Official Review: Yo-Kai Watch 2 (Nintendo 3DS)

By Alex McAuliffe, Oct 27, 2016 37 4

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Oct 27, 2016
  • Release Date (NA): September 30, 2016
  • Release Date (JP): July 10, 2014
  • Publisher: Nintendo
  • Developer: Level-5
  • Genres: Role-playing
  • ESRB Rating: Everyone 10 and up
  • Single player
    Local Multiplayer
    Online Multiplayer
    Co-operative
The sequel of the hit Japanese series, does Yo-Kai Watch 2 manage to win over Western audiences more convincingly than its predecessor?
Alex McAuliffe

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In case you haven't read the review of the original Yo-Kai Watch, I would recommend you give it a look as I'll be referencing some of the points made there.

A brief history

The series' story revolves around mischievous spirits known as Yo-kai, resurrected spirits of animals and people who are normally invisible to humans. Through the power of the Yo-kai Watch (roll credits) our protagonist is able to see, battle with, and befriend these creatures. Yo-kai 2 adds more of these practical jokers to fight with and is sold in two versions, each with their own exclusive Yo-kai. If you're not already reminded of some other monster-capturing and battling series on Nintendo handhelds, the similarities only get more noticeable.

This time around, we follow a Yo-kai civil war forged by an argument over donuts, hence the two versions of the title. As I mentioned in the original review, the plot always felt disjointed and needlessly separated by fetch quests; well, Yo-kai 2 does very little to remedy the issue. There's still the same barely existent, extremely delayed central plotline which frustrated me oh so much, especially considering Yo-kai's affinity for good writing. There's clearly a lot of talent displayed by the writers here, as the second title is as genuinely funny as the first, so why ruin every moment with another fetch quest? Grtanted, a few new types of quests have been added to shake things up, but the lack of real improvement in this area is frankly astonishing.

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Same old battle system

If you've read the review of the first game, you'll know how disenchanted I was with the combat system as a whole. It was plagued by an unnecessary amount of randomness, a lack of depth, and an emphasis on passivity that is tedious and frustrating. As with the fetch quest issue, Yo-kai 2 fails to improve this situation in any way shape or form. The main battle interface is a wheel on the lower screen which allows you to switch in real-time which Yo-kai are fighting. Each Yo-kai attacks automatically; all the player controls is the occasional "Soultimate" move, accomplished through touchscreen minigames, and a throwable pin used for targeting. An annoying focus on status effects and this horrible passivity makes it an experience that isn't for everyone, and which I quite disliked. What's worse is that Yo-kai 2 takes the battle system from the original and leaves it almost untouched, showing a complete lack of care and evolution in this sequel.

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The issue of randomness comes in recruiting Yo-kai for your team. Yo-kai have random chances to be recruited at the end of a battle. This chance can be increased by throwing them food, but the food which each Yo-kai likes is completely random. This is a ridiculous system and makes it really hard for completionists to catch all the Yo-kai. One area where the game gets praise is its world map. It expands upon the main map of the original game and adds plenty of new areas. Though getting to these places is very tedious until you can teleport, it really is a well-designed, expansive map.

As beautiful as ever

Yo-kai 2's visuals are as impressive as those of the original. It's definitely one of the best-looking 3DS games especially considering its age. The Yo-kai designs are beginning to feel stale as a lot of the new additions are mere clones, but for the most part the title has very original design.

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A lot of the music is reused from the original game, but most of the tracks still hold up well. Yo-kai Watch 2 presents itself about as well as its predecessor but with a significantly larger map, making it feel more complete.

Verdict
What We Liked . . . Splendid visuals Decent music More Yo-kai What We Didn't Like . . . Virtually no gameplay improvements over the original Disjointed plot Passive battle system Too much randomness Boring and repetitive quests
8 Presentation
Similarly to the original game, Yo-kai 2 has very nice visuals, with funny writing and decent music to wrap together the presentation very nicely.
3 Gameplay
I detest the fact that this part of the game received the same score as the original. Could they not have improved upon their mistakes by at least a tiny bit? Or at least make any kind of change at all? I seriously doubt there are many who can slog through the overly passive battle system and boring quests while claiming to actually enjoy them. I get that it's not everyone's thing, but it's still despicable that nothing at all was changed in this area.
5 Lasting Appeal
The story is fairly long but the degree of randomness which pervades so much of the game and the monotony of the quests kind of destroy any pleasure you might get from sticking around.
5
out of 10
 Overall (not an average)
After the disappointing original title, I was hopeful for a sequel that would fix some of the major problems and emphasize what the series does well. Instead, I got a sequel which made marginal if any improvements over the original game, only this time with no novelty whatsoever. It's very disheartening and doesn't bode well for the series' popularity in the West.

    37 comments

  • Azel
    Azel
    What a great Idea, to publish a review from the same guy who hated Yôkai Watch1 xD

    such an interesting point of view.. do you hate yourself? if you hated the 1st one, why on earth would you inflict the pain on yourself to play through and review the second game,a long jrpg at that? kinda baffles me tbh.
    You, spiderman1216, MaiconErick and 2 others like this.
    Oct 27, 2016
  • T-hug
    T-hug
    Well who is better qualified to review it? The guy who has played the series or someone who is new to it?
    It's just one person's opinion, but personally I'd rather hear from someone who can tell me if it's an improvement over the first game, or just another rehash.
    You, Scott_pilgrim, 3DSDude_ and 11 others like this.
    Oct 27, 2016
  • Chary
    Chary
    What a shame. This looks like a cute/fun series, but it seems to totally miss out on its potential to be something really great. Now I wonder if 3 will fix anything with the gameplay...though I doubt it.
    Oct 27, 2016
  • CLOUD9RED
    CLOUD9RED
    No word on battling online against other people? Let's talk about passive play once you have actually played this game.
    dimmidice likes this.
    Oct 27, 2016
  • BORTZ
    BORTZ
    Man I was really hoping they would fix the issue(? is feature a better word?) with the catch system. I want to catch all the yokai, but the feeding of random yokai and hoping you get one is trash. Easily my least favorite part of the first yokai watch game. It seems like the devs are too hands off to some of the areas the would make this series go from good to great.
    Oct 27, 2016
  • FAST6191
    FAST6191
    "What a great Idea, to publish a review from the same guy who hated Yôkai Watch1 xD"
    We are not assigned reviews around here and as such anybody playing a game is generally expected to at least theoretically enjoy the concept and possibly know something about the gameplay style. Or if you prefer you will not see a football/soccer game seriously reviewed by me any time soon as every one since sensible soccer, and that was only sort of tolerable to me, has bored me senseless (probably as football/soccer bores me senseless). Had it been hated for such reasons, rather than for being a weak game with far better examples of the gameplay style out there in the world, then there could be cause to raise an eyebrow. Enjoying such gameplay styles is hardly uncommon either (I am no fan of pokemon but I do enjoy some demikids dark version, medabots and robopon) and if there was potential in the prior entries then later ones can be worth looking at.

    As for why play, if it was not already covered, then I agree if you are looking at the library of games, or no games in the case of the 3ds and are then trying to extract some value from it, and trying to figure out what to play then you probably could have found out it was more of the same. This however is not playing a game for pleasure but to make a review, a subtly different concept.
    Scott_pilgrim, Azel and endoverend like this.
    Oct 27, 2016
  • XrosBlader821
    XrosBlader821
    *rolls eyes* oh boy, can't wait for the Yokai Watch fans to storm this review like they did last time.
    Oct 27, 2016
  • Chary
    Chary
    I can't wait for the Reddit thread dedicated to where they hate on this review like last time.
    Oct 27, 2016
  • tommikinder
    tommikinder
    Thanks for the review, I was dissapointed with the first Yo Kai game, I had to force myself to finish it. When I heard the sequel would have 2 games I was intrigued, but turns out they are just lazy games with hardly any differences or improvements.
    When you look at the Pokemon games, Red and Blue were brilliant and then the sequels Gold and Silver improved on them in every way; content, graphics, characters, etc, and that was over 15 years ago! At least Sun and Moon are out in 3 weeks :toot:
    3DSDude_, Yil, Chary and 1 other person like this.
    Oct 27, 2016
  • CLOUD9RED
    CLOUD9RED
    Well I've found Yo-Kai watch refreshing compared to the latest Pokemon games; the ideal game for me would actually be this Yo-Kai 2 but inhabited with Pokemons then but that's just wishful dreaming :-)
    Oct 27, 2016
  • Yil
    Yil
    Now we have the new Pokemon, Yokai Watch isn't that appealing anymore. Though I am never really into it.
    Oct 27, 2016
  • chavosaur
    chavosaur
    Where the fuck is Pikachu
    Oct 28, 2016
  • hobbledehoy899
    hobbledehoy899
    In your vaginachu~
    Oct 28, 2016
  • Glyptofane
    Glyptofane
    There are three new mechanics which can be utilized to improve the catch rate, but were ignored by this review.
    Azel and CLOUD9RED like this.
    Oct 28, 2016
  • Steena
    Steena
    So only fans should review games? So they can give in the free 10s and validate your already-established "opinion" in a glorious circlejerk?
    Every review should be ideally made by someone who is a returning fan, someone who never played a game in the genre, and someone who dislikes the genre/previous entry.
    I disliked the first and I wanted to know if it's worth for me to play 2, just as an example.
    You look like you took personal offense so as a fanboy you don't need reviews in the first place, it's already great for you.

    Reviews aren't meant to be echochambers but the complete opposite, it's why the whole system is a fucking joke right now. Let's not reinforce that shit as consumers thank you.
    Oct 28, 2016
  • astrangeone
    astrangeone
    Exactly my problems with the game. The storyline kept in interested and playing in the first one, and the second one takes a while to get going and it's padded like crazy.

    The random catch a yokai thing is seriously pissing me off and making me not want to play.
    endoverend likes this.
    Oct 29, 2016
  • 03bgood
    03bgood
    Yay, more proof that these shitty ass M-rated games are brainwashing people, sigh!

    M-rated crap gets 9.x
    But good games like these get a 5.x

    I hate today's world! I really do!
    Yil, clownb, endoverend and 1 other person like this.
    Oct 31, 2016
  • mario5555
    mario5555
    Thanks for the review, just having bought the TWO sequels (having flashbacks of Megaman Battle Network), and while owning the first, but not having a chance to play it yet, I'd disappointed that Level 5 just didn't make a Pokemon clone or ripped off its own Nino Kuni game and make it handheld.

    I'm happy Yokai Watch has been extremely successful for them (unlike Geist Force for Capcom and Treasure) as a anime, toy and game property, I'm also saddened that (like you mentioned) they are just pumping out soulless sequels one after another. Unless the third games do something completely new, I think I'm just going to ignore them.

    Speaking of the 3rd games, it has been announced in JPN that there are THREE games coming out (one is a tie in to the Yokai Watch movie) and all have version specific Yokai, that screams ****'n money grab to me and will lead to killing this series by whoring out the property by releasing inferior sequels to quickly after the last game in the series is released causing fan burn out with too much too quickly. Sadly.
    Oct 31, 2016
  • CLOUD9RED
    CLOUD9RED
    I feel your pain, most definitely there's a yo-Kai at play! "Forgive them, Father. For they don't know what they are doing" :-)

    Anyway,

    YW2 IS a great game and the much better version of YW1. While the first game I put away after completing story and and post-game story and not minding filling the Medallium this second game in the series feels way different. YW2 makes you want to finish all quests and catch them all, explore every bit of land there is. This thanks to simply adding something like 'Trophies'. The befriending way is much more easy as well; it's a struggle to catch special event Yo-Kai but there's actually some fun in it in this soft-resetting. We soft reset in Pokemon for get shiny or better stats but hell breaks lose if we soft reset to befriend a certain special -nyan. Anyway it become more fun to complete the Medallium now that you can actually trade with people (yes! you need friends for that.) and there's the competitive level in the game too where you can battle and have online rankings and weekly rewards, if you ask me very appealing. Then again there's so much that I haven't touched yet since there's still so much to do (Blasters, Spots, Criminals, unlikely trophies and catch some more Yo-Kai). If you tackle your goals one by one it's a nice feeling but if you fall in the trap by trying and doing everything at once then It could be a pain indeed. Anyway everyone is entitled to their humble opinion and this was mine. Let's go out now and play whatever we like. :-)
    endoverend likes this.
    Oct 31, 2016
  • FAST6191
    FAST6191
    Your opinion yadda yadda yadda.
    Your reply however says nothing about how this review might fall short in some manner, what you might have enjoyed that the reviewer did not (personally I do not find memory/tile match puzzles all that interesting, others however might well like such things) and merely espoused some notion, possibly a slightly puritanical one, about games that the games world deems to brand M (possibly in spite of worse being family entertainment in US police procedurals). Without offering anything to counter with your reply lacks much in the way of meaning, it could well be young endoverend faltered somewhere but I will not know if I have to go off your reply.
    Oct 31, 2016
  • XrosBlader821
    XrosBlader821
    Aren't we over generalizing a little too much?
    World of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest Builders, Dragon Quest 7, Ace attorney 6, Starbound, 7th Dragon and countless other non m-rated games got high scores over the last few months.
    Scott_pilgrim likes this.
    Oct 31, 2016
  • 03bgood
    03bgood
    Yes, I know WoFF, DQB, DQ7, AA6, Sb, and 7th Dragon got high scores, so did Civilization VI. The problem is, usually nothing but M-rated games get a 9 or higher and that's bullshit! At least Japan thinks of the fucking children, unlike the US!
    endoverend likes this.
    Nov 1, 2016
  • Yil
    Yil
    While M-rated are mostly bad, that does not suggest the opposite is always good.
    Nov 1, 2016
  • Yil
    Yil
    I am going to write threat letters to EA, until they stop being a company. And Ubisoft and Activision to stop everything beside Rayman and Skylander.
    Nov 1, 2016
  • dimmidice
    dimmidice
    But they did "fix" it? When you get the Yokai Watch Zero you can "poke" ontop of feeding. It makes capturing specific yokai way more easy. It's still not foolproof, but its a huge huge improvement.

    Also has to be said, reading this review i get the exact same feeling when i read the review for the first game. Clearly the reviewer didn't play it for more than half an hour. Or he was distracted and not actually paying attention. 2 has a longer story, more postgame, online trading, better capture mechanics, more yokai, and other QoL improvements. So how it can have the same score as the first is mindboggling.
    clownb and CLOUD9RED like this.
    Nov 7, 2016
  • dimmidice
    dimmidice
    Decided to correct some bits which are just flat out wrong.

    It still has "fetch quests" But most side quests are now actually part of a quest chain. And they have their own side stories (and occasional boss fights) too.

    Actually now you have poke and Moxie skill. Not a huge improvement i grant you. But you also have soulcery. Which lets you turn yokai into souls, the souls can then be equipped and they give stats at its most basic. But they can also affect the behaviour of the yokai (guard better, deflect dmg etc etc) and also after battle effects. ( get more exp after fight, get more drops, befriend more yokai) So that (when used correctly) means you have a lot more control over how the battle goes.

    Actually that's a lot improved in YW2. Poke can give a huge befriending boost and you can "hover" over an enemy with the "target" command to see their food preference. Plus this game has online trading. So if you desperately want a yokai that you're having difficulty with you can just trade for it online. Kind of a huge feature to not mention.

    Actually the food they like is completely not random. Each yokai has a food they like. This never changes.

    There's only two "clones" i can think of. Robonyan F looks a hell of a lot like Robonyan. (which makes sense as storywise he's sort of an upgrade of robonyan) And master oden who is a retexture of signiton. Then there are the fruitnyans (6 of them) and the roboyokai (again 6 of them) But you don't encounter these in normal gameplay and they're essentially free DLC. So that's not really relevant. There's a few new Nyans as well. (Buchinyan, darknyan, hovernyan, dracunyan, Wondernyan, Sailornyan,) But those aren't clones. They all have their own personality and skills, and look quite different. You could be referring to the fact that a lot of yokai have a recolored version? (E.G. Casanono and Casanava[/IMG]) Which is no different than shiny pokemon.

    This isn't pokemon :/ And people have actually completed their Medalliums. It's made quite easy given the fact that you can online trade a yokai and then return it to your friend right away. Which makes it quite a social event. Again, quite a big thing to not mention in a review.

    Marginal improvements? Hell let me make a list. Soulcery, Better side quests, Poking, Info view in fights, Much bigger map, More post game, Baffle boards, ONLINE TRADING, Yo-Kai Busters. (And more) That's not marginal at all.

    How you can possibly give a game which improves in lots and lots of ways over its predecessor the same score is really mind-boggling.
    Nov 7, 2016
  • XrosBlader821
    XrosBlader821
    That doesn't really sound that convincing if you ask me.
    Scott_pilgrim likes this.
    Nov 7, 2016
  • dimmidice
    dimmidice
    What part?
    Nov 7, 2016
  • CLOUD9RED
    CLOUD9RED
    ^^ + online battling (including ranks), one of my favourite features.
    Anyway nice about the game is that there is so much to do (and unexplored). It can be very overwhelming, but if you split your objectives and tackle one by one you're in for a pleasant ride! :-)
    dimmidice likes this.
    Nov 7, 2016
  • XrosBlader821
    XrosBlader821
    Just because something is part of a questchain doesn't automatically make it "good". If that was the case MMO's should be wiping the floor with all RPG genres, which they don't.

    Why not just give the player full control over how the battle goes instead of relying on AI to do the thing you hope them to do? That's the thing people love to hate about Digimon World 1 and it's successors even though you can technically achieve full player control in that game.
    Does this game have online battles? because from what I keep hearing, both from fans and critics of YW, I can't imagine it being fun to play online or even develop a competitive scene.

    Just because you can trade with other people doesn't mean that the issue of Yokai being too hard to recruit is fixed. Especially notable if you're doing self imposed challenges (something people love to do with Pokemon replays).

    I've seen some of those "totally not clones" Yokai from a friend and I have to agree with the reviewer here. Also it IS different than pokemon since we don't threat Shiny Pokemon like completely new Pokemon we specifically call them a color variation.

    But it's competing against Pokemon. And in Pokemon you're only "forced" to trade version exclusive Pokemon since everything else is easy enough to catch on your own. Which I personally find more tedious than social.
    Scott_pilgrim likes this.
    Nov 7, 2016
  • dimmidice
    dimmidice
    I didn't say that made them good. I was responding to him saying quests were all (or mostly) fetch quests.
    the point i was replying to was the "untouched" bit. It isn't untouched. I'm not a huge fan of the battle gameplay myself. I prefer a more traditional ATB system (e.g. world of final fantasy) But the battle system isn't nearly as bad as endoverend makes it sound. And actually it does have a competitive scene, including tournaments. It's more about team building. But it's not like you don't do anything in a fight. You control which of your yokai fight, you control the target, you control the special skills.

    But that's not the point i made. Poking and seeing food is what makes it easier to recruit. Trading is just an option.

    Example? You two keep mentioning clones but can't be arsed to give a single example. And yes it's slightly different from pokemon. Difference is that in yokai watch yokai have personalities. Each yokai is its own person. But is having some recolors that bad? Especially since skills and attributes are different?

    Same in YW2. You don't have to trade for anything but version exclusives.
    Nov 7, 2016
  • XrosBlader821
    XrosBlader821
    Which makes this statement irrelevant.

    But you do realize that he did say "almost untouched" right? The issue you should rather focus on is that he didn't go into detail and reading the improvements from your comment I think "almost untouched" fits as a description quite nicely.

    I haven't played the game so I don't know how easy/hard it is to have the correct food from the get go and how easy/hard it is to just blow all your food without ever getting a recruit prompt for hours. Sure the reviewer may have missed the detail that the fav food isn't random and that it is displayed in the game if you look for it but from what I get recruiting Yokai is still a grind based purely on luck than on skill. Which really doesn't sound that appealing.

    http://static.hlj.com/images/amd/amd32188_0.jpg
    What I've been told these aren't all Jibanyan(?) variations and from point of view it it really looks like the same Yokai just with different clothes and color.
    Sure they may have different skills and personalities but that doesn't make them unique. Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth had a Regular Agumon and a Black Agumon. Both with different passive abilities, different signature move, different stats, different typing but it still was just a recolored Agumon and nothing else. And as far as I know even Pokemon Sun/Moon doesn't threat Alola forms as separate Pokemon even though literally everything about them is different from the regular version.

    Also yes it is bad to have recolors as their own entries in the Pokedex / Medallium(?). Digimon World Next 0rder for example got torn apart by fans for having a roster consisting of 1/4th recolors. especially after the roster was smaller than the predecessors. Having too many recolors can certainly kill a monster collecting game for many people.

    Except when it's too frustrating to catch the yokai you want, like you recommended.
    Scott_pilgrim likes this.
    Nov 7, 2016
  • dimmidice
    dimmidice
    Sure does.

    They're pretty sizeable changes to be honest. I'm willing to bet he had no idea about the soulcery feature.

    It's very easy to have the correct food. You don't even need the best tier food. It's still a bit of a grind, but it's a million times better than in the first game. It's still luck based. but poking/food/skill usage helps a tremendous amount. Way way better than it was in the first game. Which you wouldn't think when reading this review. Since it got the exact same score. Which makes no sense at all.

    Your pic has Baddinyan, Jibanyan, Shogunyan, Robonyan, Komasan and Komajiro in it. There's more Nyans in 2. They're all unique. Just because they're cats (except for komasan and komajiro) Doesn't mean they're the same creature. Meowth and purugly aren't the same pokemon Even though they're both cats. And sorry but black agumon is not just a recolor. Black agumon has ALWAYS been cooler than normal agumon. And he's had different evolutions in past games too. (No idea About sleuth, playing that once i'm done with SuMo)

    Why is it bad? Just saying "next world got torn apart" isn't much of an argument. Nobody who actually plays YW is bothered by recolors. (from what i've seen on discord chats) It's just something people who don't like the game bring up to make it sound bad. Having some yokai which have a differently colored twin really isn't an issue at all. In fact i like having the option in some cases. (e.g. beetall and cruncha)

    Shouldn't be frustrating in YW2 really, except for certain yokai which are the equivalent of legendaries/rares. I only mentioned it because it's an option.
    AyanamiRei likes this.
    Nov 7, 2016
  • XrosBlader821
    XrosBlader821
    The issue is not that they all are cats. The issue is that they feature the same design. A cat with big head and a tail that splits into two with flames at the end of it.
    The only thing that's different is the color, clothes and pattern on the face. but that doesn't make a completely new design. It's something people love to joke about in the Digimon fandom. If you take regular Beelzemon, give him a winter jacket an call him Yuuki Beelzemon that doesn't make him a entirely new Digimon. It's still gonna be treated as such in the wikis, because of course it will, but to the player it feels more like a filler-mon.

    With that mindset you shouldn't be judging what's a recolor/clone and what isn't.
    It's just a Black regular Agumon with different typing (Virus instead of Serum) which explains why they have different evolutions (evolving into more virus digimon instead of serum digimon) but it doesn't change the fact that they have the exact same "Digimon Reference Book" profile and look almost identical.

    The picture I've shown you with the cats is from somebody that does play the game and is bothered by the recolors and doesn't bring it up to make it sound bad but rather because he's being honest. I don't care whenever you're Pokemon, Digimon or Yokaiwatch, if you tell me this almost identically looking mon is supposed to be a completely new mon then I call BS. It's something that's been bothering me with Digimon for years and I'm probably the biggest Digimon fanboy that you can encounter on this site. Actually no, Romstar is active here too isn't he? Okay second biggest Digimon Fanboy (even Romstar hates the Recolors though)

    Look, I don't care about YW. I can only comment on what I'm seeing which means my opinion of this franchise is worthless regardless of what I say until I play it. I will agree though that this review is very sparse and should probably go more into detail. If you compare it to my Cyber Sleuth review I did almost 2 years ago I wrote like twice as much about that game and even after that it felt to me like I wrote too little.
    Nov 7, 2016
  • mimi-dono
    mimi-dono
    Looks like you don't know that it exist a type of player called "Masochist Gamer".
    endoverend likes this.
    Nov 23, 2016
  • 03bgood
    03bgood
    M-rated shooters are worthless! I can't believe those awful games are taking over the gaming industry. I'm losing faith and I don't even fucking care if another video game crash happens.

    There are good M-rated games out there like GTA, Perfect Dark, Mass Effect, Resident Evil, God of War, Half-Life, and Fallout. I just hate the fact that they are oversaturating the gaming industry.
    Nov 27, 2016
  • FAST6191
    FAST6191
    Everything gets oversaturated. I fear you might be mistaking the current iteration of the symptom for the disease.

    Text adventures? Once someone sort of cracked the formula then there was a nice little boom and glut of awful ones. Same deal when text adventures morphed into what Lucas Arts was doing and people wanted a bit of that pie.

    Cute mascot platformers? Rode high for much of the 8 bit era, near dominant through the 16 and kind of only fizzled during the 32bit one.

    So it is the 32 bit era now and the kids you brought up on cute mascots now greasy teenagers, and being the 90s then indifference is in,... ooh is that Crash Bandicoot what the kids like? Come back Cool Spot, I will forgive you if you take Gex and his awful pals away. Also if you want to put Sonic and a few of his (new) mates out of their misery then you will spare them an embarrassing decade or two.

    Even without the cute mascot platformer then every licensed game was a sidescroller at one point. Sidescroller was then shorthand for cheap cash in at one point.

    Final Fantasy Clones? Surprisingly most of this happened after Final Fantasy tried doing something slightly different with the PS1 stuff but there are still plenty of those out there.

    Tony Hawk an unexpected smash hit? Every "extreme" sport gets a game now. I recall playing one for scooters (truly the lowest form of things in the skatepark hierarchy) on the PS1 a year or two later, though it was not actually that bad. There was also a wakeboarding game. I don't know how far the extreme climbing (part of it might have eventually become assassin's creed) and free running games ever got but I recall seeing dev discussions on TV shows and older internet video on it.

    Resident Evil does better than some ever imagined? Now I actually like Dino Crisis and Soul of the samurai/ronin blade is one of my biggest guilty pleasures but that is besides the point. There were so many games that wanted to be this.

    Within what might loosely be called fps games (I am not a fan of most game genre classifications but it is a shorthand that works enough for these purposes today) then you see trends. World war 2 was the only way for what felt like a long time at the time, modern then was in, far future, back to modern, then near future and I think we are heading back into world war 2 before long. Oh and they were originally called Doom clones for a reason.

    The reason I say symptom and not the disease is partially due to the fact we did not see something dethrone world of warcraft, this despite many pretenders to the throne. Investors saw the mountains of cash made and thought they would take a punt. If you go on investment sites and look up the game industry you will tend to see it framed as an industry which has long term investments by companies in singular products* and for investors (which mainly care about the next quarter, and very rarely the next year if they are particularly long term) that means a bad game is hugely damaging. On the flip side a runaway game success will eclipse a slow and steady normal company so it is an option for some.

    *one dev house makes one game for three years sort of thing, if the game flops that is three years and however much investment in it down the pan where in three years my food company has released hundreds of different products and who was I to know people did not want brussels sprout flavoured meat, who cares though as other things did work.

    Music games? They went from yeah this is nice and this plastic guitar is fun, to annual updates/versions, to dlc, to a byzantine system of song selection and charging that only serves as testament to the skills of the music licensing team.

    Amusing to me is you used the word shooter. I hate to spoil it but I think it was one of Charlie Brooker's shows on games (best one) that ended with him playing a clip from an 80s/early 90s science show with a guy espousing the wonders of computer games. The clip ended the segment of the original show with a line like "computer games are wonderful, just stay away from the mindless shooters" with the host of the new show then saying "what he said". The shooters in question for the original show would today be known as shmups by many. They are not so common today but time was the only thing that stopped them from complete domination was the cool mascot platformers and licensed side scrollers.

    Do you know how many tile matching/bejeweled and similar games we covered in the releases for the DS? I don't actually but it was a lot. Expand that to include hidden item games and it gets worse still. The games for bored housewives... genre is probably actually one of the purest examples of this.

    Short version. Anything that works tends to get over represented within the industry, has done since computer games became a viable commercial venture, and is also seen in films, TV, books, music, art and all other creative endeavours. M rating or not has very little to do with anything here, just might be a very loose theme right now.
    XrosBlader821 likes this.
    Nov 28, 2016