How much do reviews matter when you're looking at games?

[Agent HK47]

I use reviews as a guide, but they are not the most important factor. I tend to look at game engines, tags and preview images first and foremost. If I like what I see then I usually look for a few somewhat recent reviews, which are of decent length, as these often take the time to flesh out positives/negatives about the game.
Still, even if the reviews are bad, I might very possibly give the game a go, if I like the preview images and tags enough. It all depends on the individual game.

 

[E_nigma]

People are so quick to give something 5 stars that you have to be truly terrible to get below 3 stars. Reviews can also be a quick way to check how mechanics and fetishes are handled, when mods aren't arbitrarily deleting them.

yeah I've had a few of mine deleted because some mods are rather protective of certain games/tags.

Personally as far as reviews I tend to look more for what reviews have the most likes. if it's kind of an early game or a game with certain tags that tend to get a flurry of 5 or 1 stars based just on a single tag it helps to see that the people who have a bit more interest in it are actually reading reviews of something they've already played to raise awareness. So often you see a game that's 3+ years old with 4+ stars but tons of the most recent reviews are 1 and 2 stars with 8+ likes while the 5 star reviews are vacuous fluff pieces. There is also the anti and counter reviews you see particularly in new games. I also usually only consider reviews that have a substantive take, more than just the 200 character minimum that has a lot of words but nothing to say

 

[Atemsiel]

Depends how big the game is. If the game is like 5gb, I'll read some reviews first to see whats up before spending the time to download it. If it's like 200mb I may just try it if I like the art or whatever.

Issue with reviews is you see some games where there's a bunch of 1 star reviews that don't comment on the quality of the game, it's just about the theme not being what that person's into. They're as useful as a vegan's review of a steakhouse.

 

[gingisep]

I only read negative reviews and consider them if they point out things I don't like in a game.

 

[izalde]

If a game hits all the niches I'm interested in, it's an instant download. I rarely check reviews.

 

[nulnil]

5-star reviews are almost never informative and often sound like fanboying. If you want to write a review to convince me to play, your review should inform me how the game is fun, what kind of fetishes that could turn me off, ect. On the other hand, 2-3 star reviews are often more informative. They usually point out what's wrong with the game or how someone might just like the game.

Here's how I think stars should be formatted:
5 stars: There are no flaws, anyone reasonable can enjoy it, and it's comparable to non-porn games.
4 stars: There are admittedly flaws with the game, but they aren't too problematic to look past.
3 stars: The game is not for everyone, but 60-70% of people could enjoy it.
2 stars: There are very large issues with the game, but it is possible to ignore them if you are horny enough.
1 star: The game is utterly not worth your time.

Also, when talking about your review, here's the 3 main points I use:
Gameplay: The overall fun and depth the game has to it.
Presentation: The complexity and how much sex is relevant to gameplay. Something like a rape move I could use would be an auto 6/10
Visual Design: Not how much you like big boobs, but the originality, quality, and character design that goes into the artstyle.

 

[MarshmallowCasserole]

5-star reviews are almost never informative and often sound like fanboying.

As someone who writes a lot of critical reviews, I kinda agree, but I have to note that writing a good review for a perfect game is a lot harder than for a game with pronounced flaws. Critical reviews are also quite fun to read.

MOST 5-star reviews are given for art style and "potential". Potential most of the time means desire to see more pics in that art style.

Here's how I think stars should be formatted:

The star ratings here have a verbal equivalent, which is actually useful: excellent, good, average, poor, terrible.

An excellent game is doing some aspect extremely well, and has no serious flaws that spoil the experience.

An average game is just that, average.

A terrible game is a game not worth playing.

Poor and Good you can extrapolate from the previous three.

 

[Virulenz]

I dont read or write reviews, i give a fuck about some little stars and i dont read every single post in most topics. I check the latest updates, see an interesting thumbnail and check the tags, then i search the topic for specifics of some tags (avoidable ntr, avoidable dicks/lesbian routes, prostitution as in seeing some whores or becoming one, ...) and ask myself if no answer was found. Then i decide if its worth the download and in the end i may or may not leave a post in the topic, mostly about found bugs. Thats it, why waste time on reading opinions of people i dont know about things i didnt see myself before playing?

 

[ManOfDarkDesires]

Even if I read reviews, I don't let them shape my decision. If a game looks appealing or interesting to me, I download it nonetheless and give it a try. Basing on my personal experience, some games are very flawed even if the rating is outstanding, mostly because several people turn into mindless fanboys after playing the game... It's ok to support and praise worthy games, but if you really like a game, you should be ready to criticize its flaws, so the developer(s) may improve it in subsequents updates.

 

[Belphegor007]

Reviews give me an idea of how true tags are, how buggy it is, and how the gameplay is if the reviews are done correctly.

I am completely fucking sick of 5 star reviews saying the game has nothing now but it has potential, I always debate if I should fucking report these fucking garbage reviews.

 

[Degenubis]

For me, there's so much content out there that I kinda have to factor review scores into things in order to know where best to spend my time.

I will play lower rated games if something about them catches my eye (usually a particular tag, or really good renders, or a storyline approach I like) but I'll generally sort things by rating and work my way down from the top.

If something has a decent number of reviews (20+) and is sat at a 1-2 star rating, that's usually enough to make me stay away. If it's around 3 stars I'll take time to read the reviews and see how I feel. 4 and above I'll go off how the game looks to me.

 

[fitgirlbestgirl]

If something has a decent number of reviews (20+) and is sat at a 1-2 star rating, that's usually enough to make me stay away. If it's around 3 stars I'll take time to read the reviews and see how I feel. 4 and above I'll go off how the game looks to me.

The problem is that any game that isn't complete trash on multiple levels and popular enough to get reviews will have a 4+ star rating. 5 star reviews by fanboys will always outpace any critical reviews unless a game is literally so terrible that everybody agrees it's a lost cause.

Review scores are absolutely worthless for 98% of games. To get a sub 3 star rating on F95 you have to literally be a scammer or incomprehensibly bad at everything, yet somehow still able to get people to play your game.

The only worth of the review system are individual reviews that manage to tell you more about the game than the Engrish synopsis, strategically chosen screens, or marketing fluff ever will.

 

[Jash83]

Individual reviews generally aren't reliable because the majority of reviewers don't put any thought into actually assessing and reviewing a game, only categorising their opinion as either "like" (5 stars) or "didn't like" (1 star). And some morons even review with an active agenda, openly admitting that the think the game is only really worth 3-4 stars, but they're giving it 5 stars anyway to counterbalance the "wrong" reviews that have given it 1, which entirely defeats the purpose of reviews being an AGGREGATE score ("this popular opinion is wrong, I have to rig it to be more like MY popular opinion").

That said, because most people don't bother reviewing bad games unless they PARTICULARLY despise them (combined with the aforementioned "like=5/5" issue), review scores will usually incline more towards the upper end of the spectrum on average. That means that any game with a score of less than 3 stars must have an EXTREMELY high proportion of very low scores to counterbalance the inevitable 5s, prompting me to check the reviews out to find exactly what the issue is. While most games with 4 1/2 star scores can't really be counted on to actually be THAT good, a sub-3 star score is usually a HUGE red flag, and usually a sign that, unless the game specifically fills a unique niche that few if any other games do, I'm better off just giving it a miss.

 

[E_nigma]

The problem is that any game that isn't complete trash on multiple levels and popular enough to get reviews will have a 4+ star rating. 5 star reviews by fanboys will always outpace any critical reviews unless a game is literally so terrible that everybody agrees it's a lost cause.

Review scores are absolutely worthless for 98% of games. To get a sub 3 star rating on F95 you have to literally be a scammer or incomprehensibly bad at everything, yet somehow still able to get people to play your game.

The only worth of the review system are individual reviews that manage to tell you more about the game than the Engrish synopsis, strategically chosen screens, or marketing fluff ever will.

I kind of wish the reviews when you went to read them showed most liked as well as recent. Cause you're right there are a lot of games with folks that just blanket 5 stars and a meaningless review meanwhile the thought out 2 star review with 15 likes gets moved down to the next page. I can name several games off the top of my head with padded scores and "counter" reviews that exist only to offset the 1 and 2 stars

 

[Degenubis]

The problem is that any game that isn't complete trash on multiple levels and popular enough to get reviews will have a 4+ star rating. 5 star reviews by fanboys will always outpace any critical reviews unless a game is literally so terrible that everybody agrees it's a lost cause.

You have a point, but again I come back to my original point. There's SO MUCH content out there, that if we just put reviews to the side how do we filter out what is worth our time or not?

Reviews are inherently flawed because they're subjective, but they're one of few measures we have to appraise worth. Until something better comes along, I'm not sure what else we can do but use them, albeit with caution.

 

[fitgirlbestgirl]

Reviews are inherently flawed because they're subjective, but they're one of few measures we have to appraise worth. Until something better comes along, I'm not sure what else we can do but use them, albeit with caution.

I agree when it comes to actually reading individual reviews, I just don't think the aggregate review score tells you anything about a game, unless it's really, really terrible.

 

[RedPillBlues]

Its rather easy to get a good read of a game based on reviews provided it has enough. Filter out any hort one or five start review and then simply read the ones that are actually talking about the quality of the game instead of just complaining. Of course by that point you have filtered out 90% of the reviews, but the remaining ones are generally worth reading to understand if a game is worth your time or not. So the rating itself is generally irrelavent from anything 3-5 stars for me. Now 1-2 stars with 10+ reviews meant something went really wrong, and those reviews are worth reading just to read.

 

[Jaike]

I agree when it comes to actually reading individual reviews, I just don't think the aggregate review score tells you anything about a game, unless it's really, really terrible.

Agree that average review score doesn't say a lot and it's tilted upward, but I think it says something.

Here's the current first pages of best ranked games in weighted rating and number of likes:

Spoiler: Weighted rating

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Spoiler: Likes

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First, gotta say I haven't played most of these. But the weighted rating filters out some unadulterated horseshit like Milfy City and not shitty games with issues like AWAM or WVM. But all the games with the highest number of likes have an average above 3, so that reinforces your point that to "get a sub 3 star rating on F95 you have to literally be a scammer or incomprehensibly bad at everything".

So maybe you can use the weighted rating as a heuristic with a big pinch of salt in a way like this, if there are enough reviews:
4-5: more likely to be something good or decent than the average game
3.5-4: perhaps mostly good but may have some issues
3-3.5: perhaps good but likely to have serious issues
2-3: likely to be shit but you never know
1-2: abandon all hope

And then read long reviews for the details.

 

[desmosome]

It's not too hard to skim through the review page to land on a few that's actually worth your time to read.

You can filter out anything with huge walls of text with no formatting. You can filter out anything that uses a category system with no elaboration. You can filter out Engrish reviews. You can filter out anything really short because that's 95% just useless fanboying that tells you nothing about the game.

 

[EnterpriseNL]

I almost never look at reviews, so not important to me, I selected 1-2 stars, BUT I will still check the game itself