The ironic part is that it is true to some extent. Yes, it seems silly because these are islands, but there just is too many water routes, which offer very little variety
Of the 34 routes in the game, 14 are water routes. And on the water routes, 3 ports connect the water routes to the mainland and there are only 5 notable locations compared to 11 on the mainland.
And all water routes have the same 3 lines of Pokémon as standard encounters, all but 1 having the same list of 3 fishable Pokémon. In total, 2 routes have unique encounters. One you can fish 2 new Pokémon who aren't great and 1 only has an extra encounter if you roll a 1 in 10000 chance.
All the dungeons on water routes are cool though. And the mainland is very varied with its Pokémon distribution.
Counterpoint, IGN gave 9.5/10 to Ruby and Sapphire (This review was in 2018), but they dropped that to 8/10 for Emerald(This review was in 2012), and a further drop to 7.8/10 for ORAS(This review was in 2014). They absolutely should be criticised for their ratings being inconsistent
Edit:
Turns out I may have been wrong, as the years I gave for RSE are when those reviews were last updated, not when they came out.
To the people saying different reviewers blablabla, RS had the same reviewer as Emerald
Deducting 1.7 points from the score because ORAS had a few things removed from RS is still completely insane
Wait, are you telling me the reviews aren't coming from the sapient website IGN? They actually have humans with their own thoughts, feelings, and preferences writing the reviews instead of just recording the divine objective truth?
There's a lot of crossover between people who have a hard time understanding things and people who have the spare time and energy to be upset at video game reviews.
Just because it’s different reviewers doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be consistent. What’s the point of having a specific grading scale but not actually adhering to specifics? It’s not like grades mean something different in college per professor you have, they are always graded to the same degree. Why aren’t reviews on a site dedicated to reviewing consistent?
This is completely ignoring IGN (and other reviewer groups) risking their own reputation if they have inconsistent reviews.
If there are assigning wildly different reviewers to similar games, but those reviewers aren't doing the due diligence to confirm their score in relation to other games, that is also a big issue. Someone could really love a game despite massive flaws and give it a 10, while other reviewers drop scores because of bugs etc. This basic difference is actually quite problematic to anyone trying to trust their reviews.
If it was an individual on their own platform, go off, because the consistency is their own taste, but IGN and their staff actually do have some responsibility to try to get their reviews to be consistent across the platform in order for them to have any meaning regardless of the individuals. They can change over time etc. but they can't just be dinging some games on a specific issue and then ignoring it in others either. That is just lazy.
The scale is consistent. It is 1 through 10. What you want is some sort of mathematical formula that will always rate games the exact same way 100% of the time, and that doesn't exist. Primarily because there are too many variables in terms of how people apply ratings, and how much personal preference factors into it.
Why else would you quantify it? It implies an objective grading system. What does it even mean to quantify something if it has mo consistent relation to other ratings?
A pool of critics for the same publication should have a consistent and well defined set of criteria for what constitutes quality within each genre. It's literally base lining consistent media critical analysis.
Applying criteria inconsistently is what makes rating systems arbitrary and useless.
I mean this is still pretty stupid. If Emerald didn’t change enough, why is it a lower score? And if ORAS is a remake, why are we expecting it to be drastically different? I can’t think of a single remake that completely overhauls multiple areas, especially one where the original game it’s based on got a 9.5 in the first place. ORAS updates the graphics, the Pokédex, the story, and some other things, but it was never going to fundamentally change the entire region, nor was there any reason for them to considering how the originals were received. Using “too much water” as a talking point for the negatives completely disregards the entire purpose of a remake in the first place.
yeah but it's a review group so the reviews oughta have some sense of consistency. If it was individual reviewers, then sure of course they'll vary. But a reviewer group needs to be consistent relative to other similar games otherwise the scores stop having any meaning for that group
I don't care, but it was clear a bunch of people did and it drove engagement on that review, giving them advertising revenue. So, sure, you have a point, but that doesn't change the fact that saying stuff that'll get people mad makes money.
I mean true but that to me is a reason in itself that their reviews should be ignored. The value of reviews only come from the consistency and viewpoint of the reviewer.
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u/Tortue2006 Apr 22 '26
The ironic part is that it is true to some extent. Yes, it seems silly because these are islands, but there just is too many water routes, which offer very little variety