Poll of the Day > New take: What are the worst RPGs on the SNES?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Certainly the entire console couldn't have been gold, right?

For metric, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest gets the Mendoza Seal of Mediocrity - it's the bar and you have to perform under it to be "bad"

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I'll nominate Obitus, hate that game.

I can see people not liking Drakken 1, and Lufia 1 is rather janky

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Suoer Mario World. It's like it's not even an RPG!

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Secret of Mana. Great music, though.

CaptainStrong posted...

Secret of Mana. Great music, though.

How dare you!!!! REEEEEEEEEEE

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Lokarin posted...

For metric, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest gets the Mendoza Seal of Mediocrity - it's the bar and you have to perform under it to be "bad"

The problem for me is that I've definitely played worse but they were so forgettable that I've forgotten about them

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I was going to say Legend of Dragoon, but that's PS1

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KodyKeir posted...

I was going to say Legend of Dragoon, but that's PS1

hehhe, I wanted to say Eye of the Beholder but it was on everything except the SNES

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googles

wait, it was on the SNES? dang it must have really sucked!!

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Lokarin posted...

How dare you!!!! REEEEEEEEEEE

I don't hate the game. I just could never get into it because you have to go very close to the edge of the screen for it to scroll. I'd probably like the game if someone made a ROM hack that makes it always scroll when you move. I only think it's the worst SNES RPG because the only other ones I've played are Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy IV, V, and VI, EarthBound, and Super Mario RPG. I haven't played any shitty SNES RPGs.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/snes/category/48-role-playing

There are three pages worth apparently.

I'm going to go with J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: Volume 1 but only because they didn't finish the series. It should have been named "The Fellowship of the Ring" because it doesn't even get to the end of the first book and instead ends with the battle with the Balrog.


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KodyKeir posted...

I'm going to go with J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: Volume 1

This is actually a pretty good pick, having played the game myself. I would like to point out, though, that the game's OST has some of the best songs I've ever heard on the SNES. The title theme and Hobbiton are amazing tracks; they still sound excellent.
But that is not enough to save the game. Pretty much everything else in the game is a total mess. Oh, one other thing I'll say in its favor is that it is multiplayer, and it actually does benefit a lot from being so because it reduces the impact of the atrocious AI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMRS1ace7lY

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Gaawa_chan posted...

This is actually a pretty good pick, having played the game myself. I would like to point out, though, that the game's OST has some of the best songs I've ever heard on the SNES. The title theme and Hobbiton are amazing tracks; they still sound excellent.
But that is not enough to save the game. Pretty much everything else in the game is a total mess. Oh, one other thing I'll say in its favor is that it is multiplayer, and it actually does benefit a lot from being so because it reduces the impact of the atrocious AI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMRS1ace7lY

ya, that's a pretty bad one...

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KodyKeir posted...

I was going to say Legend of Dragoon, but that's PS1

I'll fight you

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CinderLock posted...

I'll fight you

technically a PS1 game is a bad SNES game.

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aw I actually own and like LotR, but I haven't played it in decades (I beat it once a very long time ago)

my vote for bad SNES RPG would probably be Nobunaga's Ambition: Lord of Darkness (or not, see below), a KOEI RPG. I love their strategy games, but I could never get very far in this game, and it felt clunky and terrible back then, when I already played and enjoyed their other clunky but great games like Uncharted Waters.

(it is possible that it's good once you get into it but I never got into it)

(EDIT: looking it up, Nobunaga's Ambition isn't even the game I remember. The game I'm thinking of is actually Inindo: Way of the Ninja)

another one might be Tecmo Secret of the Stars, but I can't remember enough about it

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KodyKeir posted...

I was going to say Legend of Dragoon, but that's PS1

Topic said worst, not best. Also snes.

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Lokarin posted...

For metric, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest gets the Mendoza Seal of Mediocrity - it's the bar and you have to perform under it to be "bad"

Mystic Quest isn't even that bad - it was just "Baby's First RPG" at a time when people were coming off way more advanced Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy games (or worse, WRPGs like Ultima and Wizardry) and expected more. Especially since they slapped the Final Fantasy brand name on something that was never originally a Final Fantasy game in the first place (the same way they later did on GameBoy, releasing the SaGa games as Final Fantasy Legend and a Mana game as Final Fantasy Adventure).

It doesn't help that 99% of the time, when you hear someone complain about it these days, they've never actually played it. It's just "memetically bad" in the same way that 7th Saga is "memetically hard".



Garlands_Soul posted...

The problem for me is that I've definitely played worse but they were so forgettable that I've forgotten about them

This is the problem for me, honestly. It's easy to remember games you like, but when you don't devote a ton of time to a game because it's terrible, and you move on with your life, it's much easier to forget the weird, obscure, or just-plain-bad RPGs you've played.

Sometimes I even have the problem where I'll remember having played a game, and I'll remember that I didn't like it, but not why - and I can't even entirely remember the genre. Like I'm not entirely sure whether it was an adventure game or an RPG, but I just remember thinking it was kind of shit.



KodyKeir posted...

I was going to say Legend of Dragoon, but that's PS1

I was going to say Chrono Trigger, but that's at least partly me trolling.

But it's also partly because I never really liked the game at all (it doesn't help that I hate Toriyama's art style, and that I played and enjoyed Chrono Cross first and never really went back to CT until years later). And because it always felt like there were better RPGs out there even when it was contemporary. And because the Internet has spent the last 20 years or so sucking it off far harder than it ever deserved, to the point where now I mostly just kind of hate it out of spite (see also, Ocarina of Time).

Nostalgia always complicates things, though. There are a lot of popular games that I dislike that I might have been more willing to go to bat for if I'd played them when they were new and I was a child forming fresh memories and undying loyalty for brand identity, but which kind of look and feel like shit when you're coming back to them years later when you're older and have way more experiences to compare them to. I loved the absolute shit out of the original Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest as a kid, but if I'd never played it before and played it for the first time today, I'd probably find it boring and needlessly frustrating ("Why do I need to use a separate command to walk down stairs?!").
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hydelyd

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I thought Paladin Quest felt rough but that could very well just because I did not utilize the gameplay correctly. I did find it interesting and odd to combine MP with HP. I recall spells get stronger with use so my first healing spell costed more HP to cast than the amount it healed.

KodyKeir posted...

I'm going to go with J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: Volume 1

That one was definitely rough for me. I cannot help but wonder if it was designed with the point-n-click adventure mindset of PC games of that era.

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Nice baseball reference

InfestedAdam posted...

I cannot help but wonder if it was designed with the point-n-click adventure mindset of PC games of that era.

Bingo, it was released on MS-DOS in '91, amiga in '92 then it was ported to both the SNES and (I want to say the genesis) in '94

CinderLock posted...

I'll fight you

I bought the game because I played the demo, which was smooth and polished, but the actual game was janky and difficult to move about, I barely played a couple of hours because the Main character kept getting stuck on a tuft of grass. I always intended to revisit it, but a landlord stole all my stuff a decade ago and that was one of the many things I never got back.

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Seventh Saga
Paladin's Quest
Secret of the Stars

Secret of the Stars is the best of those three, and that's saying something

ReggieTheReckless posted...

Seventh Saga
Paladin's Quest
Secret of the Stars

Secret of the Stars is the best of those three, and that's saying something

hey... I love Paladin's Quest

ma objectivity is biased!!!

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It's ok. I also have love bad rpgs