Is RetroArch too confusing to use?

[Tipi]

Before I write a novel, I'll give a quick example.

Duckstation has great settings my fav is fast forward and save state functions.
Very easy to use.

Indeed. I was also about to praise DuckStation in my message. It's just so intuitive to use for whatever reason.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Configuration is very unintuitive. In order to change settings, every time you need to select a specific option to write the config, otherwise it will have forgotten your changes next time. Settings aren't organized very well and some settings just aren't editable from the UI, you have to edit the config file directly, in 2025 we should be past needing to manually edit config files.
Once you have gotten the settings down and don't need to change them again, basic navigation like selecting a game to load is fine, but each core has individual settings that it seems that you can only change when the core is loaded, so you have to go through a lot of effort to change the settings for each core...

Slightly off topic, but I can't understand why Parallel Launcher is popular, it's just an extra frontend on top of RetroArch but it hides the RetroArch UI away from you (you need to know the hotkey to access it which it doesn't mention) and it doesn't expose nearly any settings itself so you still need to use the RetroArch UI for most things, then why not just use normal RetroArch directly? I don't really know what N64 emulator to use these days because I've had issues with every single one people suggest.

 

[Xdqwerty]

I'd say it's unneccesarily confusing to use

 

[Jayro]

What's your opinion?

I feel like some aspects of it are too unintuitive for something that's supposed to act as a frontend. Particularly I am not fond of its controller configuration methodology. I sort of understand why it was done like that but it's also simply not necessary and adds too much complexity to the process.

It also has features that feel like they're only there because they could have it rather than trying to address things a user might be looking for in a frontend.

MiSTer FPGA is a far better solution, but it has an ugly (but intuitive) GUI.

 

[NTolerance]

It definitely overwhelms the user with menu options. For advanced users however, those options are great. One fix would be to hide a lot of it behind an "advanced" mode. RetroArch already has this mode, but it doesn't hide very much.

 

[MCPShephard]

I've found it useful for SNES emulation in particular, but otherwise... it's so cumbersome. Settings and features are way too cluttered

 

[JuanMena]

Lol no... I guess RetroArch bad if you can't follow instructions... or lack basic reading skills.