Video Game Hot Takes

[11clock]

What hot takes on video games would you want to share?

Reminder: Keep things civil! We’re human, we all have opinions that hardly anyone will agree with.

[KobaBeach]

oh this thread is gonna get fucking obnoxious

anyway i honestly believe singa's songs for falcom aren't really that bad and most of the blame should be placed on falcom milking him to death because he's the cheapest freelancer they have. forever an ishibashi stan though (rest in peace my dear)

also star ocean 3's plot twist isn't that bad, it kind of retcons everything into being a giant mmo but honestly it works in terms of intelligent life being given birth to in some sort of massive program

[EllenHouraisan]

Yukiko is best girl.

[camwoodstock]

Here's a take that probably isn't that spicy, but it's our particular frustrations that go alongside it probably are: 99% of the problems with Nintendo's releases as of late rest firmly in them trying to put "Future updates at a later date!!!"-style updates in games that have no fucking reason to have them.

Like, no, sorry, Nintendo Switch Sports only putting Golf in the game months after the fact is not the problem here, it's the fact they just kinda released that game and put golf in it half a year later after everyone had already settled on the take of "It's not like, awful, but Wii Sports Resort is probably still the best of the Console/Thing games" and nobody gave a shit. It's not even the most interesting instance of this shooting a game in the foot (see: Animal Crossing: New Horizons), it's just yet another victim of Nintendo haphazardly applying this release strategy onto a game that doesn't fucking. Gel with it. At all. Because the only game that this actually made sense in was Splatoon, because those "future updates" generally took minimal effort to make but still impacted the game a lot. Not designing a full-on new character that usually just amounts to an extra button on the character select for players who came in late.

[MonkeyShrapnel]

There's no such thing as good design and bad design

[11clock]

Most Jackbox games actually suck. For each collection, you're only really buying it for one or two games. It kind of feels like that they throw ideas at a wall and hope that some stick.

[Catabo]

Paper Mario is the only good Fire Emblem game.

(they're both made by Intelligent Systems and i've been thinking about this ever since cow dubbed it a strategic game in yesterday's video)

[Crow]

maro isn't real

[camwoodstock]

maro isn't real

NO!!! NO!!! FUCK NO!!! "Mario" is REAL yuou just need to BELIEVE in him like we do & he jump in the air & stomp the boma and go "Waho" & we go "Yahoo" in response 2 O.K.??? this is HURTING don't EVER say this!!! AGAIB
we're 99% sure we're experiencing acid reflux please take exactly 0% of this post seriously aside from this disclaimer. we refused to fix a single typo here because it's funnier this way.

[ano0maly]

One thing that comes to mind for me is in Golden Sun (and its companion, The Lost Age).

I was displeased that the two despicable characters in the games - Lady McCoy of Bilibin and the Mayor of Alhafra - never got justice served. I felt that all the other characters in the game - even the villains - had some class or style, but these two characters had no redeeming value. There should have been a way in the game to walk away from them feeling satisfied instead of on a sour note.

I felt bad for Agatio and Karst when the Wise One blocked them from lighting the Mars Lighthouse, and then forcibly transformed them into the Flame Dragons to be fought by the party of protagonists (and left them to die afterwards). They were the antagonists of most of TLA, but it turns out that they were doing something that was necessary to save their hometown of Prox and ultimately the whole world of Weyard; the protagonists learned this truth over time and did the same. I would have preferred if the Wise One turned Lady McCoy and the Mayor to those boss creatures instead - would have been just desserts.

Also, this thread may be of relevance: guilty pleasure games

[YelseyKing]

IT IS NOT A SIN TO PLAY ON EASY MODE!!!!!!!!1111

[Lord Ruby]

Uh, let's see ... I like the second half of Bravely Default? I think it has clever ludonarrative consonance, and I like the climax it leads up to.

[11clock]

I don’t like Psychonauts 2’s combat. Because every move you have is useful in combat, and they designed different enemies specifically to be countered by different moves, it led to battles feeling way too chaotic and messy. I think that Guacamelee handled moves that integrate into both platforming and combat better, by keeping things down to only 4 attacks. Also, the usefulness of the move depends more on the environment than on the enemy type. Enemies do have different colored shields, but they are still vulnerable to any attack, letting you use other moves to reposition the enemy into a more favorable position before breaking their shield.

[BobisOnlyBob]

Uh, let's see ... I like the second half of Bravely Default? I think it has clever ludonarrative consonance, and I like the climax it leads up to.

THANK YOU! Good company! I appreciate it!




as for my own "hot take" I can't think of a nuanced one right now so I'm just gonna go with Resident Evil 4 is absolute dreck and I'm so so so so so sick of hearing about it because it's been remade again it's Capcom's fucking skyrim, I don't care and couldn't bring myself to. I get it's really popular! And apparently plays great! But I am fundamentally incompatible with that game and I fucking hate Leon.

[Bean]

Speaking of Square, we were talking about this in Discord, and I still think they make really fun games to this day. They just get overlooked due to all the dumb business decisions they've been making with others (Microtransactions in Chocobo GP, hopping on the NFT craze after it's burned out, poor advertising when not assisted by another company).

I mean, their lineup this gen has been fun and sometimes experimental. Obviously have the big ones, but then you also have Bravely Default II, Octopath Traveler 1 & 2, Triangle Strategy, NEO: The Advertising Ends With You, the Trials of Mana remake, Harvestella, and then actually remaking stuff that is on the older side like with the Pixel Remasters and Front Mission games.

If they could just push out the dumb decisions and just focus on the games and spreading them out in a decent manner, they could be considered in their second-best period after the 90s.

[11clock]

Being rewarded for skill is better than being rewarded for time spent. It feels more accomplishing to achieve something since you got better at it, not just because you played the game for long enough to be handed it. This is one of the key reasons why I don’t like the traditional experience point system in RPGs. Leveling up doesn’t feel satisfying at all, I just get a “well that happened” feeling, unless it’s a crapton of exp at once from defeating a difficult boss or something.

I also do not like dynamic difficulty at all for similar reasons. Don’t take pity on me just because I am struggling, it cheapens the payout from finally winning! I really wish that you could disable the free masks in the Crash games from dying too many times. Instead of imposing a difficulty based on how well the player is doing, why not just let them set the difficulty themselves?

My views on skill vs time spent bleeds into my tastes in roguelikes. I don’t like permanent character progression popularized by Rogue Legacy. You’re turning the game from a test of skill into a test of patience. Keep unlocks to characters, new items and areas in future runs, higher difficulty levels, etc. Don’t defeat the whole point of this genre with permanent upgrades!

[KobaBeach]

I fucking hate Leon.

leon is only good for furthering the redfield bloodline

Speaking of Square, we were talking about this in Discord, and I still think they make really fun games to this day. They just get overlooked due to all the dumb business decisions they've been making with others (Microtransactions in Chocobo GP, hopping on the NFT craze after it's burned out, poor advertising when not assisted by another company).

+1'ing this but i feel like a lot of the other more prominent non-indie JRPG devs are either Idea Factory+Compile Heart, outright Idea Factory tier, or stuck working on one IP and nothing more, so I think the bar isn't high at all lmao

Idea Factory isn't all bad, yes, but I'm very tired of most of their games being mostly anime girl conveyance mechanisms first and actual games second, I'm pretty sure even PC98 and early 2000s Windows bishoujo games and eroge were better than that (I actually haven't really played eroge outside of five minutes of Morenatsu's translation patch when I was like 14 so)