Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

@Pizzamorg Probably. I mean, ultimately, it boils down to whether you'd prefer a unique cyberpunk action game or a turn-based JRPG, but even as someone who heavily prefers RPGs to character action games, Tokyo Mirage Sessions can be difficult to recommend. I don't mind the music idol theme or the inherent cringe of the premise and own the game twice-over, but even on Switch, it never took off. TMS does have its small cult of enthusiastic fans, but Astral Chain is just way cooler.

Xenoblade 3 probably has the most streamlined and easy to manage combat in the series. Some series veterans think this makes it too easy, but as someone who isn't a gigantic fan of Xenoblade combat in general, I'll take them making it flashier and less annoying. It does feature a few returning characters, but the main game is its own original story and can be fully enjoyed on its own terms. As someone who was always ambivalent when it came to Xenoblade, I was not prepared to fall in love with it like I did. It's the first Monolith Soft game to top Xenogears for me.

Avoid the DLC expansion, though. It's excellent, but also heavily reliant on knowledge of the first two games to properly appreciate.

Finally completed Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door today. It was my first time playing it and... it was okay I guess? No where near as good as it's hyped up to be.

The cast & writing are absolutely a delight (alongside some winning aesthetic choices), but those aspects are definitely pulling the most weight on what's otherwise a kinda dull game to actually play.

Most regions just consist of a long "hallway" overworld with a town and dungeon. Now the dungeon is usually fun & engaging to explore that first time around, but becomes a slog anytime you have to revisit it (which usually happens 2 or 3 times, especially considering side quests) which is a problem because there's SO much bland backtracking (in the obligatory "spooky" region you have to backtrack between the town & haunted mansion like 3 times back to back as part of the story, with a shortcut between the two not unlocking until like after that 3rd time?), and they're not really designed in such a way that your abilities unlock shortcut capabilities, so you usually have to trudge through near the whole dungeon again (usually with enemies that are near worthless for EXP on extra go arounds) until you reach the one new room or whatever.

The two regions that DO shake things up (Glitzville & the Excess Express) are somehow worse, being absolute slogs to get through.

It's a shame too, as Rougeport & it's underground (which you return to in-between each chapter) are actually designed pretty well, with lots of crannies & shortcuts to unlock as you get new abilities, showing that they definitely have the capability to make engaging environments (with the only really time saving shortcuts introduced are a series of pipes that let you return the various regions directly from Rougeport bypassing the underground).

I do like that there's some choice in how you build "your" Mario (you can pump all your EXP into base stats, or can use it to expand the number of badges you can equip, which are collectables that give you various stackable boosts, such as immunity to status effects, randomly heal after the turn ends, or other stat altering effects), but honestly I think combat was kinda dull, even with the action based commands. Maybe it's because things feel a bit limited with only two active party members, but I honestly thought Super Mario RPG had more engaging combat.

@RR529 Yeah. TTYD is a funny and well-written game, but the actual game part of it is... eh. I didn't play the remake, because I don't think I could go back to those linear hallways after experiencing the vastly superior level design of The Origami King.

@Ralizah unfortunately I can’t get over this myself, like I obviously don’t mind basic gameplay but my expectations were definitely hurt when I played PM64 (which isn’t a bad just probably not for me)

@Ralizah, yeah, I was definitely doing a lot of comparisons to Origami King, which honestly was a much more fun game to play with environments worth exploring.

Now, I do think the newer games could still use a bit of work making their casts more memorable (but OK was a lot better at this than Sticker Star) and still need to figure things out in terms of what they want out of a battle system (maybe just go full action at this point similar to Super Paper Mario?), but I just hadn't realized how weak the level design in the older games was until now.

Part of me has always wanted to replay the 64 game as it was one of my favorites as a kid, but maybe I should leave the memories alone if it's anything like TTYD.

@RR529 Everything is better than Sticker Star, lol. I played that game for three hours before turning around and selling it. Never had such a strong reaction to a game before. And it was my first Paper Mario, too!

I do think Nintendo needs to ditch turn-based combat if they're intent on new Paper Mario games not being RPGs, but SPM's gameplay was honestly just awful. I think TOK would have worked fine with basic fighting mechanics, and it would have removed the one element of the game everyone seemed to hate.

You could still leave the puzzle battles for the bosses, which used a somewhat different system anyway.

@Yousef- I had a really hard time getting into the original Paper Mario, for some reason. Despite TTYD's flaws, I think it benefited tremendously from the more farcical tone compared to the original.

Finally beat Xenoblade last night. One of those white whales for me, had it on Wii but never finished it, kept meaning to go back. Well… the story goes absolutely mad after the bit i was on back in the day. I seemingly missed the part where it goes from good RPG with cool setting to batsh*t insane but top tier RPG. Like I can totally get why it would be up there with the genre greats now. The entire Alcamoth situation and the way it’s reflected across every facet of the game is masterfully done. I can get over the slow start and the somewhat basic combat because the story, exploration and marriage of narrative and quest design is so brilliant. That ending too… properly rivals Final Fantasy games with how definitive it is and how great of a culmination it is of your journey. Reminds me of Final Fantasy X’s ending quite a bit actually. Onto the side story thing!

The more I think about it, the nicer it is that they were able to get Jenna Coleman back for Future Connected. She’s much much bigger now than she was when Xenoblade originally came out so I’m surprised they managed to get her back. It’s interesting how her voice has changed too, but it’s 10 years later after all.

@nessisonett that’s a pretty good and thorough description of the game, it’s really helping properly convey the type of experience this is. I’ve ran into my fair share of products that have a really slow start until the inevitable “oh snap” moment and the game gets good, so while this isn’t uncharted territory for me it’s still helpful to know this as it’s not something you can discern on your own.

I appreciate this kind of description, I appreciate having this kind of knowledge in advance as I tend to prefer knowing what to anticipate for things I’m not too keen on. This game sounds like a blast. Kinda wanna get it physical though. I feel pretty boneheaded for taking so long to find that the physical trilogy was in kuwait right under my nose haha.

@nessisonett Took me three tries to finish it. Wii, 3DS, then finally Switch. So it was a bit of a white whale for me, too.

Still need to play the expansion, though.

@Ralizah It’s hard to talk about post-Mechonis without speaking in massive riddles but personally I thought that portion of the game justified the more uninteresting areas. I never played the 3DS port but I’m pretty amazed that they managed to get it running at all even on a New 3DS, it really was an incredibly well optimised console by Nintendo towards the end. It makes me laugh that they’re trying to plug this bloody PS5 Pro when you know fine well that if anybody put the sheer ingenuity into optimisation that Nintendo do then they could be pushing the PS5 a million times harder.