What are some common critiques of specific games that you think are unfair or unwarranted?

[ScOULaris]

No game is perfect, and even the best games ever made lend themselves to criticism in one area or another. Sometimes a particular critique ends up becoming a common refrain amid online discussion of a game. This is a thread for defending against those types of popular criticisms for specific games.

I was compelled to make this thread after reading through the Stray OT and watching this Dunkey video:


View: https://youtu.be/DE6JBysCljk

The main complaint that I see most people making about Stray is that jumping/platforming is guided and prompt-driven.

I'm here to refute that critique.

The developers themselves said that they went with this design decision because it didn't feel very cat-like to be missing jumps or leaping haphazardly off of buildings, and I 100% buy into this logic. I think it was the right decision, even if it meant that the game wouldn't have a platforming focus.

A huge part of Stray's appeal is letting the player experience its hauntingly beautiful cyberpunk world through the eyes and body of a cat, and most of its design choices were clearly made in service of that mission statement. The end result plays akin to a classic Point-and-Click Adventure game in a fully 3D world with lots of verticality, and that's totally fine! The game is not a platformer and doesn't need to be.

So that's my very recent example and the inspiration for this thread, but I know there must be plenty of others that people would like to defend in here.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

Yeah, I agree with you. Stray would be a way more frustrating (and way less cat-ish) game if you spent all your time manually jumping at walls you weren't able to climb.

I think the "hold Square to win" critique of FFXV is kind of unfair, because that's just one option for combat. You can do manual attack inputs if you want.

 

[Sento]

"DLC characters in fighting games should be free."

 

[AuthenticM]

"Resident Evil 3 (OG) was made on the cheap by reusing most of the assets of RE2."

 

[Ruisu]

Sorry but if you have a problem with the chaos system in Dishonored you're just playing wrong.

The game gives you TONS of leeway in terms of being lethal while still maintaining low chaos, and stealth and lethality are not connected so nothing is forcing you to play without interacting with the combat or just limiting yourself to choking people or sleep-darting them your entire run.
If people actually experimented with it instead of assuming their only options were full murder-spree or zero kills, they'd be able to see that in the results screens at every mission.

 

[knightmawk]

Can't you turn off the prompts for the jumping in Stray? It's still contextual, but it doesn't show the prompt so it feels better.

I don't have anything else to add to the thread yet, but I want to so I'm gonna leave this here so I dont forget about and come back later, when I'm not asleep, to read more and add my own.

 

[Mike Rambo]

Sorry but if you have a problem with the chaos system in Dishonored you're just playing wrong.

The game gives you TONS of leeway in terms of being lethal while still maintaining low chaos, and stealth and lethality are not connected so nothing is forcing you to play without interacting with the combat or just limiting yourself to choking people or sleep-darting them your entire run.
If people actually experimented with it instead of assuming their only options were full murder-spree or zero kills, they'd be able to see that in the results screens at every mission.

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I generally agree with this but I also feel like the game does a really bad job of explaining it to you; like the tutorial for it really uses the wrong words and makes it seem like basically any killing will really raise your chaos score

 

[Phendrift]

"final fantasy XIII plays itself with autobattle"

Just bullshit, auto battle removes the repetitiveness of spamming the same inputs over and over, the meat of XIII's battle system is controlling the overall flow of battle with paradigms

 

[EllipsisBreak]

Super Smash Bros. Melee is widely known for being much more glitchy than it is, and for being dependent on glitches for competitive play, which it isn't.

 

[Rover]

FF13 gets a lot of shit for... pretty much everything about it, but primarily its battle system - which just takes some time to open up as it attempts to smooth out a learning curve. I never wanna hear another word about this again, after people slog through 50+ hours of FF14 before it gets good and calling it the best game ever.

 

[Mr. Genuine]

"final fantasy XIII plays itself with autobattle"

Just bullshit, auto battle removes the repetitiveness of spamming the same inputs over and over, the meat of XIII's battle system is controlling the overall flow of battle with paradigms

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This is a good one. In fact Final Fantasy XIII is a great example for this thread. I can't think of a better game where so much misdirected criticism was thrown at it.

Like there are lots of reasons why FF13 is a flawed game but "No towns" is not close to being on the list.

And the whole "it's just a 30 hour tutorial" thing is complete horse shit.

 

[roguesquirrel]

Sorry but if you have a problem with the chaos system in Dishonored you're just playing wrong.

The game gives you TONS of leeway in terms of being lethal while still maintaining low chaos, and stealth and lethality are not connected so nothing is forcing you to play without interacting with the combat or just limiting yourself to choking people or sleep-darting them your entire run.
If people actually experimented with it instead of assuming their only options were full murder-spree or zero kills, they'd be able to see that in the results screens at every mission.

Click to shrink...

On a similar not, the hangup people have with getting the "bad" ending if they go full high chaos doesnt really make sense to me for the people who want to go nuts. Youre going to deny yourself 20-40 hours of having fun with a game just cus the Boatman chews you out at the end of it?

 

[Ruisu]

I generally agree with this but I also feel like the game does a really bad job of explaining it to you; like the tutorial for it really uses the wrong words and makes it seem like basically any killing will really raise your chaos score

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That is true for the tutorial, but it didn't take too long for people experimenting with the system to notice how forgiving it is (and for that information to spread though a lot of people still ignore it or act like it's not true)
Not to mention how you can change your chaos level drastically from one mission to the next.

On a similar not, the hangup people have with getting the "bad" ending if they go full high chaos doesnt really make sense to me for the people who want to go nuts. Youre going to deny yourself 20-40 hours of having fun with a game just cus the Boatman chews you out at the end of it?

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It bothers me in general how people avoid "bad endings" when they can bring really interesting characterizations for the story, and in the case of Dishonored, one of the bad endings is a really nice tragedy for Corvo.

 

[Mcfrank]

People complaining about destiny vaulting content. Bungie explained exactly why they needed to do it and the game has improved dramatically in all the ways they said it would when they began this process. Barely anyone was playing the old stuff and getting new content frequently because they are able to iterate faster is amazing. It also allows them to bring old spaces back in new ways like the leviathan this season.

 

[CONCHOBAR]

Street Fighter V's Fight Money. I've seen a lot of people with very strong opinions against the system, which is silly to me because the system was purely beneficial. By just playing the game, you could earn currency that you could use to buy DLC characters, stages, and costumes. There was no freemium vs premium currency, there was just the one currency that worked on everything (save for some costumes that could only be bought with real money). I managed to get everything up to Season 3 without paying a dime out of pocket. No other fighting game was doing anything like it, and the alternative was... nothing. The alternative was just not having it. It had its flaws, but it was far better to have a crummy system than no system. And now, because of the reaction, we probably won't see it in SF6.

 

[Zeliard]

A lot of the extreme focus people have on goofy inconsequential bugs and glitches, especially when those come in huge open world games with a hell of a lot going on.

Crashes, of course. Save file corruption, that's the absolute worst. But an NPC flying through the air one time? It's funny, and hell it might even momentarily interrupt your immersion, but otherwise who gives a shit?

People seem to take those as a sign that the game is some broken disaster they have to whine about endlessly on forums instead of going "huh, that was odd" or just making a bug report and moving on.

edit: i realize this isn't about a "specific" game only because it's about like twenty of them. Pick basically any ambitious open world game.

 

[Spring-Loaded]

There's nothing outright bad about the batmobile in Arkham Knight. You may not like it, but it is appropriate in a Batman game as historically, the batmobile has appeared in various Batman media in various forms, all represented in AK, in terms of features or actual skins/models.

It was fast, could smash through most objects without slowing, could shoot homing missiles, had left/right ram ability, could easily navigate tight spaces in 360 directions in tank mode, could be remotely summoned while on the ground/in midair/in a fight, could be controlled remotely, the tank combat was actually fun, could seamlessly transition between car and tank modes, incorporated into spatial puzzles well, could ram cars and drone tanks, you could launch out of it into a glide, you could uppercut and enemy into the air so it could blast them with a "non-lethal" round, and it could be summoned in such a way that it would ram into dudes while you're fist-fighting them in the street.

Probably the best open world vehicle in a game. Rocksteady made every aspect of it perfectly functional, all in tandem with on-foot/gliding traversal. I didn't even know there was a OHKO death in that underground encounter because it was effortless to control 🥹

It's no more "forced" on the player than any other contrived required gadget or combat encounter that Batman could "realistically" bypass or take care of through alternative means. The same level of player options is consistent across the traversal and combat, in and out of the batmobile.

Once you batsphemers (bats + blasphemer) have to choke down Gotham Knights' janky traversal and combat in a dull-looking and flatly designed Gotham, then you'll see. You'll all come crawling back to Arkham Knight, begging the Batmobile for forgiveness!!! Hahaha!! 🤪

 

[Akumatica]

That Okami is too long.

Why would you want it to end?

 

[Zeliard]

There's nothing outright bad about the batmobile in Arkham Knight. You may not like it, but it is appropriate in a Batman game as historically, the batmobile has appeared in various Batman media in various forms, all represented in AK, in terms of features or actual skins/models.

It was fast, could smash through most objects without slowing, could shoot homing missiles, had left/right ram ability, could easily navigate tight spaces in 360 directions in tank mode, could be remotely summoned while on the ground/in midair/in a fight, could be controlled remotely, the tank combat was actually fun, could seamlessly transition between car and tank modes, incorporated into spatial puzzles well, could ram cars and drone tanks, you could launch out of it into a glide, you could uppercut and enemy into the air so it could blast them with a "non-lethal" round, and it could be summoned in such a way that it would ram into dudes while you're fist-fighting them in the street.

Probably the best open world vehicle in a game. Rocksteady made every aspect of it perfectly functional, all in tandem with on-foot/gliding traversal. I didn't even know there was a OHKO death in that underground encounter because it was effortless to control 🥹

It's no more "forced" on the player than any other contrived required gadget or combat encounter that Batman could "realistically" bypass or take care of through alternative means. The same level of player options is consistent across the traversal and combat, in and out of the batmobile.

Once you batsphemers (bats + blasphemer) have to choke down Gotham Knights' janky traversal and combat in a dull-looking and flatly designed Gotham, then you'll see. You'll all come crawling back to Arkham Knight, begging the Batmobile for forgiveness!!! Hahaha!! 🤪

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I agree with everything you said except who casually travels in the Batmobile when you can literally fly throughout the entire city, and go to whatever destination as the crow (bat?) flies? I only used the Batmobile when it was required, but I agree it was ultra smooth both in and out of combat.

 

[Sabretooth]

Dragon Age 2 reusing the same maps/dungeons was a complete non-issue for me that a lot of people latched on to bash the game for.

Like, it's already a fucking formulaic fantasy RPG, does it matter if your drab ass dungeon corridor goes right instead of left? It's not even like the reuse makes no sense - the game is specifically set over time in one city, so it makes perfect sense if you revisit areas you've been to before.

 

[TeddyShardik]

That Okami is too long.

Why would you want it to end?

Click to shrink...

People don't know you can play games over a longer period of time.
I mean that's hard if you just rush to the next new release, so your hot takes about it are up to date. :P

 

[Mr. Genuine]

All complaints about FLUDD in Mario Sunshine are invalid.

 

[Beelzebufo]

Yeah, I agree with you. Stray would be a way more frustrating (and way less cat-ish) game if you spent all your time manually jumping at walls you weren't able to climb.

I think the "hold Square to win" critique of FFXV is kind of unfair, because that's just one option for combat. You can do manual attack inputs if you want.

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You're also just making the game far less fun for yourself by just holding down the phase button. XV's combat has some big issues (mostly enemy design honestly, Iron Giants, Ronin, and the rare humanoid bosses are the only ones I consider fun enemies), but it can be so much more exciting than so many people ended up letting it.

I guess it's mostly the game's fault though for never even remotely requiring you to "git gud" and never explaining or telling the player about a single one of its deeper mechanics.

 

[Dogui]

"final fantasy XIII plays itself with autobattle"

Just bullshit, auto battle removes the repetitiveness of spamming the same inputs over and over, the meat of XIII's battle system is controlling the overall flow of battle with paradigms

Click to shrink...

At some point most FFs were criticized for being "just press attack to win" or some other aspect of the combat, but for some reason people got extra salty towards FFXIII, which is imo the game that really stepped up the battle system in the series.

Though i would say using abilities manually is a lot more important to the performance in combat than it looks like, specially because sometimes you don't need to use all the commands available and you're just wasting time waiting the atb to get full.

On manual, the combat sometimes is really engaging even when you're not changing paradigms. Playing on auto for me is like just deciding to have less fun with the game.

Anyway, the game has a lot of problems obviously, but the battle system is definitely not one of them imo.

 

[Jonathan Lanza]

To be fair cats DO miss jumps, it's not a skill they're born with, that have to hone it.

 

[Beelzebufo]

I brought this up before, but I think Days Gone being called generic by so many people was kind of funny and unfair considering open world zombie survival games are very much not a common thing in the AAA space.

Feel free to critisize anything else about that game though.

 

[blueredandgold]

I've never actually considered BotW one of my favourite Zelda games (or favourite games, full stop) and I'm not without my own gripes with it, (I'm up to the desert and it's a crushing bore) but most of the stuff that the majority of people complain about? Not at all worth getting up in arms about. The Shrines, to pick but one, are superlative. Even the ones that don't make any bloody sense.

 

[Ovvv]

I will never understand people weighting quality of sidequests so heavily when they're poorly designed. At worst, shitty sidequests detract nothing from an experience.

 

[Chumunga64]

Actually watching that video and dunkey actually agrees with you there haha

I think the "hold Square to win" critique of FFXV is kind of unfair, because that's just one option for combat. You can do manual attack inputs if you want.

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It is funny seeing people parrot the "hold square to win" complaint, watch those combo mad videos and then utterly fail recreating them lol

 

[DNAbro]

FFXIV being mostly quests/reading and talking between the dungeons/solo missions.

Dawg that's the point, reading is enjoyable, it's a strength not a detriment and doesn't need to be fixed.

 

[Orayn]

Weapon degradation in Breath of the Wild is a bit of a feels-bad but it's well balanced and important to the game's design.

 

[Boots The God]

Marvel vs capcom infinite was a bad game just people didn't like the art style.

 

[Mekanos]

People calling Super Mario 3D World "not a real 3D Mario" or "2.5D" or whatever annoys the everloving fuck out of me. A game isn't less 3D because it is structured a certain way. 3D is about movement, not level design.

Weapon degradation in Breath of the Wild is a bit of a feels-bad but it's well balanced and important to the game's design.

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This is a good one. Weapon degradation really makes you value your inventory and forces the player to try lots of tools.

On a similar note, while "the clock in Majora's Mask makes me anxious" isn't wrong, per se, that is kind of the point lol. It's a time management game, it never pretends to be anything else.

 

[Astral]

"final fantasy XIII plays itself with autobattle"

Just bullshit, auto battle removes the repetitiveness of spamming the same inputs over and over, the meat of XIII's battle system is controlling the overall flow of battle with paradigms

Click to shrink...

This is a good one. As if the people complaining are actually going to prefer manually inputting the same exact inputs the auto-battle is doing for them. Hell, the auto-battle optimizes it by choosing whatever gets the stagger up fastest iirc.

 

[Ayirek]

"You have to attack your own party to level up in Final Fantasy II"

No you don't. Just play the damn game.

 

[Perkin_Warbeck]

I found out recently that some people complain about reused animations in something like Elden Ring. It seems absurd to me. How many ways are there to animate someone opening a door or swinging a sword. Seems like a perfectly fine cost saving measure.

 

[mute]

Most complaints about the gameplay systems in FFVIII.

 

[JoJo'sDentCo]

The Wanderer face in the SOTC Remake. 😏

 

[OneTrickJeffrey]

The people who complained about the timer in Deadrising 1 are why we can't have nice things

Also the people who complained about Fallout 3 actually ending after the ending.

 

[Dec]

I can't believe anyone would think free jumping in Stray would make sense. I hope someone mods it in just to see how fucking shit it would be

 

[ClearMetal]

That Assassin's Creed Odyssey has outrageous level gating to force you to buy experience boosters.

In reality it has level gating because the developers want you to explore the huge world they created. Shocking, I know. But tell that to the people who want to speedrun the story and, indeed, eventually run into a wall.

 

[MoonlitBow]

"final fantasy XIII plays itself with autobattle"

Just bullshit, auto battle removes the repetitiveness of spamming the same inputs over and over, the meat of XIII's battle system is controlling the overall flow of battle with paradigms

Click to shrink...

FF13 and FF12 are the only games that ever got hate for having automated battle systems. FF13 in particular was really good about buffs and debuffs being a relevant part of fighting battles and not just spamming your strongest attack alone.

I think the "hold Square to win" critique of FFXV is kind of unfair, because that's just one option for combat. You can do manual attack inputs if you want.

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The only problem with FF15's combat was that enemies needed better telegraphing on their attacks, other than that the battle system did allow for a variety of playstyles IIRC.

 

[Deleted member 17210]

Mirror's Edge being too short. It was the perfect length. The sequel showed that bogging the formula down with unnecessary padding detracts from the experience.

 

[XR.]

That Assassin's Creed Odyssey has outrageous level gating to force you to buy experience boosters.

In reality it has level gating because the developers want you to explore the huge world they created. Shocking, I know. But tell that to the people who want to speedrun the story and, indeed, eventually run into a wall.

Click to shrink...

That's a pretty weak incentive for exploring. If you want people to explore, you need to create something people have a desire to explore in the first place.

 

[Deleted member 93841]

People complaining about destiny vaulting content. Bungie explained exactly why they needed to do it and the game has improved dramatically in all the ways they said it would when they began this process. Barely anyone was playing the old stuff and getting new content frequently because they are able to iterate faster is amazing. It also allows them to bring old spaces back in new ways like the leviathan this season.

Click to shrink...

Disagree to all of this. Don't take away content I paid for. And don't tell me I can't go dicking around on Mercury because not enough other players wanted to do the same.

I haven't played Destiny 2 since Beyond Light launched and I have no desire to ever return now. I probably won't play other Bungie games in the future either, unless Sony turns the situation around. If I'd known what they were going to pull, I never would have started playing in the first place.

People being happy about 100s of dollars worth of content (including some of the best content they ever had) being yanked from their games is not the future I thought I was going to live in, but here we are.

 

[TaySan]

Grinding for respect in SR2. I can understand that criticism for SR1, but 2 isn't bad from my experience. You gain respect so much faster than 1 and they give you more ways to earn respect than just the side missions. Plus the bonuses you get from style ranks.

 

[Blu]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVi1go-hqh0

If you don't put cats on a pedestal you'll know they mess up all the time (like all things).

It's fine to have the game be the way it is though and it's fine to not enjoy it.

 

[retroman]

A lot of people hate classic Resident Evil's ink ribbon save system, but I think constantly having to worry about limited saves greatly enhances the tension and feeling of dread.

 

[onpoint]

It's funny because I agree with people on the idea that Stray having free jumping would likely feel awful. But I also honestly have no desire to play something that's so on rails, so I'm thankful for the Dunkey review for highlighting that, thus saving me $30 and 5 hours.

 

[ScOULaris]

The Wanderer face in the SOTC Remake. 😏

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That's the only one that's not allowed in this thread. Such unforgivable sins are indefensible.