Unfortunately the initial response to your post was just rage and thus made your life realy easy to just dismiss it, so here goes something a little more elaborate.
The review in question was clearly made by a reviewer that is very sub-par in this kind of genre. When even my wife can play the game co-op with me witout me saying much in hints and then you have a "RPGer" reviewing the game and having more dificulty in the game it's a very clear sign something's wrong.
Normally not the case with Lucious. He really is a big RPG guy. Tired? Rushed? I don't know what all contributed to this. I'll admit that I'm saddened by the personal attacks though. People calling for his head on a pike, calling him an asshole, an idiot, a stupid fuck, etc. over a review. I guess people's personal feelings aren't important anymore. Gotta love the anonymity of the Internet.
Another sign something's wrong is that you have a dozen prefessional reviews over 85 that praise the game and hundreds of user reviews stating over 9.0 average, when mostly all negatives are from people either playing pirated versions with unpatched bugs or people QQIng it's too hard, and then you give it 10 less points as the average. 10!
Our reviews will never, ever, take into account the reviews of others, be they professional or fan. That's not in any way a good representation of a product, nor does it represent the writers opinion on that point. That's a mob with pitchforks and torches.
Another CLEAR sign you review was just made by a bad reviewer is that it clearly states larian released an incomplete game, wich is just absurd as i already ended it with no game-breaking bugs. Even more serious the reviewer criticizes larian for releasing too early and having major bugs and already pachting the game twice when you you gave Diablo 3 a 90!!!!!! a game that was impossible to play for a full week !!!!!!
You said it yourself - patches. We received the game well in advance of release, and well in advance of those patches. Perhaps Lucious ran into bugs that were fixed before you had access to the game? I'll find out. I'm not sure where you are going with my D3 review - it played flawlessly. We didn't have a single problem with the console version of D3. If you did, sorry. We didn't, so that's what we scored. Again, no mob score, but one that reflects the experience I had. In the case of this review, I'm going to get to the bottom of what Lucious saw and we'll take appropriate action to shore up or re-review the game, as appropriate.
"and many quests went ignored because I had no idea where to find the characters to drive them forward"
Yes, it's called reading dialog and paying attention to hints. What is this? a 12 year old playing an RPG after playing Diablo?
Sorry - not going to respond to personal attacks.
"How do I craft an item? Stumble over a recipe book or drag a few random items over one another in your inventory and maybe you値l get something"
He's not even trying. Realy, it was a rushed review. There are soooo many recipies in the world that he mentioning "stumbing" means he didnt play the game more than a couple hours. And yes, you can randomly try to combine items but recipies will tell you everything you need to know.
Haven't played the game, but it sounds like he didn't find it as intuitive as you.
" Now you must decide if you want your archer to stay near the back of the formation, where their exceptional accuracy but low health (because there are only so many points to go around) will be most effective in combat, or lead the group, where they can quickly locate potential dangers but be much more vulnerable."
What ? this makes no sense at all. What you "lead" outside of combat is diferent from the combat formations, i bet the reviewer didnt even notice the battle formation button.
Don't know, but I'm not happy with the combat descriptions in the review - I'd like to see a lot more info on classes and formations. It's one of the things we'll fix.
I'm realy sorry but this review was a half-baked-sorry-excuse of a review. No mention of the good points of the game because it's clearly a review made by someone that has no clue how to play and didnt go far into the game nor didnt have time to experiment and explore solutions.
There are quite a few references to the good points in the game. There is even a section outlining a few of them labeled "Pros".
I'm realy sorry but i can't take your review site as serious after this review. I'm not trying to be a fanboy defending "larian honor", i'm just realy trying to understand if it was just a poorly made review from your reviewer, or you are "fishing" for page-hits based on this score.
So you are judging the entire site based on one single review out of over 2000 reviews and over a decade in this industry? Now who's unfairly judging?
Hopefuly you as an editor in chief will be wise enough to understand it's a bad review. Hell even if you gave the game a 90 it would still be a bad review. Poor texted, poor depth, poor explanations of how the game works, etc. It's a review worth it for an amateur third grade local newspaper. If you say you want to growth this is realy not the way to do it m8.
I'll take appropriate actions, but I'll point out that you are criticizing somebody for their work while your own reply is littered with personal attacks. It's a little hard to take constructive criticisms that way.
Good luck in your "review of the review".
Appreciate that. It's pretty much ruined my weekend thus far hearing some of the awful things people have had to say about a really good guy who just wanted to talk about videogames. I've dealt with this a few times, but I suspect he'll probably end up quitting over this, despite any objections to the contrary. But hey, it's the Internet.
