Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

@Ralizah Well, I was going to weigh in with a lengthy post, but wasn't much point after reading yours I feel the same way about XC2 over XC that you already eloquently spelled out. XC2 just seemed to do almost everything better. The only thing I'll add is the personal feeling I had when playing. XC1 seemed dragged out at times and when I was done with the story, I was just done. XC2, however, I didn't want to leave the world when it was done. It sounds overly dramatic, but it left a bit of a void for a while. Comparatively, like when you finish a really good book or TV series you've really been invested in and still want more.

@Ralizah I'd say every single point you've brought up made me seriously think. This won't change your stance, but I can guarantee you that Definitive Edition fixes some of these issues. To me, until the Definitive Edition was released, Xenoblade Chronicles was an incredible game that fell just short of perfection, because it had some of the worst graphics for any videogame I've played. But, obviously, the hardware on Wii was not very powerful, and thus it took a mammoth effort for that game to even run on Wii to begin with. DE fixes the graphical stigma with a flourish, and while the more cartoon art style might not agree with everyone, I think the approach was to allow for more noticeable expressions. Lighting's also been fixed, and it seems to be easier on the eyes.

The cast of characters is something I could debate for a very long time. With 1's cast I feel that Sharla is a little bland in terms of her personality, but I love every party member, some more than others though. I actually started Final Fantasy X a few weeks ago, so I get the Wakka joke. But it isn't fair, ya? Same with Riki, during Chapter 12 I think, he has a really heartwarming cutscene, that made me reconsider my own view on his character.

With the whole concept and story premise of 2, I can't say that I appreciate it as much as I should, because the whole idea of humans living on the backs of ten to fifteen Titans, feels far too derivative of 1's idea (humans living on the bodies of two titans). It is because of this that I mark down 2 in the story department. And strangely, I feel the pacing is weird...the way the chapters were divided made them seem far too big. This point is weak but I might as well get it out there.

Ahh, music. I love all the games' music. Almost equally too... but 1's evokes the strongest memories for me. At first I disliked the remastered/orchestrated tracks, but almost every single one grew on me, because the instrumentation was better, tracks like Satorl Marsh, The Spiritual World, have nicer-sounding vocals (for me at least), some tracks have new backing melodies, like that synth in You Will Know Our Names, etc, making them sound fuller. I cover songs for fun, and doing songs from 2 is impossible, because the music is orchestrated in such impressive depth. X's soundtrack is a mixed bag. Some songs are incredible and are bangers, but some songs make me want to turn off the game, because of how poor they are on my ears.

The thing with Monado visions is that it's a step forward from other mechanics, which show up in cutscenes and that's it. It's a really cool idea that I feel was implemented really well. Of course there's things like the Vision music playing during a boss fight which kills the atmosphere, but in the grand scheme of things, there's other things to prattle about.

I agree with your commentary about Heart-to-Hearts, but I'd wish there was a compromise, where each pair of characters had multiple conversations to deepen their connection, but without any affinity system. Best of both worlds, no?

As for you getting DE, hope you enjoy it more than you did on Wii, or Wii U. I beat the game three times on Wii, and managed to sink three hundred hours into it on Switch. The QoL changes make it very easy to play.

@theJGG The new character models really bring everything to life in DE, from what I've seen. It's still a remaster, so environments aren't as gorgeous as XC2's, but, in general, I'd say it's a good looking game (in TV mode, at least). I've owned it since launch, but just haven't gotten around to it yet. I'm hoping to start it within the next few months, though.

I guess, for me, XC1's setting feels very mythical and, thus, detached from reality. A lot more was done to integrate the titans in XC2 into the worldbuilding of that universe, so it felt more 'real.' I can swallow people building civilizations on the backs of these giant animals due to the surface of their planet being uninhabitable, and I love how the need for people to reside on them, like parasites, fuels conflicts related to resources and land. It's absolutely derivative of XC1, of course, but I felt like it was an improvement on the concept of the original.

LOL XCX's music was always going to be controversial. I really like Sawano's work in various anime I've watched, but the style is often over-the-top and extremely distinct from the sort of music employed in XC1 and XC2.

XC1 has some good tracks, and, like I said, the reorchestration of various tracks really gives them the pop I felt like they were missing in the original. But XC2 has one of my favorite video game OSTs of all time. I love almost every track in the game. As you kind of allude to, the music is so good that there's no need to alter or change any of the tracks.

As for Heart-to-Hearts... yeah, that sounds great. In general, I feel like the affinity system adds nothing of value to Xenoblade Chronicles.

I did play a few hours of the original on the Wii, but it looked so bad on my HDTV (and, IMO, the Wii classic controller is really uncomfortable) I stopped and bought the 3DS version instead. Which... is still ugly, but less noticeably so on a smaller screen. I'll be playing the Switch version primarily on the TV, so I'll be able to get a fuller appreciation of the striking landscapes this go around.

Oh, and to be fully candid: while it's not as 'full' an experience as the retail games, I think, pound-for-pound, Torna: The Golden Country is the closest to perfection the series has gotten. It's sublime in almost every regard. It even has excellent sidequests, which sucked in XC1+2.

@Shadowthrone Thanks! I almost didn't download it at launch, but XC2 ended up really resonating with me in an unexpected way. I was disappointed by XC1 and mixed on XCX, but, some issues aside, I think they hit XC2 out of the park in many respects.

I didn't complete most of XC2's blade quests, though, so I really want to go back one day and fully dig into it. There's hundreds of hours of meaningful content available after the credits roll.

@Ralizah It's an interesting strategy, to buy a game and not play it for six months. I'm pretty poor at holding off like that, so when I buy a game I'll sink my time into it until I beat it. The only time I didn't play a game immediately after purchase was FFX/X2 for Switch. Reason being... Persona 5 Royal!

Thing with XCDE is that it runs on Xenoblade 2's engine, and because of that both look appalling on handheld when it comes to draw distance and when you're looking at screenshots of it on a computer, but I've spent some time playing both games on handheld and it isn't too bad. Torna uses an updated graphics engine so it's no surprise to hear me say that it looked better than 2.

I didn't realise that about the worldbuilding there. Thanks for that, it'll allow me to think more about the very premise of the game when I start my eleventh play through the game.

Regardless of Sawano's poor work I'll still play his songs from the game whenever the mood allows. Some of his songs are incoherent soups of electronic sounds and some aren't... But because of Xenoblade's strike rate, it's safe to say that awesome music that combines orchestral elements, electronic elements, and rock elements, is a calling card of the franchise.

Christmas is coming up, so it's a good time to knuckle down and rediscover the original Titans! Even if to you they aren't the best.

PS: It still shocks me as to how much love MonolithSoft put into Torna, and making it free to Expansion Pass owners, which already had new quests, Blades, and game mechanics.

@Shadowthrone I really embrace that feeling whenever it strikes me, and usually only Japanese Role-Playing games manage to pull it off so consistently. They have awesome, quirky characters, insane scopes, addicting combat and detailed, hand-crafted worlds. Examples; (speak of the devil) all three Xenoblade titles, FE: Three Houses, Persona 5 [and the Royal story], Persona 4 (just started but I'm in love), Final Fantasy VII Remake, Final Fantasy X. All of these fill these criteria, and these games are just sublime. They've stolen my heart over and over.

@TheFrenchistFry Just when I capped off a huge post on Japanese Roleplaying games! Atlus has made some neat stuff so I might end up coming to some kind of verdict myself about those two games. But do you mean the vanilla versions, or Full Body and Royal?

Catherine >>>> Persona 5

I somewhat tl;dr'd those Xenoblade posts (partially because I haven't beaten 2 and thus don't have the most definitive opinion to contrast with), but I will say, one out of every three times Xenoblade 2 tries to be funny, I feel like literally any justification for it somehow being better obviously dies a miserable death. I mean, unless they saved all the best humor for later on (or just abandon the tone its been going for so far).

It's very Kid Icarus Uprising so far, in that it has a specific kind of comedic tone so that when it fails, its baaaaaaaad. Like Xenoblade 1 has its bad and frustrating moments, but I'd take all of them over a single more cutscene in 2 like the ones I'm talking about.

@Blooper987, @Wargoose
Actually, that's what Smash Bros. Brawl was going to be (Melee with added online support), if Iwata couldn't get Sakurai to develop Brawl as a new game, as Iwata announced Brawl before development on it even started.
Also, with 3D All Stars running via emulation, I believe this opens the door for other Wii and GameCube to make an appearance on Switch in the (hopefully not too distant) future.

@kkslider5552000 The moment it started with the Japanese maid humour. I was pretty sure I wasn't gonna be recommending it to anyone I know.

My favourite game in the series was Xenoblade X.

I think Torna is massively underrated. It's got the best, or at least close to, that the series has to offer in terms of graphics, music, voice acting, combat system, story and characters. The only thing it hasn't got is the sheer enormous scale of the other games, but it's still something I spent as much time with as other full-price RPGs like Tokyo Mirage Sessions and Paper Mario.

So far as Xenoblade 2 goes generally, the first twenty hours are the worst. The slow start to the story, the endless gacha drops, the excessive (and often pointless if not outright misleading) tutorials, and the somewhat opaque combat system all irked me at the time, but by the time I'd played two hundred hours, that was all pretty much forgiven if not outright forgotten.

Oh, and for anyone who still thinks that combat in the Xenoblade games is needlessly slow, I'd suggest watching some of Enel's YouTube videos on the subject, as you can take down even the toughest superbosses in a matter of seconds with the right builds. I'd think that the games could do a better job of telling you these things, but that's an area where Monolith are at least starting to show some improvement.

@theJGG, I'm still in the middle of playing XCDE, so I'm not going to get into the overall discussion of whether it or 2 is better (though it's been an interesting debate to read), though I want to correct something you mentioned about XC2's art direction in your initial post, about it being "chibi".

"Chibi" refers to an anime substyle that features characters that have tiny bodies (usually with large heads), like the Bravely Default games or World of Final Fantasy, so while XC2 is very "anime", it's in no way "chibi".

That's what I was going for. @Ralizah touched on it saying that the humour was better than in 1, but it felt extremely forced for me. @Wargoose the maid humour is a scene I will skip every time I play the game. It's a Japanese thing all right but that scene (and Lila too) could have been wiped from existence and nothing would change.
@RR529, my bad.

Graphics and presentation are probably the single most important make it or break it element in a game, and they matter way more than people give them credit for, especially the people who only game on consoles like Switch

Considering how well the Switch (and portable Nintendo consoles in general) has sold, the number of GOTY/GOAT awards games like Zelda:Breath of the Wild (visually appealing but not even close to state of the art graphics) win from critics and gamers alike, and that the most powerful system on the market does not consistently win the console war (sometimes it's the least powerful of the three in fact) I'd say graphics don't really matter all that much anymore.

@Euler I'm not talking in terms of the power of your console. I'm literally talking about in game graphics

Zelda is an ambitious game but what helps about it is that it's probably still one of the Switch's best looking games, and has great art direction and presentation

Contrast that with titles like Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite whose gameplay is fantastic, but people didn't buy it because the graphics looked unfinished, and the presentation was a major step down from Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and how distinct it looked compared to other fighting games in the market. In fact that's the exact reason why people bought Dragon Ball FighterZ in droves over it when it came out like a few months later

Like would you have bought Mario Odyssey if it looked about as good as something like Vroom in the Night Sky or Troll & I? Would you have bought games like Zelda or God of War PS4 if they looked and performed about as well as something like Ark Survival Evolved on any platform

I've seen people actively defend the state of ports like Outer Worlds on Switch and I really don't see how you can justify having a game portably if it frequently drops frames or has consistent resolution problems. I'd even argue games like Persona 5 wouldn't be nearly as popular as they are with mainstream audiences if it didn't have the slick presentation it did, and it's not even close to the best looking PS4 game imo

Another example is the PS2. It was less powerful than both the Xbox and the GameCube but I'd say games like Final Fantasy X and MGS2 & 3 have aged extremely well graphically speaking and are still appealing to play on modern displays at present

I don't think graphical power matters too much but it has to look good in some way, generally speaking. (with rare exceptions here or there). There are games that look...modern enough but have such an underwhelming and bad art style that it almost certainly hurt them. Whereas there are games that look like they came out in 1991 but are still appealing to look at.

If your game doesn't look good in any way, that's a huge disadvantage to getting people to actually play it.

@TheFrenchiestFry Games need to look visually appealing on some level to be successful and to make a good impression on most people. But "visually appealing" doesn't necessarily mean Naughty Dog-level realism, 4K graphics, etc. More often than not, a game only really needs solid art direction to succeed. That's why a PS3 game like Persona 5 managed to impress in 2017 when, by any objective metric of analysis, the game was positively primitive compared to other games on the PS4.

With that said, one important thing to keep in mind is that the standard for what is acceptable on a handheld is lower than what is acceptable on a home console, and that's also going to vary from person to person. I personally wouldn't want to play something like The Outer Worlds on Switch in its current state, but I'm also not going to tell someone that their enjoyment of the game is illegitimate because it doesn't align with some platonic ideal of game performance. What is especially annoying is when people who behave like this for Switch ports ignore the severe performance/presentation deficits in PS4/Xbone versions of games like Control, Fallout 4, The Witcher 3, etc., where such deficits are even less acceptable in general due to the lack of hybrid functionality on those consoles.

Unless you're playing on a top of the line PC, all of your gaming experiences are going to be compromised to some degree. How tolerant you are of performance/presentation deficits will depend heavily on your expectations for the platform and how much you enjoy gaming on one platform vs another.

So there's really no need to "justify" playing a Switch game at 540p30 vs 900p30 or even 4K60. It all comes down to your priorities as a gamer.

I imagine those of us who grew up with consoles that regularly ran 3D games at 20fps like the N64 are even more tolerant, in this regard. If "the greatest game of all time" was enjoyable at a substandard framerate, I have a really hard time swallowing that modern games that generally tend to perform better are somehow "unplayable."

@theJGG It's worth noting that a lot of dialogue during the maid scenes was changed in the localization. The original version is more... erm... honest, to put it mildly, but presumably needed toning down to avoid a mature rating.

And yes, it's something that Japanese people obviously find really funny, because it's such a widely employed trope across all their media, but just comes across as really cringey to a Western audience.

For what it's worth, I found the running food gags in X fell just as flat but at least they were never going to affect the game's rating.

@Ralizah where I notice it the most is in split screen games, seeing a game go from 60fps in single player, to sub 30fps in 4 player is jarring. Racing games in particular, you lose the sense of speed.

Then there are oddities like deadly premonition where art direction, technical performance, soundtrack and gameplay are all objectively bad. Yet it's still charming as hell.

@theJGG @kkslider5552000 I guess you could remove the maid skit (which I personally found to be very amusing) and Tora's weirdness in that regard from the game, but you'd also be removing an element of Tora's characterization as well, along with one of the layers of how he relates to the rest of the cast. And this is generally why I like the frequent humor in XC2: it's humor grounded in the flaws and quirks of the central cast, which helped to humanize them for me. It's also a nice reminder of how JRPGs used to be allowed to be flat-out silly at times.

@Wargoose Yeah, it definitely matters more or less in some respects than others. One thing that annoys the hell out of me about the Switch port of Hyrule Warriors, for example, is how drastically the performance changes depending on how you play. I wouldn't mind if the game allowed the player to cap it at 30fps, but shifting from 45 - 60fps in docked mode down to 25 - 30fps in handheld mode is just jarring.

Deadly Premonition... I dunno. I can put up with some level of jank, but DP2's performance is genuinely atrocious. It's cool if someone else is willing to put up with it, but the "it's charming because it's bad" thing only works in very specific circumstances for me.

I don't disagree with this, but the humor could be...um...good instead. Do the same things, except actually good. Literally every joke that failed I've seen done successfully before.