Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

@VoidofLight While I understand the intent, I think it was a mistake making your Zonai device battery dependent on mining resources to expand it. Would have preferred having battery upgrades tethered to main plot progression or something. It kind of turns the game into a slog if you want to get to the point where your devices last any length of time.

@Ralizah I don’t mind it, but it feels hard to obtain everything in a run that’s without the paraglider or fast travel.

I don't disagree with some of those complaints but at the end of the day, the two open world Zeldas are some of the only games where I can have a good time doing not much of significance beyond checking an area I haven't been to before.

Probably helps that the past two games in huge worlds I played were Xenoblade 2, which somehow still didn't have enough game world for how eternal and tedious trying to do even most of the notable quests can get and Arkham Knight, which tried to expand its meaningful side content and somehow made it feel emptier than the fields north of Kakariko.

Honestly between them and Hyrule Warriors, Zelda's kinda mastered the art of finding joy in the simplest and most unendingly repetitive tasks. The fact that I also prefer Happy Home Designer to most Animal Crossings probably also fits well into that. But at the end of the day, dealing with a 3rd bank robbery using Arkham's excellent stealth mechanics felt boring in a way that "ooh what's inside here" has not in TOTK. I also have a soft spot for just chill, long term explorations in some dark place, now that I think about it, as the one weirdo who liked the whole underground section in Assassin's Creed 3 (which is a far less defendable opinion tbh).

Ehhh. Xenoblade isn't really open world though. I don't get why people keep lumping it in with Open World games. X is an open world, but that's the only open world in the series. Xenoblade Chronicles 1, 2, and 3 all have open areas, but for the most part it still goes on as a linear story-driven experience. Calling it "Open World" is like calling Ocarina of Time or Monster Hunter "Open World."

@VoidofLight It kills me to say this, but I agree with a lot of your take re.TOTK

I desperately WANTED to fall in love with this game, as I did with BOTW, but was left feeling just a bit hollow & empty after 20-30 hours and put it down. I am not disputing that 'objectively' it is a remarkable game... but I could never shake the feeling of 'been here done that'.

I support Forbidden West, Ragnarok and even SM2 fall into this camp somewhat - building on their excellent predecessors but not quite doing enough to carve their own identity.

TotK being largely standalone doesn't bother me, but I do agree regarding Pikmin. I don't get why they actively contradicted the (very basic) stories of the previous games in a numbered sequel. It wouldn't have been too alienating for new players if Olimar remembered meeting the Pikmin before, but pretending it never happened is jarring for those of us who've played the whole series.

@Dogorilla This is a completely baseless theory of mine, but I like to believe that they were originally going to give it 4 a subtitle rather than the traditional numbering the series had up until that point (maybe something like Pikmin: Search and Rescue to signify the shift in story/premise?). However, with the sheer amount of notoriety Pikmin 4 as an entity had gained in the years since THAT interview alongside Miyamoto (and presumably most if not all of Nintendo) making a large push for Pikmin to finally break into the mainstream gaming landscape, they probably thought keeping it as 'Pikmin 4' would entice more people to buy it.

Again, literally no evidence for this whatsoever but I think it makes a decent amount of sense if you think about it XD

I'm not a Monster Hunter fan. I tried getting into the series with 4 Ultimate and Rise, but I couldn't, unfortunately. I don't really like how sluggish the controls are... I'm sure they were made that way for a reason, but they just didn't click with me. I guess I like having my player characters' controls to be more snappy, lol. I also don't like how it takes so long to take down those huge monsters. Recently, I revisited 4U to see if I would like it better, but yeah... I still don't like it. Oh well... at least I tried it.

@MarioLover92 I played through rise and I couldn't wait for it to be over. I know it's a beloved franchise, but for the life of me, I can't understand why 🤷‍♂️

@NintendoByNature I love Monster Hunter, and even then I dislike Rise a bit. I hated the segments where they forced you to basically play tower defense. I also dislike how they included a lot of recolored variants of monsters, instead of having more interesting monsters like in previous games.

I also struggled to get into Monster. I tried a demo of 3 on Wii U, ad even bought 4 on 3DS, but it's so sluggish and repetitive. It just bored me. Also, I seem to recall the quest giver in 4 being excessively rude and unlikeable.

Also, I agree with @VoidofLight on TotK. The points about not connecting more to BotW really bugged me throughout the game. Like, why do I need to unlock the whole map again? Did they just bin the old Sheikah slate without at least copying the map? I loved BotW, but TotK became quite a slog towards the end. I hated the fact that building and upgrading both use the same resource, which is grindy and takes forever to get. It just killed any interest I had in trying to be creative. I played for over 120 hours, and I think I was still just over half-way to a full battery. And every time I needed to build something, if I didn't want to use up zonaite (because I was trying to save up for more battery power), I'd have to search around for wood to build the whole thing again, or at least build most of it so it would cost less zonaite for the rest. And no Nintendo, pasting Adson around the map 50 times with the exact same "puzzle" isn't interesting gameplay either.

There's just so many other niggles too, like weapon breaking and fusing being slow and annoying, and the Sages' powers all being mapped to A and you have to catch them to use them. "OMG if you blow my items away one more time I'm going to scream!!!" I did love absolutely love some parts, like reclaiming the fishing village, the runups to the temples, getting my own house, lots of really inventive shrine puzzles, the cool robot Sage, and finally saving Zelda. It felt properly amazing at these points. Incredible gaming. But these highs were dragged down by super excessive padding; a lot of which was essentially recycled content from the previous game. By the end I was so burnt out. If it had focussed more on the new parts, shortened the runtime, offered actually decent rewards for finding chests (possibly a few unbreaking weapons), and cut down on reused content, I think it would have been a far better experience. But as it was, I came away mildly disappointed with the game, which is a big shame.

Oops. That turned into a rant.

Anyway, right now I'm absolutely loving Pikmin 4, and I've almost finished. I didn't realise it disregards previous plots. It's my first Pikmin game, and I'm fully intending to play the rest of the series on Switch (and 3DS).

@VoidofLight interesting. Rise was supposed to be one of the best in the franchise correct? Kind of felt dull honestly.

@NintendoByNature

I can't get into them either, but I assume some people just like taking forever to slowly whack a monster. Kinda feels like a disatisfying boss rush to me. I really liked the world in Rise if not the actual gameplay so I snagged monster hunter stories 2 and liked that better.

Same here! I couldn't really get into the mainline monster hunter games but mhs2 was fantastic. Especially its post game!

@NintendoByNature Rise is touted as one of the best, but previous entries were better. I personally liked World more than Rise, given it did a lot of stuff better, with the only caveat being weaponry and armor not being as interesting or silly.

The main criticisms raised against Monster Hunter Rise are that it's too easy, it takes out the need to track the monsters and that the end game wasn't as good as World's, (although it improved in Sunbreak). The monsters though, are far more varied than World's, (especially base World's), my main criticism with World is that it's basically Monster Hunter: Jurassic Park.
I personally prefer Rise to World, (which in itself seems to be an unpopular opinion), as I prefer the Monsters and the move sets that the weapons have. I believe that if they manage to bring the best bits of Rise and World into the next Monster Hunter game, then it'll be a banger. World had the most atmospheric maps, (although the forest was a bit of a slog), the monster tracking was great, the investigations and more importantly the difficulty that Rise lacked.
The free updates for Rise were a bit disappointing, but we did get Amatsu, which was a worthy and necessary addition I think.
Also I should add that all past Monster Hunter games, (if memory serves), have had tower defense missions. They've always been a bit of a slog, Rise's is faster paced but it's still not great unfortunately.

@Arnie4490 I know World had like two, but they weren’t as overwhelming as the rampages. The rampages genuinely induced anxiety into me and didn’t feel fun to play through at all.

My main complaint with Rise is including smaller versions of monsters that don’t exist in the game at all, along with how they kept putting in recolor after recolor. World did the same, but the base roster felt like it made up for that. Rise only introduces a few new monsters, a few returning, and majority are just recolored. I lost all interest in Sunbreak, and didn’t even get to the expansion itself. Partially because I had to play alone, but also because the grind got pretty bad.

@VoidofLight I definitely agree that they weren't fun and I can see your point about how they would induce anxiety as I avoided them until I absolutely had to do them to proceed.
The smaller versions of monsters in Rise were definitely annoying, the Zamites had me hopeful for a Zamtrios return but alas it wasn't to be. I didn't feel that the recolours were too much of an issue until the post Sunbreak title updates as every game has done it, (I'm not a fan for the most part either), but the title updates were basically 90% recolours with 2 returning monsters. By the time Amatsu was added, I beat it and then I was done with Rise for the most part.

@Arnie4490 The title updates being recolors sort of killed a ton of my interest in the game. I was also hoping that Zamtrios would return. Crossed my fingers for Sunbreak and the title updates, but we never got it. Same with Tetsucobra.

@NeonPizza That's fair, I think. It is in the name; this is the ultimate, definitive version of Smash. I think the goal of this game was to be a culmination of everything in the series and bring everyone back, rather than making really big changes to the gameplay.

Ultimate is my personal favorite in the series since it's the one I started with. I have gone back to play Melee and Brawl though, and I do think those also have unique things to appreciate. I do think it would be cool if the next Smash is something truly unique, though. A weird shake-up to the gameplay or the next-gen facelift as you mentioned would be really nice.