RolStoppable said:
You put a lot of stock in review scores then. The way most big media outlets come across is that AAA third party titles are reviewed on a different scale then retail games of a smaller scope. Essentially, the smaller scope titles obey the normal standards while AAA third party games commonly see their scores bumped. You play a AAA game with a score of 80, realize that it's bad and begin to associate scores of 75 with bad games. So now you treat the games you listed as questionable when they actually deserve better. Rune Factory is derived from Harvest Moon and adds more RPG to the run-a-farm foundation. It has spawned its own full series with several installments, so it's no surprise that the user ratings are high, especially because Harvest Moon's quality has dropped off and the fanbase had to look somewhere else to get their fix. Fantasy Life hits a very similar taste, so the same logic as above applies. The question is if you like Harvest Moon and its offsprings in general. The people who like such games are getting served well, so the user ratings are high. Personally, I ignore such games because I consider Harvest Moon more work than fun. Ever Oasis is a game that I reviewed and gave a 7. I think you read my review, so no reason to say more here. Tales of the Abyss belongs to the longrunning Tales series of Namco and if you've played one of them, you pretty much know what you are getting from another one. The quality of the story may differ, but gameplay-wise they are all very similar. Abyss is a solid entry in a solid RPG series. I don't consider Tales great or amazing, but the games tend to be decent to good and can be considered safe buys if you are looking for another JRPG. Yokai Watch seems to target a younger audience, so I advise caution. The one thing to remember with user ratings is the target demographic which unsurprisingly happens to be the demographic that is most likely to buy any given game. Games are designed to fit the given tastes, so there is a high chance for a positive response if a game is at least decent. For example, Skylanders is a very kid-centric IP, so it's getting glowing reviews from young gamers; but for an adult the games are probably way too easy and basic to be satisfying, at least that's my personal experience with Skylanders. Or you could take Nintendo's Style Boutique series which heavily targets girls; if you aren't even remotely part of the target demographic, then good user ratings are quite meaningless. In summary, I'd expect you to end up liking Ever Oasis and Tales of the Abyss. I am unsure about Rune Factory and Fantasy Life, but I'd assign the former with a higher chance that you will like it. Yokai Watch is the one where I'd say you won't like it. Regardless of if you like the five games you plan to play, it's going to expand your own knowledge of IPs, so there should be a net gain even in the worst case scenario. |
Well I'm about to put it all to the test. The funny thing is I used to like a lot of games that got scores like this back in the day. But I liked games that scored higher than this better. And once I went from being a single or two console guy, to owning pretty much everything (past and present) there were so many great games to play that I stopped bothering with the ones that I percieved as merely decent or average, based on their metacritic scores. But it's been thirteen years since then, and the quality of professional reviewers has slowly sunk over the years. So I'm willing to go out on a limb to see how these games really stand up.
