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[They stuck the landing.]

1

TalkBack / Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble (Switch) Review

« on: June 24, 2024, 06:40:00 AM »

They stuck the landing.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/67664/super-monkey-ball-banana-rumble-switch-review

When my reviews editor at Nintendo World Report passed along the download code for Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble, he asked me to let him know how it was. A little later I sent him a message with four words:

“We are SO back.”

I was a bit skeptical of Banana Rumble after 2021’s Banana Mania did a mediocre job of remaking Super Monkey Ball’s GameCube classics. The redone physics weren’t well-tuned to the faithfully-ported levels, and the one innovation since I last played twenty years ago—the ability to jump—felt more like a cheat than a genuine step forward for the series’ gameplay. As the first fully new game in a decade it should’ve been even more difficult to stick the landing than a remake, but I’ve thankfully been proven very wrong. Banana Rumble impressed me right out of the gate, and it managed to keep up that momentum all the way through.

In case you’re new to Super Monkey Ball, the basic idea is that you are naturally a monkey rolling around in a giant hamster ball. The game loop consists of a series of bite-size platforming levels where you simply try to safely reach the goal while collecting as many bananas as you can along the way. Where most platformers nowadays allow you to stop on a dime and quickly adjust your trajectory with great precision, Super Monkey Ball takes the opposite approach by forcing you to work around your own momentum. Once you’ve built up speed it isn’t easy to stop moving without smashing head-first into a wall, and if you don’t build up speed then you’ll have trouble rolling up slopes and bouncing over obstacles. It’s a game all about Newton’s first law: a monkey in motion will stay in motion, and a monkey at rest will stay at rest.

The big shake-up this time around is the addition of a spin dash that allows you to quickly gain momentum in any direction. Its most obvious application is getting that extra burst of speed you’re missing to get up a hill or jump over a gap, and that’s about as far as the level design ever demands from you. Meanwhile experienced players will be able to take advantage of a well-timed dash to make a sharper turn than their speed would allow or even hit a jump at just the right angle to fly over an entire stage and reach the goal in seconds.

Where the jump button in Banana Mania felt like a cheat, the spin dash is far more balanced in ways that encourage the player to be careful and clever about its use. The key limitation is that the dash is not a get-out-of-jail-free card; it doesn’t cancel your momentum, and if your speed is high enough then it won’t make a big enough difference to meaningfully change your trajectory. The dash must also be charged up before use and has a cooldown period before it can be used again, so it’s not something you can use to easily correct a mistake you didn’t anticipate making. Speedruns of past Super Monkey Ball games have been a spectacle like nothing else, and I’m incredibly excited to see what the most dedicated players are able to pull off with this move.

The levels themselves are balanced for all skill levels by the inclusion of optional objectives that can be completed for bonus points. Each level has the same set of side goals: finish incredibly quickly, collect every banana, and collect the golden banana that has either been hidden or placed in a difficult spot to reach. While simply reaching the goal of a stage starts out easy and ramps up at a steady pace, the optional objectives get difficult very quickly, and even experienced players will likely find them to be challenging as early as the game’s second world. There are plenty of levels in the early stages where I haven’t even figured out how to beat them quickly enough for the bonus, and I imagine I’ll be coming back to this game for a long while if I want to finish them all.

Banana Rumble is not free of shortcomings though; the multiplayer battle mode is sadly a step down from the classic party games. There is a surprisingly extensive set of alternate game modes that can be played online such as racing, banana hunt, and a robot-smashing competition. These game modes are not bad and it is pretty cool that they are playable with up to 16 players, but since they’re all based on the same core controls and mechanics as the main platforming levels they don’t have the same variety as the party games of old. It feels strange for me to complain that a game doesn’t feature a lot of mini-games that have nothing to do with the traditional gameplay the series is known for, but this is a game by the same developers as the Like A Dragon franchise. Like A Dragon is famous for its wide variety of disconnected mini-games that ultimately have nothing to do with the main story or gameplay. Is it so much to ask for Super Monkey Ball to receive that same treatment now when past games did it so well?

Despite my disappointment with the side games, Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble is the most I have enjoyed playing a new Super Monkey Ball game in twenty years. The failures of Banana Mania have not been repeated, and the high skill ceiling of the spin dash combined with the extensive replayability of the optional objectives means that I am probably going to be playing this game for the next twenty years just the same as the GameCube classics. Even as the modern descendant of Super Monkey Ball’s original developer Amusement Vision, Ryu ga Gotoku Studio has outdone themselves here. This is not simply a return to form; this is proof of the bright future that Super Monkey Ball might have.

[Back with a vengeance.]

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TalkBack / Hands-On With Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance

« on: April 30, 2024, 08:30:00 AM »

Back with a vengeance.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/preview/67052/hands-on-with-shin-megami-tensei-v-vengeance

When Shin Megami Tensei Vengeance was announced, I assumed it was going to be something along the lines of Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse. Apocalypse—a follow-up to the original Shin Megami Tensei IV—was a brand new story that served as a companion to its predecessor rather than being a full replacement. This belief was bolstered by the fact that Vengeance allows the player to choose between the original game’s story (“The Canon of Creation”) and the new story (“The Canon of Vengeance”) at the beginning of a playthrough. Upon getting hands-on with the game, I discovered that Vengeance is not a wholly new story at all, and instead serves a role similar to re-releases in the Persona franchise such as Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 Royal.

Our demo began in a scene I recognized from the original Shin Megami Tensei V: the introduction of the Bethel Japanese Branch after the opening act in the game’s Minato region. Aside from the presence of a brand new character—a student named Yoko Hiromine—this scene played out exactly the same as I remembered, and when listening carefully I could hear the subtle differences in the audio quality of dialogue indicating newly-recorded lines whenever someone was acknowledging Yoko. The story would continue into the story arc at the protagonist’s school featuring the demon Lahmu, and aside from Yoko occasionally chiming in to provide her thoughts on a story that was already written without her presence the story remained the same as the original game.

The one exception is a new scene that occurs right in the middle of this arc featuring a boss fight against another new character, Naamah. Naamah had no clear connection to the events occurring in the story and I didn’t have any context for her brief appearance, but based on existing promotional material I know she is a member of the game’s new group of antagonists called the Qadištu. After the fight with Naamah ended, the school arc continued with no further changes until it was time to switch to the next part of our demo.

The second part of the demo took place in a brand new area in the Shinjuku region. These events were all new and totally distinct from the original game’s story, but we weren’t given any real explanation for what was going on. It wasn’t clear when these events take place in the game story, but given the save file we started from featured a Level 40 party it was substantially later than the events we had seen so far. From here we were allowed to explore the new Shinjuku region, which was full of its own side-quests and optional objectives to find. It appeared to be a full-sized area on par with those in the original SMTV, but in the limited time we had to play I couldn’t come anywhere close to exploring it all.

Not much has changed in what players can expect from Vengeance’s gameplay. Obviously there are some quality of life improvements on par with those found in the Persona re-releases; the player can now freely save anywhere and menus have been retooled to be smoother to navigate. Atlus has promised some substantial additions such as more recruitable demons and chances to see new optional scenes with allies, but these were tough to really get a feel for in the limited time we had for the demo. Outside of the new story the most significant change to Vengeance is its release on more powerful hardware, which meant our demo was running on the PlayStation 5. The game was running substantially better than I remembered it at full 4K with a rock-solid 60fps, though the Atlus representative running our demo sheepishly clarified that those graphical improvements would not apply to the Switch version.

Shin Megami Tensei Vengeance promises more SMTV, and that appears to be exactly what it is. At its core this is the same game that was released three years ago, and the addition of new story scenarios has an obvious appeal for fans of that original game. Unfortunately it’s also the latest in what appears to be a new tradition for Atlus: to re-release a flagship title a couple after a couple of years with substantial story additions that make the original version of the game obsolete. If you’ve been holding out on playing SMTV until now then that patience has clearly been rewarded as Vengeance features everything the original game has and more, bringing everything to all-new platforms at the same time. However, for anyone that’s had their fill of SMTV, you’re probably better off waiting to see just how substantial that “and more” is before getting too excited about this one.

[The better 3D Sonic.]

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TalkBack / Hands-On With Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble

« on: April 24, 2024, 06:54:00 AM »

The better 3D Sonic.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/hands-on-preview/66999/hands-on-with-super-monkey-ball-banana-rumble

I grew up playing the first two Super Monkey Ball games on GameCube, and still hold them in high regard to this day. There aren’t many platforming games that put a heavy emphasis on the player’s own momentum, and having to carefully manage the speed and angle of my character’s motion is a deeply satisfying challenge. Despite this, I never kept up with the series’ later titles until 2021’s Banana Mania remade the original two classics I had grown up with. Now Super Monkey Ball is receiving its first brand new title in over a decade, and the brief demo of the game I got to play has made me more excited than ever for its return.

Banana Rumble features an evolution of the franchise’s classic gameplay, acting as the natural next step in that style. The controls and physics feel fantastic, and the muscle memory I built up over twenty years with the originals transferred seamlessly over to the modern gameplay engine. I only got to play missions from the first two worlds of the game’s story mode so I didn’t get a chance to see how difficult the game could get, but these early stages managed to present meaningful challenges through their optional objectives. Each stage in Banana Rumble has three optional objectives: one for completing the stage quickly, one for collecting every banana, and one for collecting the special golden banana. These optional objectives get difficult fast, so it won’t take long for experienced Monkey Ball players to receive a challenge that’s a match for their abilities. As someone who likes a good challenge myself, the golden banana is often a particular highlight as many stages will require a strong familiarity with the game’s mechanics in order to grab it.

The Super Monkey Ball franchise has experimented with new movement mechanics in the past such as an ill-conceived jump button, and Banana Rumble is the first time I’ve felt like one of these mechanics is truly a good fit for the franchise. Banana Rumble introduces a chargeable spin dash that gives the player a burst of speed in any chosen direction. In the opening stages I played there were very few times that the spin dash was required, but I could immediately see the potential it had for advanced play such as speedrunning. The ability to charge the dash while moving and then release it in any chosen direction gave me the opportunity to retain a higher speed when making tight turns, and the mandatory cool down after each dash forced me to think carefully about what the best applications of the new move would be.

In addition to the classic gameplay, Banana Rumble also features extensive multiplayer with a number of different game modes that can all be played either locally or online. In addition to the entire story mode being playable cooperatively, there are five battle modes that can be played with up to 16 players such as racing, banana hunt, and a robot-smashing competition. Of the five battle modes I was most interested in racing since the other modes felt a bit like trying to fit the square peg of Super Monkey Ball’s gameplay into a round hole, but perhaps I’ll be proven wrong once I get to play against a full lobby of humans instead of mostly CPU opponents.

Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble has revitalized my interest in the series in a way that Banana Mania could not. Banana Mania’s physics never felt quite right which clashed with my muscle memory of classic stages, and it did a poor job of recreating the various party games that were included alongside the main gameplay. The battle mode doesn’t quite live up to the variety of the old party games, but the traditional gameplay of the story mode feels just as good as ever. Only time will tell if the level design in later parts of the game lives up to the best challenges of the older games, but what I’ve seen so far makes me feel very optimistic.

[We tried to reach for the stars, and they still look pretty far.]

4

TalkBack / Sonic Superstars Review

« on: December 18, 2023, 05:10:37 PM »

We tried to reach for the stars, and they still look pretty far.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/65843/sonic-superstars-review

I have tried so hard to like Sonic Superstars.

Superstars makes a great first impression as it nails the physics and controls that go into a 2D Sonic game. Sonic—at least in his side-scrolling incarnations—is one of the only platforming protagonists that has a heavy emphasis on momentum. Once he starts moving he can be difficult to control with precision, so actually speeding through a stage takes careful thought and practice to be able to do successfully.

This style of platforming may have a barrier to entry, but it’s what gives the classic Sonic franchise its core appeal since the player is rewarded for improving their own skill at the game—the better you are as a player, the more exciting the game will be in return. Nailing the feel of Sonic’s movement is ‘the hard part’ in making a 2D Sonic since nothing else matters if it doesn’t feel just right, and this is the area where Superstars is most successful. The movement and physics in Superstars feel perfectly in line with Sonic’s classic Genesis games, and that makes the many ways the game drops the ball with many other crucial aspects all the more disappointing.

Sonic Superstars is a death by a thousand cuts, and the first of those cuts is in the visible space around Sonic during gameplay. Simply put the camera is too close to Sonic, making it difficult for the player to see what’s coming up in front of them. This appears to be an issue with level design; Sonic himself is more or less the same size on screen as he was in the Genesis games, but everything else in the world is scaled up to seem so much bigger than him. Because of this the game often feels claustrophobic and cluttered, which flips around into feeling like too many critical details are just off-screen whenever the stages open up to allow more breathing room.

The biggest problem with the game that kills any chance I’ll be revisiting it in the future is the excruciatingly long boss fights. In most 2D Sonic games bosses can be attacked repeatedly in sequence, and if you’re particularly skilled you can finish many fights in a matter of seconds. This is not the case in Superstars where every single boss is designed to allow you to get exactly one hit in before it enters a long period of invincibility. Rather than the matter of seconds that a fight could take in previous games, Superstars’ bosses can be several minutes long when played perfectly (and God help you if you screw up and have to start the fight from the beginning). The bosses are not fun, and they add so much time onto a given playthrough that the threat of having to do them again is enough to stop me from ever replaying the levels preceding them.

There’s nothing but additional grievances to be found in the small stuff. The superpowers you gain from collecting Chaos Emeralds aren’t well-integrated into the game design—presumably because it’s possible to miss all of them entirely—and feel either too situational or too overpowered to be fun (and since they can only be used once per checkpoint the overpowered ones don’t even help much with boss fights). The online battle mode that serves as the only place you can use the customizable robot character that the game’s collectible medals are for feels tacked on like a relic from the days when every game needed to be able to advertise some form of multiplayer; not that it matters since there’s no one playing online to be matched up with anyway. Even the soundtrack is a letdown—a rarity for even the worst Sonic games—feeling more like an imitation of the classic Genesis soundtracks rather than an iteration of them.

After its strong first impression I quickly started to see the cracks in Sonic Superstars, but I kept pushing forward in the hopes that when all was said and done the game would rise above its flaws. This never happened; the more I dug into the game, desperately hoping for it to pull everything off in the end, the more frustrated I became as I realized it was never going to do that. I don’t like to directly compare a game from a totally different franchise in a review, but given how Superstars released only three days before Super Mario Bros. Wonder, it feels inevitable. Super Mario Bros. Wonder nailed its gameplay while reimagining Mario’s look for a new era, setting what could be a new standard for its franchise for years to come. Meanwhile Sonic Superstars looks back, basing its look on the animated shorts accompanying the retro aesthetic of Sonic Mania and Sonic Origins. Superstars should’ve been the new standard to live up to Sonic’s Genesis run, which just makes it sad that the game fails to even match the standard that was set over twenty years ago.

[A great simulator in need of mutual aid.]

5

TalkBack / Firefighting Simulator - The Squad (Switch) Review

« on: October 24, 2023, 02:00:56 PM »

A great simulator in need of mutual aid.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/65311/firefighting-simulator-the-squad-switch-review

My dad is a firefighter, so growing up I spent a lot of time around fire trucks, rescue equipment and—of course—firefighters. I’ve tried a lot of simulator games in my time, too, such as American Truck Simulator, Farming Simulator and PowerWash simulator, but this is the first time I’ve played one that’s actually about something I have some experience with. I was pretty excited since there aren’t a lot of games about firefighting, and I’m happy to say it met all of my expectations in that regard—though not without an unfortunate caveat that may be a dealbreaker for more general audiences.

As a simulator game, The Squad is less concerned with exciting game mechanics and more concerned with portraying the minutiae of firefighting. It’s not enough to rush into a building and point your hose at a fire; you need to know how to connect a supply line, where the attack line is stored on a fire truck and how to attach a nozzle before you can spray a single drop of water. Once inside a burning building you’ll need to juggle your responsibilities between stopping the spread of the fire and rescuing any victims stuck inside. This can be a careful balancing act since the fire will realistically spread and reignite rooms that were previously safe if you aren’t mindful and strategic about which flames to attack first. You’ll also need to be careful around smoke and keep an eye out for backdrafts that can prove deadly if you fail to spot them. The tone is not flashy and dramatic—it’s slow and methodical, realistically portraying how firefighters approach a fire in real life.

If you’re not experienced with all things firefighting, then you’re in luck; Firefighting Simulator comes with a comprehensive tutorial that walks you through everything you’ll need to know on the job. For me this was just a refresher course that told me which buttons to press to do things I already knew, but I was happy to see this because a lot of simulator games throw you into the action with poor tutorials that don’t help anyone that struggles with the details of how to succeed in realistic simulations. Even if you don’t know the first thing about firefighting you should have no trouble figuring out how everything works with the help of the tutorial.

One of the unique things about Firefighting Simulator is its commitment to playing cooperatively with other players. Every mission is carried out with three squadmates, allowing you to delegate duties to carry out your job efficiently. When playing single-player, AI squadmates will fill in and can be given specific orders to carry out so that you can split up and tackle different problems simultaneously. In theory this is a great idea because of how crucial teamwork is in firefighting, but in practice it’s sadly the game’s biggest red flag.

In my entire time playing this game for review, I never once managed to connect to another player online. Hosting a session myself when selecting a mission was never successful, and the list of public lobbies to join never once showed a single other player online. Unless you have three friends you can convince to buy the game with you it’s unlikely you’ll ever get to play the complete experience of The Squad, instead being stuck with the AI squadmates who will do most of the work for you while you’re busy ordering them around.

Firefighting Simulator - The Squad is a great representation of what it takes to be a firefighter, and the effective tutorial guarantees that any player should be able to figure out how to succeed at any mission in the game. I’d love to get a full squad together and tackle a house fire together with maximum efficiency, but the difficulty I had in finding a squad takes a lot of the wind out of Firefighting Simulator’s sails. This is the ideal form of a simulator game for me, but it’s sadly near impossible to play it under ideal circumstances.

[The more things stay the same, the more they change.]

6

TalkBack / Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy (Switch) Review

« on: October 17, 2023, 12:01:00 PM »

The more things stay the same, the more they change.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/65246/trine-5-a-clockwork-conspiracy-switch-review

Trine 5 is a difficult game to review since very little has changed since Trine 4. In truth, if you’ve already played a Trine game then I really don’t know what I could possibly tell you about one that you don’t already know. Obviously the story is brand new and the skill trees for each character have some new (though not very groundbreaking) abilities, but if you put both Trine 5 and Trine 4 next to each other, you’d be hard pressed to even tell which is which.

For those of you who are new to Trine, it’s a 2.5D platformer where you control three characters with their own unique skillsets. Amadeus the Wizard can use magic to levitate obstacles and conjure boxes, Pontius the Knight can reflect projectiles with his shield and throw his weight around, and Zoya the Thief can fire arrows and cover distances with a grappling hook. The majority of the game is spent solving puzzles that require you to swap between each character and use their abilities in tandem to clear challenges and overcome obstacles.

The game can be played in co-op with each player controlling a different character, but since I didn’t have anyone willing to play with me, I was only able to play in single-player. I imagine most of the fun of Trine comes from playing it with friends as you goof around throwing ideas at the wall until something sticks, but playing alone was not nearly exciting. Puzzles alternate between being so simple that taking the time to actually execute the solution ends up feeling tedious and being so obtuse that they feel like you’re brute forcing your way through them.

Puzzles in Trine are designed to not have a single distinct solution. On the surface this may sound like a good thing, but the downside is that puzzles cannot be built in a way that they facilitate the player understanding their solution. For one particular puzzle I resorted to looking up a walkthrough online that showed off a solution that required too precise timing for me to successfully pull it off. After many failed attempts I found another walkthrough with a different solution that was substantially simpler. In this case, Trine’s lack of specific puzzle solutions made it more difficult for me to succeed; the best puzzles will be carefully constructed around the solution so that the player will eventually stop trying a solution that clearly isn’t working, but Trine didn’t give me the opportunity to realize that. The solution I was failing over and over again did work—I had seen it in the YouTube playthrough—but the technical execution was too difficult for me to implement the solution that I already knew was the answer. Why would I give up and try to find a different solution when I believed I had found the correct one?

This is to say nothing of the poor combat that is all too frequent in the game. This is nothing new; Trine 4 was also filled with tedious, repetitive combat encounters that interrupted the pace of the game. The three characters’ skillsets simply aren’t built to make fights interesting, even with upgrades on the skill trees giving them more opportunities to do damage. Amadeus’ magic is simply too sluggish and cumbersome to deal consistent damage, and Zoya’s arrows never match Pontius’ strength. The most efficient way to approach every fight in the game is to spam Pontius’ basic sword attacks, and since a new fight starts every couple of minutes they get repetitive very quickly. Given how poorly the cast’s abilities fit into combat, I’m not certain what the point of having combat is at all.

That’s where I have to address the elephant in the room: my glowing review of Trine 4 where I gave the game a score of 8.5/10, praising its puzzle design in particular. This strange hypocrisy will undoubtedly stand out to anyone surprised to see my hot take on a beloved franchise; how can I feel so much more negatively towards Trine 5 while also claiming that it is more or less the same exact game? This is a question that I have to admit I do not know the answer to. I have been trying to reconcile that difference the entire time I’ve been playing Trine 5, and I have simply failed to understand it. I even tried replaying Trine 4 in my quest for answers, and all that did was reinforce just how similar these two games are. If everything between the two games is the same, the only conclusion I can come to is that I’m the one who has changed. It has been nearly half a decade since I first played Trine 4; long enough for a teenager to start and finish high school. The games I’ve played since then—as well as the person I’ve become in the roughly 1/8th of my life that has passed—have changed my perspective enough that Trine simply does not work for me anymore.

Trine 5 is more of the same, though based on how the series’ fans have received it so well perhaps that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It stands to reason that if you liked the previous Trine games, you’ll still like this one, and that probably goes double if you’ve got three friends to play with. Unfortunately I don’t have three friends to play with, and I can’t deny the dull and frustrating experience I had with it. Between poor puzzle design and combat that doesn’t seem to belong in the game, there was simply nothing in Trine 5 that didn’t feel like a waste of time.

[Fully pulling the plug on a generation.]

7

TalkBack / Online Communication For Wii U And 3DS To End In April 2024

« on: October 03, 2023, 08:23:00 PM »

Fully pulling the plug on a generation.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/65103/online-communication-for-wii-u-and-3ds-to-end-in-april-2024

Nintendo will be discontinuing online services for 3DS and Wii U in early Spring of next year.

Announced today at midnight eastern US time, Nintendo is planning to shut down all online communication for its previous-generation systems in early April 2024. A specific end date and time will be announced at a later date. This shutdown affects all online services for those systems including online play, leaderboards, and SpotPass communication.

Nintendo noted in their announcement that Pokémon Bank will be an exception to this shutdown, though they clarified that this may change in the future. It will also still be possible to download any previously-purchased software, updates, and DLC from the eShop "for the foreseeable future."

This news comes alongside recent rumors that the successor to the Nintendo Switch will be launching early next year, which Activision CEO Bobby Kotick was quoted under oath in court saying would be in "closer alignment" to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Since a Switch successor would make the 3DS and Wii U two full generations out of date, it's likely this shutdown is in preparation for Nintendo's jump to the next generation.

[Maybe wireless audio isn't so bad.]

8

TalkBack / NACON RIG 600 Pro Headset Review

« on: September 18, 2023, 08:00:00 AM »

Maybe wireless audio isn't so bad.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/feature/64935/nacon-rig-600-pro-headset-review

I’ve generally resisted the transition from wired to wireless headsets over time, so the NACON RIG 600 Pro was my first venture into wireless gaming audio. The headset features two options for connectivity through either Bluetooth or a 2.4GHz connection via a USB adapter. For most every practical purpose in gaming, you’re probably going to want to use the adapter since the audio delay over Bluetooth is pretty bad, but the hardware makes this pretty simple to do.

The adapter itself uses a USB-C connection which makes it work natively with handheld devices like the Switch or a Steam Deck, but included in the box is an extra adapter cable for traditional USB ports for use on PC or console. The plug-and-play nature of the adapter works seamlessly, since I was able to just plug it into my Switch dock, my PlayStation 5, and my PC and it just worked on all of them with no fiddling required. The USB-C adapter is also pretty compact, so it fits pretty well with the Switch’s form factor.

A microphone on the headset can be used for voice chat while gaming, but unfortunately this doesn’t work well with the Switch’s mobile app since you can’t hear audio from both the USB adapter and the Bluetooth connection simultaneously—the Dual Mode where you connect to different devices merely swaps which one you’re using so you can answer a phone call if you happen to get one while gaming. This isn’t really the headset’s fault since the Switch is the only modern gaming platform where you are required to use voice chat on a completely different device, but it is a reality that Nintendo fans will have to put up with.

Audio quality on the headset is pretty good, though you’ll want to mess with the EQ settings via the RIG mobile app for the best results. The default settings have the midtones too low and I was getting ready to knock this headset for its sound quality before I discovered the mobile app. As a matter of personal preference, I do consider it a downside that basic functionality has been offloaded to the app. This is probably an unfair criticism since every headset I’ve used in the past only offered EQ settings through a PC app, but I’m getting a bit tired of smart devices in the modern age prompting me to download a mobile app to use them.

The last major feature of the RIG Pro headset is support for Dolby Atmos surround sound, which I have a bit of a bias against. I happen to have home theater speakers with full 5.1 channel surround sound, and I’ll never prefer the trade-off in audio quality that comes with simulated surround sound over headphones. With that in mind, the technology does provide a convincing simulation of 3D audio without the need for games to specially mix a binaural equivalent, so if you don’t have a full surround sound setup in your home then there’s an obvious advantage to having this turned on.

I can’t say that all of my hangups with wireless audio have been solved (the idea of having to charge my headphones still bothers me), but the RIG 600 Pro has managed to become my go-to for PC gaming. The ability to rely on a USB adapter instead of Bluetooth instantly resolves my biggest fears of compatibility and latency, and the quality is comparable with many of the wired gaming headsets I’ve used before. The Switch’s mobile app voice chat will limit the headset’s appeal for Nintendo fans interested in voice chat, but the compact form factor of the USB adapter gives it a far and away advantage over wired headsets for handheld gaming. I can see myself continuing to use the RIG 600 PRO for a while to come, and it’s gone a long way in helping me come to terms with an all-wireless future.

[Numbers Go Up]

9

TalkBack / Vampire Survivors (Switch) Review

« on: August 16, 2023, 03:00:00 AM »

Numbers Go Up

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/64583/vampire-survivors-switch-review

Vampire Survivors is a remarkably simple roguelite game. The only thing that the player is really able to do is move around a field that is filled with hundreds upon thousands of hostile creatures. Your character will periodically attack the creatures, but you have no control over which enemy is attacked or when it is attacked. The one piece of genuine agency you have in the game is choosing which upgrades you acquire upon leveling up, which are split between new weapons for more frequent attacks and stat upgrades that boost your various abilities.

So what is it actually like to play Vampire Survivors? At the start of a run you’ll be fairly weak. Take the starter character Antonio for example; he begins a run with just a whip attack that occurs directly in front of him approximately every one and a half seconds. On a level up you could upgrade the whip to perform a second attack directly behind you, and eventually to do more damage in a wider area. You could also choose to take a second weapon like the magic wand, which fires a magic missile at the nearest enemy approximately every second which can be upgraded to shoot four powerful missiles that can each hit multiple opponents. Instead of a weapon maybe you’ll take a passive item like the empty tome, which decreases the cooldown of all weapons and can itself be upgraded to reduce those cooldowns even further.

You can carry up to six weapons and six passive items which can all be upgraded until you’ve gone from a weak adventurer throwing a fireball every now and then to an unstoppable ball of death that tears through legions of monsters without breaking a sweat. Some items can be combined to reach an evolved state that grants even more powerful effects that eventually fill the screen with projectiles and damage numbers until it all blends together into an incomprehensible soup of explosive carnage. Vampire Survivors has often been described as a ‘reverse bullet hell’; rather than trying to dodge a rainstorm of projectiles from an all-powerful boss, you instead are the all-powerful boss firing a rainstorm of projectiles on countless weaklings.

As a roguelite, Vampire Survivors features a long-term upgrade system that is driven by in-game achievements. Accomplishing goals will unlock new items and characters that provide more options in your level-up choices, and cash that is accumulated through gameplay allows you to buy permanent stat upgrades so that you can tear through stages faster and more easily. There isn’t anything to unlock that fundamentally changes the game and each character has the same basic gameplay loop, but as you unlock more and more abilities you’ll be able to get more creative and intentional with your builds in order to come up with an efficient plan that feels the best for how you specifically want to engage with monsters on the field.

Vampire Survivors is not an especially challenging or substantive game, but it is one that feels good to relax and unwind with for a half hour at a time. A podcast that I listen to once described the game as “my favorite slot machine”, and it’s a moniker I think is very apt for how good Vampire Survivors is at giving a satisfying rush of dopamine with its overwhelmingly flashy effects, absurd power curve, and snappy pace of upgrading. There are no hidden depths lurking under the surface and I truly don’t know what more I could say about the game than I already have, but it doesn’t need to be anything more than it is. Sometimes I just want to see big explosions, flashing colors, and numbers going up, and Vampire Survivors gives me all of that in great quantities with pretty much no friction along the way.

[Those who do not embrace Dandori cannot survive this planet... But if they grow the leaves... they will thrive.]

10

TalkBack / Pikmin 4 (Switch) Review

« on: August 11, 2023, 09:26:36 AM »

Those who do not embrace Dandori cannot survive this planet... But if they grow the leaves... they will thrive.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/64538/pikmin-4-switch-review

When Pikmin 3 first released on Wii U in 2013, it felt more like a sequel to Pikmin 1 than to Pikmin 2. The pressure of a limited number of playable days returned, caverns were gone, and even the purple and white types of Pikmin introduced in 2 were nowhere to be found. Now, a decade later, Pikmin 4 seems to be doing the same thing with Pikmin 2; caverns are back, the limited number of days is gone, and the story is about collecting treasures to fulfill currency quotas. In many ways Pikmin 4 feels like a stealth remake of 2, and it manages to elevate ideas and mechanics from the franchise’s former middle child to a new level, ironing out the flaws and introducing more new ideas to make an experience that feels like a new peak in quality for the series.

The basics of Pikmin are the same as ever: rather than directly fighting and completing tasks yourself, you are ordering around a group of tiny creatures called Pikmin that gain strength in numbers. They can fight, they can carry things, they can build bridges—pretty much anything a playable character in a video game needs to accomplish. The only thing they can’t do is make decisions for themselves; that’s where you come in.

Pikmin 4 follows the traditional structure of the franchise by tying gameplay to a day/night cycle where you must drop what you’re doing and return to base when the sun sets. This time around, that base isn’t empty anymore, and an entire crew of companions known as the Rescue Corps is running operations while you’re away. The Rescue Corps serve as recurring characters throughout the game’s story, but they also offer various gameplay functions such as providing mechanical upgrades and offering side quests for you to complete. The whole experience feels a bit more video game-y, and while it does sand down the uniqueness of the Pikmin franchise a little bit, it adds a nice flow to your progression that helps keep the day/night cycle from feeling as vestigial as in Pikmin 2. Every trip back to the base is a chance to upgrade your abilities and check in on your friends, making the end of a day something to look forward to after spending a ton of time exploring caverns.

Speaking of caverns, they’ve been substantially improved from Pikmin 2 with a small but significant change: the caverns are no longer randomly generated, and everything is placed with intention by the developers who expect you to have particular options when tackling challenges. This vastly improves the flow of underground exploration, but it also lightens the impact of some of the crueler pranks that the game can play on you with falling bombs and surprise enemy spawns. Since the caves have bespoke design to them you’ll never find yourself in a scenario where one of those pranks feels like it couldn’t have been avoided, and the added rewind function that can quickly take you back to a few minutes earlier can make it less frustrating when a true disaster befalls your party. Be honest, hardcore fans: you always hit the reset button when your Pikmin were wiped out in Pikmin 2’s caves anyway, didn’t you?

The biggest addition to Pikmin 4’s gameplay is the presence of Oatchi, a doglike companion who can act as an independent player character or in place of your Pikmin depending on what you need him to do. Oatchi fulfills an awful lot of quality of life features in Pikmin 4 as he can not only take on the role of a captain or a Pikmin, but can also be given commands to search for important things such as treasures, hidden resources, or even missing Pikmin. He’s not quite as versatile as the trinity of playable captains in Pikmin 3 (and sadly cannot be controlled by a co-op player like the three captains could) but clever use of his abilities will be crucial to succeed in the game’s Dandori challenges.

“Dandori” is the game’s name for acting efficiently and strategically, and there are many distinct challenges in the game that require you to use Dandori well. Special caverns where you race against the clock to collect treasures as quickly as possible in a limited time and splitscreen battles where you compete with an opposing captain to collect the most loot are the flagship Dandori challenges that will scratch the itch of long-time players who miss the time pressure of collecting ship parts in Pikmin 1 and finishing the game in as few days as possible. Even though Dandori didn’t have a name in-universe until Pikmin 4, it was always the part of the Pikmin franchise that I enjoyed the most, and many of the late-game challenges demand an extreme understanding of how to best command Oatchi and your Pikmin in order to barely scrape by and receive the best rewards.

One big part of the game falls flat though, and it is unfortunately one of the additions that sounded the most interesting going in. For the first time in the franchise, Pikmin 4 allows you to venture out at night in order to gather unique resources that can only be found in the dark while fighting off monsters that are far more aggressive than usual. I imagined the night time gameplay as something that you could choose to do instead of heading back to base at the end of the day that allows you to take risks in order to gain great rewards, but the reality is much less exciting.

Night time missions are chosen from a menu at the base, and they take up an entire day on their own. These missions take on a tower defense format where you must protect structures called Lumiknolls with the help of ghostly Glow Pikmin. The aesthetics of night time in the Pikmin world can feel unsettling and threatening, but the actual gameplay is simple to the point of being boring. Glow Pikmin are more powerful than regular Pikmin since they can stun enemies and deal huge damage with a burst attack and automatically teleport to you when left idle, trivializing both combat and strategy. The nighttime missions quickly blend together into feeling like busy work since you’ll be doing a lot of them if you want to receive their important rewards, and the utter simplicity of the challenge leaves little room for thinking on your feet and improvising. It is technically possible to finish the game while doing a bare minimum of nighttime missions, but you’ll be locking yourself out of a substantial amount of side content as a consequence.

Pikmin 4 is everything I could’ve wanted from a new Pikmin game and more. It is simultaneously a return to form with a heavy focus on Dandori and also a leap forward with entirely new mechanics and big improvements to returning mechanics. There are some flaws—nighttime missions are a drag and the early tutorials are dreadfully slow—but those warts don’t outweigh everything Pikmin 4 manages to achieve. This is a new standard for Pikmin; all we can do now is hope it doesn’t take another ten years for Pikmin 5.

[A look back at Pikmin’s growing pains.]

11

TalkBack / Pikmin 2 (Switch) Review

« on: July 20, 2023, 07:49:19 AM »

A look back at Pikmin’s growing pains.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/64326/pikmin-2-switch-review

Pikmin 2 is something of a black sheep in the Pikmin franchise. It exists within Nintendo’s mid-2000s transition away from hardcore gamers towards more casual audiences, and it feels like a weird midpoint between those two extremes. I have no idea if this dichotomy is the result of any intentional design decisions on Nintendo’s part, but the result is an undeniable sense that the game has trouble deciding what exactly it wants to be. Sometimes it’s too easy and lacks some of the challenges that made the original Pikmin compelling, and sometimes it’s brutally punishing in ways that only the most skilled players will be able to stomach. The audience for this game feels slim, but the most dedicated fans of the franchise may enjoy it for the truly unique experience it brings to the table.

Pikmin 2 opens with Captain Olimar and his new partner Louie returning to the Pikmin homeworld in search of treasure to pay off their boss’ massive debts. The two captains enlist the help of the native Pikmin to carry various delicacies, devices, and doodads back to their ship to sell for cold hard cash. The big twist introduced in this game is the presence of underground caverns teeming with treasures and monsters alike. Though the traditional overworlds of Pikmin 1 are still present (literally, since you visit remixed versions of the original maps), the majority of the game’s runtime is spent in the caverns, descending deeper into the Earth with no warning of what you’ll find ahead.

The caverns themselves are sadly pretty dull, made up of copy and paste assets that are lightly randomized. Enemies and treasures are fixed to each individual cavern, but their exact positions will be different each time you enter. The layouts of the underground are mostly flat and simple with very few visual themes, and I swear I saw a few layouts multiple times (though I’d never be certain given how basic and featureless each one is). The randomness also makes the gameplay feel directionless; I would often break down walls and obstacles that lead to nowhere while treasures were laying out in the open. The bespoke puzzles and challenges in the overworld are just as good as the original Pikmin, but they feel few and far between since your time in the caverns will easily dwarf your time above ground.

In terms of difficulty, Pikmin 2 is very uneven. The core challenge of the first game—the limited number of days you have before a game over—has been completely removed, making the day/night cycle feel like a tedious leftover. With no hard time limit you’re free to explore at your own pace and take as much time as you need to restock your army of Pikmin with no consequence, leaving no incentive to optimize your route through the game. Every few minutes the sun will set and you’ll be forced to go through the rigmarole of gathering your Pikmin and returning to your ship before coming back the next day and returning to what you were doing exactly where you left it. The result is that the end of a day feels like it might as well be an especially long loading screen for how little purpose it has, especially since time freezes completely when you’re underground.

The flip side of the coin is the intense challenges to be found in the underground, which feature some of the most punishing consequences for failure I’ve seen in the franchise. Caverns are densely filled with powerful enemies that can easily catch you off-guard and wipe out an entire squad of Pikmin in an instant. Multitasking is actually deeply discouraged in the underground since unexpected enemies can be lurking around the corner, and the game often throws what I can only call pranks at you as explosives literally fall from the ceiling without warning. Monsters become tougher and more destructive as you progress further through the game, and I had to make frequent use of the autosave the game makes on each floor of a cavern to get through some of the unfair and unexpected curveballs that would be thrown at me.

Ironically, I think this punishing difficulty is actually something that especially dedicated fans of the franchise may find appealing. Combat in Pikmin is often simple because you aren’t directly engaging with enemies, and the intense difficulty found in the caverns is exactly what I’ve seen many hardcore fans say they love about Pikmin 2. The tedious repetition of each cavern’s randomized features took away a lot of appeal for me, but there’s no doubt that the game’s high intensity that requires intimate familiarity with the nuances of commanding your Pikmin is unlike anything else the series has to offer.

As for the Switch version specifically, the updates in the HD version of Pikmin 2 are pretty much identical to those found in Pikmin 1, which I covered in a mini-review last month. The primary change unique to Pikmin 2 is that the real-world product placement found among the game’s treasures has been removed, and a joke spam email from an online dating site (yes, that’s real) has been rewritten to be more family-friendly. One thing in both games that I didn’t realize until playing Pikmin 2 is that while using gyro controls the cursor can still be moved around by the control stick. This was not the case in the Wii versions of Pikmin 1 and 2 where you could freely aim independently of your character’s movement, and you’ll need to actively fight against the cursor drifting away when positioning yourself around enemies.

Pikmin 2 is a tough game to recommend, especially with the brand new Pikmin 4 featuring a much more successful version of its key feature, the caverns. The high difficulty requires a lot of investment from the player to overcome, and the lack of bespoke design underground makes the journey to overcome those obstacles too tedious to feel rewarding. Dedicated fans who want to be pushed into learning the intricacies of Pikmin’s mechanics will find something special in the unique challenge, but pretty much everything else about Pikmin 2 has been pulled off much better in another game in the franchise.

12

TalkBack / Re: 100 Classic Books Review

« on: July 07, 2023, 11:07:03 PM »

Does it have Pride and Prejudice? I know someone who's been meaning to read that.

[We had early access to the PS4 version of the demo.]

13

TalkBack / Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective Demo Preview

« on: June 12, 2023, 03:00:00 PM »

We had early access to the PS4 version of the demo.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/preview/63967/ghost-trick-phantom-detective-demo-preview

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is a murder-mystery puzzle game from Ace Attorney writer and director Shu Takumi. Originally released on Nintendo DS thirteen years ago, it serves as something of a sister game to Ace Attorney, featuring much of the same humor, style, and charm. Any fan of Ace Attorney’s story should feel right at home here, though what sets this game apart is its unique focus on manipulating in-game events in the style of a Rube Goldberg machine, setting off chain reactions of objects knocking each other over, hitting buttons to activate devices, and generally getting in the way of any hapless villains or bystanders around the scene of a crime.

If you’ve already played Phantom Detective on DS, the new remaster (which I played a demo of on PS4) is pretty unremarkable. The original’s touch screen controls are simple enough to map cleanly to an analog stick, and the game made so little use of the system’s dual screens that I had to look up old videos on YouTube in order to remember just what that second screen was even doing in the original game. This is a pretty straightforward port with few upgrades besides HD visuals and the option for a rearranged soundtrack. It’s bare-bones, but the game’s simple cel-shaded style lends itself better to higher resolutions than some other recent games that suffer a poor AI-upscale.

If you’ve never played Phantom Detective, then this port is a perfectly good way to do so, and I highly recommend you do so. The game stars Sissel, a recently-deceased man who discovers he has strange ghostly powers that allow him to possess objects to move them around and disrupt the environment. He can jump between nearby objects, but his limited range means that you’ll need to find clever ways to manipulate your surroundings in order to get where you’re trying to go.

Just moving around and generally haunting the place isn’t all Sissel can do though; he’s also able to possess the body of anyone else who is recently-deceased in order to rewind time to four minutes before their death and change their fate by performing a Ghost Trick. Each death scene is a puzzle that must be solved in order to manipulate the right objects at the right time in order to indirectly save someone’s life. The solution is rarely straightforward: you can make a rolling cart slide across the room, but you can’t defy physics and make it float where you need it to be, so you’ll need to cleverly figure out how to jump between multiple objects just to get around.

Since these puzzles take place in a scripted period of time, it’s not enough just to know where you need to go; you’ll also need to pay attention to the actions of the characters in the scene to be where you need to be when you need to be there. This setup adds a lot of tension in figuring out the right timing before it’s too late, though occasionally this can lead to you being forced to just sit and wait for the characters to reach the correct part of the script when you’ve already figured things out.

The most notable feature of Phantom Detective—which holds up just as well in HD—is the high quality of its character animations. Every character is animated with a ton of charm and personality that went above and beyond in making use of the limited hardware capabilities of the original DS version. A lot of big, showy movement was necessary to convey character on such a small screen, and that talented work looks just as good on a big screen at twice the frame rate. It’s the same quality that we’ve come to expect from the 3D-animated Ace Attorney games, and in fact all character animators named in the original game’s credits went on to work on Ace Attorney at one point or another, making it clear how influential this game was on its sister series.

The demo I played is now publicly available on Switch, PlayStation, and Steam. If you haven’t played Phantom Detective and you’re even a little curious about it, you should absolutely play this demo. It’s been over twelve years since I played the original game on DS, and I’m still impressed by it to this day. I’m looking forward to updating my vague decade-old memories when the remaster finally releases, since every memory I do have of this game tells me it’s one of the best and most unique narrative games I’ve ever played.

[One of Nintendo's best is back with compromise.]

14

TalkBack / Pikmin 1 (Switch) Review Mini

« on: June 23, 2023, 03:29:00 PM »

One of Nintendo's best is back with compromise.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/64144/pikmin-1-switch-review-mini

When Pikmin 1 was announced to be coming to Switch, the first thing I wanted to know was what version of the game it would be based on. The original Pikmin has only been ported once as part of the New Play Control line of games on Wii, and while the Wii Remote pointer controls were the obvious selling point there were actually some big quality of life changes that it’s easy to forget were never in the original GameCube version. In the original Pikmin, you couldn’t swap the color of Pikmin you were holding before a throw, meaning you had to carefully stand next to whichever type you needed before picking it up. The AI attached to Yellow Pikmin carrying bomb rocks was also different; on GameCube they would drop the bombs immediately upon being called with the whistle which could lead to some accidental deaths, while on Wii the Pikmin would only drop their rocks after being thrown and even automatically move away from bombs that were about to detonate. The most substantial change on Wii was that the game’s save system was overhauled, allowing you to rewind to a previous day from the file select screen in order to correct any mistakes you had made without losing more of your limited in-game time.

Since the Switch obviously doesn’t have a controller that uses a sensor bar, I didn’t want to take for granted that we’d be getting the improved Wii version of the game on Switch. Thankfully my fears were unfounded, and Pikmin 1 on Switch seems to be a 1:1 port of the New Play Control version. Even some minor graphical changes like on-screen arrows that direct swarming Pikmin, colored UI elements noting which Onion the Pikmin were carrying an item back to, and the color of Pikmin ghosts corresponding to their fallen soldier are all retained from the New Play Control version. If anything has changed in the game’s presentation besides the UI being upscaled to match the HD resolution, then it’s subtle enough that only the most hardcore of fans would notice.

Without the option to use a pointer, the game’s default controls are mostly the same as on GameCube, but an option has been added to enable the use of gyro aiming while whistling or throwing Pikmin. This is the biggest compromise that Pikmin 1 has made in the transition to Switch since the gyro is only enabled in context-sensitive situations, making it difficult to quickly micromanage your cursor between targets. I don’t think this will be a problem for first-time players—it’s still more versatile than the original GameCube version—but every ounce of muscle memory I had while playing screamed that this feels bad.

Pikmin 1 on Switch is not the definitive version of this game; the Wii Remote’s pointer controls were a perfect fit for Pikmin and their absence is deeply felt. That said, this is likely the best Pikmin 1 can be on a system that doesn’t have a pointer, and the core design still holds up as one of the best debuts a Nintendo franchise has ever had. Longtime fans might be better off digging out their old Wii Remotes for the New Play Control version, but this is a fine place to start if you want to see what the big deal is while we wait for Pikmin 4.

While I’m here, let me give a quick note on Pikmin 2: It’s been a long time since I played Pikmin 2 so I didn’t want to write a hasty review of it without really putting time into it, but as far as I can tell it also appears to be a straight port of the New Play Control version with the same control scheme on Switch as Pikmin 1. The single immediate change I could see was that the Duracell battery in the game’s opening stage has been replaced with a fake generic brand, which probably applies to the other licensed real-world products throughout the game.

[What you see is what you get, and the rest is a royal pain.]

15

TalkBack / We Love Katamari Reroll + Royal Reverie (Switch) Review

« on: June 22, 2023, 04:35:08 PM »

What you see is what you get, and the rest is a royal pain.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/64087/we-love-katamari-reroll--royal-reverie-switch-review

We Love Katamari Reroll is a straightforward port of a straightforward sequel to a very unconventional game. If you have any experience with Katamari—whether it’s with the original PS2 games or the 2018 remaster Katamari Damacy Reroll—then you pretty much know what to expect already. You control the Prince of All Cosmos as he rolls around a Katamari—a round object that scoops up anything it touches to grow larger like a snowball. The Katamari can only pick up objects that are roughly the same size as itself, so the challenge of gameplay involves strategically rolling up small things like thumbtacks and board game pieces in order to eventually consume larger and larger targets.Little has changed since the first game, but We Love Katamari does retain its predecessor’s flair for bizarre and creative imagery. The story has shifted to a meta-narrative about the franchise’s popularity, and each mission involves fulfilling the wish of a Katamari fan by creating the Katamari of their dreams. The story is punctuated with flashbacks to the King of All Cosmo’s youth, providing his backstory in minimalist scenes that are bizarre, funny, and at times touching. There aren’t any bold innovations that make the game feel truly unique from its predecessor, but the end result is clever (and weird) enough to at least feel like it isn’t simply rehashing the same ideas.

New to the Reroll version of We Love Katamari is a side-adventure titled Royal Reverie where you actually play as the King of All Cosmos during his youth as he fulfills the orders of his own commanding father. This side adventure fits well into the original game’s structure, slowly unlocking new missions as you progress through the story, but its quality is a pretty stark contrast. The missions in Royal Reverie all have additional objectives that make them more challenging than the original game’s stages, but they are dull at best and a frustrating slog at worst. One asks you to create the largest Katamari you can in only sixty seconds, while another has you rolling up small fireballs to attack an opponent’s health bar without growing your Katamari. The challenge that ultimately made me give up on Royal Reverie was a pseudo-stealth mission where rolling up any of the fast-moving ghosts that wandered the stage would trigger an instant failure. These mediocre challenges—as well as the bland and straightforward dialogue that accompanies them—stick out like a sore thumb against the irreverent charm of the original game.

If you’ve ever played We Love Katamari or any version of the original Katamari Damacy, then you already know what you’ll be getting into with We Love Katamari Reroll. It’s an incremental improvement at best—both as a sequel to Katamari Damacy and as a port of We Love Katamari—but if that’s all you’re looking for then the end result will certainly be satisfying. Katamari is already such an unusual game that maybe its sequel doesn’t need to be particularly groundbreaking, and since it’s so rare for any Katamari game to be released at all it’s absolutely a good place to start for anyone that hasn’t gotten to experience the series’ weird and wonderful vibes.

[Less for more.]

16

TalkBack / Farming Simulator 23 (Switch) Review

« on: May 22, 2023, 11:00:00 PM »

Less for more.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/63795/farming-simulator-23-switch-review

One of the more interesting markets in gaming is the growing niche of ‘simulator’ games that strive to be mundane and realistic simulations of some facet of everyday life. Games like PowerWash Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator can be good ways to just vibe and relax, but Farming Simulator 23 is a game that struggles to hold the same magic for me. My only previous experience with Farming Simulator was reviewing the Switch version of Farming Simulator 20 a few years ago, and the 2023 edition has failed to hook me for many of the same reasons as its predecessor.

The basics of Farming Simulator 23 are obvious: you’re tasked with managing a realistic farm, carrying out all the necessary steps of agriculture to grow crops, cultivate livestock, and expand your business into more varied fields (both figuratively and literally). In order to produce any sizable yield to sell at the markets, you’ll need to have multiple vehicles running different parts of the process simultaneously, which is where automated workers can be hired to pick up the slack. This automation is as boring as it is necessary, since it means that the actual amount of work on the fields required from the player is relatively little.

The real meat of the gameplay appears to be in the actual management and upkeep of your farm and equipment, which makes it odd that the in-game tutorial almost entirely focuses on the ground-level process of harvesting crops. Once I had everything set up and automated, I was completely lost on what to do next since I didn’t even know where to begin with setting up a new area of expertise for my farm, and since new equipment is realistically in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars I didn’t exactly have the wiggle room to experiment with things to figure out what sticks.

Even some of the basics of harvesting weren't adequately explained, which I discovered when in-game notifications told me that my fields had not been adequately plowed. I needed to buy a new piece of plowing equipment—something which the tutorial never brought up in any way—in order to adequately set up my fields for a good harvest. Experienced veterans of the Farming Simulator franchise will likely go in already knowing what they’re supposed to be doing, but as an outsider I found the wide breadth of things that I could (and sometimes should) be doing to be utterly impenetrable.

On Switch, Farming Simulator 23 also comes off as a bit cheap. Switch players are receiving a stripped-down mobile version of Farming Simulator which is scaled back from the latest PC and console release from 2021: Farming Simulator 22. Features from Farming Sim 22 such as beekeeping and multiplayer are absent and the number of machines and vehicles has been scaled back from over 400 to roughly 130. It’s telling that the game’s marketing boasts the addition of chickens to the mobile versions—a feature that has been in the PC versions for over a decade. The graphics are also obviously a massive step down from Farming Sim 22, but the biggest problem I had with the previous Switch release—a low draw distance that made it difficult to tell when crops had fully grown—has been improved.

Farming Simulator 23 is not a game for newcomers. My time playing was largely filled with confusion, and the in-game tutorials and guides do very little to point a new player in the right direction. It may appeal to core fans of the franchise since it is at least a portable version of the game, but the scaled-back features are likely to be what those players care about the most, and anyway the price tag of $45 is frankly a joke compared to the $8 this same version of the game costs on Android and iOS. Perhaps I’m wrong and there’s some X factor a hardcore Farming Simulator fan can tell I’m missing, but Farming Simulator 23 is a clear non-starter for newcomers that clearly lacks plenty of content that longtime fans have come to enjoy on more powerful hardware.

[Adventurers! We have an emergency!]

17

TalkBack / Dokapon Kingdom Connect (Switch) Review-In-Progress

« on: May 02, 2023, 06:00:00 AM »

Adventurers! We have an emergency!

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/63612/dokapon-kingdom-connect-switch-review-in-progress

Dokapon Kingdom is a party board game that is often mentioned in the same breath as Mario Party. More specifically it is often regarded as the crueler and more sadistic version of the two, frequently pitched as “what if Mario Party was also a full-length RPG?” Over the last two weeks, I’ve been playing the game with my friends from Mario Party Monthly, the monthly stream series on the NWR Twitch channel where we have been competing against each other in Nintendo’s premiere sadomasochistic party franchise for the past a year and a half. We’ve barely scratched the surface so far—this is a full-length RPG after all—but we’ve already seen enough for me to know that Dokapon Kingdom is a board game experience unlike anything else that’s held back only by how difficult it is to convince people to actually sit down and play it.

The story of Dokapon Kingdom takes place in a standard fantasy RPG setting: a dark lord is threatening the world and the king has sent up to four adventurers to defeat the dark lord and win the princess’ hand in marriage. The players all have the same goal, but they are not working together. Each player’s status is measured by their net worth, which is most significantly influenced by towns on the board that the players have taken ownership of and invested money into for development. That’s right: Dokapon Kingdom has more in common with Monopoly than it does with Mario Party, but money isn’t the only thing you need to keep track of.

Like I said, this is an RPG, and you need to also pay attention to your stats, your equipment, and your class skills. Towns are not bought, but are instead liberated from monsters that must be defeated in battle. These monsters aren’t just filler enemies, they’re formidable opponents that will soundly trounce any underleveled player who tries to take them on. Players who get a good build going early will scoop up towns quickly, leaving opposing players in poverty. Each chapter of the story mode also features distinct objectives such as defeating a boss or retrieving an item for the king, and the player who completes an objective first will receive massive and often permanent rewards.

Success in Dokapon Kingdom depends on how well you can balance all of its various mechanics, and falling behind the pack means that you’ll often be forced to choose violence. Combat takes place in turn-based battles that leverage a rock-paper-scissors style system of advantages and counters. The attacker can choose to use a simple basic Attack which the opponent can weaken with basic Defending, but they can also choose a powerful Strike attack that can break through the enemy’s defense. Strike attacks are risky though, since the defending player can completely negate them with a Counter, which dodges the attack entirely and hits the attacker for more damage than the Strike would’ve done. Unique skills add a bit of extra depth and complexity to battle, and combat between two players is often a gamble on how well you know what your opponent is thinking.

The downside of Dokapon Kingdom is that it doesn’t do a very good job of explaining exactly how its mechanics work. There is a help menu where you can read up on the basics, but a lot of crucial details are often left unsaid. One good example is the Local Items that can be given to the king as a gift to boost your net worth. The help menus explain that Local Items can be obtained at towns you own, but what it does not say is that those towns must be upgraded to level 3, and then they are collected from the town alongside taxes. Battle stats are also never explained so it isn’t clear exactly how your stats translate into damage, or even what the speed stat does at all (it affects hit accuracy). We’ve had to do a lot of google searching to figure out how some major mechanics are supposed to work, and there are a few fundamental mechanics we still don’t fully understand after eight hours of play.

Speaking of those eight hours of play, the daunting scale of Dokapon Kingdom is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. The length of the story mode heavily depends on the people you’re playing with and how efficiently you complete objectives, but discussion of the game online tells me that it takes roughly 25 hours to finish a single playthrough—and that’s if you’re quick! This enables an incredible opportunity to craft an ongoing adventure with friends that devolves into spiteful chaos as time goes by, with tension higher than any other multiplayer game I’ve ever played. The obvious drawback is that you need to figure out how to get a group of players to sit down and play a single playthrough for over 25 hours. The four of us are all adults who are out of school and have jobs and responsibilities to take care of, so those eight hours of play over the course of four sessions constituted every free moment we could find together over the course of two weeks. Even now I’m not sure if we’ll ever actually be able to finish this game, and that is a substantial red flag that I feel has to be included alongside any recommendation of this game. This isn’t something you can casually pick up with the lads; it is a substantial commitment that will take a very long time to finish.

Of course since Dokapon Kingdom Connect is a Switch remaster of a Wii remaster of a PS2 remake of a Super Famicom game, the most pressing thing I have to address is the brand new online mode that this version is named for. Our entire playthrough so far has been entirely online, and that experience has frankly been immaculate. We have not experienced a single internet-related problem in the game so far, and a sleek autosave system backs up your progress every turn so that nothing is lost if you do need to restart the lobby for a game in progress. Each player also receives their own copy of the ongoing save file, so no one person needs to be relied on as the host for an entire playthrough. Whenever we need to load the save file, it’s a simple matter of loading the save file, and then the game automatically connects us together. In an era where long-form online multiplayer games often struggle to have an intuitive save system, it’s a pleasant surprise that Dokapon Kingdom Connect just works.

Of course, we’ve barely scratched the surface of what Dokapon Kingdom has to offer, and there’s still a long adventure ahead of us. It’s going to take us a long time to finish this game, so I’d like to invite you to join us so we can witness the journey unfold together. We have been recording our entire playthrough so far just like it was a game of Mario Party Monthly and will be broadcasting it on NWR's Twitch channel as part of our new series: Dokapon Kingdom (Kind Of) Monthly. Beginning Friday, May 26th, we will be broadcasting our entire playthrough so far, and once the recordings catch up with us we may even start streaming our sessions live as we play them.

The journey has just begun, and we’ve got a lot of Dokapon Kingdom ahead of us, but I’m incredibly excited to continue this adventure. Check back with us as Dokapon Kingdom (Kind Of) Monthly progresses to see more of our impressions on this legendary party board game.

[Looks like you're stuck on the shores of Hell. The only way out is through.]

18

TalkBack / Smashterpieces Podcast Episode AF23: Doom (1993)

« on: April 01, 2023, 08:33:45 AM »

Looks like you're stuck on the shores of Hell. The only way out is through.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/feature/63271/smashterpieces-podcast-episode-af23-doom-1993

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Did you know that dogs can’t look up? This implies that the Doomslayer, who also cannot look up, is in fact not a person but a dog. The evidence is out there, mostly on Mars and in Hell, but it is out there. Don’t believe me? Have you ever seen the Doomslayer eat food? Of course not, cause he’s eating his dog food in secret to throw you off the trail. Wake up, sheeple! The government doesn’t want you to know! The Doomslayer is a dog!

Presented by Anonymous Dinosaur and Nintendo World Report, this is Smashterpieces - a casual walk through the history of the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Roster. On this show, hosts Joe DeVader and Matt Zawodniak are playing one game for every fighter in the newest Super Smash Bros. game, from 1984's Duck Hunt to 2019's Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Each game will be live-streamed by both of us, and then we'll convene to talk about it on the podcast.

Anyways, we’re here to talk about Doom. Not 2016, that’d be silly. We’re talking about the ORIGINAL Doom. You know, the one where you can’t look up BECAUSE THE DOOMSLAYER IS A DOG.

Join us next time as oh god we’re playing that? No, god no, what hath we wrought?

You can find previous episodes at Anonymous Dinosaur's website!

Our list of games can be found here!

You can watch Matt and Joe stream these games on the NWR Twitch channel!

[You've got boost power!]

19

TalkBack / Smashterpieces Podcast Episode 44: F-Zero GX

« on: March 22, 2023, 10:12:01 AM »

You've got boost power!

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/feature/63207/smashterpieces-podcast-episode-44-f-zero-gx

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Welcome to FASCAR, the channel where we talk about Fast Cars. Today we’re gonna talk about the fastest cars of all, the ones of the legendary F-Zero Grand Prix. They go very fast. They go extremely fast. Think of the fastest thing you know. A beautiful stallion? Faster. A regal cheetah? Faster. A tuned-up racecar? Faster. A jet like from that one movie? FASTER. The speed at which my life has fallen apart and my family has left me so I’m stuck here in this dark room writing podcast episode descriptions trying desperately not to let it set in but it gets harder to do so every day? Somehow even faster.

Presented by Anonymous Dinosaur and Nintendo World Report, this is Smashterpieces - a casual walk through the history of the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Roster. On this show, hosts Joe DeVader and Matt Zawodniak are playing one game for every fighter in the newest Super Smash Bros. game, from 1984's Duck Hunt to 2019's Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Each game will be live-streamed by both of us, and then we'll convene to talk about it on the podcast.

You can hear all about these speed demons in this episode discussing Smashterpiece #44: F-Zero GX. What do we think about the story mode as opposed to the Grand Prix? What makes this game so special in the world of racing games? Where’s your closest F-Zero AX machine? All that and more in today’s episode! (NOTE: We do not know which F-Zero AX machine is closest to you personally, that would be weird)

Join us next time as we set off on our first proper Pokémon adventure in Smashterpiece #45: Pokémon FireRed/LeafGreen

You can find previous episodes at Anonymous Dinosaur's website!

Our list of games can be found here!

You can watch Matt and Joe stream these games on the NWR Twitch channel!

[This is a message from Lord Nergal. "I await you on the Dread Isle."]

20

TalkBack / Smashterpieces Podcast Episode 43.4: Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade (Part Four)

« on: February 23, 2023, 09:50:07 AM »

This is a message from Lord Nergal. "I await you on the Dread Isle."

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/feature/62965/smashterpieces-podcast-episode-434-fire-emblem-the-blazing-blade-part-four

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As I sit here on this battlefield, I think long and hard about the cost of this war. The lives lost (statistically like 7 or so), the wives widowed (I actually think our army only had three married people in it and two of them were married to each other), the blood spilt (this game is rated E for Everyone so honestly there really wasn’t any now that I think about it), the time taken (okay yeah this one checks out)… Was it really worth it? What were we even fighting for?

Presented by Anonymous Dinosaur and Nintendo World Report, this is Smashterpieces - a casual walk through the history of the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Roster. On this show, hosts Joe DeVader and Matt Zawodniak are playing one game for every fighter in the newest Super Smash Bros. game, from 1984's Duck Hunt to 2019's Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Each game will be live-streamed by both of us, and then we'll convene to talk about it on the podcast.

I suppose if I had to come up with an answer it’d be that we were fighting for Smashterpiece #43, Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade. An era has finally come to an end, and it needs much discussion. How do the last few maps of the game hold up? What are some of the major differences between the ends Eliwood and Hector’s routes? Is Ninian Roy’s mom or did we all get it wrong? What even is a dragon, anyways? All this and more in today’s episode.

Join us next time as we go way too god damn fast in Smashterpiece #44: F-Zero GX

You can find previous episodes at Anonymous Dinosaur's website!

Our list of games can be found here!

You can watch Matt and Joe stream these games on the NWR Twitch channel!

[Barely the bare minimum.]

21

TalkBack / Tales of Symphonia Remastered

« on: February 15, 2023, 05:03:20 AM »

Barely the bare minimum.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/reviewmini/62899/tales-of-symphonia-remastered

I have fond memories of playing Tales of Symphonia nearly 20 years ago. It was one of the first JRPGs I’d ever played, and to this day I consider it a gold standard of the genre. With a complex narrative in a massive world, fluid real-time combat, and a star-studded English dub featuring the likes of Scott Menville, Jennifer Hale, and Tara Strong, there’s plenty to love about this game. There are a few things that haven’t aged too well such as the lack of quality of life features from future Tales titles and a messy opening act with clunky exposition, but I’d still easily recommend the game to anyone looking to play an absolute classic.Unfortunately, I don’t have as many kind words for the latest remaster, which is not only the first time it’s been re-released on a Nintendo system, but also only the third time ever that the game has been made available in the west. There are enough problems with Tales of Symphonia Remastered that it feels generous calling it a remaster at all—not only does it lack any new features or improvements at all, but it retains every technical flaw from previous re-releases while managing to introduce brand new problems of its own.

Symphonia Remastered is based on the PS3 re-release from 2014, and many of its issues are inherited from that version. There’s been a lot of talk about how the game is locked to 30fps—a downgrade from the GameCube version’s 60fps that has its roots in the initial PS2 port. If that were the only issue then things might not be so bad, but the game’s art style was also compromised with inconsistent rendering for the anime-style character outlines featured in the original release. The outlines never manage to look as bold as the original GameCube version, and depending on the scene they sometimes vanish entirely. Some scenes also bizarrely have dialogue that is completely missing in PS3 and Switch versions. This isn’t a matter of censorship or an updated localization; characters will still reply to missing lines as though they were still there.

The issues with the PS3 port (which can also be found on Steam) ultimately don’t add up to much, and if you’ve never played the game before you probably won’t even notice most of them. The same can’t be said of the new issues introduced in the Remaster. Loading times between maps, which used to be miniscule, are now several seconds long. Colors are less vibrant across the board with the game’s brightness being turned down in all scenes. Textures have been AI upscaled, with visual details devolving into a smeary soup as a result. The battle UI now features texture seams not present in any other version, and small icons and text fonts now have visible compression artifacts. One especially egregious example I noticed was a small black line that consistently appeared above any lowercase w in dialogue.

Some of Symphonia’s graphical effects are now simply broken. The pause screen which previously appeared on top of whatever was happening in the game now features a plain black background. The stylish animation that transitions between exploration and combat is completely missing, replaced with a hard cut to black followed by a hard cut to white that fades in after a couple seconds. Cutscenes also appear to have lost the ability to crossfade, now abruptly jump-cutting between shots that used to be slow transitions. The only genuine improvement in this version is that the game runs at 1080p, a record high for console versions of Symphonia—but a lot has been sacrificed to get there.

So much is compromised in this remaster that if it had just been an emulator running the GameCube version in HD, then it actually would’ve been an improvement. That’s not just hyperbole; I actually checked how the GameCube version looks on a fan-made emulator rendering the game in 4K, and the result speaks for itself. There are no compression artifacts in the UI, there are no visible texture seams, the character outlines are fully intact, and the game runs at a smooth 60fps; all aspects that the official remaster fails at. The only thing the GameCube version is missing is the content that was added in the later PS2 port, but at this point I’m starting to wonder if that content is even worth the trouble.

Tales of Symphonia seems to be a game that is doomed to get a bit worse with every subsequent re-release. It’s difficult to justify calling this new version a remaster at all since it includes all of the problems with the previous version while introducing entirely new problems on top of that. The bare minimum for a port of a retro game should be that you won’t notice any technical problems if you haven’t played the original, and Tales of Symphonia Remastered does not even clear that bar. It is playable; it’s still Tales of Symphonia, but that is the absolute least we can ask of it, and that is the absolute most we’ve gotten from it.

[The best Fire Emblem in the last decade.]

22

TalkBack / Fire Emblem Engage (Switch) Review

« on: January 17, 2023, 04:00:00 AM »

The best Fire Emblem in the last decade.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/62622/fire-emblem-engage-switch-review

Fire Emblem Engage is both a celebration of the franchise’s history and an exciting evolution on the series’ formula, managing to deliver the best of both worlds. There’s plenty of fanservice referencing the series’ more than thirty years of history with classic characters, maps, and gameplay mechanics that harken back to the best memories of your favorite Fire Emblem game. There are also bold new reworks and innovations to mainstay mechanics that drive the tactical gameplay forward to new heights. Engage may not quite be everything I wanted it to be, but I think it’s easily a new high bar for what a modern Fire Emblem can be.

Fire Emblem Engage tells the story of the Divine Dragon, a character whose name and gender you can choose that is canonically named Alear. After a thousand-year slumber, Alear wakes up with amnesia to a world on the verge of war with worshippers of the ancient Fell Dragon. In order to prevent the Fell Dragon’s return, Alear must gather the twelve Emblem Rings—artifacts of substantial power carrying the spirits of heroes from other worlds—and travels the land to find them before they can fall into the wrong hands.

This story isn’t particularly unique—it has a lot in common with Fire Emblem Awakening, which was already pretty derivative in itself—but it gets the job done well enough and gives us the chance to meet a cast of characters from all corners of the world who bounce off of each other in compelling and entertaining ways. The main story may be simple, but Fire Emblem Engage has one of my favorite casts in the franchise, with a number of characters that are fleshed out very well in support conversations.

Some personal favorites of mine include the party animal Pandreo, who earnestly dedicates his life to leading the church his parents abandoned; the former assassin Yunaka, who puts on an over-the-top goofball facade as she tries to leave her violent past behind her; and the child merchant Anna, who dreams up big entrepreneurial schemes while concealing her fear and anxiety over being separated from her family. The only characters I didn’t find something to love about were the ones that simply didn’t stay in active duty long enough to unlock their support conversations.

Of course, Fire Emblem isn’t just a game about characters; it’s also about tactical RPG strategy, which is where Engage really manages to shine. I talked at length about the details in my preview two weeks ago so I won’t repeat myself too much here, but a total rework of the series’ staple weapon triangle goes a long way into encouraging aggressive tactics that raise the stakes of each battle, and powerful Emblem Rings representing heroes from previous games add a new layer of risk and reward to combat. The map design is also fantastic, often encouraging you to split your army into two smaller teams that can tackle separate obstacles at once, which led to me putting a lot of thought into which units synergized well in a coordinated strike force.

Even the fanservice leads to compelling gameplay as Fire Emblem Engage features throwback maps to chapters from previous games. These maps will obviously bring back memories to longtime fans, but the twists they offer to gameplay will make them worthwhile even for players who don’t recognize them. Every throwback map goes out of its way to replicate the feeling of its original context, whether it’s protecting the crest stones in Three Houses’ Holy Tomb, desperately defending choke points in Radiant Dawn’s Nox Castle, or getting one-hit killed by ludicrously overpowered ballistae on a bridge crossing the River Thracia. Even though these maps are technically reused content, they add a whole new layer of variety to the game that make for some of the most memorable tactical problems in all of Engage.

If there is one thing that disappoints me in Fire Emblem Engage, it’s that I’m starting to feel a bit disillusioned with the current split between Classic and Casual modes. The casual mode that disables permadeath and the time crystal that allows you to rewind turns and rethink your strategy are welcome features that have done a great deal to make Fire Emblem approachable to more players, but as an older fan of the series I can’t help but feel like the Classic mode is turning into a bit of an afterthought. As the franchise has pivoted towards investing in units and keeping them regardless of any setback, there hasn’t been any innovations in providing a classic experience that encourages players to keep playing through mistakes and adapt to changing circumstances.

I often wish Fire Emblem would implement a ‘wounded’ system where units are merely taken away temporarily, but even the simple option to adjust the number of rewind charges on higher difficulties—which is locked into the maximum number that was available at the end of Three Houses from the very beginning of Engage—would make me feel like the classic experience was at least something the developers were thinking about. Instead after making a mistake on classic mode we’re left to choose between two extremes, either removing a character and their personal story from the game entirely, or turning back time (either through a full reset or literal rewind) to completely erase a mistake from existence. It’s a great thing that Fire Emblem has options for players that want to mitigate the consequences of their mistakes, but I’m disappointed that players who actually want to deal with those consequences have not received any innovations to match since the series began over thirty years ago.

Fire Emblem Engage may not be my dream game, but it is still a damn good Fire Emblem game. The worst parts of it are merely okay, and the best parts of it paint a bright picture for the future of the franchise. I have never played a game quite so ravenously, sinking over ninety hours into my first playthrough in just two weeks (though don’t get too intimidated by that number, it counts all of my resets from playing on Hard difficulty, and I also played all fifteen optional chapters). At the end of it all I didn’t feel exhausted or burnt out, but rather like I somehow wished that I could play for even longer. Fire Emblem Engage may not check every box that fans were hoping for, but it is easily the strongest showing for the series in the last decade.

[The most exciting Fire Emblem in a decade.]

23

TalkBack / Fire Emblem: Engage (Hands-on Preview)

« on: January 05, 2023, 04:00:00 AM »

The most exciting Fire Emblem in a decade.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/preview/62526/fire-emblem-engage-hands-on-preview

Fire Emblem Engage feels a bit like it snuck up on me. Only about three months passed between its original announcement and the game arriving in my hands, and I feel like I learned very little about it in that time. That meant that I was going into the game relatively blind, and I’m happy to say I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I have been playing this game non-stop since I received it and I’m confident now that this is the best I’ve felt about a new Fire Emblem game in the last decade.

The first thing I want to talk about—which is also the thing I’ve seen people online be the most hesitant about—is the Somniel: Engage’s equivalent to Garreg Mach Monastery from Three Houses. In Three Houses I felt like the classroom-focused gameplay of the monastery was a bit too intrusive, largely being a rote and monotonous task that lost its appeal long before the game ended but was too essential for your units’ long-term growth to be ignored. In contrast, Engage’s Somniel is mercifully skippable while also being much clearer about its immediate benefits. Rather than focusing on long-term growth that becomes evident hours into the game, the minigames on the Somniel provide temporary bonuses to your units that immediately affect your next battle. If you participate in the exercise minigame then you’ll receive a minor stat buff for the next battle, and stopping by the kitchen for dinner gives a special healing item that’s a little better than a standard vulnerary. It’s a good balance that makes the side activities clearly worthwhile, but they aren’t so necessary that you’ll feel like you’re missing out by ignoring them.

But Fire Emblem Engage isn’t just a game about mitigating its predecessors’ weaknesses; it also showcases a number of innovations to gameplay to bring a new twist to combat. The biggest change by far is the complete overhaul of the weapon triangle, which has returned after a brief absence in Three Houses. The basic concept of the weapon triangle is the same as ever—swords have an advantage against axes, axes have an advantage against lances, and lances have an advantage against swords—but what that advantage means has drastically changed. In past games, weapon advantage would give a boost to your stats that meant you were more likely to hit your target and do a little extra damage. Those stat changes have been completely replaced by a new status effect called Break.

Attacking an opponent with advantage applies Break, which completely prevents them from counter-attacking until their next turn. This means that any unit, regardless of their own strength, can attack the afflicted target without any fear of retaliation, giving a big incentive to act more aggressively in battle. The flip side of this coin is that it’s now substantially more dangerous to sit and wait for the enemy to come to you since they have equal opportunity to apply Break to your own units as well. The strongest units can be put into a bad situation after being Broken, so you’ll need to be careful of putting yourself into a spot where the enemy can take advantage of you.

And enemies will absolutely take advantage of you; enemy AI appears to be much smarter this time around than ever before. As early as the very first battle of the game, I was surprised to watch an enemy unit that was already right next to me carefully reposition itself to make sure it was standing in terrain that let it evade my attacks more easily before it attacked me. This is something that I’ve never seen AI in Fire Emblem be smart enough to do before. Aside from smart positioning the AI would also always make sure to capitalize on my mistakes; it would inflict Break first when swarming my units, and it would always go out of its way to target any unit that could possibly be killed in that turn—even if that enemy in particular had no way of dealing the killing blow. Even with the generous rewind function that is now standard in Fire Emblem, I often found myself restarting entire chapters from the beginning because I wasn’t confident that my strategy was going to work out anymore. I should note that I exclusively played on Hard difficulty, so I can’t vouch for whether the AI will still be as smart on Normal, but I was more than happy to get the challenge I was looking for and then some.

Engage also brings innovations that aren’t quite as subtle with the introduction of Emblem rings. Emblem rings take the form of protagonists from previous Fire Emblem titles, acting as a personified piece of equipment that grants stat boosts and extra skills to your units. Each Emblem fills a different niche in battle, such as Radiant Dawn’s Micaiah giving powerful healing abilities, and Genealogy of the Holy War’s Sigurd granting ludicrous mobility to any unit. Emblems grant some passive abilities to their users at all times, but their strongest skills are limited to when you Engage with them.

Engaging with Emblems merges your unit with the Emblem, giving them a fancy costume change and legendary weapons from the Emblem’s original game. Engaging with Emblems is extraordinarily powerful, and it will often be your ace in the hole to take out the game’s most difficult foes. The balancing factor that keeps Emblems from being too strong is the cooldown they have after the Engage runs out. After being depleted the Engage meter can only be recharged through active combat (or through healing for clerics), so simply hanging back and waiting for the Engage meter to recharge won’t be an option. If you want to Engage with your Emblems regularly you’ll need to make sure your units are getting a healthy balance of combat each turn—and the faster you want to recharge a unit’s meter, the more danger you’ll need to put them in. Overall, Fire Emblem Engage skews the risk/reward calculations you’ll be making to favor aggressive tactics where you take on your opponents head on, which is exactly what I think a strategy game should do.

In addition to the major Emblems you can Engage with, there are also minor Emblem rings representing side characters from past games that can be obtained through a gacha system. These Emblems cannot be Engaged with and offer much smaller advantages in battle, but they’re worthwhile enough to at least make sure you have one on each unit. Duplicate minor Emblems can be merged together to create rings of higher rarities that offer greater stat boosts, and some S-tier rings even offer unique skills that you can’t get anywhere else. Unfortunately in this pre-release era where there isn’t any information about these rings online, it felt like I was taking a huge gamble every time I decided to merge some rings together. There’s no way to know which S-tier rings have unique skills, so every time I spent substantial resources to get an S-tier ring only to end up with a dud, it felt like a complete waste of time. This should be much less frustrating when I can just check a fanmade wiki to know which rings are worth investing in, but without that information you’re better off just relying on the whims of random gacha pulls.

The one part of Engage I think is most likely to disappoint people is its main story. The plot is fairly straightforward and spends little time on worldbuilding. It’s reminiscent of the old GBA games where the writing received little focus, and characters often act with little more motivation than simply following the script. If you enjoyed the fact that Three Houses had enough lore to fill a textbook you probably won’t be happy with how underwritten things feel. It’s honestly a shame because Engage’s cast of characters is one of my favorites in the entire franchise. The support conversations in this game go a long way towards fleshing out units from multiple angles, and almost every character has more interesting things going on than the single anime trope that defines them.

This is best seen with the recurring character Anna, who has been reimagined as a child separated from her family. She’s still motivated by money at heart, and her interests are focused on business strategies and marketing, but she also struggles with the anxiety of being separated from her family, and often speaks up about how she resents being treated like a child. The silly trope that defines her may be the same as ever, but it’s been used as a foundation to build a more interesting character instead of just being the entire character like in previous games. The entire cast seems to have gotten this amount of care and focus, and the only characters I didn’t find something to love about were the ones that I simply didn’t keep on the battlefield long enough to unlock support conversations for.

There’s so much more I wish I could say about Engage, but there’s also so much I’m not able to talk about in a limited preview. From the very beginning of the game I was utterly taken in by how much I was enjoying it, and that energy has not let up. It remains to be seen if I still feel as good about it when it comes time for my final review, but for right now I’m more excited about Fire Emblem than I have been in a long time.

[Brendan Reed, leader of the Black Fang.]

24

TalkBack / Smashterpieces Podcast Episode 43.3: Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade (Part Three)

« on: December 29, 2022, 03:54:00 PM »

Brendan Reed, leader of the Black Fang.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/feature/62508/smashterpieces-podcast-episode-433-fire-emblem-the-blazing-blade-part-three

• iTunes

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• Direct Download

Ah, sorry we’re late! You know, the weather and the traffic and all that, but at least we’re just in time for the holidays! I mean, it’s only been… Oh god, has it actually been that long? Oh no, oh jeez, oh dang… It’s fine, let’s just say we went off to war and that’s why we took so long, right?

Presented by Anonymous Dinosaur and Nintendo World Report, this is Smashterpieces - a casual walk through the history of the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Roster. On this show, hosts Joe DeVader and Matt Zawodniak are playing one game for every fighter in the newest Super Smash Bros. game, from 1984's Duck Hunt to 2019's Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Each game will be live-streamed by both of us, and then we'll convene to talk about it on the podcast.

War wasn’t won in a day! A fact that we have learned extensively in Smashterpiece #43: Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade. Much like the wheel of fate, Alex’s wheel of death continues to spin. Not really, more just people are dying. Everywhere, really. Even you, even me, even Eliwood, even the character from Binding Blade that you absolutely know because you’ve played Binding Blade, right? We’ve all played Binding Blade, the game that didn’t release outside of Japan? Yeah, we all played it. Definitely. Anyways, life is finite.

The next episode will be our final episode on The Blazing Blade.

You can find previous episodes at Anonymous Dinosaur's website!

Our list of games can be found here!

You can watch Matt and Joe stream these games on the NWR Twitch channel!

[The facts so far.]

25

TalkBack / Smash World Tour Tournaments Cancelled One Week Before Championships; Nintendo's Involvement Disputed

« on: November 30, 2022, 11:29:15 AM »

The facts so far.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/62277/smash-world-tour-tournaments-cancelled-one-week-before-championships-nintendos-involvement-disputed

Smash World Tour, an unofficial Super Smash Bros. circuit run by the eSports team VGBootCamp, announced yesterday that they would be ceasing operations. The tournament series was nearing the end of its 2022 season with championships set to take place during the weekend of December 9th, and the planned 2023 season has also been cancelled. In an open letter shared on Twitter, SWT said that they had been contacted by Nintendo the night before Thanksgiving and told that they would no longer be allowed to run their tournament circuit.

According to the open letter, SWT's organizers were shocked to hear this since they had been in talks with Nintendo over the previous year to acquire a license to operate as an official Nintendo-sponsored event. After the announcement of PandaGlobal's officially-sponsored Panda Cup, Nintendo assured SWT's leadership that their tournaments were not at risk of being shut down and "had represented Nintendo's values well." A key takeaway of the meeting was that Nintendo's primary concern in shutting down tournaments was whether the event made use of unauthorized game modifications, which controversially led to them issuing a cease & desist order to The Big House Online in 2020 due to the use of an online netplay mod for Super Smash Bros. Melee.

Nintendo explained that their partnership with PandaGlobal was not exclusive and allowed SWT to apply for a license, with SWT saying they submitted their application in January of 2022. SWT alleges that after this, PandaGlobal's CEO Alan Bunney began advising tournament organizers not to partner with SWT, claiming that the tournament circuit was going to be shut down. SWT explains that Nintendo dismissed Bunney's claims when asked about them and promised to talk to him about his comments, which continued as both circuits got underway.

Smash World Tour 2021's Grand Finals, screenshot from VGBootcamp.

SWT explains that this back-and-forth continued through 2022 with their license application being delayed several times and tension between the SWT circuit and the Panda Cup continuing behind the scenes. This culminated in a meeting last week where a representative from Nintendo informed SWT that the tournament would not be granted an official license, and that Nintendo would no longer be allowing them to continue operating without one. According to the open letter, Nintendo also denied a request for SWT to be allowed to run their 2023 season with the intention of obtaining a license for a potential 2024 season, with Nintendo's representative telling them that "those times were now over." SWT said in their original letter that they had received Nintendo's notice both verbally and in writing.

After the story broke last night, Kotaku received a statement from Nintendo confirming that SWT's license had not been granted, however Nintendo claimed that they did not request that the 2022 championships be cancelled. SWT quickly followed up by sharing the written statement they received from Nintendo, which said the following:

“It is Nintendo’s expectation that an approved license be secured in order to operate any commercial activity featuring Nintendo IP. It is also expected to secure such a license well in advance of any public announcement. After further review, we’ve found that the Smash World Tour has not met these expectations around health & safety guidelines and has not adhered to our internal partner guidelines. Nintendo will not be able to grant a license for the Smash World Tour Championship 2022 or any Smash World Tour activity in 2023.”

While Nintendo's statement does not directly order SWT to cease and desist, it does clarify that they require a license for any commercial activity featuring their IP. The statement additionally clarifies that they will not be granting that license to SWT for either the 2022 championships or any activities in 2023. This contradicts Nintendo's statement to Kotaku unless Nintendo is trying to capitalize on the technicality that they didn't say SWT had to stop, they just described a situation identical to SWT as one that they do not approve of.

Panda Global CEO, Alan Bunney

There has also been some discussion regarding Nintendo's statement that SWT's health and safety guidelines are not up to Nintendo's standards, since SWT has stricter requirements for the COVID-19 vaccine than the officially-licensed Panda Cup. SWT requires all attendees provide proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test, while the Panda Cup merely recommends attendees follow CDC guidelines that recommend a vaccine. However, the Panda Cup has stricter rules requiring the use of masks indoors, which SWT only recommends attendees do.

At time of publication, SWT's response to Nintendo's statement to Kotaku is the most recent official comment on the matter, so it's likely that there are still developments to come before we know what really happened. However, something that is less disputed is the role PandaGlobal's CEO had in attempting to undermine SWT. A number of representatives from prominent eSports organizations such as Beyond the Summit's David Gorman and Golden Guardians' Tracy Parkes have corroborated SWT's version of events, with Gorman describing Bunney's behavior as "basically running a protection racket." Additional allegations against PandaGlobal have also surfaced, with pro player Niko claiming not to have received his tournament winnings for placing 7th in a Panda-run tournament last month, and Spanish commentator Toon Laguna alleging he has not been paid for translation work for the Panda Cup dating back to July.

After SWT's letter was posted, several players sponsored by Panda Global spoke up against Panda, with Justin "Plup" McGrath saying he believed the Panda Cup should be cancelled. Cody "iBDW" Schwab said that he felt blindsided and betrayed, while Eric "ESAM" Lew simply stated "This is f**ked." Terrence "TKbreezy" Kershaw spoke at length about the news on his Twitch channel where he began jokingly updating his resume to apply for a new job.

At time of publication there has been no official statement from Panda Global or Alan Bunney regarding SWT's letter.