The lesson here is that for a review to be useful, the review needs to clearly state what exactly it sees as the good points or the bad points of a game. Because sometimes I read a bad review that complains about an issue I simply don't care about. Maybe a game didn't get the lore of some famous license right, or isn't woke enough for the reviewer, but if I personally don't care so much about these issues, that wouldn't be a reason for me to think less of a game. I decided against both Cyberpunk 2077 and Etherfields, but for example the glitches on PS4 didn't really play a role in my decision on Cyberpunk (I don't even own a PS4), while the great quality of the miniatures didn't make me excited for Etherfields.

I don't think I can give a complete and accurate description of why I don't want to buy Cyberpunk 2077 or Etherfields. Sometimes it is small things that seem irrelevant, but make you decide one way or another. Sometimes I watch a game being played on YouTube, and it just doesn't feel like it is right for me. Very often that has to do with the "flow" of a game. Even from the positive reviews you can see that the flow of Etherfields isn't right, and that in a game where you jump between different modes of gameplay, one of those modes is clearly more fun to everybody than the others. But my personal decision against a game can also be based on my personal pet peeves, like failure forcing you to replay large parts of Etherfields, while other people maybe have no problem with that as a game feature.

I don't think that objective reviews even exist. Our circumstances define us, and make us more susceptible to some issues than to others. For example, due to my circumstances, I am not highly sensitive to the price of a game, while for somebody in different circumstances that might be a major issue. And because novelty can be an important factor in the enjoyment of a game, and everybody's gaming history is different, the same game can feel very different to people who have played something similar before and those who didn't.

I am trying to express as well as I can what I liked and didn't like about a game in my more review-like posts. But I am aware that the aspects I am talking about might not even be relevant to you. I wouldn't want you to follow my recommendations if the arguments I used didn't resonate with you.