What is the worst Nintendo game?

[starseeker300]

The combat wasn't the worst I've ever played, and yes, it was better in Torna, and I thought the actual level design and how you can find stuff in these little nooks and crannies was well enough done. Everything else, though. went from passable to liquid feces. I usually try to do as much as I can in a game before finishing it so I can get the fullest experience, but this is one of the few games that I just gave up on with that. Having to swap my party around to do anything, in combination with the whole rng based crystal system and having to grind so much to get rare blades with specific skills was so god damn tedious and horrible to the point where I just went absolute ape shit at one point and started yelling at the screen. I completely agree with the writing, too. It's mid as fuck, and other than maybe the whole concept of Blades, everything it tries to do I have seen done better in other pieces of fiction. But I think the absolute most damning thing for the story and characters is the voice acting. There is not one performance where I thought to myself "Shit, they actually did decent for this game", no, it was all dull as a wooden plank. Even with mediocre writing, a good, passionate performance can win me over, but this game has neither good writing nor voice acting.

I was willing to defend this game at first, and my opinion wasn't influenced by some youtube video or some shit saying that it was bad. Actually, it was quite the opposite. I was told it sucked by a guy I trust while I was still very early in the game, but I still kept a positive view on it despite that. Then I heard it a masterpiece by so many people, and my hopes got even higher. I was told it gets good later, but it never did, and I only got more and more sick of the game's bullshit. I get the whole "decent gameplay but great story" bit, trust me, my second favorite game is Red Dead 2, BUT BOTH HALVES OF XENOBLADE 2 ARE DOG WATER. I've had such a god awful experience with this game that I have little to no interest in playing 3, despite it being downloaded on my Switch for half a year by now.

Post automatically merged: Nov 16, 2025

Sorry for the absolute wall of text, but Jesus fucking Christman, man, this game...

no thank you for explaining your reasoning, ive played xc1, future connected, xc2, and torna. and i gotta say the series so far has been preety hit or miss.

XC1: phenominal story probally one of the best ive seen in fiction, but all the actually game parts of the game suck major dookie, slow boring combat, it feels liek im giving the character im controlling suggextions rather than actually playing as them in battle, and literally every single side quest except one is a fetch quest

Future Connected: Fixes some issues with the gameplay but not the major ones such the combat overall being too slow and uninteractive still, the specials are better now. due to its shorter length the problems dont grate as much but they are still there

XC2: gameplay is much more interactive and it feels like I'm actually playing as the character now instead of just giving a simulation suggestions, i really like the blade combo system. but man that story is so cringe, and rex, mythra, and tora(if i here "meh" one more time im gonna crash out like samuel l jackson in pulp fiction) are some of the most unpleasant characters ive ever had to deal with. pyra and zeke are inoffensive but one note, nia(outside of the crush on rex) and morag have some interesting things going on but I agree it has been done better elsewhere.

Torna: Is the only one id say so far is genuinely good overall, a great story about how jin became a villain with an even better version of the blade combo system that lets you do more than just specific ones. im still gonna play xc3 and xcx because of torna though probably not soon

overall the biggest problem with the series is that they tried to reinvent the wheel when they didnt need to with the combat, they tried to combine an mmo combat system with a traditional turn based one and ended up with the worst of both worlds in the original, if they dropped what they have now for an action rpg but still somehow worked the elemental combos in the series could reach its full potential in my opinion

 

[Pickle surprise]

My candidates are Paper Mario: Sticker Star and New Super Mario Bros 2.

I tried to like Sticker Star at first and went in with high hopes, thinking it was just old school fans being too rigid in their tastes and being afraid of change. But no, they were right. Combat is pointless, bosses are a slog unless you have the right sticker to deal with them, if you used that sticker in another area by trying to figure out a puzzle then you are just screwed, having to backtrack to a shop to retrieve stickers that you misplaced, limited inventory size, Bowser has no personality whatsoever, bland as hell story in general, and no new character designs with the exception of a Wiggler butterfly. The hate for this game is well deserved, complete disgrace to the Paper Mario series.

NSMB2 is one of the most Ubisoft Nintendo games I ever played. It feels so paint by numbers and its one gimmick that supposedly differentiates if from other Mario games is pathetic. COINS, lots and lots of COINS! Do you do anything special with these coins? Well if you collect enough, you get a new title screen! Anything else? Nope! I love collecting stuff in games but the collecting has to serve a larger purpose. Collecting shit just for the sake of it is not compelling gameplay, Nintendo. Honestly, it felt like they released this just because the NSMB games sell like gangbusters and Nintendo needed something that was guaranteed to bring in the money. It feels so lazy that they did not even bother to try anything that could make this game stand out from the rest of the series. I was miserable playing this as I felt like I was going through the ropes yet again playing through the most by-the-numbers levels Nintendo has eve rout out. I just felt insulted by Nintendo's lack of shit to give. One of the most lazy, cynical and bland games Ninrendo has ever put out and is easily the worst entry of the Super Mario series. Truly the low point of the franchise. People will say but what about Mario is Missing and Hotel Mario? Well first off, I never played them and secondly, this was made by Nintendo themselves so I feel NSMB 2 deserves extra scorn and criticism as they can do a hell of a lot better than what they produced here.

 

[Nickakyoin]

XC2: gameplay is much more interactive and it feels like I'm actually playing as the character now instead of just giving a simulation suggestions, i really like the blade combo system. but man that story is so cringe, and rex, mythra, and tora(if i here "meh" one more time im gonna crash out like samuel l jackson in pulp fiction) are some of the most unpleasant characters ive ever had to deal with. pyra and zeke are inoffensive but one note, nia(outside of the crush on rex) and morag have some interesting things going on but I agree it has been done better elsewhere.

"Story is cringe". Sorry, how much story have you done with XC2? Because towards chapter 5 and/or 6 its lore is more shown, especially for the main villains, makes making everything more and more worthwhile.
I gotta say that my huge issue with XC2 is actually more on the gameplay (combat system and also having the abilities to make your way). That horrid tutorial didn't helped, never understood it but at lesat I've managed to force my way.

 

[starseeker300]

"Story is cringe". Sorry, how much story have you done with XC2? Because towards chapter 5 and/or 6 its lore is more shown, especially for the main villains, makes making everything more and more worthwhile.
I gotta say that my huge issue with XC2 is actually more on the gameplay (combat system and also having the abilities to make your way). That horrid tutorial didn't helped, never understood it but at lesat I've managed to force my way.

i have played the entire game front to back, and then played ng+ to the point of unlocking mikhail as a blade as well as torna which i liked a lot better from a characters standpoint. and paid attention, and i understand the lore, but heres the thing, i understand mythra has trauma but it is no excuse for her constant bitchyness to the rest of the cast made her extremely unlikeable. she comes off like a petulant child for her entire screen time and that did nothing to endear me to her as a character. by the time where the big moments came in the story, i was no longer invested in it because i didnt care about the characters they were happening to anymore because i either had lost interest in them or actively hated them in the worst cases.

a good story gets you to care about the characters in some way and if say the only character i care about is the main villain, then it has failed in some way. jin and malos would have made better protagonists for the story and torna proves that for jin. the only character i would want to see return in the future are jin and malos, in fact my wild cope dream for xc4 is that malos or some weird reincarnation of him at the very least is the protagonist of it

Post automatically merged: Nov 23, 2025

Anything DSi-ware :)

even four swords anniversary and shantae risky's revenge?

 

[Nickakyoin]

i have played the entire game front to back, and then played ng+ to the point of unlocking mikhail as a blade as well as torna which i liked a lot better from a characters standpoint. and paid attention, and i understand the lore, but heres the thing, i understand mythra has trauma but it is no excuse for her constant bitchyness to the rest of the cast made her extremely unlikeable. she comes off like a petulant child for her entire screen time and that did nothing to endear me to her as a character. by the time where the big moments came in the story, i was no longer invested in it because i didnt care about the characters they were happening to anymore because i either had lost interest in them or actively hated them in the worst cases.

a good story gets you to care about the characters in some way and if say the only character i care about is the main villain, then it has failed in some way. jin and malos would have made better protagonists for the story and torna proves that for jin. the only character i would want to see return in the future are jin and malos, in fact my wild cope dream for xc4 is that malos or some weird reincarnation of him at the very least is the protagonist of it

Ok, sorry for having doubted. I respect your point views.
Yep, I agree that Mythra's character trait (the ultimate definition of tsundere cliché) isn't excusable from its backstory. Everything else for me worked one nicely, even if sometimes there was some padding (XC2 was still an ambitious +80h JRPG) that felt very sloggy.
In any case I don't think this is exactly the right thread to talk about, for the Xeno series/universe there should be a whole thread in this forum.

 

[moonbits]

Uh.. Nintendogs

I'm not even sure why I played it as a kid.

 

[starseeker300]

In any case I don't think this is exactly the right thread to talk about, for the Xeno series/universe there should be a whole thread in this forum.

then make it yourself, there is nothing stopping you from starting a xenoseries megathread

 

[Luxfin]

Mario and Luigi - Paper Jam.
Okay, this is one is going take a bit of explaining. This is the one of the worst Mario and Luigi games because of its missed opportunity and potential. The (normal RPG battle) gameplay is really good. (At least to me.) The story is so boring that I feel like it make a good substitute for Melatonin. Starlow is pretty much at her worst here to the point that she needs to have a mute button (at least in the English version because why in the digital charlie brown hell have you spent mostly using her to roast Luigi for no reason just to be a serious dick). This game releasing after Sticker Star (Gag Me) and Color Splash (Honestly Never Played It. So I need to save judgement on that) really didn't help matters at all. This game along with NSMB2 and the other two aforementioned games is just part of the whole "Generic Era of Mario." This story just makes me go why the hell do I want to even care about this if I have to put with bland and repetive minigames and catching toads. You could have done more with the Paper Mario characters and mechincs than just slapping them together for the token gesture of a "CROSSOVER." Just because the game is suppose to be a CROSSOVER with your sister RPG series, doesn't mean that you have to lazy with it people. This is just Mario and Luigi with little bits of Paper Mario. It's blows my mind, WHAT WERE THEY THINKING!?

 

[Judier]

"• Metroid Fusion"

Same reaction.

 

[Nickakyoin]

then make it yourself, there is nothing stopping you from starting a xenoseries megathread

I gave for granted there was one, that's what hold me from doing it, but sure thing!

 

[ShinnAsukaYESTaylorSwiftNO]

• Pac-Man (GBA Port)
• Tom and Jerry: War of the Whiskers (2003)

Hey! War of the Whiskers is a good game!
Also which GBA port of Pac-Man?

 

[RETRO-VETRO RETRO-VETRO]

Hey! War of the Whiskers is a good game!
Also which GBA port of Pac-Man?

War of the Whiskers isn’t terrible, but compared to other Tom & Jerry games it definitely feels rough to me. Clunky controls and AI all over the place. Fun idea, just not well executed.


And for Pac-Man, I meant the plain GBA port. The one that’s basically a bare-bones version of the arcade game with weird sound and floaty movement.

 

[ShinnAsukaYESTaylorSwiftNO]

War of the Whiskers isn’t terrible, but compared to other Tom & Jerry games it definitely feels rough to me. Clunky controls and AI all over the place. Fun idea, just not well executed.


And for Pac-Man, I meant the plain GBA port. The one that’s basically a bare-bones version of the arcade game with weird sound and floaty movement.

Oh, did you mean Pac-Man Collection?
As there exists a ROM hack for that compilation that fixes most of its issues: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6380/
Or maybe you meant Namco Museum 50th Anniversary?
Or Pac-Man: Special Color Edition for the GBC?