darkSpyro

Yes I will be doing this all the games and yes I know Skylanders super chargers is a Mario kart clone

It's racing section was, but the main story mode was hardly a "Mario Kart clone".

Oh my gosh... this **** is neverending...

What.

i legitimately hate this game.
i really wanted to like it so hard so many times. i put 200+ hours in it. you can't say i didn't give it a fair shake for at least a few of those hours.
i probably actually enjoyed 10 hours or so.

i have a lot more i could write but for now i've just written this and if and only if i feel like it i'll get back to this. but just mentioning other issues i had: gameplay was piss-easy and unfocused, vehicles were horrible, not just because they had way too much focus and poorly designed segments, but they had h terrible controls and feel, plus many vehicles barely feeling different and all having completely uninteresting mods and upgrades, too much platforming over combat as well, portal master powers impeded on gameplay even further and had a poorly-implemented levelling system (**** the rng collectables), new lock puzzles are awful in that they are too action- rather than thinking-focused to be breathers but so clunky they also just aren't fun, lack of good puzzles in general, the new roster was small and was composed largely of stinkers, levels had some good ideas but lacked design to back it up nor really explored them (perhaps outside of VoTA, the one level i feel actually has good pacing, even if i still like absolutely no levels in this game), lack of replay value (in quantity second-worst of the series to only trap team, in quality utter ****), with poor level count too (and while i don't prefer long levels for the series, sc doesn't have long levels like sf or even levels noticeably longer than the other games), the collectables system was terrible by leading to grinding for hats and made it feel like you were no longer finding treasures lost in worlds, old lore became irredemably muddled here (was getting muddled but not to a point that made me give up until sc) and trap team's entire plot was just swept under the rug, the online when it existed was kind of terrible and now that it's gone extra vehicle mods (which were more substansial than the base mods and upgrades!) are lost forever, content gating beyond the "three vehicles needed" that people like to tout is lousy, the figure collecting was some of the worst to grace the series (y'all remember the starter packs needed to get everything, and how bowser and dk came out in double packs later with no announcements, and how the figures were so expensive while being kinda small and lacking quality improvements?).
the one big thing i think it has really going for it is the aesthetics, a humongous improvement over other works by the studio that is mostly good, often great and has a couple of amazing moments- but this isn't even the best game of the series in that regard anyways: spyro's adventure is still the platinum standard. next to that game sc has many more low points, more asset reusal, way less interesting palettes, more simplification, overall more generic cartoonishness rather than the cool dungeon crawler edge the first two games had and weaker fundamentals than tfb's works (a specific nitpick that picked me off: the color bleed of those blue blobs in VoTA onto the background, why did vv's color bleed get even worse in nst, the whole studio needs to work on putting fundamentals in practice).

so, what i did write...

the story moves so fast over glumshanks' death and past a lot of worlds and one-time characters like they're nothing; while brisk pacing is nice and i appreciate the attempt i feel like this was closer to rushed.

perhaps exacerbating it is that i really spent no time in the hub like the other games so it failed as a breather between levels to let everything set in. there was nothing i wanted to explore there. there were just tacked-on vehicle sections and if you had the right items to place down, just like trap team's hub, real simplistic sidescrolling sections. except the ones in superchargers, which also are only offered by certain items you get via rng and thus you aren't guaranteed to see and breathe with and don't get to have fun actually finding, are ridiculously small and empty and don't have at least the amusing super high jumps and bits of verticality the equivalent had in trap team nor collectables in them. they are pointless and unamusing mush, they neither expand on the academy as a place nor really add to the gameplay. they can't serve as breathers when they're obscured in the pool of rng items and thus may never appear to give you a breather, they certainly don't add to exploration when you can only get them through pure luck and then poof you place them down and they're there and there's nothing to explore in them, there is already an entire level about sidescrolling so it's not really new, and they just aren't fun on their own (no satisfying feel or design, utterly no meat, and the latter would have been fine like it was in trap team's sidescrolling sections but again these aren't real breathers like those in the predecessor- i sound really negative about tt's but i actually like them specifically because they're simple while still having some fun memorable aspects, more complex sidescrolling is not good in this engine imo, but these sections in sc have nothing going for them).
the hub in general was also quite mashed together and squished; handy for reaching where you want to go, but outside of the ship there is almost no breathing room. it's not a place you want to explore. i know there's an argument for the customisation but with a hub that already felt so squished and how that customisation is nothing more than placing items down it did nothing for me. the idea could be done much better without the game having to be focused around it like lost islands or universe were. it's not even that novel because we had a customizeable hub in giants and treasures decorating the hub in tt. imo this game has the worst hub by far- poor as both a resting spot and area to explore or play in. on an art level, while actually justified fairly well, we've seen the academy just before this and in a much better form too, plus the damn thing looks ugly with its harsh colors and gadgets and cluttered **** everywhere. it also feels like it never expands, it never adds unique or new npcs or anything, the entire game it's inhabited by just the same characters as the last game, series mainstays and pandergast. there is no excitement getting to know new npcs in this game in general because every single one besides the underwhelming villain is a one-shot, but it's worse when the ones that are there as plot devices never reappear or hang anywhere else, making it more blatant they're just plot devices. anyway, this hub, it's not any good and not even really original.

flynn was also extremely hateable here, not just for how he acted or being the flattest but frequently breaking the tone of things. i physically cringed at his fart joke at the end of cloudbreather's crag and he pops up on the microphone over gameplay so often he's ****ing unignorable in spite of being pointless towards the story.
the occasional jarring break in tone is something superchargers suffers from: it tries to be more "dark" than a lot of vv's works and genuinely has amazing atmosphere at times but still has ridiculously childish points to it. i'm talking in even little things like npcs doing lame dances and inexplicable plungers in place of ammo fired at you in cloudbreather's... guess that level has a lot of breaks in tone, huh. skylanders always should have some lightheartedness and a touch of silliness but when this game did it, it was incredibly jarring and just dumb at points. travelling to the future for stinky cheese in trap team isn't why you would expect to be going to the future and just crazy and creative enough that even if it broke the tone it would still have been an amusing idea, cluck having his own chain of fried chicken is just a dumb pun that really isn't funny even as a pun lover and is the kind of thing you would see out of swap force's repertoire.

... that's it. i'll only continue if i feel like it, but ****ing hell this game has so many problems which could each be their own rants.

I don't care that this is a double post, the forums are dead don't be stingy over that.

And I'm bored, so I decided to make a realistic list.

First of all: this is still a great game, and I would argue a better game than Giants... but a great Skylanders game? Hell no. I'm sad to say I think it competes for the bottom spot with Giants as a Skylanders game.
What I mean is: better game for non-fans. For real invested fans? Eeeehhh...

Here are four main summations of the game's problems.

• THE #1 ISSUE AND WHY SO MANY PEOPLE HATE THIS GAME SO MUCH: it's not focused on the Skylanders. Whenever I play it I never feel like I get a good feel of them. There's nowhere to just pick up and play as them, the experience is always interrupted. There are no good modes purely for them (Battlebrawl and Bandit Train are way too short and lite). But they should be the driving force (pun not intended). They're the most addictive, they're replayable and carry between games, they have the deepest and best gameplay, they're all wildly different between the other segments that basically always play the same and where you get choice, probably the best aspect of the gameplay the series has, SC sort of tossed it out for a much more typical game. The vehicles are obviously more shallow but feel like they get more screentime, focus and development. At least they get extra modes.
  
• The game is so fractured between driving, on-foot action and other on-foot that none of these aspects ever truly get going. It ends at what would be around midgame difficulty and challenge in SF and the great level design concepts never feel like they reach their maximum conclusion, it feels like it doesn't really ramp up the obstacles or complexity appropriately- it feels like they could do much more with the ideas they had, but not in a good "you could make a game from this idea" kind of way but an "unfinished" way. The enemies are horribly basic and underutilised too and have some real jank, feeling a bit cobbled together. It's not like SF had super complex level design but it felt totally fleshed out and ramped up much better using much simpler ideas. You get to a segment you want in SC but it still feels unercooked. And there are also quests that feel strangled by such a bad system and hub customisation that isn't quite there and a tiny racetrack count and the online was really bad. Frankly, this isn't nearly as big of a problem in any other entry. They have unfinished aspects, but SC often feels like it had to be patched together with focus on so many things and not enough time or budget or whatever was the real issue. It's... just... fractured.
  
• The vehicles themselves aren't a great gimmick; mere spectacle but a lot of that spectacle repeats and loses its lustre, they have no real customisation with the pitiful mods and the extended mods being gone, and the upgrades are just a straight line, a good bunch of extras but those feel one-and-done because there isn't an incentive to keep playing vehicles or try different things with them as there is for Skylanders. It never feels like you have a unique vehicle, or they give you much choice. The vehicles themselves barely feel different from one another too. They certainly tried to do that, and they are great and distinct visually, but the vehicle gameplay is never strong enough for the differences to really matter or interest. The vehicle sections were never something I wanted to master or try more in, even racing (mainly because that overstayed its welcome, with too few maps strung out by repetitive modes). Plus it's really obvious the experience was designed around Hot Streak who is the best vehicle for almost the entire experience anyways. Tying into point #1, this gimmick also has nothing to do with the core gameplay. Every other gimmick is a natural extension of that: swappers add more choice, taps add dynamic, Imaginators add customisation. It feels like vehicles were just made for setpieces, or coolness, which is really shallow.
  
• Everything good has a "but" attached. It feels like the game doesn't excel at much for this reason and even where it excels is stunted and drowned in a lot of... blah. I feel like that can be figured out on its own and at this point I'm too tired to write more.

The reasons I think Giants may be the worst instead are

• SC has Skystones Overdrive kickass game-within-a-game my only complaint is it never had random online matchmaking
  
• Would often rather play vehicles than most of the plodding puddles in SG, there is spectacle, action and a modicum of choice with them
  
• SG has the least distinct spot in the series. SC may have shaken the formula up too much, but that still makes it more interesting and worth it for a different experience. SG is an expansion pack to SA which is much worse than that game.
  
• Giants feels repetitive not just for being like an expansion pack but within itself, with the dearth of samey assets, same caves, repeated game design and nearly everything being a town or ruin. They did a really great job with what they had, but you can still tell they had to reuse a lot and relied on some former scrapped ideas.
  
• Giants is obviously dated and doesn't hold up nearly as well as SA.
  
• SC has a better story and world.
  
• SC has a larger roster.
  
• SG... has the worst set of levels in the series, I'm sorry, almost all of them suck or bore and just pull you into slow samey ****, and they're obviously trying to be longer than the first game but come across as really short levels dragged out with really bad segments.

But Giants has WAY better extras, it's still a purer Skylanders experience, and the action is WAY better to get to. It has more interesting enemies and lengthier combat segments when you get there. The levels feel bigger than SC's with actual collectables besides chests, giving more sense of exploring for treasures and giving more real goals. It delivers more as a Skylanders game. And I don't think SC's roster is nessicarily better, because SG gives characters way more to do, added stuff for EVERYONE and balanced them way better (this is something that disappeared after SF, really :/). And oh yeah SC is way too easy. Giants is slow, but the balance is actually fine. It's funny because SC followed up the indisputable hardest game in the series.

The mechanics are just arguable too. SC should curbstomp SG here, because SF's mechanics were so ****ing strong and basically perfect, but the hitstopping in SC and easy abuse of knockback combined with worse and way easier combat hurt it a lot. SA and SG's mechanics are more dated, but still great, I feel they're better than SC but I'll just say it's arguable because I haven't played SG for a while and don't entirely "get" SC's.

I think every game in this series is great, but it's a shame that SC had to turn out how it did, it's just not a good entry to get invested in the same way as the others (which all deliver on Skylanders action, even SG). I couldn't play it for dozens of hours like the better games or even SG to some extent (I at least come back to that one and play a few hours for Heroics, SC usually only gets me for an hour or two and I pick it up less).
Hopefully I managed to explain why this game is so divisive without totally crapping on it for once. I like this game now, but I will never love it, and I can never overstate how disappointing it is as a Skylanders game.

Yeah, Trap Team was the medium between Acti screwing up to make you pay more and the devs actually having a lot of say in things. Superchargers it started to dip towards Acti, though god damn if VV didn't try to make it go out with a bang.