Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

@ShonenJump121 Oh, I have found some Nintendo fans can act like that, but it can be applied to fans of anything that is popular. If it is a community centered on a product or IP released by a company that is popular and well-liked, they likely have a big fan base, which isn’t bad and pretty good, but sometimes big fanbases do not like it when someone shares an opposite opinion that is more critical or negative of the product. I am assuming it could be that they want the thing or company they like to be seen as flawless, when I think that making mistakes is pretty much normal and expected from every game company that exists. It’s going to be very hard to find a game company that does make masterpieces every time and never has released a “bad” game ever. Some companies of course do better than others when frequently releasing games that are critically acclaimed, but some that do that aspect better have probably released a game that is less than spectacular on occasions.

If there is a fan base centered on a product that isn’t well-known or unpopular, then they sometimes do act less like that, especially if the community is aware of the product not being the greatest thing ever made. I have found that it’s usually smaller gaming communities that are fine with any opinion expressed, positive or negative.

@N00BiSH I agree tbh. I've personally never felt much desire to have a d-pad on my joy-cons, and in some cases (e.g. games that require precise directional input like tetris), I prefer the buttons to the mushy feeling of the Pro Controller d-pad.

My related unpopular opinion (and forgive me if I've posted this before) is that I prefer digital triggers to analog. Sure, some games benefit from analog (Mario Sunshine comes to mind), but overall I find the shorter travel distance of digital triggers to be much more comfortable. I don't want the Switch successor to have analog triggers if it means giving them the travel distance of, say, the Xbox Series controller.

A nice compromise is to have adjustable triggers as in the Xbox Elite controller, but I don't see this happening on a Nintendo console.

I've definitely reached the point, especially like 15 years of nearly un-ending 8-bit nostalgia marketing, that I'm just not into the NES anymore. Like 90% of its games are not worth going back to for the sake of enjoying a quality game. I feel somewhat similarly about certain early 3D games, but even moreso for NES that its more worth going through to see gaming history and how games used to be like when there weren't a ton of standards of how good video games work than to enjoy a video game the way you normally would.

Really I don't find the Joy-cons generally speaking to be all that bad, people treat them like they're the worst thing Nintendo has ever done. but they drift!

So? Every controller I've had from the big three have had drift issues. That's not something unique to Joy-cons, I've burned through 3 PS5 controllers and 2 Xbox controllers due to drift.

@ShonenJump121 Stick drift seems to be more prevalent than ever before, I own a lot of older controllers with sticks that still work pretty well all these years. I think it has to do with newer sticks having smaller deadzones, which makes them more precise as well as more susceptible to drift.

I kinda hope we don't get a remake of Xenoblade Chronicles X. It feels like a waste of resources for a game that's nothing like any of the other Xeno geames. Better to just lump those resources into the actual Xenoblade titles instead of an empty open world game with a bad story and major side-quest focus.

It's the pro controller which has kind of a crappy d-pad

In honor of it's two year anniversary, here's a take that shouldn't be unpopular but apparently is:

I like Return to Monkey Island. I like it a lot actually. So much in fact, that even two years later and a lot of my thoughts haven't changed much since it's release. I liked the art - it's my favorite look for the series since game 2 - and I like the ending for what it had to say, both in terms of Monkey Island and the general nature of storytelling.

@N00BiSH Is it actually an unpopular opinion or have simply not many people bought the game? Personally it's still on my wishlist waiting for a good sale but NL reviewed it 9/10, the NL player review averages an 8.1 which is pretty good, metacritic was 87 which was in the top 20 games of the year. So generally sterling reviews all around.

@FishyS most of the critics thought it was good, it's really divisive amongst the internet. Some people(like me) really enjoyed it, but then there's the more vocal side that's been pretty hostile towards it for the two factors I mentioned before.

@N00BiSH Considering the player scores are fairly high too maybe you are just hanging around angry websites 😆

@FishyS you're probably right about that but during the lead Return's release a LOT of people were just really angry at it. The comments on the reveal trailer alone kind of prove my point.

And that was just for the art style. It got even worse when the game came out and people started getting to the end.

WHAT was so good about streetpass? I couldn't use it because of parental controls, and honestly I don't see the appeal of being able to view the Mii of somebody who I passed by. I'd much rather have miiverse back, or that effort go into an actual game.

Also, home menu customization doesn't matter so much. It's nice to have, but it's not a detriment if it's excluded.

@sunny63 Streetpass was essentially a game in itself. Not only did it show you the Miis of people you had passed, but you would exchange puzzle pieces with them, with new puzzles being released every month. Plus you could use the encountered Miis in Streetpass Quest (a mini RPG) to earn hats for your Mii.

I'm not dying for it to come back myself, but it was great fun of the time. That said, the concept was really cool, and I would like to see Nintendo build on it in the future.

I did also like StreetPass, I liked how goofy the games included were and a lot of the game concepts and ideas, but I am not really crazy about it and don’t really feel anything about how it can’t really be played anymore. What really annoyed me was the coins that you needed to continue playing some games (like Find Mii) when the Miis I recruited got scared and couldn’t defeat any of the enemies, so it kind of became unfun by the end from how stuck I got. The fact I rarely bumped into people when using StreetPass later on also made lose a lot of fun.

Miiverse was kinda cool too and I remember using it a bit with the first Splatoon, but I don’t really miss it at all like others. It’s also probably because the following two Splatoon games kind of had a Miiverse replacement, except that you couldn’t type in posts or reply and all posts had to be drawings, plus the fact it was for Splatoon games only. If Miiverse came back in some way for the next Nintendo console, cool! If not, that’s fine.

I can agree with the home customization thing. I mean, it is a nice feature to kind of spice things up and I can understand why people want it (especially since the Switch has been stuck with two themes for almost a decade now) but for me, I don’t really think it’s bad if they never add in some new home themes and customization as a late update to the Switch. Similarly, I can also remember some people getting annoyed with the NSO icon on the home screen being changed from gray to pure red and wanting it back to gray, but I don’t find that to be something important.

The switch has the largest line-up of games out of any Nintendo console, but that doesn't mean that it has the best games of any Nintendo console. Especially not in terms of their respective series. Outside of a handful of games, it feels like a lot of Nintendo produced games this generation are pretty much either released unfinished (content-wise) or are released with some heavily glaring flaws that make the games less memorable, or almost a hit but not quite.

Animal Crossing is the largest example. It was unfinished at launch, with a good chunk of the content being added back in through free updates. Even with the updates being finished, the game still has a massive lack of content in comparison to the previous entries in the series. Doesn't help matters that Nintendo also abandoned half of their fanbase with New Horizons either (with the game stagnating if you don't play, instead of how it used to change).

Then you have the Mario Sports games, which all seemed like they could have been the best in their series- but they ended up being completely and utterly unfinished with Nintendo doing the bare minimum through free updates to fix that issue. Same can be said for Switch Sports, where the game is just inferior to the Wii Sports series due to releasing with a handful amount of sports and having to trickle feed them due to releasing the game unfinished.

Even when you have finished games though, a good chunk of them feel hollow or unremarkable imo. Super Mario Odyssey is a game that I feel hollow while playing. I tried to replay it a couple of times after my initial playthrough- but I just can't bring myself to do so. The amount of repetitive tasks in the kingdoms along with the over-abundance of moons makes everything feel less satisfying to play through. It makes me just not want to even try. Breath of the Wild was fine, but it too gave me a weird "hollow" feeling. A "hollow" feeling that would only be further compounded by Tears of the Kingdom, and how that game really felt like a mess of systems and ideas that never got as fleshed out as they should've been.

Echoes of Wisdom also suffers that same fate. A game that feels unremarkable despite having a bunch of good ideas, all because those ideas weren't well fleshed out. Unlike A Link Between Worlds (where that game still stuck with me after all those years), I walked away from Echoes of Wisdom entirely unimpressed. The combat was fine, but the side content that filled the game just didn't work for me. The expanded map felt like it was too large when these games work best with smaller and tighter level design. The dungeon quests were pretty unremarkable, and the dungeons themselves were pretty unimpressive both in theme and in layout (with the exception of Faron). There were a handful of quests in the game that were pretty cool, but outside of that a good chunk of those quests only really gave rewards out like smoothie ingredients, and nothing more than that. By the end of the game I pretty much wanted for the game to be over (which is a first for a Nintendo game for me).

Then we have Brothership. While I'm excited for another Mario and Luigi game after years of just not having one, I'm terrified that this will disappoint me as much as Echoes of Wisdom or Animal Crossing New Horizons did. I hope it won't, but given that there's a massive lack of the original staff working on this game (including the absence of Yoko Shimomura), and the fact that the game looks visually unremarkable in a lot of places, I don't really have that many high hopes for it. I hope it'll be good, but I get a huge gut feeling it won't even be near the level of games like Xenoblade 2, Xenoblade 3, or Luigi's Mansion 3. Hope I'm wrong though- seeing as Mario Party Jamboree sorta surprised me with how good that game is.

@VoidofLight I agree the Switch line-up being a bit weaker when comparing to some previous console's line-ups. For many games on Switch, I liked a previous entry better. I think Switch is my favorite game library if rereleases count, but if you don't count them, it's probably lower in my ranking. Talking about new games alone, the Switch has felt somewhat weaker in that aspect (in my opinion).

Animal Crossing New Horizons is a good game, but it gets rid of a lot of the core of what the series was (Nintendo please make Animal Crossing: New Leaf HD). I very much prefer New Leaf over New Horizons. Sure, New Horizons did some stuff better than New Leaf, but I'd say New Leaf did a lot more things better than New Horizons. I don't mind how New Horizons continually updated adding new content, but I'm sure it'd bother physical copy owners who wanted to save their 32 GB of Switch storage.

Mario Sports games on Switch were some of the biggest disappointments on Switch. All of them released unfinished. By the end, Mario Tennis Aces felt like a complete game, but Mario Golf: Super Rushed and Mario Strikers: Battle League ended their post-launch runs feeling unfinished and so inferior to their respective GameCube/Wii entries. In my opinion, Mario Super Sluggers was the biggest and best Mario Sports title, and we haven't seen a new entry on Switch.

I personally loved Mario Odyssey, but it wasn't as good as Super Mario 64 or Super Mario Galaxy. I started Breath of the Wild, but I don't think it was for me. Almost every area requires a specific outfit (too hot, too cold, etc.), and the horses movements felt so strict (like being scared when near walls or edges) (and being the only easy way to go fast at that time in the game) which made the game feel a lot less open than I thought. I enjoyed Link's Awakening a lot more, there were a few parts I didn't like but it's my favorite Zelda game right now. Even though I like Link's Awakening, I am hesitant to try Echoes of Wisdom since it trades some typical 2D Zelda stuff for BotW/TotK mechanics.

Brothership looks like it'll be better than Paper Jam, but I think it has a shot at being the best in the series (at least from what I've played). It looks great, the animation is very well done, the music is awesome (the new composer is doing a good job from what I've heard), and the gameplay seems similar to the other games. Looks like there will be quite a bit of content as well. Hard to say until it releases, but it looks promising so far.

Switch has a good library, but it is definitely lacking in some aspects. For me, the remakes/remasters/ports are what makes their line up a lot stronger.

@PikminMarioKirby With Animal Crossing, my main issue with the free updates was mostly just due to how it felt like the updates added too little to the game, and the base game had too much missing in turn. If it were to have launched with the 2.0 stuff in the base game, and then had more come in free updates, I don't think I would've minded as much.

My other issue is just how the game feels stagnant. It feels like nothing really changes since villagers can't move unless you give them permission to do so, and nothing dies or becomes messier without your input. It feels like the game doesn't really need you, and it gets rid of the illusion that the game's world was living and breathing like in previous entries.

As for the switch library, I feel like in terms of sheer series that exist on Switch, and in terms of old games being brought back- the system is probably better than most other Nintendo consoles. It's just in terms of the over-all game quality where it falls apart to me.

@VoidofLight I wish there was more that could happen if you don't do things on the island in New Horizons. I kind of liked how in previous titles a Villager could move away while you're gone. I liked it especially with how New Leaf handled it so you can see them come back in Main Street every once in a while. There aren't many buildings in the New Horizons island either, especially compared to New Leaf's town and the Main Street. When 2.0 released for New Horizons they added the shopping place at Harvey's Island, it just felt like they were throwing some classic characters there with no special building or theme.

With Switch it definitely feels like games have been rushed/rely on DLC or post-launch content to get games released at a good time. Although as of recent, I don't think there's been a Nintendo game that got major/paid DLC that released after Fire Emblem Engage (January 2023) (Yeah I know there was Mario Kart and Splatoon and Mario + Rabbids, but the games themselves released before FE Engage). Even Kirby learned a lesson from Kirby Star Allies: Kirby and the Forgotten Land is still at version 1.0.0! Games like Forgotten Land, Mario Wonder, and Pikmin 4 have all felt like finished products from the start, and major updates/DLC (while would've been great) were by no means necessary. Major content updates aren't always bad (I thought they were nice in Mario Maker 2) but when it gets in the way of the quality of the game and the developer can essentially use it as an excuse to release it before it's finished (like Pokemon Scarlet/Violet and Mario/Switch Sports), then it becomes a problem.

I prefer Sonic Heroes over Sonic Adventure 2. It just feels faster, and the gameplay is more fluid and satisfying. Every story having the same play style is fine, almost like a difficulty setting. It's probably the worse game, but IMO a bad game that's fun is better than a good game that's unfun.