If I am going to watch a video review of something I will usually watch a first impression. Games like FE Brad mentions are not so easy to first impression because of the large amount of depth. I really love watching Let's Plays but just to learn some new tips and tricks. 

Years ago user reviews on the internet used to be worth something because people were generally reasonable about their criticism.  These days they seem to be more about venting frustration in the most mean-spirited way possible at any product that dared to not meet their lofty expectations.  Diablo 3 is the most interesting case study because here we have a game that is by all accounts fun, polished, and has received outstanding post-release support from the developer, yet the user score at Metacritic would have you think that it's one of the worst games ever released in the history of gaming.  Now whatever your opinion of Diablo 3, surely nobody could objectively say that it deserves an overall score of 3.7 (especially compared to the 88% average from professional reviewers).

User reviews would be worthwhile if more people didn't see it as a simple up-down vote.

Well what I know is that I like this game and I am going to play it.  I have started playing lots of games that have gotten good reviews but I have not enjoyed them, hence those games were not for me.  That doesnt make the games bad as lots of other people like them. 

It's just a matter of personal preferance.  But lots of people think confuse their opinions for a fact and give the game a extremely low score and try to push their opinion as a fact.

I don't like rap music but that doesnt mean after I bought a rap cd that I went raging on about it on the internet that all rap is crap and that's a fact! 

How do you review products before buying them if you don't get a sneak peak first?  You look and user reviews which are the best way to judge any product from a Movie, Washer, Car or even games.

Now you need to first read throught all the reviews (or at least a lot to ket a feel what your dealing with.) Which means a product with only 4 reviews (no matter what they are) is worthless. You wait until there are 50 or 100, or 1000 or more.  Then you sift through them to get the general gist of issues and praises of the product to make and informed choice. 

Also I personally don't put much stock in Professional Reviewers no matter what product it is.

Hell...no! I f i would do this, i would never get what I want or like...

I'm mixed; several of the reviews suggest the person had not spent much time playing but there is at least one detail middle score (5 or 6) that seems well thought out. Anyways not everyone likes everything and the internet allows for a crazy sort of approach. I've already express my views on this game so no need to repeat; but in summary it certainly is not a 0 or 1; and it is certainly not a 9 or 10; and quite frankly very few games (almost none) are 0/1 or 9/10.

Actually i rely on REAL research rather than the word of anonymous people on the internet... sounds crazy I know. No matter how you dice it reviews are the opinions of other people and usually contain very little fact. Whether it be user or pro. Anyone who relies on the opinion of people they don't know in order to choose whether or not to buy anything are a bit daft. Not that there's any shortage of people like that, thats why companies pay millions for celebrity endorsements.

Are reviews useful? Sure.. as long as its a small part of your research of a purchase. If you rely only on reviews then let me review bomb this bridge i got to sell ya with positive reviews.

So you just blindly buy a product and hope for the best?   You need to read the reviews and short though the Fanboys and troll portions of the review to get to the meat of the review. And if you read a lot of them then you can pretty much tell if this game or other product is right for you. Never go by just the review score alwasy read reviews

Well yes of coarse you research a product and part of that is the user reviews.  A product can sound real good on paper but does not hold up well when actully uses hence why user reviews are important. 

And by the way the reviews do have more facts in them than you give credit for. But you have to shift through them to find them and they are not has badly hidden as you may thing. 

Oh and all the REAL research you do for a movie won't do you much good as would user reviews of the movie, why? becuse a movie could have a good script, good actors and even a director that is concidered good but still put out a POS movie. And you won't know that without the reviews.

Generally speaking movies, games etc are worse for reviews than physical products because there is ALOT more subjectivity involved with if its "good" or "bad".

Like it or not people have different tastes.. the worst movie ever probably has a few fans. Hell theres people who actually like Grease. Does that mean its a good movie? No. It means they enjoy that movie.

Good and bad are themselves subjective terms. Sure there may be a fact or 2 in a review.. but the majority of it is going to be extremely subjective, which makes it useless unless there is an exact copy of yourself running around doing reviews for ya.

Now of course you're free to believe that reviews are extremely useful if you'd like. But our difference of opinion on the matter further illustrates my point.

No, not blindly. I read descriptions about the product. "What is this game about" MAYBE i watch a Lets play video (games), and then i decide to buy or not. But never based on comments from other peolpe. Its a little bit old fashioned. I know. But i´m grown up in a time, there was no internet and you really (believe me ) had to buy something without asking thousands of people (reading comments).

I´m sure people these days miss many things (games, books, films etc.) they would like only because there were 1xxxx people, who didn´t like it.

I can't create a metacritic account so I won't be voting. Stupid server error every time I try to log in. Can't even look at the scores unless I go incognito. I would give metacritic a 0 out of 100 for this. If I could log in, I would give it a 9. I would write a decent critique and I would link to my let's play series about the game. Damn you metacritic and your incompatibility with my computer!

Players reviews, at least on Metacritic, are not to be trusted. The problem is indeed the one Brad pointed out, people try to influence the overall score. For example, Galactic Civilizations II Twilight of the Arnor has a 7.9 user score on Metacritic, which I find to be revolting. One guy even says he doesn't even like 4X games. Then why bother?

I don't actually believe in a score system for games, because each game is different and has good things and bad things. Some people rate FE low, because "it fails to be a MoM clone". But it doesn't try to be. This is why people should actually read about the game, see how it plays, identify the things THEY like and the things they don't. Simply looking at a Metacritic (because its also shown on the Steam page) score and deciding to buy or not, is plain stupid, in my opinion.

I actually bought War of Magic after all the horrible reviews, because I liked followed the game since its announcement, and I was indeed disappointed because of serious performance and stability issues, but after they were fixed, I enjoyed and played the game a lot.

But I believe things are actually shifting towards my point of view, I believe people are starting to actually look for LPs and gameplay videos and reviews, not just look at a symbolic number to decide whether they should buy a game or not. This is why the community has a huge role in promoting the game, more so then actual marketing perhaps. Reviewers will talk about whey THEY like and what they don't, but a LP or other gameplay video will show you the actual game and you can decide for yourself what you like and what you don't.

Having the same problem.

Don't know what's going on there...

It knows you're a fanboy, that's why it won't let you create an account. 

It would be cool if it also could recognize idiots, maybe then the scores would actually mean more.

When I read metacritic reviews I simply ignore all the 10's and 0's and read the ones that fall somewhere in the middle. Those usually give you the best insight on a game.

Metacritic keeps throwing me weird server errors. I guess I am not the only one. 

I think an active community says a lot about a game too. If the game has a community with people that truly love the game (fanboys, if you will) then that says something about it. 

Pretty much this.

The funny part about the negative player reviews for D3 is that a whole lot of them say something like "I spent 200 hours playing this game and it sucks!" If the game sucks so much, why did you keep playing the game? I didn't buy D3 based on word of mouth and those player reviews... because almost all of them also point out some other flaws that I wouldn't enjoy, such as the gold farming treadmill/extremely rare good loot drops/RMAH, simplistic character leveling/skill system and wonky difficulty. I thought the loot drops in Diablo 2 were frustratingly rare enough (I played something like 500 hours and never even had a complete set of anything good), so I can't imagine the frustration from D3. I'd probably have fun with it for a couple weeks, but that's it. Plus Torchlight 2 rocks, so there's no reason to even play D3.

This is actually one place where I would only trust a review that had played for a long time.  One of the things about a game like D3 (or FE) is that it comes with the expectation that you will invest a lot of time into it.  In D3 you play for hundreds of hours to build up your character into an immortal demi-god and find out what powers you can unleash.  In FE (and all 4x) you play to explore and conquer while honing your strategies.

I think the problem with D3 is that the more time you spend with it the more it seems like D2 with updated graphics.  People played the crap out of D2, so if they're not feeling like they're getting added depth in D3, they're going to be pissed off.

With a good game, the more time you spend with it, the more fun it becomes.  FE strikes me as a particularly good example of this.  It presents such a different style that it's hard to grok it in one or two play-throughs.  You really need to spend a lot of time with it to even understand what is going on.  And once you've gotten a grip on how the game works, the customization that's possible means that you can really start delving into strategies and gameplay styles in a way that's strikingly deep.

On another note, people are slamming the game because there aren't dwarves and elves.  This is a startlingly weird critique.  Like you are not allowed to make a fantasy game without bastardizing Tolkien.  You have your own fully-developed lore, you say?  I don't care.  When you say "fantasy" I think of half-naked elf girls.

But when you read the reviews you can tell after reading a bunch if the movie or game etc. is something your going to like.  Perhaps I'm not explaining this correctly. But even a bad review can have information in it that can give you an idea on what the product is like.  Yes everyone has different taste which is why you read reviews from all over the spectrum. 

Look I have been using user reviews for years to give me a an idea on if a product would be something I like or not. Mostly is has been Games and movies. And I had discovered that I usally get a pretty good idea on if I will like a movie/game or not.  You look at what the users are saying is bad or good about the movie/game and if I normally like a feature they they either like or dislike then I know hey I am going to like it. 

There are several movies (usally the darker ones) that had bad user reviews how ever because I read them I was able to determine that I was going to like the movie and I did in each instant.

For example if a bad review said: "I found that the negative story was to dark and the scene had a lot of combat with blood." I would say ok that is something I like even though the review is saying this is a negative. 

Another example:  "This is a fun loving story for they whole family"  That would be a big time negative in my book hence I would more likely not watch that

Ignore the number and read what they say.  I ignore the "worst game EVER" and "best game EVER" crowd.  I read to identify gameplay features.  As derivative as games are now, a little self awareness is all that is required to find games you'll enjoy. 

For example:  I like loot driven games so guess what: Borderland2 (check), Torchlight 2 (check), etc.

What attracted me to WOM and FE were random worlds, hero centric perspective, and magic.  That's it.  You "had me at hello" as the saying goes.

lol  There have always been user reviews one way or another even before the internet. I've been around since the 70's. They were in a paper form and word of mouth. Ahh the old days.

Both of those comments are purely subjective though.

A negative story = negative to him/her but that doesn't mean it is negative. Maybe the protagonist struggles through out the movie only to die at the end and he found that negative. But he died having finally completed his lifes dream so maybe to you its a positive life affirming flick.

too dark = okay.. whats TOO dark? or for that matter whats dark. Dark to one person is not necessarily dark to someone else.

a lot of combat and blood.= how much is a lot? 5 mins of combat and a gallon of blood? 55 mins of combat and 3000 gallons of blood?

The only thing that review actually told me was that there was some combat and blood.. no telling how much.

The rest of that tells me nothing about the movie.. it tells me how the reviewer perceives it.  You seem to think that we all perceive things in a similar way. Without a reference on a particular persons frame of mind we have no way of knowing what they consider as dark or fun loving, how much is too much etc etc

I've only played Tarth so far, so I can't comment on the differentiation of races.  But the second point... the other current TBS games that come to my mind are Civ 5 and Warlock.  Both have a mechanism that provides every settlement with an intrinsic value for defense even if units are not garrisoned there.  Because of this, I can see that people might find having to build and garrison troops in each and every city tedious.  There's a reason these other games removed that requirement...

There is a mechanism here. Each city already has a city garrison to help prevent this problem. But should a city garrison be able to turn back a dragon? You can defend your city up against a lot of minor enemies with the city garrison, just not more powerful monsters. Just recently they upped this garrison and in all fairness if you don't like the vanilla city defense, it's not that hard to mod in yourself and I'm sure one of these mods will be coming around soon.