[General Discussion] RPG hype getting the better of you

If its one thing about games in general that is becoming more common place especially in this day and age is that a lot of games tend to be built around their own hype or even to a certain point the hype that particular fans have toward a certain game or game genre in particular.

With so much access to information about games before they're even made it is very easy to build hype upon a game especially if it has such a strong fan base.

From my point of view one thing that I have learned especially over the last few years, is not to allow myself to have un-realistic high expectations toward a game especially if it is one of my favourite games or series of games.

I find if I allow myself to get involved with the hype of a certain game, then I feel that I am setting unrealistic high expectations toward games in general, and more often than not I end up getting dissappointed.

This has happened with some of the rpg's I've played as well. I would share some of games that I was hyped about but ended up getting dissapointed at the end.

Xenosaga Episode II (Jenseits von Gut und Bose): Xenogears is my favourite game of all time. When they first had released Xenosaga even though I know its not a direct prequel but there are some slight similarities, I was obviously excited but I did not know anything about the game beforehand. I'll be honest if it didn't have the word Xeno in it, I probably would of never picked it up. I didn't want to go into this game thinking it was like Xenogears completely, so I kept an open mind and when I played the first one I enjoyed it a lot. When I had heard that they were maming a sequel, thats when I got really hyped up about it since they did the first one so well from my opinion.

Xenosaga Episode II came out, and I even had the game pre-ordered for the longest time because I was so excited about it. I thought they probably weren't going to change much, to be honest the story for Xenosaga Episode II was still pretty good but in my eyes everything else sucked. The first thing I noticed is that they changed the majority of the voice cast, I thought the voice cast from the first game was practically flawless especially chaos's voice. I was not a fan of the armour break battle system. I found it so incredibly tedious. I honestly thought the team up moves were a little silly, I tried really hard to enjoy this game, and if it wasn't for the story I probably wouldn't of finished it.

Final Fantasy VIII: With how good Final Fantasy VII was even though it doesn't hold much of a candle to Final Fantasy VI; I really had high expectations for VIII. Especially after seeing a trailer for the game they had definetely improved with the graphics and I thought with how well they did with VII they could make more positive advances with VIII. Boy was I wrong, all this game in my eyes is eye candy and thats about it. Within playing about 1 hour and a half into this game, I knew that angsty emo teens would jump all over this game. Drawing magic was tedious and annoying. The cast is like a fantasy version of The Breakfast Club. I got a friend back home who thinks this is the greatest game ever made, and she consistently writes squall and irvine gay fanfics all the time.

I know different people are going to have different opinions toward certain games because as much as we all like rpgs we do have our unique individual taste.

So what I would like to ask the Gamingforce Community is have you ever allowed yourself to be hyped up for specific rpg's only to be dissappointed by the end product.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Here is a fun example:
Suikoden I and II were incredible games, while III was decent. However...we all can recall the devastation of Suikoden IV. That was a big example for me since I loved the suikoden serie, yet had confidence that IV could still be a decent game (as III was pretty decent). Unfortunately that was not the case and I was hesitant in trying out V due to the poor quality of IV.

Another Example:
The most overrated RPG serie, Final Fantasy:
I am going to skip all the above since it was up and down for me:
2 (decent), 4 (Great), 5 (decent), 6 (incredible), 7 (great but overrated), 8 (decent to awful). Then Final Fantasy 9 was pretty much awesome so I had much anticipation for 10 which was to show up on PS2. Due to the upgraded graphics I would have expected the quality to be significantly better. UNFORTUNATELY FF X was utter garbage so I lost faith in the serie ever since (and for a good reason since FF XI was an MMORPG and FF XII was even worse).

Eh, can't think of any more for the time being. I know there are a lot more awful ones for the PS2. At least there are several niche rpgs that are fantastic for the ps2 *cough Mana Khemia*

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I've played Skies of Arcadia up to the first Gigas (which took a RIDICULOUSLY long time to kill), and while the music is nice, I haven't really seen anything special yet. The battle system is kinda dull, and the encounter rate certainly doesn't help any. I'll still finish it (probably after starting over), but so far I'm just not impressed.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by valiant

Here is a fun example:
Suikoden I and II were incredible games, while III was decent. However...we all can recall the devastation of Suikoden IV. That was a big example for me since I loved the suikoden serie, yet had confidence that IV could still be a decent game (as III was pretty decent). Unfortunately that was not the case and I was hesitant in trying out V due to the poor quality of IV.

I agree entirely with what you said. I practically didn't even consider V since after what I had experienced in IV, it made me feel like Suikoden was sorta like the Sonic games where it just hadn't managed to make the transition from 2d to 3d very well. I've never been more happy to have been wrong than I was after I started playing V and how it brought back that special Suikoden "feeling" that the other games had.

Another game that left me disappointed was La Pucelle Tactics. After having enjoyed Disgaea's gameplay as much as I had, I was looking forward to playing something similar, but more serious in tone. Maybe I didn't pay attention to the previews enough or what, but La Pucelle's same "goofiness" in things like its music made the game lose its appeal with me very quickly, and I've never picked it back up since the second day or so after I bought it. It was actually due to that, that I haven't purchased anymore of NIS's games since they've all seemed so similar to Disgaea and I figure I'd rather try to finish Disgaea than buy more games like it that I won't be able to finish.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I second La Pucelle Tactics, since at the time, everything about it seemed so wonderful and wacky. When I finally got it, I'd played a couple of chapters and it was surprisingly bland, despite the character designs and battle system. Too lackluster for me in a lot of respects and I felt like there was lots of room for improvement. I hadn't played Disgaea at the time.

After playing Disgaea I had expected every title with "NIS" somewhere on the box to be just as fantastic as my Disgaea fanboy instincts expected it to be. Although as a result, Phantom Brave and Atelier Iris weren't very exciting for me. I only played a couple of chapters of Phantom Brave and it was too much customization with a different kind of charm from Disgaea. Atelier Iris, I finished to the end, but apart from the alchemic synthesis, it was a horribly generic rpg in several ways. I had also looked forward Makai Kingdom and everything else, but learned my lesson from those two games.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Everquest II. Yeah it was an MMORPG but still a RPG. I loved Everquest for a long time. Everquest II seemed to throw away so many things that were good about Everquest. I also would like to know who's bright idea it was to make the server have to work to unlock a race to be playable. The other things that bothered me were the character models and armor graphics. EQ had more character appearance customization then EQ2. EQ2 each race/gender had one face, you could morph it to make it fatter/thinner, put different hair, and other stuff on it. But it's still the same face, so basicly everyone looked the same but with different hair. They also made armor look the same no matter what race was wearing it, in EQ every race had different armor graphics. If you were wearing full plate, people would have to try to guess your race based off your height. Basicly everything EQ2 does is done better by either WoW or EQ1.

Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria. Now I don't hate the game, but I enjoy it nowhere near as much as Valkyrie Profile 1. I just really don't like the new combat system.

Legend of Mana. Basicly my reaction was "Hey a mana game!" because I hadn't played one since Secret of Mana and after playing it I was just like "Ugh...."

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

^
Dawn of Mana. Enough said about that.

FELIPE NO

I've yet to play a Mana game aside from Secret that was any good.

Being a fan of the Megaman X series, I about wet myself when I found out about Command Mission. I haven't played enough of it to say that it's a bad game, but holy SHIT is it boring. I only got around an hour and a half into it before I put it down to play something else. I'm not even sure if I have it anymore.

Another one I was disappointed in was Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. I LOVED Second Story. But I just couldn't get into this one. When I played SO2, it was really easy for me to get attached to Claude and Co. I didn't give a damn about any of the characters in SO3. I can't even remember any of their names besides Fayt. What a dumb way to spell that, too.

Don't even get me started on Phantasy Star Universe...

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Is it okay to talk about the effects of hype AFTER you've played the game? I bought/played Xenogears back in 1998, thought it was a good game, but never thought it was a GREAT game. Then the internet arrives and I discover that some people think of it as 'the greatest creation of the human mind'. Eventually I came to loathe the game (as a consequence of my many arguments with Xeno-zealots) until playing it again and feeling more certain (and secure) of my position on it.

Hype before playing a game... FFVIII is an obvious example. I agree with anyone who was impressed by FFVII and expecting something similarly excellent. Instead FFVIII turned out to be a black sheep of the series. I played it once and then forgot about it. I've tried to play it again a few times but the drawing always turns me off before I get anywhere.

There's also Suikoden II... Before anyone flips out, I do think it's a very good game. I just don't think that a certain person was an effective substitute for a certain other person in the role of primary antagonist. I felt like the betrayal was a bit contrived/forced and that the character was too ambivalent/meek to keep me interested like the other character had. I also had issues with the boring dungeons, but this is of course something that can be held against the entire series, though Suikoden II may actually be the only one that seems to totally recycle forest paths and dungeon corridors (Rockaxe, anyone?). There's also how a number of people view Suikoden II as being so superior to the original, and I think that's a considerable stretching of the truth. It's twice as long and a little more refined, but the original was the original, and the second one hardly introduces enough new things to beat the original in that regard. Plus the original still has the best soundtrack of the series and I prefer Tir to Riou. In the end I actually agree that Suikoden II is the better game, but only slightly. Either way, only together can you say that there's a great experience there. On their own they're just 'good' and not on par with the inspired overall design of a Chrono Trigger or a Valkyrie Profile. They're a bit too grounded in convention to be THAT good. Just my opinion of course, but yeah, the hype and the prices on Ebay made me think that Suikoden II would break into my top ten favorite RPGs with ease. It didn't.

And I like Legend of Mana, darn it. It's one of my all time favorites. A game of endless possibilities and infinite wonder. Oh well. As my mom would say, it's for personal tastes that color was invented. (that really sounds better in Spanish )

Originally Posted by WolfDemon

Another one I was disappointed in was Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. I LOVED Second Story. But I just couldn't get into this one. When I played SO2, it was really easy for me to get attached to Claude and Co. I didn't give a damn about any of the characters in SO3. I can't even remember any of their names besides Fayt. What a dumb way to spell that, too.

I think Claude was actually Crawd in the Japanese version, so we got lucky on that one. Anyways, I agree. Star Ocean 2 is a favorite and Star Ocean 3 proved to be a disappointment in many ways. It made an effort to improve upon the combat system (with mixed results) but pretty much cut out Private Actions (one of my favorite aspects of SO2) altogether. The Item Creation was more limited as well. Not just in terms of what you could create, but in terms of freedom of control. Being forced to follow a specific procedure just eliminated the fun in it. I haven't even mentioned the infamous plot twist, which pretty much killed my interest in the series. Let's just say that Star Ocean 3 proved to be a farce in a more literal sense than even my worst fears could've expected.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Hmmm...

Xenosaga - With all the hype, I really got bored within the first hour or so. I just couldn't play it to completition...or for a reasonable amount of hours given the amount I paid for it.

Final Fantasy VIII - I played it for two hours and found it uninteresting. Granted, I really digged FF6 and FF7, and this game was an attempt at something new. Maybe if I gave it more time, I would have really enjoyed it. I kept hearing/seeing all the hype but honestly it didn't hook me in like other games.

Legend of Dragoon - I heard all the hype. People were giving it the sleeper RPG hit of the year. I played it and...was...bored...by...it. I tried to give a go, but I just couldn't get into it.

Dragon Warrior II and up but especially VII - I am going to focus on VII here although this is for DW in general. Don't get me wrong, I played the first one, and I beat it. However, people give it a super amount of hype when it honestly is...boring. I literally brought together all the coins I had in my coin jar to buy Dragon Warrior VII and played it maybe two hours. I really have tried to get into DW, and I can't figure out why I can't.


Megavolt: Cool quote. I think I'll keep that and use it from time to time concerning preferences.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Summonmaster

I second La Pucelle Tactics, since at the time, everything about it seemed so wonderful and wacky. When I finally got it, I'd played a couple of chapters and it was surprisingly bland, despite the character designs and battle system. Too lackluster for me in a lot of respects and I felt like there was lots of room for improvement. I hadn't played Disgaea at the time.

After playing Disgaea I had expected every title with "NIS" somewhere on the box to be just as fantastic as my Disgaea fanboy instincts expected it to be. Although as a result, Phantom Brave and Atelier Iris weren't very exciting for me. I only played a couple of chapters of Phantom Brave and it was too much customization with a different kind of charm from Disgaea. Atelier Iris, I finished to the end, but apart from the alchemic synthesis, it was a horribly generic rpg in several ways. I had also looked forward Makai Kingdom and everything else, but learned my lesson from those two games.

Ah....well, I haven't let hype get the better of me, but these might be the first few. These aren't exactly "hyped" in the traditional sense, since they all pretty much cater to a niche audience, but I bought them more or less because it was an RPG and NIS was in the bottom corner of the box.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Dark Cloud - Don't know if it was that heavily hyped, but I remember being told by a number of people to pick it up. Big mistake, got bored and never quite got passed the first dungeon.

FFXII - Don't get me wrong, I really have enjoyed the game. I just thought it would be much better. The story can't hold a candle to FFX, the characters seem to have hardly any backstory, and all of the fun of having monumental battles is lost on a uninteresting and dull battle system. That said, I'm close to beating it, as it is still one of the best RPG's of the past couple of years.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by WolfDemon

Don't even get me started on Phantasy Star Universe...

If you're anything like me as taste in RPGs goes, your reaction and mine will likely be similar. As luck would have it, I've already gotten started on Phantasy Star Universe. (beware massive onslaught of text)

I was speaking idiomatically.

I started Valkyrie Profile (PSX version) pretty recently and just can't believe that amidst all the hype nobody ever mentioned the hilariously abysmal voice acting. That you CAN'T SKIP.

Lunar was also a game that I played on the recommendation of several people, but turned out to be a mediocre experience from beginning to end.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

What a fertile topic! Just a few off the top of my head.

Chrono Cross I think the hype was just too strong on this one; I was bound to be disappointed. It's a pretty good game, just a lousy sequel.

A friend once described it thus: imagine a sequel to Star Wars that took place on one planet, with an all-new cast. While there are some new characters that vaguely resemble Luke, Han, and Leia, they only appear briefly as ghosts and you find out third-hand that the rebellion was crushed and the Empire won. Actually, come to think of it, that sounds a lot like the prequels

Star Ocean 2 was highly recommended by a lot of people, and I was psyched to try a pure sci-fi RPG. Imagine my horror when the game ditches you in a medieval world 10 minutes in and takes away your gun (the same thing happens in every installment of the series, I later found). The gameplay is all right, but that thwarted expectation stung.

Vagrant Story is another. I remember when all the gaming publications were giving it tremendous scores (Gamespot gave it a 10), without mentioning the ridiculous and unbearable complexity. It's essentially the world's most in-depth mystical weapon forging game.

Like most people, I was awed by the opening cinema and music and lost interest in the first level. While I eventually came back and beat it, the experience only revealed more flaws: distinct dead areas where you have no idea where to go next, and an ultimately incomprehensible story.

I have more, but this is already getting into tl;dr country.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by orion_mk3

Vagrant Story is another. I remember when all the gaming publications were giving it tremendous scores (Gamespot gave it a 10), without mentioning the ridiculous and unbearable complexity. It's essentially the world's most in-depth mystical weapon forging game.

Like most people, I was awed by the opening cinema and music and lost interest in the first level. While I eventually came back and beat it, the experience only revealed more flaws: distinct dead areas where you have no idea where to go next, and an ultimately incomprehensible story.

Eh, this is one of those areas where I have a knee-jerk "But-" reaction. How was the story incomprehensible? I was fairly confused about the whole Sidney-Joshua linking (was Joshua Sidney's young version, a separate child or just manifested his thoughts or what) but the rest was either wonderfully clear near the end or left open for your interpretation (what really happened with Ashley's family), but not something I'd describe as incomprehensible. But then I never found MGS2's story complex, just needlessly jumbled.

I will say something about the weapon system, though. A lot of people complain about the difficulty and often even say the game is downright impossible to play if you don't know what to do beforehand.

I played this game when it first came out in Europe. At the time my experience with RPGs was Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy 7 and Grandia. Hardly games to make me a hardcore RPG player. I had no internet for reference or help. So to say Vagrant Story never felt overly difficult or complex should put things in perspective. Sure it was hard. Many of the bosses were extremely challenging since you had to do more than just wait for a turn and attack. You couldn't powerlevel through the game so that's probably what caused a lot of trouble for people. I was often stuck doing 2hp damage on many bosses, but that's what boost spells, chain abilities and break arts were for. The golem was impossible till I noticed I could damage it with a blunt weapon much better etc.

But I kept going because the story completely swept me away, I had to find out what happened next. I played through the game with two weapons only. A (crappy) sword I built that I kept improving as I found better hilts and a large mace I got from a boss. I didn't know how the forging system worked so I never used it. Meaning you don't need that many different weapon types to finish the game, nothing is forced on you. I ran away from bosses to lower my RISK, I waited around after tough fights to bring back my health and magic, etc. And apparently I beat the last boss with an unusual method that WASN'T the only way to do it after all.

But yeah, touchy subject for me, that.


On the topic, I think Final Fantasy VIII kinda counts for me. 7 and 8 were THE reasons I bought a PS1 and entered that generation of consoles and onward. The FMVs had been amazing for the past few years so by the time I bought the console and games, the story details had been spoiled to me (though both games still surprised me with many twists). FF8 was very entertaining to me back then. Nothing as gripping as FF7 and I remember not really liking any of the cast that much, but it was an entertaining yarn either way. The orphanage twist made me frown as till then I'd figured RPGs and Square always did good stories with engaging characters with well written personalities and pasts. That 8 essentially skipped all that was troubling even back then.

It was only years later, especially after watching Noah Antwiler's "reviews" of FF8 that I started repeating "What was I thinking?". The more I watched the videos and remembered those mentioned story bits, the less sense it all made. Why was this matter like that? Why did they go there? Why are they doing this? WHY did I not think it ridiculous back then?

I guess I was too young to actually read what was going on and was swept away by the eye candy. And my theory is that whoever still likes this game did so too. I doubt there is a single person who plays this now for the first time and finds it their favorite in the series.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Qwarky

...needlessly jumbled.

That about sums it up, yes. Child-doubles, jumping tattoos, maybe-or-maybe-not familial relations, etc. The MGS2 comparison is a very apt one. But I do ultimately like the game, just like I like MGS2; they were both simply over-hyped and disappointing.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

It's unfortunate and interesting at the same time how many people either LOVE or HATE FFVIII. It's easily the 2nd best in the series for me after IV. I've only been playing FF since I was 5, so I'm not a band wagoner, or FFVII fan boy at all.

FFXII could have been much better. FFX was good, but I"m so sick of that game, the characters are horrible too. IX is solid, as are all the other games. I honestly think IX could have been a lot better, but it was good. It was too comedic for me I guess.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Andrew Evenstar

It's unfortunate and interesting at the same time how many people either LOVE or HATE FFVIII. It's easily the 2nd best in the series for me after IV. I've only been playing FF since I was 5, so I'm not a band wagoner, or FFVII fan boy at all.

FFXII could have been much better. FFX was good, but I"m so sick of that game, the characters are horrible too. IX is solid, as are all the other games. I honestly think IX could have been a lot better, but it was good. It was too comedic for me I guess.

Oh, so you started playing FF when you were 5? Were you in an orphanage at the time? And did you, upon growing up, find out every friend you have was ALSO at that orphanage, and that your mortal enemy ran that orphanage? Only none of you remember because magic happened and now there's a gay lead character that whines more than a fat girl upon finding out the last XXXL Jack Skellington hoodie was sold from her local Hot Topic MINUTES BEFORE SHE ARRIVED?

Because if you did tell me that, I'd have to say it was the WORST FUCKING STORY I'VE EVER HEARD.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I don't know, Star Ocean 3's fantastic plot twist certainly does contend at the very least.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I just can't get enough that they kidnap a president of a nation by switching train carts and replacing him with a robot double. AND the president turns out to be a zombie clone planted for security. Because, you know, an academy for training teenage mercenaries was plausible enough.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Final Fantasy XII takes the cake for me.

I dunno, on paper, real time battling seemed like a good idea. Constant action, work at your own pace... That kind of thing. It's good for an MMO. The problem is, XII isn't an MMO. From turn-based battles to real time battles, I don't think it transitioned well at all.

What pissed me off even more was that your characters are too retarded to equip shit on their own and they need a license to do almost everything in the game.

I've been trying time after time to overlook all the stuff that pisses me off about this game. It's awfully hard to.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

At the risk of getting gangbanged by the lot of you, I've always thought Star Ocean 3's revelation was completely in theme with the game, or all the games in the series. Yes, it's horribly executed, true. But what is the story of every game in that series if it's not that what every civilization knows gets flipped on its head? Whether starting as a space traveler lost on a backwards bumpkin planet or being beamed into an alien spaceship while being none the wiser, not a whole lot different than the Matrix has you Neo, seriously. Kinda the natural progression of always something bigger than you are which is what SO has always been going for so give it a rest already.

On topic, Unlimited SaGa. Yikes. Fantastic artwork! Unique battle system! Legendary score! Completely unredeemable.

FELIPE NO

Man. I was so fired up for Unlimited SaGa. It looked so pretty, it was going to be like the first game. Then wham. Balls on your face. Out of nowhere. It's just atrocious. ATROCIOUS. Thanks, Uzi. Now I'm all sad again.

Maybe the worst part is how it forced Romancing SaGa to be fairly overlooked by the gaming world at large, and that game actually -was- more in line with the first game.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Isn't it a remake of the first game? That would probably explain it.

Jam it back in, in the dark.