A Tale of Two RPG Reviews

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 27, 2015

I am still not far enough to really comment, *BUT* I find the difference between two reviews by hardcore, old-school sites pretty intriguing for Pillars of Eternity:

RPGWatch gives it a 4/5. Two other reviewers chime in and offer commentary at the end, apparently holding a more positive review of the game. But while David “Corwin” Yarwood gushes over much of the game… the same things I’ve gushed over (so far), he brings up some pretty fair problems that can drag the game down, especially later in the adventure.

RPG Codex holds a much less positive view of the game. Again, I’m not far enough along to really offer any kind of judgment here. The real-time-with-pause and inspiration from D&D 4th edition (with deliberate attempts to avoid imitation) didn’t seem to win many points with reviewer Darth Roxor, but he does offer concrete reasons (in pretty exhaustive detail) why the game seems to merit little more than a “Meh!”

While there’s no numerical rating for the RPG Codex review,  he states, “I don’t know if I could call Pillars of Eternity an outright ‘bad’ game. It’s just painfully generic, with nothing that ever stands out, but I would also say that any sufficiently mediocre game is indistinguishable from a bad one.”

And then there have been some pretty stellar reviews of the game, although I tend to weight the ones from these two sites devoted to classic and modern PC role-playing games a bit heavier than everything else. Although in part, this could tell me that Obsidian has managed to “open up” the game to larger audiences – although possibly at the expense of the hardest-of-the-hardcore.

And this is why I will not mourn the death-of-relevance of aggregate reviews.

Sure, it’s nice being able to find links to all the various reviews in one place. But an aggregate review score is meaningless. And while I do prefer the “Rotten Tomatoes” method of aggregation, the more useful ratio of positive vs. negative reviews, I still find that it’s accuracy is only so-so. Sometimes I find that a certain group of critics panning a movie (or game) is a good indicator that I’ll enjoy it.

On top of that – and I’m not sure how much of this is still true – but in the past there was a pressure on a reviewer to avoid being an “outlier.” You didn’t want your review to be too much higher or lower than the “average” or you’ll lose credibility. That seems bass-akwards to me. You want to establish greater credibility by modifying your true opinion until it blends in with the herd?

It’s not that the RPG Codex is an outlier, so much as that this reviewer looks for different things that constitute a great game… and finds it wanting. And he explains this in detail. Maybe too much detail. And maybe he gives short shrift to some aspects that I, as a consumer, value. Maybe for me, the crafting system in an RPG is the be-all, end-all of the gaming experience (hint: it’s not), and so I’d weight that far heavier than everything else. It’s be weird, but legitimate. And as a consumer, I’d gravitate towards a reviewer who does likewise.

The problem here is in actually getting to know a single reviewer that well, and truly “feeling out” their preferences. Back in the old days, if you read the same magazine month after month, with a review by one reviewer appearing regularly for a review or two each month, you’d get a pretty good idea of where they stand by the time… well, sometimes by the time they quit reviewing games. These days, on websites, it seems less consistent, although at least in the case of the two sites I mentioned above, the reviewers have been around a while and probably aren’t going anywhere soon.

So the point is… do I have a point? Yes. Point. Pay attention to individual reviews. Be wary of sites that hide the reviewer’s identity. And as always, have fun!

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