Musing on a change in review style.

Submitted a review for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves for NES earlier this week, a piece of around 1200 words which made the points I wanted to make, and gave the game the star it deserved (and withheld the other 4 stars it did not deserve). At one point I cite several examples of things somewhat implemented and then eventually not used much, or at all, implying rushing in the product.

Rereading it today, I suddenly realize I missed a point. You can find gold pieces in several locations, dropped from enemies or extracted from chests. The point is that there is no point, as there is a single place in the game where you can spend some gold, as part of a story quest to pay a fighting trainer for your men. This costs a fraction of the gold you'll have at this point, and nowhere else in the game does this gold have any point at all. I've never tried what happens if you get to the trainer without the gold, I'd say even odds between the game letting you pay him anyway or a dead end and potentially an unwinnable situation.

The thing here is, in the past, I would have made sure to include this in the review, as well as the fact that there is one chest key early in the game for one locked chest, and later chest keys can be found but there's never any place to use them anymore. Because I felt the review would be better for having more examples. Nowadays, I feel it wouldn't have made it better at all. 1200 words will do the job in this case. If a review goes to or past 2000 words, even *I* lose my focus rereading my own work. How can I expect readers to fare differently? If I actually need those words to make my point, then perhaps (though I'd wonder *why* I'd need that many). If the point is made, it doesn't need to be stressed further and further.

Likewise I no longer feel obligated to make the review a comedy piece just because it trashes the subject matter. It works sometimes, but this pony knows more than one trick by now. What I have written, I have written.

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	honestgamer - June 29, 2018 (03:56 PM) Knowing when to provide more information and examples, and knowing when to move on because you only have so many words to make your point before your audience loses the thread, is an important skill to master. Some people writing on the Internet never will. They have unlimited space and they mean to use as much of it as possible! It's funny to me that to a certain extent, we can become better writers not just through practice, but through the passing of time. There are things I've picked up just by reading a lot of what others write, and it sounds like the same holds true for you.
	Masters - June 30, 2018 (03:11 AM) Yup, what you both said. Sometimes I find myself thinking, 'I could have put MORE into the review,' as if it's a FAQ or is in any way supposed to resemble something comprehensive or complete. It boils down to the simplest of things: a yay or nay with the barest amount of reasoning that makes whichever leaning work. It's easy to get bogged down with the, 'but there's so much more HERE that I could talk about!'