PixlBit

I feel a bit guilty producing this part of the countdown.  I realize just how little I remember about games on this part of the list.  Fully half of them- I couldn't recall even one memorable moment.  These are the games that aren't broken or even particularly bad; they  just don't have much to recommend them.  If you are paying attention and reading these blurbs that I've worked on so dilligently, you'll be hearing that fairly often until around the top 150.  I recall playing them; I recall having opinions; I just don't recall a damn thing about them.  If I didn't keep all my old notebooks, I might not have been able to cobble together a coherant list that ranks them in relation to one another.  Meh.  When I return to the top 100, the blurbs will become more informative.  Until then, I'm glad I could help you waste five minutes.  

200) Puzzle Quest (DS)- I remember when this game came out, how publications tripped over themselves to give such high praise to this new genre mash-up.  It was so refreshing to have battles played out in a slightly different way than your typical RPG, and it gave context to those common-as-dirt match three games that were literally all over the place.  Oh, these aren’t my opinions- these are still the opinions of magazines and internet critics.  I thought the game was pretty boring.  At first it was interesting enough- I had never played bejeweled or any of those kinds of games, so I was able to put up with the slow pace (even by RPG standards) and odd interface.  But then it went on and on, and I had to match fucking tiles to buy items or to move across the map.  I guess the game just wasn’t for me.  I actually beat this thing, unlike some of the games higher on the countdown that I actually like….. but I can’t wholly recommend it.  Maybe if you love lining up objects so they disappear.  Maybe if you like generic fantasy stories.  Why you’d combine the two, though, is a mystery to me.  Why not just make an RPG that has you play full games of Tecmo Bowl every time you fight an orc?  They could call it Tecmo Bowl and just eliminate the RPG elements.  Now that’s a game I’d play.

199) Silver (Dreamcast)- Maybe I’ve said this before, but there are some games I just don’t remember very much about.  Of all the games on this countdown, this is the one that I can’t tell you a damn thing about.  I mean, there isn’t one thing about this game that I remember.  So, how did I come to place it at number 199?  That is a question that really gets at the heart of how I rank these games.  I’ve got notebooks filled with old countdowns and lists.  I’ve mentioned it before, but this is what I did with my spare time when I was bored in class.  I’d just write “Ten Best Dreamcast Games”, or “Best Sci-Fi Books”, or “Current Hall of Fame Baseball Players”, stuff like that.  This way when I looked back on it years later, I’d have an idea of just how affected I was by various media.  After making so many countdowns, you just get an idea where a particular games ranks in comparison to others.  For example, I don’t remember much about Arcana for the NES or Thousand Arms for PS1, but I know I liked Arcana better.  It’s not an objective method, and it doesn’t say anything for which games are the highest quality, but it does give a “gut test” and frame of reference from which to rank them.  So even when I don’t recall anything about a game, as is the case with Silver, I know what it’s better or worse than.  And it’s worse than most.

198) Okage: Shadow King (PS2)- This was a cute RPG that didn’t have much substance.  What can I say about it?  It’s like a Halloween RPG.  It was one of the first RPGs available for the PS2, which was one of the greatest RPG systems of all time.  It tried to be funny- a lot of the dialgoue is "charming" and "hilarious" in quotes.  In quotes because it tries to differentiate itself in the slightest way by forcing a lot of cringe-worthy slapstick into most of the converstations.  I'll admit to being slightly amused at first, but after an hour or two I was just bemused.  Not really, but those two words rhyme.  There isn’t really anything wrong with Okage, per se, but there isn’t really anything great about it.  Like I said- there is somebody out there thining "It was charming.  It wasn't Final Fantasy, but I like it!"  In my humble opinion, this game is the Guardian’s Crusade of the PS2 generation.  Damning with faint praise?  You decide!

Hilarious!  It's a demon- but it talks like you or me!

197) Infinite Undiscovery (X-Box 360)- Okay now I feel a little awkward.  I look back at 198, and I see Okage, a game that I don’t actively hate.  But now one spot higher is Infinite Undiscovery, an indisputably shitty game.  Well maybe you’d dispute it, but you’d be wrong.  So what’s with the discrepancy?  Did I make a mistake?  Well….. no, not exactly.  Okage is one of those games that’s just content to sit around and take the C+ grade.  It’s not going to fail spectacularly because it doesn’t try to be spectatcular.  Undiscovery, however, swings and whiffs….. but it does have ambition, at least.  But god, what a clusterfuck….. just an awful, awful mess.  The story is execrable and I won’t recap it, but apparently your main character is an identical twin to some mystical hero, but your guy is even more of a mystical hero.  The voice acting is consistently horrible, and the story places your party in such convoluted and absurd situations that the problem cannot be ignored.  Take the dinner dance, which I will link to you below.  For fuck’s sake, what poor Japanese sap lost his job over that one?  Seriously, that’s a situation that should never occur in any game, and what self-respecting man would be caught dead doing a dinner dance?  After watching that, I’m seriously surprised he didn’t let loose a loud fart and fall face-first into a cream pie.  Jeez, I’m pissed even writing about it.  But the horrible story situations and voices are only the tip of the iceberg.  One of the game’s “features” is that there are like twenty party members you can choose between.  As if it matters, because the game is so short (like twenty hours long, tops, even if you do everything) that you will literally not have time to use them all.  Each has a special ability that you can use on the world map, but they are almost worse than useless for how infrequently you’ll use them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlHZrBUimuY

196) Legaia 2 (PS2)-  When I started playing this game, I had absolutely no expectations.  The first Legaia was pretty much the definition of unspectacular.  At that time, I was playing pretty much every single RPG that was released, shitty or not.  Legaia one wasn’t shitty, but it was short and pretty generic.  Anyway, as I played through the first few hours of Legaia 2, I thought to myself, “this has the makings of a solid game.  Much better than I originally thought it’d be”.  I was wrong.  I played a few more hours, and the game ended up being exactly what I originally thought it’d be.  Generic story, generic RPG format (town, dungeon, town, dungeon, etc.) generic battles.  The game was rather short, also, if I remember correctly.  Definitely one to miss.  But I honestly wonder- is this game on anyone’s to-play list?  Anyone at all?  Let me know.

195) Brain Lord (SNES)-  This one is barely even a role-playing game.  It’s more like a puzzle-action-adventure title.  You gain levels, but that really isn’t the point.  Or maybe it was the familiars that gained the levels- you get a bunch of little beasties that follow you around and do a lot of the fighting for you.  The battles are in the vein of Zelda, with your character traversing the overworld and tackling enemies in real time.  Don’t get too excited, though, because the overworld is small.  Like two towns and an in-between region.  Now, I haven’t played this one in seventeen or so years, but I know that there wasn’t much beyond the four or so dungeons that comprise the bulk of gameplay.  Those dungeons are where the game gets its title.  Beside the enemy killing, there are puzzles galore in those dungeons.  Block pushing puzzles, riddle puzzles, password finding puzzles and puzzle puzzles.  Lots of puzzles, and I do recall that they were engaging enough.  I actually teach a graduate course called “puzzle solving” for a college math department, so the stuff in this game was sorta old hat for someone with my (cough cough) “skill set”.  Not that I’m some sort of genius or anything, just that I’m used to the kind of puzzles this game presents.  I guess your mileage will vary depending on how often you’ve played with word games or done sokoban-style puzzles.  And other than that, there isn’t much to say.  Of all the Enix RPGs of the SNES era, this was one of my least favorites.  If 7th Saga didn't exist, this would be the worst.  I never thought it was bad, exactly, but I wouldn’t play it again.

You'd be forgiven for mistaking this for 7th Saga.

194) Suikoden Tierkreis (DS)-  I suppose I ought to full disclosure when I haven’t finished the game I’m talking about.  And I don’t mean “make it to the end, but just can’t be bothered to complete the story ‘cuz there’s nothing left to see” not finishing it.  I make it about fifteen hours in, collected a lot of party members, unlocked a good portion of the world (I think) and completed a bunch of the story.  I just kept waiting for it to get interesting, to become an actual Suikoden game.  A lot of the elements were there- like I said; a bunch of people joined my party.  But part of what makes that series so great is that there is an overarching mythology that ties them all together.  Characters from previous games make appearances and past events are referenced.  This game has none of that- it takes place in a completely different world than the others.  This in and of itself is something I could’ve lived with if the gameplay was solid or if the story was outstanding, but neither was true.  It plays like an RPG, but I felt no motivation to level my characters or explore.  The main character was an annoying go-getter who immediately and rashly will bravely sacrifice life-and-limb to rescue a cat from some tree branches.  He constantly shouted things like “I can do it!” or “I’m going to try my best!”.  Maybe fifteen years ago I could have tolerated that shit, but as an adult I have very little patience for it.  What I’m saying is that there were a lot of little things that conspired to make me start hating this game.  Well not hate, maybe, but….. yeah, I sort of hated it.  I’d rather play Suikoden IV than this, and that’s saying something.  It got good reviews, though.

This guy made me long for the silent protagonist.

193) Magic Knight Rayearth (Saturn)-  Awwww, I don’t know.  I feel like there are people out there who love this game.  It’s got anime girls in it, and it’s based off of some cartoon that I’m sure some people are obsessed with.  Mostly everyone who cares knows the story behind this game- Working Designs was notorious for taking their time releasing a game, but this went beyond that.  It started development early in the Saturn’s lifecycle, and was literally the last game released for the system in North America.  At this point, nobody really remembers what they did with all that time, but I remember thinking this thing was the holy grail of RPG gaming (at the time) and walking away after playing scratching my head.  Do you know that the main characters, the three magic knight girls, gain only up to level three before they max out?  Is that strange to you?  Level three.  At the time I was shocked.  The game was over before it started, and I was just like “huh”?  I wonder if time and decreased expectations would be kinder to this game if I played it now.  It’s amazing how little I actually remember about this game, but the level three thing stuck with me.  It’s a testament to how some games lodge themselves in your memory, and others just become a footnote in a top 250 countdown you cobble together because you are bored and your girlfriend falls asleep on the couch at 8 p.m.

192) Mystaria (Saturn)-  Two Saturn games in a row!  Saturn had a bunch of good RPGs, I guess.  Well, a bunch of RPGs anyway.  This one, Magic Knight Rayearth, Shining the Holy Ark, Shining Force III, Albert Odyssey, Panzer Dragoon Saga, the list goes on…..  No, that was the entire list, but still, for a system that had so few games, a large percentage of them were RPGs of fair quality.  Mystaria is all right, but it really doesn’t stand out from the crowd.  See my blurb on Okage- this isn’t a game that tries that hard.  It’s of the strategy RPG variety, but think of the most banal, serviceable but uninspiring game you can and then replace it with this one.  The graphics are muddy, as were all proto-3D graphics of the time.  It isn’t pretty to look at, but there is some RPGing to be done if you are truly interested.  Did you know that you can create a translation patch CD for Shining Force III episodes 2 and 3?  Maybe you should go play those instead.

191) Grandia III (PS2)-  And so ends another edition of my countdown.  I feel bad for even writing it.  I can’t remember very much about any of these.  This one is almost as bad as Silver- I can’t think of anything that separates this from any other games in the series.  I’ve said this about Grandia before- think Lunar with a more dynamic action-y battle system.  Think anime archetypes and generic RPG action.  And isn’t that the case with many of the games at this point in the countdown?  There is nothing really to recommend them over games that are just better versions of themselves.  Lesson learned.

 
To be honest, I don't know if this is really a picture from Grandia III.