\Which you pretty much have failed to do, because you've looked at my arguments as to what caused Shadow to be a bad game, and you fled into "everyone has opinions" with your tail between your legs.
In no small part because that's the point at which you stopped discussing and started ranting (second reason, which you missed, will be presented two paragraphs down). Yes, you presented your failures with the game, but it was laced with bitching and moaning over my audacity to enjoy the game more than Heroes (this is not saying much, btw; I do not think highly of Heroes). When you whine, people don't want to talk to you, deal with it.
Since you're so adamant about this, I'll grant your wish and pick up where I left off, all without any further quote tags. But before I do, some clarification of earlier statements:
You misunderstood me when I mentioned lacking the urge to continue a discussion based on a game I would shelf in favor of Adventures/Storybook. I was referring to Shadow, not to NiGHTS JoD. See, I don't think Shadow is THAT great, but I don't think it's THAT bad either, and I can see how some minor tweaks would have made it much better (ease up the mission restrictions and eliminate the final boss split, offering 5 more mission-free stages instead of only one). If I'm going to read and write walls of text to defend a game, I'd frankly rather be defending a great game, not a mediocre game. I don't particularly care if you don't appreciate a "so-so" game. So I wasn't terribly motivated to defend Shadow.
The misconception I noted earlier was your citing an alleged need to avoid killing particular enemies. That's not the case unless you're one enemy away from completing a mission which you don't want to. When you spend that amount of time complaining about a nonissue, it says that you are not well educated about the game you're complaining about. This is, incidentally, why I don't go into terrible detail with my complaints against JoD, I haven't been able to put up with it long enough to reach my second boss fight. I realize that I could stand to educate myself further, but it takes a LOT for me to drop a title that early; the only other game to hold a candle to that level of badness in its early impressions is the GBC Animorphs game. And I know there are many with more patience than I who have found much more to complain about in the late-game of JoD, so it is not terribly encouraging for me to drudge through what I already find a fun-sucking husk of a disc in order to find out.
Visuals? Ironic complaint given your defense of JoD, one of the jaggiest titles I've seen. But I won't argue against that; you'll never catch me defending the visuals of any Sonic Team title in the period between SA2 and Secret Rings.
Missions, I conceded, were tedious and overly strict. However I do find you to blow it out of proportion a little, both due to the above enemy misconception, and the fact that missions basically exist only to unlock stuff. You can free play from the menu and never worry about them.
Dialogue? Absolutely and totally cheesy. That's why it's enjoyable, because it's laughable in that MST3K kind of way. I mean, how do you not smile at, "Where's that DAMN fourth Chaos Emerald?" I'm glad future games did not continue along this route, but it was fun as a one shot deal, and I will take it over Heroes beating you over the head with child cliches (Because...
we're Sonic Heroes! *shudder*)
Shooting, assuming we MUST put up with it, is presented as it should be: a tack-on. It's a side item to the main platforming focus. Shadow is unusual in that its gimmick doesn't completely override the platforming formula to the point of being utterly incompatible with it and resulting in an alternate play mode that gets more focus than the proper hedgehog action (read: Werehog), and it's a lot less intrusive than Hereos' character formations.
You flipped out when I compared it to Heroes, apparently thinking that I thought highly of Heroes. I don't. It has its strong points, most any Sonic Team effort (yes, even JoD) does, but it's on the lower end of the spectrum to me. Visuals are as bad as Shadow, the dialogue is worse, team difference is negligible, and the sheer number of mandatory maneuvers makes the game as a whole feel cluttered and lacking focus. Oh yes, and it introduced us to the wonderful concept of non-boss enemy HP counters, something which to this day I maintain does not belong in a Sonic game (you hit them once, they die, you move on; that's the way it should be).
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^o^ Oh, and Mario, Bowser, Mallow and Geno too of course~ x3
