"An Unbiased Review" New Super Mario Bros U - A JayWood2010 Review

[Kresnik]

I'm not particularly agreeing with either side here but I think the argument of "you should see the entire game to write a review and that means getting all the gold coins" doesn't hold much weight.

In order to see an entire Atelier game, you'll need to play through building up your relationship with every character (which unlocks different scenarios and in some cases dungeons to travel to) as well as completing every single side quest within the correct timeframe to unlock all the endings.

This means either managing your first playthrough with a guide (it is possible to figure out on your own, but not first time around) or having at least 2 different playthroughs. Of a 30+ hour JRPG.

It's not optional content, because you haven't seen the true ending until you've done all of these things. Except it is optional because you can see an ending without it.

I think the argument comes down to that he didn't think the main game itself was challenging enough, but he didn't try the self-imposed challenges that would make it more difficult. That's just an issue to do with modern game design.

I'll cite (like I always do): World of Warcraft. The game was dumbed down by WoTLK (but especially Cataclysm) so that a group of 25 complete strangers could potentially complete all the raids in the game. If you were a traditional raiding guild, you could complete these raids on heroic difficulty which added more challenge; different loot and in some cases tweaked the bosses a little. It was a case of pandering to the majority of players but having something else for the more hardcore.

But I wouldn't say to a LFR player "I can't trust your opinion about this game" because they hadn't completed every raid in the game on 25 man heroic. And that's not even getting into the fact that they'd have to have completed every quest in the game with every class on both alliance & horde; be a _____ Gladiator in arena with every class of the game; be 450 in every profession and so on and so forth. There's a gap between having seen everything and having seen 'enough' to form a sensible opinion.

And I'm not saying it's been reached here, because I don't really know enough about 2D Mario to pass judgement. But it's not as black & white as "You've seen 100% of the game or you've not seen enough to form an opinion".

In my opinion :P