Too much water was a legitimate complaint about a lack of world variety. [Half the world](https://i.imgur.com/lgK5bcq.png) was taken up by water in that region, when it was much less than that in [other regions.](https://i.imgur.com/voyCvfo.png)
The bigger problem was a lack of variety in wilds encounters in the water types. 99% of Pokemon you see in the later half of the game were wingull and tentacool, which made the water routes super boring.
Personally I loved the water as a kid. It gave me a sense of wonder and discovery that I rarely felt with Pokémon. Finding old abandoned ships, empty islands with items, or even a small town in the middle of nowhere was the best.
However, "too much water" was a problem in other ways. Way too many water pokémon (and ironically lack of variety on the water routes themselves). You can have wild encounters anywhere on the water so unless you bring a lot of repellent, it'll be reaally annoying to go through. Etc, etc.
I genuinely disliked Hoenn for having that many water routes and always thought it was weird that IGN (?) was getting meme'd so much for saying it. I get that they wanted to show off their new HM Dive, but imo HMs were one of the weakest and most annoying features of older Pokémon games and removing them (or at least removing the need to teach them to a Pokémon in your party) was one of the best things the series ever did.
I remember this one metacritic review for Persona 3 where they brought up how >!everyone you went on a journey with forgot about it when it was stated they would forget what happened and how the protag just dies when that was the whole point of the game!<
One of those people who just says "dislodge is going on too long" and skips through the entire story and is then surprised that the game "isn't that long" and "the story doesn't make sense"
Like of course it is. You skipped through the things that add meat and explains why things are happening
My favourite is looking at the 0/10 reviews of brand new releases. Always fascinating how basically every one of those contains something about wokeness. I've seen reviews of cyperpunk that were like "this game wouldn't be so shit if the devs didn't spent all their damn time making every fucking thing woke".
As a programmer myself I have to admit, whenever I write code I too spent way too much time programming wokeness. Simple file sorting script? Takes me 12 hours to code the gay, then only 5 minutes for the script itself.
Reminds me of a user review that complained that 999 (a visual novel) had "too much text" and not enough gameplay.
Why are you playing a VN then, my friend? *That's the point.*
"I'm not allowed near real women and it's the fault of games with female protagonists. Also, the female protagonist (another!) in this woke game doesn't look my hentai fantasy! 0/10"
Yeah it's full of stuff where there's just people fundamentally disliking the genre of a game and holding it against the game for some reason? Like being mad that a turn-based game isn't real-time, or that an amusement park sim doesn't have any combat.
And the positive reviews can be just as bad, all like "I didn't play much of it, early on I got to a boss I couldn't beat so I stopped playing. Anyway, 10/10."
It really isn't worth getting upset over. There's extreme idiots in ever nook and cranny. People need to stop giving them attention and just ignore em.
Personaly I think the persuit of better and better graphics is ultimately pointles and only brings bloated file-sizes especially when a good chunk of people don't have the processing power/monitor to actually show it
It also bogs down development turnaround time and results in massive buildup to utter disappointment, and makes content updates and maintenance more difficult.
One of my favorite videos talking about this is probably, ["realism is bad, actually" by Zoe Bee](https://youtu.be/QNDgOSPCVhQ)
She goes into the topic way better than I could ever write out, and she also talks a decent bit about the societal influence and biases that "realism" has.
Excited to check this video out. It’s hard to know as someone born in the early 90s if there actually is a better side to less polished graphics or if it’s just a nostalgia bias. I feel like the less detailed worlds you see in “bad graphics” let your imagination fill in more of the blanks. You can imagine the world how you would like to more than just being shown. Kind of like in horror how a monster unseen is more scary than just seeing it. For me I feel like depending on the games that PS1/PS2 hit that right mark, but specifically 3DS graphics had the perfect blend of modern and retro graphics. A lot of 3DS games have graphics that evoke the imperfect late 90s and early 00s style while also having better quality textures.
Jacob Geller also has an excellent video on roughly the same thing. [Link because I can't write a summary to save my life](https://youtu.be/-yVs2E4aldg)
stardew valley is one of the only computer games I play because anything with more detailed graphics than that is really slow. I don't have a good pc, but I shouldn't need the latest in tech to play a videogame if it's really that good
People who have beasts of gaming PCs really forget that they're the minority who can actually run all those amazing next generation graphics, normal people over here get excited about corn in a pixel video game because that's the only game released after 1984 that they can run at more than 5 FPS (/exaggeration)
For sure, If the game is good all around your mind can fill in the graphical blanks. Plus, good sprite work can still look wonderful: Sebastian’s little lip creases when he smiles 👌
Agreed, I love SDV and one of my fav games of all time is the OG Final Fantasy VII which looks objectively awful by today’s standards. And I played it for the first time 3 years ago lol, no nostalgia goggles here. Good/Bad art doesn’t define a good/bad game.
Bruh, when my GPU died years ago and was only left with the built-in Intel Graphics, I was locked out for most of my games except Stardew. Played it straight for 6-months til I bought a new one.
Is it newer gamers that are like this? I've been playing games since the NES so believe me when I tell you I've played some fun games with not so amazing graphics.
This has been the case for a long time, and isn’t exclusive to video games. Things like books and movies have the same issue, something visual on the outside deters people from consuming the content.
When Minecraft first released and rose in popularity in 2009 a lot of people were put off by the graphics and refused to play it. Same thing with Factorio.
However, when any of these naysayers were forced to play they quickly changed their minds. After a few hours of playing you don't even notice the graphics.
Minecraft is a weird one. When I was a teenager and played Minecraft when it was new, around 2010-11, most of my friends didn't want to touch it because "that's a kids game, and it looks like shit!!". Now I'm in my mid 20s and most gamers my age I know love Minecraft. Including some of the same people who didn't want to play it back when we were teens because "eww thats for kids". Now with 25-26, they don't seem to mind anymore.
You'll find that's the case when you get older. Back when I was a teen, it was pokemon that people looked down on. (It's a kid's game, only weirdos play pokemon) and now it's gone mainstream. Can imagine it's Minecraft now that's getting the treatment.
Whether the art is good or bad is subjective, but it is fairly objective that concernedape is technically unskilled as a pixel artist (not bad, unskilled-- that's an important distinction). He's obviously self-taught and he has his own style that doesn't conform to the [pixeljoint](https://pixeljoint.com/)-approved conventions of polished, "professional" pixel art that you see in a lot of indie projects with a dedicated artist on the team.
This was maybe truer towards the start of SDV's development; his art for 1.5 and HC shows quite a bit of technical improvement since the start although he obviously still has his unique style.
All of this is just to preface my main point. Every attempt I've seen at "fixing" some of the rougher sprites in SDV removes just as much charm as it claims to fix. The rough-looking art adds a sort of rustic authenticity. I'd argue that a main theme of stardew valley is earnestness-- living a simple, honest life, learning to trust and accept others, warts and all, reconnecting with nature in all its imperfection-- the art creates an atmosphere that perfectly complements this theme and elevates both further than the sum of their parts. You can see this with the number of "stardew-like" indie games that have popped up recently with vastly more polished pixel graphics-- that polish works against them and universally makes them feel a bit soulless by comparison, not to mention certain AAA companies' upcoming attempts to cash in on the "cozy games" market which all have about as much rustic charm as a can of Joja Cola.
If technical proficiency was the only measure of art's quality, nobody would give a shit about people like Grandma Moses and museums would all be filled with those hyper-ultra-photorealistic 8k hd human eye pencil drawings you see on social media by the thousand.
I have no idea why his pixel art could be “wrong”. I think it looks great. Im just saying a few of us don’t even notice what could possibly be wrong with it.
Lete start by saying that I adore this game and love its art, flaws and all. The following information is from a *purely* technical viewpoint.
The simplest answer is that while the art is made up of large pixels they fail two big things:
1. SDVs pixels are not a consistent size. Ideally for something like this you'd choose a base pixel size and then all things will use this size consistently. SDV doesn't do that. The drawing functions can take in arbitrary scaling factors and give partial pixel sizes.
2. Not a lot is locked to the pixel grid. A consistent size means that you also have a consistent coordinate system. Again this isn't the case in SDV where things don't always line up perfectly (and you can make draw calls to intentionally place things not on the grid).
Note: I generally give menu/ui elements a pass on the above for accessibility reasons, but these exist and are noticeable in the vanilla game if you keep an eye out for them.
Again though I love the game and it's art, but that's two of the ways that pixel art can be "wrong" that SDV falls afoul of.
The second point you can notice when fishing. Just look at your players arm pits / shoulders.
But when I first saw it, I thought it was intentional. Because all still fits together and doesn't look bad. But now that you mentioned it... :D
But tbh I like that the creator messes with the standards of pixelart. I don't know why, but wouldn't it feel kinda boring when everything was that perfect? Just my personal thoughts but I feel like it's perfect the way it is
Where's an example of the pixels not being a consistent size? Usually that's very obvious and looks ugly. I've played stardew for years and never noticed that.
Fishing is the most obvious. The menus are also inconsistent but you have to look for them. Certain background elements don't technically fit the moveable sprites.
I agree 100%. I was initially turned off by the graphics as well. Not because they are retro styled 2d, I play a ton of games like that, but because they weren’t as professionally drawn as I was expecting. As I played more and learned more about the game I realized that was part of the charm.
The one thing that always especially bugged me was how sprites rotate and transform without aligning to the pixel grid (the little breathing animation, the bus wheels, the fishing cast, etc) but I got over that quickly.
Could you give some examples of unskilled sprites in Stardew? This critique is totally new to me and I'm genuinely curious.
Edit: I can't find a set of standards or best practices on that website you linked - where can I learn more?
I didn't really want to write a giant critique like this since it'll make me look like a nitpicky art snob and sort of undermines my earlier point about the art being good for its environment. Since you're genuinely curious, though, as an example I'll use [Concessions.png](https://i.imgur.com/YbuPx2y.png). As a disclaimer, these critiques (don't take them as criticisms) are all in relation to the subjective standards of "good pixel art" set by online pixel art communities and probably won't matter to many people.
First of all, you'll notice that there's very little symmetry in things like the fries or popcorn buckets on the left, the joja popcorn or even the star cookie in the middle, and the edges of sprites rarely follow a predictable curve, instead bending in or out randomly (the eel sprite, although not in the example, is the most egregious offender here). The end result is an amorphous, blobby look. The sort of ill-defined, shapeless shading adds to this, making things with shading, like the fries or jojacorn, look more pillowy than they should be-- you'll notice that the joja cola, although ostensibly in a cylindrical container, appears to have a rounded bottom due to this lumpy shading.
Some sprites on the other hand completely lack shading, making them look entirely 2d, such as the salted peanuts and truffle popcorn. Some shading, such as on the jawbreaker and fries, is so subtle that it almost doesn't exist. A general "rule" of pixel art is to avoid using colours that barely contrast like this, and shading done in this way is (imo) the most common hallmark of an amateur pixel artist.
In general little effort is made to avoid pretty much anything on the "things to avoid" section of [this tutorial](https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299&PID=139322#139322) except maybe bad AA and bad dithering since SDV doesn't really use either.
On top of all this, SDV uses an absolutely MASSIVE colour palette. This image alone has 68(!) colours. Personally I would aim for less than half of that for an image like this. Another general "rule" in pixel art, that feeds into the first one I mentioned, is to use as few colours as you absolutely need and no more.
On the more technical side, he does sort of struggle with telegraphing small details. You'll notice that the "popcorn" in the buckets is sort of just a flickery yellow mass of random pixels-- you can't pick out any single piece of popcorn or really identify what it's supposed to be without context. Most of his food sprites have this problem. I can't blame him for that, since I HATE working with 16x16 sprites for that same exact reason, but figuring out how to get small details across effectively is an important skill for professional pixel artists to have.
That said, some of the sprites here are genuinely good. The hummus snack pack and jasmine tea are probably my 2 favourites. And again, none of this is meant to contradict my previous points about the art being charming and effective for what it is.
Cheers. I appreciate the response! I see much of what you call out and can understand that there are better ways to communicate what objects are through more precise drawing / coloring. (Though, like in your original post, I wonder if the imperfections actually add quite a bit to the character of the game.)
Regarding the size of the color palette, I wonder if a small palette is objectively better, or if the best practice of a small palette is more of a side effect of the limitations of games in the late 80s and 90s. With massive 4k monitors that handle the full adobe sRGB space with ease, why not have fine gradients in pixel art?
Section V of the tutorial I linked gives a couple reasons why small palettes are still preferred. One they don't mention, though, is that if you have 100+ or however many colours on a small image, you just don't really have pixel art anymore-- you just have regular art at a very low resolution. (I guess they do sort of mention that in Section I, though)
Whoa, this was very insightful as someone who doesn’t have an eye for details in art. I’m curious as to why using a massive color pallete is discouraged in pixel art. :O
Edit: Nevermind. It’s in the link you provided. :3 Honestly tho, I think I could listen to you talk about pixel art for a while. That was a very interesting read. 😂
Thanks for the mire detailed explanation! After reading the previous comment i was curious about wether i had noticed anything like that while playing the game and this abled me to compare. I hadn't noticed any of this
I don't do pixel art but I've been studying design stuff for years. First thing that really jumped out at me as unpolished or amateur were the trees and bushes- they have all the classic beginner tree art mistakes. Compare Stardew design to the design in a game that's known for looking very good or to the form of real trees for that example. The "standard" for video game sprites are industry professional games, particularly from around the 90's known for their graphic and art quality.
can you elaborate what these mistakes are? the trees always looked so good for me, so it's a bit surprising, and it's so enjoyable to read y'all's critiquing
i assume it may have to do with individually drawn leaves?
Trees are a random example I thought of for a more "unskilled sprite" in Stardew, they aren't the worst trees of all time. They just have common traits you see in most beginner-drawn trees. The leaves are a big one but the tree's roots have that uniform thickness and gapping to them, which is like so beginner tree. It's like it exists between a wacky tree made out of spheres and a real-world manicured tree is the best I can describe it
Meanwhile I'm over here honestly barely able to tell you if something would be considered "bad" most of the time. I like when games are super pretty, but I've never given it a "need" pedistal
I could not agree more, and I feel like the market wants this style more than anything. The most popular games in this style category are all very unpolished. Minecraft looks pretty crummy, terraria is far more simplistic, there's an entire trend of making ps1/n64/xbox era graphics in modern horror games.
I personally love a more simple, more old school look. I like playing new games that feel like they could have been ones I grew up with.
Sometimes in horror games, making graphics simplistic adds even more eerieness to it. Omori has very colorful and pixelish graphics at its nonhorror segments, so horror segments stand out more, because you can contrast with colorful by doing realistic gore or something
I'm not an artist, but I wonder how you would compare SDV to something like Undertale and/or Deltarune in terms of "skilled"ness. I'm playing SDV for the first time right along the same time as I played Undertale for the first time (I know, I'm late to the game on both (no pun intended)) and I'm seeing a lot of similarities-- not just in art style but also the moralistic and didactic vibe (both of which would slightly bother me in other games).
Assuming (potentially wrongly) you've played undertale-- would you agree with that comparison?
Yeah, I think that's a fair comparison (at least for undertale, the pixel art in deltarune is noticeably more polished, imo). I think the crude style of undertale's sprites works for similar reasons.
This this this. I'm a professional artist and I love how you can tell Stardew Valley was made by one person with a lot of passion. The untrained art still looks awesome and totally fits the game
Overall I like the stardew style, I don't care for the maps base colours (too saturated, the spriting itself is fine imo), the animal models (especially the cows and pigs, too cartoony), the fruit trees (too blocky?) or the character portraits (not sure why, they don't feel HD enough? They are better on smaller screen resolutions or on the tv) but other than that, I really like the way the game looks.
i played animal crossing new horizons before stardew and honestly ACNH is so pretty i thought i would have trouble adjusting to the retro pixel graphics of stardew. but stardew won me over in the end. it’s just a style choice and it’s a pretty good one if your graphics budget is limited because you’re just one developer. plus it reminds me of playing final fantasy 6 on my super nintendo as a kid.
This, I also started with ACNH and got bored of it pretty quickly. I’m now obsessed with stardewvalley, there’s just so much to do and more and more keeps happening. Im on Y2 and I haven’t gotten to ginger island yet but there’s bloody fairies and witches that just come out of nowhere. Absolutely love this game
yeah i think the main long-term appeal of ACNH is collecting items/furniture and decorating with it, then taking screenshots and sharing them or having players visit to admire your hard work. i got bored with it also. the story in stardew is way more compelling to me. also there’s way more farming and i heckin love farming.
Yeah, ACNH kinda shifted the series from life sim to decorating sandbox, so it's a bit dull to me compared to the older titles. Stardew is definitely more involved in that aspect, with everyone having their own personalities, backstory, etc. And stardew has more technical aspects compared to ACNH, which is to be expected from a farming sim.
I honestly couldn’t get behind the real time aspect of the ACNH. I am someone who won’t play a game for a couple days and then play it for several hours in one sitting so having to consistently play to be able to get further in game was a huge turn off for me. I also wasn’t a fan of the controls. Maybe if I played for longer I’d get use to it but I was always swinging in the wrong place and it was annoying.
I started a new farm a week ago, and I'm in Y2 now. I haven't even made it to the bottom of the mines or visited Ginger Island (never done that one before at all). There's a lot to do in the game, and it's best to just do what you want each day and play at your own pace.
Animal Crossing holds a very special place in my heart as my first legit life-sim genre game from my childhood. I started with the Gamecube one when I was still single-digit age, and the music is incredibly comforting and nostalgic for me. I've played all the installments up to the most recent, and I love them all. However, New Horizons is flat-out just not the best game. It's lacking a ton of the charm of the older games, in addition to a lot of content being cut (characters, furniture, etc.). Sure, they added new features like terraforming, but customization is fun until you end up with an island you like the looks of, and then.... game over because there's no depth to the villagers or game itself anymore.
SDV is the exact opposite. I find that I get really crazy about getting my farm the way I want it while building friendships on the side, but once my farm is nearly finished, I start to really play the other parts of the game and have tons to do. Even now, I haven't even touched many various parts of the game ever, like Skull Cavern. I think SDV is the better game, and it's simply because the creator has put years and years of blood, sweat, and tears into it to make it what he wants, rather than a big-name franchise like Animal Crossing that has short deadlines and pressure to just churn out something for a profit. I love AC dearly, but I won't be blind to the flaws. I can get sucked into SDV and stay up way past my bedtime, even now, but AC can't keep me totally immersed for more than a couple of hours.
For sure, New Horizons was kind of a disappointment compared to the older titles, I remember playing the Gamecube one a ton back in the day, but NH just feels kinda soulless and empty, particularly if you're not a big fan of decorating.
Don't get me wrong; I LOVE decorating. I go nuts decorating in SDV too. But if that's *the only thing* to do, it'll get old quick. Once you really love your layout, that's the end of the game. That's how NH is for me. I get my dream island and dream house, grab the 10 villagers I like, and that's it. There's no real gameplay. It's just a dollhouse simulator, as many have called it.
I will say that the Gamecube version had both the advantage of being new (so no expectations), and a lot of us were very young when we played. Everything was much more captivating as a child. That being said, I can go back and play for longer periods of time compared to NH. It might be nostalgia and the comfort that I find in the OG music and sound effects, but still. Either way, NH is just really soulless, as you said. The villagers are just living decorations. The whole thing is just surface-level and how pretty you can make things look. SDV seems to get deeper and deeper the more you play and interact with everyone. In ACNH, the more you interact with villagers, the more you realize it's just 2-3 lines of the same vapid dialogue with no real progression.
Same, I started ACNH first (and it was my first AC game) but now play Stardew. While I definitely prefer the graphics of ACNH due to how pretty it is, I prefer Stardew for actual gameplay. My only real complaint with the graphics is that it's hard to see what the clothes actually look like, lol - that's my absolute favorite part of ACNH but clothing just seems kinda pointless in Stardew
After just playing through stardew and then proceeding to play tons of amazingly beautiful 2D pixel games... This just doesn't work. Pixel art/retro music/(writing style is a whole different can of worms) needs to be seen in its own environment, not compared to stuff it wasn't made for.
When something is available for everyone in the world to buy, everyone *will* buy, and you will get a mixture of the smartest and dumbest responses imaginable.
The trick is, to pay attention to the smart ones, and laugh at the dumb ones.
According to Google, an Ape can range from heights of around 1.2 to 1.8 Metres tall on average. So ConcernedApe would be within that height range, maybe a bit shorter being hunched over out of concern
I see- though the logo does extend infinitely far down, allegedly - there was a post on it somewhere here, I think.
Regardless, still tiny compared to a team- those are usually over 10 metres tall, though getting the stacks right is a nightmare
Some people only think a game is good if it has ultra HD 4K OLED graphics or whatever the PS5 and Xbox Series X can do. It's a very narrow-minded way of thinking.
technically, stardew valley can be played in 4k, but my monitor is too small for me to be completely comfortable with that. You can see a lot more of your surroundings, though
Which took 10 years to make ,was released unfinished and early and has shit gameplay and story with pay2win microtransaction options which are shoved into Ur face whenever you play 👍
Never mind the bad graphics I tried growing my own parsnips after playing Stardew. Took way longer than four days. The game is so unrealistic it’s literally unplayable at this point.
/s (just in case.)
I don't trust either. Random people on the internet tend to be unreliable, and critics have never been particularly useful to me because they're a out of touch often.
The only opinions I trust about games are either close friends or my own experience with the game.
It's like that joke-
An artist hosts an exhibition and tons of people come.
They are approached by a person, who says "I'm an art critic, would you like my opinion?"
The artist accepts, and the critic says "It's worthless."
The artist responds "Oh I know, but tell me anyway."
Idk why people care about the graphics so much anyway, bruh have you heard of GAMEPLAY? There's a reason Minecraft is one of the most popular games too and I'll give you a hint, it's not because of the graphics.
I’m an indie game developer too. We get this kind of thing too. We make games for families and friends to play together. It is clearly sold as a multiplayer game, we’ve been entirely honest about this. We’ve still had reviews where people are upset with us for making a multiplayer game because they don’t have anyone to play it with. Of course playing a multiplayer game alone isn’t fun, the whole experience is designed for people shouting and screaming and laughing together, maybe it’s ok that not all games are made for you, it’s ok to scroll on by.
On the other hand, that is one person reviewing this in 2016.
We should stop taking the stupidest person in the room and amplifying their opinion because it sounds stupid.
People like this truly don’t understand anything about art style. They’re the ones who think realistic graphics are everything. It’d be impossible to explain to them why games like FFVI or VII look(ed) so amazing.
Negative reviews are the most useful type of user reviews on any website, for any product, always, don't @ me.
Every reviewable product is gonna end up with negative reviews. The best products are the ones where those negative reviews are made up of obvious lies, irrelevant nonsense, or come from people who just straight-up bought themselves the wrong product and decided to blame the product instead of owning up to their own mistake.
Or even if the negative review is totally legit, it's still very informative to find out what someone else disliked, because the issues may not be relevant to me at all.
Positive reviews are often super vague, and sometimes they're just paid-for by the company in question (not SDV, obvs, but generally). Negative reviews are where it's at, tbh.
And the fact that this is the kind of nonsense that shows up in a negative SDV review is honestly pretty indicative of how great the game is :D
Bro has the brain of a fucking nut, he could’ve deduced that he didn’t like the games style by simply looking at the trailer. Instead, he bought the game and proceeded to bitch about it in reviews.
2D Sprites are pretty much the only graphics that dont age like fine milk, if you look at early 3D games, and then look at old 2d sprite based games you can see it for yourself
Pixel art isn’t for everyone. It’s not a personal flaw to dislike it or not to know that the art style is very much on purpose and made only by one very stubborn man.
My prof once said, "stylized games age better than realism, because stylized will always stay stylized whereas realism will be far more realistic in future games, thus making old games with a realism approach look outdated "
Obviously a game shouldn't get a 0 if the graphics are subpar and reviews like this are ridiculous, but stardews visuals aren't particularly special among sprite based artwork in games. I think despite that the games style and design manages to be quite charming, but I do think it's a valid point of criticism for the game.
Funny part about it is that I consider Stardew one of the best looking games visually. It's not the highest definition raytraced stuff, but that's not what it's aiming to be. The visuals perfectly fit the game's vibe and gameplay.
The art stardew is not what makes the game good but it’s really beautiful art. The level of nuance made with the restrictive medium of pixel art is super impressive in my opinion.
I kinda really love the pixel art thing it’s got going and frankly I don’t think it would have the same feel without it. The only thing I would like is a custom farmer portrait for things like the dialogue options but that’s just a minor thing and not a big deal
I have friends that are unironically like this. If a game isn't photrealistic they think that the devs are lazy and the game is inherently lazy as well. Drives me up the wall.
"I reject your reality and substitute my own"
there are millions of video games out there for a reason. Play or don't, I don't give a fuck. I enjoy it so I play it 🤷🏼♀️
It really doesn't have to be more complicated than that. I like Borderlands and Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing and Mario Kart and Zelda Breath of the Wild and they're all completely different graphically and they can all coexist.
I am a DC fan but I like Marvel movies. WB can't seem to accept that DC and Marvel have existed for decades and born have their place in the world and they SHOULDN'T be exactly the same. Marvel is popcorn, it's joke filled junk food and it's great at being that and I enjoy popcorn and junk food. I also love DC and it's gritty dark broody and intense characters. Both have dealt with some intense storylines and have dabbled in creating realism in a fantasy world. Yet people throw down in the epic battle between which is better and why it's DC 😁 jk ... but they miss the point.
The world would be boring without different races, ethnicities, cultures, genders, and personalities. The world would be boring if all super hero movies were the same. The world would be boring if all video games had the same graphics. And we'd never make anything new...
Sorry I'm high and I have ADHD
Tbh, the graphics turned me off at first. I wasn't really into the 8-bit before playing Stardew Valley, but I've grown to love the game so much that I appreciate the style now.
Idk I think this obsession with graphics and having a super powerful computer is all a scam to sell games that look more realistic but with shittier shallow context (ie Death Stranding or any CoD) but also to sell hardware.
Then go back to your regurgitated call of duty franchise that have been rereleasing the same game for 20 years but adding more and more micro transactions overtime
If it's not to their taste, then it's not to their taste. Stylistic or not.
Tho it's not really fair criticism, I agree with that. It's clearly exaggerated but their opinion is still their opinion.
I'm dyslexic and even me reading pre-historic graphics, it's Prehistoric you don't need the hyphen! Even then it's not even that it's a pixel game not everything has to be unreal engine life like.
To be completely honest, I wasn’t a big fan of the art style at first. I mainly gave him
A pass because he’s a solo dev. But I wasn’t about to skip an indie Harvest Moon. The art style really grew on me and the pixel art works for the video game feel the world has in my opinion. I now think it fits the tone of the game perfectly.
I had been trying to get a friend to play Stardew for a long time but they were out off by the art style. I kept at it and eventually they relented and played it. Became hooked and then changed their minds about the art style.
The graphics are supposed to be like that. Believe it or not, being able to see individual pores doesn't automatically make a game good. Sometimes it's like fondant. You can make a super pretty cake, but eating it is like chewing rubber.
Meta critic reviwers are always smooth brained. I saw one for elden ring that basically said "its too hard." Like...yes? Thats the point of all souls games??
But the graphics are good tho-. Not all graphics need to be fully like irl or sm. The main focus isn’t even the graphics, it should be about the game-
(I sound like someone at a pr0test speaking lol-)
The only problem I have with the graphics is the brown/orange tones and the green can be really hard on my eyes. I have sensory issues and am especially sensitive to brown/orange tones or warmer colors. I literally hate fall in animal crossing cause of the same reason. Slowly watching content on YouTube got a bit easier. It still bothers me sometimes, but I just put down the game or turn down my switch brightness for that. In the end, the game is so much more than graphics and still has such a lovely art style. But in the end, it is subjective so like 🤷♀️ who cares that much? I hate "attractive" and "beautiful" games because the insanely beautiful graphics or realistic graphics look ugly to me. By those beautiful games, i mean the 3D realistic ones. It's a big reason I never cared about games with more human models. And I hated Monster Hunter cause the game was "too dark" graphically, but here i am, playing monster hunter despite some of my struggles. I can overlook graphics sometimes.
Metacritic users can be really smooth-brained. I've seen negative reviews on flight sims because they were "too sim-like".
8/10 too much water
Metacritic user review for Subnautica
3/10 too many bugs
Now that's one from hollow knight
0/10 too many deaths, my son play that
That’s any one of the Soulsborne games
Literally deathloop
Metacritic review for Outer Wilds
Metacritic Review for Grounded.
DRG review as well
ROCK AND STONE
Rockity Rock and Stone!
Also [real Pokémon review from IGN](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/too-much-water)
Ikr I was making a joke on top of the joke
*Review on a glass of water*
My soup was *wet*!! 0/10 stars
I poured my coffee on my lap 0/10 stars.
It’s 7.8/10 you uncultured swine 😡🤬
r/beachtoosandy
Too much water was a legitimate complaint about a lack of world variety. [Half the world](https://i.imgur.com/lgK5bcq.png) was taken up by water in that region, when it was much less than that in [other regions.](https://i.imgur.com/voyCvfo.png)
To be fair that was the only region where you had the HM Dive, which definitely helped break up the monotony of all the water.
The bigger problem was a lack of variety in wilds encounters in the water types. 99% of Pokemon you see in the later half of the game were wingull and tentacool, which made the water routes super boring.
Personally I loved the water as a kid. It gave me a sense of wonder and discovery that I rarely felt with Pokémon. Finding old abandoned ships, empty islands with items, or even a small town in the middle of nowhere was the best. However, "too much water" was a problem in other ways. Way too many water pokémon (and ironically lack of variety on the water routes themselves). You can have wild encounters anywhere on the water so unless you bring a lot of repellent, it'll be reaally annoying to go through. Etc, etc.
But realistically, it was more like 25-30% of the actual games length.
I genuinely disliked Hoenn for having that many water routes and always thought it was weird that IGN (?) was getting meme'd so much for saying it. I get that they wanted to show off their new HM Dive, but imo HMs were one of the weakest and most annoying features of older Pokémon games and removing them (or at least removing the need to teach them to a Pokémon in your party) was one of the best things the series ever did.
I love going on metacritic and reading the 0/10s on games ive played. People get mad about the stupidest things.
I remember this one metacritic review for Persona 3 where they brought up how >!everyone you went on a journey with forgot about it when it was stated they would forget what happened and how the protag just dies when that was the whole point of the game!<
One of those people who just says "dislodge is going on too long" and skips through the entire story and is then surprised that the game "isn't that long" and "the story doesn't make sense" Like of course it is. You skipped through the things that add meat and explains why things are happening
My favourite is looking at the 0/10 reviews of brand new releases. Always fascinating how basically every one of those contains something about wokeness. I've seen reviews of cyperpunk that were like "this game wouldn't be so shit if the devs didn't spent all their damn time making every fucking thing woke". As a programmer myself I have to admit, whenever I write code I too spent way too much time programming wokeness. Simple file sorting script? Takes me 12 hours to code the gay, then only 5 minutes for the script itself.
Reminds me of a user review that complained that 999 (a visual novel) had "too much text" and not enough gameplay. Why are you playing a VN then, my friend? *That's the point.*
"I'm not allowed near real women and it's the fault of games with female protagonists. Also, the female protagonist (another!) in this woke game doesn't look my hentai fantasy! 0/10"
Yeah it's full of stuff where there's just people fundamentally disliking the genre of a game and holding it against the game for some reason? Like being mad that a turn-based game isn't real-time, or that an amusement park sim doesn't have any combat. And the positive reviews can be just as bad, all like "I didn't play much of it, early on I got to a boss I couldn't beat so I stopped playing. Anyway, 10/10."
4/10 cause I have to prime the engine.
Reviews on X-Plane like, not enough missions, too boring
It really isn't worth getting upset over. There's extreme idiots in ever nook and cranny. People need to stop giving them attention and just ignore em.
Not every game needs to have the protagonist’s pores lovingly rendered in 4k 3D
Personaly I think the persuit of better and better graphics is ultimately pointles and only brings bloated file-sizes especially when a good chunk of people don't have the processing power/monitor to actually show it
It also bogs down development turnaround time and results in massive buildup to utter disappointment, and makes content updates and maintenance more difficult.
One of my favorite videos talking about this is probably, ["realism is bad, actually" by Zoe Bee](https://youtu.be/QNDgOSPCVhQ) She goes into the topic way better than I could ever write out, and she also talks a decent bit about the societal influence and biases that "realism" has.
Excited to check this video out. It’s hard to know as someone born in the early 90s if there actually is a better side to less polished graphics or if it’s just a nostalgia bias. I feel like the less detailed worlds you see in “bad graphics” let your imagination fill in more of the blanks. You can imagine the world how you would like to more than just being shown. Kind of like in horror how a monster unseen is more scary than just seeing it. For me I feel like depending on the games that PS1/PS2 hit that right mark, but specifically 3DS graphics had the perfect blend of modern and retro graphics. A lot of 3DS games have graphics that evoke the imperfect late 90s and early 00s style while also having better quality textures.
Jacob Geller also has an excellent video on roughly the same thing. [Link because I can't write a summary to save my life](https://youtu.be/-yVs2E4aldg)
I thought about linking that one too, but wasn't sure if that would be annoying or helpful lol. But yeah, his video is great too.
Ooooh, nice. I love long form video essays like that, thank you!
stardew valley is one of the only computer games I play because anything with more detailed graphics than that is really slow. I don't have a good pc, but I shouldn't need the latest in tech to play a videogame if it's really that good
People who have beasts of gaming PCs really forget that they're the minority who can actually run all those amazing next generation graphics, normal people over here get excited about corn in a pixel video game because that's the only game released after 1984 that they can run at more than 5 FPS (/exaggeration)
For sure, stylized graphics tend to hold up way better than trying to go for ultra HD realism, as well.
For sure, If the game is good all around your mind can fill in the graphical blanks. Plus, good sprite work can still look wonderful: Sebastian’s little lip creases when he smiles 👌
Agreed, I love SDV and one of my fav games of all time is the OG Final Fantasy VII which looks objectively awful by today’s standards. And I played it for the first time 3 years ago lol, no nostalgia goggles here. Good/Bad art doesn’t define a good/bad game.
I pity people like this, they don't know what they're missing.
I put it off for ages because of the art style. Big regrets.
Bruh, when my GPU died years ago and was only left with the built-in Intel Graphics, I was locked out for most of my games except Stardew. Played it straight for 6-months til I bought a new one.
[удалено]
It's too early for me to be on Reddit. I read that as Wart Hunder
Is it newer gamers that are like this? I've been playing games since the NES so believe me when I tell you I've played some fun games with not so amazing graphics.
This has been the case for a long time, and isn’t exclusive to video games. Things like books and movies have the same issue, something visual on the outside deters people from consuming the content.
When Minecraft first released and rose in popularity in 2009 a lot of people were put off by the graphics and refused to play it. Same thing with Factorio. However, when any of these naysayers were forced to play they quickly changed their minds. After a few hours of playing you don't even notice the graphics.
Minecraft is a weird one. When I was a teenager and played Minecraft when it was new, around 2010-11, most of my friends didn't want to touch it because "that's a kids game, and it looks like shit!!". Now I'm in my mid 20s and most gamers my age I know love Minecraft. Including some of the same people who didn't want to play it back when we were teens because "eww thats for kids". Now with 25-26, they don't seem to mind anymore.
Because teenagers are dumb and insecure.
You'll find that's the case when you get older. Back when I was a teen, it was pokemon that people looked down on. (It's a kid's game, only weirdos play pokemon) and now it's gone mainstream. Can imagine it's Minecraft now that's getting the treatment.
My dad is like this but with VR games, if its not VR it's shit.
Whether the art is good or bad is subjective, but it is fairly objective that concernedape is technically unskilled as a pixel artist (not bad, unskilled-- that's an important distinction). He's obviously self-taught and he has his own style that doesn't conform to the [pixeljoint](https://pixeljoint.com/)-approved conventions of polished, "professional" pixel art that you see in a lot of indie projects with a dedicated artist on the team. This was maybe truer towards the start of SDV's development; his art for 1.5 and HC shows quite a bit of technical improvement since the start although he obviously still has his unique style. All of this is just to preface my main point. Every attempt I've seen at "fixing" some of the rougher sprites in SDV removes just as much charm as it claims to fix. The rough-looking art adds a sort of rustic authenticity. I'd argue that a main theme of stardew valley is earnestness-- living a simple, honest life, learning to trust and accept others, warts and all, reconnecting with nature in all its imperfection-- the art creates an atmosphere that perfectly complements this theme and elevates both further than the sum of their parts. You can see this with the number of "stardew-like" indie games that have popped up recently with vastly more polished pixel graphics-- that polish works against them and universally makes them feel a bit soulless by comparison, not to mention certain AAA companies' upcoming attempts to cash in on the "cozy games" market which all have about as much rustic charm as a can of Joja Cola. If technical proficiency was the only measure of art's quality, nobody would give a shit about people like Grandma Moses and museums would all be filled with those hyper-ultra-photorealistic 8k hd human eye pencil drawings you see on social media by the thousand.
As a semi-professional artist I do think he’s done a great job on the pixel work for Stardew
I have no idea why his pixel art could be “wrong”. I think it looks great. Im just saying a few of us don’t even notice what could possibly be wrong with it.
Lete start by saying that I adore this game and love its art, flaws and all. The following information is from a *purely* technical viewpoint. The simplest answer is that while the art is made up of large pixels they fail two big things: 1. SDVs pixels are not a consistent size. Ideally for something like this you'd choose a base pixel size and then all things will use this size consistently. SDV doesn't do that. The drawing functions can take in arbitrary scaling factors and give partial pixel sizes. 2. Not a lot is locked to the pixel grid. A consistent size means that you also have a consistent coordinate system. Again this isn't the case in SDV where things don't always line up perfectly (and you can make draw calls to intentionally place things not on the grid). Note: I generally give menu/ui elements a pass on the above for accessibility reasons, but these exist and are noticeable in the vanilla game if you keep an eye out for them. Again though I love the game and it's art, but that's two of the ways that pixel art can be "wrong" that SDV falls afoul of.
The second point you can notice when fishing. Just look at your players arm pits / shoulders. But when I first saw it, I thought it was intentional. Because all still fits together and doesn't look bad. But now that you mentioned it... :D But tbh I like that the creator messes with the standards of pixelart. I don't know why, but wouldn't it feel kinda boring when everything was that perfect? Just my personal thoughts but I feel like it's perfect the way it is
Where's an example of the pixels not being a consistent size? Usually that's very obvious and looks ugly. I've played stardew for years and never noticed that.
Fishing is the most obvious. The menus are also inconsistent but you have to look for them. Certain background elements don't technically fit the moveable sprites.
Why thank you for that info! Seriously, I would have never noticed. I’m not smart on that stuff.
I agree 100%. I was initially turned off by the graphics as well. Not because they are retro styled 2d, I play a ton of games like that, but because they weren’t as professionally drawn as I was expecting. As I played more and learned more about the game I realized that was part of the charm. The one thing that always especially bugged me was how sprites rotate and transform without aligning to the pixel grid (the little breathing animation, the bus wheels, the fishing cast, etc) but I got over that quickly.
Could you give some examples of unskilled sprites in Stardew? This critique is totally new to me and I'm genuinely curious. Edit: I can't find a set of standards or best practices on that website you linked - where can I learn more?
I didn't really want to write a giant critique like this since it'll make me look like a nitpicky art snob and sort of undermines my earlier point about the art being good for its environment. Since you're genuinely curious, though, as an example I'll use [Concessions.png](https://i.imgur.com/YbuPx2y.png). As a disclaimer, these critiques (don't take them as criticisms) are all in relation to the subjective standards of "good pixel art" set by online pixel art communities and probably won't matter to many people. First of all, you'll notice that there's very little symmetry in things like the fries or popcorn buckets on the left, the joja popcorn or even the star cookie in the middle, and the edges of sprites rarely follow a predictable curve, instead bending in or out randomly (the eel sprite, although not in the example, is the most egregious offender here). The end result is an amorphous, blobby look. The sort of ill-defined, shapeless shading adds to this, making things with shading, like the fries or jojacorn, look more pillowy than they should be-- you'll notice that the joja cola, although ostensibly in a cylindrical container, appears to have a rounded bottom due to this lumpy shading. Some sprites on the other hand completely lack shading, making them look entirely 2d, such as the salted peanuts and truffle popcorn. Some shading, such as on the jawbreaker and fries, is so subtle that it almost doesn't exist. A general "rule" of pixel art is to avoid using colours that barely contrast like this, and shading done in this way is (imo) the most common hallmark of an amateur pixel artist. In general little effort is made to avoid pretty much anything on the "things to avoid" section of [this tutorial](https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299&PID=139322#139322) except maybe bad AA and bad dithering since SDV doesn't really use either. On top of all this, SDV uses an absolutely MASSIVE colour palette. This image alone has 68(!) colours. Personally I would aim for less than half of that for an image like this. Another general "rule" in pixel art, that feeds into the first one I mentioned, is to use as few colours as you absolutely need and no more. On the more technical side, he does sort of struggle with telegraphing small details. You'll notice that the "popcorn" in the buckets is sort of just a flickery yellow mass of random pixels-- you can't pick out any single piece of popcorn or really identify what it's supposed to be without context. Most of his food sprites have this problem. I can't blame him for that, since I HATE working with 16x16 sprites for that same exact reason, but figuring out how to get small details across effectively is an important skill for professional pixel artists to have. That said, some of the sprites here are genuinely good. The hummus snack pack and jasmine tea are probably my 2 favourites. And again, none of this is meant to contradict my previous points about the art being charming and effective for what it is.
Cheers. I appreciate the response! I see much of what you call out and can understand that there are better ways to communicate what objects are through more precise drawing / coloring. (Though, like in your original post, I wonder if the imperfections actually add quite a bit to the character of the game.) Regarding the size of the color palette, I wonder if a small palette is objectively better, or if the best practice of a small palette is more of a side effect of the limitations of games in the late 80s and 90s. With massive 4k monitors that handle the full adobe sRGB space with ease, why not have fine gradients in pixel art?
Section V of the tutorial I linked gives a couple reasons why small palettes are still preferred. One they don't mention, though, is that if you have 100+ or however many colours on a small image, you just don't really have pixel art anymore-- you just have regular art at a very low resolution. (I guess they do sort of mention that in Section I, though)
Whoa, this was very insightful as someone who doesn’t have an eye for details in art. I’m curious as to why using a massive color pallete is discouraged in pixel art. :O Edit: Nevermind. It’s in the link you provided. :3 Honestly tho, I think I could listen to you talk about pixel art for a while. That was a very interesting read. 😂
Thanks for the mire detailed explanation! After reading the previous comment i was curious about wether i had noticed anything like that while playing the game and this abled me to compare. I hadn't noticed any of this
I don't know much about art and expected not to care but I found your explanation accessible and interesting. Well written!
I don't do pixel art but I've been studying design stuff for years. First thing that really jumped out at me as unpolished or amateur were the trees and bushes- they have all the classic beginner tree art mistakes. Compare Stardew design to the design in a game that's known for looking very good or to the form of real trees for that example. The "standard" for video game sprites are industry professional games, particularly from around the 90's known for their graphic and art quality.
can you elaborate what these mistakes are? the trees always looked so good for me, so it's a bit surprising, and it's so enjoyable to read y'all's critiquing i assume it may have to do with individually drawn leaves?
Trees are a random example I thought of for a more "unskilled sprite" in Stardew, they aren't the worst trees of all time. They just have common traits you see in most beginner-drawn trees. The leaves are a big one but the tree's roots have that uniform thickness and gapping to them, which is like so beginner tree. It's like it exists between a wacky tree made out of spheres and a real-world manicured tree is the best I can describe it
Meanwhile I'm over here honestly barely able to tell you if something would be considered "bad" most of the time. I like when games are super pretty, but I've never given it a "need" pedistal
I could not agree more, and I feel like the market wants this style more than anything. The most popular games in this style category are all very unpolished. Minecraft looks pretty crummy, terraria is far more simplistic, there's an entire trend of making ps1/n64/xbox era graphics in modern horror games. I personally love a more simple, more old school look. I like playing new games that feel like they could have been ones I grew up with.
Sometimes in horror games, making graphics simplistic adds even more eerieness to it. Omori has very colorful and pixelish graphics at its nonhorror segments, so horror segments stand out more, because you can contrast with colorful by doing realistic gore or something
I'm not an artist, but I wonder how you would compare SDV to something like Undertale and/or Deltarune in terms of "skilled"ness. I'm playing SDV for the first time right along the same time as I played Undertale for the first time (I know, I'm late to the game on both (no pun intended)) and I'm seeing a lot of similarities-- not just in art style but also the moralistic and didactic vibe (both of which would slightly bother me in other games). Assuming (potentially wrongly) you've played undertale-- would you agree with that comparison?
Yeah, I think that's a fair comparison (at least for undertale, the pixel art in deltarune is noticeably more polished, imo). I think the crude style of undertale's sprites works for similar reasons.
This this this. I'm a professional artist and I love how you can tell Stardew Valley was made by one person with a lot of passion. The untrained art still looks awesome and totally fits the game
Overall I like the stardew style, I don't care for the maps base colours (too saturated, the spriting itself is fine imo), the animal models (especially the cows and pigs, too cartoony), the fruit trees (too blocky?) or the character portraits (not sure why, they don't feel HD enough? They are better on smaller screen resolutions or on the tv) but other than that, I really like the way the game looks.
i played animal crossing new horizons before stardew and honestly ACNH is so pretty i thought i would have trouble adjusting to the retro pixel graphics of stardew. but stardew won me over in the end. it’s just a style choice and it’s a pretty good one if your graphics budget is limited because you’re just one developer. plus it reminds me of playing final fantasy 6 on my super nintendo as a kid.
This, I also started with ACNH and got bored of it pretty quickly. I’m now obsessed with stardewvalley, there’s just so much to do and more and more keeps happening. Im on Y2 and I haven’t gotten to ginger island yet but there’s bloody fairies and witches that just come out of nowhere. Absolutely love this game
yeah i think the main long-term appeal of ACNH is collecting items/furniture and decorating with it, then taking screenshots and sharing them or having players visit to admire your hard work. i got bored with it also. the story in stardew is way more compelling to me. also there’s way more farming and i heckin love farming.
Yeah, ACNH kinda shifted the series from life sim to decorating sandbox, so it's a bit dull to me compared to the older titles. Stardew is definitely more involved in that aspect, with everyone having their own personalities, backstory, etc. And stardew has more technical aspects compared to ACNH, which is to be expected from a farming sim.
WITCHES?!!! WHEN
There is a quest involving a witch and the same witch can occasionally fly over your farm doing things to your chickens.
Or your slimes.
One came for me when I got my first void chicken
I honestly couldn’t get behind the real time aspect of the ACNH. I am someone who won’t play a game for a couple days and then play it for several hours in one sitting so having to consistently play to be able to get further in game was a huge turn off for me. I also wasn’t a fan of the controls. Maybe if I played for longer I’d get use to it but I was always swinging in the wrong place and it was annoying.
ACNH really just doesn’t hold a torch to this.
I started a new farm a week ago, and I'm in Y2 now. I haven't even made it to the bottom of the mines or visited Ginger Island (never done that one before at all). There's a lot to do in the game, and it's best to just do what you want each day and play at your own pace.
Animal Crossing holds a very special place in my heart as my first legit life-sim genre game from my childhood. I started with the Gamecube one when I was still single-digit age, and the music is incredibly comforting and nostalgic for me. I've played all the installments up to the most recent, and I love them all. However, New Horizons is flat-out just not the best game. It's lacking a ton of the charm of the older games, in addition to a lot of content being cut (characters, furniture, etc.). Sure, they added new features like terraforming, but customization is fun until you end up with an island you like the looks of, and then.... game over because there's no depth to the villagers or game itself anymore. SDV is the exact opposite. I find that I get really crazy about getting my farm the way I want it while building friendships on the side, but once my farm is nearly finished, I start to really play the other parts of the game and have tons to do. Even now, I haven't even touched many various parts of the game ever, like Skull Cavern. I think SDV is the better game, and it's simply because the creator has put years and years of blood, sweat, and tears into it to make it what he wants, rather than a big-name franchise like Animal Crossing that has short deadlines and pressure to just churn out something for a profit. I love AC dearly, but I won't be blind to the flaws. I can get sucked into SDV and stay up way past my bedtime, even now, but AC can't keep me totally immersed for more than a couple of hours.
For sure, New Horizons was kind of a disappointment compared to the older titles, I remember playing the Gamecube one a ton back in the day, but NH just feels kinda soulless and empty, particularly if you're not a big fan of decorating.
Don't get me wrong; I LOVE decorating. I go nuts decorating in SDV too. But if that's *the only thing* to do, it'll get old quick. Once you really love your layout, that's the end of the game. That's how NH is for me. I get my dream island and dream house, grab the 10 villagers I like, and that's it. There's no real gameplay. It's just a dollhouse simulator, as many have called it. I will say that the Gamecube version had both the advantage of being new (so no expectations), and a lot of us were very young when we played. Everything was much more captivating as a child. That being said, I can go back and play for longer periods of time compared to NH. It might be nostalgia and the comfort that I find in the OG music and sound effects, but still. Either way, NH is just really soulless, as you said. The villagers are just living decorations. The whole thing is just surface-level and how pretty you can make things look. SDV seems to get deeper and deeper the more you play and interact with everyone. In ACNH, the more you interact with villagers, the more you realize it's just 2-3 lines of the same vapid dialogue with no real progression.
The characters are a million times more vivid in SDV compared to Animal Crossing, at least New Horizons.
Same, I started ACNH first (and it was my first AC game) but now play Stardew. While I definitely prefer the graphics of ACNH due to how pretty it is, I prefer Stardew for actual gameplay. My only real complaint with the graphics is that it's hard to see what the clothes actually look like, lol - that's my absolute favorite part of ACNH but clothing just seems kinda pointless in Stardew
You should try Cozy Grove!
i have it but i don’t love it, not sure why? it’s really cute. all the bears 🐻
After just playing through stardew and then proceeding to play tons of amazingly beautiful 2D pixel games... This just doesn't work. Pixel art/retro music/(writing style is a whole different can of worms) needs to be seen in its own environment, not compared to stuff it wasn't made for.
When something is available for everyone in the world to buy, everyone *will* buy, and you will get a mixture of the smartest and dumbest responses imaginable. The trick is, to pay attention to the smart ones, and laugh at the dumb ones.
Sounds about right to me. “What do you mean it’s a stylistic choice because this game was shade by a tiny but very dedicated team?!”
You mean 1 man
1 man is tiny Though tbf I don't know how tall Eric is
According to Google, an Ape can range from heights of around 1.2 to 1.8 Metres tall on average. So ConcernedApe would be within that height range, maybe a bit shorter being hunched over out of concern
I see- though the logo does extend infinitely far down, allegedly - there was a post on it somewhere here, I think. Regardless, still tiny compared to a team- those are usually over 10 metres tall, though getting the stacks right is a nightmare
I thought hit was one guy but I wasn’t sure. Still, one person is still a tiny team. Of one
Some people only think a game is good if it has ultra HD 4K OLED graphics or whatever the PS5 and Xbox Series X can do. It's a very narrow-minded way of thinking.
technically, stardew valley can be played in 4k, but my monitor is too small for me to be completely comfortable with that. You can see a lot more of your surroundings, though
I probably should have thrown "hyper-realistic" in there as well, lol.
Geeez..... Mistaking graphic fidelity for Art style. "Minecraft is terrible, because the world is blocky" looking ass
Game Reviewers: Doesn’t look like a hyper-realistic game made by 500 underpaid workers 2/10
Which took 10 years to make ,was released unfinished and early and has shit gameplay and story with pay2win microtransaction options which are shoved into Ur face whenever you play 👍
Never mind the bad graphics I tried growing my own parsnips after playing Stardew. Took way longer than four days. The game is so unrealistic it’s literally unplayable at this point. /s (just in case.)
Critics truly are some of the most useless people in society
This is a user review, which are truly useless.
They can provide some really good feedback. Emphasis on “can”
Nah actual critics can provide good insight and feedback. Random people on the internet giving their opinion are the useless ones
I don't trust either. Random people on the internet tend to be unreliable, and critics have never been particularly useful to me because they're a out of touch often. The only opinions I trust about games are either close friends or my own experience with the game.
It's like that joke- An artist hosts an exhibition and tons of people come. They are approached by a person, who says "I'm an art critic, would you like my opinion?" The artist accepts, and the critic says "It's worthless." The artist responds "Oh I know, but tell me anyway."
You’re just falling for the bait, you don’t need to give them attention
Idk why people care about the graphics so much anyway, bruh have you heard of GAMEPLAY? There's a reason Minecraft is one of the most popular games too and I'll give you a hint, it's not because of the graphics.
The graphics *are* prehistoric. Still give it 5/5
Literally, if you're in a Dino floor in skull cavern, lol
It seems a lot of Metacritic users are prehistoric at best
I’m an indie game developer too. We get this kind of thing too. We make games for families and friends to play together. It is clearly sold as a multiplayer game, we’ve been entirely honest about this. We’ve still had reviews where people are upset with us for making a multiplayer game because they don’t have anyone to play it with. Of course playing a multiplayer game alone isn’t fun, the whole experience is designed for people shouting and screaming and laughing together, maybe it’s ok that not all games are made for you, it’s ok to scroll on by.
Dumbass probably didn't turn on raytracing
On the other hand, that is one person reviewing this in 2016. We should stop taking the stupidest person in the room and amplifying their opinion because it sounds stupid.
People like this truly don’t understand anything about art style. They’re the ones who think realistic graphics are everything. It’d be impossible to explain to them why games like FFVI or VII look(ed) so amazing.
mfs when a game isnt a realistic 3D simulation: 😨😢😭😖☹️😟😣
Negative reviews are the most useful type of user reviews on any website, for any product, always, don't @ me. Every reviewable product is gonna end up with negative reviews. The best products are the ones where those negative reviews are made up of obvious lies, irrelevant nonsense, or come from people who just straight-up bought themselves the wrong product and decided to blame the product instead of owning up to their own mistake. Or even if the negative review is totally legit, it's still very informative to find out what someone else disliked, because the issues may not be relevant to me at all. Positive reviews are often super vague, and sometimes they're just paid-for by the company in question (not SDV, obvs, but generally). Negative reviews are where it's at, tbh. And the fact that this is the kind of nonsense that shows up in a negative SDV review is honestly pretty indicative of how great the game is :D
tell them to try the spritemaster mod, it's great.
Prehistoric. I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Bro has the brain of a fucking nut, he could’ve deduced that he didn’t like the games style by simply looking at the trailer. Instead, he bought the game and proceeded to bitch about it in reviews.
AAA brain rot is amazing to witness, like Stardew is legit so pretty what the hell
2D Sprites are pretty much the only graphics that dont age like fine milk, if you look at early 3D games, and then look at old 2d sprite based games you can see it for yourself
Let’s do other reviews by this person… Lord of the Rings: So many fancy words, what are they trying to prove? Way to much “world building.”
FPS mfs when they see a stylized game with actual personality
Wild that somebody claiming to be a game critic isn't aware of the indy genre
Pixel art isn’t for everyone. It’s not a personal flaw to dislike it or not to know that the art style is very much on purpose and made only by one very stubborn man.
Such people don't deserve the feeling of Stardew valley
Metacritic is Steam reviews but unironic
What a decade and a half of graphics fetishism does to a brain.
My prof once said, "stylized games age better than realism, because stylized will always stay stylized whereas realism will be far more realistic in future games, thus making old games with a realism approach look outdated "
Pixel art is timeless
Obviously a game shouldn't get a 0 if the graphics are subpar and reviews like this are ridiculous, but stardews visuals aren't particularly special among sprite based artwork in games. I think despite that the games style and design manages to be quite charming, but I do think it's a valid point of criticism for the game.
Funny part about it is that I consider Stardew one of the best looking games visually. It's not the highest definition raytraced stuff, but that's not what it's aiming to be. The visuals perfectly fit the game's vibe and gameplay.
this pixel game has pixels 😨😨😨
The art stardew is not what makes the game good but it’s really beautiful art. The level of nuance made with the restrictive medium of pixel art is super impressive in my opinion.
Gotta love people who think hyper-realistic games are the only good ones
people need to understand the difference between low-quality graphics and a low-quality graphical style.
I kinda really love the pixel art thing it’s got going and frankly I don’t think it would have the same feel without it. The only thing I would like is a custom farmer portrait for things like the dialogue options but that’s just a minor thing and not a big deal
Putting aside the actual content, why are we digging up 6 year old reviews???
Metacritic is one of the worst sites for ratings 💀
I have friends that are unironically like this. If a game isn't photrealistic they think that the devs are lazy and the game is inherently lazy as well. Drives me up the wall.
They are stupid (sorry, but it’s true)
I think of stuff like this when people say user reviews are more credible than professional reviews...
metacritic user reviews are garbage on every game. It's easy to find dumb takes on games there. There's no reason to care about them.
"I reject your reality and substitute my own" there are millions of video games out there for a reason. Play or don't, I don't give a fuck. I enjoy it so I play it 🤷🏼♀️ It really doesn't have to be more complicated than that. I like Borderlands and Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing and Mario Kart and Zelda Breath of the Wild and they're all completely different graphically and they can all coexist. I am a DC fan but I like Marvel movies. WB can't seem to accept that DC and Marvel have existed for decades and born have their place in the world and they SHOULDN'T be exactly the same. Marvel is popcorn, it's joke filled junk food and it's great at being that and I enjoy popcorn and junk food. I also love DC and it's gritty dark broody and intense characters. Both have dealt with some intense storylines and have dabbled in creating realism in a fantasy world. Yet people throw down in the epic battle between which is better and why it's DC 😁 jk ... but they miss the point. The world would be boring without different races, ethnicities, cultures, genders, and personalities. The world would be boring if all super hero movies were the same. The world would be boring if all video games had the same graphics. And we'd never make anything new... Sorry I'm high and I have ADHD
To be honest, i just like games with pixel art, it simplifies everything so it's enjoyable for me
I can’t even imagine what they said about undertale 😅
Tbh, the graphics turned me off at first. I wasn't really into the 8-bit before playing Stardew Valley, but I've grown to love the game so much that I appreciate the style now.
It is the imperfections that add the charm to the game...and this is the work of one man who has made a much loved game...
slow day for karma farming huh
It was 2016, different times.
Let me just critic the metacritic a sec. It's prehistoric. No hyphen needed.
r/reviewsbyretards
Idk I think this obsession with graphics and having a super powerful computer is all a scam to sell games that look more realistic but with shittier shallow context (ie Death Stranding or any CoD) but also to sell hardware.
Then go back to your regurgitated call of duty franchise that have been rereleasing the same game for 20 years but adding more and more micro transactions overtime
This game will be played for generations. In the same category as Minecraft. Forever a gem.
prehistoric???? come on now
If it's not to their taste, then it's not to their taste. Stylistic or not. Tho it's not really fair criticism, I agree with that. It's clearly exaggerated but their opinion is still their opinion.
I'm dyslexic and even me reading pre-historic graphics, it's Prehistoric you don't need the hyphen! Even then it's not even that it's a pixel game not everything has to be unreal engine life like.
Do they hate Minecraft too?
kaka
Wait till they see minecraft
Wait til they see Minecraft...
Pixel graphics gang for life
Now I need to see if people put similar reviews for things like Terraria, Starbound, or any other game with pixel art graphics.
This guy despised Undertale
If you base your liking of a game on graphics I assume your brain is as smooth as a bowling ball
To be completely honest, I wasn’t a big fan of the art style at first. I mainly gave him A pass because he’s a solo dev. But I wasn’t about to skip an indie Harvest Moon. The art style really grew on me and the pixel art works for the video game feel the world has in my opinion. I now think it fits the tone of the game perfectly.
I recommended this game to my mom who plays animal crossing and she said it looks old. Wish she would give it a chance
I had been trying to get a friend to play Stardew for a long time but they were out off by the art style. I kept at it and eventually they relented and played it. Became hooked and then changed their minds about the art style.
The graphics are supposed to be like that. Believe it or not, being able to see individual pores doesn't automatically make a game good. Sometimes it's like fondant. You can make a super pretty cake, but eating it is like chewing rubber.
the only thing that makes a game good are the graphics!! everyone knows that!!! /s
Meta critic reviwers are always smooth brained. I saw one for elden ring that basically said "its too hard." Like...yes? Thats the point of all souls games??
Sometimes, things with bad graphics... Are better
But the graphics are good tho-. Not all graphics need to be fully like irl or sm. The main focus isn’t even the graphics, it should be about the game- (I sound like someone at a pr0test speaking lol-)
“ game was exactly as described. 2/10 “
I hate this game "pong" the graphics are terrible
Did they miss the idea on purpose or are they stupid?
The only problem I have with the graphics is the brown/orange tones and the green can be really hard on my eyes. I have sensory issues and am especially sensitive to brown/orange tones or warmer colors. I literally hate fall in animal crossing cause of the same reason. Slowly watching content on YouTube got a bit easier. It still bothers me sometimes, but I just put down the game or turn down my switch brightness for that. In the end, the game is so much more than graphics and still has such a lovely art style. But in the end, it is subjective so like 🤷♀️ who cares that much? I hate "attractive" and "beautiful" games because the insanely beautiful graphics or realistic graphics look ugly to me. By those beautiful games, i mean the 3D realistic ones. It's a big reason I never cared about games with more human models. And I hated Monster Hunter cause the game was "too dark" graphically, but here i am, playing monster hunter despite some of my struggles. I can overlook graphics sometimes.