3. Orphen: Scion Of Sorcery (PS2)
I bet you forgot this one existed, didn't you? Released on the PS2 for its US October debut, Orphen was a JRPG concerning itself with the adventures of a young man in a monster-filled world. It wasn't the most original premise, and attempted to make up for it with the novel gameplay combination of puzzle-solving and real-time combat. The problem was that while this gaming style was competent and actually drew praise from some quarters, an RPG is only as good as its story, and by crikey, was Orphen's dull. See, when you introduce an extremely out-there world, it's practically a given that you need a decent tale to hang it all on, otherwise people just might be put off by the esoteric weirdness of it all. A good example of this is the Final Fantasy games lets not forget this is a series featuring ostrich-chickens, whatever the hell moogles are and a bizarre ecosystem of monsters, yet through offering us compelling characters in interesting situations, we were hooked from the start. Sadly, Orphen doesn't have this the story is unoriginal, the characters are bland and the writing is abysmal. You had to wade through reams of unimportant, leaden dialogue to get anywhere, and this, combined with unexceptional battle system may have been the death knell for this attempt at a bold new IP. If the gameplay had been that bit better, we might've tolerated it, but as it was, it was like waiting hours for an average meal sure, when we got to the good bits, it was ok, but it definitely wasn't worth the wait.