Game reviews are basically dressed up buyer's guides. No need to trust them or have vitriolic reactions to them. Most of the time they won't matter to you if you've been into videogames for two decades and have played a bunch of shit.
And yet, people still do. All the time. Going to GameFAQs is like a timewarp back 20 years.
My favorite Musou of all time has a Metacritic of 52.
https://www.metacritic.com/search/all/samurai%20warriors%202/results
Fuck game journos.
If you trust game reviews you've clearly been coddled or have very safe game taste. That's not a controversial opinion.
And this is part of the problem. Samurai Warriors 2 with that low score? Fuck outta here with that garbage. Then something that has problems like Warriors All-Stars comes out and you wouldn't know that it's worse than the previous game. Or like how Warriors Orochi 4, while good, isn't as good as WO3 Ultimate was. They can't bother or even know what to point out. And let's not even get started on fighting game reviews.
BTW, Warriors Orochi 4 is rumored to be getting a big DLC update or new version. Maybe that will improve it to be better than WO3.
Vanquish doesn't matter- per Metacritic, it's 78% on PC, but 84% on PS3 and 360. That's not shitting on it like what IGN did with Godhand (and later on with Samurai Warriors 3) or Gaming-Age with their C- Ninja Gaiden score.
This kind of garbage happens with good scores on shit games, too- look at the infamous Bubsy 3D review from PS Xtreme magazine. Moneyhats? Clickbait? Maybe both? Who knows- but this is why most "professional" reviews don't matter to me. Even with that stuff aside, you have patches/updates fixing issues (or making things worse on occasion) or things that the reviewers just can't gauge, like how good the online play is in a game before release.
I get way more out of video footage or technical issues being pointed out than anything else.
Remember when Dynasty Warriors reviews would amount to
WHY DO PEOPLE KEEP BUYING THESE GAMES? WHY DO THEY KEEP MAKING THEM? 4.0
And then you have this mother fucker talking about how "gamers distrust of game reviews is bipolar" You must have the most plain jane taste on the mother fucking planet to say that shit.
Thank God Nintendo rescued the series from itself 
spoiler (click to show/hide)
I'm agreeing and making fun of the fact reviewers sang a different tune due to a different coat of paint.
Well......actually......
Hyrule Warriors is probably one of the best musou games of all time. Dynasty Warriors 9 is considered garbage by people that love that type of game, and it came out way later.
Hyrule Warriors had a good amount of effort put into it, its more than a new coat of paint.
Yes, HW is indeed awesome. Good mix of musou and Zelda gameplay- if you haven't played the Switch version, it's not just better because of the DLC all being there, but also because it adds in the strategy element of controlling multiple characters at once (from the 3DS port, which itself was taken from Samurai Warriors Chronicles). I like its "sequel," Fire Emblem Warriors, a lot too, and am wondering if the "Isekai Musou" that got announced is going to be the third game in this style.
Dynasty Warriors 9 was mixed right from the start and largely remains that way. They tried something new and have also been improving it steadily since the game released. That's great- my problem with it is them adding content like new weapons and fucking charging money for it. That's where they lost me and I sold the game off. I think at this point the DLC is like $200 worth of shit, which is a Koei-Tecmo staple.
