I don’t want the most cookie cutter story/characters in the genre, along with random battles where you just play the whole thing with one hand. ie, Evolution (Worlds).
Tetsuya Nomura
Stupid overly Americanized dialogue: I don’t want them talking like a 4-Kids dub
Tetsuya Nomura
Final Bosses that have fuck-all to do with the story
Comic Relief characters that are more obnoxious than funny
Excessive random battles
Mistaking needlessly convoluted gameplay mechanics for a “refreshing, original battle system”
Nonsensical psychobabble being mistaken for an intelligent story.
Falsely creating length by visiting the same locales over and over and over again
Tetsuya Nomura
Random religious terms thrown around to make the story seem deeper than it actually is. I’m looking at you Xenosaga.
Cheating card game AI. I don’t mind card games in general, but seriously. Ritapon in Suiko 4. Absolute cheater. I’ve heard Triple Triad can be rather cheap too.
Pointless arguments over controversial material: religion, politics, etc. I play RPGs to escape reality not to have it shoved back in my face. Now, well handled doses of realism are OK, they can make the setting seem more involving, but some games are so heavy-handed in their messages (ex: Wild Arms IV and its anti-war/environmental themes) that they made me almost want to quit playing.
What I really don’t want is to have 40 hours of item-gathering and frustrating minigames that have no bearing on either the plot or the main gameplay engine. I’m not against all side-quests, but they should either be somehow relevant to the story (like in Final Fantasy VI), or at the very least they should give you a new dungeon or environment to explore (like in Star Ocean 2 or, say, Vagrant Story). What I really hated, though, was the side-quests in Final Fantasy X, which mostly consisted of tedious busywork, in my view, and took up more time than the main game.
I had to look him up. He did the Tales, Eternal Sonata and SO soundtracks. I thought they were really good. SO2’s soundtrack is one of the few things I liked about that game, and ES’s music was beautiful.
Sakuraba is one of my least favorite composers. His style is meh at best for most of the games I played, with one or two decent tracks that I still wouldn’t listen to outside of the game. Valkyrie profile’s music was energetic but not what I’d call pretty, and the Tales Series is okay but could have been much, much better in my opinion. I haven’t played any of the games that are supposed to be his “best work”, but I can easily see where Sin’s coming from.
What don’t I want in an RPG? antisocial “bad boys” like Cloud Strife and Squall Leonheart. Give me characters that at least try to be sociable and nice to be around.
Hmm… come to think of it, there’s no particular track that I can think of off the top of my head. At least the music fits what’s going on. IMO at least.
I wonder why people include Cloud Strife in this. I played this game again in December, and like…he acts like that for maybe the first two hours or something. By the time you first meet Aeris, he’s not even like that anymore. It’s weird as hell, to be sure, and the sudden personality change is one of the most obnoxious parts about Cloud imo…but truth be told, he’s doesn’t fit that archetype for the rest of the 30 hours it’ll take you to get through the game.
It probably doesn’t help that most of the sidequests don’t open until the very end of the game when you’re supposed to go fight Sin. Oh hey. Let’s go save the world and make everyone wait to sing the Hymn of Fayth while we go and fight EVERYTHING ELSE.
Motoi Sakuraba’s tracks are bimodal. His earlier solo works are more typical of the kind of crap he used to pull off. Good RPG music by Sakuraba typicaly are mellow dungeon tracks like Rain Soaked Ruins from ToV or Dry Trail from ToS and town music like Gentle Sunlight from ToV. His overworlds are typically epic and decent as well. However, Sakuraba music makes some of the worst tension music in the industry with tracks like Relentless Assault from Tales of Destiny or on a tight rope from ToS. This portion of his work tends to be extremely synthy, high pitched and incoherent.
I will note that in his recent soundtracks, he wasn’t alone and he generally improved over the years in avoiding the stupid noise shit. Beyond the Beyond, the older tales games and Valkyrie Profile have plenty of examples of what happened when people left him to his own devices too much. His best work consists of simple, short looping melodies.
Mandatory grinding. It should be challenging, but doable for me to beat the final boss in a game if I just go through it straight without running. In some games (Disgaea, FFXII) this is just about impossible. I really don’t want to fight the same boring monsters for hours so that I can have a chance at beating the mid-boss of Dungeon #5. It is the second most tedious way to extend gameplay. Which brings me to…
…2. Mandatory side quests. Granted, this is similar to making grinding mandatory, but it’s more frustrating. Side quests are meant to be fun diversions in a game, not a necessary component to finish. When I say “mandatory side quests,” I mean either one of these two things: A fetch quest integrated into the main storyline. Holy fuck are those annoying. Unfortunately, those are pervasive in just about every game. The other thing I mean is having a side quest have a reward that is so good that it severely handicaps people who do not complete this quest. I don’t want to tap X to see if my chocobo can shit the fastest. I don’t want to fight cheating AI in a card game or a completely impossible AND retarded sporting event.
Insanely rare item drops. Fuck you, FFIV. Fuck you, Earthbound. In fact, fuck most of you Goddamned JRPGs. I don’t want to kill the same monster for DAYS AT A TIME just so I can get a purple piece of shit that the Grand Dwarf of Generic Fatasy Town Z can forge it into the purple shit of time, or whatever. Just about every MMORPG is guilty of this, too. Especially WoW.
There’s other stuff, but that’s the stuff that most annoys me.
Overly dumb characters. I mean, it can be funny if it’s like Zell in FF8 who isn’t the brighest tool in the shed. But when it’s Yuna for most of FFX, who is as dumb as a rock…
When most female characters instantly fall in love with the leading male character after 2 minutes of dialogue.
I also don’t like whatever GAP doesn’t like (although I prefer that your silly Chocobo quest ends in a summon of mass destruction than to the little girl you just met becoming happy and letting you progress for some nonsensical reason).
I don’t like characters like Selphie: positive, zany and apparently older than 10.
If your characters are children/teenagers, could the 16/25-year-old dude not be the wise sage of your organization? Yeah, we al know Peter Pan.
I HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE uninteresting villains. Or villains-by-fiat: people who just have different interests but the game doesn’t care to explore that point (if it does it’s a plus in my book)
Reckless actions once in a while are okay. Stupid actions if supported by characterization, ditto. If the characters act mostly without rhyme or reason, it gets old.
Artificial barriers suck; at least have the decency to explain them. You have swords that can cut through everything, you can summon gods and meteors, but you’ll gladly spend 15mins looking for a key because the villain locked the door. Oh, and when said door is wooden, the developers are mocking the players.
Worst Sakuraba moment for me was in SO3 in the battle right after Fayt’s dad gets shot. The battle theme sounds like you gettin’ gansta’ up dat bitch’s ass which was completely inappropriate considering the main character is in the process of loosing his original motivation for his quest (in a DRAMA! way no less). I’m saying this as someone who stopped playing that game at the mini-game town, but that had to be the second worst scene of the game (and the first one needs no introduction).
And speaking of SO3’s bullshit mini-game town. Minigames that punish you for trying to win at them (which is the whole loving point of them to begin with otherwise phat loot should just be handed to you) should never rear their ugly head in another JRPG again.
Also MP Death. Gently Caress MP Death!
Young obnoxious twins should also die in a fire. Especially when they start breaking out in Diner dances or getting the main character to break out in a Diner dance.
Using Roguelikes for something other than roguelikes (i.e. sticking a slow complicated mess of a JRPG battle system in with long mindnumbingly dull roguelike dungeons).
Removing or killing off the only remotely interesting character(s) in the game, especially within the first third of it. And no FFVII doesn’t count as Aerith was the least interesting character, or at least compared to Cid.
Introductions that take more than an hour to get through. And I mean the ones that contain very little or no fighting/gameplay whatsoever.
Random Chests - Come on rare loot… Shit! 1 gil.
Artificial Difficulty
Extremely spastic (super-hyper) enemies - Something you’d have to experience.
RNG Level-up system (I tend to get screwed over with this crap.)
Annoying Tutorials
TONS of backtracking (I’m looking at you, Tales of the Abyss…)
Uninteresting/Unmotivated Villains - Make me want to kill you for something!
Deus Ex Machina - I got saved by a taco. Yay?
Rare Item Drops - 0.001% Drop Rate!? Fuck you.
