Gaming and nitpicking go hand in hand and, in this era of social media and Reddit, it’s easy to find your favorite games torn to shreds over the smallest issues.
That being said, we’re no better than anyone else, and there are plenty of slights to be found in the best gaming has to offer. Is there truly such a thing as aperfectgame? That’s a debate for another day.
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These games have such massive main quests that they’ll eat up days' worth of playtime, even without the lengthy side quests.
Often,RPGs are the easiest to find faults with due to the sheer amount of hours you’ll be pouring into them. Nothing is perfect, and everyone can find something wrong with a game that they love. We’re going to check out a bunch of great RPGs with one glaring issue.
10The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
The Combat Is Weak
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Fextralife Wiki
The Witcher 3 is one of the best games of all time. It’s an achievement in storytelling, graphics, side quest design, voice acting, and character writing for the video game world, and it sits firmly in my top 5 games ever.
However, there is a small issue with the game that keeps it from being the perfect game. That is the combat. It’s fun at first and serviceable throughout the title, but there is no sense of progression throughout the game.
The combat is the same in hour 1 as it is in hour 80. You only get marginal upgrades to your Signs, and the swordplay only gives you two new attacks throughout the entire game.
That’s the main reason I can no longer play vanilla Witcher 3, as I need the W3EE mod to make the combat feel fun to play. Seeing as you are in combat quite a bit throughout the game, it’s an issue that keeps it from being perfect.
9Starfield
Almost A Galactic Success
This may be a controversial take, but I thought Starfield was largely everything it was promised besides one small feature. That feature being the procedural generation that makes up the majority of the exploration.
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At first, you don’t really pay any mind to it because you’re experiencing these things for the first time, but after a while, you start to see the repetitive areas, like the same cryo labs over and over. All that novelty disappears very quickly.
It makes exploring these hundreds of planets feel worthless, and while the combat is great and the quests are generally long and varied in their content, we come to Bethesda games for that feeling of “Wow, what’s over there?” In Starfield, due to the lack of actual handcrafted places to do that exploring, that question isn’t necessary anymore.
It ruins an aspect of a game that largely focuses on being a space sim, and it takes away the immersion that much of the game works to build.
8Cyberpunk 2077
Where Is The Villain?
Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk 2077is a mesmerizing game that has some incredible graphics, explosive combat, and a great choice and consequence system that shows up throughout not only the main story, but in the side quests as well.
It’s about as immersive as it gets for a sci-fi game of this ilk, and everything from the characters to the story is on point.
One area that it drops the ball is though is the antagonist. Every game has one in some shape or form, and yet Cyberpunk 2077 keeps you at arms' length from such a character for the majority of the game.
You’re told in the beginning it’s Yorinobu Arasaka, as he murders his father and seems to be the clear big bad. But, you’re not really given more than that. He’s in the background the entire game, and it’s clear that V is likely not going to get an opportunity to face him at any point.
That leaves us without a driving force on the other side to clash against. The expansion, Phantom Liberty, fixes this a bit by giving us a mysterious character in Solomon to either side with or against, but the main plot fails to have that type of character.
In fact, the game pretty much realizes this by shoving Adam Smasher into the game as a final boss fight, despite us getting little to no information on him throughout the game outside a couple of flashbacks.
The sequel should make sure the other side of the conflict has a compelling foil for whoever our main character is.
7Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
So… That’s It?
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is a game that isgreat from start to finish. So what’s the issue? Well, that would be the finish.
There just isn’t one, really. You get to the final boss, and it feels like a midway point in the story at best. After the fight, the game just kind of ends. There is no resolution to most of the threads the plot setup, and it’s one of the most frustrating endings I can think of.
Up till that point, everything is incredible. The combat, the role-playing, the graphics, the character builds; it’s a perfect RPG, and it feels like it should’ve been at least in the 40-60 hour range.
That was not to be, though, as budget cuts or some kind of development issues definitely halted the production at some point and led to the game being released in an unfinished state.
It’s a small flaw, as it doesn’t really ruin the game, but it makes the fact that this series is effectively dead since a painful pill to swallow.
6Elden Ring
Why Bother Experimenting?
Elden Ring
Fextralife
There is no doubtElden Ringis one of the best games of all time. If we’re going to nitpick though, one thing that has always stood out for me is the fact that weapons you find are often useless unless you upgrade the hell out of them.
The reason is that whatever weapon you’re currently using has likely been upgraded a ton to let you survive in this cruel world. That’s great, but it makes new weapon discoveries feel so underwhelming.
Why is this rapier I’m using that I upgraded 6 times way more effective than a weapon I just found in a hidden dungeon that has an amazing Ash of War attached to it? It’s endlessly frustrating and makes the rewards for beating these ferocious creatures of the world feel much lesser than they should be.
It’s really the only flaw in a masterpiece of a game that hassome of the best exploration, combat, and boss fights the RPG genre has ever seen.
5The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild
You’re Breaking Me
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Breath of the Wildis so close to beinga perfect RPGin my eyes. Yet, whenever I fire it up for another playthrough, a dread creeps over me because I know one key mechanic still awaits.
The weapon breaking. It’s about as bad of a mechanic as any game can have, and here, it’s more egregious than any game I’ve ever experienced.
There are so many amazing moments in this game, from the vistas to climbing mountains, coming up with inventive ways to fight enemies and, overall, the vibes are immaculate.
But then, you start swinging around your favorite weapon, and sooner than later, it breaks. Then the next one breaks, and then the next one, and it’s an endless cycle that often ends with you swinging around sticks at basic enemies because you want to save the good stuff for the more powerful enemies.
I hate it, and it’s such a small mechanic in an otherwise brilliant game that keeps it from perfection.
4Mass Effect 3
Where’s The Party At?
Mass Effect 3
Now, I’m sure you may be thinking this is going to be about the ending ofMass Effect 3. But I’m weird, and I actually thought the ending was fine. Not great, not bad, just fine. My one nitpick with this otherwise perfect RPG is the party.
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We go from the incredible cast of characters in Mass Effect 2, which totaled at 12, to just 8 in the final game of the trilogy.
It made no sense. This was the time for all hands on deck. To be fair, the characters from Mass Effect 2 all appear if they survived the suicide mission, but only a select few can actually join you.
It’s a shame, because the combat is the best in the series in Mass Effect 3, andthe story is just fantastic. But seeing series mainstays like Wrex, Miranda, and Grunt being relegated to the sidelines while incredibly boring characters like James Vega take up a spot is the one thing that will always annoy me about what is otherwise one of the best RPGs of all time.
3Dragon Age: Origins
Dragon Age: Origins
Dragon Age: Originsis the peak of Bioware’s powers, delivering a compelling narrative, a fun and deep combat system, and some of the best character writing there is.
However, around the midway point of the story,you get sent to The Fade, which is another realm. You’re left with just your main character when you get there.
All of a sudden, all your party building and equipment goes out the window as you’re randomly given strange shape-shifting powers that let you turn into different creatures, and it becomes almost a different game entirely.
It would be one thing if this section was brief, but it’s many hours long, and without a guide, it could take even longer. It feels like you’re stuck in a much worse game that suddenly has no story, very little variety in level design, and one that’s almost overwhelmingly difficult in the process, because the game simply wasn’t designed to be played with one character.
Luckily, you can just turn on easy difficulty and breeze through it to make it go quickly, but there’s a reason the most popular mod for Dragon Age: Origins is one that allows you to skip the entirety of this segment.
Vampire Sim
Vampyr tried to do something so different from any other RPG I can think of, and it was so close to being an unforgettable experience.
The big flaw, though, is the combat. While the melee feels impactful enough and the vampire powers were cool to mess around with, the big issue is how janky it feels.
Obviously, the budget comes into play here, but some small studios manage to make incredible feeling combat regardless of that, so I’m not allowing that to be an excuse.
It just doesn’t feel all that good to fight, whether it’s basic enemies or boss characters. The combat feels a bit floaty, and for being a vampire, it’s way too easy to get overwhelmed by basic humans, so that power fantasy never quite comes to fruition.
Everything else in the game, though, is all aces. It’s an incredibly deep and varied RPG that has some fantastic voice acting, dialogue choices, and the conundrum of whether to feed on people you’re trying to cure is one of gaming’s greatest dilemmas.
I would love to see Dontnod return to this world at some point, as it was oh so close to being a classic.
1NieR: Automata
Again And Again
NieR: Automata
Nier Automatais one of the best titles Platinum Games has ever made, but in order to fully appreciate the it as a whole, you need to play through the game 3 separate times.
That’s not hyperbole; the story’s true ending is locked behind playingthrough the game 3 separate timesand doesn’t trigger till the end of Round 3. That means, while the game is fantastic, playing it a second time immediately after your first experience is a rough experience, especially since 9S is far less fun to play as compared to 2B.
If you manage to make it to the third playthrough, you’re in luck, as it’s the best playthrough of the game. But it still requires an ungodly amount of time to play through the first two to get there.
I’m not sure how this could have been done better, but maybe just hiding obscure side quests that need to be finished to get to the ending might’ve been a better route.
It does little to ruin what is one of the most unique RPG experiences out there, however. My advice is to beat the game normally, then just turn on easy and speed run 9S’s playthrough and go back to whatever difficulty you like for the third one, as that one deserves your full attention.
