Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

@HunterLeon I get that. I haven't played the games, admittedly, but I've never felt compelled to. As a fan of platformers Crash always seemed unremarkable.

I have to kind of agree, based on playing the first 2 games a while ago anyway. Like they're fun enough, but Crash 1 has some inexcusably obnoxious problems in hindsight, and even 2 isn't exactly the best platformer, even for a 3D platformer of its time. Like its really good in some places, but it never reaches the point of feeling like it earned the hype it got. And I'm usually the guy defending that era of gaming, but maybe the hype was a bit much for these games.

@Cotillion From a marketing standpoint it's certainly advantageous to promote him that way. I think the real "Mario Killers" would've been games like Resident Evil, Tekken, and Metal Gear Solid. Games that went so far beyond what Mario and Nintendo were doing.

This take has been controversial lately so I'll just say it:

Sometimes, it would be better if games decided to be shorter. Pacing is super underappreciated in big budget gaming nowadays. Especially JRPGs, where that's been a problem for ages. Some super long games are great, but when you force people to deal with boring padding, or you don't know how to find the balance of extra content, its a big problem. While not the worst example of this at all, the one that comes to mind for me is Skyward Sword, which desperately needed small things cut throughout it until it was like...5 hours or so shorter. That's when I first noticed that pacing could be a problem.

Celeste and Mario Odyssey are my 2 favorite Switch games, and I think they have a good compromise where the main game is brilliant and there's a ton of content beyond that that's also great but not as amazing necessarily. So with both when I was done, I was at least done on my own terms. And while part of me wishes the extra content was as strong as the first dozen hours I put into them, its much better than many games, where too much is mandatory or too much extra content is just not especially fun.

I also love how Rayman Legends handled it. It had a relatively short campaign, but it had lots of various types of content beyond that that was almost all great, including daily and weekly challenges.

@kkslider5552000 the Xenoblade series is the biggest culprit for me. No JRPG needs to be 100+ hours long. I personally think between 35 and 50 is the perfect length for an RPG. As soon as I see 100+ hours of gameplay I know I'm in for two things, a badly paced story and a million copy and paste fetch quests.

@kkslider5552000 Absolutely agree. And I feel like this is becoming a more and more popular opinion as (i) the industry is expanding and there are far more great games to play, (ii) many gamers are getting older and have less time to play games.

Actually, it feels like I've heard more reviews complain that games have unnecessary padding, than complain that games are too short, these days.

Of course, it completely depends on the game. Anything narrative-heavy and light on any meaningful progression (e.g. RPG mechanics) shouldn't be longer than 10-15 hours IMO. Conversely I think games with in-depth progression systems (i.e. where you gain abilities that change the gameplay in a meaningful way, like most RPGs) can get away with 30+ hours. It also depends on what you have to show off with your content. I completely agree that Mario Odyssey is a great example - giving players a taste of the many different levels in the main game, and leaving the hard-core moon-collecting to the post-game.

You're partially right about this, but I found the pacing of Xenoblade 1's story to be really good. I can't think of a ton of instances where the game wasted my time or the dialogue went on forever about something we already knew or nothing of interest. It doesn't even have a ton of side quests disguised as main quests, and the ones it does have are usually interesting in some way (or at worst, are fairly quick and painless). And I played it by doing much of the actual sidequests, so it was quicker paced still for people who focused on the main story over sidequests.

X's story wasn't, but that's not what X was going for in the first place. For better or worse. (I have many problems with how X did things, but blaming the main story it wasn't focused on seems a bit unfair).

Xenoblade still had a lot of empty space though...

Also, the Definitive Version's OST is very disappointing

I mean, that's true enough. I just liked the environments enough that that only occasionally bothered me (mostly for a handful of annoying quests involving way too rare items).

I'll just again when I have the chance to dig into the Definitive Edition properly, but I remember Xenoblade 1 being very poorly paced through the game's early hours after the call to adventure (or revenge, as it were) happens. Whereas Xenoblade 2 was compelling and properly paced throughout.

And yeah, X1 has a TON of needlessly huge areas. They're literally just there to pad out the experience and give the developers room to puke little glowing orbs everywhere.

I can't remotely agree with this. Like even stuff that could be time wasting non-sense I felt the game often got through fairly quickly, at least compared to other stories I've seen. Like in terms of establishing each part of the world, each major character, and the themes and elements of the story that become more relevant the further they go on, while having those areas more or less have a mini story of their own that ties into those things, I think they did a really good job.

Xenoblade 2 had more variety, so it was fine. Xenoblade 1 took far too long to explore

God I love emulation! Sonic Retro just archived their fan hack entries from all their competitions between 2012-2019. It's a fantastic collection. Definitely go check it out if you're into that.

Oh and someone on romhacking just gave Kirby's Dreamland on Gameboy the DX color love Nintendo never did. What a time to be alive

I can't stand new pixel-art. When I'm going through the eshop I could find a game with a cool looking title picture and a really good synopsis but if the gameplay is all made up of pixel art I can't bring myself to even check it out. I love the old SNES and NES games but they used pixel art because that was what they had available at the time. Retro gaming has it's place in my heart but when it comes to the switch I want my games to look the part of a 21st century experience.

@JoeM103 I'm pretty sick of this too. I grew up with the SNES and a lot of those games are timeless to me, but when modern games delibrately have a retro look seems uninspired in most cases.

@JoeM103 I'm with you. It would be nice to filter out all 2d pixel art games Anyone else reading, no offense intended. I still respect 2d pixel art, I've just already gotten my retro gaming out of my system.

Snes? It wasn't that long ago Nintendo was still using pixel art for some of their bigger franchises like Fire Emblem and Pokémon.

When Nintendo does it it's usually a nod to their past. When indie developer #31415926 does it it's usually to communicate to the player a sense of nostalgia (although I suppose that's true for either case). Eh, whatever the reason is it just doesnt do it for me. I completely forgot Fire Emblem had pixel character models in it.

Unpopular Opinion:

Most video games do not get the "choices matter" and "moral dilemma" concepts right. Most games can pretty much be divided into three categories in regards to choices:
1. All options basically mean the same thing, beside 1 or 2 choices throughout (most JRPGs for example).
2. Games with obvious "good" and "evil" choices, usually games that present you with darker paths to take though they are sometimes not obvious. This is a step in the right direction, but it basically boils down to 2 different playstyles. (A lot of Western RPGs like Divinity OS 2, Vampire the Masquerade... heck, even a few of the Bioware games).
3. Those are the worst criminals in my eyes - games that present you with choices that mean nothing. These vary from choices that look like they might mean something, but it doesn't effect anything whatsoever (even sometimes just locks you out of other content) to even bigger ***** who present "moral dilemmas" that seem legit, but with one leading to an obviously positive outcome and one leading to an obviously negative outcome (most games that pride themselves with "choice", ranging from Dragon Age to Witcher) - those choices are basically a roulette - there's nothing to think about or to "live with", as with true moral dilemmas.

I can think of a few instances of great element of choice in modern gaming, one of the most recent ones I remember is in "Sinking City". There's a part which I stumbled upon - after discovering some organization is evil and a guy that works for them is good - on talking to him again, I suddenly had the option to tell him to "run away from this town", never saw him again, but it felt like a great choice that shows player agency. That doesn't mean that a few games don't do choices justice. And even among the culprits I mentioned earlier, they do possess some interesting choices SOMETIMES (for example, any game with romance elements lets you "choose" a companion, slightly different tinged endings and such), but still, the bottom line is:

Games do not really understand "choices" and "moral dilemmas" mean.

@kkslider5552000

I found that Xenoblade was quite well paced up until eryth sea. From then onwards it dragged for me. I think it was a combination of bland sidequests, lack of challenge, lack of new mechanics and the Mechonis areas being less interesting to look at.

I might be coming off like I'm hating on Xenoblade, but I've finished the first 2 and almost finished the 3rd game. I wouldn't spend 300 hours+ on games I don't like. I think the world design is top tier, and the soundtrack is amazing but I'm genuinely struggling to recall one of the sidequests from the original game.