one-star ratings

[Arabi1]

I don't trust one-star ratings.

There are games I've played that I know all the details of, and if you want to be ungrateful, the maximum you can give is 4 stars. I see some examples of people giving the game one star because of personal bias, and the strange thing is that people give them more likes than positive reviews, thus rewarding them and helping to spread this phenomenon.

And when I check their profiles, all their other ratings are also 1 star for games I know they shouldn't be, they keep giving 1 star to all the games they play as if they have nothing to love in this life. Those who give two to four stars are the real honest ones, and those who give one star are like an Amazon product with a full 5 star rating and thus lose their credibility, at least to me.

 

[GNVE]

Well there might be quite a few things at play here:
- Some people always have something to criticize. I had a friend who never posted anything fully positive on her socials. Even if something good happened there was something in her post about how bad X had been. It got old real fast tbh.
- The anonymity allows some people to just be trolls and and idk feel good I guess about themselves that they were mean to a dev?
- It is generally easier to criticize than to name things you like. (name 10 things that are good about youself vs. 10 that are bad. most people will find it easier to complete the latter list.)
- Even on a good game some will dislike it. If you have a 1000 5-star reviews and 1 1-star review the latter might have more likes on its own even if the total number of likes of all those 5-star reviews outweigh that 1 1-star post's likes massively.
- Standards might be an issue. If you come to this site only playing AAA games and expecting the same spit and polish you might be a little disappointed.

Just the first things that come to mind as what might be at play.

So far I only gave 1 1-star review but quite a number of 2-star reviews.

 

[tanstaafl]

I've only given two one star ratings ever. Both times it was because the level of effort by the dev(s) was obviously zero. All others I've given, even if technically worse than the two one stars I've given, were because there was at least one aspect of the game that the dev actually put some effort or skill into. Story, art, renders, UI, etc. Anything. If there is obvious effort or attempt or even skill in one of these things even if the rest of the game is a complete wash, you will get at least a two stars from me.

Also, no matter how good a game is, I'll never give a five star for a new game. I'll give 4 stars and then bump it up if it stays good and gets regular updates.

 

[desmosome]

A 1* review is overwhelmingly two things.

• NTR haters bombing a game that isn't actually NTR but might not adhere to their standards of "only MC can have sex."
• MC power fantasy self-inserters getting mad that the MC isn't immediately a gigachad that does things exactly as they want.

That's basically it. There are occasionally truly garbage games that deserve 1*, but those are the exceptions.

 

[Writefuck]

Sometimes when you don't like something that seems to be getting mostly positive reviews, you might get the sense that leaving a more "extreme" negative review is necessary in order to balance out the positive ones it's getting. A one-star feels like it'll have more impact than a 2- or 3-star review. For this reason I personally think it's better to have reviews just offer a simple binary like/dislike, or a "thumbs up/down" system rather than trying to assign a number. Siskel and Ebert had the right idea with their thumbs-based reviews.

 

[Champinon]

There are a bunch of games that clearly deserve 1 star rating due the lack of effort, stolen art or questionable practices but most of the time, just like angry reactions and facepalm reactions, 1 star are used as a weapon by NTR-haters who for some twisted and bizarre reason go into NTR games to complain about NTR, trying to stop developers from developing their games by demoralizing them instead of ignoring those types of games that they obviously don't like just like a normal person would.

 

[MissFortune]

That's basically it. There are occasionally truly garbage games that deserve 1*, but those are the exceptions.

Objectively, I think the only dev who deserves a 1 Star rating is Mr. Vision. Dude's just kind of a piece of work.

I mean, you could argue ICSTOR, too, but at least he came back and finished it on some level.

 

[mp3774]

I don't trust one-star ratings.

There are games I've played that I know all the details of, and if you want to be ungrateful, the maximum you can give is 4 stars. I see some examples of people giving the game one star because of personal bias, and the strange thing is that people give them more likes than positive reviews, thus rewarding them and helping to spread this phenomenon.

And when I check their profiles, all their other ratings are also 1 star for games I know they shouldn't be, they keep giving 1 star to all the games they play as if they have nothing to love in this life. Those who give two to four stars are the real honest ones, and those who give one star are like an Amazon product with a full 5 star rating and thus lose their credibility, at least to me.

thjats what i sadi when people started bombardiating my porn game "mr cocknballing in the infinite sex" because it was acorrding to some dumbass "too esoteric" and "often dwelved into heavy philosophical musings instead of being an actual porn game" and i told them, this is what i told them, i told them

"HEY COCKFUCKERS, STOP GIVING 1 STAR REVIEWS, U COULDN'T CRITIQUE A PORN GAME EVEN IF UR ORGASM DEPENDED ON IT"
but they kept on downvoting me like crazy and rating my games 1 stars, very sad situation

 

[MalkavianVamp]

Some people give one star ratings because Don't like fetish of game , personally I look for story and gameplay in a game but I understand devs who don't focus on those and just sex,but thAts just me ...

 

[Death Panda]

if you want to be ungrateful

I see some examples of people giving the game one star because of personal bias

So are you for or against personal bias? Because reviewing out of personal gratitude is classic personal bias.

Like it or not, there is a lot more incentive to writing a good review for a game you like than there is for writing a bad review for a game you dislike. With the good review you get a slightly higher chance that development on a game you like will continue, but with the bad review you get nothing.

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

I mostly ignore 1 and 5 star reviews unless it's from someone i know, usually you can only get legit intel from 3-4 star reviews.

 

[hoshimota]

I don't think it's fair to over-generalize reviews like that. I agree with you that there are plenty of people leaving reviews for dumb reasons, but then again there are plenty of people posting in general for dumb reasons so... yeah you kind of have to do the work and figure out the context.

I have reviewed a number of games, across the whole range - 1 to 5 stars. I stand by every single review. But I also write like paragraphs of content explaining WHY I feel that way, so it's up to you to agree or discount the review depending on whether what I have written resonates with you or not.

In general, games on F95 are way the fuck over-rated and I strongly suspect people pay to get shill reviews because let me tell you, there are a ton of fucking complete piece of shit games out there with absurdly high reviews. I honestly think they lean much more on the overly optimistic side, rather than the overly negative size, overall. Plus plenty of games START OUT GOOD but then the dev becomes a lazy greedy cunt and quality declines, but they still can just ride the wave of positive reviews they got early on.

 

[Jaike]

Ratings should be for quality, not for effort. A one-star rating is supposed to mean "terrible" here. If you don't think games with that quality exist, I invite you to try more Japanese shovelware and HTML real porn horror. I remember a bugged sandbox where the navigation and the menu were mixed up for some reason, and clicking twice on the same location or inventory button in some cases would close the game. That was a good candidate for a one-star review if there ever was one.

Now I agree it's a lot more likely that a one-star review or a five-star review is crap. But I think review length is a better guide to a review's quality, to a point, than the rating. If someone puts in enough effort to go well over the character minimum and formulate their views, it's more likely they have something reasonable to say.

A 1* review is overwhelmingly two things.

• NTR haters bombing a game that isn't actually NTR but might not adhere to their standards of "only MC can have sex."
• MC power fantasy self-inserters getting mad that the MC isn't immediately a gigachad that does things exactly as they want.

That's basically it. There are occasionally truly garbage games that deserve 1*, but those are the exceptions.

Is it? Probably the biggest motivation for one-star reviews is that the reviewer thinks a game's overrated. Here are recent reviews for BaDIK with one star:

So firstly, this is my first time making a review so just read on what you get. So i charged in this game blindly Knowing absolutely nothing and giving me absolutely everything to the characters with good humor and the story so far as to being comedic. I invested hours upon hours to this game just to have my balls hit with a hammer. First off there are minor issues here and i just ignored it cause they were you know "minor" and those were the characters, you know majority of them are either hookers or cheaters. But you can easily ignore them yeah cause i mean they're not important at all. Now moving on to the major issue... The Throuple thing you know with you and maya and josy " a thing " this turns me off so much and it turned me off more when I invested hours upon hours on maya just to see the outcome of her rejecting me . And i mean yeah that sucks but what can i do when the devs are the ones who pull the strings. Eventually started to forget them with all the shit happening on this game. (spoiler alert = I didn't forget them) Why oh nothing the devs just really want the Mc and those two cheaters engaging like some hamster on a wheel running and running just to see no end whatsoever. The story is just ok for me I've seen better just like eternum's story and i kid you not 1st on my personal favorites. Point is this is just too overrated on my taste and i mean overrated as in the story just get overshadowed for all the hype this is getting.


- Wandering Reviewer

P.s didn't get to finish this so I'll leave it to 2 stars... Nah everybody saying it gets worse every year so I'll be leaving as i recently put it. Bad mouth me all you want im just stating my experience.

[Edit]
I mean we do have different opinions and shite I can't believe I'm one of those poeple who didn't follow through this game since this has been one of the best AVN out there... i just cant contain my dissapointment when it started off as a rollercoaster going up and up again and again just to see the most dissapointing drop.

I fail to see how I could possibly give this more than one star. This has been the most disappointing experience since I started playing AVNs, and it probably has to do with its high reputation

Everything just seems so uninspired. Story, generic college slice of life with no creativity, characters just have their default model appearances, music feels like anything you'll find on Youtube by searching for royalty free music. Might as well put some Kevin MacLeod in there while we're at it

The worst part is that the developer adds drama just to have drama, not as a result of good writing or it needing to be there. It's blatantly obvious and very distracting

Most overrated VN I've ever come across, I don't see how this gets any higher praise than any of the other generic college VNs

- Story 2/10
- Animations 4/10 (not the worst I've seen, but pretty average in the end)
- Characters 3/10 (most of them I find annoying and inconsistent)
- Renders 6/10
- Music 5/10
- Enjoyability 3/10

A uninspired story dragged down even more by its unlikable cast. Everything else is too mediocre to carry it

Overrated much? The story's okay, but everything else is meh. Whether it's the sex scenes or the Li's, who seem like a bunch of whores...

The top-notch animations feel wasted here. Too much unnecessary filler content just kills the fun. Not worth investing many hours, especially considering the MC's personality is like a doormat – letting everyone walk over him. I gave it a shot until Episode 8, but that's as far as I could go.

P.S.: Jill is overrated.

Maybe some break review rules. 2 hit on themes you mentioned, but the most common line is they think it's overrated. Not a good day for my review length rule either, the writer of the longest review was Captain Padding.

Anyway my experience is that for this kind of game that attracts self-inserters but isn't fully gigachad or up to anti-NTR haters' standards, "overratedness" is often the most common argument. I find that anti-NTR review bombing is about as common as pro-NTR review bombing in those. But I don't spend much time reading reviews.

 

[Dessolos]

I only do 1 star if I hate the game and it feels like the dev barley put effort in. For Example Game of Hearts I hate and forcing myself to slowly finish cause I just want to see if the demon storyline will actually go anywhere. But it isn't enough for me to give it a 1 star there is alot of effort put into that I can't decide if it's 2 or 3 star game when I do finish it.

 

[Zardoz23]

I only do 1 star if I hate the game and it feels like the dev barley put effort in.

I haven't rated too many games. But the one 2 star review I left was basically for this reason. In my opinion Milf's Plaza is the definition of a terrible porn game. It has the unholy trinity of bad writing, bad translation, and bad mechanics (clicking around random spots in a room to find cash is not good gameplay). But the artwork is acceptable so I gave it 2 stars.

I think your typical one star game is just too easy for me to spot. I don't bother downloading them in the first place. And I won't review a game I haven't played. MILF's Plaza at least looks like it could be decent on the surface because the screenshots look nice. I'm curious how many steam refunds it gets because you don't need to play 2 hours to figure out the game sucks.

 

[desmosome]

Ratings should be for quality, not for effort. A one-star rating is supposed to mean "terrible" here. If you don't think games with that quality exist, I invite you to try more Japanese shovelware and HTML real porn horror. I remember a bugged sandbox where the navigation and the menu were mixed up for some reason, and clicking twice on the same location or inventory button in some cases would close the game. That was a good candidate for a one-star review if there ever was one.

Now I agree it's a lot more likely that a one-star review or a five-star review is crap. But I think review length is a better guide to a review's quality, to a point, than the rating. If someone puts in enough effort to go well over the character minimum and formulate their views, it's more likely they have something reasonable to say.


Is it? Probably the biggest motivation for one-star reviews is that the reviewer thinks a game's overrated. Here are recent reviews for BaDIK with one star:








Maybe some break review rules. 2 hit on themes you mentioned, but the most common line is they think it's overrated. Not a good day for my review length rule either, the writer of the longest review was Captain Padding.

Anyway my experience is that for this kind of game that attracts self-inserters but isn't fully gigachad or up to anti-NTR haters' standards, "overratedness" is often the most common argument. I find that anti-NTR review bombing is about as common as pro-NTR review bombing in those. But I don't spend much time reading reviews.

It was hyperbole, but also, reviews that clearly break rules tend to get removed eventually. What's left is people who managed to talk about some other thing just enough to skirt the rules when really, their main complaint is that the MC ain't acting exactly like what they want or the LIs are not up to their standards, because they are cam girls, sluts, has existing relationships, are bitches, lesbians, bi, or whatever.

Certainly, just a contrarian dude coming along and shitting on a game because it's popular exist as well, but that seems rarer to me.

 

[hoshimota]

I mean I am not scaling my fucking scores for effort lmao. I am judging on results, plain and simple. The dev can try their ass off, and make a shit game, and then they are getting a low score. Conversely some are geniuses, and put very little effort in yet manage to churn out a great product, and they get a high score.

No participation trophies.

 

[Advent Games]

Mine's a 1+ star also ^_^ if you look at the comments they leave, it's either non-sensical, complaining about wanting stuff, complaining that stuff I've said is in the pipeline but isn't there yet, or they hate the genre and are hate-rating.

I go off the views-to-likes ratio. If the game has a lot of likes, it has a general interest. If that game also has tags you like and many likes, chances are high people liked it because of those tags you also like.

 

[Zardoz23]

The dev can try their ass off, and make a shit game

I am skeptical. If we're talking about real dedication I think most people could offer a decent short story kinetic novel with a rudimentary engine (something super simple) and as long as it doesn't crash for some unknown reason every 2 minutes it would probably be worth 2 stars.

The real mistake most would-be porn devs seem to make is biting off more than they can chew and trying to "fake it 'till they make it" out of raw greed. I am seriously considering trying to make my own game that focuses on realistic goals. I feel like a half decent plot, an hour's worth of content, and half-way decent artwork would be met with 3 stars on average.

 

[Count Morado]

biting off more than they can chew and trying to "fake it 'till they make it" out of raw greed

Raw greed for <$100 USD per month for about 2/3rds of the adult game developers on Patreon... Even after 3 years on that platform?