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TalkBack / Re: Metroid Prime: Federation Force Is Great, Actually

« on: September 24, 2023, 05:09:53 PM »

Textbook example of wrong place at the wrong time for sure. I bought the game at launch and also had a lot of fun with it. It was definitely a good game, just the exact opposite of what the series needed at the time. The reactions from the fanbase was inexcusably horrible, but at the same time, I can't totally disagree with the sentiment of being disappointed, and it's something Nintendo should have been cognizant of. They openly held back games in the Wii era to make sure the timing was right, and if rumours are to believed, they're also doing that now with some titles. I guess they were a lot more desperate during the Wii U years when 3DS had to prop up their business with whatever releases they could though.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Not a hater but... (future prediction)

« on: September 24, 2023, 05:01:31 PM »

With the Switch successor rumours starting to gain steam, I was randomly reminded of this thread. What an absolute gem. Going from "10 million lifetime sales" to being within a stone's throw of PS2 and DS for the best-selling system of all time when it's all said and done. Truly an underdog story if ever there was one.

I hope our friend makes a comeback for his Switch 2 predictions.

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Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 840: Mario Spreading

« on: September 24, 2023, 04:56:20 PM »

SaGa Scarlet Grace is lowkey an amazing JRPG. Not "for what it is" or "for a SaGa game" or with some other kind of qualifier: it's legitimately great with one of the best turn-based battle systems I've experienced. Think there's a very good chance you'll enjoy it, Guillaume. I also don't remember a single playthrough being all that long by modern JRPG standards either, which is also nice.

If I didn't play Scarlet Grace, I probably wouldn't be that excited for Emerald Beyond based on what was shown on the Direct either, but my experience with the former has me all in when it comes out next year.

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Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 766: Who Owns Your Pac-Mom?

« on: April 11, 2022, 12:15:26 PM »

I think European copies of rare games are generally worth less than the US version. When I checked what my copies of Ninja Cop and Gotcha Force were worth it wasn't that much.

Elden Ring isn't actually THAT hard, turns out the people who yell "git gud" hamstring themselves by ignoring like half the mechanics and acting like it's cheating to use them.

I'm skeptical that anyone on the crew who is on the fence about Elden Ring would enjoy the game using summons and that other stuff. I haven't used it myself, but watching some other people play, it seems like they just let them do the work while they spam roll for most of the fight (which is fine, I just can't imagine this crew having fun like that). There is probably a happy medium to be found, but I think it's hard with the way the mechanics work. The game is still very hard in the sense that you can easily wander into a fight and still get one-shot.

That's also a pretty weird way to characterize playing Elden Ring like a classic Souls games. It's like saying people who don't play on the easy setting in an otherwise difficult game are hamstringing themselves or not using steer assist in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is ignoring the mechanics. People should just enjoy games however they want, there doesn't need to be shade thrown on either playstyle.

Anyway, I would argue that while Elden Ring is still difficult, the real way it makes the series better is by taking out a lot of the other frustrations around its difficulty. Cutting down (or outright removing) the slog back to pretty much all the bosses in the game, having a million options to go elsewhere and make progress if you don't want to deal with a particular boss or area at the moment, being more generous with bonfires, etc. It's still a hard game, but they smoothed out a lot of stuff around the difficulty that made it frustrating.

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Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 765: This Isn't Even Steven Seagal's Final Form

« on: April 04, 2022, 02:14:04 AM »

You can effectively lock yourself out of choices in Triangle Strategy, unfortunately (meaning you cannot sway the decision a certain way no matter how much info you collect and what combination of answers you try). Each decision corresponds to one of the three convictions, and if you don't have the necessary amount of points in that conviction at that point in the game, you cannot say or do anything to sway certain characters (you can grind it in very miniscule ways but that takes ages).

I loved the game overall and enjoyed it a great deal, but this was also my sole complaint. Especially since they're a lot more transparent about it in new game+, and (spoiler about routes) there's a golden route that sounds pretty much like the true ending (I'm still working on it, so I haven't seen it yet myself), and you need to make very specific choices at these junctures to unlock it.

Also, I'm not 100% on this, but I read that battles scale based on your army's level and maybe the difficulty. I was also wondering why I always like 1-2 levels behind the recommended level, but apparently it's designed that way. They give you a lot more exp when you're somewhat underleveled vs. being at or above the same level as enemies to make up for it. I felt like I had to grind more for money than exp just to get enough upgrade materials.

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TalkBack / Re: 48 New Tracks Won’t Save Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

« on: March 19, 2022, 05:55:11 PM »

"Won't Save" is a questionable word choice for a game the article points out is close to 45 million in sales. What exactly is it Nintendo needs to be trying to "save" about MK8's release at this point? If you said "Won't Improve" then that would make more sense to me. Nothing in the article really highlights the idea that the game needs saving either considering how well received it seems to be with Switch users who continue to purchase it.

I'm going to assume this is referring to the issues they outline in the article and how new courses don't really address them. They mention the sales and the popularity in the first paragraph.

I've had a lot of fun with Mario Kart 8 both on Wii U and Switch, and I'm still excited for the Booster Courses, but I kinda agree: at this point, the game feels very basic, and even on the new maps, I still felt like I was playing the same game I've been playing for years and years. I don't think Mario Kart 9 was the play, but they certainly could have added some of those elements from Mario Kart Tour to freshen up the experience.

200cc is fire though.

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Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 747: Like the Plane

« on: November 22, 2021, 02:07:00 PM »

Which other games in the series? Most games in the series were restrictive in terms of fusion (albeit in different ways) until IV. If you played Strange Journey before IV, I'm not sure how that would annoy you. More importantly, the game was balanced around that fact.

That's disingenuous. That's like saying just give every demon you intend to use in V one skill of every element, get 8 turns, and just stomp everybody before they get a single turn in. It's not that simple in practice all the time. The strategy shifted more towards building teams for each floor in Strange Journey.

The only sector where this was egregious was Eridanus. That's not the only late game dungeon in the game though. Every Atlus dungeon crawler has some trial and error and many of the mechanics you mentioned. That's the nature of those games. It's not a Strange Journey exclusive, and it definitely didn't stop there.

I'm not really trying to defend the merits of Strange Journey (I can understand how some people wouldn't like it), it's just a bit weird to make a 1:1 comparison like this to a decade old game that I would argue is basically a different genre (or sub-genre if you want to call it that).

My point still stands that it shouldn't have any bearing if James or anybody else is debating whether to pick up V, but more because it's much more different.

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Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 747: Like the Plane

« on: November 22, 2021, 12:57:36 AM »

SMT 5 is lightyears ahead of Strange Journey in terms of design. If you decide to go into Strange Journey and find that it's annoying and frustrating, that's a totally normal reaction in 2021 and isn't a reflection on how 5 is.

(5 is incredible by the way, can't put it down)

Lightyears ahead how? It's an apples to oranges comparison: I'm still relatively early in SMT V, but the exploration is largely open spaces, and the first dungeon was very basic. Strange Journey, on the other hand, is a pure dungeon crawler. It's more that the design is vastly different than better or worse (I think both games are great in very different ways).

I do agree for that same reason that a negative experience with Strange Journey should not deter someone in the slightest from trying SMT V though.

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TalkBack / Re: Splatoon 3 Announced: Coming In 2022

« on: February 19, 2021, 01:18:19 PM »

Comparing Wii to Switch is apples to oranges. Wii found widespread success with a mechanic that was going to lose its appeal to a mainstream audience past the short-term. That's why even waiting a year or two too long was make or break. Switch's main appeal (as a concept) will become more appealing over the next decade, if anything. Like does anybody envision them moving away from this concept with the successor? They will refine it, make it more flexible and convenient, and obviously more powerful, but the main principle of the hardware design will be the same.

It's not only about when they want to put out a successor, it's also about when they can. Moving to a new generation means that you're segmenting your playerbase, and the leap forward has to be significant enough to justify that while also being affordable enough for a mass market product. It's not enough to just want to do strategically, it has to be technically feasible too.

Imagine Sony and Microsoft trying to put out PS5 and XBSX when they launched the PS4 Pro and XB1X, or alternatively, trying to start a new generation with those iterative consoles as their next gen. They would've hurt themselves immensely in either case. There's a pretty good argument to be made that they pulled the trigger too early even now given what a mess their launches have been.

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TalkBack / Re: Catherine: Full Body (Switch) Review

« on: July 08, 2020, 11:58:18 AM »

I think one can be critical of the games perspective (if one thinks it is morally flawed in some way), without denigrating in the way this author has.

Which is what they did:

The puzzle portion of the game is outstanding, the voice acting good, and the game itself is very unique.

Over the past decade I have largely avoided revisiting Catherine because I knew that it likely had not aged well, and I didn’t really want to spoil the good memories I had of playing the game. My tastes have changed a lot over the years, and while I’ve gained a new appreciation for the incredible puzzle-solving gameplay, I’ve been utterly astounded at just how poorly the story has aged. It’s unfortunate, since the voice acting, visuals, and overall cinematic direction of both cutscenes and gameplay are all excellent.

They gave the game a fair shake. They acknowledge the exact same strengths of the game you did. The difference is that you seem content to handwave the offensive material in the game because you're not part of the community being disrespected, while the reviewer is a reasonable human being capable of empathy.

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TalkBack / Re: A Look Back at E3 2000 - Nintendo World Report's First E3

« on: May 14, 2020, 10:26:53 PM »

This is really cool. I was very young around this time, and it would be almost an entire decade later that I got regular internet at home, so I was never plugged into video game news of this era. It's always fascinating to see what it was like. Seems like an entirely different world compared to where we are now!

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: What will Nintendo release in 2020?

« on: May 14, 2020, 10:23:12 PM »

I'm not sure if I would qualify a Paper Mario game as a heavy hitter. Feel like it hasn't had that level of weight for some time as Sticker Star and Color Splash felt more like supplemental games than big tent poll affairs.

Yeah, I would put it on par with something like Luigi's Mansion. A good secondary title that will get its fans excited, but not a "universal" big game.

This reveal lends more credence to the 3D Mario collection rumour, since this was also part of it, and Venture Beat also casually dropped "Pikmin 3 Deluxe" as something that's supposed to be part of Nintendo's 2020 plans today as well. If those two rumours pan out, then their second half of the year lineup is starting to take shape.

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TalkBack / Re: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Dropped from EVO 2020 Lineup, New Games Added to EVO Online

« on: May 14, 2020, 10:20:29 PM »

And EVO becomes even more useless. Kinda hard to call yourself a credible fighting tournament without having the best selling fighting game of all time.

Kind of hard to call yourself a credible fighting game tournament when everything is online.

This isn't a real EVO, and the format they've chosen shows it. As noted in the NWR article, they're not doing tournaments for the main lineup and are instead doing invitationals, and it's not a coincidence that the four games that do have open tournaments all use rollback netcode (and they'll still likely be less than an ideal experience).

The netcode in Smash Ultimate is so bad that top players are already swearing off online tournaments after having poor experiences with the other big online tournaments that were organized over the last few weeks, so it's not like EVO would have an easy time getting together a roster for an Smash Ultimate invitational even if they wanted to. Blame Nintendo for not caring about their online experience.

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Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 661: Dropping the Gloves

« on: February 24, 2020, 10:16:18 AM »

Kinda surprised at the vitriol James has for the story of Cindered Shadows and Three Houses. I'm not sure if you're just mashing through dialogue, but there's a reasonable explanation for almost everything you said makes no sense or is "dumb".

Balthus is the closest friend of Holst, who is seen as one of the best generals in Fodlan even by people outside of The Alliance, and has also knwon Hilda for years as a result. So it's not like they just up and trusted this dude with a bounty on his head for no real reason (and even his bounties are for a comically idiotic reason, which they're up front about; it's not like he's been out there committing war crimes).

Same goes for Yuri and Constance; Ashe is acquainted with Yuri through his being the adoptive son of a well regarded Kingdom noble, and Edelgard recognizes Constance as the daughter of former Empire nobility. So, outside of Hapi, the Ashen Wolves aren't complete strangers. On top of all that, the biggest driving force for the group from Garreg Mach to help them in the beginning is because there are lots of other people in Abyss who are innocent and need protecting. It's not like they decided to help these four people fulfill their life goals specifically at the outset.

Even the part about the passage to Abyss being some kind of unforgivable stupidity is a pretty big reach. It's not like Garreg Mach is some shanty on a side road.



It's a gigantic castle town built by dragon people and their fellow mystical allies in the middle of a mountain range. So yeah, hidden passages that the class hasn't discovered before or an entire network of tunnels and facilities underground doesn't seem that unbelievable.

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TalkBack / Re: Fire Emblem Three Houses: Cindered Shadows (Switch DLC) Review

« on: February 21, 2020, 01:03:57 PM »

Largely agree with this review. Cindered Shadows felt more like pre-Three Houses Fire Emblem, which after 300 hours of meticulously completing all four routes in the game, I was more than ready for. The Cindered Shadows campaign took me a bit longer on Hard (11 hours), so yeah, it was a pretty good length considering the majority of that spent on the maps and not in exploration or in the classroom.

I'm not gonna see how the main Ashen Wolves and The Abyss are integrated in the main till later, since I ran through Silver Snow and Crimson Flower in the lead up to this and am a bit burned out on the game again, but the characters are really likable, and I'm looking forward to what role they play in the war and what kind of relationships they end up forging with the other characters in the game.

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TalkBack / Re: Pokemon Sword And Shield Announces Expansion Pass

« on: January 11, 2020, 01:23:43 PM »

Aside from taking my comment too seriously, notice how I didn't mention the PokéDex.

Fair enough about not mentioning the 'dex, but then I'm not sure what they would have been holding back. Nothing really indicates that any of this content is already finished.

I guess it really was as simple as me not realizing people still made "DLC is just content they cut from the games" jokes in 2020. My bad.

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TalkBack / Re: Pokemon Sword And Shield Announces Expansion Pass

« on: January 11, 2020, 09:58:17 AM »

Holding back content to release as DLC? Pokémon truly has become a modern game!

I see that Game Freak cut out half the Pokedex so they could sell players the solution a year later. It's almost like this game probably should have spent another year in development.

I mean, it's right there in the first post. You don't need to pay a single cent to have access to the 200+ Pokémon being added. Game Freak has made quite a few blunders over the past year, and I've been kinda disappointed with what I've played of Sword & Shield so far, but it's seems like a reach to try to dunk on them for what was announced here.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: How are y'all Switch Pro Controllers holding up?

« on: January 05, 2020, 02:20:56 PM »

My Pro Controller is still in good shape as well. I bought it when Splatoon 2 launched, so it's got more than two years and over 1,000 hours on it (including a fair amount of use with my PC), and it still hasn't given me any real issues. There was some dust from the analog sticks grinding against the edges a bit, but that went away after a short while.

I would definitely try to get a replacement. It's a really good controller overall.

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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo World Report's 2019 Game Awards

« on: January 05, 2020, 02:16:11 PM »

I started playing through Genealogy of the Holy War last year (after finally catching up with most of the Fire Emblem games released in North America; the only ones I haven't finished now are Shadow Dragon and two routes of Three Houses, the latter of which I'm planning to start soon). The game really is super intriguing from a story and character standpoint, but yeah, it needs a full on remake from a gameplay perspective. There are a lot of interesting ideas with the large maps and mission structure, and how the romance and timeskip is implemented, but the game is hard to play in a lot of respects. I would love to see it remade, and with Koei Tecmo apparently taking a larger role on Three Houses than we initially thought, it makes a certain amount of sense that a remake is something other people at Intelligent Systems would have been working in the meanwhile.

I wouldn't hold my breathe for Thracia 776 as DLC though. I know people have speculated on that, or even both games being remade into a single package, but I don't think either scenario is feasible when you consider Intelligent Systems turned Gaiden into such a fleshed out, robust game with Shadows of Valentia due to the care and attention they approached the remake with. I think Thracia 776 would have to be its own remake.

Overall, it was interesting to read through this feature as always!

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TalkBack / Re: 8-4 Talks SaGa Scarlet Grace Ambitions And Localization

« on: December 28, 2019, 07:26:15 PM »

I'm 35 hours into my first playthrough with Urpina. Game is amazing and 8-4 absolutely did an awesome job with the localization. It's in my top three for favourite games of 2019 already and might go higher!

“Try everything!” Howard implored. “SaGa games are more about the journey than the destination, so when you find yourself in a new area, make the rounds to examine all locations, visit all towns, and chat up whoever you encounter. Once you come across an event that seems like it could head interesting places, go along for the ride and see what happens! If you find yourself unable to proceed due to a battle you can’t overcome, upgrading your equipment is a great place to start. Once your characters are a bit better outfitted, try revisiting battles you know you can win and playing though those a few more times to hone your understanding of how combat works.”

I've been following this approach (mostly because I do with most games, especially JRPGs), and it really is staggering to see just how much great content there is in this game. The development team clearly had to make a lot of concessions with the resources they had to work with, but they made so many smart choices in what to prioritize and ended up making something really special and fun. Hope this game does well for them and they get a little more to work with for their future projects.

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TalkBack / Re: Metroid Prime 4 Development Rebooted: Now Retro Studios Project

« on: January 25, 2019, 06:39:00 PM »

Metroid Prime 4 was also due in 2019. That sure worked out well.

Metroid Prime 4 never had a specific release window (nor do I remember Nintendo even implying that it was close).

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TalkBack / Re: Metroid Prime 4 Development Rebooted: Now Retro Studios Project

« on: January 25, 2019, 06:26:51 PM »

I look forward to yet more mediocre Wii U games getting Switch ports because of this, since Nintendo apparently still hasn't learned how to make Switch games yet.

Yeah, they've only announced five original games for 2019 to go along with all one of those Wii U ports so far. They really need to get it together.

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Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 606: Flexing on Undead Taxmen

« on: January 22, 2019, 11:26:47 PM »

I'm glad Torna got some love. Even though I've come to expect a lot from Monolith Soft, they still managed to surpass my expectations with Torna. I'm sure most of us would have been really happy and excited even if they just mostly reused the engine and the battle system with some tweaks, but they totally went above and beyond and delivered something amazing.

Dragon Quest XI is far and away my game of the year overall (and I'm happy people waiting for the Switch version will get to play it in the near future), but Torna was definitely in the top three.

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Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 605: Remembrances of Games Yet to Release

« on: January 14, 2019, 02:00:52 PM »

I never really had a problem keeping my party properly leveled in Octopath Traveler because 1) they give you the level for each character's next chapter right after you finish the current one, and 2) you can easily get all eight secondary classes at the start of the second set of chapters. The game gives you enough information to know who you should be leveling in the short-term (because their chapter comes soon given the recommended level), and enough flexibility that you can have any character in your party at any given time and not be hindered all that much (outside of some boss battles).

If too much time between chapters is a concern for you, the game also gives you enough flexibility that you can make two separate parties and just run through all the chapters for one party before moving onto doing all the second party's chapters. I didn't do this myself, but I saw quite a few people say it worked well for them with a little bit of planning.

Also, I don't agree with H'aanit being useless without monsters at all. I ignored that mechanic for the overwhelming majority of the game, and she was still one of my favourite characters. Hunter class skills are great both for boss battles and for speeding up a lot of normal encounters (which, yeah, it doesn't surprise me normal encounters are taking you a long time if you think she's not super useful).

As for the structure of the game overall, I thought they did a great job delivering on what they set out to do with Octopath. As Clex alluded to, it really feels like you're on an adventure with eight travelers and the game lets you go about it in so many different ways. I had so much fun with the battle system and building up characters and parties, and just exploring the world and the towns playing as all eight characters as I went. On the flip side, if you wanted to minimize the time between each character's chapters, the game is structured in a way that makes that approach feasible too. It's a super unique and enjoyable experience that stands out to me even like half a year later.

The game sold over one million units in less than a month, and that's with shortages in Japan and in the West, so it was definitely a commercial success. Asano has since said that BD11 is expanding and has hinted that they're currently working on multiple projects (and have heavily teased another Bravely game), so it definitely seems like Square Enix was happy with the result overall.

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Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 586: Local Furry Streaming

« on: August 27, 2018, 11:32:39 AM »

Ni no Kuni II sold over 900,000 units in two months, so I don't think it's accurate to say that it sold like crap. Also, funnily enough, this is an example of a game that DID try to do something to set itself apart (and arguably cater more to the West) by moving more towards action combat.

I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that Dragon Quest XI will fail to make inroads in the West (like everyone on the show seems to believe). For all of Square Enix's questionable decisions regarding the series, they did address the biggest asks from Western fans by 1) including voice acting, and 2) having a day and date release on PC (which should also indirectly address the issue of the MIDI soundtrack and is something most Japanese third party releases still can't get right), so it's not like they spent this last year doing absolutely nothing or failing to make the release better in ways that may not have been achievable with a worldwide launch. Going to another recent example, Fire Emblem Fates came out 8 months later in North America (and almost an entire year later in Europe) and that game still sold very well, so I don't believe this is as big a deal as it's made out to be in general (especially since Dragon Quest XI is coming out 13 months later, not "18 months later" lol).