bashing an anime based game for having a laughable plot is like bashing a sports game for the teams being unbalanced.

It's kinda the point. Has anyone ever seen one anime that didn't have a laughable plot? That's just how they work. I mean, Custom Robo was an awesome game... but you were fighting an unstoppable invisible killing machine by using a childs toy.

Oh jeez. Custom Robo got a 65 Metacritic average.

Wonder why... that game was all sorts of fun. Oh wait, everyone bashed the story of custom robo i guess according to Metacritic and just perfered the straight battles.

Weird. I thought the characters were pretty hilarious... what with the weird old lady, and all the parodys on anime type stuff, and the tough guy who loves to write poetry.

I think some critics just don't understand the greatness of the overly cheesy that's meant to be overly cheesy.

I disagree, both with the laughable plot part and your explanation of it.  Fire Emblem plots have usually been pretty good.  Some parts are a little contrived, but no more or less than most elements of others. 

I agree. FE has a very good plot. Especially by modern RPG standards.

I disagree, both with the laughable plot part and your explanation of it.  Fire Emblem plots have usually been pretty good.  Some parts are a little contrived, but no more or less than most elements of others. 

I actually don't see a problem with this. People don't seem to cry foul when games are criticized for being too easy.

Difficulty isn't something like intellectual sophistication in a movie, where there is no limit to the amount that is good. You will never here a movie critic say that a film was too intelligent or that it was too emotionally complicated. That's something that has no limit; by contrast, everyone has a point where difficulty stops being a good thing. 

Which certainly makes it more challenging to critique game difficulty; when is a game too easy? When it is too hard? What do those terms mean in the context of a professional critique? I'm not suggesting that 1up has correctly decided what is too difficult or too easy; I haven't played New Blood at all. Instead, I simply want to establish that the idea of a game being too difficult isn't an absurd complaint.  

I actually don't see a problem with this. People don't seem to cry foul when games are criticized for being too easy.

Difficulty isn't something like intellectual sophistication in a movie, where there is no limit to the amount that is good. You will never here a movie critic say that a film was too intelligent or that it was too emotionally complicated. That's something that has no limit; by contrast, everyone has a point where difficulty stops being a good thing.

Which certainly makes it more challenging to critique game difficulty; when is a game too easy? When it is too hard? What do those terms mean in the context of a professional critique? I'm not suggesting that 1up has correctly decided what is too difficult or too easy; I haven't played New Blood at all. Instead, I simply want to establish that the idea of a game being too difficult isn't an absurd complaint.

I actually don't see a problem with this. People don't seem to cry foul when games are criticized for being too easy.

Difficulty isn't something like intellectual sophistication in a movie, where there is no limit to the amount that is good. You will never here a movie critic say that a film was too intelligent or that it was too emotionally complicated. That's something that has no limit; by contrast, everyone has a point where difficulty stops being a good thing. 

Which certainly makes it more challenging to critique game difficulty; when is a game too easy? When it is too hard? What do those terms mean in the context of a professional critique? I'm not suggesting that 1up has correctly decided what is too difficult or too easy; I haven't played New Blood at all. Instead, I simply want to establish that the idea of a game being too difficult isn't an absurd complaint.  

As far as that aspect being correct: To quote IGN when they were questioned about the 1UP reviewer's opinion in their podcast "There is no excuse at all for being unable to beat this game on easy mode, and while the normal difficulty is on the hard side for most people it's far from unbeatable." It seems to me that they are either very bad at games (which I doubt considering they are reviewers) or criticizing the game for being too hard in hard mode... which is ridiculous.

After 4 hours with the game I have progressed with difficulty on normal mode but I have completed every operation they complained about in the review (all of which were in the first hour or 2) with no difficulty, which of course leads me to believe that they didn't complete the game either, which is very unprofessional. Again, I really don't care what score you give a game, but the written content of the review needs to be detailed, concise, and informative.