Well, I've posted my Disgaea 3 review.
This was a pretty difficult review to write. The series is getting so complex at this point, with so many fans drawn to so many different things. It was a big challenge to try to hit all of what I view as the main bullet points and do it with some word economy. Even now, it's right around 1500 words long, when I was hoping for closer to 1000 to 1200!
Anyway, I nailed most of the important points except that I didn't mention magicharge, one of the least noteworthy new features. Basically, a hero and a monster can combine for three turns with the monster boosting your attack and receiving benefits. Then the monster is gone from battle. Enemies did that a lot around me but I never did a magicharge throughout the whole thing. It just wasn't necessary.
Anyway, I could tell from reading other reviews of the game online--after posting mine--that other reviewers were having similar difficulty in reviewing the game. I was feeling bad because my writing wasn't particularly witty or anything, but I found that to be an epidemic in all other reviews for the game... and they spent as many words on things (usually) and didn't cover some of the stuff I did!
So yeah, I'm pretty happy with the review. The only things I would change is maybe to add more personality to my language and to shorten it by about 300 words without losing anything I'm saying. Given the breadth of the material I had to cover, I don't think either of those two things was ever going to happen. So... good review, I guess.
jerec Sep 1, 2008
Yeah, I wouldn't read the review to admire the style of writing, so I doubt you should go using it in any tournaments. But for what it was intended to do, the review succeeded.
honestgamer Blogger Sep 1, 2008
Writing to win reviewing tournaments seems to have less and less in common with writing to really analyze games. There are a lot of things that might be included in a review if you hope to win a tournament, but not as many of them have to do with actual gameplay analysis as I feel should.
Writers like drella, Masters and zigfried who really balance spectacular prose with in-depth game analysis are quite uncommon. I more often see writers that lean too much toward pure game analysis or toward interesting fluff, while sacrificing something else in the process. Something I'm trying to do is find a better balance between the two, but I expect that it will take a long time yet before I'm entirely comfortable with where I've settled as a review writer.
Maybe it'll never happen.