What is your unpopular video game opinion?

[Integrity]

oh i absolutely also mean to indict contemporary fans from tri onwards, not just the brand of dweeb who makes a four hour "why monster hunter 2 is the only real monster hunter game" video kind of guy

[Fabulously Olivier]

9 minutes ago, Integrity said:

oh i absolutely also mean to indict contemporary fans from tri onwards, not just the brand of dweeb who makes a four hour "why monster hunter 2 is the only real monster hunter game" video kind of guy

For the record, I do not consider myself a fan of the series. I consider myself someone who picked up World and considered it objectively impressive.

 

I am familiar with the attitude though. It's everywhere. It doesn't matter if it's a franchise with nothing but banger games. Ratchet and Clank's fandom hates the new ones for no good reason.

 

It also doesn't matter if the franchise is maligned. Even Dynasty Warriors has its weird group of elitist diehards who think 3-5 are the best because they were "literally Dark Souls hard."

Edited December 20, 2023 by Fabulously Olivier

[Florete]

38 minutes ago, Integrity said:

"grouse about random video game shit thread"

A little informal for my preferences, but it works.

18 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

I see.

By the way, does my statement about missing 2D Zelda count as an unpopular opinion?

Of the recently-posted takes, that one was probably the closest to being unpopular, though I'm not sure I'd consider it actually unpopular. Somewhere in the middle.

11 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Then you have me. I'm perfectly happy saying all Dark Souls fans are just the asshole rejects of the Monster Hunter fandom, and that their influence actively makes gaming worse.

All gamers make gaming worse.

[Integrity]

2 minutes ago, Florete said:

All gamers make gaming worse.

real

[Fabulously Olivier]

5 minutes ago, Florete said:

All gamers make gaming worse.

When was the last time a Kirby fan spat in someone's coffee?

[Florete]

2 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

When was the last time a Kirby fan spat in someone's coffee?

I don't follow every fandom, but I'm sure you can find out if you look hard enough.

Are you a Kirby fan?

[Integrity]

i don't even have to look hard i knew an extremely toxic kirby fan lol

[Fabulously Olivier]

36 minutes ago, Florete said:

Are you a Kirby fan?

Not especially. I mean, they're good enough games, but I'm not exactly jumping to grab more than the few I've played.

 

They just seem harmless, frankly.

 

Edit: 

To clarify, I think there's a great deal of difference between liking something and being a fan of it. I like *most* games. I like, say, Darksiders, and Zelda, and Uncharted. I'm not exactly hyped when a new one is announced. I'm not following them. I'm a fan of Fire Emblem and Yakuza. One of them gets announced and I'm screaming.

Edited December 20, 2023 by Fabulously Olivier

[vanguard333]

6 hours ago, Florete said:

Of the recently-posted takes, that one was probably the closest to being unpopular, though I'm not sure I'd consider it actually unpopular. Somewhere in the middle.

I see. Thanks.

In any case, I can think of an opinion I have on 2D Zelda that is definitely unpopular: I would like to see a single-player 2D Zelda game with the four Links gameplay from Four Swords Adventures.

I mentioned earlier that there are things 2D Zelda games can do that 3D Zelda games can't; one of them is Four Swords, as the 2D top-down perspective is better-suited for controlling four characters on one screen. One thing that can be seen with Tears of the Kingdom is that the camera doesn't keep all the sage spirits on screen at the same time as Link even when they're near him. Nintendo has only ever used the idea of multiple Links for multiplayer games, but I enjoyed playing Four Swords Adventures single-player, and, when playing it single-player, it had a neat formations system: the Links could be arranged in a horizontal line, a vertical line, a diamond (back-to-back-to-back-to-back) and a box.

I think it would be really cool to see a single-player game with a proper overworld and dungeons that uses the four Links idea. It doesn't have to be four Links; it could be Link and three other characters, but I just think it would be neat to see it used for more than just level-based multiplayer games.

Edited December 21, 2023 by vanguard333

[Fire Emblem Fan]

Xenoblade isn't really all that great. All three are pretty run-of-the-mill JRPGs, with the second one being the worst and close to what I'd call a mediocre game.

[Fabulously Olivier]

1 hour ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

Xenoblade isn't really all that great. All three are pretty run-of-the-mill JRPGs, with the second one being the worst and close to what I'd call a mediocre game.

I for one think Xenoblade 3 is an S-tier JRPG, but I get why someone might think the franchise isn't great.

 

Xenoblade 2 is absolutely mediocre. A significantly below average JRPG even.

 

Now on the topic of JRPG franchises that aren't that great... Kingdom Hearts. Even at its best, it's B tier, and at its worst, it's just dreadful.

Edited December 21, 2023 by Fabulously Olivier

[vanguard333]

1 hour ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

Xenoblade isn't really all that great. All three are pretty run-of-the-mill JRPGs, with the second one being the worst and close to what I'd call a mediocre game.

I don't want to be pedantic, but there are actually four Xenoblade games: 1, X, 2 and 3. Of the four, I've only played 1 and X, and the one that I enjoyed most was the one that's most often forgotten: Xenoblade X, mainly because it had fantastic exploration. 1 had a good story, characters and worldbuilding, but I could not enjoy the gameplay. I don't like the MMO-like combat and the exploration in 1 was not fun.

[lenticular]

14 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Absolutely. The only substantial difference is that people like Aonuma aren't putting their names on the game's cover and title screen of every game like some kind of author.

Personally, I'd like to see more names on covers, not fewer. I like to watch movies made by people who made other movies that I liked and read books written by people who wrote other books that I liked. But for some reason (spoiler: the reason is money) video game companies want to make it hard for me to know which people made the games I play so it's harder to follow individuals.

As a point of comparison: if I look at my blu-ray of Interstellar, there are five names on the front of the box and an additional fourteen names on the back of the box. Meanwhile, if I look at my copy of Super Mario Odyssey, there are zero names on the front and an additional zero names on the back. Because the powers that be at Nintendo want us to imagine that games are just protruded out of the magical Nintendo factories without any actual people being involved.

(I've no opinion about Kojima specifically, though. I've never played any of his games. They just don't seem like my sort of thing.)

[Eltosian Kadath]

On 12/9/2023 at 2:48 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I think it's that, by its very nature, a review system that churns out a "mean score" favors giving an extreme value. The more extreme a user's review is, the more impact it has on the mean score: ergo, the more powerful and influential it is. I don't really have a "fix" to this, admittedly, even though I try to moderate my reviews, as a matter of personal honor.

You kind of solved the problem by describing it, just don't base it on the mean, use a measure of the center that mitigates extrema. Median is a classic way, but some weighting of the average would probably work too.

 

13 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

 

It also doesn't help that, in their absence, there's now this growing perception that only the 3D Zelda games should be considered mainline games. Ever since Tears of the Kingdom, I've been in a lot of conversations with fans where I've brought up a 2D game like Spirit Tracks, only for someone to reply with, "We're talking about the mainline games", and, when the 2D games aren't being dismissed as spinoffs, they're just outright being forgotten.

To be fair, the DS ones were a bit of odd ducks in general, thanks to the weird touch controls, not simply because they were 2D.

 

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

Personally, I'd like to see more names on covers, not fewer. I like to watch movies made by people who made other movies that I liked and read books written by people who wrote other books that I liked. But for some reason (spoiler: the reason is money) video game companies want to make it hard for me to know which people made the games I play so it's harder to follow individuals.

As a point of comparison: if I look at my blu-ray of Interstellar, there are five names on the front of the box and an additional fourteen names on the back of the box. Meanwhile, if I look at my copy of Super Mario Odyssey, there are zero names on the front and an additional zero names on the back. Because the powers that be at Nintendo want us to imagine that games are just protruded out of the magical Nintendo factories without any actual people being involved.

(I've no opinion about Kojima specifically, though. I've never played any of his games. They just don't seem like my sort of thing.)

Now that is a good take. Lets see more names on games and get a better gauge on who is making them.

[Lightcosmo]

9 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Kingdom Hearts. Even at its best, it's B tier, and at its worst, it's just dreadful.

this is pure gold, though! XD

[vanguard333]

8 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

To be fair, the DS ones were a bit of odd ducks in general, thanks to the weird touch controls, not simply because they were 2D.

True; they were odd ducks, but they were still mainline Zelda games, yet I've seen them increasingly dismissed as spinoffs when they aren't forgotten entirely. And, while they certainly had unique control schemes centered entirely around the DS touchscreen, I don't think that is the sole reason; after all, Skyward Sword was also centered around a unique control scheme, and no one ever dismisses it as a spinoff; it's still recognized by everyone as a mainline Zelda game.

[Fire Emblem Fan]

23 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

I don't want to be pedantic, but there are actually four Xenoblade games: 1, X, 2 and 3. Of the four, I've only played 1 and X, and the one that I enjoyed most was the one that's most often forgotten: Xenoblade X, mainly because it had fantastic exploration. 1 had a good story, characters and worldbuilding, but I could not enjoy the gameplay. I don't like the MMO-like combat and the exploration in 1 was not fun.

Oops. X is so unremarkable to me that I forgot it existed.

[Fabulously Olivier]

What I will say is that Xenoblade 1 is only impressive in context. It has a strong narrative by JRPG standards, but it gets as much respect as it does because it was basically a fully fledged single player MMO... on the Wii of all consoles. Viewing even the remaster from a modern lens, the combat is pretty bad, and the quest design is every bit as bland and dull as your average MMO.

 

The same can be said of X. It's only impressive because it was basically trying to be a full MMO on the Wii U. A stupid, brave goal that it is only partially successful at. I respect the ambition.

 

2 is a cringe factory.

 

3 is actually so impressive that it dethroned Three Hopes as my GOTY 2022. It takes a lot to overcome that kind of positive bias.

Edited December 22, 2023 by Fabulously Olivier

[Etrurian emperor]

1 hour ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

2 is a cringe factory.

Oh so much. I'm not down on xenoblade 2 at all but its got some of the lowest hanging fruit you can imagine. Like a naked furry lady with gigantic personalities. 

[Fabulously Olivier]

23 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Oh so much. I'm not down on xenoblade 2 at all but its got some of the lowest hanging fruit you can imagine. Like a naked furry lady with gigantic personalities. 

Her fruits do indeed hang low, yes.

 

If we're being totally real, Fire Emblem's fanservice is tame by JRPG standards, especially compared to that.

[Etrurian emperor]

I think the character design of Xenoblade 2''s optional cast compare especially poorly when contrasted against those of Xenoblade 3.

The Blade system in 2 has no limitations. Characters can literally be anything but most often the Blades are the same bunch of conventionally(or not so conventionally in the furry's case) bankable waifus. 

The Heroes system in Xenoblade 3 on the other hand is full of limitations. Characters are set by default as to being unable to be older than 20, they always have to be millitary officials of one of either nation with their color scheme already determined by that. Yet this bunch of heavily restricted characters end up being far more unique than the Blades who had all the freedom in the world. They didn't even use the age limitation to make everyone a conventionally attractive teenager through the use of exception or to make some of these ''teenager'' look more mature than teens typically are. 

[Fabulously Olivier]

13 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I think the character design of Xenoblade 2''s optional cast compare especially poorly when contrasted against those of Xenoblade 3.

The Blade system in 2 has no limitations. Characters can literally be anything but most often the Blades are the same bunch of conventionally(or not so conventionally in the furry's case) bankable waifus. 

The Heroes system in Xenoblade 3 on the other hand is full of limitations. Characters are set by default as to being unable to be older than 20, they always have to be millitary officials of one of either nation with their color scheme already determined by that. Yet this bunch of heavily restricted characters end up being far more unique than the Blades who had all the freedom in the world. They didn't even use the age limitation to make everyone a conventionally attractive teenager through the use of exception or to make some of these ''teenager'' look more mature than teens typically are. 

Uh, Gray and Triton are a lot older than 20. 

 

And it's really just a difference in art quality. Xenoblade 2 represents the eclectic and transparently pandering art design of a gacha game, and IIRC blades are designed by a bunch of different artists with no cohesive art style. If it was an intentional parody or critique of gacha trash, I'd almost respect it. Almost. But that's giving it way too much credit and it's pretty much just the thing it's mimicking without a paywall. They couldn't even be bothered to iron out the mechanical annoyances of bad gacha pulls.

 

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 heroes are really meant as full extra party members, and most of them really knock it out of the park.

[Perkilator]

For as monotonous as the gameplay can be as a whole, I can say that I at least prefer Project X Zone 2’s combat system to Project X Zone 1’s combat system. Makes me wish the duology got a rerelease on Switch where PxZ2’s combat system is used across both games.

[Integrity]

pxz/2 were really games that needed to be about 30% shorter overall, liked them though i did

[Noctis51]

Motion Controls and the Wii-mote in the Wii Gen were a great idea and made for a lot of inspired games. (Kind of irrelevant for FE though)

The N64 controller was similarly inspired and good for the rotator stick, and DS stylus only games like Spirit Tracks worked out just fine. The d cross is not all omnipotent. 

Playstation games are mainly just not good anime, but they filled the gap between gaming and anime so they had a role to play. Except for the PSP and Vita which were kind of gameplay-first platforms. 

Edited January 1 by Noctis51