What is your unpopular video game opinion?

[Sidereal Wraith]

The Legacy of Kain series is better written and much more engaging than the Trails of series, despite the latter having several games and dozens of hours of cutscenes more than the former. 

Edited May 27 by Sidereal Wraith

[vanguard333]

I've been seeing a number of people online lately refer to Tears of the Kingdom as a "lazy" sequel. I can see why they think that, and I do think the game does have major problems in the form of things like far too much copy-paste, but I do not believe that those problems are the result of "laziness"; I believe they are the result of misplaced effort.

I recently watched the GDC presentation Nintendo did on the gameplay and sound design of Tears of the Kingdom, and they go in depth about how, for ultrahand alone to work, they had to make every object in the game a physics object with its own properties, and they also talk about how the main priorities of the dev team were to double down on the vast open world and complex physics engine that made Breath of the Wild stand out.

I genuinely believe the effort they put into those goals is on full display in the finished game, but I also believe that effort was misplaced. I like the sky islands and ultrahand, and the increased scope of the world and the physics mechanics is impressive, but I can't help but think it would've been better if their goals had been to build on top of the open world and physics engine instead of doubling down on them.

 

EDIT: I also believe that there should be more RPGs where the protagonist is a spellcaster rather than a sword wielder. The point of the game is to have the player experience a magical fantasy world; have the player character wield that magic.

Edited June 2 by vanguard333

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

1 hour ago, vanguard333 said:

EDIT: I also believe that there should be more RPGs where the protagonist is a spellcaster rather than a sword wielder. The point of the game is to have the player experience a magical fantasy world; have the player character wield that magic.

Good idea! It seems like, in most  fantasy settings where magic exists, its role is complementary to traditional weapons. But... how about a setting where magic completely supplants weaponry? Maybe they've never bothered to learn metallurgy, since magic can accomplish all their needs. Who needs a scythe, when blades of wind can cut down stalks of wheat? Who needs a hoe, when soilomancy can push root vegetables straight out of the ground? It could be really interesting to see an RPG, or other type of game, in such a magic-centric setting.

[Fabulously Olivier]

10 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

EDIT: I also believe that there should be more RPGs where the protagonist is a spellcaster rather than a sword wielder. The point of the game is to have the player experience a magical fantasy world; have the player character wield that magic.

I want more protagonists with spears, fisticuffs, or daggers.

[vanguard333]

8 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Good idea! It seems like, in most  fantasy settings where magic exists, its role is complementary to traditional weapons. But... how about a setting where magic completely supplants weaponry? Maybe they've never bothered to learn metallurgy, since magic can accomplish all their needs. Who needs a scythe, when blades of wind can cut down stalks of wheat? Who needs a hoe, when soilomancy can push root vegetables straight out of the ground? It could be really interesting to see an RPG, or other type of game, in such a magic-centric setting.

Interesting idea; the closest that I've seen to such a setting would probably be the anime Black Clover, and even then, metal tools and weapons still exist because because there's a big disparity between how much magic the royalty has vs how much magic the peasantry has.

In any case, even for games with traditional sword-&-sorcery settings, it would be nice to see more protagonists that are spellcasters rather than sword wielders.

 

25 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I want more protagonists with spears, fisticuffs, or daggers.

More spear-wielding protagonists would be cool. Most fantasy protagonists are beginners at wielding weaponry, and spears are arguably the most beginner-friendly melee weapon. Swords are actually the least beginner-friendly melee weapons; the main reason for their prominence is that they were sidearms; they could be carried anywhere (which, admittedly, is important for an adventuring hero).

[Fabulously Olivier]

Certainly a niche unpopular opinion, but I don't subscribe to the "Samurai Warriors is better than Dynasty Warriors" consensus. Hyper attacks make SW even more mindless and button mashy than DW. DW has far better overall character design.

 

And DW has 3 (4) distinct, iconic factions. This matters because it makes the story easy to follow and gives you a team to root for. SW is made up of so many distinct factions, and most of them are literal-whos. The story only really cares about the Oda, Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa factions. The game has a massive Sanada bias. And you're probably only going to care about the Date clan if you're a Sengoku Basara fan.

Edited June 2 by Fabulously Olivier

[Etrurian emperor]

1 hour ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Certainly a niche unpopular opinion, but I don't subscribe to the "Samurai Warriors is better than Dynasty Warriors" consensus. Hyper attacks make SW even more mindless and button mashy than DW. DW has far better overall character design.

 

I do subscribe to the ''Samurai Warriors is better'' consensus but I also agree with you. Hyper Attacks are stupid. In a genre where you can already slash through mooks as if they were butter there's just no reason to create a whole moveset to make it even easier. I've heard the argument that its there to make speeding across the map easier but this feature was added in a game that already introduced character switching and thus had no need to traverse the map faster. 

As for the characters. What holds back DW for me is that there's a lot of bloat. There are many character's who's gimmicks overlap. There are numerous ''way of the warrior!'' types or ''I served three generations of the sun family!'' that they become interchangeable for me. Some characters also seem to exist purely to be there in a single stage and then die. 

1 hour ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

And DW has 3 (4) distinct, iconic factions. This matters because it makes the story easy to follow and gives you a team to root for. SW is made up of so many distinct factions, and most of them are literal-whos. The story only really cares about the Oda, Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa factions. The game has a massive Sanada bias. And you're probably only going to care about the Date clan if you're a Sengoku Basara fan.

I'm the rare freak who likes SW Masamune but rather dislike SB Masamune. I think SB Masamune comes off as an obnoxious, spotlight stealing try hard and it speaks poorly of him that SW's Masamune who's characterized as a complete brat is more mature than his Basara counterpart. 

I think the Sanada bias is kinda weird. As a clan they missed about every important event in the era. I know Yukimura has a lot of folklore significance due to Osaka but aside from that he's a historical nobody. The fact that most of the series has a completely invented career for him as Shingen's right hand decades before he was born kinda signals how poor of a main character he is. 

As far as SW go its apparently an unpopular opinion that Mitsunari is an irrational, deeply unlikable and warmongering git who brings all his problems on himself and mostly get by with the fanbase because he's pretty and his rival is fat. But its also my opinion. I absolutely can't stand him. 

On 5/28/2024 at 3:44 AM, vanguard333 said:

I've been seeing a number of people online lately refer to Tears of the Kingdom as a "lazy" sequel. I can see why they think that, and I do think the game does have major problems in the form of things like far too much copy-paste, but I do not believe that those problems are the result of "laziness"; I believe they are the result of misplaced retribution.

I think Tears kinda suffers from a misplacement of resources. Some dungeons and questlines  don't seem as big as they should be, but then you have a gigantic underworld cavern under the ground that's almost exclusively there for optional side content. I like the debts as a challenging area but I also strongly feel that the resources used for it could have been used far better. 

Edited June 2 by Etrurian emperor

[vanguard333]

On 6/2/2024 at 1:26 PM, Etrurian emperor said:

I think Tears kinda suffers from a misplacement of resources. Some dungeons and questlines aren't don't seem as big as they should be, but then you have a gigantic underworld cavern under the ground that's almost exclusively there for optional side content. I like the debts as a challenging area but I also strongly feel that the resources used for it could have been used far better. 

I agree; the effort and resources for Tears of the Kingdom was misplaced. In the GDC presentation on Tears of the Kingdom, the dev team talks about how their main focus was on doubling down on the scope of the open world and the physics engine. This explains why the game has so much additional space in the form of the sky islands, the depths, and the caverns, while a lot of the stuff in that additional space is copy-paste.

Incidentally, looking back at my original statement, I wrote completely the wrong word at the end of my last sentence of Tears of the Kingdom. I meant to type "effort", and instead typed a completely different word that made no sense in the context of the paragraph. I have no idea how I did that. I fixed my original statement.

 

EDIT: Another unpopular video game opinion I have would be this: I think video games are the best form of media for prequel narratives. One fundamental question prequels usually need to answer is, "Why are we seeing past events that originally were fine as just backstory?" Prequel video games provide an answer: the player isn't just seeing or reading the past events; they're experiencing them.

Edited June 3 by vanguard333