I guess it's not a video game opinion--but it is a gaming opinion--I can't stand soccer. It's such a boring game, and you never know when it's going to end. The clock just keeps counting up.

It ends at 90 minutes, plus stoppage time for penalties and injuries, but that is generally somewhere between two to four minutes? It's actually a fairly short game compared to hockey, football or any other sport, it just isn't as broken up or spread out.

Also, I think Earthbound is better than any Final Fantasy game. (Except FF6, of course).

Earthbound has a pretty engaging story once you get further into it. It's the early-game that's a bit slow. And also, the interface for managing things like items, PSI powers, and interacting with features is rather clunky.

Other than that, it's a matter of taste whether you like its quirks, such as the absurd humor and the many references.

I hated Oblivion. But I love Skyrim. I don't know why, but Oblivion was just so boring and tedious to me, while Skyrim is a lot more enjoyable.

It's because in Oblivion the whole game you have the cold breath of The Man breathing down your neck. In Skyrim there's more of a sense of freedom. Perhaps it would make me unpopular to say that Morrowind was, IMHO, the height of the series so far, and it's been going downhill since.

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If you've been mod-o-fied,It's an illusion, and you're in-between.Don't you be tarot-fied,It's just alot of nothing, so what can it mean? ~Frank Zappa

It's because in Oblivion the whole game you have the cold breath of The Man breathing down your neck. In Skyrim there's more of a sense of freedom. Perhaps it would make me unpopular to say that Morrowind was, IMHO, the height of the series so far, and it's been going downhill since.

You wouldn't be alone in that opinion, MG. Morrowind is still my favorite of the Elder Scrolls if only for the sheer scope of the game itself. It's not as pretty, nor as polished, but it had atmosphere and a certain richness to the world that Oblivion could never recapture. Even Skyrim, for how much I love it, doesn't quite recreate the magic I felt playing Morrowind.

Isn't Morrowind the one where you can 'miss' strikes if your stats aren't high enough even though it's in real time and you can literally see your weapon thunk the baddie?

Indeed it is! d100 mechanics FTW.

I think part of what gave Morrowind it's "richness" and "atmosphere" as DF puts it, is the fact that it had no fast travel system. This added a degree of realism, since you were only ever able to fast travel to any given location as far as the nearest port or silt-strider platform. Sure, you could make ridiculously overpowered jump spells later on to zip wherever you wanted, but even that had an element of the uncertain in it, and besides, was still way more fun than opening my map and clicking where I want to go. That, and the Dunmer, and their whole culture, really, was horribly interesting. Dagoth Ur was one of the best villains I've ever seen in a video game. What's described as an "alien and inhospitable landscape" is what makes Morrowind so damn fun. It's like everything is turned upside-down there, and half the game you spend battling this very element- i.e blight storms, slavery, strange diseases, angry Commona-Tong, 6th House cultists that attack you when you're sleeping, over 9000 cliff-racers, the native religion, the xenophobic tribes of ashlanders, Telvanni wizards in towers made of giant mushrooms, etc.

This post has been edited by MogMaster on 12th July 2012 14:02

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If you've been mod-o-fied,It's an illusion, and you're in-between.Don't you be tarot-fied,It's just alot of nothing, so what can it mean? ~Frank Zappa

I think part of what gave Morrowind it's "richness" and "atmosphere" as DF puts it, is the fact that it had no fast travel system.

HA HA no. The sooner stats are removed from realtime spacial interaction, the better and I don't see how something that is completely optional automatically removes atmosphere or richness.

I wouldn't say "automatically". The fact that it's there makes it hard not to use, though. I should mention I'm weak willed, and want to do things as fast and efficiently as possible. The fact that I'm able fast travel certainly makes it hard not to utilize it. Being forced to slow down by not having any option was nice for me, and I'm sure there are a lot of people that I share this fault with.

If it was a matter of added realism, as something like removing stats would create, then the newer Elder Scrolls games can't be said to be any better than Morrowind in that regard. Everything you do is still completely stat based.

So far as the differences in the mechanics of those stats go, is the fact that I may hit with a knife but don't know how to do damage with it, more realistic than some magical dagger always just being awesome, but I can't manage to strike with it, presumably because I'm unfamiliar with the type of weapon itself? Sort of. The fact of the matter is, the concept of having weapon skills is a bit of a farce in principle. But I don't play RPG's full of wizards and elves for their ability to emulate real world mechanics, and I don't think the former option presented is all that less realistic than the latter-- if anything I'd judge d20 Dungeons and Dragons mechanics the "most realistic", such as those given to us in KOTOR. Certainly the latter scenario is less frustrating though. Spending five minutes trying to shiv a mudcrab with an iron dagger, and STILL ultimately getting taken out yourself is rough .

This post has been edited by MogMaster on 12th July 2012 16:51

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If you've been mod-o-fied,It's an illusion, and you're in-between.Don't you be tarot-fied,It's just alot of nothing, so what can it mean? ~Frank Zappa

It's because in Oblivion the whole game you have the cold breath of The Man breathing down your neck. In Skyrim there's more of a sense of freedom. Perhaps it would make me unpopular to say that Morrowind was, IMHO, the height of the series so far, and it's been going downhill since.

You wouldn't be alone in that opinion, MG. Morrowind is still my favorite of the Elder Scrolls if only for the sheer scope of the game itself. It's not as pretty, nor as polished, but it had atmosphere and a certain richness to the world that Oblivion could never recapture. Even Skyrim, for how much I love it, doesn't quite recreate the magic I felt playing Morrowind.

I've wondered for quite some time if this is true. I haven't played Morrowind, nor have I played Oblivion (owned but couldn't play, because my XBox stopped saving and I could never get into it). Some may argue that the advances in technology help the newer games in the series, and that is why it will probably be more popular in the future to say Elder Scrolls [insert newest] is the best ever. But the problem with sandbox games is that these games are basically the same ones created over and over again, at least on a fundamental level. When Morrowind came out, the formula was relatively new, but Skyrim benefits from the past iterations honing its gameplay. Yet, game after game in the series doesn't stray too far in innovation.

With all of that in mind, the popular opinion today is that WRPGs are dominant, but how can copy-paste (with improvement and new "wallpaper") beat in the long run, the great JRPGs that had their formulas but always came up with something unique and interesting?

It's because in Oblivion the whole game you have the cold breath of The Man breathing down your neck. In Skyrim there's more of a sense of freedom. Perhaps it would make me unpopular to say that Morrowind was, IMHO, the height of the series so far, and it's been going downhill since.

You wouldn't be alone in that opinion, MG. Morrowind is still my favorite of the Elder Scrolls if only for the sheer scope of the game itself. It's not as pretty, nor as polished, but it had atmosphere and a certain richness to the world that Oblivion could never recapture. Even Skyrim, for how much I love it, doesn't quite recreate the magic I felt playing Morrowind.

I've wondered for quite some time if this is true. I haven't played Morrowind, nor have I played Oblivion (owned but couldn't play, because my XBox stopped saving and I could never get into it). Some may argue that the advances in technology help the newer games in the series, and that is why it will probably be more popular in the future to say Elder Scrolls [insert newest] is the best ever. But the problem with sandbox games is that these games are basically the same ones created over and over again, at least on a fundamental level. When Morrowind came out, the formula was relatively new, but Skyrim benefits from the past iterations honing its gameplay. Yet, game after game in the series doesn't stray too far in innovation.

With all of that in mind, the popular opinion today is that WRPGs are dominant, but how can copy-paste (with improvement and new "wallpaper") beat in the long run, the great JRPGs that had their formulas but always came up with something unique and interesting?

I actually put about 50 hours of gameplay into Oblivion this week, and having finally given the game a more thorough shot, I still maintain that, despite my personal preference for the atmosphere of Skyrim, that Oblivion was a better game, although still not so good as Morrowind. I think, however, I've gotten some better insight into why.

The thing about Skyrim is the enchanting and smithing trees are too breakable, and have a nasty habit of making the unique items and Daedric artifacts pretty much obsolete. If it was just a matter of forgoing the option to pursue these trees, I would forgive this, but the problem is the items and artifacts themselves all seem to be nerfed, and unless you pursue the option to become overpowered, you run the risk of being useless. I like the smithing and enchanting systems they put in, but I do think they need a tune up at least if they're to make it into ESVI (which I hope is in the province of Blackmarsh. Fingers crossed). For one, making an iron dagger shouldn't be worth as much as a Daedric war-hammer .

I also feel that too many of the NPC's were un-killable and that it ruins the game experience. Part of what made Morrowind so great was the option to go genocidal over the whole map, with only the threat of guards re-spawning being a problem.

Another thing is that the main-quest/guild-quests, which were equally good, and in some places superior to Morrowind in Oblivion, really took a nose-dive in Skyrim. I did the Thieves Guild quest in Oblivion and was totally blown away by how badass it was, what with the final heist being an infiltration of the Imperial Tower, the heart of the freaking Empire, to steal an Elder Scroll. But in Skyrim I just felt like it was another dungeon grind, and the final job being nothing more than one more dive into an ancient Nord tomb WITH OTHER PEOPLE. This seemed ridiculous to me, and I felt it just devolved the idea of a Thieves Guild into a Fighters Guild with a little bit of stealth. Also, there was the random side-jobs, which I just found irritating. Presumably they were supposed to replace the "independent thievery" quest of Oblivion, but they were mostly boring, irritating, and seemed like a poor attempt to add actual thievery to a thieves guild quest-line with all-too little of it.

To Skyrim's credit, they equaled Oblivion with their Dark-Brotherhood quest-line. For one, they never lost site of what an assassin does, and secondly, despite the quest-line being somewhat shorter, the final job for it was beyond awesome.

Really, I think a lot my issues had to do with lack of creativity in Skyrim's dungeons. They sacrificed the quality of their mazes for length by putting back-exits into pretty much every single one of them. It also doesn't help that the Skyrim lacked the sinister element present in Morrowind and Oblivion, where in both of the former games you're fighting cults of some sort. Dragon's themselves don't quite make up for this, and there's no substitute for an insane cult of humans trying to take the powers of the gods. Certainly the Dragon's were cold and sinister at times, but that struck me more as being by nature, unlike their Big-Bad predecessors, which were primarily human. This dark human element of sacrifice added a lot to the dungeons, in places like Morrowind's sixth-house bases, that could seemingly be ready to surprise you in any random cave, and Oblvion's Oblivion Gates, with their bizarre Daedric architecture, cages that dropped victims hundreds of feet to be impaled by big vicious spikes, and burning corpses hanging upside-down around every turn.

This brings me to the last thing, which is that Skyrim lacked the long, yet satisfying, grind that it's predecessors did. In Morrowind you had to go and convince three great houses and four ashland tribes to back you, and in Oblivion you had to go close an Oblivion Gate at every city to convince said cities to come help you. Skyrim lacked this element in it's main quest, which, despite being tedious at times, always felt rewarding when you finished. They made the grinds optional, for instance with the dragon-priest masks, which if they were added to the main-quest, I feel, would have enriched the experience. Then again, what would it have mattered, since unique magic items were petty much useless in this game anyway?

I definitely enjoyed Skyrim, don't get me wrong. It was a great game with a lot of great elements, and was definitely a shining example of another great Elder Scrolls game (a series I feel to be probably the best RPG series currently in existence), but as a huge fan, I also have a large amount of criticism. Certainly I can't wait for Elder Scrolls VI, but I have to hope that the the last two games were only a dip in the curve after Morrowind before everything bounces back up to new heights, and I'm completely blown away by the crowning achievement that the next game is.

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If you've been mod-o-fied,It's an illusion, and you're in-between.Don't you be tarot-fied,It's just alot of nothing, so what can it mean? ~Frank Zappa

It did seem at points that Skyrim that some of the dungeons were lacking in uniqueness, but I tink it's mostly because they put in so much. I wouldn't be surprised if that turns out to be a needless sacrifice. I have a friend that swears by Oblivion. Says that it's one of his favorite games of all time. Yet, my friend also likes Chrono Trigger and FFVI more. Now, I don't know how unpopular it is on this forum, but I imagine that in the entire gaming community people prefer WRPGs over JRPGs. But to me as good as WRPGs are, things like you discussed happening in Oblivion's Thieve's Guild, special moments like that seen to happen all the time in the classic JRPGs. Games like Chrono Trigger are filled with special moments like that.

... Okay, favoring JRPGs over WRPGs is not necessarily unpopular, especially here. I've been saving this really unpopular one: I think Donkey Kong Country is a better platforming series than Super Mario Brothers.

I just never enjoyed the Doom or Wolfenstein games, at all. I acknowledge the part they played in the games we have now, and I respect their place in whatever gamer history of things that were important to the genre, especially with regards to shooters, but yeah, never really enjoyed any of 'em.

Here's one I get a lot of hate for:

I really enjoy the .hack series of games. They aren't perfect, not by a long shot, but they have some great concepts in play and they were just...fun? That's really the criteria I have for a game at the end of the day.

The gameplay itself is fairly okay, but Kratos is revolting to say the least. I can't stand him to the point nausea.

Also, I believe MMORPGs are the devil - they're fruitless, boring, grind-fest, copy-pasted boredom marathons. While many of them feature some nice gameplay or skill development schemes (SMT:Imagine, City of Heroes) and others are quite pretty in their own right (FFXI, XIV) their nature, as things that lock you into prolonged pointless repetition and demand your time on appointment makes them evil in my eyes. Also, boring.

I cannot stand the God of War series either, and I also agree that MMORPG's are terra-bad. They always have you repeat the same tasks over an over until you get some new item; then what? You do it again.

That being said I also do not like most first-person shooters, and I don't really are for Disgeae 4, it lacks the charm of the others. I also think that Assassin's Creed games are bad, except for the first one.

I could write about games I don't like but "pop culture" says are good, so I will leave it at this for now.

Here is something new:I watched an lper named hcbailey play FFXII, and i enjoyed the lp and the game more than i have in a long time.I liked the real time combat, and didn't mind the characters at all.It seemed waay more fun than FFXIII.I also seem to not be all that interested in lost oddyssey.Its not a bad game, but its gameplay lacks charm of old jrps.There are some rather good story moments, but i feel that some moments ruin the game.Another new thing:beating silent hill 1 has caught my attention to the series, convincing me to buy more games in the series.

I think that every game in the Metal Gear series is an overrated piece of crap. I think that every game in the Shin Megami Tensei series is an overrated piece of crap. I think that every game in the Kingdom Hearts series is an overrated piece of crap. I think that... nevermind, I'll stop.

OK, OK. Now that I've played through FES and played 4+ hours of Nocturne, Persona 2: Innocent Sin, Persona 4, and Devil Summoner, I'll say that there are a few exceptions to that SMT comment above ... Persona 3 and Persona 4 are the only Shin Megami Tensei games worth playing.

And oh man this thread is so much fun to read through. I love sipping on some Haterade every now and then. Time for another glass:

Tales of Symphonia is an okay RPG at best. It's maybe the fourth- or fifth-best RPG on the GameCube, nothing more. It's not even one the five best Tales Of games. Its combat and customization systems are all surpassed by later Tales Of games, and its characters and storyline run the gamut from tired cliche to annoying anime stereotype to simply uninteresting. Overrated in 2004, not worth playing in 2012.

First off, Ocarina of Time is a bloated mess and is one of the weaker games of the series (it still has many strong selling points). Link to the Past is the best game in the entire series.

Secondly, Final Fantasy VII is the most overrated RPG of all time. The Materia system felt very unrewarding to me, the story feels like a mix of I and VI, and I don't feel very highly of it.

Finally, I hate all BioWare games. Now those of you who know me from chat, I apparently hate everything. But I have at least given them a try. DA:O, ME, SW:ToR. I gave them their fair share, but they were some of the worst games I've ever played. While they are buggy, I look more towards Bethesda's version of the Fallout series and Elder Scrolls V when I need my Western RPG fix.

I have to agree with a fair number of you: A link to the past is the best game out of the Zelda series in my opinion. Granted, that could be because it was the very first video game I ever played, but even now it's far more engrossing than Ocarina or Twilight Princess and by far more entertaining than Skyward Sword.

I also think FFVII is severely overrated. I had problems with it when I first played, despite being a fan of it then and even enjoying Advent Children. But every time I have played it after the initial run, it has just come across as disappointing. I started another run through this past week ad ended up stopping after the Temple of the Ancients. I find it tedious and dull, sadly, the characters and story line weak and lacking in depth.

Modern games have left me with an intense feeling of abandonment recently. Mass Effect and all of Elder Scrolls have disappointed me in the story department and as pretty as the graphics are and as awesome as the customization is, a bad story will lose my attention quicker than anything else.

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Sword and Sorcery CosplayEnough with the flowers already, Terra! The cape weighs ten pounds now!It was me! I did it! I am the conversation killer!

Mass Effect and all of Elder Scrolls have disappointed me in the story department and as pretty as the graphics are and as awesome as the customization is, a bad story will lose my attention quicker than anything else.

Oh? I thought ME's story was supposed to be good?

Well I was only around 10 hours into it, but Dragon Age: Origins had a pretty good story. what system are you using?

I had it on the Xbox 360. I've heard good things about Dragon Age: Origins and I have it around here somewhere for my computer, but I haven't popped it into the disc drive yet. I've been more into Starcraft and Guild Wars as of late, but Origins is next on my list.

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Sword and Sorcery CosplayEnough with the flowers already, Terra! The cape weighs ten pounds now!It was me! I did it! I am the conversation killer!

Hmm call me crazy but,i actually didn't dislike the first kingdom hearts,though i never played the other ones.

I just played KH1 and loved it. But I didn't really like the other ones.

Btw, I personally don't think FFVII is overrated anymore. There comes a point when so many people say it's overrated, that it's no longer unpopular to say it's overrated. In fact, I think that the oppisite is now true. I think FFVII is underrated now.