dmc

May as well start this off strong, then:

/deletes previous comment, whoops this ain't the salt meme

Don't worry, it's gonna go in that direction anyway, albeit toned down some

DmC Devil May Cry isn't actually a bad game

Even in my saltiest of moods, I can't call the overall thing awful? There's good ideas there and potential in place, and some things I genuinely love

The urban fantasy vibe they were going for was criminally underrepresented

Also one of its boss fights is actually really fucking cool? And might actually be one of the cooler fights in the series? The Bob Barbas fight takes the lame cinematic thing they were going for and does it right by weaponizing his position as a news anchor to frame a fight with you against mobs that paints you as a violent psychopath

It's actually well done and I love it for that

It is still the worst thing to happen to Devil May Cry, don't get me wrong. For all the neat things it showed and could've done, it still nearly killed an iconic franchise

But it had those better aspects that I'm loathe to admit to

The game's identity crisis is what fucked it over. Seems to happen a lot with Capcom titles especially.

The one time it's worked out is Resident Evil 7 and I am reluctant to call that title an RE game

Village fixed that, though, so it's cool

.......speaking of

RE me

I may as well continue with 7 a bit before I go to my real unpopular opinion. It started this segue, after all

Resident Evil 7 takes itself way too seriously for me to call it a proper Resident Evil game

It's better about it than DmC was, but that one went straight into teenage fanfic territory. At least the people here tried

And in fairness, the game's not bad! Looks great, it's smooth and introduced mechanics every RE title since has been using, which I'm cool with. And IIRC, that was the first instance of the RE Engine?

An engine so powerful that it's been used for multiple games including non-RE ones like uhh...what's this little thing called again? Oh, that's right

Monster Hunter Rise

and Devil May Cry 5

Street Fighter 6 uses it and the upcoming Exoprimal and Dragon's Dogma 2 are gonna use it, so you know that engine puts in work

The Little Engine That Could, modernized

okei how about digimins

Getting back to RE 7, it had an interesting horror story tying it all together that I do give it credit for

but to me, RE needs its campy elements and 7 lacked that. The protagonist is one of the most forgettable in the entire franchise and I still call bullshit that rescuing your shitty toxic girlfriend instead of the one person who actually helped you and cared about you is considered the good ending

Buuut they started nudging things in the right direction with the DLC, where you can not only save Zoe, but do so through a mini adventure a friend appropriately called "Uncle Jojo's Bizarre Adventure" and I refuse to call it anything else now

Evil within!

1 and/or 2

Where Zoe's uncle Joe lays the hillbilly smackdown on military and zombies until he gets a machine fist to punch them all better with

So I'd probably amend it to say base RE7 is too serious and I can kinda understand it since RE6 was too goofy and they wanted to stay away from that

Though the excess stupid was not the only problem that game suffered, whoever thought it was a good idea to give that game a 20 hour run time I just want to have a few loud words with

That transitions nicely to my other RE unpopular opinion that I'll quickly go over before moving on to the next fandom

Revelations 2 was a better return to form than base RE7

I feel like Rev 2 gets overlooked a lot because it's not a mainline entry. A shame since I like how it combined the more action-y aspects of 6 while also being grounded enough to have its horror elements like they did with 7.

And also keeping the campiness, between some self-aware humor that leans on the fourth wall and just the entire character of Moira, who's Barry Burton's eldest daughter

We also see the returns of Claire in a post-RE5 world and the man, the legend himself, Barry Motherfucking Burton

I could make a separate plurk dedicated to how much I love this game and what it does well, but to move things along, I'll leave it at its ability to find the balance between camp and horror Capcom wanted to do with 7 that they got right in 8

Moving onto Digimon...Jesus Christ, where do I start...

maybe I should go through several opinions in short order

I can't promise they'll all be unpopular, but since this franchise frustrates me, it helps to get the frustrations out now and again

Digimon opinion 1: Stop trying to compete with Pokemon

You're not good at it

The comparisons to Pokemon are superficial at best and go off of "franchise with cute monsters of different shapes and sizes"

Digimon's not about you trying to collect a bunch and take them to tournaments; Digimon excels at telling coming of age stories or working through personal traumas or deviling into the complexity of the human soul

Digimon can tell more mature stories because it's about growth as a person and becoming stronger by working through those issues

So the sooner Digimon starts competing with Persona instead of Pokemon, the better

Digimon opinion 2: Stop making the games grindfests

Holy shit, guys, I get the series started out as V-pets, but is it really that hard for you idiots to try and innovate a little?

The grind becomes like, 80% of the game most of the time? And it's usually a pointless grind, too, which stands out more when the game itself doesn't have much on offer

Digimon World 2 and 4, Dusk and Dawn...others I can't imagine...

A pokemon youtuber put it best when they decided to pick up Dusk and Dawn for a video, in talking about how the Digimon fandom is full of people who've been hurt again and again and it's not just the video games, either. It's got its share of underwhelming shows and stuff, too

don't worry, in cyber sleuth

it'salso that much of a grind!

But Riki, if you want Digimon to be more of a storytelling experience, why didn't you pick up Survive Because I thought it was gonna be more tactics game than visual novel

also

if you want digimon to compete with persona

that's also a grindfest

It'd at least be less of a grindfest than what it is now

Where it can serve you zero fucking purpose on top of being Korean MMO levels of slow

smt5 also displayed that the series can be not a grind fest, so hopefully that continues

Good

god I keep forgetting SMT5 existed, it got like, NONE of the attention 4 did

And yeah, much as I love Cyber Sleuth taking the story in that direction, there is still a grind in place

aside from it being released right at the height of blue hair & pronouns

(ie when chuds were complaining about that, not the implication that it was ever an actual problem)

Poor SMT5, man

it's funny you say that, because it really feels like Atlus forgot that 4 exists

Honestly, it kinda feels like the only SMT Atlus remembers is Nocturne

though 4 did definitely fade into obscurity after Apocalypse

A shame since given what little I know of SMT specifically, Apocalypse had one of the most hype DLC superbosses I've seen out of this series

it's trapped in 3DS hell now, so rip

That, too. Everything on the 3DS is now abandonware

and the DLC can't be bought with the shop dead

even if you got a cartridge

A real shame. I will say that it's a very good time to be a pirate, at least

Getting back to digimon real quick, I find it funny that the most loved games tend to be the V-pet games? World 1, Digitize, Next Order

Which...are grindfests, of course, but at least they don't...pretend to be more than what they are, I guess?

they still have stories and whatnot, but for some reason, it seems to feel better in these games than it does most other Digimon titles

It's hard to explain when I haven't put together my thoughts on it. That said, re: Digitize Decode is turning out to be probably my favorite Digimon game. It's JP exclusive and on the 3DS, so you're not getting to that or the English patch without sailing the high seas

However

I think it's worth it

Did I have any other digimon opinions? Hmm...

Digimon opinion 3: Try harder with the franchise, I guess?

I dunno, man, I mostly pay attention to Digimon for the porn nowadays.

Though I am in a Digimon tabletop and Re: Digitize Decode is great

That said, Evil Within! Before I can start talking it, I feel the need to preface my opinions:

I did not actually play the first game. I bought 2 straight up and was ready to play it, but during the intro cutscenes, I decided to watch a summary of 1. And boy am I glad it did. It helped make sense of a lot of things that might've otherwise confused me

Funny since it seems like 2 is the better game overall? But hey, that happens sometimes. From what I was told, the main thing I missed out on by not seeing the whole thing through was Sebastian's partner, Joseph.

Hacker's Memory did a lot better on the digigrind, at least. still grindy, but better

I'm glad for that, at least

As for unpopular opinions about Evil Within....

Evil Within 2 deserved better than to fly below the radar

I can't remember if it had commercials or not, but it did get a haunting rendition of Duran Duran's Ordinary World that I really love

But my god, did 2 get so many things right

It was freaky, it played well with its survival horror genre, it rewarded putting yourself at risk to explore more, the protagonist is extremely compelling...

The story's almost Silent Hill-esque with how the protagonist's fears and past come back to haunt them and sometimes, try to kill them and it plays so well into that

My gripes with it are pretty scarce. The targeting reticle isn't very reliable in close combat situations and there are some one-hit deaths that I felt weren't telegraphed very well. They looked no different from normal attacks, to me

I could just gush about this game and what it does well, but it still blows my mind that it didn't get a whole lot of recognition? Sure, Markiplier and some other people did playthroughs, but I don't know much more than that.

Since the company worked for Bethesda, they could've advertised the hell out of it and I'm not sure they did

However, the dev team's going strong and put out a game that Targets ME SPECIFICALLY and released it NEAR MY BIRTHDAY

MOTHERFUCKING HI-FI RUSH

I swear to God, once I get an income again, I'm getting a new GPU and buying that game outside of a sale. I need that game in my life

keep an eye out for Tango Gameworks. They're on a fucking roll

I guess that could be a take for EW2, maybe? That you need to know the events of the first game to get it, since 2 doesn't really go into it a whole lot?

But I can't really fault it for that since there's a big 2 in the name

EW2 really entertains with the fucked up monsters, I love bastard camera italian man

but also uhhh Sonic

bastard camera Italian man was a fun villain