Bottom 5 Worst RPGs You Ever Played

[JarlFrank]

Since we've had several top 5 and top 10 polls here, how about the opposite - what are your bottom 5 RPGs?

These are truly the bottom of the barrel. I famously despise Neverwinter Nighs, and I hate Oblivion for what it did to the genre... but there are way worse games in existence. Games so bad you want to get the time back you wasted on them.

Here are my bottom 5:

1. Restricted Area: one of the worst Diablo clones ever made. Low variety of enemies and environments, even more repetitive than most Diablo clones. Worst RPG I ever played.

2. Space Siege: it's Dungeon Siege in space, but with far less variety in enemies, environments, equipment etc. If you thought Dungeon Siege was boring, this one is even worse.

3. Requital: slow single character RTwP like in NWN... except it's even more linear and boring than NWN, and it's buggy slavjank with several badly coded quests that can break the game.

4. MetalHeart - Replicants Rampage: at first glance it looks like Russian Fallout, but it's not. The gameplay is completely tedious and everything is janky as fuck. Setting is interesting, as are the visuals, but the actual game sucks.

5. Arcania - A "Gothic" Tale: JoWood took the Gothic IP from Piranha Bytes and hired a developer with zero RPG experience to make the fourth Gothic game. The result is a horribly broken abomination filled with invisible walls and a nonsensical story.

 

[hivemind]

1. Planescape Torment
- Overrated as hell, mediocre writing doesn't excuse horrible gameplay, honestly not as bad as the other ones on this list but I put it on worst place just because of how much dick sucking it gets
2. Baldur's Gate 2
- DOGSHIT TRASH ANY BOOMER WHO THINKS THIS IS A GOOD GAME SHOULD BE KILLED
3. Divinity Original Sin
- I
4. Divine Divinity
- Fucking HATE
5. Divinity II
- Larian

 

[agris]

Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader
Neverwinter Nights
Underworld: Ascension
Skyrim
Deus Ex: Human Revolution

in no particular order

edit: divinity original sin deserves a spot too

 

[lukaszek]

focusing on crpgs, when thinking of worst ones I focus always on following titles:

dark souls 1 - shameless cash grab for pc port that should pass any quality check. Speaking of cashgrabs im aware that at later date at least 1 more port got released at full price

dragon dogma - people complained about bethesda console ui but somehow dragon dogma gets a pass? This is worst shit ever. Should be put on pedestal so it does not happen again

oblivion - just for horse dlc. Normally I wouldnt care but I think this one is a reason infamous 'add x race dlc' exist now.

 

[hivemind]

Complaints about actual RPGs with serious flaws - participation award

Some literally who games made by one gypsy in a copper wire factor that nobody ever heard of - no participation award

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Going to restrict myself only to games I truly played rather than played a short bit of before quitting.

1. NWN2 OC. The only good part in the entire game is seeing Deekin and the trial, and they messed up the latter by always forcing you into combat no matter what. Not only do you have to prove your innocence -- which, fine, it might be their customs -- but even after doing so, they somehow have the right to force you into a trial by combat anyways. Wat? Game ends with a "rocks fall, everyone dies(ish)", no joke.
2. Dragon age 2. Encounter design is so terrible that enemies fall from the ceiling. Every combat encounter has wave after wave of enemies that just pop out of nowhere. Every other aspect of the game is like this, as if the designers just found out about copy+paste.

3. Gothic 3 Forsaken Gods. Made by some outsourced indian company that reused all the base game assets. Makes Gothic 4 look like Gothic 2.
4. Path of Exile. Take the worst parts of Diablo 2, throw out everything else, dial it up to 11. Maybe there was a good game buried here once, but it's worse than diablo 3.
And for something controversial:
5. Alpha protocol. I fucking hate the timed dialogue choices, the combat is garbage, minigames out the ass, and the game has hit me with gamestopping bugs everytime I've played it. Fuck this game.

 

[agris]

Alpha Brotocol is Obsidian's best game, let that sink in.

 

[hivemind]

It is also top 4 of all RPGs ever made so...

 

[Aarwolf]

1. Gothic remake - atrocious try to revive old game
2. Numa Numa - I hate it that much I forgot it exists and it pains me that I remembered it again
3. DOS 2 - Fort Joy was okayish, but fight on a ship and stupid "all people not in your party are dead" part made me rage quit and never come back
4. Deadfire - everything about this game felt wrong, I liked first Pillars and backed that shit out of curiosity
5. Black Geyser - another kickstarter failure, I should only blame myself and my curiosity; and me golden heart and charity.

Honorable mention: Kingdoms of Amalur, what a fucking snoozefest.

 

[agris]

ugh good point on numa numa, i had flushed it from my memory. that game was atrocious.

 

[Humbaba]

1. Torment Numanuma. Combat sucks, characters suck, the story sucks, runs like ass and contains cringy backer content. The setting's not even that bad but other than that it's just a pile of shit all round. People need to realise that PST is a singular masterpiece that cannot be matched or emulated.

2. Pillars of Eternity. Boring setting, terrible plot, shite characters and anime VA's. Combat was mildly entertaining though, which is why it's #2.

3. Arcanum. Has good ideas and literally nothing else.

4. NWN2. Just boring. MoB has a good plot but that is it.

5. Al-Qadim. Just meh.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

2. Numa Numa - I hate it that much I forgot it exists and it pains me that I remembered it again

ugh good point on numa numa, i had flushed it from my memory. that game was atrocious.

shrug, these types of games are just (painfully) mediocre to me and not truly terrible.

 

[Falksi]

1. Dragon Age 2 - Needs no explanation
2. NWN2 - Just incredibly bad UI, like mind-blowingly bad. Totally prevented me getting any enjoyment out of the game.
3. Witcher 3 main game - Pure bloated retardism. Like 100 hours of torture as you do a whole load of day-job shit.
4. Final Fantasy 13 - An abomination
5. Final Fantasy 15 - Another fucking abomination.

 

[Aarwolf]

4. Final Fantasy 13 - An abomination

Forgot about this shit, but yes, the worst mainline FF ever. And it spawned two direct sequels and two indirect ones (Type 0 and XV), but I played only one of them (XV), so no opinion about the other ones.

 

[agris]

2. Numa Numa - I hate it that much I forgot it exists and it pains me that I remembered it again

ugh good point on numa numa, i had flushed it from my memory. that game was atrocious.

shrug, these types of games are just (painfully) mediocre to me and not truly terrible.

I think the true pain comes in the huge gulf between the potential, and the reality. The pitch was Torment 2 in all but name, and as you say the execution was pure mediocrity. I think if the pitch was "inXile tries its hand at a walky-talky iso game", the magnitude of disappointment would be a lot less.

Personally, I feel so thoroughly burned by the Kickstarter era, vis-a-viz OE/inXile/Larian, that it colors all of their games for me.

 

[Modron]

1) Neverwinter Nights
2) Pillars of Eternity
3) Risen 2
4) Two Worlds
5) Avadon 1 (2 is great and 3 is pretty decent)

Those were the most disappointing rpgs I have played, with exception to Two Worlds which I had no expectations of and just got as bundle fodder. I wish I had kept spreadsheets of all the rpgs I got from Home of the Underdogs and emulated in the early 2000s because obviously the list would be different than this but those are just the worst offenders off the top of my head.

 

[Volourn]

" DOGSHIT TRASH ANY BOOMER WHO THINKS THIS IS A GOOD GAME SHOULD BE KILLED"

Do you have the balls to follow through on that threat? I doubt it. Coward.

 

[Butter]

1. KotOR 2. Terribly paced, terrible story, terrible combat system with terrible encounter design. No redeeming qualities whatsoever.
2. Fallout 3. People call it Oblivion with guns, but that sounds a lot more appealing than the reality.
3. Path of Exile. The product of literal autists who thought grinding for 10k hours was the fun part of Diablo 2.
4. Dragon Age: Origins. Shallow and boring systems, endless trash encounters with RTwP, dating sim layered on top. Creatively bankrupt.
5. Skyrim. You can install 100 mods and it's still shit. Every design and writing decision was wrong.

 

[Dedicated_Dark]

1. Baldur's Gate 3 - Fuck you Larian!
2. Outer Worlds - Shame on you fucking Obsidian!
3. Cyberpunk 2077 - Where's my Cyberpunk in Cyberpunk?
4. Wasteland 3 - Makes Wasteland 2 better.
5. Insert all the weaboo jrpgs here like Berseria, Recent Ys, Scarlet Nexus etc.. juvenile garbage that gives me 2nd hand embarrassment. The issue is some of them have pretty decent gameplay so I can't help it..

shrug, these types of games are just (painfully) mediocre to me and not truly terrible.

Painfully mediocre hurts more because you were excited about the potential at some point. The actual crap gets apathy.

 

[jackofshadows]

Looks like people rather are coming up with their hate lists than bother recalling various obscure trash. I can recall only a few of them: Konung 2 and Heath: The Unchosen Path (Златогорье) + Goldenland: Cold Heaven (Златогорье 2). Don't see a point to list here even amobinations like Fallout 3, really.

 

[Modron]

Gun to the head I would replay Heath before NWN OC.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Gun to the head I would replay Heath before NWN OC.

At least it's short, you can finish Heath under 10 hours.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

going to start buying some of you learner's english dictionaries

 

[NJClaw]

Nonsense. I only play good games, obviously.

 

[V_K]

I don't think it makes sense to make a list of the worst RPGs ever, since most of those are cash grabs or indie fails that nobody cares about. Hell, I can't even remember the titles of some shit games I tried for 10 minutes and dropped immediately. So below, in no particular order, are five worst games that I've played that somehow have a reputation of being decent, good, or even classic.

Bard's Tale - nothing to do other than fight repetitive random encounters that appear at a ridiculous rate.
World of Xeen - the original popamole: simplistic uninspired systems, simplistic uninspired quests and shiny shiny graphics.
The Quest - like Xeen, but with slightly better lore and only one character - which turns the already uninspired combat into mind-numbing snoozefest.
Divine Divinity - Diablo clone larping a bastard child of Ultima and Fallout. Functions about as well as Frankenstein monster would in real life.
Operencia - cargo cult dungeon crawler: nominally has everything a good dungeon crawler should have but casualizes it all to the point of irrelevance.