Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

@Ralizah Minimalist = bad. It might not be your cup of key, but some of the best stories are told through very little words. It's a very ambiguous game, but that's the beauty of it. It lets the actions speak for themselves and makes you think about what happened. If Breath of the Wild had gone with a minimalist story, it might have been absolutely amazing and done so much for the open-world design.
The fact that people talk so much about it and theorize so much when there's "barley a narrative" is why it's so good.

@Kidfried Actually couldn't disagree more with the BotW and NMS comparison; even more so with NEXT taken in to account. NMS is far more a traditional resource gathering space sim' than anything else. BotW is just a bit open world RPG 'lite'.

@Tasuki @Jaz007
I think BotW fails a little bit with the slight lack of direction. It's certainly not game-breaking or difficult to overcome at all, but it feels all the less Legend of Zelda for it. My daughter (11 now) got on far better with A Link Between Worlds, which is easily a game that could be called traditionally more difficult. She just finds it laborious, plodding and difficult to engage with. She's plays Pokemon games to death and has put in a good 100 hours or so in to Disgaea V at this point.

Personally I found what I played of BotW rather boring. I enjoyed the systems in place, the cooking and whatnot - but it didn't imbue me with any particular desire to play more of it.

@Jaz007 I never said it was "bad." I said there was barely a narrative... because there's barely a narrative there. Criticizing BotW for being a bit thin on narrative while praising the far thinner SotC for having a "strong story" is simply insane. It just doesn't make any sense.

By pretty much any metric, BotW is far heavier on narrative elements than SotC. Explicitly, in terms of cutscenes, main story quests, diary entries, dialogue with NPCs, etc. And if we're talking atmosphere and suggestion, BotW also uses environment and, hell, sometimes its musical score to engage in forms of storytelling. There's a logic to the ruined architecture that tells a tale of ruin. The music is often remixed and nearly crumbled remixes of music from previous Zelda game, which strongly suggests links to past glories in certain environments. Journal entries help to flesh out some of the people who survived the apocalypse. Heck, the way you structure your own experience with the game becomes a part of the story as well, which is why its design and almost fully open structure is so brilliant.

With that said, while I like the game's story (and it has a really awesome version of Princess Zelda in it), I don't think it can be said to have a strong story. It's a strong experience.

@Kidfried You could take that last post of yours, change a few words, and apply it to literally thousands of video games where "meters go down" and "people ask you to collect things for them."

They're not comparable experiences at all.

@Kidfried And I think you're confusing things as well.

• Sure, but, even then, SotC is light on story. We discover very little about the people involved. The plot is threadbare. Unless you're just going to lump any constituent element of the game under "story" as well, which is self-defeating, I don't see how anyone can deny the game doesn't have a strong story to it.
• What we know of a story can be interesting, but if you barely see it, if it only informs the very beginning and very end of a game, I don't see how we can call it a "strong story." It's just not. It's more a way to structure a series of boss fights surrounded by an atmospheric environment you have to navigate to get to each one.

I've never looked at a modern painting and thought: wow, that has a strong narrative built into it. Same with most religious parables. In the second case, religious parables only really gain a deeper meaning by being part of a larger, more structured religious story. They gain relevance through association, for the most part.

SotC doesn't have a strong story. It doesn't need a strong story. It's not a narrative-driven experience. The amount and type of storytelling it has is fine for what it's going for.

Which is also how I feel about Breath of the Wild, by the way. I don't think it needed to be a more structured, linear Zelda experience. The narrative elements that were there suited the game perfectly. I wouldn't say it has a "strong story," though, in the way something like an Uncharted game has a strong story, because that would imply more of a focus on explicit narrative elements than there is. The experience of the game, if that's what we're going to call a story now, is only as strong or as weak as you make it. I stopped after 75 hours, as I was extremely satisfied with what I had accomplished and experienced. If you crawl the game for 300 hours looking for every last korok seed, maybe it feels like an aimless sandbox. But that is more down to how you play the game, imo, than anything else.

So, if I understand correctly, there is still some progression and leveling to an extent in BotW. I’ve always heard that “you can go anywhere, climb anything” in the game (a la NMS) but that sounds to only be partly true, as there are virtual “obstacles” to going somewhere in the form of lack of stamina that needs to be upgraded before being able to go there. So there is some linearity to the experience. Again, sorry to be ignorant.

OK everyone lets try not to derail the thread please, we wouldn't want it to get closed now would we but i can see this is an important subject for you to discuss so perhaps one of you could create a thread specifically for it OK @Kidfried @Ralizah @Jaz007

back on topic

Unpopular Gaming Opinion: Halo 5: Guardians was great, it still was fun to play and yeah while it's story wasn't the best in the series it was still enjoyable

@FullbringIchigo One last post, and then I'll drop it if other people do.

@Th3solution The entire game is a constant process of progressing, becoming stronger, learning more about the world and backstory, and structuring your own story. You CAN "go anywhere, do anything," but unless you're a high-level player who can manipulate in-game physics effectively, you're going to have a difficult time accessing certain sections of the game before other sections of the game. Through the constant feedback of collecting stamina and health upgrades, gaining stronger weapons, environmental design, and, of course, explicit narrative elements in story sections, the game invisibly guides the player to structure a satisfying adventure for him-or-herself. The game is open, but the hand of the designer is constantly evidenced in the design of the game itself.

Which is nothing like NMS, because there's pretty much no structure to NMS, invisible or otherwise. No meaning to its design. I don't know what the recent update added, but base NMS just used a bunch of algorithms to randomly assemble countless worlds and then forced you to constantly chip away at them to survive.

There are also crafting and survival elements in BotW, but it doesn't dominate your time. It's intelligently integrated into the fabric of the gameplay itself to further immerse you in the experience of exploring Hyrule.

What the game almost never does is establish artificial roadblocks to make you play in a certain way, which is how previous Zelda games were designed. I personally think BotW's design, while certainly not perfect, is a huge improvement all around, one that really channels a sense of adventure.

Thanks for the input everyone. Although I absolutely believe the discussion to be worthy of “unpopular gaming opinions” as we clearly have a few who bear the unpopular opinion that BotW (a game lauded as one of the greatest of all time, if not the greatest of all time) is overrated. But I do think we have explored it quite thoroughly (no pun intended)

@Th3solution true it is worthy of discussion but it was starting to turn into an argument and one of the things i promised to do so we could have this thread was to make sure there was no arguing and that it remains clean and safe which the only reason i chimed in, i hope you understand

Unpopular opinion(s):

• NSMB2 is the best of the NSMB games thanks to the coin rush levels and the gold collection metagame overall, which forces you to play levels in riskier ways than one normally otherwise would.
• I think a wide swath of the SNES' catalog doesn't stand up nearly as well as people think it does. Super Mario World, for example, is a lesser experience than most of the other 2D games in the series. Super Metroid was revolutionary, but was improved on by both of the GBA entries. Chrono Trigger is just plain overrated: it has a decent combat system, some fun characters, but an unengaging plot and rather boring characters. Also, the music isn't great. Earthbound is a mediocre game that I feel is only popular still because it's "quirky;" take away the weirdness, and you're left with a mediocre product. Super Castlevania IV is one of the weaker games in the series, too, with its overpowered whip making secondary items irrelevant and its focus on Mode 7 antics and awkward platforming. Mega Man 7 is one of the worst games in the series. And, frankly, I think the original DKC trilogy didn't age well. The level design isn't great, many of the secrets are just waaaaay too hidden, and I feel like the difficulty is often unfair.
• I'm unsure how unpopular this opinion actually is, but I feel like DKC Returns is a far more difficulty experience than Tropical Freeze was. Especially those barrel blast levels.

@ellis-bas FFXII really is weirdly good monster hunting game in its later half!

@Ralizah SNES is overrated in general. It has a few seminal key gaming experiences for sure - but it got far less play when I was a kid than the MegaDrive did, and I sold the one I bought later in life as I barely bothered with it. I also sold my SNES mini after tinkering with it for a bit.

I'd say the Super Mario World does hold up very well though. It's a lot better than SMB and SMB2. Not many games in general are quite as good as Super Mario Bros. 3, but that's part nostalgia talking.

I didn't like DKC then and still don't.

@Ralizah is NSMB2 New Super Mario Bros?

@FullbringIchigo Indeed it is.

@KALofKRYPTON I dunno. I feel like SMB2 is unique enough that it survives as a really strong experience on its own. Aside from the lack of good power-ups, I also just don't like a lot of things about SMW: the strange music, the art design, those infernal ghost houses, the new enemies you encounter, etc. I know a lot of people love the more open level progression and multiple exits, but those don't really do anything for me.

@Kidfried personally i think Super Castlevania IV is the best of the series even if it is just a remake of the original, Symphony of the Night is a great game as well and this one might be an Unpopular Opinion But Lords of Shadow Mirror of Fate was also a great Castlevania game although the 3DS controls were awkward so the PS3/360 HD version is the better one

actually i enjoyed all the Lords of Shadow games, shame Konami just dropped it

@Kidfried I guess we do.

I'm not a huge fan of the Metroidvanias in general. Adding RPG elements to Metroid-style game design somewhat defeats the purpose of the design in the first place. And once you've played one or two, they all kind of feel samey.

I do love me some Order of Ecclesia, though, which combined elements of both Vania styles to create a beautiful experience.

And Rondo of Blood is, far and away, the best game in the series. Such a wonderful little game.

@Ralizah My chief childhood memory of SMB2 is 'WTF is this?!', I thought it was crap. Learning later in life about the Doki Doki origins of the game cemented it's abject crap-ness. It's still crap. Even the All Stars new coat of paint treatment couldn't help it not be crap.

Lost Levels would've been fine as the actual sequel.

@KALofKRYPTON fun fact Doki Doki Panic was originally a prototype for Super Mario Bros 2 but Nintendo felt it wouldn't appeal to the Japanese audience so they created what we would know as "The Lost Levels" instead and released the prototype as Doki Doki Panic only to then reskin Doki Doki Panic into Super Mario Bros 2 for the a western audience because they felt "The Lost Levels" was too hard for Americans to play

so in fact the version of Super Mario Bros 2 we got is actually what SMB2 was originally going to be

so the question is which version is the true SMB2?

@FullbringIchigo No worries, my friend. Most of the opinions here, by virtue of being unpopular, can elicit quite a discussion. Thankfully we all respect one another’s right to feel differently than we do. I appreciate that everyone is being good-natured about opposing views. I legitimately use the opinions expressed in these forums when I decide what to buy and play. Thanks for helping keep us on track.

@FullbringIchigo As I understood it Ninty America decided on not using the original SM2 (Lost Levels) in favour of Doki Doki as it was too similar to SMB.

@KALofKRYPTON Lost Levels is infuriating. It's the Castlevania III of the Mario series: waaaaay too difficult for me to enjoy.

SMB2 is incredibly weird and different from other games in the series, so I get not liking it, but I really enjoy the way it mixed up the gameplay by allowing the player to interact more deeply with the environment, the multiple characters you can play as, which makes it much more replayable than other games in the series, since they're different enough to change the experience of playing the game, and the imaginative boss battles (much moreso than in any other 2D Mario game that comes to mind).