Sunderfolk is a game that snuck up on me and quite frankly feels like Nintendo’s ideas of Game Boy Advance-to-GameCube connectivity executed in the modern world. The dream of players having individual screens while they all play a video game together is realized better than I’ve ever seen it before. Coming from publisher Dreamhaven (founded by Blizzard co-founder and former CEO Mike Morhaime) and developer Secret Door, this is essentially a video game that mixes tabletop RPG concepts with the gameplay setup of Jackbox Games. The game plays out on the TV (or Switch screen) while players control their characters via an official Sunderfolk app on their phone (or tablet).
The world of Sunderfolk is populated by a slew of fantasy critters, set in and around the town of Arden. The brightstone is under threat by the shadowstone and it’s up to you - and one to three friends - to play as one of six characters to save the day. The story so far is good enough set dressing but it hasn’t been all that compelling. I largely enjoy the charm of the audiobook-esque narration that feels like a DM just trying their best, but sometimes it’s too easy to drone out. What has hooked me about Sunderfolk is the way it takes a relatively complex style of game and makes it approachable and explainable while also housing a wealth of depth.
The six characters are all tied to specific classes. You have the mage-like Arcanist, the tank Berserker, the supporting Bard, the chaotic Pyromancer, the arrow-wielding Ranger, and the sneaky Rogue. It should all be familiar if you’ve played a round or two of Dungeons & Dragons in your day. In lieu of more complex character sheets, each character’s active abilities are tied to three cards. They represent a series of movements and actions across grid-based terrain that can be used to complete different goals on your turn. For example, the Berserker has a relatively straightforward card that lets you move a set amount of spaces, and then attack an enemy near you. They also have one that lets you move twice, throw a person or item two spaces, and then move twice again. That’s very helpful to toss a character out of harm’s way or throw an enemy off a cliff. As you progress, you level up and gain more access to cards, but you can only ever have three active ones during a mission. Sometimes it feels limiting, because certain cards have more specific uses and functionality, but it helps keep turns from getting too out of hand and complex.
The other wrinkle to actions is the Fate Deck, which is made up of 10 cards (4 neutral, 3 positive, and 3 negative). Whenever you attack, you pull a card from the deck that can add or remove a point of damage or even add a special buff. It adds an element of chance to your actions, but you still have insight into the likelihood of what could happen since once you pull a card, it stays out of the deck until you run through it.
I appreciate how Sunderfolk handles the roleplay elements as well. At different points, one of the players will have the chance to name an enemy or item in the world. Naturally most of the time I’ve played this has resulted in dirty jokes, but you could also treat this seriously and color your fairytale fantasy critter world with your own pizazz. The game also will deliver information specifically to your character depending on where you go on the map. For example, the game might hint to you just on your phone that it looks like a treasure chest is hiding off in a certain area. It’s all well throughout and clever. I’m continually impressed with how Sunderfolk is constructed because it is such a smart and savvy adaptation of tabletop principles into a video game wrapper.
On Switch, it bluntly kind of looks bad. It’s not atrocious or anything, but it’s definitely not a looker. The art style is good enough to withstand mediocre visuals and I believe Dreamhaven made the right call to put this game on Switch despite the fact that the game clearly runs worse on Switch. The portable nature is a good fit for the game. Ultimately a lot of your enjoyment will be dependent on if you have a group to consistently play this with. That’s a key reason why this is a review-in-progress and not a fully scored one. I’ve had the game for a week and while I’ve sunk time into it, the true test will be on the longevity of Sunderfolk with a group. You do need multiple people to join in to start a campaign, but after that, you have flexibility. The whole party doesn’t need to be present every single time you play. Characters can stay behind on missions and will level up alongside everyone else (but miss out on found gold and loot). The host player can also control two characters at once (relatively easily toggled at the tap of a button on your phone), so in theory you can play this solo even if it’s not the ideal method of play.
Still, Sunderfolk is best enjoyed with friends, whether it’s online or on the couch. I’m looking forward to furthering my adventures with this game on Switch. It’s an incredibly neat idea and concept that feels right at home on a Nintendo platform. When I can navigate adult life to get a regular group together to play through this, I’ll hopefully be back with a scored review.
All things considered, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom getting $10 upgrades for Switch 2 beats the alternative I low-key expected: near-full price remasters. Sure, newcomers dropping into these years-old games will have to drop a combined $150 to get them both on Switch 2. Maybe that’s not great, but at least we know that there are hundreds of hours nestled into both of these games. And the Switch 2 versions have a whole lot of neat new bells and whistles.
Visually, Nintendo’s promising smoother visuals, enhanced resolution, better framerate, and more detail. HDR was bandied about. Load times will be quicker. The side-by-side comparisons shown aren’t seemingly game-changing but it’s all very nice. The Korok Forest, which has always been a framerate debacle in these games, in particular looks much improved. Now I can enjoy the nice music around the Deku Tree without noticing how much the engine craters. Playing Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom often seemed like the game was at the upper limits of the Switch. I’m not fully sure if this will entice me to start up a new playthrough or something, but this all seems like the optimal way to play these games now. The Switch 2 versions also add a second save file, so you can transfer your save over to Switch 2 from Switch and even kick off a new adventure on the new platform.
Beyond the visuals, the biggest hook to these updates seems to be Zelda Notes. This is a part of the Nintendo Switch app (formerly the Nintendo Switch Online app by the time this comes out). That aspect of it is a bit of a bummer. Needing a smart device to make use of this is not the smoothest way, but at least Zelda Notes seems to be designed with that quirk in mind.
You can select Shrines, Koroks, enemies, and more for the app to navigate you towards. You can glance at the map on the phone, which updates your position in the game. You can also use Voice Guidance, which lets your phone shout at you what direction you need to go in, whether it’s going north or south or even up or down. This seems like a new version of Nintendo’s Super Guide, which was a concept Nintendo toyed with back in the Wii era. Those were boosts or guides built into the game that would do things like make Mario invincible if you died a lot or in the case of Zelda games like Skyward Sword or Ocarina of Time 3D, give you hints as to where to go next. Navigation and Voice Guidance is not identical to those implementations, but it feels like it’s in the same realm. I love when games have built-in guides to them, even if in this case it still requires your phone.
Voice Memories potentially add a lot of lore to both games. You can use the Navigation and Voice Guidance to find dozens of Voice Memories throughout both games. In Breath of the Wild, you can hear new voice-acted stories from Zelda. In Tears of the Kingdom, Rauru and Kohga also join in on the fun. The clip shared has Kohga pondering if the Depths are the afterlife. Looking forward to hearing more from Kohga and also whatever character-building nuggets arise from these.
Other boosts and boons are present in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom on Switch 2, all via Zelda Notes on the Nintendo Switch app. Once again, none of this is game-changing, but it’s all nice. Completion percentage is available at a glance. You can share items and autobuild schemes using QR codes. Achievements and stat tracking are also built into this experience. You can even get an amiibo bonus if you scan the same amiibo in five times.
Overall, I don’t know if the Switch 2 updates for Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom will get me to sink hours upon hours into these games again, but I’m definitely going to boot them up and check them out when I get my hands on a Switch 2. It helps that, for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers, the upgrades are included with your subscription. Otherwise, they’re $10 a piece if you already own the games. If you don’t own either game, the Switch 2 upgrade adds $10 to the retail cost, so you’re looking at a $70 Breath of the Wild and an $80 Tears of the Kingdom. A steep price if you want the red box art and game card. It will be interesting to see how the prices for these Nintendo Switch 2 Editions change in the future, but in the case of the two launch day Switch 2 Editions due out on June 5 alongside the system, they’re at least reasonably easy to check out if you’re curious.
Depending on how you look at it, six or 11 years have passed since the last brand new mainline Mario Kart game. Yes, technically Mario Kart Tour is a mainline Mario Kart game. I understand you might not totally agree, but we here at Nintendo World Report contain a few of the dozens of people who really enjoyed Mario Kart Tour on mobile. Tour also illustrates a few ways that the single-player in Mario Kart could be embellished and improved. Sure, it’s built around some familiar mobile gameplay elements, but the thrust of that game was about getting high scores by finishing races, collecting coins, doing drifts, and much more. I personally put a ton of time into Mario Kart Tour and had an absolute blast. I’ve also been stumping for a great single-player mode in Mario Kart for years at this point.
Now that we’re mere weeks away from Mario Kart World, the bold new entry in the franchise that will launch alongside Nintendo’s brand new Switch 2 console, I’m hoping that some of Tour’s DNA will work itself into Mario Kart World. From what we’ve seen so far, I’m encouraged. The expansive overworld that features pathways and connections between each race is incredibly neat. It looks like it has the bases covered with expressive visuals, cool new tracks, and a few new gameplay elements. But what about if I sit down to play this game as a solo player? Will this finally be the Mario Kart game that can bring back some of the clever fun of Mario Kart DS’ Mission mode? Will this be the one that calls to mind the great single-player campaign from Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed?
We’re still in a state of “to be determined,” at least until April 17’s Mario Kart Nintendo Direct or potentially the June 5 launch of Mario Kart World. As of now though, I’m encouraged but still skeptical. The free roam mode looks like it might be the key to single-player content. It’s already a big step forward that you can just mosey around the environment in the open world. That’s already a new solo interaction with Mario Kart that almost instantly makes it a step forward from the last few entries. From what Nintendo has shown, there appears to be some sort of unlockables as well as hidden nooks and crannies throughout the open world. There are even some sort of achievements for doing things like driving certain amounts of distance in the world.
The unlockables appear to be the costumes highlighted in the trailer during the Switch 2 Direct. To what end those costumes do anything is to be determined. They were variant characters in Mario Kart Tour that you could level up. Maybe there will be some sort of leveling up mechanic for costumes in World. It’s also possible that new karts or kart parts could be found and uncovered throughout the world. Maybe there are also missions and bosses nestled there too? I don’t want to get my hopes up too much that Mario Kart World might quell my desire for a more interesting single-player aspect for the series, but I’m very encouraged so far.
We should all know one way or another on just how big of a solo focus Mario Kart World has since it comes out on June 5 alongside the Switch 2. Heck, if Mario Kart 8 is any hint, maybe the game will get a big story-mode campaign in the 2030 release of Mario Kart World Deluxe. What do you think? Will Mario Kart World have a cool single-player mode? Will World trump Mario Kart 8 Deluxe overall? Will World still sell a bajillion copies even if it costs $150? Time will tell. It has a cow though. You can race as a cow. We should all stump for Moo Moo Meadows Cow for Smash.
MLB The Show is entering its fourth year on Switch and while the mere existence of this ambitious and fully featured sports game on Nintendo’s old creaky hybrid system is impressive, it’s getting harder and harder to recommend unless this is truly your only option to play some virtual baseball. The pieces of the game are incredible and in the four years I’ve covered MLB The Show for Nintendo World Report, this is by far the sharpest every game mode has been simultaneously. It’s awesome seeing a developer continually innovate and reinvent modes in such a successful and consistent manner. I just wish everything wasn’t bogged down by being on a console saddled with decade-old technology.
One of the standout new features is the solid revamp of the online-only Diamond Dynasty. If you aren’t familiar with it, this is their persistent mode where you collect virtual cards and make your own team to compete in a variety of single-player and multiplayer modes. The last year or two of Diamond Dynasty got very convoluted as there were different sets and seasons that would reset throughout the year that would more or less invalidate your previous collections. That has been done away with in 2025, though it seems like with that change, it’s a much slower ramp up to putting together better teams. Overall though, it’s a positive shift.
The mode also benefits from a very novel roguelike board game mode called Diamond Quest. You roll a die and move around a grid uncovering spaces and landing on challenges. The concept of this is awesome, as it puts you in a mixture of quick challenges (like strike out two batters in an inning or get an extra base hit) and slightly longer challenges (like a 3-inning game or scoring a certain amount of runs in 12 outs). It’s a highlight of MLB The Show 25, but on Switch, that snappiness isn’t present. Everything is slow to load and I got to a point where even though I enjoyed this mode, it just became a slog. Some of that blame can be placed on the lack of variety in challenges but most of it is on the slow load times. That carries over to most of the Diamond Dynasty mode. It’s a cool mode that just chugs on Switch.
The Road to the Show mode where you create your own player and play through their career had a big revamp last year that for the most part I loved. This year it’s even better, as they seemed to fine-tune some of the cumbersome story elements and added in high school and college starting points. I said last year that this mode wasn’t fully ready for the big leagues on Switch, but this year it’s in a much better shape even if there are still technical shortcomings because of it being on the Switch.
A mode I never dabbled that much with previously but have historically always enjoyed in sports games is the Franchise mode. It’s something that has been relatively similar over the last few years in The Show, but the latest version has had some substantial reworking. It’s way more compelling as just a general manager simulation, with far more in-depth and nuanced free agency, drafts, arbitrations, and tenders. If you’re the sort of person that likes fiddling with budgets and numbers in your sports, this mode might be dangerously engaging. Some of the tutorials could be better, as I had a rough first offseason even as someone who is familiar with and follows the free agent circus in the baseball offseason. Still, once I got the basics down pat, it was incredibly fun building a team as a general manager with the numerous levers I could pull to try to improve it.
I’ve loved the Storylines museum modes that started showing up in MLB The Show in 2023, but this year seems like it’s starting to hit some diminishing returns. Still, seeing the history of Negro League legends like Cool Papa Bell and Turkey Stearnes rules. Additionally, Sony has announced they will be adding more Storylines in future free updates. As of now it doesn’t seem like there will be something like the novel Derek Jeter Storyline from last year, which is a disappointment. Regardless, the Negro Leagues content here is incredible, even if it’s dipping into reused content from past games.
If you want to play a licensed baseball game and you only have access to Nintendo Switch, MLB The Show 25 will do the trick. This version is an adequate representation of the pristine gameplay design and mode variety the series has been consistently delivering for years, but every aspect of it feels compromised on Switch. Here’s hoping Switch 2 is a better destination for MLB The Show 26.
Before Inkle Studios released Overboard in 2021, I was never fully consumed by one of their games, even if 80 Days and Heaven’s Vault are extremely neat. The whodunnit time-loop narrative hook of Overboard blew me away when I reviewed it (and so did their 2023 game Highland Song). I jumped out a stained glass window for joy when Inkle announced Expelled! An Overboard! Game (that is how the logo presents the game’s name. I will henceforth just called it “Expelled” from now on). As evidenced by the name, Expelled is similar in concept: it’s a time-loop game where you explore a multi-room environment over many short playthroughs to gather information and clear your name of wrongdoing. The big difference between the two games is Overboard was all about getting away with murder on a boat while Expelled is all about avoiding getting expelled for a crime you didn’t commit.
You control Verity Amersham, a poor scholarship student at a boarding school in 1920s England. She wakes up one day to find the most popular girl in school in a rose bush after falling out of a stained glass window. She’s immediately assigned the blame and promptly expelled. Verity has to explain this all to her father, which leads to her recounting the events in more detail, revealing that maybe just maybe Verity isn’t a reliable narrator. That’s the core aspect that separates Expelled from Overboard is that you get pushed into a position early on where Verity low-key obscures the truth from you. She’s easy to root for, largely because her classmates are trashbag humans, but she’s incredibly abrasive at times. It’s a testament to the writing that this character, voiced by Baldur’s Gate 3 narrator Amelia Tyler, sticks the landing of being an intriguing quasi-anti-hero. Some of the challenges in the game are just getting Verity to admit things to herself, which thematically works very well.
The events of the game take place over one school day, where every choice you make takes up time. You can slavishly follow your schedule and attend classes or go try to sneak around and clear your name. Expelled’s scholastic setting is more focused than the boat of Overboard, largely due to the structure of the school day. It expertly teases you along, encouraging you to make different choices, focus on different supporting characters, and uncover huge secrets that can help clear your name. It also provides multiple goals to strive for, whether it’s answering the list of questions that the game populates as you play or the multiple endings you can wind up in at the end of the day.
Expelled plays some of the same narrative tricks as Overboard, but it comes off more like a song in a different genre from a band than it does repetitive or trite. The music in the game furthers that as the soundtrack is peppered with jazz music from the likes of Louis Armstrong and George Gershwin. Inkle knows how to nail a vibe and the vibes of this game are off the charts.
Depending on how you play the story, you’ll solve Verity’s dilemma in a few hours. I had moments where I thought I had everything figured out and just needed to trigger the right dialogue options, but even still I wound up getting surprised more often than not. Expelled is a tightly wound narrative puzzle game that makes me excited that it’s labeled “An Overboard Game” because hopefully that means Inkle makes a game like this every few years to wrinkle my time-loop-loving brain and completely delight me.
A handful of songs both brand new and returning have been announced for the upcoming release Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4. Activision revealed a partial list of the full soundtrack, mentioning that both more returning and new songs are yet to be announced. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 returned almost every song from the original two games while adding a good spread of new, stylistically appropriate songs as well.
"Ace of Spades" by Motorhead, "96 Quite Bitter Beings" by CKY, and more are confirmed to be returning from the two early 2000s releases the remade release is based on. Joining the soundtrack are songs from the likes of Turnstile, Jeff Rosenstock, Urethane, End It, and Schoolboy Q (with recent Super Bowl halftime show star Kendrick Lamar). The full list is below:
"Ace of Spades" by Motorhead
"Them bones" by Alice in Chains
"Ultimate" by Denzel Curry
"Damaged Goods" by Gang of Four
"96 Quite Bitter Beings" by CKY
"Yankee and the Brave" by Run the Jewels
"King of the Beach" by Wavves
"Real Thing" by Turnstile
"Not the Same" by Bodyjar
"New Wage Salary" by End It
"Head" by Jeff Rosenstock
"Collard Greens" by Schoolboy Q ft. Kendrick Lamar
"Outta Here" by KRS-One
"Result" by T.C.M.F.
"Dog Years" by Urethane
"Charlotte" by Kittie
"Mass Appeal" by Gang Starr
"Faster Than the World" by H20
"Roadkill" by Starcrawler
"Amoeba" by Adolescents
The author pledges to attempt a backflip if a Catbite song is added.
As we enter Nintendo's next console generation with the Switch 2 later this year, we've been doing some reflection here at Nintendo World Report. The Nintendo Switch, launching back in March 2017, will go down as one of the most successful video game consoles of all time and over the course of the 8+ years it spent as Nintendo's primary platform, it had a dizzying amount of games released on it. Over the course of 2025 (at least that's the goal), we're going to look back at Nintendo's game output on Nintendo Switch, with multiple staffers and contributors writing up their present-day thoughts on Nintendo's games.
We'll start at the beginning, with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
In a few short months, I will have been involved with Nintendo World Report for 17 years. Outside of that causing me to have some degree of existential dread due to the passage of time, it also means that the lead up to the Switch successor isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve been embedded in this world for the likes of Project Cafe (the Wii U) and the NX (Switch), and while the success for each platform is wildly different, recurring patterns emerge. As we sit here in January 2025, mere days or weeks away from a reveal of just what exactly the “Switch successor” is, here are a few things to keep in mind while you await your next Nintendo console.
The Truth Is Less Exciting Than The Rumors
Whether the Switch 2 comes out in April or 2026, the reality that’s shaping up is that this will not be a gigantic leap forward, at least in the way some of the talks out there have shaped up. It would be a huge change for Nintendo to have a bleeding-edge system because after all, this is a company that released a console in 2017 based on years-old technology. That console wound up becoming one of the best-selling ones of all time.
Without diving into specific rumors, the word out in the ether is that the form factor and overall style will be relatively similar. It’ll be a step forward, but it’s not going to triumphantly surpass the Steam Deck. Also it’s likely not going to be an OLED screen. Yes, I’m bummed about that too.
Expect A Surprise or Two
Going into the full rollout of the Wii U in 2012, the “surprises” weren’t the most thrilling things but there were still games we did not fully know about going into its full reveal. E3 2012 brought about Nintendo Land and PlatinumGames’ The Wonderful 101. The September 2012 event that confirmed the November release date revealed that Bayonetta 2 was coming. These were all things that weren’t telegraphed beforehand.
Going into January 2017’s Switch release date event, we did know a new Mario was coming due to the October Switch name reveal trailer and at the time, there was already chatter about a new 3D Mario coming out. Comically, we have the same chatter now, especially since it’s been four years since that team last worked on something substantial in the form of Bowser’s Fury. But in the days leading up to January 2017, no one knew about 1-2 Switch or Arms. Those were legitimate surprises.
It’s logical that Nintendo will trot out Mario, whether it’s a new game from the EPD Tokyo team responsible for Odyssey and Bowser’s Fury or a brand new Mario Kart. It’s also logical that some internal team at Nintendo is going to reveal some wild new concept for a game that heavily leverages whatever gimmick is yet to be revealed for the Switch 2. I will sit here hoping for Ring Fit Adventure 2 in year one.
Count Your Lucky Remasters
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, a port of a game released three years before the Switch came out, was one of the Switch’s best-selling games. I do not know what game Nintendo will try to put in that spot for Switch 2, but bet your bottom dollar that Nintendo will have a remaster or three in the first 12 months of the new console.
The darkest one would be Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Deluxe, especially because that game would probably still be guaranteed to sell 30 million copies, but looking at the very few Wii U games left untouched and the first few years of the Switch, I see a couple of likely options.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild HD (which would be a hilarious name) seems like a real possibility, especially with some reports of a nicer-looking Breath of the Wild being used to show off the power of the new console. As far as other Switch games from 2017, Fire Emblem Warriors: Definitive Edition and Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Monolith Made It To The Right Console Spec This Time seem like things that could exist. Glancing at 2018, maybe Super Smash Bros. Ultimate gets an ulimate-r release. Depending on what the Switch 2’s gimmick is, Nintendo Land could finally come back from the dead or maybe 2025 can be the year where everyone comes around on Star Fox Zero. If Breath of the Wild doesn’t get the remaster nod, maybe we finally see the long threatened Wind Waker and Twilight Princess ports. There are a lot of possibilities and that’s without even mentioning Kirby, who has a Wii game (Epic Yarn), a Wii U game (Rainbow Curse), and two 3DS games (Triple Deluxe and Planet Robobot) that haven’t come to Switch yet.
Maybe Nintendo even looks a little later for a remaster. Why make a whole new Animal Crossing when you can try to have lightning strike twice with an upgraded port of New Horizons?
The Original Switch Won’t Be Dead Yet
While Nintendo has confirmed backwards compatibility so any new Switch 1 release will in theory be playable on the successor, it’s still to be expected that Nintendo will have a few remaining OG Switch games in the hopper in 2025. As of now, the farthest we have a game with a date is Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition on March 20. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and Pokémon Legends Z-A are also announced for 2025.
Even if the Switch 2 comes out in April or May, I would still expect a handful of Switch 1 releases in that time period or later. It’ll likely be low-ceiling or low-cost projects (which has honestly been the MO of the Switch for the past year), but we could still see some cool stuff. I still place a lot of doubt on Metroid Prime 4: Beyond being a cross-gen game, largely because unlike Zelda, Metroid has never had a wide appeal. For context, the entirety of the Metroid series has roughly sold the same as The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I’m extremely stoked for a new Metroid Prime, but that game doesn’t really have the proven legs to put the cross-gen resources into it. Especially when you have backwards compatibility and have it there as a chaser for the fanbase.
Looking to the past (and I understand it’s not a 1:1 comp), the 3DS had 20 games come out from Nintendo after the Switch came out. That output won’t be the same due to back compat and the different situation Nintendo finds themselves in, but if Nintendo’s going to be releasing a Fire Emblem remake, weird Kirby spinoffs, or a Metroid game, it’s probably coming to the older thing.
Deep Breaths
To tie into the dumb joke in the title of the article, let’s talk about the concept of lamaze. It’s a common technique used for birthing that focuses a lot on using deep breathing and other relaxation concepts to reduce the pain of giving birth. It’s silly to look at a method to make an entire human being coming out of your body less painful and tie it into a new video game console, but here we are. Take deep breaths. Reddit and forum threads will not have all the answers as to when Nintendo will reveal their new system. Nintendo has stated they will discuss it more before March 31, 2025. You can just sit back and wait for the busy morning in the next few weeks where Nintendo says “it’s time” and we all sit back to watch some hot marketing materials. The Switch 2 is coming. It will hopefully be cool. Relax and enjoy the ride. If you missed out on one of the thousand or so games on Switch, now’s the time to catch up, and you can rest easy because Switch 2 will be backwards compatible (as confirmed by Nintendo).
I first played Ys: Oath in Felghana via the PSP version more than a decade ago and it blew my hair back. I wouldn’t call myself an Ys guy, but after Oath in Felghana, I checked in on the series consistently over the years and largely enjoyed my time with all of the games, but I would always speak so fondly of Oath in Felghana. I was ecstatic to hear Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana was coming to Switch in 2025, but playing through it was a reminder that this series has continued to improve and refine in the 20 years since this remake of the third Ys game originally came out in Japan.
This action RPG has snappy combat, as you take control of series protagonist Adol Christin and bounce around the land of Felghana taking down hordes of enemies with sword combos and magic abilities. It’s not a crazy in-depth system, but it feels good and the consistent stream of level ups, weapon improvements, and more boosts do enough to keep it varied. Difficulty spikes still hit, but Ys Memoire adds some difficulty options and even a frenetic “Turbo” mode that helps speed up parts of the game.
This new version also adds in voice acting for Adol, some visual refinements, and different character illustrations and music options. The rock stylings of the game’s original soundtrack still hit well for me, and it’s fun to have some of the old music from the original versions of Ys III available. This is still clearly an upgraded version of an older game, but it doesn’t really feel as old as it actually is.
A lot of that feeling comes from how good the combat feels. The action in Oath in Felghana is just consistently enjoyable, especially when you get to bosses that tax the limits of the combat in a way that is challenging but not unfair. I have fond memories of the story from when I initially played this, but during this playthrough, Adol and his partner Dogi’s quest was a little less compelling. The action drives the fun, which makes this 10-15 hour adventure a pleasant journey that doesn’t really overstay its welcome.
While I’m a little less over the moon about this game in 2025, I’m still very happy that Oath in Felghana is out on a modern console in the west. From the era of its release, it’s one of the best action RPGs of its style and even to this day, it’s still a very enjoyable one. I might recommend some of the later Ys games ahead of this one, especially if you want a more true 3D adventure, but if your goal is to check out the highs of the storied Ys series, Oath in Felghana is a must-play.
The last time a brand new Mario & Luigi game came out, we used a format we dubbed “Review Revisit” to share more thoughts about Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam. We also did it for Paper Mario: Sticker Star. So it felt right to break out the format for the latest Mario RPG Mario & Luigi: Brothership. The response to the game hasn’t been definitive, with a wide variety of opinions and takes ranging from adoration to disappointment. Where did the intrepid NWR staffers who decided to set sail on this Nintendo adventure land? Is this the new direction we all want in Mario RPGs? Or does it fail to hit the highs of the past?
Justin Berube: Mario & Luigi: Brothership, the sixth game in the series, opens up with several patrons of the Mushroom Kingdom being sucked into an alternate dimension known as the world of Concordia. This only sets off the myriad of issues I have with the title as once this happens smart players know that the people of this world will never matter outside of this game and in the end everything will return to normal. This makes it hard to deeply care about the world or story of Concordia, which is a shame because RPGs rely on story elements to encourage the player to move forward.
The combat system in Brothership is as fun as ever, but the battles for the first 40 hours of the experience are way too easy. Once you hit this point there are a couple of good boss battles to be found, one of which incorporates an amazing minigame into the combat. Sadly, this really isn't enough to make up for the investment worth it to get to that point. The balance feels off here as the final boss felt extremely easy, while a boss several hours before had a better overall fight and challenge. Additionally, a few of the Bros. (Special) attacks take way too long to execute bogging down the combat in many cases.
The pacing is one of the biggest issues with Brothership. The beginning of the game felt like torture with excessive pointless talking and tutorials that any experienced player needs less of. I think it took at least five hours before I got my first Bros. (Special) attack. The game also heavily encourages players to return to each area immediately after doing the initial task there in order to collect important items needed to upgrade a new Plug system vital for combat. This, along with other elements that come up later, make the game seem extremely padded for no good reason.
The writing in Brothership is also a bore. Most of it is meaningless and the jokes rarely land. It feels like the game is playing everything so safe or the writers didn't even try in the first place. The side quests usually don't have great rewards either making most of the optional interactions not worth it. There is, however, a bright spot with a side character named Buddy who shows up extremely late in the game. Doing everything related to Buddy and his quests is one of the bright spots of Brothership and it's sad that we will probably never see him or the endearing relationship he forms with one traditional Mario character ever again.
Ultimately Mario & Luigi: Brothership is a game that's hard to get through as it overstays its welcome. Completing everything in the game took me around 60 hours and I'm not lying when I say this game would have been better if that playtime were cut in half if not more. Maybe the magic is gone, or maybe the Mario & Luigi formula has been done to death making it hard to compare Brothership to the bright spots of the franchise. If they are to move forward with more of these, which I don't know if we really need, the entire formula needs a major change. I say ditch Mario & Luigi all together and do Wario & Waluigi, Donkey Kong & Diddy Kong, or Peach & Daisy because sadly what we got with Brothership is a bit stale.
Neal Ronaghan: Mario RPGs are very important to me so when a new Mario & Luigi game was announced, I was hopeful it would hit the highs of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga or Bowser’s Inside Story. Unfortunately, this entry hits somewhere below the two titans of this sub-series. Brothership is easily the most fun I’ve had with a Mario & Luigi game since the DS, but it’s also a game that frustrates me constantly. The animation is incredible, but the new electrical outlet-inspired characters are flavorless and boring. The combat has a nice rhythm to it, especially with some of the stylish Bros Moves, but it takes forever to get going and Luigi’s menu commands use the A button instead of the B button (even though his timed attacks require the B button).
While I acknowledge this is largely a RPG series for children, the over-tutorialization and extremely plodding opening hours wore on me and I honestly only stuck with it because of the sunk-cost fallacy and the fact I said to other folks at NWR we should do this feature. To an extent, I’m glad I did because I enjoy the rhythm of the game after a few hours where you essentially do cute and bite-sized vignette adventures on new islands as an overarching story builds in the background. But going back to this being an RPG series for children, my 6-year-old kid grew weary of this before he reached the point where the game gets better.
Even as it gets better, Mario & Luigi: Brothership overstays its welcome, inching into the 30-40-hour mark (unless you're a completionist like Justin above me). There’s a reason I celebrated how the Super Mario RPG remake streamlined an already comparatively short game. Mario RPGs don’t need to be 40-hour affairs. I feel like for everything Brothership does right, it takes a step back in some other faucet. This is a mostly enjoyable game that is bogged down by chicanery more often than I’d like.
Willem Hilhorst: Mario & Luigi was always my first and favorite Mario RPG series. I got introduced to them via Superstar Saga and kept up with the series ever since. Colorful worlds, charmingly written with a fun and inventive combat system set them apart from the other RPGs I played at the time. So, the death of Alpha Dream in 2018 stung quite a bit. That made it so the revival of the series with a brand new entry was quite surprising, though I had my reservations as the series did have a bit of a bumpy track record since Bowser’s Inside Story.
Enter Mario & Luigi Brothership. Stunning with its gorgeous cel-shaded visual style, expressive character animations, and creative worlds and characters. Sadly, after more than seven hours with the game I cannot bring myself to keep playing the game. Tutorials are always a bit of a challenge and Nintendo in particular can be brutal about these at times. In fact, the original Bowser’s Inside Story was quite guilty of this as well. But what always got me through these walls of texts, was the funny writing and wild story setup that got me engaged into their world. Mario & Luigi: Brothership doesn’t just stumble, it falls straight off of a cliff into the sea.
It dawned on me at about hour five. I simply wasn’t having fun. It took hours to expand the move set of the bros. with not just the hammer, but also a single bros. move, staples of the series that usually took less than two hours at most. Now, pacing in RPG’s is always a challenge. But while the original trilogy of M&L also could be a bumpy ride, I was assured of one thing: having a good time with the dialogue. Mario RPGs always defined themselves with a distinct, often fourth-wall-breaking, tone in its writing. But Brothership is all about style with very little substance. Characters fail to make an impact, relying on one-note jokes and Mario and Luigi themselves just feel passed over, being literally dragged into another world. While I like the creativity in the designs, with everything being a combination of nature and electrical engineering, the writing does very little to engage me into the world and its characters. Few outright jokes show up and most of the writing comes across as belittling towards the player.
I still think the combat system is quite a bit of fun, even though it takes two bosses before it really gets going. I think I instinctively started grinding, not necessarily because the game feels challenging. Combat is pretty simple and as you’re quickly drowning in coins, it becomes pretty easy to upgrade equipment. I think what struck me most is the lack of customization of both Mario and Luigi. In previous games it was fairly easy to make each of them feel distinct with their stats spread. But this time around it only happens when you ‘rank up’, choosing a trait. But these traits take a long time to obtain and include stuff like unlocking a second equipment slot. It just feels like too many instances where the ball was dropped to keep a brand name relevant, but not understanding how all these cogs together made the M&L stand out from the rest.
I don’t feel comfortable scoring Mario & Luigi: Brothership at this time. I can tell you that this might be my personal most disappointing release of 2024. I had high hopes for the return of this series, but in all honesty, I think I may have preferred it to stay buried. Brothership made me question the enjoyment I’ve had with the series in the past and whether it isn’t just rose-tinted nostalgia. Perhaps this brothership has sailed for me.
Sometimes I have a difficult time explaining to people why the more measured pace of traditional Japanese RPGs works for me. Even if I occasionally decry things like random battles and dead-end-filled dungeons, I love the rhythm of a good RPG and they can be some of the meatiest comfort food games out there. Dragon Quest III HD-2D might have become the game I’ll point people to so they can experience that vintage warm, fuzzy feeling. It’s wild to me how this NES RPG made in the 1980s holds up as well as it does more than 35 years later. Even wilder is how this fancypants remake is far more light-touch than I expected. This is more or less the same game from 1988, just with modern bells and whistles. It’s a smart, brilliant remake that carries forth the original masterpiece while not truly feeling dated.
For those who are less familiar with Dragon Quest’s history and legacy, Dragon Quest III is the game that fully rocketed the franchise into Japanese cultural importance. On its release in 1988, it sold more than a million copies on day one and kicked off the urban legend of the Japanese government prohibiting a Dragon Quest game to come out on a weekday (it’s not true). That fever pitch was not unearned, because for its day, Dragon Quest III was incredible. The first two games, each getting their own HD-2D remakes in the future, laid the groundwork, with the first game introducing the world with a battle party of one and a relatively straightforward adventure. Dragon Quest II introduced a full party and more mechanical depth, but was more of a stumble gameplay-wise. Dragon Quest III, on the other hand, knocked it out of the park.
You take control of the 16-year-old son or daughter of Ortega, a legendary hero who fell in battle against the villainous Baramos. After an opening that involves a quiz that helps dictate your character’s stat growth, you set off on a globe-spanning quest to avenge your father’s death and defeat Baramos. You piece together your four-person party with characters and classes of your choosing and go on vignette-like adventures to help disparate groups of people out along the way. The class-based system is at first simple but gets way deeper as you progress. As your various party members reach higher levels, you can change their class where they keep all the learned abilities and skills but their stats go down and they begin again at level one. It’s very fun to fiddle with this to make useful and intriguing party members. You could just keep your magic user a magic user and superpower them into the Sage class, or you could do something like level up a healing Priest class to learn all the best healing spells and then turn them into a melee class you so have a pal who hits like a truck and can also bring your dead carcass back to life. It’s been a very long time since I last played Dragon Quest III and remembering the engaging flexibility of the class system was like a warm hug.
The classic nature of the turn-based battle system continues that comforting familiar feeling. Battling has not been altered much at all. I did find myself using the Tactics settings that can put the game into auto-battle mode far more often, especially in random overworld battles. This is not my favorite turn-based battle system ever, but it’s a reliable and dependable one. It’s cozy, but not in the way a farm sim can be a cozy game. It’s cozy in its familiarity and vibes.
The bits added and embellished in the remake just help to add to the experience. The Monster Arena is one of the more sizable additions, letting you recruit monsters throughout the world to then throw into Pokemon-esque fights. There’s also added story content deepening your hero’s father Ortega more. It’s nothing earth-shattering, but it’s a welcome addition to shine more light on an important character in Dragon Quest lore. Beyond wholesale new content, this remake adds a lot of modern flourishes, like voice acting (in English and Japanese), customizable battle speeds, three difficulty settings, friendly auto-saves, and more. If there’s some modern nicety you hoped would make it into this remake, it probably did.
Dragon Quest III HD-2D helps bring a hugely important game to a wider audience. It’s not much more than a classic RPG, but the quality still shines through decades later. This might not have the archival material of some of the video game museum games that have come out lately, but it feels of a similar disposition as them because this is taking a titanic landmark game and giving it the tender loving care it deserves so it can be enjoyed by even more players in the current age. There might have been better RPGs made in the past 35 years, but most of them likely wouldn’t be as good as they are without Dragon Quest III leading the way.
The recent 2023 movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem was a delightful surprise in my household. I loved it and so did my two young boys. So when Outright Games announced TMNT Mutants Unleashed - a video game based on the movie - I was excited to hopefully ride that wave of turtle excitement into a fun video game. That excitement was fleeting as Mutants Unleashed is all over the place in its execution despite some good ideas and a presentation that follows up nicely on the style of the film.
Mutants Unleashed’s surprisingly deep plot follows up right after the events of Mutant Mayhem, showing the aftermath of the shelled quartet’s triumph and acceptance. More mutants (“Mewbies” as the teenage turtles call them) surface, largely to provide the beat-’em-up gameplay with some cannon fodder. The story introduces new characters, including a bunch of teenage human friends for the turtles to interact with. As per usual with Outright Games’ more children-oriented games, the amount of voice acting is great, especially for younger players. In general, the dialogue does a great job of capturing the vibe of the movie and while the plot veers more into side story than main event, it’s still a compelling tale.
Given TMNT’s beat-’em-up game history, I was looking forward to some fun co-op brawling, but the combos and systems in this game feel undercooked. It leans more character action than vintage brawler, which would have been a better choice if the character action felt tighter. Each of the four shelled warriors have their own abilities and skills, even if the multiplayer tops out with two players. While I was less engaged by the combat, I’ll give credit to the fact that it’s relatively easy to pick up and play, giving it broader appeal to all ages. However, unlike Outright Games’ more toddler-oriented games (Bluey, Paw Patrol, etc.), Mutants Unleashed skews to older ages, so the lack of depth and complexity to the combat is more of a detraction.
I was relatively unaware that Mutants Unleashed also hid some interactive social segments that seem inspired by Persona and recent Fire Emblems. You can take a turtle on different events to spend time with friends, but all of it is so slow and drawn out (and largely doesn’t feature voice acting)n that it grinds the pace of the game to a halt, even more so because the co-op play doesn’t really factor in much here. It draws out the length of the overall game to double-digit hours much to the detriment of the entire package because the content here does not withstand 15-20 hours of play. Adding fuel to that fire is the Switch port, which is adequate in motion but is bogged down by some technical hiccups and extremely long load times. Booting into the game took so long that I initially thought it was broken.
TMNT Mutants Unleashed has some really good ideas that don’t coalesce into a great game. The combat is fine, but nothing to write home about. The social RPG concept is novel, but not well executed. It’s all the more frustrating because the writing for the relatively engaging plot is great. Part of me wished this game had some time to be refined because the framework of something totally radical is here. It just doesn’t make it out of the sewers.
There is no denying that developer Nomada Studio’s debut game - the 2018 release Gris - is a beautiful, moving game. An emotional story about grief and loss, Gris offered a gorgeous and contemplative journey that I enjoyed my time with. Gris was widely acclaimed, won a bunch of awards, and overall was an unqualified success. I did have one knock against the gameplay: that it was maybe a little too focused on the experience and not so much on the act of playing the game. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it personally was what prevented Gris from being one of my favorite games of that year. Nomada Studio’s second game Neva picks up a lot of the magnificent visual aplomb, but adds a crucial engaging element: combat. It’s not a flawless addition to the experience, but it did enough to make Neva more of a game and less of a puzzling walk.
Neva’s story is similar in presentation and style to Gris. While Gris was more focused on the parent and child relationship, Neva focuses more on the human and pet relationship, as you control a woman named Alba who is bound to a wolf cub named Neva after a traumatic incident in the game’s introduction. You wander through side-scrolling environments, completing the occasional puzzle, performing some platforming challenges, and fighting off some dark evil forces. The variety is what stood out most to me, as you would have the occasional segment that focused on just going forth with your beloved dog and taking in the scenery, only to be interrupted by a fight where you and your pup need to fend off enemies.
The combat never gets too complex but easy-to-grasp controls and a good enough variety of enemies keep it fresh throughout. Alba has a simple attack and a dodge roll, with a few flourishes added in as you progress. A few segments feel a little kill room-y, but it also happened at a clip where I’d start to have that thought, and then the segment would end. The only parts I didn’t really enjoy were the chase sequences, which are also the only part of the game where you can die in the Story Mode difficulty. The tension created as you have to move quickly is good, but they felt more punishing compared to everything else throughout the game.
I’ve been a pet owner my entire life and have experienced my fair share of pet-centric media. This is one of the most impressive examples, doing a tremendous job of capturing that connected feeling to an animal through a central element of working your way through the seasons. The game is split into four overarching segments (one for each season) and you see the growth of Neva through each one as well as the growth of your relationship. It’s emotional along the way. I would protect this wolf with my life and well, that is certainly a thing you have to do a lot in this game.
I preferred Neva to Gris, though both games are triumphant and artistic video games that will probably make you cry like a baby. If you’re a lifelong pet owner like myself, Neva has the potential to hit you like a train, but it’s also a universal enough feeling to work for anyone. The combat is a great addition to the video game aspect that definitely filled in a hole for me in the experience. Nomada Studio continues their penchant for making gorgeous games that are packed with emotional resonance. Now that they’ve told game stories about parents and pets, we’ll see how they can make us all cry next.
John arrives with his pick for the Game Club and let's just say it doesn't go over quite as well as Outer Wilds did. Join us as we look back at what should have been an incredible spiritual sequel to Metroid Prime, but was instead a budget title developed in an afternoon.
The video game developer Good-Feel has been around for nearly 20 years and for most of that time, they’ve worked closely with Nintendo on games such as Kirby’s Epic Yarn and Yoshi’s Woolly World. That’s continued to this day with the release of Princess Peach Showtime earlier in 2024. But before Good-Feel was formed, the founders of the company worked at Konami, specifically the Ganbare Goemon series (for more on this, check out our history of Good-Feel). They somewhat revisited those Goemon roots with their self-funded game Bakeru, which first came out in Japan a year ago but is now coming out worldwide courtesy of publisher Spike-Chunsoft. Bakeru is not a Goemon game, even if the main character and overall setting is very evocative of the same Japanese mythology that fueled Goemon’s world. What Bakeru is is an enjoyable if simplistic adventure that might be closest in play style to Kirby and the Forgotten Land. It’s an overly cute game that I wish was a little more ambitious but it’s still a fun and varied ride that shows off how skilled Good-Feel is at making Nintendo-esque games.
Set in what’s dubbed “Fairy Tale Japan,” the whimsical story sets the heroic Bakeru fighting against the evil Oracle Saitaro as he tries to take over Japan with his weird festival. You travel around Japanese prefectures in a linear order, going through more than 50 stages. Most of the stages are set in 3D landscapes where you follow a relatively straightforward path to fight enemies, find collectables, and most importantly, destroy at least three festival lanterns so you can get the vile partiers out of the area.
Most of the gameplay feels like a beat-’em-up, as you make use of Bakeru’s drum to beat the tar out of groups of enemies. This is done by hitting the left and right triggers to chain drum combos and execute a handful of chargeable special attacks. You can also dodge roll and block, but outside of a few specific scenarios, you can find a lot of success by just bouncing around with the triggers. The combat does slowly evolve over time, helped out by the new additions to the Western release of the Hurricane and Spinning Top attacks (though I didn’t play the Japanese release so I can’t totally compare the before/after). Special transformations are also unlocked as you progress, typically from defeating bosses. These either tie into level puzzles or just make you super powerful. It’s all very cute, and I definitely cackled as some of them were unleashed for the first time, but they mostly make an easy game even easier and no matter what, at a certain point though, you’re just mashing buttons through relatively pleasant environments.
Every few levels you go through some type of special stage, whether it’s a race or even a 3D shooter. It’s in those moments that I kept wishing for Bakeru to be more like the old Goemon games, because that’s where I was reminded of the chaotic energy of Mystical Ninja’s novel diversions. Bakeru is not totally a Goemon game like they were in the ‘90s, and that’s fine. I’m just trying to level-set for all of you. That chaotic energy came out to me in full strength in the collectables. You can find three hidden items in each level that are cute and sometimes funny, but the best bit in all of Bakeru is the five collectable bits of trivia found in each level. You essentially need to find five pieces of golden poop that then spit out a random fact at you. It serves no greater purpose, but you can revisit all the trivia in a menu if you wish. Hestu and the Koroks would be proud.
Bakeru is an enjoyable romp that consistently delivers lighthearted action with a lot of charm even if it gets a little repetitive the deeper you get into it. Good-Feel clearly learned a lot from working with Nintendo because this game deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Nintendo’s lighter fare. This isn’t quite the Goemon spiritual successor I felt I was promised, but Bakeru is still a good time (especially for younger players) and I hope that Good-Feel both continues working with Nintendo and continues to work on projects like this.
The SteamWorld series has been kicking around the world of Nintendo for more than a decade, but as we near the end of the Switch’s life, it has faded more into the background, far away from the early days of the Switch when SteamWorld Dig 2 was an early indie highlight. Their latest game, however, is easily developer Thunderful’s best effort since Dig 2, as they revisit the turn-based strategy of SteamWorld Heist with the aptly named SteamWorld Heist 2. This is a bigger and more expansive helping of strategy compared to the original, with a lot more customization and variety. Something can be said about the straightforward focus of the original Heist, but even with a few issues, Heist 2 is a welcome addition to the SteamWorld canon, adding in a fuller, more realized world with lots of juicy strategic fun.
While the original took you from level-to-level on a point-to-point space map, Heist 2 throws you into the water. Early on you take control of a boat that allows you to cruise around bodies of water, seeking new missions, enemy boats, and a decent amount of secrets. The missions are of the same style as the original: 2D side-scrolling maps with a lot of verticality and typically procedurally generated enemy placements. You roll into these situations with a team of robots, making use of their different classes to move around the map and shoot down the enemies. Each character has two action points that can be spent on movement or actions. As someone who has played through the original Heist a few times, diving back into these missions was like riding a new souped-up bike. I immediately dove back into the strategy and started getting used to all the new bells and whistles.
The biggest shift is that you can change your character classes by equipping them with different guns and then work on multiclassing the characters in a way where you mix and match abilities and buffs to uniquely spec out your roster. For example, I took a default Sniper class character and switched them over to an Engineer class that had the ability to take two shots. Using the Sniper class abilities I had unlocked, I was able to make it so those two shots were far more accurate. That’s just the tip of the iceberg though as you can fiddle around with the six(?) different classes and make your ideal version for each character. Heist 2 does run into the issue where every character starts to be able to play similarly, as the only major differences are a small number of character-specific accents, like the ability to use a grenade item as a free action instead of a full one.
The bigger your crew gets, the more complicated everything gets. You can’t save loadouts or anything for characters so you will likely spend a lot of time on the menus to rearrange who has what and what class they are right now. The game also relies on a day cycle, so as you explore the overworld, you can only use each character on a mission once. When the team is all spent, you have to return to a base and spend the night to recharge for another day. It’s a nice idea, but it involves a lot of excess travel around the world map. Sometimes it’s not so bad and fits into the story and gameplay, but other times it slows everything down. I’ve had climatic missions that would play better back-to-back that are right next to each other on the map, but that is instead broken up by needing to go across the map to rest up and recharge the team. It’s a pace-killing decision that forces you to play less of the best parts of the game.
When you are in the water-filled world map, you ride around in a boat that slowly gets upgraded throughout the story so you can access more parts of the map. The boat doesn’t really do much, however, as you primarily get into relatively meaningless skirmishes with enemy boats in real time where you auto-fire weapons and move around to avoid fire in a way that reminded me of a sleepy version of Vampire Survivors.
The change of pace isn’t all bad, but it almost artificially lengthens the whole game, which clocks in around 25-30 hours to get to the end (roughly double the length of the first one). When I’m rolling with my team of bots planning my next set of actions to take down enemies efficiently while taking as little damage as possible, I’m having a great time. Even some of the moments where I’m bogged down by changing loadouts or traipsing through the water is enjoyable. But at times the balance feels off, no matter which of the many interchangeable difficulty settings you can choose from. I take solace with the fact that even amidst this, the character and world design is still clever and neat and the soundtrack from SteamWorld staple Steam Powered Giraffe is radical, matching the quasi-Western theme with good tunes sometimes popping with great vocals.
SteamWorld Heist 2 is in a way the game I’ve been wanting Thunderful to make since they released the first game in 2015. I’m so satisfied by all of the customization and options you have across the 10 different characters, even if I have some quibbles with loadouts and managing class changes. The turn-based tactics of it all are still so delightfully crunchy and awesome, featuring new objectives, unique bosses, and oodles of content. However the constant returns to the bar to rest and the strained simplicity of the water travel hold this back from being such a slam-dunk instant classic as its predecessor. This is a sequel that is bigger and better in a lot of respects, but is also weighed down by superfluous additions.
Nintendo surprisingly announced a brand new 2D Zelda game with The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, due out in September 2024. While a lot of folks definitely hoped for a Zelda game where you play as Zelda, I don’t think it was on many Bingo cards before the June 2024 Nintendo Direct. But here we are: living in a world where Nintendo revealed the latest entry in their legendary Zelda series just three months before its launch. And it looks great! The map looks like it’s a modified version of Link to the Past, but Link never had the power to create beds and moblins out of thin air before. And his inventory didn’t look like it was straight out of Breath of the Wild. And Link never had this kind of puzzle-solving freedom except for, well, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.
Echoes of Wisdom is the latest in the modern evolution of the Zelda series that kicked off more than a decade ago. We don’t know exactly how the game will shake out, but early results seem to suggest that while this is a 2D Zelda game, it might share more in common with the design ethos behind Breath of the Wild. How did we get here? It started back in the waning days of the Wii.
Before we start, let’s get things clear: I’ve been delighted and mystified by the Legend of Zelda games from the moment I first came across the original gold NES cartridge sometime in the early 1990s. I didn’t totally leap into super fan status until the late ‘90s when I was swept off my feet by Ocarina of Time and then proceeded to tackle everything I hadn’t finished that came out beforehand. I appreciate the design of the first NES Zelda. I think Link to the Past rocks. I’m still waiting for the Zelda II remake because that game is very neat but also peppered with a lot of ‘80s jank. I just want to make it clear that I love the old dungeon-heavy gameplay flow that Link to the Past cemented as the franchise gold standard for two decades. Because in addition to loving that familiar pattern, I also love how Eiji Aonuma and the Zelda team at Nintendo realized they were hitting diminishing returns and decided to redefine what Zelda as a series was following the somewhat tepid response to the 2011 Wii release The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. It was around that time that Aonuma and Nintendo started to rethink the conventions of Zelda. And in January 2013, Aonuma revealed his intentions to the world of Nintendo fans.
In 2013, Nintendo was in a bad place as a company, about to kick off the worst stretch in their decades of video games. The Wii U had launched with a thud in November 2012, capping off a speed-run of tanking the goodwill generated from the smashing success of the Wii and Nintendo DS. It’s worth noting the 3DS was doing okay at this point, salvaging a borderline catastrophic launch and eking out a nice niche for itself in video games, though nowhere near the same level as its dual-screened predecessor.
But the Wii U was the device that needed saving and on January 23, 2013, Nintendo presented a Wii U Direct focused primarily on Nintendo’s own games hosted by the then-president Satoru Iwata. It was a hail mary, announcing a number of Nintendo’s major projects that would take the rest of the Wii U’s short life to come out. A new 3D Mario game and a new Mario Kart were both announced with no other details, images, or news. Iwata also mentioned the existence of a new party game from the Wii Party team, a new Yoshi platformer, a Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem crossover, and a new Monolith Soft game. Those last three games would eventually come out between 2015 and 2016 as Yoshi’s Woolly World, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, and Xenoblade Chronicles X.
The biggest reveal, however, was a new Legend of Zelda game that would eventually become The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Eiji Aonuma stood in front of the blank white background and took to outlining the driving theme of development for the next Zelda game roughly a year after the last one shipped. He stated his mission very plainly: “Rethink the conventions of Zelda.” He highlighted those conventions as being things like completing dungeons in a certain order and playing solo. He then quickly diverted the audience’s attention from the fact that they had nothing else to say about their next major Zelda game (we would see a brief clip in June 2014 at E3) and announced Wind Waker HD for release later that year. Part of the reason for Wind Waker HD’s existence was stated plainly by Aonuma. It was going to take a while for Breath of the Wild, so here’s Wind Waker HD in the meantime. In retrospect, that also explains why Twilight Princess HD and Skyward Sword HD were both made. I guess if we want more old Zelda remakes, we need to cheer for new games to take a long time to make.
Looking at what Aonuma said more than 11 years ago, it’s wild how much he’s been a man of his word. Basically every new Zelda game - mainline or spinoff - has been an experiment in breaking conventions, to the point that what we once knew as Zelda isn’t really the same as it was 10 years ago. I’ve long been fascinated by how the Zelda games have evolved over the years and since the late 1990s, Eiji Aonuma has been heavily involved in the series, eventually becoming the series producer. While the first 15 years of 3D Zelda was executing on a consistent structure and style, each one built on the previous one in unique and interesting ways. Look at the battle system that started quite basic in Ocarina of Time and then featured the addition of parrying in Wind Waker, specific moves in Twilight Princess, and then the featured motion control combat in Skyward Sword. You can even look at something like the Command Melody in Wind Waker being streamlined into the Dominion Rod in Twilight Princess.
Looking at 2D Zelda, I’d argue that the series conventions have almost always been rethought. You have the leap from Zelda 1 to 2. The experiments of Link’s Awakening on Game Boy, the Oracle games duology, the multiplayer in Four Swords and Four Swords Adventures, and the touch screen controls in Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks. 2D Zelda has never stayed still, though recently it’s been dormant. And that’s what makes The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom’s upcoming Switch release so exciting and interesting.
But to get to Echoes of Wisdom, Aonuma and the Zelda team had more than a decade of deliberate, announced convention breaking to do. Let’s look at how we got from the relative low point the Zelda series stood at after Skyward Sword was released in 2011 to the world of 2024 where the Zelda franchise is assuredly one of Nintendo’s most exciting and successful, complete with a movie in the works.
When Aonuma spoke about his intentions to shake up Zelda in January 2013, he hid the fact their first statement on the matter was coming out later that year. It wasn’t Wind Waker HD. Instead it was The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. Announced in April 2013, The game was billed as a Link to the Past sequel in Japan and shares roughly the same map and similar overarching structure as the influential Super Nintendo classic. Within that familiar structure, the back half of the game toyed with dungeon completion order.
Through the character Ravio, players can rent or buy weapons and items to let them access and complete dungeons in whatever order they want, primarily in the back half of the game. It was an interesting idea, but it does lead to the latter parts of A Link Between Worlds having a flat difficulty curve because, in theory, you need to account for that dungeon being someone’s first and last experience in that section of the game. But the spirit of Aonuma’s quest kicked off in earnest. The conventions of Zelda - which had been relatively the same since 1991 - were being rethought. However, we saw that happen every now and then in the past. Would A Link Between Worlds be the norm or would it be a one-off in the same vein as Majora’s Mask? The answer is easy, because why else would I be talking about the evolution of Zelda here if they didn’t keep reinventing it.
The multiplayer part would be the next concept that Aonuma and team would tackle across Hyrule Warriors and Tri Force Heroes. While Hyrule Warriors is a spin-off, it did allow players to play as more characters than Link, including Zelda, Impa, and even Ganondorf. Tri Force Heroes was very much in the same vein as Four Swords, but it added online multiplayer. And I guess you could think that making fashion a key part of a Zelda game was a rethinking of a convention as well. Hell, that fashion aspect is honestly a big part of Breath of the Wild too. While Tri Force Heroes wouldn’t go down as an all-time great, it still showed the spirit of continuous innovation to figure out what Zelda should be in the 21st century.
The true marker for if Aonuma’s plan of convention breaking would work was The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. This is the bold new frontier he staked everything on beginning with that mention in January 2013. More than four years after he laid out his plans, Breath of the Wild launched on Wii U and more importantly, the brand new Nintendo Switch console. To say the rethink of what a Zelda game is in Breath of the Wild worked would be an understatement. It was an unqualified smashing success that cemented Zelda as a marquee franchise once again. After years in the wilderness, Zelda was in the same sales realm as Nintendo’s biggest movers. It even had the critical acclaim to back it up, notching numerous Game of the Year awards and going down as one of the best games of the decade.
Tears of the Kingdom would further the ideas of Breath of the Wild, emphasizing player freedom, exploration, and creativity. It’s wild that we went from Link exploring a barren Hyrule Field in Ocarina of Time to Link building a Death Star stapled together with green glue while he flies in the air on a fan-powered bicycle. It’s telling that after Tears of the Kingdom’s launch, Aonuma seems content to leave that style behind. We do not know what the future of 3D Zelda looks like, but the team seems like it’ll keep nimble in the future, making sure they don’t stay stagnant for too long.
In the time between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, one of the bigger franchise releases was a remake of the Game Boy classic Link’s Awakening. The cute toy-like art style drove what was by most accounts a pretty standard remake. But after seeing Echoes of Wisdom carry forth the same art style, what that remake added stands out way more. The new mode Chamber Dungeon features the gravekeeper Dampe guiding Link through a cute little dungeon maker where you move around tiles to solve puzzles and make your own dungeons. It felt like an experiment from the Zelda team to try to see if a Mario Maker but for Zelda could work and while I would never rule anything out at this point, a Zelda Maker might not be in the cards. The idea of iterating off of that idea to get to a character creating items and enemies in the world to solve puzzles does seem within that same ballpark.
Nintendo historically makes gameplay mechanics before locking in the framework, and it seems likely that the Zelda team experimented with items and enemies being cloned in the world for combat and puzzles. The change in gameplay sounds like it fits Zelda herself more than Link, especially since focusing combat on generating echoes would involve Link not having a sword, which seems like a convention Aonuma might not want to break just yet. Ergo, we now have a Zelda game starring Zelda.
We have so far only seen a few scattered minutes of Echoes of Wisdom, but it’s an impressive opening salvo for a game we get to play very soon. Maybe it’s not fully elements of Breath of the Wild mapped to 2D. Maybe it does follow the traditional dungeon structure. Maybe it’s littered with Shrines on the Link to the Past map. Maybe you go to Lorule or the Dark World. Who knows! Aonuma has succeeded on his goal of changing up the series conventions because at this point, it’s way harder to guess what they’ll do next. The future of Hyrule is vast.
If I had to guess though, I think Aonuma knocks on the multiplayer door again. They’ve messed around in spinoffs, but the multiplayer aspect has been more on the fringes than on the main stage. I’m not going to say a multiplayer 3D Zelda is in the works, but there does seem to be room for Aonuma and the team to experiment. I will close this by sharing my dream for a battle royale on the Breath of the Wild map. Make the weapons breakable and add in all sorts of random Nintendo skins. Let’s go.
The NWR Connectivity Game Club returns with the cast each picking a game for the rest of the crew to play. Up first is The Outer Wilds as submitted by Melanie Zawodniak. We do our best to avoid spoilers for the first half of the episode, but we strongly recommend that if you have any interest in playing this game, you do so before listening to this episode.
Darkest Dungeon hit Nintendo Switch more than six years ago and it was an ideal way to play an incredible (but punishing) roguelike, dungeon-crawling, turn-based RPG. Developer Red Hook Studios then did the thing most teams do after a very successful game: they worked on a sequel. But the end result, aptly named Darkest Dungeon II, is not just a by-the-books sequel. The foundation is still familiar. The game still retains the dark Lovecraftian theme filled with depleting sanity and grungy visuals. The turn-based battle system is largely a refined version of what was in the first game. However the overall structure is a sizable swerve. Instead of hanging out in one specific town, attacking dungeons from that headquarters, you’re riding a stagecoach and going from inn to inn. Instead of staying in one place, Darkest Dungeon II becomes a road trip game and in the process offers a different experience from the original that, at least for me, is filled with a lot more variety.
Darkest Dungeon II is more focused on how you react to events as opposed to how you pre-plan for them. The first game relied more on the latter as you could specifically piece together your team and gear to be ready for the task ahead. The sequel is more unpredictable in its journey, requiring the player to think on their feet more often. Inns serve as checkpoints where you cash in the Candles of Hope you collected on your journey to incrementally upgrade your abilities and unlock new character classes. The game is still punishing, but even in failure, you typically make some amount of progress. It can become a war of attrition where you make slow steps to the endgame, but the nature of it is essentially even if you suck, you’re still going to unlock stuff.
Unlike the first game though, the game does not reach a plateau where everything is more or less across-the-board easier. The roguelike runs have a higher degree of variety, extending playthroughs beyond the natural end. They’re also perfectly engineered for handheld play on the Switch as it’s easy to hop in and do a run. It helps that the performance on Switch is stable and good, making the new stylish 3D models pop out (especially on an OLED screen). Runs themselves are more concentrated with much more individual choice. Going between inns features tons of branching paths, leading to dialogue choices that can impact the party affinity or a series of battles that will test your party’s composition. Every stop along the way adds to the story of your journey, giving you a ton of agency but also staying somewhat unpredictable.
That being said, the stagecoach travel segments are some of the weakest elements of the game. You can direct the coach left and right on the screen as it hurdles forward, but it slowly becomes more of a chore of happenstance than something that builds like the other aspects of the adventure. Even when the stagecoach is fully powered up, you can still go completely off the rails. Unlike the battles and dialogue choices, it feels more like bad luck than bad play.
That’s not to say the RNG gods won’t totally screw you over in battle, because that still happens often. I’ve had many quests get turned sideways by stumbling upon a den of enemies that wrecked me. Still, I can crawl at the wall to try to get out of it alive. When a wheel breaks off on the stagecoach, I just need to hope the dice rolls in my favor (even if there are some ways to compensate for it). The changes to the battle system seem to be made to not let you cheese it quite as much. You can’t have multiples of the same class and the overall party affinity matters a lot more. You need to make the right decisions along the way so that way your party works together better behind the scenes. Party composition matters so much, but what I’ve noticed as well is that you can make almost any quartet work in the field. Some are harder than others, but the tools are there to leverage character abilities in harmony to survive and thrive.
I did not closely follow the pre-release period of Darkest Dungeon II, but my expectations were just that it would be an enjoyable but derivative sequel. I’m thoroughly impressed that the reality of Darkest Dungeon II is much more ambitious than that. This is a game that does not supplant the original, but instead stands next to it, offering up an experience that is familiar but very different. I wish more sequels of this type took the relatively big swings that Darkest Dungeon II has made. The meticulous pre-planning prevalent in the first Darkest Dungeon is incredible, but so is greater focus on in-the-moment reactions in the sequel. Darkest Dungeon II is an impressive, well-crafted game that will absolutely pound you into the ground with death and detritus, but also will reward your strategy and perseverance.
Nintendo fans from the DS and 3DS era likely remember Level-5. The Japanese developer has been around since 1998, but they cemented their place on my radar the moment Professor Layton and the Curious Village came out on Nintendo DS in 2007. They followed that game up with countless sequels and also introduced the world to a variety of other games, including Yokai Watch, Fantasy Life, and Inazuma Eleven. They were quiet for a long time though, with most games barely even making it out in Japan. However, their first major release in the west in a long time can catch you up on a lot of their work over the past few years. Three years after its Japanese release, Megaton Musashi W: Wired hit Nintendo Switch earlier in 2024. It’s an extremely novel game that looks beautiful and is packed with content, though it leans a lot further into the story than I expected.
It takes a while before you can truly sink into some mech combat in Megaton Musashi W: Wired. First, you need to be introduced to its Matrix-esque premise. Playing as the volatile teen Yamato, you go about your seemingly idyllic normal life until the veil is torn down and the memories of the alien Draktors destroying humanity resurface. After being informed of the meager surviving government’s attempt to fight back the Draktors while letting the rest of humanity live in a simulation, Yamato hops behind the wheel of a Rogue, a giant mech that is used to fight back against the Draktors. The animation in cut scenes is fantastic and even moving around the world is pleasant thanks to the sharp art style that pops on the Switch, especially in handheld. The story is relatively long, but stays interesting throughout with plenty of twists and turns. Soon enough, maybe you’ll start feeling some sympathy for the aliens.
As I said, I was surprised by how much the story was the main draw here. I expected a lot more focus on fighting stuff with a giant mech. That is a key part of the game, but it’s also one of the weaker parts. First off, after how sharp the visuals are outside of battle, the graphics when you’re fighting look worse. Beyond that, the combat is generally just hack and slash. That’s not a death knell, but it makes that aspect of the game get stale over time. The difficulty does eventually ramp up, but it takes quite a while for it to be more engaging. You can fiddle with customizing your mech as well with an overwhelming amount of options. A lot of it feels superfluous, though. It’s hard to feel the minute differences between weapons when a lot of the combat is just working your way through hordes of foes. That all being said, it’s still fun to move around and fight robots in the same way it’s enjoyable to romp through an arcade beat-’em-up.
I walked away from Megaton Musashi W: Wired feeling very optimistic for the forthcoming onslaught of Level-5 games due out in the near future, but it was also a reminder of their strengths and weaknesses. The presentation is incredible, complete with a compelling story and charming characters. The action-oriented parts lag behind, though. The mech battling is totally fine hack-and-slash fun, but it rarely exceeds that. If you’re looking for a fun mechs-vs.aliens narrative to enjoy on your Switch, Megaton Musashi W: Wired absolutely rocks. But if you’re here solely for robot combat, you’re best looking elsewhere.
Monster Hunter Stories was a novel spinoff to Capcom’s Monster Hunter series when it hit Nintendo 3DS in 2016 (2017 outside of Japan), though it came out near the end of the console’s lifespan. Ironically, the first Stories is being ported to Nintendo Switch near the end of that console’s life, but it’s in a vastly different place for Monster Hunter and Nintendo in the west. Monster Hunter World’s 2018 release helped to make the franchise more prominent than ever, spawning more support on Switch in the form of Monster Hunter Rise and Monster Hunter Stories 2. Now anyone curious about the Stories sub-series 3DS origins can check it out in this fine port.
Broadly, this is Pokemon by way of Monster Hunter. It’s not quite 1:1 with Pokemon’s setup, but the basics are that it’s a monster-collecting RPG where you find and raise your own crew of Monsties to uncover the mystery behind the blight that is poisoning the world. The story is told well, often feeling like a Saturday morning cartoon in a good way. How it filters the Pokemon hook through the Monster Hunter lens in how it’s structured. Much like how you accept quests in mainline Monster Hunter games, you’re doing a lot of that here. Some of them devolve into fetch quests, but they’re always good reasons to venture out into the world and explore more of the various areas.
The monster variety isn’t quite as vibrant as Pokemon, as the Monstie count here is only in the mid-double-digits, but it’s soundly good enough. What was the laggard part of the game back in 2017 still remains that same part here: the battle system. It’s serviceable but it’s heavily built on a rock/paper/scissors mechanic that bounces between random and stale. More complexities are added over time, especially as your Monstie lineup deepens and your weapon selection increases, but the same basic strategies rule the day. Counter the enemy character’s primary attack type and go nuts. I appreciate you can speed up the battles so some of the potential monotony is lessened, but this is the crucial part of the game that drags it down, especially since some of the technical triumphs of the 3DS game are rendered moot by the port. Though for as much as I - someone who has played these types of games for multiple decades - am let down by the battle system, I do think it’s a nice level of depth for kids. The lower entry level of the battle system helps to make it a good entry level RPG in a way that I don’t think most modern Pokemon games do a great job of.
I don’t mean this negatively as much as I mean it matter-of-factly: this Switch version of a 3DS game indeed does look like it was a 3DS game. This was a good-looking 3DS game for its time and while the overall art design is still strong, it still very much looks like it used to be a handheld game. It’s felt most prominently in the open world areas that are very sparse. As long as you know what you’re getting into, the visuals aren’t a big detractor, especially because otherwise the game runs fine aside from some load times here and there. It also helps that this isn’t being launched at full price.
The game itself is more or less unchanged from the original 3DS release (more than likely this is an adaptation of the 2018 iOS/Android port). The biggest addition is fully voiced English and Japanese dialogue, so you can switch to your preference. A Museum Mode with concept art and music is also brand new. This does come with all of the post-launch content added to the original release in Japan, including a wealth of new monsters and even postgame challenges. If you still have Monster Hunter amiibo, you can also break them out here as well to unlock what you could in the original. The online multiplayer battles are also available here, though go back up to my thoughts about the battle system and you can see that my interest in them is not high. I’m happy they exist though and my experiences with them were that it ran fine.
As someone who enjoyed Monster Hunter Stories when it came out on 3DS seven years ago, I’m happy it has a new home on Switch, even if it’s not a full remake. It’s well worth diving into if you missed it the first time around, especially since the relative simplicity makes it a decent entrypoint for a younger audience into this world and genre (especially since it has so much voice acting). If you are looking for something more complex, you can always try Monster Hunter Stories 2 or just go on hunts in one of the many other available Monster Hunters.
While John and Neal take a break from weekly Connectivity episodes, we've decided to pivot to a new format inspired by our popular Game Club episodes. Starting in July we'll be posting monthly (hopefully) episodes of a brand new Game Club. But this time, rather than basing games around a specific franchise, each member of the cast will choose a game to make everyone else play through.
We'll be recording our first episode based on Melanie's pick, Outer Wilds in mid July. Pick up the game on your platform of Choice and play along with us!
The last decade of SaGa ports and remakes have been illuminating in the west, shining a bright light on a series that has never been at the top of the list of Square Enix’s famed franchises. The last brand new entry in the SaGa series predates the Switch (the Japan-only 2016 Vita release SaGa Scarlet Grace) and now, eight years later, comes SaGa Emerald Beyond - the first brand new SaGa game on Switch after more than a half dozen other re-releases on the system. Unfortunately, the wait might not have been worth it because Emerald Beyond is an uneven, oft boring game buoyed by a solid combat system.
Much like any entry in the series this century, Emerald Beyond features a nonlinear structure where player choice guides you in different directions for each story. You pick between five different characters, ranging from aspiring witch Ameya Aisling to the singing robot Diva No. 5, and then choose between a few different options to explore different worlds leading to an open-ended narrative conclusion that then encourages you to play with a different character or replay one of the characters you have already completed. In my experience, each playthrough took around five hours (give or take), but the deeper I got into each replay, the more bored I became. The playthroughs do build up an overarching story and are filled with enough different areas to visit and things to do that aren’t just identical runs, but the overlap in gameplay and presentation start to blur all the worlds together, turning it into a veritable soup of an RPG quest.
The character variety is wacky, as in addition to the aforementioned teen witch and singing robot, you also have a vampire king, a magical puppeteer, and a pair of rookie cops. To be able to go from vampire battles to cops investigating a murder should be thrilling, but in execution, it’s just bland. A lot of this comes from the flat presentation, both in how the 3D characters are presented in the 2D overworld but also in the dialogue itself. Everything is overwrought and overlong, a far cry from the strong localization in SaGa Scarlet Grace that was one of my favorite aspects of the game. Sadly, the dialogue in Emerald Beyond unfolds with an almost eerily logical precision, lacking the natural hesitations of human conversation. Also would it kill someone to explain to the Western audience what a kugutsu is (for the record they’re easily summed up as demon puppets, which is maybe what they could have been called in game or even just described as in game).
While Emerald Beyond boasts 17 different worlds to explore and plot threads that connect together in the background, the moment-to-moment gameplay in each world is very similar. You enter a new area, press a button to automatically scan for points of interest, pick between one of a few points of interest, sit through slow, long dialogue, and occasionally fight a battle. Rinse and repeat. One time I collected logs found by wandering the overworld. Another time I looked for cats. All of it is just point-to-point wandering around flat areas. Also, every now and then you have to solve a simple tangram puzzle. That’s basically the game.
Some of that setup is similar to how Scarlet Grace operated, but it’s streamlined to the point of obsolescence. Scarlet Grace had towns and blacksmiths to break up the flow. In Emerald Beyond, you just upgrade your weapons through the main menu. This simplifies the process but also makes it so the game is narrow-minded. A lot of my complaints about past SaGa games are that they can be too inscrutable for their own good, but after playing Emerald Beyond, I’m coming to the realization that these games are based on layers of inscrutability. Making it easier to understand alters the alchemy that makes these games fun and interesting.
All that being said, the combat’s enjoyable. The turn-based battles are built off of the bones of Scarlet Grace’s very good combat system with a lot of smart tweaks that make it a little more friendly, but still adequately inscrutable as like past games, there are no experience points and depending on your character’s race, you earn new abilities semi-randomly. As far as the new tweaks, characters can equip two different weapon types now, combos are easier to pull off, and different character types make for a lot more party-building variety. The combat quite frankly saved this game for me.
It’s a shame that SaGa Emerald Beyond doesn’t stick the landing outside of the enjoyable turn-based combat because it’s still a fascinating and distinct series. I wish I was more engaged in the story, because the potential of bouncing between 17 worlds and criss-crossing replayed stories sounds cool. It just doesn’t coalesce into something all that fun. Maybe the SaGa series is something best left to ports and remakes.
Having stumbled upon the Raw Thrills-developed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game a few times, I was looking forward to the home release of the game in the form of TMNT: Wrath of the Mutants. The original 2017 release is a decently enjoyable modern arcade game that does not rival the Konami classics but is a fine pastiche. On Nintendo Switch, removed from the colorful arcade cabinet you potentially found in a bowling alley or bar, that enjoyment starts to fade away.
The best part of Wrath of the Mutants is the source material, pulling from the extremely good 2012 TMNT cartoon, featuring the great voice cast of Rob Paulsen, Seth Green, Sean Astin, and Greg Cipes as the title characters. All of the levels, including the new ones added to the Switch version, pull from the cartoon show’s entire run, complete with some winks and nods to older versions of the characters. The Switch version runs fine but doesn’t look that great overall, especially in handheld mode. While I personally like the look of the show it’s based on, I don’t think that art style translates well to this type of video game.
Levels are longer than you expect, complete with multiple stages, mid-bosses, and a final boss. The four playable characters are most separated by their available Turtle Power, which is a bonus move that can be pulled off when a meter is charged. Mikey uses his nunchucks to hit enemies with pizza slices, Donnie electrocutes baddies, Leo spins in a sword tornado, and Raph gets angry and makes fire appear. You also have assist characters, such as Leatherhead and Metalhead, that you can occasionally get to drop in and help out battling the hordes.
In a world where the Switch is filthy with TMNT arcade games across the Cowabunga Collection and Shredder’s Revenge, Wrath of the Mutants is a distant third place. It’s fine in the sense that if you get three buddies to play through it with you, you’ll probably have a good time. But beyond that camaraderie, this is a middling port of an okay game.
Typically when I play Metroidvanias, I’m not focusing on the story. I love Metroid and I have geeked out over Chozo lore, but at the end of the day, as long as I’ve got some atmosphere amidst the labyrinths, I’m good to go. The strength of Tales of Kenzera: Zau is in its story, which is intertwined through the gameplay, told in a manner that makes the game better by its emotional impact. The quasi-abstract story of loss and grief is the foundation that the tight platforming, great sense of movement, and enjoyable combat funnels all build from. In the process, developer Surgent Studios has made one of the best games of its type in recent memory.
The majority of the game focuses on a young shaman named Zau who recently lost his father. He goes to Kalunga, the God of Death, to try to revive his dad, which takes him on a quest throughout the land of Kenzera to defeat the three great spirits. Each spirit has its parable about death and loss, delivering powerful emotional beats regularly. I did not expect to be near tears during boss fights during this game. While the story is a focus, it doesn’t interrupt gameplay, with most of the cut scenes told economically on the back of incredible writing. Zau also has recurring dialogue with Kalunga while he’s running and jumping around the world.
The platforming and action that accompanies the story is mostly fantastic, as Zau’s maneuverability starts great and gets even better as you unlock more abilities. The combination of a double jump, wall jump, and dash makes platforming quick and fun in an almost rhythmic pattern. While the game holds secret paths and unlockables, it’s largely straightforward for the duration of the plot. Even still, I had a good time jumping around areas I’ve already gone through.
The combat is simple at a glance but has a variety of layers, some of which can be low-key cheesed during certain combat situations. Zau has a sun mask and a moon mask that can be swapped between at will. The sun mask is more aggressive and melee-focused, offering light combos and when you unlock it, a special powerful ranged attack. The moon mask is more focused on defense, with an early stun add-on power as well as a basic ranged attack. Swapping between the two strategically is where the combat starts to take off. It feels great to lay out a mask-swapping plan and execute it to perfection. The only real issue with the combat is the few stretches of too many kill rooms in close proximity. They both slow the momentum down and show the cracks of the combat.
Visually, the art style is overall expressive and pleasant, running well enough on Switch. It's not the ideal place to play Tales of Kenzera, but if you just have access to Switch, it's good enough to experience the greatness this game has to offer. The game has auto-save, so it removes any need for save rooms. The checkpointing is mostly good, though it is hard to find out where the game will leave you when you quit the game. My biggest issue with the checkpointing is when there is a reaction-based platforming challenge. Some of those are side challenges, so the fact they’re meant to be difficult doesn’t bother me there, but when those are in the main story, I felt like I was being punished for not having preternatural knowledge of what was coming next. Lengthy trial-and-error segments were the lowest point of Tales of Kenzera.
Thankfully that low point is the outlier, but this is still overall a stellar video game. Lasting in the ballpark of 8-10 hours, Tales of Kenzera is a well-paced Metroidvania that is a blast to play, featuring novel unlockable abilities, a good challenge, and most of all, an incredible story. Just be ready to shed a tear or two, especially if you’re in my shoes of being a parent to a young kid because hoo boy - that whole father/son element is played to perfection. The story is a true triumph and the gameplay supports it perfectly.
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