Whether it's your preferred taste or not, doesn't mean that a game isn't a bad game. If you ask me, there's so much bias over franchise or developer/publisher that too many games that aren't deserving of praise still gets it. God of War is good, no denying that, but a better game like Dante's Inferno gets slammed because not only is it a God of War ripoff, but because of the publisher, and the game is far better than any of the God of War titles.

Garbage like Ni No Kuni receives massive amounts of praise for no other reason than its pretty graphics and the fact that it's a collaboration effort between Level 5 and Studio Ghibli. The storyline isn't very good, even if this game was released in the silver age of RPGs. Magic that's practically useless because it costs way too much and normal attack combo will take off more. The game is pretty much a button masher where you're constantly hitting x the entire time during combat, rarely defending or doing all out defense unless it's on a boss.

Pokemon at its core has a deep layer of strategy, but what about the main game. That 20 hour storyline where you're slogging through against Pokemon that you'll OHKO throughout the game. Then in order to get to the layer of depth where the game is actually good, if you want to do well, you're going to put in a minimum of 5-10 hours getting a good Pokemon team decent IVs, then the time it takes to level those Pokemon to 50 and get the skills you want them to have. Every single time a new Pokemon releases, it's common that even fans will admit the main game is boring and repetitive, but the game gets a free pass because the game has an underlying amount of depth that most people will rarely experience because of the amount of time you have to put into it? 

Too many games get overlooked because regardless of the system, you have a group of fans praising one game that doesn't deserve it, usually when it's exclusive. Additionally, Nintendo fans overlook a lot of quality games that are on Nintendo consoles simply because they're not developed or published by Nintendo, although being exclusive helps.

Finally there's the fact that people haven't played all these games. Unfortunately there's nothing that can be done about that, but if people actually tried out different games than sticking with just Nintendo games or play the highly rated niche titles also instead of only the over hyped games then people might actually start playing some games that are better than those they're accustomed to.

I think you need to take a step back realize that this thread is for you.

(and my magic/melee experience was vastly different. melee was largely useless)

And IMHO that seperates a good reviewer from a crap one. YOu dont need to like a specific genre or game to understand that some kind of quality went into it. For example, I dont like Xenoblade, found it to be quite boring, but alot of people like it. Now I would never call it a bad game, hell no I can tell it was greatly made, just not my cup of tea. I think their is a barometer for quality, if your game constantly glitches, framerate drops, screen tearing or just flat out is unplayable then thats a bad game by basic standards (steel battalion comes to mind)

My only experience of that was the demo from XBLA and my god that was amazing to play, I would especially love to personally thank who ever it was decided to put the self destruct button inside the cabin next to about 5 other major controls and then make it a kinect only game.... I say kinect only, I mean you need to use kinect while holding a controller.

I'm honestly keeping my eyes peeled for a cheap copy of both this and sonic riders kinect just to have the 2 most broken games of the generation in my collection.

But yeah regarding the rest of your post I do agree that a good reviewer should be able to see that there was an amount of work gone into something such as a fighting game, but I don't believe someone who isn't a fan of the fighting genre would ever really get balance issues which are clear from the get go.