mountaindewslave on 14 January 2018
| nuckles87 said: Retro Studios. While I’ve enjoyed the output of both studios, I simply prefer the tighter design of Retro’s games. The Metroid Prime trilogy are brilliantly designed first person adventure games, the first one in particular. They aren’t “wide open” games, but they are packed with environmental puzzles and exploration opportunities. The games are deftly designed to make the most out of each of their areas, encouraging back tracking without constantly forcing it. And the scanning mechanic loads every area with lore without forcing the player to see it. And of course, the first two games also have a masterfully done atmosphere, and the motion controls in the third game are easily some of the best and most engrossing FPS controls of ANY motion-controlled game. The Donkey Kong Country Returns games are, likewise, incredibly well designed side-scrolling platformers, and easily among the best of their genre. Though I will admit the vehicle sections can be pretty cheap, though this also gives them old-school charm that I enjoy (though I get that a lot of people don’t care for that). Monolith’s output...well, ignoring Day of Disaster, which I haven’t played but I’ve heard wasn’t good, they’ve basically been expanding and playing with a single game concept since the original Xenoblade. I’ve had a lot of fun with all three Xenoblade games, and they are easily among the best JRPGs, but they are also incredibly complex games that, to me, feel more slapped together. The worlds are huge and beautiful, but there is rarely an interesting way to move around them. The stories have ranged from solid to great, but they’ve yet to suck me in enough to see any of them to completion (though I hope to change that this year). Many of the side quests are glorified collection quests, where you have to pray to the game’s algorithms that the item you need will randomly spawn in the game world. The enemy placement and levels can be frustrating, especially in the latest game, where uber powerful enemies can get involved in fights because the fight slowly moved into their path of movement. And the systems upon systems these games often stack on top of one another can just make the games feel overly convoluted. So, basically, the Xenoblade games are great, but have loads of little problems that just kind of build up. I imagine many of these don’t bother hardcore RPG fans, but they ultimately put the Xenoblade series of games below Metroid Prime and DKCR for me. |
this. and you're accurate, Monolith has been either exclusively doing Xenoblade games OR assisting other Nintendo studios in development of other games (they have a second studio with an emphasis on art design I believe).
whether we're talking critically OR sales, Retro is clearly in another league next to Monolith. Or at least from any objective basis of comparison. And this is coming from someone who has played like 40 or 50 hours of the newest Xenoblade recently
