Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

Veeeery unpopular opinion: Nintendo was completely in the right to cancel that smash tournament, and all the people I’ve seen whining about it and calling Nintendo stupid and evil are completely childish.

@Blooper987 How Was Nintendo in the right?

@DePurpleMonkey it was protection of their property. Nintendo did not authorize the use of the mods that they were going to use. It’s taking a product made by Nintendo and modding for an event for the public. If Nintendo doesn’t want that illegal mod to be used for an event, it’s completely fine for them to do so

Nintendo was in the right in the sense that copyright law in its current form is profoundly stupid. "oh hey we'll allow you to have copyrights from the 30s still, but if its proven you didn't relentlessly defend it, you can lose it because reasons." Both of these things are awful, but its the combination of both existing simultaneously that is fascinatingly dumb.

@Blooper987 They're legally within their right to do so. There's no question about that.

I'd think that people were just hoping for a teeny bit of flexibility on Nintendo's part though, given that we're in unusual times. Cutting enough slack, just for once, to take a tournament online where the only alternatives are cancellation or a significant risk of it turning into a COVID superspreader event doesn't necessarily entail a softening of their stance against emulation and modding in the long run.

It's truly amazing how many people don't understand intellectual property laws, why they exist and why companies are in the right to enforce them.

Moreso than the mod itself, they have to use illegal copies of the game. The Big House doesn't mention this in their release. Nintendo does. So, Nintendo had the choice of condoning the illegal piracy of their IP or shutting it down, which isn't much of a choice at all.

I still think I’m on the Melee community’s side on this one. By cancelling Big House Nintendo basically killed the game.

It's stuff like this that makes it not so cut and dry. Then there's the precedent if they did cut some slack. Oh, you let people use illegal copies of Melee for an event, so now you can't stop people from doing the same with Ultimate.
There's more to this than just the black and white some people are making it out to be.

@Shadowthrone Yeah but like, what IP damage would Nintendo be sustaining

Usually this stuff would be justified if it was damaging company image or sales of a potential new product, such as when Nintendo pulled the plug on AM2R and the Mario 64 PC conversion because new games or iterations were being worked on by them

Melee is a 19 year old GameCube game, which has since been completely replaced by not just one, not two but three considerably newer games.

Especially when you have companies like SEGA actively embracing stuff like fan projects and continued support of their older titles, this comes off as Nintendo practically being stuck in a little fantasy bubble where everything has to either be played their way, or not played at all, and it comes off as tone deaf considering they're already one of the most piss poor companies when it comes to restorations of legacy content these days

@TheFrenchiestFry what if there is an HD melee in development 😱🤣 jk jk

@Blooper987 Considering Sony announced both Final Fantasy VII Remake and a new Shenmue game in the same conference the sky's the limit this point

Nintendo should just release melee, with rollback netcode on switch. Nintendo makes a tidy profit, and makes the smash community happy. They could outsource it to another company like Code Mystics, if they really don't want to put the effort in themselves.

@TheFrenchiestFry The game itself is less the issue than setting the precedent of condoning piracy of their IP. One event gets to pirate Melee, so another can pirate Ultimate? Or MK8? Or any number of other 30 year old games that Nintendo likes to resell every generation, for that matter?

What Sega does is a moot point. If I freely loan my belongings to strangers, should you be chastised for not doing the same thing with yours?

Piracy stems from a lack of options in many cases. Nintendo was fully right to shut this down, but on the flip side of it, they would have fewer battles to fight if they treated their legacy content better. A Smash All-Stars on Switch, for example, would alleviate all of this. Melee has a huge following to this day and Nintendo does seem to have a blind eye to that sort of thing.

Emulation rulz!! Seriously I've discovered so many emulation sites, romsites, emulators, homebrew, retro games and just really cool stuff online. There are people from Russia sharing new games with people in the US. There are hackers in Brazil making some of the best SMW hacks ever. There are Super Metroid hacks, LoZ hacks, Mega Man, Contra, SM64, Mortal Kombat I-III, Doom, Sonic, SoR, Kirby, JRPGs it's really endless 👍

Emulation rulz!! Seriously I've discovered so many emulation sites, romsites, emulators, homebrew, retro games and just really cool stuff online. There are people from Russia sharing new games with people in the US. There are hackers in Brazil making some of the best SMW hacks ever. There are Super Metroid hacks, LoZ hacks, Mega Man, Contra, SM64, Mortal Kombat I-III, Doom, Sonic, SoR, Kirby, JRPGs it's really endless 👍

That poor computer of yours

See, the problem is you assume the laws they're dealing with all make sense. Basically, what Nintendo is doing is dumb but that's because they have to deal with dumb.

But it is also true that it is fairly unlikely anything negative would come from it (I assume it would require a particularly bold patent troll). So...I dunno.

Unpupular opinion: Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is mich more and better in many ways than Xenoblade Chronicles.
Dunno if it was because i played it first or not, but it holds right up for me

@Quimbolas In what way? The characters, the combat, the story, the art style, the music? Personally I get how Xenoblade 2 can be compared to the first, and yes, I played XC on the Wii first, but after playing and replaying X and 2 multiple times, I still feel that Xenoblade 1 beats 2 in all the departments I listed. The characters are more likeable, and their voice acting is extremely good. The combat is not too fast or slow (in 2 it's pretty slow, because of the way Arts are charged with auto attacks), and is challenging and complex. The story is more grounded than 2's but emotionally still makes me tear up when I watch certain cutscenes! And in terms of art, I prefer XC's less anime approach. In DE it's a little cartoony but it fits very well. The chibi style in 2 is cool, but they don't use the anime effects (like in the Wanted Nia scene, with the tear drop, eye effects) as much as they could have. And some of the fan service is too blatant, like why there's so many female Blades, et cetera. And the music isn't live recorded in 1, (some of it is in DE), but it has a lot of love put in. And with processed instruments I feel electric guitars sound better, for some reason.

I've played all three Chronicles games, and Torna, in the space of four years, and it's already vaulted on top of my all time favourites list. Let me know what you love about 2.

@theJGG some of the aspects you mentioned. Both ost's are great, but i like XC2 more overall, samething about the gameplay, the world and it has better humour moments. The combat may be a little slower but for me is more satisfying as it gives me more options.
The story and characters for me it's basically on the same level for each of the games, they have strenghts and weaknesses but i like them both.

@theJGG Not the person who you're responding to, but I share the same opinion (although I've yet to play DE, so I'm open to my mind changing with regard to that specific version), so let me go explain myself.

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Xenoblade Chronicles is an UGLY game. While impressive in scope, the muddiness of the landscapes broadly ruins the aesthetic of the game for me. On the character design front, the characters have these kind of hideous face textures plastered onto their models, so they hurt a bit to look at.

One of the reasons I'm looking forward to playing DE is because of the way it salvages the character designs with updated character models that aren't hideous.

The lighting and visuals in the original release are also kind of... washed out? It's just a really bad looking game all around.

I actually really like the more expressive and stylish designs of the XC2 characters. You mention they're "fanservicey," but that really only applies to Pyra and a handful of optional blades you may or may not see throughout the game. It's overstated. I understand someone being uncomfortable with Pyra's design, of course, but it's not a big deal to me, and it's certainly not indicative of how characters are designed overall.

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I liked the cast of XC2 (and Torna) far more than the one in the first game. Shulk was annoying and never clicked with me. Fiora becomes a plot device. Sharla doesn't have a lot of personality. British Wakka Reyn is one of my least favorite characters in the game. Riki is probably the worst nopon character in the series. etc. I didn't really connect with any of these people.

Rex/Pyra/Mythra/Nia/Zeke/Dromarch/Poppy/Tora/etc. were all far more interesting and immediately likable personalities for me. I became emotionally invested in Rex's quest when I never could quite do the same for Shulk. I think a lot of it is the writing: the game allows these characters to have fun and, in general, leans more heavily into humor overall, despite also being a much more emotionally devastating game at all times. And, in general, I feel like Xenoblade 2 is better at juggling characters and giving them all time to shine.

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Xenoblade 2's story is quite a bit better overall. It's extremely well-paced and kept me highly invested over the entire length of the game. It is also, as mentioned, a game that deals with difficult subjects and emotions, and I appreciate the emotional candidness involved. While the final thirty minutes or so of the game pulls its punches a bit in a way I didn't appreciate, I was still highly invested in the story from beginning to end. It's well-written.

Xenoblade 1 starts with a premise that feels vaguely Attack on Titan-y, which is fine, I guess, but it's difficult for me to become invested in revenge narratives. After Shulk and Reyn leave their village, it feels like the plot goes on hiatus for a long period of time as you slowly assemble a cast of characters. In fact, I'd argue the plot never really picks up again until the prison island sequence halfway through. That chunk of the game, in the middle, is pretty good, but the plot sort of falls apart near the end as well and becomes overtly metaphysical in a way I didn't connect with.

Xenoblade 2 feels like it was written by someone who knows how to structure a plot involving multiple parties in a satisfying manner.

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In terms of landscape design, I found the Xenoblade 2 titans far more evocative and visually interesting than the landscapes in the first game. Xenoblade 1's areas are needlessly huge, and there's really nothing to find in them since you spend the entire time running around collecting random blue orbs everywhere. While Xenoblade 2 could probably also stand to shrink its landmasses a bit, Monolith went to greater pains in the sequel to justify the 'open area' philosophy of level design and made item collection points that feel grounded in the environment.

Name an area in Xenoblade 1, and I can almost always name a similar but more well-designed level in Xenoblade 2.

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Gameplay-wise, I wasn't a huge fan of the monado's constant visions, and the combat in general is slow and simplistic. Xenoblade 2's system might seem a bit too complicated at times, but it's a really cool little system once you learn its intricacies, and the amount of customization you have with Rex's loadout is insane. I found that, one you understand how to use blade combos, pile on orbs for chain attacks, etc. the combat didn't feel too slow at all for me. The skill ceiling is higher in Xenoblade 2, but I don't think that's a bad thing.

I feel like Torna: The Golden Country did a much better job than the first game of using a simplistic battle system that is a joy to engage with.

Just my opinion. Xenoblade 1 is too focused on positioning Shulk and overcoming monado visions.

You also have a lot less control overall when it comes to how chain attacks play out.

Also, Xenoblade 2 is the game in the series where it's easiest to control health regeneration in combat, which is a huge boon to me.

A change in Xenoblade 2 that makes me appreciate it over Xenoblade 1 is also the way heart-to-hearts work. The affinity requirements in the first game are too strict, which meant I'd have to grind random characters together for hours and then trek back to areas where I passed them up in the first place. It was a pain. Xenoblade 2 just treats them as little moments between two characters and seems to ditch affinity requirements entirely, which allowed me to engage with them when I first came across them. It's a small change that had a large impact on my enjoyment of the game.

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I'm one of those people who thinks the first game's music isn't that great. In general, I feel like the soundtracks for these games have only improved over time. Xenoblade Chronicles 2's soundtrack is full of bangers, whereas I found the instrumentation in the first game to be... lacking.

Admittedly, the DE goes a long way toward salvaging the soundtrack of the first game by reorchestrating key tracks.

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It's hard for me to think of an area where I don't think Xenoblade 2 is just flat out better.

I guess I'd give these to the first game:

• Better voice acting for the main character (I prefer the voice acting for the extended cast more in XC2, though)
• Main character is better designed in XC1
• No annoying gacha element or field skill blocks to worry about
• It's easier to not get lost in XC1's landscapes

While, again, I'm going to replay XC with the DE on Switch and see if my feelings have changed, I found the original XC to be quite disappointing. XC2 surpassed my expectations in a variety of ways.