The thing is, many classics had good tutorials. For instance, to me it seems that RTS games teach the gamers to play the game bit by bit, while TBS games are far more often the variety of "you figure it out". What's up with that?

E.g., you can put a total newbie to play a floppy version of Dune 2 or Warcraft (1 or 2), and I don't think he'll have any problem figuring out the game. The first missions teach the basics bit by bit, how to produce units, upgrade units, harvest resources etc. It could be also in separate tutorial missions, if needed.

Maybe this is because those RTS games are mission-based (broken into missions), while MOO is kinda "here's the universe, do something in it". The latter would possibly need some kind of separate tutorial mini-campaign showing different options and what to do when.

I was also delighted when I recently started playing Mechwarrior 3. It has lots of buttons and lots to learn (even for someone who has played lots of mech games), but I think the tutorial training missions do a good work teaching it all to you. I don't think you necessarily need to even open the manual.

I would consider that a helpful feature, actually. The order of the reviews seems mostly random to me, and as someone pointed out above, more of a popularity contest sometimes than about how well information is conveyed.

I remember I happened upon the infamous Jack Keane as a newbie, and really thought - WTF is up with that game? Kind of hilarious in hindsight, though.

At the end of the day, every rating system overrates. Average movie review is what 4 out of 5, critics rarely completely pan anything, same here. The best way to deal with it is by comparison. As others have said, anything with less than 4 stars is likely problematic, even just 4 stars tends to be average or slightly below. I recall once breaking it down and 4.5 was a 75 percentile game. 4.2 was 50th (or the median game). And 3.8 was a 25 percentile (or the breakpoint for the worst quarter of games here).

If you are wondering about the tenths, I checked it by inspecting the stars element from the games tab as a list.

I don't get what everyone's problem is. I've always found the user ratings on GOG to be quite helpful and usually adequate, just keeping in mind that 2.5 stars is already the lower end of the scale. And especially combined with some of the top-rated reviews they've helped me to get a good impression of many games already.

In general I find "X out of Y whatever" ratings to be meaningless. In this regard a thumbs up or down system like Steam has is better, though I could see allowing for a third "ambivalent" option between the two.

That said, my own approach with the GoG stars is to ask myself, "How well does this game live up to what it was/is trying to be?" If it does a solid job there, I'll give it 5, even if I don't particularly like the game/genre/style myself. The more issues it has with meeting its own expectations, the lower the rating gets. I don't think I've had to give anything a 1 yet, but there've been a couple of 2s.

I use reviews when I am on the fence about certain games. I ignore the overall star ratings and look for reviews that give the game average to less than average rating and a detailed description as to why. I do this on any site that uses reviews not just GOG. (I also will look for detailed good reviews if I want better balance) Basically, I am looking for a reason not to buy the game.

For the older games I am familiar with most of them, either through playing or reviews in the past and usually know which ones I want or don't want so don't pay much attention to the reviews.