Happy Surprises - Or Games You Enjoyed Even Though Gamespot Rated It 3.5
 

Ever buy a game *despite* the ratings it got - and enjoy it? What about buying something, loving it and then seeing everyone rip on it? How about that game you hide in the back-back of your collection, next to your seasons of DeGrassi: The Next Generation that makes you go...

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Spit it out, we wanna hear about it

Secret of Evermore. This game gets slagged on by everybody. "OH, IT'S THE REASON WE DIDN'T GET SECRET OF MANA 2, DENI! IT'S SO AWFUL!" No, you know what was pretty awful? Seiken Densetsu III.

Evermore has a hugely underrated soundtrack filled with wonderfully moody music, a storyline that is entertaining and camp all across the board, a nice world design, and quite frankly was purely enjoyable. I will never understand the frothing-at-the-mouth hatred so many people display for it.

I'll have to say God Hand. This game gets low marks and unenthusiastic responses pretty much across the board. It had severe clipping, sub-par graphics for a PS2 title, and it was hard as tits. I love it. What is almost never mentioned is the fact that it was not only the most customizable street brawler ever, but that it was actually very balanced and still worked extremely well with this customization. The game was fairly lengthy for its genre, and had a ton of replay value.

Also, it's fairly obvious that at least on ign, the only reason it got such a paltry score (a 3) was because the reviewer was handed his ass.

Not really panned by the critics but I know that any mention of Final Fantasy VIII immediately starts a ten page flame war on the intertubes. I really enjoyed that Final Fantasy.

That's because it sucks, and you have to be devoid of a functioning brain to enjoy that storyline.

WE WERE TALKING ABOUT GAMES, THOUGH.

MECHANICS SUCK TOO THO

Eh, I'll say it. I liked FFVIII as well.
Anyways, a game which was looked down upon which became my guilty pleasure was Alundra 2 for the ps1. It had horrible load times, tons of slow down but I actually enjoyed going through the game. The humor and characters of the game were just something that I enjoyed and the voice acting was better than most ps1 games at the time. It's not a game I ever replayed but still, I found it enjoyable.

Earthbound got ripped by Jeff 'Lucky' Lundrigan who used to review games for Game Players magazine. He said that it had NES-quality visuals and gave it a score of around 50% or so. Yet I loved the game for its quirkiness and originality.

I like Legend of Mana a great deal as well. EGM ripped it to shreds for being too non-linear and for lacking an overarching story by which to drive the entire experience, but I found it to be a title with tons of depth and beauty, regardless of the bugs (which are unfortunate, but I had a blast with all the customization elements anyways).

Agreed. I thought that Alchemy was interesting and the western stylings of the game were kind of refreshing compared to the Final Fantasy-esque stuff. I also happen to prefer Evermore to SD3. I liked SD3, but I feel like it's let down a bit by the mindless hack 'n slash nature of the combat system. They should've kept the percentage meter for attack efficiency. It seems like a small detail, but it really affects the experience. Also, you attain your final classes too late into the game to really enjoy them.

I think that Secret of Evermore still has my favorite Jeremy Soule score... A lot of his other stuff seems a bit generic by comparison. SoE's music, on the other hand, was clearly inspired by the melodic beauty of FFVI, while still retaining the ambient elements that make it unique.

I liked the mechanics. I liked the fact that I could conceivably not get into a battle, other than boss fights, during the entirety of discs two and three, if I so desired, and it wouldn't really hurt my chances of completing the game. All thanks to proper uh GF equipping and early spell drawing. I know all I want to do in an RPG is run around with encounter-none equipped and only progress the story forward, avoiding all conflict. Pacifism man, it is a worthy path in life. Well, I suppose that is not entirely accurate. You kind of need to draw a few high level spells around the end of disc two if you want to be able to brute force your way through the boss battles. But you don't have to complete the random battles in which you draw those spells, you can run away from them after drawing, thus retaining your lower than 20 level. What's so bad about that? Ohhhhh right.

I don't know what Fable was scored on them there interwebsites, but most people seem to hate it, due to a gap in expectations and the actual delivered product. That's fine, but I didn't really follow any of the hype leading up to it, so I enjoyed what the game did offer without sitting there the entire time thinking about what it was supposed to offer. I can understand the point of view of those people who dislike it for those reasons, but strangely enough, they can't understand my point of view.

Many people seem to badmouth Suikoden III, I guess because it wasn't Suikoden II, but I really loved Suikoden III. And I knew that it wasn't Suikoden II because it had an extra I in the name. I really enjoyed the Chris and Geddoe plotlines, and thought the Hugo plotline was roughly average. I liked the combat system, liked the setting, liked the overall plot. It did lack the musical flair of the previous titles in the series though, that's for sure.

The incredible ease at which you can break Final Fantasy VIII would be interesting if it weren't for the fact that it basically makes anything other than Limit Breaks and Spell Junction obsolete. Summon a Guardian Force? Why the fuck would I do that when Zell gets stupid high damage output with his limit break for free? The game is incredibly easy to break in half, but has none of the interesting payoff of games like Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne.

Conan for the 360. It wasn't exactly despised, but most people just threw it off as a God of War clone, which it kind of was. However, it was still awesome, and I enjoyed it infinitely more than God of War if only becau- CROM. That's why.

I got this game midway through the PSone/N64 era. The game stock at a local SEARS had the newest titles, but a very small amount of SNES games remained in the corner at a very cheap price. One of those games was Secret of Evermore.

The internet still wasn't what it is now regarding game information and discussion, and all I knew about it was what I could read on magazines (which was very little). Still, I went for it, and really enjoyed it. I agree that the music is great, and the campy storyline is quite entertaining. It wasn't until some years later that I realized the world didn't share that opinion.

I still keep the original cart and the retail box.

Azure Dreams got a slating over here when it was released with reviewers saying the graphics were shit, it was repetitive and it was essentially far too damn hard.

I bought it before I read the reviews (Although the guy in the shop did say he didn't know anyone who had finished it as, you know, it's really hard) but I absolutely love the game. Sure the graphics are garbage but it's an rpg, who cares? It probably would be monotonous if you're not into that kind of thing as the whole game is basically one big fuck-off level grind as your character resets to level one each time you leave the tower so you need to find all the items to upgrade your sword that you can and if you're making a serious attempt to get up the tower you need to spend as long as possible on the lower floors levelling up first. Also, it is pretty difficult at first as the items you need to constantly feed your monsters to keep them alive are pretty scarce and if you die in the tower you lose all your stuff.

Persevere however and you soon end up with a strong enough sword to get to the tenth floor without needing your monsters, you learn to only get them out when you need them and you discover that one type on monster can eat any item you want. Thus the difficulty drops down to sensible levels and you're left with a great little dungeon crawler with a passable story, the hilarious trying to get eight girls to date you at once bit and the village design and stuff.

Also boobies.

"CRUSH ME WITH YOUR LOVE!"

I agree with you Deni. People continually ride Evermore with that sort of slant, but it has so many qualities. The magic system in the game was both fun and original and it made me love the game that much more. Easily one of the better games on the SNES. Does it stack up against a game like Secret of Mana? No, but that hardly makes it a bad game by any means.

Secret of Evermore was decent. As stated, was it on the level of Secret of Mana? No. However, SoE was a decent game, a decent story, nice music, and nice combat system. The problem is people see IT and immediately expect the high expectations of Secret of Mana, then feel the game is garbage when the game fails to meet those expectations. It happens all the time with games. Chrono Cross, Legend of Mana, some of the Final Fantasies, are all games that at times (if it's still not that way) that have been held up to their successors' standards and therefore considered disappointments and trash because they didn't meet those standards.

I'mma go out on a limb here.

I had too much fun with Shadow the Hedgehog. Horribly made game. Critically panned all over the board. Deserved those low scores.

Yet I had fun with it. Sure I rented it and beat it in 18 hours of play time, but those 18 hours were awesome. "Where's that DAMN fourth Chaos Emerald?" Such forced line. Such lulz.

Star Fox Assault has to be it for me. Let's be honest. Ever since they went on the Gamecube, they went in a downward slump. There weren't enough Arwing missions, too many Landmaster missions, and what's the deal with Wolf helping out Fox now?

Regardless of how the ratings went (fairly average), I still liked the game a whole lot.

YouTube Video

Earth Defence Force 2017. In all fairness, this is a love-it-or-hate-it kinda title, so the reviews aren't so much negative as they are all over the map.

I love B-movies, I love the whole Japanese-dubbed-giant-monster genre, so basically this game could hardly have been better if it was made to please me specifically. In an industry increasingly starting to take itself too seriously, this is just the kind of thing I want to play. From the Doom-style sprite pickups to the hammy voice acting, to the excessive care given to explosions, to freakin' GODZILLA making an appearance, this game is just right.

Also, it's hilarious as a co-op game.

I've got to agree with this. I know a lot of people bashed the game, but I liked it because it was sort of back to the 'roots' of the Star Fox series, and was a lot more like Star Fox 64.

Add me to the list of Final Fantasy VIII. I guess people weren't too happy with the whole stocking up as many spells as you wanted instead of having MP, but it was the first Final Fantasy I played and I enjoyed it more than all of the others I've played so far (IV, VII, IX, X). I dunno, maybe people didn't like the story.

I've talked about this one over and over again, but I really had fun Sonic the Hedgehog 2006. Yes there were flaws and I won't deny that there were flaws I never ran into that don't exist, I've seen enough youtube videos to convince me of their existence. It had a good story (minus the ending), epic music, and the controls for the most part were good. Finding all those damn medals for achievement points was a different story, but I didn't HAVE to do those.

Haha, now that was funny. Hearing Sonic say damn for the first time in English in a game was a little amusing but it got old after a bit. I didn't like the game too much either, but I think my biggest mistake was buying it for PS2. I didn't realize the slowdowns were so bad on there compared to the Gamecube and XBox versions.

Agreed, I had fun with Assault and then I got to the last 2 or 3 levels where it got really difficult and frustrating. Adventures was so-so, but Assault ended up being much better and a return to the Star Fox 64 gameplay. Of course, Slippy is still as annoying as ever.

I think the problem with Final Fantasy VII is two-fold.

Firstly, all it is is a redux of the new idea from Final Fantasy VI. The whole technology versus magic thing was great the first time around - and then expanded (strangely, in many parts) for Final Fantasy VII. By the time Final Fantasy VIII came out it got to be too overblown and weird. Floating academies? Cid as a teacher? All the towns looking like resorts from the Bahamas? It just didn't wortk.

Secondly, I think the biggest insult was that the game suffered from what I call "Twinkie Syndrome". Imagine you're hungry for a snack and you have a pair of Twinkies in front of you - it sounds like a great idea. You have one and its great but doesn't fill you up - so then you have the second one and immedeately feel sick and wonder why the fuck you ate it in the first place. FFVIII is just that - it sounds good before and during but leaves you feeling sick and rejected afterward.

Guess I'll step up to the plate and say it too. I ALSO enjoy Final Fantasy VIII! I enjoy it so much I played both PSX and PC version (well playing the PC version just for cheating/hacking purpose). XP

Back then (around 1999 I think) we never own a PSX and was still "stuck" on the SNES. My sister bought us a PSX for Christmas (because it was $99.99 when Sony decided to remove that port from the back of their PSX) and ask what games we want. One of the game was Final Fantasy VIII since we love playing Final Fantasy II (or IV) and III (or VI) on the SNES. So we got the game and play it. At first we didn't like it and thought it was waste of money (even though it was a gift). But a few months later we gave it a try again and quite enjoy it. There was something different that we can't put our finger on it but as long I enjoy it, I don't care what others think. ;)

Oh, then we decided to play other Final Fantasy games like VII but this topic is about games having low rating but people enjoying it. XP

I liked Pokemon Ranger a lot, and I don't even like Pokemon., including Mudkipz.

I absolutely loved all the .Hack games. While IGN's reviews were apparently pretty kind for the original series, the general word about them wasn't. Boring button-mashing combat, only 4-5 types of dungeons, too short and expensive since it was split up into 4 volumes at $50 each, etc. While all of that was true to an extent, I could easily overlook it for the story and characters.

The .Hack//GU series got completely shafted by reviewers. IGN didn't even post reviews for them until the third and final game had been released, nearly a year after the first one, and gave them all 5-5.5 basically for having too many cutscenes and too much reading. Even though they still had very few dungeon types, a screwy level balance, and some pretty cheesy dialogue, the cutscenes and reading (which isn't even necessary) are stupid complaints. I still loved the GU series, and they're some of the very few games I went through the trouble of getting 100% on.

I didn't like Evermore much at all when I first got it, and only made it up to near the end of the Prehistoric area. It was a big disappointment after being hyped up thinking it was a sequel to Secret of Mana, and it got shelved until last year. As soon as I stopped trying to compare it to SoM, bam, suddenly it was a pretty fun game.

To be fair though, having the beginning area be the hardest and most irritating section wasn't a great move either.

Ah hah. I see what you're doing here LeHah. You're just trying to prove some point that review scores don't mean shit after my dismay at Too Human's low score, amirite? Well even though I still won't buy Too Human anytime soon, I'll admit that there are quite a few great games that were unfairly bashed by the critics/media.

For me, my greatest find among low-score reviews has to be Blue Dragon, a quirky little RPG that was scored something like a 6.0 at Gamespot (although it did get a 7.9 from IGN). Granted that score isn't THAT low, but the game deserves a lot more respect. It may have a cookie-cutter plot about saving the world from a maniacal villain, but it mixes that up with some different plot elements that keep it original enough to stand on its own.

The only problem I have with the game is Akira Toriyama's character design, as they all feel too similar for my tastes. I seriously want to call the game Blue Dragonballs since the hero looks like Goku. Plus it makes it sound like the dragon has blue balls, and that's never not funny.

In all seriousness though, the game is fantastic and well worth a playthrough if you're an RPG fan. It doesn't weigh itself down with pointless sidequests or meaningless dungeons. And then there's the awesome battle system, which has become one of my favorites. The boss battle music is kind of hilarious too: Some Japanese rocker screaming "Staring down eternity!" never gets old.

....that's actually Ian Gillan from Deep Purple.

Wow no kidding, I never knew. But he sounds kind of Japanese from the way he sings the song IMO.

Well, a lot of people panned this game or thought it wasn't good enough, but I very much loved the game Dark Sector for my PS3. I thought the game was easy to get into, gave a good challenge [especially since I just beat it and now im on 'Brutal' mode], plus the Glaive is just an amazing weapon. Also, the graphics were stunning. I loved the little details they gave the game, for instance rain dripping and falling down a cliff of rocks. It looked quite realistic.


I honestly think people never gave it a chance because critics like gamespot, IGN...they thought it was mediocre or too repetitive [which is ironic I think because most FPS/TPS can get that way anyway]. I admit the story could have used some touching up, but other than that, its a great game.





Well since FFVIII was mentioned, i'll mention it as well. Since it was my first FF, I have a bond with that game, but other than that I think it was overall a fun experience. I must admit, as I get older...I notice the story is a little obnoxious at times, but for me I had more fun lvl'ing and drawing magic to pump my stats up and lvling my GFs so I can get abilities and shit from them. Plus I adore its soundtrack, that goes without saying.

Earlier this year, Gamespot fired one of its "biggest" writers for not bothering to play the games he was reviewing. Before that even, they'd end up giving some of the worst reviews I've ever seen in my life - Halo 3 starts off with one of the dumbest fucking paragraphs I've ever seen ("Halo 3 is the greatest things you've ever played, even if you disagree with us")