I think mine has to be Mistmare. It was this RPG I thought might be fun, it was really cheap and I didn't have anything else to do, so I took it home. when I was installing it, I went to Gamespot to see the review. Dismayed was I to find out the reviewers gave it a 1.7/10. Not one to be scared off by a reviewer (I remember IGN gave Gothic II a 2/10 once, one of the best RPG's I can remember and it got a 2/10!), I went ahead and tried it anyway. It really is horrid. The entire way to play the game is clunky and annoying. It's all extremely confusing and soulless. It's like they made a 2MB computer file that generates its very own RPG without any human input. It just appears never to have been tested. It goes from realistic to far-out fantasy in a second. It's full of spelling errors, it crashes to desktop constantly, and even on the best of machines its framerate is terrible.



Anyone else has any horror stories?

I think I've forgotten it.

One of the Wizardy games, IIRC. I've played some pretty bad RPGs, but who ever thought that 'first person party based' was a good idea should really have thought again. I think the game was installed on my machine for about half an hour tops, and most of that time was spent creating a party.

Pretty much my entire thought process on my gaming experience amounted to: "I am being attacked. I have no idea where my party is. I have an interface that can most charitably be described as a joke. Turn based combat is bad enough, but endurable (Albeit with gritted teeth) if the game has a lot going for it in other directions. Oh look, I'm dying. Probably because I have no idea where any of my party is, so cannot get them to act effectively. This is beyond bad... Yeah, bye."

You will have guessed that I actually removed most of the words in that thought paragraph, because they were not nice words

Actually, I found with Wizardry 8 that the first person perspective (which I generally dislike to the point of not considering such a game) and the turn based combat (which can be ok, but I don't really care for) worked pretty well together. I don't know what the earlier games in the series were like, though (Wizardry 8 had icons along the sides of the screen for each character during combat, showing their status, health, etc).

Arx Fatalis was another first person game that I tried the demo for based on seeing positive reviews. Unlike Wizardry 8, though, the demo didn't last long. I recall reading in the intro text file how they made the game in first person perspective because that was much more realistic and immersive, and then shortly after that explaining the controls, where you clicked to attack, with the strength of the attack built up if you held the mouse button down longer. It struck me as rather funny how fast they could go from talking about realism and immersion to something so artificial.

When I first got a computer (Win95) I bought a few bargain bin games that ended up being stored in a box for awhile, and then eventually stored on a shelf, where they can be neglected in style. Recently I decided to re-try Daemonsgate, 'A Roleplaying Game of Epic Proportions'. It came on 3 3.5" floppies (a later release was on CD), with a 96 page manual, 2 fold-out maps and a 15 minute video on a VHS tape. Walking around the screen flickered a bit as the graphics were drawn, so I didn't get far enough into the game to tell how good it was. Obviously the graphics were not great, but I wasn't expecting much. The copy protection had the game prompting for a word on a given page, paragraph, line and number in the manual (a great copy protection mechanism... before the invention of the photocopier, not to mention scanner and OCR). IIRC from the first time I tried the game, years ago, this prompt happened during gameplay, as well, not just when first starting the game (probably part of why I quit the first time).

Oh my, Wizardry 8 is by far one of the best RPGs ever made

The GUI is complicated, okay, and the 1st person-party-system is uncomfortable at first, but after you've got some experience with it, it plays out very nicely.

Okay, and the worst?
I'm quite unsure, I have never experienced a complete disaster. But there are several games with serious flaws.

Well I think I vote for Gothic:
Absolutely horrible controls. The skill system is also not that good, and you can't customize your avatar by yourself. And the faction system is annoying since you must align with one in order to get better armor and quests, but I really dislike them all

There are very few games with a skill system I like more than Gothic.

Elder Scrolls, now those are games with awful skill systems. I still remember equipping heavy armor and buying a lot of healing potions, then standing still with three mudcrabs pounding on me for an hour or two so I could level my heavy armor to max. Jumping continually to level acrobatics, sneaking around the island to level sneak skill, etc. Absolutely horrible, even though Morrowind was definitely not a bad game. People nag about grinding in MMO's, but they forget that a lot of single player games they idolize necessitate it, as well. I can't believe they didn't radically change that for Oblivion. Tsk, tsk.

Last year I played a fighter class in oblivion with no mods (i know, i know, i'm crazy!), with heavy armor, etc,etc and i didnt do that grinding at all. I still ended the game and had fun. Those grindy processes to go around the leveling system (like your examples) is what made your experience bad, not the system in itself (imho), If you leveled normaly by killing mobs, etc and not worry too much about that, you would have a much better time.

Of course now i am re-playing oblivion with over 30 mods instaled (leveling addons aswell) and the experience is much much much better, but i still think the oblivion leveling system was not as bad as ppl say.


ABout the worst RPG i ever played i think it was Lands of Lore 2 and 3, but most people wont recall that game.

that's true, I only did that the first time I played Morrowind, but still, it means the skill system is bad. Even the tips said stuff like "Swimming is better for athletics than running" and stuff like that. You can have a better time by ignoring it as much as possible, and it doesn't kill the game (though it does make it harder), but ignoring parts of a game means that part isn't good. Why descend a mountain if you can just jump off it and level your acrobatics skill? You don't have to grind in MMO's you know.

Well yeah, Morrowind's skill system has definitively its issues with that.
But on the other hand, there's no pressure to resort to this "gamey" actions.

So the amount of "abuse" of the skill system is not something dictated by the game itself, but is just one of many possible ways to play the game. It's completely up to the player to decide.

And honestly I'm quite impressed you defend Gothic with your critique of Morrowind
Because in the end, the optimal skilling in Gothic is much more dictated by the game. There are certain portions of the game you won't survive unless you level in a very specific way. That's much more restrictive than Morrowind's system.

I think if there's one thing that emerges clearly from this thread, it's that one person's worst game ever is another person's fantastic experience.

I stand totally by my criticism of Wiz 8, which - to me - was an utter pile of steaming garbage. Yet others love it. Gothic also seems to be love or hate.

What a varied breed we humans are

Two old games that might deserve the title "worst RPG":

- Abandoned Places (for Amiga). At that time, it was common to include food and drink, and your party had to eat or they would starve. Unfortunately, the characters in this game had such a ravenous appetite that you needed to spend all the money you earned on food, so you couldn't buy any new equipment, and the opponents you encountered in the beginning didn't drop better weapons or armour, although they did become more powerful. I stopped playing very soon.

- Chaos strikes back (for Amiga), the sequel to Dungeon Master (which was a great game). There were so many teleporters (which you couldn't avoid) that it became very hard to keep track of where you actually were and where you were going. One could say that the game was aptly named, but the developers overdid it so much that the game wasn't fun anymore.

And some newer games that were very bad for one reason or another:

- Daemon Vector. It was included in a compilation I bought, and I had very low expectations. It looked ugly, I didn't feel inclined to play any of the available characters, combat largely relied on combos and reminded me of a brawler, and the few bits of story that popped up were lame. I wouldn't even label it "RPG", and it soon vanished from my hard drive.

- World of Chaos. It could have been a good game with some more balancing and bug-fixing, but unfortunately, fights were frustratingly hard in the beginning, the game often crashed and a bug prevented me from continuing the game after the first few maps. There is a patch and it supposedly fixes this bug, but it still kept me from playing on, although I installed the patch before starting to play. The publisher and/or the developer went bankrupt soon after release, so there won't be any more patches.

- Neverwinter Nights. Probably not the worst RPG, but the biggest disappointment. The game was severely imbalanced, I hated the controls, the story was lame and full of logical holes, you could have just one companion and the AI was annoyingly stupid. I was often tempted to stop playing for good, but completed the game, although the end was also disappointing.

- Throne of Bhaal (expansion for Baldur's Gate 2). Sadly, the best example of how you can ruin a great game's story (great game referring to Baldur's Gate). The tiny bit of story that was left in this expansion was completely predictable, though it mainly consisted of fight after fight after fight, all of them imbalanced. I played co-op with my brother, and the only challenge his paladin faced was to clear the opponents quickly enough before my mage/thief character died. Which still regularly happened because the game designers had the great idea to often teleport the whole party into close combat. Spells were almost ineffective because of the high magic resistance most opponents had, but when my character had a chance to lay traps, no opponent stood a chance to survive. Pen & paper D&D has some flaws with respect to high-level characters, but a good Dungeon Master can keep the game both fair and challenging. Throne of Bhaal utterly failed in this respect and also slowly dragged the story of the series to a predictable end - that's why I would probably call it my personal "worst RPG".

Well of course, because Morrowind's system is not restrictive enough.

If you can buy some pots and pans and stand among 5 mud crabs for five hours, you're suddenly an expert on heavy armor? In Gothic, you actually need experience before you can learn something. Even though it is definitely far more restrictive, as you say, I feel restrictive is a much better choice. It's like having a God Mode button in the corner of the screen. You'll be compelled to switch to god mode every time things get tough. But how much fun is a game in god mode? Gothic basically made you struggle to get better at things, struggle to get enough money to buy decent equipment. It's completely feasible for a Morrowind character to be a half god before it even leaves Seyda Neen. This is not to say I didn't like Morrowind, though. I loved Morrowind. It had a great character creation, a great environment, good quests and fun factions, and it's a game I rate about 8 out of 10, which is 3 more than Oblivion's disappointing 5. It would be up there in the 9 region, if it hadn't been for its godawful combat system, mindless skill system, afterthought 3d perspective and glowy item ugliness (which was modded out, thankfully).

Basically, creating a character has to be choosing your development. You can't (or shouldn't be able to) become a master at every type of weapon, every school of spells, and every type of armor in the game. Especially if it's all required. You don't learn how to levitate in Morrowind, you're basically screwed. You end up like a jack of all trades, except you're a master of all trades. Then you're not creating a character. You're not creating this craftsman, or this thief, because you can basically do it all and be fantastic at all of it. It really diminishes the 'role' in roleplaying, IMO.

I guess this one's also one of the hit/miss games. This is one of my favorite RPG's ever, because of the multiplayer ease, modding ease, memorable characters (Deekin definitely being up there with Minsc for best companion ever) and great expansions. Even though I've heard it being criticized a lot, it set my expectations for NWN2 so high that NWN2 was most likely the biggest disappointment I've ever played. NWN1 is not party-based, but they never said it was, and its AI(while being less than great) is still much better than NWN2's. I loved the Graphics NWN had, and its low system requirements. Never had it stutter or spend ages loading, always very smooth and very animated. For a game coming out in 2001(or 2002?) it was by far the prettiest RPG I'd ever played, and I felt the controls were the easiest I'd ever used.

@ Morrowind: It's a different role-play conception. In games like BG, Icewind or similar you have some kind of "specialist" approach. A thief is good in lockpicking, a fighter can mow down hordes of enemies and so on. Everybody has its specialty.
Morrowind on the other hand has a "universalist" approach. You can build the hero you want, you can choose the skills you like without any real limitations.
So in the end it's just a complete different role-play philosophy, but not less role-play. At least that would be my point of view

I decided I hated Morrowind after one too many trip into a shop where the owner with the x-ray vision told me he wouldn't deal with me AT ALL because I had contraband in my pack. So I put it on his counter, which he was fine with, apparently, and shopped. That happening once was twice too many. At least. When it kept happening repeatedly... Well, the game wasn't so good that I could ignore it, grit my teeth and carry on. Even without that annoyance, it was mediocre at best.

Gotta agree with the hatred for the first NWN game. What kind of sense it makes to take a system designed for party based play and try to create the next Diablo out of it, I don't know. Add in a bland plot (Generous description I know) and so many glitches that it was almost more bug than game... I completed it once just because, but I doubt I'll ever play it again. Just a bad game from the design stage on.

Two of the three points you touched are far more valid for The Witcher than they are for NWN (system designed for party - based play / Witcher has no companions/pets; and Witcher had a lot more bugs than NWN (I never had one single bug in it, personally)).

I take it you think the Witcher is a bad game also?

Actually, I think The Witcher is by far the best single character RPG I've ever played. I really don't know where you get the idea the system is designed for more than a single character, though. It's clearly not. Given the way combat is set to timed moves, you'd have real trouble with more than one character, don't you think? It had its problems, yes, but nowhere near the level of bugs that NWN had. The main problem with Witcher was horrendous load times, which were annoying but far from game breaking.

As for being MORE valid, I take it you do know that D&D is a system designed for a MINIMUM of four characters and preferably five or six, right? The classes are all balanced the way they are for that reason.

Witcher's based on the same game engine as NWN, no? That being said, I can't remember any bugs in the Witcher, maybe two or three CTD's in a year and a half of playing. Load times are nothing either (in EE at least).

Never played NWN, so I can't really weigh in on that one, or on what the worst RPG is. Like most bad RPG's, I played the demo and then forgot it.

I think I remember they used the engine of NWN2, but quite changed in some parts, I think.

They used the Aurora 2 engine to build The Witcher, yes. But the Witcher gameplay is not even remotely based around the D&D game system. There's none of the deliberate character weaknesses that mean Geralt would need support to be effective.