@Xb1ps4

At what point do you reach end game and does that change the other part of the game that people hate? Why does it matter if you have to play through countless fetch quests to get to legendary fetch quests. How much leeway do we need to give Microsoft?

This site is called n4g. If you read the comments and the votes, it may as well be called playstationenthusiast (too bad its already taken). I agree that reviews by obviously partisan sites should be viewed with suspicion, but the ones people should be more concerned about are ones that hide their partisanship. N4G is no exception.

@eonjay

I can’t answere your first question I haven’t played the game, however I do have it through game pass and will give it a shot but admittedly this isn’t my kind of game.

I’m not asking to give ms leeway.... all I’m pointing out is that a lot of these reviews are from places I have never heard of until this game came out so they might be a bit unfair and biased.. personally I like ign and gameinformer reviews they seem to be on the same track with me on what I would like..

@Krib

They can rate it the same way that GT Sport, NMS and Drive Club were. As you suggest it the game is incomplete. The 'end game' is BS and you know and everyone here know its just an excuse to give it a pass. If those games listed got a bad grade for being short on content even though they all got free content that far expanded each then same for SoT. So yeah its ironic how you always give MS a pass on any garbage they try to pull. $60 for an incomplete game is unforgivable according to your own words so yeah being a hypocrite as usual. If this were a Playstation or Nintendo game you'd be here crying about how the low grades deserved for 4 years of work and repetitive garbage. Shoes on the other foot and you prop it up instead? Uh... Okay there bud that's some good 'objectivity'.

***This site is called n4g.***

And it's also not a site selling you 'their' opinion. Any opinion here is from the community, not from writers or people aimed to sell you something.

You can't say "most people on N4G are sony fanboys, therefore we can't take any site credibly." That's not how journalism works. They're journalists, we're not. And you're comparing community focus with journalist opinion/bias.

I can say with the utmost certainty that N4G is mostly Sony Fanboys. That does not change the fact that this game has come up short.

@RealHeisenberg

Well that's not hard when the other side fails to draw in fans in the first place.

For everyone calling n4g's community too playstation biased, remember when the 360 was doing well? Some of you people are either too young or just have to ridiculously short memories. As for Sea of Thieves, it was obvious it would turn out like this, after all the demos/videos we saw. I think some people are just desperate to have a good exclusive on the Xone.

I agree, failure to draw in more fans is definitely on MS. Maybe they can turn it around, maybe not. I'm set either way.

As for when 360 was doing well, what was that 2006 and 2007, this site was still full of Sony fanboys. I witnessed it. The difference now is that there are significantly less MS fanboys which is likely due more to what Sony has done right compared to what MS done.

So I guess by your logic, there shouldn't be any reviews of any games until they release all the patches and dlc required to make the game feel complete. Right? Maybe we should just wait a year before games get reviewed and tell everyone "buyer beware, you are on your own!"

Destiny 2 debuted with better reviews and we all know how that turned out in due course

@lawiig
yes and no
story - yes
gameplay - no
graphics and preformance - no
main missions - yes
side quests - no
online only games mp/pvp - no
online only with sp/coop - yes
and in saying that if reviewers got early copies which they held back which we know the reason why now some of them might have done enough in a week and on release day wouldnt have to rush to try and do reviews for peope that go by reviews to spend the money they may not have much of to spend on a game but saved up to get it.

@letsago no not at all, but the pirate legend stuff is in the game now.

If it takes too much grind to get there then score it down, but it's weird the reviews are out before anyone in the world has done what Rare say are the best voyages, and none of them even make honest note of the fact they haven't seen that stuff

@law
I don't think he's saying finish but play it more in depth. Honestly though even with that consideration $30 should've been the price point. Maybe after a couple of updates $60, just not now

Krib, this game has been in development for a while. Come up with things for it?! NMS was trashed left and right for a lack of content. How is this game different?

Alright guys... well, MakoD has determined this isn't really a game, not really. So let's all just roll up the sails, cancel our game night with our friends and cancel GamePass or return your physical copy.

Apparently everything I'm doing, the fun time with friends and PvP, the cosmetics that I'm unlocking and customizing my character and boat with just means absolutely nothing... Because apparently it's not a game, not really.

/s

@Krib

Whoa so the guy who always suggest GT Sport was incomplete is going to give SoT a pass after 4 years of development? For so called 'end game' content?! Lol. What a total hypocrite. SoT is just a badly designed and implemented game. You guys should expect way more than you're getting. Pretty sure you suggested paying for an incomplete game was not cool. Yet here you are propping SoT up? Lol.

@chevalier

If no one has gotten to the end game content how can they rate it?
@letsgo
they haven’t finished the content in the game. I’m not asking they wait for all the DLC, but you don’t even know what the endgame content is. it could be different but you never know

@trooper
NMS was trashed because they lied to everyone about what it was. If they hadn’t lied, it wouldn’t have been hated on like it was. Rare hasn’t lied about a thing with this. It’s a online co-op pirate adventure.

@Mako
go read through that guys further reddit post. People are asking him to prove he is who he says he is and he’s making up excuses the entire time. It’s still not confirmed it’s him and not some fanboy (if you look at his other comments from before it definitely looks like that could be the case) So quit acting like his words are the gospel and repeating them every time you comment..

ok, so I guess we wait until the first players/reviewers unlock and finish these 'legend voyages' you're talking about. I was super interested in this title but reviews, videos and streams are really not winning me over right now.

@letsa_go... there have been several sites that have gone back to re-review a game after some time has passed. Especially if there has been significant content that changes the overall aspect of the game. It's nothing new anymore since most games are released in an incomplete state.

Post release content is usually viewed and reviewed either by itself or as a whole to the game in a re-review.

No one may of got to legend voyages but that could because people get bored after a while. I have put about 6 hours or so into this game so far. About 2 of those 6 hours I have had some fun taking on other ships ect. The rest of those hours have been spent just sailing around doing fetch quests being very bored. Am at the point now where I can't even force my self to play it by my self and am simply waiting for 1 or 2 friends to come online and hopefully the game will become fun again.

Hate on this game all you want but you can't say "it's not a game".

People could argue that something like a Telltale game or a Heavy Rain is "not a game", but they'd be wrong too.

You not liking it doesn't just make it "not a game".

All of these arguments about lack of content and whatever else, it just sounds to me like 1 of 2 things.

1) The haters that were never going to play this because it's Microsoft

2) People that wanted the game to be something different than what it was obviously always going to be.

There has been a decent amount of info about the game out there, nobody should be surprised.

It's exactly what I expected it to be, and I love it.

I know some people won't, but I knew that a long time ago as well.

This is dumb. If I have to play hours and hours of repetitive gameplay to get to one more new thing then what is the point?

End game content is usually just expanded and more difficult early game content. It may be more fun, but I can't imagine they have a hugely different set of quests and things to do at the end.

Doesn’t matter the grind to legend is uninspired and lacking content.

How dumb are people. “You haven’t seen the best part of the game”. Well if the game sucks what’s the point of going to the end? Talk about a carrot on a stick! You guys are being so tricked it’s not even funny. Multiple things with this game is a trick. Wake up

Legendary voyages aren't necessarily "end game" or "a grind to get to". The idea is that anyone can go on legendary voyages with a player that has got there, so you could potentially do them the first time you ever play the game. That's not an horrific grind.

I dare say in 3-4 weeks these will be quite common. I get the haste in releasing reviews, and I get the criticisms. I am not pinning much hope on pirate legends being the saviour of the game, but it just seems nuts to completely fail to mention them in these early reviews.

***Not a single person has reached the end game yet.***

Well, that's not true. Plenty of people have unlocked the special end quests and have told us they are the same. All you're doing from there is just more quests for more cosmetics/faction gain that goes nowhere for now. Remember also that the Kraken, which tons of gamers have encountered, was considered an 'end game' event as well.

---

If you want only people who have 'done everything' to review games, more often than not you're going to exclude 90% of the gamers of this sort of game because most people are going to get bored and stop playing because it's boring before they even get to what could be more fun or could just be more boring.

The argument here is whether or not you can properly review a game for what it is in a few days. Every other MMO has been reviewed like this, but suddenly this one game with lots of criticism shouldn't be? Yeah, sorry, but I get not listening to 'I played all day yesterday so I know' reviews, but this late after release, people understand how the game is played and they know what the end game content is.

@Christopher Rare anticipated it would take the community 2-3 weeks to get the first pirate legend, and they expected that player to become something of a celebrity. I expected a bit of a song and dance when it happened and if there has been then it passed me by, but that's certainly possible.

If there are already loads of legends I guess that is a further indication that Rare over-estimated the content they had included.

***If there are already loads of legends I guess that is a further indication that Rare over-estimated the content they had included.***

I don't agree with this as it's a common issue with people working way harder than planned to achieve goals in MMOs. The average gamer isn't unlocking that content, they're still weeks away from it. But, those people who spend their lives in games, streaming, putting up gaming videos on how to do everything in a game? They have this stuff down because it's what they do and they make money off of it in this day and age.

I don't think it's fair to assume that their ability to know how to and work towards end game content means they don't design well for the average gamer, they're just an exception that they can't limit without further limiting everyone else in a much larger way.

I think Rare is happy with the content. I think there was also a ton of miscommunication on the expectation of content in the game as it obviously didn't meet expectations. I think this game turned out how whomever decided what it was wanted it to turn out. I just don't think that it's a far-reaching style of content like most sandbox type of games.

I think like some other games, we need to realize that this is a niche game. It's not intended to be for the masses. Minecraft was a fluke, not the norm. We need to realize that and hold our expectations back a little.

Having said that, reviews of the game can be legitimate in representing an opinion as well as a general expectation of the game based on what they've been told. A lower scored game doesn't always mean a bad game so much as a game that isn't for everyone. One of my favorite games from last generation, Alpha Protocol, was poorly scored but hit all the marks for me (other than boss fights early on).

Didn't the armchair critics criticize Gran Turismo Sport for launching before enough content was available for them to make it a "full experience"? I actually thought Sport deserved its criticisms for launching before the wealth of content was available and I would argue that Sea of Thieves should not be held to a different standard.

How can there be endgame content if there is no leveling up system? And is a game really good if you have to play until the end to see if there is any enjoyment to be had? I can usually tell if I will enjoy a game or not within the first hour or two of playing.

@ porkChop

You don't need to play an entire game to understand the game mechanics or what the game developers intention was in order to review a game. The game is tedious you can have fun with games like these but it really shows the lack of depth in the developers part if you are forcing the player to have to make his own fun. The bottom line is that when you critique anything you are critiquing what you like and what you don't like many people do not like how tedious SOT plays it is what it is.

Pork- it is an extremely poor excuse it would be like trying to say if inside of a game that had over 8,000 let's just say "Demi seeds" that in order to give a proper review somebody needs to collect all 8000 of them so if I'm playing this game and the story doesn't exist ,the game mechanics are non-existent, the game was filled with bugs , the enemies are not even properly modeled and completely unfinished I mean do you really believe I need to collect all 8,000 demi seeds to give an opinion on this game? So what you're saying is after the 7999 seeds I can't tell you if it's bad or not? Only after I get every last one? Come on pork I read lots of your post I know you're not a dumb person but this just doesn't make any sense whatsoever you're literally trying to say and opinion cannot be rendered unless the game is completed but I believe if the game is of poor quality you don't need to do 100% of it to realize that

no one is really that stupid.

How can I give a crap about a games endgame content if the quality of the entire game is garbage? Do you seriously believe after 1000 hours it's suddenly going to turn into Assassin's Creed 4 type of gameplay story quality?

So you have to understand that if they've already played enough to realize that the elements of this game are garbage I don't think they need to go through all the content to come through this consensus. I remember having a similar debates regarding Battlefront 2015 and one of the things I remember reading was an individual saying that the game is not bad but it lacks content so they weren't going to purchase it and I have to question if the game is fun what does it matter how much content the game actually has if you enjoy it?

It's why I firmly believe that the strongest issues with Battlefront 2015 was not the amount of content I would argue it was simply the Bland gameplay itself only because in order for somebody to want more content the game was actually be fun in the first place.

So are you going to tell me you're going to have no problem playing a thousand hours of this game filled with content and it's one of the worst games ever created? You're basically asking for a lot of something bad.

It would almost be like trying to say someone needs to play a thousand hours of Bubsy 3D to know if it's actually bad 😂😂😂
28514;

So I want you in all seriousness the think of the worst game you've ever played in your life... if the game was 5000 hours long and it was just terrible every single hour are you telling me you're dumb enough to keep playing the game just to give an opinion? Are you literally telling me you're unable to understand the game as bad regardless of how long you decide to play?

Like I said to someone on here before if you don't like Battlefront with 10 Maps you're not going to like Battlefront with a thousand Maps the volume of content is not going to change your damn mind if you're not having fun.

How can someone review something when only played the game for 5 minutes, or in sea of thieves case not even half a day which isn't enough to warrent a review. This is why devs need to stop handing Copys of games out because there's a very biased approach out there and a trend that reviewers are now setting, review a game quickly and destroy it fast and they have done this with good games all to often and often they are wrong..

I wonder what people expect to be so amazingly awesome with the end game content. Is it going to be different from early game content? Is there more variety to the quests? Are there multiple bosses, and if so, enough so you aren't just grinding the same one over and over?

Even games that do end game content don't vary things up so much from the rest of the game that is say it'll suddenly be fun. It's usually more challenging, and sometimes adds in a unique aspect, but it doesn't become a whole new game all of a sudden. Anyone that has played an mmo knows this.

@porkchop

Then I guess unless every reviewer has every single car in GT sport or Forza before they can say they finished the game.

As for lack of content and "endgame" content and reviews.

If all there are is fetch quests for chickens and pigs and bananas a d chests before the "end game content" that is fun begins, than it is completely fair to say there is a lack of content to keep people occupied and immersed before hitting end game.

Games aren't supposed to be about just end game content but the journey there as well. And if the journey consists of dangling a carrot in front you with promises but all you see is bananas around you, it's safe to say some people won't be bothered to make it to end game.

Porkchop you are not very bright if it doesn’t make sense to you. Sorry man. If the whole game is repetitive and horrible and bland, what makes you think the very last part will be any different. The core of most games present themselves pretty quick, I mean this just seems like an excuses to prop the game up. You could do this with any game. Yeah mass effect sucks but that end part was amazing! 10 out of 10

Here's the train of thoughthought for this.

That last jrpg I played wasn't very good. It had a shallow story, repetitive uninspired game play, and wasn't much to look at. I found it passable, and fun at times when playing with my friends around because when groups of people get together it's easier to.have fun despite us still not really enjoying the game, and that one guy who gets excited rubs off on the rest of us and in our drunken stupor, we can say we are having fun. Despite all that, that last boss battle in the game was actually pretty good, so look forward to doing that over and over again until the dev graces us with some dlc

@aconnellan

When did explaining a control scheme and how the game functions become hand holding? And to answer your question yeah its a problem for a large segment of the gaming population makes it a bad game.

Why should games that charge 60 bucks off the gate not get a day 1 review? All games went through the same ring including service based games so why should SOT be given special previlage?

You are expecting people to dish out 60 bucks and 'try' the game on their own expense to which I say no thank you! Reviewers can take a second look after a few months and change the review jf they want which happens for many a games. But judging a game that costs 60 bucks on day 1 is totally valid.

I went to a restaurant. It looked great. Had the appetizer, kinda small portion, kinda bland but it was cheap. Ordered salad, didn't come with dressing, it was just wet lettuce onions and tomato. The soup came, I wasn't feeling great about it. Asked the waiter what it was, this cloudy bowl... he said try it..i did literally tasted like chicken top ramen. Not bad but not impressive, after all I am at a restaurant right? Main course, steak and potatoes, can't mess it up. Out comes this beautifully plated steak a handful of those nice little red potatoes. I cut into the steak, at least I try to, it's rubber. Literal rubber. I don't even bother with the potatoes. I complain to the waiter and ask if it's a joke. I get up to leave and everyone is saying stay for dessert.... f outta here. Stay for the full meal, review the full game, wahh you gotta play more, no, no we don't if tghe game is that bad, that early then there's something foundationally wrong with the game and it deserves the score it got.

A lot of new players don’t know how to play this. So they can easily get confused. So yes, the game should have tutorials in first place.

That's really odd cause I didn't see any complaints when that 9.3 score came out less then 24 hours after the game released.

There is nothing new to do after a handful of hours. Why wouldn't it be fair to review it at that point. With the knowledge the game is adding the requirement to spend gold upon death and that they are adding microtransactions after release, I'd give them an even lower score than the current average myself.

people don't understand nuance or abstract thought. they just hear two games and decide they like one better than the other so the one they don't like can't be anything close to the one they like. I get that you are speaking in a larger context, not a direct comparison. it could be a huge community building game that has a long burn that could also extend to other platforms and or be cross platform. it could be like sea of thieves in that regard etc. never mind the knuckle draggers on this site. its impossible to have a reasonable, objective conversation here.