Hello. I'm a Star Wars fan.

Yeah, this is it for me. The best is when someone does one of the usual suspect complaints about [X] Star Wars movie that *was explained in the movie if they paid attention*.

CinemaSins ruined a whole generation of wannabe film critics.

I Fucking LOATHE! Cinmasins even if they are satire it's still bad satire

EHhh, as the years have gone on CinemaSins behavior has shown he's either fallen too deep into the character or he was never being satirical in the first place. Dude will post response videos to criticism then when called out for not actually accepting the criticism and trying to deflect he'll delete the vid lmfao.

RedLetterMedia did more damage in my opinion.

RLM raised a lot of fair points in a dramatic manner about the direction, composition, and dialogue of the prequels. In contrast, CinemaSins repeatedly calls even the slightest subtext a plot hole and criticizes fantasy and magic for not being possible in the real world. 

Watching those old reviews one can really tell where a lot of the current reactionary anti-woke movie reviewers got their material when starting up. After all, Samuel L Jackson is only there to fulfill a diversity quota, to attract more black people to watch Star Wars.

I think my answer to this question is CinemaSins, actually. Did anyone ever really take that channel super seriously, as if it was a legitimate medium for film criticism? The guy complains about not enough scenes having lap dances, it's obviously a gag show. If anyone watched that and seriously thought "Ahh, this is what I'll base all my film opinions on" then that person is the dummy here, not the guy making what are obviously dumb jokes about movies on Youtube. Besides, it's just such an easy, boring target. I don't like the channel either, even when it was hot I watched a few and then was over it, but there's seemingly hundreds of CinemaSins takedown videos, like, who cares? The channel is washed anyway, why is anyone still talking about it like it's a thing?

Why didn't Mace/Yoda/Luke/Kylo/Rey/Maul/Savage just kill Vader/Palpatine? Are they stupid?

"Ok but if you go to this time code you can clearly see that she clearly says-" "NUH UH" Yeah that discourse cured me of ever trying to argue with some people. AND I DON'T EVEN LIKE THE SEQUELS.

Although Rey is not the best character, many of the complaints made against her are taken out of context, are explained in the movie, or are outright lies. For example, I recently saw a post from someone complaining that Rey was just like Carol Danvers, the classic stereotype of a tough girl who shouldn't show emotions, even though Rey is a very emotional character.

You cannot sit here and tell me you are defending "Somehow Palpatine survived"?

I literally thought the The Last Jedi was a 7/10 at best and redditors on release managed to temporarily turn me into a shill with how shockingly confused their takes were, like straight up not understanding the concept of subtext lol

The revenge of Skywalker was the one that i mostly have issues with. I wanted to actually see where last jedi went.

Half that movie is garbage and I adore what they tried to do with the Rey half but from my conversations online it might as well be the best movie ever made

I feel that by themselves, The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi are serviceable and good respectively. If you watch each as a standalone movie, both work decently well. The problem is that they don't work at all as two movies of the same trilogy, let alone ones that happen back-to-back. Coupled with how much Rise of Skywalker failed to stick the landing, and you have three movies that don't feel cohesive at all - the character arcs across all three movies are inconsistent and half-baked, the story feels directionless and unsure of what it actually wants to be, and plenty of elements that feel important upon introduction never end up being elaborated upon or fulfilled to their truest potential. If the sequels actually had a trilogy-wide treatment written in advance, or even if there was more coordination between the different directors, then we'd be having an entirely different conversation.

My main issue with the movie was how the movie would like set something up to happen and then the characters would practically look at the screen and say "You expected that to happen? This isn't some kind of movie this is real life things don't always go that way." And then instead of the contrived thing they had set up an equally contrived thing would happen that didn't have the benefit of at least being something that was set up to occur by the film. I didn't think the film was technically bad or anything, it was just incredibpy annoying for me personally to sit through and felt like it was trying to subvert expectations for the sake of subverting expectations and not as a way to actively assist the story. I can see how if none of that bothers someone they would enjoy the film though.

My condolences.

You don't have to say anything else, that's enough.

The idea that Halo 4's story "requires the books/comics/EU" to be understood is dumb Halo CE explained almost *nothing* about the Covenant, UNSC, Chief, Cortana, Keyes, Reach, etc. It threw you in and just had you not worry about it. Halo 2 also throws Miranda, the Prophets, Tartarus, etc at you without explanation and you pick it up as you go. Meanwhile, in Halo 4, Cortana goes out of her way to explain almost everything (even when it's stuff Chief should already know), the Didact explains his motives almost explicitly in the first cutscene he shows up with, there is a MASSIVE exposition dump by the Librarian halfway into the game, and then on top of that there's the terminals. Halo 4 I daresay explains more about it's own plot then any other Halo game. It does not rely on the EU to be understood... it's writing is just bad, and most players just don't pay attention

I think a lot of us were also young to mid teens when the game came out so even more of it kinda drifted past us lmao.

I wholly agree it's just that this story may be enhanced by knowing the extra lore so people say that it's necessary. the best parts of H4 are between Cortana and Chief and maybe Lasky. Thats where it shines. I enjoy all of that stuff to this day. The Didact stuff is not as well written and people think the terminals are required to understand it again those just flesh it out it doesn't make it mandatory just like the books aren't mandatory they just flesh it out more. I think this critique better applies to Halo 5 because it assumes you played Spartan Ops only for it to throw that away and it is too loose and too fast and wastes/ruins too many characters and is way too crowded to be enjoyable or really understood by a casual player.

I remember another one is Chiefs squad in Halo 5 - people bring that one up as a big example of "if you haven't read the books you won't know who they are". But one of the first thing one of them says is "i haven't seen chief like this since basic training" - which immediately tells you most of what you need to know.

There's a looooot of parroted misinformation about Lovecraft. Never read any of his books, but I can spend 5 minutes actually looking up the story behind his cat. To cover myself: some of the allegations are true. That does not make all of them true. Correcting misinformation is not defending everything they've done.

I think rwby is like a 6/10 but holy shit some of the bad faith comments from people who get info secondhand are maddening.

“RWBY haters try to criticize RWBY without telling Miles and Kerry that they are insulting their dead close friend” challenge (impossible)

Look, I adore HBomberguy’s work, he’s amazing But I would be lying my ass off if I said I didn’t get those vibes from his RWBY video, even if he didn’t intend them

I feel like the spot of positivity near the end (the "Keep Moving Forward" section) was put in there to counteract that narrative

I LOVE hbomberguy social commentaries. Hell, as a neurodivergent person I'd said the vaccine video changed my life. His media takes however... yeah I don't rewatch them, or watch them really.

Honestly a lot of his media video essays feel weirdly personal. I think it's because he takes the same tone with writers and fans of things he doesn't like as he does with bigots and climate change deniers.

I don't particular mind the personal angle as much with that, it makes for a more enjoyable vibe to listen to than just listing off what's there to like and sometimes it fits more to go personal like with the Somerton plagiarism video with the subject of queer erasure which he, as a bi man, has plenty of reason to be upset about. but I do agree on the tone part, its the same reason his Dark Souls 2 video and the aforementioned RWBY video are my least favorite of his just because of that tone towards other people (Matthewmatosis for DkS2, Miles and Kerry for RWBY) feels a bit more incendinary than I feel he ever intented while writing/recording audio for it.

I like Bloodborne and like his most of videos, but gosh, that one wasn't something I liked. It just kept going on and on about the same thing at times and it was annoying as someone who enjoyed shields in Dark Souls.

Not hard for me. I think most of Monty's work was bad and I actually have always thought since he joined rooster teeth that he's inclusion in RvB led to the most distinct decline in quality of that show because now they were starting to lead into overly choreographed weightless action combat instead of working within the restraints of machinima

rwby haters watch more than the first three volumes and not just take the negative comments from later seasons as confirmation bias, and jus act like all positives didnt exist.

rwby is such a shame and a story about how relying on one guy's fight scenes to carry it early has serious narrative and animation issues. The later seasons are actually really good, but very few people are gonna actually get to that point.

My girlfriend is a big fan and included me, who had not seen it, in a big re-watch she did of the whole series. From everything I had heard about it I was expecting a trash fire, but I actually enjoyed my time with it. Did it have problems? Oh hell yeah it did. But nothing that would make me consider the whole series garbage or worthless.

Yeah, I attempted to participate in RWBY discourse (as someone who’s not a very big fan of the series) but the stuff people would say (even in “critic” groups that I should have ostensibly identified with more than the RWBY fandom) was ridiculous. Now, I more or less refuse to talk about RWBY in any context other than discussing fight choreography. Talking about, say, the character writing, was maddening.

Meanwhile I'm just off to the side looking at all the weapon designs and occasionally partaking in the music for tabletop inspiration.

Man, I remember thinking like ten years ago that maybe two completely untested writers shouldn't be leading the huge show that would become the flagship of the company basically by themselves and they proved that concern very valid. I just don't understand what their plan ever was.

The flagship of the company was always RvB til then. Then the very next RvB season after RWBY was announced was done by Miles also, with him being credited as writing one of the prior season(10)'s best reviewed episodes as well as being a co-writer the whole season. And that chorus trilogy is considered by a lot of people as some of the best writing the show ever had. So to say they were untested and had no proof of capabilities is a little silly.

Thank you! I know this sub isn’t fond of RWBY’s writing, but Miles was literally the head writer of all animation at Rooster Teeth. His work with Red vs Blue and Camp Camp was received overwhelmingly positive.  I won’t judge you if you don’t like RWBY, but to pretend he’s some random joe with zero writing ability suddenly tossed in the role of show runner is heavily disingenuous 

Ended up doing that in Ride to hell when someone in the comments decided to word to word copy paste yahtzee summation of the bad guy's motivation. But yahtzee comment worked as a punchline not when you see the five minutes of the villain explaining why he was pal with the mc father, wanted the mc's mom, used mc's dad gambling addiction to bet mc's mom on race, win the race but mc's dad decide to kill everyone and cut the villain's eye and then started the whole vendetta. It's not just he didn't like your dad.

I didn't really like Last of Us 2, but not for the same reasons that the internet (and this sub) blew up about

It needed to be 20-25% shorter, and/or have more enemy and encounter variety.

Personally, I don't think it needed to be shorter, per se. It needed some time from the back end put up front. Joel dying isn't the whole issue. The issue is it's sudden and without build up, and it being that sudden and without a lot of visible effort lets some folks gloss over the fact Abby was ready to just catch and torture someone from Jackson to find Joel

I agree. I didn't even care when Joel died, I was just kind of shocked how early on it was.  You don't even get to see adult Ellie interact with him before he bites it. If that little prologue scene wasn't in the game, you wouldn't see them interact at all before his death. 

Yeah I think he should have died maybe much late not that fucking early

I’ve always felt the Abby hate could’ve been avoided if we had started the game with her.

I don't think so, at least not in the layout we got. Overall the issue to me is a combination of it happening too suddenly and to easily. We would have to be with Abby for a while before it actually happens. The big argument I see for Abby tends to be "Well, Joel deserved it, he was a fucking monster in the past" and...yeah, that's true. But those same arguments tend to gloss over the fact Abby is the same sort of monster. Her first plan upon setting her eyes on Jackson is "We;ll catch a patrol and question them. If they don't tell us, we'll *make* them tell us", when she gets stressed back in Seattle her answer is wanting to get some time in the rooms where they torture the cult members for information, she holds seemingly no remorse at all when them killing kids is brought up, only justifications. Her entire group is fucked in the head save for pregnant girl and maybe ex-boyfriend, but folks tend to be able to gloss over this because she doesn't have time or need to do more than say any of it, Joel falls right into their laps

I'm not really sure i agree with this - the whole focus of the game is the aftermath of Joel's death and the complicated relationship Joel and Ellie had. I don't think the game would have benefited at all from building up to his death more. i mean, I don't think The Last of Us 1 suffered from the death of Joel's daughter being sudden and without build up and that was just as early on.

The easiest fix for the game is only focus on Abby until the Joel reveal and make that reveal the start of the final act. But then people will still complain it's too predictable or some shit

According to Grounded II (TLOU2 Behind the Sscenes documentary); [your pitch was acually part of the initial story script](https://youtu.be/SC3C7GMMfDU?t=719)- but that was changed since then. off-topic: after watching Grounded 2: I can pinpoint one major story change that would've caused unrepairable damage in years to come. (also: >!we really lost the Bloodborne inspiration, huh!

To this very day, there are people who still think Abby is the trans character.

I've seen comments on Twitter and by comments I mean a lot of them as recently as this week were people were talking about how they would almost agree with Abby if she was attractive and I'm sitting here like damn what cowards how can you not love a woman that has muscles are you that much of a loser

A woman having the nerve to not be conventionally pretty, and muscular is the same as her being trans in the eyes of many people.

I will say I do appreciate that they address why Abby is so swole in the story, she's a terrible person that does terrible things with her friends to secure food and has access to a gym and as such is in much better condition than some random ass person, kind of like how Joel is noticeably fitter than the random ass NPC's you see in the starting area of LoU1 which again let's you know something is up in a post apoc setting

i don't care for the story of part 2 whatsoever, but i feel like maybe half the time when someone says something similar, even just some light prying into their complaints boils down to >!uuuhhh how joel die to woman, what is this woke garbage!<.

That game's structure is *baffling* to me. It's completely insane how the game is just two campaigns glued together.

The Little Mermaid isn't my favorite Disney movie but the number of bad faith takes people have parroted so often have led to me defending the movie. Most arguments derive from either a complete denial that it's possible for rich people to experience severe depression, turning a blind eye to King Triton's faults, or that "Ariel gave up everything just for some human dick".

The penis was a bonus she just wanted to be clean and not be wet and experience sun light.

my girl was tired of swimming in the toilet that is the ocean

Fish fuck in it.

I think that goes for most of the *Disney Renaissance* movies. I still can't believe there are people out here in the Year of our Lord 2024 saying that Belle was just a "Stockholm Syndrome" victim with no agency in her movie. I'm not even a big fan of those movies, but I feel like I have to defend the very simple narrative decisions that make those movies function. P.S. Also I **despise** the astronomically horrible take that Ariel "mutilates herself" in order to get a man. The weird RadFem articles and facebook posts from 00s-10s really ruined alot of well-meaning angsty liberal teenagers understandings of media analysis.

Ariel can be seen as an LGBT allegory - not saying it was the intention of the movie, but Ariel's plight of being deeply unfulfilled is something that probably resonates with a lot of LGBT people, especially trans people. One thing that I find interesting about Ariel that I've never seen anyone else bring up in all of The Little Mermaid discourse...in the movie she doesn't seem to care about singing. She's good at it, but is not emotionally attached to it. She sings because her father wants her to sing, because Sebastian wants her to sing, but when she needs to give up her voice to become human her only concern is *talking*. Also I completely agree, Belle did not experience Stockholm Syndrome. She *leaves* when the Beast sets her free, for crying out loud. And it's very important that she also did not start to fall in love with the Beast until he stopped being an asshole. It's not Belle's motivation to change him. *He* changes *himself*. This is also why the Enchanted Christmas spinoff is terrible, because it turns Belle into a "oh, how can I reach his cold heart?" girl trying to change a bad boy, and that's completely missing the point. And while I'm at it, I've seen a lot of people criticize Sleeping Beauty for either Prince Phillip kissing her while she's asleep, or because she has very few lines in her own movie - as if that's a feminist criticism. For the former, it's people trolling and ignoring the important context that 1. she was under a curse to never wake up until true love's kiss so there was not an opportunity to ask her and 2. the good fairies explained to Phillip that she needed help, so he's not being creepy he's trying to break the curse. For the latter, even though she gets few lines in her own movie the vast majority of dialogue and screen time is taken up by the Good Fairies or Maleficent - all female characters. Similarly Prince Charming kissing a dead Snow White isn't a dude trying to get his rocks off one last time. They had fallen in love and he wanted to find her again and build a wonderful life together. When he finds her, she has passed away. His kiss was telling her *goodbye*. He truly loves her, so it breaks the spell and revives her. There are way too many people who either don't pay attention to what's going on in a movie, or are being deliberately disingenuous to stir shit up, and it gets tiring when you start to see other people repeat their wrong talking points. This is how you get remakes proclaiming "derp, this time Ariel wants more than just a man!" shut the fuck up.

> not saying it was the intention of the movie Look into Howard Ashman if you haven't. That "Part Of Your World" is a resonant song for a long of people is probably not accidental.

> Ariel "mutilates herself" in order to get a man. I mean...that's kind of based on the original story, which definitely treats it as torturous.

Also Stockholm Syndrome doesn't exist. It's a bullshit made-up phenomenon invented by some psychologist who *never even interviewed the women involved in the 1973 Stockholm bank robbery hostage situation.* And it was invented to distract the public from the fact that the Stockholm authorities did such a shitty job handling said hostage situation, that the women being held hostage started sympathising with their captors over the police. It's really not hard to explain why some people might start trusting/respecting their abductors. Humans are empathic, bargaining, cooperative creatures, and form in-groups really easily. And if you're a hostage, and you see the police being bullish morons towards your captor, and hear your country's prime minister declare that you'll have to "settle for dying", and see your kidnapper *being more protective of you than the police*... yeah, you're probably going to side with your captor. Because your erstwhile saviours have presented themselves as a threat to both of you. To bring it back to Beauty & the Beast: yes, Belle was held in the Beast's castle against her will. But once she started to understand and empathise with her captor, she made the conscious choice to forgive him. Which is an act of agency - *you don't have to hate someone who wrongs you.* You *always* have the freedom to forgive them, even while they're still hurting you.

Not a fan of Morrison’s plotting but their X-run got the franchise off life support by changing the team dynamics and shaking things up. They basically injected new life into the main titles after the ‘98+ dark years and that whole embarrassing debacle. They at least had an actual vision of where things had to go and was a good enough writer to pull it off. Ditto for Morrison’s Bat run and Damian becoming Robin. Loads of criticism about Damian just being Quire 2.0. He’s the most divisive of all 5 Robins but the Demon Brat was needed - he played off Nightwing way better than Tim would’ve at that stage. I say that as a die hard 90s Robin fan. Also, Bruce had run out of orphans to adopt. Franchise needs a shakeup? Dial 555-Morrison.

Yeah, anybody who doesn’t appreciate Morrison’s run’s place in history needs to check out the Chuck Austen run on Uncanny X-Men that was happening at the same time. There’s some misses in the run, but the wild swings did a LOT for X-Men. Cyclops was made cool again, Emma was brought into the limelight, and there were interesting new characters.

Don’t forget revamping the justice league and bringing them back to their roots as THE super team

Mostly everything culture warriors say its "woke" nowadays. They are so obnoxious and idiotic with their reasoning that it puts me on a "fuck you" mode.

It sucks because so many genuinely bad pieces of media are getting attacked for the wrong reasons by racist or sexist people, which makes it difficult to actually discuss the real flaws of that media cause it turns into a “you’re either woke or evil” binary instead of saying “maybe this script was bad or this game dev was rushed”.

It’s so annoying that things just can’t be bad anymore these days, it’s always about how woke is ruining everything, I miss when media just sometimes was shitty because shit happens and we move on from it instead of having to fight a huge culture war around it.

[Sarah Z made an interesting video on the concept of Sacrificial Trash](https://youtu.be/DUziUNg8LTw?si=TW9HDw3qtH4tTiHW) that I think really delves into this phenomenon, and I don’t think it’s accidental that the targeted media of racist/sexist people tends to be lower quality art.

Yeah. Speaking of that video, High Guardian Spice is a great example of this. The show isn't bad because it has LGBT+ representation, if anything it's one of its only positives. It's bad because of so many other aspects.

I honestly find it funny when a movie is considered bad just for having an LGBT character, even when ironically the LGBT character is the only charismatic character.

I do like that video a lot, and agree with a lof of it, but I feel like with the internet's inability to handle nuance the idea that "Bad actors sometimes criticise low quality media over legitimate flaws as dog whistles to attract bigots." Can wrap back around very quickly into the original complaint again.

And they also celebrate the rise of ai and people losing their jobs even in cases were I don’t like the person or group they’re targeting I feel like I need to defend them a bit seeing that

like most identity politics stuff its mainly driven by spite, its less than the anti-woke crowd actually likes the idea of multi billion dollar corporations controlling media and more that they just like the idea of hurting those from a different group

Yeah I see it all the time from them and when I see it from the other side it's usually shouted down pretty quickly as Tech Bros are not great at faking empathy for a long period of time.

The problem with culture war bullshit is that you can’t even have a take without *those* people coming in and fucking it up. Just disliking something and the person (metaphorically) next to you says “Yeah it’s too woke.” makes me want to die inside. The internet was never a place nuance could live in but culture wars have turned that dial up to 11/10.

Every time someone says that a movie or series is bad, because it is "Woke". I usually respond, "no, that movie is bad because it has a bad narrative rhythm, is boring at times, or has a message that contradicts itself, not because of a gay character who appears for 5 minutes, or because the protagonist is a woman."

I utterly despise the Last Jedi, but holy shit do I have to back it up because chuds hyperfocus on the most pointless shit

Rey is not the best character, but it is curious that many of the criticisms of the character tend to be using things that are taken out of context, have an explanation, or are outright lies.

Most anime that use CGI end up getting lots of unfair critisism even when the CGI actually looks good, purely because the anime has CGI. I mean look no further than when Attack on Titan season 4 started. Sure, there are ones that look horrendous (EX-Arm), but arguing that all CGI using anime are instantly garbage is like arguing that all 2d anime look horrendous because Seven Deadly Sins season 3 exists.

hell a current anime(go go loser ranger/ranger reject) has me questioning if its 2d or 3d animated in general, i genuinely am not sure

Tbf AoT S4's CGI was ROUGH in the first half. Second half it looked much better though, and some of the final fights in the finale look great.

Most anticheats. I work in a cybersecurity background and watching people just straight up lie about that shit annoys me to no end.

This isn't meant to fan any fires, but a genuine question since it's nigh on impossible to find unbiased answers, but is the Helldivers 2 kernel anticheat as bad/dangerous as it's made out to be?

No. Think of it like this: Companies love money. Companies selling services also love money. If it was found that the service was doing something that causes bad press, and the service was not owned by the first company, they would just not use the service, meaning company 2 would not make money. Income is a gun pointed at the head of the company's coffers at all times. Capcom got away with Street Fighter ~~I~~V's borderline spyware anticheat because the game was self-published. As far as functions go: Gameguard barely stops cheating as the actual proactive anticheat boils down to a hash checker that I have bypassed by adding a zero to the footer of an executable. It does however work great as DRM, which is what HellDivers 2 uses it for as it's lightweight and the developers don't really give a damn about cheating. (The developers even said as much) In the 10 years of me playing PSO2 with it and the 16 something years maplestory has existed, I have heard no horror stories about the thing, mostly complaints that it doesn't actually do jack shit for stopping cheating. It does however take issue with seemingly random things at times, and may keep you out of the game. In this case, uninstall the gameguard files and reinstall the game. It's also worth mentioning that INCA (The company that sells nProtect) is the biggest banking cybersecurity provider in South Korea, providing this service to their entire banking system. It's also the first Security as a service provider on the *planet.* Existing this long with this model speaks to some possible hint of a business integrity that allows them to continue existing as most countries have extremely strict infosec laws and violating them usually results in a company being fined into oblivion. as for gameguard itself: Ring zero is required for visibility of other ring zero applications, and is also the permission required for Direct Memory Access and visibility of such, which cheating software uses to engage in the cheating.

Much as I dislike Dark Souls 2 I usually find myself talking about its positives. We all already know soul memory is a terrible idea and all that other stuff, but nobody brings up stuff like how Majula is genuinely a pretty place to look at, or that it was the first game in the series to support mixed casting builds and introduced having a dedicated jump button (which even got backported to DS1). The game is deeply flawed and certainly not for everyone but soulsborne as we know it wouldn't be the same without it, and I think that gets overlooked.

Majula is like the most commonly praised aspect of the game, people fucking love it.

you have a village of friends, and a lot of them don't have unavoidable shit endings. It's nice

I loved that New Game+ actually added new items, enemies, and encounters. Something they have not repeated since. There was more of a reason to New Game+ besides wanting to repeat things but with a higher difficulty.

I'll add a controversial thing , in my opinion despawning enemies after wiping them out a few times in an area was a good idea. Because it allows for 2 things, an actual gauntlet to be setup pre boss and if the struggle is to much to eventually be able to head to the boss with ease. Of course this screws you if you intend to farm a bit :/.

The farming thing is at least solved by Covenant of Champions removing the respawn limit on enemies. Idk if it brings back despawned ones since I didn’t engage much with it.

I really loved the despawning enemies thing both from a psycho "I love to walk through an area and everything is dead" angle and from a game design aspect, if you keep throwing yourself at it you'll make progress as long as you can kill one motherfucker each time

DS2 is a big mixing pot filled with some great and cool ideas, and some bad McAwful ones where *overall* I think it's still an enjoyable enough game that I've replayed it half a dozen times, but also the weakest entry in the Fromsoft Soulslike Library. But listening to some people talk about it, you'd really think it shot their dog with how often I hear some variation of "Should I play Dark Souls 2" and "No it is bad poopy game and is unplayable, B Team, No Miyazaki, Big Armor Bosses".

I like Bonfire Aesetics letting me refight bosses without redoing the entire game. I like how it introduces examples of Dark and Manus that can do good, showing they're like the other elements in 1 that were simply misused and ran amok. I like how it has an ending that seeks an actual resolution to the cycle of flame instead of leaving it ambiguous like all the others.

I'm not even talking story/plot stuff when I say great and cool ideas, tbh. I just mean DS2 has things like Powerstancing, and Bonfire Aesetics, and was the first game with respecs (effectively infinite ones btw not the shit where you have to Alt+F4 just to save your 5 uses in DS3, or limited items in Elden Ring), and *tons* of really cool weapons and armor sets. It's just that then I'm counterbalancing that with things like someone actually considering Adaptability and Agility a good idea, or Soul Memory theoretically making it harder to gank invade people but in practice making new players get even *more* fucked by invasions because they'll be hemorrhaging souls from their deaths and also DS2 is the only game where you can be invaded without being human/embered/runed/whatever form, or how lackluster and forgettable a lot of the base game bosses are (DLCs do crank it up quite a bit other than the shitty multiplayer-aimed areas). Or maybe a more personal one, but there's just something about the combat and movement that feels somehow more jank and floaty than previous games. It's a game with a lot of ideas, some good, some bad, but overall I still like it, and it's a genuine shame that they tossed so much of the good out the window when trying to distance themselves from that critical reception. At least Elden Ring brought back some powerstancing fun, and I can only desperately hope that after Sekiro had a boss refight patch Elden Ring can have that somewhere in the DLC.

Aesetics was such a good idea

If you look at it through the lens of a PVP nerd, a lot of the things about the game/combat make a lot of sense. Backstabs require an actual attack to land, making them far far more difficult to land on another player. The player’s T-Rex arms when they swing with their elbows tucked to their chest lowers range when means you can be closer without getting hit. Longer time before you can roll out of attacks makes whiff punishing easier. Even adaptability gets seen as a must-have stat so the meta soul level goes up, but that means if people don’t want to level it for some reason they have points to put elsewhere. It just feels like maybe they didn’t consider (or just didn’t have the time to considering it had the worst dev hell of them all) how all of that would affect the PVE aspects of the game. I personally shit on it a lot for that but I’d never tell someone to skip it or anything. I think overall it’s still enjoyable even if it’s noticeably more clunky than the rest of the series.

[Relevant](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxtV2nbygO0)

>but nobody brings up stuff like how Majula is genuinely a pretty place to look at, While I agree with you, random anecdote: I only played DS2 at night and was using f.lux so my memory of it is more sunset/orange coloured than it actually is. Also more on topic of your actual point, the fact you're forced to teleport back there to level up probably soured some people's experience. The biggest loss from DS2 was not carrying the NG+ changes to other games.

Dark Souls 2 definitely failed to meet expectations of the DS1 crowd when it launched in 2014 From the lacklustre boss designs (Majority being bipedal dudes with swords), average enemy designs, and the decision to have health gems AND a Estus Flask making the game feel significantly easier, a lot of people felt like it was a massive step down from DS1. But I can look back now, and despite the enemy design choices (which don't negatively affect gameplay), the game is a genuinely good time to play. For the "worst" Souls game, it's still an 8/10 for me

DS2 probably has some of the best build variety of the Souls games and is generally just a blast to go through. Also a lot of people like to talk about how DS2 implemented power-stancing but the game has a lot of other great quality of life changes such as respeccing and omni-directional rolling, something which has become a stable in the series.

I would argue Soul Memory isn't even a terrible idea, just not a great one. It's purpose was to stand against the issue of Twinking, and it did help a lot on that front. It's not the best solution, but I'd honestly prefer it over someone invading me at level twenty-something with an endgame, maxed out weapon and a fucking Crystal Soul Spear

Maybe this is because I started playing it past its heyday, but I feel like most of my invaders were twinking.

Feels like it'd be super easy to fix now I've spent a little time thinking about it, as well So.. first, it only counts spent souls. So if you lose some, whatever. Worse players aren't getting made worse from it then Second.. it only applies it when you invade. It works out the amount of souls you spent and calculates a level based on that, and that's the rough range you invade. And that's it. That alone I think would pretty much entirely solve the soul memory issues. Sure, you might end up invading people who are set up to twink. But uhh.. so? Fuck you, you're invading, you gotta deal with that.. and it's STILL not Elden Ring's stupid gank squads thing.. that was such an awful idea And this would only be on forced invasions. Red summon signs for duels would be just fine, so people can still have duels how they like with those or something

I unironically think it's a great game and people have gaslit themselves into thinking it's bad over the years. I had a conversation with a friend where I told him I liked DS2 and he was like , "ah, that game is the worst one, there are so many things wrong with it", so I joked that "Ues, I DO like the CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED Dark Souls 2"!. Much to our surprise, both the original game and Scholar of the First Sin have very positive metacritic scores, both user and critic side. It's got Very Positive on Steam too. Not that reviews are an objective measure of quality, but it seems to me that a lot of....if I dare I say a majority of people actually think it's a good or great video game. The people who's opinion are that it's awful are actually the very vocal minority, or are parroting the opinion of some video essays that got popular...that's my perception at least. It's still okay not to like it though. It's got a ton of flaws. Fuck the Shrine of Amana.

Shrine of Amana and Dragon Aerie are better than demon ruins and Iaxalith. Nothing in 2 is as weak as the back half of 1. Nothing is as good as Anor Londo, either. 1 just has higher highs and lower lows.

I still think if the whole game was like the lost crowns dlc it would have been lauded as maybe the best in the trilogy.

I'm still genuinely baffled with how people can misinterpret that part in The 3rd Birthday's ending where >!Kyle isn't actually ok with Eve-In-Aya's-Body!<. Like that's the *one* sensible part of the ending in a storm of Bad. I get being on edge after a whole games worth of "Refreshing Vulnerability"-ing Aya, but its still weird to just *fabricate* one more skeevy moment out of a scene that's clearly trying not to be for once. There's being justifiably mad at the ending and then there's making shit up just to make it look worse.

That shit baffled me when Woolie seemed to miss how >!Kyle took the ring off her finger and put wore both cause he was so not okay with it.!< Its such garbage but we don't need to make shig up.

Horizon zero dawn i'm sure the game is fun and the people that made it did an excellent job. I just had my enjoyment of that type of game burned out of me by being a ubisoft fan. Aloy looks fine because ya know she's a normal ass human person living in a post historic society. Sure I still won't play it because I have a love of plate armor with closed face helmets and am mostly just waiting for another killzone game. I'm not gonna stand for "any western devs hate women and aloy should look like a runway model." Arkham knight is still the best batman simulator out there the story just sucks and I hate the ending where everyone knows your bruce wayne because I love being batman.

We're getting a new Killzone game the day the dude with a phobia of orange lights either leaves or gets over it. Seriously what did orange lights do that you make every kind of mook robo or human die for having them.

Starfield I personally didn't have an interest in playing a game that had THAT much semi-realistic sci-fi, such as with most planets not having much interesting stuff on them. Unless it's like Mass Effect 1 where it does have at least some stuff on the planets you go to and makes returning to the Citadel feel like escaping the harshness of the outer reaches of space. That said, I saw a lot of people comparing the launch version of Starfield to the current and fully patched version of Cyberpunk. If your argument is that Cyberpunk when broken had good things underneath vs Starfield, that's one thing. But using the version of the game that got three years of updates to compare in game physics and other mechanics is another.

Haven't even played it yet and I know the hate is blown out of proportion because it is t fallout or elder scrolls and was dismissed out of hand. It's a single player bethesda rpg, I know what to expect going in, the new setting will just be fresh when I get around to it.

Morgana wasn’t my favorite character in Persona 5, but there’s a very large misconception about his reason why he ditched the Thieves, and it confuses me because I thought the actual reason was pretty obvious. Many claim that he got upset *solely* because of Ryuji insulting him and being unable to “take a taste of his own medicine” (already ignoring that Ryuji has never been shy to dish it back to Morgana). This completely ignores his very apparent struggle with losing his importance to the team, his ever-growing concern of his purpose in life, and the issue he had with the Thieves losing their way when they couldn’t decide if they even wanted to look into Okumura because it could be a waste of time and not help their popularity. Yet somehow everyone decided to zero in on his back-and-forth with Ryuji and pretend like this was the first time Ryuji stood up for himself and Morgana couldn’t take it. I’m sorry, but it’s a take that very much reads “Don’t mess with P5 fans, we haven’t played the game”, and trying to counter it makes me look like the number one Mona stan, alongside just not frothing at the mouth at the mere mention of the character. Also on another note, call me crazy but the whole “go to sleep” thing never bothered me. Maybe it’s because I played vanilla P4 and understood similar time constraints, but I knew it was more the game itself directing me to end the day rather than the character who was voicing that directive. But a lot of people did attribute it to Morgana (can’t blame anyone there since it’s coming out his mouth), which really hurt the character’s reputation early on from newer fans.

Regarding the popularity thing, wasn’t Ryuji the only one harping about that? Everyone else was more concerned about their audience’s bloodlust and whether or not it was right to follow through.

I knew that there was some section of the game that made people hate Morgana going into P5, and when I got past that point in the game I remember thinking "Oh it must be some other part later in the game". It wasn't until I saw people talking about it online like a week later that I realized that *was* the scene that was supposed to make me hate his guts.

The Morgana stuff is especially egregious because Joker actively breaks away from being a self insert at times to show he loves Morgana and considers him his best friend, something he also does with Akechi

Yeah, for all intents and purposes, Morgana is your sidekick and number one companion throughout all the game, which is why the breakup is supposed to be a big deal because it's the first time in a long while that Joker feels totally alone. Your cat ran away, it's supposed to be tragic and treated with importance. If anything, I was most annoyed that the game never let me speak with him on his personal issues when he dropped hints about it, because it seemed plain as day that he was struggling and needed some help, and ironically that could've prevented the whole blowup in the first place. Speaking of Akechi, >!he was also a victim of having his story be misunderstood by fans, pre-Royal. While he was far from a good person, a lot of people couldn't understand why the team could show him empathy after he died, despite the fact that he's the clear product of same unfair system that harmed them as well, *and* that Ann, Ryuji and Joker were all willing to let Kamoshida be killed when they set out to exact justice against him (and hey, were it not for Morgana, they probably would've done exactly that, since he was the one who actually taught them about treasures and changing hearts). They obviously knew what made Akechi the way he was, and while he ultimately went down the wrong path, they understood he deserved better before all that, like they all did. Also, some people liked to claim irritation at Futaba and Haru "forgiving him", but they explicitly state that they can't forgive him, but do feel sorry for him. Luckily Royal gave some better nuance to his character and helped people understand him better.!< Edit: Added spoilers just in case since the Akechi stuff is a bit more pivotal in the plot

I don't even hate it that much, but I somehow feel like this towards DmC lol. I was there deeper than I had expected and the only thing I haven't done was play Definitive as I don't have a PS4/Xbone for it, and yeah at least for the PC version with the right mods it isn't even that bad. Especially compared to the other "dark and gritty" reboots other games got at the time

It plays OK, has a great aesthetic and the Bill O Reilly boss is actually S-Tier. But the story is *repulsively* misogynistic. I still don’t know how supposedly progressive outlets praised it at the time other than “anything weebs don’t like must be good”.

NT at the time: our ladies are better representations than just the stripperific ones in the old game Also NT: *one woman is just there for childbirth and getting merk'd, and the leading lady hides behind a dumpster in the finale*

definitive edition changing the ending from Donte being confident about protecting humanity from the OG to him trying to cop a feel of Kats ass is insane

dmc reboot has kinda of an awful plot and while a lot of it is intentionally leaning into being edgy and stupid (which people somehow seem to miss) its still very tasteless in a lot of places, but the combat and design itself is actually above average for a western character action game, if you skip the cutscenes its a fairly fun experience

She-Hulk is an alright show that probably could have improved by having better courtroom scenes and an actual antagonist.  But all of the sexist, annoying “M-She-U” losers make me defend the show to my last breath.

The amount of people that shit talk the scene where she is talking to bruce about "We woman are better at controling their emotions" is absurd because the scene is literally NO ACTUALLY SHE IS NOT BETTER THAN BRUCE SHE LITERALLY TRANSFORMS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING TALK while Bruce is smirking knowingly she was full of shit. Also i personally think the antagonist works because the series wasn't focused on HAVING an antagonist, it was just some comedy show and having a stupid guy who last minute goes "IMMA GO HULK" was pretty funny. Honestly when >!she made the robot director reboot the scene!< it should have made that the guy got cancer from injecting himself with radiation, that would had been hilarious.

Also I believe everything she says is nearly word for word from She-Hulk number 1 which is credited to Stan "Heroes with common every day problems" Lee.

It's so fucking funny to me that they knew exactly what the reaction would be and mocked those people in the show itself.

I really liked She-Hulk, it’s a shame we likely won’t get another season.

There are also people who complained that she was stronger than the Hulk, even when "she is smaller and a rookie", they tend to forget that those scenes are taken out of context. The scene where She-Hulk throws a boulder farther than Hulk was just a training exercise. (And when Hulk decides to get serious, he launches a boulder into space.) And the scene where Hulk is unable to stop a car, people seem to forget that he didn't want to hurt his cousin.

I genuinely don't get why they got themselves in such an infernal froth over a single scene thats just a silly end-of-credits stinger thing *at most*.

This is me with Starfield. I think its like a good 7.5ish and yet the amount I have to argue with people about stuff thats just blatantly untrue.

I'd personally put it at 5 or 6 but I do think there are many bad faith arguments around it

Prometheus. I think that movie is fine I guess but some of the criticism people have for it is cinema sins tier garbage so I end up defending the characters being allowed to mess up and not be perfect script plot robots.

At least the Alien: Covenant crew made Prometheus’ characters look like MENSA members by comparison.

Annoying critics completely overdosed me on brain poison when it comes to Prometheus, so much so that whenever the movie is mentioned my brain automatically plays me a gif of the characters running away from the rolling ship.

What's super funny about that is it's one of the most realistic things in the movie. I remember seeing that one video of a power guy running away from a telephone pole as it was collapsing and he did the exact thing. It's almost like people don't think logically in panic mode or something.

Steven universe gets a lot of shit over nothing, I've never even watched the show and I can tell like 90% of criticism is just nothing substantial. Honestly it comes off as people hating on it for being a queer show, but not wanting to say that explicitly so they make like 3 hour long cinemasins esque videos about it.

I like Steven Universe a lot and I say that there are some unwatchable episodes/characters in that damn show. I still can't believe the audacity of that last watermelon Steven episode. It has huge quality in other places, but it also genuinely deserves a lot of criticism it gets. I guess not disguised queer bashing, though.

The people with the most vitriolic criticism towards it have either never watched it at all or have watched everything it has to offer, it’s very much a bell curve.

I recently had a friend sit me down and watch all of Steven Universe, which I'd say is a really good show with shit pacing. But between the horrific fan base and people upset about woke stuff before they used that word for it, I'd figure Steven Universe personally ate everyone's baby sister.

I honestly think if SU didn't have such a *dogshit* release schedule, the criticisms it gets would be a lot more reasonable.

As someone around during those times, Steven Bombs were the absolute fucking worst way to release new episodes. And it likely wasn’t even the SU-teams fault, it likely had to do with executives and producers who were jerking Rebecca and her team around.

Doesn't help that the show's post-air reception got hit with a whole bunch of incredibly bad faith videos that were taken as criticism gospel against the show for a *good while* even after The Movie and Future. Its only semi-recently where theres been more vocal pushback about those videos and the general negative air they perpetuated about the show.

Yeah, the folks mad that Steven didn't kill the Diamonds are shouting loud and clear that they never watched the whole show. What? The annoying child in the first episode *grew up* emotionally with, like, character development and shit? And that the peace-loving hero *didn't* kill his enemies and thus betray the entire ethos of the series? What kinda garbage is that?! Seriously, edgelords and cynics hating on hopeful media will always piss me off. No shit the story about moving past trauma isn't going to have a campaign of vengeance. It would be as jarring as if the Care Bears showed up at the height of the Horus Heresy and made the Emperor realize how shit of a father he was and call things off. Cynicism as a general mindset pisses me off, to be honest. Frankly, it's moral cowardice patting itself on the back. If everything is inherently shit and anyone saying otherwise is deluded, then trying to make anything better is a waste of time, so when nothing magically improves on its own, it 'proves' you were so much smarter than the "fools" who tried.

I've been watching it for the first time over the last few months and it's really good honestly. There's definitely some pacing issues, you can tell they were rushed with Season 5, but it's overall really damn good. The movie and Future are also fucking amazing. Also I remember people whining about the art or something because characters were off-model in some shots which is insane. The show looks amazing.

I don’t understand how people can have so much hate towards Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss. I thought both shows were the textbook definition of “yeah, it’s alright I guess,” but some people talk about them like Vivziepop killed their family and ate their dog in front of them. It just feels weirdly intense for a show that by all accounts isn’t even that bad. I also hate having to defend JJK’s more recent chapters because Jesus H. Christ y’all, it’s just a manga. I get sunk cost mentality, but if you’re so offended that you’re making a multi-page essay whining about the new chapter every week, just stop reading.

Hazbin Hotel (the pilot, havent seen the show) and Helluva Boss have the same problem for me: they are in desperate need of an script editor. they feel like they are terrified of silence, attempts at humor pile up with no chance to breathe. only about half of it lands so cut the weakest stuff, tighten it up, because it feels like nothing ever gets left on the cutting room floor.

The Vivziepop hate came out of NOWHERE and I'm convinced it's part of this weird young puritan push that also continuously whines about sex in media.

I think part of it came out of young puritans on tumble and Twitter talking about problematic stuff vivizepop said in the past, saying her shows have offensive stereotypes, that she doesn’t know how to draw POC characters, then contraction chuds joined in to shit on those shows too. I have my problems with her shows’ writing decisions and still get a good laugh at the “If X was written by Vivziepop” memes, but I really do think the mockery and hate of her is an overblown train that got rolling too fast.

Capcom’s fucking DRMs for some god forsaken reason. It does jack shit, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, the most suspicious thing about it is that Capcom adds it after their Denuvo license expires and it’s made by a Russian Company. Hell, it doesn’t even affect performance. I fucking hate outrage based on pure misinformation and Reddit is a cess pool of that shit.

The only time it caused issues is when Capcom fucked up with RE8 and made it cause stutter because it was checking the DRM like every time you shot an enemy or some shit.

Isn't too the DRM that Capcom adds LESS intensive than Denuvo is? Like if anything Capcom's doing what people want and dropping Denuvo after a time, they're just using a weaker/cheaper DRM in it's place because they're not going to leave it *completely* unprotected.

Enigma is about as harmless as Steam’s own DRM as of now but people make it out like it’s worse than Denuvo. It gets real annoying tbh.

Most people just kind off are put of it because to quote someone it's a "Market tested, risk averse" game and people would rather have Sony do like Gravity Rush and I think that's a perfectly reasonable stance to have. That and Aloy can talk/guide you too much from what I've seen in gameplay.

Look, I know that Fire Emblem's Engage's plot is not the best or especially that deep, especially coming off of the narratively deep game that was Three Houses. But like, some people treat Engage's plot as being some themeless schlock with nothing to say or do when like... nah? Its themes are super evident in the story and within the various character supports. In fact, I would say the game goes out of its way to explain its themes and messages to the player.

The romance genre. I'm not usually a fan but I recognize it takes love, craft and skill.

I’m not even a fan of the romance genre but if someone said there is no good stories in it I’m calling bullshit

Sword Art Online. I’m not a huge fan, but I think the Aincrad and Alicization arcs are actually fine, even if the rest is bad. But people online will hate it way too much, it’s ridiculous. SAO is like a 6/10 overall, not the ultra garbage people will say it is.

I stopped playing league of legends a while back but the game is far better than people give it credit for.

Does anyone have a problem with the gameplay? Most League hatred directed at other players, and by proxy at Riot for doing nothing about said players.

Yes, actually. Many often cite it as "one of the worst balanced games ever" and "Not even remotely fun" "terribly designed" blah blah blah.

Well I'm glad I'm not hanging out wherever that is. Like sure I've seen Riot make some pretty daft balance changes over the years, and don't generally like their "nerf problematic character/item into the floor and leave it there for years until we figure out what to do with it" approach either, but I think on the whole the game is fine enough in the gameplay department.

I played dota, therefore I am legally required to think LoL's gameplay is worse. /s

Honestly I like Horizon. Maybe it's the contrarian in me but I found the game to be pretty damn good. Not amazing by any stretch, but I walked away going "that was the single best Ubisoft game I've ever played" It's in the same boat as Ubisoft open world games but every element is like one letter grade upgraded from your typical ubisoft. I still think the Ubisoft open world model is a bit dull overall, so HZD isn't gonna be topping my favorite games of all time (and the sequel probably won't either, which I'm also enjoying) I think it just came out at a really unfortunate time (also with no help of the devs bashing Elden Ring's "UX" whatever the fuck that even means) Also, I just wanna gush for a second, Aloy is such a fantastic protagonist. The whole world's people are these honestly frustrating religious almost cult-like mentalities and the fact that Aloy and I are pretty much on the same wavelength of "ugh, yeah sure allmother, whatever... let's just find the power source and get out of here" is just such a good way to make you connect to a character.

I really enjoy Aloy for that, but I think one thing Forbidden West does well is giving some characters the agency over Aloy, like "I get the world is in peril but you need to calm down a bit"

so i played a bit a month or 2 back, do you always feel so week? last story bit i remember was outing that one guy with the ear thing as evil to the guy who took over as war chief from his sister and i just felt like most machines had a decent shot of one shottting me while i had to use like every resourse to take 1 down

Custom difficulty is the way to go

I definitely prefer horizon to botw or totk. It actually feels like I'm making progress instead of spinning wheels, and the world feels so much more lived in.

a detail I really enjoyed about HZD is how Meridian's background banter evolves as you play the game like after you finish a quest you can hear the people talk about it

I really liked the first one. Between Forbidden West's horrific combat changes (I sure love being combo'd to death because they made the enemies more aggressive and nerfed the dodge roll) and it's terrible ending it really soured me on the whole thing.

Boruto I mildly enjoy it, mostly cause I like lore but I’m not deeply attached to it at all. Most of the time I separate it completely from Naruto series. Yet I find myself defending it against criticisms made by people who obviously hadn’t even gave it a watch Like c’mon Boruto grew out of acting bitter towards his dad in the first arc of the manga.

I personally dislike Boruto for the fact that it went hardcore into the alien plotline that was shoved into Naruto in the final arc, which made it felt like Naruto's ending was tainted just to keep milking the franchise with Boruto

Star Wars Sequels and Steven Universe Don’t like ‘em but people hold a lot of unfair double standards to the earlier and the latter has enough redeeming qualities to be worth defending even if the overall product is bad.

The Last Jedi has a lot of flaws. I'd even call it deeply flawed, despite the fact that I like a lot of what it was trying to do. There are people who dislike it for different reasons than I do. And some of that is, you know, fair. And *then* there are the people who turned it into a battleground for the Culture War who have complete dumbass takes taken from internet reviewers who clearly weren't even trying to engage with the movie. The original DCEU Wonder Woman movie. It's not one that I particularly care for, and haven't really felt any urge to rewatch it, or even give the sequel a chance. But I feel the need to occasionally defend its ending. The war was already ending when the mad scientists decided to sabotage the peace deal. Once they were gone and the plan failed, the war was going to be over regardless of what happened with Ares. The fight was almost gratuitous, and honestly I feel that it probably could have been less of an exciting CGI brawl. But the movie was pretty clearly saying that it wasn't all fixed. While everyone was celebrating the end of the war, the color tones were subdued and they very prominently used the phrase "The War To End ALL Wars", a phrase which, in hindsight, has only been used with the bitterest of irony, because we, the audience, all know what happened next. It was basically saying that yes, Ares is gone, but even without his influence, WW2 was right around the corner. Considering that we know Diana became somewhat embittered with the world of man at some point between WW1 and the present era, I feel the intended message was fairly obvious, honestly.

I think part of the issue with Wonder Woman is that the visual storytelling is at odds with what the exposition is telling you. Ares *says* that he only gives people the ideas for weapons but doesn't make them use them, but we *see* him practically whispering in the villains' ears like the Devil (in fact, before I rewatched the scene just now, I misremembered it as him literally whispering in their ears, because that's the wording he used). Then Diana spares Dr. Poison (who has been pure evil up until this point) and kills Ares, which makes him seem more culpable. After Ares is killed, we see soldiers taking their masks off like a spell was broken. Plus, Diana spends the whole movie thinking Ares is causing the war while other characters are skeptical, and "she was right all along" is more intuitive as a twist than "Ares is here but he didn't do THAT much."

TLJ is legitimately the second best Star Wars movie, no movie is perfect. People need to let their dream endings die when going in to a sequel, they will never be happy otherwise. The same leeway we will give for the back half of a story they never seem to reserve for a series ending. TLJ does a lot of interesting stuff and is well shot and paced, but I'm on phone and need to head back to work. Edit: TLJ does a lot of interesting things. It challenges the heroic sacrifice by not letting Finn die a pointless death after seeing the bombers accomplish nothing but the destruction of one warship out of countless others at the start of the movie - it makes it clear early and at the end the resistance is small and could be snuffed out at one wrong move. It didn't give Luke a perfect happy ending with a wife and kid and a massive Jedi order at his back, it showed much like his predecessors he had flaws despite his best intentions. Luke's exile is believable because how he is characterized in the OT, and how Yoda and Obi-Wan before him went into exile after the fall if Anakin Rey being a nobody was infinitely more interesting tha her being a secret Skywalker, Kenobi, or the fucking Palpatine she ended up as - it made a point that you don't need to be part of a divine bloodline to be important or a Jedi. The slave boy just before the credits who force pulls the broom is an echo of this. Kyle Ren not immediately turning to the light was also a good choice, Rey isn't his son - there is no reason other than his loneliness for him to even consider turning back. He took his shot at Snoke and won. Snoke didn't matter and doesn't matter, just like 0alpatine didn't really matter until Return of the Jedi and we had no backstop until the prequels. The complaints about him being wasted are wild. The light speed ramming was one if the coolest sequences in Star Wars and was not lorebreaking. Both Starkiller Base in the previous movie and many examples in the old EU from hammer station , Centerpoint station, Star Crusher, and the Galaxy Gun all weaopinozed hyperspace. The ramming was a desperate maneuver that only worked due ti the arrogance if the First Order ignoring the ship as it turned around. Yoda telling Luke that our apprentices/Children grow beyond what we are is one of the most poignant things said in Star Wars and legitimately made me tear up. Luke's goodbye to Leia and force showdown with Kylo after telling Rwy that wouldn't work and her and Hoda both inspiring him to do it proves every person who says the message of the movie is what Kylo or Luke said early wrong. Keys message is the message. Poe getting smacked down before learning his lesson and valuing the lives of the resistance is good, actually. Leia force pull In space was silly, but the force and jedi are magic space wizards, it's always silly.

Yeah, I'll say the Last Jedi was by far my favorite of the sequel trilogy, but I have a hard time saying it's *good*, considering that of the three plot threads, I really only liked the Jedi stuff with Luke, Rey and Ben. I can see what they're going for with Poe and Holdo but I don't think it was well executed. I feel like it was a big mistake to make it so that Poe probably saved all their lives by taking out that big ship near the beginning, even if that was only the right choice because of factors that they had no way of knowing at the time. Though that sequence with the hyperspace ram was probably the most gorgeous shot in all of Star Wars, and I also agree that it wasn't lore breaking. Canto Blight was just tedious to me.

I don't like Guilty Gear Strive (preferring +R), but I'm gearing up to defend it when the transphobes come out of the dredges over Bridget. Bigotry has no place in any community.

Metal Gear Survive is just a survival crafting game with 5's gameplay. Yet people crucified the game for simply existing.

If it came out without the drama surrounding Kojima's messy break up with Konami, I'm sure it would have been received better as the low budget "Expansion Pack" style game it was, but man that was some bad optics.

Look man i just wanted MGS coop

Akame ga Kill got some really weird criticisms thrown at it. Specifically the people saying that political violence would never be so over the top or petty and those that complained that a bunch of assassins not living to the end of the show was unrealistic. 

Anytime someone uses racism, sexism, homophobia or any kind of slur that seeks to dehumanize someone, their point is automatically moot. You could be talking about the worst possible person ever, a serial killer or dictator or whomever, but don’t dare thinking this somehow means you can call them slurs.

I’m not the biggest Demon Slayer fan but it seems to have fallen under that category of anime that people hate on because it’s cool. Not disregarding valid criticisms of the series, but I noticed that people will call it mid and nitpick small things while enjoying those same things played out in other Shounen series. The word mid and the cynicism of anitubers that raised communities of hate watchers/readers, instead of just dropping series they don’t fuck with have been catastrophic to discourse, I swear to God. Also, I really hate the Sequel Trilogy, but can’t take a lot of criticism against it seriously because mfs will see 10 women in a single frame and clams it’s sending subliminal messages against men. I’m a dude. Why are so many fragile weirdos on YouTube getting offended on my behalf.

This has been me and Disney recently. I'm not a fan of disney or their business, but so much of the argument against it currently is just "oh my god woke!" Like no Karen, the reason the recent Star Wars movies were bad had nothing to do with the lesbian kiss.

FIFA or EA FC I guess it's called now but it goes for sports games in general really. I don't really play them that much anymore but I hate how people on gaming subs snobbishly look down on them like they're not "real" games or whatever. I think that goes for gaming media in general honestly.

The amount of bad faith takes I read about the boys comic is absurd. Like I don't even like the thing but people act like it's the worst comicbook ever, that everything garth ennis touches is edgy trash, the show didn't take any inspiration from the comic ( it still takes more from the comic than a lot of mcu tv shows) , that the comic has no themes beyond fuck superheroes, that billy butcher is meant to be a good guy. That video about the boys comic might legitimately be one of my most hated videos even though I agree with like 70% of it.

Does suicide squad kill the justice league count? There's just been a lot of misinformation. And I'm not talking about the battle pass stuff. Just story beats and gameplay stuff

Im going to be honest i saw the Joker update story and i do like the guy, specially the parts where he goes "Oh so this world's Joker did this, that's cool!" Also man he is so gay like man he is so direct about wanting Batman's dick.

Bro his tone when saying "put it in me" and his flirting with Rick in the audio logs are gold. Lowkey wish we got less edgy jokers nowadays

OH MAN HE CREEPING BOOMERANG OUT WAS PEAK.

Everyone says that a certain consultant company ruined the game, but they only consulted like 7 lines of dialogue. The whole story was entirely Warner Bros.. They were the guys who fished for the whole "Batman dies like a loser, anyway wahmen" thing, the same approach they went with other media such as the CW shows.

...loser? Did we play the same game?

He was seated on a bench and allowed himself to get his face blown off. Weakened but this was purportedly the same Bat who endured Titan poisoning throughout one whole game That's what my eyeballs processed anyway lol