Inquisition has a lot of trash quests that you are better off skipping if time is a concern. Think MMO collection quests. Padded length. Origins is filled with more quality time. DA2 makes me ill just thinking about it, so it's about a 1 hour long game to me :D
Mainstream ones usually are these days. But that's not a rule. WRPGs were turn-based long before JRPGs were on the scene, and a lot of the indie and crowd-funded games coming out use TB combat.
I'd recommend one of the Dragon Quest games, no question. They cover the basics of both Japanese and western RPGs, such as party combat, turns, menus, overworld travel, a fully realized land mass, classes. The 16-bit and DS versions of 3,4,5,6 would be optimal.
Gunpoint - Better hacking game than the multi-million dollar Watch Dogs
Hotline Miami - Lurid, 80s inspired thriller. Top down action that rewards on-the-fly thinking.
Elite: Dangerous - Space exploration and combat sim
Mark of the Ninja - 2d ninja stealth game with a sharp art style. One of the better stealth games in recent memory.
FTL - space combat roguelike. Real time with pause ship management and one on one ship battling. Upgrades, different ships to unlock.
I'm confused, did he have problem with the execution of the story, meaning the quality of the storytelling according to established narrative standards? Or did he have a problem with the content existing at all? The latter is not a quality judgment, it's a political or moral one. But should this have any weight on the score, which is traditonally a metric of quality of craft and execution? I don't think it should. Whether subject matter is objectionable or not is vastly more subjective than whether a game works as intended and how it executes compared to other similar games. Scoring according to how comfortable one is with the subject matter strikes me as petty and amateurish. A warning for sensitive players that such content exists within the game would suffice.
Personally, I think his argument is without merit. Glamor girl/go-go/erotica/supermodel tropes deal with objectification, inherently. But being that these are professional and cultural realities, they are valid sources for creative representation, which I believe is one of the main reasons why Bayonetta, really the only major game that is centered around this theme, has struck a chord with so many. Does the reviewer not find murder and theft objectionable? If so, I hope he applied the same standards to GTAV that he applied to Bayonetta 2, else he looks like a hypocrite with an agenda.
As far as getting emotional over scores, you have to consider the source. There is some validity to the 'man-child' stereotype. These kind of people exist in the audience. They are immature, insecure, obsessive, irrational. Their identity and happiness is tied to the products, as if they are an extension of their being. Sure, I still laugh and shake my head at IGN's 3/10 for God Hand, but not only do I not care what they think about anything, time has vindicated my high opinion of the game. What gets me is false information, dishonesty, dismissal of the medium's history, hype-mongering, cheerleading, inconsistency and hypocrisy, all of which I've seen plenty of in game reviews. There is a reason that game "journalism" is often accompanied by scare quotes.
Carnival was pretty intense as a child. Pure challenge and nothing but.
I don't trust Bioware to make anything but lowest-common-denominator dreck anymore, but it looks much better than DA2. I'll wait for opinions from the hardcore RPG audience. I really wish companies would put out demos again. I bought more games during the PS1 and PS2 days, because of demos, than I have any other time.
I caught the trailer late, but it was definitely compelling. Sometimes you just know when a movie is going to be major just by the tone of the trailer, the concept, the glimpse of performances. I'm not surprised it's getting high marks from reviewers.
Hell naw, Siren is on another level bro. Real talk.
Buddy, seek help.
j/k
