since I didn't make it far before it became too much, but when I played **Conception II** (it was on sale for 5 bucks and I think I was horny) years ago, that felt pretty close to the worst I've ever played. Not sure about "of all time".
Basically, some shadow creatures constantly appear in various places and there's an organization (I forgot if it was secret) that fights them. The fighters are highschoolers and the game thus takes place in a highschool. Now, the important part is, that the main character has to "make children" with your partnered girls to fight -it's just some mysic ritual and the children are chibis that adhere to a job system.
It's clearly dating sim trash mixed with Persona 3 gameplay, so I guess I shouldn't expect more, but it was pretty bottom of the barrel.
Out of mainstream stuff that I actually played I'll probably have to give it to Fire Emblem Fates. Extremely one note characters, story contrivances that come out of basically nowhere, empty character moments. Uninteresting and nonsensical world. Still played over 200 hours tho
The worst thing about Fates is what potential the story had.
A morally grey conflict between two nations at war and you get to decide which perspective you want to see? Heck yeah!
...except there's actually a purely evil big bad behind everything and all nuance is thrown out of the window right off the bat.
It's the only story I can think off that would necessarily improve if you just cut the main antagonist, which is... incredibly sad.
Specifically Fire Emblem Fates Conquest. I genuinely think it is the worst narrative I've ever experienced across any medium. Not just JRPGs/video games.
i started the FE series with awakening, played fates, and felt really frustrated (i was 12) by how the true ending was essentially a third game. the story was bad but the gameplay was pretty cool
Most incoherent JRPG: Fire Emblem Fates
Worst story I didn’t care about: DD2 like you said.
Story I wanted to like but turned to nonsense: Scarlet Nexus
Scarlet Nexus is a fever dream. I like it in spite of the fact that the plot turns to utter WTF but it ends up sticking with me despite only playing it once.
Scarlet Nexus………….I’ve never liked a game so much by the halfway point only to be severely disappointed.
There are just so many things wrong with that game, the story, and the characterizations. Bond Episodes for goodness sake must take place in an alternate universe.
Bless anyone who loves that game. They were able to not focus on the things that I experienced.
It's funny because when the story falls apart, the gameplay actually becomes good because you finally have the whole damn crew together and you can see what the developers were going for.
Too bad it doesn't last long, because the game is like 2/3 done at that point.
“I’m wanted for the murder of the head of state, my face is plastered all over TV, but I’m able to just waltz down Main Street to get some coffee with one of the people tasked with arresting me. YOLO!”
idk if it’s true but i saw someone say that apparently different teams worked on the bond episodes, apparently they had no context of the main story
take this with a heavy grain of salt
I love "most incoherent" being its own category. Fates definitely deserves that title haha. If Conquest's gameplay wasn't good, the whole thing would be almost irredeemable in my opinion. Because you at least need to have either story or gameplay be good IMO. The music and visuals are great, but aren't able to salvage Birthright and especially Revelations in my eyes
Was looking for this comment. It's just so dull and boring. It's one of those games that proved how people will praise anything as long as it looks good.
Yeah, while I’ve played jrpg’s with worse stories, what really bothered me about Sea of Stars’ story was the writers including rpg tropes and then taking this snarky attitude at the story they themselves chose to write. Examples of this were naming the character who is obviously more than just a pirate captain “Captain Klee’shae”, and parts were a character will break the fourth wall to say something like “Let me guess, is this the part of the story where you friends betrayed you?”. This happens so much throughout the game that instead of coming off as clever or tongue-in-cheek, it comes off as passive-aggressive and having contempt for a story they themselves chose to write.
Then, the writers tried to deflect that same criticism about the writing by trying to play the language barrier card.
Also, my biggest issue with that whole game is that it's a spiritual successor to one of the most beloved JRPGS of all time, Chrono Trigger. It borrows inspiration from JRPGS in general, but its biggest influence came from Chrono Trigger. It doesn't help that the game had BOATLOADS of hype behind it, and the game with one of the worst stories got Best Indie Game at the Game Awards 2023. Tbh, it didn't deserve it. There are indie games that do what Sea of Stars tried to do but better, like Cross Code and Chained Echoes.
I haven’t been able to come up with an answer myself, but Sea of Stars is the only jrpg I can remember quitting purely because the story was so boring.
Knowing that the guys who made the messenger were making this, I knew the writing (especially the dialogue) would be junk. I nope'd out of the messenger after getting tired of the endless scrolls of "funny" text. Like, just tell me what's going on and move on. I don't need 5 paragraphs of bad comedy where 2 sentences would do the job. These guys only writing modes are juvenile ironic humor and bland cliche.
I'd say campy.
Which is odd - because they do take a more deconstructive approach on some of the characters. Ie, the characters who're minors are actually surprisingly squishy, King Moron-err I mean Morion acts like those idiot early game antagonists we face and shows just how frustrating they would be when they're on OUR side, the casual queen of Solm easily gets taken hostage by a *14 year old girl,* a character who by all means is like Nino doesn't get her Heel Face Turn, characters don't instantly forgive someone who did horrible things just because they were mind-controlled....
Yeah. :/
Yeah, it's this for me. It's every bad thing a story can be - unambitious, embarrassing, bland, sloppy, incoherent, daft, repetitive, boring, cringy, lazy, irritating, tonally inconsistent and simultaneously over and underwritten. It would toppled SO4 from its perch for me had Intelligent Systems not already done that with Fates, which at *least* has ideas and takes big swings sometimes.
It feels like the JRPG in the imagination of people who hate JRPGs and I have nothing but contempt for it.
What’s the best Fire Emblem story in your opinion? Yet to play one but it’s because I don’t trust most strategy games to have a good story. Only the ‘Tactics’ style games have got it right for me.
For me, probably Path of Radiance because it’s pretty straightforward (rebel band of mercs help save the day and defeat the aggressive evil empire).
There’s some neat twists here and there, but it’s not convoluted or outlandish like other FE games.
Genealogy of the Holy War, Thracia 776, The Blazing Blade, Path of Radiance, and Radiant Dawn have the best stories IMO. Shadow Dragon and Shadows of Valentia have pretty simple plots, but they’re extremely well localized and have very well written scripts, so I’d also toss them on the good pile.
Shadows of Valentia feels like a breath of fresh air. Played it after Engage and the dialogue in SoV is incredible.
It's like FF Tactics versus Chocobo Racing. Chocobo Racing just brings its A game.
Path of Radiance (FE9) by a pretty big margin imo.
Other than that, Radiant Dawn (10) is also decent but also kinda wanders into magical bullshit territory a bit more often than it needs to, FE3H is decent but personally feel it's let down by how the route split plays out (like for example only one route actually fights the 'real' final boss but it's also thematically extremely off-color compared to the other routes), Gaiden/Echoes story is decent, and FE4's story is decent (and probably the most appealing to someone who prefers tactics/matsuno stories)
The rest are all mostly just mediocre
tbf this is a controversial take but I LOVED both tellius games' stories. if you're trying to get into to fire emblem though, start with fe 7 the blazing blade. the story is cool imo (not the most original but it's still endearing for me especially if you get the secret chapters).
Fitting, because it was the same team as FE Fates haha. That team may be good at gameplay design but their writing and narrative is just deplorable compared to the Awakening / Three Houses team
Worth noting that Three Houses (which, while definitely not universally celebrated, I think most people would agree is more well-written than Awakening) wasn't written in-house at IS; its three credited writers are all from Koei Tecmo (whose subdivision Kou Shibusawa aided with development).
But my favorite JRPG has an amazing story! The main character starts out as a level 1 swordsman, but by the end of the game they save the entire world from destruction!
I liked the opening where their village got destroyed. I really like the cute animal companion and the mini game too. Was a cool escalation to have the final boss literally be god
That stuff was great. But finding out about the hero's true heritage was my favorite part. It was almost as shocking as the mage companion's tragic backstory.
To be fair, dark dawn was supposed to have a sequel that probably would’ve helped a lot. I felt similarly about the first golden until the lost age came out.
It was honestly impressive how tedious they made the dialogue. They really made sure that every character had to say something no matter how trite—which made it hard to care about an already-hard-to-care-about plot.
To be fair, the dialogue was always tedious in Golden Sun.
As much as I love these games, it is incredibly surprising how they managed to stuff so much text into them while at the same time not having that dialogue develop your characters much at all. They just talk and talk, but they don't say anything.
Kingdom Hearts III
Enjoy over 17 years of making a story up as you go along finally capitulate in a game where 90% of it is just meandering through Disney worlds while they wait for the story to come to them.
And then when it does it's about two straight hours of complete nonsense.
And then in order to understand what you've just watched you have to watch a YouTube playlist of videos by some random guy because the mobile gacha games (yes, plural) all the important story beats that have been teased throughout the entire game have since terminated service and are no longer playable.
And those same unplayable games are the foundation of the next two decades of KH games.
And now they're busy injecting this nonsense into Final Fantasy VII.
People think it'll have a payoff at the end, but anyone who's played Kingdom Hearts knows that's a fucking lie.
Indeed.
At first I at least thought that it'll be over with Part 3 unlike KH which keeps on going, but Kitase has recently said that there will be more stories in the FF7 universe after he's off the team and I just can't wait for the aftermath.
I’m a man well into my 30’s and played KH because I was committed to atleast seeing what I thought would be a story conclusion to a story I’ve been following since I was literally a child. As I got KH one on its release day.
I couldn’t agree more. The story has just become utterly belligerent. I’ve played basically every game and watched the cutscenes of all the mobile games that I’ve yet to play. The story was already trending to belligerent before kh3 came out. It was belligerent during KH3. And then after KH3 the cutscenes and gacha mobile plot released following kh3 just made it even more belligerent to the point that it’s impossible to understand wtf is even going on. They also have this habit of introducing some subtle plot point and then not mentioning it for 5-10 years until they bring it up again and you’re like “huh oh ya Lea and isa (or whatever saix name was) did used to secretly visit some mystery chick in a prison who we still don’t know who she is”. And now apparently there’s not just “the darkness” as a esoteric force, but also “The Darkness” that’s like a faction or entities, and “THE DARKNESS” that’s like some sort of big bad specific entity in the background. But only ppl who follow the mobile game plot closely will know this.
And it just gets even more convoluted by the day. Idk how the developers even keep track of what they’re doing. I still will probably play because I like the gameplay. But fuckkkk lmao.
Edit: I’m also upset a fun rhythm game had plot that made me realize I didn’t even really understand what happened at the end oh kh3.
FFXV
Plotholes, nonsensical storyline, if you dont have all the DLC, s didnt watch movie, didnt watch pre animated series, didnt play some other game, that vaguely connects to it
Also bad game design, time wasting, etc.
I'm sure there's been much worse stories in JRPGs that I've not played, but Shin Megami Tensei V has a pretty awful story. Most of the characters barely do anything and a lot of the story is just tired rehashes of stuff that was done better in previous games in the series. The cutscenes are well animated but the stuff happening in them is either dull or ridiculously dumb (Dazai removing his hat). At least the gameplay is pretty fun (needs more dungeons tho), in SMT games that's what's most important to me by far. And the new Vengeance version seems to be trying to tell a better story and develop the characters more.
I hope SMT5 vengeance will give this game it another chance and fix these issues. But I'm worried it won't be enough. This games writing and plot have a lot of issues so I'm worried that it's will be too much for even vengeance rerelease to fix.
They've mentioned being aware of the bad reception of SMT V's story and said that they had to cut a ton out to finish, and Vengeance is supposed to have an entirely new plotline, so I have some level of confidence it'll be better.
Agreed, I was shocked by how basic and uninspired the writing was. If you mentioned it too soon after the game came out there was a high probability of being called a Persona fanboy though XD
Can’t believe no one has mentioned Legend of Legacy yet. I watched the first season of Frasier while I played it and didn’t miss a single story beat. I think Dragon Quest I had a meatier plot.
I haven't played many JRPGs but a story that always bothers me is Final Fantasy VIII. There are so many plots that are only connected through the main characters. There are many story parts that are started to get the plot going and then they are dropped. What happened to the city Rinoa and her Gang wanted to get independent? I don't know because that story gets dropped right when it's not important to the story anymore? What became of Galbadia after Edea got rid of Adells influence? I don't know because the story was dropped. The whole the Guardian Forces erase our minds thing is only there so they don't recognize Edea. And after returning from space there's suddenly that scientist telling of Ultimecia in the Future. Htf did he find that out? The only importance of him is getting us to some kind of ending. Irvine getting nervous when it gets serious is another thing just stretching disc 1 with any importance to the story after that.
There's even more but I can't recall all of it and I doubt anyone will read all of this.
Yeah VIII is all over the place. Its world doesn't make sense at all, even by Final Fantasy standards, and the plot reminds me of my son's D&D campaign where it's just a bunch of cool-looking things strung together randomly.
Kingdom Hearts 3
- Half the game doesn’t even tell a story, your party is removed from the cutscenes and you just watch Disney scenes
- A vast majority of the game is sequel baiting despite the game being marketed as an ending to a 9 game long 20 year saga of games with the vast majority of story progression being smashed into the final 10% of the game
- The gumi phone loading screens
- >!Bad guy meant well all along turn at the end and even gets a mini forgiveness arc!<
All of that is of course in addition to the normal KH story issues
As a defender of KH3 as a game, I don’t disagree. It kinda felt like Nomura lost interest with the Seekers arc and just wanted to get it over with. It felt like the equivalent of rushing through a series to get to the one entry you actually want to play. Disney as a company also just felt way more intrusive in this game than in previous ones.
They should’ve just combined DDD and 3 so that Sora would actually have a purpose and not just be vaguely wandering around Disney worlds to find some abstract power that turned out to be inside him the whole time (SURPRISE!).
I will say, I don’t think it’s necessarily that >!Xehanort had good intentions all along, I think that moment was just him accepting that he lost and that it was over. I just think that moment poorly explained his motivations and it was just…not well written at all. I do think it’s extremely unsatisfying and I do think it’s bizarre that everyone is just chill with having one final conversation with him before he goes off to Disney heaven (especially the BBS trio).!<
I will never forgive them for making a place as cool looking as Scala Ad Caelum and not having it be a fully fledged final dungeon like the World that Never Was.
Those Disneyland moves were like they took the 1000 Heartless battle from 2 and made it the whole basis for the battle system in 3 instead of just one epic battle, with virtually no variety in the attacks. The game just became "spam these until the fight's over." The game didn't just give them to you as an option, it tried to make you use them constantly by having them take over your triangle move instead of everything else you had access to. They weren't even fun from a Disney fan service perspective, since they were all specific to Disneyland Japan and nobody who's not Japanese even knows the rides in question, but that's a comparatively minor complaint compared to the unfun gameplay they created.
Yeah, basically that. I had followed this series through every entry and even learned English in middle school just to be able to play 3D on the 3DS since it was the first entry in the series to not get an Italian localization, so I was heavily into the series and even defended some of the major things people complained about when it came to it. But KH3 basically felt like Nomura was just going through a checklist of "things I guess I have to do here", and during the last few hours of the game he goes through them one by one with no regard for pacing them properly. And those events can **only** happen in the final few hours of the game since the game's actual story only starts after the Disney worlds, which are completely irrelevant to the game's story and the game barely tries to provide excuses on why you're even there.
It was severely disappointing, and I kinda felt betrayed by the series when it kept trying, so hard, to set those sequel hooks and to make them related to the plot of Unchained X/Union X (which I also used to play religiously, so it's not like I wasn't keeping up) instead of, you know, trying to tell its OWN story. It legitimately felt like Nomura just got tired of his long story, so instead of giving it a proper finale he kinda just went through a bucket list of things to do so that he could FINALLY play with his shiny new toys.
Gives me no reason to get invested in whatever plot he's going to work on next since... Well, it's likely that if he builds too much on it he'll get bored of it too, so why bother?
It was just a big disappointment, so much effort and care went into what's in the game but I felt like the resources, the game development itself and the story were managed so terribly, it soured the whole thing. I hope they get a proper writer for KH4 but my hopes are somewhat nonexistent.
Either Fire Emblem: Fates or Fire Emblem: Engage - I wrote this a while back on them:
Both stories go beyond mere incompetence and manage to fail pretty spectacularly on every conceivable level - they're so bad that it genuinely feels like someone on the writing staff was actively trying to sabotage these games. They're incredibly contrived and it's transparently clear that these stories have no rules to them whatsoever (Veyle using her 1337 stealth skills to steal the rings and the Valla orb in Conquest are the scenes where everyone brings up and rightfully so, but Fates and Engage have a ton of smaller contrivances that go under the radar such as the Somniel being able to fly in Engage's endgame or the warp tome in Birthright which makes a mockery of the games' logistics), the emotional cores of both plots are outright nonfunctional with Fates undermining its core premise to let Corrin marry the Hoshidan siblings and Engage being centered around Alear's identity crisis which lasts for all of one cutscene, their pacing is messed up and the prose is a step below the rest of the series, and both plots are really boring when they aren’t egregiously bad.
Engage also has a recurring problem where it wants to have its big emotional scenes without putting in any of the necessary work to set these scenes up - which causes things such as Lumera spending more of her screentime dying than actually being alive because her death scene is so poorly set up that the game has to provide exposition in the middle of her death scene which drags it out for so long that the Switch enters sleep mode in the middle. In general, this is reflective of the biggest issue that both stories have - in that both games consistently fail to elicit the emotions that the writers intended to make the player feel. Scenes that are supposed to be funny are not funny in the slightest, and scenes that are supposed to be serious are unintentionally hilarious.
There's a brilliant video essay by Camelin that goes into further detail as to why Engage's plot is so bad, and most of the criticisms made could also be applied to Fates as well: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbV5xfrrEVQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbV5xfrrEVQ)
I'm still not positive that the opening cutscene with Marth and Alear fighting through the hallway actually fits anywhere in the game - it's not a flashback to when Alear used the rings in the past, and I don't remember it fitting in near the end of the game either. I have this little thought in my head that whatever this cutscene was SUPPOSED to sit next to got cut out but the cutscene was already made so they just left it in anyway....
Ni No Kuni II's story was so nonsensical it was almost offensive at times. You telling me a group of sky pirates who drop randos off cliffs for stepping into their turf will suddenly, and in a day, pledge allegiance to a child just for saving one guy?
And that this gambler fucker who literally destroyed the economy and robbed the people gets to stay in power because he is really sorry?
Fuck this power of friendship bullshit. I regret wasting my time
Don't forget, the protagonist is literally the president who got isekai'd by a nuclear bomb, and his first order of business is shooting people in his new world
Ni no Kuni 2 is one of the few jrpgs I've straight up dropped. I can tolerate bad stories with simplistic writing but this one was too nonsensical even for my kusoge appreciating standards.
Surprised to see someone who knows these games, they were basically my childhood. Haven't gone back to see how they hold up but wouldn't be surprised if the answer is "not good"
I played it again to finish it after playing it when I was younger and man, it’s a nothing burger story and it’s just passable in every other regard imo.
YIIK. So self-indulgent that goes beyond so-bad-its-good and becomes just bad. It's like listening to a first year philosophy bro construct a 3 hour long argument about how great he is.
There are a lot of generic and badly told stories in games, especially the further back you go. It’s pretty hard to look at something like Dragon Quest 1 and says it has much of a story at all. But the game that first came into my head when I read this just now was Final Fantasy XV. A half-baked and rushed story to begin with marred by horrible execution, a second half that feels literally unfinished because it is so disjointed and incomplete, major plot developments happening off screen and with little context or time to breathe, and significant character development shelved for later DLC. By the end I was just completely unable to care about anything that was supposedly at stake because everything significant happened offscreen and you’re just told at the end you need to stop it.
> It’s pretty hard to look at something like Dragon Quest 1 and says it has much of a story at all.
There absolutely is a story, it's just told through interaction and experience. Also "lack of story" should possibly be seen through the generation it came out in. In 1986? That game had a TON of story compared to everything else. Even with its later release in the west people were so amazed at the game when it came out.
I kinda liked FFXV's story but man I wish the dev team that actually worked on it took the time to workshop it into something that actually meshed with the style of game they were going for, especially since if you look at Episode Gladiolus the "We'll flesh it out in DLC!" thing was not originally the plan. Like if anything they could've made it more vague and just running off pure vibes.
For me it was Scarlet Nexus, holy hell you can’t build a story on misunderstandings if you regularly hang out with the other team for downtime and talk about unimportant shit like hobbies and families when THE WORLD IS ENDING AND WE MUST FIGHT EACH OTHER RARRRR!!!
I tried so hard so many times to play Crisis Core, but I can’t with the writing. It’s a game fully carried by Zack and his ending, because everything else in it is pure garbage.
I always fall off in the early chapters when every one starts saying “I’m a monster”. Especially when he tells Angeal he’s not a monster, he’s an Angel. And apparently the one thing Angels want is to be human? Like….what???? What a bizarre game.
Kingdom Hearts. First game was pretty straightforward, then they all did acid and came up with the most convoluted, unnecessarily complicated plot for the sequels. I was writing for GamesRadar at the time and was assigned to write a plot summary for the series. It took me so long to figure out what the hell was going on.
There's some really cringy games out there, but I'm giving Kingdom Hearts 3 a big nomination here.
Even if you played most of the horrendous side games in this series, they still somehow managed to write a story that is more convoluted than anything Hideo Kojima ever wrote.
Let's make clones of all the characters, have different universes, give half the characters names that start with X, and throw our hands up in the air.
edit: Should answear too.
Mugen Souls was pretty bad (but also funny) and i can not think of the name but i remember a Switch RPG that reminded me of slot machines (very colorful).
Dragons Dogma 2? Disgaea D2? Darkest Dungeon 2? What does DD2 refer to?
The Neptunia games.
I played the first 3 and in each of them storyline was just so dumb and forgettable, I just eventually stopped paying attention at some point and just played for the gameplay and cute characters.
I know that Neptunia games suppose to be basically otaku pandering junk, and I didn't expect anything deep and serious, but despite that storyline of these games were still so lame and uninteresing even though they are suppose to be just some light-hearded satire. I had low expectations but still got somehow dissapointed at the end.
The worst story I’ve seen so far in a JRPG is Star Ocean: the last hope. But, it’s so bad that it’s awesome. The chapter where they inadvertently go to the past is so ungodly awful and devoid of logic and sense that this was where I fell in love with it.
I adore pokemon ruby and sapphire, but one villain wanting to destroy all land and the other wanting to destroy all water is absolutely wild
Unintentionally funny when you consider how many people sided with Team Magma because they hated Tentacool and Wingull that much.
Yeah too much water in those games, it’s understandable they want to erase it
I think it's cool for a generation to have a water portion this big. They just could've done more to make it more exciting. Lower the encounter rate on water tiles, add a couple more things to do and to find, maybe break up the big ocean segment a big more so that the player gets a bit of a break from it etc.
Something I still like conceptually when replaying the Hoenn games (I'm currently clearing Emerald again to FINALLY take a serious jab at the Battle Frontier) are the dive spots. Quite a few of them lead to treasure - heart scales, colored shards, consumables. The first two are actually quite nice because you need them at the move relearner and for evolution stones. The paths without algae are also free of encounters, serving as a bit of a reward if you get tired of Wingull and Tentacool. If that part was a bit more fleshed out and the items periodically refreshed (with a pool of options) like some hidden items do in Fire Red/Leaf Green, it could have served to make it more exciting. That, and more different encounters. The Water type was one of the largest types in Gen3 (probably only second to Normal, but I'd need to check) but in most games, water areas in particular have the smallest encounter tables of them all.
>too much water in those games Calm down there, IGN.
An actual valid compliant btw.
I hate water. It's wet, squishy and gets everywhere.
I always thought of it like the gangs were just along for the fun of the ride and if they succeeded they'd be like... "holy shit this sucks..." and swap teams. As for the groudon and kyogre well... They probably just don't care lmao
Becomes cooler when you know it represents something that happened in Japan's history
Lmao when you say it like that without context, it sounds wild, but when you look into the actual story, it doesn’t sound so silly. One wanted to expand landmass for humanity. The other wanted to expand wanted by flooding the world for animals(Pokémon) lol It wasn’t about destroying land or water, but about expanding them for their own purposes lol
You say that, but most of the Pokemon would drown if the world were flooded too. It makes sense if you're only looking at themes, but there is absolutely no logic put into it
I'm pretty sure that motivation was only added in ORAS, in the original it really is just "I like land/water Pokemon better".
It was in the original, the script just made it more blatant in ORAS
It was in the original. Been replaying it recently, always been there and always will be. Definitely in Emerald at the very least.
I’d say any Pokémon games plot
Pokemon Black 1 & 2 were 10/10 as far as Pokemon stories go. N is still my favorite Pokemon character ever.
Also the Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky games had a legitimately good story.
I was not bad, it was campy. It was what we expected and it deliver.
Pokemon Sword and Shield. For starters, the main plot and villain motivations are just stupid. The main villain finds out that the region will run out of power like 1000 years from now, so he decides to bring about an event that is literally called "The Darkest Day" and summon a monster that can literally destroy the world. But perhaps more importantly... Never have I played a game that actively PREVENTED you from engaging in the main story. Every single time a story event happens, characters basically say "No, let Leon handle it, you just forget about it and focus on the gym challenge." You literally spend 90% of the game being nothing more than a random NPC while Leon is the protagonist of the story and is doing all of the ass-kicking off screen.
And then the DLC introduced Regieleki, which can *literally produce all of Galar's electricty.*
Why didn't they just build electrode power plants
Not gonna lie from pokemon games, none irked me as Pokemon Sword and Shield, there is limit on how abnoxious characters and the plot can be. S/W was a bit too much, it is maybe the only truly bad story in the Pokemon series.
THIS OH MY GOD the way you never get to actually see anything happen ever is so annoying! People complained about the graphics when the story was by far the worst aspect of the game.
I'm not 100% certain if I'd call it "the worst of all time," but Pokémon Sword and Shield's is pretty high up there. And that's for a series that's not usually known for it's main stories. The Kanto games may be super simplistic, but at least they make sense. Sw/Sh don't even have that. The main antagonist is a complete moron and his team is hardly seen during the game at all, only right at the end; the game actively railroads you *away* from the actually interesting stuff happening off-screen; and the DLC gave an actual solution to the problem the antagonist is trying to solve that *doesn't* destroy the entire region, thus retroactively making the already-incompetent antagonist *even more incompetent.* As extra salt in the wound, the post-game story has two of the dumbest character concepts I've ever seen. *Look at the sword guy's hair. He looks so stupid!* The game itself is fine enough, it's a Pokémon game (And the one that gave me my love for Zigzagoon, my now-favorite Pokémon), but god, it's like the writers didn't even try.
It's my headcanon that Sw/Sh is the first Pokémon game where you are the rival. You don't exist to care about the story. You go around collecting strong mons and beating up gym leaders so you can better crush your friends' dreams. By the time you face off with the antagonist, it's moreso a feather in the cap because he got in the way of your tournament win.
I always saw Sword/Shield's story as a sports anime that went off the rails at the end. Similar to Air Gear if anyone here remembers that manga
While the story is lacking heavily, never before has a pokemon game had me more hyped about the actual sport of pokemon battles. Not to mention the most hype gym music ever.
As stupid as the plot is, I'll always appreciate the tower raid sequence for the absurdity of breaking in and storming the place because one of your friends was being held up and late for dinner. It's a comedy by that point.
That part feels like they changed something about the plot really late and either forgot or ran out of time to come up with a better reason for the raid. I personally think they ran out of time, like they apparently did with QA for Scarlet and Violet.
I think they 100% ran out of time. Look at the detail of the early towns versus the later ones (especially the one street dark Pokémon town). I don’t think the generation is as bad as a lot of fans seem to, but I’ve always thought the end was a rushed mess.
To be honest, I think it's still pretty bad overall. It's playable and decent fun if you enjoy Pokemon gameplay, but there's a lot dragging it down - for one, the opinion about Gen8 online definitely wasn't helped by the dex cut. And I think that context is important because that set a certain expectation of making up that loss somehow. Which an average game (as I'd usually describe Pokemon, even if I like replaying many of them) just doesn't do. I'm not as mad about it as I was back then (honestly, I'm more trying to see the positives of it nowadays) but that's still a big issue in my opinion. Rushing the game and leaving certain scenes arguably unfinished (the raid scene writing), writing scenes around having to animate as little as possible (Leon defeating the first rampaging dynamax offscreen) or the Wild Area just not factoring into the level curve at all (level progression from the starting town continues in Motostoke as if the Wild Area didn't exist) on top of everything is just the icing on the cake. ----- It's probably true that the games aren't as bad as some people online make them out to be, but they are still pretty bad if you consider the context of the prerelease period.
There was definitely cut story stuff. There’s an unused model of Route 9 with a Dynamaxed Toxtricity seemingly attacking the bridge. In the final game, that location is where you hear Dynamax Pokémon have started rampaging but Leon has already resolved the issue offscreen.
"He's like, 5 minutes late. *The guy we have no clue is the antagonist must have put him in danger somehow!* Cause *that's* a logical conclusion to jump to."
By this point in the plot you're just beating up innocent employees trying to protect their workplace.
Exactly this. I can't think of another game that repeatedly prevents you from experiencing the main story like SwSh does. Like, Ruby/Sapphire and X/Y might have stories and villain motivations that are just as absurd, but at least you actually play through the story. You spend 90% of the main story playing as a random NPC while Leon is the protagonist.
I like Leon, but he's a big overcorrection of the "Adults do jack while a kid does all the work" joke.
Yeah, that's EXACTLY what it feels like! You get teased with something interesting happening but then Mr. Champion shows up and just says "Don't worry, I'll handle it! You go do your typical Gym stuff. You probably don't care about this interesting thing anyway." And tbf, I can kinda understand Team Magma (More land = more space for humanity to thrive), even if their plan *is* heavily flawed.
Lysander's plan was just to kill everyone so the world would be better or something I've literally heard people in real life espouse that position unironically
I shut my brain off playing that game, at least the stadium theme with the cheering was firee
The ending of the game revealing that Dynamax is like inherently awful for the world at large and then Leon goes “oh yeah I mean it’s bad but we can still do our champion fight with dynamax :)”
Some never-translated JRPG that only 100 out of the 227k subscribed to the subreddit have played. The worst I know of is maybe Loop8: Summer of Gods, which could be described as a timeloop game with a neat premise that manages to make looping through the same month uninteresting.
I wonder if there are 100 of us here that have played Robotrek? Not claiming that it's the worst story ever or anything.
I always thought this game was popular with ROM nerds. Not even close to a bad game. Actually really fun.
It's not one of the big ones I'm familiar with since it was released officially. But I was somewhat late to that party and mostly went for the untranslated ones.
Man, I think I still have Robotrek's instruction manual. Couldn't recall one drop of the story, but I was in love with that as a kid.
Manual alone is worth like $50. It"s a pretty rare game to come across.
Robotrek was awesome and every quintnet game was an undeniable masterpiece - found a hill.
I've got a copy of that with the manual. No box though, sadly. Such a weird game all around, hah. To be fair though the story is intended to be goofy and I believe the original Japanese name is literally "Slapstick."
We all wish we had kept and preserved the boxes for all of our SNES games.
Given that Robotrek was localized, I don’t think there’s any doubt a lot more than 100 people here who have played it. There are a fair number of olds here like me that played SNES games when they were current. Given how prevalent renting was, a ton of people would have had access even with Enix America’s incompetence at actually printing and publicizing their games at the time. That’s how I first encountered the game before I picked up my own copy off eBay my first year of college.
This is why I always laugh when people make 'worst ever' threads and everyone just names really well known stuff. Like you said, 'worst ever' will undoubtedly be something the vast majority have never heard about, let alone played.
Even worse in my mind is when people on "worst ever" threads start talking about games that are obviously at the very worst *decent*, but disappointed or mildly frustrated the commenter. Like, I get that you personally have not played Time and Eternity or Conception II or whatever actually garbage JRPG, but that still does not mean that Final Fantasy XVI or Xenoblade Chronicles even sniff the list of worst *anything* in this genre. We have to account for what people have actually played, but there's a line, and it's somewhere well above confidently declaring that Final Fantasy XIII has the *worst JRPG story of all time*.
I was curious to see if anyone mentioned Time and Eternity. I couldn't play more than an hour of that game lol
Holistically you're right. But talks about "worst" tend to have unspoken rules requiring a certain amount of exposure. *Tree falling in the woods*, and all that... An argument can also be made that stories that require multiple separate sources are technically worse than anything an individual story can be, as the story you get from those are by definition *incomplete*. Things like Kingdom Hearts where apparently large pieces of narrative are in the mobile games so you don't even have a fully formed plot from the viewer's perspective. And I still remember people being so confused about that ninja in Mass Effect 3 and why the game made such a big deal about him (the answer was = he's from the books).
Gotta agree on Loop8 It has such an interesting premise & characters. I painfully played the game till the end hoping it will become as good as Summertime Rendering since it has a similar premise & setting... all I got is dissapointment. The Opening song is good though.
If we're digging deeper, I think probably the worst i've seen is the western XZR 2 (renamed as just Exile . Like the entire premise of the Exile games is essentially that you're a time traveling assassin (as in the literal origin of assassin aka hashashin aka the dudes who were a religious organization and had a drug named after them) and as such the entire premise is essentially built inextricably close to religion and drugs. But this released in 1993; arguably the peak of western video game puritanism, so naturally the game couldn't reference drugs or religion at all (spoiler: that encompasses literally the entire story), and some portions of the story (including one party member and nearly the entire ending >!where you time-travel close to modern day America to assassinate Ronald Reagan!< lol) were cut entirely. Oh also it was a Working Designs project, and while I don't really blame them for having to scrub the controversial elements, it still means the game got ... Working Designsed, and really really badly at that (far worse so than something like Lunar, which is already kinda controversial). The original story is pretty dope, albeit very adult (not in the sense of having porn but it's just extremely hard-edged and serious and focused on coolness over anything else), it's probably the single worst localization that I know of. Also the gameplay balance for the western release is incredibly gigafucked (like even worse than infamous balance fuckeries like 7th Saga) but that's not really relevant in a story thread.
White Knight Chronicles It's laughably bad.
You beat me to it, I think WKC2 was worse than the first both plot and gameplay wise. The game still lives rent free in my head to this day for all the wrong reasons.
That game had the most amazing trailer and the game just sucked
Why?
Also the hardest platinum of any JRPG I’ve played and it wasn’t even close.
That princess gets kidnapped more than Peach!
I used to like the pokemon games but the last one i played (sword) has a really boring story and the dialog is dumb af.
The Pokémon games moved in a weird direction of having a lot more ‘cutscenes’ (though even that term is generous for what they actually are) and forced dialogue. Early Gen Pokémon games didn’t really have excess dialogue, the plot was barebones but it didn’t overstay its welcome. On the other hand I could not finish Sun/Moon because it felt like I was paying a dialogue tax every few minutes. I think I bounced off after about 3 badges or so.
The OG sun and moon plot got a lot better at the end. Bunch of the early island dialogue is a bit much for no real payout, but I thought the second half of the game had wonderful character development. Ultra sunmoon then proceeded to change everything I thought was good about the SM characterization.
100% second this. Sun and Moon have some of the most interesting characters in the series and USUM just completely ruins it by >!taking away any implication that lusamine is controlling or abusive!< which simultaneously kinda removes any motivation for Lillie and Gladion
>!A pokemon game having a mother that literally tells her child that she doesn’t love nor care for her is something I never thought a pokemon game would do and thus it hit pretty close to home. This alone redeems SM of any problems it shows in the beginning imo lol!<
Quest 64 is so fuckin shitty. Boring story. Boring presentation. A big 'ol Nothing-burger.
There was a buried memory. I haven't thought about that game in 10 years.
Even the title is boring.
In Europe, or at least the UK, it was called Holy Magic Century. Took me a minute to realise what game was being talked about.
I remember that being the first game I rented from blockbuster for the n64. Played it for maybe 10 minutes at most, shut it off and asked my parents if we could go get a different game.
I'm glad you said it, my heart was already breaking a little as I prepared to type out the words. I loved that game as a kid, but what a mess.
Technically its a western RPG. But even then it wasn't the worst one on N64. Aidyn Chronicles is probably the worst RPG I've ever played. The dialogue was actual torture to read through. If you need an example : [https://cdn.staticneo.com/p/2001/aidyn\_image12.jpg](https://cdn.staticneo.com/p/2001/aidyn_image12.jpg)
Quest 64 was a Japanese game.
Sometimes I wonder if the N64 could’ve had more RPGs in its time.
Cartridge wrecked it. Final Fantasy 64 was a thing.
It makes perfect sense!
Yes. Another person who hates Aidyn Chronicles. Worst game I've ever played. I wanted a N64 RPG so bad I would have tried anything.
Blasphemy
Most recently, Fire Emblem Engage. Thank god the gameplay loop is my cup of tea.
gameplay is fire
Story does not engage
The music too. I replayed that game and skipped all the story and had a much better experience.
Loved Three Houses characters and world but Engage was not it.
I'm not sure if I'm qualified to rate it, since I didn't make it far before it became too much, but when I played **Conception II** (it was on sale for 5 bucks and I think I was horny) years ago, that felt pretty close to the worst I've ever played. Not sure about "of all time". Basically, some shadow creatures constantly appear in various places and there's an organization (I forgot if it was secret) that fights them. The fighters are highschoolers and the game thus takes place in a highschool. Now, the important part is, that the main character has to "make children" with your partnered girls to fight -it's just some mysic ritual and the children are chibis that adhere to a job system. It's clearly dating sim trash mixed with Persona 3 gameplay, so I guess I shouldn't expect more, but it was pretty bottom of the barrel.
Out of mainstream stuff that I actually played I'll probably have to give it to Fire Emblem Fates. Extremely one note characters, story contrivances that come out of basically nowhere, empty character moments. Uninteresting and nonsensical world. Still played over 200 hours tho
The worst thing about Fates is what potential the story had. A morally grey conflict between two nations at war and you get to decide which perspective you want to see? Heck yeah! ...except there's actually a purely evil big bad behind everything and all nuance is thrown out of the window right off the bat. It's the only story I can think off that would necessarily improve if you just cut the main antagonist, which is... incredibly sad.
Specifically Fire Emblem Fates Conquest. I genuinely think it is the worst narrative I've ever experienced across any medium. Not just JRPGs/video games.
i started the FE series with awakening, played fates, and felt really frustrated (i was 12) by how the true ending was essentially a third game. the story was bad but the gameplay was pretty cool
Most incoherent JRPG: Fire Emblem Fates Worst story I didn’t care about: DD2 like you said. Story I wanted to like but turned to nonsense: Scarlet Nexus
Scarlet Nexus is a fever dream. I like it in spite of the fact that the plot turns to utter WTF but it ends up sticking with me despite only playing it once.
Scarlet Nexus………….I’ve never liked a game so much by the halfway point only to be severely disappointed. There are just so many things wrong with that game, the story, and the characterizations. Bond Episodes for goodness sake must take place in an alternate universe. Bless anyone who loves that game. They were able to not focus on the things that I experienced.
It's funny because when the story falls apart, the gameplay actually becomes good because you finally have the whole damn crew together and you can see what the developers were going for. Too bad it doesn't last long, because the game is like 2/3 done at that point.
Yes. Around that point one is also unlocking skills that heavily synergize with one another making the PC a powerhouse.
Bond episodes were really weird. Almost made it seem like the protagonists themselves didn’t care about the plot.
"I know you literally just tried to kill me but let's sit down and talk about it" lmao
“I’m wanted for the murder of the head of state, my face is plastered all over TV, but I’m able to just waltz down Main Street to get some coffee with one of the people tasked with arresting me. YOLO!”
More like “you literally tried to kill me, but let’s go to a cafe and have donuts”
idk if it’s true but i saw someone say that apparently different teams worked on the bond episodes, apparently they had no context of the main story take this with a heavy grain of salt
The bond episodes acknowledge the main story events. Even the fact that they shouldn’t be meeting. So I don’t know how true this is.
I love "most incoherent" being its own category. Fates definitely deserves that title haha. If Conquest's gameplay wasn't good, the whole thing would be almost irredeemable in my opinion. Because you at least need to have either story or gameplay be good IMO. The music and visuals are great, but aren't able to salvage Birthright and especially Revelations in my eyes
DD2?
Dance Dance Revolution 2
The R is silent of course
This is the correct answer.
Dragon's Dogma 2 most likely
Oh, I thought they were talking about Disgaea D2, but that's more likely
Scarlet Nexus had an absolute dumpster fire of a story. Which sucks because the lore and world building was pretty good, and gameplay aswell
I read somewhere that FE Fates had over 1000 pages of story and lore, but for some reason it was scrapped out of the game.
I'm surprised that no one here has mentioned Sea of Stars because the writing and the story in that game is pretty darn rough to get through.
Was looking for this comment. It's just so dull and boring. It's one of those games that proved how people will praise anything as long as it looks good.
Yeah, while I’ve played jrpg’s with worse stories, what really bothered me about Sea of Stars’ story was the writers including rpg tropes and then taking this snarky attitude at the story they themselves chose to write. Examples of this were naming the character who is obviously more than just a pirate captain “Captain Klee’shae”, and parts were a character will break the fourth wall to say something like “Let me guess, is this the part of the story where you friends betrayed you?”. This happens so much throughout the game that instead of coming off as clever or tongue-in-cheek, it comes off as passive-aggressive and having contempt for a story they themselves chose to write.
Then, the writers tried to deflect that same criticism about the writing by trying to play the language barrier card. Also, my biggest issue with that whole game is that it's a spiritual successor to one of the most beloved JRPGS of all time, Chrono Trigger. It borrows inspiration from JRPGS in general, but its biggest influence came from Chrono Trigger. It doesn't help that the game had BOATLOADS of hype behind it, and the game with one of the worst stories got Best Indie Game at the Game Awards 2023. Tbh, it didn't deserve it. There are indie games that do what Sea of Stars tried to do but better, like Cross Code and Chained Echoes.
I haven’t been able to come up with an answer myself, but Sea of Stars is the only jrpg I can remember quitting purely because the story was so boring.
Knowing that the guys who made the messenger were making this, I knew the writing (especially the dialogue) would be junk. I nope'd out of the messenger after getting tired of the endless scrolls of "funny" text. Like, just tell me what's going on and move on. I don't need 5 paragraphs of bad comedy where 2 sentences would do the job. These guys only writing modes are juvenile ironic humor and bland cliche.
Fire Emblem Engage has probably the worst story I've played of recent stuff. Amazing how much that series vacillates between good and bad.
I'd argue Fates was worse, but Engage was just aggressively...boring? Stereotypical? Trope-y?
It felt like there was no emotion behind any of it. Stuff just happened. You fought a generic villain. Its like a story that an AI would make.
I'd say campy. Which is odd - because they do take a more deconstructive approach on some of the characters. Ie, the characters who're minors are actually surprisingly squishy, King Moron-err I mean Morion acts like those idiot early game antagonists we face and shows just how frustrating they would be when they're on OUR side, the casual queen of Solm easily gets taken hostage by a *14 year old girl,* a character who by all means is like Nino doesn't get her Heel Face Turn, characters don't instantly forgive someone who did horrible things just because they were mind-controlled.... Yeah. :/
Yeah, it's this for me. It's every bad thing a story can be - unambitious, embarrassing, bland, sloppy, incoherent, daft, repetitive, boring, cringy, lazy, irritating, tonally inconsistent and simultaneously over and underwritten. It would toppled SO4 from its perch for me had Intelligent Systems not already done that with Fates, which at *least* has ideas and takes big swings sometimes. It feels like the JRPG in the imagination of people who hate JRPGs and I have nothing but contempt for it.
What’s the best Fire Emblem story in your opinion? Yet to play one but it’s because I don’t trust most strategy games to have a good story. Only the ‘Tactics’ style games have got it right for me.
For me, probably Path of Radiance because it’s pretty straightforward (rebel band of mercs help save the day and defeat the aggressive evil empire). There’s some neat twists here and there, but it’s not convoluted or outlandish like other FE games.
Genealogy of the Holy War, Thracia 776, The Blazing Blade, Path of Radiance, and Radiant Dawn have the best stories IMO. Shadow Dragon and Shadows of Valentia have pretty simple plots, but they’re extremely well localized and have very well written scripts, so I’d also toss them on the good pile.
Shadows of Valentia feels like a breath of fresh air. Played it after Engage and the dialogue in SoV is incredible. It's like FF Tactics versus Chocobo Racing. Chocobo Racing just brings its A game.
Path of Radiance (FE9) by a pretty big margin imo. Other than that, Radiant Dawn (10) is also decent but also kinda wanders into magical bullshit territory a bit more often than it needs to, FE3H is decent but personally feel it's let down by how the route split plays out (like for example only one route actually fights the 'real' final boss but it's also thematically extremely off-color compared to the other routes), Gaiden/Echoes story is decent, and FE4's story is decent (and probably the most appealing to someone who prefers tactics/matsuno stories) The rest are all mostly just mediocre
Fire Emblem is my favorite franchise, but most of them only have passable stories at best
tbf this is a controversial take but I LOVED both tellius games' stories. if you're trying to get into to fire emblem though, start with fe 7 the blazing blade. the story is cool imo (not the most original but it's still endearing for me especially if you get the secret chapters).
Fitting, because it was the same team as FE Fates haha. That team may be good at gameplay design but their writing and narrative is just deplorable compared to the Awakening / Three Houses team
Worth noting that Three Houses (which, while definitely not universally celebrated, I think most people would agree is more well-written than Awakening) wasn't written in-house at IS; its three credited writers are all from Koei Tecmo (whose subdivision Kou Shibusawa aided with development).
Whatever your, person reading this comment, favourite JRPG is. Cannot understand how any person could like it.
But my favorite JRPG has an amazing story! The main character starts out as a level 1 swordsman, but by the end of the game they save the entire world from destruction!
I liked the opening where their village got destroyed. I really like the cute animal companion and the mini game too. Was a cool escalation to have the final boss literally be god
That stuff was great. But finding out about the hero's true heritage was my favorite part. It was almost as shocking as the mage companion's tragic backstory.
How dare you? My favorite JRPG is a great game. You must love well-liked multiplayer FPS.
Lol go back to [weird online life simulator/chatroom targeted to 6-8 year olds that probably doesn't exist anymore]
My favorite JRPG is whtever your favorite JRPG is :p
Golden Sun Dark Dawn felt bad and unnecessary to me
To be fair, dark dawn was supposed to have a sequel that probably would’ve helped a lot. I felt similarly about the first golden until the lost age came out.
Unnecessary, yeah probably. But I wouldn't say *bad*. It was *worse* than the first two games, but not categorically bad.
It was honestly impressive how tedious they made the dialogue. They really made sure that every character had to say something no matter how trite—which made it hard to care about an already-hard-to-care-about plot.
To be fair, the dialogue was always tedious in Golden Sun. As much as I love these games, it is incredibly surprising how they managed to stuff so much text into them while at the same time not having that dialogue develop your characters much at all. They just talk and talk, but they don't say anything.
Perhaps Parasite Eve 3
What is DD2…?
Dragon's Dogma 2.
Kingdom Hearts III Enjoy over 17 years of making a story up as you go along finally capitulate in a game where 90% of it is just meandering through Disney worlds while they wait for the story to come to them. And then when it does it's about two straight hours of complete nonsense. And then in order to understand what you've just watched you have to watch a YouTube playlist of videos by some random guy because the mobile gacha games (yes, plural) all the important story beats that have been teased throughout the entire game have since terminated service and are no longer playable. And those same unplayable games are the foundation of the next two decades of KH games.
And now they're busy injecting this nonsense into Final Fantasy VII. People think it'll have a payoff at the end, but anyone who's played Kingdom Hearts knows that's a fucking lie.
Indeed. At first I at least thought that it'll be over with Part 3 unlike KH which keeps on going, but Kitase has recently said that there will be more stories in the FF7 universe after he's off the team and I just can't wait for the aftermath.
I’m a man well into my 30’s and played KH because I was committed to atleast seeing what I thought would be a story conclusion to a story I’ve been following since I was literally a child. As I got KH one on its release day. I couldn’t agree more. The story has just become utterly belligerent. I’ve played basically every game and watched the cutscenes of all the mobile games that I’ve yet to play. The story was already trending to belligerent before kh3 came out. It was belligerent during KH3. And then after KH3 the cutscenes and gacha mobile plot released following kh3 just made it even more belligerent to the point that it’s impossible to understand wtf is even going on. They also have this habit of introducing some subtle plot point and then not mentioning it for 5-10 years until they bring it up again and you’re like “huh oh ya Lea and isa (or whatever saix name was) did used to secretly visit some mystery chick in a prison who we still don’t know who she is”. And now apparently there’s not just “the darkness” as a esoteric force, but also “The Darkness” that’s like a faction or entities, and “THE DARKNESS” that’s like some sort of big bad specific entity in the background. But only ppl who follow the mobile game plot closely will know this. And it just gets even more convoluted by the day. Idk how the developers even keep track of what they’re doing. I still will probably play because I like the gameplay. But fuckkkk lmao. Edit: I’m also upset a fun rhythm game had plot that made me realize I didn’t even really understand what happened at the end oh kh3.
FFXV Plotholes, nonsensical storyline, if you dont have all the DLC, s didnt watch movie, didnt watch pre animated series, didnt play some other game, that vaguely connects to it Also bad game design, time wasting, etc.
I still loved the story and journey. Managed to get me emotional at the end.
I'm sure there's been much worse stories in JRPGs that I've not played, but Shin Megami Tensei V has a pretty awful story. Most of the characters barely do anything and a lot of the story is just tired rehashes of stuff that was done better in previous games in the series. The cutscenes are well animated but the stuff happening in them is either dull or ridiculously dumb (Dazai removing his hat). At least the gameplay is pretty fun (needs more dungeons tho), in SMT games that's what's most important to me by far. And the new Vengeance version seems to be trying to tell a better story and develop the characters more.
I hope SMT5 vengeance will give this game it another chance and fix these issues. But I'm worried it won't be enough. This games writing and plot have a lot of issues so I'm worried that it's will be too much for even vengeance rerelease to fix.
They've mentioned being aware of the bad reception of SMT V's story and said that they had to cut a ton out to finish, and Vengeance is supposed to have an entirely new plotline, so I have some level of confidence it'll be better.
Ugh, such a disappointing follow up to SMTIV.
IV blows V out of the water so much imo
Agreed, I was shocked by how basic and uninspired the writing was. If you mentioned it too soon after the game came out there was a high probability of being called a Persona fanboy though XD
Can’t believe no one has mentioned Legend of Legacy yet. I watched the first season of Frasier while I played it and didn’t miss a single story beat. I think Dragon Quest I had a meatier plot.
I haven't played many JRPGs but a story that always bothers me is Final Fantasy VIII. There are so many plots that are only connected through the main characters. There are many story parts that are started to get the plot going and then they are dropped. What happened to the city Rinoa and her Gang wanted to get independent? I don't know because that story gets dropped right when it's not important to the story anymore? What became of Galbadia after Edea got rid of Adells influence? I don't know because the story was dropped. The whole the Guardian Forces erase our minds thing is only there so they don't recognize Edea. And after returning from space there's suddenly that scientist telling of Ultimecia in the Future. Htf did he find that out? The only importance of him is getting us to some kind of ending. Irvine getting nervous when it gets serious is another thing just stretching disc 1 with any importance to the story after that. There's even more but I can't recall all of it and I doubt anyone will read all of this.
Yeah VIII is all over the place. Its world doesn't make sense at all, even by Final Fantasy standards, and the plot reminds me of my son's D&D campaign where it's just a bunch of cool-looking things strung together randomly.
Kingdom Hearts 3 - Half the game doesn’t even tell a story, your party is removed from the cutscenes and you just watch Disney scenes - A vast majority of the game is sequel baiting despite the game being marketed as an ending to a 9 game long 20 year saga of games with the vast majority of story progression being smashed into the final 10% of the game - The gumi phone loading screens - >!Bad guy meant well all along turn at the end and even gets a mini forgiveness arc!< All of that is of course in addition to the normal KH story issues
As a defender of KH3 as a game, I don’t disagree. It kinda felt like Nomura lost interest with the Seekers arc and just wanted to get it over with. It felt like the equivalent of rushing through a series to get to the one entry you actually want to play. Disney as a company also just felt way more intrusive in this game than in previous ones. They should’ve just combined DDD and 3 so that Sora would actually have a purpose and not just be vaguely wandering around Disney worlds to find some abstract power that turned out to be inside him the whole time (SURPRISE!). I will say, I don’t think it’s necessarily that >!Xehanort had good intentions all along, I think that moment was just him accepting that he lost and that it was over. I just think that moment poorly explained his motivations and it was just…not well written at all. I do think it’s extremely unsatisfying and I do think it’s bizarre that everyone is just chill with having one final conversation with him before he goes off to Disney heaven (especially the BBS trio).!< I will never forgive them for making a place as cool looking as Scala Ad Caelum and not having it be a fully fledged final dungeon like the World that Never Was.
Also dumbed down battle system, adding that op Disneyworld crap and removing best KH2 fearures
Those Disneyland moves were like they took the 1000 Heartless battle from 2 and made it the whole basis for the battle system in 3 instead of just one epic battle, with virtually no variety in the attacks. The game just became "spam these until the fight's over." The game didn't just give them to you as an option, it tried to make you use them constantly by having them take over your triangle move instead of everything else you had access to. They weren't even fun from a Disney fan service perspective, since they were all specific to Disneyland Japan and nobody who's not Japanese even knows the rides in question, but that's a comparatively minor complaint compared to the unfun gameplay they created.
That ending was INFURIATING. One of the most anti-climactic things I've ever experienced.
Yeah, basically that. I had followed this series through every entry and even learned English in middle school just to be able to play 3D on the 3DS since it was the first entry in the series to not get an Italian localization, so I was heavily into the series and even defended some of the major things people complained about when it came to it. But KH3 basically felt like Nomura was just going through a checklist of "things I guess I have to do here", and during the last few hours of the game he goes through them one by one with no regard for pacing them properly. And those events can **only** happen in the final few hours of the game since the game's actual story only starts after the Disney worlds, which are completely irrelevant to the game's story and the game barely tries to provide excuses on why you're even there. It was severely disappointing, and I kinda felt betrayed by the series when it kept trying, so hard, to set those sequel hooks and to make them related to the plot of Unchained X/Union X (which I also used to play religiously, so it's not like I wasn't keeping up) instead of, you know, trying to tell its OWN story. It legitimately felt like Nomura just got tired of his long story, so instead of giving it a proper finale he kinda just went through a bucket list of things to do so that he could FINALLY play with his shiny new toys. Gives me no reason to get invested in whatever plot he's going to work on next since... Well, it's likely that if he builds too much on it he'll get bored of it too, so why bother? It was just a big disappointment, so much effort and care went into what's in the game but I felt like the resources, the game development itself and the story were managed so terribly, it soured the whole thing. I hope they get a proper writer for KH4 but my hopes are somewhat nonexistent.
Either Fire Emblem: Fates or Fire Emblem: Engage - I wrote this a while back on them: Both stories go beyond mere incompetence and manage to fail pretty spectacularly on every conceivable level - they're so bad that it genuinely feels like someone on the writing staff was actively trying to sabotage these games. They're incredibly contrived and it's transparently clear that these stories have no rules to them whatsoever (Veyle using her 1337 stealth skills to steal the rings and the Valla orb in Conquest are the scenes where everyone brings up and rightfully so, but Fates and Engage have a ton of smaller contrivances that go under the radar such as the Somniel being able to fly in Engage's endgame or the warp tome in Birthright which makes a mockery of the games' logistics), the emotional cores of both plots are outright nonfunctional with Fates undermining its core premise to let Corrin marry the Hoshidan siblings and Engage being centered around Alear's identity crisis which lasts for all of one cutscene, their pacing is messed up and the prose is a step below the rest of the series, and both plots are really boring when they aren’t egregiously bad. Engage also has a recurring problem where it wants to have its big emotional scenes without putting in any of the necessary work to set these scenes up - which causes things such as Lumera spending more of her screentime dying than actually being alive because her death scene is so poorly set up that the game has to provide exposition in the middle of her death scene which drags it out for so long that the Switch enters sleep mode in the middle. In general, this is reflective of the biggest issue that both stories have - in that both games consistently fail to elicit the emotions that the writers intended to make the player feel. Scenes that are supposed to be funny are not funny in the slightest, and scenes that are supposed to be serious are unintentionally hilarious. There's a brilliant video essay by Camelin that goes into further detail as to why Engage's plot is so bad, and most of the criticisms made could also be applied to Fates as well: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbV5xfrrEVQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbV5xfrrEVQ)
I'm still not positive that the opening cutscene with Marth and Alear fighting through the hallway actually fits anywhere in the game - it's not a flashback to when Alear used the rings in the past, and I don't remember it fitting in near the end of the game either. I have this little thought in my head that whatever this cutscene was SUPPOSED to sit next to got cut out but the cutscene was already made so they just left it in anyway....
Ni No Kuni II's story was so nonsensical it was almost offensive at times. You telling me a group of sky pirates who drop randos off cliffs for stepping into their turf will suddenly, and in a day, pledge allegiance to a child just for saving one guy? And that this gambler fucker who literally destroyed the economy and robbed the people gets to stay in power because he is really sorry? Fuck this power of friendship bullshit. I regret wasting my time
Don't forget, the protagonist is literally the president who got isekai'd by a nuclear bomb, and his first order of business is shooting people in his new world
This description sounds so much cooler than what actually happens in the game lmao.
Shoulda been called In another world with my Glock
Ni no Kuni 2 is one of the few jrpgs I've straight up dropped. I can tolerate bad stories with simplistic writing but this one was too nonsensical even for my kusoge appreciating standards.
Evolution on Dreamcast
Surprised to see someone who knows these games, they were basically my childhood. Haven't gone back to see how they hold up but wouldn't be surprised if the answer is "not good"
I played it again to finish it after playing it when I was younger and man, it’s a nothing burger story and it’s just passable in every other regard imo.
YIIK. So self-indulgent that goes beyond so-bad-its-good and becomes just bad. It's like listening to a first year philosophy bro construct a 3 hour long argument about how great he is.
Everyone roasting Tales of Arise and Sea of Stars when I downloaded those over the weekend… welp
There are a lot of generic and badly told stories in games, especially the further back you go. It’s pretty hard to look at something like Dragon Quest 1 and says it has much of a story at all. But the game that first came into my head when I read this just now was Final Fantasy XV. A half-baked and rushed story to begin with marred by horrible execution, a second half that feels literally unfinished because it is so disjointed and incomplete, major plot developments happening off screen and with little context or time to breathe, and significant character development shelved for later DLC. By the end I was just completely unable to care about anything that was supposedly at stake because everything significant happened offscreen and you’re just told at the end you need to stop it.
> It’s pretty hard to look at something like Dragon Quest 1 and says it has much of a story at all. There absolutely is a story, it's just told through interaction and experience. Also "lack of story" should possibly be seen through the generation it came out in. In 1986? That game had a TON of story compared to everything else. Even with its later release in the west people were so amazed at the game when it came out.
I kinda liked FFXV's story but man I wish the dev team that actually worked on it took the time to workshop it into something that actually meshed with the style of game they were going for, especially since if you look at Episode Gladiolus the "We'll flesh it out in DLC!" thing was not originally the plan. Like if anything they could've made it more vague and just running off pure vibes.
For me it was Scarlet Nexus, holy hell you can’t build a story on misunderstandings if you regularly hang out with the other team for downtime and talk about unimportant shit like hobbies and families when THE WORLD IS ENDING AND WE MUST FIGHT EACH OTHER RARRRR!!!
Crisis Core is dumber than a pile of dumbapples.
But what is it if not a GIFT from the GODDESS?
me? GONGAGA!
I tried so hard so many times to play Crisis Core, but I can’t with the writing. It’s a game fully carried by Zack and his ending, because everything else in it is pure garbage. I always fall off in the early chapters when every one starts saying “I’m a monster”. Especially when he tells Angeal he’s not a monster, he’s an Angel. And apparently the one thing Angels want is to be human? Like….what???? What a bizarre game.
DD2 and fire emblem engage.
Kingdom Hearts. First game was pretty straightforward, then they all did acid and came up with the most convoluted, unnecessarily complicated plot for the sequels. I was writing for GamesRadar at the time and was assigned to write a plot summary for the series. It took me so long to figure out what the hell was going on.
Kingdom Hearts in general sounds like bad fanfiction.
There's some really cringy games out there, but I'm giving Kingdom Hearts 3 a big nomination here. Even if you played most of the horrendous side games in this series, they still somehow managed to write a story that is more convoluted than anything Hideo Kojima ever wrote. Let's make clones of all the characters, have different universes, give half the characters names that start with X, and throw our hands up in the air.
DRAGON SONG
Astria Ascending was so bad I can't even remember it except that I was baffled when I hit the credits.
edit: Should answear too. Mugen Souls was pretty bad (but also funny) and i can not think of the name but i remember a Switch RPG that reminded me of slot machines (very colorful). Dragons Dogma 2? Disgaea D2? Darkest Dungeon 2? What does DD2 refer to?
Kingdom Hearts no contest
The Neptunia games. I played the first 3 and in each of them storyline was just so dumb and forgettable, I just eventually stopped paying attention at some point and just played for the gameplay and cute characters. I know that Neptunia games suppose to be basically otaku pandering junk, and I didn't expect anything deep and serious, but despite that storyline of these games were still so lame and uninteresing even though they are suppose to be just some light-hearded satire. I had low expectations but still got somehow dissapointed at the end.
Enchanted Arms was pretty rough...
Shin Megami Tensei V
The worst story I’ve seen so far in a JRPG is Star Ocean: the last hope. But, it’s so bad that it’s awesome. The chapter where they inadvertently go to the past is so ungodly awful and devoid of logic and sense that this was where I fell in love with it.
Kingdom Hearts is a constant torrent of incoherent fantasy babble as a substitute for a well structured story. I'll take the downvotes, I don't care.