Of course ive read your review, i even read your first impressions in the MMXI thread, you went from "i cant possibly play past act 1 this is too bad and i am forcing myself to play" to "must have, must buy " . I am not kidding that was your words
Did you also read every post in the megathread in-between? You know, the ones where I go "actually there're some good points in there after all" and "hey the game's growing on me" and "you know what Zeriel you were right, the flaws are not as bad as I thought"? That post you quoted about forcing myself to play was when I had just realised my beloved exploration was gone, and I was having to put up with those damn loading screens all the fucking time. I was angry from staring at those screens for so long and came here to vent. I find it rather telling that, when having to choose between the rants of someone pissed off because he just hit a flaw and is overreacting, and his detailed analysis on the game as a whole after completing it, after messing around with other party combinations, and after putting some thought into what he really thinks of the game, you decided to go with "angry rant to vent while waiting for loading screen".
Fair enough you dont own a console, you cant compare it handheld rpgs. According what i read from the ubisoft warrior squad its not fair to compare it to other blobbers as Might and magic are their own subgenre. Yeah really so you cant compare it to anything... how convenient it is as it cant stand the comparison to japansese blobbers and classics...
See it's comments like these that make me think you're a moron. The Ubisoft squad? You registered here 5 years ago. You're posting quite angrily in a thread about a Might and Magic and its comparison to other blobbers. You've actually never seen the tricycle/motorcycle image? You think this started being posted JUST because Ubisoft announced MMXL? You think this incredibly inane debate about which is better and why hasn't been around since nineteen fucking eighty seven?
Feel absolutely free to debate why any number of japanse blobbers and classics are better than MMXL (warning: I cannot participate in anything related to the japanese blobbers; Bee is a far better candidate). But if you're going to pretend that the M&M fandom sprang overnight because Ubisoft, then don't be too surprised if you get called a moron.
There's far too many superlative, calling genius the fact you can get a randomized pary, thats too much . That was implemented in roguelike ages ago.
I don't give a shit about roguelikes or what they implement in a review about Might and Magic. It's something that fits with the M&M playstyle superbly, and that has never been in M&M, until now. Roguelikes are older than M&M. JVC never thought of adding it in, even though Roguelikes were alive and well throughout the series' existence. I never thought of it. Then when I read about it during the Early Access, I slapped my forehead; how did nobody at NWC think of using this? How did
I never think of this? The genius isn't in inventing random party generation (did I claim this?); it's in having it
in Might and Magic, in a series where the entirety of the fun on replays comes from making gimped, oddly-themed parties and abusing the system to make them work. I've been saying this for years before MMXL was announced, and to see it implemented here was a joy. And every time I start one of the other M&Ms now I'm going to thin "gee I wish they had it in back then". I wasn't giving Limbic credit for inventing something they didn't invent, I was giving them credit for thinking of implementing it in a series where it really, really works well. If the damn creator of the series himself didn't think of it over 15 years then I sure as hell will praise them instead.
Seeing how horrible the class balance in the game , especially ranged, is its probably not much fun.
I had a loooooooooong rant about ranged and class balance before the patch came out. Remnants of it are still in there, though probably not noticeable if you hadn't read the original (which I sadly didn't make a backup of - might've been fun to post for contrast). In fact my overall impression of combat was quite a bit more (even more?) negative before the patch fixed ranged and made class balance more solid. Since I didn't finish the review until after the patch was out, there really was no point in having 3 paragraphs going on and on and on about flaws
that no longer exist in the game. Incidentally, this has always been my attitude, and not just with M&M; I've repeatedly made fun of people complaining about bugs in NWN2 that were fixed 5 years ago.
One problem with MMXI ? In fact its not a problem!
The game stutters ? its unity fault .
These two are cute, but I don't see anything in the review that could be interpreted like this. Unless of course you thought "I'm willing to blame this poor performance on Unity itself rather than on Limbic" means "Limbic are my heroes and it's all Unity's fault".
Many assets are lifted straight out of HOMM6 and other Ashan games ? "I don't see the problem with recycling graphical assets if this means more resources can be spent on making quality content" .
I'm sorry, but I'm not a graphic whore. In fact this paragraph initially started with the famous Andyman Messiah quote about playing games with your dick out and a bottle of lotion, before I cut it quite late into production.
Ah quality content , some things are good like air puzzle , but I dont see mentions that some of them are so simple that you can solve by mistake just by stepping on plates. Some dungeons levels are just one big corridor.
And now I know for a fact that you haven't read the review, despite your claims to the contrary.
Another tradition that MMXL proudly maintains is spicing up combat with a healthy dose of puzzles. The most common ones are chests that require answering a riddle to open. These start off fairly straightforward and become a little less obvious later on, though they're not as clever or involved as those of say Betrayal at Krondor. The spatial logic puzzles are more interesting - most of these appear in the Mysterious Crypts, the non-combat counterpart to the Dangerous Caves. These also start pretty simple, but some are quite a bit more involved and may even require getting out that good old notepad to figure out the solution.
Although the dungeons in MMXL are generally of high quality, the endgame dungeon has some problems. The M&M series was never particularly famous for its strong endgame dungeons, with MM1 and MM3 probably featuring the best ones. The endgame usually feels like something hastily thrown together to give some sense of conclusion, the most notable offender being MM6, which offered a rather boring and forgettable final dungeon in a game notorious for its sprawling and superb dungeon design. In an attempt to do something different, MMXL features a series of long dungeon crawls, but while the Tomb of Terror is fairly well designed, it is followed by two back-to-back dungeons with no interesting features or puzzles (though thankfully they are nowhere near as horrible as Square Lake Cavern from MM2). This culminates in the end boss, which in keeping with the spirit of (most of) the series is not a simple Kill Foozle type of encounter, but instead involves playing a tedious game of hide and seek as you fight the boss's minions and gather the pieces of the Deus Ex Machina that allows you to defeat him.
Indeed, no mention whatsoever that some puzzles are simple, or that the riddles are not the best we've seen, or that some dungeons have problems, lack interesting features, and are tedious.
No seriously, what the HELL do I need to say? Do I need to colour-code criticism in red so it stands out? If I had replaced "these start pretty simple" with... what exactly? You complain that there is no mention how simple they are. THESE START
PRETTY SIMPLE. If I'd said "too simple" would you have considered that negative enough? Are the words "problems", "no interesting features" and "tedious" ones you usually associated with superlative praise?
This is a love letter to your limbic's friend , not a typical codex review.
This one is cute every time it pops up, especially because you keep going on about "typical Codex review". Here's a fun one from VD's review of Oblivion.
The dungeon hack experience is one of the strongest elements of the game. Daggerfall featured huge, seemingly endless dungeons, where you could literally get lost without Mark & Recall spell. Morrowind fixed it by making the dungeons as small and linear as possible. Oblivion's dungeons are somewhere in between, and overall, superbly done. They are well designed, very atmospheric, with levers, buttons, and secret doors, and everything else you might expect from a good dungeon. After a while you may notice a repeating pattern, but it never bothered me.
Hey look, superlative praise of Oblivion dungeons. He even points out one problem and then immediately says NOT A PROBLEM!
So.... I guess VD's review is a love letter to Bethesda and not a typical Codex review?
Writing a comprehensive, relatively unbiased review is a great deal of work, and Sceptic clearly put a great deal of time and energy into his, which I'm well aware is part of the reason I'm being ripped into. It's easy to sit in the peanut gallery and hurl criticisms. For what it's worth, I feel his review is well-written and comprehensive, though perhaps misses the mark on being entirely objective and unbiased (but see the third paragraph).
I appreciate that you do recognise the effort I've put into itm and I appreciate your comment on the writing and comprehensiveness (especially since, as everyone can tell, my writing is as far from concise as can be, and I tried very hard to be comprehensive without ending up with a 100-page book). But this isn't the reason you're being ripped into, and it's not the reason I ignored your posts for a few pages. I did because you called it "deceitful" and when I pointed out the absurdity of this statement you proceeded to launch into a set of ad hominems that were completely unrelated to the review. That you went from "how dare you compare it to MM1-5" to "actually I meant only WOX" to "actually that's an accurate comparison", all the while refusing to acknowledge that maybe just maybe your initial criticism was overreaction, didn't help much. Anyway I really don't want to go on about this anymore, what's said is said and I have enough thick skin not to care much beyond interest in the actual argument.
What I
am interested in is the bias thing. Define bias. Did I write positively about the game because of my positive feelings about the game? Yes. My impressions of the game are not objective. My detailed dissection of the system is what's meant to be objective; whether you think the system itself is a good thing or not is up to you. I'm of course going to state my personal bias towards what I like or don't like, because it's my review and I can. But you're free to decide "actually that's not something I want in a game" and to therefore not buy the game, despite whether the reviewer, who as a huge long-time fan of Might and Magic most
definitely has a bias, thinks it's a must buy or not. Bias works both ways, by the way; if I wasn't so hung up on Might and Magic being all about exploration, that whole section in which I decry the "outworld dungeon" and in which I rip into the blessings for being a poor imitation of the outdoor skills wouldn't exist.
Now, do I have some secret bias related to Ubisoft or Limbic? I got a review copy for the game (there's a reason I stated that in the opening). From the Codex itself, from the pool of keys that were going for the contest, NOT directly from Ubisoft themselves. I never had any contact with anyone from Ubisoft, or from Limbic for that matter (the Canada Dry thing was a joke. And yes it's a failed joke because I fail at corporate headquarters). I was pretty annoyed when I wasn't invited to the VIP forums and with the timing of Gamescon as I really would've liked to be the one to go there, but now I think it was actually a good thing that others dealt with this, because it meant I approached the review and the game with no preconception whatsoever. I don't know anyone from Limbic and have no possible investment in them, other than in fact they made this game that I am looking at and playing, and that's the perfect spot to be in as a reviewer.
Now here's the heart of the matter: I like the game enough to want it to succeed, and I would like a sequel that improves on the many flaws I pointed out, and I would like people to buy this game and play it for themselves, so of course I tell people in my review that they should buy it. Now notice the opening statement:
I like the game enough. Why the HELL would I review a game that I like and then tell people "hey guys I think it's a really good game and I really enjoyed playing it, but you know what? nobody else should buy it." That doesn't make any sense. Hence my concluding recommendations.
There's already a Codex-approved review on the site index, and you're one of at most half a dozen people who'd actually care to read one written by me, except perhaps to satisfy a "Yeah? Let's see how well YOU can do, buddy" impulse.
No. Don't be silly. The point would be to have a review with a completely different focus, from someone who disagrees with the first review, and that draws completely different conclusions. Reading both would be a hell of a lot more informative because now you have BOTH biases, the one that likes it and the one that doesn't (or just thinks it's mediocre - whatever). One of my favourite things about the Codex reviews is when more than one person writes them. Remember DAO? VD wrote a rather superlative review of the game - best C&C since Arcanum and all that (yes I know he said that in a post and not in the review). Then Elzair wrote a scathing review of the game. I happen to agree with Elzair. I happen to disagree with most of VD's review. I'm glad we have both.
I doubt I'm alone in this. While I don't read every Codex review, it's fairly clear in most cases that the reviewer is either enthusiastic about the game, or wants to rip into a stinker.
Well yes, but the reviews that fall outside of this dichotomy can be just as good (again see DU's Bioshock review).
I interpreted it as Sceptic liking the game despite the flaws (he pretty much says this at the end), so he would keep mentioning positive things along with the bad ones to make that known.
And this is exactly the case.
