I've been playing the first Xenoblade and I couldn't imagine having to play a game of that size to a deadline (I actually took a month break from the game at one point). This games bigger. I don't envy games critics on this.
I actually chose to avoid subquests too, with the exception of those I incidentally completed whilst playing the game. Contrary to what some of that games reviewers assumed, it plays perfectly fine if you avoid almost all the sub-quests. You level fast when you fight higher level mob you're always kept at the right level for the main story. It's an example of how reviewers have to make assumptions on how you have to play it based off how they played. When I was about level 40 or 50 I did do a few subquests at the fallen hand of the Bionis and I did feel I was overpowered for the start of the next section of the main story but it quickly got back to normal.
As far as this review goes I very much doubt I'll have to look through the manual much. The first one threw a fair amount of mechanics at you very fast in the early chapters and didn't explain some things properly, but I don't need to understand everything straight away. Working stuff out is part of the experience.
I'll download this day one because Nintendo games don't reduce in price much, but I doubt I'll want to follow the first one with this without a break.
I bought my wii u to compliment my PC but last year and this year it has been my most played system. Here's my four reasons:
1. I love off-tv play and that alone makes the wii u gamepad my favorite gamepad ever and it's a shame it's been so derided because we might never see it's like again. The comfort of curling up in bed and playing games is probably a big reason why I ended up playing so much of the system.
2. As someone who doesn't always have free time for regular big action games and open world rpgs Nintendo supplys a wide range of platformers such as Yoshi's Wooly World which fit well into my life. Splatoon is made up of bite sized matches as is Mariokart and Smash. There are plenty of varied quality games that are worth your time yet don't sap ridiculous amounts of your free time.
3. Being a PC gamer, Nintendo is the only console dev that feels like they offer me something significant I don't already have. I have a 360 but ended up preferring to play all the games on PC. The nearest thing to Nintendo style games you get on PC are indie games. Nintendo is just different to the bulk of the industry. I would actually opt to get some multiplat games on wii u over PC because of off tv play (On the Wii U multiplat tends to mean mean indies).
4. Local multiplayer. There's a ton of it on the Wii U and whilst there were some on my 360 it was mainly shooters like gears of war, fighting games and some indies. Having a range of accessible quality games is so important when it comes to local multiplayer because you have to cater to a wide range of people. A local multplayer shooters only good if your friends are into local multiplayer shooters and beat em ups often require all participants to have played sufficient amounts of the game to be able to play at a similar level. Two years after release Super Mario 3D World it's still getting booted up for the local multiplayer. It's easy for people to pick up and play.
With all that said. If I was thinking of buying one now I'd be thinking about holding off for the nx... Even if the nx doesn't totally replace the wii u and doesn't offer backwards compatibility and off tv play (Both of which I imagine the nx won't have) I'd expect very cheap second hand wii us will become very common after the nx's release.
@TheZeroPercent: If the nx is released next year they might have manufactured all the wii u's they plan on making and lowering the price might force them to restart wii u production.
@fanirama: That's pretty much all stealth games. It requires you suspend disbelief.
It would be nice to see some stealth games that don't follow these same unrealistic rules but doing away with them in all game would be like abandoning a genre. Blanket criticisms of games which choose to make use of these mechanics is like saying Mario games are crap because they aren't realistic. People should judge games for what they are trying to be, not what they aren't trying to be.
@kaalkurayami: Of course it could be a combination. GameSpot could choose to hand the review over to somebody they know is already a huge fan of a given series. The review would still be honest, in a sense, but slanted in favour of the game.
Likewise, if a company isn't a big advertiser perhaps its best to hand their games to someone who won't appreciate them... Or not review the game at all.
I remember, long ago, reading an ed roman blog about his experiences writing in guitar magazines. It wasn't so much that companies directly paid for reviews but they paid for advertise and if you didn't advertise at all then they likely wouldn't review, or notice the existence of your product, let alone give it a good review.
Anyway, all theories about bias and corruption can, of course, always be fought off by pointing out that it could just be opinions... But likewise we have numerous accounts of corruption within so many magazines and websites... including this one. Why should we assume this is an exception?
Is buying a external drive really that difficult? Another extra cost, yes. But anyone using the eshop should have one regardless. I get noticeably faster load times running off my hard drive rather than internal flash.
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