Old school, but the old game Dungeon Master - when it was originally released for the Atari ST - it was still in a slightly unfinished state and there was items and spells that you could acquire that effectively did nothing because the designers had forgotten to remove them after deciding not to implement the code…

In Final Fantasy XIV, many unique pieces of gear are locked to dungeon drops. So if you want that killer-looking jacket to complete your outfit, you may need to farm a particular dungeon over and over again due to multiple layers of RNG.

Life in Aggro hits a little too close to home.

I think the argument here isn’t about how it’s wrong to critique a writer, it’s how unfortunately and resolutely you’ve misjudged the writer’s intent, and just as resolutely blamed that misjudgment on the writer instead of the possibility of an accidental miscomprehension.

The author says that the WORD “metroidvania”…

I get why people don’t enjoy it, but this may help you understand why people do enjoy it.

You can tell gamer culture is infested with emotionally fragile man-children based on how poorly they react to fair criticism of their sacred totems.

“It’s not bad, you just don’t get it” has been a smug excuse for things that are actually bad for generations.

I’m....not saying anything even of the sort? Wheel back the English Lit degree, my dude; I’m literally just saying that, while I can objectively understand this is a decent game/why people like the game—even though I find it boring—it still surprises me that so many people are this rabid to defend it as though it has…

Your conceptualization of what constitutes a genre gives no genre any room to grow without splintering into a new sub-genre.

It is a good time, but it definitely has issues. After nearly 20 hours, I beat Normal, cleared most of the side quests (I called it quits on the food and burying quests because of how annoying they got. I have 100% map completion, yet I don’t have what you want in my crafting list? Seriously?), and had several pieces…

Re: the zero feedback on the combat--I definitely agree there. I’m not a fan of games that allow you to strike an opponent and they can still walk into you or complete an animation or whatever, without any reason. SOTN had some of this but, well, it was 1997, it was all 2D, the spacing and animations worked a lot…

Y’all really don’t understand the concept of air quotes, do you.

Oh my Christ

I poured twenty hours into the game and have played multiple Metroidvanias, so let’s drop the whole “Maybe this isn’t your type of game,” and “You’re not a REAL fan of the genre,” angles, alright?

Critiquing a writer is valid if you’ve chosen to engage with their work from start to finish.

“Literally the first line for a review of a game catering to genre fans.”

No, I ran into something that capped a rather boring game with an equally boring conclusion. The game just “ended”, and not in a satisfying or epic way for the—minimal—build up there was.

holy shit is there a cursed computer in some dorito-and-cockroach-infested basement composing these cut-and-pasted whinefests out of some sort of wretched neural network? buncha virgin-ass nerds thinking any criticism of a game is somehow an attack on them and an entire genre.

I read the whole review, and it says basically that the game is great, it’s fun to play, and it’s worth playing it.

It reads like an interesting piece of criticism...rather than just a review.