Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

@Ralizah you didn’t like Sony E3 2018?? That’s crazy!! But seriously, c’est la vie, and I’m appreciating more about the Direct now that some hours have passed. They really did show a lot, though it didn’t hit with me as I’d like. To give an example of what I considered a banger Direct… Feb ‘22. I could count on one hand how many games I wasn’t interested in. Easily my favourite Direct, I felt spoken to as a fan. But others at the time? A little mixed, despite me having gushed over it. Good to be understanding and hey, still some games from this presentation I’m excited for. September starting with Astro Bot and ending with Echoes Of Wisdom… chef’s kiss of 2024 for me.

@Enriesto I think part of the issue for me is that PS4-era Sony kinda just kept hyping up the same games over and over again. And the Sony games I was in for wasn't generally the AAA action fare anyway.

I will say, my one regret is that we didn't hear anything about Professor Layton or Fantasy Life. :/

@Enriesto Prime 4 confirming that Hunters is canon is worth the lack of Echoes remastered 😂

@nessisonett a persuasive point, but I’m still grieving the absence of Echoes 😭

Overall I was pretty impressed with the Direct. Was hoping to see a Switch version of Wind Waker, but other than that it was solid.

@Kidfried I think people (including me) are just happy to see another Metroid Prime game as the last mainline entry came out back in 2007, which will be 18 years ago when the game comes out next year. I personally don't mind if Metroid Prime 4 is just more of the same as the previous games. It's not like there's been an abundance of Metroid Prime games or clones since then.

@Kidfried In this case, the trailer felt more like a way of communicating: "Hey! This is real, and isn't vaporware. It's also a normal Metroid Prime game and doesn't have any weird or alienating gimmicks in it."

So I'd wait for more footage before coming to any conclusions.

Nintendo cared enough about the quality of the game to change developers and reboot development, so I'm sure it'll turn out fine if you like this sort of game.

@Kidfried this was my sentiment as I expressed previously on this thread following the Direct. It really comes down to acknowledging its existence, which is enough for many fans. Not enough for myself, but I’m not drawing conclusions and am confident it will be great (also something I said earlier) despite what I thought was a trailer that failed to give this game the reveal it deserved. I’m often at odds with fans of various series though, which is why I don’t regularly share opinions on major news sections as I’ll get eaten alive 😂 Metroid mega fans loved it, and I just don’t get why.

In short… bad trailer for what should be an amazing game. I stand by it.

The acknowledgment of its existence is of course wonderful for fans of the Prime series.... albeit the 'reveal' was still somewhat underwhelming, if indeed still comforting.

I'm a bigger fan of Dread personally (vs Prime) and would have loved to have seen confirmation of a sequel.

Hollow Knight needs a similar verification that the 'heart is still beating'..!

Personally I’m kinda surprised to kodaka’s new game met with utter indifference and deafening silence. Though I’m unaffected either way, I’m just waiting for the official renders to get posted and see all the fanart.

RIP ROMhacking.net

What a huge loss, been a staple of the scene for 20 odd years. All because of internal drama that it’s gone too.

RIP ROMhacking.net
What a huge loss, been a staple of the scene for 20 odd years. All because of internal drama that it’s gone too.

Oh for real? What a massive bummer.

I don't even really bother with romhacks or unofficial translations of older games, and I still milled around that site. Great historical resource, and huge for that particular segment of the community. Really sucks to see it go down like this.

I’ve finally gone back to Xenoblade Definitive Edition. Think I’m near the end, in Mechonis Field. Spent so many hours just doing loads and loads of sidequests now that I’ve got the last party member and loving it, it really does play like a single player MMO at times, scratches that Final Fantasy XII itch. I’m trying not to do too much of the story too quickly as a lot of the sidequests in the hidden village have the timed marker so clearly something’s going down soon.

@nessisonett Is your plan to play through the series?

@Ralizah Probably yeah, it’s in my backlog. Dunno if I’ll bother playing X though. The first one I played to about halfway through on Wii so this was more of a revisit already. The difference in graphics personally isn’t actually a straight upgrade, I really liked the original vibe and muted artstyle as it felt similar to Xenogears rather than an ‘anime’ style. A lot of this one is improved though obviously with regards to texture quality and general QOL. Environments are pretty great looking too.

@nessisonett Gonna have to disagree with you there. The original character models and a lot of the texture work were uggo in the original. Even compared to some considerably older JRPGs I can think of. The game genuinely hurt to look at on an HDTV.

Took me three tries on three different platforms to get through the first game, but I did eventually beat XCDE. Considering XC3 is my favorite JRPG to date, it's funny how strongly I dislike the original.

I do need to go back and play Future Connected, though. And X, actually, which I never beat. Although I wonder how it'll feel without the online integration now. It wasn't an MMO, but it definitely wasn't a strictly offline, single-player adventure, either.

@Ralizah Yeah, I played Xenoblade 1 on a CRT years ago and I remember it looking pretty nice. The character models were blocky but I think the faces felt less stylised and dare I say out of place, the colours are super bright on Shulk’s hair specifically. Original was blocky as hell though. The combat’s a bit odd and can feel almost like it’s on rails but I do like the plot and the affinity chart is up there with the best systems in JRPGs, it’s like the Bomber’s Notebook on crack.

@nessisonett my friends keep beating me over the head to play the trilogy. >.>
I was planning to buy them physically but that fell out, I got them digitally. They’re loooooong but my friends keep saying they’re good, so I’ll take their word.
I do like the music, the combat was a little fun on my first impressions hour, I think I’ll like it.
Lots of traversal and running around though.

@nessisonett I don't mind the affinity system in and of itself, but the choice to hide character-building dialogues at SPECIFIC locations behind affinity requirements annoyed the hell out of me. Love it when I can't see a bit of character development until I grind two particular characters in a party for hours on end to build up their affinity levels. -_- XC2 ditching that requirement for H2Hs and actually fleshing them out (voice acting; more interaction) is probably my favorite aspect of that game.

Xenoblade 1 does feel very... hands-off at times. Xenoblade 2 improved this with timed button presses and arts being mapped to buttons instead of an unwieldy arts bar, but got a little overly complicated with several of its systems. XC3 combined the best of both worlds: combat is still interactive, but not overly complicated.