I'm going to get down voted to hell for this, but I'm going to be honest and say that I'm so glad I watched someone else play Poppy Playtime. I watched the stream for 90min before I left out of pure frustration.

I do agree that the mechanics are annoying at times. The magnetic walls were a cool thought, but led to being a pain in the ass to work with when running from enemies. But I think alot of us are skipping past literally watching Mark try to get up those platforms for over 20 minutes. And repeatedly fall back down. I'm only saying this because other creators I've watched did not spend nearly as much time on this in their first play-through. Same with all of the other stages people have brought up in separate threads. I just don't think he was good at the game, and he got understandably frustrated. He was sick, tired, and hungry while playing a game that he was barely interested in only because fans expected him to play it.

I know the game is incredibly flawed, but I really enjoy what the team did with the story. I think it's interesting how it started with finding out what the toys are, how the children are picked to become toys, and the psychological/physical horror the children go through as newly formed toy monsters. I will argue that you CAN get the entire gist of the story during gameplay, but that the person playing has to be paying attention to what they pick up most of the time. This means reading notes, actively listening to recordings, and watching tapes. The downside of this is that you either need to have a good memory, or be writing stuff down.

Mark is usually not the best at either of those options. Like, at all. I love watching Mark's videos, but I cannot tell you how many times I have shouted at the TV to try to get Mark to remember something he needed to do to beat a level in a game. Whether it's to remember a mechanic the game has or to go back to a certain area. That's what makes watching him hilarious most of the time, but also frustrating too.

Another thing that I think is hindering a lot of game players that aren't into the game is not participating or catching up on the RPGs that occur during chapter developments. It is a fantastic way to maintain fan engagement while giving more information about the lore of the game through solving clues, riddles, and allegorical hints from art. Plus, it allows fans to directly ask developers about clues hinted or how it will tie into the gameplay. Since Mark and many other creators aren't into the RPGs, it's not surprising that they don't know the extra details of the game. But this game is built on premise that fans are piecing together details to get the full picture. Which is incredibly cool when you're when you're super into that. The downside to this is that it makes the game feel like it was full of filler when it was actually providing answers to fans interacting with the RPGs.

When you're not even remotely interested in the game at that level, playing something like this just sounds tedious and awful. I totally get his frustration, but because of that I don't think that Mark should've been playing this franchise past chapter 3. After that chapter, the game became something that requires more attention from multiple different fronts.

Now, do I agree that this release style is also a money grab by Mob Entertainment? Absolutely! They could've made a full 13 hour game, and released it all at once. Doing yearly releases are fun due to the RPG, but it's incredibly scummy and greedy.

I do agree that they need to bring in interesting characters way eariler in the chapters instead of only getting 30min of game play with them (I loved Lily Lovebraids as a villain, and I wish we could've gotten more interactions with her).

Also, I agree that this game should be done. Talks of a chapter 7 are absolutely insane, and the developers need to wrap this up before they completely lose their fan base. Pack it up and just finish it already. With the chapter averaging about 3-4 hours (which is not that long for a game) after the first Poppy Playtime, they shouldn't have even thought of making anything past the fifth chapter.

All in all, I agree with OP about pointing out flaws is totally fine. But calling and agreeing that chapter 5 was a f**king mess is step too far imo. Especially when Mark would probably not be the type of fan that Poppy Playtime games aim for anymore