I call em as I see em.  And I have seen a lot to not value player reviews at all.  

So you have read them all and disagree with every single one of them?  And I suppose you think the "Professional" Reviews are of more value? 

Sorry but that makes no logical sense.  But then I call them as I see them and reviews have been valuable to me in gauging if I'd get the game or not.  Only thing better than user reviews is acully playing the game itself (Beta, etc.)  I have bought games in the past based on negative feed back too. Because what people are saying as negative was a feature I liked. 

For example:  There are a few people who are glad that there are no ships in FE.  So if I would to read user reviews from them and they were praising the DEVS for not having ships in the game, giving the game 9.0 . Well I would see this as a big negative  so then I would look at other reviews and see if there were positives that would counter this. I'd also have researched the game on the Games website as well.  Then go back to the User Reviews to see what people thought about each feature.

The lowest professional review this game has gotten is a 3.5 star out of 5. That's one review. Every other pro review has been >=80. It's a pity that only 3 metacritic pro reviews have been made so far. Two are >=80, one is 3.5 out of 5 = 70.

If you want to start your own thread where random anonymous Internet people's opinions can be summed up, then have at it.

I think it's totally legitimate to call someone out who predicted a metacritic average of 68 as being someone whose point of view is out of the mainstream.  I don't think the pro reviewers are mainstream. Rather, I think that a person who thinks that the pro reviewers would give this game a 68 is out of the mainstream.

Sure it does. A professional reviewer is a verified person without any known axe to grind. He or she is accountable. An anonymous Internet user has no accountability. It could be the PR people of the company giving it a 10 or some disgruntled customer giving it a 0.

As for the OP, I was hoping for a low 80 and planning for a mid to high 70. Kinda late to the party but oh wells!

@user reviews: I'm going to have to backup Xia partly here. You have to actively filter through user reviews to find useful ones. It isn't as hard in a niche genre like TBS to figure out which reviews come from people who know what they are talking about, but with huge titles like Diablo 3, it's a lot more difficult...TONS of people rated that game based on the always online requirement alone and I'm sure some of those people never even played the game. Dragon Age 2 is another classic example. "Too different from the first game. 0/10". That tells me the game is completely worthless, which is not possible for a Bioware game.

This kind of goes both ways with critic reviews too though. (ie. The infamous PC Gamer 94% for Dragon Age 2 that's plastered on the ads). You can't help but wonder a little at that score, whether you want to be a conspiracy theory person or not. Often reviewers just aren't very good writers and can set a tone in the article that makes ZERO sense with the review score. You generally get to know critics that line up with things you like and just trust in them a little.  

I think if you read enough reviews from different sources you will piece together some general likes/dislikes than can help you make a purchase. That said, there's a lot of useless crap along with it. That's kinda the Internet I guess.

User reviwes are useful, if the author presents the pros and cons for him, no matter if positive or negative. Such a review tells me if the game may be for me or not, a simple number does not.

After what some "professional" reviewers have written over the years, the percentages they give are highly suspect to me, too. I need a detailed review to decide if I like a game or not. Many reviews in magazines don't mention things I am interested in, too - like if I can save at any time, does it require a permanent online connection, is a DRM in place which can damage my system, at what resolution can it be played, do turns in TBS games take seconds, minutes or hours to complete, and so on.

The thing is, one needs to spend the time to make a survey on the net to get an informed opinion how a game does.

I find user reviews useful. I find user scores worthless.

There are good reviews and bad reviews. There are professional reviews and there are user reviews. These two variables are not related to each other.

The metacritic score (based on professional reviewers) will affect a consumers choice much more than the user score.

A professional reviewer is someone who gives every EA/Activision/Ubisoft title a 8.5 minimum.

Do you think the same of those who predicted a 90+ metacritic?

Because if FE ends up about 79, which seems extremely likely to me, then those 90+ guys are just as far, or further, out of mainstream as the guy who thought it would get 68.

And if FE gets 77, which is feasible, then your 87 estimate will be more off the mark than the 68 guy. So lets just accept people have different opinions.

I predicted 81. Not 87. I think it deserves an 87.

You can have whatever opinion you want. But ones Metacritic prediction is a testable evaluation.

And, again, I find mainstream thoughts are worthless.  Popularity != right

User reviews might not have the same value as professional reviews in a lot of cases but they are not totally worthless either.

At the end of the day, all I can say is that users' reviews spared me some mighty disappointments, while critics' reviews would have had me jump straight into them.

Please continue. 

There is only one reviewer that I can trust.  That I know has not taken a back hander, or is biased against the genre.

And that is......................ME!!