Use this thread to vent about games you hate: games that should or could have been great that weren't, games that are flat out awful, or games you just don't see why other people froth over it.
I hate Vagrant Story. Vagrant Story is the ultimate example of a game that I wish was a movie because the story, music, and graphics are incredible. Unfortunately, you have to actually play Vagrant Story, which is an experience so tedious, frustrating, and arbitrary that I can't believe it got such high review scores. To be fair, the basic gameplay is really fun: being able to aim at certain body parts and to time attack/defense skills into chains is a really interesting idea, and the basic platforming/puzzle elements are all done extremely well. The problem comes in the gameplay that is laid over this: the Risk system, the weapon system, and the crafting.
The Risk system is designed to discourage button mashing, plain and simple--this isn't so bad, but there are much better ways of doing this. Any attack you perform in the game increases your Risk meter. When it starts to get over 25 or so (on a scale out of 100), you begin to miss attacks more often and do less damage. The Risk meter goes down when you stand still and do nothing, and there are items to lower Risk, but what's the fucking point?? As I said, there are much better ways of discouraging or eliminating button mashing in an action RPG, and the Risk system is terrible and irritating. If I can just open a menu and use an item everytime my Risk gets too high, why even have it in the game at all?? You'll either spend too much time standing still waiting for your Risk to go down, or you'll constantly be opening the menu to use items, which makes the gameplay molasses slow.
The weapon system wouldn't be such a problem if it wasn't so complicated. There are three types of weapons (blunt, piercing, and sharp edge) and on top of that there are various elemental allignments. Not a big deal; other games have elements and different weapon types. The problem is that the element and weapon types are absolutely crucial to the battle system. When you run into, say, a Fire Elemental boss, you can spend hours doing chains of 3 to 4 HP damage attacks over and over (and then tediously getting your Risk back down) or you can switch to a water elemental weapon. What's that you say, you don't have a water elemental weapon?? Well uh I guess you're shit out of luck. Even assuming you do, having to open the menu to switch weapons and/or attach/de-attach gems to affect elements slows down the gameplay. This is a game that so badly needed some kind of ring menu to quickly cycle through items and weapons I can't believe they didn't implement one after play testing. I know it can't be out of laziness , so I can only assume it was a design choice, albeit an extremely poor one.
Finally, the crafting system. Around about the late 90s onward, RPGs started to have systems wherein you could 'customize' or 'combine' various items, weapons, and/or armor to create newer, better items. The problem is that they usually give you no indication of what the result will be, leading to lots of re-loads or time spent tearing apart and re-assembling items over and over. However, in most games they are but an optional thing for the hardcore to fool with; witness Star Ocean 2, which has all kinds of item creation and customization crap, but you can easily beat the game without touching any of it. Not so for Vagrant Story: weapon and item crafting are mandatory. In fact, Vagrant Story is the absurd climax of this concept. There are so many stats and numbers to keep track of, it's hard to know whether your weapons and armor are going to improve through the process or not. Rather than playing the game and having fun, you will spend chunks of time fucking around with crafting until you can get the right weapon/armor combos to defeat the bosses.
I can see how the game might appeal to some people because it is a unique experience, combining an action/stealth game with lots of strategy and hardcore jRPG elements. However, for the other 99% of the population, Vagrant Story should rightfully forever stand as a game that squandered all its potential by trying to be unique and complex but ended up being frustrating and needlessly complicated.
