The latest edition of UK gaming publication EDGE has arrived to subscribers and with it comes a number of high-profile review scores. The review that will most likely be of interest is Xenoblade Chronicles 2 which received a seven from the magazine. Here’s the full review scores given in the January issue.
- Star Wars Battlefront 2: 4 “the worst implementation of a loot system we’ve ever seen in a full-price game… the most miserly structure of the grubbiest of free-to-play games, plastered cynically over a full-priced product”
- Xenoblade Chronicles 2: 7 “It doesn’t quite match the out-of-nowhere brilliance of the first game, nor is it as bold as the daring, but flawed, follow-up.”
- Call of Duty WWII: 7
- Need for Speed Payback: 4 “An open world that offers nothing but uneventful journeys between missions; draconian progression doled out loot box by loot box; tin-eared scripting and a wilful disregard for player freedom.”
- Animal Crossing Pocket Camp: 5 “Somewhere, Animal Crossing has mislaid its soul.”
- Hidden Agenda: 4
- Bury Me, My Love: 7
- Million Onion Hotel: 8
Well done to edge for giving low scores to ea’s greedy money grabbing games
7 seems a bit harsh for XC2. But I can’t really judge that yet. I’m only 4 hours or so into the game. I already absolutely love it though. It’s so damn charming and the exploration and combat seems to be rocksolid.
I think they are just honest, it isn’t a bad vote for Edge. Other sites just get inflated scores, maybe to get cited by Nintendo in the trailers. ^^
I think this is spot on with Animal Crossing.
It doesn’t feel the same. And I blame the Microtransactions. Which I’m also glad they rated SWB2 badly for that too.
AC’s use of microtransactions done come anywhere near what EA did with Battlefront. AC is doing it the right way. Battlefront implemented a pay to win system with characters locked behind huge pay walls and loot boxes for powerups. At no point does AC actually push you to spend money, and anything you pay for is a known quantity. There is no gambling system like loot boxes. You know what you get for your money. Somebody on this site explained it well.
“I feel like while Mario Run wants you to pay into the rest of the game, and Fire Emblem encourages you to constantly expand your arsenal of heroes, Animal crossing doesn’t really press you in any way to want to spend cash. Bugs and fish respawn regularly, fruit respawns after a decent amount of time, villager requests are constant, furniture doesn’t take terribly long, the purchasable tickets are plentiful just from playing. The mine, honey and nets speed things up, but don’t really have a good enough payoff to justify buying them.”
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A 7 for Xenoblade 2? That’s a score a lot of people don’t consider buying, because it’s too low. Besides, that’s Monolith we’re talking about, I’ve yet to get disappointed by them. I can’t believe the game is that “average” to deserve such a “low” score. I’m not very far into it at this point, but so far my first impressions were very good. The main characters are already 10 times better than anything I’ve seen in XCX.
Scores aren’t everything. I’m 100% sure if Xenoblade Chronicles would be released today, it wouldn’t be received even closely as well as it did back on the Wii. And sequals can suffer from sky high expectations a lot. Even if they manage to match the brilliance of the original game, they’re scored lower, because it’s “too much of the same”. If you make them more different, it “doesn’t feel like franchise XY anymore”.
I mean, sure, I haven’t read the entire EDGE review, but this statement alone is pretty much bs: “It doesn’t quite match the out-of-nowhere brilliance of the first game” – HOW in the world do you expect a game developer to create a surprise hit as a sequel to a surprise hit, when you’re expecting them to recreate the surprise hit? I guess it’s hard to explain… let’s make it easier: basically, you can’t surprise anyone when he already knows that you’re about to surprise him. The brilliance of Xenoblade Chronicles came as a surprise, the expectations were a lot lower so it was a lot easier to go above and beyond them. This is impossible for the sequel, because everyone already expects that brilliance.
Long story short: this 7 is not going to sour my experience with this game. Now, excuse me, I’ve got some swimming in clouds to do.
I agree the game is brilliant so far even though I just started. I’m liking it better than x cus of the focused story and it’s got my attention just like the first one did. So far it’s on par with the first one which is great. It’s got an 84 on metacritic which is great for a jrpg but I’ve noticed lots of reviews complaining about how it’s too complex or is only for hardcore fans which imo is a stupid reason to dock points.
This is Edge, a 7 is actually a truly decent game.
Stop whining you baby. You obviously don’t understand what quality is, hence why you’re not a reviewer. You’d probably give the shittiest game a 10/10 whie giving good games a 5/10.
yes it is possible to produce another surprise hit. It’s called coming out with another great original story and great original cast of character. Which XC2 does not have. Just because YOU like XC2 characters more than XCX doesn’t mean this review is wrong. Basically in your head your subjective opinions are right and Edge’s objective opinions are wrong.
A 7 is a decently good score btw. But it shows Monolith to keep trying. One thing they should definitely keep trying is in character design. They need to find that right design that fits this game world and narrative. The story needs to be better if they way a better score, the story in both XC1 and XCX is original, daring, and great. XC2 falls short on this.
XC1 > XCX > XC2
Hopefully Monolith’s next installment can take the good, improve and learn from past mistakes and come back with another heavy hitter.
Holy cow, please dear, keep it together.
Never once did I say the game is a 10/10. I just said my first impressions were very good and I liked the characters a lot more than I did in XCX. If you remember correctly, if you played the game, the characters and story were some of the weakest points in XCX while it excelled in open world exploration. Yes, affinity missions helpoed a lot to flesh out the characters, but that game was by absolutely no means character- or story driven, while XC2 is exactly that and it starts to show very early in the game.
I’m far away from any reasonable evaluation of this game, I wouldn’t dare to put a number on it in any way.
My comment was more about the influence of expectations on reviews. Reviews are not “fair”, not objective and are very much driven by hype or in other cases by disappointment. EDGE doesn’t have an opinion. EDGE hired a person, who played this game and gave his or her opinion on this game. If you think reviews are objective, I’m very sorry to burst your bubble, but every review is an opinion. Every opinion is subjective, it can only try to be as objective as possible. The more professional the reviewer, the more objective the review hopefully is, but one can NEVER completely shut out his own preferences.
Furthermore, opinions aren’t wrong, unless prooven otherwise. I mean, if I say: “In my opinion, the earth is flat” that’s obviously wrong. If a reviewer has certain points of criticism that he can properly explain, then there’s nothing wrong with it, unless it’s obviously trolling. That’s where reviews become subjective, that’s where the personal preferences come into play. Person a believes the player benefits from a slow build into the mechanics of the game, while person b believes it drags on too much and there should be more action sooner, to keep the player interested. The one reason might be enough for person a to give a higher score and person b to give a lower score.
Some games have received undeservingly high reviews, while other’s suffered from it’s surroundings. Case in point: Skyward Sword was average, but was scored way above that, while DKC Tropical Freeze was a brilliant platformer that may not have been scored bad, but below of what this game is worth – it suffered from the fact that people wanted Metroid and it was yet another platformer on the Wii U after quite a few of platformers released on Wii U.
Expectations, surroundings, the mood in the community, the release date, the marketing campain, the genre of the game – everything has a huge influence on the score. Just because a game is good, doesn’t necessarily mean it will recieve a good score. It may receive a great one, or a bad one depending on a lot reasons outside of the game’s quality itself.
I believe Zelda Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey both have benefited a lot from Nintendo simply giving their fans what they wanted for years. Do I believe both games deserve a 97% metascore? Hell no. Do I belive both are amazing games? Hell yes.
I stand by my word: you can’t produce another surprise hit, if your audience already expects a hit. Best possible outcome: you can meet the expectations,or surpass them, and produce another hit, but it’s not going to be a surprise, because the audience already expected as much based on past experiences. Real life example: If I stand next to you and suddenly jump at you out of context, I will surprise you. The next time I’m standing next to you, you’ll expect me to do it, so it won’t be a surprise anymore.
Mario Odyssey was received with universal praise. It’s one of the biggest hits this year. Was it a surprise hit, though? Far from it. Everyone and their mom knew this game was going to be amazing.
I’m very well aware that a 7/10 is not a bad score, actually it’s still a good score, but I mentoined it’s a score where some people start to think twice, if they want to spend the money. Video games are expensive. “Good” may not be enough of a reason to spend $50 or $60, even more so if your budget on games is rather tight.
I’ve played games with a metacritic score in the 70s, that I found very much worth my time and money, while other games with 90+% on metacritic just didn’t do it for me. Scores aren’t all that matters, but in more recent times they’ve become extreamly important in the gaming community to evaluate if a purchase is worth it. Therefore, a 7 in a very well known publication can hurt the game’s reputation quite a lot, probably a lot more than a 7 should.
How I will personally score XC2 in comparison to the first two entires, I don’t know yet. Ask me again after another 60 or 70 hours of playtime. What I do know is, this game is probably not flawless, but I will be enjoying it nonetheless, because it’s simply the type of game I like.
I don’t want to imply I’m better than anyone or that my opinion is better than anyone’s, because that’s just now true. I simply know what I want and whom to trust.
I’ve been part of the gaming community for a while, I’ve played my fair share of games, I’ve seen consoles come and go, I’ve read my fair share of reviews and I’ve lived through the times, when schoolyard rumors were your most reliable source on secrets in video games. I know very well what I want, what I like and not to trust anyone, but my own opinion.
The reviewer for EDGE has every right to believe a 7 is a deserving score, but I have every right to disagree with that.
Awesome typo, that I didn’t notice sooner. Of course it’s: “I don’t want to imply I’m better than anyone or that my opinion is better than anyone’s, because that’s just NOT true.”
Sorry.
I think they were being generous with the 7. The original Xenoblade Chronicles game (Wii/3DS) was damn near perfect with a few tedious issues, but not being able to follow up and improve on that game is beyond my understanding. How has Nintendo continued to make great Zelda games? X was a gigantic leap backward and also a HUGE disappointment. So much so, I no longer trust anybody’s opinion about the series as everyone originally praised X and are only now admitting it wasn’t very good. It was atrocious. I’ll wait until XBC2 is on sale before purchasing it as I don’t want to get burned again.
From what I can see, it seems to be a mix. Not as good as the original, but not as bad as X. However, I don’t know exactly where that lands and if it’s worth my time or money.
Lol who put the stick up their ass? They sound negative about everything that’s come out. 5 for AC? It’s a mobile game. Did they really expect it to be as good and deep as a console game?
Did you read some people expecting a good AC game for mobile these days? Yes they were expecting a good AC game like the console version
Ouch at that 7 for Xenoblade… Only because Call of Dooty gets a 7 too when we know it’s actually a worse game 😣 Maybe they didn’t like the anime style ? 😏
Yeah. That’s the main reason why the 7 score bothered me too. NO WAY is COD WWII even a smidgen as good as XC2. NO W A Y.
It’s truly sad some people think a 7 out of 10 is a low score. I blame the school system having anything below an 80 as bad & you should feel like a total idiot for having such a “low” score. (It’s why some people believe the school system is broken because it tries to make everyone adhere to the same scores as if everyone is equal when it’s sadly not true. Nothing really wrong with that, though, as not everyone is going to be perfect at everything. Basically, it’s saying it’s wrong to be unique or different from the rest of the herd & you should feel bad about it.)
Anyway, glad they trashed EA’s games for that loot crate bullshit. Need for Speed 2015’s always online kept me from buying it & now Payback has this loot crate bullshit that will keep me from buying it. EA sure knows how to keep me from buying games in one of the few franchises I actually like from them.
Animal Crossing Pocket Camp: 5 “Somewhere, Animal Crossing has mislaid its soul.” Not sure about this game but that’s definitely the case with Paper Mario. Everything after Super Paper Mario has been a husk without it’s soul.
Your comment gets 7/10 too.
How dare you, sir!? I am at least worth a 7.8 out of 10! (Does that score look familiar? xD)