Things in RPGs That PISS ME OFF!

[+FujiSkunk]

I think some people in here will appreciate these:

 

 

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/46941774/

 

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/45730727/

[rockman_x_2002]

It absolutely boggled my mind. The character can jump 20 feet up in the air during their combat moves, but while walking around they can't lift their feet high enough to step over a totally insignificant rise in elevation. Even R2D2 and Daleks can go up stairs!

 

That would be the "Selective Paralysis" Rule:

 

Selective Paralysis

Your characters must always keep both feet on the ground and will be unable to climb over low rock ledges, railings, chairs, cats, slightly differently-colored ground, or any other trivial objects which may happen to be in their way. Note that this condition will not prevent your characters from jumping from railroad car to railroad car later in the game.

[shadow460]

One more thing that really rubbed me wrong (and ruined an otherwise stellar RPG) was Catcher Chocobo in FFX. Getting that 0:0.0 was very close to impossible.

[Vic George 2K3]

Random battles that emerge out of nowhere are really annoying to me.

[Lord Helmet]

Random battles that emerge out of nowhere are really annoying to me.

 

Ha!

 

Don't play many RPGs do ya?

[Classic Pac]

There are 2 things I hate about RPGs first is random battles especially when your going through some sort of maze, cave, etc.. and your trying to figure your way through it all without being killed.

 

The other is boss battles, some of them just take tooooooooooooo long. In Beyond the Beyond there just about perfect in length but FF7....that is another matter. Look I am not impatient, but I have better things to do then sit in front of my TV and battle this one boss for more than a hour.

[Gabriel]

Another one...

 

Save spots.

 

I HATE save spots! Let me save anywhere dammit! Yes, it means I can save right before a boss and immediately try again if I die. So what? Oh, you want me to lose the hour of wandering preceeding the boss where there was no save point. Screw you, game developer guy!

 

Forcing players to save only in certain locations accomplishes absolutely nothing. It's just frustrating. That's all.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

That list is pretty good but it made me realize how unfamiliar I am with many JRPG's.

[Tempest]

Another one...

 

Save spots.

 

I HATE save spots! Let me save anywhere dammit! Yes, it means I can save right before a boss and immediately try again if I die. So what? Oh, you want me to lose the hour of wandering preceeding the boss where there was no save point. Screw you, game developer guy!

 

Forcing players to save only in certain locations accomplishes absolutely nothing. It's just frustrating. That's all.

 

The Final Fantasy games are really guilty of this. There are a few (V comes to mind) where the last save point before a huge multi boss battle was back at the begining of the dungeon.

 

Tempest

[moycon]

Another one...

Save spots.

 

I HATE save spots! Let me save anywhere dammit!

 

Also auto save when entering new areas (ala : Oblivion)

So if you forget to save you don't have to deal with that crappy feeling of wasting the last 2 hours of your life when you realized you never saved and are going to have to do it ALL OVER AGAIN.

 

Happened to me more times then I care to remember.

[Lord Helmet]

Another one...

 

Save spots.

 

I HATE save spots! Let me save anywhere dammit! Yes, it means I can save right before a boss and immediately try again if I die. So what? Oh, you want me to lose the hour of wandering preceeding the boss where there was no save point. Screw you, game developer guy!

 

Forcing players to save only in certain locations accomplishes absolutely nothing. It's just frustrating. That's all.

 

That's what I loved about the KOTOR games. You can save anywhere/anytime in those games.

[shadow460]

If it takes you an hour to beat any of the bosses in FF7, including Ruby and Emerald Weapon, you've made a mistake somewhere. There's one strat with Ruby that takes about two hours, but you get to put something heavy on the controller and just walk away. You should be able to beat them all in under an hour each even without Knights Of the Round. Spells like Hades, Demi, and Coin Toss works wonders against even the toughest foes. They become absolutely lethal when they're used with the better command and/or linking materia.

 

I'm not partial to how the saves work, but auto save should be optional. If I have to save at a save point, I'll prepare better before I enter a dungeon. If I know I can save anywhere, I play carelessly.

Of course, if you can play through said RPG without ever getting beat, where and when you save doesn't matter as much.

Edited June 29, 2007 by shadow460

[Ze_ro]

What about dialogs? First time I play through a new RPG it's fine but when you've played the game a few times, you tended to want to skip the dialogs for quicker game play. But some asinine programmers made dialogs in some RPG game non skip-able, forcing me to waste about 5 minutes looking through something that I already know.

One of my biggest pet peeves with Japanese video games is how they display the text o.n.e. l.e.t.t.e.r. a.t. a. t.i.m.e.... v..e..r..y... s...l...o...w...l...y. Some games even give you an option to change how fast it displays text. Christs sake, just show it all at once! What's the point of slowing it down? This isn't even unique to RPG's (Megaman ZX does this, for example), but it only ever seems to happen in Japanese games for whatever reason.

 

It absolutely boggled my mind. The character can jump 20 feet up in the air during their combat moves, but while walking around they can't lift their feet high enough to step over a totally insignificant rise in elevation. Even R2D2 and Daleks can go up stairs!

I'm amazed how often in RPG's that it's not even a logical barrier... If it was a big wall, then that's fine, I'll try to find a way around it... but instead there's a fat man sleeping on the path that I can't seem to get around or climb over or wake up in any logical fashion (It makes FAR more sense to go get his daughter to come and sing for him than to just stab him in the butt and tell him to get the hell out of the way). Or there's trees blocking the way (how dense are the forests in Japan anyways?)

 

I've never been a big fan of Japanese RPG's... I think the primary reason is the chaotic character interaction. It seems like half the time when I choose a response to something a character says, the actual effect is not at all what I expect, due to some bizarre japanese social taboo that I simply don't know about. Women in RPG's are especially illogical... even moreso than they are in real life! From what I can tell, if I ever travel to Japan, every girl I talk to will be very upset with me, regardless of how polite I am. It's bad enough that companies put such poor effort into translating games these days, but they completely ignore the social differences that should be dealt with at the same time.

 

Another thing I've never liked in Japanese RPG's is that you generally don't get to play any role whatsoever. The whole thing has been choreographed for you... it's more akin to a movie where you unlock the next scene by killing the boss, but once a cutscene starts, you lose any hope of deciding how your character reacts to anything. Now, most games have a specific ending (kill monster, save the world) which is all fine and dandy... but I'd at least like to be able to control how I get to that goal. I find western RPG's (Oblivion, for example) usually let you take more direct control over your character and how you progress through the game. It's unfortunate that the MMORPG scene is so profitable, as most of the western developers have all but given up on single player quests.

 

Despite my stance on JRPG's, I have to say that I really enjoyed Grandia II for the Dreamcast. I never once had to do any levelling, there are no random battles, and the game progresses very smoothly overall. My only complaints were that the storyline got completely incomprehensible near the end, and the female characters again made no sense whatsoever.

 

--Zero

[Bruce Tomlin]

One of my biggest pet peeves with Japanese video games is how they display the text o.n.e. l.e.t.t.e.r. a.t. a. t.i.m.e.... v..e..r..y... s...l...o...w...l...y. Some games even give you an option to change how fast it displays text. Christs sake, just show it all at once! What's the point of slowing it down? This isn't even unique to RPG's (Megaman ZX does this, for example), but it only ever seems to happen in Japanese games for whatever reason.

Or, conversely, they don't wait long enough before displaying the next block of text (and don't wait for you to press a button), so if it's an import, and you aren't a native reader, you're screwed.

 

Often both problems are combined... you have to set the speed to maximum slow to have a chance of reading anything, and it still goes on to the next screen without waiting for you to press a button. I did improve my reading speed a bit by reading manga text as fast as I could while ignoring furigana, but I'm still nowhere near "flash reading" in Japanese like I can do with English.