Yakuza 4 - 78
Two Worlds II - 70
Hyperdimension Neptunia - 42
Trinity: Souls of Zill O'll - 55
Venetica - 47
Ar Tonelico Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel - 60
Dragon Age II - 82
When it comes to role playing games, it seems that only the Mass Effects, Elder Scrolls, Dragon Ages, and Fall Outs of the world are the only choices a gamer has for rpgs on the consoles. The heavily anime-inspired titles out of Japan have been reviewed as poor games, and this trend continues with Hyperdimension Neptunia. It mostly has received bad reviews for a complicated battle system, and a meandering plot. Ar Tonelico gets mediocre reviews because it is a Japanese RPG. Professional reviewers do not give solid Japanese RPGs good reviews anymore. It seems that JRPGs that satisfy JRPG fans are considered "bad games" by the professionals.
Yakuza 4 has a few medicore and bad reviews too, although the reviews are positive overall. The most frequent criticism of the game is that it isn't much different from Yakuza 3.
Venetica seems to deserve poor reviews. Gameplay footage on YouTube shows a very unpolished game with dated graphics and poor animations. According to the reviews, the game has an interesting protagonist and story, but the game is riddled with bugs and suffers from a lack of depth in the combat system and character progression system.
Two Worlds II looks intriguing. In the game you can switch your character archetype on demand. When the switch is made, your character automatically has the appropriate armor on for that archetype, and therefore a different appearance. The game looks like it has nice graphics too. So what's up with the bad reviews? Well apparently there is plenty to do in Two Worlds II-loads of quests, crafting, and exploring but... Oh no! It has technical issues! It is UNPOLISHED. In short, if you're an RPG fan, pick this title up. When technical issues are present, professional reviewers always mark down a game a lot, despite quality gameplay and story.
Trinity: Souls of Zill O'll is another game that has bad reviews that I think an RPG fan should pick up. The game is a fast paced action RPG where you can switch between three characters. These three characters have different abilities and some are more useful in some situations than others. I played the demo on PSN and the gameplay is solid. After I played the demo, I searched the internet for reviews of this game, and I thought I would see decent reviews. But I was wrong. According to the professionals, the problem with this game is repetitive gameplay and just being generally mediocre. Argh. The reviews also admit that the game has a ton of content and a decent story. Well, what I sampled was not mediocre and if the game has a decent story and a lot of content, then I'm in.
An 82 for Dragon Age 2 doesn't look bad, eh? That is why I named it as an exception in the title of this blog. However, the USER SCORE of Dragon Age 2 is only a 3.9/10. The game is more streamlined and action focused than the previous Dragon Age. Do we have ourselves the Western Final Fantasy XIII on our hands? Dragon Age fans aren't too happy with this release.
