A good review is one that both expresses how the person felt playing the game and comes with supporting facts so that a person reading it can accurately judge is the game for them.
There are a lot of things a game can be judged on. Not everything on the following list applies to every game. For example not all games have a plot.
Game play:
1. The mechanics of the game and are they intuitive. Or are left struggling how the developer expects you to do the next part.
Example: would be using both mouse buttons to drag items but having to guess which one to activate an item.
2. How much time is used going from point A to point B rather than actual game play.
3. Does the game use a map but have no real reason for it or does it actually make use of the map.
Example: Monster avoidance, finding items, secret locations and event ties
4. How much of the content is accessible on a single play through
5. Do you have to replay or play from different saved points to see all the content.
6. How laggy is the game
7. how buggy is the game
8. How much grinding is there in the game
a) Does the developer come up with new ways for you to increase points or are you just repeating the same things
9. How clicky is the game - How much clicking you have to do just to do simple tasks.
10. Does the developer use false choices - choice that don't really matter the out come is the same. Done to make it appear the developer did more work than they did but there is no path created from it.
11. How much is your own map exploration tied to your choices. Some developers make big maps but you can't actually switch jobs or anything when you want you can only do so when they want the path to open up.
If you took the map away from Alansya Chronicles the only difference would be you save time going from point A to point B.
You have no real freedom in the game to change jobs when you like as in the other 3 games. The map plays a larger role in the last two than even that.
Visual Art:
1. Style and quality of the art and quantity of art.
2. Art reuse. example: would be using figures or dolls that can change cloths.
Music,Voice, & sound:
1. Style of music and quality
2. Voice
3. Sounds
Story:
1. Plot
a) Does it have plot holes (you don't need to be Shakespeare to get this write, it is 5th grade to 8th grade material)
b) How well written is it- grammar, punctuation..., paragraph and line development. Again the basics.
c) Immersion - does the story suck you in feel plausible
d) Do you get emotionally invested in seeing the out come.
2. Character development
a) Do you learn history, motivations of the character
b) Do you start having emotions connected to characters likes and dislikes
c) How relatable are characters
d) Do you get invested in seeing what happens to them
e) Is character behavior consistent with what should be expected - especially if their is a scale or corruption system in play
3. Scene development - if this was a book I would list it as part of plot development but with visual games and audio it becomes a thing of its own.
a) Character arrangement
b) Camera position
c) Lighting and atmosphere
d) ... A lot more
4. Does it fit
a) When you look at the timing of events does it fit
b) Do they feel out of place or thrown in because of some external force outside the story
c) if you have choice in doing stuff does changing your choices feel like everything fits or is in the proper order
Example: Character switches jobs and suddenly goes from level 1 slut to level 10 slut or vise versa. She just fucked 5 guys and now she is scared to do a wet T-shirt comp (Usually caused by author trying to fit stuff together than having written it in order)
Replay Ability:
1. How well does the content and game play lend to replaying the game and it not feel like you did it all before.
Overall:
1. Combined value
2. If you took away any one part of the list above would it be worth playing.
Example: If you took the art away would the game still have value?
Reviews will never be the best they can be on here.
You have a number of things that conflict with one another.
The first being the reason people play games is different. With such you have different play styles. You have people play a game for plot and story. You have others that skip dialog as fast as they can to get to the next scene.
While the guy who plays a game for plot and story could write a reasonable review that isn't possible for the one's who skipped the dialog. They would have to lie about what they know about the dialog and such after all they didn't read it.
Which is funny because you can find them commenting in threads about wanting to skip dialog and then find them posting how great the dialog and the plot is on reviews.
Even among people who do take the time to read we all have differing values and opinions on stuff. The way I see something isn't going to be the way everyone else sees something.
To me the art is a small part of the game. For some other people art has a greater weight or value.
Imagine if a blind person played your VN or game how well would it hold up?
Then you have rule issues. I understand why they don't want other games mentioned because it creates issues of using reviews as a means to advertise. But in doing so it also prevents a good comparison of issues of stuff like how maps are used such as i did above.
There are three groups of people the reviewer, the moderators and the people reading reviews. All of which are comprised of individuals. You are bound to have conflicts.
The biggest problems isn't so much the rules they established for reviews it is the lack of rules established for staff in removing and taking them down.
1. There should be no hidden or unspoken rate system. The rating system should be fixed! Come up with abetter entry system that includes 0 so it reflects the true scale. Think of the Michelin star rating system for restaurants. You don't get a star for participation.
2. The staff should understand people have different values from their own.
3. Imagine if a blind person wrote the review. The art in the game has no value to them. the music might. But they could be death as well.
4. The people doing reviews can't read minds or know all of your expectations or values.
5. It doesn't matter if the staff played the game and got more or less out of it and felt the review is unfair. That's expected because of those different values and play styles and so on.
