I have to echo earlier sentiments; more than anything Yahtzee said, the fans are the ones turning me off to this game. Hell, half the time I buy the games he rags on, partly because they drop in price used after he does, and partly because I know his tastes and mine have exactly matched up maybe... twice? Three times if we count how inexorably horrid Haze was, but I have yet to meet a defender of that game.
I like JRPGs, I enjoyed Mercs 2 and Borderlands and even Bioshock 2, though I dug them mostly due to multiplayer. You know, the thing he hates? Ergo, the thing I would NEVER come to him about? Ever? At all? I agree with him that single player should NEVER be a toss away concern- no game I buy should equal a suicide pact for my friends to have to get the same game -so in THAT I pay critical attention.
I hear him say grind and collection and all that, I'm thinking that sounds kinda cool to me. He says exploration, I'm loving that. He says sweeping landscapes, something the Wii isn't well known for, I'm thinking that's pretty nifty. His review well went towards SELLING me on the game.
Then I came to the response thread for that one, and this response thread. Hoo boy.
To sum up what I have learned; there is no story. The game punishes you violently for not figuring out its strategies. The weapons swing very slowly. The game is, at once, very quick to get through in terms of various quests and yet also very long due to being frakking endless. The exploration boils down to just going after more of the same monster, which typically is just the extended family of a boss you killed. And evidently, you see these as positives.
Seriously, I don't get that. You grin and gleefully comment on what naive fools we are, how quickly you can topple various bosses, and I'm left to wonder what you get out of it. It doesn't sound like you're saving the world, or even doing much in favor of the human ecosystem. It sounds like, well, you're playing a deer hunting game where the deer will murder your face off if you don't hit them in the left rear leg first or something.
In spite of all Yahtzee's bluster, the Wii isn't a worthless system. It has good games in a wide variety of forms. It's not like we're dealing with the Virtual Boy and the best you're getting is that one Wario title. Other than because you're long time fans, why pick this game over the others for the console? Or for that matter, why pick this game over the countless other co-op games available in this current generation? Other than 'It's cool to beat up sea monsters with swords and hammers', I haven't heard ANYTHING from this game's myriad defenders to convince me it's worth playing. Hell, some of the things Yahtzee mentioned that intrigued me and made me WANT to buy it, you managed to shoot down while white-knighting this game. It sounds like a step backwards, and a fairly dull samey one at that; that's not exactly worth a 50$ entry fee from where I'm standing.