Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

Some 30 hours into Xenoblade 2. I believe roughly half way through the available chapters. I still have no idea if I like this game or not. I like its combat more than 3, the gacha system is weird but I actually quite like the excitement of getting the named Blades, while it is in someways a more generic JRPG, I think this story works much better in the context of what Nintendo will allow you to show, I also think it is significantly better paced than 3 was and far more coherent, as well.

However, I sorta don’t like… anything else? Quest navigation might be some of the worst I have ever experienced in any game. The quest compass thing is utterly useless, and the maps are not designed for you to be able to organically find where you need to go with so little guidance. I have like four pages of side content that all do not have quest markers, they just give you a vague area of a map and tell you to figure it out. This generally means googling it, but I got really tired of doing that.

I think exploration is meant to be a puzzle solving mechanic in itself, which would be fine, but the game loves putting high level enemies near where you need to go at a much lower level. I guess this is to help funnel the player in the right direction, but when one of these things agros, it removes your ability to access menus or see the compass, and they won’t break agro for literally miles, so trying to escape one of these always sends me massively off course and the fast travel points are so spread out and often poorly placed, getting back to where I was before to resume looking for where I need to go ends up being more frustration than its worth.

It’s systems, and menus, are unnecessarily overwhelming and I’m already pretty exhausted with trying to remember to constantly manage my WP, my bonds, my skill and affinity trees, my accessories and food items and whatever other levelling up menus I’ve probably already forgotten about. I usually don’t love aggressive streamlining of RPG systems, but I think Xenoblade 3 made the right choice in significantly cutting down the amount of menus and various things the player needed to be aware of and topping up all the time.

I also don’t understand why every chapter ends with a boss with an absurd difficulty spike, even if you are over levelled as I often am. On normal the game feels fine everywhere else, then every boss has this team wipe move that looks at your level advantage and laughs. Even on easy this team wipe move can still laugh at your level advantage unless you are closer to ten levels above, rather than five.

I also don’t like the bonus XP system. This was in 3 as well, but I don’t remember it being as restrictive there. But here, you basically never level up actually playing, the majority of your levelling up comes from inns for some reason. So often times when I’ve been stuck on a boss, I’ve had to fast travel to an inn and found like 7 levels waiting for me there. I don’t understand any aspect of this design choice at all.

@Pizzamorg Worst parts are, yes, trying to even find your way around the nested environments, but also the fact that so many side-quests block you from progress until you have specific blade skills to complete them.

Also, the fact that the game runs so low-res. Monolith couldn't figure out how to get decent results out of Switch until XC3, which upscales to 1080p and has far more fluid character animation. This tops out at 720p docked and frequently drops lower. Handheld play is... really bad, too.

But I still really liked it. Very cool launch year exclusive on top of Mario Odyssey, Splatoon 2, etc.

@Ralizah oh my god the field skills thing. I am on chapter 7 and I’m genuinely contemplating giving up being honest. So tired of the games loop at this point. Watch an extremely lengthy cutscene. Be dropped onto a map with no guidance. Follow a quest marker which is guaranteed to send you the wrong way every time. Run around for an hour. Get infuriated, google it, find the correct path is so absurdly complicated I dunno how they found anyone to figure it out organically, then when you finally get onto the correct path oh sorry you can’t get through this door unless you have four earth element, three wind mastery and two leaping. Well I guess off to google then since the game gives you zero information on how to overcome these hurdles. And the answer every time is just to keep pulling the gacha until you get the blade with the right skill on it. Like who designed all of this? Why make the aspect of engaging with this world so infuriating and miserable?

Says a lot about the quality of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt that I'm replaying it on Switch and I'm enjoying it just as much as I did on PS5 despite the downgrade.

@Bentleyma I did W3 on Switch also, definitely playable and enjoyable. Similar to how I felt playing BG3 on steamdeck, neither are the 'ideal' platforms for performance and/or graphical fidelity... but the portability factor is certainly a currency in and of itself

@CJD87 It obviously has it's issues, but it's still totally playable. I'm really interested in these types of ports on Switch. I've just picked up Batman: Arkham Knight. I know it was a mess when it released, but I'm hoping it's been patched into a playable state.

So I went from saying “hey I need a little break from Xenoblade 2 cause it has so many design choices that really piss me off” to replaying about 30 hours of Fire Emblem Engage lol I honestly dunno if I am gonna even go back and finish Xenoblade 2 to be honest. The story, combat etc all great, but they just made that game borderline unplayable in every other aspect.

In terms of Engage, I didn’t love Fire Emblem Engage when I played it the first time, but still played like 70 hours of it anyway and rolled credits. Now replaying it fresh off of Xenoblade 2 and its massive pile of frustrations, honestly makes Engage feel like such a treat. Engage is designed almost in the opposite way of Xenoblade 2, in that every creative decision in Engage seems to be focused on making Engage as playable as possible, even if that may result in certain systems feeling a little shallow or basic.

I sorta forgot too how nice it looks for a Switch game, all the details in the animations make watching fights play out fun always, they can really make a fight between two units look like a choreographed cutscene somehow, and its a shame that whatever tech they used to bring that to a reality is probably going to be lost, as I don’t think Engage was particularly well received or sold well, and seems to have largely been forgotten. Swapping classes is a lot of fun, especially when you completely transform the role a unit may have previously filled. I also appreciate how out there some of Fire Emblem’s classes can be, and I’d argue this game doesn’t even have some of the weirdest ones. Plus, while Engage is pretty easy, there is something weirdly satisfying about a unit just absolutely going on a rampage as it takes on Unit after Unit, dodging, parrying and cutting them down. It is here where little animations really shine too, like how a dodge can be animated in lots of ways, like knocking a projectile out of the air, or doing a slick cut behind the person or whatever. Just always looks so cool.

Switch 2’s reference model leaking is interesting. Magnetic joy-cons are a great idea. It does seem slightly too similar but the changes could be on the software side and we pretty much know the internal gubbins by now and that’ll be a big improvement. Bizarre for a console to leak this badly without even being revealed.