What's with the bad reviews recently?

[Sugoikage]

This game looks interesting and someday i might wanna buy it. But, what's with the reviews recently?

[EureVerbrauchtheit]

Depends on - quickly checked a couple of them and most of them are...well...the issue seems to be in front of the computer...and not the game itself...

To be fair - yes...there are bugs - but the devs are working to solve them, they are still providing new content & once you get into this game...it's lovely & really motivating...

Simply ignore reviews like: I don't like this game cause I can't swim...there are reasons, why it makes sense, that you can't swom...esp. when you know, that you unlock parts of the game step by step...

[Sugoikage]

Originally posted by Data:

Depends on - quickly checked a couple of them and most of them are...well...the issue seems to be in front of the computer...and not the game itself...

To be fair - yes...there are bugs - but the devs are working to solve them, they are still providing new content & once you get into this game...it's lovely & really motivating...

Simply ignore reviews like: I don't like this game cause I can't swim...there are reasons, why it makes sense, that you can't swom...esp. when you know, that you unlock parts of the game step by step...

Thanks for the reply. Ah, i see. But, the first thing that i'm gonna ask is that this game doesn't actually have any performance issues like bad optimizations and crashes right?

[Sabishi1985]

Originally posted by Sugoikage:

Originally posted by Data:

Depends on - quickly checked a couple of them and most of them are...well...the issue seems to be in front of the computer...and not the game itself...

To be fair - yes...there are bugs - but the devs are working to solve them, they are still providing new content & once you get into this game...it's lovely & really motivating...

Simply ignore reviews like: I don't like this game cause I can't swim...there are reasons, why it makes sense, that you can't swom...esp. when you know, that you unlock parts of the game step by step...

Thanks for the reply. Ah, i see. But, the first thing that i'm gonna ask is that this game doesn't actually have any performance issues like bad optimizations and crashes right?

It depends.. For some players the game crashes quite often. Personally I've never experienced any crashes whatsoever. I'm experiencing some minor performance issues though. :-/

Anyway.. I'm pretty sure the bad reviews aren't being posted by players of the PC version. The game has been released on consoles some days ago, and those ports aren't very... ideal at this point. Especially the Switch port seems to be a somewhat horrible mess. ^^' But Nintendo (not sure about Playstation and XBox) isn't offering any kind of rating system, so all the frustrated players end up here and downvote the game. Is it fair? Nope. Is it understandable? Definitely yes.

[Sugoikage]

Originally posted by Sabishi1985:

Originally posted by Sugoikage:

Thanks for the reply. Ah, i see. But, the first thing that i'm gonna ask is that this game doesn't actually have any performance issues like bad optimizations and crashes right?

It depends.. For some players the game crashes quite often. Personally I've never experienced any crashes whatsoever. I'm experiencing some minor performance issues though. :-/

Anyway.. I'm pretty sure the bad reviews aren't being posted by players of the PC version. The game has been released on consoles some days ago, and those ports aren't very... ideal at this point. Especially the Switch port seems to be a somewhat horrible mess. ^^' But Nintendo (not sure about Playstation and XBox) isn't offering any kind of rating system, so all the frustrated players end up here and downvote the game. Is it fair? Nope. Is it understandable? Definitely yes.

Alright, this might be a conclusion for my question. Thanks for the reply. Appreciated

[Purrz]

This game is so fun, if any negatives recently its that ^ but the bugs are somewhat there but id rather have the devs working towards fixing bugs than a bugless game where the devs do nothing and when there is a bug they have no idea what theyre doing. I bought this game in beta and have seen consistent improvements

[JVC]

The many recent bad reviews seems to be a Chinese thing. The game is developed in China, and a minor side story has become very unpopular among Chinese fans. The developers have now promised to change that part of the story.

Don't want to spoil it here, but it has to do with one of the NPCs and was something that hardly anyone would experience since it happens five years after completing the main storyline. Very few people would play the same character for that long after completing the main story.

[AWAWA Liz]

Is there any rhyme or reason for the crashes occurring only to certain people? What components would increase said crashes? Is it AMD related? Intel? Is it the graphics card?

I know it's a little off topic but people were complaining about random crashes as well.

[Caradog]

People just seem insanely nitpicky when it comes to this game. People calling it bland when it's one of the most colorful and well designed landscapes I've had the joy of romping about lately. Critting this game for things then then praise other games for having the same or worse in. I really don't get why people are so hard on this game, seems to be the one to hate recently. The switch reviews are the worst, metacritic is so full of hyper emotional and frankly dubious subjective claims. People slamming the devs for a "cash grab" even when they are actively working hard to patch and improve content...it's a bad cash grab if they still work on it after they get paid. And seriously if 2 minutes loading bothers those people I wonder if a relaxing game like this is for them to begin with. The switch port isn't the "horrible mess" it's made out to be, not even by half, so those reviews aren't understandable

Sure there's issues, one of the worst is just the lack of consistency across the board, something that could be such an easy fix (The zelda approach to voiceacting and just being selective would have helped so much, ensuring there's perks for everyones friendship levels etc little things which wouldn't nessicarily be more work but just planned a bit better) but at the same time theres so much content anyway. Such a huge world you get to grow and change and so few games like this tackle such a feat.

Is it because it threatens the limelight of everyones favourite indie darling Stardew Valley?

[Darknife777]

Originally posted by Sabishi1985:

Originally posted by Sugoikage:

Thanks for the reply. Ah, i see. But, the first thing that i'm gonna ask is that this game doesn't actually have any performance issues like bad optimizations and crashes right?

It depends.. For some players the game crashes quite often. Personally I've never experienced any crashes whatsoever. I'm experiencing some minor performance issues though. :-/

Anyway.. I'm pretty sure the bad reviews aren't being posted by players of the PC version. The game has been released on consoles some days ago, and those ports aren't very... ideal at this point. Especially the Switch port seems to be a somewhat horrible mess. ^^' But Nintendo (not sure about Playstation and XBox) isn't offering any kind of rating system, so all the frustrated players end up here and downvote the game. Is it fair? Nope. Is it understandable? Definitely yes.

It also probably didn't help that they advertised this as a "farming" game even though farming isn't a big part of the game. They should have just advertised the game for what it was.

[Frieren]

People blame the devs just because the game ends up not being what the players thought it would be and thats on the players not the devs .... players blame stuff on devs like performance when yes it could be the game but it could also be their computers ... etc etc etc etc.
this game hasn't crashed on me yet ... it hitches at times but that hasn't really happened in a while (since i upgraded my video card) ....... everyone has their tastes .. if in doubt try the demo if you're not sure about buying it .. or wait for a sale to get it if there is no demo ... or try the GOG version (i did and i loved it and then i bought it on steam) .....
so you don't like how the story goes (the fate of one NPC in particular) ok and? - its a storyline, if you want a happy ending etc then go play something fluffy LOL .... i love the fact that this particular NPC has a destiny just like all other NPC's ...
yes i love this game and yes it frustrates me at times but i don't blame the devs at every turn.

[EureVerbrauchtheit]

Originally posted by KarmicRequiem:

so you don't like how the story goes (the fate of one NPC in particular) ok and? - its a storyline, if you want a happy ending etc then go play something fluffy LOL .... i love the fact that this particular NPC has a destiny just like all other NPC's ...

To be honest...I was also pretty disappointed after hearing about the fate of this special NPC...but the reality is...how many people are realistically planning to play the game to this point...based on the reviews...the number seems to be really high in China...

Most of the negative feedback written in English can either be ignored (like the swimming-stuff...) OR is about performance...which is (tbh) a valid complain in some cases.

Having a quick look at the reviews written in German - even the negative reviews can be considered as quite positive/constructive & fair...especially as most of them have been written in a time, where many of us faced game-breaking bugs like the Portia Bridge showstopper.

So...as in most of the cases...reading the negative ones needs some filtering...(same as the super positive ones)...there might be reasons, why things are like they are...

[worstcase11]

About the crashes - I had a few - that said my computer is a laptop, and the rare crashes tended to occure when it was seriously overheating. (Since the last updates the game has been remarkably stable.)
With my setup I am frankly amazed that the game looks as great and runs as smoothly as it does.

[veryinky]

There is a spike of 96 negative reviews on the 23rd to 25th, of these 94 are chinese and 2 are english. The two english are complaining about technical problems while more than 80 of the chinese ones are complaining about the ending of a post-marriage quest for Ginger. So I wonder why this spike happened on those 3 days and why exclusively from china.

[AWAWA Liz]

Originally posted by worstcase11:

About the crashes - I had a few - that said my computer is a laptop, and the rare crashes tended to occure when it was seriously overheating. (Since the last updates the game has been remarkably stable.)
With my setup I am frankly amazed that the game looks as great and runs as smoothly as it does.

If that's the case then something in the game's code is making it work much harder than what would be intended (optimization...). On regular desktop computers the crashes would have to occur less if lack of heat distribution is the main cause. My desktop for example got as hot as 63-65 degrees celsius which would be somewhere in the 140s fahrenheit range when playing v.2 of the game. Imagining that on a laptop... I hope your machine doesn't get fried...

Also in another topic I've seen there were assets for the game that were failed to be compressed properly, meaning big chunks of data having to render the game at all times is a real killer for less heat distributing computers, more so than being able to run the game at all. But I guess the two go together.

[JVC]

Originally posted by veryinky:

There is a spike of 96 negative reviews on the 23rd to 25th, of these 94 are chinese and 2 are english. The two english are complaining about technical problems while more than 80 of the chinese ones are complaining about the ending of a post-marriage quest for Ginger. So I wonder why this spike happened on those 3 days and why exclusively from china.

It seems that this extra storyline wasn't videly known among Chinese fans until then, and Ginger is very popular among them. Apparently, a Pathea employee made things worse by writing on Weibo, that the story wouldn't be changed, and that made things flare up.

A few days later, a developer wrote on Baidu that they respected all the negative criticism, that they would change the story and would accept input from fans about how it could be changed.

Disclaimer: I couldn't find the original post on Weibo. The Baidu post is this one: https://tieba.baidu.com/p/6111598719