RYAREISENDER'S PROFILE

Oooh a good review from Sated, now I have to play it after all...
I was hesitant because it uses Romancing Sa-Ga 3 graphics which I'm familiar with already (really like RSG3).

As far as I understood the current rules are only that you have to explain your opinion.

The question left is if the opinion has been explained well enough in this review.

To be fair the reviewer didn't just say "I don't like the game, because it is too hard. 2/5", he explained at least to some extend why it is too hard. He explained that if you use the wrong tactic on a boss you are dead on the second turn and he explained that even if you grind you won't be able to beat the boss like that. Both things are actually correct.

The worse part of the review is where he tries to sell his opinion as cold truth indirectly implying the other reviews on the game are wrong. He goes so far and claims the game is unplayable which doesn't make much sense for a game that's been finished by many players.

I would have preferred him saying something along the lines of "I'm not a person who likes to try different tactics until I succeed, I want to be able to win every boss fight on the first try. Star Stealing Prince couldn't offer me such an experience, so I never got a chance to really enjoy it."
That would have been much better.

After all, the claims that this review is important so people see what they could not like about the game only works if from reading the review you know what kind of player will actually have problems with the difficulty. The cold truth doesn't really work here very well, as it's probably only the truth for 10% of the players.

There are plenty of games that frustrated me a lot because they were too hard and I really wouldn't see how I could rate them any better than 2/5 when I could only play 10 minutes of them and then got stuck because of the high difficulty with no chance to get further into the game and basically having wasted my 40€ (Dragon Quarter EU version I'm looking at you).

That being said, Star Stealing Prince isn't hard. It's actually pretty easy compared to other games released here. There is not much grind required and the only hard dungeon allows you to dodge any encounter (or escape from them). I really don't understand this review, because if the reviewer has problems with this game, then he might as well give 90% of the other games a 2/5 rating as well due to them being too hard for him.

I would really like to see such a discussion on forums rather than part of a single review. It's quite enjoyable to discuss subjective reviewing vs. objective reviewing as well as what reviews should be there for, as these things are often not very clear and everybody thinks differently.

Coincidentally, I was recently banned from my previous community for defending objective reviewing (and consequently criticizing the staff for censoring it) - however in this case I'm still on Sated's side because I still think that both types have their validity to exist.

The other way around it can happen exactly the same way. Someone writing an "as objective as possible" review, listing all the facts, it gets a score of 1.5 and then someone coming in and saying "Are you stupid? I played this game and it was awesome! Reviews should reflect how the game feels like and not be rated on objective facts."

This will always be like discussing god vs. evolution. There is never a solution, but you can discuss forever and it's fun (at least I consider myself thoroughly entertained by the replies to this review).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't at least one of the purposes of reviews, to help our fellow developers to improve their games?

I'm sure that this review does that:
1. It suggests to the developer to make his games more unique.
2. It give the developer the hint that the sadistic humor (as the developer himself called it in a review comment of another review) is a huge turn-off for at least some people (actually quite some going by the replies here and the fact that I myself felt exactly the same way as well).

It also provides information to the players:
1. Don't play this if don't like the generic JRPG style.
2. Don't play this if you don't like the humor shown in the review.

So yeah, goal of a review achieved.


Edit: I want to add that especially on RMN where every game gets many reviews, I find it much more intersting if a review highlights one aspect of the game particularly good or bad. I will often find myself reading the worst an the best review to decide if the game is something for me, so I'm glad if they don't just list all the facts but tell me why they loved or hated it.
It's a bit different when there is only one single review for the game, then I'd rather have it more objectively listing the facts so I can go through the list of facts and decide based on them if I'll like it or not.

As far as I know the game neither uses original graphics nor music, so imo, there no need to rate them.

I personally generally just give "non original" graphics 3/5 if suitably used. 4/5 if used to perfection and less than 3 if it just doesn't look good. But I can understand why you would want to avoid rating them altogether.

Also yeah at least in the normal subjective reviewing style, reviews are all about opinion and that doesn't really need to depend on all the parts of a game. Isn't it usually one single factor that annoys you so much that causes you to stop playing a game?