7 Of My Most Notoriously Unpopular Gaming Opinions

Everyone’s got them, and here are some of mine. These are 7 unpopular gaming opinions about great and not so great parts of gaming.

I write about many aspects of my life and interests here on Walking The Shoreline. I’m fascinated by relationships, love seeing people find their purpose, want to be a better leader, husband, and father, and enjoy really having a good look at the larger issues of life. A lot of my Featured Posts are to this effect.

At the same time, I am a massive nerd and a big gamer. I majored in Games Technology (programming) at university, have 15 game consoles, and frequently still recharge my little introverted batteries after a big week or weekend or time with people with a good game or two.

As with any gamer, I have amassed a number of unpopular gaming opinions. I mean sure, there’s the mainstream and all the popular games that most people play and enjoy (I guess), but then in the dark corners of the galaxy lie our secret-ish games that we really enjoy despite popular opinion, or even really don’t enjoy despite the same.

So I thought it was time for another fun one following 1 million (!!!) visitors to Walking The Shoreline clocking over in the last few months. Here are 7 of my most notoriously unpopular gaming opinions.

Ps. Don’t hate me

#1: Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is the best Tekken game

My wife and I recently watched the surprisingly solid Netflix anime adaption of Tekken. More specifically, it retells the story of Tekken 3, more or less.

Now, Tekken 3 is of course considered the best Tekken that ever came out. And I remember it. I played it in the arcades and on my PlayStation and was right there with everyone being blown away at how good it was.

And out of all the Tekkens that have come and gone since, I’ve gotta give the win to Tekken Tag 2.

It has 68 characters, it perfects the fighting system even better than Tekken 6, it’s zaney, it’s unbalanced in a way that makes it have a party and competitive aspect, and it’s customisation options seem to never end.

And yet whenever I read any best of list or critical reviews, it seems to be considered a 7 out of 10 game. This seems crazy to me because it seems like it has everything going for it that Tekken 7 doesn’t – lots of modes, heaps of characters, and no pay walls for things that should have already been in the game.

If you haven’t played it, it’s usually like $5-15 on any console of the time so go find it. You won’t be disapponted.

#2: Age of Empires 3 has aged better than any of the others

The first one was my safest opinion, but from here on out, I’m sure I’m going to offend a lot of people.

I loved all the Age of Empires games. I played every single one and every single expansion back with my brother and dad for hours and hours. Rise of Rome, The Conqurerors, and the excellent Titans expansion to Age of Mythology (can’t wait for the remake).

And yet after all this time, Age of Empires 3 seems to me to have actually aged the best, particularly even after all of them have had a remake or a HD version.

There’s lots of teams, the combat is great, and the best part of all would be that the resource management is extremely streamlined. You don’t have to completely micromanage your supplies for 50% of the game, you can just get in there and keep going.

I would say I have equal levels of love for Age of Mythology, but to me, AOE 3 has aged the best and is the most replayable even in the Twenties.

#3: The Switch is still way too overpriced

Before the Switch even came out, I wrote a perhaps unpopular view entitled Uh Oh, Nintendo: 5 Reasons The Switch Isn’t Looking Great

And all these years later, I think the Switch is still way too overpriced.

Maybe it’s because I was one of the few people who actually bought and enjoyed the Wii U. All the best Switch games are just Wii U games (although they made Breath of the Wild worse to be able to accommodate for the Switch). None of the games ever go on sale. The storage options are super limited. Families simply shouldn’t still be considering a console that costs at least a $700 investment to buy two games and an extra controller with the console.

Sure, there’s a lot of good unique titles on it – the Let’s Go games look super fun, Mario Odyssey, and Nintendo always has great first party offerings. But it’s been 5+ years and you could really save a lot of money doing almost any other option.

#4: The Final Fantasy 13 Trilogy is amazing and the best main entries

Get ready for offense.

Everyone hates the Final Fantasy 13 games online. All the major reviewers stll bring it up and make snarky remarks about it. YouTube gaming channels always bring it up as a disappointment. People are still going on about all the other titles at its expense.

And yet to me the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy is my favourite tied with Final Fantasy VI. Okay, maybe even a bit more.

It was like playing an anime. The graphics are still gorgeous. The characters are really memorable and were a lot of fun. The set pieces are amazing. And hello, that soundtrack? Every time I replay Final Fantasy 15 I pretty much just play it with the Final Fantasy 13 soundtrack on the whole time.

The first game definitely did have a lot of problems, with the main one being that enemies had too much health. They were trying to compete in a world where MMORPGs and 14 hour boss battles were super popular with gamers at the time. Some of the characters got too much attention, it took too long to really open up to allow you to use all characters and customisations, and shifting paradigms was a bit slow.

And guess what, they actually fixed all of these complaints in Final Fantasy XIII-2, which I consider to be the best Final Fantasy game. I love this game. Noel and Serah are great and brilliantly well acted by their voice actors, their interactions with the previous cast and locations are amazing, the soundtrack is brilliance, the monster hunting system added Pokemon into Final Fantasy, and Caius is freaking awesome as a villain. Plus time travel and references to my favourite game ever made (which may appear later in this list).

The series has so many memorable moments to me – when Lake Bresha is turned to crystal (which still looks utterly amazing even today), when you finally strive all the way through Gran Pulse to the town of Oerba with Ashes to Ashes playing, having Serah conquer time and meet up with all the characters of the first game, the hard headed Snow coming face to face with the saviour complexed Noel, and the full Majora’s Mask vibe of Lightning Returns.

Say what you will, but the combat system from these games is exactly where the combat system of all modern RPGs has headed – automation and strategies of party members over hitting the A button 97 times just to find a healing item or get all your party members to attack. I’m currently playing the very popular and very well reviewed Tales of Arise and am constantly struck by how much it outright borrows from the Final Fantasy 13 games.

And with all the games nowadays being playable animes, I’ve gotta say that Final Fantasy 13 games did it first, and arguable the best.

And here’s a free extra unpopular opinion: Final Fantasy 7 isn’t very good as a game and has aged horrendously from every perspective #UhOh #MightLeaveThatOneAlone

#5: Horizon Zero Dawn is better than Zelda Breath Of The Wild

Man, I love the Zelda franchise. I absolutely do. I’ve replayed Ocarina of Time and/or Majora’s Mask every year since they’ve come out. Twilight Princess is a masterpiece and I play the HD version all the time. Wind Waker is a living cartoon, and the Oracle games on the Gameboy Colour could be my favourite portable adventures ever.

And while Breath of the Wild is super fun… Horizon: Zero Dawn is even better.

Both games came out at the same time, and I wrote in my Breath of The Wild review at the time that even though I hadn’t played Horizon, I could see that it was a game that seemed to do everything Breath of the Wild tried to do but much better.

And after being able to purchase and play it on PC when it came out on Steam, that is 100% the case.

Horizon is a proper open world game. Breath of the Wild is open world-lite unfortunately. I’ve replayed and enjoyed Breath of the Wild multiple times to be sure. But Horizon looks better, has better combat, has better resource management, has better items, has a better story, has a better soundtrack, and has a more memorable experience overall.

Many Zelda fans that BOTW is the best game ever. But it’s simply not. At least to me.

#6: Mass Effect 3 is the best one

Now to really trigger some gamers out there.

The Mass Effect games are beloved by many. Commander Shepard is awesome, the characters are awesome, and it’s way better than any playable movie could ever be.

And while Mass Effect 2 is often praised as being the best, I’ve gotta give it to Mass Effect 3.

The stakes for the galaxy have reached their penultimate level. The combat system has been perfected whichever class you play. The experience and especially dialogue system has been super refined and streamlined to just give you a really solid experience at any skill level. The history of the galaxy is really fleshed out and presented extremely well through characters like Liara and Javik. And the reapers are utterly inpenetrable resulting in a finale that’s absolutely fantastic.

For all the haters regarding the “three” endings, the Extended Cut DLC absolutely differentiate the endings compared to its launch version, and is a stellar combination of resolutions to a story with so many branching paths.

Jennifer Hale is absolutely perfect as Femshep, who would be my favourite female character in gaming ever. The performances are at an all time here in general – a particularly memorable exchange happens towards the end of the Leviathan mission where you need to speak through one of the doctors to this huge alien creature who predates everyone else.

I do love Mass Effect 2. And 1. I really, really do. But Mass Effect 3 is just peak sci fi on any platform of any media type. I used to have friends walk into my house while I was playing it and just sit there and watch for ages. Rightly so.

Renegade Femshep 4 lyf

#7: Chrono Cross is the best game ever made

This one is back in the less offensive category, but it’s probably unpopular because I don’t know many other best of lists or gamers who hold the same opinion.

But to me, Chrono Cross has to be the best game ever made. The soundtrack, the story, the characters, the memorable emotional beats. Just, perfection. The true sequel to Chrono Trigger absolutely needs more love than it gets. More in Chrono Cross Is The Best Game Ever Made

And hey, thanks to the Radical Dreamers Edition, this has become way more accessible to play as well as its Super Nintendo predecessors in Chrono Trigger and Radical Dreamers.

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So hopefully I didn’t lose any friends or subscribers through this, but there you go. I think all of us have unpopular gaming opinions, whether it’s about games we loved and didn’t love. And these are a cross section of some of the ones I’ve been thinking of lately. I’m sure I can think of a lot more, as I’m sure you can as well.

How about you? Do you actually agree with any of my unpopular gaming opinions? What are some of your own?