Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

@FishyS

Very nice reply, I like those categories. I think the two categories that most fit what I'm talking about is the "selling addiction" and "artificially long."

I know it's not good to say (but we are in the unpopular thread haha), but I've been disappointed with the Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom games even though I've been a massive Zelda fan all my life. Personally, I would put them in the "artificially long" categories, and it's a total bummer for me. I can, however, appreciate how the devs of both games did an astounding job overall, but in Tears especially, there are just so many "Hey! Nice to meet you! Go take pictures of these things and bring them back to me!" collect-a-thons. You can argue, though, that you can just skip all of that stuff and go straight to the end if you have the skill to do it. I don't know, most of that stuff just lacks the substantive end rewards that you'd get by doing side quests in the older Zelda games (Biggoron's Sword comes to mind), so it just makes them feel like busy work rather than something cool that changes the gameplay but isn't necessary to beat the game.

I don't know. Like I said, I find myself mostly playing retro stuff these days and indies that hearken back to those days (and don't include too many superfluous collectibles). Games like Katana Zero, The Messenger, A Hat in Time, even Graceful Explosion Machine have been some of my favorites recently.

@rallydefault I think newer Zelda games have fallen into 'game of the year syndrome'. For some reason game of the year 'has' to be overly epic and large scale and graphical. No matter how good Mario Wonder is, it may win best family game or something, but game of the year will go to some huge game like TotK or an overly graphically intense game like FFXVI.

I haven't played TotK, but in BotW I thought the large amounts of side quests combined with the open world and directionlessness was not a great combination. You knew you had to do a ton of shrines so it was hard to tell the difference between an unimportant side quest and something which you kind of had to do to beat the game (assuming you aren't some 3-heart low stamina super ninja). Somewhat nonlinear and open is fine, but I'd like to be able to follow the main path to the end without going down 1,000 false paths. I realize this is a super unpopular opinion since most people love that game. 😆

I actually think Pokemon is pretty good at this; Arceus for example has a zillion overly silly or repetitive side quests and goals but they make it very easy to differentiate important from post-game or completionist goals. Even if you explore a lot you'll naturally end up along the main plot path in 30 or so hours and it is completely up to you if you want to spend 40 mote hours 100%-ing everything else.

@Professor_Plumber Animal Crossing games can work under a live service model, yeah, but it's just that New Horizons didn't due to the fact that it was forced. The game was launched in a barren state, with most of the update content being found in the code at launch. It had less content than previous entries, and got rid of things that were either considered series staples, or were big features in the previous entry on the 3DS. It didn't help matters that the game had infrequent updates, with most of them being small until the final update, and then when the game was set, they just dropped it.

The holidays fell flat as well, but that has less to do with the update model, and just a different approach to the game's design, with life sim elements taking a back seat in order to give full customizability. It's unfortunate though that they made the holidays updates, since it makes gathering footage for videos much longer than it needs to be. (I've been working on putting my thoughts into a video on youtube, mainly so I can put this past me, since it's been bugging me for a good while.)

@Professor_Plumber It'll be a while before I can get it out, since I'm still capturing footage, but I'm excited for when I can actually release it!

I’m just gonna put it out there. I love gacha games. Before anyone goes nuclear on me I just love the surprise of getting new characters. Especially ones that I’m hoping to get.
I’ve been playing a ton of blue archive (which is a Gacha game that is apparently putting up a good fight against genshin) and I only ever pull on the limited banners and it’s definitely fun getting surprised by a character you don’t have yet.

@FishyS
Interesting - so based on our short conversation here, do you think I should give Arceus a spin? As I mentioned before, I'm usually not a fan of RPGs due to the repetitive nature, but I did have a fun time just playing through the storyline in Sword a few years ago.

@rallydefault A big part of the draw of Arceus is the ways it differs from 'traditional' pokemon so it depends on how much you enjoy Pokemon games. I admit I spent a ton of time repetitively crouching in the grass chucking pokeballs at pokemon who were walking past just because it felt neat that you could do that. As for the actual storyline... they had the opportunity to easily make it really good and just sort of decided not to, although the overall premise is still interesting. My personal favorite pokemon game but definitely not without flaws.

@FishyS
Yea, the deviation from the traditional formula is what intrigues me. It seems to be on sale for a good 20 dollars below what it launched at, too, so I'll probably give it a try. Thanks!

Here’s one unpopular opinion I can think of: I actually really enjoy playing fighting games on my own, and sometimes even prefer it to multiplayer. You can change a bot’s difficulty to your skill level while skill based matchmaking isn’t always perfect at doing that, you generally have a couple solo-only modes like arcade/classic mode, and sometimes you get an FG with a good story mode which is definitely a solo thing. Then you don’t need to worry about having a stable internet connection either, what’s the issue with Switch Online for example if I just play Smash Ultimate offline? After long enough I can understand going online and I do have fun playing fighting games online on occasion, mainly with friends, but the only game where I could see myself playing online more than once in a blue moon is Guilty Gear Strive because it actually has pretty good netcode.
Then again maybe this just says more about how much of a loner I can be sometimes 😅

@Slim_in_Blue You're not alone. I usually play them by myself. Couch play with someone else is preferred beyond that. I enjoy fighting games, but I'm not particularly good at them and repeatedly getting my ass handed to me online gets real old, real quick.
So, I just have fun playing story modes and single player matches.

I mentioned this over in the Xenoblade Chat thread because I just beat Xenoblade 2, but I think I like 2 better than the original. The original just dragged on forever and got more and more ridiculous, whereas while I don't think everything about 2's story made complete sense, it at least was more streamlined and followable. The things most people complain about, like the gacha mechanics for Blades and the Field Skills, are fair and I agree with, I didn't think they really got in the way of completing the game; just 100%ing it which I would not have any intention of doing anyway. And I liked the characters and their interactions better in this game, especially fleshing out the rare Blades through their own special quests (I loved Wulfric!). I only hate that the gacha mechanics kept me from getting a lot of them so I probably missed out on a lot of good story and character interactions that would have made me like it even more. The side quests as a whole I also found better in this game and less annoying, although annoying fetch and kill quests were obviously still present. Overall, I simply found the sequel more entertaining than the original, and I haven't even gotten to the DLC yet which everyone does seem to love.

2 is my least favorite XC game. 1 used to be my favorite, but 3 is the one I like most (thanks to Future Redeemed). 2 gets good from chapter 7 onwards, and I like chapter 10, but the tone of the story kept being dragged down by stupid anime humor and boobs. One scene in XC2 was ruined because of the boss that came before it, despite them expecting you to take said scene seriously. @Xyphon22

I haven’t finished one yet, but I agree with you, I like two much more, especially the cast of characters, they are all level ten and I love it! And the DLC, oh my goodness if you loved the story and characters, the dlc just adds a whole knew layer, haven’t finished that either. Haven’t played three but I think I know how I will ranked them is going to end up being three, two, and then one last.

@VoidofLight Yeah, I'm pretty sure most people think 2 is the worst, which is why I thought I'd put my thoughts on the game here. I honestly thought the childish anime humor was not nearly as bad as I was expecting based on what I'd heard, nor nearly as bad as it could have been based on, you know, the character models. Other than the hot spring scene, there wasn't much. I think I might know what scene you are talking about, and I thought that was really odd and kind of uncomfortable (if they were real people), but not over-the-top.

@Snatcher I agree about the characters. It's hard for me to pick a favorite from the main cast (Wulfric was my favorite, though). I wasn't crazy about what they did with Nia or that practically everybody and their mothers turned out to actually be Blades , but other than that everyone was fun. I haven't played three yet either, and I need to do the Torna DLC first, but I think I need a little break from Xenoblade before I do that.

@Xyphon22 the scene I was talking about was the scene where the king of Mor Ardain nearly got murdered by a Nopon in a Chibi Robot maid mech. It's meant to be seen as extremely serious, but I don't know how they expected people to take it seriously when the boss was literally a robo maid.

@VoidofLight Oh, right. I forgot about that one. That was odd. The one I keep going to was after you fight all the Phantom Addams/Ganons/whatevers and Nia reveals herself to be a Blade (which she had already kind of given away to the player in your scene), of course by wearing a much more revealing outfit, and gets her power by confessing her love for Rex. And Rex is just like, "Aw, that's nice. I love you, too! Just like I love everyone else!" It was just awkward and unnecessary.

@Xyphon22 actually I kinda liked that scene, because Rex wasn’t really lying, yeah he just gave the biggest friend zone ever, but he also wasn’t lying, he really does love everybody, and I think it was his way of telling her that he loved somebody else, but also that he still love her, idk I might be looking into it too much but I can see how it’s hard to watch. also man I feel like we had this conversation before, really strong feeling lol but we haven’t. However I do agree somewhat with the Robot maid, I mean it was hard to take seriously but at the same time the person who built it literally built himself a wifue, I forget the name of the merchant napon but he didn’t really care how it looked, he just wanted a strong robot, so he didn’t seem to take how the design looked into account, but I don’t blame anyone for not liking the scene. And to be fair they were blade eaters (I’m pretty sure) so they were humans at a point, but there were a lot.

Again I might be looking into it too much, but I feel like that might be some of the intent with the scenes, the Nia one at least because the robot maid is a little but of a stretch and I agree it’s pretty goofy lol……wow I think these opinions really are unpopular.

But you will be happy to know if the outfits make you uncomfortable that three tones it down a ton, and again the dlc supports the story a lot.

@Xyphon22 That scene you mentioned is the funniest thing if you play the entire series.

XC1 was consistently mediocre. XC2 was a rollercoaster of amazing and terrible elements. Ultimately, I tend to judge games by their strengths. Also, the highs were higher than the lows were low for me.

@VoidofLight Oh come on, Giga Rosa at least had one of the better boss themes in the series

I lost it when the 70s sentai music started.

@Xyphon22 XC3 really forces you to re-contextualize that scene between Nia and Rex lol.

@Ralizah It's a good song, but story-wise that moment just kind of destroys the game for me in a way. That and just the combat not really being my thing. I know people hate 1's combat, but I like how it's better explained and feels more simple in comparison (plus you don't need to stand still while using arts, or have to use pouch items to increase movement speed).