I would say that these type of (usually political) books/shows that constantly add stuff (new story arcs, new characters) it is quite difficult for the author to devise an ending that will link all plots and please the funs.
For these shows/books the ending is usually everything and if it doesnt deliver, the fans feel a bit cheated.
Examples in shows where the ending left a bad taste is Battlestar Galactica (very similar to Game of Thrones) and Lost (not a political show or similar to GoT, but it also added new stuff constantly). In both these shows, many fans didnt quite like the ending.
Martin is one of those writers who constantly lets his imagination run wild and doesnt always looks the large picture. I also suspect he slightly lost interest in GoT.
Remember he writes a new book series, he also has a deal converting this new book series he is writing to tv series, plus he also writes plots for short movies (he has started a new company with another person close to him).
So in short, he has too many stuff in his pocket (so to speak), and he is forced to finish the GoT books (because of the show timelines) and he currently doesnt have the inspiration/will/drive to finish.
Only Gamespot cites patience as a negative in a RPG game...
"Deep character progression and customization", "Ambiguous systems" Anyone noticing the disrepancy here?
"X does a poor job of explaining things in general, and you will spend a lot of time with the in-game manual, poring over pages in search of information." The game has an ingame manual? And we complain how boring is to look at it?
But this is one of the few times where i see reviewers giving thumbs up for deep & complex systems & at the same time bashing the said systems for being too complex.
What is the difference between human & Mech combat? How these systems interact with the world? These are the questions that i would like to for the review to delve longer.
Also pages like How Long to Beast list a standard Xenoblade X game (playing ONLY the main story) at 77 hours, 10 hours longer than the previous game Xenoblade Chronicle X. The gamespot reviewer played 65 hours, which possibly means he didnt have the time to play any subquests. The game can take over 200-300 hours to play all the extras (since it is longer than Xenoblade Chronicles), according to its creators.
PS: Take my post with a grain of salt. I dont have a Wii console. I havent played any Xenoblade game. But i like RPGs and this game seems interesting enough to search for its reviews (even though i will probably not buy the console).
But this review hasnt illuminated me at all what the the game's problems were. I got the sense he wasnt objective.
The soundtrack problems are only mentioned in 2 lines (that he wanted to mute them. Why? what are the reasons for muting?) Plus other review problems that i wont mention now, this post is already far too long.
In the end, this review has confused me even more (and i didnt want to buy the game in the first place!)
I feel sorry for the people who will base their purchases from this review (even though the game got a high score, it didnt really explain the game)
Geogyf's comments