Exactly. Which isn't anything against games having stories, even excellent ones. And an interactive story with branching elements is a unique and special experience. But like maps in a novel, or car chases in a movie: it does not need to be there for a game to be a good game.
It literally cannot be an rpg without a story.
Having payed the original Bard's Tale without the manual...it kind of can? At least and still be an effective video game.
I mean, are we talking about "completely absent a story" or "lacking a compelling story?" Crystal Project is a game that barely, at all, has a story, and it is very much an RPG (in particular it riffs off of Final Fantasy V). Same with Legend of Legacy, and most early dungeon crawlers, which basically have the thinnest of excuses to go digging through dungeons. But then, the same could be said of the original Super Mario Bros. Few video games completely lack a story at all; Pong, most sports games, maybe?
Those were most of the reasons, yeah. Combat was dull and repetitive: my squad would fire off the same actions in the same order almost every combat, with little regard to the opposition. I never really bought the grimdark nature of the setting - it felt incredibly generic in a way that made me long for the complex originality of the Forgotten Realms. I got the impression that late in development someone remembered it was supposed to be grim and emptied a couple buckets of blood over Generic Fantasy Setting #11. I did like the companions though; that’s always been BioWare’s strength.
I might have had the patience for that when I was younger (I did slog my way through KotOR2, which was probably worth it even though it’s an over-long overrated mess), but I’m not sure I do any longer.
