Totally agree, too many things to spend money on to take a gamble on something you're not sold on. My thing is, Zelda fans are trying to sell Zelda on people who were not sold on the dubious 10/10 best game ever made scores
This part is actually what I was really talking about. Zelda may look repetitive and samey to the un-sold people, but it's a totally different story when it's in your hands. And that seems to be the same thing going on with Mass Effect, and it's definitely what went on regarding detractors to Horizon Zero Dawn. They had quirks, but they tended to not matter to the people playing them and enjoying them.At risk of sidetracking, I will say that Breath of the Wild is not really that repetitive. Except for the combat shrines, I don't think it's fair to list ANY of them as "the same dungeon multiple times", as the diversity in the puzzles and mechanics of them is actually quite surprising. Plenty have unique quirks or demand thinking of new and unique uses for your abilities. The fights are usually staged in ways that give you a lot of interesting and unique ways to take them down, and there is a decent selection of enemies as well (though, sadly, some old staples are missing). There are probably a dozen or more different styles of puzzles to find Koroks, and most of them are unique as well (or involve reaching a particular part of unique terrain). The diversity of the content is really quite surprising to me, especially compared to every other open-world game I've played.
Yeah, I wouldn't want to force a game down anyone's throat who's not interested. I was merely asking that people give it the same reasonable doubt Zelda fans are asking for. Breath of the Wild has far from sold me. And the legions of 10/10 scores actually make me a lot more skeptical. No matter how much you enjoy a game, to call it the best game ever made, or try to explain how perfect it is when there are noticeable flaws that could be addressed, which don't even detract from the enjoyment of the game; they just exist. It just seems like Zelda was reviewed by Zelda fans, and not even objective Zelda fans. Meanwhile Mass Effect was reviewed by not-fans. IGN, GameSpot, and Game Informer are all notorious for having their reviews bought, and having Nintendo fans inbiasly review Nintendo products, and then having Call of Duty dude-bros review other product, and not even be fans. Reviewed by people who don't get certain games.I just never really got hooked in to Andromeda. I didn't even know about most of the development troubles the game experienced until the past couple of days. The most I'd seen of it was a couple screenshots, which, honestly, didn't make the game look that appealing. I think they might have pushed graphical fidelity too far without balancing out their modeling skills, as a couple of the characters just look a bit "off". None of them particularly appeal to me, and, as I've not seen any trailers or anything but screenshots, there's not a lot else to go on. I wouldn't even say that the characters are "ugly" because, frankly, they always have been. I mean, name me one character in Mass Effect that's visually appealing. The closest is probably Garrus, but even he's ruined by the texture issue that plagued the PC port (which is the only version I played) and made the close ups of him all use the lowest-rez textures (there's a mod to fix this, but I'm lazy). They got better as the series went on, but this does strike me as a typical "we've pushed too far towards photo-realism without having the design chops to pull it off".
One recent example I can think of would be IGN's video review of Resident Evil 7, was obviously not done by someone who's played most of the series. They complain about repetitive bad-guys as if the previous games didn't have that. Or the obtuse puzzles, as if the previous games did not have that. Imagine the backlash if someone reviewed a Zelda game as if it were the first Zelda game they ever played and pointed out all the ways it could have been like other games
I can think of two actual journalists who actually critiqued Zelda without just blindly praising it. And their gaming tastes are more in line with mine than most of the fake reviewers out there working at Polygon, IGN, and the rest. And they didn't hate the game. They enjoyed it. But it wasn't perfect. No game should ever be considered perfect. And even when reviewed by fans, they should at least try to be objective. It seemed like there was way too little objectivity regarding Zelda, and way too much critical objectivity regarding Mass Effect
And back on topic, the more I watch my girlfriend play Mass Effect, the more I know I'll enjoy it. Which is reassuring. Also it has Sudoku puzzles. Which is awesome. I just got done helping her solve one
But thank you Skyblade. I know you're a super-fan, but I also know you're reasonable and objective and can understand people's skepticism even though you know there's no reason to be skeptical. We're just human