YMMV / Haven: Call of the King

• Audience-Alienating Ending: If you already know the game's notoriously depressing ending, and the fact that a sequel will almost certainly never happen, there's no point in getting invested in the game's story — which as seen above, has its own share of problems anyways.
• Awesome Art: As disappointing Haven may be, one thing it does have going for it is a unique Final Fantasy-esque art style designed by the talented Rodney Matthews. The game's graphics, which were impressive for its time, certainly help.
• Awesome Music: It also features an epic soundtrack composed by Andy Blythe and Marten Joustra. Isle of Heroes is one particular stand-out example, a wonderfully atmospheric tribal track that is well-loved by BIONICLE fans for being reused on the BIONICLE Heroes promotional website.
• Cliché Storm: One of the main criticisms the game received was how extremely cookie-cutter the story and characters are. Haven himself is an archetypal wide-eyed boy scout with no character development or flaws to make him an interesting protagonist. The supporting characters don't fare any better in memorability, and the main antagonist himself, Vetch, is a stereotypical evil dark overlord who wants to enslave the Galaxy, and the whole point of the story is for Haven to stop Vetch and free his people, which is a concept that has been done to death many times and the game does little to add to that formula.
• Complete Monster: Lord Vetch is the tyrannical galactic ruler who has enslaved entire planets and injected every slave with a deadly virus requiring a constant antidote. Hunting the young Haven who seeks to summon the good king Athelion, Vetch kills one of his servants for fearing the hero more than him and later abducts Haven thanks to his spy. When the latter protests that he broke his promise of sparing the boy, he attempts to kill them both. Eventually, Vetch painfully murders King Athelion with the virus and, unable to kill Haven—who has been rendered invincible—proceeds to chain him up, stranding him alone on planet Auria.
• Disappointing Last Level: Even aside from the infamous ending, the last levels are a long string of repetitive shooting before facing the final boss with a very easy QTE.
• It Was His Sled: Infamously, Haven accomplishes nothing.
• Moral Event Horizon: Vetch crossed it when he killed King Athellion. And he really crosses it when he chains up the now immortal Haven to a rock for all eternity, giving him a Fate Worse than Death.
• Narm: Whenever Haven interacts with another NPC, he always has this goofy, simple-minded looking toothy grin on his face while he listens to what they have to say.
• Tear Jerker: Regardless of what you think of the game, the ending is pretty damn solemn. Haven failed to save his people and Athellion, was betrayed by his best friend, and is sentenced to a Fate Worse than Death for the record books while Vetch goes on to enslave the galaxy. And since the game's announced sequels were cancelled, Haven is pretty much trapped there forever...
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The game pretty much suffers from this if you're already aware of its Downer Ending. The plot is more or less a Shoot the Shaggy Dog story at its bleakest, because despite Haven's efforts, he fails to both save his people and defeat Vetch, and ends up being chained up for the rest of his life with no one to rescue him. And as mentioned on Audience-Alienating Ending, why bother getting invested in the story and characters if you already know that everything ends badly?
• The Scrappy:
  • Chess is widely loathed for backstabbing Haven, secretly working as a spy for Vetch and being indirectly responsible for Haven's fate at the end.
  • Vetch is also not very well liked for being a two-dimensional villain.
• So Okay, It's Average: Haven isn't a bad game, but it's not really what most people would call an "underrated gem" either. It's mixture of various gameplay styles into one game is handled competently enough, but none of them are anything outstanding. The story is also as detailed above, A complete Cliché Storm, with the only stand out moment being the infamous ending.
• Uncertain Audience: A likely major factor as to why the game flopped so hard. It was hyped up big time by Midway, so much so that they went as far as coining the term "FreeFormer", as the developers wanted the game to incorporate all kinds of genres for the player to go through. Even if the game was able to efficiently juggle all these genres at once, the idea of incorporating so many different genres together is a hard sell. Being an action game and a platformer in one isn't a hard sell, but throwing in racing, space shooting, turret shooting and arena fighting doesn't bode well for people who like at least one of these genres but not so much the other. Granted, Ratchet & Clank and Jak and Daxter both tried to do the same thing, but those games did a much better job at implementing those elements by not straying too far from the platforming.
• The Woobie: Haven, especially at the end...

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